Ten – Ten International or just 10 – 10 for short is an organization of amateur radio operators which are dedicated to maintaining high levels of amateur radio and communication on the 10 meter amateur wave band (28.0-29.7 MHz). It was established in 1962 and has grown continuously since that day, but not without it’s ups and downs according to the number of sunspots and the openness of the band. At this point over 75,000 10-10 numbers have been issued.

10-10 is a volunteer organization with no paid officers, the work of providing services to members falls upon the shoulders of dedicated volunteers. The quarterly issue of ’10 – 10 News’, the 30+ page journal of 10 – 10 activities is the only exception.

If you are a 10 meter enthusiast, 10 – 10 allows you to take part in a wide variety of activities internationally, not the least of which is meeting old friends and making new ones by keeping the band active through participation in 10 – 10 nets, QSO parties and certificate collection. These activities offer both satisfaction and challenges whilst promoting learning and courteous practises. The combination of the on-the-air activities, awards, a bi-annual convention, not forgetting the 10 – 10 News creates an unusually strong bond among organization members.

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The American Radio Relay League was founded in 1914 and is the USA’s largest membership organization for radio amateurs, with over 154,000. It is a non profit making organisation that provides both technical advice and assistance to amateur enthusiasts as well as supporting a number of educational programs throughout the US. It is also the primary representative organization of amateur radio operators. The ARRL represents its members by lobbying Congress and the FCC and performs a similar role internationally.

Local and regional activities of ARRL are carried out through its Field Organization which divides its 15 divisions into 71 separate regions called Sections. One of its most important functions is organizing emergency communications in the event of natural or civil disasters. Each section of ARES, (American Radio Emergency Services) has an appointed Section Emergency Coordinator. ARES also supports training and organizes regular practise exercises and establishes Memorandums of Understanding with relief agencies and government and has provided essential emergency communications a great many times throughout the leagues history.

Hiram Percy Maxim of Hartford, Connecticut was a well known business man, inventor and engineer and was an active member of the Radio Club of Hartford, he also had one of the best equipped stations in his area.

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If you’re a ham radio operator and have time on your hands, you might consider volunteering for Public Service, it is one of the most worth while things you could ever do. Volunteering for Disaster and Emergencies would mean doing some training but you easily be instrumental in getting people rescued from a flood or organising a rescue team to dig people out of a collapsed building. Why waste your talents? It could change your whole life.

Unlike commercial systems Amateur Radio is not dependant on terrestrial facilities that can fail, such as cell phone sites that can be overloaded, Electricity, Telephone and Water.

Amateur radio operators can use hundreds of frequencies and can quickly establish networks tying different agencies together to improve their operations. Radio hams are resourceful people and can improvise antennas as well as power sources and happily most of today’s equipment can be powered by an ordinary car battery.

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It is quite a painful time for children when they are losing their baby teeth. It gets further annoying as the permanent set of teeth start to grow. The children get irritated by the pain and so frequently stick their tongue to the place where the new teeth are growing. This can possibly cause problems in the alignment of teeth. Obviously, you need to consult a dentist who specializes in Cincinnati orthodontics. Some people avoid this as they do not like the idea of their children wearing Cincinnati braces. But, this is the best means of getting a perfectly aligned permanent set of teeth for your child.

However, you can completely avoid the problem by acting smart. You can do this if you understand a child’s psyche well. It is common knowledge that kids get easily fascinated by stories. This happens to be a very good distraction for children who are bothered by their toothache. The most common tale that parents narrate to their children is that of the tooth fairy.

Well, the origins of the tooth fairy can be traced in a long history from Europe. When a child used to lose his first set of teeth, each one was buried in the ground. There are several different stories for this behavior. According to some, the new teeth will start to grow only when the previous ones have been buried in the ground.

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I have experienced two paranormal occurrences in my life. Thankfully I had witnesses at both events so doubts about my sanity can remain just doubts. In celebration of Halloween I have decided to put both down on paper.

My first ghost I encountered was on Governor’s Island in New York City. The home we lived in was on Colonel’s Row and was a three story brick affair. Its rooms had high ceiling, small windows and were generally poorly lit. The evening I saw this ghost was the usual nasty sort you find in late autumn in the city. Dreary, cold and rainy. It is fair to say we were primed for the coming event. My mother had ordered us to get our bathes done and David had just finished while Jon was waiting for me to get out.

The bathroom was at one moment a noisy and active place with three boys chattering away, the normal sounds of bathing and the ever present patter of rain on the windows. The next it was as if time had ceased to function. Our lives had gone from a movie to a picture in an instant. I felt frozen, lying in the bathtub, caught in the act of leaning my head back to wash the soap out of my hair. In my periphery, Jon and David were both, suddenly and alarmingly silent statues. What they were seeing and feeling was beyond me at that point. In fact, during the brief time the thing was in our presence, I felt almost nothing. I could not feel the tepid water or the cool air on my exposed body, nor even my hands, feet or legs. Physically, the only part of me that I was conscious of, was my eyes. They felt huge and dry. As the thing glided across the threshold of the door, my eyelids seemed to be straining to peel back. There was no thought of closing my eyes or even blinking. There were no thoughts at all and no fear. My mind seemed inoperable, disengaged, seemingly unable to comprehend the thing in front of me.

The ghost did not seem solid yet it had a physical presence. It was of varying shades of grey and though it was vaguely human in shape it had no legs and had only small thin wispy arms. It had emerged from the darkened corridor beyond the bathroom, paused at the doorway and then glided silently into our bedroom to the right. We saw it for maybe a second and a half.

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“You are far too pessimistic.” A friend says to me.

“I am a realist with pessimistic tendencies,” I reply.

“No you are a depressed pessimist with psychotic tendencies, which means you have a negative view of the world and yourself and you scare me sometimes.” He stoops and picks up a leaf. “To me this is a pretty orange and gold leaf. This reminds me that it is autumn and the holidays are coming up. What do you see?”

“I see you holding a dead thing, in fact a fine symbol of death.”

“It is meant to die. To a tree this is like losing a fingernail, you wouldn’t mourn the loss of a fingernail.”

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Rip Van Winkle

John Schlismann

Rip van Winkleist ein Buchstabe, der immer gewesen ist, ist und immer sein wird. Es gibt Millionen Leute um die Welt, die seine gelassene Lebensanschauung nehmen, sein gef?hlloses, unmotivated Haltung und vollendet absolut nichts. Rip ist eine Ikone zum stagnierenden, zum faulen und zum unbrauchbaren. Er ist die Person, die das Leben nie v?llig lebend es durchl?uft und bevor er es kennt, ist alt und sterbend, wundernd, wo die Zeit gehen l??t.

Rip war nicht ein schlechter Mann, wie offenbar veranschaulicht im Text; er lebte sein Leben ein wenig contently und einfach. Leute mochten ihn und er shy nicht weg vom Helfen andere. Sein nur Problem war sein Widerwille zum Arbeiten f?r ein Leben und die Probleme dieses, das zu Hause f?r ihn verursacht wurde. Der Hauptbuchstabe der Geschichte st?ndig erh?lt an durch seiner Frau gekreischt und nimmt aller Zeit ihn Dose, weg von ihr zu erhalten, sich zu am?sieren. Ein TagRip geht weg in die Berge gehen Jagd, wo er einen Mann trifft, der herauf ein Fa? Bier schleppt. Er trifft diesen Mann an und Sein der good-natured Kerl, da? er ist, hilft ihm, sein Getr?nk zu seinen Freunden zu tragen. Schlie?lich beginnt er, mit ihnen zu trinken und bevor er es kennt, ist er heraus K?lte. Er wacht nicht schon bewu?tes, da? Zwanzig Jahre ?berschritten haben auf und denkt urspr?nglich, da? er von seinem Hund und von Gewehr beraubt worden ist. Dieses Teil ist bedeutend, weil es erkl?rt, wie er glaubt, da? er beraubt worden ist und symbolisch es im Kontext mit dem Rest der Geschichte betrachtet, die er mehr als gerade von seiner Gewehr und von Hund aber von seiner Zeit und von Leben beraubt worden ist. Er als geht hinunter den Berg und alles hat ge?ndert. Er erkennt nicht die Leute, h?ngen die ganze sein altes Heraus schauen nicht, wie sie in den Jahren bewohnt worden sind und sein Haus verlassen wird. Nach der Unterhaltung mit einigen Leuten, stellt er schlie?lich heraus dar, da? Zwanzig Jahre ihn vorbei gef?hrt haben. Tochter des Rips nimmt ihn innen, und er ist in der Lage, heraus unt?tig zu leben der Rest seines Lebens im Old age.

Den Zeitabschnitt des revolution?ren Krieges zu verwenden war in dieser Geschichte symbolisch. F?r Starter in symbolisierter ?nderung, ?nderung in der vollst?ndigen Verfassung des Amerikaners sowie eine revolution?re ?nderung im Rip- van WinkleLeben (er ist jetzt ein alter Mann). Es k?nnte einen neuen Anfang f?r Rip auch dadurch symbolisiert haben, da? er seine Gezeterfrau nicht mehr besch?ftigen mu?te und leben k?nnte das Leben, das er f?r ?hnlich dem neuen Anfang der Staaten von Amerika w?nschte.

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My neighbors, Scott and Beverly, have a fun tradition that evolved from a Christmas Eve party during which everyone drank a bit too much eggnog. Scott has one of the deepest, raspiest, loudest voices I’ve ever heard. If you can see him you can hear him, and he doesn’t know how to whisper. This is especially hard when I’m trying to get my kids to sleep in the summertime.

This particular Christmas Eve party was winding down and Beverly, a warmhearted Christmas enthusiast, didn’t want to see it end. She suggested a singalong, the song being “The Twelve Days of Christmas”.

Anyone who has ever been Christmas caroling knows that this one is the mother of all Christmas songs. I know, because nearly ten years ago I went Christmas caroling with a big group of friends in our neighborhood. I didn’t realize until that night how many people might resent the idea of a bunch of strangers ringing their doorbell, swilling their spiked cider, and treating them to an off-key rendition of “Jingle Bells”, some of them trailing off halfway through because they’d forgotten the words. It started dawning on us (after we’d walked and sung for two hours or more) that perhaps our Christmas spirit was one-sided. We stopped in front of a darkened house and our ringleader, Vee, a fiery Southern-by-birth-and-don’t-you-forget-it matriarch marched up to the door and rang the bell. The door remained firmly closed and a disembodied voice said, “Yeesssss?”

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I’ll Be Home At Midnight

I have a good friend who is a doctor. A great guy but with one minor flaw: he never tells the truth.

One weekend we went to play tennis at a resort about a hour from my house. We played doubles together until 1:00PM then took a break for lunch and finished up the double matches at around 5:00PM. At this time, he went to go swimming while I played a singles match. Since my wife could not get a hold of me because I was playing tennis, she called my doctor friend. She inquired: “When is my husband going to be home? ” He responded by saying “Midnight.” Since it was only 6:00PM at the time and we were only an hour away, she thought he was joking (lying).

Well, after his swim and my match, we went to a friends house to have dinner and socialize. We left at 11:00PM and I arrived home at exactly 12:01AM. I entered the house and tried to open my bedroom door and to my surprise it was locked. I asked: (through the door), “Why is the door locked?” My wife said: “Well the doctor said you would be home at midnight”. I responded, “Well it is midnight, here I am”. She said: “But he never tells the truth, so I did not believe him. So you’re in trouble.”

I called the doctor and had him talk to my wife. He told her he wanted to start to ‘diversify’ lately and decided (to my detriment) to tell the truth once in a while. After their chat, she finally opened up the door.

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Posted by KCWalensky | No Comments »

While we are on the way to discussing about the EGG, one of the basic and oft asked questions is “Who came first: the chicken or the egg?” There is no clear inference towards the history of this wonderful thing called the Egg.According to the Bible, the chicken came first.It has been mentioned as “And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.And God said, ‘Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.’” Genesis 1:10-20.(Quote-Unquote)

Then there is another school of thought which propounds that eggs came in existence long before the chicken.Harold McGee in his book On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen says that these cells evolved about a billion years ago.According to him, the first eggs were hatched in the ocean.The chicken evolved only about 5000 years ago from an Asian bird.

Even though the history of the egg is slightly uncertain, yet it is apparent that eggs have been in use since the evolution of the early man.This is being assumed from the fact that raising chickens for food is an ancient practice and in logical progression, so should be the consumption of eggs.

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