More sticks than I can throw a thanks at:
Jordan R. at Steak Out; Theron Smith at Hilton; Annaliese and Amier at UBC; Bubba's Stephenson Dairy Bar; Pam Cooper at Dr. Pugh's office; Dan & Fay; Sweet Tooth Cafe; Rogersville Produce Market (Mountain View Bakery butter - mmmm); Pal's Sudden Service; Hobby Lobby; Angie at Cheddar's; Medical Center Pharmacy w/famous grill & sandwich shop; Drs. Velasco and Dalle-Ave (Lisa Cook, RNP); Blaine Hardware & feed; Brittany at Barley's (Cottonwood Pumpkin, Rogue Shakespeare Stout and Southern Pecan Nut Brown); Brandy and Dale at Shoney's; Alex and Chad Miller via ticketsbyphone; Janice at Walmart; Amis Mill Eatery (interesting story about finding original mill wheel in rubble of old river mill); math teacher and others, including SRO, at SCHS; Mom and Dad; Bill Lee; Mrs. B; Peggy; David and Melinda; the Jerdons
Showing posts with label family. Show all posts
Showing posts with label family. Show all posts
2010-09-16
2010-09-04
We're Gonna Find You
In my backyard, a viral (not aviral) video gone global. No cute cats or laughing babies.
A father's legacy performing well on the field.
Ringing ears. Hoarse voice.
Bistros and Bubba burgers.
Squeaky teeth and onerous onlookers.
A clean bill of health and a bill for poor health.
Acting out a public role to draw attention away from the players in play.
Happy and tired family.
Forty-year anniversary and another Kindle 2, too.
Crown and goose and checkerboard, Jennie and royal stout on a long weekend.
Montreat and PC in a small world after all; pretty eyes, adopted or otherwise; soccer, lacrosse or other sports. Ocean crossings and practical jokes.
Playing DJ for mother and her new family. Tackling pillows in slo mo like the pros.
Sleep...much needed sleep...too worn out to proofread or re-edit...nighty night.
A father's legacy performing well on the field.
Ringing ears. Hoarse voice.
Bistros and Bubba burgers.
Squeaky teeth and onerous onlookers.
A clean bill of health and a bill for poor health.
Acting out a public role to draw attention away from the players in play.
Happy and tired family.
Forty-year anniversary and another Kindle 2, too.
Crown and goose and checkerboard, Jennie and royal stout on a long weekend.
Montreat and PC in a small world after all; pretty eyes, adopted or otherwise; soccer, lacrosse or other sports. Ocean crossings and practical jokes.
Playing DJ for mother and her new family. Tackling pillows in slo mo like the pros.
Sleep...much needed sleep...too worn out to proofread or re-edit...nighty night.
2010-08-28
07734
To keep my funny bone feeling sharp, I do not adjust my TV set. I read, or, to join the flock of me2 techsters, iRead.
To accomplish that, we stopped first at McCutchen's Magnolia House, home of our favorite dedicated owners of the former Blue Willow Cafe, and now reincarnated as a finer version of the former, the antiques cleared out and offering a hot bar, meat with either two and three veggies, with a variety of enticing desserts spread across the top of the bar. Of course, the menu offered inducements for further investigations in hungry haunting before/after visiting UBC.
[Cue segue music] At Unclaimed Baggage Center, I tried on a $1300 100% cashmere men's coat (Giorgio Beverly Hills?) priced at $225 or thereabouts.
Current budget not cut out for cashmere, I opted for a lightweight coat and some pants ($10 to $15 each*) to leave room for books.
Also stopped at Keepsakes on the Scottsboro town square, me picking up another book and my wife some scrapbooking supplies.
Later on, we shopped at Mike's Merchandise in Huntsville and added to the assortment. The list:
-----------------
* Pants: Pierre Cardin Paris, $3.29; Dockers (never worn), $10.59; Kenneth Cole New York, $15.59; Brooks Brothers, $12.59. Coat: Alan Lebow, $15.59.
To accomplish that, we stopped first at McCutchen's Magnolia House, home of our favorite dedicated owners of the former Blue Willow Cafe, and now reincarnated as a finer version of the former, the antiques cleared out and offering a hot bar, meat with either two and three veggies, with a variety of enticing desserts spread across the top of the bar. Of course, the menu offered inducements for further investigations in hungry haunting before/after visiting UBC.
[Cue segue music] At Unclaimed Baggage Center, I tried on a $1300 100% cashmere men's coat (Giorgio Beverly Hills?) priced at $225 or thereabouts.
Current budget not cut out for cashmere, I opted for a lightweight coat and some pants ($10 to $15 each*) to leave room for books.
Also stopped at Keepsakes on the Scottsboro town square, me picking up another book and my wife some scrapbooking supplies.
Later on, we shopped at Mike's Merchandise in Huntsville and added to the assortment. The list:
- Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years (Blue Ribbon Books edition) by Carl Sandburg
- The Debate On The Constitution, Federalist and Antifederalist Speeches, Articles, and Letters During Struggle over Ratification: Part Two
- A People Numerous & Armed: Reflections on the Military Struggle for American Independence, by John Shy
- The Great Decision: Jefferson, Adams, Marshall and The Battle for the Supreme Court, by Cliff Sloan and David McKean
- Shadows At Dawn: A Borderlands Massacre and the Violence of History, by Karl Jacoby
- Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, by John Perkins
- The Spy Within: Larry Chin and China's Penetration of the CIA, by Tod Hoffman
- News of a Kidnapping, by Gabriel García Márquez (translated by Edith Grossman)
- The Great Depression Ahead: How to Prosper in the Crash Following the Greatest Boom in History, by Harry S. Dent, Jr.
- My First Time: a collection of first punk show stories, edited by Chris Duncan
-----------------
* Pants: Pierre Cardin Paris, $3.29; Dockers (never worn), $10.59; Kenneth Cole New York, $15.59; Brooks Brothers, $12.59. Coat: Alan Lebow, $15.59.
2010-08-27
The Falling Leaves of Early Autumn
Nestled...no
Carved...no
Scraped...no
Landscaped into the landscape, a secondary school campus - its property lines defined by a highway and train tracks - hosted the hopes of two opposing football teams last night.
My niece's husband ("nephew in-law"?) coaches the quarterbacks for Hazel Green High School. His team, the Trojans, faced the Madison County High School Tigers as the sun set over the north Alabama hills - the Keel Mountain "range" and Moontown Airport nearby.
Vintage aeroplanes crisscrossed the skies before the game began, as if an air war were to accompany the pending ground war.
As a child of teachers and a husband of a daughter of teachers, I know all too well the appearance and disappearance of parents' faces as their children enter and exit their school years.
There in front of us everywhere are the precious, specific offspring of adults who've invested more time and and money than they'd want to count preparing their kids for the social setting that public/private schooling provides.
Their stories are similar but never the same. Married parents, divorced parents, widows/widowers, adoptive parents, adaptive parents, involved parents, absentee parents...the list goes on and on.
But they're not just parents. They have lives they believe are their own, defined at least partially outside the parental zone.
For instance, around us last night:
For dinner, we ate at a local steakhouse, Oh Bryan's, (food/beverages served by Jessie), where no one in the place is a stranger to anyone else. I know the worker overlooking the salad bar will take an upcoming trip to the Nashville Zoo. I shook hands with people I don't know although we acted as if we were best friends.
You can't pay for that kind of local friendliness, friendliness that's missing at the political/corporate infighting levels.
And that's why I'm here everyday, because seven billion people are my local friends and neighbours. I am saddened that opportunists make extremist speeches in order to popularise themselves with "like-minded" folks, ingratiating others and making enemies where enemies are not needed.
Drug cartels I can deal with, because politics are unnecessary where guns and money speak louder than words.
I can play the game of subtle political posturing as well, knowing that subcultures need feelings of exclusivity, BUT without raising their fears and anxieties too high.
At lunch yesterday, Miranda, our server at Beauregard's, shared her secret to success with us. She's taking college courses, paying for them with her own money, so that she'll have no debt when she graduates from college with a degree in special education about two years from now. Her happiness and pride in supporting herself shines on her face and in her gray-green eyes.
I sat on the bleachers with the parents, wondering which one(s) of their children will figure out how to self-finance post-secondary school training tracks pointing toward lucrative careers.
Hazel Green pulled off the win last night at Madison County, 7-21. The young men on both sides chased and pounded each other into the ground like warriors. Their seasons barely started, they'll use lessons from this game to start discussions about where they want to be after their secondary school playing years are over.
As the planes buzzed overhead, as the trains chugged by, as a single helicopter flew a little too close to the stadium, I wondered about my own career and what my parents would have thought 30 years ago as I took off my graduation cap and gown to start my post-secondary school life.
Certainly, I am not where I thought I would be with a fully-financed Navy ROTC scholarship at Georgia Tech in my hand back then.
I imagined myself a storyteller from age five onward, writing when and where I can/could. That's where I've always been, my career track a consequence of putting food on the table and a little bit more than that. That's where I'll always be.
How many children in primary and secondary schools know who they are and who they will be from moment to moment? How many parents can say the same?
Circumstances do not make us who we are. Circumstances show to others what we're made of. Writers and thinkers have stated and restated those facts. Non-linguistic animals demonstrate those facts from birth. So do we.
You bring who you are to the game. You take away from the game an appreciation for others and what they're made of. If children know that innately, why do we adults so easily forget?
Isn't it time we relearned who we are and willingly/openly shared ourselves with those who have no want/desire to be what we ignorantly label enemies, who are really just temporary opponents in a game?
Carved...no
Scraped...no
Landscaped into the landscape, a secondary school campus - its property lines defined by a highway and train tracks - hosted the hopes of two opposing football teams last night.
My niece's husband ("nephew in-law"?) coaches the quarterbacks for Hazel Green High School. His team, the Trojans, faced the Madison County High School Tigers as the sun set over the north Alabama hills - the Keel Mountain "range" and Moontown Airport nearby.
Vintage aeroplanes crisscrossed the skies before the game began, as if an air war were to accompany the pending ground war.
As a child of teachers and a husband of a daughter of teachers, I know all too well the appearance and disappearance of parents' faces as their children enter and exit their school years.
There in front of us everywhere are the precious, specific offspring of adults who've invested more time and and money than they'd want to count preparing their kids for the social setting that public/private schooling provides.
Their stories are similar but never the same. Married parents, divorced parents, widows/widowers, adoptive parents, adaptive parents, involved parents, absentee parents...the list goes on and on.
But they're not just parents. They have lives they believe are their own, defined at least partially outside the parental zone.
For instance, around us last night:
- Dee, whose husband received an award of excellence earlier in the day from General Ann Dunwoody, head of the U.S. Army Materiel Command at Redstone Arsenal and the first female four-star general (if you want to bring up good, tough-but-friendly female role models, I'll take 1 Gen. Dunwoody for every 100 Sarah Palins). [Gen Dunwoody comes from a long line of soldiers, reports the BBC. ” ‘A Dunwoody has fought in every American war since the Revolution,’ said army chief of staff Gen George Casey.]
- Meanwhile, a fellow next to me, a happy father, has two sons on the football team and one daughter in the marching band's flag corps. The father retired from the military and now works as a logistics manager for LG. His wife, unable to attend the football game because of a business meeting, is CFO for a small international firm. They hope their daughter will get an engineering degree at university.
For dinner, we ate at a local steakhouse, Oh Bryan's, (food/beverages served by Jessie), where no one in the place is a stranger to anyone else. I know the worker overlooking the salad bar will take an upcoming trip to the Nashville Zoo. I shook hands with people I don't know although we acted as if we were best friends.
You can't pay for that kind of local friendliness, friendliness that's missing at the political/corporate infighting levels.
And that's why I'm here everyday, because seven billion people are my local friends and neighbours. I am saddened that opportunists make extremist speeches in order to popularise themselves with "like-minded" folks, ingratiating others and making enemies where enemies are not needed.
Drug cartels I can deal with, because politics are unnecessary where guns and money speak louder than words.
I can play the game of subtle political posturing as well, knowing that subcultures need feelings of exclusivity, BUT without raising their fears and anxieties too high.
At lunch yesterday, Miranda, our server at Beauregard's, shared her secret to success with us. She's taking college courses, paying for them with her own money, so that she'll have no debt when she graduates from college with a degree in special education about two years from now. Her happiness and pride in supporting herself shines on her face and in her gray-green eyes.
I sat on the bleachers with the parents, wondering which one(s) of their children will figure out how to self-finance post-secondary school training tracks pointing toward lucrative careers.
Hazel Green pulled off the win last night at Madison County, 7-21. The young men on both sides chased and pounded each other into the ground like warriors. Their seasons barely started, they'll use lessons from this game to start discussions about where they want to be after their secondary school playing years are over.
As the planes buzzed overhead, as the trains chugged by, as a single helicopter flew a little too close to the stadium, I wondered about my own career and what my parents would have thought 30 years ago as I took off my graduation cap and gown to start my post-secondary school life.
Certainly, I am not where I thought I would be with a fully-financed Navy ROTC scholarship at Georgia Tech in my hand back then.
I imagined myself a storyteller from age five onward, writing when and where I can/could. That's where I've always been, my career track a consequence of putting food on the table and a little bit more than that. That's where I'll always be.
How many children in primary and secondary schools know who they are and who they will be from moment to moment? How many parents can say the same?
Circumstances do not make us who we are. Circumstances show to others what we're made of. Writers and thinkers have stated and restated those facts. Non-linguistic animals demonstrate those facts from birth. So do we.
You bring who you are to the game. You take away from the game an appreciation for others and what they're made of. If children know that innately, why do we adults so easily forget?
Isn't it time we relearned who we are and willingly/openly shared ourselves with those who have no want/desire to be what we ignorantly label enemies, who are really just temporary opponents in a game?
2010-08-26
One, Big, Happy Characterless Family
And you just thought it was your imagination that your kids can't remember family history you deem most important. What if they couldn't even remember how to write history in their native language?:
Amnesia or Cultural Revolution?
2010-08-23
Stan's Extreme "Going Out Of Business" Sale!!!
Pretty soon I will celebrate 25 years of legal residence with the woman I met when we were 12 years old at a summer camp (i.e., my wife). She would like to celebrate by going on an exotic holiday trip with me or demonstrating some other method of recognising that we've enjoyed good days and bad days together for about 9,125 days.
Twenty-five years. What can happen in that many revolutions of Earth around our most important star?
People have died but many more people were born in that time period. Could we say that birth has had a greater effect on our species' existence than death? Perhaps. More likely, we'll point to historical records that detail the warring nature of primates like us, rather than the ordinary joys and discoveries of new children in our lives.
If we look at ourselves as a species in toto, we can address population growth from a view of life without border constraints (because border disputes are a great source of excuses for starting wars ("the grass is always greener on the other side")).
[I pause here to consider the "natural" behaviour of our species long ago (pretending to erase 1,000,000+ years of civilisation development), when we were more a reactive species than a proactive one, then mentally follow our progress as we learned to hitch a ride onto the resources we harnessed around us and innocently took control of the local environment, and finally look at us 100,000 years from now when we'll be nothing like we are now. Will words like capitalism, communism, socialism, democracy, oligarchy, monarchy, dictatorship and totalitarianism be remembered? Absolutely not.]
What if you could look at most future scenarios and chart courses today that lead you toward any or all of them?
The cry of the wren outside your window would have as much of an effect on the future as anything else.
Twenty-five years of staying loyal to the concept of matrimony. Some would call it sexually monotonous or morally uninteresting (as in the quote, “The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues.”).
Of course, marriage is a relatively recent addition to our growing millennial-long list of acts of civility.
Essentially, marriage was one way to [try to] guarantee that two people will, barring major illness or unexpected death, raise their offspring together without forcing their children's complete care onto the already-full lives of others.
Is monogamy an inherent genetic trait? I don't know. In any case, our thoughts - the superset of ideas we pass from one generation to the next - have superseded the trait, if it exists/existed.
I have faced physical sexual temptations in my married life and resisted all of them. Does that make me any more or less interesting to others? I don't know.
Marriage is the only commitment I've ever made that I intended to stick with. Whether it was my general cultural training, Boy Scout training, religious training, and/or genetic disposition that encouraged that point of view, I don't know and it doesn't matter to me. The fact remains that my life partner and I chose each other after years of being friends.
We haven't had children together so we've shared our lives and bounty with nieces, nephews and the community at large, instead, while remaining physically/mentally faithful to one another (I admit I have made "what if" comparisons throughout my married life but have never found anyone more compatible than my wife).
I've met people who shouldn't marry and shouldn't have married. But at the same time, they have been or could have been good parents. Therefore, marriage and parenthood are not necessarily synonymous.
While watching a family of titmouse birds make their way through the forest past our house, I think about the family that is my species spread around Earth.
How do we as a species reconcile civil/religious differences in the definition of marriage and parenting? Can we?
If life is a series of coincidences, accidents and other intersections of space and time that from at least one perspective a person could label a "black swan"...
If up to 40% of births are tied to extramarital encounters...
Will a "Brave New World" or "Matrix" future of society-in-general raising our children from birth redefine the civil union between two people?
Or will we, as an expanding population of ever-more-diverse specialised subcultures, always have conflicting views that provide individuals the right to choose which one works best for them in the subcultures they wish to live?
You see, I have considered this issue here before, so I wonder, if this is my planet, why others who might have read my words or been unknowingly influenced by them, would question the location of a religious center in which people who also fear extremism as much as others (after all, the 9/11 attack hijacked their religion from them) promote civil unions similar to my view.
At last, I find myself at the bottom of this blog entry knowing none of this really matters. Whether the Ottoman Empire, the Mayan Empire, the British Empire, the Russian Empire or the Mongol Empire reappears in a new form (eventually showing once again that there's no such thing as "too big to fail"), we're still one species of individuals figuring out how to make our way through life relatively free of oppression in order to live as children and/or parents, married or otherwise. Ultimately, these are just a few paragraphs of procrastination while I momentarily put aside thoughts of how/where to get the money to finance a fancy 25th wedding anniversary celebration with my wonderful wife.
Twenty-five years. What can happen in that many revolutions of Earth around our most important star?
People have died but many more people were born in that time period. Could we say that birth has had a greater effect on our species' existence than death? Perhaps. More likely, we'll point to historical records that detail the warring nature of primates like us, rather than the ordinary joys and discoveries of new children in our lives.
If we look at ourselves as a species in toto, we can address population growth from a view of life without border constraints (because border disputes are a great source of excuses for starting wars ("the grass is always greener on the other side")).
[I pause here to consider the "natural" behaviour of our species long ago (pretending to erase 1,000,000+ years of civilisation development), when we were more a reactive species than a proactive one, then mentally follow our progress as we learned to hitch a ride onto the resources we harnessed around us and innocently took control of the local environment, and finally look at us 100,000 years from now when we'll be nothing like we are now. Will words like capitalism, communism, socialism, democracy, oligarchy, monarchy, dictatorship and totalitarianism be remembered? Absolutely not.]
What if you could look at most future scenarios and chart courses today that lead you toward any or all of them?
The cry of the wren outside your window would have as much of an effect on the future as anything else.
Twenty-five years of staying loyal to the concept of matrimony. Some would call it sexually monotonous or morally uninteresting (as in the quote, “The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues.”).
Of course, marriage is a relatively recent addition to our growing millennial-long list of acts of civility.
Essentially, marriage was one way to [try to] guarantee that two people will, barring major illness or unexpected death, raise their offspring together without forcing their children's complete care onto the already-full lives of others.
Is monogamy an inherent genetic trait? I don't know. In any case, our thoughts - the superset of ideas we pass from one generation to the next - have superseded the trait, if it exists/existed.
I have faced physical sexual temptations in my married life and resisted all of them. Does that make me any more or less interesting to others? I don't know.
Marriage is the only commitment I've ever made that I intended to stick with. Whether it was my general cultural training, Boy Scout training, religious training, and/or genetic disposition that encouraged that point of view, I don't know and it doesn't matter to me. The fact remains that my life partner and I chose each other after years of being friends.
We haven't had children together so we've shared our lives and bounty with nieces, nephews and the community at large, instead, while remaining physically/mentally faithful to one another (I admit I have made "what if" comparisons throughout my married life but have never found anyone more compatible than my wife).
I've met people who shouldn't marry and shouldn't have married. But at the same time, they have been or could have been good parents. Therefore, marriage and parenthood are not necessarily synonymous.
While watching a family of titmouse birds make their way through the forest past our house, I think about the family that is my species spread around Earth.
How do we as a species reconcile civil/religious differences in the definition of marriage and parenting? Can we?
If life is a series of coincidences, accidents and other intersections of space and time that from at least one perspective a person could label a "black swan"...
If up to 40% of births are tied to extramarital encounters...
Will a "Brave New World" or "Matrix" future of society-in-general raising our children from birth redefine the civil union between two people?
Or will we, as an expanding population of ever-more-diverse specialised subcultures, always have conflicting views that provide individuals the right to choose which one works best for them in the subcultures they wish to live?
You see, I have considered this issue here before, so I wonder, if this is my planet, why others who might have read my words or been unknowingly influenced by them, would question the location of a religious center in which people who also fear extremism as much as others (after all, the 9/11 attack hijacked their religion from them) promote civil unions similar to my view.
At last, I find myself at the bottom of this blog entry knowing none of this really matters. Whether the Ottoman Empire, the Mayan Empire, the British Empire, the Russian Empire or the Mongol Empire reappears in a new form (eventually showing once again that there's no such thing as "too big to fail"), we're still one species of individuals figuring out how to make our way through life relatively free of oppression in order to live as children and/or parents, married or otherwise. Ultimately, these are just a few paragraphs of procrastination while I momentarily put aside thoughts of how/where to get the money to finance a fancy 25th wedding anniversary celebration with my wonderful wife.
2010-08-14
Beknighted Belatedly, Nevermore
Some results of delayed gratification (i.e., birthday gifts from my sister and her family):
Saw a former student of mine from my ITT Tech teaching days last night at a showing of "The Expendables." Glad he's expecting to graduate in the spring, and as he said, I wish I was there to teach the students another class or two. Reality is more than regurgitating facts from a book. Education is more than proving you can absorb material at a high rate of speed and reform it into test results and senior projects. We're social beings, not robots.
A thanks to Roy at Walmart, who's always greeting us at the front door.
A comment to the Yes Men. If you're going to make fun of the WTO, then you shouldn't copyright your film - it turns your satirical parody into pure hypocrisy. But maybe that was your point - can't even take comedy seriously. However, I do - that's why I give mine away (thanks to the generosity of my wife).
- "Edwurd Fudwupper Fibbed Big" by Berkeley Breathed
- "The Bodacious Book of Succulence" by Sark
- Two via B&N gift card: "on evil" by Terry Eagleton, and "10 Books Every Conservative Must Read" by Benjamin Wiker, Ph.D.
- The Scream 3D postcard
- Facsimile of E.A. Poe's handwritten copy of "The Raven"
- Hot sauce and hot chow-chow
Saw a former student of mine from my ITT Tech teaching days last night at a showing of "The Expendables." Glad he's expecting to graduate in the spring, and as he said, I wish I was there to teach the students another class or two. Reality is more than regurgitating facts from a book. Education is more than proving you can absorb material at a high rate of speed and reform it into test results and senior projects. We're social beings, not robots.
A thanks to Roy at Walmart, who's always greeting us at the front door.
A comment to the Yes Men. If you're going to make fun of the WTO, then you shouldn't copyright your film - it turns your satirical parody into pure hypocrisy. But maybe that was your point - can't even take comedy seriously. However, I do - that's why I give mine away (thanks to the generosity of my wife).
2010-08-11
Modular Emotion System
Pardon my delay in responding to some of your inquiries - recent airplane travel required the removal of my brain implant. Reinstallation took longer than usual to reacquire normative parameter settings.
Question: if a commander does not support his senior enlisted staff, should he re-educate himself or receive reprimands? Surely, he is not insuperordinate? Don't make me call out lack of respect in the chain of command.
If a worker is credited for work she did not perform, should her superiours' superiours receive detailed reports suggesting appropriate action to save a critical project from imploding due to low morale and high stress amongst her coworkers?
In my father's youth, he was told that the horse owned by his Granddad (Frank E.) had race horse blood (i.e., bloodline). He would not let another horse-drawn vehicle pass him. He would speed up on his own to prevent that. That must have been the "hot-rodding" of the day. My father's grandmother (Mamaw) was known as a fast driver of the "horse and buggy" and the Model T Ford that succeeded the horse, so fast driving must be in our blood as well! Horse and Model T were gone before my father's birth. In the post-Depression and WWII days, they walked!
If you could eat regolith to feed your metallic liquid "blood" system based on redesigned DNA, would you? If you no longer had to breathe, what would your sense of time feel like?
More as it develops... but then again, who's using camera film these days? You are if you don't want electronic records.
Question: if a commander does not support his senior enlisted staff, should he re-educate himself or receive reprimands? Surely, he is not insuperordinate? Don't make me call out lack of respect in the chain of command.
If a worker is credited for work she did not perform, should her superiours' superiours receive detailed reports suggesting appropriate action to save a critical project from imploding due to low morale and high stress amongst her coworkers?
In my father's youth, he was told that the horse owned by his Granddad (Frank E.) had race horse blood (i.e., bloodline). He would not let another horse-drawn vehicle pass him. He would speed up on his own to prevent that. That must have been the "hot-rodding" of the day. My father's grandmother (Mamaw) was known as a fast driver of the "horse and buggy" and the Model T Ford that succeeded the horse, so fast driving must be in our blood as well! Horse and Model T were gone before my father's birth. In the post-Depression and WWII days, they walked!
If you could eat regolith to feed your metallic liquid "blood" system based on redesigned DNA, would you? If you no longer had to breathe, what would your sense of time feel like?
More as it develops... but then again, who's using camera film these days? You are if you don't want electronic records.
2010-08-08
Seeds and Asphalt
While road courses dominate the airwaves, crowds dominated the lanes of the watermelon festival in what only the meteorologists would call a cold front. Thanks to Bev Mazursky's homemade ice cream, Ten Thousand Villages' informative volunteers like Sheelagh and Rupa Singh, the band Offering in which my nephew's friend Sanannah plays violin, Plan 9 Music, the World of Mirth and vendering vendors sweating under tent booth roofs selling to the fiery frenzy that is the competitive taps, claps and timbre of street music.
Congrats to Montoya and Dario who had more will power today. Wish I could see Amish country near the Mid-Ohio track again.
Anyone had a hankerin' for an atomic stop at Quaker Lube lately?
Why do I crave a low-slung Lotus right now?
Congrats to Montoya and Dario who had more will power today. Wish I could see Amish country near the Mid-Ohio track again.
Anyone had a hankerin' for an atomic stop at Quaker Lube lately?
Why do I crave a low-slung Lotus right now?
2010-08-05
Guangdong
What happened between 1982 and 1986 was documented for the Ones Who Go Before You.
Sounds too melodramatic for me but that's what they told me (no, not "THEY" or "THEM," just people like the rest of us).
I remember when I interviewed for a position in the troop that would represent the local Boy Scouts attending the national jamboree. One of the interviewers said, "I'm keeping my eye on you." That thought bounces around and resurfaces when I least expect it. In fact, I know I repeat it in my thoughts and in my notes occasionally.
Why repeat it? Because it's what adults seem to like to do: pick out a promising person, say a few words of encouragement and watch the effect.
A robin shoves its offspring out of the nest. Same thing.
A female spider consumes its mate. Not the same thing.
Which brings me (takes me or carries me, colloquially speaking) to the subject of rumours.
"I know what you did last summer."
"I saw the way you [mis]treated your employee."
"I know what those bruises and prick marks indicate."
"Great job on that speech you gave the other day!"
"No one has the spreadsheet macro programming skills like you."
"Keep up the good work!"
"Another 50 reps and you'll be strong enough to play first string."
"Sorry, but we're going to have to call in your bets - your debt limit is too high for the boss to ignore, even for an important member of the family like you. You know, if you don't pay, personal family members of yours will mysteriously burn in a house fire, right?"
Now, what exactly do those sentences tell you? Could you create a set of rumours that told a story for every one of them? Why don't teachers give you assignments like that?
How many of us would want to see all the rumours surrounding our stages of growth?
I heard many about me growing up and savoured the variety, ignoring most of them because I didn't have time to address the creative thoughts of idle minds, mine being busy creating its own set of humorous anecdotes about fellow members of the subcultures through which I passed.
Thus, when I hear about bullying in school, I wonder why young people let themselves worry about what others say about them. I mean, after all, strength is in holding your ground and raising yourself on a pedestal, not waiting for others to knock you down (verbally speaking; physical bullying is another matter-against-matter, states-of-energy engagement that takes requisite skill in collecting strong friends and a wickedly complimentary mouth).
If you go with the crowd, then you're subject to mass/mob rule.
If you go with your instincts, as finely tuned as mine were by my loving parents, then you don't need the crowd for self-reliance and self-approval, knowing that family is the most important guiding light for the trailblazing path you make.
My mother and father didn't raise me based on rumours they heard. They raised me based on direct experience. They provided my firm foundation for me being me, no matter who I would be in the eyes of others.
My mother and father also instilled those beliefs in many generations of students - my mother teaching the first year in primary school and my father teaching college/university courses for adults (in age if not in action) - many students coming back to tell my parents how much they appreciated my parents' strong roles in their happy, successful lives.
So I guess I could say I learned to listen to my adult teachers and the supportive actions of my friends, not the vapourish rumours passing up and down the school hallways.
Of course, as an adult, I've learned there's a way to rule others using rumours (i.e., often the incomplete, first impressions that people get about their peers) but it is a precarious form of leadership, directing the fickle flow of the masses on macro- and microscales simultaneously. Far better to rule by facts, as brutally honest as they can be sometimes, depending on a sufficient number of individuals to see truth rather than flake out on the fiction of popular crowd movements (in other words, acting as anchor points for you when the inevitable furies and storms blow rapidly through rumour mills).
Sounds too melodramatic for me but that's what they told me (no, not "THEY" or "THEM," just people like the rest of us).
I remember when I interviewed for a position in the troop that would represent the local Boy Scouts attending the national jamboree. One of the interviewers said, "I'm keeping my eye on you." That thought bounces around and resurfaces when I least expect it. In fact, I know I repeat it in my thoughts and in my notes occasionally.
Why repeat it? Because it's what adults seem to like to do: pick out a promising person, say a few words of encouragement and watch the effect.
A robin shoves its offspring out of the nest. Same thing.
A female spider consumes its mate. Not the same thing.
Which brings me (takes me or carries me, colloquially speaking) to the subject of rumours.
"I know what you did last summer."
"I saw the way you [mis]treated your employee."
"I know what those bruises and prick marks indicate."
"Great job on that speech you gave the other day!"
"No one has the spreadsheet macro programming skills like you."
"Keep up the good work!"
"Another 50 reps and you'll be strong enough to play first string."
"Sorry, but we're going to have to call in your bets - your debt limit is too high for the boss to ignore, even for an important member of the family like you. You know, if you don't pay, personal family members of yours will mysteriously burn in a house fire, right?"
Now, what exactly do those sentences tell you? Could you create a set of rumours that told a story for every one of them? Why don't teachers give you assignments like that?
How many of us would want to see all the rumours surrounding our stages of growth?
I heard many about me growing up and savoured the variety, ignoring most of them because I didn't have time to address the creative thoughts of idle minds, mine being busy creating its own set of humorous anecdotes about fellow members of the subcultures through which I passed.
Thus, when I hear about bullying in school, I wonder why young people let themselves worry about what others say about them. I mean, after all, strength is in holding your ground and raising yourself on a pedestal, not waiting for others to knock you down (verbally speaking; physical bullying is another matter-against-matter, states-of-energy engagement that takes requisite skill in collecting strong friends and a wickedly complimentary mouth).
If you go with the crowd, then you're subject to mass/mob rule.
If you go with your instincts, as finely tuned as mine were by my loving parents, then you don't need the crowd for self-reliance and self-approval, knowing that family is the most important guiding light for the trailblazing path you make.
My mother and father didn't raise me based on rumours they heard. They raised me based on direct experience. They provided my firm foundation for me being me, no matter who I would be in the eyes of others.
My mother and father also instilled those beliefs in many generations of students - my mother teaching the first year in primary school and my father teaching college/university courses for adults (in age if not in action) - many students coming back to tell my parents how much they appreciated my parents' strong roles in their happy, successful lives.
So I guess I could say I learned to listen to my adult teachers and the supportive actions of my friends, not the vapourish rumours passing up and down the school hallways.
Of course, as an adult, I've learned there's a way to rule others using rumours (i.e., often the incomplete, first impressions that people get about their peers) but it is a precarious form of leadership, directing the fickle flow of the masses on macro- and microscales simultaneously. Far better to rule by facts, as brutally honest as they can be sometimes, depending on a sufficient number of individuals to see truth rather than flake out on the fiction of popular crowd movements (in other words, acting as anchor points for you when the inevitable furies and storms blow rapidly through rumour mills).
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