Gerald Atkinson:  

Life. I live in Moscow Idaho; home of the University of Idaho. It is located on the Palouse region of eastern Washington and the extreme western portion of Idaho. Washington State University is about 10 miles to the west [Go Cougs]. The air is pristine and the stars shine at night. It snows in the winter and there are distinct seasons. The area is mainly agriculture with the emphasis upon wheat [soft white variety]. There is no traffic and two lane country roads are the norm. The nearest freeway is 90 miles north. I never want to leave................ ;) Work... we work to live and not live to work.... I have been doing computers and such forever it seems. My life is one big Microsoft Update. The silver lining is replacing XP with the new Windows 7 Enterprise....... a product that actually is good and solves a lot of the problems that XP and Vista did not handle well. I bike to work because the town here is so small that it is viable. The weather plays an important role during the dark months, so I walk and it takes me 15 minutes. I value this opportunity of being in a small town USA.......... School, back in the day... My memories of high school are clear to this day. Even though the time was very small as compared to my experiences further on during the years, there were a lot of good times and good people that I knew. One of my favorite memories was that of Mr. Noble who taught Graphic Arts. About once every three weeks or maybe a month we would not work for the period but just sit in our assigned seats and listen to him talk about important things that were going on outside of the school; things that were ready to take us away and maybe not return. I know that the topics and subjects that he talked about could have gotten him in trouble with the admin but it was good and he made me think of things. As I said some the topics and subjects were 'controversial' and 'verboten' due to their political nature. One of my other teachers who I believe taught English [in the bungalows by the football field] spoke one day on the war and found herself in front of the principle the next day. That was the end of that topic of discussion on a subject that ruled our lives. During high school all I wanted to do was to go to the beach and hit the offshore days or the evening glass off. Life in Lakewood seemed to be so partitioned off from the world with the lawns and fences.......that the beach was an outlet and there was such an attractive world along the beaches and PCH going south from Seal Beach. I used to surf at the Cliffs by Golden West Street and PCH. It was a treacherous hike to the beach from PCH and the name 'cliffs' was aptly applied to those who would lose their footing on the jagged concrete junk that was...Expand for more