Diane Joy Baker
2021 Emerson Ave.
Cincinnati, OH 45239
diane1@zoomtown.com

Subscriptions: 1 - 44¢ stamp = 1 issue

TALON’S EDGE is the chapter newsletter of the (USS) Aquila NCC 42297, a non-profit fan organization based in Florence , Kentucky . All rights and privileges to the terms STAR TREK and all images / references to same are exclusively owned by Paramount Pictures Corp. Likewise, all rights & privileges to the terms and all images & references to STAR WARS (Lucas Film), Dr.Who (BBC), or other programs not specifically named, are exclusively owned by those companies. This newsletter is not intended to infringe on any copyrights or legal holdings of the writers, producers, Production Company, or others with claims to the programs / images, nor to make profit from them.

If you have book reviews, movie/series reviews, or other stuff you want to post but don't want to put it in the newsletter, there is now a blog page where you can post it (yourself).
https://ussaquila.angelfire.com/blog/

Upcoming Events

Book Club discussion: Mars Crossing by Geoffrey A. Landis

USS Aquila Meeting 2 PM follows immediately. We hold meetings at the Mary Ann Monaghan Library, Covington KY Basement board room. (Ask librarian for escort below).

Medical Matters: Alzheimer's Disease by Linda Widener

Alzheimer's Disease is a complex, degenerative irreversible brain disorder for which there is no definite cause, no definitive treatment, and to date, no foreseeable cure.

A person with Alzheimer's type dementia usually experiences progressive memory loss, and judgment, marked personality changes, difficulty with abstract thinking, and orientation, and a progressive inability to communicate verbally.

Alzheimer's is not an inevitable result of aging. Confusion is always due to some organic disease or chemical imbalance in the system. The syndrome is not the same as hardening of the arteries, but is related to specific pathological changes in the brain. It's not just a disease of the elderly, and can afflict people in their forties and fifties. Alzheimer's is not preventable, nor can it be cured. Men and women of all cultural, educational, racial and sociological groups can get it. (CFU course, from National Center of Education).

Stages of Alzheimer's include:

Early

Stage 1: no memory problems; some which medical staff can detect

Stage 2: Memory lapses begin, especially forgetting familiar words or names, or the location of keys, glasses, or other everyday objects. These problems are not vital to friends, relatives, co-workers or medical personnel. (Normal people often have such lapses; they may even joke about having Alzheimer's.)

Stage 3: Word or name finding becomes noticeable by others, decreased ability to remember names of new acquaintances, performance issues at work or social settings become noticeable to others, reading a passage and retaining little or none of the material, losing or misplacing a valuable object, decline in ability to plan or organize.

Early stages can develop and last 2-4 years; the disease spirals downward rapidly.

Intermediate

Stage 4: At this stage, a careful medical interview detects clear deficiencies in the following areas: decreased knowledge of recent occasions or current events, impaired ability to perform challenging mental arithmetic (e. g., counting backward from 75 by sevens), decreased ability to perform complex tasks, such as planning dinner for guests, paying bills and managing finances, reduced memory of personal history, subdued or withdrawal especially from mentally challenging situations.

Stage 5: Major gaps in memory and cooperative functions. Some assistance with day to day activities essential. Individuals may be unable to remember their own telephone numbers, address, the high school or college from which they graduated. They have trouble with less mentally challenging arithmetic (counting back from 40 by fours, or from 20 by 2's). They need help choosing proper clothing for the season or the occasion. They usually retain knowledge about themselves (name, names of spouses and children), and can eat or use the toilet by themselves.

Stage 6: Memory difficulties worsen; significant personality changes; they lose awareness of recent experiences, events and surroundings, need help with daily activities, cannot recall personal life, but can remember their name; occasionally, they forget their spouse's name or their primary care-giver, but can still differentiate between familiar and unfamiliar faces.

Intermediate stages last between 2-10 years as symptoms intensify. At these stages, issues of safety arise, and families need to make decisions on how to keep their loved one safe, nutrition, hydration, and terminal care. Denial can be dangerous.

Severe

Stage 7: a need for assistance in simple tasks: dressing, cooking, eating. Forgetfulness becomes a way of life: one does not know one's spouse, or their own name; restlessness, mood swings and anxiety, paranoia, or hallucinations may become an issue. They may hoard things, or hide objects, repetitions, ritualistic or erratic movements or gestures. They may become unable to construct a sentence or may stop speaking, and some are unable to write. These losses also affect motor functions, co-ordination, and body movement. Gait changes may occur, such as stiffness, stooped posture, and a slow, shuffling walk.

Final, or terminal stage is marked by wasting muscles, mental deterioration and the inability to walk. Shin breakdowns, contractions, and urinary tract infections are frequent. Patients may be unable to talk, or they mumble or babble. Malnutrition and dehydration are not uncommon, as gag and swallowing reflexes may disappear.

On autopsy, the brain shows senile plaque, and neurofibrilary tangles similar to normal aging, but differing in quantity and location. Granulo-vascular degeneration in the neurons and amyloidal proteins similar to many older people with other dementia types. Alzheimer's Has become recognized as the most common cause of dementia in people over 65. The plaques, and tangles disrupt electrical impulses necessary for getting messages from neuron to neuron. The greater the number, the more disruptive the disease becomes. Neuro-transmitting chemicals may also be reduced or absent , which prevents message transmissions across synaptic space from neuron to neuron. There may be some circulatory damage related to brain-cell death, but this is not the main cause of the dementia. Research on the tangled clumps is still in flux; some theories hold that the clumps are the real problem, while the plaques are protection from the clumps. Since the plaques are what current drugs attack, this theory holds that the drugs make the disease worse. New research has all but proven that the clumps are the true culprit behind Alzheimer's, and drugs are being developed with the clumps in mind. ---Submitted by Linda Widener

U.S.S. Aquila: The First 10 Years by Rob Langenderfer

In November 1994, the ship’s 4^th anniversary party was held. Tammy Borchardt was elected Chief of Science. Prior to the party 23 members journeyed over to an event at the planetarium that members of the Polaris and other Star Trek clubs were attending. The premiere of Star Trek: Generations occurred later that month, and the Aquila held a recruiting drive the night it came out that 12 Aquilans (including myself) attended. This time truly was the period in the ship’s history in which the members of the ship were the most active.

Members of the club participated in recruiting drives at Media Plays in both Florence and Western Hills, marched in Thanksgiving and Christmas Day parades, did a “Breakfast with Santa”, and helped at a canned food drive all in the span of just over a month. Additionally, Glenna Juilfs, Erin Pence, Jessica Pence, Janet Burgoon, Leonard Robinson, and Rob Langenderfer performed alongside Juanita Daley, Elza Correll, Eileen Dehyle, Chris Dehyle, and Bill Robb from the Space Station Star Hawk in two performances of Klingon Monkey Business at the Westside Nursing Home in Price Hill and the Woodland Hills Nursing Home in Lawrenceburg in December.

I have endeavored to keep politics out of this history, but there is one matter on an international scale that affected a great many clubs in Star Trek fandom and the Aquila itself to a major degree, so it is one political matter that I cannot ignore because it has shaped how the ship has functioned since 1995. To deal with the matter extremely briefly, Starfleet International, the mega- Star Trek club that was over the Aquila, its mother ship U.S.S. Polaris and its sister ship U.S.S. Camelot as well as hundreds of other chapters, had suffered from not having turned in tax returns to the IRS in 1991 and 1992 since it had been incorporated. A candidate for Starfleet President, Dan McGinnis, had been suspended, pending an investigation into various matters, including having airline tickets for himself, his wife, and others paid for out of Region 12 funds. When his Vice-President, Deborah Nelson, assumed the presidency, she reinstated him as president of Starfleet International and he in turn fired all of the directors of the Starfleet Academy schools as well as the Starfleet Regional Coordinators who had opposed him. There were concerns that Starfleet International would begin to impose tight controls upon local chapters about how they would use their money. At the Feb. 1995 meeting, of the 19 members of the club who were present, 17 voted that the group end its ties with Starfleet International. (The U.S.S. Camelot and the U.S.S. Polaris also voted to leave Starfleet International around this time, along with many other Starfleet chapters.)

After the meeting, many of us journeyed over to Cindy and Ken’s for what would end up being the last Engineering blueprints meeting/party we would end up having. The preliminaries for the blueprints were completed, and work on the final drawings was in process. However, unfortunately, they were lost during Glenna’s 2001 move to Texas. The Engineering parties that we had at the Paughs (and I attended four of them) and the two other general parties we had there that I attended were always a lot of fun. Even though I was always self-conscious about my lack of drawing ability (and consequently never did anything of note in terms of actually helping create the engineering blueprints), I was very active at the Activity Committee meetings that took place over there, and one could argue that they were my initial steps in actively participating in the process of developing ideas that the Aquila could carry out on a short and long-term basis that provided direction for future fun activities. We would watch videos over there to tremendously late hours while talking and joking around about all sorts of things and comically noting how, especially in his early years, Cindy’s dog Dusty was absolutely obsessive about sniffing anyone and everyone any number of times! We had many good times over there, and I, for one, miss all the camaraderie of those late hours, hours that we never seemed to have the stamina for anywhere else.

In March Darlene Stroberg, a friend of Tammy Borchardt’s joined the ship, the first regular new member the group had gained in a couple of years. She joined a ship that would never again be affiliated with an outside group in anything more than a nominal way although the Aquila still retained ties of friendship to the Polaris and the Camelot. With the Aquila having left Starfleet International, the club policy manual was revised to reflect the relevant changes that the step entailed as well as other changes that the revision committee, comprised of Greg Turner, Glenna Juilfs, Linda Widener, Tammy Widener, Tina Widener, Leonard Robinson, myself, Cindy Paugh and Ken Paugh thought necessary.

Many members of the crew participated in a St. Patrick’s Day and a Memorial Day and a 4^th of July parade (after having spent many hours building a Bird of Prey float at Juanita Daley and Elza Corrill’s house with their 13 cats and floats which took up a great deal of space in their living room) with the Space Station Star Hawk. Documentation for some of these events is sketchy in the Aquila newsletter since Glenna by this time was also editing the newsletter for the Star Hawk, Hawk Talk. It may not be necessary to give a detailed account of every parade, but as I was heavily involved in helping to build floats and attending the regular monthly Star Hawk meetings (where plans for Tall Stacks ’95 in which Aquila and Star Hawk members planned to participate were regularly discussed), I wanted to try to give those of you who were not there a sense of what it was like.

For one thing, there were gatherings at Juanita’s house, sometimes as many as five or six a month when we were at our most active points getting ready for a parade. Glenna was always there and served as very much of an anchor of stability for the occasionally volatile but vulnerable and also somewhat motherish Juanita Daley, suffering from cancer but managing to uphold virtues of dignity and determination, who felt, however, that she been treated badly by Klingon clubs in the past and was almost always worried about them intruding on her turf. Glenna had always served as an anchor of calm and controlled thought on the Aquila when things threatened to burst out of control. Because she was quite low key, when she stated a position on something, you knew that it had merit, whatever the issue concerned. Many years ago now Joan Riley observed to me that Glenna was a gem that was often overlooked. Erin was always at her side loyally helping on the floats and with anything else that was needed. Janet Burgoon, the mother of two of Glenna’s grandchildren who lived with Glenna at the time, was also over there a fair amount. Once Linda Widener became involved in Star Hawk activities, she became one of its most consistent members, always helping frequently in building the floats and in marching in the parades. Many times Brian and myself were also with her, and I have many pleasant memories of innumerable times listening to country music in her van as we went over to Juanita’s. Juanita (who liked to be called Mommy O’Rommy and Joan Riley (who often went by Captain Mom) both had motherish qualities about them, but the two people who most exemplified the best of those attributes so much that their kids each called the other “Mom” and helped a young historian in his college days deal with emotional private family issues outside his prior experiences and treat him and make him feel like a member of their own families were right here on the Aquila command staff at the time.

Brian and Erin had a lot of fun together and Tammy W. was also a not infrequent participant in parade-related events and even Tina showed up now and then. Leonard and Shirley were nearly always present for the parades and other events although they didn’t do a great deal in terms of float construction. From outside the Aquila, Earl Jones and his wife Margie and son Ed represented the IKV Harbinger and Ed and Monica Watkins represented another Klingon ship with Eileen Dehyle also helping on things. Bill Robb’s tapes of Star Trekking Across the Universe could always bring a smile to my face when we started the parades. The Star Hawk crew also attended many Native American cultural events since Juanita was a full Navajo.

At the May 1995 meeting, after a successful Dover Peace Conference that had Robert O’Reilly in person as a guest that Glenna, Erin, Janet, Tammy and Darlene and Greg attended and also just after the Paynters moved to Texas, the following people held offices on the Aquila: Captain Greg Turner, Commanding Officer, Commander Glenna Juilfs, Executive Officer, Operations Chief, Newsletter Editor, Lt. Linda Widener, Second Officer, Medical Chief, Commander Leonard Robinson, Records Officer, Ship’s Archivist, Marine Officer in Charge, Master Chief Petty Officer (MCPO) Carson Widener, Treasurer, MCPO Janet Burgoon, Assistant Operations Chief, OPS Newsletter (note : which, effectively, she never did anything with; Glenna edited the final issue in which she announced Janet as the new editor in the Winter 1994-95 issue, and the last Aquila division newsletter bit the dust), Lt.jg. Ken Paugh, Engineering Chief, MCPO Vanessa Turner, Communications Chief, Commander Erin Pence, Cadet Corps Commander, Lt. Cmdr. Tammy Borchardt, Science Chief, MCPO Tina Widener, Project Genesis, Ensign Alan Wright, Quartermaster, Outreach Officer, Captain Cindy Paugh, Recruiting Officer, Ensign Shirley Robinson, Overseas Coupon Project Coordinator, Stampede Coordinator (as far as I can recall Shirley never did anything related to those positions; Tammy Widener was the only person who did anything with Stampede) The revised policy manual was approved at the May meeting.

Later in May I hosted a club party that many club members attended. All 6 of the Wideners were there, and Greg and Tammy and Darlene and Glenna and Erin (and I think Art Lauer from the Friends of the Time Lord and I think Alan Wright and maybe Leonard and maybe some other member of Glenna’s family). At the party Glenna announced that she had heard from Cindy about a major special event that Bev Hater and Polaris CO Dave Abbott (who had succeeded Joan) were in the beginning stages of working on with people from the Cincinnati Museum Center. Leonard became Director of the Aquila Academy following the ship’s departure from Starfleet, and he developed versions of Officer’s Training School and Officer’s Command College for the ship. Leonard handed over the position of Ship’s Historian to me in July, and I have held it ever since.

In September Tammy Borchardt hosted the annual club picnic at her house. Many people (including myself) atttended, and Tammy would go on to host more than twelve more parties at her house for the club over the years that I would attend. I got to know her mother and her sister Candy and her dogs (one of which we saw grow up from being an excitable puppy into a friendly and well-mannered Lab-Chow girl) quite well. They were always very hospitable, and her sister in particular was a very good conversationalist. I feel sad that I don’t think I ever had the chance to share with her about my trip to Disney World, for she was a big Wizard of Oz fan, and I got to see the ruby slippers. Tammy’s “worms and dirt” (chocolate pudding, crushed oreo cookies and gummi worms) was always a hit with the cadets.

While Cindy and Greg and Glenna and Linda were rather quiet and thoughtful leaders, Tammy was all emotion and tended to shoot from the hip. “I don’t want any of that Next Generation crap!” she shouted when a prospective ship’s motto that was a line from ST:TNG was proposed as the Aquila’s motto when the ship’s going to starship status was discussed many years before. At another time, she admitted, with a hint of a smile, “I’m not always tactful.” While Linda and Glenna and Cindy could be Kirk and Greg could be Spock, Tammy was McCoy through and through (a bit ironic, since Mr. Spock was Tammy’s absolute favorite character on Star Trek). Tammy was always very sweet and motherish to the cadets, especially the small ones. A frequent attendee at conventions with the group, Tammy did not take shit off of anyone, once punching out Earl Jones when he started fooling around with her after he had too much to drink. An artist, always capable of very deep feelings, extremely blunt in her speech, extremely talkative, Tammy could be very down-to-earth at times and sharp-tempered at other times. She was always interesting and she had a way of rallying the group when it had hit a low point by holding a party or just spouting forth on some topic or another. Extremely fun-loving and never predictable, she brought life and energy to the group wherever she went, and she remains the only 3 time winter of Officer of the Year.

Aquila Officers	2
Unclassifieds	2
Event Calendar	2
Area Meetings	3
Briefing Room and Club News (RL)	3
Medical Matters: Alzheimer's Disease (LW)	4-6
Aquila History (RL)	6-9
"Life on Mars" and Other Fun (DJB)	9
Mission Page	10

U.S.S Aquila Officers
COMMANDING OFFICER/NEWSLETTER EXCHANGE LIAISON/SHIP’S HISTORIAN Rob Langenderfer 859-371-9798 rlangenderfer@yahoo.com uss.aquila1@juno.com	LIAISON TO STARBASE KARMA/SECURITY CHIEF Gary Pierce 513-497-5069
EXECUTIVE OFFICER / MEDICAL CHIEF/ Linda Widener 859-283-9799 LWIDENER0449@yahoo.com	MEDIA LIAISON Aimee Weber 859-356-5731 mermaid44715@yahoo.com
SECOND OFFICER/RECRUITING OFFICER/RECORDS OFFICER Stephanie Rechtin 859-261-4380 wreckedin@gmail.com	NEWSLETTER EDITOR/ OPERATIONS CHIEF/ Diane Joy Baker 513-521-6039 diane1@zoomtown.com
SCIENCE Officer / TREASURER/ Brett Strittmatter 513-646-7177 brett_strittmatter@yahoo.com	TRANSPORTER CHIEF Nelson Charette 859-630-6889 (cell) snelsonc@isoc.net
Web Wizards Rob Langenderfer and Glenna Juilfs rlangenderfer@yahoo.com karadione@hotmail.com	U.S.S. AQUILA WEB SITE: https://ussaquila.angelfire.com/ E-MAIL:mailto:uss.aquila@juno.com

USS Aquila(Independent): Second Saturday at 2 PM Kenton County Public Library in Covington Contact: Rob Langenderfer Website:	ILV Midnight Warrior(KAG Xenoleague): Fourth Tuesday at 7:30pm (except December) meetings held at members homes and changes monthly. Contact: Joel Nye Website
*USS Melbourne(SFC)* Meets every other month; the off month is a social function Second Sunday at 3:00pm; Place subject to change Contact: Miriam Lauer	USS Camelot(Independent): Third Friday at 7pm (except December) Dayton Museum of Natural History 2600 DeWeese Parkway, near Triangle Park Dayton, OH (exit 57B from I-75 N or S) Website
*Friends of the Time Lord* Third Sunday 2:30PM WCET Contact: Rhonda Scarborough	KAG = Klingon Assault Group SFC = Starfleet Command

October 2010

Upcoming Events

**Book Club discussion: Mars Crossing by Geoffrey A. Landis**

USS Aquila Meeting 2 PM follows immediately. We hold meetings at the Mary Ann Monaghan Library, Covington KY Basement board room. (Ask librarian for escort below).

U.S.S. Aquila Briefing Room September 2010 by Rob Langenderfer

Medical Matters: Alzheimer's Disease by Linda Widener

U.S.S. Aquila: The First 10 Years by Rob Langenderfer

Mission Page