A Day in the Life of Chaos

Being an American parent requires a lot of letting go.  It seems like you spend your child's life letting go and you wonder what if anything you ever get to hold on to.  Maybe it is simply the memories.  We certainly can't hold on to our children, if we did they would never fly.  They would never become the self-sufficient adults they must become in order to survive.  I suppose every species confronts the same dilemma.   The only difference is for most the developmental period is much shorter.  A bear for example would raise and see its cub leave in a year, an elephant in two.  Yet for a human being the time goes on and on as one stage turns to the next.  For most of us we will spend a good quarter of our life raising our children.  Arguably the time really only ends upon our own death. There is one frightening period of development all parents know we are destined for.  Sometimes we like to pretend it won't happen but it will.  It is running at us like a semi-truck five

As our politicians have been debating or, not debating, the future budget course of America I have been thinking.  Anyone that reads this blog knows that I do that a lot.  I think in the shower, I think on the way to work.  I think before I fall asleep at night contributing to sleep deprivation.  Sometimes I just wish I didn't think. That said, yesterday my wife and I were talking about the American decline and she said something that made me think yet again.  She said this country has lost its pride.  I feel it imperative to explain that my wife was born and raised in the Philippines.  Until she moved here to put up with me and my over active mind, she viewed America from a much different position.  She viewed us as the "Shining city on the hill" that President Reagan once spoke of.  No Pride, wow I thought, how true is that?  Think beyond the simplistic American Pride and go deeper, much deeper.  We used to be proud of our standing in the world.  We were proud of our

Recently as described in a previous blog I had to go to the hospital for a kidney stone.  I was pretty sure what it was but the attack came at 4 am and the ER was the only option.  In retrospect I could have stayed home and just risked not knowing the cause.  It might have turned out okay or I might have died.  Funny thing is, next time, maybe I will take the chance. Everyone in America knows the realities of health care in this country.  The maze of paperwork and policy details and fine print.  Even if you have insurance there is no guarantee it will pay for anything. Since I just went through a real world example of this I thought I would share my billing experience with Lexington Medical in beautiful South Carolina.  Two days after the visit they sent me a survey.  I guess they wanted to make sure I got it in before the bills started to arrive. So, this is my recent experience with going to the ER for two hours with my kidney stone.  They did one CT scan and gave me two shot

When you visit the Philippines and land in Manila it is often easy to lose sight of what the country really is. Manila is a modest urban nightmare of traffic and concrete.  Towering condominium towers compete with with massive bill boards as they both block out the world outside.  Rivers dark and murky flow through the city filled with pollution.  At times I find the whole thing almost reminiscent of the movie Blade Runner.  Traffic clogs the roads like red blood cells meeting arterial blockage.  The pollution has colored everything with a dirty coating that never seems to wash away. When confronting this concrete jungle it is often easy to forget that it exists in a country filled with beauty, sandy beaches and sun.  It is not the norm, it is the exception.  It seems that progressively there is a move to fly tourists directly to resort destinations avoiding Manila all together.   It is as if the best strategy to deal with the nightmarish urban center is to simply forget it is there.

Americans, when it comes to our bodies are a modest lot.  I don't know where it comes from.  Why in a society where we readily plaster an image of a scantily dressed person on a billboard do we have such a sense of personal modesty?  I think for the most part Americans don't see this in ourselves.  It is only when we travel around the world and look back do we realize how modest we really are. My first lesson in this came in Europe as a student.  I was traveling one summer with my back pack on my back through the great capitals of western civilization.  From time to time I would meet other wayward travelers and we would decide to journey with each other for a few days if we were headed in the same direction.  Usually the experience resulted in an address being exchanged and a commitment to stay in touch that would never be maintained.  After a few years we would look through our address books and wonder just who that name belonged to.  At any rate, I remember meeting two men