While my wife and I sorted between keepsakes and donation-worthy material in her mother’s house, we created a pile of items that fell somewhere in-between — interesting to look at but not worth adding to the piles of curiosities collecting dust in our house.
What to do with them…hmm…
What else? Scan ’em and then give ’em away.
Examples below — more to follow, as time permits.
Here lies an outlier
As we get to know more and more about each other, we will grow more comfortable accepting each other’s subcultural differences, appreciating how the definition of success can vary so widely that it almost seems impossible seven billion varieties point to the same thing: our species’ survival and growth.
Yes, it includes fear, crime, ecosystem disasters, economic failures and myriad ways in which the universe we live does not always point toward our survival and growth.
Dust particles — small fibers, short hair, unidentifiable tiny, twisted objects — seemingly oblivious to gravity, float through a beam of sunshine propped up between the writing desk and the dirty window.
A few days ago, I visited with some friends whose father recently died. My friends and I had spent a few years together in primary and secondary school over 30 years ago. One friend I hadn’t seen in at least 35 years.
Needless to say, we knew little about one another except what we have seen in the past couple of years while sharing space on a computer server farm spread across data centers around the world dedicated to an online social media website called facebook.
In other words, we had little to say to each other in person that we didn’t already know, or should have remembered seeing in our online personality profile.
The moment was there for comfort at the time of loss of the family patriarch.
Soothing words.
Fond memories of our youth spent under the guidance of a chemical research/sales engineer and literal/figurative father figure.
I cough, sending dust particles on a swirling dance out of and back into the sunlight, which then disappears with clouds passing overhead, reappearing a few minutes later at a new angle, attached to the bright, yellow glob amidst the blue-painted dome high above.
An airplane swoops and circles the patch of sky nearby, making the sounds of the television playing a movie called “The Longest Day” seem live and in real 3D viewing/listening closeness.
After visiting with the friends, my wife and I returned to her mother’s house, continued our sorting through physical reminders of my wife’s mother, father and brother, all deceased.
My wife’s nuclear family is no more, except in her memories.
Her brother’s widow and children still live. She has cousins spread around the globe. And her family by marriage — my blood relatives, including nuclear family (father, mother, sister), as well as extended family (nieces, nephew, cousins, aunt, uncle, etc.).
My friends’ father lived for 84 365-day, 24-hour cycles around our local star.
As the planet spun, my friends’ family influenced those they met, all of them tied to Earth by gravity, the curvature of spacetime, we surmise.
We can see the familial influence through the eyes of the intersection of sets of states of energy, adding meme upon meme, including the word “meme,” to build physical representations of ideas like “idea,” to arrive at the point where schoolmates meet 30+ years later to reminisce about a few years spent in growing up together toward adulthood.
Did any of the dust particles floating in the air at the church where, due to one death, we met to talk about good times in childhood attach themselves to me and then re-enter the airspace in the sunbeam not far from this computer?
What about the particles I can’t readily see, such as water molecules, bacteria, dead skin cells or other microscopically miniscule minutiae?
We are connected in ways we rarely take time to notice, if we can see the connections at all.
How do I explain a blog post composed only of pictures to a blind person who uses a Braille keyboard and automatic audible reader?
How do I explain wireless radio pathways between a notebook computer and wireless router to people who can’t feel or don’t communicate signals at a wavelength of 0.125 m or about 5 inches?
Although… you know, some people say they can feel 2.4 GHz radio waves and other phenomena they claim causes them radiowave/EMF sickness.
But let’s get back to the global story of our lives, where financial gurus want to prop up a system that is no longer a viable connection between the macro and microeconomic levels…
Last night, she cooked the largest large BBQ-sauce topped hamburger, a sticky burger with everything, she’d ever prepared.
Why?
Because she never concerned herself if anybody listened or anybody cared.
She worked for a living, taking customers’ orders, served drinks, cooked the food, carried food to the table and accepted cash before the customers left.
She couldn’t tell you that Charles Schulz retired from the life of a daily cartoonist with an announcement in the comics section of newspapers on Sunday, the 13th of February, 2000.
She didn’t know the president of Germany had resigned after losing complete immunity from the law.
She knew many of her customers by name, their favourite menu items, their job status in town, how her football team was doing and why the ice cream machine was broken.
She believed but didn’t preach to others that many pairs of hands folded in prayer reach out to touch the whole earth.
There’s always that better life somewhere if…
Lucy had just given real, helpful psychiatric advice to Charlie Brown; Snoopy had shot down the Red Baron; Schroeder went on to become a famous philosopher and concert pianist; Linus came to terms with a security blanket; Sally and Pigpen fell in love, marrying and producing the next Peanuts generation.
Dilbert: If we know it’s doomed, why do we bother?
Boss: It’s the same reason I had kids.
Dilbert: [thinking] At least there’s a reason.
She filled up a takeaway cup with Dr. Pepper and handed it to the customer walking out the door.
“I’ll see y’all soon, okay?”
The customer nodded. After 35 years of eating Bubba’s good homestyle burgers, there ain’t no question of coming back…right after the weekly paycheck clears and maybe after the bills are paid.
Naw, the bills can wait!
Quality of life — hamburgers, fried pork chops, grilled liver and onions — food pyramids around here are simple triangles, happiness more important than life expectancy or international news headlines.
In any language, it’s still the same sentiment: let the good times roll.
An important influence on my youth died a few days ago. Here’s to you, Frank!
KINGSPORT — Frank Abernathy, 84, entered into rest Feb. 15, 2012, at home.
Frank was born Jan. 30, 1928, in Okmulgee, Okla., to the late Fred Valle and Laura De Vilbiss Abernathy.
Frank graduated from Oklahoma A&M (now Oklahoma State University) in 1950 with a degree in Chemical Engineering. While at OSU, he was a member of Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity and the Phi Lambda Upsilon honorary chemical society. Frank began working for Tennessee Eastman Company in 1950 in the yarn plant and also worked in chemical sales and market research. He and his wife Mickey were adult advisors for Sing Out Kingsport in the 1970s and ’80s and Frank worked with Kingsport Junior Achievement. He retired from ECPI in 1986 after 37 years of service. After his retirement he taught a “55 Alive” driving class for seniors. Frank was a member of Colonial Heights Presbyterian Church for 46 years where he was very active and served as a deacon, taught Sunday school, and was a youth leader. Through the church he was a volunteer for Habitat for Humanity. He was an avid golfer and tennis player. He and Mickey loved to travel and enjoyed taking cruises and visited all 50 states.
He was preceded in death by his wife of 58 years, Mildred “Mickey” Lowrey Abernathy, whom he married on May 17, 1952. Frank was also preceded in death by his brother, Fred Robert Abernathy and Fred’s wife, Emily Jean Reeves Abernathy.
Survivors include his children, Beth Mitchell and husband, Gary, of Kingston, Don Abernathy and wife, Valerie, of Kingsport, Carol Jennings and husband, Jeff, of Gray, and John Abernathy of Providence, R.I.; grandchildren, Vicki Lawson and husband, Greg, of Fall Branch, Greg Mitchell of Columbus, Miss., and Dustin and Rachael Jennings of Gray; brother, John Abernathy and wife, Virginia, of Tulsa, Okla.; several nieces and nephews.
The family will receive friends from noon until 2 p.m. Saturday at Colonial Heights Presbyterian Church, with funeral services at 2 p.m.
Burial will follow at East Lawn Memorial Park.
In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to Colonial Heights Presbyterian Church organ fund or Habitat for Humanity.
You may leave a condolence for the family at http://www.eastlawnkingsport.com . East Lawn Funeral Home is honored to serve the Abernathy family.
Being blind doesn’t mean you are helpless but this video is meaningful in its portrayal of redefining your capabilities:
The Legend of the Hummingbirds
Daily Health Boost Feel Good Tribe
Do sets of states of energy have an equivalent value in a labour/investment credit system?
This paragraph implies as much:
The Obama administration says insurers can provide birth control for free because contraception reduces costs for them overall by preventing expensive-to-cover pregnancies, as well as reducing the risk of ovarian cancer.
“It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics or chemistry.” — H.L. Mencken
“The price of freedom of religion, or of speech, or of the press, is that we must put up with a good deal of rubbish.” — Robert Jackson
“The word ‘good’ has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man.” — G.K. Chesterton
“The art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of citizen to give to the other.” — Voltaire
“If you steal from one author, it’s plagiarism; if you steal from many, it’s research.” — Wilson Mizner
“I don’t care what is written about me so long as it isn’t true.” — Dorothy Parker
NOTE: This chapter to be rewritten at a later date…
My wife’s 50th birthday cake, using her favourite kid’s toyline theme, Helly Kitty:
A nod to Gift, Eric, and Noina at Thai Garden; Cheryl, DJ and Sam at Publix; the friendly faces at Walmart, including Roy (miss having you at the front door and sorry to hear Walmart is fading out the greeter role, becoming just another bland/faceless warehouse/big box store); ziiplight’s photo blog.
treetrunkdings 