Posts

Road Trip

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Road trips, especially in the Mountain and Southwest states always serve to remind me how big America is.  In the past days I have been on a journey that has taken me from Oregon to Texas.  Along the way we passed through some of the most beautiful landscape America has to offer stopping over in Canyonlands, Arches and Mesa Verde National Parks.  America’s National Parks are the jewels of the nation.  They are precious monuments to a wild and beautiful unsettled land.   Two guys at Mesa Verde, National Park As the miles slip away and we wind our way through miles of land with scarcely a single human present it reminds one of how empty and unsettled America is.  The tiny farm towns we cross through are monuments to the past and decaying representations of the present.  What little remains of a Main Street is often fronted by a few beautiful old brick buildings long since abandoned.  It makes me wonder how they ever served as a commercial center but I suppose in the era of Amazon they ar

The End

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Conchiteen Rondain Alcala “Chatty” When we are young we watch life begin. Our friends and even ourselves have children and commence the process of building a life and a family. If we make it through the frustrations and difficulties of marriage we reach a short period of stasis and then life commences its most cruel of tricks.  Life becomes death. It starts among our parents and those we have looked up to. Tragically it becomes interspersed with surprises as those we always thought healthy succumb to the boney fingers. Sometimes I feel like life has moments in the dark when we all stand naked and a dart is hurled impaling an unsuspecting victim. It can seem so random.  My mother died at 59. So young it has always seemed, especially as I will soon pass 58. It’s funny how as you grow older, old seems to become younger. When I remember her sickly and dying form I can’t believe we almost shared the same age. Early death is the most tragically unexplainable. The kind where there

Young Become Old and the Old Become Younger

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The beautiful and intelligent Sanna Marin Former Prime minister of Finland There is a curious thing that happens as we age, the old become young and the young become older.  I know this seems odd, please allow me to explain.  When we are young we look up to those we understand.  Those that seem within reach.  Often they are young athletes or celebrities.  They are the idols that we hold and we admire their talent, ability and perhaps wisdom.  Suddenly, one day not so late in our lives a curious thing happens, our age surpasses them.  One day we turn on the television and that sports idol is suddenly younger then us.  With each passing day they look more and more like children. The aged warmonger and bringer of death  Vladimir Putin (Wikipedia) As we progress through life we look at those older than us as the sources of wisdom and guidance.  They are the echos of thought and life experience that we trust.  We look to them for advice and in the world around us, seek their steady hand t

Retirement - The Last Days

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There is an odd feeling of finality as you wait out the final days of your sentence.   Like a prisoner waiting for parole your life becomes gentler as you experience increasing work release. You have long seen what’s on the other side yet for 33 years it seemed so close but yet so far.   In a few short days I will be liberated but it comes with a calliope of associated feelings, some sweet, some sour.   Work in many ways is like a relationship.  It becomes a major part of your life and is the foundation of your routine.  Everything is scheduled around its needs and a significant part of your day consists of meeting the associated obligations.  Since I was a young man most of what I do, even in my personal life is governed by my job.  Like asking permission from a parent, supervisors exercise a god like authority evaluating, considering and permitting many facets of life.  In the case of the self-employed their lives are equally restricted by the needs of their businesses.  In the re

The Seeds of Our Own Destruction

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There are moments when society colludes to make you feel old.   It happens in an amalgamation of statements, occurrences and overt acts.   Those that commit the injustice really don’t even know that they are doing it, it just happens.   I am sure when I was younger I did the same.   The Atlantic magazine recently published a story about a couple attempting to live without WiFi, internet and cellular telephones.  They permitted the use of a land line.   The New York Times published an article about the anomaly of a quiet zone in West Virginia where because of proximity to a radio telescope, there is no cellular service and the consequential impact this has on life. I seem to recall some TV show where people had to live as they did in the 1800s.  Honestly I don’t understand this concept, if they wanted that they should have just gone and filmed the Amish.  Incidentally I don’t think the show lasted that long.  I suppose it was just not that exciting. The point is that from the perspec

An Act of Contrition

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In a way this posting is a form of “mea culpa.”  It is an act of contrition for a time of my life that when I look back, I feel sorry and ignorant.  I was a product of the society around me and in that I became what it wanted me to become.  As a man who tries his best to think logically and independently I am ashamed that I surrendered myself in the manner I did. I was the product of Alaska in the late 1960s and 1970s.  It was almost a frontier but not quite.  Alaskan’s proudly called it the “Last Frontier.”  Roads were still often dirty and dusty.  Nothing was manicured and most was created out of necessity as opposed to methodically planned.  Those that lived in the state were divided between a small subset of long term hardy Alaskans that arrived during World War II or an even smaller set that came before.  They were truly the hardy mountain man types.  The ones that had lines of seasons written in their faces like the rings of a tree.  My family was of a new class.  It was a group