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!