Here it is June 1. Coming up on the summer solstice, my brother's birthday and the halfway point on our calendar for this year. I have that cliché kind of thought about how I could actually stop time when I was around 5 or 6 years old. Then, I wanted time to keep moving, except sometimes when I stopped it for a minute or 2. I wish I could remember how I did that.

 

Of course the Gulf oil spill is mightily on my mind, along with Mary and a lot of my friends. I am sure that BP wishes it could stop time for a while. I vacillate between anger about how they could let such a thing happen and some empathy for having responsibility to accomplish a task for which they haven't any experience to fix. We live in this fantasy world that thinks there are instant fixes for things. Ask anyone who watches a loved one die of cancer or some bacterial infection. Sometimes there are no instant fixes.

 

I am, in no way, reducing BP's responsibility. They have made billions of dollars selling us oil. They needed to have done a better job protecting us from this accident. They didn't. Now, it must be stopped. All the hand wringing, haranguing, fretting and accusations will not stop the leak. I sure wish I knew how.

 

There are 2 apparently contrary lessons here. First, we are alone. Ultimately, we must be self-reliant and must be prepared to manage our lives and our affairs. Second, we are all in this together. We must learn to gather around one another in our hour of need and help. Hating, accusing and the like will not plug the hole, in fact, fighting will probably slow progress.

 

My best answer is prayer. From here in Michigan, all I can meaningfully contribute is my spiritual support. Another cliché comes to mind. "love the sinner: hate the sin."

I've been experimenting and learning about blogging with MS Word. Yesterday's blog has some spelling errors. I am a little ashamed of them. I am not a careless person, for the most part. I just was so excited about the ease of publishing the blog with Word that I do not have the heart to change it now and it was so cool, yesterday when it worked so effortlessly, that I forgot to spell check.

 

As you will observe, if you take the time to review the posts herein, I have been a spotty blogger to say the least. I have promised, before, to do better, so I won't do that, again.

 

I am at a point where I need to make some choices. I need to decide how to handle Twitter. It takes too much of my time and it is interfering with some other important activities. I need to decide how to blog and what I want to, ultimately, do with this resource. It is a cool thing, but not real useful, at the moment. I have a garden and home chores to attend to. I have a book to work on. I have been sick, recently, so I have my health to attend to. These need to be managed better.

 

I am still withdrawing from my former job, 3 years later, make that 4 years, come June. Likewise for the NFBMI presidency. I have reduced my work for NFB considerably, but am still very emotionally and spiritually involved.

 

Speaking of spiritual matters, I still feel inadequate with my church contributions. I am still not sure exactly how to carve out a niche that will be good for the God, church and me.

 

Memorial Day has caused me to think about these things. Some people die very young. I have been given this time. What is my best way to respond to this gift? Difficult to set priorities. I will keep trying.

I've been experimenting and learning about blogging with MS Word. Yesterday's blog has some spelling errors. I am a little ashamed of them. I am not a careless person, for the most part. I just was so excited about the ease of publishing the blog with Word that I do not have the heart to change it now and it was so cool, yesterday when it worked so effortly, that I forgot to spell check.

 

As you will observe, if you take the time to review the posts herein, I have been a spotty blogger to say the least. I have promised, before, to do better, so I won't do that, again.

 

I am at a point where I need to make some choices. I need to decide how to handle Twitter. It takes too much of my time and it is interfereing with some other important activities. I need to decide how to blog and what I want to, ultimately, do with this resource. It is a cool thing, but not real useful, at the moment. I have a garden and home chores to attend to. I have a book to work on. I have been sick, recently, so I have my health to attend to. These need to be managed better.

 

I am still withdrawing from my former job, 3 years later, make that 4 years, come June. Likewise for the NFBMI presidency. I have reduced my work for NFB considerably, but am still very emotionally and spiritually involved.

 

Speaking of spiritual matters, I still feel inadequate with my church contributions. I am still not sure exactly how to carve out a niche that will be good for the God, church and me.

 

Memorial Day has caused me to think about these things. Some people die very young. I have been given this time. What is my best way to respond to this gift? Difficult to set priorities. I will keep trying.

Memorial Day 2010

Memorial Day 2010

 

I can remember many years grilling outside with my family with the radio tuned to the Indianapolis 500. My father was a race fan and we both read mechanix illustrated and Motor trend Magazines each month. We loved the suspense of the long races and enjoyed rooting for our favorite racers.

 

Grilling in my family, was my mother's area of expertise. Today, either Marc, my son, or I do the grilling and Mary does not. Indoor cooking is appropriated according to who is the most motivated (hungry) to get things going.

 

My father hated camping. He served in WWII and said he had all the camping in Europe that he could stand. He hated tents and sleeping bags. He told many stories of the horrible conditions while his unit fought its way across Europe. He received a medal for inventing a kind of stove that could operate on gasoline without exploding and burning everything and everyone up. He came from a farm and was a very good innovator. His invention made a lot of people, even if modestly, more comfortable.

 

I am so proud of my father's contributions to defeating Hitler. Hitler was a horrible evil person who needed stopping.my father also received a Purple Heart when he was wounded during an artiliary attack. His good friend was killed by the same explosion. He always said that his friend saved him by shielding him. The strange idea of pure randomness was a lesion that I learned from this story. A random artiliary shell launched from many miles away explodes. 2 people a few feet apart are victims of the explosion. 1 is killed the other wounded. Who can possibly explain any meaning from that, except to be grateful for every day.

 

My father died when I was 16. I wish he had lived longer. He may not have lived that long if the wind had blown the shell a little off course, or the other soldier had been a foot one way or the other. We can only be grateful to God for every opportunity we get.

 

I sometimes oppose wars. I sometimes oppose political decisions. I even sometimes oppose Pentagon decisions on tactics or strategies. I never oppose our soldiers who go to fight on my behalf. Many times I feel politicians are far too cavalier with this precious resource. I am lividly angry at the lack of support that has been shown recently to the Veterans Administration to take care of Vets. Most homeless people in Lansing are Vets. Why can't the VA have a home for every homeless vet? These are special people who deserve our love.

Preparing to leave

Mary and I went to Mike and Shirley’s for New Years last night. It was exactly a year ago, now, that we decided to be in Hawaii this time in 2009. We missed our goal by 1 week because of resort availability. Not bad.

Mike has done a great job getting our plane reservations. There is some confusion and uncertainty, though because of 2 big picture things. First Northwest Airlines in the middle of consolidating operations with Delta who purchased them. We originally booked with Northwest. They are changing routes and schedules and our reservations have changed a couple times. When we checked last night, the phone information system had a different return for us from the email itinerary that we received. We will need to reconcile this.

Second, some idiot tried to attack a flight on Christmas day. Though it was clearly the fault of the bureaucrats for not keeping this known threat (his father had turned him in) all airline passengers are being punished by tightening up security procedures. In my opinion, I am in much more danger riding in a car than flying, so why all the panic? Humans are quite irrational sometimes.

I am about to pack. I don’t know exactly what I want to take. Of course, I have around 36 hours to figure it out, so no rush, yet! (smile)

I am most interested in the natural environment of Hawaii and in a virtual tie, is to taste lots of food, especially fruit and seafood. I look forward to hearing some local Hawaiian slack Key guitar players. I am writing this here so I can compare my expectations with what we actually do. Of course, meeting new people and meeting up with some NFB acquaintances will be gratifying, as well.

The next entry will probably be from Hawaii on the 4th or so.

Michner's hawaii

We finished reading Michners book "Hawaii a few minutes ago. It is more than 50 hours in audio format. It has given me some things to look for. Although the book is more than 50 years old, now, it gave me a sense of how geography, culture and politics have converged to make, Hawaii, a model for the changes to be encountered here on the mainland. The discrimination, prejudice and exploitation of minorities by the ruling class has given way to integration, economic power and political involvement by all groups. Because Hawaii is dominated by the Pacific, the dynamics are different from those here. It is clear that California is much like Hawaii in the way it must deal with these issues from an an Aisianrather than European emphasis. After the names are removed, though, the issues of political and economic integration are the same. The book is wonderful.

Trip to Hawaii

Mary and I are going to Hawaii for 2 weeks. This will be our first time, there. We are both very excited about our trip. We are traveling with our friends Mike and Shirley. We will be on Owahu, about 30 miles from Honolulu.

We are planning on doing hiking, eating, swimming, eating, touring Honolulu, eating, playing in the big waves on the north shore and did mention Eating?

I hope to do blog entries here during our trip to document our experiences. If you have any comments or suggestions for us, please let us know by making a comment below. I plan to make detailed and general comments about food, airplanes, the resort, the people and anything else that occurs to me.

Amusing Quote

The minute you or anybody else knows what you are you are not it, you are what you
or anybody else knows you are and as everything in living is made up of finding out
what you are it is extraordinarily difficult really not to know what you are and
yet to be that thing.
The minute you or anybody else knows what you are you are not it, you are what you
or anybody else knows you are and as everything in living is made up of finding out
what you are it is extraordinarily difficult really not to know what you are and
yet to be that thing.
Author:
Gertrude Stein

Now, she sure has a way with words.