Edward Muller:  

As of January 2015 – an update sort of: I have written and removed stories at least twice. I’ll tell you why in a little bit. My wife and I are now both retired and living in Florida the last four years. We retired in 2006 but did not move south until 2010. Before retirement I worked 31 years for the Government in Contracts, the last 18 as a senior Contracting Officer. (That is the official title for those who spend your taxes for you when the Government buys stuff.) May seem simple enough but I bought unusual stuff, missiles from various countries that had agreed to dispose of them under various dis-armament agreements, chemical weapons similarly from countries that we were assisting of disposal, destruction of certain missiles found in the jungle, left over in Vietnam 30 years after the war, not your normal stuff. I traveled frequently to Russia, (more than 12 times, - just for business, I lost count – but twice more for vacation) and negotiated contracts with the Government of Russia for various services that both countries agreed were essential to international peace (if you believe it today – but it was true then). Dealing with the Russian authorities always made me paranoid so whenever I wrote something like this I usually deleted it. Maybe I’ll let this one stand. I will write more about the “olden days” when I used to work, because every other day I used to love my job. The official mission statement for my office in State Department was “A principle purpose of the United States Government is ending the Scourge of War.” That was my job by contract, grant or other agreement. Who would not feel good about working on that every day? But now we live in Florida. I checked the Classmates database and it said there were no other Frankford 68’ers in Florida. Come on down you’ll like it. We moved here in 2010 one month before the Gulf Oil Spill. We have had a condo across the street from the beach for more than 20 years waiting for this move but we might not have picked the exact correct month to land on the beach. (I’ll try to find and post a picture of our beach, beautiful snow white “sugar sand” so called because of its color. For a week you could not get near the water because of the 20 ft. band of crude oil sludge. But the sludge band was only one week. I forgot to say “here” is Pensacola on the “Emerald Coast.” Check out the travel guides for this year. Pensacola and the environs are one of the 25 best places to go for travel/vacation. (And we get to live here!) After a year on the beach in 2011 we moved into a house in the historic district of Downtown Pensacola. If you are familiar with Northern Virginia (where I lived the previous 30 years) you should think “Old Town Alexandria.” In Philadelphia, I guess you should think “Society Hill,” except for prices. We are in a small town of about 50,000 in habitants, who are not into fancy big city ways, so it is really not that outrageous for pricing here unless you want to actually live on Palafox St. (one of the 10 best city streets in the country according to travel magazines). We are a 4 block walk from there. Life is great. If something happens in town we can walk there. Do you know the Capital Steps? They are a political satire musical group from Washington DC that keep national politics in perspective thro...Expand for more