Blessings

Its the time of year once again for counting blessings, and I am reminded that, living in the greatest country on the Earth, faults and all, I have so many blessings to count again this year.

I am blessed that I am truly free, that I can choose to go where I wish, be what I want within my means, to say what I wish to say about just about anything I want. I must look around me, and count the number of my worldly brethren that cannot enjoy these most basic of blessings.

I am blessed in that I can vote to choose my leaders, even if my choice may be overshadowed by the interests of Big Money or Big Corporations that will always have more resources than the public, and will always have more influence in swaying the public's opinion on an issue or a leader; I am blessed that they must always influence ME, and not ignore me as a non-being. I am the focus of their money and efforts, because I have the vote that they covet.

I am blessed that I can choose to not travel by airplane if I am offended by my country's misguided efforts to combat terrorism. I am also blessed in that I am free to pursue efforts to eliminate those offensive and mostly ineffective screening methods for domestic flights by choosing not to fly, hoping that the industry itself will eventually effect a change with the TSA for more reasonable methods.

I am blessed to be able to, and proud to, pay my taxes, in order to support my government and the programs enacted by the Congress elected by the people of the United States, the state of Florida, and my local community. At the same time, I am fortunate to live in a country where I am free to point out fraud and mishandling of tax money without fear of imprisonment or harm to my person.

I am blessed to belong to a middle class, where I earn enough money to own a small dwelling, a nice car, and some nice belongings, in a community safe from fear of crime. I am fortunate to have a good job that is, for the moment, safe from layoff or elimination, and is fulfilling emotionally and challenging mentally.

I am blessed to live in a country where the government is stable and safe from being overturned by enemies foreign or domestic, or safe from collapse from within, no matter what pundits or political rivals my cry from time to time; they have been doing so for two hundred and twenty years.

I am blessed to live in a place where my years of military service is celebrated, even while knowing that it is not the veteran that guarantees our freedom, it is the Constitution that guarantees our freedom.

I am blessed to be able to say the Pledge of Allegiance with my class each morning, and I am blessed to be free to take exception to the "Under God" clause, and still mean the rest of the Pledge without reservation.

I am blessed to be free to follow the religion of my choice, or no religion at all, or several religions at the same time. I am free enough in this country, and my privacy cherished enough by my fellow countrymen, that few people, if anyone, knows my true religious affiliation.

And finally, I am blessed to be able to spend Thanksgiving with my family, to see my brother again who I do not see nearly enough, and to spend time with my mother, and to see and smell the land and breathe the air in Tennessee, which I miss more than I care to say.

Happy Holiday Season.

- Crow

Airport Sercurity

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin

With the current bruhaha about airport security, I am reminded that the whole ball of wax began with an act of terrorism, which became the focus of a nation filled with hatred and fear. Ten years later, the fear remains, a fear so great that a proud, free people will bend and submit to a degrading scheme of personal violation, loss of privacy of their effects, and disposal of the rights of due process of law that the fore-fathers of that people had fought and died to obtain and maintain for the people over the last two hundred and thirty years.

Groups or individuals engage in terrorism to change the behavior of a larger group or institution. By using terror, a smaller, less well armed contingent can effect this change in an efficient, less expensive manner than can be done with a larger, more heavily armed force. The terrorist uses fear as his weapon; actual casualties are minimal. The promise of future *possible* casualties is the real weapon. There may never be another one, there may be a few. The nature of the terrorists environment, there can never be a large number of casualties; the terrorists just don't have the resources.

The casualty count in this, the Forever War, is minuscule compared to any major war we have fought in our history, yet our politicians still bang the drum, beating the people into a religious froth to ensure the terrorists' weapon is still sharp: Fear. Instead of letting our laws and our law enforcement handle a problem of criminal conduct, our leaders have made it one of military conflict where our military is ill suited to do battle. How do you combat the real enemy, Fear, with tanks and guns?

Instead we lay upon the altar of sacrifice our Liberties. Never before have I had to carry proof within my own country of the place of my birth. Never before have I had to allow another person, unknown to me, to rummage through my personal belongings, and to touch me when I did not want to be touched. And worse, I have no choice but to submit to this; I don't even have the option to turn around and leave, I have to submit or be detained without a warrant or due process. I have to submit to this, or stop traveling in my own country, not just overseas, but in my own community.

I hope this nightmare is temporary, and that in the years to come, historians will look back on these times as one of those dangerous periods when Americans almost let their freedoms go, but then, somehow, managed to get them back again. But my own Fear is that this time, they have gone for good. When I watch the officials at work, I see for the first time in my life the workings of an Internal Police, answerable to no one but the Secretary of their order. I do not see how Liberty can stand.

Crow.

Cowardice

It amazes and saddens me to watch the frenzy whipped up over Muslims, mosques, burkas, and all things Islamic in our (Western) world today. The worlds fastest growing religion seems poised to "take over the world," one country at a time. Commentators here in the US and Canada monger fear and hate, pointing to the least significant thing, making it a cause to rally against.

We still call to mind images of 9/11, ten years after the event. Does no one remember this war when the first battles were fought, the bombing of Berlin night club and Rome airport? Does PO2 Steadman, one of the first casualties, not deserve a place of honor in this war? And the bombing of the Marines in Beirut, and answer to our bombing Libya from the sea?

The current world situation has little to do with religion, and everything to do with power. Islamic conservatives also happen to be in power in several countries, and they are, as counties do, trying to extend their influence in trade and governance over their neighbors. We do it, thought force of arms; that is our way. They do it through subversive methods, involving patriots and zealots into a cause they manufacture to be religious; that is their way. The story is the same, written by a different hand, that is all.

Should we be in Iraq? Unreservedly, no. That war was a simple, open grab for another people's lands and ways. We had no idea as to what we were getting into, or what we were going to do once we get their.

Should we be in Afghanistan? Much more complicated. This is when the enemy has it's roots, and in a modern world, borders are vanishing in spite of dieing efforts of some to shore them up. The future is borderless. If culture, trade, and finance becomes truly global, then borders will be meaningless lines on maps, ignored by people and money. But for now, we know where the bad guys are, we just can't root him out.

Realize that in all cases where two antagonists meet in conflict, even if one is wholly victorious over the other, just meeting in the contest changes all parties. Even all the while, as we try the Islamic zealots, the meeting of cultures is changing Islam. If we can get over our moral cowardice, and meet the issues head-on, we will find a people changed from those we first met at Beirut, and Libya, and finally 9/11. Maybe we should try talking a little before we continue the shooting.

Time, redux

My recuperation in Canada is now over. I must return to the world of the working this week, a long trip of several days drive, then almost immediately into the the workplace fire. Am I ready?

A little more than two months ago I was a slab of meat on a hospital bed, unable to move my legs, and scared to death. Today I can walk and move about, mostly without the use of a cane if in the house. I have been able to stay the whole day without having a nap, another improvement. Yet I still don't sleep through the night, medication be damned.

I have worries that maybe it is time to "pull the plug," to change to a more sedentary lifestyle, one that allows for naps and daysleep, and moving about only if I feel up to it. Maybe retirement is the answer after all.

I feel there is more to give. I love teaching, and want to continue to do so. The youth of my community are reaching out for roll models, for teachers that understand and want to lead them, not yell at them. I have an intense sense of self-reward form watching the young people in my classes grow, even over just the one year I have them, and I feel privileged to be in some small way connected to their lives.

I go back into it with a profound feeling of sadness that I do not think I will be able to handle the pressures and give-and-take of everyday work. What then? I fear.

I fear that life is changing me, changing around me, and I have no control. All the things I was warned about years ago when I got this wound originally, after 20 years, are all coming true. I thought I had beaten the Beast, that I was leading a normal, fruitful life after all. Then, it comes back to me, changing me, beating me after all.

I tell my students that sometimes things happen over which we have no control. Prepare for life, I tell them, and meet it head on. Now it is time to take some of my own advise.

Crow.

Sudbury Saturday Night

We spent the week in Sudbury, Ontario, the site of what remains the richest combined nickel and copper deposits in the world, along with platinum, gold, gallium, and one of the world's only supplies of rhodium. We toured one of the older mines, which has been modernized to show how mines are run today, which was something just this side of profound.

The tunnels were chiseled out of hard granite and gneiss, with wire mess holding up the walls, and electric light showing the way. There was water dripping constantly, and we walked in shallow puddles of it throughout the tour. I suddenly got a real appreciation for water removal in mines!

We also got to sit in a rescue station for a few minutes... quite eerie, and when the guide turned off the lights to give the visitors a feel for how dark it is several hundred feet under the surface, I was back on the boat in a flash. The lights were off only seconds, but I had already gone through my emergency drill for the sub in my mind, and knew what my next move was when they came back on. Some things leave the body, but never leave the mind.

Most profound of the whole trip is that all this geology for the region, the nickel bearing ores, the igneous and metamorphic rock in the middle of a sedamentary formation with no volcanoes, is all from a meteor strike about 2 billion years ago that hit with enough violence to change the rock in the earth for a 200-300 km radius, and to simultaneously deposit huge amounts of metals. The nickel, copper, platinum, and especially the rhodium, are all star-stuff, all from "out there."

Exploration in the "Old Days" relied on the good eye of a trained geologist, and a lot of luck. Now they have sonar, underground radar, and computers. Today, a full 100 years after the first mine was begun, the Sudbury nickel deposit has been mapped, and it is a lens of material that has not even been started to be mined yet! They haven't even gotten to the really good purity stuff, according to models of the ground. Wow. Wow.

What they DID learn in the 100 years of nickel mining here is that the thinks men do can and will change the Earth. The smelting process liberates a tremendous amount of sulfur dioxide, and that along with other waste gases and metals actually stained the rocks here black over the years. You can tell a development from after 1976 (when they began to use stacks, and to remove SO2) from before, because the rocks, especially large boulders that are uncovered, are grey. Some have a characteristic line on them where the dirt was.

Sudbury also stank. There is an old song about miners cutting loose, "Sudbury Saturday Night," which is local folklore about the only people that would live here: miners, their reluctant families that couldn't live elsewhere, and the camp followers that usually follow a large group of foolhardy, hard-working men. My SO remembers trying to eat a meal in Sudbury and not being able to eat the food for the smell. Slag heaps were everywhere, and since stacks didn't exist, the smoke from the smelter just rolled over the town. Sudbury became all but a dead mining camp.

They learned form that disaster: the SO2 is removed from the effluent as much as possible now, and sold as another revenue stream. All effluent is put out of tall stacks, away from people, and the one slag heap is carefully cultivated as it cools into a specific shape to be built on. Older heaps were covered and capped, and now have housing and parks, and the town of New Sudbury built on their remains.

And the mining continues, unfortunately fatalities also continue. A miner died two years ago in the mine, and the company and government were completing an inquiry as we were leaving. I don't know that mines will ever be completely safe, but I think the one we saw is much safer than those past.

In a final moment, I went rock hunting, and found a listed gneiss deposit on the Ontario geological tour that was an outcropping of the meteor strike, age listed as 1.85 billion years old. I picked up rocks that were a quarter of the age of the Earth itself.

Which brought home to me: the Earth does not need Man. The Earth does not really care what the temperature is, or how much SO2 or NOx is in the atmosphere. The Earth will survive just fine with or without these things, because the Earth is a ball of rock. Man is the one that requires oxygenated air to breathe, and water in a certain pH range in order to survive. It is Man that should be aware of the conditions in the environment he finds himself, irregardless of who or what causes the conditions. If there is global warming, then Man must do something if he wishes to continue on the Earth, it doesn't matter what is causing the warming. If there is too much SO2 in the atmosphere, then Man must do something to reduce it if he wishes to see many more summers, no matter where the SO2 is coming from.

And if making money is to take precedence over survival of our kind, then just pass a law saying you can print money on your computer and everyone will make money all the time. Then we can stand together in the sun until it roasts our skins and grows tumors all about us. "There is no damage from the Sun!" we will say bravely, waving our money at each other. "The Sun is just a plot, no one can keep me from making money!"

One day the Earth will stop being our Mother, and will support us no longer, and the Sun will bleach our bones. And all our money will only last about 16 months, far less than the damage we have done that killed us.

Crow

New Way to look at Food

We went to St. Jacobs' today, the large Mennonite tourists pit north of here. Its kind of sad to see a people's devotion to the simple ways, their devotion to their God, devotion to following the simpler rules of an earlier society reduced to a tourists spectacle, wholly bought into the chase for the almighty dollar, part and parcel on the road to Mammon with the rest of us.

But for me, an even more special trip to Wonderland this time; I have been unable to get my blood sugar under control this week, and this morning I felt as though I would never wake. I actually felt drugged in some way, even though I had not taken any. I feel like I am in a free-fall, and I don't know where this will come out.

Finally awake, we went to St. Jacobs', more for the exercise for me than anything, and to see the Farmer's Market, only open on Tuesdays and Sundays.

So I walked down the isles of pies, and cakes, sweets made from Real Ontario Maple Syrup, and buttertarts, middle eastern sweets and Japanese sweets; then table upon table of home-made jellies, jams, preserves, marmalades, honeys, butters - if it is sweet and goes in a jar, they had it for sale.

Water water everywhere, and not a drop to drink.

There was nothing I could touch. It was finally sinking into my rather thick skull that there was absolutely nothing here for me but a slow, painful demise. I have to gain control of this monster or it will do away with me early.

I hate that I cannot eat the things I love to eat. I hate that I cannot eat all the sweet and marvelous things I love, like the maple syrup candies, but they are killing me. I have to control what goes into my mouth, finally, before it controls me. Only I can do that.

My resolve: to eat only what I should, and to gain control over my diet and my blood sugar levels. I give myself one week to show some grip, then one month to show real resolve in all facets in life. This is my present to me.

MMG

The End of the Bees

My mate and I strolled through the isles of the local home renovating store, when I came upon what we were looking for: bee spray. But this was a new kind of spray, a foam!

I studied the instructions carefully, since I was going to be on the "apply" end, while I figured my partner would be on the "spectate" end of our mission. The idea is to spray the nest entrance hole with the foam, and block them in (!), then walk up to the nest (!!) and stick the applicator wand directly into the hole itself (!!!) and fill the nest full of foam (!!!!). Each exclamation point represents the amount of sweat that was appearing on my forehead *in the store* just reading the instructions.

After some pacing, souls searching, and consultation with the T factories, I purchased the bee foam. Why not, nothing ventured, nothing gained, right? Besides, I haven't been stung by a hornet in over twenty years, I was due.

I did choose to wait until evening, on the presumption that most of the hornets would be safely in their little hornet beds and not out looking for me. I tested the system on a near-by bush (impressive range!), then slowly walked up to within about ten feet of the nest. This is where, as we used to say in the Navy, I had to 'reach down and find a pair.' It took some fumbling around, but I finally found them, and took up my position and sprayed the nest.

Worked beautifully!! Just like a huge blob of shaving cream, the nest was now blocked by this lethal substance that shielded me from the hateful hornets. I stepped up to the nest and heard just how hateful: the nest was actually vibrating with angry insects. I lost my pair at this point and stepped back.

A new thought entered my brain: what if, in sticking the six-inch applicator into the nest, I tear a hole into it, allowing the hornets to escape? What if the foam over-fills it, and it breaks open. Did those guys think of that? This was looking ever more like a mixed-up, Rube Goldberg setup every second.

Finding my pair once more, I stepped up again and followed the instructions (when in doubt, follow the instructions!), filling the angry, buzzing nest with foam. One bee did escape, but he took off before I could attack him (interesting reversal).

I think the nest saga is over. Tomorrow, I plan to take the nest down and run it to the dumpster. Once more the back porch will be ours to enjoy fully without insect interference.

What I learned with this episode in my life is that there are new things that are coming out almost daily, technology and science has introduced things to our lives that make it easier to do almost everything that we used to do with more sweat, danger, and personal pain. You can embrace it, or continue in the 'old ways,' your choice. I think the old ways are old for a reason.

The secret, and the goal for our youth, will be to meld the new ways with the good stewardship of the earth. That is what we leave you, young ones.

MMG

Welcome to Canada

After three days of driving, rough weather in West Virginia, cool mornings, and finally, a smooth border crossing thanks once again to the Canadian Border and Customs Service, I find myself once again in the land of Gold Finches and restful days to complete my recovery. Not my usual two and a half month vacation, but I will take what I can get at this point.

So after a good night's sleep, I am ready for anything. Even when my significant other comes in from the back, and says that she has discovered a wasp's nest on the back porch, and would like for me to knock it down sometime today. 'Sure,' I tell her, 'right after coffee and the morning crossword.'

'Well, don't you do these things at night,' she asks?

Pardoning her brief foray into things Man, I reassure my mate that *I* am not a candidate for one of those lowT commercials. I'll knock it down in broad daylight. I grabbed my broomstick and mostly depleted can of wasp spray and went around the house to the back porch.

Of course, I hadn't counted on her miss-characterization of the situation. That's the 'wasp's nest' in the picture above. As I came around the corner and faced the 'nest,' a full blown Bald-Faced Hornet's Nest. I not only felt my T go low, but I felt my T factories looking for new and unexplored hiding places. You just don't see these things very often anymore, I rationalized over a third cup of joe. Very tricky, need just the right kind of spray, the type that can hit an escaping wasp at thirty feet, in the dark, and kill it in nanoseconds.

So while I am making my plans and shopping lists, the hornets get to enjoy another day of life, maybe two. Heck, who are they bothering, anyway? They are just buzzing around, happily pollinating the local gardens, attacking neighborhood yipping dogs, and otherwise minding their own business. Maybe we should think about Man's wanton inhumanity towards Nature...

Crow

Betrayal

Betrayal
at the worst of time
when time was almost
almost mine,
then gone my foundations,
my support
the very pegs I stand on,
and all thereafter
belongs to others.

The one who once taught concepts of science
now struggles to convince
of the ability to void unassisted
and to claw back accustomed decencies
one-by-one.

My day is now satisfactory
in sitting up for lunch
and working morning sudoku
before sleep closes in.

MMG

Accomodations

I have watched over the years as my physical condition has deteriorated from "baseline" to that not far removed from a chunk of firewood. But the worse my condition got, the more I compensated for it, both physically, with the addition of more appliances, and emotionally, by selling myself on the fact that a sedentary lifestyle was an acceptable one, and more canes, wheelchairs, and model airplanes would be virtually unnoticed.

I even saw it as a badge of honor to hobble down the hall at work on two canes; at least I was at work, and not sitting back in an old RV, living on meager disability payments while forced into a life of minimal activity certain to insure, if not outright cause, my own early demise.

Then suddenly, as if turning a key, I could not make my legs work anymore. Almost as if dragged into a tornado, before I could recognize what was happening to me I was whisked off to a hospital, then transported in the middle of the night to a big university hospital in Gainesville, three hours away to sit stripped of both accommodations and defenses in the glare of the brightest medical lights in the area.

Peeking into my back, probing my body, outlining individual nerve paths, these lights came together, glared down upon me, and found:

nothing.

At least nothing that can be remedied with a surgeon's blade. So I am back to where I began, 22 years ago, a soul with a degenerating spine, one that I know one day would let me down. We didn't know how long it would take, or how severe the impact; now maybe we know...

How scary is that?

So you have been having a hard time with getting around the last couple of weeks, mostly because you are tired right out at the end of the day, so you start to slip into this blue funk, what I called the Black Hand, this depression that envelopes you and freezes you and keeps you from doing anything productive. Naturally, you begin to think, maybe you are really depressed this time, so much you just don't want to move. You realize that is a whole lot of being depressed, but then, its been seen; you're not breaking any new ground here.

So when your legs finally decide not to go forward anymore, you almost accept, almost anticipate it. "Just give in," you tell yourself. Then you change your mind and try to move - too late, the legs are not working for you'

But after a day of resting, you feel like you can take on a day of work once more, so you go. The results are predictable: within hours you are back in the same predicament.

So you see your doctor, who looks at you and says, "Let's call someone to come get your things, and we will transport you to the hospital."

You call your Dad, who comes to get you and take you to the local hospital, where you are ushered in as a "Direct Admission." You get a bed, a late meal (Mac and cheese, baked), and changed into hospital gowns to be rushed to an MRI - stat!

Except the machine won't accept people your size. In fact, after calling around the area, no one seems to have a machine large enough - so the nurse walks in and announces: "You are being transported to Gainesville, four hours away." I have time to call my Dad at 2am to let him know I am leaving - then they load me in an ambulance and we leave.

How scary is that?

Circle closes

There was a time when I went to bed each night, swearing that I would find a way to get my revenge on two people for what they had done to my life. And to my ex, I swore I would wait until one day when she would see what a mistake she had made, and I would have my revenge on her as well.

Then life dulled my hatred a bit, other pressures intervened, and I began to forgive just a bit, but not to forget. I knew I would never, ever forget. This was my first love, crushed, I could never fully recover.

That is until I recovered. It took time, I can't lie, but I did recover, and before long, I forgave and forgot. Then the whole of that part of my life faded into the background of my life.

Again, life intervened, and a fire took place on board my submarine. I met my own death, mortality staring me in the face, and somehow I survived. My life was renewed on so many levels.

Then I got everything I had ever wanted in my early days: my revenge. Only it wasn't what I wanted to hear now.

I met Satan in that fire under water, and I found that we weren't too different, he and I. I know myself to be a profane, fundamentally flawed being, totally undeserving of the trust that was placed in me at that early age, or maybe at any age. I cannot accept the apology of one who, having served God, I feel more deserving of an apology from me than I from them.

If we could wind back time, would it be worth the try? Could we try again from the start, be a family and stay with each other for 35 years faithfully? Yes, it would be worth a try to start over and stay together this time. But would we? Would I just end up breaking your heart again some other way? If I broke up our family twice, I would not think I could stand the pressure.

I am older now, and have settled with a wonderful person that knows me, and can help me make it day to day. It helps me just as much to know I have a son once again that carries my name, and that I have a very dear, old friend that I can talk to once more, that I have missed for over thirty years.

We can't turn the clock back, but often we need the help of everyone we know to help us to push the clock forward just one more day.

Crow.

Fighting the Black Hand

I am sitting here at this machine, working up the courage and the energy to fight the black hand, which has been closing in on me for the last three days. There are signs all around me that the hand is winning: dishes stacked on the counter, the unmade bed, heaps of 'stuff' on the chairs, the table, my recliner covered in dirty socks, shirts, things left where they were removed.

This is far from my Navy training, and far from where I am happiest, a clean and orderly house. But then, the Black Hand is not something I choose to have come over me.

Winston Churchill called it his black dog, and he fought with it all his life. It was a deep depression that took him for weeks at a time, and caused him to sink into great despair. He battled it with constant drink, and smoke, and even spending great sums of money he didn't have, although he always seemed to get by.

I haven't always had this Black Hand, but it has taken me lately, and it does send me into despair. I quit caring, as it were, and just sit, all of a lump, and let time slip by me.

Also, I cannot sleep during these times when the Hand takes over my life. So I stare out at the world with no hope, exhausted, in the building trash around me, falling deeper and deeper.

Then I finally fight back. The only way I can fight the blackness is with light: I open all the blinds, let the light into the house, run all the ceiling fans to stir the air, and start cleaning! If I can clean just one room, then I can go there when I need hope again, and then back into the house to clean more, then finally the laundry, and all is done.

I find that once the wash is finished, the house straightened, and my things put away, then I can sleep, or at least I can try.

I see the sun peeking through the blinds; time to face the Hand.

MMG

When to Listen to Your Heart

I had a week to remember. We all agreed that it was pretty much the worst week we had all experienced, and that includes teachers that had been teaching in the system for over twenty years. It seems that all our concerns about lack of vision, lack of consistency, and a complete lack of planning of any kind all came to a head in one terrible week, the Perfect Storm of Errors and Complacency.

I learned long ago not to make a statement in a blog that you weren't prepared to make a.) to the person or persons concerned, and b.) to your mother. I have notified the administration of my workplace that the last week was exactly as stated above, the worst I have ever seen, and I have the additional advantage of having worked for government contractors EG&G and Lockheed-Martin, so I have seen some pretty bad administrations. But I had never seen conditions such that I didn't know what the rules under which I was to discipline my students were from day to day. Infractions change daily, penalties change daily, even the person making the decision changes daily!I informed administration that this situation was not only bad for morale, it was untenable. Period. (The new school motto: A new day, a new way!)

Thinking back on my life (I'm doing a lot of that lately, which I think is the purpose of this blog), I consider the times when I faced issues or situations that I thought were right or wrong, and someone or something tried to get me to change my position for what ever reason. I know that through most of my life, I have been very clear; what is right is right. Period.

What that left me with is a trail of jobs that I was fired from ('relieved' is the Navy term), and a set of situations I had to leave to find new pastures. I was relieved from a division leader position in the Navy at the Training Unit because I refuse to have my division paint joints that were under vacuum with shellac in order to pass a critical test to get the plant started up. Instead, I chose to do it the right (and slow) way which would have delayed the start-up. In my defense, everyone agreed that the old shellac trick was bad, but since it was quick, the Chief asked around for a First Class that would do it, and as soon as he found one, I was relieved.

That's the one that sticks in my mind for some reason, there are others. I have had six careers (including the present one), and all of them except the Navy I left on my terms. What more could a person want?

My dad told me once 'You have to go along to get along.' I have never, ever been able to do that. I tried, honestly I tried when I worked for the State of Florida's Agency for Workforce Innovation. Getting along, however, meant firing a man that did nothing to deserve it. In fact, the man that my boss wanted me to lay off had the best numbers in the whole section. I couldn't 'go along' any more, and I laid myself off instead.

Try to stay true to what you think is right. It might refine as you get older, but it will never go away.

MMG

Flying (or not)

When I was a young teen, I spent gobs of time and what to me at the time a horrible pile of money (all made on my own) on model airplanes, which I would build, then with a gang of friends, we would go to the edge of the municipal golf course at Audubon Park, claim three or four flying circles, and fly our airplanes from noon until just before sunset. The planes were magnificent, each one the product of three to four weeks of labor, brightly colored, striking in design. Most were Topflight Flight Streaks, I do remember, and a few profile P-51 Mustangs. My first was a smaller Fokker Eindekker, but the favorite was a Shoestring, painted teal and red. No one else had a Shoestring! Those were good days, long days. We were busy, and our time and money went to legitimate pursuits, not drugs and gangs like so many young people today.

So here I ma, many years later, and I am looking for something to fill my hours while I have to endure a temporary situation of stagnation. And, voila! I once again find that I can get involved in my old hobby, except some things have changed: the planes are less expensive, the materials are different, and there are no cables anymore, its all radio controlled. I think, 'Outstanding! I can so do this!'

The materials are now foam, the same styrofoam type material that the trays which hold your fresh chicken the meat from the grocery are made of. I know this because when I had to make a recent repair to one of my planes (I have had to make many), I used one such tray, and you can't tell the difference. It makes for a very light, but also easy to break, plane.

And I have a reputation for breaking them. I build them, often in just a day or two, as it doesn't take that long to build a kit. Then I try to fly them. Or maybe I don't try to fly them. I do not have a clue what the problem is. I try hard to cover all the bases, to make sure I am doing everything just right. I even bought a simulator to practice flying on the computer.

This morning was the best of all examples. I got up at 5:30 am, and loaded the car with two planes, one that I had worked on for a week, and was really looking forward to flying, the other was a kit that I knew I could fly, and I was taking as a back-up in case something happened to the first plane, at least I would have something to fly. I made sure I had a couple of spare propellers, just so a broken propeller wouldn't ruin my flying day. I packed a hat, a bottle of water, etc. Then off to Panera for a bagel and cinnamon roll, then to the flying site, 10 miles away,

When I got there, it was quiet, the sun was just coming up, no one else was around. THe site has a piece of road, then open field. I was ready!

I hooked up the battery on my Eindekker, the big plane I had built from scratch, and it synced with the radio, all was ready! I tested the elevators and rudder - they were backwards! Hmmm... I had to stop, open up the plan, and move the plugs for the elevator and rudder servos to the other connections, about five minutes, then button it back up - now ready!

Power up, plane begins to move, lifts off the ground, starts to veer off to the left, I try right rudder - not enough - POW!

The plane hit the car. The motor mount on the plane gave way, so did the rudder. Every thing else is fine - except the pilot, of course, is steaming. She will get rebuilt to try and fly again.

So out with plane number two, a little bright red number, a Fokker D7, nice model, I expect I can at least get some fun out of this one. I put it down, and taxi out on the road, it hits a pebble and careens into the curb, where it lays quiet, no longer responding to any throttle commands. On closer inspection, when it hit the curb, it knocked the motor off its mount, and pulled a wire out of the motor somewhere - end of my flying day.

I have a timer that I use, which is suppose to time the flight so you don't overdraw the lithium-polymer battery. It is set for twelve minutes. Today's total was 6 seconds.

Usually I go flying, and I come home an hour later, my significant other asks, 'So, how many did you crash?' Hmmm. Okay, two. Both repairable.

One of these days I am going to get one up for 12 seconds. Then it will be a minute. And finally, I will have the whole 12 minutes. It may take the rest of my natural lifetime to do so, but many who know me know I am persistent, if I am anything.

And anyway, it keeps me off the streets, and keeps me from buying drugs, joining a gang, etc.

What I Have Learned (So Far)

I have finally begun to sleep again, after a period of not sleeping due to reasons beyond my control, and the rest feels pretty good. Now that I can rest, I am able to wake, make a cup of tea, and reflect on what I have learned in my somewhat long life so far.

The most important thing I have learned is to do what you love, or what you feel in your heart is the right thing for you to be doing at that time. To do work you hate, even if it is for a premium in pay, will only take the life away from you and leave nothing for you at the end of the day, or the week, or year. Working at something you enjoy is a joy, and the days pass lightly, even fly, the evenings all for you to use as you will. If your work is something you truly love, you will find the days light as a feather, and time passing without notice. Before long, you will be recognized in your field and teaching others. This is an enviable life to live.

I have learned not to be afraid to leave a work situation that I found untenable. You will find another, and if the one you are in is making your life unhappy, then it would be better to spend your time searching for a new situation than forcing yourself to bare another day in hell. The money will come form somewhere, or maybe you should change your lifestyle so that you can live within the new bounds for a while. In the worst of situations, however, I have walked away from a job that was causing me physical problems (headaches, stomach aches), and stepped into another position two weeks later.

I am still learning to accommodate my physical disabilities to my job. There are few things I cannot do; at one time I would have said there is nothing that I cannot do, but I have learned that I do have physical limits. However, with the help of a few tools and appliances, I can pretty much do anything that my peers can do. Add to that the willingness of the students to help, and I am able to perform in the classroom at the same level as anyone.

I am also learning to accommodate my physical disabilities at home. This is considerably more difficult of a task, as there is no one to assist me at times, and when there is someone, I want to do things myself so as to show my continued independence. I have to learn to navigate the kitchen, cook outside, cook for more than one, etc.

I am learning to build model airplanes again, a return to a favorite past time of youth. I built and flew airplanes when I was in my teen, back when we had gas motors and control lines. Now the motors are electric (and much quieter), and the radio control equipment is very affordable. The planes are hard for me to fly, as I have a depth perception problem and cannot tell if the planes are about to hit something, usually a pole. So I build them, and fly when conditions are perfect, which is not often.

I am learning to live with another person. I have always had a dual problem; I cannot live alone, yet I am very picky about some (but by no means all!) things in my living space. I know that makes me difficult to live with, maybe even impossible to live with. But finally, after many years and several tries, I am learning to be patient, and to not be so tight with my living space, and to share.

And I am learning that people are not trying to hurt me. I have had the overwhelming felling since the February fire that everyone I meet is trying to hurt me. I worked with a tightly knit crew of 100 men, well trained and integrated. We all knew each other, we worked together and played together. Then when the fire broke out, they had to isolate the compartment - and me - in order to secure the fire and prevent its spread. In effect, I was being expended. I have carried that abuse of trust for the last 25 years, and I can say I am just now getting over the feeling of abandonment.

I don't think I will ever trust again to the extent I did before. I have not learned that yet. Perhaps I will before my black feathers all turn grey.

To Choose Not to Participate

In am teaching the last unit in the new core curriculum this week: healthy choices around sex, alcohol, and drug use. You might think this an unusual unit for a science teacher to teach in a middle school, and you would be correct. It is a Health unit. However, the district eliminated all their Health teacher positions two years ago in a money-saving measure, and consolidated this unit under the science curriculum.

At the same time, the district hired a company from New York to provide a curriculum for use in suburban Florida. The Health portion of that curriculum looks like something that would be taught in teh New York City schools, where the vast majority of eighth graders are sexually aware if not sexually active; the terminology is explicit, the web sites are explicit, and the instruction is explicit. If a child did not know all there was to know about having, wanting, soliciting sex, preventing pregnancy, avoiding detection by parents, shirking responsibility (boys), demanding responsibility (girls, after the fact), they would after this class.

I taught this curriculum last year. We split the classes up, girls in one class taught by the lady teachers, and boys taught by me. I thought at the time maybe we were putting out a little too much info for the age group, but the curriculum specialist from the district, and my principle, both insisted that it was not a big deal, that this stuff was taught in the middle schools all the time.

I kept trying to imagine putting my own daughters in the class, and I just couldn't do it.

This year, it was decided not to split the classes. I would have to teach both boys and girls in teh same class. Okay, I think I can deal with this.

There was no lesson plan. The district did not have an approved lesson plan, the teachers are supposed to come up with their own. How am I supposed to know what is approved and what is not? I was given a list of websites that had "good model lesson plans," but when I went to the sites, I found the sites *very explicit*! Oh, boy!! I asked the curriculum specialist if she had been to any of the sites, "Well, no, I haven't had the time," she told me.

The permission letter that the district provided us had the URL address for the district's curriculum that we were to follow so that parents could look up the curriculum to decide if they wanted their children exposed to that kind of thing. The link did not work. When parents inundated me, and I forwarded their requests to the district, I was told the site was protected: "The curriculum cost a lot of money, the district doesn't want someone stealing it." ?!?!?!?!

So after reviewing the lack of support and competence of the district concerning the sex ed portion of the curriculum, after attempting to look up the supporting documentation for the (nonexistent) lesson plans, and after reviewing what information they DID present to me to teach to my students, I concluded that the information was not age appropriate for the classes I taught.

I have chosen not to participate.

During the Second World War, after the surrender of France to the Germans, the Nazi government only occupied about 40% of French territory, allowing the remaining area to be self-governed by a government out of Vichy. This government was completely autonomous, with absolutely no military or political ties to Nazi Germany, nor were there any German troops in the lands administered by the Vichy government. Even still, Vichy did the bidding of the Nazis simply on request, up to and including the rounding up and delivery of Jews to the German border all the way up to the end of the French Occupation in 1945. There were no German troops to enforce these requests, no German policemen to escort the shipments, simply the French doing the best job they could at delivering Jews to the death camps because they had been told to, including sanitizing the cattle cars between shipments, and running trains on time.

It never occurred to the French to just not participate.

Like I have decided to do today. I am not going to do this, because it is just wrong. Someone will look up in a few years, and ask "How did this get taught? It is obviously very wrong?!"

It starts here. Let someone else teach it, if it must be taught, Maybe the principle can teach it. I will not. I know what I *can* teach. I can teach that the latest research on brain development shows that the prefrontal lobe, or the area of the brain that controls right from wrong, judgment, and moral values, isn't fully formed in young adults until they are 25 years old. So giving 13 year olds information and then hoping they will develop the moral ability to handle that information appropriately is gross conceptual error.

And you would hope that institutional educational professionals would know better.

Crow has learned to follow my instincts, they have served me well through the years.

The Few, and Hope

There is hope, it seems, for the future leaders of America and the world. The hope, however, resides in a precious few who, despite everything the public schools are doing to prevent them from achieving, are on their own gaining the knowledge they need to excel in the future years in high school and beyond.

But only those precious few, and even they don't recognize themselves most of the time. Their peers try to bury them in the sea of mediocrity that has become American schools. What is today considered "high performance" is the past's average, or even low performance. What I would have given a "C" or "D" for five years ago is actually earning "B" and even "A" today. Grade Inflation dad called it, and that was twenty years ago! It has only gotten worse.

So where is the hope?

Some students get it. Some actually don't care much about grades, and get into the material, want to learn. One student filled her notebook full of almost everything I said in class, with tabs to cross-index information. Every web page I ever pulled up in class was documented in her journal. She was going for the knowledge. She earned an A++.

There are others. They are the ones that will hopefully get scholarships to MIT and Yale, get the law degrees, run for high office, negotiate with foreign powers. These are the children that can grow up to adults that will keep us out of wars, that will balance our Federal budget.

And all I can do it encourage these few is talk. Yack-yack-yack-yack. The schools have no programs that I can offer them outside the standard curriculum, other than a club that I would be willing to take on under my own time. And there is the rub...

When does the society stop supporting the individuals that make up the defining structures of the future for that society? Teachers teach, but they also lead by example, they provide a maturation ground for young wills to develop and to grow strong or weak, to succeed or to fail, all in the shelter of a caring adult familiar to and supportive of the child. However, the teachers cannot do all that on their own dime, even though they often do; its part of what makes people good teachers, and administrations and school boards tend to take advantage of that.

But one day it goes away. The very wonderful math teacher in the room next to me, a veteran teacher of many, many years, has taken her last year I think. She cannot continue long, she is beginning to hate what she does, and no one can long do a job they hate. Many young people will lose out when she stops teaching, and many other teachers, myself included, will lose by not having her example to follow.

I have done some very difficult and fulfilling things in my working career, including military and nuclear industry careers that were incredible. However, I have never had as fulfilling and as varied or as important a career as that I have now, a middle school teacher. And I feel the weight of its importance every day, but I also feel, through the adolescent bravado and peer pressure, the respect and love of my students.

There is the hope for all of us. As long as there is respect and love on both sides, we should get through just fine.

MMG

McAcademia

I asked my students to evaluate their beliefs concerning Global Warming, and to record what information they needed to make a final determination in their minds, one way or another, that global warming does or does not present a problem that must be addressed by humanity and science.

Most students remarked that they needed information that is and has been readily available in academic reports for years. Hmmm. 'If this information is available, then why do you still have questions concerning global warming,' I asked? 'That isn't available, it is hidden! Only certain people can read it, so They keep it away from the public. Its part of the Government Conspiracy to hide information from people that need to have it to make good voting decisions.'

And how do we know it is part of the vast Government Conspiracy? Because it doesn't come up on Google!

While I was under water all those years, a shift occurred in how our society receives its information: if you need to know something, you simply Google it. Just type the required information in the search area of the Google search engine, and press the enter key (also called 'hit enter'), and the required information, and more, much, much more, come up on the screen at your fingertips. The user now has to discriminate between the info he or she needs, and the info that is stray or misleading.

And what about concepts? What about subject areas, or matters that take up more than a few webpages to explain or report on? Well, they are either condensed into those precious few pages, or they just doesn't make it to Google! Face it, you don't need to know the basis behind a Carnot engine, and heat rejection in the thermodynamic cycle to know how an internal combustion engine operates... do you? You can get a good one-page graphic on how the pistons go up and down, even some type on how much energy (about 8000 btu/lbm) gasoline releases in the engine. Who cares about the physics behind it?

I was a bit cynical (can you tell?) until I took a test for a course on Physics in preparation for taking a certification exam. The test itself was horrible, the questions assumed I had conversion tables and specific heat tables and property tables right at my fingertips... and then I realized that I did! Just Google it! How long does it take 500 grams of ice to melt when placed in a styrofoam cup with 300 ml of water at 30 degrees C? Google it! How long will an aluminum rod elongate when heated from 100 degrees C to 600 degrees C? Google it?

In the old days, we would look up the material properties, do some math, and come up with our answers. It depended on our knowing the basics of the subject matter. Now, even the tests, courses, and subject matter itself is set up to make use of Google.

But then, when the information doesn't appear on Google because it is too complex, or too voluminous, it has become part of the Other, which all too often the popular culture vilifies as a Government Conspiracy to hide important information. If that's the case, it's being hidden in broad daylight!

Next week my students are going to learn how to look up, find, read, and interpret a formal scientific report. We are going to pick one on a topic that many of them chose as information they would need to make a decision on global warming, just to show them the information is already here, and to show them that the Internet is a tool, but Google is mostly for entertainment. If you use Google to be informed, then you will be fully informed on entertainment matters, but not so much on things that really matter to you and your family.

Learn to treat the Internet like television: people want to sell you things. The more they get things in front of you, the more chance they have of selling something. So everything on the Internet is going to be fed to you in small, short chunks designed to keep you on-line: entertainment.

Crow

What Children Are For

When I was a young man, a century a go (actually, a millennium ago!), the ideal for the American Family was something a little different than the one today. I got married to my high school sweetheart, the only girl I had loved at that point in my life, and we did what we thought everyone was supposed to do: get a job (or two, or three), get a place to live, have a child. Notice something missing here? Yep - no goal in life. No matter, we had love, and that was supposed to be enough to start on, the rest was to follow. I guess for me, children were part of the American Life, not a fixture exactly, but part of the contract if you will.

"Hi, I'm here for the American Dream Special? You know, the Prosperity, Happiness, and Economic Security Package?"
"Certainly, Sir! Come right up! Now, lets see what you have here. Do you have a job?"
"Yes, sir. I work at Moore-Rounetree VW, and at night I stock the shelves at Kroger."
"Very ambitious! How about a spouse? An Apartment? A car?"
"I have a very beautiful wife, and we live in our own apartment, away from either of our parents. We just replaced our car, which set me back a bit, but we survived it."
"Well, good sir, I am impressed! Just one more thing, then... do you have 2.54 children?"
"2.54...what? How does one have .54 children?
"That's stat talk, of course. You either have 2, or 3. You could have more or less, which would let more off the hook for the 2 or 3, depending on how many more or less you have. But the fact is, you have to have children in order to participate."
"Really?"

And so a son was born, and six years later to a different mother, a daughter, then eight years on, another daughter, my sweet youngest, to yet another mother. It wasn't planned out that way, I never set out to be a "playa," to have 2.54 children by as many women as possible. All of my children were conceived in love, and not one could ever be called a "mistake" or ill-thought out. They are all beautiful creations, half my genes and half another persons, themselves a continuation of two other family traditions, names, cultures, DNAs, histories. What a wonder! What a miracle!

Now I am temporarily alone, my partner has to spend six months in Canada to maintain her status. As I still work, that leaves me with a couple of months here before my summer vacation, when I can rejoin her. In the mean time, I am learning about myself.

I am leaning that in my later years I am finding it harder to self-regulate my daily schedule. I once had a dog, Hallmark, that would help tell me when it was time to eat, when it was time to go to bed. When my SO is here, she helps me. Now, there is no one, and I startle myself to look up from whatever I am doing on a Wednesday night to see the clock, and realize it says 3:00am. I never had that problem when there were children in the house. Children are great fans of the routine, and even when they are breaking it, they want to make sure you are following it.

I also tend to let the kitchen go when I am alone, and the sink/dishwasher, or both at the same time, fill up with dirty dishes, and nothing happens to them; or dishes in the dishwasher will get washed, then will remain in storage for a week or more. Then my youngest will call, wanting to come over to watch a hockey game. And almost imperceptibly, I will start to clean. Dishes get put away, food gets put in cupboards, pans get stored. I guess I want my News to see her Dad's home as a place close to that one she grew up in. I hope she never sees me unglued, and that drive helps me keep it together.

So now I think I know what children are for. They are for us to admire, to love, and to keep us from getting too old to take care of ourselves. And my children, at least, are doing a great job.

Crow

When is it time?

I got this terrible feeling over breakfast this morning, looking out at the grass; when is it time? When will I know when it is time to go?

The awful truth is that I had a momentary lapse, a temporary let-up in my constant watch on the mind and emotions; chronic pain beats down the door, and forces thoughts that would normally remain in darkness:

When will life be no fun anymore? When is the future no longer bright? What will I do when there is no one left to talk to?

I am tired. But I know thinking on laying down is a "slippery slope" which I can neither afford nor desire to explore. I am fortunate to have the support of a wonderful doctor, who I think I owe much to, including at least the last five years of productive life. However, we both agree that perhaps just enjoying life, in as good a quality as we can get for me without the productivity part, may be the best that we can hope for.

These are the things that we never tell our children about, nor do we let our children take part in the decision making process. Getting old is something that is not honored, or even acknowledged, and we tend to cover up the trappings of aging in our society. No one teaches our young about buying medications, and when to ask for generic meds, or a higher strength medication and use a pill cutter to halve the dosage to save money; no one discusses the use of diapers when incontinence becomes an issue; our children never learn about paralysis and what is does to the body, and why grandparents might not want to go to the movie, or out to dinner.

No one takes the time to talk to the children about the side effects of prescription drugs, and why we would want to put up with all the discomfort, and sometimes the dangers, of those side effects.

So when is it time to talk to them? It will be too late when we are too tired, and when we pass away.

Its too bad that they won't be interested until it happens to them. I hope the words of the Crow are still around for them to hear when they feel the frost settle on their hearts, and in their bones.

MMG

Late Night Ice Water

It was this very night, about this very hour (3 am), off the coast of North Carolina on the USS Jack in 1987 that the fire occurred.

I was at the Feed Station with a student (MM2/SS Frink) when we got the order aft to go to Ahead Flank. I watched Frink start the Number Two Main Feed Pump, when we heard a load buzzing noise, and saw black smoke start to roll out from the bilge below us. No big deal, I thought, just a feed pump bearing failure. I had seen many in my eleven years shifting feed pumps. I told Frink to shut down the Feed Pump, and I grabbed the phone to report the fire in the pump.

"Fire in Number Two Main Feed Pump, pump is secured," I announced firmly to Maneuvering.

There was no response. The buzzing and the smoke continued. By now the pump had begun to coast down. "Maneuvering, did you receive my last?"

Then over the 2MC (intercom system aft), we heard "Fire in Number Two Main Feed Pump... FIRE IN MACHINERY SPACE UPPER LEVEL!! FIRE IN MACHINERY SPACE UPPER LEVEL!!

The ship is divided into five compartments, the after three, Reactor Compartment, Auxiliary Machinery Space, and Engine Room, were collectively know as the Engineering Spaces. The Feed Station is in the Auxiliary Machinery Space Lower Level. There were two ladders that led from the lower level to the upper level, and only the Upper Level had access to the Engine Room and the Reactor Compartment Tunnel which led forward.

My Student and I found ourselves trapped under a major fire in a submarine at over 400 feet deep off the coast of North Carolina. And trapped is the word: the immediate actions in a submarine fire is to isolate the fire after evacuating everyone possible. All personnel left the Upper Level, and then the hatched were shut and dogged (locked). We had air-line breathing masks to breath from, and sound powered phones to communicate with, but as far as expectations for surviving the fire, we had none. We were told that rescue crews would re-enter the compartment in about 20 minutes when they had organized a fire fighting team.

So we watched the copper buss bars over us melt, and rain down on the deckplates; we watched the smoke turn from dark to oily to solid; we listened carefully for any crews to enter the compartment. It got hot, then it got hotter. We squatted down on the deck, then we lifted the deckplates and sat with our legs in the bilge.

Throughout the fire, I had two overwhelming considerations washing over me the whole time: the second was that we were not going to survive, but that the longer we could keep the machinery going, the better chance for the rest of the crew to survive. The Feed Station keeps water going to the Steam Generators, which keeps the Steam Turbines on line, and the Steam Turbines are the engines that keep the submarine going. The Thresher accident showed that modern submarines have to be able to drive the boat to the surface as well as blow ballast, so the engines are necessary for the survival of the crew, and that was high on my mind.

The first thing on my mind was that I could NOT let my student know that I thought our situation hopeless. I had to not only let him think we would be saved, but I had to make it look as routine as possible. I had him simply follow procedures, and tried to shield him from any indication that this was a terminal event on our part.

And, as luck had it, we were saved. It should not have been, but it was. Fifteen minutes later, the fire out, a crew came in to relieve us. I went to the mess decks and had a coffee, then went back on watch. I don't think my student joined me. I would have liked to gone to bed myself, but I had to keep it routine.

And now, years later, I am still experiencing life colored through the lens of those few minutes that night off the North Carolina coast. It is hard to take the minutia of life seriously when you have actually faced your mortality so early in life, and in such a hostile, violent environment. I don't suffer foolishness in my professional relations very easily, which marks me. I rarely maintain a job for more than three years before my inability to navigate the politics or the culture of the workplace causes me to fall on my own sword, or to become too expensive a liability for a top cat.

But then, I always land on my feet. I feel certain that I will find that next job, and I always do. I never let anything stand in the way of getting on with life, even my considerable disability, as I feel I have seen worse. You can find comfort in having seen the Devil already, then he holds no power over you.

There are nights, though, I would rather be sleeping, than sitting up, sipping on a late night ice water and writing in my blog, remembering nights long ago off the coast of North Carolina.

Is it kind?

There is an old Chinese proverb out there (does anyone know of any new Chinese proverbs?) that gives wisdom on how to approach interpersonal relationships, specifically, how do you know what things to do to one another, and what things not to do? I suppose the Chinese equivalent of Dr. Phil got tired of answering the age old question of "Is it okay to tell a little white lie if it doesn't hurt anyone, and no one every finds out." Back then, no one would find out for centuries, even if it was important.

So the sage tells his audience that if you go to do something, you should first stop and ask yourself three questions: Is it right? Is it necessary? Is it kind? If the answer to any of those three is "no," then you should not do it, whatever it is.

If it is not right, then you should not do it on moral grounds: I have always tried to impress on my own children that their integrity is the only thing that is truly their own in this world. Even their name is given to them by someone else, but their integrity is theirs alone. Only they can protect it, and only they can throw it away. Once lost, your integrity will take years to regain, if ever. The best thing is, never, ever let it go. You can get another job, you will never get another reputation. I have walked away from two jobs in my life over moral issues, and in both cases it set me back financially, but I recovered in a short time. My integrity did not suffer, and is intact to this day.

If it is not necessary, then why expend the effort? There are so many other things in life that require our attention, there is little time to waste on things of little concern. I may have a different outlook than some on this, but I have seen life in a light where there is precious little time on teh earth, far too little time to be spending it on minutia. If you are going to be burning calories, burn them in the pursuit of matters that make a difference. Trivial concerns spill the life energy of others who may not have that much to spill.

Is it kind. This may be the most important of all. In our trade with each other, as we meet and speak, exchange ideas and words, just how much of our greeting and time spent communicating is spend being pleasant? How much do we demand from each other, without being thankful for making each others' jobs a little easier when we help each other out?

At my work, for some reason the language has turned to demanding this last year. Over the intercom, teachers and students are now ordered to "Report to Room 205 for a conference!" Report! I am sure it never occurs to the person on the other end of the microphone that in America the only persons that can order me to report anywhere are a magistrate or law enforcement with a properly executed warrant, or the Navy if my skills were so badly in need that I should have to be reactivated. No one at my school has that power. Yet they still order me to "Report!" Why?

Somewhere our society has learned that it is okay to push around the weak and marginalized. We feel it is for the greater good, so it is acceptable. When did we make this shift? We didn't used to feel this way. It used to be that the weak were protected, the marginalized were included. It was the obligation of the strong to protect the weak and lame.

Is it kind? Think before you do. If it isn't kind, then don't do it. Life is hard enough without adding to each others' burdens. We should do all we can to lighten each others' load every chance we get, whenever we can, for our time here is short, and hard.

Pulling in the reigns on life

The new year comes, and all the new pressures, or maybe they are old pressures in new clothes? Things must be done, bills must be paid, houses painted, cleaned, repaired, landscaped, roofed, carpeted, floored, etc., etc. Children have to have clothes to go to work, school, and so forth, books must be procured for both work and school, and occasionally just for fun. Then the doctor must be seen for one reason or another, mostly for things put off too long, and now a problem that cannot be ignored.

There doesn't seem any way out, or any way around the huge wall of obligations that face use; the necessities of life appear overwhelming, and the opportunities to overcome them small, even nonexistent. How can anyone do all these things, and on the salary that I make? It just can't be done!

Mid January is the time of year when most suicides for middle aged and older adults occur. Pressures of money and life in general cloud their judgment, and cause them to make that final, irretrievable decision to end the pressure through ending life, not realizing that by ending life they also end love, happiness for their families, and above all: hope.

These things, bills for the house, doctor appointments, work on the car, they were here last year, and the year before. I was wringing my hands wonder how I was going to pay for a valve job on the engine in my Volkswagen Bug just before the Christmas I was engaged to get married in 1976... and I have had something to wring my hands about every year ever since. Somewhere in the 1990s I bought a good, unscented lotion so that as least I would have soft hands after the wringing was done.

I have now learned, as my feathers darken, to stop so much wringing of hands. My hands are plenty soft by now, I must admit, but that is about all I got out of all my worry and stress. Things eventually worked out, as I have been diligent about making sure my bills did get paid, even if late. I made sure my tasks were accomplished, even if not quite on time, and I made sure I completed my jobs to the best of my abilities, even if they were a little slower than others. That's all one can do in this life, his or her best.

And leave time for the soul, for without that time for self, you cannot do your best. Take the time to relax, watch a hockey game, fly a kite, take walks. Those allow you to put in that extra at what others pay you to do for them.

And as I get older, I find I have the need for a nap now and again as well, which is where I am headed now after the stress of writing this blog. Got to go rest my feathers.