Finished Christmas presents

So I was finally able to finish my chainsaw art, here is the bear.  His eyes may look a little wonky but that’s because I used some polished Lake Superior agates that were found at my father in laws house. His head didn’t turn out quite the way I wanted, but it was better than the first one I made years ago. I haven’t finished the signs he will hold.  One is going to say “welcome” and the other will say “go away”.

The next one is the first eagle I made.  I think it’s pretty good, but compared to what I wanted to make.  At least compared to the second one.  The problem with the second was that the log was smaller so I had less room for the body.  Next I want to make one with its wings stretched out, it would be flying sideways, so all the feathers are stretched out.  Probably a few levels beyond my skill, but it would be fun to try.

Mirror, mirror on the wall

I keep coming back to thoughts about how we reflect our thoughts on to others.  I don’t always see it right away, but it becomes obvious after the fact.  For example, my wife and I had an argument today and she ended up calling me an idiot.  Later after we argued about it, she admitted she thought herself to be an idiot for what she did.  She didn’t necessarily mean to call me that (at least that what I’m telling myself!).  In the heat of the moment she fired that at me, my feeling were hurt and I got angry at her.  The anger she had was towards herself, but what I saw was the anger directed at me.  I see more and more that many times the thoughts and actions I see from another person are not always easy to interpret and instead of mirroring what you see, like yelling back at a person who is yelling at you, it helps to remain calm and try to see what is behind the thoughts of the person in front of you.

I am not good at this at all, the person who I end up confronting the most is my wife and it’s easy to fall into old habits of argument that I quickly lose this introspective view.  It is only in hindsight that I am able to calm down and think through what happened and then go back and either speak my disagreement or apologize for something.

Another example is American politics at the current moment.  I do my best to take a neutral stance for one good reason.  None of it is worth getting that worked up about.  I listen to one side accuse the other of the thing they are doing.  That side denies the accusation and throws something back at the other that they are guilty of doing.  It really is quite the show when you take an observer view.  I’m not interested in forwarding either a Democratic or Republican viewpoint in this forum.  I will say that deep down somewhere there are good ideals that are put forth by each of them, but it is such a muddy mess right now that neither is worth my time.  The reason I brought them up is because the mirror blindness that they have is so striking that there are few examples I can think of that illustrate my point any better.  I hear them calling each other hypocrites and what I see is that they should be calling themselves hypocrites because they can’t see that they are guilty of they very behavior that they accuse the other of.  They are unable to see beyond the fact that while both have good ideas, they both can be right.

I’m right and therefore because I’m right you must be wrong is the human thought that we all seem to have written into our DNA.  Even I’m right, so you must be slightly less right is still creates the same problem in the end.  Essentially it sums up politics and the argument I had with my wife this morning.  If you’re not for me, you’re against me.  If I’m right, you’re wrong.  If you don’t agree with me, then you disagree with me.  It’s very hard to see without the detached viewpoint that black and white are rarely the only two choices,  there are a million shades of grey or whatever color you want to choose.  Immediately assuming that you know what someone else is thinking based on what you are thinking is most often a way to keep conflict going.  Someone might be yelling back at you because you scared them and that’s their defense mechanism kicking in.  The assumption that they are wrong or that you know what they are thinking is hard to stop.  I need to continue to work on this, I think it is a key to making this world a better place.

One more project almost done

I’ll continue on my seemingly endless parade of projects I’m working on.  My daughter needed a new set of drawers for her clothes.  I’m not a big fan of buying stuff like that when there is such an overwhelming supply of furniture in this world that can be fixed up and look like new again.  So for about 75 dollars I am going to fix up and refinish my parents bedroom set that they no longer need.  As I said in the last post they are moving and their house is a bit smaller, so they were looking to get rid of some of their bedroom furniture.  The two pieces I took have been empty for 14 years.  They bought new pieces when they moved last time and just put the old ones in their extra bedrooms.  Now the new house has smaller bedrooms and they don’t need such large pieces in the rooms anyway.

Here is the partly finished product.  I used a chalk paint and then lightly sanded the edges.  I am in the middle of applying a wax coat to protect the paint and then all I need are a few handles and some grease for the drawer slides and away we go with updated furniture.  You can see the original brown that they were by looking at the taller piece in the back.  They also had some ugly large handles, whic I plan to replace with darker thin ones.  My daughter, even though she picked the color and helped paint everything is not liking this change.  She likes her old kid sized dresser and is not liking this much.  I’m pretty sure she’ll come around when it’s all done.  It’s going to be very nice looking when I finish.  I probably could sell each one for a few hundred after the work I put in, but I like them too much!

Art

I’m continuing with my steady progression of hobbies and interests that never seem to stop.  Today I started working on some chainsaw artwork for my parents and and my father in law.  If they turn out like I hope they will be the perfect Christmas presents for them.

I’m not quite ready to show my progress yet, but here is one of the logs I’m going to be working with.  Its actually going to have some meaning hopefully for my parents as this is from one of the trees they cut down a few months ago.  This was a tree that was in front of my grandparents house and it had to go to make room for the new house they are building on that site.  So far I’m working on a half eagle and a bear.  So we’ll see how it goes, maybe I’ll have some time to take some better pics tomorrow.

Grandpa

So I’ll start with my grandpa, he was probably the most intelligent, but stubborn person that I have met.  He was a farmer his whole life and never went past high school in his education.  He was the salutatorian of his class, even with hardly attending class his senior year.  His father was an alcoholic with liver disease and emphysema and was unable to do much on the farm.  Had he been able to go to college he would have went to law school.  Within a few years he was drafted to serve in World War II and was off to basic training.  Fortunately for me he was sent back home after he completed his training to work on the farm.  He would have went to Omaha beach on D-day and if that happened there is a pretty good chance I wouldn’t be writing this now!

Here is a picture of him with his favorite dog, Tiny. He would have been in his early 20’s when these were taken.  My family has always had St. Bernards and I even have two right now.  They are the most gentle and loving breed I have ever seen and have such great personalities.

This picture was taken in the mid 1920’s.  My grandpa is the little boy in this picture and his grandpa is the pilot sitting in the plane.  This was the first plane in the county and the hangar for the plane was on the farm where I grew up and my brother now lives.  My great, great grandpa was a land speculator who owned a number of farms and he justified the plane purchase so he could check on all his properties.  His story will need to wait for another day.

The top picture is the farm where he grew up and where my brother currently resides.  The bottom is of the house up close.  It would be interesting to get a current picture as the only building left from this picture taken almost 80 years ago is the house.  The house now looks completely different as well, but it’s main structure is still there and it will be 130 years old next year.  Another thing I would like to point out in the top picture is how close to the town of Sleepy Eye we are.  You can see houses and a water tower if you look closely.  This was a source of great consternation for my family as the town has inched closer and closer over the years.  My grandpa used his love of the law to torment the city whenever he could and my dad and brother have followed in his footsteps.  Every time I visit I hear new grumbling over some happening in the city.  This battle has been going and doesn’t look like it will end anytime soon.  It’s really quite remarkable how stupid the city has been over the years and while there are interesting stories to tell that have shaped my family, I’m going to keep them to myself for now.

Family History

I’m going to take a bit of a different angle with the blog in the next few weeks.  I have been deeply interested in my family history.  From the research I’ve done I know there are a few famous people, some that came on the Mayflower and probably a few infamous people.  My mom gave me a pile of papers and information on my family that my grandma had put together over the years.  She dabbled in things, but was never really organized.  I plan to digitize her notes and confirm the research she did.  I want to share my work with this blog as I go through the papers as it might help me find a place to share the more interesting finds and help those putting their own family history together with some ideas on where to start and how to do it themselves.

So I’ll share a bit about my closest famous cousin.  He was a famous physicist who was very important in the development of sonar and radar.  He was instrumental in creating systems that allows radio signals to be transmitted much farther than they had been previously.  He went on a mission to fly to the South Pole and actually has an island in Antarctica named after him!  He was part of the Majestic 12 who reviewed the Roswell, NM alien incident.  On top of that he has a high school in Texas named after him.  His name is Lloyd V Berkner.  Unfortunately he has passed away, but there is an incredible amount of information about him and I’ve read his books and ones that were written about him.  Even though we never met, he has inspired me to follow my dreams and not let anyone tell me it’s impossible.  I’ll be putting up some pictures and info about him as I dig into his past.

I’m sure I will find many more stories and hopefully you will find them as interesting as I do!

Halloween!

How could I miss the chance to include some pumpkins in my posting!  I have always loved pumpkins and that is one thing that hasn’t changed.  I had one year where I wasn’t involved with growing them and this year I went all out again.  My kids and my nieces had a one acre plot of pumpkins, their intent was to sell them this fall and they did.  I think when it’s all said and done they took in close to 1500 dollars!

One of the perks of having your own private pumpkin patch is that you get to keep pretty much whatever you want.  So I’m going to show you a few and leave the deep philosophical musings for another day.  The first pumpkin is about the most perfect a pumpkin can be.  I didn’t want to carve this one, it will get eaten in a few days!

The second is one that became known as buttkin, it is two pumpkins that grew together.  Ugly compared to the first, but beautiful in its own way.

The last two are carved up pictures of the ones we did.   The very last is a closeup of buttkin, so you can see how I made it have a happy and sad face.  We won’t win awards for carving, but we had a good time and froze our fingers as the pumpkins were nearly frozen when we cleaned them out.  Happy Halloween everyone!

Starvation and blown tires

Yesterday was a fun day, until it wasn’t.  I drove a truck full of food to a food packing event that it produces meals for those who need food.  This food goes all over the world to where ever it is needed.  Africa, Haiti, anywhere a hurricane strikes or just down the street at the local food shelf.  This is a fun way to get this food ready in mass quantities for groups who are wanting to help out those in need.  The first picture is the back of the truck with the extra ingredients.  The brown and yellow bags are soy protein and the white and green bags are rice.

What you see in the picture is enough food to make 40,000 meals.  There is also some flavoring and vitamins that are added to the mix and each bag has six servings in it.  It is designed to be the right mix of nutrition for a person who is starving and hasn’t eaten for a while.  Of course anyone could eat it.  It is quite tasty and has a chicken soup flavor.

The company that my friend runs also makes a rice and bean mix and oatmeal.  He does this by buying bulk ingredients and then working with groups to host these events.  Yesterday the group I delivered to packaged 9000 meals.  Not a huge amount compared to some, but still enough to feed a lot of people!  The end product was a full pallet of boxes all ready to go.

Here you can see a bit how they set up I had some other picture, but there were a lot of faces and as I don’t know any of these folks I didn’t want to post them out of respect.  They had a group of about 70 people and they knocked out their packaging in about an hour.

We loaded up after that and I headed to another town to drop off the finished food at a trucking warehouse and then home.  I should also add at this point my friend runs his operation using inexpensive tools, old trucks that have been fixed up and his headquarters is an old school that was closed.  He puts the maximum amount of money into his food in order to get the most bang for people’s money.

The problem with this is that things tend to break.

On the way home I blew out both back tires and barely kept my overloaded truck on the road.  The police that came to check on us was amazed that I was able to keep the truck out of the ditch.  My friends came down pulled the tires off and changed them on the side of the road.  We finished up and I got home at 3 am.  One interesting thing I learned was how to seat a truck tire using ether starting fluid and a torch.  It was cool to watch, I wish I would have taken a video.

There are not enough people like my friends in the world.  He has pretty much dedicated his life to this program and feeding the starving people in the world.  There is such a huge need for this, but the funds are limited and the means to move massive quantities of food in a usable form from this country to another are not cheap.  Yet he keeps pushing forward and has packaged countless millions of meals for others and he only has a small staff of a few paid employees and a fleet of run down trucks to do it.  He doesn’t buy tv commercial time, he doesn’t spend his money on fancy buildings or even wear nice clothes.  He is a saint who wears plaid.  He’s been an inspiration for me since I’ve met him and he is pushing me in this direction.  I have liked to help his causes with help and by giving him money.

I’ve come to the conclusion that doing selfless and mostly thankless work like this is where my life is going.  I’ve had some ideas lately about starting a program that helps people in need.  He has the corner on the food market and I don’t think I could do it better.  What I want to explore is the need for another human need - shelter.

I was shocked to learn that in Minnesota when prisoners are done with their sentence they are now booted out of prison whether or not they have a place to go.  This isn’t a huge problem in the summer as it’s pretty nice, but there are limited places to go when it’s cold.  The system already stacks the deck against felons and criminals and many times they are forced to return to their life of crime just to make ends meet.  To me if someone has done their time, it’s time to move on and give them another chance at making a better life for themselves.  This just doesn’t happen.

I’m going to work on a plan that helps this group of people, the people that society would rather see locked up and stay out of sight.  Sometimes all they need is a chance.  Sure some of them will go back and reoffend, but most just want to get on with it and be normal.

I’m not sure how all this will work out, but what I want to do will help these people meet a basic need.  The need to have a place called home.  If they don’t have that to worry about, they can find a job, they can help their families and communities.  They will have one less major worry that will allow them to keep working in a good direction.  There is a few ways this could happen and a nearly infinite amount of variables that could be used to help.

I am planning on going big with this and making a plan that could be copied by others to help spread a sustainable way to help the ridiculous number of people than cycle through the prisons in this country.  More to come here, but I need to get these ideas out of me and into the world.

Irregular symmetry

I’ve always been fascinated by the idea that we see ourselves reflected in the world.  There are a few quotes that come to mind that get me going.  First is one by Carl Jung, “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves”.  Another is from Hermann Hesse “ If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.

These two quotes together are ones that have really helped me to contemplate my actions.  I really try to think of those ideas when I find myself worked up about something.  When I want to lash out at someone who has said something I think is ridiculous or stupid.  If I can do it, pausing when that anger rises up and remembering this is often enough to prevent me from saying or doing something stupid.

The tricky part of this comes into play when we look at nature.

This picture is beautiful, I took it after one of our late season snowstorms in April this year.  Take a close look at the trees.  The trees here aren’t ones that show perfect symmetry, they are leaning and some are growing into each other, but overall they do have balance, they held up all that snow and didn’t fall over.  If I were able to single a few of them out when they are fully alive in the summer they would look fairly symmetrical.  The part you can’t see is the root system.  While it doesn’t look exactly like the tree tops, there is some reflection in how roots spread underground.  None of this is like a perfect flower that has amazing symmetry, but that brings me to the point of this post.

The reflection mentioned by the authors above is not perfect.  It is not a total mirror image,  it is like the reflection seen between tree tops and the roots,  there is symmetry, but it’s not obvious with a quick glance.  To me it explains some of the divisions in this country, if you read the same account of current political events going on (current or historical) you might wonder what is going on because each side of the story is so different and so far apart that it hardly makes sense to an outsider.

What I noticed is that the interpretation of the event depends on what mirror is being used,  if you are on one side of a political argument you would tend to believe the storyline from that side.  If you are a more neutral observer like I have become, you wonder how each side is able to sleep at night because one accuses the other of doing something they are ten times more guilty of doing and ignores the criticism that they are also guilty of the same thing.

 The issue arises because we think we are looking out a window, but it is in fact a mirror.  However, the reflection we see is distorted.  It’s like the difference between the roots and the treetop.  Very different but the same.  Like a just about every treetop, one side may be a little lopsided but over all if you divide any tree right down the middle, one half will be roughly the same as the other.

This distortion I think is the cause of the anger or irritation.  This is also behind hypocrisy, which is probably going to be a future topic for a post.  If you are looking at a distorted mirror you can’t see that in most cases you’re in fact looking at the problem.  Most often assigning blame or accusing someone else of some wrong (except for the most part  if the person has actually physically hurt you), comes from the blurry mirror you look at.  This is all very sneaky though because being humble and admitting you might be wrong is so difficult for humans.  

Over the years that I have been able to think about this, I have yet to be able to find a good rebuttal that is able to disprove the two quotes at the top.  The more I think about it, the more I am able to see that this tricky character trait of humans is constantly causing problems for people.  The only solution I have found is to take a short pause or deep breath and then focus on what is going on inside me.  It has taken time, but it has lead me to some very serene times in my life and the more I can practice this nonjudgmental approach to life the better my life becomes.

What’s really important in this world?

I don’t know the answer to the title of this blog.

I don’t think there are a lot of people giving this question a lot of thought these days.

It’s really too bad, because if more people were thinking of it, perhaps we wouldn’t have some of the problems we are facing in this world.  Money is something that seems to be important.  It is important to many people for a variety of reasons.  Some noble reasons for sure, but the majority of people’s reasons to get and have money are typically selfish.

Maybe that last sentence gets at the heart of the issue.  When looking at how big and important events or things are it depends a lot on perspective.  It’s incredibly important for me to be able to provide food, safety and some fun for my family.  For a town it’s probably very similar as well as a state or even a country.

Popularity, fame and luxury seem to be important, but would my life end without the next big Fast and Furious movie or another season of Modern Family?  Would I cease to exist without hearing the latest gossip from Hollywood?  Would I be able to survive without new curtains in my bedroom that aren’t as ugly as the ones currently hanging there?  Would I be able to survive with only two cars instead of three?

I most certainly would be able to go on without the list of things above, life may not be quite as enjoyable as it currently is temporarily, but I think we would all be able to adjust without those things.

So we can go a level deeper, what is important is only what you need to survive.  In Minnesota that looks a bit different than what that might look like in Brazil, but food, clothing, shelter and safety are what they are.  There are so many people who lack these basic important things in their lives, but yet this country is consumed with celebrity and materialistic pursuits.  It’s perhaps the not wanting to look or think about all those who have it so rough where these basic important needs aren’t met.

It’s becoming more and more difficult for me to ignore these people.  People who have life so tough and would be jealous of what I have because they have so little.

No matter what you happen to believe about the events that take place after you die, there seems to be a few truths that also help me get to the bottom of my question.  You can’t take any money with you when you are dead.  I suppose you could, it is a fact archeology has proven that a lot of people were buried with their “stuff”.  The only things you keep are those you give away.  Goodwill and charity lives on much longer in the memories of those you have helped.  Money and possessions are sold or divided up and soon forgotten.

I have a great friend who lives to make money, but only because he likes to give it away.  He also hates to be recognized for it.  That is who I think I would like to be, someone who has the ability to see all of the things I have been writing about and who lives it.  I don’t want to live my life any longer making more stuff for people who don’t need it, I think the most important thing in life is to help other people.  While I may not end up doing it the same way my friend does.  He is mostly interested in feeding hungry people.  I will find a way to meet the needs of those who are having a rough time and do it in a way that brings no attention to myself, only the way it is done.  Hopefully it will allow those people to be better people to each other and to the world.

We have clearance, Clarence...

Every time I go to the airport I think of one of the greatest movies of all time.  Airplane at time has some of the best word play in a movie and every time I see it takes me back to a simpler time.  Yesterday I was at the airport to pick up my wife and daughter who were coming back from a wedding.  I was there in plenty of time and due to a delay I spent some time walking around the airport looking at signs and thinking.

Life in America is so full of signs and order.  I took a few pictures mostly out of boredom and I’ll share my thoughts while I walked around waiting.  First I don’t know how many times I found myself looking at this information.

Everyone who has been to the airport has looked at this board to see the status of their flight.  I watched people like me who were waiting who would just stare at it.  I saw people leaving look and then take off running because they were late.  The sign here is updated fairly fast.  It was a bit concerning when all of a sudden the flight I was waiting for switched to delayed!  It was a three hour flight so for it to switch to delayed 10 minutes after it should have arrived was not something I was expecting.  To make a long story short, the plane was about to land and the pilot had some issue with the landing gear brakes and they had to circle for 30 minutes to try to fix it and make sure they had emergency vehicles on the runway waiting for them!  I didn’t know all this until after the flight switched to landed on the board, but it was most unexpected.  Everything turned out ok in the end.  The sign I was watching didn’t reflect all that excitement or really have the ability to tell me what was going on, but it wasn’t inaccurate.

While I was waiting I took some rides on the moving sidewalk.  I’ve always liked these, even though I think the point of them is moderately useless.  Maybe that will change as I get older and can’t get around as well.  For now though they are a fun novelty that are almost only found in airports so it’s fun to play on them.  There were two signs that I noticed there that follow with pictures here.

The first is the suggested placement for people on the walkway.  There were no people around last night so I just rode up and down and stood where I wanted to look out the windows of the skyway.  I’ve seen people not follow these suggestions and then some important person in a hurry has to change lanes to get around a family or someone who isn’t paying attention.  

The second picture is one that to me is a bit of over kill.  Isn’t it obvious that the walkway ends?  I find it interesting that the designers felt that this is information that people would not come to a conclusion to without having the sign.  It’s not like they are able to suck you under, but I suppose people who aren’t paying attention might get tripped by the end.  Those people have tried to sue or something and some lawyer said, put up a sign.  That way they can’t sue because now we can say there was a sign, we warned them.

The last sign is one I felt like I saw way too much.  It was on the door I was waiting by.

I wanted to see if anyone would notice me ducking in, there wasn’t anyone around so no one would have been there to physically stop me.  If I would have time it right I could have made like I was talking to someone and just pretended like I forgot something and slipped through.  Getting arrested for being curious was not on my list, so I guess it will have to remain a thought.

All this thinking about signs.  I was going to try to be clever and tell some made up story about signs related to things in my life. Like show a sign and then tell a story about something that happened to me in the past and how I wished this sign would have been there.  It’s probably been done before.

What I will do though is say that there are signs we all have in our life that we need to pay more attention to.  They aren’t the same as these signs, but like these signs they can vary widely on how much we pay attention to them or ignore them.  They give us informational tidbits or they warn us.  They are always there and sometimes other people think they can see them in other peoples lives.  The outward physical signs we put up are a reflection of what we have internally and over time society has been able to create informative signs that are used everywhere that everyone can read and understand.  

Being able to decipher those internal signs though is something we all struggle with.  There have been times when the signs are blatantly obvious to me and there are times when I wish I wouldn’t have missed some, but they were always there and are still there. 

Middle of the road

The ultimate goal I think I’m working towards in my life is balance.  There are plenty of words written about virtues and even more written about defects.  There are excesses in each side of virtues that I will at some point need to add in to the discussion.  Take passion for example, this one is a somewhat loaded topic.  Passion is a fiery subject that can quickly lead to anger.  On the other outright apathy.  The balancing point here is razor thin and I found myself just this morning getting sucked into an argument with someone on reddit about gardening and my blood was nearly boiling before I said to myself, just knock it off.  It was a total waste of my energy and I was much better served moving on and doing something more constructive.

Now the opposite apathy for doing anything constructive is setting in and while I have plenty to do today, here I sit not wanting to even put on clothes!

That balance point when passion is involved is a rapidly shifting one and while hindsight is useful to determine where you were, passion can cause you to do stupid things so quickly that future hindsight become having to say “l’m sorry”.  The reflection and lessons you might have learned are quickly replaced by the need to apologize or become more angry.

This one is a tough one for me and for a lot of the people in this country these days...

In bloom

October in Minnesota is not typically the time of year that flowers are thought of.  To think of a cactus flower blooming in Minnesota would be even more unusual.  But the following is a picture of some cactus flowers I took a few years ago in June.

This is a variety of prickly pear that came from Colorado that is hardy in Minnesota.  So far it’s the only variety I’ve had bloom, but it is spectacular!  The flowers only last for a day or so and after that they quickly wither.  I am hoping next summer to see more of them and be able share those with this blog.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about defects and virtues.  One I want to explore has a couple of opposites.  The virtue is perseverance and the defect would be stubbornness or defiance.  I have had an abundance of both sides of this pair in my life.  Picture a person who is being told that for whatever reason that they can’t or shouldn’t do something.  The person receiving the message responds with “watch me!”.  Now this description is one that is left open to good or bad and short or long term.

To give one example of a good long term example that I experienced, I’ll take you back to Grandma’s restaurant in Duluth about 13 years ago.  It was there that I sat with friends and discussed the possibility of a class on addiction and what it would take to bring this class into existence at the college of pharmacy in Minnesota.  Let’s just say for brevity’s sake that my response was “watch me”.  Lo and behold a year later the class came into existence!  This to me was one of many examples in my life where perseverance in the face of difficulties lead to something amazing.

On the complete opposite spectrum is my drug and alcohol addiction.  Again, it’s not the time or place to hash out the details, but there were many episodes of being stubborn and defiant that brought me down to rock bottom.  Likewise there was a great deal of perseverance involved that has kept me sober for 13 years.

Another set of virtue and defect and one that I see the same qualities in.  If they are used for good, the results are astounding.  If used for not so good, they can literally kill a person.

At the current moment I’m faced with a good situation that is fed everyday and is driving me towards another “watch me” moment.  I have not been able to rocket ahead with my plans yet as I have not landed on the winning idea, but I am getting close.  I know that what I’m trying to do is come up with a plan to allow me to make a living helping people.  I don’t see a lot of downside to this other than the obvious fact that at the moment I don’t have a job to support my family while I develop this general idea.

The interesting dilemma I am seeing as I ponder is how this could turn into stubbornness.  Balancing this pair for good is tricky because it is again something that requires perspective.  My own perspective is the positive perseverance side.  A few outsiders I know are not agreeing and thinking I should take the easy way out and just get a good job that pays a crappy wage, that I will likely get bored at and move on from a little older and little more beat up from.  Other friends are curious and see the good.

Ultimately, time will be the judge of whether or not my actions are virtuous or defective.  I’m hoping that like my cactus that’s tough enough to handle the brutal weather Minnesota can throw at it, I am able to thrive and bloom in a seemingly adverse environment where people value safety over serenity. I just watched a show tonight which the title of the episode was “Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.”  That’s what I want and that’s what I will get.

Probably should post a few pictures...

I feel a bit of the floodgates opening.  I haven’t written anything that anyone else will possibly read outside of a few emails for over two years.  What that’s effectively done is made me feel like I have to catch up suddenly.  I used to write many posts and include a picture or two.  I suppose I need to stick to that formula since I was actually having people read these posts.  I’m not 100 percent sure how to get people back here reading this blog, but I imagine that there will be some event that helps me to get back to that point.

What’s interesting is the fact that I too feel the need to say what’s on my mind and always have had a need for some outlet of that nature, but looking back at the years I have been doing this times have rapidly changed with regards to how people seem to operate.

Listening to media, reading news stories is fascinating to me and I’m not really interested in picking one side over the other.  I’m not above it or with it or against it or anything for whatever the current outrage happens to be.  China, Trump, celebrities who think they are smarter than they are, clever comedians who make fun of all, PC people, pro-life or pro-choice - pick one or all of them to discuss.  I am Switzerland on these topics.  Often I like to play the devils advocate when really hopped up people talk about these topics, but I do this less and less.  It’s not that I don’t care about any of it,  I just don’t care for the way that these topics are presented typically.

The all or none and us against them presentation is what really fascinates me.  If I’m listening to the radio or watching TV, there is not a single voice that seems to really look at anything with any sort of reason.  This dualistic reasoning fails to work on many topics and it is incredible dividing.  I’m really curious as to what lies behind this push.  My previous post was on balance and how delicate and really subjective it can be.  I come back to one of my favorite quotes of all time.  “There is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so”.  Shakespeare hit one out of the park with that.

It’s all about perspective.  Take all the trouble with Hong Kong and China.  Your physical location will dictate your thoughts about this trouble,  history is full of examples of oppression and the oppressed rising up against it.  It’s all perspective though on what makes it good or bad.  Just look at this country.  I wouldn’t be in America or call myself and American if it weren’t for a similar scenario that played out.  To all the British what those first Americans did was treason and absolutely awful.  Probably to a lot of Americans too who were loosing out on business with the British or because there was a war.

To be forced to pick a side and then belittle anyone who thinks otherwise is exactly what happens a thousand times a day on social media, the regular media and in whole counties.  The result of these cold shoulders or snubs or fights can vary with extreme results, but it is all the same.  The most effective way to silence opposition to is to eliminate the opposition, it’s sad but modern history is written by the winners because the losers just don’t exist to tell their side of it.

For some reason this happens on social media, one person blurts out an unpopular view.  A few people express outrage that such a thought even is spoken.  The person recants their statement, apologizes and that side wins.  It’s a mini form of war at least that how I see it.

What can we do to stop it?  That’s where this gets interesting,  I don’t profess to have the solution to end dualistic fights,  but it can start with compassion and empathy for the opposition.  If you try to deeply understand why a person might have such a strong conviction or what drives them to want to fight against the injustice of the day, you may be more likely to have a productive and rational discussion with them.  Realizing that right and wrong in a certain area is subjective based on how you see the same problem is a good start.

Start being responsible for your own actions and stop letting others control your level of happiness.

Balance in life

Things didn’t sort themselves out last night.  It’s not that today was bad, but the revelation of what’s next and what is going to come didn’t happen like I was hoping.  I suppose the time of the year for bursting forth and flowering has past and now it’s time to hunker down and get ready for winter again.

Still not quite ready to publicly or at least admit to this blog in an anonymously public fashion what happened to me and why my life has been so difficult. I do somehow think that it might be helpful for  me - maybe.

For now I want to write out something that has been kicking around in my head for some time,  the idea of balance in life.  Life is a delicate balance.  Look at the name of my blog, toxicity is really a balance.  Too much of any substance can kill.  Anyone who has stayed successfully married knows that the balance between husband and wife is the difference between wedded bliss and divorce.  Sometimes there is a wide balancing point and sometimes it’s razor thin.

Balance of character defects and virtuous attributes is also interesting and it’s what I’ve spent a lot of time chewing on.  For example, procrastination is something every person has dealt with and struggled through at times in life.  Anyone who denies this is just procrastinating telling you the truth!  Some people seem to do better with it than others and use the artificially created pressure to get things done.

Now take patience, no question all of us wish we could be more patient.  In fact there is a saying - patience is a virtue.  The fascinating thought I have carried for a long time is that the differences between these to attributes is razor thin and it depends entirely upon one’s perspective.  Both involve being waiting, both involve putting off of something.  In some ways both involve conscious effort NOT to take action.  The balance point where is where being patient transforms into procrastination.

Often this is something that can only be seen in hindsight, if you are patiently waiting to work on a project for some good reason, that’s fine.  It can quickly change to procrastination thought when the reason you were waiting has happened and now the project can move forward.  If you were patiently  waiting to talk to your child about their behavior (like not eating vegetables) and you make them noodles once again because you say to yourself “now is not the time”, your behavior has quickly changed into procrastination.

It’s such a fine line to cross from virtue to defect that it’s missed and only after the line is crossed do you notice and feel bad about it.

The questions I want to answer about this are numerous.  I see this line with a number of virtue and defect combinations and they are line’s that everyone crosses multiple times in their lives.  The problem I see is that we forget that up until the line is crossed we were displaying good behavior and after we cross it, at some point we forget that we were good and now we only see the bad.  It’s also quite easy for others to see and point out (and less obvious for the person displaying the behavior).

How exactly this knowledge might help someone is also something I haven’t quite ascertained yet.  I sense that this could be helpful in the right setting and may help people who suffer from crushing guilt.  It hopefully would help them see that they are really good people who have just made some error in judgement.  It might help them see that the person who points out their error is probably making that same error ten times more often.

It might also help them to see that while the behavior balance has tipped back towards defect for the time, it’s really not that hard to tip back to virtue, because the underlying virtue is still there.

And now for something completely different...

It’s been seven years since I posted to this blog.  Seven of the most interesting and soul killing years I’ve lived.  I’ve gone from carefree to crushed.  It all started two and a half years ago on a particular day in May that by chance or by choice keeps showing up in my life.

May 19th was the day I was married to my first wife.  It was the day my oldest son was born three years later.  Two years ago it was a day that sent my life down a new path that I don’t entirely like yet.  It was that day that I lost my job and the respect of most people in my life.  I am not sure I want to open the door to that low point in my life at the moment.  I will likely need to sometime.  I feel like it has to be open at some point.  It’s not a secret, but I’m still not sure I can go there with any real purpose yet.

Since that day, my life has taken a series of twists and turns that I couldn’t see coming.  I almost feel that it was like driving a car down the road with your eyes closed.  Imagine having only rumble strips to tell you you were drifting to close to the centerline or the ditch.  Angry drivers honking, tailgating and doing all the nasty things drivers who find someone weaving or driving to slow do.  There have been lots of near misses but luckily no more head on crashes.

I’ve felt so alone at times, that the world has turned its back on me.  I still feel that now, trying to find a new job with a criminal record.  There are days when I want to sit in my own mess and feel sorry for myself.  There are days when I want to scream.  I did everything to myself, I created yet another self destructive implosion and I own every part of it.

Today is the day that I begin to turn this life of crap into something good.  I’ve done it three times so far.  I’ve taken a seemingly horrible thing and transformed it into something I can brag about.  I took a drug addiction and made it into a teaching career at one of the pharmacy schools in the country.  I took a shattered divorced thirty year old and found him a beautifully wife, and stared a new family.

So far I’ve managed to get that pretty girl to agree to hang around.  Pretty much everything else has changed.  Mostly because I had no other choice.  I am proclaiming this moment as the point in time where that tide begins to turn.   How is that going to happen?  Hopefully the morning will give me an answer.