Tag Archives: transportation

German private industry vs. American military industry transportation choices

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The beauty of a brain in retirement is letting one’s thoughts wander.

For instance, as I was driving back and forth from unrestricted territory down a long road into a restricted American military base, I looked around me.

I remembered when I used to commute via airplane and taxi from the U.S. to Germany on business.

In Germany, I noticed that some companies, such as Fujitsu-Siemens in Augsburg, offered large covered parking areas nearest buildings for people who commuted by bicycle or motorbike.

Here in the U.S., at the local military base called Redstone Arsenal, those who carpool (more than one person per vehicle) are allotted spots to park nearest one of the buildings but motorbikes were allotted uncovered spots in the middle of the carpark.

Which got me thinking…

When are we going to design our infrastructures to optimise the mix of devices we use in our transportation systems?

In other words, if we make token efforts to promote efficient means of transportation, then people will continue to pay for the convenience of inefficient methods.

Only when we make it difficult and/or inconvenient to use relatively expensive transportation vehicles (cars/trucks/SUVs) will we change our habits.

For instance, what if people had to use mass transit to get onto a U.S. military base, with tiny carparks and large bicycle/motorbike storage facilities located at mass transit pickup points throughout walk/bike-friendly [sub/ex]urban neighbourhoods?

Would we encourage people to walk or bike to work rather than the majority piling into their one-person occupied metal-and-plastic contraptions lined up one-after-another in traffic jams morning, noon and night to get on the base?

Would we worry less about the dangers of large carparks full of uninspected vehicles on military bases?

Would we find better ways to spend our time than wait on crowded roads for our turn to drive through traffic-light controlled intersections?

Would we have more time to spend with family before and after our workdays are done?

Makes an argument like the one cited here at wired.com moot, doesn’t it, when you eliminate the need for the motorised/EV transportation devices altogether?

The water sprinkler in the woods

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Yes, the new leader of the Committee is right.  I moved part of the supercomputer out of the sub-sub-subbasement and into the cave network stretched across parts of north Alabama, north Georgia, southeastern Tennessee and western North Carolina.

Some of my colleagues are investigating the feasibility of extending the network to subnetworks our subcommittees set up in Kentucky and Virginia centuries ago.

Just because I’m retired doesn’t mean I’m retired.  Although I am tired and losing my ability to maintain an understanding of this symbol set — the communication method you call the language of [American] English — to record these thoughts in the second decade of the 21st century.

I still keep in touch with my associates, of course.  After all, I have to eat and feed my family.

This very morning, I looked over some data analysis reports and found this tidbit of the future interesting.

A young boy, while watching “Real Steel,” came up with the idea of merging NASCAR, “The Last Starfighter,” “Real Steel,” and Google autonomous vehicles to give underutilised racetrack owners a way to make money when they aren’t hosting main events.

Without the need for human drivers and protective cages, racecars have taken on new shapes, much more interesting than the “win on Sunday, drive on Monday” models that have dominated the sport since its infancy.

Much more fun to watch, what with people sitting at home getting their fifteen seconds of driving their favourite car around the track, randomly picked throughout the race so that no viewer with special gaming equipment at home purchased just for this type of sport can leave the screen because anyone at any time can be picked to take over his or her (or its!) favourite car.

No one knows when other popular racecars have been taken over by autonomous software routines.

Seems like we have been here before, doesn’t it?

Didn’t Formula 1 already patent the invention of the robot driver called Michael Schumacher, discovering that even automatons like Mike deteriorate when pushed to the limit race after race, becoming less efficient, less successful, eventually?

Which brings us to the Olympics.  The sentient being we created for the U.S. Swim Team, Michael Phelps, is still performing well.  The early prototypes such as Muhammad Ali, Nadia Comăneci, and Lance Armstrong gave us trouble in the long run, but we learn from our construction projects no matter what they look like at the end.

How do we create these superstars of sports?

Easy.  We listen to the ignorance of the crowd.  Where they almost hit genius moments, like this writer, Jenna Wortham, who thinks interfaces with computing devices will only take place via our five senses.

Long ago, we learned how to put enhanced computing devices inside every part of the body, making individual body parts smarter, faster, cheaper.  Chemical, organic, undetectable — microorganisms that release designer molecules (phrases like “human growth hormone” are out of fashion, don’t you know?); microorganisms that clean up waste products such as urine, feces and sweat before they’re released from the body; microorganisms that attach to specific cells of the body (muscle tissue, for instance) without flooding the bloodstream with the appearance of banned substances.

Waiting for the slow feedback loop between our sensory organs and computing devices is just a plain waste of time and effort.

For now, we’ll let the populace believe their antiquated interface devices like mobile phones and tablet PCs are somehow making them more productive busybodies — not much better in retrospective than a group of Neanderthals sitting around the person who discovered fire, asking, “Okay, fine!  But can it cut up the meat for us afterward?” — because we know they don’t know better, and are stuck in this time period.

We’ll let dilettante comedians convince their audiences that they’re one step away from the great breakthrough, as long as you pay for their humour-filled advice.

After all, those who can’t see the future have only this moment in which to live.

Well, yes, I’ve told you you also only have this moment in which to live, but then that’s what I wanted you to believe at the moment I wrote it.

How else am I supposed to show you that every moment matters because no moment matters?

Anyway, I’ve an experiment to check.

If you put a water sprinkler in the woods and nobody noticed, would the birds that sipped water from dripping tree leaves have an effect on your future?

If I don’t humour myself, who will?  If I can’t humour myself, who can?

If a movie like “Into The Wild” is probably a false retelling of history, why tell it?

How can I find out?  Use an upcoming holiday trip to test the theories that supercomputers create to entertain themselves.

Repeating thoughts and news of natural events as a form of long-distance-over-time communication is more tiring than I first thought when I was invited to lead the Committee.  They hinted but didn’t tell me that a leader never stops leading.

Lucky me!

Back to my cup of hot tea on a day when 105 deg F is no big deal, watching a tick crawl up my leg and nestle into a break in my skin, releasing chemicals into my bloodstream that affect my immediate future, much less my future 1000 years from now.

Mountain Retreat

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Bill Tewlast prided himself on his do-it-all workshop.

He had inherited his grandfather’s tools when Bill was a boy and spend most hours, when kids were playing outside, apprenticing himself on the intricacies of turning any kind of metal into useful items such as kitchenware, fireplace pokers, rakes, shovels and frames for racing go-karts.

By the time Bill graduated from secondary school, he had the smell of metal in his skin and on his breath.

For graduation, Bill’s parents bought the young, strong man a small place on the edge of town, a former full service petrol station complete with the latest in industrial-scale 3D model making equipment.

For the first few years, Bill worked on restoring antique automobiles, an easy craft for someone with his skill but also very lucrative.

When he couldn’t find a part he needed, or didn’t want to pay the price being asked, he simply forged his own.

As he became more familiar with the CNC functions, he realised his limitations and hired a couple of kids to create an automated, computer-controlled mind reader that could turn Bill’s thoughts directly into workable reality.

The kids had gotten their start in the DIY home modeling business, picking up some used 3D cutters from a Maker Faire.

Bored with their desktop versions of live chess pieces, they turned to the Internet and advertised their services.

Bill brought them on-board, promising to make them millionaires before they were 15.

They informed him they were already millionaires but couldn’t touch their money so they wanted to become billionaires and have that much more money they couldn’t touch, keeping them hungry and creative.

The kids, a twin brother and sister (but not twins to each other), Trynce and Gwythreun, were familiar with the feeling that someone was feeling what you were feeling, usually when you had an odd feeling, so they often dismissed Bill’s comments about feeling someone was reading his thoughts when he was feeling odd.

They explained that after you hook up to a human-machine interface, there is no going back — the more connected you are, the more integrated you feel, and thus it was perfectly normal to feel someone, not the actual machine that reads your thoughts, was reading your thoughts.

Anthropomorphism is as old as our species, and probably older, they explained, having received their PhDs in Anthropological Molecular Studies in Pathological Psychosis from an online university in Tajikistan when they were 12.

Bill nodded and went on to his work, rarely noticing that before he thought he needed a special tool, the tool would appear next to him and then disappear when its unique use was no longer necessary.

One night, Bill fell asleep on the old leather sofa in the office area of the workshop.  Despite his best efforts, he had never created a machine that could fabricate the perfect cup of artificial coffee.  The price of real coffee had shot up so high he decided he’d quit caffeine and try adrenaline for a while.

While he slept, he dreamt.

His dreams were run-of-the-mill fantasies that mixed snippets of reality with imaginary landscapes tied to Bill’s emotional states.  He rarely remembered his dreams and concentrated on his waking thoughts, instead, as profitable as they had been.

But this night, a creature walked into his dream that he had never imagined before, followed by one after another of flying creatures, some big and some small, some harmless and some worse than his worst childhood nightmares.

They congregated around an enormous building that resembled an architect’s version of a kid’s half-cathedral, half-castle cardboard cutout in the backyard.

Some of the flying creatures flapped their hairy wings and caught updrafts, perching on the lookout points and entranceways when they landed.

The creature that walked looked like nothing Bill had ever seen.

It was like a squid but not like a squid.

Its eyes stared at him and they stared at nothing.

Its flesh pulsed in iridescent waves.

It had arms that turned into tentacles, then spikes, next hooks and variations in-between.

It had a shape but then it didn’t have a shape.

It…could…read…his…thoughts!

It was real.

In his dream, he watched as the creature read the thoughts of his about operating the CNC equipment and the conversations he had with the kids about even better ways to use the CNC equipment to create a thinking, autonomous being that they nicknamed Golem of the Gorge.  The creature intrepreted Bill’s memory of the conversation and heard “Gorging Golem.”

Bill tried to wake up but he was held in a subconscious trance.  He wanted to warn the kids.

The creature had figured out that a lot of these CNC machines, both industrial-scale versions like Bill’s and the used MakerBot Thing-O-Matic like the kids had, were connected to the Internet.

The creature was now connected to the Internet.

The creature was upset about something and had one thing on its mind — mischief.

While Bill slept, gargoyles disguised as mailboxes, jewelery, castle/cathedral guardians and temple protectors awoke from the deep sleep of eternity.

They, too, found susceptible people asleep nearby and tapped into their dreams.

They, too, connected to the Internet or slipped past human-based security systems — motion detectors, eye/finger scanners, typewritten passwords — and turned on cutting machines around the world.

Over the next 24 hours, a new army of autonomous creatures entered the lives of Homo sapiens, opening the dawn of the age of {^#!*&”>, the unpronounceable name of the creature from another planet.

{^#!*&”> did not declare itself emperour or dictate new rules.  It simply went about the business of building itself a world focused solely on getting it off this world eventually.

As people woke up from their new nightmares, they scrambled to see what their machines had made.

They found nothing out of the ordinary.

Everything was as normal as the day before.

A few people, those who kept meticulous records of their inventory, noted a shift in the quantity of raw material, but when they investigated, the total inventory was well within tolerance of counting errors.  “To err is human…” they thought to themselves, forgetting the second half of the quote in the rush to solve the mystery of why one night in their lives, their dreams seem to have a life of their own.

{^#!*&”> was satisfied.  If it had a plan, the plan was on schedule.  If the schedule had a milestone, the milestone was a launch date.  There were 13,824 days to go until launch.

After Bill woke up, he decided he had to sell a copy of this CNC interface.  With a machine like this, one could stop running to the store for a rarely-needed tool, saving time, and when one was finished with the tool, the person would throw it into the pile of raw material for the next time a new tool, part or unique gift for that special someone was needed with no time to spare.  He’d call the machine/interface device the R-Cubed, short for Reduce/Reuse/Recycle, just in time to take advantage of the latest craze in sustainable engineering products for the home, office and business.

Trynce and Gwythreun called to say that somehow their Makerbot had reproduced and replaced itself with hidden features they only dreamed possible.

Bill felt a tickle at the edge of one of his thoughts, as if…

{^#!*&”> was smiling, if you could call its skin colour changes the equivalent of a smile, sitting behind the wheel of a truck, simulating a human truck driver in case anyone bothered to pay attention to a person’s hidden under a large sombrero.

Bill wanted to get an R-Cubed into everyone’s hands.  To some, its interface would resemble a mobile phone.  To others, a game controller or TV remote control.  To many more, a computer keyboard.  An R-Cubed interface to suit every taste, reading people’s thoughts, controlling Internet-connected CNC machines and adding to the hidden army of {^#!*&”>.

People would not notice the subjects of their conversations changing as more and more of them connected to the autonomous bots loyal, if such a word will suffice to explain an unbreakable bond between created and creator, to {^#!*&”>.

{^#!*&”> drove on into the heat of the day and throughout the heat of the night — it was taking over this world more quickly than it thought possible.

But then it knew everything is possible when one has a defenseless planet like this to call one’s own.

{^#!*&”> wanted to enjoy this new pleasure of hot wind in its face and strange, rhythmic sounds pouring out of the round objects mounted in doors and other spots of this inedible motorised transportation device.

After a couple of days picking up these beings that beckoned {^#!*&”> to stop, eating them and discharging the hard-to-digest parts, it was getting hungry for something tastier.

With no need to waste energy as a hermaphrodite, laying fertilised eggs in town after town, plenty of its little babies growing up and feeding upon the local livestock, disguised as coyotes, vultures and other native scavenging beasts, {^#!*&”> decided it was time to go into hiding for a while.

Let the plan take its course, with {^#!*&”> checking in by reading thoughts when it wanted, but otherwise acting like whatever beast or flower it felt like at the moment, feeding when it needed.

Hidden in plain view, its genetic and artificial offspring reshaping the world without a single rebellious thought amongst them.

{^#!*&”> liked his creations doing his bidding.

Decisions by committee was for creatures when there were too many of them and not enough resources to share or dominate easily.

Beings like {^#!*&”> took off, disappeared, found worlds to call their own when the danger of committeeism threatened to infect their ways of life.

Even now, {^#!*&”> sensed that thoughts of the dominant species of this planet were making headway into its thoughts.

What is a “committee”?

Eat and be eaten, that is all.

{^#!*&”> drove the truck over a cliff, climbed out of the wreckage and rested in the shade of the crushed cab.

Time is irrelevant.  {^#!*&”> lay there for ten years, hibernating.

Meanwhile, its offspring fought for control of the world, “technological versus organic” the main theme.

Hybrids formed an underground revolutionary movement to eliminate both the sentient machines and the ravenous beings that claimed they were descendants of the Pure One.

But that’s getting ahead of ourselves, isn’t it?

We haven’t lived in that future yet, have we?

Have we?

Ringtonia set down the recent auction winnings of her uncle, who had bought this paper edition, “History of Earth, 2000-2999,” in exchange for a few scenic vistas he had inherited here on Mars from his great-great-great…well, his 10th great-grandparent, the first of the approved GMOs, genetically modified organisms specially designed for life on Mars.

“Uncle, did we win?”

“Win?”

“Yes, was the Uprising our victory or theirs?”

“Ringtonia, nobody wins a war.  However, people are always paid to write history favourable to their ways of life.”

“Was this book written for us, then?”

“That, my dear, is a question, isn’t it?  May I have the book back now?”

Her uncle had grown good at blocking Ringtonia’s thoughts a few years ago.  She had pretended, since “birth,” to be him when she read his thoughts, his not being used to genetically-related material having closer access to his well-guarded thoughts than the general population.

This time, he let slip a thought that the war went in favour of an entity no longer around.  What did that mean?

the deeper I talked, the worse I got into it

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Agirita splashed her feet in the warm waters of the fountain.

When the weather lady said it was supposed to reach 50 deg C, she was surprised.

She did not a cold front was moving through the area.

She tried drinking from the fountain but, as she suspected, it was ocean water pumped in, probably at night through a suspicious pipe she saw at the bottom.  Many of the villages in the city were sneaking ocean water rather than paying for city water to keep the City Manager’s mandate on tourist attraction in full force – “water fountains will operate from dawn to dusk, no expenses spared!.”

Drinking water was too expensive to buy at the market.

With no money, she had no option there.

So she tapped the squid on its “shoulders,” no longer pretending to be dead, and pointed toward her right shoulder.

The squid, or whatever it was, rolled toward her, stood up and set itself carefully into her arms.

It had told her everything but its name.

Where it came from, what is was doing here, why it was urging her to find water fountains.

Although she felt hungry and thirsty, the squid told her it was providing her nourishment as long it was getting fed.

She didn’t ask and it didn’t need to elaborate on what it was feeding.

She was not stupid, just preoccupied.

She had a reputation to keep and if word got out that she’d been responsible for the loss of a boat crew, she’d get no more jobs at the main fishing docks in town.

Others like her had the nearest docks to themselves, their reputations better or worse.

No longer concerned about selling the squid, she walked back out of town, into the suburbs, where the squid could feed unnoticed.

“Hey, señorita!”

Agirita turned to see a schoolmate driving his family’s new truck, covered with graphics and logos of the family business.

“Manuel! Com’ sta?”

“Muy bien.  ‘How you doin?'”

“Ahh…well…okay.”

“What is that?  Is it a rocket bike?”

The squid, while passing by a newsstand, saw a picture of a jet-powered bike and changed its shape, in so doing turning from a bright, metallic red, to chrome-coloured skin.

“Sort of…I found it on the side of the road and I’m trying to get it to a friend’s house out of town.”

“Let me give you a ride.  It’s the least I can do for you helping my cousin fill the security position on his fishing boat.”

“Muchas gracias.  I believe I can walk.”

“No, no, I insist.  My mother AND father would scold me severely if I didn’t offer a ride to an old friend of the family.”

She hesitated.  She really liked Manuel.  But she could feel that the squid was getting hungry again.  Besides, if Manuel was gone, no one could connect her to the boat.

“Okay.”

“I’ll help you with the…”

“No, that’s okay.  I can handle it myself.  You stay inside.”  She thought to herself, knowing the squid was listening, “Please wait until we are out of town to eat.”

Manuel opened the small window behind the driver’s seat and talked about his family business — buying fresh fish and turning them into coated, frozen sticks to sell to the English colony in the suburbs.

“You know, they say that most of the lowlands of Great Britain and Ireland are completely flooded now.”

Agirita nodded her head.  She did not feel like talking.  She said a silent prayer for Manuel, his wife and children.  She did not believe they deserved such a tragic end to Manuel’s life.

The squid was silent on the matter.

Little did she know the squid was weighing which one to eat, the one who had gotten the squid so far on foot without complaining until recently or the new one with the motorised transportation device.  The donkey cart had been okay but the donkey was too tempting to eat when the fish were all gone.

If the “squid” could figure out how to operate the vehicle itself…

Getting old, can’t remember how to insert a table…

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Have you ever forgotten the simplest capabilities such as inserting a table into a blog entry or how to create a macro in a spreadsheet?

Boy, am I getting older, not so much more forgetful, just more stuff to push to the front of my thoughts, letting the less-used thoughts sit in unused neuronal pathways.

That’s why I’m listening to the Cikada String Quartet on earphones while I write this.  Nothing like a little Kaija Saariaho, John Cage and Bruno Maderna to rearrange my thought patterns and make new connections to old habits.

I digress.

I came here to catalog a thought that bugged me while traveling a long distance between two cities.

What is the value of keeping my old car — with no monthly payments and little in the way of major repair costs — in relation to fuel efficiency of more modern vehicles?  Is there a significant difference such that I should spend time hunting investment-quality instruments to “play”?

For instance, my car gets 25 MPG (U.S. Miles Per U.S. Gallon) in the city and 30 MPG on the highway.

Traveling 25,000 miles a year back-and-forth to the city, I burn about 1000 U.S. gallons.

If I had a vehicle that got 40 MPG, I’d burn about 625 gallons.

A difference of 375 gallons, about 1 gallon per day.

What is my monthly cost savings using average cost per gallon for those 375 fossil fuel units?

375 gallons x [$/gallon] /12 = cost savings per month

$/gallon ….. cost savings per month
3 ….. $93.75
4 ….. $125
5 ….. $156.25
8 ….. $250
10 ….. $312.50

Therefore, by not purchasing a new vehicle with more efficient fuel usage, I spend about an extra $100 per month (ignoring new vehicle monthly payments vs. old vehicle average monthly maintenance, insurance, licence fees, etc., which would make the difference negligible (in fact, the costs would be significantly more in the other direction [it saves me money to keep the old car])).

Conclusion: I have no one to impress (no need for the latest gadgets, shiniest rims, sleekest lines, Internet access while driving, surround sound system or safety features), so the old bulldog, the baby BMW 325i, sits at the top of the driveway, ready to burn 25-30 miles per gallon at my request, saving me money in comparison to purchasing a new vehicle, costing me money in comparison to walking or riding a bicycle (since public transportation is nonexistent in my neighbourhood).  Now I can throw away that scrap of paper on which I scribbled the calculations!

Lookie, lookie, lookie

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In the continuing saga of “life finds a way,” we take you into a town called Sauceburg, where children are hooked up to indoor gaming devices or texting tablets, well protected from the scorching ultraviolent rays of the hot sun.

Deep into the labyrinthine lanes, streets, courts, roads and sidewalk-lined, curbed, cobbled, paved and concreted vehicle access paths of suburban housing estates.

Where, except on Mondays and Thursday, when lawn maintenance crews cut, sweep, mow, and blow landscape material, hauling the unapproved composting contents away, babies are raised, teenagers tolerated and adults get their weekly five-minute breaks from the horrors of reality.

Otherwise, during the day, relative quiet hangs in the air, hardly a soul in sight of patrolling drones.

At night, sleep.

Occasionally, a raucous sound pierces the peaceful dreams of parents, driving the stake of fear through their hearts!

Oh my God, Jasmyn!  Drunken young adult drivers weaving through the neighbourhood!!!

Quick! Press the button that lowers your curbside mailbox into its protective underground vault, safe from the screeching tires and solid bumpers of SUVs out of control!

What did you say?

You didn’t follow the Joneses and buy the latest in home protective services, including the Postal Service Access System 3000 that only allows preauthorized, certified delivery of mail and small packages to the pop-up mailbox, activated by the security badges worn by prescreened postmen (and women! (and robots!)), which, after delivery, lowers itself automatically and attaches to the underground conveyor that passes your mail through metal detectors, bomb sniffers, white powder zappers and pest control fumigators to the comfort of your home, your castle, the virtual womb that encases you and your family, well out of reach of those who intend only harm and malice?

Well, that’s too bad.

Because, in that case, this is you:

The Mailbox – Chapter Two

Stay tuned to what happens when your neighbours are in too big of a hurry to investigate the manufacture of mailboxes they stick into the ground because the suburban covenant says they have to have one despite all their correspondence flying back and forth electronically.

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.

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.