Mrs. Moffat's baby boy turns 27 today.... Happy Birthday Jake... and many many happy ones to follow, too

happy birthday to you
happy birthday to you
happy birthday dear jake....
Happy birthday to you...

and many more...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JACOB DANIEL MOFFAT

Kaitlyn at her Bible School program this

evening, taken by Jonathan

finishing up under the lights... the blur is Madison Ann...

Austyn's last game of the season.. he is on first.. they loaded the bases.. and lost the game by one run... wow... but they played their hearts out

Opposing pitcher had his "catfish" stance down to a t.... one could tell he was well groomed in intimation ... haha...

Madison Ann being, well, Madison.... haha...

A Man playing short stop

A-man throwing to Third...

Austyn caught a pop up fly... nailed it big time and a very quick throw back to home...

Cars, cars and more cars at the ball park last night...

Austyn on his way to Third

the ladies watching Austyn's last ballgame of the spring season 2009

Mike Anderson's new puppys.. think they are for sale too....

I am trying to upload videos of the new puppies on youtube without much success, maybe by the end of the day... sigh...

thinking of my own Mom who turns 90 on June 23rd....

Living legacy
Man's father fought in Civil War

Charles Cox, 93, of Pawnee poses with a photo of his parents and a picture of himself in the Army in 1942. Cox is one of the the nation's few remaining sons of a Union Civil War Veteran. RHETT MORGAN / Tulsa World

By RHETT MORGAN World Staff Writer
Published: 6/17/2009 2:18 AM
Last Modified: 6/17/2009 3:16 AM

PAWNEE — Charles Cox traveled in a covered wagon, courted in a Model T and served on four continents in the Army.

His history also contains this jaw-dropping nugget: Cox's father fought in the Civil War.

Cox is the son of Joseph H. Cox, a Illinois infantryman for the Union Army from 1862-65. Charles was born when his father, who married three times, was 73.

"I think I was an unexpected child," said Cox, 93, of Pawnee.

Today, he's a link to Lincoln.

Only 52 children of Union Civil War Veterans are still living, according to the Pennsylvania-based Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War. The Sons of Confederate Veterans has located more than 100 sons and the United Daughters of the Confederacy has located more than 150 daughters.

Charles Cox wasn't on the list, which chronicles only one Civil War child from Oklahoma, a daughter.

"... Unless the order learns of family members of a veteran due to a news item or the survivors make themselves known to our order, it is not possible to know of them," David Demmy Sr., executive director of the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War, wrote in an e-mail. "I am not aware of any other organization that may attempt to contact and tabulate these folks ... ."

Cox shrugs off his unusual status, mainly because of the arithmetic of it all. Cox was 13 when his father died in 1928.

"My older brother had more to do with my childhood than anybody else," Cox said recently from an easy chair in his home.

"He really was the one who saw to it that I was taken care of. I've never forgotten how he was so involved in my life."

Documented life in letters

Joseph H. Cox was a corporal of Company F, 127th Illinois Infantry. Enlisting in August 1862, he served in the 15th Corps under Gen. William Sherman before being wounded and taken to the notorious Andersonville Prison in Georgia, the first of several POW camps in which he was held. He escaped in December 1864 while being moved to Jacksonville prison and reached the Union lines the following February.

J.H. Cox wrote down his remembrances of the war on stationery dated July 10, 1875. His family still has the original copies and other documents detailing his colorful life.

J.H. fathered 12 children from his three marriages, including eight from his last wife, Emma Thurston, whom he wed in 1889. When he made the first of two land runs into Indian Territory in '89, he wrote to his wife in a letter dated April 19, remarking on the difficulty of crossing the Salt Fork River.

"Now came the critical part of our journey," J.H. wrote. "Two men and one team had already drowned, and the ferry men were all drunk but I decided to risk it. I put harness and everything in the buggy, laid my overcoat off, and got Henry Gazway to go with me and lead the gray mare. I took poor Rompy who could barely breathe with distemper."

He continued: "The men behind whipped their horses in, and we hung to their halters. They had to swim almost from the bank. The gray mare swam like a duck but Rompy struggled for about 5 rods (came near pulling me in) and turned over on his side and gave up. Men from the shore yelled, 'Let him go, he will drown.' Those on the boat said, "Give him some more rope or he will drown.'"

In an April 22, 1889, letter to Emma, J.H. complained about food. "I don't think I shall stay as long as I intended, as I have had a falling out at my boarding house with the cook," he wrote. "The pancakes don't come up to standard. I went to turn one and it fell 4 1/4 sections adjoining. Please tell me what to do. My stove is a daisy, but I am sadly in need of a cook."

Traveling the world

Charles Cox was the last child born to J.H. and Emma, who was 30 years her husband's junior. When J.H. purchased property in Arkansas, he rode a train there while sending his wife, teenage son and Charles in a covered wagon, said Gail Gazin, the younger of Charles' two daughters.

It was in Arkansas, near a place called West Fork, that Cox was treated for diphtheria at about age 4. He recalls the physician saying, "I don't know whether he will make it through the night."

"I proved that they were wrong. I'm still here," Cox said.

The family eventually settled back in Pawnee. Cox married Elna Griesel, a switchboard operator whom he first met in a Pawnee telephone office.

"Dad went in there to call a girlfriend and saw mother," Gazin said. "He thought she was a pretty good lookin' woman, and he might just have to get to know her."

Cox did medic-related duties while in World War II, working in such places as Capetown, South Africa; Brazil; Canada; India; and France.

"I got to be a world traveler," he said. "Wherever they had a problem, they sent me."

When the war ended, Cox made a career of education, first teaching at a one-room schoolhouse before spending roughly 30 years in the Pawnee school system. His wife of nearly 67 years died last May.

"It's a life that I don't really have to apologize for because the things I have done have been beneficial to a lot of people," said Cox, a company commander for the Oklahoma National Guard from 1954-60. "My life has been respectable. I have no reason for regretting. I've managed to survive all this time and I'm crowding 100."

This young man bought feed from us for his show pigs over the years and grew up about 2 miles from us.. now look...

A unique dairy in Payne County

Ashley Stockamp
Stillwater NewsPress

A Payne County farm is complete with pasture, barns and even a milking parlor, but there are no cows.

Chester and Dora Busch operate Feather Creek Farm, located between Stillwater and Glencoe. The farm is a full production goat dairy with about 100 milking goats, 48 of which are being milked at this time.

Dora Busch said they started in the dairy goat industry about seven years ago when their oldest son wanted to show dairy goats. After he graduated and moved away from the farm, the Busches decided to transform into a grade A goat dairy.

Feather Creek Farm became grade A in 2007 and they began selling their milk at Pure Prairie Creamery, LLC, a cheese factory in Ada. The cheese is sold in local groceries throughout Oklahoma including Consumers IGA and Companies Comin II in Stillwater.

“We sell it locally, we are legal to sell 100 gallons of raw goats milk, which is unpasturized,” Dora Busch said. “The only thing that has been done to the milk is that it has been filtered for cleanness. We can sell that from the farm every month.”

Pure Prairie Creamery, LLC Partner Bill Clark said the creamery produces a market for Oklahoma goat dairy producers. He said the Busches are one of his best producers.

“It’s been excellent,” Clark said. “They have the highest quality of milk of any producer we buy from. Their quality has been superb.”

Clark said he can’t talk enough about the quality of their milk and attributes their success to careful genetic selection. He said milk usually gives an average 9 percent yield on cheese, but Feather Creek Farm’s milk yields 10 to 11 percent.

The Busches hope to add a cheese factory to their dairy and sell direct to consumers, but Dora Busch said the Stillwater market is a tough market.

Chester Busch said he has wanted to milk for a long time, and took losing his job as an opportunity to farm full-time. He said now was a good time to get into the dairy goat industry because people are becoming more health conscious.

“It’s something I always liked doing,” he said. “It’s a specialty item, a novelty item. More people are getting more health conscious so goats milk is on the rise.”

Dora Bush said milking goats is the same process as milking cows, but is actually a little easier.

“The only difference is you’ve got two teats instead of four,” Dora Busch said. “My husband’s favorite saying is ‘If god had intended us to milk cows he would have given us four hands.’ ”

She said the size makes them easier to handle and the milk is a little easier to digest. She said the goats are good to work with and develop better personalities than dairy cattle.

“They’re very personable,” Dora Busch said. “Every single one of these goats has its own personality. They’re just lovable.”

Goats are considered browsers; they will pick through weeds and leaves instead of eating grasses. Dora Busch said the dairy goats are kept on an alfalfa and sweet feed diet to help with production.

“If all we did was let them browse, they would milk but it wouldn’t be what it is now,” she said. “It’s the same as with a cow dairy, the more production you can get out of one animal, the better off you are.”

Chester Busch lost his job in April and along with running the farm, distributes cheese for Pure Prairie Creamery. Dora Busch said this was a “mixed blessing” because he can now make more money on the farm.

“You don’t have to go out to an eight to five job,” Chester Busch said. “Farming’s really 24/7, but it’s something I enjoy doing.”

The Busches said they would like to expand their operation to around 150 milking goats. They also want to raise awareness for the industry and let people know the opportunity is out there.

For more information about becoming involved in the Dairy Goat call 405-334-1318.

American Chopper show builds CNG cycle for OKC energy company

By Associated Press
Published: 6/16/2009 10:49 AM
Last Modified: 6/16/2009 11:20 AM

OKLAHOMA CITY — The stars of a cable television reality show have built what is being touted as the world's first compressed natural gas-powered custom chopper for a local energy company.

"American Chopper" stars Paul Teutul Sr. and his sons, Paul Jr. and Mikey, run a family business in Newburgh, N.Y., known as Orange County Choppers.

They built the CNG-powered chopper for Chesapeake Energy Corp., the top independent producer of natural gas in the U.S.

The Oklahoma unveiling for the CNG chopper will be Wednesday morning at Chesapeake's northwest Oklahoma City headquarters. The "American Chopper" segment featuring the CNG chopper will air on cable network TLC on June 25.

Other Lives: Daytrotter Session

Other Lives recorded a session with Daytrotter.com awhile back. They become the fifth Oklahoma artist to be featured on Daytrotter - Evangelicals and Aqueduct both sessioned there in 2007, as did The Uglysuit in 2008 and Samantha Crain earlier this year.

Below are mp3s from the session, including details on each song by the band.

DOWNLOAD: Other Lives - “Precious Air”

This song was written in 2007. We recorded “Precious Air” for our album and we didn’t quite capture it in the studio. We had an earlier demo that we recorded on our own in Oklahoma and we ended up releasing that version of the song on our 5-song EP that we released last year.

DOWNLOAD: Other Lives - “It Was The Night”

This song was written for a dear friend that I lost.

DOWNLOAD: Other Lives - “AM Theme”

We wrote this song about a documentary called “The Bridge.” “The Bridge” is a 2006 documentary film by Eric Steel that tells the stories of a handful of individuals who committed suicide by jumping off of the Golden Gate Bridge in 2004.

DOWNLOAD: Other Lives - “Paper Cities”

This song started out as a piano riff that I had for a long time. Musically, this song kind of came together in parts. The lyrics on the other hand were sort of a theme we all had on our minds. This song is about the helplessness and feeling of disconnection we have had during the war. We all know family and friends overseas and it hit close to home.

From Daytrotter:

The Other Lives are cardiovascular. The Stillwater, Oklahomans are as good as a 10-mile run is for the old ticker. They’re as good as any other reasonable method of strengthening that pump that takes up a good amount of space on the south side of the ribcage. It enlarges the resilient, damned thing so much so that the trustworthy organ starts to pulse against those thin bones and you can feel it everywhere else in your body – exactly what they’ve done in terms of growth, for you as well as the many others that they’ve put themselves in contact with. Jesse Tabish doesn’t seem to have any trouble in getting compelled to delve into a story or a situation that involves painful remembrance or dramatic consequences, coating the swirling thoughts in the kind of open plain country-folk ringing and rustling that makes any man, woman or child feel what it might mean to be lonesome and forgotten. And that may not be the intention. Likely, these are songs that are meant to buoy a soul and that’s there, but Tabish and the young group do a job on making the actual story and the various points of interest feel as if they’re so personal that we shouldn’t take our eyes or ears off of them for we’re their protectors and are responsible for any of their aches and tears. It alone is enough to make a person come into closer contact with the weight of the sadness that he writes into his lyrics, which tend to veer through very personal episodes as well as mingling them with other stimulations brought in through other means less closely held. Without trying to make a person feel isolated with their own rambling troubles and their own significant glooms and terrors – those meaningful matters of restless nights – Other Lives has the ability to blow the top of your head out, allowing all of these somber spirits crawl on in and get their vagrancy on, bringing their neediness and their misfortunes straight to your temples. In letting these various sorts in, the capacity for pulling from these stories the great depths of intimacy and the great darkness of impact increases and suddenly we’re all there with the one Tabish is singing about – from the late friend in “It Was The Night” (singing, “You were so gone when we found you/It was the hour you had come back/You were so gone/And all of the reasons we’re not meant to know/Let the wind sweep over you/And hear the sound that’s calling you to come..back.”) to the other odd folks who just happen to make an impression on the writer, preying on his affinity for devastatingly harsh light and uncomfortable, but gorgeous heaviness. Other Lives fill their songs with some shimmering abandonment, the issues of lives changing and lives getting cold and barren before someone’s very eyes. Without needing to hightail it for the hills, drifting out into the middle of nowhere, we’re left hijacked and completely immobile in our cranium, thinking about those outside and around us as flittering fascinations – those who could love us, hurt us, miss us, ignore us, stun us, worry us or embrace us. It’s just always confusing where they’ll take us – to which destination – and this is a place that’s most unbearably absolute for Tabish and Other Lives.

another look at Friday's Storm

Not sure who took these awesome photos, this arrived in an email from Marilyn, please enjoy. Another look at Friday's storm.

Nasty little squall blew through this morning at about 9 o’clock.

The leading edge wasn’t as pretty as I had hoped it would be, but it wasn’t too bad. The first thing I noticed was that the sky behind the leading edge was a nice green color. If you recall from a previous email back in February, green skies typically indicate the presence of hail. Windy little sucker, too. The clouds just above the stadium lights here had to be pushing to the south at or over 100 mph. I’m glad those weren’t reaching ground level because I would have been blown to somewhere in North Texas.

“Greenage”.

After a nice downpour and gust front, the hail started to fall. It started as some nickels and dimes, but quickly grew to quarters and then golfballs.

A collection of golfballs and maybe a little larger.

Now up to the proverbial “hen-egg” sized hail. Maybe racquetballs.

Still about the same size, but I thought the banded core was pretty cool.

I thought this one was pretty cool looking. It was flat on the top and bottom, but had this ruffled look in the middle. Sort of looked like the cap of a mushroom. Really bizare, but that’s why I like the weather. It’s pretty random.

According to my computer, there were some radar detected areas of 3.5 inch hail. That’s getting into the big stuff now. Sort of between baseballs and softballs. Usually the radar program over-sizes the hail, meaning what actually hits the ground isn’t as big as the radar program says it is. This time it was.

This can ruin your day in a hurry.

Bigger than a quarter.

After 10 minutes of palming this thing, it has shrunk considerably. Even though some time had passed, it still measured in at 3 inches

I am not sure abou names...

but I think this is Mason and Isabella in town messing around in store? From Trisha

Thought for the day... actually two thoughts for the day...

thought one...

between 930 and 1030 AM yesterday Stillwater (Home of OSU) was pelted with softball size hail that usually goes long with tornados... While in Norman (Home of OU) between 930 and 1030PM a tornado came down running for about two miles BACKWARDS withOUT hail!! all in the same day.. rivals in many things, damaged from same type of storm... wow

and second thought for the day... when it's time to go... it's time to go...

Did you read about the lady who missed the flight that went down over the ocean recently...

LONDON: An Italian woman, who arrived late for the Air France flight that crashed in the Atlantic, was not so lucky after all. She has been killed in a car accident in Austria.

Johanna Ganthaler was holidaying in Brazil with her husband and missed Air France Flight 447 after turning up late at Rio de Janeiro airport on May 31, the Times reported.

All 228 people aboard lost their lives after the plane crashed into the Atlantic four hours into its flight to Paris.

The couple, from Bolzano-Bozen province, had managed to pick up a flight from Rio the following day.

Ganthaler died when their car turned across a road and swerved into an oncoming truck. Her husband was seriously wounded.

so when your number's up, it's time to go.. can't hide I guess!