Life After The Porch

I Am Voting In Favor Of MAPS 3

2009-10-26T21:56:00.002-05:00

Here in Oklahoma City we have this thing called MAPS. The acronym is for Metropolitan Area Projects.

We voted on the original MAPS in 1993 about the time I was in the process of moving away from the Oklahoma City area. A few of the original projects included what is now called the Oklahoma River, a canal through the Bricktown area, a baseball stadium, an arena, and a few other things.

1993 was still a tough year for a lot of us in the Oklahoma City area. I thought the entire MAPS proposal was inspired by something near lunacy if not worse. All together the projects were estimated to cost some $300 Million plus. It was to be funded by a temporary one cent sales tax.

Besides the economic issue of removing that much money from the local economy and spending money on absurdly crazy projects there was the very widespread distrust of our local government.

But that first MAPS passed much to my surprise. But I was more surprised when I returned to Oklahoma City in November 1998 and observed the changes wrought by MAPS. It wasn't only the physical construction projects that had changed the place either.

There was a change in attitude. People were more upbeat and there was a civic pride that had not been apparent to me before I left.

Next there was a program called MAPS For Kids that was designed a little like MAPS but was for metropolitan area schools.

Then there was a kind of mini-MAPS just a year or so ago to upgrade the downtown arena for a basketball team.

There is not a chance that I personally would have supported any of the projects undertaken by any of these measures.

In just a short time we'll vote on MAPS 3.

I would not support any of the projects proposed in MAPS 3 either. I am pretty certain I will never use any of the finished projects nor am I likely to personally benefit in any way.

And I admit that when I first heard about MAPS 3 I was skeptical and pretty negative.

But I've thought more about it and I've decided I want to continue what the original MAPS began.

The big MAPS 3 projects include a large downtown park, a downtown streetcar system, and a new convention center. Then there are several smaller projects. The total cost is estimated at $777 Million to be paid for by a one cent sales tax.

I think all those individual projects are crazy. I wouldn't spend a nickel for them. I'm pretty sure there is no way to prove any kind of economic return on any of them either with the possible exception of the convention center. And I suspect it is more likely negative.

But I'm going to vote yes to extend the sales tax.

I'm going to trust the City government to use the money wisely and in the same spirit as MAPS 1.

There's a lot of opposition to this new MAPS especially by the local fire fighters and police and a pretty vocal group of other assorted folks.

So I have no idea how this is going to turn out.

But I've made my decision.

Contrast In Belief

2009-10-01T13:06:00.002-05:00

This morning in my Bible reading I was in the New Testament in Luke 1. Well I was in John 1, too, but I'm writing more about what I noticed in Luke 1.

What I noticed was the contrast between Zachariah and Mary.

Both are visited by an angel (the same one in fact, Gabriel) who tells each about a future birth of a child.

Zachariah says (The Message) "Do you expect me to believe this?"

Mary says "Yes, I see it all now: 'I'm the Lord's maid, ready to serve. Let it be with me just as you say.'"

Interesting to me is the fact Zachariah was the vocational religious person of the two.

Just found it really interesting.

Priorities and Values

2009-09-30T10:02:00.002-05:00

Matthew 16-20 (The Message)

Jesus replied, "You, too? Are you being willfully stupid? Don't you know that anything that is swallowed works its way through the intestines and is finally defecated? But what comes out of the mouth gets its start in the heart. It's from the heart that we vomit up evil arguments, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, lies, and cussing. That's what pollutes. Eating or not eating certain foods, washing or not washing your hands—that's neither here nor there."

I have finished Hezekiah and Malachi in my daily Bible reading.

I am reminded of just how important is freedom to worship.

I fear that many of our time do not recognize the importance and it is a freedom that may be lost.

There I Fixed It

2009-09-29T07:42:00.003-05:00

A friend sent me pictures of various handyman repairs the other day.

All the images were stamped with the name of a web site which I had to check out on my own of course.

So if you need a good laugh or some good ideas about how to fix stuff check out:

There I Fixed It

Lot's of uses of duct tape.

Fact stranger than fiction.

etc.,.

Ezra Trusting God

2009-09-27T10:15:00.003-05:00

In my daily Bible reading the other day I was in Ezra 8 and found the passage beginning at verse 21 to be very interesting:

I proclaimed a fast there beside the Ahava Canal, a fast to humble ourselves before our God and pray for wise guidance for our journey—all our people and possessions. I was embarrassed to ask the king for a cavalry bodyguard to protect us from bandits on the road. We had just told the king, "Our God lovingly looks after all those who seek him, but turns away in disgust from those who leave him."

So we fasted and prayed about these concerns. And he listened.

Ezra was preparing to journey to Jerusalem with quite a group of people and items for rebuilding the temple. Ezra was not without reason to be concerned about theft because later we learn that he was carrying "25 tons of silver, 100 vessels of silver valued at three and three-quarter tons of gold, 20 gold bowls weighing eighteen and a half pounds, 2 vessels of bright red copper, as valuable as gold."

One might desire a small army to guard that much stuff nowadays as well as protecting a rather large group of people.

At first when I read this I thought Ezra had actually asked the King for help so I had to read it a few times.

Does remind me of discussions I've had in my life when I've expressed my faith that the Lord would take care of me.

Those Who Debate

2009-09-26T05:00:00.000-05:00

Over the last decade or so I've read a lot of postings from various email lists, forums, web sites, blogs and so on.

In so doing I've noticed that there are different kinds of people who participate.

Of course there are the moderators who comprise the forum police force. Sometimes this is the same as the forum owner or operator but frequently not.

There are trolls who post in order to start a fight of some kind.

There are lurkers who read and don't post much.

There are frequent posters who have an opinion on everything and post on everything.

But I've become interested in those who like to debate on forums. There is the proponent who takes the affirmative and argues forcefully. There is the opponent who does the same but against the proposition.

Both the proponent and opponent types fall into two major types. On the one hand is the person who argues the issues. On the other is the one who immediately brings personal attack and derision to the argument.

There is also the undecided. These seem to be particularly despised on so many forums.

There is also the person who is often a lurker but who occasionally posts an opinion and then simply retreats back into lurkdom.

I suspect in many ways these forums do mirror to some extent how we act as a people.

What Did I Learn From College?

2009-09-25T05:00:00.000-05:00

I graduated from the University of Oklahoma more than 39 years ago now.

Someone asked me the other day what I learned in college. I told them that I was considering a blog post about that subject because I thought I had enough perspective now to address it.

My friend laughed. I was serious. He's old enough to understand what I said. So I laughed, too.

That very morning I was privileged to meet some young college students and listen to them talk about their experiences. One was a first year student and the other a junior I think. They both talked about how fearful they were about going to college and how the decision of where and what and how loomed so large in their minds.

To myself I thought I could tell them there would be plenty of other opportunities to screw up their lives other than which college to attend and that on balance the decision of where to go for college would not prove so important in the long term.

But I decided there was no point in letting them know that at this stage in their lives since it is something they will soon find out on their own. No point in unsettling a perfectly good day.

I read a quote the other day that I liked: "As you go through life you are going to have many opportunities to keep your mouth shut. Take advantage of all of them." I don't know the attribution but it's pretty good advice.

My own choice of colleges was pretty easily made actually. The University of Oklahoma was just a few miles away and I could drive there every day before work. That made it the least expensive choice and, therefore, the correct one.

But what did I learn there?

Well, of course, I learned what I studied although honestly there is not very much I remember of any of it.

I think the question though really addresses the "life lessons."

I learned a lot of things actually and some in surprising ways. For instance there is that History of Science course that I took because of some requirement. I didn't want to take it. But really it proved to be one of the best courses because it helped me understand there was a human side to science that my then idealism failed to appreciate.

There were other courses that were forced upon me that I never would have voluntarily pursued. They contributed to one life lesson which I think is that doing some work not of our own choosing is a good thing.

But I think the biggie thing I learned was just how big the world really is. And that there are a lot of people. And all those people are the same but different and there is so much to learn and do and think about.

At the same time though I learned that the specialties were so fabulously complex that the more you learned the more questions were found. One of those bigger on the inside things than the outside. Your degree just means you've managed to open the door.

Life is like that, too. The older you get the more you see but the more you see just makes you understand there is that much more out there to explore.

So that's what I learned from college.

Future Blog Entries

2009-09-24T08:07:00.002-05:00

I'm working on a few: What I learned in college, The Process of Thinking, reviews.

Read Esther in my daily Bible reading yesterday and today. Used Peterson's Message Bible. Really excellent and surprised me in a few particulars.

Prairie School Style

2009-09-23T05:00:00.001-05:00

I've had to learn all sorts of stuff about residential architectural styles recently.

The picture is the Robie House in Chicago which is a very well known example of Frank Lloyd Wright's Prairie School style.

Turns out I like this style very much. Also turns out I am not alone.

Then I ran across one of those quizzes about what is your house style so I answered the questions as best I could. Couldn't really answer them because they were multiple choice and on several there were no choices that I would have chosen but I had to in order to proceed. For instance on choosing my favorite color there was no choice for white which is my favorite color so I chose blue because that's probably my next favorite. I almost chose gray but blue won out.

Anyway that test said I was definitely a ranch style house kind of guy. And I really can't much argue with that because I really do like ranch style homes. But the quiz didn't include prairie style.

What I like about the prairie style is the emphasis of the horizontal, the low sloped hip roofs, the windows and details, the wonderfully huge overhang, and the natural exteriors. I was interested to learn that inside the homes are open and flowing. That was a big deal at the time because so many houses were comprised of little rooms.

Wright believed that the inside of the house defined the outside as I understand it. The prairie style name comes from a plan by Wright that appeared in the 1901 Ladies Home Journal titled "A Home In A Prairie Town."

He wanted the houses to blend in with the flatness of the prairie terrain. That definitely fits our land.

Now what I do not like is the McMansion style which is also known as the Neoeclectic style. Another form of Neoeclectic is the Dallas style which is so common now around our area.

The photo is from Wikipedia and is actually kind of a moderate example compared to some I've seen in real life.

I really dislike all those steep, gable roofs. And I dislike the mixing of the different styles of facade material as well as the mixing of architectural styles.

In 1936 Wright developed another style that was called Usonian in the 1950's. It grew out of the Prairie style. I was interested in this and think I may have posted something before about it because my Dad actually built several houses of that style right after he returned from World War II. The Usonian style also was very horizontal but was designed to be very affordable.

Have to decide now what I am doing with all this information.

World Alzheimer's Day

2009-09-22T05:00:00.001-05:00

World Alzheimer's Day

Yesterday, September 21, I am told was World Alzheimer's Day.

I didn't really know about it beforehand. Thought it was interesting though that it coincided with the 2nd anniversary of my dad's death. I don't know that I would have done anything differently had I known.

We are now told that more than 35 million people suffer from Alzheimer's or some other dementia worldwide and that number is about 10% greater than what was predicted a few years earlier.

By 2030 the number is estimated to nearly double and by 2050 a staggering 115 million persons are projected to have the disease.

After two years I find I have very little confidence in The Alzheimer's Association or any government or even any medical practitioner. That's not really a change in my confidence level from my caregiving days mind you. Actually I had zero confidence then and I still have zero confidence.

It is like those commercials for depression drugs that warn you that one of the side affects of the drug is depression. Then you learn that people that are depressed that are taking the drugs are still depressed. Not exactly a ringing endorsement.

On the other hand I am skeptical of these projected numbers, too.

There is an entire industry that grows up around diseases. I receive various kinds of advertisements for M D Anderson as well as one of our local hospitals and Cancer Centers of America. I like the latter because there is this one "doctor" that tells a "patient" that she has no "expiration notice."

Alzheimer's well on it way. It takes a lot of specialized people and facilities and so on and it is a disease that makes us all fearful.

Maybe I'm turning into an old cynic.

Two Year Anniversary

2009-09-21T07:55:00.003-05:00

There are two family birthdays that share this date and now they are in the forefront.

As others have written about their own experiences, that time two years ago for me and, indeed, even the entire 9 preceding years of caregiving, slides further into the fog of history.

Yet, I do remember. In my own way I experience and handle the emotions of those memories.

The are many emotions: the lingering grief and sadness mixed with relief that I had managed to reach the end; the sorrow that I did not do better; the loss of my father and partner and friend; the loss of my identity -- again; the fear and excitement of the future unknown including the finding of my new "self."

It seems strange to me but the solitary time yesterday spent with shovel and wheelbarrow and the four horses was part of that process for me. It took more than 2 hours and I was worn out at the end.

Push the scoop beneath the poop until it was full and lift it to the wheelbarrow. Bucky first, then Jet in turn, had to bite one handle of the wheelbarrow and turned it over in the doing. Curious horses but so fearful of even the tiniest thing. Then push the wheelbarrow through the wet but drying lot out to the corral pasture. And do it again and again and again and finally the concrete pad is evident.

Someone asked me why I did not hire someone to do that hard and not particularly pleasant work for me. I replied that I wanted to do it myself.

But I think I did it because it would have been something my Dad would have enjoyed doing. I could imagine the two of us doing that together although it was not part of my imagining yesterday. In retrospect though I think that's a large part of why I did it.

I remember as a child how much I enjoyed working with my Dad on the farm. At the time I never would have believed that those experiences would be remembered instead of other things.

Then later when we were business partners and I relished every day seeing him and being with him. Now it is my own son that I see daily -- and relish seeing, too.

And I think of where I am myself on the curve of time.

And I think of all those others who have traveled much the same path before me.

And I think of those friends who share this time with me and I wish them all the best.

Planning

2009-09-20T09:28:00.002-05:00

I haven't had much desire to read or write lately.

This is not particularly new as I have now observed the same thing occur more than a few times in my life. I think I've mentioned before that there is an amazingly useful value in perspective. It is just that for some things there is no way to achieve it without experience.

In my reading life I have several books underway and they are all interesting so the blame yet lies with me. Unfortunately you still have to read in order to understand, too. Maybe Apple or Amazon or Microsoft will make something that you plug in your ear (painlessly please) and a few nanoseconds later you've uploaded and understand the digital content.

On writing I haven't had much to say. It happens.

In my business life we are working on two actual contracts for land. Our Target deal is dead for now at least which is the way of current retail.

So I am spending an enormous amount of time on planning -- master planning it is called. It means we are attempting to actually plan the use for the entire 130 acres remaining of our old farm.

I find the process to be both exceedingly engaging and extremely difficult.

For one thing the process requires me and my associates and family to all individually think about what we like and want and hope. What kind of buildings do we like and what do we hate? What makes us proud and what disappoints?

Then there are all these practical considerations of engineering drainage and traffic and what might sell and what can we finance and what can we actually do.

There are details -- a myriad of details.

I've been driving around looking at all sorts of residential developments and office parks and apartments and retail centers. So many, in fact, that they have begun to blur together in my mind. Then I've been reading everything I can about "new urbanism" and creating enjoyable public spaces and so on.

It seems to me that all projects begin with a feeling of being overwhelmed by the size and complexity of the thing. That is followed by the chaos of synthesis of so many different and divergent ideas.

Then at some point there is this moment of clarity when the chaos dissolves into a set of principles that lead to differentiation of tasks and processes.

I'm not there yet but I feel it drawing near.

In the meantime I am off to shovel horse poop.

The Year 2012

2009-09-08T16:30:00.001-05:00

December 21, 2012 is the day that the world ends according to some.

There are all sorts of web sites about it. An example is http://www.december212012.com/.

Even WiseGEEK has a page.

There is, according to some, an astronomical object named Nibiru approaching Earth which will arrive on that date. Among the more interesting claims in my opinion is that the Vatican has built two telescopes on Earth and is launching a satellite for the explicit purpose of tracking Nibiru. There does seem to be some disagreement about Nibiru though including its name.

Apparently though it is Nibiru that is causing the magnetic pole of the earth to shift and that shift will continue to increase with some dramatic even on December 21, 2012. The dramatic event is a collision or near miss. As you might guess not everyone agrees.

There is a Survive 2012 site if anyone is interested in surviving.

There is an article on NASA about a new planet.

That's dated 7.29.2005 and the image is from October 21, 2003.

Thought that was interesting.

A good part of the 2012 stuff comes from Mayan calendar information. Some of it was popularized in the Indiana Jones film about crystal skulls.

Some of the phenomenon predicted include total shift of magnetic pole, big change in weather, big change in oceans, melting ice caps, earthquakes, volcanoes, Sun spots, shortages in food and water, economic disruptions because of shortages, wars because of shortages, and so on.

Oh and God and Jesus will be revealed to have been ancient astronauts and Christianity, Judaism, and Islam have all been covering this up for millennia.

I may have left out some stuff but I suppose you get the idea.

Surprise Gifts

2009-09-07T08:49:00.004-05:00

It was the day after my birthday this year.

I really needed a haircut and had been putting it off. I don't know why I do that but it seems I usually do now.

During my caregiver life I made regular appointments because I had so little time free to do things and the time cost me because of paying for aides. Now I act like time doesn't cost me anything and that it belongs entirely to me. I should be more cautious about how I spend time though because really nothing has changed in fact. Rather it is the perception.

But that's a different subject and I need to return to this one.

So I called Mike who has now cut my hair for a long while. He also came to the house to cut Dad's hair. That was a very great service to me and I still remember it. I paid him for doing it of course but I remain grateful for his help.

Surprisingly he had an opening that afternoon for me.

Now it just was absolutely coincidental that my son had an appointment with Mike that day but preceding mine. My son was in the 8th grade when Mike began cutting his hair.

I arrived on time for my appointment and Mike and I had a nice chat as he cut my hair. Really he's a stylist but I am not exactly the "style" kind of guy. That's really not his fault but just the fact that I am more "style-less" than most. I think I blogged about this once.

He removed the apron and I stood up and reached for my wallet so I could pay him.

Mike said "No charge today. Your son paid for your haircut as a surprise gift for your birthday."

I was truly surprised, too. In fact I was nearly speechless. I felt a big smile on my face.

I've thought about that event many times since. Each time I again relish the pleasure of it. The last time we both had appointments on the same day I was earlier and again it was coincidental. So I paid for his appointment that time. And he was surprised. I know because he called me and thanked me.

I don't know which event gave me more pleasure: giving or receiving. Both were wonderful.

I've thought a good deal about how similarly I am surprised quite often by The Lord. Usually I am not expecting anything. Then I'm surprised by something I know the Lord gave me as a surprise. No, I can't prove it. But I know it all the same.

It makes me want to surprise Him, too.

Texas Holiness Association

2009-09-04T16:30:00.000-05:00

Ran across this photo in stuff from my parent's home.

Texas Holiness Association merged into the Church of the Nazarene in 1910.

It is my understanding that my maternal grandfather was actually licensed initially in The Texas Holiness Association.

Perhaps he is in the group somewhere. I did look at it under a magnifying glass but saw no one that I thought might have been him.

World Names Profiler

2009-09-03T16:00:00.001-05:00

I thought this was a particularly interesting web site:

Mostly my surname, Fritts, is in The United States. Tennessee is the state where we are the most numerous followed by Oklahoma, North Carolina, Kentucky, Kansas, Arkansas, Missouri, Wyoming, Washington, and Alaska.

Smile and Give 'em Heaven

2009-09-02T14:37:00.002-05:00

Last Saturday, August 29, 2009, I attended another funeral for a high school classmate.

My brother read the obituary in the Friday paper and sent me a text message because he recognized the name and thought he remembered me being in school with Ron.

I've gone to several funerals of my school mates and teachers the last few years. I don't know exactly why I go. It's not as though I've maintained friendships with many of my classmates over the years. Even those few of us that were very close in school have strayed apart.

But there's something about being children together that survives long periods of separation. I notice I now even look much more kindly upon the remembrances of classmates I actually disliked at the time or in some cases considered enemies. Perhaps it is the perspective of time or, more improbably, the onset of some gain in wisdom.

This time it was the funeral for Ron Taylor. I think he and his family arrived at our school when I was beginning high school which then was the 9th grade. He was 2 grades below me but his sister, Verna, was in my class. His father was an assistant principal if memory serves as well as being the drivers' education teacher. I don't remember knowing others in the family and didn't know there were any until the funeral.

They lived south of us about 2 miles and seems to me that we rode the same bus together at least some.

Like several friends of my approximate age Ron had been stricken with polio as a young child. I learned at the funeral that it was when he was 4 in 1953. If the poliovirus could have waited a couple of years, Ron would have undoubtedly benefited from the Salk vaccine.

But polio was not the thing that defined Ron Taylor. Even as a junior high student Ron had a big spirit and an equally big smile. Neither of those have dimmed in my memory even after 46 years or more.

Ron was 59 when he died. It was sudden and unexpected. He was a coach most of his adult life and I had heard about a couple of his assignments. When I knew him he was one strong football player.

When I knew him I was an atheist. Back then I neither knew nor cared what his faith was if any.

I was pleased to learn that he was a devout disciple of Christ and had been for a long time.

Besides me there were about 500 or maybe 600 more people there to pay Ron respect and to try and help his family's grief as much as we could by our mere presence.

I'm not the only one to write something about Ron:

The comments are worth reading as much as the articles.

It was in the service that I learned that Ron nearly always ended his conversations with others with a resounding "Smile and Give 'em Heaven!"

I like that.

Nineteenth Ammendment 89th Anniversary

2009-08-26T07:46:00.002-05:00

Today is the 89th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America.

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

I wrote more about it not long ago. But I noticed today that it was the anniversary and thought it was worth a reminder.

Still amazes me how short a time it has been that women could not vote.

Shoeless

2009-08-19T05:00:00.000-05:00

Jeep in the shop.

Fortunately Mark knows what he is doing and I know enough to let him alone until he's finished.

New battery, starter, and some work on the starter foot pedal has been completed.

Brakes are next.

And important, too.

Baby the Cat

2009-08-18T05:00:00.001-05:00

It was Saturday, May 30, 2009.

We were staying out at the little house in the country. As I drove into the yard by way of the pasture road I saw the cat, whose name is Baby, lying on the patio.

Just a few days had she taken to lying on the patio. Usually she was around front and when I drove in she would take up a place under my car.

Something seemed wrong so after I parked I went around to check on her. At first glance I thought to myself that she was dead. Immediately I thought about how I really so hated to tell my wife because she and that cat had been together a very long time.

So I thought I better make certain and squatted down and touched her with my hand. She didn't move at all. I stood again and touched her with the toe of my shoe and again there was no movement.

I walked inside and told Judy that I thought something was the matter with Baby and maybe she should come with me and look. Thought that was better than blurting out what I thought. Mr. Sensitive that I am.

When we got to the cat Judy sat down and ran her hand across Baby's body.

Suddenly Baby came awake with such a start that we were startled, too. She looked at us and purred. I thought she might be just a bit embarrassed. She was breathing kind of hard and I thought there was kind of a crease across one side of her head.

Really I was amazed because I thought she was gone.

The next day she was okay. Judy enjoyed a little sun bathing and Baby stayed right with Judy. Judy caressed Baby and held her and just spent time with her.

The next day was Monday, June 1.

When we returned home we didn't see Baby in any of her normal places. We looked all over for her. We walked out into the fields and along the fences and even down the road in front of the house. We walked out pretty far into the pasture.

We didn't find her but the vegetation was tall and thick so we might have missed her.

Likely she went to the creek even though it is an awful long ways but really we don't know.

So it has been more than 2 months now and I look for her at her normal places when I am at the house. And when I get the mail I always look down the driveway and miss her walking out to meet me.

Baby was not an inside cat. Last year another cat attacked her and she didn't fare too well. She was already kind of beat up. She had one floppy ear with some of it missing due to some other battle long ago. One eye was pretty rough. Part of her mouth was messed up.

Outside cats are pretty independent. It wasn't so much that she was our cat or even that we were her humans. It was more we all lived at the same place I think and she enjoyed the accommodations and the food I put out for her.

I don't know exactly what she thought of me. I think she kind of liked me because if I put my hand down she'd come over and head butt it. She'd sometimes rub against my leg. And she liked my car's shade.

I think that's pretty close to affection for an outside cat.

Health Care Debate

2009-08-17T05:00:00.001-05:00

I watched Meet The Press yesterday.

Really I wish I had not. Usually I don't but I made an exception yesterday because I am interested in health care.

On the Obama Health Care side were Rachel Maddow, Tom Daschle, Bill Ritter, and Charlie Rangel. I suppose really I should include the show's host, David Gregory, because his position seems pretty clear to me.

Opposition included Tom Coburn and Dick Armey.

There was a fellow from the Chamber of Commerce but I missed what side he was on if he actually said.

I agreed with Senator Coburn which shouldn't surprise anyone really

.Just as an aside I actually received a telephone call from Senator Coburn's office regarding Alzheimer's and my own caregiver role during the time I was caregiving. He was the only senator that took any interest at all in any of the letters and emails I wrote and sent during that time. Representative Tom Cole also contacted me and I believe he was the only representative.

The only thing that I know for sure is that there are two sides and they seem to me to be irreconcilable.

The Democratic position as nearly as I can tell is that "they" (meaning the Democrats in power) are in favor of improving health care and that anyone opposing is in favor of either the status quo, depriving more people of health care, and/or making health care actually worse than it is.

In terms of policy the Democrats seem to favor a government controlled health care system. They would accomplish that goal with either a government system alongside the private, or a single payer system. Eventually they would like to move to total control of all medical facilities and personnel. This they say offers the greatest opportunity for cost savings by eliminating administrative bureaucracy.

The Democrats see two very evil villains: insurance companies and anyone else who oppose them. And they are not shy about excoriating their opponents.

The Republicans are adamantly opposed both philosophically and practically. However, the Republicans did agree that health care could and should be improved. They also see an evil villain, namely the Democrats.

Actually Rachel Maddow seemed particularly angry with Dick Armey. Daschle was more angry with Coburn. Rangel was just angry at everyone.

I am pretty sure if Rachel Maddow was in charge of health care that Dick Armey would be on his way to a "government clinic" to be prepared for "going home" (using language from Soylent Green).

The Democrats have the votes to pretty much do anything they want regardless of the Republican opposition. So it seems to me that the public debate and town hall meetings and so on are public relation efforts.

That said the Democrats are not tone deaf to public sentiment either and public sentiment so far is not favorable toward too much government.

Still my guess is that some kind of reform bill will make it into law. Everyone will claim victory and we'll all go on our merry way.

End of Life

2009-08-16T05:00:00.007-05:00

There has been a lot of discussion lately about the cost of care during the end of life period.

I wonder when you start counting the end of life period especially if you don't know when the end occurs?

In the recent house bill there was a provision, since removed, that reimbursed doctors who provided end of life counseling.

Some senator or congressman I read said that having counseling like that at the end of life was too late and it needed to happen 20 years earlier. Thought that was interesting.

I noticed an article in the Wall Street Journal that reported some rather old statistics. The article referenced a 2001 study. That's 8 years ago and I suspect things might be different now but I didn't really find more recent data (which is not to say it doesn't exist).

However, I paid more attention to the graph than the statistics after I noticed it.

But back to the stats: The 2001 study reported that each year about 5% of Medicare beneficiaries die and that spending in the last year of life accounted for 27.4% of total Medicare spending. So that last year of life is definitely expensive.

I think that was true in my parents' case but only if I include the cost of caregivers I hired and paid for myself. I never did know really what hospice cost so I can't comment on it.

Just last Friday though an attorney friend told me that he really thought we all needed end of life counseling in order to cut medical costs because that's where the most money is spent. It is kind of like robbing banks I guess.

That same idea definitely is repeated in the WSJ article.

There's even mention of a report by The Urban Institute that concluded about $10 billion per year could be saved with "better managed end-of-life care." How this would be done:

"The savings would result from training aimed at discouraging doctors from providing care simply because they would get paid for it, and from having teams at hospitals help terminally ill patients manage their pain once they chose to stop treatment, among other things."

Well there is talk about the cost of the health care plan being about $1.5 trillion over 10 years or some $150 billion per year. So $10 billion per year savings would be about 7%. Really doesn't seem like that much when you think about it that way -- at least to me.

About then I noticed the graph.

My next thought was a brief memory flash of that 1973 movie, "Soylent Green." It is set in the year 2022 in New York City where 40 million people live. There are government assisted suicide ("going home") centers ("clinics"). Soylent is a giant company in cahoots with the government that makes processed food because real food is long gone.

The newest Soylent product is a wafer called Soylent Green.

Turns out that it is made from humans who have "gone home."

I wonder if the "green" comes from the idea of recycling life?

You do have to admit that according to that Kaiser graph we could save a lot of money if all of us 65 and older just went "on home." Or maybe we should make it 3 score and 10.

We could save even more if we moved the age down to say 60. Then you wouldn't even have to pay social security at all. That would solve the social security problem, go a long ways to fixing the medicare problem, eliminate a lot of trouble with old age diseases including Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, and probably help the unemployment situation.

It is interesting to me that the cheapest years are 5 to 17. But really it is pretty much the same until age 45. Save a lot if you cut off at 45.

I started thinking about the cost for a family of 4 let's say: Father and mother in their 30's and 2 children say 5 to 17. It works out to about $7,500 per year. If I applied it to my family (me and my wife) then it works out to just about $10,000 per year. That's interesting because that's quite a bit less than my health insurance costs my business. My parents did not spend anywhere near $8,776 per year until they were about 85.

Then I began thinking about how much is an extra hour of life worth? Or an extra day? Or an extra week? Or an extra month? Or an extra year?

Depends I guess on whether it is you or someone else and whether or not there's pain or unawareness or depression or all sorts of other parameters.

It's quite a bit easier I suspect if it is someone else and someone you dislike to boot. If you like them then its probably harder.

What do you tell someone in end of life counseling? "Wow, you're about to die and really there's no sense in prolonging your life. Why don't you just go ahead and check on out now and save us all quite a bit of trouble and don't be so damn selfish."

Probably not that crude. Would be smoother -- more like Soylent Green I imagine or some of the dialogue in 1984. "Wouldn't you like to just lie down here and enjoy the pretty pictures of Earth they way it used to be and have a nice, long, deep sleep?"

Of course there's no problem really if someone has an advance directive that specifies no heroic measures be taken to prolong life. No problem because that's the consensus of the majority.

But what about the person that goes against the majority and either has no directive or actually has the gall to specify his or her desire for longer life? What then?

Does not society have the right, indeed, the obligation, to force that person to accede to the best interest of society?

Probably we would have some kind of boards established like the old draft boards I remember from the Vietnam War era. Everyone will get a card with a designation. Some people we need to keep around longer.

I'm going back to reading 1984 now.

Victim Turns Table

2009-08-15T05:00:00.005-05:00

While I hate what happened to the victims, I loved the outcome reported in this story:

Kidnap victim in Miss. beats alleged sex attacker
By HOLBROOK MOHR, Associated Press Writer
Wed Aug 12, 1:47 pm ET

JACKSON, Miss. – Police had been watching Vincent Goff for years, convinced he was the masked man who sexually assaulted couples at gunpoint on the Mississippi coast. But before investigators closed in, they say Goff picked the wrong victim and was beaten nearly to death with his own rifle.

Goff, a 37-year-old unemployed Biloxi man with a wife and two stepsons, was being held Wednesday in the Harrison County Jail after spending five days in a hospital recovering from severe head wounds.

Little is known about Goff's background or the unidentified man who beat him so hard that the wood stock of the rifle broke. But authorities say Goff's arrest caps a terrorizing series of attacks that began on the sandy banks of the Biloxi River in 2006.

Goff allegedly approached a man and woman last Thursday afternoon on an isolated logging road in Harrison County and forced them into the woods with a rifle, Sheriff's Maj. Ron Pullen said Wednesday.

They were forced to strip off their clothes and told to perform sexual acts when the male victim, described as a physically fit member of the military in his mid-30s, wrestled the gun away.

"He beat him until the stock broke over his head and then continued to beat him until he thought he had him incapacitated," Pullen said.

As the victims were getting dressed and calling police, the attacker staggered to his car and sped away.

A deputy pulled Goff over based on a description of the car and tag number. The officer called for medical assistance and Goff ended up in an intensive care unit, Pullen said. He need numerous staples to close the gashes in his head.

Goff was charged with six counts of kidnapping, five counts of sexual assault, two counts of aggravated assault and one count of molesting an underage girl for crimes dating back to 2006. He does not have an extensive previous criminal record.

Pullen said he doesn't think Goff has a lawyer and would likely be appointed a public defender. Goff's home phone number was disconnected Wednesday.

Pullen said investigators were awaiting the results of DNA tests on previous victims when the latest attacks occurred. The results came back Friday while Goff was still hospitalized and allegedly linked him to the 2006 crimes.

The first suspected assault was on construction workers who came to the Mississippi Gulf Coast to find jobs in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Pullen said. The man and woman had not been able to find a place to stay and were camping on the banks of the Biloxi River. A masked attacker approached early that morning, pointed a rifle and made the couple disrobe.

"He forced them to do sexual acts on each other and then he participated in it," Pullen said.

A man and underage teenage girl were assaulted in a nearly identical attack only a few months later. The attacks become increasingly violent, though the victims were not badly hurt, Pullen said.

Over the next few years, there were other attempted assaults in the area by a masked man with a rifle — one couple escaped by jumping into the river and swimming to the other side, Pullen said.

While Goff was under surveillance earlier this year as a suspect in an indecent exposure incident, investigators said they saw him steal a purse from a woman at the beach. That, along with the indecent exposure charges and other evidence, persuaded a judge to issue a warrant for a DNA test two weeks ago. Pullen said Goff's DNA matched that found at some of the crime scenes.

Harrison County Assistant District Attorney Charles Wood said the case would be presented to a grand jury.

And to be fair I hate that there was violence of any kind at all. I feel terrible for the perpetrator's family. I even feel terrible for the perpetrator himself.

But if I have to choose between perpetrator and victim I will go with the victim every time.

I admit to wondering though if Goff, the perpetrator, would sue his victim for damages. I hope not but it wouldn't surprise me.

Also wondered which TV network would make the made-for-tv movie first.

Government Health Care

2009-08-14T05:00:00.004-05:00

Here you go from our local newspaper:

Social Security deal brings relief to Durant woman
Class-action lawsuit fought denial of benefits
BY MICHAEL KIMBALL
Published: August 13, 2009

I'm just going to retell the story though rather than print the whole thing but feel free to click the link.

Seems as though Ms. Roberta Hobbs, 75, Durant, Oklahoma had an outstanding warrant from California stemming from a 2001 car accident prior to her relocation. In 2006 our government passed a law to deny social security benefits to fugitive criminals.

The SSA in their enlightened ignorance used that law as reason to suspend Ms. Hobbs' benefits along with another 200,000 benefit recipients.

Now Ms. Hobbs at the time had an electric wheel chair, a terminal lung condition that keeps her on oxygen 24/7, and $46 per month from Oklahoma Old Age Assistance.

After she lost her social security benefits she exhausted her savings, lived with no heat in her home which had been vandalized, and with no wheelchair which someone stole.

She survived thanks to a local church, her daughter, and a few other non-governmental organizations.

She asked every government agency she could find for help but was turned down by all.

That no help was forthcoming from the government does not exactly surprise anyone who has ever had to deal with the government.

Eventually though the National Senior Citizens Law Center represented Ms. Hobbs and 5 others in a class action suit against the SSA in 2008. At this point it appears that Ms. Hobbs and her fellow plaintiffs have won that case on behalf of some 200,000 people of whom 80,000 will get their benefits returned.

The other plaintiffs: a woman whose warrant was intended for someone else; a mentally disabled man whose warrant was issued when he was 12 and ran away from his home; a stolen vehicle charge that was dismissed but not recorded properly; someone who bounced a check to a grocery store in Texas; and, another California traffic accident.

The price to the SSA is $500,000,000 plus.

Why do we want to turn more of our health system over to the same government?

And by the way there are end of life provisions in the health care bills now being discussed.

Here's a link to the text of HR 3200. The section dealing with end of life consultation is Section 1233.

No, those provisions don't explicitly state that sick people should be killed in the interest of saving money. Likewise I am certain no one that voted for the provision to deny benefits to fugitives intended to nearly kill Ms. Hobbs. But that's what happened.

In my own experience as just one example there is the case where my mother was in the hospital with a broken leg. At 3 days I was told she was due to be discharged but they had managed to secure us 3 more days. After that we had to leave. Her doctors did not want to discharge her. Her nurses didn't either. Nor did the hospital officials. It was Medicare rules that forced us out. Just a few days later my mother died. Would she have lived longer if she had been given more time? I suspect so.

So there was no explicit conspiracy on the part of the government to kill my mother. But there was certainly a lack of regard for her personal condition in light of their sacred rules.

I do not consider myself an alarmist or an extremist but I can certainly appreciate the concern that people have about this issue.

And that is from someone who had to try and talk to my own father about end of life directives after he was diagnosed with Alzheimers.

Volt

2009-08-13T05:00:00.002-05:00

I watched on TV Mr. Fritz Henderson of the new General Motors speak about the new Chevy Volt.

Besides a web site the car has a Facebook page and a Twitter account.

He talked about the ad campaign for the new car that features the numbers "230" displayed so that the ZERO is an electric plug with a smiley face appearance. He said that 230 represents the miles per gallon efficiency rating for the car.

The Volt is likely going to sell for $40,000. According to Mr. Henderson it is designed to be used optimally by the person who drives 40 miles per day and that is supposed to be about 75% of us or something like that.

That's because 40 miles is about what you can drive on one charge of the lithium-ion battery. You just plug it in to your normal house outlet. The estimate is that a single charge is between $.75 and $2.50 depending I suppose on the cost of electricity and how depleted the battery is.

The car seats 4 adults.

The 230 mpg number is achieved using "new guidelines" about which the details are unknown. Basically the Volt on one charge can hit a maximum of 40 miles using only the battery. It does have an engine which supposedly can take you another maximum of 300 miles using gasoline at a rate of 30 mpg.

As I watched this news conference here's what I thought:

The new GM is the old GM less all the people they screwed over.
The new GM learned absolutely nothing from its past.
Same old same old - promise more than they can deliver - same as old GM.
Advertising is more important than results to both GMs.
Lack of respect for the intelligence of consumers.
Wonder what a battery costs for these things?
Wonder about where all those batteries go when they die?
Wonder about the unintended consequences?

Then I quit watching.

I have owned cars by GM, Honda, Toyota, Nissan and other manufacturers. My Hondas all got better mileage than the sticker. My Toyotas (including Lexus) got exactly what the sticker predicted. My GM cars never came close to the predicted mpg number.

Later I left work, climbed into my Lexus and drove home. And on the way I thought about the fact that I paid the same amount for my Lexus that GM is going to ask for the Volt.

And I'm pretty sure a sarcastic smile spread across my face.

Health Care Insurance

2009-08-12T05:00:00.001-05:00

11.9% increase in our health care insurance premiums we were told by our agent.

Then he presented several options that would reduce the cost of our premiums. Of course this was achieved by either reducing some level of benefit or increasing the employee's share of medical cost or both.

But the increased cost of insurance is not really the subject of this post.

Rather I was interested in the discussion of health care and insurance and the ongoing political struggle.

The most significant thing I noticed was a stunning paradox. On the one hand there was uncertainty about the government plan we'd face in the future. On the other was absolute certainty that whatever plan the government ultimately enacted it would be more bureaucratic, less efficient, less effective, and more expensive.

The next most significant thing I noticed was the anger and disgust about the process that is underway to implement a broader government plan. It is the sense I think that the plan has been determined and is going to be forced upon the country period.

Our agent's clients are all relatively small businesses. He said there was not one among them that was not terribly upset about the prospect of increased government intervention.

I know something about government health insurance since I dealt with medicare for the last 10 years on behalf of my parents.

My experience does not make me very confident. I just imagine Medicare on steroids and there is this nightmarish vision of all the terrible problems I had with Medicare magnified by an order of magnitude that looms in my mind.

That's not to say that I am overwhelmingly positive about the current health care system.

It's just that I think if anyone can make it worse it is the government.

Me Watching 3D With Grandkids

2009-08-11T05:56:00.004-05:00

I enjoyed such a happy afternoon yesterday.

My son and daughter-in-law asked if I wanted to go to the Warren Theater in Moore with them. I was also going to eat lunch with them but ended up on a phone call that interrupted lunch.

My cousin called to visit a bit. We're very close so I always take his calls. He said he was watching TV news and reading Atlas Shrugged and that made him think about me. But that is an entirely different blog post.

In the photo that's me on the aisle and my granddaughter, Emily next to me. Next to her are Austin, Kelli, Ian, and Aiden. My son took the picture so you can't see him. Seven of us all together. I bet the theater was happy to see us.

Emily took this picture of me with my iPhone. The movie hadn't started yet so there wasn't much need of the 3D glasses.

I am trying to smile. I've been working on smiling more. It seems a bit awkward. I am so impressed with those people on TV who smile all the time.

The 3D glasses seemed to give me just a little discomfort. Eventually I put on my regular glasses and then the 3D on top. I'm not sure that helped really.

And the glasses felt a little strange at first but eventually as I became more interested in the movie the glasses became more and more unnoticeable.

I have not seen a 3D movie in a long while. I was too young for the so called "golden era" of 3D in the 1950's. But there was a resurgence in 1970 with the release of The Stewardesses. This movie was "X" rated. A coworker and I snuck off from work one day and watched it in downtown Oklahoma City at one of the few then remaining grand old theaters. At the time we thought it was pretty "X" rated alright but compared to stuff today it was very mild. We hoped no one we knew recognized us and I remember we kind of turned our collars up.

The 1970 3D experience was entirely a different and much more unpleasant experience than the 2009 experience. The glasses then were not very good.

I have to say that 3D in 2009 is amazing. There were several times during the course of the movie that my perception was that things were coming at me to the extent that I wanted to reach out and grab them.

The movie itself wasn't so great but the kids seemed to really enjoy it. It wasn't a bad movie. The theme is pretty worn though. Ruthless businessman intent on monopoly unknowingly contributes to mad scientist plot to take over the world with computers. Good guys have to stop him. The wrinkle is the good guys are Guinea Pigs, a mole, and some other animals. They also have a scientist who is male, good, clueless, and has a hot, geeky girl assistant. There are some other wrinkles, too; but, hey go watch the movie.

Afterward we all drove over to Il Dolce Gelato for sorbetto and gelato. The boys and I sat together and engaged in an interesting discussion about dimensions while we enjoyed our sorbetto.

Austin said he thought maybe he would make a 5D movie sometime and maybe get rid of those glasses. So I tried to explain the concept of dimensions. That probably would have been worthwhile as a short video -- Pop Explains Three Dimensional Space.

When we left the movie all 4 grandkids wanted to ride with Pop (that's me) over to the gelateria.

As always the Warren Theater provided an excellent theater experience. In a way it does remind me of the grand theaters of my childhood but better. The quality of the sound and sight is just unsurpassed in my experience. But it is the wonderful design of the building and the comfort of the theaters and the uniformed employees and just how things are done that all contribute to a good time. It always makes me want to return to watch another movie.

I'm planning in my imagination right now a return trip with the guys at lunch maybe.

What a great time. I am just so thankful for my family and for the invitation and that I went along.

I've Been Reading Again

2009-08-04T05:00:00.001-05:00

I've read a lot the last few weeks and months. I get on these reading binges and just read and read and read. The Kindle doesn't help control my near addiction to reading either. I'm definitely reading more since I bought the Kindle but is that a good thing? After the reading binge though I usually go through a "sober" period where I read much less for a while.

I say "less" because I try every day to at least read the local newspaper, my Bible passages from my "Read Through The Bible in a Year" program, and my emails. That's actually quite a bit although my emails are fewer now.

There isn't any particular order here. I usually read several titles at a time anyway and the Kindle, the iPhone Kindle, and my laptops all contribute to me reading more titles at a time. And again I am uncertain if this is good or bad.

Also, I may be repeating something I've already written about here.

When God Goes to Starbucks: A Guide to Everyday Apologetics
by Paul Copan

I read about this title on a blog about the same time I happened to overhear a conversation about faith while sitting in my favorite Starbucks (Fritts Farm - Moore, Ok).

I can't really say I was misled exactly because the title clearly says it is "apologetics." But I was disappointed. I suppose for one thing I no longer really much like apologetics. For another though I thought it might be more about conversations I've actually had or overheard in Starbucks or other similar venues. But that's just me.

If you are interested in apologetics covering certain questions then this is a good book. The arguments are well conceived and logical and pretty succinct.

Retail Superstars
by George Whailin

I bought this one right after finishing the In-N-Out and jumped right into it. In-N-Out left me kind of excited about retail and I was kind of hoping for something similar in this book but covering a variety of stores. It didn't really do that.

On the other hand Whailin does a really good job of briefly describing and analyzing several retailers that were totally unfamiliar to me and that I am certain would have remained that way except for his work.

I guess I'd say interesting but nothing inspiring for me at least. There are only 7 reviews on Amazon and all gave 5 stars. I didn't review there but it wouldn't be 5 stars for sure.

The Neighbor
by Lisa Gardner

I liked this title a lot. It's kind of a cool story on several levels. Lisa Gardner never fails to satisfy on detailed research and procedures and so on and this title is one of the best she's done in that regard.

There's a husband, wife, and child. Something happens to the wife. The husband is the likely suspect -- even to the reader. Lots of computer stuff. At least one or two loose ends even at the conclusion for me at least.

On the negative the characters weren't exactly as sympathetic as I would have liked. That means I never came to really care about them too much. There was a certain feeling of contrivance that I ignored.

For me it was a good solid 3 star read though. Good book and I like Lisa Gardner's stuff.

The Fat Resistance Diet
by Leo Galland, M.D.

This is a really good book in my opinion. I learned a lot reading this book and even have tried out some of the ideas and found them rather helpful. It is about leptin resistance. If you haven't heard of leptin then by all means take a look at this book.

The Cabinet of Curiosities: A Novel
by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

I enjoyed this book sufficiently that I have purchased another title by the same authors. I also enjoyed learning about "cabinets of curiosities" and several other subjects. I was disappointed some in the characters but found enough to keep me interested. There were several really implausibilities that bothered me but that I overlooked in the interest of my own joy. Again I've bought another title.

Scarpetta
by Patricia Cornwell

It's kind of strange that I've never been much of a Scarpetta fan but I actually became interested in this rather long book. At first I was so bored that I nearly quit but there is something to be said for stubbornness I suppose. So in the end I enjoyed the experience of reading this book. The characters didn't much win me over. The ending was nuts. Still I enjoyed it anyway.

Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity
by Mark A. Noll

This book was exactly what I hoped and was a very enjoyable reading experience. If you're interested in the history of Christianity this is a good choice for a quick excursion of a rather long and complicated journey.

The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life
Alice Schroeder

Let me put it this way: DON'T BUY IT. If you do buy it don't read it. Good grief!! This thing goes on and on and on. There are all kinds of dubious facts and possibly some out and out inaccuracies. Boring. This author never heard of succinct.

The Cultivation of The Native Grape, and Manufacture of American Wines
by George Husmann

It was only $ .99. I had some interest in growing grapes there for a brief spell. Not sure it isn't a good idea even now.

Flo, Flo, Flo

2009-08-03T05:00:00.000-05:00

Rather the Progressive Insurance character, Flo.

The actress playing the character is Stephanie Courtney.

She's 39 and married. She has a Facebook fan page with more than 8 thousand fans.

I am certain that Stephanie must be a really nice person but I cannot stand Flo and I actually turn the channel to something else if one of those annoying commercials plays while I have the remote.

And compared to my wife I am a raving fanatic.

Era of the Petabyte

2009-08-02T05:00:00.000-05:00

Information overload

A report released last week by the US National Academies makes recommendations for tackling the issues surrounding the era of petabyte science.

1 byte = 8 bits (a letter, digit, symbol, etc.,.)
1 Kilobyte (1 K) = 1024 bytes
1 Megabyte (1 M) = 1024 Kilobytes
1 Gigabyte (1 G) = 1024 Megabytes
1 Terabyte (1 T) = 1024 Gigabytes
1 Petabyte (1 P) = 1024 Terabytes

The article states that it took more than a decade to decode the human genome with its 3 billion base pairs. That was in 2003. In only 6 years modern computers can run through that much data in a week or even less.

Wikipedia gives some examples. All of the recorded works of humankind from the advent of history to the present in all languages would be about 50 Petabytes. AT&T has about 15 Petabytes of data transferred in its network each day. Google processes about 20 Petabytes each day. Facebook has about 1.5 Petabytes of images or about 10 billion pictures.

Pretty amazing that we are now entering "the era of the Petabyte."

Nineteenth Ammendment

2009-08-01T05:00:00.000-05:00

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

Jan 10, 1918 - Passed narrowly by The House of Representatives
October 1918 - Failed Senate by 3 votes
May 21, 1919 - Passed House of Representatives
Jun 4, 1919 - Passed Senate
Aug 26, 1920 - Ratified by Tennessee, the 36th state to do so

Feb 28, 1920 - My state, Oklahoma, ratified. (I wondered so I Binged it.)(

Mar 22, 1984 - Ratified by Mississippi - the last state to do so.

The reason for my post is that during our granddaughters' visit we watched the 2004 movie, "Iron Jawed Angels."

Before watching the movie they just assumed that women must have been able to vote a long time ago where long time means way back several hundred years in American history. They were shocked that it only happened in 1920.

When we met their father to hand them off we mentioned the movie. He thought it was before the Civil War when women could vote. He was also surprised it was just in 1920.

It was important to my wife that her granddaughters see that movie.

I understand why and I think it is important for everyone to be educated about just how recently women were unable to vote and just how badly many were treated in that struggle.

Lucia Whelan -- 911 Call

2009-07-31T05:00:00.000-05:00

A few days ago I posted Black vs White, Police vs Citizen about an incident involving Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Cambridge, MA police officer, James Crowley.

I mentioned the name of the person whose call to 911 initiated the incident. And I also repeated what I had read about Whelan in news media stories.

Turns out that what I posted was wrong because the news media stories were wrong.

Now that's not really a shocking revelation to me because in every case about which I have personal knowledge and there is a media story there are factual inaccuracies in the latter. Several times I've been interviewed myself and then read the reporter's account of what I supposedly said only to be absolutely amazed at the inaccuracy.

Since my post though the original 911 call recording and transcript has been made public and Ms. Whelan has actually made public appearance(s).

It is obvious now in hindsight that Ms. Whelan did absolutely nothing wrong and should never have been so maligned as she was by all sorts of opiners.

That includes me even though I didn't say anything bad about her. I did repeat erroneous information and I wanted to correct that.

So apologies to Ms. Whelan.

Strange Being A Parent Even Temporarily

2009-07-30T05:00:00.000-05:00

I was a father once. Well I am still a father technically but my children are adults and I am talking about the kind of parenting one does when the children are not adults.

My granddaughters stayed with us about a week. And one day while grandma was on the phone I was asked "Can we go for a walk?"

I was stunned.

First thing I had to do was process what had just happened. Someone -- another human being -- had just asked my permission to do something. What? Suddenly I recalled that my reality had changed and there were now these people living here and I was in some kind of loco parentis role. Wow! I hadn't thought about that.

And I had been asked permission to do something mundane -- take a walk. I realized in that instant just how long it had been since I had been a real parent.

That made me recall just how many decisions and choices that parents have to make when it comes to their children. Amazing really. What an awesome responsibility to raise children.

Life experiences.

Jeep

2009-07-29T05:00:00.001-05:00

One of my very earliest memories is riding in a Jeep that would have been a lot like this one except it was undoubtedly older.

This one is a 1950 Willys CJ-3A. That makes it 59 years old. I am still older though admittedly not by much.

I remember that early Jeep ride in some detail. My mother was driving. I think we must have been driving to our then new farm and it must have been about 1950 or 1951. It was very, very cold. There was no heater. That means it was either a military model MB or a CJ-2. I'm guessing it was MB.

I remember standing and leaning over against my mother. I was bundled up against the cold with a cap and coat and mittens. I remember they were mittens and not gloves.

Seems a funny detail to recall but I do or at least I think I do.

The cold and no heater and our bodies made the windows fog up and hard to see out.

I remember my mother shifting the manual transmission. She would have been 37 or maybe 38 then. I find myself wishing I had known my parents at that age.

Maybe it is that Jeep ride that has made me want a Jeep. Or maybe it is my experience with them when I was in the National Guard way back in 1970. Back then we had 1950 vintage Jeeps. I managed to get one stuck once between two trees when we were on a training exercise. That feat caused some consternation among my superiors.

I happened to mention the other day that I had always wanted an old Jeep. Someone said "like a 1980 vintage?" I replied "No, like a 1950 vintage."

So they've been on the lookout for one ever since.

And on Tuesday, July 21st, one appeared for sale on one of the Internet lists.

We went to look at it and decided it should come live with us at our place.

So we bought it. Now we have to get it running.

UPDATE - before posting but after I wrote the entry:

We got it running. Well, "we" is actually Mark who can do most anything mechanical. He got it running.

I did check in on him and asked how things were going and kind of acted like I knew something about stuff like fixing an old Jeep.

And if you manage to live a few years you do learn a few things about various things.

Learning about stuff is different than actually being able to do stuff.

This is also me shot from the passenger side.

One thing I notice for certain is that the steering wheel seems a whole lot closer to my stomach than it did when I was driving similar Jeeps when I was 22. This Jeep was only 20 when I was 22.

I wonder if the Jeep changed? Surely it isn't me.

The thing runs great now that I've driven it. We need a few more things but all in all I am very, very happy.

In-N-Out Burger by Stacy Perman

2009-07-28T05:00:00.000-05:00

In-N-Out Burger: A Behind-the-Counter Look at the Fast-Food Chain That Breaks All the Rules
by
Stacy Perman

This book was just released this year in April by Harper Business.

Really I knew nothing about this hamburger chain except that I had seen the name mentioned a few times in various discussion board posts. Usually it was along the lines of "we should get one of those" places or "why don't we have an In-N-Out here."

But it is a California chain and I've been to California a total of three times in my life. And never did I go there to eat a hamburger. So I suppose it isn't all that strange that I would not have been to an In-N-Out.

And after reading the book it makes me want to go to one just to try it for myself.

The prologue describes the opening of a store in Tuscon, AZ in 2007. The description reminded me of my own experience with the Chick-Fil-A here at Fritts Farm in Moore, OK. Except, of course, that Chick-Fil-A sells chicken and In-N-Out sells hamburgers. And Chick-Fil-A is here and In-N-Out isn't.

But there are many other similarities between the two firms. Notably both are family owned which is to say private. Both have gone their own way rather than the "corporate" way. Both have a cult-like following (I started to write "kind of" but there is no "kind of" about it). Both have a nearly fanatical obsession with customer service, food quality, and cleanliness.

All that is well and good but not so much really what fascinated me about this story. Rather it is the similarity and contrast to my own family and personal story.

I'm not bothering with a review. Amazon offers plenty of those: editorial here and user here.

My family didn't sell hamburgers but we had a family business when I was growing up and when my children were growing up and now we have another one.

Thanks to my son who was on vacation in California and was able to get this nighttime picture for me of an actual In-N-Out Burger place. That's probably about as close as I'm going to get for now.

The In-N-Out story is many stories of course as are most involving humans. Every person that worked at In-N-Out probably could tell their own story in fact and it would be just as full of drama and interest as the one in this book.

But the story of In-N-Out is more than anything else the story of Harry and Esther Snyder and their sons, Rich and Guy. Harry was born in the same year as my mother and Esther in 1920 so I put them in the same age range as my own parents. They opened the first store in the year I was born and their sons were just a little younger than I am. So we share a time if not a place.

So I see family lessons in this story and I see business lessons as well. There are other lessons, too, but I'll leave those for others. I think family and business is a sufficiently large universe for my brief exploration.

The first thing that occurs to me is the idea of recognizing and taking advantage of opportunities as they come along. That's what it seems to that Harry and Esther Snyder did and that's what my mom and dad did as well. It wasn't that my parents had any great plan or that they wanted to be rich. They wanted to earn a living for their family and they used what they had. And they worked their tails off, too.

Is is really that hard to recognize opportunities?

Yes, it is. Just listen to people talk sometime. I had someone the other day say to me that they could have bought my dad's farm or land around it. In the context he was letting me know that he felt he missed an opportunity. Or I hear people say things like "I thought of something like that and I don't know why I didn't act on it." I received an email a few years ago from a friend I've not seen since high school. He told about working for Hewlett-Packard when they were still in a garage. But he left before the company became successful.

Then there is the power of "saying NO."

That what my dad and mom did when it came to their farm. Over the years they had so many offers to sell it. And I'm certain there was at least some temptation because I know there were money problems at various times. But Dad just kept saying "NO" and held on to the farm. Harry and Esther Snyder and their sons did the same thing.

In both cases money was not the overarching motivating factor. I'm not saying it was unimportant because it was. But Harry Snyder wanted to make hamburgers his way and he stuck to that. My Dad used to tell me to "pay attention to your business and let other people worry about theirs."

Don't borrow money. Both my parents and the Snyders just would not do anything they could not afford without borrowing.

A couple of serious negatives though I noticed from the book.

One is that family businesses become just all consuming. I know this from personal experience and it is surely something the book makes clear in the case of In-N-Out. There is this confusion that occurs between where family life ends and business life begins.

The family business can be used to control family members and others who work for the business. That almost always has negative repercussions for everyone involved. I saw that first hand as well.

In the Snyder's case the business caused a terrible rift in the family. So far we've managed to avoid that and I want to make sure we never, ever let the family business become more important than the family. Just not worth it.

That's about it I guess.

I hope to get to an In-N-Out Burger someday and try it out.

I very much recommend this book.

Black vs White, Police vs Citizen

2009-07-27T05:00:00.001-05:00

This is the mug shot of Henry Louis Gates when he was arrested the other day (July 16, 2009) for disorderly conduct. The charges were later dropped but apparently the mug shot was taken before that.

As celebrity mug shots go this one isn't so bad really. Gates doesn't look bad at all. In fact I think he looks pretty good for a 58 year old guy. He looks reasonable and mild mannered and even kind of scholarly which for a Harvard "scholar" seems to me to be a good thing.

I think about what I'd look like in a mug shot sometimes when I leave the house without my shower and have my cap on my head to keep my notorious (in my family) mad scientist hair in place. Because I know they make you take your cap off. Not that I would be doing anything deliberately to get arrested mind you. But sometimes I think weird stuff like that.

Now this picture (and no I do not have permission to post these because I didn't ask anyone - but they are all over the Internet) is not as kind to Dr. Gates.

Nope. He does not seem so kindly and calm and scholarly in this one.

But I wouldn't be very happy myself if I were standing on my front porch with 3 (at least) rather large police offers surrounding me and me in handcuffs.

This photo was taken by a neighbor by the way. Neighbors figure into this entire incident in a big way, too. The neighbor taking this particular picture is William B. Carter. Carter is also 58 and retired from Bank of America according to one report I read. Same report said he had earned $4,000 for the photo as of July 23rd. I thought that was interesting.

Another "neighbor" began the police involvement in the incident. Her name is Lucia Whalen. She's a fund raiser for Harvard apparently. She was in her office on July 16th and looked out her window. She observed a couple of guys trying to break open a door. She called the cops and reported the incident.

This is the cop who got the call.

His name is James Crowley. He's a sergeant and been on the force 11 years. He's 42. It has been noted that he taught about racial profiling and apparently that's supposed to be of some meaningful importance in the reporting of this incident.

Someone -- maybe many someones -- asked him to apologize.

He refused.

He said he acted appropriately and had done nothing wrong and so there was nothing for which he should apologize.

Then our President (and there's no need for a photo of him because his image is everywhere these days) got involved when asked about the incident in a press conference. He said the police acted stupidly.

Now given the facts of the incident as I have written them and as I understand them to be true it is predictable and understandable what subsequently happened.

Black people (not all but many) said the incident was all about white racism, defended the black victim, recited personal stories of their own encounters with white police racism, and so on.

Lucia Whalen was called a racist because she saw two black guys with backpacks breaking in a door and called the police. All police persons are already assumed to be racists but they were again called racists at every possible turn.

Police everywhere, but mostly white ones, said the President didn't know the facts and shouldn't have gotten involved and that they were not stupid and not racists and that they acted appropriately and so on and so on.

Pundits -- but only white ones -- said the President made a rookie mistake, derailed his health care program; said racism was alive and well in America and we have a long way to go; said it was not just about racism but also elitism (smart Harvard people versus dumb police officers); and a bunch of other stuff.

Regular white people that I know did not initially have too much opinion about the incident until it became part of popular culture. Then the opinions expressed were mostly that you shouldn't screw around with people whose jobs allow them to carry guns and handcuffs.

I've had several incidents in my personal experience that returned to my consciousness as a result of this one.

Long, long ago I was already at work in the wee hours of the still dark morning. My then wife heard someone trying to break in and called me and the cops. When I got home I rushed into the house and right out the back door. I was confronted by two officers with guns drawn on both sides. They had no idea who I was and made me raise my hands and stop. Then I had to prove who I was and that I belonged there. And let me tell you I made no sudden movements and was extremely cautious about every little move I made.

Years after that I and my entire family was home sick with the flu. Somehow we set off the alarm which was monitored and the monitoring company called the police. We straightened things out with the monitor but it was too late to recall the gendarmes. So two officers arrived at my front door and I answered in my robe and best illness marked appearance. The police had no sympathy and demanded -- yes demanded -- my ID. I had to return upstairs to get it and they accompanied me inside but let me go upstairs alone. I rested much easier when they left I can tell you.

Several times I've had to go to an office to meet police because of alarms and actual burglaries. I can tell you that in every instance the police (both men and women, black and white and other) have been at very high alert. There was palatable tension. And their tension alone made me have a lot of tension, too. Usually I was already tense because of the alarm.

A couple of times I've rather stupidly entered a dark warehouse or office alone when an alarm was going off. It is scary.

Truthfully I am kind of cynical about this entire Henry Louis Gates incident.

Not the original incident. I think it was just exactly what it seemed.

But I am suspicious of Gates' subsequent behavior. I think he may have taken advantage of what he perceived to be an opportunity for some publicity. Gates is apparently one of the smartest people in the world. It is hard for me to believe he did not understand or anticipate the result of his action.

And, yes, I do not think the cop was as smart as Gates and I suspect he did fail to anticipate and think through the results of his action. So, yes, I am being a bit stereotypical myself.

And the President of the Unite States? I am absolutely cynical that he "made a rookie mistake." These things are like performances and highly choreographed. And the President is also very smart. It is just hard for me to believe he didn't understand what he was doing.

You have to admit that Gates received publicity that you simply couldn't have purchased at any price. And it cannot be bad for his career -- which appears to be a professional racial victim advocate. And Mr. Obama is his friend. And you know what they say about friends in high places.

Now I don't know any of these people and if I did I might dismiss all my conjecture. It is only conjecture.

But everyone else is conjecturing all over the place so I figured I might as well, too.

Scary Dream

2009-07-26T05:00:00.001-05:00

I don't often remember my dreams. I don't often have bad dreams. Or maybe I just don't remember them.

So maybe that's why this one was particularly disturbing.

I was not alone in the dream but I am uncertain who was with me. That doesn't mean I did not know them. I think I did. I think I had some degree of responsibility for them. But now I can't remember if there was one other or more others. I think more.

We had been climbing into mountain places and crossing dangerous bridges. We'd been working hard. But we'd finally arrived somewhere.

And there were some kind of monk like people there. They wanted us to do three things I think. I don't recall all three. But one had to do with drinking some kind of drink. And another had to do with reciting some kind of pledge in an unfamiliar tongue.

I was afraid. But whomever I was with wanted to do it and wanted me to do it, too.

I think it ended with me having to decide to abandon my companion. For some reason I think I had some kind of responsibility for my companion. But I wouldn't drink and I wouldn't recite so I had to leave.

The drink would have numbed my mind I know. I think the pledge was some kind of allegiance to some kind of demon god or something.

But I think it was not a god like those old idols. I think it was some kind of modern god.

That's it - that's the dream.

Economists

2009-07-25T05:00:00.000-05:00

I read Malcolm Berko's column the other day in our local newspaper:

Dear Mr. Berko: Can you explain in simple English who Joseph Schumpeter was and what this economist was talking about when he wrote about the industrial collapses and changes in employment and production?

What do you think of economists, especially Schumpeter, who many people seem to be quoting?

E.L., Waukegan, Ill.

Dear E.L.: I don’t like economists, who are some of the most useless people on the planet.

The economists I know are cross-dressers, drive Volvos, tend to be anti-social, their shoes squeak even when standing till, their cologne smells like Juicy Fruit, and they have the emotional range of Formica.

Former Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Alan Greenspan, whose hobby is teaching cats to swim underwater, is a perfect example. As I’ve been telling audiences since 1998, "He ain’t the crispiest Dorito in the bag.”

I laughed out loud.

Also had to look up Joseph Schumpeter on Wikipedia to read who he was and what he though. However, I resisted the urge to buy any books.

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

2009-07-24T05:00:00.000-05:00

A while back Amazon offered a Kindle version of George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.

I wasn't really interested in again reading the novel. Although I very much did enjoy reading it ages ago when I was much younger. Of course when I read it the year 1984 was still in the future. And I recall thinking that I would not be so terribly surprised to find at least some of what was described in the novel become fact.

Then when 1984 arrived it wasn't much like the novel here in the U S of A anyways.

Apparently though there were a lot of other folks who did want to read a Kindle version of the novel. Or at least they bought and downloaded copies of it.

But the publisher apparently changed its mind about the entire idea of offering an eBook version and thereby instructed Amazon to stop offering them for sale. So Amazon removed the item from the store.

Which in turn removed the titles from individual users' Kindles.

Which in turn caused quite an uproar.

Which in turn caused me to become interested in the entire matter.

In my research I found that the novel will enter the public domain in the United States in the year 2044. I'll be 96 then and probably have lost interest if I'm still around.

It turns out though that the novel has already entered the public domain in Australia and that in fact the novel in question was available for reading from a web site. I clicked the link and the book in HTML glory appeared on my computer screen.

Somehow the government is going to have to get control of this entire thing or all sorts of people are going to be reading 1984 in violation of the copyright.

Maybe we're not as far from 1984 as I thought.

Life With Teenagers

2009-07-23T05:00:00.002-05:00

My friend Dave with undoubtedly be delighted to learn that I have two teenage girls living at our house for a few days.

They are really good kids and we are enjoying them so much. But I have to say that they have caused quite a change in the patterns and habits of my daily life. It has been a very long while since I lived with a teenager.

The first thing I notice is just how boring and mundane is my life minus teenagers. Sometimes one doesn't understand these things until one is exposed to the exact opposite.

The second thing I notice is that there actually can be organized chaos.

The third thing is that teenage girls -- I think moreso than boys -- attempt to occupy and use all available and even potentially available space. This task they prove to be remarkably successful and capable of achieving. I believe if we had twice the space or half the space the result would be the same.

They're pretty good cooks though. And that's good because they eat a lot. We were totally unprepared for just how much a lot is. We don't even buy bread period. So we thought buying one loaf was quite a lot. We've had to return to the store for more and I notice that loaf is nearly depleted now.

Apparently they live more at night though and I live more in the day time. That's another big difference.

But what a treat.

Young Couple

2009-07-22T05:00:00.000-05:00

I was really tired the morning after our quick but long trip. I was a bit later than normal and it was already sunny.

Earlier I thought about staying in bed even longer but I never have been much of a morning sleeper. It's like a switch for me. I am either awake or asleep or on a very brief trip to one or the other.

It was a beautiful Sunday morning. The Sun was bright and the sky was clear and there was no wind. Things seemed cleaner and fresher. And I was so glad to be home. Just nothing like sleeping in your own bed with your own pillow.

I was taking it pretty easy and driving even beneath the already slow speed limit. I was so enjoying the day and looking all around me and noticing things in more detail than normal. And "more" for me is not a lot I am acutely aware.

It was just before I turned the corner that I noticed the parked car and a little ways from it a young couple.

It is not unusual to see cars in that place nor people enjoying the little park like area at the entrance to our addition. It is one of the things that attracted us to the area. Photographers use it often as a setting for their commissions.

Really I don't know how old they were but the sense I have is that they were young. I think they were nearer to high school than college graduation. But it is just a feeling.

They were sitting on the ground and they were facing each other. They were very close and their bodies were entwined. Her arms were around his neck and his around hers. Their faces were hidden in each others embrace.

It was the briefest glimpse even at my slow speed and then I was past them and in seconds they were only shadows of thought in my mind.

There had been no motion I had noticed when I passed them by. I could not see expressions on either face.

But there was nothing amorous about their embrace.

Perhaps there was joy. I cannot say not.

But I think it was a sad embrace. I don't know for certain but that's my feeling. And it made me a little sad myself. As though there had been some awful misfortune that had befallen them. And each was comforting the other though the experience of this grief.

But my sadness gave way to a feeling of happiness. But it was the kind of happiness that makes you want to cry because it is so beautiful.

I think they were comforting each other. It wasn't comfort by word or deed. It was comfort by presence and touch and that amazing thing we call love.

There's a beauty to that.

When I returned a few hours later they were gone.

Not All Starbucks Are The Same

2009-07-21T05:00:00.000-05:00

I go almost every morning to the Fritts Farm Starbucks in Moore, OK.

There's a saying that "absence makes the heart grow fonder."

I proved that saying true in the case of my Fritts Farm Starbucks this last week as we took a quick trip out of town.

I had long suspected that my particular Starbucks was a special place. I just didn't know how special it really was.

Never have I entered my Starbucks without a cheery greeting from one and usually several of the baristas working there. Often there are customers who I also know. Whichever one of us sees the other first initiates the greeting which is quickly reciprocated.

In my case familiarity may not have bred contempt but I surely had succumbed to taking my Starbucks for granted.

There are some Starbucks were the baristas do not appear happy at all to be working there. Now it isn't that they were impolite or rude or discourteous. I am just used to having happy people make my coffee.

It isn't because of being busy either. My Starbucks is usually busy. I could even understand being ignored because of someone being overwhelmed with other customers.

But people that are overwhelmed by no customers makes no sense to me.

Another interesting thing I learned while gone is that the cheerfulness of my barista has a profound impact on the taste of my coffee.

I am so glad to be home!

And while I am at it hotels are not like home.

Me When We Landed On The Moon

2009-07-20T09:37:00.004-05:00

We were at my Aunt Larry's house watching the whole thing on TV 40 years ago.

I am the guy sitting in the chair. Apparently my pants are too short. My dear Judy says I still tend to want my pants too short.

From left to right behind me is my Aunt Ruth, cousin Brian, cousin Marilyn, Aunt Larry, and ex-wife Debbie.

I was 21.

Now I did not really remember this although I do have vague memories now that I've seen the photo.

Rather my brother who is our family historian and archivist sent the photo to via email with an explanation. As I study the photo the memory of the occasion does become less vague but it is hardly in focus.

He also sent a second image which I felt obligated to include on my blog entry. I started to say for posterity but that seems a little absurd to me.

But maybe no more absurd than landing on the Moon in the first place.

From left to right is my mother, Evelyn, and behind her by father, Alton. Seated next to him is his brother, my Uncle Vic. Next to Uncle Vic in the floor is my grandmother, Letitia. Directly behind my uncle is my cousin Pam and next to her is cousin Marilyn.

I think these are just treasures and I am so happy to have them again and to look at them and use them to spur my so very faulty memories of that time.

I had not yet gone off to boot camp nor had I graduated college. My wife was not yet pregnant with our first child. I think my cousins were still in high school then.

Really amazing photos.

Profoundly Ignorant

2009-07-14T06:29:00.003-05:00

I heard the phrase "profoundly ignorant" used by a TV business commentator in describing a magazine article. I really liked the phrase.

That made me think, too.

I have been and am profoundly ignorant about any number of things. A few of these I know now after learning something about the subjects. But the vast remainder I know not.

That's because it takes a certain amount of knowledge to raise one's level of ignorance to the profound level.

Otherwise one is simply blissfully unaware.

Nothing really wrong with that as long as it is maintained privately.

After many years of negative experience it is my conclusion that the trick is to attempt silence regularly and consistently in order to shield from public notice the depth of one's own stupidity. That way the public is safer.

Not that I have arrived mind you but I am trying.

No Place

2009-07-12T10:57:00.002-05:00

Sunday morning I watched the local political show that comes on just before "Meet The Press." "Flash Point" is its name.

There is a moderator who attempts a neutrality of sorts, a democrat, and a republican. Usually there is a guest. The "democrat" always says bad things about republicans. The republican responds and the democrat attacks back and so on. The democrat's attacks always seem personal to me.

Usually the republican guy tries to be less personal in his own attacks but sometimes he, too, slides into personal attacks. Maybe less frequently than the democrat I think but hard to measure.

But it is called "Flash Point" so it is certainly not surprising that the format is adversarial and hostile at that. And the democrat is an attorney and attorneys seem more adversarial to me in general than most folks. The republican is a businessman who served as mayor once.

I really do not like to say bad things about other people. I was thinking that this morning while I watched that show. I think the republican guy lost his last couple of elections probably because he isn't very good at saying bad things about other people. Others disagree with me of course.

The democrat is really good at it. But he lost his elections, too. Maybe he is just a bit too abrasive about it.

I guess there's a skill level to it. Some politicians are really good at it. Some not.

So in that way I don't find a place for me in the culture. I don't want to say bad things about anyone. That's not very popular right now. Nearly everyone it seems has something bad to say about everyone else.

I always wonder what they say about me to the next person that they meet. I bet you anything it is something bad though.

So I think there's no place for me at the proverbial table of political discourse.

Not that I think there should be really nor am I much interested anymore. It seems tiresome now to me. I've seen nearly all of this before now. My dad used to try to tell me this and I never could understand him. Finally I begin to see what he meant.

Obadiah

2009-07-02T04:34:00.003-05:00

My daily reading yesterday in the Bible was Obadiah.

It is one chapter and short on words as well as succinct on message.

It is not difficult to understand generally although there are plenty of problems in details as is pretty common.

There are two things that just really stood out for me as I read.

The stronger was the idea that failure to act was as bad as contributing to the act itself:

On that day you stood there and didn't do anything.
Strangers took your brother's army into exile.

Godless foreigners invaded and pillaged Jerusalem.
You stood there and watched.

You were as bad as they were.

You shouldn't have gloated over your brother
when he was down-and-out.

You shouldn't have laughed and joked at Judah's sons
when they were facedown in the mud.

You shouldn't have talked so big
when everything was so bad.

You shouldn't have taken advantage of my people
when their lives had fallen apart.

You of all people should not have been amused
by their troubles, their wrecked nation.

You shouldn't have taken the shirt off their back
when they were knocked flat, defenseless.

And you shouldn't have stood waiting at the outskirts
and cut off refugees,

And traitorously turned in helpless survivors
who had lost everything.

I found that passage rather appropriate to our modern world.

The second thing that jumped out at me was the idea that perceived security is not real security:

You thought you were so great,
perched high among the rocks, king of the mountain,
Thinking to yourself,
'Nobody can get to me! Nobody can touch me!'

Think again. Even if, like an eagle,
you hang out on a high cliff-face,
Even if you build your nest in the stars,
I'll bring you down to earth."

Something we should all remember.

Meeting Strangers

2009-07-01T05:00:00.002-05:00

When we arrived at the concert of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir the other evening it was about 100 degrees. The thermometer on the car said it was 104. Just by "feel" I think it was maybe a little hotter than that in the parking lot but I'll concede "about 100."

Regardless the temperature, or maybe because of it, we did not linger in the parking lot. I did, however, pay attention to where the car was parked as we began walking away. Good planning on my part but only because of my previous experiences losing cars in parking lots. It always impresses me how different a parking lot looks full compared to empty and in darkness rather than light.

There was a queue of people gathered at the building entrance closest to us so we began walking towards the end of the line.

Coincidentally we arrived about the same time as another couple. It was one of those situations where the man preceded us but we preceded his wife. So she joined him in front of us. Immediately he apologized for "cutting the line" which really hadn't happened. Besides no one was behind us anyway. So it was said in a pleasant, joking kind of way.

And we joked back about the fact that they gained so much ground and then we all laughed. I noticed the couple's laugh. Their laughs were exactly the same and very happy. Those laughs were such happy laughs in fact that it made me happy.

Then the woman asked her husband if he had the tickets. And he responded with kind of a blank look that was subtle enough to make me wonder. And then there was his big laugh again as he produced the tickets which was followed by her equally big laugh. Again it made me happy just hearing those laughs.

We made casual conversation then as the line moved towards the entrance. They mentioned their city and she regretted she had not brought a jacket. We laughed together at that because it was hotter in line than it was in the parking lot.

After we entered the building they went one way and we another. As we parted we wished each other well.

I thought to myself that it was such a pleasant experience to meet someone like this couple in a line of many other strangers. What a blessing.

Later Judy and I talked about how wonderfully matched we found this couple and how much we enjoyed talking to them in line and how happy their laughs made us both.

I bet you like this couple, too. And I bet you have a mental image of the man and the woman somehow based on my mere words.

And I bet in that mental image they are each of the same color.

And you would be wrong because he was one color and she was another and I've decided to omit the detail.

And it mattered not one bit. In fact it was not noticeable at all. That was especially true in light of the amazing similarity of their sense of humor.

And that's the way it should be.

Short Sleeves

2009-06-30T05:00:00.001-05:00

Recently someone told me that short sleeve shirts are kind of lower class. I didn't know this. Really. No one before had ever told me.

I've been wearing short sleeve shirts a long while, too.

Now I will admit that I haven't bought any short sleeves in the last few years. I just cut the long sleeves off of my dress shirts and had them hemmed. Worked for me.

I wonder if living in a place where it gets in the high 90's and low 100's changes your opinion of short sleeves?

Of course there are those who would say that my short sleeve shirt wearing only serves to confirm their already long held opinion of my lower class status. They would say that I am the only one surprised by such revelation.

Then again I think "they" believe that just about all of us who live in "flyover country" are lower class. And I guess they believe that those of us here in Oklahoma are about as low as low class gets.

Well -- there you have it.

Mormon Tabernacle Choir

2009-06-29T05:00:00.002-05:00

Saturday, June 27, 2009, we attended a performance of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir at The Lloyd Noble Arena on the campus of The University of Oklahoma.

This photo, taken by Judy's iPhone, shows the choir and orchestra all on stage but prior to the start of their performance. Someone else forgot to charge his iPhone.

According to the free program the choir began in 1847 which is pretty impressive. Also impressive is the voice of the choir's announcer, Lloyd Newell. He's served since 1990. You can immediately tell why he is the announcer.

The organist was equally impressive and I do love organ music. Of course the organ was one they haul around with them and not the one located at the Temple in Salt Lake City. I heard that once when I was there although it was only some kind of rehearsal. It was still quite impressive.

The arena usually is used for basketball games among other things. It holds about 12,000 people but the area behind the stage was unavailable for use for obvious reasons. So I'm guessing that it was maybe 2/3 full which would be 8,000 people. The Sunday paper reported there were 8,500 in attendance so my estimate was pretty good. The paper also reported this was the largest group yet on the tour.

The last time the choir was in Oklahoma was in 1969 when they performed in Tulsa.

The choir has 360 members according to the literature but I think there were maybe 250 or so in Norman. The orchestra was easily 40 or more additional performers. Everyone is a "non-paid volunteer." (I thought non-paid was unncessary if you said volunteer but that's what they said.) They said that all together there were 570 people on 11 buses and a whole bunch of trucks and 3 airplanes.

From Norman they were all heading to Denver for the final performance of this tour which began in Cincinnati.

The arena is not exactly comfortable but it was okay I suppose. Probably that is more of a reflection on me than on the facility.

The parking lot was easy to get into but hard to leave. I've noticed a lot of things are that way.

It was after 11 sometime when we finally made it home and it took us a good 2 hours to wind down.

We had a wonderful time.

Next Car I Will Buy

2009-06-27T05:00:00.004-05:00

Photo is my present 2003 Lexus.

I've been thinking about cars.

For one thing the news is full of stories about cars and car companies and bail outs and economic considerations. Then there is the news about the recent deaths of three celebrities that made me think about mortality.

And for another my 87 year old mother-in-law has decided to give her car away. She hasn't driven in more than a year. We discourage any notion that she should try to drive again given certain health considerations in addition to age.

My dad quit driving on the streets when he was 82 which was when he retired from his business work. My mother quit when she was 81. My favorite high school teacher was in her early 90's when she stopped driving but she might have waited a bit too long.

Soon I will be 61.

I figure that means I have a maximum of between 20 and 30 more years to drive myself around. Right now I drive quite a bit. And about once a month or more often sometimes I haul a pretty good load of horse feed. I've carried more than one thousand pounds a few times.

And sometimes I haul around a car full of people, too. Hopefully I will continue this pace for a while.

So sometime I'm going to have to buy another car or maybe several. I thought I should probably try to kind of plan when to buy so when I get the last one it it isn't just before I quit driving. No point in having a brand new car I can't drive. On the other hand if I hold on to one too long now then it gets too old and unreliable perhaps in the future when I am ill prepared to handle problems.

And there are economic considerations. It seems like this might be a good time to buy a car but it also seems unlikely for them to get cheaper over time. Unless we really do have significant deflation then it would be better to wait longer.

Do other people think of stuff like this? Or is it just me?

Plus my caregiving career makes me want to have a lot of stuff nicely organized and arranged so someone else doesn't have to bear that burden.

So after thinking about all that stuff for a while my head was spinning and I decided it was fruitless to worry about it.

But now that I had turned down this mental path, so to speak, I began thinking about what brand of car I might buy if I were to buy something.

Money-wise I should probably buy something from GM because I have a significant value of points to use. Surprisingly the points are still good, too. I know because about once a week I get a letter from them urging me to go buy something and use them. But really I didn't think all that much of GM before the government took them over and that fact has actually served to increase my lack of confidence in the company and the cars they make.

Dad's last car was a Chrysler. I didn't like it and it had a bunch of problems which is probably why I didn't like it. Judy had a Chrysler, too, and really liked it but I thought it was too high maintenance. Besides there is that government intervention factor again.

I might consider Ford. They didn't take any bailout money yet anyway. And when my step-son bought his last pickup I thought the Ford dealership was one of the best I've ever experienced. I'd go to them in the blink of an eye. But I don't much care for Ford cars.

I've never much liked the German cars either. They seem too "harsh" somehow but I really haven't given them a look in a long while so that's an old prejudice and may be undeserved. And I don't like all the options you have to choose.

I had a couple of Nissans and an Infinity. Didn't much like them.

That Hyundai brand looks pretty good. Probably should check that brand. Especially that Genesis. Two problems though with dealers. One dealer has the absolute worst TV commercials and I would never buy from them just because of the commercials and I'm serious. The other dealer treated me very disrespectfully about a year ago and I don't think I would venture back there. But there are other dealers I suppose in other towns.

I've had great experience with Lexus, Toyota, and Honda. Really more than great -- spectacular -- would be more correct. My Lexus is the best car I've ever owned and the dealer has been also great except for how far I have to drive to get there. Hondas have been the most economical vehicles I've ever owned.

Now I'm exhausted from thinking about it and I certainly don't want to go shopping.

So much for car shopping.

Somtimes I drive myself crazy. (Is that a pun?)

Mortality

2009-06-26T05:00:00.003-05:00

Mortal - adjective - subject to death.

Ed McMahon - June 23, 2009 - age 86.
Farrah Fawcett - June 25, 2009 - age 62.
Michael Jackson - June 25, 2009 - age 50.

Some reporter was asked how she would describe the reaction of people in the crowd that had gathered in Time Square in New York City. She said people seemed more excited than sad but not excited that Jackson had died rather about his music and art.

I thought about how I felt then.

I felt relief more than anything else. All three seemed like sad stories to me that were just becoming ever sadder.

I didn't want to read in some future article about McMahon losing his home or see him trying to earn his way out of whatever new financial problem he'd encountered. And McMahon had always seemed happy to me and I really did not like seeing him in difficult circumstances at 86.

Fawcett seemed to be suffering to me. There was very little doubt the outcome of her struggle. Had she lived there would have been more suffering. Somehow her life even before cancer seemed sad to me. Certainly she was beautiful and talented and I suppose all the other good things people said but what I knew about her seemed so full of conflict and sorrow.

I thought Jackson's life was even sadder. Even I could recognize his great talent. But there was a loneliness and a painful sorrow that I thought was always there. In recent years he just seemed to me to be someone who no longer could manage his life.

So I felt relief that at least the struggles had ended for these three figures.

Coincidentally I've been reading about King Solomon in my daily Bible reading. He was also a man of immense ability and superlative accomplishment. Yet at the end of his life he broke faith with his God.

His public life did not begin that way. He writes about it in Ecclesiastes. In the end there is one thing that matters.

So when I read the account of his death I felt the same feeling of relief.

Lemonade Stand

2009-06-22T10:05:00.004-05:00

Actually it is the last part of a "math camp" that my granddaughter attended. They were able to put to practical use what they learned about math in making the baked goods they were selling and then in pricing and selling and making change.

Pretty cool.

This is how I began my Saturday. If I had known how close Lori was I would have waited and taken her with me. But as it was I left the lemonade stand to return to Moore and pick Lori up at the hotel.

More about that later.

Message On White Board

2009-06-20T05:00:00.001-05:00

The other day my granddaughter and her family took a little trip. Her parents planned it as a surprise for the children and swore me to secrecy.

So one day my daughter-in-law came down to meet my son at the office under some pretense or another. The kids suspected something but really didn't know what.

I think I had to leave before they did. When I arrived at the office the next morning I found this note on the white board.

I took a picture with my iPhone.

Truth Stranger Than Just About Anything

2009-06-19T05:00:00.002-05:00

PETA wishes Obama hadn't swatted that fly

PETA is sending President Barack Obama a Katcha Bug Humane Bug Catcher, a device that allows users to trap a house fly and then release it outside.

"We support compassion even for the most curious, smallest and least sympathetic animals," PETA spokesman Bruce Friedrich said Wednesday. "We believe that people, where they can be compassionate, should be, for all animals."

I bet PETA folks would have an absolute stroke if they saw us putting fly spray on the horses. If I get a chance I kill everyone of those big horse flies I can, too. I am not apologetic for it.

In case anyone else is wondering what a Katcha Bug catcher is I found a picture.

Honestly the picture doesn't help me much in trying to figure out how to use the thing. PETA offers it for sale here. It is $8.00. There is also a link to the humane mousetrap which is $11 for one or $20 for two. It is easier to figure out. It is a little small though for some of our rats.

Really you just cannot make up stuff as good as this.

Discipleship

2009-06-14T08:35:00.002-05:00

Have you ever heard someone say "I am a disciple of so and so?"

We all know what that means when we hear it even though we are willing to be pretty broad about our definition.

We mean someone that very closely agrees with and follows a particular belief system.

Sometimes it can be rather trivial or even in jest like "a disciple of garlic" or some similar thing. And in that case we know that the "disciple" doesn't mean that the particular thing applies to his entire life.

On the other hand when we talk of being a disciple of Jesus Christ we know that the person is in fact speaking about the entirety of his life: thought, deed, faith, everything.

Discipleship always involves learning or at least I cannot imagine otherwise. If you are not learning about your master then how can you really claim to be a disciple? Also I was thinking that this element of discipleship means that it is never "blind" allegiance. In fact the novice disciple is recognized as being the poorer disciple exactly because he or she knows less.

Discipleship always involves the recognition that the master is the master. At least in following Jesus the student never becomes the master.

Discipleship always involves actually following in action as well as knowledge. Just knowing something and doing nothing is certainly no better and probably much worse than not knowing at all.

Discipleship definitely involves being. One either is or isn't a disciple. There's no middle ground. You just can't be a little bit of a disciple. Nor is it correct to say someone is more of a disciple than someone else.

The one verse that always comes to mind when I think of discipleship is John 5:30:

I can do nothing on My own initiative As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is just, because I do not seek My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.

Google Books and Other Digital Books

2009-06-13T09:23:00.003-05:00

Back in 2004 Google launched the Book Search Project as it was known. Supposedly there are now some 10 Million books that have been scanned and made either wholly or in part available on line. I say "supposedly" because I have definitely not counted them.

Some authors and publishers were either not contacted or could not be contacted and so some scans were done without permission. So there was a lawsuit. Not that a lawsuit about something like this is a big surprise.

Then in 2008 a settlement was reached whereby Google would pay some $125 Million to various parties. There have been at least three federal investigations and I don't know where those stand.

It's been in the news recently, too. And at least one blogger I read posted about Google Books.

So I thought I should check it out.

I loved Edgar Rice Burroughs when I was a young reader. I think I read most of his works although not all by any means. I am not even certain how many books he wrote.

I clicked on one of the titles the search brought up. I honestly don't know if I've read it or not. I could read it online on my computer, download a PDF or a TXT file, buy it from a list of sellers, or find a library. Pretty good I thought.

So I clicked on the Amazon link to see if I could buy the book as a Kindle version.

Sure enough I could buy it for $.80. Actually that's pretty good, too, because if I wanted it on my Kindle and downloaded it from Google then I would have to convert the PDF and then copy over to my Kindle or use the TXT and copy over. Probably worth $.80 to do that.

But while I am looking at the page I see one of those "also bought" links to a "Works of Edgar Rice Burroughs" that contained 50 of his books. FIFTY! So I click and sure enough it is what it says and is priced at $4.79 for the Kindle. That's 50 books for $4.79 for the Kindle. That's amazing.

The publisher is MobileReference.com so I surf over to their site. They have a whole bunch of books that are ready to go for the Kindle.

I did not buy the Edgar Rice Burroughs book but I might. The reason I didn't buy it is I have more books I am reading right now than ever before in my entire life. I see so many titles I would like to read and it is so easy to get them.

If it were just easier and faster to read them now.

Productivity

2009-06-10T06:45:00.002-05:00

Note: I found these images on the Internet somewhere a long while ago and have no idea where. So credit is due to someone but I'm sorry I do not know to whom it is owed.

When I began working for my dad at his business my first job was what I guess we would call a job cost clerk maybe.

The company at the time had more than 100 employees who were paid by the hour for work performed on various jobs. Each person had his own time card on which for each day he would record time worked by job. Jobs were assigned a number.

So at the end of a week the employee was supposed to add up his hours for each day and record that number at the bottom of the day column on the card. Then he summed the hours each job and recorded that value at the right hand total column for each job. The he summed the day hours across and summed the job hours down and the two numbers were supposed to agree as well as be equal to the number of hours worked that week. The foreman was supposed to sign off on each job.

That summing never did happen of course. My first job then was to take all those time cards and one by one to perform the summations. I had a Marchant calculator like the one in the image that I used to perform these calculations. Actually my first calculator was much older than the one in the image but I don't have a picture of it.

After I totaled and checked the time cards I had to calculate the value of the work by multiplying the hours worked by the employee's rate. That was both by job and total. Overtime had to be calculated separately. Then I calculated FICA which was the result of the wage by a constant factor. Next were things like federal and state withholding taxes, union dues, other deductions, and a net wage.

It took me most of an entire day to do that one task. Now there were other things I did during that time like help answer the phone and so on but mostly it took that long to "figure the time cards" as it was called.

My next step was to take a pad of "job cost tickets" and begin "taking off the cost." First I would sort the time cards alphabetically. Looking at the first time card I would find the first job number and label the top job cost ticket with that number. Then I'd write the employee's name on one line of the ticket as well as hours worked, rate, and extension. I repeated that for each job until the time card was finished and then I'd start over with the next time card. That took about another day.

Then I handed all those time cards and cost tickets to the fellow who ran the NCR posting machine.

We had two and they looked a lot like this image to the left except that ours were older I think.

It took that fellow who ran the posting machine two to three days plus to write those payroll checks and also post the cost tickets to the job cost file ledgers. There were Employee and Job ledgers respectively which were posted and maintained a total of sorts.

By union contracts we had to hand out payroll checks to employees on Friday a certain number of hours before quitting time. So those payroll checks had to be ready.

So that's what a small business accounting department was like in the early to middle 1960's.

I do believe that I could do the same work today with a personal computer and Quick Books in maybe a couple of hours and actually have more stuff finished. I've scribbled a few numbers trying to figure this out and I think there might be a 50 fold increase in productivity.

In thinking about this I began to dream about a system I might design today.

Probably for employee input portion I would use a smart phone an a custom application or perhaps one that already is available. I know that iPhone in particular has such an application that looks very good. That application would connect to some Internet available database and the data could be stored and accumulated real time. There would be several ways of generating the payroll checks and the various accounting systems could be updated real time as well.

I don't know what the increase in productivity might be but certainly very considerable over the 1960's and even considerable over a personal computer method.

Just something I was thinking about.

Song of Solomon in The Message

2009-06-09T05:00:00.002-05:00

In my daily Bible reading I am using The Message by Eugene Peterson.

What a treat the Song of Solomon is in this version! I so enjoyed reading Peterson's paraphrase and it made me think about the Song of Solomon from entirely different perspectives.

I have to say that The Message version is even more sensual than I remembered.

I am now reading in the Proverbs and find my reading to be equally happy and beneficial. What a treasure is the Proverbs. I haven't read there in a while.

At the same time though I have this friend that sends me anti-Christian stuff all the time. She knows I am a believer. I am not sure why she sends it. I've known her a long time and she is not a cruel person. In fact she's a nice person.

I think she must think the stuff is just funny and is unable to understand that the material might hurt my feelings.

I thought about asking her to remove my name from her list or maybe even complaining about what she sends me.

But I decided that we've been friends too long. Besides I think she'd never understand since she isn't a believer herself.

I think my friend is not particularly anti-Christian. Mainly I think she thinks that Christians are conservative and she's liberal. I think she is more non-religious than anything else and more understands the world in political terms.

Now the stuff she sends comes from people who are anti-Christian in particular and anti-religion in general. Generally the material makes fun of Christians and Christian belief. As I understand it I think these people would be quite happy if Christians disappeared.

I think they would not really want to kill Christians but I think it wouldn't hurt their feelings if someone else did. More than anything else I think they want to discourage people from being Christian or at least openly admitting it. They think they are doing a good thing of course.

So I can kind of understand a bit that they would produce and disseminate content that is hurtful to Christians. But why my friend would do it I really don't much understand.

I wonder if the world would be a lot different if there were no Christians?

Or maybe I didn't say anything to my friend because I lost my temper the other day.

I shouldn't have but I did. I still feel badly about it. There had been about 20 preceding incidents where I could have lost my temper and I didn't.

Funny how you can do well 20 times and then the 21st time gets you.

National Kindle and koffee Day

2009-06-07T10:45:00.003-05:00

National Kindle & Koffee Day
June 6, 2009 10 am

This was first proposed by Kathy S on the Amazon Kindle Forum on May 21.

Pretty simple idea: if you owned a Kindle then show up at your local Starbucks (or other coffee shop if no Starbucks) on Saturday, June 6, 2009 at 10:00 am.

I've been reading the various Kindle forums since the recent comments by author, Alexie Sherman, about his disgust and loathing for the Kindle. I am interested in how rather diverse people come together over different things and form a community. And I've been an active member myself of several different virtual communities.

In some ways they are all alike, too. And those similarities, negative and positive, are much in evidence on the various Kindle boards.

But I found this idea of a National Kindle and Koffee Day to be particularly interesting.

For one thing it was conceived and proposed by a member of a board who was not associated with either Starbucks or Amazon. She simply owns and uses a Kindle and posts on the Amazon hosted boards.

For another is the national scope of the idea. It wasn't to be just a small, local area or even a state or a region but the entire United States. It could have been the entire world just as easily I suppose except that the Kindle really isn't the same outside the United States although there are some out in the wild.

I wondered if anyone would show up at my Starbucks but I had not made up my mind about whether I would attend or not. I think that was Wednesday last week. The time didn't really work out quite right for me. Usually I am in Starbucks earlier than that.

But I happened to mention it while I was in Starbucks on Wednesday. Immediately a barista told me that she really wanted a Kindle and would look forward to Saturday when she could look at one herself. So that sealed the deal for me and I decided to be there.

I didn't want to be alone so I tried to get my brother and my son to join me. But they both had other stuff to do.

So I showed up about 9:30 am and got my coffee and one of those new-to-us breakfast sandwiches. Those sandwiches are really good by the way and the one I get with low fat cheese and turkey bacon is pretty low calories actually.

No one else with a Kindle showed up. I kept mine out in plain view so that if anyone else had come in with one they would surely have seen me. I was sitting right near the order station.

The barista did come over for her hands on demonstration and another fellow came over as well. The barista said she was going to get one for Christmas and the other person said he was going to think about getting one sooner.

I posted about it on a thread on the Amazon boards after I returned home. As of the time I am writing this there are 55 people who have submitted 84 posts on the thread.

I wonder how many people actually will end up buying a Kindle. I wonder what will happen to Kindle "community" users if a lot more Kindles are sold.

At any rate I find the entire thing fascinating.

Swallows Returned - In Horse Shed

2009-06-03T05:00:00.002-05:00

Kindle Readers Elitist According to Author

2009-06-02T05:00:00.003-05:00

I found this quote interesting in a recent article I was reading:

At a panel of authors speaking mainly to independent booksellers, Sherman Alexie, the National Book Award-winning author of “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,” said he refused to allow his novels to be made available in digital form. He called the expensive reading devices “elitist” and declared that when he saw a woman sitting on the plane with a Kindle on his flight to New York, "I wanted to hit her."

The article was in the NY Times titled: Book Fair Buzz Is Not Contained Between 2 Covers by Motko Rich. Oh it was dated 5/31/2009, too.

I read my Kindle on an airplane once. There were two of us with Kindles on that same flight in fact. Never did occur to me that I should be afraid of people attacking me because they would think I am an elitist.

And the Kindle is a great thing to use to read on an airplane or in a waiting room or any number of other places where space is a premium.

Never ceases to amaze me what people actually say and think.

Believe I'll pass on that book or anything else by that author.

I don't quite understand the author's hysteria about the Kindle but I suppose anyone who would consider hitting someone reading on an airplane is not really a serious person.

This generated quite a discussion on the Amazon discussion forum.

UPDATE (after original post):
The author, Sherman Alexie, has a web site, shermanalexie.com and has posted a response about both the Kindle and the article and all the emails he received.

He seems like a decent guy with deeply felt concerns about the Kindle. I really don't understand his concerns but he did post on the Amazon discussion thread about his remarks and that earned him some points with nme.

I've Been Reading Again

2009-06-01T05:00:00.001-05:00

Run for Your Life
by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge

Certainly not the best Patterson book I've read. Still I enjoyed it.
I liked the characters or most of them at least. I even found a little
sympathy for the villian. It is pretty simple. Big, good looking guy
is pushed over the edge and decides to teach as many as possible a lesson by
killing as many as possible. Michael Bennet, NYCPD detective, has to stop
the killer while dealing with his own grief as a relatively new widow and single
parent with a housefull of kids. Killer decides at last minute to kill
Michael. Wonder how it ends?

The 6th Target
by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro

Another of the women's murder club stories. I like them.
Lindsay has to solve a string of children kidnappings while breaking in a new
partner and dealing with other stuff including her romance with Joe. She
does in case anyone might wonder.

7th Heaven
by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro

Yet another women's murder club story. I liked this one better I think
that 6th Target but then again I read it most recently. Everyone of the
club gets into the act in this one except the reporter I guess. I thought
it was enjoyable. Several stories all happening at the same time.

Wicked Prey
by John Sandford

A team of thieves puts together a pretty decent plan to pull several high dollar
robberies in the midst of the Republican convention in Minneapolis - St.
Paul. Lucas has his hands full trying to figure it out and stop them. I really like Lucas Davenport and friends -- just very cool characters.
One interesting thing about this one is that the Kindle version originally was nearly the same price as the hardcover book. Because of that I joined a boycott which is rather more political than I really am.
But when the price declined to $9.99 I bought it for my Kindle.

True Detectives, A Novel
by Jonathan Kellerman

This one really dealt with two new characters although my old favorites, Alex
Delaware and Milo Sturgis, do show up. The pace was a little slow at
first and for a while I didn't think I was going to like the characters
much. But by the end I had decided I would read more about these 2
brothers. Not exactly up to Kellerman's normal book I think.

Just Let It Unfold

2009-05-31T05:00:00.005-05:00

The other day I blogged about a book I had read by Dean Koontz and how I had appreciated it more since I finished it than when I was reading it. In that book the hero needs a new heart.

His girlfriend is an aspiring author who discusses the concept of subtext with him. She begs him to "just let it unfold" when he signs up on the heart transplant list. But he is very rich and begins to lose confidence in the system and decides to change to a new doctor. His old doctor is a true friend but the new doctor is one who promises results.

The new doctor does get results, too. But it turns out that the heart for the hero has been purchased and results in the death of an innocent young woman.

I have a friend right now that needs a new liver. Not too many years ago another friend needed a new heart. Regularly I read about someone who has given a kidney to someone else.

And we all know about the hope of stem cells being used to grow new organs and the resulting debate that is ongoing about the ethical implications of such technology.

At any rate the situation in that book about someone needing a new heart is all too plausible. That someone rich enough could simply buy what is needed is all too plausible as well. We know this because from time to time we read stories about an entire black market for organs.

In the case of organ transplantation there is a system in place that is meant to protect the innocent while assisting those in need.

In the book it is the man's fear that drives him to seek out a heart at all costs. His fear of death was just so great that he could not keep his promise to his girlfriend. He gained his life but lost everything else.

Jesus said something similar in Matthew 10:38-39 (The Message):

If you don't go all the way with me, through thick and thin, you don't deserve me. If your first concern is to look after yourself, you'll never find yourself. But if you forget about yourself and look to me, you'll find both yourself and me.

Fear is mostly what keeps us from faith. A lot of people would argue that it is unbelief but that's just what the absence of faith is -- not what keeps us from believing.

Many of us want to live our lives in the freedom of faith. But we just cannot make ourselves let go of whatever security we think we have. We are just too scared to let go.

In Luke 18:18 there is this story about a "rich young ruler" who comes to Jesus and says that he's followed all the commandments but wants to know what he has to do to deserve eternal life. Jesus tells him he only needs to sell everything he has and give it to the poor and then follow Jesus. The young ruler couldn't do it.

I was thinking about examples in the Bible where people decided to help God out rather than just let what God had promised unfold. There are plenty of examples.

For instance God promises Abraham and Sarah a child. But when she fails to become pregnant Sarah decides God needs a bit of assistance. And she has the power to effect something the consequences of which remain with us to this day.

Or another time Abraham says that Sarah is his sister instead of his wife because he's afraid the truth will get them all killed.

Eventually though Abraham gets it right when he takes Isaac up to the mountain to offer the sacrifice.

Yesterday my Bible reading was in Psalm 119. Verse 1:

You're blessed when you stay on course, walking steadily on the road revealed by God.

Often it is the most difficult test of faith to wait on the Lord.

Stay the course.

Book: Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God

2009-05-30T05:00:00.001-05:00

Cazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God
by Francis Chan

Francis and Lisa Chan founded Cornerstone Community Church in Simi Valley, CA in 1994. He writes some about his biography in the book but otherwise I did not find a lot about him from the web.

There is a web site for the book, too: crazylovebook.com.

Chan talks about how many Christians become so without really having a clear understanding of God's character and the resulting, "crazy" love that He displays towards us.

Moreover he says that if we really grasp God's character and love that there is really only one valid response on our part. That is our unrestrained, "crazy" love for God.

He goes on to discuss this idea in several different ways. The chapters are relatively short and easy to read and appreciate. He uses a good many Scripture references and intersperses them clearly and artfully. On my Kindle the default font size was rather large but easily changed.

There were for me several notable and memorable places in the book.

One chapter discusses the parable of the soils and Chan writes "Don't assume you are good soil." I smiled when I read that for several reasons. We do often find it easier to associate ourselves with the hero than the villain.

Another chapter discusses what it means to be lukewarm and Chan declares that a lukewarm Christian is simply an oxymoron -- not possible.

Yet another place he says that a Christian life really should not make sense to non-believers. I smiled again.

I think I most enjoyed the little examples of actual people who have sold out entirely to the Lord. I think Chan does those particularly well.

In thinking about the book now that I have finished I realize that I did not really enjoy it as much as I had expected before I began reading. Partly I think that's because of high expectations.

I do agree with so much of what Chan says though and much of what he does is well done I think.

When I read something like this though I always worry that some might feel a need for greater human works than greater faith. Chan does not say this by any stretch. But I do worry about it.

It is a worthwhile read I think.

Book: Your Heart Belongs to Me by Dean Koontz

2009-05-28T05:00:00.000-05:00

Your Heart Belongs to Me: A Novel
by Dean Koontz

I've read several books by Dean Koontz but I cannot say I am a really big fan of his work.

His books that I've read have been fast paced and interesting and surprising and suspenseful and most all the things I like. But I guess they are just a little too weird for me.

But I hadn't read one of his in a while and I was needing some new stuff and this one was available for my Kindle and I clicked the button and there it was.

I read the first couple of chapters a while back and they didn't seem very "koontz-like and they didn't interest me terribly much either. So I got busy with something else and read several other titles.

But over Memorial Day weekend I decided I needed to catch up and finish reading several of my underway titles and this one was included. I can't say I was terribly happy about reading it for quite a while but I persevered through the end.

The story is about this rich "dotcom" guy that is in love with this wonderful girl who also loves him but rejects his marriage proposal. Then it turns out the rich guy needs a heart transplant. His girlfriend begs him to just let the process unfold naturally without trying to manage everything himself. He, of course, says he will but later cannot resist his need to control everything and changes doctors.

Soon afterwards he is flown out of country on his own jet with accompanying surgeon and staff to receive the heart that has conveniently beome available.

But in doing so he loses his girlfriend who finds out he couldn't keep from micromanaging.

And at this point in the book I thought ot myself that it was a good thing he had involved himself because otherwise it wasn't looking so good to actually get a heart.

There's a place in the book where this lady private ey tells the rich guy that the roots of violence are lust, envy, anger, avarice, and vengenance. At the time I thought it was about someone that was trying to do the rich guy in and he did, too.

It seems that he is having all these strange things happen not the least of which is this woman he keeps seeing from time to time. He has the private investigators find out who donated his heart and the woman is a spitting image of the donor.

I'm giving the ending away now -- so if you don't want to know what happens -- stop here.

Turns out the woman is the sister of the donor. The donor wasn't a volunteer either. And that new doctor wasn't exactly a great humanitarian since he basically bought the heart.

So it turns out that the rich guy's micromanaging of his situation set in motion a string of events that claimed an innocent life.

At the time I finished the book I still didn't much care for the book.

But in the few days since I finished I've been thinking about it and I've changed my mind. I really like this story now.

I like the lesson of this story and find a good deal of truth in it.

I'm one of those who has often succumbed to the temptation to try to control things myself. For one thing I hate to lose and for another I hate to give up. So I go all out usually.

Sometimes my zealousness has produced a variety and a number of unintended consequences that were apparent.

I wonde what the ones were that were not so obvious.

A very thought provoking book from Mr. Koontz.

The $9.99 Kindle Boycott Forum

2009-05-27T06:05:00.002-05:00

A few days ago I was about to purchase a new title for my Kindle when I noticed that the price for the Kindle version was nearly the same as the price for a hardback copy of the book. This fact irritated me.

My irritation resulted in noticing the Amazon tags for the title in question and also noticing the Amazon discussion forum.

Tags are a very useful feature. Several tags for this particular title concerned a "boycott" of offerings costing more than $9.99 for the Kindle.

On the discussion forum there was a lengthy topic concerning the same subject.

Finding new things I like and jumping right in are things I do far too frequently and is not virtuous.

So for the last couple of days I've received email messages every time there is a new post on the boycott topic.

Good grief!

Discussion boards are not good places for me.

I must learn to leave them alone.

Memorial Day

2009-05-24T10:10:00.002-05:00

It was originally called "Decoration Day" and instituted not long after the end of the Civil War for the purpose of memorializing the "Union" soldiers who fought and died in that conflict.

The Civil War claimed at least 620,000 soldiers' lives in addition to untold numbers of civilian casualties.

It is good I think that we should remember those who have given their lives in service to their country.

Kindle - $9.99 Boycott - Revisited

2009-05-22T10:09:00.003-05:00

Just a few days ago I blogged about the so called "Kindle Boycott" of titles costing more than $9.99 by Kindle users. That blog was titled A Chink in the Kindle - $9.99 boycott.

I was on the verge of purchasing John Sandford's new book, Wicked Prey, when I noticed the price for a Kindle version was only $1.40 less than the price of a hardback edition.

So yesterday (May 21, 2009) the price was reduced to $9.99. I bought it and it was delivered in a few minutes to my Kindle. I haven't started reading it yet but I will probably read it over the weekend.

The "boycott" is a pretty loose term I think for what is happening over at Amazon. I think a lot of us that have expressed our disappointment over the Kindle pricing are not much into boycotting stuff. I am certainly not.

But in one of the discussion forum topics about the $9.99 price issue there are more than 360 participants and more than 2500 posts. I remember one time someone telling me that less than 1% of the people would respond to a survey but that 1% would reflect the same sentiment of a much larger group. If that's true that means there could be tens of thousands of people who feel that the Kindle pricing is out of line.

I seriously doubt the "boycott" had any real bearing on Putnam reducing the price of the book I wanted to buy. It might have but really I have no way of knowing for sure one way or another.

More likely I suspect is that a whole bunch of us made similar individual decisions about buying. At the same time I think publishers and authors are struggling with complex issues about how to address this new digital age in which we all find ourselves living.

Regardless the reason I am happy the price was reduced on a title I wanted and I am happy I was able to buy it.

Price of oil

2009-05-21T05:00:00.002-05:00

Thanks to Wiki for the image.

It is a bottle of oil in case you can't figure it out. My brother has a bottle of oil like this but I didn't have an image of that one so I thought I'd use this one from Wiki since it was reasonably easy to get.

I came to live with my Mom and Dad in November, 1998 even though I did not know then that I had moved.

Funny that sometimes we've moved on and don't even realize it until later.

Yesterday, May 20, 2009, the price of oil at about 11 a.m. central time according to CNBC was nearly $62 per barrel.

I've read various predictions about the future price of oil. Some prognosticators wrote that it would fall to $25 per barrel or maybe lower. Some think it will go back above $100 per barrel and maybe even $200 or higher.

Anyone want to guess what it was in December, 1998?

I'll tell you: $8.64 per barrel.

That's according to this site.

If you distrust that then here's a link to the Energy Information Administration of the United States page: Weekly United States Spot Price FOB Weighted by Estimated Import Volume (Dollars per Barrel). The number is a little different but close enough I guess.

What's the point of this post?

Well, recently there's been a lot of concern over our local economy in the event the price of oil plummets downward. When I heard the concern I thought I remembered that oil was at a really low price when I returned to Oklahoma but I had to look it up.

I guess it is one of those perspective things.

Bucky

2009-05-20T05:00:00.000-05:00

This is Bucky.

He drives me absolutely nuts.

For one thing he tries to bite me a lot. He did bite my hand once. Didn't really hurt me but made me move my hand for sure. In fairness he bites other things besides me including horses, people and inanimate objects. I have no idea why.

Then he picks on the younger mare. This irritates me. When I reprimand him for doing this he ignores me.

He just gets into stuff, too. Like yesterday we noticed that he had caught part of his mane in something and actually pulled a hunk of it off. He looked like he had a Mohawk haircut or something.

But the thing he does that most aggravates me is the way he eats.

He takes his head and pulls his chin into his body in a kind of sweeping motion inside the feed trough. Naturally this scatters oats and pellets and sweet feed all over ground under his trough.

I don't know why this makes me so angry. It is wasteful but my emotion seems a little beyond what that warrants.

And, no, the other horses do not do this. Only Bucky.

If I am standing over there I yell at him "Bucky, stop that!" He looks up at me usually and judges whether or not I might be able to do anything to him. And usually I cannot get him so he kind of gives me a look like "catch me if you can dude!"

Another thing he does regarding eating is that he will leave his trough and come over to the girls' trough to see if they have something better. They don't of course but while he is over there he will eat some of it. Often when he does this I will be standing there and I will say to him "Bucky! Get back over to your feeder." If I say it loudly enough and forceful enough then he will look at me and turn around and go back over to his feeder.

So you see he knows what I'm telling him.

I've tried talking to him about quadratic equations and philosophy and stuff like that but I don't think he cares.

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln

2009-05-19T05:00:00.001-05:00

It was March 28, 2008 when I first blogged about reading this book on my Kindle. At the time I reported that the hardcover book was 944 pages and weighed in at 2.4 lbs. according to the information from Amazon's site. On Kindle it was under 5 Mb.

I actually purchased and downloaded it on March 22, 2008. And just for the record I paid $9.99 and I don't know what the hardcover price was then. It was published in December, 2006 though; so, it had been out awhile.

Really I did not expect it to take more an a year to read the book. And the book was interesting. The writing was fine although not exactly of "page turner" style. In terms of style and format I would have really appreciated shorter chapters and there are so many details and characters presented that it is easy to become bogged down in them and distracted from the story.

But the story itself is so interesting and intriguing that this really is a wonderful read. About 1/'3 of it is notes and references and so on including a photo section -- all in the back. This is not history you learn in school. Really it is neither dry nor uninteresting. Many of all those details I just complained about help provide a decent human understanding of both the people and times.

This book made more real for me the horror of the civil war and the sacrifice of so many men and women who ultimately waged it in all too bloody terms a great moral struggle.

At the end the pages that describe the assassination and the near term aftermath are so poignant. If I had read nothing else I think that alone would make the entire book worthwhile.

Lincoln is the central character as one might expect and by the end of the book his already giant standing in my mind had grown by several orders of magnitude.

Slavery is so strange to contemplate as such an everyday, casual part of life. Then the fact that it took a terrible war with horrible losses on both sides to resolve the issue is even more amazing to me.

As horrible as war is, and that one was, it is even more horrible to think that the evil of slavery be allowed to survive even a short time longer.

I wonder how things would have been different if Lincoln had survived and been able to lead the nation during the subsequent reuniting of the country.

I thought at one point during my reading that one high mark of leadership was simply staying the course.

I am certain I am going to be thinking about this work for a good while. I am glad it is over but I am so glad I've read it.

I really recommend this book if you have the time and patience.

Togetherness

2009-05-18T05:00:00.000-05:00

Happy Pop

2009-05-17T05:00:00.000-05:00

My dad's father was my "pop" and dad was "pop" to my kids and I am "pop" to theirs. So I guess I come from a long line of "pops."

Somewhere out there in this picture is my oldest granddaughter.

I don't know exactly what the event was called but at her school they were having the kids compete in all sorts of athletic contests before the end of school that is coming up this next week.

My son and I were together at a lunch with some business associates and he got a text from his wife that his daughter was in a big relay race. We had time so we drove to school to watch. First thing I noticed was that it was hot and steamy and I wasn't dressed very good for it.

When we found my granddaughter she and her group had just completed the egg toss contest. This is where the boys and girls in the group pair up across from each other with each partner standing on a yard line marker of the football field. Then one partner tosses a raw egg at the other. If the egg is caught then the partner moves back 10 yards and tosses it back. The game continues until the egg breaks which usually makes a pretty big mess of the receiver's clothes.

So not only did my granddaughter want to hug me but several other girls wanted to hug me as well even though I did not know them. You get the idea I am certain that they didn't really want to hug me as much as they wanted to smear a little raw egg stuff on me.

There were all sorts of other contests. One group was shooting these water balloons with a big rubber sling shot like thing. Another was having a tug-of-war with a rope. Another was performing the song YMCA with appropriate choreography. Upon completion each group rotated then.

Everyone was having a pretty good time made even better by the occasional Popsicle break.

I had a lot of fun, too.

My new favorite place to sit

2009-05-16T12:12:00.005-05:00

Last night we used the gas grill for the first time on the patio at the "new" house - which isn't very new even to us anymore.

I cleaned up one of the really old, white, springy chairs from Dad's house and I sat in it while cooking the chicken breasts and hamburger patties.

This is one of two chairs I kept from the porch of the old house. This is one I used to sit in next to Dad while he sat in his recliner. And before Mom died we all three would sit together but that was still my chair.

I couldn't help but think that it would have been rather nice for them to be sitting there next to me.

On Thursday the technician from the sound place finally got the Proficient M6 whole house sound deal mostly working. (Mostly is the key word as it still is not 100%. One must wonder about the company's name because they certainly have not proven proficient thus far.) I clicked on the FM tuner button on the patio control and listened to classical music thanks to KCSC 90.1 FM which is a great station for classical I might add.

We wanted baked potatoes but we always forget you have to plan ahead to bake a potato. Not to worry though because the new microwave has a "speed cook" feature. Except I didn't know what that meant. But as I've reported ignorance has never stopped me. Fortunately the microwave anticipated my ignorance and told me what to do.

It flashed on the screen to put in the black pan. We had to find the black pan and rinse it off. I wasn't aware that our microwave came with a black pan but it did. So I put it inside and this put 2 large potatoes on it. I continued following directions (from the microwave - can you believe that?) and 17 minutes later we had baked potatoes.

There is this lamp thing that comes on every so often and apparently helps cook the potatoes. The skins are a little crinkly and the insides were perfect for my taste anyway.

Actually I thought they were better than baked in a conventional oven. Maybe not quite as good as wrapped in foil and buried in coals but, hey, you sometimes have to compromised. I would post a picture but I ate the potato.

Then we enjoyed more storms and rain coming through our town. The storms continued past my bedtime so I am not sure when they stopped.

Life cannot be much better than this.

How Would I Introduce Jesus?

2009-05-15T03:50:00.002-05:00

The other day I received an email that had a video of a Steve Harvey performance wherein he did an Introduction of Christ to a room full of people. I found it on Youtube.

I find it interesting that some people like Steve Harvey can get up on stage before a big crowd and do such a great job of leading the entire group.

That's not one of my gifts. You wouldn't really want me to be introducing anyone to a big crowd like that. And I wouldn't want to either so it kind of works out I guess.

Somehow I suspect that "needs no introduction" part is the most significant. That's how it was for me anyway when I met actually did meet Jesus. Wasn't any doubt in my mind who He was. You hear that a lot about needs no introduction but there are whole bunch of folks that I have no idea who they are or why I should know them. But Jesus truly does need no introduction.

I've heard people say when they get to heaven the first thing they're going to do is run up and ask God why something or other happened or throw their arms around Him or some other very familiar kind of thing.

But I bet it will be more like when I first saw the ocean or the Grand Canyon or my newborn babies. I stood there in awe and reverence trying to make my mind grasp some little sliver of the reality of it all.

Except that being in His presence will be so much beyond any experience I can imagine.

But Steve Harvey surely did a great job and surely did make me think.

No matter who tries to introduce you though you still have to go to Him yourself. Amazing how that works.

Star Trek at the Warren Theater

2009-05-14T05:00:00.001-05:00

Wednesday was one stressful day. The stress is from something I cannot blog about which does not make it particularly less stressful.

That stress began in the morning and continued past lunch.

Then I had to replace an air conditioner compressor at home and the unit at the office quit. Funny how that works.

But I bought tickets for my stepson and me for the Star Trek movie at the Moore Warren Theater for the 6:20 pm showing in the balcony. I bought the tickets at noon and they had 8 seats left. So we met at 6 and ordered our food which was quite good. The Warren is just a great experience. Even a mediocre film would be good there I think.

But Star Trek for me was way above mediocre. I thought it was great. I notice on Yahoo that the critics gave it a B+ and the movie goers gave it an A. I'd be more in the "A" group because I really enjoyed myself.

I still want to see Wolverine, Soloist, Monsters vs. Aliens, the new Terminator, and Angels and Demons. Somehow I think I probably will not make all of these.

We left the theater just in time to enjoy the subsequent thunder storms with hail and tornadoes. No stress from that of course.

All in all just a really interesting day.

A Chink in the Kindle - $9.99 boycott

2009-05-13T05:00:00.001-05:00

Tuesday I noticed that one of my favorite authors had a new book out. John Sandford's 2009 novel, Wicked Prey, was available from Amazon.

So I went first thing to buy it for my Kindle.

And there I was reading the 2 reviews about the book and wondering how the reviewers read it so quickly and then got their reviews posted. And that's when I noticed the price: $15.37.

Now most of you who have been reading my blogs for a while know that I would not let that price deter me from purchasing the product based on cost alone. I've shared too much for anyone to have that idea of me.

When I bought the Kindle though most of the books were $9.99 or less. In fact, that was a selling point about the Kindle. You buy a digital version and save some money. Some people think it might be environmentally friendly, too; but, I haven't really researched that aspect.

Excuse me but $15.37 is considerably above $9.99. So I checked the price for the hardback from Amazon: $16.77. Then I checked Barnes and Noble: $18.16 or $16.34 depending upon membership status. The latter is with free shipping, too. Amazon is free shipping for me as well.

I am not going to drive the 10 miles to check out the price in the actual Barnes and Noble store. Sorry Barnes and Noble.

So I can get the digital copy of the book for $1.40 less than the cost of the hardback book

I am not buying the book period!!

I've really enjoyed the Prey series by Sandford. I've purchased all of the previous 18 titles and a good many in hardback versions. I've purchased a second copy a few times. I had no idea the last one I read might be the last one ever.

I am not blaming Amazon by the way because Amazon does not set the price nor does the author. The price is established by the publisher. In this case that is Putnam which is part of Penguin apparently.

So I am not buying this book in any version. I am not buying anymore Putnam books and I'm going to try to avoid Penguin. And I am joining the $9.99 boycott for Kindle titles.

I didn't know about it until I became upset over this title but it turns out that quite a few publishers are trying to charge more than $9.99 for Kindle titles and quite a few users have begun tagging such books with "9.99boycott" to alert others.

If it means reading less or reading different authors then so be it.

The Alzheimer's Project

2009-05-12T05:00:00.002-05:00

I've been watching the HBO Alzheimer's Project films all morning. It is Monday as I write this, the day after Mother's Day.

It is raining now and has been nearly all night. When I went out to Judy's farm this morning the pasture road was really muddy. Even slow going threw mud all over the side of the car. It is funny to me that the mud is black for a while but the more rain we get the redder the mud becomes.

It is not funny that the weather mirrors my mood as I watch these videos. The longer I watch the more I feel like I am suffocating from the memories of my own time caregiving for my parents.

Every video, every person, every situation, every place all conspire to raise old memories long since buried but not very deeply it turns out. Mostly I would just as soon those memories stay forgotten I guess. I am surprised I feel this way and did not expect it.

Yesterday morning I was already melancholy for a while. I avoided church. Not because I did not want to worship but because I really did not want to be around other people. I didn't want to be reminded that my parents are gone and I am still here. I drove over to the cemetery and stood there in the plot that has 6 of us already. Didn't do anything - just stood there - and thought about each one of them. Maybe I gave a bit more thought to the women in honor of Mother's Day.

Mom has been gone 8 years this year and my grandma will be 21 and my aunt who was like a mother 22. I walked over to my other grandparents' graves and realized she's already been gone 24 years. Then I went to find my ex mother-in-law's grave because she also was a mother to me. I didn't put out flowers. It was raining anyway. But I counted how many I need to buy for Memorial Day and I will put them out then.

Then last night I watched an older X-Men movie on TV. I followed that by watching the HBO video about Caregivers. I chose that one first for some reason. I could not help but think about how like the X-men are both those of us with dementia and those who try to care for them. Irony?

This morning I began again by watching The Memory Loss Tapes. My blogger friend, Annie from Maple Corners, is in that one. I wish I could say it was good to see her and her mom but it would be a lie. I recognized her instantly of course and her mom. It was painful for me to watch though. But I made myself watch all of it.

I have to stop watching right now. I am not sure I can watch more. I want to. I wanted to write about how great it is that these videos exist and I wanted to like them just as everyone else has commented about them. Maybe I will like them later but I don't right now.

I want to go throw up right now.

My son is in the next office. He can hear the audio though. I just told him I thought I was going to puke. He said he thought he might, too. He said he wasn't sure he could watch these.

One thing I can tell you is that a few minutes of video footage does not and maybe cannot communicate what it is like when the minutes turn into hours and the hours become days and the days fall into weeks and the weeks grow into months and the months accumulate into years.

I don't know if I will post this.

It is Monday afternoon now. I am home from feeding the horses and checking on Judy's mom. She reminds me so much of one of the women in the memory video.

The videos are very honest and very real. They are well produced with very high production values. But they are raw, too. RAW is the right word I think.

I did not know I was still so raw myself but apparently I am. I really thought I was more healed. I really thought these stories would not bother me so much.

I decided to post as you can see.

A Second Touch

2009-05-11T05:00:00.001-05:00

In the early 1980's when I came to know the Lord I read this book by Keith Miller titled "A Second Touch." It had to do with the Lord's healing the blind man of Bethsaida. The incident is recorded in Mark 8:22-26.

First the Lord spits on the man's eyes and then lays His hands on the man. The Lord asks the man if he can see and the man says he can see men but they are like trees walking around. Next the Lord touched the man again and the man began seeing clearly.

Miller draws on this story to reflect on how we often see people that are in our life as mere objects and not real people. It is the second touch by the Lord that enables us to see people as real human beings rather than just objects.

Our modern, urban life doesn't help us very much either. When we place our order at a drive through speaker we are talking to a disembodied voice that may or may not be very understandable. Calling any company often lets you talk to a computer first and sometimes only.

In the country we used to wave at each other when we passed and often we knew each other. In the city there are too many cars and we're pretty lucky if we know who lives on either side of us.

We see someone at an intersection holding a sign painted with the words "work for food" and we think not much more about it than if the man were a light pole.

If we are watching TV and we learn someone is a liberal or a Republican or some other label then we immediately stop listening because we think we know what those labels mean. And the same can be said all too frequently about race and size and accent and sex and a bunch of other stuff.

I've remembered that book by Miller and that story about the blind man of Bethsaida for a long while now.

Lord I pray You touch me again and again until those people I see are more than trees walking about.

Happy Mother's Day 2009

2009-05-10T07:15:00.003-05:00

This is the Mother's Day card I bought for my mother-in-law.

Mainly I bought it because it has the picture of the Chihuahua on it in the lower right corner and one up from the bottom. She has a dog like that and loves it. And then she has other dogs she loves, too.

It's a big card and when you open it up "Shout" begins playing. It is very annoying to me but I think she will like the cover.

You just can't always get everything you want on a card. So I compromised.

I bet no one else gets her a card like this.

Last year we were in Omaha at my wife's daughter's house and we enjoyed a Mother's Day lunch at P. F. Chang's.

Happy Mother's Day to everyone.

My Friday Friends

2009-05-09T05:00:00.000-05:00

I've come to think of Fridays as friends day.

My first stop was the cleaners. I began going there a few years ago because my then future wife patronized it. I didn't have much cleaning back then because that was in the middle of my caregiving. My "uniform" then was pretty minimal and surely did not require a cleaners.

Over the years I've come to know the people who work at the cleaners. I go there 2 or 3 times a week. I don't take many clothes at a time. They know me now. When I walk in they write my name on the tickets without me having to tell them. They know I want my shirts without starch and I like my jeans to be dry cleaned instead of washed. We greet each other like old friends. If there's a problem they fix it and I don't hold it against them. I wouldn't really think of going somewhere else.

I drove over to Starbucks next. On my iPhone there is this little notes application. That's where I write down the names of the baristas. But usually the morning crew is the same and we all know each other. They know stuff about me and I know stuff about them - not big, important things but little, unimportant things. They know my drink and they fix it for me without me having to tell them.

There's about 8 guys over at one end of the room. They are members of one family and they all sit together every Friday. So I see them nearly every Friday and we joke around some with each other. When I walked over to see them this Friday one of them said that I had increased their average IQ by joining them. Everyone laughed. Another time before someone asked me if I had any good words and I didn't and he said he'd give me some and so he said "above ground." It took me a while to figure that out but when I did I laughed out loud.

Pretty soon my brother came in and we sat at a table and talked and just sat with each other. We waited a while on my son because he was going to join us. But he was delayed and so finally we left together.

Another friend and I had a lunch appointment. He and his son were over at Home Depot picking up some stuff. My son and I went to pick him up and then his son later joined us. We went to this quaint little place called Two Olives. It is an old school building that was built in 1928.

I had classes in the old building when I was in grade school and junior high. The friend we were meeting there and his partner bought the old building a few years ago and began remodeling. The first floor is done now and its really nice. Two Olives is a great place to eat.

Our friend joined us and we all sat there together and enjoyed the food but more the conversation. I noticed our little group spanned three decades in age. We talked about all sorts of things but nothing really of earth saving importance I suppose.

After lunch we all returned to our respective lives.

Later I was thinking about the great blessing of what I had experienced this day. No great discoveries were made and no big deals negotiated and nothing really important at all happened. But I think it is this kind of day that I will remember and savor and appreciate for a long while.

Red Tail Hawk

2009-05-08T05:00:00.000-05:00

Feeding the Animals

2009-05-07T05:00:00.001-05:00

I feed 4 horses and 1 cat daily.

They are always happy to see me. Now really it is not me in particular they care about but the guy that feeds them. And it is food that interests them. I know that.

But I use the opportunity to pet the horses a little. Sometimes I think they enjoy it but mostly they just tolerate it because they know eventually I am going to get the feed for them. Judy is a different story though. They like her and they like her to pet them, food or not.

Now the cat is different. I think she actually enjoys seeing me. The other day it was raining and she actually came out in the rain to greet me. She usually comes out to see me but in the rain is above and beyond.

So I get quite a bit of positive reinforcement from these animals.

I always talk to them. I ask the cat if she's hungry and if she wants something to eat. She looks up at me and meows except that's not really what her speech sounds like. When I go in the house to get her food the door closer holds it open a second or two. The cat takes that opportunity to run in with me. She thinks that if she comes in with me that she will get her food faster I suppose.

Then when we go out the door she runs underneath my feet almost always making me nearly fall over her. This used to irritate the daylights out of me but I've become accustomed to it now.

When I leave I tell her goodbye but she usually is too busy eating to acknowledge my departure.

The horses know my car so when they see it they begin moving towards the feeders. If they are out in the pasture they will run. If the wind is blowing hard and gusty or if the weather is changing or just about anything really they get a little upset and act rowdy. Have to watch them if you're in there with them.

The old mare is always the hungriest. She whinnies at me and gets right up against the fence and strains her neck over it towards me. I have a strange respect for the old mare. She's in her late 20's now and had several foals. I always think of us being in the same age range even though she is a lot younger.

The younger mare I suppose is my favorite although I really don't know why. I just like her. She's kind of dainty in a horsey way.

The sorrel gelding's name is Bucky. That's not his real name but his descriptive name and apparently well earned. He irritates me no end. For one thing he uses his head and mouth to scoop out oats from the feeder onto the ground. I hate this and I usually tell him about it. But he ignores me. He prefers the sweet feed to the oats I guess. He is also the "biter" of the group. He will bite me if I am not careful. He'll bite just about anything.

When I finish I tell them all goodbye and that I'll see them tomorrow. They don't even look up from the feeders. But it seems rude not to tell them I'm leaving.

Even if you feed some humans they aren't really glad to see you.

Side Effects

2009-05-06T05:00:00.000-05:00

So now that my medical "inspections" are over I am taking drugs in an effort to alleviate symptoms.

There are six possible drugs. Four of them are alpha blockers. Two of them are enzyme inhibitors. I've tried both the latter and two of the former.

The alpha blockers were both really bad for me. They made me light headed, dizzy on standing to the point of nearly fainting, blurry vision, tired, and lethargic. And worst was I felt like I couldn't get a full breath.

One of the alpha blockers I tried a few years ago. My doctor gave me samples of a newer drug in that class that is supposed to have fewer symptoms.

It didn't have fewer for me so I stopped taking it after 3 miserable days. Astute huh?

So then today I tried a newer drug of the enzyme inhibitor class. After about 2 or 3 hours I started having the shortness of breath symptom. But that was about the only symptom and I was thinking positively. Crazy when you think maybe you could live with shortness of breath. Another couple of hours though and I had an episode of awful, gut wrenching, black hole sucking depression.

Wow. That was unexpected. Because I had read all the reported side effects of all these drugs and depression was not listed.

But I know what depression is and I know I experienced it and I know the only thing I took was this drug. So it may not be double blind scientific but I am attributing the depression to the drug.

And I am not taking it anymore and I don't care what anyone says.

So that leaves one drug I've taken that had minimal side effects for me. It is also in the enzyme inhibitor group. For some reason as yet unexplained my doctor seems averse to giving me this particular drug.

I think it is time for a little heart-to-heart.

This reminds me of experimenting with drugs for my dad. I felt like he was the guinea pig back then. And of course he could never tell me how he felt and I had to guess.

It isnt' much easier when I know how I feel.

Nuts.

Peacock Revisit

2009-05-05T05:00:00.000-05:00

My HP Netbook

2009-05-04T05:00:00.001-05:00

I bought this from Best Buy the other day.

It is an HP Min 1000 - 1030 NR - $349.99

10.1" screen. Weighs about 2.4 lbs. No disk drive - just a 16 Gb solid state drive. No DVD or CD either. But it has a camera. The keyboard is about 85% and fits me just fine.

I am typing this blog entry on it in fact.

I tried several before I selected this one. It isn't the latest model from HP but I liked it best.

Everyone here is laughing at me because I keep going smaller. My main laptop is just a 12" screen.

But it is so convenient to carry around. I get about 3 hours on the battery.

It works great for web and email and stuff like that. I put an extra gig of memory in it but it is still a little slow but not that bad.

Just a great little Netbook.

Amazon Kindle iPhone App

2009-05-03T05:00:00.002-05:00

I had another doctor appointment on Friday. It was another endoscopy at the urologist's office. I won't go into detail about the procedure itself in the interest of propriety and modesty -- not mine -- yours.

But it isn't very hard to guess what it might be.

For reasons unknown there was a delay and I ran out of things to do pretty quickly. I didn't have my Kindle 2 but thought it would be nice if I did. Then I remembered the iPhone app.

I downloaded it and within a few seconds was reading one of my books on my iPhone.

I thought it really worked well. The screen is not bad at all for reading and you just change pages with a flip action of your finger on the iPhone screen. My delay was about 90 minutes so I was really glad to have it and I enjoyed reading a new Jonathan Kellerman book, True Detectives.

The nurse apologized profusely when she finally called me back. Apparently they "forgot" me somehow. Maybe it was me subconsciously hoping they would forget me forever and not perform the procedure. I was already wondering if my mind had exaggerated my symptoms and maybe I just needed to cancel this whole deal.

I wasn't looking forward to this but I needed to know the problem and this was how to find out. When I told my brother I was having it he said to run the other way or at least to try to get them to put me under. He had the same thing a couple of years ago. But the doctor had assured me it wasn't that bad.

It is a little embarrassing I suppose for some men, especially with a female nurse. My caregiving career seems to have permanently altered my sense of modesty as in I apparently haven't any left. When I have to wait I fall into caregiving waiting mode, too.

When the doctor came in he was so very apologetic. I told him caregiving had taught me that I did not control the world. I think he may still harbor the opposite idea. Maybe as a doctor he does but apparently with significant limitation in my case.

I got all ready for the procedure in the exam room. The nurse applied some deadening gel. The doctor was rather "far along" when he said that the machine was broken and he couldn't tell anything.

So then we moved to another room and did everything over -- from the beginning -- and I do mean everything.

The results were conclusive though and he gave me some medicine to try for a few days.

I don't think I can take this medicine though because I have every side affect listed on the patient information sheet. I plan to persevere at least through Sunday though.

In the meantime I am happy to report the Amazon Kindle iPhone application is 5 star in my opinion.

Betrayal

2009-05-02T05:00:00.001-05:00

Reading the Unlikely Disciple book has made me think a lot about betrayal.

Loyalty and friendship and family and faithfulness are really important elements of my personal and family morality. I am certain they have been handed down for generations upon generations in our family. They are too strong I think to be explained solely by the older generation teaching the younger. I suspect there is a kind of spiritual heredity that is akin to DNA except it is not physical. I don't know what it is nor can I prove it but I suspect it exists.

I am a traducian because I do believe the soul and spirit originate coincidentally with the body. Some people believe the soul is specially created by God sometime before birth and others believe the soul preexists the body. But that's a different subject.

But for me and others in my family there is little more sacred than loyalty to family and friends and self. Perhaps self should be first because you have to be true to your core values above all else.

Kevin Roose first encounters the issue with his family and friends. They are concerned that he will be corrupted by his experience at Liberty. He is sometimes afraid of that himself as the story unfolds. He secures approval for his venture by giving his assurance that he is only interested in observing and writing.

At Liberty though he begins to develop relationships with other students. He does not tell them that he is only there to study them and to try to make some sense of their culture.

Relationships often begin on a less-than-honest basis though. It is not unusual to present oneself in the best light when meeting new people. That's especially true when the relationships involve romantic attraction. I think Roose did nothing more sinister than that when he enters Liberty.

In the writing of the book he apparently protects individual identities. In my mind his treatment of the university itself and the culture is neither malicious nor dishonest.

I have no way of knowing how those he does write about feel about his treatment.

One time I had this friend and I thought I understood his opinion about a particular subject. It was a complex subject. In a meeting I stated that my friend believed such and such about the subject. Not long after my friend and I met and he was so angry with me. Someone had told him I had said something about his opinion. It actually wasn't what I said but I had said something. My friend felt I had betrayed him and our relationship. Our relationship was never the same because of that experience. I have never forgotten.

The thing about betrayal is that it is often one sided. I did not intend to betray my friend. In fact I did not think I had betrayed him. But he thought I had. That was all it took.

I have felt betrayed, too. I remember one such time when my friend told me "that it had nothing to do with me." I am certain my friend believed that and probably never understood why I felt as I did.

There are few things worse that I have experienced than the emotion of feeling betrayed. Those feelings for me have been physically jolting as well as emotionally wrenching. Those feelings have been so terrible for me that I desperately want to avoid doing that to someone else. And I sometimes worry about things I did 30 or 40 years ago that I now think were awful.

A couple of times I have actually apologized to some old friend about something that looms so large in my memory. In one particular case I was astonished that my old friend had no memory of the event at all.

I was very surprised to begin to worry about something that happened so long ago that I had not given the least thought about.

As much as I enjoyed reading Roose's book there is no doubt in my mind that had I been one of his friends that I would have felt betrayed. He knew that, too, because he remarks about how gracious and forgiving were his Liberty friends (or more truthfully specimens).

I wonder if he will have regrets in 40 years.

Peacock

2009-05-01T06:59:00.004-05:00

Kind of surprising Oklahoma bird at my lawyer's office.

Reading: The Unlikely Disciple

2009-04-30T05:00:00.003-05:00

The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University
by Kevin Roose
Grand Central Publishing (March 26, 2009)

Kevin Roose is a sophomore at Brown and an intern for writer, A. J. Jacobs, when first introduced to Liberty University through students he meets at Thomas Road Baptist Church. His conversation with the group of students frustrates Roose because he realizes there is a cultural gulf between him and them.

He decides to enroll in Liberty for a semester in an effort to understand the culture and to write a book about the experience. Roose is 19 at the time. He secures his parent's and school's permission, completes an application to Liberty, and is accepted.

Roose writes that the "evangelical world, in my mind, was a cloistered, slightly frightening community whose values and customs I wasn't' supposed to understand. So I ignored it." Roose is slightly frightened but his family and friends seem terrified of the prospect.

Because of his experience in speaking with the Liberty students, Roose decides to impersonate an evangelical during his time at Liberty. He writes "Naturally, I wanted to be as honest as possible." So he crafts his background story in that spirit and even receives help from the one Christian he actually knows.

He does manage to blend in with the Liberty students he meets. He is surprised to find that they are not the homogeneous stereotypes he had thought. He also finds there are some things about Liberty that is even worse than he had expected.

He makes friends. He learns to compartmentalize his life and his studies. He surprises himself by how well he adapts. He keeps his secret and takes sufficiently good notes to write an interesting book.

Towards the end of his time he is even able to interview Dr. Jerry Falwell. The resulting article is acclaimed on campus and gains some exposure off. Dr. Falwell dies the day before Roose is set to leave Liberty and Roose delays his departure until after the funeral. His article then gains even greater attention.

Before the book is published Roose returns to Liberty and confesses his subterfuge to his friends. He is surprised by the gracious responses of forgiveness and friendship.

In the end Roose reflects on the experience. He admits to being permanently changed but unconverted. He writes that his semester at Liberty did not "bridge the God Divide" but he thinks the barrier is not insurmountable. He even writes about his youth although mostly in the context of writing a book.

Now what did I think about the book?

It is a good book. It is interesting. It is well written. The characters in the book are portrayed humanly and the situations are realistic. There is little sense of contrivance and there is the ring of truth.

There are several strands of unresolved tension. Will Kevin get caught? Will Kevin fall in love? Will Kevin be converted? Will Kevin pass his courses? Will Kevin lose his friends and family? Will Kevin betray his new friends?

It is the novelty I suppose that makes one start reading. It is the tension and realism and writing that keeps one reading.

So I recommend the book.

I have more things I want to write though and I am sure I will.

The General and the servant girl

2009-04-29T05:00:00.000-05:00

I was reading the other day in 2 Kings 5. It is the most interesting story of a general named Naaman who was afflicted with leprosy. Eventually he goes to the prophet, Elisha, who by his own servant tells the general to immerse himself in the Jordan river and he will be cured.

Naaman really does not like this idea nor does he like talking to Elisha's servant instead of Elisha directly. So initially he stomps off refusing to do it. Well, his underlings persuade him to change his mind by telling him that he would do something complicated if he had been instructed to do so; therefore, why not do something simple.

I'm paraphrasing of course.

Naaman goes and dunks himself in the Jordan seven times and he is healed.

There's more, too.

Much later -- hundreds of years -- this story becomes very important in the life of Jesus, the Messiah. So it is an important story.

What really interests me is why Naaman wants to go to Elisha in the first place. That's because his wife has told him what her servant girl said. The servant girl is from Israel and was captured by Naaman's King on a previous raid.

Her name is not mentioned in the account. And she doesn't tell Naaman directly but only his wife, her mistress.

The story obviously is not about the servant girl but somehow I have become fixated on her. I keep thinking about her.

For one thing she must have been an exceptional woman because Naaman immediately took the advice upon hearing it. I wouldn't take advice from someone I didn't have a lot of respect for.

I wonder how she felt about being captured and removed from her home and family and life? I wonder if she was resentful or angry or depressed or all the emotions I can imagine myself feeling.

I wonder why she cared so much for Naaman? I wonder if it was because of his wife or the man himself or was it just something in the heart of this unnamed, young girl?

I wonder if she knew the Lord? And if she did I wonder if she felt herself called into His service? Was she at peace because she felt that calling even though she was a enslaved in a strange land?

I wonder if she was rewarded by the general when he returned home? I wonder how she felt when she found out he had been healed?

I wonder if she had any idea that her remark would play such an important part in world history? It was not a very significant statement really.

Makes me wonder about my own statements and my own life.

I Survived The Endoscopies

2009-04-28T07:29:00.002-05:00

Yesterday I had a colonoscopy and an upper gastrointestinal (GI) endoscopy.

Endoscopy means looking inside and that's exactly what happens. In my case it was the colon and my upper GI tract that my doc wanted to inspect.

Thanks to Wiki Commons for the image. I didn't take any photos myself. And honestly I did not observe this thing because I remember nothing after the nurse told me to roll over on my left side. Well, I remember saying "Is this okay?" but I do not remember the answer. So I guess it must have been okay.

They gave me Versed and Demerol I think. I was not taking notes though. I think they said the former would help me forget. I said "I didn't need much help forgetting stuff" which I thought was rather witty and humorous. But it must work pretty well.

The next thing I remember after turning on my left side is waking up in another room where I briefly noticed this nurse next to me. Then I had this irresistible need to shut my eyes which I satisfied. The next time I opened my eyes they stayed open and the nurse said I should get dressed while she went to get Judy. She drew this curtain around the bed and I got everything on apparently because I was dressed by the time Judy got there.

I thought it was funny about the clothes when I first arrived because the nurse that took me into this room told me I should leave on my socks and my undershirt. I don't know why that seemed funny to me but it did then and it does now. She also explained the hospital gown to me which also seemed funny as in "put the open side on your backside." I never laughed though.

Oh, yes, there was a toilet in the room and I was invited to use it and I did and there was discussion about what the result looked like. Reminded me of some conversations I've had before in the last few weeks.

Then we talked about horses and the nurse got a wheelchair and I sat in it and she pushed it out the door eventually. I saw our car and I said "I can walk over there" and that's what I did. Except the nurse grabbed hold of me and walked over there with me.

I do not remember the drive home at all. But we must have driven home because I do remember being at Judy's house for a few minutes. Then we drove over to the Banbury house but I don't remember that either.

Next I sat down in a recliner and I don't remember anything else until I awakened. I asked Judy if I had been asleep. She laughed.

Then I fixed myself something to eat: instant oatmeal, instant grits, and 2 of those itty bitty boxes of raisins. That made me feel a lot stronger. So next I found some leftover Thai vegetable fried rice from last week that I had thrown in the freezer (always thinking ahead!!). I put it in the microwave and a few minutes later I was eating it.

I checked the computer but had no energy to do much of anything about anything.

Judy, who had about as little sleep the night before as I did, said she needed a nap. I said I needed a nap, too. She was going to nap on the couch but I said I needed to be flat so I headed for the bed.

When I awakened it was like 5:30 or somthing and we had to go feed the horses. She said she hoped the nurse didn't find out because I wasn't supposed to do any "chores" today. Well, feeding our horses isn't very hard unless I have to carry feed sacks to the feed cans. I had already done that (again thinking ahead!!).

We visited Judy's mom a while and on the way home we stopped at a Sonic. At first I didn't think I wanted anything but then I thought a lemon berry real fruit slush would be really good so I got one.

That slush was really, really good. I have to get another one of those soon.

I think I took another nap maybe or maybe not. I watched Chuck on TV I remember. Then I went to bed and next morning came and I was awake again. I fixed myself some left over Starbucks and instant oatmeal and raisins. Then I started this blog entry.

I have to quit though because I have to get ready to go to the urologist at 9.

Thanks for all the good wishes everyone.

TriLyte®

2009-04-27T05:00:00.005-05:00

Welcome to TryiLyte.com

Does anyone besides me think that message is funny?

I mean the "proper preparation is the key to a successful colonoscopy" part of the message? It just strikes me funny. Cost wise this is certainly the least expensive part of the colonoscopy. I paid the Walgreens folks $35 for the jug which already had powder stuff in it. On the top were 5 flavor packets but you only use 1. The surgery center part is taking a good hunk of a $1,000. I haven't found out yet what the doctors are costing. I think the whole deal is going to bust a big hunk of $2,000.

My health insurance pays for it. Except for my coinsurance amount that is which is $250 or something. And then there is my deductible amount. I have spent ZERO so far this year. Anyone want to take bets on what my deductible is? Yep: $2 grand.

Interesting how that works. Not just on health insurance but all insurance that I buy. Except life insurance and I haven't used any of yet.

The jug is 4 liters it says. That's 135.26 ounces or 16.91 glasses of 8 ounces each. I decided to use 12 oz foam cups though. That's 11.27 of them. At 7:00 a.m. Sunday evening I began drinking two-thirds of the total. I rounded that to 8 cups.

That's a lot to drink. Took me about 2 hours. Then I had to drink 3 glasses of water. I managed 20 oz of water in another hour or so.

The result is pretty much what you might guess. I definitely did not want to drink anymore by the time I went to bed. It made me feel a little sick and "mentally off" -- kind of inebriated feeling almost.

At 3:10 a.m. Monday morning I proceeded to drink the rest -- a little more than 3 of my foam cups. I am definitely not wanting anymore of this stuff.

It is the same foam cup by the way. Is that recycling? Somehow I managed to distort the bottom of the cup.

In case anyone is interested in what this stuff does and can't guess given the scanty information provided thus far I will say only that a toilet is a good idea to have nearby when ingesting.

This will be (I haven't had it yet as I am writing this) my second colonoscopy. The last one was 3 years ago. The same doctor though. He's the one that said I should do this because he found a polyp last time which he removed.

People have asked me what the colonoscopy was like. I didn't think it was too bad actually. Honestly drinking this TriLyte® stuff is the worst part and it doesn't bother me that much. On the scale of disagreeable and disgusting things I've done this is way down the list. But that's just me.

As for the procedure itself about all I remember from last time is someone saying something about counting backwards. When I awoke I felt pretty good. I remember telling someone that I thought I could drive just fine.

Of course I always think I can drive just fine.

So if anyone is reading this before about 8 am central you know where I am and what I am doing.

I've decided to forego twitter and facebook. Unseemly. Have to draw the line somewhere.

Degeneration

2009-04-26T05:00:00.000-05:00

I read an article the other day about vocabulary. The author argued that he tried to use "big words" in his lectures in order to help his students understand complex concepts and to be able to more successfully discuss the subject.

That caused a flurry of Internet debate of course about whether or not that was a good idea. It is not hard to imagine the two sides and their respective positions.

But it made me think about several different things.

Not too long ago I read passages from letters written home by American Civil War soldiers. I've also been reading (for a long while) Doris Kearns Goodwin's book about Abraham Lincoln. She includes quotes from the writings of people of that period. Then I have read some things that were written long ago by members of my family including my father and mother and grandparents.

What interests me in all of these is the rather greater vocabulary in use compared to what I generally read today.

There are older examples as well. For instance there are some really old pieces of Biblical writing that survive that discuss very complex concepts using advanced language.

There are four possibilities as I see it:

Vocabulary usage has not declined and I am just wrong.
Vocabulary usage has declined because human capacity has degenerated.
Vocabulary usage has declined because education is ineffective.
Vocabulary usage has declined because it is a matter of fashion.

That first possibility has a lot of merit I admit forthwith having become by this age well acquainted with my own self-delusional, intellectual failures.

Education is more intense now than it was when my parents were in school. I really do not believe the educational system is at fault. Or maybe there is just more to teach. That's true enough. But we have more time to learn. My dad had to try to read by a kerosene lamp for goodness sake.

Fashion definitely is a part of the issue I think. Telephone, radio, television, Internet, cell phones, email, and texting all discourage both complex concepts and advanced vocabulary. But it is hard for me to conclude that it is the only cause.

I think there actually may be some loss of capacity. It is nothing I could really prove scientifically but it just seems that way to me.

If I were to propose an evolutionary reason I guess I would say that it is because our species does not need to be as intelligent. If I were to propose a Christian reason it is that we are farther removed from the fall.

Just stuff I was thinking about.

Babies: Geese that is.

2009-04-25T05:00:00.004-05:00

Geese. Just what we need (not)!

We have so many geese that
I figure if the recession gets so bad that
we are starving to death; then, we can
survive by eating these things. Except
I would have to hire someone to kill
them because I could never bring myself
to do it, starving or not.

They are pests but they are also rather
regal in how they walk around and ignore
people. And people pretty much stop their
cars when they cross the streets and honor
their nests and ooh and aah when the babies
are born. Even the weed eaters are restrained
from cutting down the grass around the nests.

I was driving to our office Friday morning on a
little homemade gravel road that runs behind
the Chick-Fil-A. The tree is the only one left
from the old garden and orchard that dates from
my childhood. I saw the babies there and stopped
to photograph them from my car.

Context

2009-04-24T05:00:00.000-05:00

I saw this mattress and box springs on the side of the road.

I felt the anger rise within me. In the little movie theater that exists in my mind I watched someone deliberately pull up in a pickup and throw off the unwanted bedding. Anger was becoming rage.

Then the movie changed and the pickup morphed into an old car with the mattress and box spring tied on top. There was a man and woman in the front and two children in the back and the car was filled with all sorts of stuff. It was a very poor family that was moving and the mattress and box springs tore loose in the wind as I watched and landed on the road. The man pulled off and hey all tried to get the load back on the car. They gave up in tears and desperation and harsh words and pushed the items over to the side of the road.

The movie changed again and the car morphed into a truck and the mattress and box springs fell off the back while I was watching. The driver was oblivious and continued on his way. A following pickup stopped and the man driving got out and pushed the objects to the side of the road.

The rage had subsided and the movies had stopped and the screen was dark.

I realized I had no idea what happened that caused that mattress and box springs to be there on the side of that road.

Facts are facts but context makes all the difference.

Last Words -- King David's -- Mine

2009-04-23T05:00:00.001-05:00

In my Bible reading the other day I came near the end of 2 Samuel at Chapter 23. It begins "These are David's last words" followed by them of course.

My mind fell off the mountain of Biblical thought I was climbing. (I only climb rather small ones now.) It (my mind) began to think about what my last words would be if I were called upon to write them down. It sounds like my mind has a mind of its own doesn't it, entirely separate from my will? Sometimes I think it does, too, because I try to corral it and it just seems unmanageable at times.

That might have been an instance just now.

If my mind weren't connected to my mouth these episodes might be less stressful.

I think it is not the very last words of David but more likely the last written words. Probably it is like when several of us have stopped blogging and written our final posts on those blogs. Except they didn't exactly have blogging back then in David's time. And it was final before death. And he knew it. I am pretty sure I would stop blogging at least a few days in advance of my final breath.

That made me wonder about that time when I know that my life is concluding here on Earth. If I do know which is certainly not assured.

What would I say?

Partly it depends upon how long before my demise. And partly how I feel.

Of course unlike David I am not a king.

But I am the first son of my family. We do have a family business that will hopefully continue beyond my death. If I knew I were nearing death I think I would like to pass along a few things to my brother and my son especially about the family business. I would want my daughter and her husband and my grandchildren to know these things as well but I would be especially concerned about my son and brother because the mantle of leadership would fall more heavily on their shoulders.

That's what King David's "last words" seem like to me, too. His family business was being king. So I think as much as anything this is a little note for Solomon who would be King after David.

I think the actual message starts at verse 2. And I think that part is where David declares that he was called by God into his position. He makes the point that it was not just his calling but his family's calling. That's an important part.

Because of God's calling there are benefits to the family. But there are responsibilities, too.

I want my family to know that very same thing and to remember it and to honor and revere God.

Verse 3 also stakes out the high standard of righteous conduct and living and worship that David desires for his descendants. And that begins with reverence. I would encourage that, too.

Verse 4 is a reminder that God is the great provider. We need that reminder every day.

Verse 5 attests to the utter dependence we have on God for our salvation and our lives. David's family is certainly a good negative example in a lot of ways. But it is good to remember that we are all sinners. Some of us are bigger sinners than others but not by so much really. If we're getting through it will not be by our own efforts. If all my own children and grandchildren learn just that single fact I would be delighted.

Verse 6-7 is a warning to watch the relationships you make. That's a good one. It is really easy to fall in with bad companions especially for leaders who have lonely jobs just by nature of the position.

Then the rest of David's last words has to do with his mighty men. These were his trusted comrades, his loyal to the bone friends. These were people that could be depended upon. Leaders have to have those they trust and those who prove trustworthy. David names a few and tells why they are so trusted by him. I know some people like that and I think that's advice I could pass along as well.

That's how I see it at least.

Does Anyone Care About Doing A Good Job?

2009-04-22T06:00:00.001-05:00

I casually told someone I was going to be waiting on an installation of a TV service the other day. They said "I hope it goes well." Then we both laughed and admitted that we neither one thought there was much chance of that happening.

It's terrible to expect problems with everything.

But that's the way it is now I think. I do not think it always was this way.

Part of the problem is that so much of what we do now is so complex while the tools we have to apply are so fast. For instance my iPhone tries to figure out what I am trying to type as I do it and substitutes words that I sometimes did not intend. Or the spelling checker for this blog entry for that matter does something similar. Both things happen fast, too!

Beyond that though I just get the feeling sometimes that people don't care much about the quality of the work they produce.

Probably more of my "old fogey" syndrome.

*The AT&T guy came and did a really good job as far as I can tell. I was pleasantly surprised. But that surprise shows that my expectations were so low.*

U-Verse

2009-04-21T05:00:00.000-05:00

For TV service in our new home we had a variety of choices: Free over the air, Cox cable, Dish Satellite, and DirecTV Satellite. I have experience with all of these except U-Verse.

For Internet service we could choose Cox or AT&T.

For telephone service our choices were AT&T or Cox or nothing. Thought seriously about nothing, too. We have cell phones and the phone we have at Judy's is almost never answered even if it rings.

My experience with Cox has not been particularly good over the years. I have found the organization to be extremely bureaucratic and insensitive to customer concerns about as much as possible. My last experience was at the farm when I called them and asked them to come out and move a cable that was almost certain to be accidentally cut. This was during the Chick-Fil-A site work. Cox's response was that they couldn't come until the cable was cut. So when the cable was cut I called back and a guy came out. But he said "We can't fix it. You should have called us before the cable was cut." That experience makes me reluctant to use Cox. Plus I had quite a few interruptions with Cox service over the years and really could not recommend them for service.

We have DirecTV at our little house on the prairie. It works quite well except that it goes out when we have storms. We do have storms quite often. I thought it might be better to have something that was more resilient to storms.

My mother-in-law has DISH. It also goes out with storms. They say it isn't supposed to do that but it does. Actually I have had really good service from DISH.

Then I read about AT&T's U-Verse and decided to give it a try when it became available in our neighborhood.

I signed up about 2 weeks ago. Since then I've received 4 emails and a couple of phone calls. The appointment was for 8 to 10 on Monday morning. At 8 AM the installer called me and said he was working at the neighborhood box and would be there in 40 minutes. At 8:40 he arrived at my door.

He finished at just a few minutes past noon.

As nearly as I can tell everything he did is working great.

Kudos to AT&T - good product, good service.

Handkerchiefs

2009-04-19T06:05:00.006-05:00

I don't know what happened to all my handkerchiefs. I was down to only two and they were rather well used. So I turned to my trusty mercantile choice, Amazon of course, and found some in about 15 seconds.

Amazon just has them for sale but they come from Jos. A. Bank.

Still I had them "in hand" within a couple of days. The UPS fellow brought them in a considerably larger than needed box.

I use handkerchiefs and always have nearly as long as I can remember. I have a hard time leaving the house without a handkerchief stuck in my pocket.

I like to have a clean one but when you only have two you have to compromise on that issue. But now that I have a "baker's dozen" (that's what the package read -- I haven't counted them) I can be assured of a clean one daily.

Just to clarify there is no great need for a clean one for oneself. But if one carries handkerchiefs one finds shall we say opportunities to offer them to women and children. I have on rare occasion offered mine to another man but there is an unseemliness to it that I can't quite specify.

Over time I have noticed that I was more and more the rarity in having a handkerchief to offer. But really I had never thought much about it.

Until the other day when my son and daughter and a friend were visiting and I mentioned I had just received my new handkerchiefs. The three of them thought that was so quaint that I would buy and carry handkerchiefs. I said "what do you do when you need a handkerchief?" And I won't say what they did because I thought it was disgusting.

There is apparently a generational change in the wearing and use of handkerchiefs that had previously escaped my attention.

I noticed the other day that George Will had written a piece (Will Jeans Undermine Our Social Order) about the pervasiveness of the American blue jean. I would recommend to him a similar piece about the disuse of the lowly handkerchief but I am one of the ones who wears jeans daily and I am certain that would disqualify me in his eyes.

But I like my hankies even though they apparently make me an old fogey. And I am doing my part to preserve our social order to make up for wearing jeans.