I am taking a much-needed sabbatical – here are a few data points to ponder while I deprogram my computer programmers who are reprogramming the supercomputer that keeps me in touch with my network of colleagues and business associates:
Dear Flo,
Are you connecting those cute little boxes, that Progressive uses to “improve” my insurance rate, to one of these, too? Will it record when and where I wreck into Mayhem like me?
Signed,
Lost with a GPS unit under my car
A bird I can’t see digs through leaves covering a broken stretch of gutter, looking for insects to munch on.
Dense patches of moisture – clouds – flow through the atmosphere above, like wet weather creeks filling from rain showers upstream.
After my brother in-law died at an early age, I fed thoughts of what I wanted to do, to achieve, to complete, before I died.
I finished novels I had sketched on paper. I became a published author, fulfilling a lifelong wish that began when I was ten, receiving a professional review from Publishers Weekly.
Then, seeing that I could, I tried my best to fill in for my brother in-law, taking care of my mother in-law when my wife could not. My mother in-law is now dead (btw, her date of death is a palindrome: 11.02.2011).
I am an old man in thoughts, if not totally at 49, approaching 50, years of age. My hearing is diminished, my hair is white and thinning, my ankles swell, my skin grows spots, my blood pressure is high and cholesterol readings vary on the unhealthy side.
I have no competitors.
Soon, in a year or 50, I will be forgotten, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
I have no legacy to protect, ghosts/secrets to run from, or dream/carrot on a stick to chase after.
I am just me, one set of states of energy, a simple ego that wants to shine brighter than I want to burn it, my energy nearly given out, living one day…no, living one small moment at a time.
I have nothing to live or die for.
I prop myself up on my sense of humour, my shield that hides the invisible me from the rest of my species.
After all, I am the emperour’s new clothes, a figment of imagination, entropy states meeting fractal math patterns.
I knew that 2011 was going to be a tough year.
That’s the problem with getting older and wiser, seeing patterns that you know will repeat themselves in your lifetime, no matter whether you want them to or not.
I’m tired of being wise or a wiseass.
I don’t want to live to see 2012 but neither do I want to die.
This chameleon personality wants to disappear, fade into the woodwork, melt into the forest, states of energy vanishing before your eyes.
It just did.
Goodbye.
I’ll leave it up to you to connect the dots:
When you need an excuse, any excuse will do.
On a sunny autumn day, the muted fall leaves colouring an elaborate quilt on the rowed hills of east Tennessee, I finally, fully, felt the loss of my mother in-law while I sat with my wife next to the coffin for graveside service on Saturday.
I will not see her smiling face or hear her voice her concern for her daughter’s health, anymore.
Last night, when we drove into the garage, the absence hit home once again — no calling my wife’s mother to let her know we made it home safely after returning from east Tennessee.
Mortality.
We live and die.
Now, my wife and I deal with the imbalance, she with no parents or sibling and I with both my parents and my sister alive. My wife and I each have one living pair of blood-related niece and nephew.
My wife is ready to be free of traditional family obligations such as holiday gatherings.
We shall see.
No doubt we face a transition.
A transition from what to what, I don’t yet want to know, although I can project a few future possibilities.
A superglued broken cup commemorating the 2005 Paderborn Weihnachtsmarkt attracts my attention, hinting at the future.
The parts of my wife and me put on hold until her mother died are ready for release.
However, post-death logistics remain…dividing the estate, modest as it is, including photo albums, Christmas ornaments, kitchenware and a few dozen decks of playing cards used for bridge games; writing thank-you notes to those who assisted toward the end of and after my wife’s mother life.
One more day of mourning/grieving our loss and then life goes on…sigh…
My mother in-law and me, 1st Nov 2008, Clinch Mountain Overlook
A quiet, lonely day today.
Time to sharpen a pencil and work on the Book of the Future…
Let’s see…the Cherokee football team lost, the Volunteer marching band won, the Hazel Green football team lost, and on and on.
On a systems level, moves are made and then…
The supercomputer churns butter.
In game theory, do emotions play a role?
After spending time with my species, I’ve a galactic simulation to test and implement – can you prove to other entities you can anticipate their actions without knowing much (except everything) about them?
This input device and its corresponding display elsewhere limits descriptive output.
More on that later.
Can the absence-of-I trust the states of energy called emotion and instinct as much as I trust the supercomputer, network of colleagues, and Book of the Future?
As Rev. Rose said, long after Rev. White and his wife were looking for their dogs, life’s transitions tell us how we’re witnesses, or examples of ourselves, to others (and thus back to ourselves).
My family and individuals within my family are in transit.
For some, they may feel their next stop is in the twilight zone.
In this story within a blog of managing the galaxy’s future, where asteroid trajectories serve as measurement data (is there ever a datum that’s not a measurement?), etymology psychology, do we understand that the total mass of nonplanetary matter matters more than the individual pieces?
Yes, but at what timescale?
Could you explain a leaf rake to a bodyless being?
Can you create an infographic that shows the influence of the Alabama-LSU football game on every one of us seven billion?
The Tennessee instate rivalry game attracts viewers.
While everyone else is looking at an electronic device, what has your attention?
The truly frugal don’t read online blogs.
Obviously, they’re not my readers.
Thanks to Cross Flower Shop; Chad Hill; Tommy and Stella Logan; Town of Rogersville Street Dept; Sweet Tooth Cafe; Ada at GreenBank; McKinney crew; friends and family; the nurse from Michigan who seeks culture.
Almost time to write the next chapter.
Pull the ripcord ’cause you’re parachuting onto the fast-moving transition train.
[Have you taken the time to describe your relative’s dying moments in great detail? Should I?]
Were you part of the system of education that collected kids in masses to provide the same set of messages to many?
Hello to Jain and Zhao at HH cafeteria.
Isn’t it amazing how standardised tools like phonetics and writing put us here together to consider possibilities inside and outside this moment?
Soon, my wife’s family will gather outside the usual holiday reunions to reminisce.
States of energy driven to spin around one another because of concepts like family and language.
We don’ yet know what a person thinks when taking the last gasp for air after the heart has stopped beating.
Automatic brain stem function?
Conscious effort to stay alive one last second?
But we understand the word “dignity.”
My mother gave the world me. My mother in-law gave me her daughter, all the world to me.
My father taught me to be a man in a man’s world.
Meanwhile, I’ve adapted to gender-neutral subcultures while preserving my training which designates important, flexible roles for heterosexual men and women.
In the next two days, I’ll hear a lot of phonetic utterances centered on subcultural belief structures, mainly Christian, with philosophical differences that we can label Presbyterian, Southern Baptist, and Church of Christ.
There’ll be no war of words while we celebrate the life of my mother in-law.
If I could get my wish, I’d ask the rest of my species to take a break from arguing with and killing each other during the next 24 hours.
It’s not about me, though, is it?
For the sake of the woman who birthed my wife and raised her for 18-plus years, use the next 24 hours to hesitate before attacking someone else.
Use reason, calm and dignity to respect one another.
Imagine the person you’re with or thinking about is sitting beside you just before you take your last breath – how would you want to be treated?
Personally, I’d want you to tell me the world’s best joke and I’d hear the punchline just before my consciousness slipped away.
“Four welders walk into a funeral home to view their best buddy’s body. The first one says,…” You know the rest, of course.
Have a great day!
Thanks to Mapco; Sheila, Wendy, Julianne and restorative nurse at Southampton; Dre at Red Robin; Variety Bake Shop; Bertha and Debra of HH food services; Dr. Robert Williams; Jerrica; Howard Grimes; Bubba’s; Mr. Broome; Pat’s friends/coworkers; Earline and Joe Price; Jared Bell.
Meanwhile, the Libyan PM can help assess this:
From: randy.forbes@mail.house.gov
Date: Mon, 31 Oct 2011 08:44:33 -0400
Subject: Does Defense Manufacturing Matter?
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Dear Friend – In 1997, the United Kingdom initiated a program to develop a nuclear attack submarine. But some five to six years into the program, it became clear that neither the prime contractor nor any other British firm had the necessary design and production skills to build the new submarine. Without a domestic ability to produce submarines, the United Kingdom was forced to look abroad in order to complete their project. Fortunately, the British were able to look to United States and employ one of our shipyards to provide the missing skills and expertise. With American help, the Astute class was completed in February 2010. However, by then the cost for the first three Astute-class submarines had reportedly grown by 90%, and the first of the class was some four years late. If the U.S. military one day found itself in the same position as the British did with the Astute program, it would have few places to turn for help since no allies currently maintain the breadth and depth of capabilities resident in the U.S. defense industry. Defense manufacturing is worth protecting. Let’s take a look at this snapshot of defense manufacturing in America:
The defense industry employs some of America’s best and brightest:
As production jobs and capability decline, the ability to recover these critical skills becomes very expensive or even impossible as highly skilled personnel are forced to pursue other careers. The Production Lines-
Shuttering existing lines will diminish or eliminate our capabilities should we need them in a time of crisis. The Suppliers-
According to Pentagon analysis, the defense industrial base provides 3.8 million private sector jobs. Trillion dollar cuts to nation defense will result in: Job Losses. Shipyard Closures. Atrophy of innovation. Inability to rapidly reconstitute critical skills in response to emergent threats. Few have contemplated a future where the United States, when confronted with a crisis on the scale of Pearl Harbor or 9/11, must predicate its response with “Can we?” rather than “Will we?” Such a way of life is worth protecting. Yours in Service, Randy Forbes |
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I’m not a doctor. I didn’t stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
I’m part of the generation that created the ability for people to Google their health.
More of what I know about my mother in-law’s condition: syncope?
treetrunkdings 