Sometimes the old jalopy fights back!

So this morning I was just getting on my way to watch the sunrise when my old jalopy made a screeching noise, which it does not do. I let off the gas a bit, and it quits, which tells me it is the one and only fan belt that must be loose. I coast on into the gate station to a well lit location and pop the hood. There is not a lot that can wrong with the fan belt on my car, one fan, one alternator and the crankshaft. I could tell it was loose so I grabbed my little canvas tool bag from under the seat to get the 9/16 wrench I knew that allow me to adjust the alternator to tighten the belt. I start wrenching on the adjustment bolt only to find the whole assembly is loose. I also grab the 9/16th socket and ratchet so I can tighten the lower mounting bolt as well. It did not take long to realize that the lower mounting bolt was sheared off. Man oh man I thought, I was a couple of miles from the house, how was I going to repair this. It was only a bit after 5am and while there is a NAPA right beside the gate it would not be open for some time.

I keep a small supply of items in the tool bag, fuel filters, a set of points and condenser, a couple of spark plugs and what not but not a bolt like this. This bolt is almost 6 inches long and although the bolt in use was not a grade bolt I was pretty sure the replacement would be at least a grade 5. So back to how do I get home? It obviously has to be repaired somehow to get back home, I pondered the possibility of just taking the belt off and setting out for home and hope that we did not overheat, it is a small 6 cylinder car so I was pretty confident I could make it, that would be my fall back, last resort repair. What else could work in the short term? I removed the broken bolt and found that my quarter inch drive socket extension fit through the hole and the end was big enough to not fit through the alternator. I slipped it in and with the firm grip of a pair of American made Vise Grip brand pliers I had my repair and I was off to the house, squeak eliminated. I considered leaving the repair it had worked so well but I could hardly afford to give up the extension or the vise grips.

I made it home, transferred all my Sunrise watching gear from the jalopy to the Town and Country and we were off to watch a magnificent sunrise together. After all of that we cleaned house and later I went looking for a 6 inch long, 3/8 inch diameter, grade 5 (minimum) bolt and the necessary flat and lock washers to make the repair. Sounds simple enough huh? WRONG. I started where I always start when working on my car, NAPA. They are a bit more expensive but I have learned my lesson, over and over again sometimes it seems with going to the discount parts places. They call them discount places for a reason, you get a discount but you also get inferior crap so it is a trade off. Anyway my buddy at the NAPA tells me no joy on that, and asked what I was doing. I tell him it is for the alternator bracket on my 58 Ford, to which he replies, the 58 Ford did not have an alternator, it came with a 35amp generator. He knows his business for sure. I explain to him in my journey to having air conditioning in the jalopy I had to first get the generator changed out for a higher amperage alternator and I had to fabricate all the bracketry from scratch, that explains it he says with a laugh.

I continue my fools errand a with stops at three different discount places and even the Home Depot and Lowes and an Ace Hardware. The Home depot and Lowes representatives did not even know that bolt hardness was graded – should have not wasted my time going there. Anyway, I come home empty handed and know that I will be calling my fastener vendor tomorrow from work, he will be able to provide me that bolt I just know it. The old Jalopy will be as good as new and able to continue to take me to the beach for the sunrises for many a day to come.

President Obama wins the Nobel Peace Prize, Extraordinary! Or maybe not.

I heard earlier today that President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and started wondering what that really means. When talking about the Nobel Prize for peace, some monumental figures come to mind, for example Mahatma Gandhi, one of the strongest symbols of non-violence in the 20th century, was nominated in 1937, 1938, 1939, 1947 and, finally, shortly before he was assassinated in January 1948. Although Gandhi was not awarded the Prize (a posthumous award is not allowed by the statutes), the Norwegian Nobel Committee decided to make no award that year on the grounds that "there was no suitable living candidate". Since we are talking about Presidents I will stay there for my examples, Theodore Roosevelt was the first U.S. president to win the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize. He received the honor in 1906 for his efforts in mediating the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), midwifing the Treaty of Portsmouth signed by Russia and Japan on September 5, 1905.

Or we can use Woodrow Wilson, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1919 "in recognition of his Fourteen Points peace program and his work in achieving inclusion of the Covenant of the League of Nations, which would later morph into the United Nations, in the 1919 Treaty of Versailles." That pretty much revolved around the end of WWI. And then we have Jimmy Carter, he won the Prize in 2002 "for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development." He was the first U.S. president to accept the prize in person, in a ceremony in Oslo on December 10, 2002. His efforts at Camp David were instrumental in Anwar al-Sadat and Menachem Begin sharing the Nobel Peace Prize in 1978. All truly impressive feats, ending wars, preventing Mideast turmoil and the like are pretty impressive and not easily attainable feats. Two non presidential figures I want to touch on are Martin Luther King Jr and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. They also won the prize and we all know of their accomplishments, they are clear to all. Come on folks as much as I like the President he is not in their league when talking about accomplishments toward peace, not even close.

So as I ponder it, I am trying to figure out the monumental feat that has been accomplished by our President. After quite a bit of ponderin I came to the conclusion that I have ZERO respect anymore for the Nobel prize, the committees who vote for nominees or anything to do with the prizes. Why you might be asking. Well if we look at what he has done recently I could only compare it to a not so distant past President who performed a similar act. President Richard Milhous Nixon expanded the unwinnable war in Viet Nam into Laos and Cambodia, assuring the American people that it would help end the war. Well we know with a short glance at the history we should be learning from that that did not work. I see the same tired rhetoric being used about expanding the war in Afghanistan, and I still see no clear and easy to understand mission or exit strategy. Do you know when our work (whatever it is) will be done in Afghanistan? I do not. To me nominating President Obama is hypocritical, he is expanding the war that is contributing to bankrupting our country at the same time! That statement in and of itself it a GIANT indicator - he does not deserve the Nobel Peace Prize, he is leading a active WAR!

After a bit of poking around I found that he was actually nominated some time ago, 2 weeks into his presidency actually. TWO WEEKS – what a crock and a symbolic gesture that tarnishes the validity of everything Alfred Nobel wanted to do by setting up the system, with 94% of his wealth, in his will before he died in 1895. With all the details worked out, the first of the prizes were awarded in 1901. So I thought I would investigate a bit more and see if there was something President Obama did as a Senator or community organizer before that that rose to the level of and had the merit the justified the award. Man I am having a hard time getting past the nomination coming only two weeks into his Presidency. In my research I could find no such event. I was able to find that the youngest Nobel Peace Prize Laureate is Mairead Corrigan, founder of the Northern Ireland Peace Movement, who was 32 years old when she was awarded the Prize in 1976. And I also found the oldest Nobel Peace Prize Laureate to date is Joseph Rotblat, who was 87 years old when he was awarded the Prize in 1995 for his efforts to diminish the part played by nuclear arms in international politics. I was not able to find the deed that propelled our president to the top of the heap, I know the answer is someplace out there – what is it? And more importantly is it grand enough to justify the prize?

This seems to me to be yet another example of the United States favorite pass time, lets whip up a bit of symbolism and place that over the substance of the matter. Who cares about such an obviously hollow award based solely on symbolism that has no defining event to make it actually mean something. I am so sick of the façade our government and country hold up to hide the ugly truths that they no longer teach our children – some people lose and some win and we are not and can not all be held up as stellar individuals. When we do that it, to me, is insulting my intelligence and invalidates the greatness of the people who are actually deserving of recognition for there actual deeds. I served in the US navy on 2 war ships and each had a ships motto, the first, USS Stump a Spruance class destroyer was “Tenacity: Foundation of Victory”. That means that something worth doing takes determination and hard work, that is what makes it worth while. We are a country of instant gratification and to me it is a damn shame.
On the USS Gettysburg the motto was “Deeds Not Words” which means we let our actions speak for themselves. In the case of President Obama, how do I reconcile these two mottos? I think they (our government, not just the President) are tumbling along without our interest at heart, the foundations of our country are based on representative government. Do you, deep down, feel you are being properly represented at any level of government, I do not. As far as the other, what deeds have we seen? Have we gotten out of Iraq NO, is there a plan to get out of Afghanistan – NO. We are just allowing ourselves to have the warm sunshine of symbolism blown up our asses and all we seem able to do is smile and enjoy it while we give meaningless awards to the folks running the fans that are doing the blowing. Giving the Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama has tarnished the whole thing and sullied the accomplishments of true reformers who actually did the work, in the trench’s without an eye to how it might benefit them. I am thoroughly disgusted today indeed!

I have a Face Book friend who posted the following “For all the haters, the Nobel Peace Prize doesn't have to go to someone who had a world-wide effect on peace. It's someone who has made a great accomplishment in peace or equality. The fact that the US elected a president of African descent is a huge step. As someone on NPR said this morning, its not just only a prize for him but for the American people, that and he kept Palin from being in office…. Good point Brad.” All I could think was WOW, All the haters. Those are pretty tough words. I do not by any means hate the President, I voted for him – the first vote for a Democrat for president in my life by the way. So if the peace prize is not for someone who has had a world wide effect on peace I still do not understand this new definition of peace and equality. What – exactly – did the President do in his first two weeks in office, or before that could be considered a great accomplishment in peace and equality? The Nobel Peace Prize is not supposed to be a symbolic gesture for some nebulous accomplishments and when we water it down to mean less we disgrace the other winners, who have actually deserved it, those like Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr and Desmond Tutu and Jimmy Carter and the list can go on and on. And what pray tell does the President being of African descent have to do with the Nobel Peace Prize? How, exactly, is his winning it a prize for the American people? I see no answer other than some nebulous crap that is supposed to make us feel good about our president and being American’s which is not what that particular prize is all about.

This is undoubtedly a topic that will get beaten to death in the media – this will be the last time I comment on it.

I found out the other day that we are now getting another tax levied against us!

I was at breakfast with a friend of mine the other day and he was telling me about the increase in the costs of our license plates. From what he told me the cost has nearly doubled and when you consider we can now get our tags in two year increments. It is possible that you might be paying 4 times what you paid last year when you visited the DMV, at least in Florida. I was stunned to hear that news, he also filled me on that drivers licenses also basically doubled in cost as well. Just when we can least afford new taxes we are hit with another one! Our city council recently voted to raise our millage rate, someone told me they raised it the maximum amount allowed by law but I have not independently verified that claim. This year we have also have been forced to pay new city fee, a waste water drainage fee as well. This and all the other shenanigans our political figures are involved with has forced me to conclude that instead of shrinking government, EVER, we will continue to be strapped with additional tax burdens.

I do not know about you but Bride and I are struggling to make ends meet. We are in that income bracket that is just high enough to remove us from the assistance lists and just low enough to that we are freaking struggling to make ends meet. I for one an sick and damn tired of being the guy getting screwed, nary or kiss or the KY yours + mine to at least make it fun! What I can not figure out is why the government bodies, local, state and federal do not seem to be able to cut spending. The size of government continues to grow, every year and when times are lean they still grow. During the last year we have had to continuously cut our spending in my household, as I am sure most folks have. Why is it that we allow our government to continue on, unabated, with what ever plans and programs they have to maintain. It is like we are feeding the machine but the machine has become huge and lethargic and I for one sometimes wonder what the hell the original purpose of the machine was and why do we have to continue to feed it.

I understand we need government and I am not one who thinks anyone should break up our union. I am not one who wishes for all government to go away, they do have some constitutional obligations to us, the people of this country. They have some programs that are beneficial to a great many people and they protect us with Police and Fire Fighters. There are, however, A LOT things, at all levels that they are doing that should at least be looked at. We need to at least slow the growth of government, I would say it needs to be rolled way back and I would prefer to stop the growth but knowing I need to keep my expectations realistic I would hope for at least slowing the growth. I for one can not afford to allow this continued growth, I simple just do not make enough money. I fear that I am headed for the poor house unless something is done to stop all the new taxes. They can call them fees or charges or whatever the hell they want to but it is a tax and I feel it is without proper representation, the folks that are supposed to be representing us are stuck in the wood chipper and unable to get themselves out.

It happens in a very controlled way, controlled by those who will benefit from it. Lockheed Martin for example, they build the F22 Raptor fighter plane. This approx 70 million dollar plane is a top of line fighter, it has no equal, it truly has nothing even in its league. This top shelf fighter costs in the neighborhood of 70 million per plane, not cheap but by military standards it is a bargain compared to the 2.2 BILLION we paid for each of the twenty one B2 bombers in our military arsenal. Well I will give you some insight into how that happens, in my opinion. So all the funding for the military has to come from Congress, you know the legislative branch of our three legged government. That spending bill is then signed by the President, the executive branch of our government. So how does Lockheed Martin sweeten the pot for the military to justify the purchases to the legislators in congress? Below is a map of the Lockheed Martin facilities around the country that have more than 200 employees.

As you can see they are spreading the manufacture of their products around the country, everyone gets a piece of the pie. I could not find a list of facilities with less than 200 employees but I would bet you anything they have all 50 states covered pretty well.

What has happened to our country? Maybe I am just jaded because I reside firmly on the bottom of the economic ladder and do not feel like my shitty economy has any positive outlook. It is hard for me, and getting harder, to feel optimistic about our countries future, this is not political for me it is about being an American and being proud of it. We should all know by now that it matters little which party is actually in office the machine is too big for any of them to control and it just keeps grinding away, just like a wood chipper, pulling them in and shredding them into little chips. I do not know what the answers are to these CRAZY times but I know I have turned off most all of my luxuries and am still struggling to get by. Seems like the stimulus has passed me by on its way to some obviously more deserving folks! I for one need government to control itself, it they are unable to and continue to tax me to death I will be looking for one of my friends to put us up!

The Giant Head - Art at the Jacksonville International Airport

Last night I traveled to the Jacksonville International Airport to pick up a good friend. I actually left early and was going over the Matthews bridge when she called from Tampa to tell me she was late. Had I checked my Facebook I would have delayed my departure. I came back home and before long she told me that they were boarding in Tampa and she was on her way. I again loaded up, in her car, to go and pick her up. It was raining so I still left with plenty of time to get there early, I hate being at the airport and have to wait for your ride so I always get there early for my pickups. On my way I took several pictures of the sunset, pretty cool with all the clouds. Anyway I am pulling into the waiting lot to watch the board that will tell me when her plane lands and I notice this giant head strategically placed along the route into the terminal. I had never noticed it before so I was intrigued, here is a picture of the head in question.

So I thought, since I have my camera that I would get a couple of pictures of this piece of art, in hind sight I wish I would have left my camera at home. I got this picture from the internet but I took some shots from across the street in the waiting lot with the zoom on my little Nikon CoolPix all the way out. I then thought, I have time I will just walk across the street and get some shots from a closer vantage point and maybe sit and stare at this piece for a while and see what it says to me. Once on the other side of the road, why did Mr. Oatmeal cross the road, because he is a dumbass that’s why. Well what at first glance appeared to be a lush green lawn quickly turned into a freaking hellish swamp, I was up to my knees in slimy mud that sucked the flip flops off my feet and since they were actually brides flip flops I had to then reach my arm in and retrieve them. Once I was finally able to extricate myself from my swamp walking expedition I then realized that I was covered in mud up to my knees and on one arm up to my elbow and had gotten my shorts and shirt muddy. I must have been quite a sight for the folks driving past, what is that strange man doing walking around the airport grounds with mud all over himself, I am probably lucky I am not in jail or being shipped to the detention center in Cuba.

Oh well I thought as I skulked back to the parking lot where my friends car was parked. As I make my way to the car I start thinking how is this going to work, I did not want to get mud all over her car. I mash the trunk button on the key fob and find one little cloth, a white affair with an orange border that was about the size of a wash cloth. I thought better to ruin that than the upholstery and carpeting in her car. I sat on a wooden bench that they have provided for folks who are waiting and wiped the mud from myself, realizing that several folks were watching from their cars. I could only imagine the snickering that was going on, I would have been outright laughing had I witnessed the circus act I just put on. Before long I get the call, her plane has landed, I had cleaned myself up and was nervous about the cloth. I asked my friend that I found this cloth in her trunk and what, if any, significance it may have. It was a good laugh as I told her the story, it was just a rag that she used to clean her hands, or anything other little messes that may crop up in her car. I can only imagine what she was thinking when i first asked that question. Well that rag now has a good story.

My friend travels much more than I so I asked about the giant head, she seemed think it had been there for a while. I told her I was going to find out about that Giant damn head when I got home, it had caused me so much embarrassment that I felt I needed to know the story. Well come to find out she is called the Goddess of the wind and while I could not find the exact commissioning date the first acticle I found was dated November of 2005. So our 14 foot head had been watching me for several years without my knowledge. I did find out that the sculpture cost a cool 150 grand, just when I thought that was bad enough I learned the airport authority moved the flag pavilion to create a home for the sculpture. And that granite walled home, with cascading waterfalls, cost an astonishing $450,000. It does have lighting that illuminate Hoy es Hoy (Today is Today) from the bottom at night so maybe that 450k was OK. Oh yeah there was another controversy with the Giant Head, the artist called it Hoy es Hoy but the airport authority renamed it to Goddess of the wind, he didn’t mind terribly as he still cashed the check. The artist, Javier Marin drew his inspiration from many different cultures—Mexican, Native American, and Asian. He says that this piece is representative of the Airport’s value of multi-culturalism and places the City on an international level for public art. Is he high, this is Jacksonville, a city that only begrudgingly supports the arts, and then barely at all.

The pre-Columbian and classically inspired features are framed by Medusa-like ringlets of hair that seem to flow around her. She is truly quite impressive, or at least she seemed so from my vantage point in the swamp that surrounds her on three sides. This purchase used operating revenue as part of a larger effort to elevate airport art to an international level, have you ever been to JIA? There is not one international flights that leaves from JIA. For some unknown reason that hasn't deterred officials from clinging to the idea that it's the perfect place for Hoy es Hoy. Especially now that she has mysteriously acquired an aviation-appropriate nickname to go with her new perch. "It's a gateway; it provides a first and lasting impression," said John Clark, executive director of the Jacksonville Airport Authority. "To me, it kind of symbolized this blending of ethnicity. I didn't realize when I first saw it that it was the goddess of wind." WHAT! It had been there for 4 years and I just noticed it. I am relatively sure Mr. Clark is full of something and he can tell any story that makes him feel better about spending the money, what do I care.

No one involved claims to know exactly where the Goddess of the wind nickname came from. But those present when Clark visited the J. Johnson Gallery and first saw Hoy es Hoy agree they heard someone say she could be a "goddess of the wind." Though airport officials acknowledge she is no such thing, they have latched onto that label anyway. The artist, said Hoy es Hoy honors the intellectual and emotional side of humanity, those parts that are universal in everyone. But ultimately it is up to the viewers to decide what they see. "She could be a million things," Marin said from Mexico City. "They can call her Medusa," he said, laughing. "If that's what people see, then she's Medusa. ... I don't try to define things. I like things to be up to interpretation. I agree with him, while art is created with one thing in mind it moves different people in different ways and I wish I could have gotten close enough to the Giant Head to sit, stare and ponder it for a while. Yep, they can call it Goddess of the wind or Medusa or Hoy es Hoy but to me it will always be that “Giant head at the Airport” and I am glad it is there, even though I had a unique way of learning the story.

Have you ever noticed it or knew the story behind it?

Who was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and why did Google add this to their front search page?

Ganhdi would have been 140 years old on October 2nd and Google celebrated his life and marked his brithday for the world to see, which because of him was declared by the United Nations General Assembly on june 15th 2007 as the International day of Non Violence. He joined what some might consider elite band of folks who have graced the google doodle. Those include Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, Confucius and Michael Jackson. Perosnally I am not sure a child molester belongs in that company but Google decided he did. Anyway, October 2nd is a national holiday in India known as "Gandhi Jayanti", this day marks the occasion of the father of the nation’s birthday. This is one of three officially declared National Holidays in India and is observed by all Indian states and union territories. No where in India can you buy or consume liquor, a small way to honor this great man. He was born on October 2 1869 in Porbandar, Gujarat as Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and has been celebrated for his ideas and leadership by example on non violent passive resistance. Most times you hear his name you will hear "Mahatma", this word is actually from the Sanskrit word meaning "Great Soul". The name change happened after he returned to India from South Africa, the Indian people began to call him Mahatma, a title reserved for great sages.

He married at a very young age, 13 and he a Kasturbai Makanji were blessed with four sons. This created some issues for the family, his wife is widly quoted as saying "You want my sons to be holy men before they are men!" The four of them tried to live up to their father's expectations of them, but each, in his own way, failed. Gandhi's attitude toward their failure was, by his own testimony, an element of guilt for sexual excesses in his childhood marriage. So even in the family of Mahatma Gandhi there was some dysfunction, who would have thunk it? The records tell us that Harilal, his oldest son, converted to Islam and later became an alcoholic. I also found that when Harilal's wife died in 1918 that Gandhi would not approve a re-marriage and that broke the son. I had no idea about any of this and was quite surprised to find out about it. Gandhi was a committed man and wore his convictions for all to see, and they would seem impossible for a son to live up to, this is really a sad story for the son’s of Gandhi. It appears to me that there is a paradox in Gandhi's life, poor treatment of his wife and children are not congruent with his behavior towards others. He was extremely demanding of himself, and those closest to him. It appears that he was easily able to display loving kindness to virtually everyone, everyone except his family. I found an interesting quote from Gandhi's best known biographer, Louis Fischer, in "The Life of Mahatma Gandhi". He put it very simply - Gandhi thought his sons could be chips off the old block, but the block did not chip. They say that later in his life he had mellowed concerning his expectations of his family.

He began studying law in 1888 in London and finished that schooling in 1891 and in 1893 he opened his own law firm in South Africa. In 1906 he began the Satyagraha movement to protest to the law that all Indians should be finger printed and should also carry an identification card. Gandhi started a peaceful campaign declaring that he would either go to the jail or die before following any anti-Asian laws. This was the first of many callings he was drawn to in his life, this is where he planted the seed of who he would become. George Paxton, of the London-based Gandhi Foundation, said that times Gandhi sounded very anti-technology because he advocated a return to a simpler way of life. He viewed most techologies as a bane to the poor because they were so often employed at the expense of the poor. In India there were massive numbers of unemployed, and the introduction of technology wasn't benefiting them, it was benefiting the owners of the factories. While he did not publicly advocate technology he would not have been able to lead India to indepence from British rule in 1947 without being a master of it. Without technology such as the telegraph, telephone and newpaper he may not have risen to prominence.

While the bits of technology are differnent the priniciples are the same, most technological advances do not immediately benefit the masses although I think we are hitting a time when that tide is shifting. We are more impowered today than ever with new things, and I find it all fascinating. Don’t get me wrong, I am not sure we can handle it and keep it in the correct perspective. We have all this gadgets that help us get through our days, our crackberrys and I-phones and all the other wifi connected gadgets. But is being connected really all it is cracked up to be? We seem to have short memories, what did we do before cell phones? We got by just fine, when I was a kid my Mom kicked us out of the house and we were not allowed back until it got dark. No phones to GPS track us and we lived way out in the country and wandered for miles looking for some mischief to get into. Think about how frustrated you get when there is no cell service, or no connectivity for your I-pod. The simplier life Gandhi spent his life defending was just that, a simpler life. A life that one could enjoy without the pressures of a dictatorial regime ruling the country.

At the end of World War II, Britain emerged victorious and when general elections were held in 1945. While there were promises of self Government a committee arrived from England and discussions were held with the leaders of India about the future of the free India. These meetings obviously failed because of the differences in the opinion between the Congress and Muslims leaders. India did eventually attain Independence in 1945 but due to ongoing issues the country was partitioned into India and Pakistan. This inability to get everyone on the same page caused huge problems between the Hindus and the Muslims that continue to this day. During the entire ordeal Gandhi worked tirelessly to unite the Hindus and the Muslims. This angered the Hindu fundamentalists so much that one of them, Nathu Ram Godse, assassinated Gandhi on January 30, 1948. The last words on his lips were ‘Hey Ram’ (Oh God). He later inspired millions of people around the world, including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela.

He was a great man and I for one am glad that Google honored him on his birthday.

What do you see when you examine your own mortality?

I recently received news that my Brother-in-law has bladder cancer and I have spent the last couple of days contemplating my life and my own mortality. I hate that – I should not need news like that to force me to do it. I try very hard to examine myself on a daily basis but sometimes my hectic life gets in the way and that pisses me off. I am going to vow, again, to myself, not to let that happen again. I spoke with my Brother the day after the news and the day before the meeting with the oncologist and was surprised at what good spirits he was in. I have never faced any news like that but I hope if I get that news that I do not crumble into the fetal position in my bathtub and start sucking on my thumb, who knows it could happen. (I did steal that line from my brother) Bride and I have talked a lot about Brother Bill and our mortality and what we believe in or not believe in since first hearing the news.

Bride said the first thing she did was pray and I asked her why. She told me that it seemed the right thing to do. We then started talking about our belief in God, she is not sure if she believes and I consider myself a spiritual seeker so that did not get us anywhere. So that got us to talking about why is it that when news like that comes our first thought is to pray? We talked about religion and the role it plays in our lives, from early childhood through until today. She was raised Catholic, schooling and all and I was raised Baptist – how did we get together, right? Anyway we have very different backgrounds in that regard but neither of us is overly religious so it has never created any issues for us. Now she is more Agnostic than Atheist and less Catholic and I consider myself as somewhat the same. I am not sure what that means exactly but I guess it means I am somewhat Agnostic and have Atheistic tendencies.

Spiritual seeker – my ambling through life has lead me down, and back in some cases, many different paths. Some were good, others not so much, some were long road trips and some were brief incursions. I have learned some things that were beneficial to me and I learned things that were not so helpful. I have learned through example and study and I have learned by observing bad examples. I have learned from examining the motives of teachers who had their own agendas. I have found that we need to be observing and learning all the time and have found I learn more when I least expect to be learning something – the AH HA moments. I guess I am wary of teachers and when learning, in an organized way, from them I think I put up a knee wall and place a jaundiced eye on the material. No matter the source of the information we each must examine and reconcile this new information with what and who we are, without that what does it really mean – blind faith I think.

There has been one constant on my journey and that is most folks have some hypocrisy in them, and yes I place myself at the top of that list. You might think, from that statement that I am somewhat jaded wouldn’t ya. It is not meant that way and I do not believe I am, I feel that I am simply a realist. I will give you a test, the next time you are at church and you are in the parking lot trying to get out look around and examine the faces of your fellow church goers. Inevitably you will see at least one with the look of complete disgust on their face with the slowness of the traffic leaving the church. Not even out of the church parking lot and the grace of God is already slipped from their mind, gone – I have not gone to church in years but did this experiment many times and it proves out, every time. So, I know you are thinking that is not true, well it is my truth and like any truth it needs to be examined and believed individually. Try it for yourself. You also have remove the rosy glasses that organized religion provides and be open to the truth, no matter where it comes from. Sometimes the truth is ugly and not something you want to see and not something you want to admit is in you. In my earlier years my pig headedness and stubbornness and blind beliefs simply blocked these easy to see hard truths, especially when placed against my own shining example (I had a high opinion of myself back then – some might even say sanctimonious). That lackadaisical approach to my early beliefs created MANY problems along my journey.

Through all of my journeys, I have also learned that there are a range of possibilities for the meaning of our lives. On one end of the spectrum we have, and I will use an analogy here, life starting, the annual bulb being planted in the ground during the spring, or when we are conceived. The little sprouts pop forth searching for the sunlight and start to grow, we are born and cared for. We, along with our flowers, reach some early stage of development, childhood and growing up. We reach our stride, like the flower starting to bloom and then comes the autumn. Our flower starts to slow down, fade and eventually die in the winter, not unlike us, getting older and passing away. Maybe, just maybe, it is that simple, we are nothing more than an evolutionary inevitability. We are born, grow old and die, like everything else on the planet and maybe that is all there is to it. The other end of that spectrum is the story of the Bible and we all end up in either a glorious Heaven or a miserable Hell. That is one part that is not as discussed as much and a discrepancy in the plan as I see it. If you believe that there is a Heaven, then you must also believe in Hell and recognize that God also created Hell. Personally I never understood or could reconcile that God would create such a place and send people of his flock to that place.
Anyway, I have come to be OK with it, no matter which end of spectrum may be the truth. Maybe, as the Buddhists believe, we are reincarnated, what we come back as depends on the culmination of our Karma from this and previous lives. What I have found is that all major religious groups and spiritual societies have a set of guidelines, rules for living right if you will and I think you might. They all basically tell us to do the right thing. Christianity has the ten commandments, Buddhism has a range of Precepts, depending on whether one is a monk, or layperson and in the Qur'an there are more than 10 commandments and Hindu’s have 5 principles and 10 Disciplines and Taoist’s have up to 1000 commandments depending on the sect we are talking about. I have never liked the word commandments, it implies a dictatorial relationship with your highest religious figures and that, I would think, was not the intent as it countermands the rest of it. In my opinion, folks – relax, this is all just my opinion and my truths and what I have observed and found on my journey. Each of us have our own journey and yours will different than mine and different from anyone else’s. If by chance your dander is up, it might help to refer back to paragraph 4 sentence 1. If you are being truthful with yourself someone else’s opinion should not make you question your own beliefs or even get mad about what is working for someone else, I am just saying.

So through all of that I have distilled it down to something that my simpleton brain can understand, be an upright person – the best person you can be. Don’t lie, steal, cheat, kill or any of the stuff we know is wrong. Right and wrong is really that simple – black and white and those who want to muddy it up with conversations about gray areas simply do not have the moral courage of their convictions or maybe they do not even the convictions to begin with. It is easy to let one little thing slip, oh I will take this or cheat on that or do whatever it is we know is wrong. Well if you compromise who you are, even a little, it becomes easier next time and once accustomed to the small lies the ones just a little bigger will start to come easy as well and the next thing you know……… So I try VERY hard not to compromise my principles, my moral and ethic foundations are strong and no matter the situation I will not lie to you or steal from you or do what we all know is wrong. Not even a little because once you compromise yourself you are on a slippery slope because you have figured out how to lie to yourself. When you can do that, you might as well admit defeat in the game of life because you missed the point. My unbending ethical foundation is hard to maintain and has caused me many a hardship throughout my life, tiny ones with Bride, big ones with friends, and huge ones at work and most every other area of my life. Seems it might have been easier to just go to church and sit in the pew, depending on the sermon giver to tell me what their truth is.

So what does all that mean? It means it is not easy to be a good person, your beliefs will be challenged every day and in every way. Being a good man is what gets me through the days. I try hard not to question or judge others or the methods they use to get through their days, I do not really care. I have enough problems with myself. Everything else is just fluff, my striving to be a good man is NOT following anyone else’s doctrine, it is what I have found makes me happy and helps me get through my days. If believing in God is what makes you happy then I am happy for ya. Finding happiness and something to help you get through the days is truly rare in our society (look at the # of antidepressant prescriptions if you need proof). If believing in Allah is working for ya, bless ya my friend because a lot of people never find any happiness and nothing to help them through. To me, it does not matter what the “it” is, as long as you can be true to “it” and you find peace and happiness in it.

To sum all that up, if our foundation of morality is in tack, the mortality thing will take care of itself!

I love you Brother Bill

What is it with high beam headlights and not knowing when to switch them to low beams?

It has always bothered me when approaching traffic rides with the high beams on and for some reason refuses to switch them to the low beam mode of operation when traffic approaches. That seems to me a common courtesy, one that seems to have long since gone by the way side. I know for a fact there is a law against bright lights in Indiana, more on that in a moment. I live in Florida where several of the laws governing vehicles and there operation seem to be lacking. Even some equipment in vehicles is optional, such as turn signals, another peeve of mine by the way. It is difficult enough to operate a motor vehicle but when the rules are skewed it becomes exponentially more challenging do so safely. Turn signals, or directionals or flashers or whatever you want to call them are more for other peoples safety. They help cars following you decide how close they can tailgate you and they also warn cars in front of you as to you intentions, I am going to turn here in front of you now for example. So living in Florida has prepared me, somewhat, for this and the lax state of peoples driving courtesies.

Let’s go back a little to talk about lights on vehicles. When I was younger and in high school we used to put switches on the brakes lights, switches on the brake lights you ask? That allowed us to make a quick turn, if by chance there was someone else chasing us, say onto Possum Hollow Road by Kiser lake and that person would never see the tail lights or the brake lights come on. There were some indiscretions in my youth, I will not deny them but look at how I turned out – right? Anyway I am just saying that I am familiar with the wiring on vehicles, going to Ohio High Point Vocational school for auto mechanics and being interested in electronics has allowed to jump right in and get it, when it comes to cars. Some time ago, for unknown reasons, car manufactures stopped placing the high beam, low beam switch on the floor to the left of the brake pedal. Some propeller head figured they could save 13.987 cents per unit if they moved it to the turn signal knob, so that is the path they took. STUPID if you ask me, and they did not by the way ask me because here I am telling them anyway. A simple trip through the south and they would have quickly realized that people already do not use the turn signal knob, they would have known that putting additional controls on the same knob would prove fruitless but NO they went and did it anyway.

So as I said earlier about Indiana and their rules. Some time ago I was stationed north of Chicago and I was there for about 9 months going to schools. Anyway being from Ohio, a scant 4-5 hour drive away I traded duties, bought some one off and was able to travel home almost every weekend. I remember class would get out around midnight and off I would go into the darkness. Indiana is where I learned another lesson about driving, never let the tank go below a quarter tank. I remember passing a gas station with a quarter of a tank and out on route 30 there is NOTHING and damn if I did not run my Jeep out of gas and ended up walking A LONG way to find gas and was able to pay someone to drive me back to nowhere where my Jeep was. To this day I very rarely let the tank go below a quarter and I live the city now where there are gas stations on every corner. So on one seemingly uneventful trip home we are tooling down the divided highway and a car was approaching with their high beams on, so I flash my high beams. No joy, so I flash them again, leaving them on high for just a little longer, still no joy. The third time I leave them on for like 5 seconds and still no joy. Now if I would have had any brains in my head I would have let it go at that but NO I could not do that, I had been disrespected and a toll would have to be paid. As I mentioned I was driving a jeep and across the top of the jeep were 8 KC daylighters at 100 watts a piece for a total of 800 watts total. I figured with those and two high beams at the legal limit of the time of 55 watts each I was pushing 910 watts a lighting, almost sufficient for normal nighttime driving, almost. In addition to that I had convinced a friend of mine that worked at Grimes, they made aircraft landing lights among other airplane related items, that I needed some of those lights. He was able to provide me the lamps but no mounting for them, no worries a metal fabricator outside of Chicago whipped them out for about 50 bucks a piece and voila 2 aircraft landing lights were mounted on the front bumper. So now I have the 910 and an additional 1500 per lamp for a total of 3910 watts of piercing halogen light available to me to drive at night. It was so bad I had to install a separate alternator and battery just to keep the lights operational. Stupid things we do as kids huh? So there I was, faced with Mr. bright lights at about 3am in the middle of Indiana and what was I to do? I flip all the switches to the on position and I could see that it was a cop car as clear as if it were the middle of the day, and he was still over a mile away. Well you can imagine his surprise when night turned to day and I found that it startled him about $390 worth because that is what the ticket cost me.

Well I do not have nearly that much light available to me anymore, I drive a minivan or my old 58 ford jalopy and neither of them would look right with a light bar across the roof and I am not even sure KC daylighters are even still sold. Somedays I wish I still had them because for some reason people still ride around with their high beams on and after “the incident in Indiana” as it has become known I will rarely flash even my normal high beams to get someone to turn theirs down. I guess I will have to suffer through, I mean I am already used to no turn signals so why has it been so difficult to get past the high beam issue?

Well if I can ask one favor of you, PLEASE use your damn turn signals and stop using your high beams when you are cruising around in town!