A Day in the Life of Chaos

In a previous blog I mentioned some people that have passed that helped to make me who I am as a person.  I hope this is mostly for the better and less than for the worse.  I thought I would take a moment to write a few recollections about some of the people I have known and continue to know and what they meant to me.  It is interesting I suppose that the majority of the people noted are father figures.  I think in the life of a young developing man male figures that pay them attention and give them a sense of worth are very important.  My father had a similar impact on the life of one of my friends.  With my father’s encouragement and guidance my friend made it through the university and found direction in his life.  I truly believe my father was critical in his progression.  Regretfully I am not sure I have ever held the same significance to a person in life aside from my son.  That said, often we never fully understand the role our actions play on the lives of others and few circl

The first time I remember confronting death was as a child.  My mother took me to visit my paternal grandmother and grandfather in a Los Angeles suburb.  It was the kind of place that the original boom California generation moved to as a relief for what central Los Angeles had become. I was twelve years old and my memories of my grandfather were limited as we had moved north to Alaska when I was two years old.  I had only seen him a couple of times since then and those memories were clouded in the fog of early youth.  Memories colored by photographs that likely don’t recall but simply recreate a memory that had left the mind or been buried within its deep recesses.    My grandfather was debilitated.  He sat in his naugahyde recliner with a blanket wrapped around him watching reruns of Bonanza and Big Valley.  He was suffering from brain cancer and his time was limited but when you are young, and have no concept of death, time seems to have little finality.  For a young mind, Gra

When I was a child I had a mentor.  Well not really, mentor is a word that conjurers up an image of an apprentice working with a powerful wizard.  In reality it was more like a person that feels special to you for an unknown reason.  There was just something about that person that seemed to sit right.  Maybe they listened, maybe they didn't.  Maybe it was just a person that even though I never asked anything from them, they made me feel secure.  They made me feel important or valued in some way.  In my case they were friends of my parents who in some way through my contact with them made me feel important in their eyes. Ken Piper Nearly as far back as I can remember I knew a wonderful man.  He seemed seven feet tall and had a body four feet wide.  His head was bald and he had a smile and a laugh as deep as a geyser billowing steam.  He used to give me books or records when I was small and as I grew older he would take me to school.  He lived with us for awhile while his life w