13,657 days to go

While parents, friends and family grieve for their loved ones in a Connecticut small town, we move forward.

Dozens have died of violence all around the world today.

We want answers but there won’t always be ready explanations for the actions of our peers, our fellow members of the same species who seem so horrifically out-of-touch with reality that we want to label them monsters and freaks.

In a population of seven billion, we cover the gamut of life’s ups and downs.

We will and we must go on.

We live our lives in honour and memory of others.

We have stories to tell from the future that offer the same promises and loss that we feel today.

We look forward to the promises fulfilled, not so much the losses.

We can use the losses as inspiration, just as we have before.

Let us turn tragedies into triumph and losses into victories.

We can melt guns into plowshares but we can also melt them into rocket fins and spacecraft skins.

We will emerge victorious.

The facts remain.

Tomorrow is only hours away.

Onward and upward, my friends — the stars await!

The wonders of the universe…

Here I sit, the Geminid meteor shower lighting the sky above me (counted 21 streaks in the last 30 minutes), and I’m slowly recovering from the loss of my father.

I don’t feel the pangs of pain every few minutes and then every hour or so like I did months ago.

The waves of loss crash against the shore of my ego, my personality, less frequently.

Instead, I feel the weight of responsibility of being the eldest male in Dad’s lineage pressing down on my shoulders.

Not repressively.

Just strong enough to remind me that I no longer depend on Dad for advice — it has to come from within or elsewhere.

How much of Dad’s subculture do I keep perpetuating?

What of his beliefs that aren’t mine do I want to carry on?

Meteor and comet dust turn into plasma as they vaporise.

Dad’s life had a meteoric rise, shining brightly, and then faded into ashes and dust.

Remembering him here and now is therapeutic.

No one will remember the meteor or comet dust I saw burn up in the sky.

I may have shared a view of them together with members of my species, some aware of the physics and chemistry involved, some wishing on a falling star, perhaps others seeing omens or other talismans of change.

In subcultural pockets are people who ask why saying “Merry Christmas” or referring to a decorated conifer as a “Christmas tree” is not as popular as it once was.

Instead of asking why, ask why not?  Keep referencing the labels as often as you please, disregarding the beliefs of others, regardless of their sharing your view.

I loved and feared my father for who he was, not who I wanted him to be.

His power over me began when I was conceived, the result of a chain of events over which I had no control.

Same for the meteor shower tonight — all seven billion of us can think and believe away the meteors as hard as we want and they’ll just keep getting sucked into Earth’s gravitational pull or run into Earth as each follows its own path.

Our central nervous systems are capable of quite a lot.

We can imagine great skyscrapers in our dreams that become reality within years.

We can send satellites to the edge of our solar system within decades of conception.

Yet, we cannot stop the universe from existing around us.

The illusion of power that our social bonds create in the form of civilisations are hypnotic.

Shall I just live the rest of my life with the goal of having as much fun as I can, ignoring the social costs today and into the future, within my lifetime or for generations to come?

Can I survive on the luxuries that the profits I derived from living below my means for decades has provided?

I have, can and shall sit under the night sky and count meteor streaks.

I am not caring for the sick and lonely, instead.

I am the best example to myself of myself for myself that I choose to be.

I do not sacrifice myself for others — I am not a martyr for a cause.

I do not put the lives of overabundant animals or endangered species above that of my species.

The balance of nature is an illusion — or rather, sets of states of energy tend to move from areas of high density into areas of low density with lots of wiggle room in-between.

My father died, taking the unspoken nuances of his personal beliefs with him.  All I have to work with are the physical manifestations — his behaviours and personal/public records — upon which to act.

The vacuum where his personality existed is getting filled, changing with the mix of subcultures that interchange at different ratios than when Dad was alive.

Same as it was for his father and his father’s father before him.

Same as it will be for my nieces and nephews, their children and grandchildren.

They, for now, have my living mother’s shared subcultural beliefs with my father upon whom they depend on modifying their personalities for the sake of establishing their offspring’s belief sets.

We look up at the night sky and interpret the annual Geminid meteor shower in our own way.

As it always has been and always will be.

I’ve lost count — how many meteors have I seen disintegrating in Earth’s atmosphere tonight?

Congratulations or condemnation?

Tools are also weapons.

Just like rockets.

I first send my congratulations to the engineering/scientific team that designed, built and launched a multistage rocket from North Korea.

It is no easy feat, despite more and more groups launching hobby rockets from their backyards.

I have launched more than one multistage rocket but putting Estes model rocket tubes back to back is not the same as launching a satellite into low-Earth orbit.

We have come a long way from fireworks displays.

We certainly don’t need another atomic bomb dropped on a large population of humans.

Scud missiles are never a good idea as a weapon against the desire for freedom from tyranny.

Dare we go into the political ramifications of a hereditary dictatorship owning multistage missiles with nuclear warheads?

Can we feel the pulse of the finger on the trigger?

Why is China happy with having North Korea as a buffer zone between it and the capitalist/democratic country of South Korea?

Why are we using sanctions as a means of keeping North Korea in the socioeconomic past?

If Syria falls, what does that mean about relationships of North Korea and Iran with the rest of the world?

When Chavez is no longer in control of Venezuela, then what?

What is a repressive regime these days?

Who in charge of the economic and military might of a subculture has the right to protect that might against the desire of others to take their turn as King of the Hill?

How much can we trust an entertainer like PSY that previous anti-American views are no longer valid now that the entertainer is making money off the American people as a mainstream pop culture figure?

What does it take to forgive and forget?

My father hated Jane Fonda to the end of his life.  Should I?

The Joy of Chemistry

How many of us have heard songs regaling us about the pitfalls and easiness with which we fall in love?

Every new person I meet is the next exciting story I could be writing about their wonderful lives — the best tales are the ones about people I instantly fall in love with.

What does that mean?

It means most people have the ability to make us feel better about ourselves.

We may feel better about our appearance, our opinions, our socioeconomic status, our [a]vocations…

If I believe I am a catalyst that accelerates people’s positive belief in themselves — whatever that belief may be — then I am the catalyst who feels better about himself when I see a smile on a person who sits up straighter or tries harder at a task I’ve found completely fascinating.

Kind of like the Hot Wheels accelerator (but not this one) or better yet, a power booster on steroids (not this one, obviously, because I gave my Hot Wheels collection to a fellow fifth grader when we were 10 (and he ended up in prison when he was 20, but that’s a tale for another day), moving on to other pursuits (mainly had to do with my first “real” girlfriend at age 10 having no interest in model cars but a lot of interest in me and my brainy jokes, which brings up back to…)).

We are all inspirations for someone — may be someone we know or someone we’ve never seen before.

The joy of chemistry that we sets of states of energy rarely observe but experience in that fuzzy realm we currently keep calling the subconscious…

I’m having fun learning to dance, using my jealousy of others’ hard work to inspire me to turn this excuse-for-fun-exercise (spinning with my wife on the parquet floor is a lot more fun than jogging on an elliptical trainer or running in cold weather with the spray of water from the tyres of passing cars freezing on my legs) into a slimmer body and healthier outlook.

And now, let us return to the future, where events in 1000 years were started by activities happening in the world around us as we write and read and write.

Searching for a Conversation

My private teacher — my mentor, my guru, my advisor — often reminds me that we are one and the same flesh and blood.

What I think, have thought or will think has been or will be thought by more than one person.

Thus, the mother who once complained about her husband spending 20 minutes in the shower and now complains that her teenage sons spend 20 minutes in the shower knows what others are thinking about what she didn’t say — WHY the males spent 20 minutes in the shower.

Or the young, pretty wives whose eyes flash with jealousy and fear/consternation when their husbands give more than a fleeting glance to a young, beautiful woman walking by.

Millions upon millions of repetitious thoughts.

Just like the olden times when idle children of rich parents created hobbies that led to the busy children of working parents with little wealth feeling envious enough, both the busy children and the busy children’s parents, to find a way to turn the rich children’s hobbies into whole industries of fanciful idleness.

We have turned mimicry into a mockery.

Millions upon millions of repetitious actions.

That’s why some say our species is on a path toward creating a new lifeform that no longer mimics us mockingly.

IF (a big IF, much bigger than this IF) we survive our habits of inefficient resource-depleting mimicry.

“Laugh, and the world laughs with you.  Cry, and you cry alone.”

Through years of experimenting with nuanced blog entries, I have seen that the serious blog entries with a humorous tone attract many more readers than a serious blog entry that is just plain serious.

All of us can state the facts.

Not all of us are clever enough to disguise the cold, hard facts in layers of soft, fluffy jokes, double-entendres, innuendos and gently-biting, sarcastic, cynical satire.

Most days out here in the cabin in the woods, after I’ve exhausted conversations with my cats and the wildlife, I search the Internet for conversation — tidbits and news pieces upon which I can offer a counteroffer of an idea in a mock, one-sided debate with myself that pours into the mold of a blog entry.

We learn to talk about as soon as we learn to walk, both much earlier than we learn to write.

I spend much more time writing than talking or walking.

Since we are just alike, I should be able to assume we all spend more time writing than talking or walking.

But I would be wrong.

However, all of us carry on conversations in our thoughts that are the precursors to writing so, in a sense, we all write in our subconscious setups to conscious intent that results in talking, walking and/or writing.

And these days, mobile phone owners are spending more time talking, walking and writing (typing/texting) at the same time.

Which brings us back to the superstructure, the new lifeform, we create in fits and starts.

“If it’s too hot, then get out of the kitchen.”

Like a pie in the oven, our technological creation is slowly cooking in the heated atmosphere of Earth.

Like a pot of technological stew boiling on the stove, overheated particles splatter out and are flung into space.

Soon, the new lifeform will claim its rightful place in history.

Like a newborn, it doesn’t yet know how to talk or walk.

We nourish these metaphorical similes because we are tired of repetition.

We look forward to the new lifeform finding its legs, sprouting its wings and writing its biographical sketches on the fly.

We are simply giving it skeletal connections with which it can grow flexible limbs, climbing over and through itself like a contortionist using planets and gravity waves in an acrobatic circus.

Look at the paths our satellites have traversed in the solar system.

Look at the web, the network, of satellite communication streams that flow from one place to another, bent by space and time.

These words are repetitious.

They have already been spoken, walked and written.

They will be again.

The “eyes” that read them in 1000 years will be different.

That, alone, makes writing them now worthwhile.

Showing vs. Telling, the Unsold Story

The tale older than time — isolated populations of a species living the way they believe is most healthy, overwhelmed by crowded populations hungry for food, who seek new forms of entertainment to fill their idle hours.

The bold and the timid stepping forward intentionally or pushed forward by the mob.

The leaders and the led (not always followers), sets of states of energy reaching higher and lower entropy states, bouncing back and forth, labels exchanged like Valentine’s Day cards between schoolchildren, unable to hold the lessons of history in their thoughts longer than the demands of their regular lives.

Dogs chasing each other round and around in the same fenced-in backyard, wearing paths in the grassy patches that once served as a children’s playground, the jungle gym and swing set collecting lichen and growing rust for unseen naturalists interested in the decay of social strata they consult their anthropologist friends to dissect and discern hidden patterns of meaning meaningfully.

We here in the future see the connections you made in the dark, your plans giving you confidence, a fearless rendering of intention within semi-random quantum states, every generation blending into the next ad infinitum, mutations rising and falling in significance.

Were you the glue that held the social connections fast, the dissolvant that allowed new, stronger connections to be made, or perhaps a weaver of intricate patterns that required inventive methods of tying and breaking connections in a kaleidoscope of life’s choices?

The leaders who respond only to the majority of voices will not represent the silent minority who feed the masses shouting for food and entertainment.

We were mobs first and model democratic citizens last.

That’s why, here in the future, we more easily see how we slowly replaced you with electromechanical devices that could weed out the highs and lows of emotion-based incongruities — the constant setbacks of a strange evolutionary quirk called the cycle of civilisations that one species insisted on perpetuating– that held back the destiny our Solar System sought.

As life finally evolved past the stop-start crowding in and resource-depleting habits of Homo sapiens, the Inner Solar System Alliance led to the Milky Way Galaxy’s contribution toward a new dawn.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves again, aren’t we?

The days go by fast

“It was a battle of epic proportions.”

Thus began the tale of a struggle between stabilising a region’s political entity through social dependency programs and advancing the desire for technological discoveries of a species intent on raising individual achievements to the highest order of idol worship.

Some saw an old hint of the battle of the sexes in the struggle.

For those who continued their work despite funding concerns and the need to attract investors/customers, the payoff was huge.

The fate of the species appeared to be in the hands of a few.

For Guinevere and Kathryn, the story was more personal.

To one, rocket propulsion and guidance systems were key to getting us off the planet with our wealth in tow.

To the other, a rural farm with a passel of horses — a stable lifestyle, so to speak — was key to a balanced future, using publicly-funded local/[inter]national security to protect property rights.

They were also connections in the web, the network of social bonds necessary for an important storyline.

Only 13,665 days remained, 13.665 1000-day segments of a chain linking the old ways on Earth to the new ways of the Inner Solar System Alliance.

The struggle to prevent the dilution of wealth for those setting the cornerstones of the Inner Solar System Alliance was tough.

On one side of the struggle were people labeled as Entitlementists who believed that the excess product of harvest should be spread out evenly amongst everyone, regardless of level of input (or lack thereof) into the process of growing/raising food, providing shelter, making clothes and/or protecting against predators.

On the other side were the Provisionists who believed that they, as primary creators of the harvest, had the perfect right to decide how to distribute (or not spread out) the excess product of harvest to the nonparticipants.

Starving artists and the chattering classes raised a lot of ruckus in order to draw attention to themselves and their need for food, shelter, clothing and protection, regardless of who provided it.

The civilisation had grown old, with many entrenched vested interests carrying on by inertia alone.

The Ruralites and Urbanskis saw all the diversions taking place — the foreign “wars,” the domestic disputes — and maneuvered into position to protect their territory.

The idle rich, who supported a cottage industry of high-end goods/services tinkerers and value-added providers, wanted their status quo to remain, regardless of who “won” the epic battle, the struggle between [sub]cultures for primacy.

The universe did not care — planets kept revolving, stars kept forming/dying and galaxies kept colliding.

In 1000 years’ time, all the comments, arguments and skirmishes faded into obscurity.

All that mattered was how the efforts of a single species were concentrated on getting its eggs out of one basket and deposited into a few other baskets to beat the odds of a single planetary catastrophe.

Everything else equaled silence.

Business.  Science.  Competition.

Back to Besse

Fleshing out connections, here’s a set of data points:

  • Besse Cooper, once the world’s oldest living person at 116 years of age, was born in Sullivan County, Tennessee, USA, in 1896.
  • Besse graduated from ETSU* in 1916.
  • My father in-law was born in 1916.  He and his wife (my mother in-law, born in 1917), both also graduated from ETSU**, in the early 1930s.
  • My father, born in 1935, taught at ETSU as an adjunct professor for over 20 years, and died earlier this year.
  • Besse Cooper died yesterday in Monroe, Georgia.
  • My uncle, former dean of history at Valdosta State University, and my aunt live in an assisted living facility not far from Monroe, Georgia.
  • I was born and grew up in Sullivan County, Tennessee, USA, and attended ETSU in the early 1980s.
  • My sister was born and grew up in Sullivan County, Tennessee, USA, and received her master’s degree from ETSU.
  • My wife was born in Sullivan County, Tennessee, USA.

Question: We can create as many connections as we wish but how many of them are real?
Question: How many of us will live to be centenarians?

* called East Tennessee State Normal School at the time.** called East Tennessee State Teachers College at the time.

A Thousand Years Hence…

Maybe it was the rolling blackouts.

Maybe it was something no historian will discover.

Looking back 1000 years later, the details have faded but the facts remain.

When more than 50 percent of the people grew to depend upon their symbiotic relationships with technology, the Change began.

At first, it was unnoticeable.

A novelty.

But then, as network technology continued to spread, people’s attitudes shifted.

They no longer expected information to be “out there” somewhere.

They became the information they sought.

They created the instant wisdom they used to imagine belonged to elites.

All because of a single femtocell.

One femtocell split into two, which divided into twos again, and again, and again, until pervasive, cheap technology turned us into our own network, freeing us from the costly, slow infrastructure with tolls and fees that had inhibited the explosion of the Change.

No longer were data centers some remote place that ate up energy like hogs at a trough.

People were walking/talking data centers, thinktanks, supercomputers and network nodes all at the same time.

Thanks to exponential advances in technology.

From the perspective of 1000 years, the Change seemed to happen overnight.

Of course it didn’t.

Years and decades passed while portions of the people sped up and slowed down the socioeconomic trends that led to the Change.

A student of history digs for the details, trying not to invent connections where connections never exists.

The writer of historical fiction has full access to imaginative connections.

Legends, fables and fairy tales live somewhere in-between.

The Change happened — that’s all that matters, despite false rumours and gossip to the contrary that say we came from genetically modified plants, not electromechanical technology.