When I was a teenager, I used to collect old phonograph records from flea markets, garage sales, and antique stores in Bucks County, Pennslvania. Some of these were from the 1920s and 30s. They were fragile and sometimes etched on just one side. Here is one such record.
I've recently being transferring hours of 8 mm videos to CDs of the last fifteen years.
What memories!
Parties, trips, the changing seasons, homes, holidays, school, babies, swimming, restaurants, pets, vacations, and also people that have left us-- these priceless images are all now stored in digits.
A few of the videos have deteriorated. The limit on vidoes is about fifteen years, so I expected that, although I was disappointed to lose those memories.
“Time catches up suddenly to us all,” the comedian Garrison Keillor writes. “One day you’re young and brilliant and sullen to your elders, and the next you’re getting junk mail from the American Association of Retired Persons and people your very own age are talking about pension plans and the prostrate. A sense of mortality should make us smarter. Life is short, so do your work. You spend more time attending to music and art and literature, less time arguing about politics. You plant trees. You cook spaghetti sauce. You talk to children. You don’t let your life be eaten by salesmen and evangelists and the circuses of the media.”
In that spirit, here are my resolutions for 2009. I will put first things last.
I will study a sunset.
I will discover a color.
I will memorize clouds.
I will be amphibious.
I will listen to my kids more and to politicans less.
I will ride into the high country.
I will savor.
I will enjoy.
I will hope.
Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring Your Winter-garment of Repentance fling: The Bird of Time has but a little way To flutter---and the Bird is on the Wing.
It has been several months since I last blogged. That hasn't effected my page rank or daily hits. I still get over 3,000 hits each day and my advertising revenue remains steady. However, the impluse to blog is, I think, a good one, so long as I don't feel that I'm writing screeds for hate week.
For the last few months, I've worked outside of the house while our house's interior was getting renovated. It hasn't been easy for our family. The boys had to tolerate living in cramped confines at our condo. We got burglarized-- a rather nasty tax event. There were also cost and time overruns. However, the renovation is almost done, although my definition of done differs somewhat from the contrator's definition of done. We're awaiting the installation of a backsplash in the kitchen and other finishing touches.
In other news, school has begun, and the first semester has come to an end with both boys getting mainly As. For our spring break, we took a seven-day Disney Magic cruise that took us to Key West, Cozumel, Mexico, and Disney's island Casterway Cay. As always, we had a wonderful time and are making plans for another cruise. Sometimes, I would go to the ninth floor in the spa and work out on the treadmill overlooking the ship's bridge. In front of me was a small plasma screen that each day traced the downward trend of the Dow Jones industrials. I much preferred to watch the flying fish in the ocean below as the Magic cut through the azure waves.
A Life On the Ocean Wave: The Disney Magic
In one of my 401(k) statements that I got yesterday, I note that my account for the last quarter dropped almost 17 percent. Ouch. I'm sure folks all over the country are opening similar statements and are uttering primal screams. This no doubt accounts for a similar collapse in Republican electoral prospects. Real Clear Politics. a polling data aggregator, today places the spread between Obama and McCain at 7.2 percent. Intrade. a gambling site that has proven its accuracy as people put dollars behind their surmises, predicts that Obama has a more than a 84 percent chance of winning. With some, hope continues to spring eternal that McCain can pull a Truman and somehow reverse what I see is an inevitable Obama landslide. I watched Karl Rove on Fox last night who did just that-- pointing to outliner polls and claiming that the consensus is old or biased. Perhaps. But I suspect that there will have to be a circular firing squad from conservatives, evangelicals, and Republicans, which I hope by now we all recognize are not the same, to atone for the views that animates George Bush's imploding world.
We are only a week and a half away from the election. There appears to be a pent-up thirst for systemic change and deep-seated anger to incumbents, especially to the Republicans. The economic difficulties we are encountering are certainly not the fault of one person or party, as the market is bigger than individuals, institutions, and even countries. However, I think there is an acute national sense of betrayal because of critical errors of judgment and a general lack of accountability and awareness of what Americans want and need, and the Republican Party will pay the price this November at the polls. The idea that Republicans = conservatives = evangelicals has especially bothered me as it doesn’t seem to be truthful. Massive deficit spending, market collapses because of deregulation, and preemptive wars are not acts of a conservative by my way of thinking. What can they be conserving when soldiers are dying and savings are vanishing? And, in the wake of the many Republican scandals, I see little with Republicanism that is more moral that the Democrats. It wouldn’t surprise me that Democratic Party control over the executive branch and both houses will bring in its own problems and scandals that eclipse what we’ve seen from the Republicans. However, as I believe we should never reward bad behavior, I must again vote straight Democratic. But I’m glad we live under a vibrant constitution and I’m glad that God continues to reign.
It is now getting warmer. Temperatures are consistently above 100 degrees, and we are starting to use the pool.
The boys have finished school. Ben ended his year with a 4.0 and Zach with a 3.5/4.0. The both worked hard. We attended the moving up ceremony for Zach from 8th grade to high school. He has a strong desire to be an engineer and to go to a university in the mid-west.
Ben is with two of his friends on a camping trip up north.
I’m looking forward to hearing about Tim’s house hunting efforts. We believe this is the right thing for him, and will provide an exciting new chapter to his life.
My small garden continues to flourish. I have a garden hose that sprays a mist over the tomatoes, herbs, squash, and peppers.
I had my annual physical and also went to the dentist last week. I still struggle with high cholesterol but I’m otherwise OK. No real problems with my teeth, either.
Work is beginning on our kitchen and bathroom. We may be living in hotels and also at our timeshare for the next several weeks, although our mailing address will remain the same. Kitty of course will have to live in the house during the construction process.
** I want to add to this two words: Brilliant & Beautiful. (I wish my father had spared the time to impart the bulk of his knowledge on to me like this.)
Blue skies smilin' at me Nothin' but blue skies do I see Bluebirds singin' a song Nothin' but bluebirds all day long
Today was a cloudy and rainy day, which disappointed Our Boy who wanted to ref this weekend. But, like the Willy Nelson song says, it's still blue skies as far as my eye can see. Yesterday, the hospital released my mom after eleven days, I watched Our Boy play on his trombone Swearingen's Entrance of the Tall Ships at the middle-school's winter concert (not like my school days where there was at least Jingle Bells and we called it the Christmas concert), and I got a nice raise at work. Like a spring robin, my mouth is open to swallow whatever rarebits God cares to put in it.
So life continues to be good.
Never saw the sun shinin' so bright Never saw things goin' so right Noticing the days hurrying by When you're in love, my how they fly Blue days, all of them gone Nothin' but blue skies from now on Nothin' but blue skies from now on
9:00 Roused into consciousness from a creepy dream involving my youngest boy, tempestuous ocean waves, and Harvard's Langdell Hall.
10:45 Dropped oldest boy off at Mountain View Park to referee three soccer games.
11:15 Sorted laundry, watered the new rye grass and fruit trees, and added water to the pool.
12:00 Made lunch for myself-- rice, chopped red cabbage, and tuna.
1:00 Picked up two gallons of fat-free milk from Albertsons. Returned them thirty minutes later for two percent. While driving to Albertsons on Indian Bend, I saw a collision-- a Buick driven by an elderly man at seventy miles per hour broad-sided a turning red Sentra that then hit a traffic light, causing the light to collapse and all lights at the intersection to shut down. The man sat stunned in his car while gasoline leaked over the road.
3:00 My 13 year old bought a T-Mobile cell phone with his referee earnings. He has wanted this for some time. The plan costs $50 a month, and he will pay for everything. Yet another introduction to the karma of effort. Study hard, get good grades. Work hard, and get things things you want. Certis paribus of course,
5:00 Watched C-SPAN for a hour. Interesting debate "Is Christianity the Problem?" from The King's College in New York, with Dinesh D'Souza, author of "What's So Great About Christianity," and Christopher Hitchens, author of "God Is Not Great," moderated by Mavin Olasky, provost of King's. I had seen Dinesh a few times before on Fox, and was never impressed by his predictable right-wing platitudes perhaps due to the kind of questions and format that Fox has. I had also heard Hitchens before as well on various cable shows, and I also was never impressed with his visceral hatred of Christianity and militant anti-theism. Although the audience applauded D'Souza more frequently that Hitchens, I felt Hitchens had the better arguments. The claim that the West's ethics derive from Jesus Christ, that Hitlerism is agnostic, and that proof for a divine law giver lies in the fine-tuned laws of the universe were just a few of the D'Souza's assertions that struck me as dubious. I was also dubious about Hitchens' claim regarding the theistic predicates to Marxist-Leninism. For fanatics on either side, Christianity is the either the source of all evil or the source of all good. There is a middle ground in there some where.
6:00 Took my youngest boy to Nothing But Noodles where I had wavy egg noodles sautéed with tender beef and mushrooms, tossed in a Stroganoff sauce. He had alfredo-- curly pasta tossed with a freshly made Parmesan cream sauce, topped with Parmesan and Romano cheeses. On Saturday and Sunday, his dinner was free. A good meal, but the restaurant was deserted. I'm not sure why. Drove back home into a spectacular goldenrod sunset.
7:00 My wife and I went to the Harkins Shea 14 to see new Steve Carrell movie "Dan In Real life." We enjoy seeing "The Office" each week, so we were curious about his latest movie release-- and we weren't disappointed. It was a feel-good comedy that captured the poignancy of trying to kindle the spark of love in the middle of one's life and also the tension between what one proclaims and what one lives. The setting-- a family reunion in Rhode Island-- also reminded me of our family reunions as well in Door County and also our summer trips to New Hampshire when I was a kid. I recommend it.
Commission Junction cancelled my account. I reinstated it, but I'm not hopeful that it will bring in dollars. The Google model seems to work for me better. Added Google analytics to my blog.
Watched The Office with the kids.
Saw Ann Coulter on the O'Reilly Factor. Both shrill as usual and clamoring to talk over each other. But I think they are one of us-- Democrats-- as their court jesting can only drive more people away from the Republican fold. Their success is our success.
I planted a lemon tree in the backyard but hacked through an irrigation pipe. Also seeded the back lawn with rye grass. Earlier this year, the frost killed our lemon tree. The other cirtus trees survived.
Our elementary school principal was fired. The usual reason of butting heads and egos run amok. It need not have happened.
Cooling weather, making our nightly biking through the greenbelt enjoyable. We usually go about five miles.
The kids finish their first quarter, we think with straight As. No big travel plans for Fall break this time.
