Jeff and Tonya Web

Jeff and Tonya Webhttp://www.thomasforum.com/Jeff and Tonya Webhttp://www.thomasforum.com/lookout.jpgwww.thomasforum.comhttp://www.thomasforum.com/lookout.jpgJeff and Tonya Web RSS Feed8040Morality and Religion Posted By: Jeff On: Mar 09 2008 @ 3:39:39 PMhttp://www.thomasforum.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=646

Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

George Washington

]]>Judges Posted By: Jeff On: Jan 19 2008 @ 09:33:46 AMhttp://www.thomasforum.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=642

—Thomas Jefferson

]]>Ideas Posted By: Jeff On: Jan 17 2008 @ 2:44:09 PMhttp://www.thomasforum.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=641

You get your best ideas when you play.
Michael Hawley
MIT Media Lab
]]>America the Beautiful Posted By: Jeff On: Aug 08 2006 @ 8:38:27 PMhttp://www.thomasforum.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=640For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America! God shed his grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood, from sea to shining sea.

Oh beautiful, for pilgrims' feet
Whose stern, impassioned stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America! God mend thine ev'ry flaw;
Confirm thy soul in self control, thy liberty in law!

Oh beautiful, for heroes proved
In liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved
And mercy more than life!
America! America! May God thy gold refine,
'Til all success be nobleness, and ev'ry gain divine!

Oh beautiful, for patriot's dream
That sees, beyond the years,
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!
America! America! God shed his grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood, from sea to shining sea!

]]>Nauvoo Pageant Posted By: Jeff On: Aug 31 2005 @ 6:09:01 PMhttp://www.thomasforum.com/topic.asp?whichpage=-1&TOPIC_ID=639&REPLY_ID=253Hiking Trip Posted By: Jeff On: Aug 17 2005 @ 11:32:16 AMhttp://www.thomasforum.com/topic.asp?whichpage=-1&TOPIC_ID=629&REPLY_ID=248Movin Out Show Posted By: Jeff On: Aug 13 2005 @ 4:25:51 PMhttp://www.thomasforum.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=638MOVIN OUT - Billy Joel Play

Uihlein Hall Marcus Center
929 North Water Street
Milwaukee, WI 53202

]]>Altmayer Benefit Concert Posted By: Tonya On: Aug 11 2005 @ 09:06:28 AMhttp://www.thomasforum.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=6377 p.m. @ Our Saviour's Lutheran Church (815 S. Washington)

Musical Performances by:
Melanie Jensen, Courtney Nielson, Kwiyoum Lee, Carla Altmayer and Giselle Altmayer.

You Raise Me Up
]]>Ideas Posted By: Jeff On: Aug 02 2005 @ 8:20:41 PMhttp://www.thomasforum.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=632

You get your best ideas when you play.
Michael Hawley
MIT Media Lab
]]>SAFETY ALERT: "Dust-Off" Posted By: jim_manning On: Jul 28 2005 @ 09:35:13 AMhttp://www.thomasforum.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=631http://www.snopes.com/toxins/dustoff.asp The author of the e-mail, Jeff Williams, is an East Cleveland police officer. He was on duty when his son’s body was discovered and arrived home to find Lake County Sheriff’s Office personnel already on the scene.

First IM going to tell you a little about me and my family. My name is Jeff. I am a Police Officer for a city which is known nationwide for its crime rate. We have a lot of gangs and drugs. At one point we were # 2 in the nation in homicides per capita. I also have a police K-9 named Thor. He was certified in drugs and general duty. He retired at 3 years old because he was shot in the line of duty. He lives with us now and I still train with him because he likes it. I always liked the fact that there was no way to bring drugs into my house. Thor wouldn’t allow it. He would tell on you. The reason I say this is so you understand that I know about drugs. I have taught in schools about drugs. My wife asks all our kids at least once a week if they used any drugs. Makes them promise they won’t.

I like building computers occasionally and started building a new one in February 2005. I also was working on some of my older computers. They were full of dust so on one of my trips to the computer store I bought a 3 pack of DUST OFF. Dust Off is a can of compressed air to blow dust off a computer. A few weeks later when I went to use them they were all used. I talked to my kids and my 2 sons both said they had used them on their computer and messing around with them. I yelled at them for wasting the 10 dollars I paid for them. On February 28 I went back to the computer store. They didn’t have the 3 pack which I had bought on sale so I bought a single jumbo can of Dust Off. I went home and set it down beside my computer.
On March 1st I left for work at 10 PM. At 11 PM my wife went down and kissed Kyle goodnight. At 530 am the next morning Kathy went downstairs to wake Kyle up for school, before she left for work. He was sitting up in bed with his legs crossed and his head leaning over. She called to him a few times to get up. He didn’t move. He would sometimes tease her like this and pretend he fell back asleep. He was never easy to get up. She went in and shook his arm. He fell over. He was pale white and had the straw from the Dust Off can coming out of his mouth. He had the new can of Dust Off in his hands. Kyle was dead.
I am a police officer and I had never heard of this. My wife is a nurse and she had never heard of this. We later found out from the coroner, after the autopsy, that only the propellant from the can of Dust off was in his system. No other drugs. Kyle had died between midnight and 1 Am.

I found out that using Dust Off is being done mostly by kids ages 9 through 15. They even have a name for it. It’s called dusting. A take off from the Dust Off name. It gives them a slight high for about 10 seconds. It makes them dizzy. A boy who lives down the street from us showed Kyle how to do this about a month before. Kyle showed his best friend. Told him it was cool and it couldn’t hurt you. It’s just compressed air. It can’t hurt you. His best friend said no.

KYLE’S DEATH

Kyle was wrong. It’s not just compressed air. It also contains a propellant. I think its R2. It’s a refrigerant like what is used in your refrigerator. It is a heavy gas. Heavier than air. When you inhale it, it fills your lungs and keeps the good air, with oxygen, out. That’s why you feel dizzy, buzzed. It decreases the oxygen to your brain, to your heart. Kyle was right. It can’t hurt you. IT KILLS YOU. The horrible part about this is there is no warning. There is no level that kills you. It’s not cumulative or an overdose; it can just go randomly, terribly wrong. Roll the dice and if your number comes up you die. ITS NOT AN OVERDOSE. Its Russian roulette. You don’t die later. Or not feel good and say I’ve had too much. You usually die as your breathing it in. If not you die within 2 seconds of finishing “the hit.” That’s why the straw was still in Kyle’s mouth when he died. Why his eye’s were still open.

The experts want to call this huffing. The kids don’t believe its huffing. As adults we tend to lump many things together. But it doesn’t fit here. And that’s why its more accepted. There is no chemical reaction. No strong odor. It doesn’t follow the huffing signals. Kyle complained a few days before he died of his tongue hurting. It probably did. The propellant causes frostbite. If I had only known.

It’s easy to say hay, its my life and I’ll do what I want. But it isn’t. Others are always effected. This has forever changed our family’s life. I have a hole in my heart and soul that can never be fixed. The pain is so immense I cant describe it. There’s nowhere to run from it. I cry all the time and I don’t ever cry. I do what I’m supposed to do but I don’t really care. My kids are messed up. One won’t talk about it. The other will only sleep in our room at night. And my wife, I can’t even describe how bad she is taking this. I thought we were safe because of Thor. I thought we were safe because we knew about drugs and talked to our kids about them.

After Kyle died another story came out. A Probation Officer went to the school system next to ours to speak with a student. While there he found a student using Dust Off in the bathroom. This student told him about another student who also had some in his locker. This is a rather affluent school system. They will tell you they don’t have a drug problem there. They don’t even have a dare or plus program there. So rather than tell everyone about this “new” way of getting high they found, they hid it. The probation officer told the media after Kyle’s death and they, the school, then admitted to it. I know that if they would have told the media and I had heard, it wouldn’t have been in my house.

We need to get this out of our homes and school computer labs.

Using Dust Off isn’t new and some “professionals” do know about. It just isn’t talked about much, except by the kids. They know about it.

April 2nd was 1 month since Kyle died. April 5th would have been his 15th birthday. And every weekday I catch myself sitting on the living room couch at 2:30 in the afternoon and waiting to see him get off the bus. I know Kyle is in heaven but I can’t help but wonder If I died and went to Hell.

JEFF

Dust-Off, the product that proved to be Kyle Williams’ undoing, has been implicated in a number of deaths:

The September 2001 death of 19-year-old Austin Purser in Valdez, Alaska, was attributed to Dust-Off. According to the young man’s roommates, the decedent had come home about 4 a.m. and had huffed from an aerosol can of Dust-Off.
In January 2004 in Brooklyn, New York, 18-year-old Kristian Roggio was killed when her vehicle was struck by one driven by Vincent Litto, 20, who had been huffing from a can of Dust-Off when his car went over the double yellow lines and crashed head-on into hers.
The coroner’s report on one of the fatalities in an August 2004 single-vehicle automobile accident in Sacramento, California, revealed the presence of difluoroethane (the propellant in Dust-Off) in the blood of a passenger in a Jeep which was estimated to have been traveling at 90 mph when it jumped a curb, hit a telephone pole, then crashed into a concrete wall. A can of Dust-Off was found in the wrecked vehicle. Of the three teens who died as a result of that crash (Matthew Walas, 15; Jeremiah Cremins, 16; Nicholas Goudberg, 17), only Walas’ blood was tested, leaving open the question of whether the driver, Goudberg, was also under the influence. (Walas was killed instantly, whereas Goudberg lived on for a further eight days, and Cremins lasted three weeks past the accident. The coroner’s office did not order toxicology tests on the blood of the two youths who lingered because these would have proved useless as the young men had received transfusions, plus they both lived long enough for any chemicals to have dissipated from their bloodstreams.)
Falcon, the maker of Dust-Off, is aware its product is abused in this fashion. It has posted information about http://www.falconsafety.com/default.aspx?pageid=46inhalant abuse on its web site, and cans of Dust Off bear a http://www.falconsafety.com/default.aspx?pageid=94 label cautioning users against misuse of the product and carry this warning in large red block letters: “Inhalant abuse is illegal and can cause permanent injury or be fatal. Please use our product responsibly.”

Yet while it might be tempting to regard this threat as one limited to Dust-Off (and therefore as a danger that can be averted by banning a specific product from the home), the truth is a great number of teens and pre-teens routinely attempt to get high by abusing inhalants and solvents found in common household products. Dust-Off is just one of a thousand or more products that can abruptly end the life of someone foolishly looking for an inhalant high. The list of items that can be turned to this purpose is almost endless and includes such innocuous-looking goods as hair spray and aerosol whipped cream. Depending on how the intoxicant is taken in, the process is referred to as ‘bagging’ or ‘huffing’ — bagging requires the substance be contained in a plastic or paper bag which the thrill-seeker then breathes from, while huffing involves either breathing directly from an aerosol or through a cloth soaked in solvent.

Both bagging and huffing can, and have, proved fatal. Sudden death can result on the first try, making one’s first time seeking this particular kick also one’s last. That first time’s being a killer isn’t an exaggeration, either: 22% of all inhalant-abuse deaths occur among users who had not previously bagged or huffed. Suffocation, dangerous behavior, and aspiration account for 45% of inhalant abuse fatalities, with “sudden sniffing death” (fatal cardiac arrhythmia) causing the remaining 55%. Suffocation usually takes its toll through the victim’s slipping into unconsciousness then dying of a lack of oxygen, but it can also happen through airway obstruction brought about through swelling caused by spraying certain agents into the mouth. Dangerous behavior-related deaths are those in which inhalant abuse cause the deceased to engage in risk-laden activities that bring about his demise: he drowns, jumps or falls from a high place, dies of exposure or hypothermia, is in (or on) a vehicle that he loses control of at high speed, or accidentally sets himself on fire (most inhalants are flammable). Death through aspiration of vomited materials comes about through an unconscious victim’s protective airway reflexes being depressed by the chemicals involved. “Sudden sniffing death” is a simple way of saying the hydrocarbons being inhaled provoke irregular heart rhythms in the victim, leading to sudden fatal cardiac arrest. Even young and very healthy hearts fail this way.

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, the peak age of inhalant abusers is 14 to 15 years, with onset occurring in those as young as 6 to 8 years. Use declines typically by 17 to 19 years of age.

Inhalant abuse is rife among children and teens for a number of reasons beyond the usual factors that inspire young people to experiment with drugs, such as curiosity, thrill seeking, escapism, defiance, and peer pressure. First, the products required to produce inhalant highs are readily available in every home. Even when users have to resort to buying their own, the goods cost little and are easy to purchase, both in terms of availability (almost every store sells at least a few items that can be huffed) and lack of challenge by sales clerks (kids generally need not fear provoking adult disapproval or undue questioning through the act of buying cans of whipped cream). No drug dealers need be sought out, no furtive connections with the underworld made; purchases are easily effected at the corner store, even by the most un-savvy and knock-kneed with terror at the thought of being caught.

Second, because these products are an ordinary part of the household landscape, they take on for many a presumption of safety. Few adults are accustomed to thinking of air freshener as something that can kill, or of Magic Markers as items that can end lives; these are instead viewed as non-dangerous goods, the sort of ordinary household necessities one doesn’t so much as look at twice let alone regard with mistrust. Kids can easily take that bland acceptance a step further, adding a presumption of harmlessness to that which is routinely left about for anyone to use.

Third, little other than the act of bagging or huffing itself needs to be concealed from parental eyes. Very few moms and dads will stop to question why their kid has taken to keeping spray deodorant in his backpack or wonder why the family’s can of furniture polish keeps turning up in their boy’s bedroom, even if these same parents were the sort to be thrown into a panic by the merest glimpse of something that might be a baggie containing dried, crushed plant material. Whereas other intoxicants can’t be explained away when found by dear old Dad (a bottle of hooch won’t pass for shampoo, nor a bag of pills for candy), inhalants continue to look like what they primarily are: typical household products. Other possible tip-offs to what the sensation seeker has been up to will be dismissed almost as soon as they’re noted — strange chemical odors wafting about the child will be brushed off by even the most drug-alert parents as “Somebody must have Scotchguarded something around here” or “That boy has been playing in somebody’s garage.” Small sores and marks around the youngster’s mouth and nose will be attributed to everything under the sun except inhalant abuse (e.g., allergies, colds, scratching, the family dog, or even “Clumsy must have tripped over his big feet again”).

It’s this triple whammy of factors (readily-obtainable inexpensive high-producing chemicals, intoxicants and tip-offs that are easily concealed from parents, and utter failure on the part of users to appreciate the very real dangers inherent to the practice) that makes inhalant abuse prevalent among drug-curious pre-teens and teens. On their side of the equation, adults rarely pick up on the abuse or its signs unless they actually catch someone red-handed, nor do they grasp how lethal this form of drug use is, concentrating instead on the threat posed by the illegal substances proffered by drug dealers.
]]>Change the world Posted By: Jeff On: Jul 25 2005 @ 11:18:12 PMhttp://www.thomasforum.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=630Adversity Posted By: Jeff On: Jul 22 2005 @ 3:25:18 PMhttp://www.thomasforum.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=628

"There is no safety only in the arm of Jehovah. None else can deliver and he will not deliver unless we do prove ourselves faithful to him in the severest trouble, for he that will have his robes washed in the blood of the Lamb must come up through great tribulation, even the greatest of all affliction."

from The Personal Writings of Joseph Smith, p. 285

Given in a letter to William W. Phelps and others following mob destruction of the Saints' property in Missouri, Kirtland, 18 August 1833.]]>Hollywood and Heros Posted By: Jeff On: Jul 20 2005 @ 10:04:04 PMhttp://www.thomasforum.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=627
I was given this link comparing the lives some of these great actors with some recent, regrettable incarnations in Hollywood.

http://members.aol.com/viperash50/hollywood/actors.html]]>Independence Day Posted By: Jeff On: Jun 29 2005 @ 3:21:55 PMhttp://www.thomasforum.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=626

]]>Sandstorm Posted By: Admin On: Jun 18 2005 @ 08:58:47 AMhttp://www.thomasforum.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=625

Sand Storm in Iraq

In Danno's photo album
]]>When I was Nine Posted By: Jeff On: Jun 17 2005 @ 10:05:32 AMhttp://www.thomasforum.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=624
http://www.kokogiak.com/gedankengang/2005/05/when-i-was-nine.html

I was 9 years old when I saw the first Star Wars at the Cinedome theater http://utahtheaters.info/TheaterMain.asp?ID=59

I am not the biggest fan of Star Wars. But I was awestruck seeing stormtroopers and wookies, lightsabers and battlecruisers. Jedi knights and princesses.

The timeless tale of good vs. evil. It would seem cliche but it seems to resonate within people as a kind of universal struggle.

Yoda, helped me realize that if The Force could exist on a planet like Degoba, it may even exist now in this galaxy ... perhaps in a different form.

I've enjoyed and anticipated each Star Wars episode, at times thinking that the lapse in between each was too long. But it was always in the back of my mind.

Now it's like the end of an era and I'm a little sad it's over.]]>FW: A Tale of Six Boys Posted By: Tonya On: May 14 2005 @ 7:14:40 PMhttp://www.thomasforum.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=622FW: "A Tale of Six Boys"

Each year I am hired to go to Washington, DC, with the eighth grade class from Clinton, Wisconsin, where I grew up, to videotape their trip. I greatly enjoy visiting our nation's capitol, and each year I take some special memories back with me. This fall's trip was especially memorable.

On the last night of our trip, we stopped at the Iwo Jima memorial. This memorial is the largest bronze statue in the world and depicts one of the most famous photographs in history -- that of the six brave soldiers raising the American Flag at the top of a rocky hill on the island of Iwo Jima Japan, during WW II Over one hundred students and chaperones piled off the buses and headed towards the memorial. I noticed a solitary figure at the base of the statue, and as I got closer he asked, "Where are you guys from?" I told him that we were from Wisconsin. "Hey, I'm a cheese head, too! Come gather around, Cheese heads, and I will tell you a story." (James Bradley just happened to be in Washington, DC, to speak at the memorial the following day.

He was there that night to say good night to his dad, who has since passed away. He was just about to leave when he saw the buses pull up. I videotaped him as he spoke to us, and received his permission to share what he said from my videotape. It is one thing to tour the incredible monuments filled with history in Washington, D.C., but it is quite another to get the kind of insight we received that night.) When all had gathered around, he reverently began to speak. (Here are his words that night.)

"My name is James Bradley and I'm from Antigo, Wisconsin. My dad is on that statue, and I just wrote a book called "Flags of Our Fathers" which is #5 on the New York Times Best Seller list right now. It is the story of the six boys you see behind me. "Six boys raised the flag. The first guy putting the pole in the ground is Harlon Block. Harlon was an all-state football player. He enlisted in the Marine Corps with all the senior members of his football team. They were off to play another type of game. A game called "War." But it didn't turn out to be a game.

Harlon, at the age of 21, died with his intestines in his hands. I don't say that to gross you out, I say that because there are generals who stand in front of this statue and talk about the glory of war. You guys need to know that most of the boys in Iwo Jima were 17, 18, and 19 years old. (He pointed to the statue) "You see this next guy? That's Rene Gagnon from New Hampshire. If you took Rene's helmet off at the moment this photo was taken and looked in the webbing of that helmet, you would find a photograph... a photograph of his girlfriend. Rene put that in there for protection because he was scared. He was 18 years old. Boys won the battle of Iwo Jima. Boys. Not old men.

"The next guy here, the third guy in this tableau, was Sergeant Mike Strank. Mike is my hero. He was the hero of all these guys. They called him the "old man" because he was so old. He was already 24. When Mike would motivate his boys in training camp, he didn't say, 'Let's go kill some Japanese' or 'Let's die for our country.' He knew he was talking to little boys. Instead he would say, 'You do what I say, and I'll get you home to your mothers.'

"The last guy on this side of the statue is Ira Hayes, a Pima Indian from Arizona. Ira Hayes walked off Iwo Jima. He went into the White House with my dad. President Truman told him, 'You're a hero.' He told reporters, 'How can I feel like a hero when 250 of my buddies hit the island with me and only 27 of us walked off alive?' So you take your class at school, 250 of you spending a year together having fun, doing everything together. Then all 250 of you hit the beach, but only 27 of your classmates walk off alive. That was Ira Hayes. He had images of horror in his mind. Ira Hayes died dead drunk, face down at the age of 32 . ten years after this picture was taken.

"The next guy, going around the statue, is Franklin Sousley from Hilltop, Kentucky. A fun-lovin' hillbilly boy. His best friend, who is now 70, told me, 'Yeah, you know, we took two cows up on the porch of the Hilltop General Store. Then we strung wire across the stairs so the cows couldn't get down. Then we fed them Epsom salts. Those cows crapped all night. Yes, he was a fun-lovin' hillbilly boy. Franklin died on Iwo Jima at the age of 19. When the telegram came to tell his mother that he was dead, it went to the Hilltop General Store. A barefoot boy ran that telegram up to his mother's farm. The neighbors could hear her scream all night and into the morning. The neighbors lived a quarter of a mile away.

"The next guy, as we continue to go around the statue, is my dad, John Bradley from Antigo, Wisconsin, where I was raised. My dad lived until 1994, but he would never give interviews. When Walter Cronkite's producers, or the New York Times would call, we were trained as little kids to say, 'No, I'm sorry, sir, my dad's not here. He is in Canada fishing. No, there is no phone there, sir. No, we don't know when he is coming back.' My dad never fished or even went to Canada. Usually, he was sitting there right at the table eating his Campbell's soup. But we had to tell the press that he was out fishing. He didn't want to talk to the press.

"You see, my dad didn't see himself as a hero. Everyone thinks these guys are heroes, 'cause they are in a photo and on a monument. My dad knew better. He was a medic. John Bradley from Wisconsin was a caregiver. In Iwo Jima he probably held over 200 boys as they died. And when boys died in Iwo Jima, they writhed and screamed in pain.

"When I was a little boy, my third grade teacher told me that my dad was a hero. When I went home and told my dad that, he looked at me and said, 'I want you always to remember that the heroes of Iwo Jima are the guys who did not come back. Did NOT come back.'

"So that's the story about six nice young boys. Three died on Iwo Jima, and three came back as national heroes. Overall, 7,000 boys died on Iwo Jima in the worst battle in the history of the Marine Corps. My voice is giving out, so I will end here. Thank you for your time."

Suddenly, the monument wasn't just a big old piece of metal with a flag sticking out of the top. It came to life before our eyes with the heartfelt words of a son who did indeed have a father who was a hero. Maybe not a hero for the reasons most people would believe, but a hero nonetheless.

We need to remember that God created this vast and glorious world for us to live in, freely, but also at great sacrifice. Let us never forget from the Revolutionary War to the current War on Terrorism and all the wars in-between that sacrifice was made for our freedom. Remember to pray praises
for this great country of ours and also pray for those still in murderous unrest around the world. STOP and thank God for being alive and being free at someone else's sacrifice.

REMINDER: Everyday that you can wake up free, it's going to be a great day.
]]>Erick Hacking's Graduation Posted By: Tonya On: May 14 2005 @ 7:08:07 PMhttp://www.thomasforum.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=621 [:-jump2]]]>Kathi Hacking's Birthday Posted By: Tonya On: May 14 2005 @ 7:06:47 PMhttp://www.thomasforum.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=620]]>Dan Stocking update Posted By: Jeff On: May 14 2005 @ 12:45:57 PMhttp://www.thomasforum.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=619Dan posted an update to his experience in Iraq and talks about some friends of his who were killed. Very powerful. Please read it here.

http://www.thomasforum.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=566

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