Bob's Eclectic Links

A Little Bit of Anything

11th A/C My Army Experience		Antique Boat Museum	Philesian Golden Rule Lodge #40
Holstein Association	My Lions Activities

How's my weather? Click here to find out. The weather in southern New Hampshire

Eclectic. The word means various or differing sources, seemingly unrelated. This is what I have here, a collection interesting links I have found, as well as personal information and family history. OK, so I wasn't clever in selecting my GeoCities' member name and page title! Yahoo found 222 references to "eclectic" with several "Bob's Eclectic". Anyway, thanks for stumbling in here and visiting with me.

By way of introduction, I am Bob Burnham, living in Hinsdale, New Hampshire, USA. I took early retirement in 1992 from Holstein-Friesian Association of America (now Holstein Association USA), Brattleboro, Vermont, after 30 years there as senior programmer/analyst with COBOL and IDMS programming experience, as well as systems design, development, and maintenance of many of the major components of the operating systems. When I started in 1964, we wrote in Autocoder for an IBM 1401 full-blown to its 16K capacity! After I retired, I began writing a PC system for recording livestock registrations and maintaining membership records for small or minor breed associations. After a few month's working in DBase III on my 8088 PC Designs computer, I moved to a Gateway 2000 486-25 and FoxPro, and now operate with a Gateway 2000 Pentium 120. My system is now being used by a sheep registry association in Massachusetts.

I enjoy RVing in my Bounder motorhome and belong to FMCA and several FMCA chapters, among them, the Granite Staters here in New Hampshire and the Singles International (SI) chapter. Both chapters have many rallies each year so there's always someplace to go. This past Thanksgiving, 2004, the SIs had a rally in Clermont Florida which I attended.

As an antique boat enthusiast, I am a member of The Antique Boat Museum at the Thousand Islands, Clayton, New York, where, as a youngster, I summered and am still a yearly visitor.

Ever since I saw the first Volkswagen Karmann-Ghia in a dealer's showroom, I wanted to own one, but practicality and business needs ruled otherwise and I was stuck with VW sedans (never called "bugs" then), old Chevies, and a great little VW Squareback. Then I found an old rusted out 1969 Ghia which I bought for $300.00 and spent ten, probably twenty, times that much restoring it. I always said that if I found a Ghia convertible, the coupe was going to go. Well, in 1992 I found the convertible, and, wouldn't you know, I now have two Ghias! Since I first wrote this back in 1996, I gave the convertible to my daughter and as of this date, Dec. 2004, I still have the '69 and have just finished having it made roadworthy after several years of storage.
Click to see a picture of the '70 Ghia convertible.

Among my hobbies are genealogy, photography, and a sadly neglected stamp collection.
The town of Durham, New Hampshire, was settled as Oyster River parish of Dover about 1635. Dover was a very tight-knit settlement and when my grandfather was born in Durham in 1881, he was descended from original settlers of the area. I received a copy of Volume II of the History of Durham in 1972 and compiled my grandfather's pedigree from it. Not being satisfied with that, I then listed the descendents, male and female, of Robert Burnham who settled at Oyster River in 1654.
Back in 1987, I purchased release 2.0 of Personal Ancestral File for my 8088. I was used to working in IDMS on the mainframe at work and a couldn't get excited about PAF's idiosyncracies, particularly when it paused to update itself about every 25 keystrokes. I have since purchased Family Tree Maker and what an improvement that is over PAF 2.0!
See my FTM page at http://www.familytreemaker.com/users/b/u/r/Robert-F-Burnham/.

I am a 32nd Degree Mason and a Shriner. My blue lodge is Philesian Golden Rule Lodge #40 in Hinsdale and I am 32nd Degree in Vermont and a member of the Brattleboro Shrine Club.

I have two grown daughters and four grandchildren. Laurel-Beth is married to Mitch Cashman and they live in West Wardsboro, VT, with their daughter Anna (born January 1995) and son, Kenny (born May 2000). Susan lives in Windham, ME, with her son Ross (born June 1994), and daughter Jordan Emanuelle (born February 1997). Laurel works at Mount Snow (or Mt. Snow) and Mitch is a carpenter in West Wardsboro. Sue works in Portland for UnumProvident Insurance.

Last updated 28 December 2004 That's Fred Tuttle, Vermont's "Man With A Plan," with me in the photo at the top of the page. Sadly Fred died last year. Two of his sayings were "I have spent a lot of time in the barn and now I want to spend some time in the house" as he was running for Congress, and "Spead Fred," the meaning of which you must be a farmer to understand!

This page hosted by Get your own Free Home Page