Sageness.

My aphasia afflicted Dad, (stroke), wrote the following letter to my big brother Mike.

"Dear Mike and Sherry
I had Susan take me to Tina's house and could hug her, kiss her and told her I loved her. She smiled and I thinked it was me.
Love Dad"

That's kind of funny and sad at the same time.

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As interesting to me as the content of the comments on websites like KTVZ and The Wandering Eye and mine, is which stories get comments and how many. Hard to predict. Well, maybe not so hard, there are some essay's that are guaranteed to get comments, but being as they are usually sex, religion, politics, or traffic, I try to avoid them.

But other than those subjects, I really don't know which ones are going to bring out the comments. Whatever grabs Buster, I suppose....

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City Councilor Jim Clinton wants to "cure" Bend's "Job Ill's" by creating a "Research center that would link high-tech companies with investors and universities and provide equipment and guidance for research and business development."

Well, that's certainly a worthy goal.

But just how is that going to be accomplished?

It's a bit like me saying, I want to increase my business by creating a "store center that would link high-end product with customers who want to buy high-end product."

Well, sure. But just how do I do that in a cost-effective manner? Expanding to a bigger space, for instance, isn't just a matter of finding a bigger and cheaper space, but also of finding reliable and long-term employees. Of not losing the customers I have, trying to reach for customers I don't have. Of not spending so much money on the project, on start-up or moving costs, that I never recoup the money in my career.

Advertising, for instance, may be reach people, but is it cost-effective?

If you want to "link" with universities and investors", don't you need to have "universities and investors?"

The biggest problem I see with his plan is that there are so many places that can do what he's talking about so much easier. Places with colleges, for instance. Or more access to the rest of the world.

In other words, it's like saying, "What we need are higher paying jobs!"

Well, of course. Just like I need higher paying customers.

Really, I'm not panning the idea, just questioning whether a bunch of money is going to be thrown at a problem that is not so easily solved.

Juniper Ridge, anyone?

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I'm going to include the FedEx office downtown to my roll of 'new' businesses, though it occupies a gray area between retail and office services. But unlike most offices, it will bring a lot of foot-traffic downtown, and there were be some purchasing going on...

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