In meantime, we continue to work quietly and mostly from home. We've had pretty hot weather here last two weeks and now it's fairly warm and very nice. Blue skies. Blazing sun.

I thought I'd start on sharing what's in Sioux Falls and McCook County.

First, McCook County. There's 5 small towns in this county. They are Salem (1,300 pop.); Canistota (650); Bridgewater (500); Montrose (400) and finally, Spencer (175). Spencer is a story unto itself. In 1998, the town was devasated by a F4 scale tornado, and 6 people died that day.

 Our office is located on the Main Street of Salem, and M.E. lives in a nice house few blocks north of the office. We live 2 blocks east of the Main street. Salem is a surprisingly nice town to live in. We got two high-speed internet providers here (DSL and cable). I guess it's "Got high speed internet? Will move there" thing nowadays. :-)

More later. 

Racin' for a Livin'

Well? What are you waiting for? Go and vote now! Often! Until midnight tonight. Let's show the world that deaf folks really can do anything except hear. 

Map.jpg, originally uploaded by LaurentSD.

We're now on a family vacation to Michigan, visiting our relatives and enjoying the scenery -- well, we see only trees and trees. :-) It's good to be visiting our home state, yet we realize that we have grown to love South Dakota even more with its open skies and spaces.

Our funding for Laurent has not arrived yet -- if it did, we'll be sure you'll be one of the first ones to know via this blog and newsletter! They tell us things are looking very good, yet we are guarded. We have been told this before.

As for the map, you can see our web site traffic comes from almost all over the world in just a week -- this was a snapshot of one week's activity (or was it a day?). Amazing.

Several deaf pilots flew in at Tea, S.D. -- a small town just south of Sioux Falls -- and met with our members from the local deaf community. My wife and I, along with our friends, took our four deaf children to meet them. They generously took us up for plane rides and answered questions about flying and how deaf folks can become licensed pilots.

They were inspirational! We totally enjoyed our time with them, and I got my itch to get my private pilot's license back... I guess it's back to X-Plane again. :-)

Chelsea M. Tobin of Aberdeen, South Dakota took the crown of Miss Deaf America. For past 3 pageants, South Dakota was in top 2. Former Miss Deaf America Erin Casler ran for South Dakota as well as the one before her, Paula Souhrada who nabbed the first runner up.

We got a good thing going here in South Dakota! It's not just our water, spacious blue skies, plentiful cows, prairie grass or CSD. We got some mighty fine people here as well!

Check out the story on: Blog - National Association of the Deaf

]]>http://www.LaurentSD.com/laurentblog/rss-comments-entry-576231.xmlMarvin T. MillerFri, 30 Jun 2006 01:06:09 +0000http://www.LaurentSD.com/laurentblog/2006/6/29/not-going-to-nad.html64930:560364:570588Due to family situation, I won't be able to attend National Association of the Deaf's National Conference. I'm pretty bummed about it, but when it comes to choosing between work and my family — I always will choose my family. I hope y'all won't miss me too much. I am curious as to what Dr. I. King Jordan's keynote speech today was like.

 
Gee... several people paged and e-mailed me saying, "Why don't you ask Warren to fund the building of Laurent, South Dakota?"

Even my deaf grandma got into the act and e-mailed me late today. (sigh)

Does anyone reading this even know him or his family? Maybe we could share our vision of building a better future for the deaf, hard of hearing and hearing signers all over the world with the likes of Mr. Buffett and Mr. Gates.

If only...

South Dakota, often viewed as a remote, cold place, is really a vibrant and growing state. We have one of the lowest taxes, one of the most business-friendly places and a quickly growing city of Sioux Falls and Rapid City.

We will give you more overview on Sioux Falls metropolitian area and what's life like here in the next few weeks.

]]>http://www.LaurentSD.com/laurentblog/rss-comments-entry-561462.xmlMarvin T. MillerFri, 23 Jun 2006 20:59:11 +0000http://www.LaurentSD.com/laurentblog/2006/6/23/waiting-and-waiting.html64930:560364:559469We are still waiting for our original funders to come through with the funding. They have informed us that things are looking very good, however, we have heard this before. We are evaluating all options available to us in making sure this project moves forward. We are not going anywhere. We are not giving up.

 We may need to make some cutbacks to let us operate for next few months. I hope we won't have to.

 I will be flying to California for NAD Conference, and I look forward to seeing many of you there. I hope I can find someone to borrow a LCD projector for my workshop -- the rental rate is $200 an hour for the conference center's projector. Wow. Let me know if you got one and you can lend me your unit for an hour on Monday, July 3rd.