Simpler Things
The evening before Thanksgiving (Wednesday) I retired from the living room. The garrish T.V. was intolerable, tho my lovely spouse was enthralled. I shacked up in the den, with a table radio playing opera (NPR) in the dark, resting with a blanket on the sofa. The next morning I awoke at 5 AM, hell of a way to start a day off from work, and started the day with some bagels, a book and the news, again on NPR. That den is the most comfortable room in the house to me. A radio, books, my computer, a sofa and a leather wing back chair. Blankets for when its cold (the fireplace in the living room keeps the furnace from kicking in, but none of it's heat gets back to this corner of the house) all I might really need is a flask of brandy stashed somewhere, but mostly it's just a cup of hot coffee now a days. This is more enjoyable than any night out on the town when I was a younger man.
David Blaine [7:46 PM]
Nationalism
The sometimes irrational support of your own country no matter what. It's pretty common, however I see a difference between some countries and others. Take Canada as an example, people there are generaly patriotic, however they have a diverse citizenry who each embrace a different cultural heritage, and practice many different religions. I am staying away from my own country for this example on purpose. Canada has a seperation between cultures, including religion, and the government. You can be a good citizen of Canada and be of Asian decent or English decent. You can be a Muslim or Jew, Christian, Budhist, whatever, and still be a good Canadian. All will stand with each other to support their country. Now some countries are quite different. Some suppress religion, or restrict religion to one stripe. As a result there are factions within these countries who wish to break off and start their own country or state. It seems the people who live in adjacent regions would be better off living as a united collective of states than living as small independent ones. There are economies of scale that work for companies and countries alike. In the US there are anti trust laws to keep one company from taking over an entire market because it would eliminate competition, however mergers between companies are common, it saves money when you pool marketing and administrative costs, same for nations. More importantly for countries, it would create bridges instead of walls between people who have so much in common, even if they come from different cultures.
David Blaine [7:28 PM]
Babies and more.
It's been about a week now. My daughter and son in law lost their baby, she was a bit over 20 weeks pregnant. As I mentioned before, the child had spina bifida and was hydrocephalic. He was baptized at the hospital, but they didn't name him. An autopsy was done to see if anything could be determined which would help the couple have children in the future without complications. Now the baby can come home for a service, possibly to be buried or cremated. The couple hasn't decided yet. During this ordeal the couple kept both sets of parents at arms length and chose to go through it pretty much alone. I understand how they felt, although it hurt a lot to watch them suffer, they are my babies, even though they are definitely adults. I'm pretty sure I cried as many tears as they did during all of this. Now even though this was a very unhappy conclusion to a bad situation, it is a conclusion, and life goes on. It is just one more change I am forced to go through right now, whether I want it or not. It's just worse this time because it has to involve other loved ones as well as myself. My sister in law continues to get by with some days better than others, some not. Work continues and some days the changes seem to make a positive difference and some days they seem to be working against us. I haven't heard from the lawyers in weeks and choose to wait with my head in the sand, figuring no news may be good news, and I can't change anything anyway, so I might as well wait. I am feeling my age and I don't like that. A few weeks ago I got my first set of bifocal eye glasses. Yesterday I had my first root canal. I no longer think I look cool in the clothes I see the young men wearing in the magazine ads, but I know I won't wear the clothes I see the older men wearing in the catalogs yet. Diesel Jeans? No. Sansabelt? Hell no. One redeeming ability is my fitness. It's hard to feel too bad about getting old when you are in better shape than you were when you graduated from high school. Yesterday a younger coworker asked me if I really ran 8 miles Sunday or was just kidding. "How do you do that?" He asked. I replied that I ran around a 4 square mile section, two miles per side. I used to worry about everything in my 20's. As I aged I saw that most of the stuff I worried about never happened, and the stuff that did happen couldn't be controlled much by worrying, so I worried a lot less, and felt a lot better. After that I actually began to think that things usually work out for the best. Now I'm re thinking that position and starting to worry a lot more. Maybe life is more like "The Matrix" than we know. Maybe "things usually work out for the best" is just an illusion foisted on us to keep us in the yoke? Maybe I should have broken this into three separate posts, gotta go,
Dave
David Blaine [6:37 AM]