Tag Archives: family

Always testing the waters, sometimes diving in…

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Lists, lists, lists.  Somewhere, probably in Italy at this time, is a person of international fame, if not fortune, who teaches and writes — Mr. Umberto Eco — a man who collects books, even if he does not read them all.

If, if, if.

I was a pledge for a fraternity to which my father belonged in his college days — Delta Tau Delta.

In the pile of papers I found yesterday, after clearing out a bunch of books I don’t need so that others may enjoy their literary/financial worth (sorry, Mr. Eco, I can’t hoard books my whole life — I must learn to let go of my physical possessions as I get closer to my natural death and the loss of all connections to our civilised lives here on Earth), a list of fellow pledges at DTD:

Name, hometown, classification/year, major, local address, local phone
Russ H., Knoxville TN, sophomore, communications, 970 Sunnydale, 693-9353
Bill Smith, Jamestown NC, sophomore, architecture, ?, 974-3843
Greg Scaione, East Brunswick NJ, freshman, political science, ?, 974-2689
David Lucas, Lexington KY, freshman, civil engineering, East Stadium Hall, x-4752
Mike Hinton, Fairfax VA, freshman, aerospace engineering, Greeve Hall, x-8098
David Rice, Knoxville TN, ?, undecided, Hess Hall, x-4062

The year was probably 1982, possibly 1983.  Like going through the ritual ceremony at DeMolay where I observed archaic symbols and recited passages I was supposed to share with no one, feeling more at ease in Boys Scout, I was turned off by Delta Tau Delta after going through the pledge/plebe ritual at Delta Tau Delta.

All that secret society mumbo-jumbo seemed outdated and also…somehow…wrong.

The same was true with some Boy Scout rituals like Order of the Arrow — the whole “rites of passage into adulthood” thing shrouded in stuff we’re not to tell young ones or those who were not deserving of being tapped out.

The only way I could keep from sharing these special words, phrases, hand signals and such was to forget what I saw and heard.

There is no privilege in rank.  Prestige is a crutch on which those without self-esteem lean, it seems, when I look at those who seek rank and privilege.

Those who do not seek but are given special rewards for their sacrifices to the greater social good are a different category.

I can understand why wise sages promote collections of instructions for social behaviour that encourage us to act naturally and let those whose natural acts selflessly benefit the species receive recognition from the rest of us.

The ant and the grasshopper.

Tomorrow or later this week, the judges who sit up high on the U.S. Supreme Court will issue their ruling about a social safety net nicknamed Obamacare.

I have seen the effects of this net, the result of national legislation, in that my mother in-law and father accrued a large cost in medical care by private practice doctors and public hospitals without having to pay a penny themselves; on the other hand, my former brother in-law has complained, amongst others, of having to pay higher out-of-pocket medical insurance premiums the last couple of years to pay for the social safety net.

The cost of running a local business in the U.S. includes socialised programs we call Social Security, Medicare and income taxes for general social government expenses, to name a few, if one has employees on the payroll, the business owner, too, that is.

A natural-born citizen takes no test or learns a secret ritual to earn full social safety net rights of citizenry.  A person not born in this country who becomes a full citizen must take a test and pledge allegiance to gain access to the social safety net legally.

I have a story to tell that takes me out of this realm of day-to-day worries about pledges and social safety nets but I am here to tell the story because of them.

In other words, a system for which I had no direct say/vote in implementing has directly benefited me very recently.  Some of the people who voted for the national legislation in Congress are members of secret societies such as fraternities, Masons, and Skull and Bones.

How many of us get full benefits of a social safety net without lifting a finger to help others in need?

Or do we give more than we receive?

Is there any way to measure our place in the economic and noneconomic portions of our society?  Does there have to be a balance or do we push our debt forward?

What if we paid it forward?

What is a secret smile shared between two strangers worth if it lifted the spirits of a dying person, lowering the need for, and thus the cost of, pain medication?

It’s about time to return to the story of Agirita and her new friend.

Their story is our story.

Allegorical, cynical, satirical.

I met a smile I liked before a metaphor is like a simile.

Rick is back for a brief moment: he thanks Chrispine, Avance, Ruth Ann, Stain, Matthew, Princess, Molly and others.

Organisational Skill Assessment

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Before I compose a hand-drawn animation sequence with the Bamboo Capture graphics tablet and fill my future with out-of-date electronic debris, I finish sorting through the piles of debris that constitute the bulk of written material which emanated from this set of states of energy called me.

Watched a commencement speech by Laurie Anderson [I thought, for a public performance multimedia artist, her acting was rather stilted], which has prompted me to click my way to a website and order a copy of the book, “How to be idle,” which in turn opened my eyes to the reams of office paperwork stacked in boxes around me.

Here’s one from 03/24/98:

Kiersey Temperament Sorter Results

Your Temperament is Idealist: NF
Your variant temperament is Healer: INFP

Any Personality Test, including the Sorter is just a rough indicator of temperament.
You might want to look at different temperament descriptions to verify the results and learn about other types of people for comparison.

I+6 N+16 F+12 P+14

David M. Keirsey
keirsey@mail.orci.com

At that time in my life, the department manager was all about fitting us into jobs that matched our personalities.

What she didn’t account for was a chameleon like me, a people pleaser who assesses the wants and desires of the people around him and blends in, hiding his personality behind layers and layers of masks, revealing himself to a select few.

I told the manager I’m not who she thinks I am and she responded that was a normal reaction to the test results from an INFP like me.

Later, I learned that she gave the same response to everyone who questioned the test results.

I wasn’t questioning the test results.  I just wanted her to know that the test results indicated my exteriour in relation to giving her the test results I thought she wanted to see.

For instance, let’s say I find out my college History professor is a dopehead and adherent to the philosophy of Timothy Leary… I make sure my term paper for the class, a review of a book about socialist utopias, contains plenty of illicit drug references and hippy religious conversations.

My goals are not your goals.  My goals are outside of the time and place in which we encounter one another, so it doesn’t matter to me about the profit targets you want to reach or the edifices you want to build in your names.

Ideas and images associated with temporal moral and ethical practices are imaginary, as far as I’m concerned.

We either reproduce our genetic material or we don’t.

Everything else is fiction about how we decide to protect our reproductive organs until we’ve produced progeny that need our protection.

Me, I have only these works of art — the sketches and writings that were birthed by me with your influence, a part of the universe, upon me.

I have no genetically-related or adopted children.  The closest I got were the nieces and nephews who [might have] looked up to me as an adult member of their clan/tribe.

They are adults now.  My influence upon them diminishes as they decide how to protect their reproductive organs until they’ve produced progeny that need their protection.

One of my hidden goals was to live long enough to be a great-uncle.

I held up my step-niece’s little one-month young girl in my arms, making me the great-uncle I wanted to be ever since I was a little boy and looked up to my childless great-uncle and great-aunt who seemed to have extra spending money my parents never had, despite the great-relatives’ middle-class wages as a postman and office secretary, respectively.

I have grown tireder as I’ve aged, exercised less and eaten minimally-nutritious chemically-treated foodstuff.  I no longer want to be a model for others or someone to look up to.

It’s time to slow down and concentrate on the dreams and desires of the personality behind all the masks…

The boy who saw macabre nightmares come to life when his favourite politician of all time, Richard Nixon, resigned.

The boy who looked down at his plate of spaghetti and thought he was eating a dish full of bleached worms covered with red sauce to hide their little heads screaming for mercy.

The boy who heard the grass talk to him.

The boy who sailed the universe at night when no one was looking.

The boy who knew that stone gargoyles and cast-iron mailboxes were like three-dimensional photographs of a reality hidden inside other people’s heads, finding an outlet, me wondering where they came from before they appeared in people’s thoughts.

The boy who earned his Eagle Scout badge and went on into Explorer Scouts, later to become a Unit Commissioner, an adult role in Scouting, because he never thought he had gained his father’s love and trust, constantly seeking, seeking, seeking approval up until he reached his adult age of 18 where he received a full college scholarship via the U.S. Navy ROTC program, accepted at both Vanderbilt and Georgia Tech, but realising he no longer had to seek his father’s approval and flunked out on purpose.

I had become the man I never thought I’d be able to grow up to be.

I never was my father and never will be.

I am me.

My hidden visions, the alternate reality that I carry in my thoughts as I interact with people who seem to like to embrace the inconsistent reality of [sub/ex]urban lifestyles and belief systems, are crawling out of me and into the world in which we meet and greet one another cordially.

They are not perfect.

They are not commercialised, plastic products for mass production and insane profit margins.

I don’t even care if others steal, borrow or marginalise my work.

My work is not me but my work came from me so I associate myself with my work but I do not tie my self-worth to what I’ve written, drawn, danced, sang or sewn.

This is the only moment in which I live and I claim this moment as mine, declaring myself absolutely insane in comparison to the insanity of boxed stuff that we only call food because the pretty picture on the outside tells me it is.

Unlike Madison Avenue marketers, I don’t have to make money from my creative redefinition of ordinary life.

I can, have been and will be me, willing to use the excess capacity of our species’ social structure that produces a buffer zone outside of basic survival to express myself here and elsewhere, on paper, in blogs and wherever I feel I want to breathe what always has to be my last breath because the next one is not guaranteed.

On to the graphics tablet, building upon my first animation!!!

As an independent filmmaker said,

Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is nonexistent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery – celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from – it’s where you take them to.” ”
—Jim Jarmusch, The Golden Rules of Filming[

My mother’s valedictorian speech — 60 years later…

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Evelyn’s Valedictorian’s Speech

for Graduation at Everett High School

Maryville, Tennessee

May, 1952

Blount County Schools

Our schools in the past have had an important part in making our county the great county that it is.  You have heard the report from Miss Long which tells us what our schools have meant to many of our professional and industrial leaders.  It is true that we have accomplished much, but we must not be satisfied until we have made our schools meet the needs of our people.

There are many needs, but I shall discuss only a few.

It seems to me that one of the most important needs is to let our schools grow up.  The old ways of living have passed.  We are now in an electrical and atomic age.  Educational facilities of horse and buggy and dirt road days do not meet the need of our motorized and fast moving age.  Our industries have grown into adulthood and our employers are demanding that our employees have more and better training.

We must stop looking at our schools as childish toys and our teachers as baby-sitters.  We must see our schools as institutions where the lives of our youth are being molded to become leaders who will have life’s responsibilities of tomorrow.  Children are not toys to be played with, but men and women in the making.  They must be given the principals [sic] of health, honesty, moral and spiritual living.  The school environment must be such that these principals [sic] can be properly taught.  Children must not only be taught, but must see the things practiced which are taught.

In the pictures which you have seen you noticed that all lunchrooms in the old buildings were in basements where artificial light was necessary and ventilation was very poor.  In the new buildings you noticed that lunch-rooms were modern and the most attractive room in the building.  This is as it should be.  Do you know of any home where the kitchen and dining room is in the basement?  If we practice in the schools the things which are taught, teaching is much more effective.  We are taught that in order to digest our food properly we should have a cheerful and happy environment.  It is evidence of growth in our schools when we take our lunchrooms out of dingy, damp, dark basements and put them in light attractive rooms.

There is a need for school growth in our transportation system.  We teach moral, and spiritual growth in our schools, but when we get on our bus to go home, boys and girls are packed together like sardines in a can.  We have one bus which has a seating capacity of 48.  The driver says that at times he has a load of 86.  Such conditions do not teach moral and clean living.  We need to allow our transportation system to grow up so that boys and girls can ride as our adults ride.

We must see our school needs and have a desire to do something about them before our needs are supplied.

We are able to supply our needs.  We are living in one of the wealthiest and most progressive counties in the state.  In population we rank 9th.  In wealth we rank 6th.  We are rich in industries.  We have excellent farming land.  We have lumber.  We have thousands of tourists.  We have marble.  But our greatest asset is the boys and girls in our schools.  We have the material.  If we have the will we can supply our needs.  There is evidence that we have that desire.  Within recent months our County Court has appropiated [sic] an additional $3,000,000 to meet pressing building needs.  Our school should prepare students for life responsibilities whatever they may be.  We are facing many new and difficult problems which must be rightly solved or our national life, as we know it today will be in danger.  Our educational system is the key to a solution of many of these problems.  In 1941 in Blount County 1124 children entered the first grade.  In 1950 there 1307 entered.  In 1941 we had 359 entering high school.  In 1950 there were 698 entering high school.  Our county superintendent said that he expects 150 more first grade pupils next year than we had this year.  This means that we will need 5 new teachers and of course 5 new classrooms for the teachers in the first grade.  It also means more teaching material and more buses.  This is only an example to show how our schools are growing.  If our schools are to adequately prepare our pupils for tomorrow’s citizenship, these needs must be supplied.

We are building great industries where people are earning a comfortable living.  We are improving our farms so that we may have better crops.  We are building more comfortable and attractive homes and we are furnishing them with the most modern equipment.  We are building larger and more beautiful church buildings where we can satisfy the hunger of our souls with the Bread of Life.

We are making progress, but much needs to be done.  Our school buildings and grounds must be made attractive and kept that way the entire year.  We must pay our teachers so that we can get the best.  Then we must demand of them satisfactory service.  Our transportation system must be modernized so that each youth will have a place to sit in decency and comfort.

God had given us our beautiful country.  He has given our county more than 10,000 school boys and girls.  293 of this number are graduating from high school this spring.  We thank God for His blessings upon us.  We thank you public officials and our parents for your efforts on our behalf, but our work is only in its beginning.

Fellow Classmates!  We have had many difficult problems during the past four years.  But now payday has come.  In our joy let us not forget those who have made this day possible for us.  Jesus healed ten lepers at one time, and only one returned to thank Him.  Let us be like that one.

Parents, teachers, and friends, if it had not been for your patience, thoughtfulness, interest, and love we could not have come to this hour.  We thank you, and we promise to work with you in making our schools the best possible, and our county a better place to live.  We shall do our best to live in such a way that you will not be disappointed in life.

=======

NOTE: My mother’s school advisor for this speech was also a local minister.

Against All Odds and Ends

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On a day like today, when tomorrow is predictable but unknown, surveying the rural landscape, fully or partially detached from cyberspace, seems more likeable than running a business on virtual land.

There are plenty of people and businesses to thank for welcoming my friendship and patronage but they will wait.

Balancing the location of one’s thought set is a perception, rather than a reality, resting on one side or the other of the verb, “to be.”

One may say one lives north or south of Birmingham, which may mean near an urban area in the U.S. state of Alabama, or the West Midlands county/conurbation of England.

Let us say we live somewhere and can sync our thought sets here whenever we wish, not precisely knowing everything about the universe in which we live but we’re willing to learn.

In other words, today is family time, with physical interface between people the key function, warmth of the Sun on our faces as real and simple as it needs to get, leaving the tools to blog behind us and out of sight, memories shared in voices and touch rather than text and tagged photos — some history lives in our thoughts only and for that privilege (quiet, unrecorded [down]time spent with family), I am most thankful.

Bury the Curmudgeon, not the Man

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In business, as well as real life, we make decisions based on evidential test results.

In real life, we made decisions based on opinions, dreams, imaginations and occasionally facts.

So it is with grieving the loss of my father in the rest of my natural life.

He lives on here — in recorded memories and anecdotes, photos and videos, audio files and books — the cybersphere.

I mentally cried in my thoughts up until yesterday, making it…oh, about two and a half weeks of heart-wrenching solace and mourning.

Now, I live with him as a reminder, a silent, unspeaking totem on an imaginary column standing invisibly behind me.

The good and the bad, the kind-hearted elder and the stern disciplinarian wrapped in fading memories.

In other words, I personify the genetic and nurturing elements of a man toward his son, his eldest child.

My father’s influence upon others started at his birth, with most, if not all, who nurtured him now gone, too.  His best friend of 73 years still lives, his neighbourhood playmate, classroom buddy and adult confidant.  His wife of 55+ years — my mother — is quite much alive, although in mental pain as she reconciles the loss of a dear friend and husband, the father of her children.

I am no longer a child.  Bigger problems than the loss of a parent push in on my thoughts but they are not more important.

How do we tell readers that the situation in Syria is merely a place for the national production of weaponry to turn a tidy profit, loss of lives a necessary component of the process?

There’s always some hotbed of violence we can use to our species’ economic advantage.  More people die from person-to-person combat between people who know each other — gunshots, knife stabbings, choking, burning, poisoning — than all terrorist attacks combined.

After all, “terrorist” is a label we reserve for “them,” not amongst ourselves.

The brother who stabs me is not a terrorist — he’s just a close relative with an anger management issue and a drinking problem — unless he gets the attention of the media ahead of time and becomes notorious, shooting off his mouth about socially-unacceptable concepts and ideals.

But we know all that already.  New crops of journalists, editors and publishers seem not to — they just as easily fall prey to the idea of perpetuating extremist thinking for a profit that also divides the political opinions of the majority of Americans, for instance.

Anyway, I digress.

After a discussion with the Committee, I’ve decided to share with you more of the products coming out of our laboratory and into a grocer’s market near you:

  • DNA tracking devices disguised as cereal flakes and coffee beans/grounds
  • Chemical hypnotic material mixed into charcoal briquets that are released at high temperature, used at backyard BBQ events to turn whole crowds into well-organised mobs when the need arises
  • Bacteria in ice cream and other products in the frozen goods department that activate at body temperature, lodging in people’s bodies at strategic locations; can be turned into cancerous growths with a certain level of mobile phone radio signal strength exposure.

Well, that’s all for now.  The use of comic literary devices is all about timing.  We’ll save the rest of the items for a more perfect moment.

Happy eating!

Oh, I’m back in the saddle again…

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Amazing, what a few days mean in the life of one species.

Part of the annual cycle of life here locally, for instance — the little “sugar” ants have found their way into our kitchen sink like clockwork.

And who says astrology doesn’t work — why, the Earth’s position around the Sun is directly connected to these ants before me.

And the Moon-influenced tides…well, I’m sure if I traced the ecosystem connections I could find the tidal pools in the Gulf of Mexico have an indirect influence on the movement of species in and around this domicile.

Not sure about Venus aligning with Earth’s view of its transit across the face of the Sun, though.

But hey?  I’m just a bigger ant on this planet.  What do I know?

Pop music flows through my thoughts today, from this century and centuries past.

Dreams have flowed through my subconscious thoughts, dreams that center on my dead father and his last two months in a variety of healthcare facilities.  Just another shot.  How about one more day with him?  Have we considered this experimental treatment?  Or that one?  Were there any unkind words I said through the years that weighed down his thoughts in his last days?  Did he feel I neglected him recently?

Part of the healing process, no doubt.

A new crossroads in the road in front of me — I can choose “Happiness,” “Depression,” “Anger,” “Denial,” “Remorse,” “Regret,” or the one I plan to take, “Unknown.”

A bit overgrown.  Underused.  Neglected.  Quiet.  Secluded.

In other words, the usual path of mine.

Wandering in and out of the actions of my species.  You, me, us, as usual.

Synching back to my self’s syncopated rhythms, out of step and in tune with our social changes, our connections with the universe at large.

Thinking my thoughts, no matter how strange, weird or normal they may be, sharing a few of them here.

Conforming to (staying within the parameters set by) local laws to preserve my relative freedom from conformity.

Letting subcultures be — live and let live.

Competing in the marketplace of ideas when I feel like going up against adverts of marketing machines blaring deafening sounds and spouting subliminal messages.

So many stories to be told, like the young lady whose [great]grandparents’ home in Hamilton has been transformed for a new generation of nonfamilial owners.  Sound familiar?

Or watching the tiny facial twitches on the President when he gave a[n election season] speech for the unveiling of a previous President’s portrait.  How easy is it for you to be a mind reader then and predict the future?

We learn a lot when we learn alot about Camelot on the backstage lot.

Do kids still learn to type “These are the times that try men’s souls“?

Is there proper thumb-typing body posture or mobile phone use etiquette taught in schools these days?

When technology moves faster than generational education cycles, what is a generational education cycle for, that period of time we stop children from performing manual labour and coerce them into classroom settings between ages 4 and 24, just to watch many of them drop out of the cycle to return to ageless, aging manual labour practices?

In the days when everyone is more equal to everyone else than ever before, is it still safe to refer to the peasant class even where literacy rates are a nonissue and people still want to get their hands on simple, low-paying, physically laborious work, no matter how many memes float through their language-filled thoughts?

How [un]important are the economies of geopolitical zones we call countries like Italy, Greece, Portugal, Spain, and Ireland to the global economy at large?  What if we let them deteriorate into complete chaos?  Can we not wait to see the phoenix that rises from the ashes or are we too afraid to risk our investment portfolios to find out?

Why am I sitting here instead of enjoying the pleasant weather outside?

A-ha!  Finally, a question I can answer.  Time to close down this laptop and invite mosquitoes to savour the flavour of the blood-filled organ called my skin.

And remember: a fine, country dinner shared with David and Evelyn in their house overlooking a forested creek; pulling out bushes with David, Melinda, Melinda’s father and John; sorting through family memorabilia with Dan and Fay; Robbie, Aaron, and Christopher at the Rave; Martha at Carson’s Grille; Rogersville Produce Market; Debra, Pat and Veronica at Hales Spring Inn; Pals #13; Oh Henry’s; my blog-connected friends, and more…

Taking a break from blogging this week

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I want to contemplate the universe silently, listen to the sounds of our planet, and investigate the possibilities of “broken heart” syndrome (the feeling of uselessness that job loss and lessening family responsibilities may have played in my father’s untimely death).

I’ll be back next week sometime.

Congrats to SpaceX on completing the ISS resupply mission successfully.  Won’t be long before they can transport people into orbital vehicles, eh, Mr. Bigelow?

Blog correction: thanks to a reader for pointing out that it wasn’t an Armitron, it was a Casio watch I once owned that squeaked several musical phrases as alarms.

Will keep viewing the dozens of blogs I follow to see how Earth influences our species’ actions in cyberspace.

A Box of Old Baby Dolls

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In the quick succession of events we call life, when we say one event or another is more memorable than the rest, do we take time to notice our thought processes and how they influence future events?

Have you ever heard a child request a toy, then you saved your hard-earned money to buy the toy and felt more affinity for the toy than the child ever did?

While butterflies chase each other through the woods and a bird tries to catch one of the butterflies in its mouth, I wonder about opportunity costs.

I finally read about the race called the 2012 Indianapolis 500 and the exciting story of dramatic turns of events during the race.

Instead of watching, on the day of the race I helped my wife’s extended family fix up the house and grounds that belonged to my wife’s mother and now belongs jointly to my wife and her brother’s children.  [I would have enjoyed watching the race in memory of my father but chose not to this year, my father having expired mere days before.  There’ll be other races during which I’ll recall motorsports events my father and I shared, shedding a tear or two of happiness AND sadness.  I could have spent time with my mother that day, also, but didn’t.]

My in-laws closely managed their finances, creating a legacy to give their children, including a box of old baby dolls that were purchased for my wife and a house left to my wife and her brother.

The dolls have lost all but their sentimental value, reaching the state where entering the city dump or landfill is their final destination.

The house retains both real and sentimental values, carrying on the legacy that my wife shares with the children of her deceased brother — her niece and nephew.

In the age-old, perennial complaints/comments about the way our children and grandchildren never completely appreciate the sacrifices made to give them the clothes on their backs and the toys in their room, my wife and I virtually face our adult-aged niece and nephew, wondering where they were when we needed them most to help them honour their father’s legacy.

The cycle of life…sigh…

Little time to mourn my mother in-law before my father died.

Now I have a wife and a mother to separately help not only with the grieving process but also the financial/legal hurdles that our society places in front of us to ensure the government gets its [un]fair share of carefully-tended legacies and insurance companies give out as little as they can to protect shareholders more than policy holders.

I was a great-nephew once, living less than 15-minutes drive from a great-aunt who could have used my assistance.  Instead, I was a frivolous college student more interested in having a good time with my friends.  Thankfully, my great-aunt changed her will and essentially cut me out, teaching me that ignoring a family member in need has consequences in the here-and-now, if not the afterlife.

Love has no price, no matter how painful the loss of a monetary inheritance may feel.

If we’re lucky, we innately know to give love unconditionally, buying toys for children who may never know the price we paid in money but more importantly in time sacrificed on the job to put toys on layaway when budgets were tight.

Hopefully, we teach our children that time spent together with family is more precious than objects like toys or houses.

Although toys, houses, and rooms full of antique furniture have their value, too.

I now own a suitcase full of shirts that belonged to my father, including his favourite blue, short-sleeved Hawaiian shirt.  I cherish them but I’d trade them in a heartbeat for another chance to sit with my father or hear him talk German with a stranger on the street.

I have a box of his unfinished balsa wood airplanes on a stack of boxes behind me.  It’s up to me to finish one of the planes and pass it on to his grandson who will never know the love of airplanes my father and I shared for the first 50 years of my life.  I know it’ll just be a toy airplane my nephew will probably think his middle-aged uncle poured a lot of old-fashioned sentiment into, wondering where he’ll put it in case I ask about it ever again.

That’s just the way life goes.

I sure miss my father today…one of his first childhood balsa wood planes sits a few feet away from me, gathering dust, its engine long since clogged with old fuel.  The only thing of his father I have is a U.S. Navy knife and leather holster.  I have nothing of his father’s father, not even memories.  I knew my father’s mother’s father but have nothing of his, either, except a story or two my father told — there are handmade garden tools and kitchen gear of his still around, though.

Otherwise, we pass this way once and are quickly forgotten.

Our business is with the living, our moments together more important than memories of those moments, which will fade soon enough.

At my funeral, will people say “I remember Rick’s blog and how it changed my life” more than “I remember Rick talking to me every day and how important he made me feel when he recalled something I’d told him in person once before?”

I have one foot in and one foot out of social media.  I don’t want to predict 1000 years from now whether our virtual lives will have stronger emotional impact than our physical connections but take me away from this computer and all the social network connections of the world quickly fade from my memory because I never held them in my hand, patted them on the back, smelled their perfume/cologne/body odours or noticed their unique personalities up close.

Will social media be like a box of old baby dolls one day, easily thrown in the trash, its opportunity cost and sacrificial price quickly forgotten?  If you ever used a BBS, you already know the answer.

A Father’s Wallet, A Son’s Wallet — A Legacy in Imagery

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Before the days of manpurses, men carried hunks of leather which encased identification cards, family photos and whatnot, giving men backaches when they sat too long with the leather hump pushing up one side of their rumps.

Here are some of the miscellaneous items in two wallets found in my father’s computer desk — my father’s wallet and my grandfather’s (Dad’s father’s) wallet — a snapshot of history (you can decide which set(s) of images belonged to which wallet):