Update 6-11-02


Hi,

Letter from Jerry, some fast business, and a couple of thoughts.

From Jerry Bittman:  Roz Minsky threw her hat into the ring for a Las Vegas reunion in 2005.  Having been a resident of that city for many years (I was a dealer and pit boss) I started to compare Las Vegas with Nebraska.
      Vegas has huge hotels.  Vegas has gambling.  Vegas has 24-hour entertainment.  Vegas has showgirls.  Vegas has great restaurants.  Vegas has terrific shopping.  Vegas has world-class golf courses.  VEGAS HAS SHOWGIRLS!  (No, I said that already.)
      Nebraska has cornfields.
      I now cast my vote with Roz, for Las Vegas.  Actually, six years ago, Pete Rosen and I were discussing having a reunion there.  Definitely in 2005
      For Diane Fruzzetti:  the Nebraska campaign was all a hallucination.  I don't know what I was thinking.  Too many Omaha steaks.  Deer jerky.  But Diane, I do have friends who work in the casinos in Albuquerque -- I was offered a job there and went to check it out.  The only good thing I can say about Albuquerque is that it is close to Taos.  Even the Dodgers took their farm team out of there.
      P.S.  I will offer free classes to anyone who wants to learn how to count cards in Blackjack.  Since they know me in the casinos, I'm banned from the card tables.  But that hasn't stopped me from teaching some 300 people how to play.  It's really quite easy (after all I can do it), and Blackjack is the only game in the casino where the players can have the odds in their favor.

Business:

Kathy Malchow has turned up:  "Sorry I was unable to get to the reunion -- I can't believe it's that many years already!  Wasn't it last week that we were just starting out?  I would really enjoy seeing the photos.  I had been keeping up with your weekly updates, but somewhere along the line lost the home page address.  Thanks for contacting me and letting me know what's going on.  My e-mail address is:  klmalchow@msn.com."

Speaking of photos:  there are now an additional 80 on the home page -- under Reunion Pictures 2.  These are from Carol Ewig, Robin Feit, and Judy Hartstone.  They still need to be labeled, so if you're trying to figure out who the people are, please look at the earlier photos.  Match up the clothes.
      Also, I still have two dozen more pictures of my own, and some current photos of South and Forest.  But they all need to be scanned and cropped, so it'll be at least another week.  Along with the labeling.

Plus, Jerry mentioned he was having trouble getting onto the home page.  That darn AOL.  You just have to be patient.  If you sign on and a get a blank white page several times in a row, or a message saying, "This address doesn't exist," try again.  Or try another time.  And you can't always tell when it's going to be busy:  I usually edit the home page late at night, when there's less traffic, but sometimes AOL uses that time for maintenance and shuts off all connections to its home pages.  And sometimes local lines are simply down.  But I'm not gonna shut the home page down without telling you, so if you can't get onto it, it's just a cyber-jam.  Kind of like traffic in L.A.:  we learn to live with it.

About the midsummer California gathering in Cambria:  There are now 7 people interested, oddly, 2 from out-of-town.  Looking at the previously-scheduled conflicts, the best free date would be Saturday, July 27th.  Please let me know how that sounds, and if you think we can build interest to at least a dozen South folks and their groupies.


Finally, some thoughts:  I'd been considering letting the weekly updates slide.  It's summer, and people have other things to do.  I wrote to Terri and Paul about that, and we discussed how last summer the updates had largely been me reporting all the new South people Paul had turned up, so other folks didn't really have to write back.  Also, as Judy Hartstone recently wrote me, "There was such a buildup of intensity, and then the BIG event, and then a little flurry as people tried to hang on to the good feelings of being together.  But then LIFE returns to take over people's time and attention.  At least, I'm feeling a bit that way.  I WANT to keep in contact with several people, but my hours are so packed that I just don't seem to have the time."
      Still, a few months ago a friend of mine sent me her web site to check out.  She's a teacher, actually a former student of mine, and she wanted to show off some pictures of Sweeney Todd and You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown.  But I was busy with our reunion, then some other stuff, and kept putting it off, till last Friday.  I opened the web site and the first thing I saw was:  In Memorium, Victoria Silvestri, 1963-2002.  My friend had died, completely unexpectedly, in her sleep at 39.
      So, to me, it's almost worth sending out these updates weekly, even if it's to say, "Hi, no real news," just to keep us all in touch.  And to provide a message board so that when there is something to say, there's an easy, established, place to say it.

http://hometown.aol.com/falcons1965a/myhomepageprofile.html


Rich