Enjoying a half hour

Oh yes, the rain arrived today.  And, it arrived at the time of day the forecaster said it would arrive.  I sat on my covered patio to soak in the sensory experience.  The occasional rumble enhanced the experience of hearing the rain come down hard on the grass, the fence, the roof, and the sides of the house.  The fringe of the patio on three sides became wet a little at a time, and I felt the mist when the rain gusted.  The refreshing aroma energized me and calmed me.  I enjoyed the half hour or so I was able to sit and take in the tranquility of these beautiful moments.  I had to leave my patio for work even though the rain continued falling without me.

And this literal half hour reminded so much of the figurative half hour of a time not so long ago that refreshed my life.  And while I know that I can't revisit that time, I know repetition can and often does happen.  In my literal world, next weekend is predicted to bring the same rainy experience.  Oh, for such a prediction in my figurative world... trusting it will.

The current forecast

Rain is coming.  At least so says the weather forecaster for the news.  He began saying three days ago that a front over the northeast part of the U.S. was headed our way, and that should it stay together, it could bring a little rain to the area.  At the time, the front was bringing an early snow to the states of Colorado and Wyoming.   The next day, the forecaster said Yellowstone had received almost a foot of snow, and the front would hold together for our area.  Yesterday, the forecaster then said that there was a 100% chance of rain for our area, maybe up to two inches.

Today, everyone is preparing for the rain event.  It is supposed to last about 12 hours and dump an inch to an inch and a half of rain.  This much advance notice allows for preparation so that nothing gets damaged..  But, it's interesting how a forecaster can now track rain 4 days away.

I know that no one can see around a corner, but sometimes the events in life are predictable. The origins for the events  come from the same place and head our way.  At least, I guess, we can prepare for them.  The issues that bring the rains of life our way, seem never to change.  We can predict the same behaviors, the same speeches, the same tirades, the same duration of time.  But, at least there is preparation time so that nothing gets damaged.

Incidentally, the forecaster today said that he saw some interesting weather developing in the Sea of Japan.  Resulting weather from that area is a week away.  And coincidentally, Thanksgiving is the next holiday.  Resulting weather from that holiday is something I am already preparing for in order to minimize the damage.  Rain is coming, for sure.

Keystone

The Romans were innovators in many areas of life.  But, one of the main areas was their architecture.  The arch in particular allowed them to save  materials and maintain strength for building above the arch.  The way the Romans would build the arch would be to build the arch from wood first, then surround the wood frame with brick.  The last stone to be put in place would be the stone in the middle of the top of the arch.  That stone was called the keystone.  When the keystone was put in place, the weight that would be built above it would be distributed evenly down the two sides of the arch.

Events happen to us all the time.  Somehow we distribute the weight of the event evenly throughout our way of thinking.  Accomplishments are great and we react with pride, but our experience tells us that there is a downside to every accomplishment.  So, the weight of the accomplishment is evenly distributed and we can appreciate the moment without thinking too highly of ourselves.  The opposite is true, too.  When devastation comes, we know that soon events will turn around.  We just have to ride out the storm.  So, the weight of the devastation is evenly distributed and we are not thrown into a spiral of depression.

And, what is the keystone in our lives that helps in distributing those events evenly?  The arch containing the keystone is usually a person who is in the center of our activity.  As we build life above us, this person bears the weight with us and puts it in proper perspective for us, letting us know how to respond, or what the downside is, or reminding us of the good times or benefits we will receive at a future time.  I am so proud to have had a person like this who made me a much better person.  When I have no keystone in my arch of events, I am not nearly as good or nearly as happy.  No one is there to even things out. I am keeping faith that I will return to being the best person I can be soon, that the keystone of my future arches won't be cracked or missing.

Moments of paradise

I was watching a Kenny Chesney special on GAC.  The man has an inspiring story.  He really never had anything given to him.  He earned it all.  Of course, people now remember him for being the entertainer of the decade in counrty music.

But, for 20 years he worked his heart out to be on top of his game.  He really never had the support of the established Nashville music community despite sell-out football stadium crowds and a string of number one radio hits.  He was too short, too bald, and had a terrible voice.  They never thought he would be good for the industry.  His bank account shows that established opinion was not well founded.

At the end of the special, as he talked about the last part of his career, he mentioned a particular music project he made for ESPN.  He made the program using his music as a background for showing how determination drives a person to the top.  He recruited coaches like Sean Payton and John Gruden and various football greats like Joe Namath and Brett Favre to make the appropriate sports applications.  Then he said that the project was his favorite moment in all of his career.

All of us have accomplishments and moments where determination won the day.  I certainly do.  But, after all is said and done, over a period of many years, I can look back on a particular year of my life and say, "It was my favorite year of all the years of my life."  I had a managerial job, but that was ancillary to the reason it was the best year of my life.  I actually had 4 jobs that year.  None of them really mattered.  I was able to break some of the fetters I had going on in my life, but that wasn't it either.  It was the following year, 2010, that I made more money than I had ever made in my life.  But the best year was the year before the money.

The favorite year of my whole life broadened my horizons, added spring to a tired step, gave meaning to a not-so-special existence, and trapped views, echoes, and marks on the walls of my heart's four-chambered caves... once-trapped attractions of beauty... oh, such beauty!... my favorite moments in all of life!

Moments I remember now as moments of paradise.

Yes I do

Oh my goodness.  The crowd knew all the words to his songs and sang them wildly.  All of them.  I was impressed, of course, but inspired as well.  It's so refreshing to see an entertainer woo and wow thousands of people through words that represent what they believe in.

I'm talking about the Dierks Bentley concert a week ago.  I carry his songs in my telephone and listen to them most nights before falling asleep - songs like Feel That Fire, Come a Little Closer, and Up on the Ridge.  Those particular songs recall a fantastic laugh, a cheerful voice, lots of smiles, and hope-filled eyes.  And tonight Dierks played a new song, I Hold On, from his recently released album. 

He set up the song by talking of people who suggested that he buy a new truck.  But, he had a truck from before his days of fame.  It had memories with his dad, who drove with him in it to Tennessee.  He would never forget that trip, and he in turn would not let go of the truck that represented that trip.  He next held up his guitar and explained that that particular guitar was the one that got him started on his road to prosperity.  It kept him centered and grounded.  It represented his roots, which he hoped he would never forget.

I understand totally the idea of that song... "I hold on to the things that keep me going strong."

I intend to keep forever three sacred belongings... a blue envelope with a card inside... a poster of three pictures with names of songs and books... and a collage of mountain pictures called A Place Within.  They keep me going strong.

I totally understand the idea of that song... "like the stripes to the flag, like a boy to his dad. I hold on"... "I hold on to the things I believe in."  And the exact memory I have of this song is one where the crowd sang wildly "I hold on" more times than the studio version of the song (because all of them knew the words, including me).  I'm thankful that night a week ago was recorded because it now plays and represents the night that brought to mind my feelings from stored symbols, my almost nightly thoughts just before drifting off...



... things I believe in!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Personality Palette

Imagine an old artist's color palette.

The artist would rarely use a single color on the palette.  Instead, (s)he would dab the primary colors in the color well in an empty well on the palate and mix the colors for some other unique color from the primary colors mixed.

In the electronic age it's the same principle, but the colors are not manually mixed.  The digital number of one color is added to the digital number of a second color.  The result is the same - many unique colors - but the possibilities are more numerous.

The digital color palette is a great snapshot for what takes place in the DNA of each person.

A personality palette exists in genes and operates on a larger scale, but with a similar process as that of the selection of color of skin, type of skin, color of eyes, size of eyes, color of hair, texture of hair, and so forth.  Families could have certain dominances that surface, but wouldn't have to surface given the right conditions.  A personality palate would also explain the nuances of likenesses and differences in the same way a brother or sister might have similar eyes or brows, but different shaped lips and teeth.

Personalities show early in a person's life and continue to develop through life.  And, it seems that they are not so much changeable as they are malleable.  Charting the personality palette would be a marvelous study because it would show the nuances that mixtures of personalities bring and mixtures that differ.  An even more fascinating study would be the interaction of the personalities when they are in the same environment together.  Which influence is the stronger or weaker influence in the presence of particular personality opposites.  To use a color palette analogy, what happens when lime green and silver are in the same picture?  How do people viewing the two colors react?

At that point, perhaps we could begin formulating some laws of attraction and repulsion.  But, we all know how much better as a person we are when we are in the environment of harmony and what a drain it is to be in the environment of conflict.  Most of the time we are in an environment containing varying amounts of conflict and harmony.  Our physical actions and mental reactions undergo constant adjustment.  But, how enjoyable life is when the influences from a significant person around us contain the perfect matches for us of tension and ease.  Compatibility happens.  Yes, days of Camelot!

Blue Marble

Every time I see a new picture from the Mars rover Curiosity, I sit in awe of a planet that used to look like Earth.  It would have been fun to have been on Mars and to have watched the Earth during one of its pre-human stages, maybe the solid ice stage.  Our blue marble would have looked entirely white.  Or maybe the greenhouse stage when there was absolutely no ice covering the poles.  Or maybe it could have been after the eruption of Mount Toba 75,000 years ago.  A black cloud encircled the entire Earth and wiped out 75% of all life.  Human life was down to around 10,000 living souls.  Or maybe it could have been the original cooling of the planet before it had water and a spin.

But, I can't, of course.  My time is for the blue marble stage.  It's beautiful enough, but I think I have missed out on something magnificent.  I find myself in that position sometimes.

Manifested sentience

Sentience doesn't surface as sentience.  It manifests itself in various forms.  Much of science is about proving what one can find evidence for.  Manifestations in various forms don't really qualify as solid, replicable evidence.  Psychology is called a soft science since it mainly deals with sentience.  I usually don't give psychology a break, but in this context I do.  How does a person describe, define, and measure something that manifests itself differently?   It's not the same as discovering something about physics that evidences itself following laws.

One of the great opportunities still available in the field of psychology is the study of personality.  People seem to be alike in so many ways, yet different in at least as many ways.  Like the genetics of a family, similar traits surface, but the nuances of difference are at least as many as the nuances of likeness are.  Yet these traits drive us to feel certain ways in reaction to our environments and the behaviors of others in that environment.  We react minute-by-minute to the events and people surrounding us.

I think of the word compatibility in connection with personality since, to me, it is the greatest manifestation of sentience.  Some people have personalities that are toxic to certain other personalities.  And, the opposite is true.  Some people have personalities that are in harmony with certain other personalities.  Of course, there are all shades of personality matches between the ends of this spectrum.  And I freely admit that the strongest manifestation of my sentience is when I have been with and around the person whose personality was the most complementary, supplementary, supportive, and propulsive to my own.  I have no science to back it up.  Maybe in a 100 more years, but not now. For the moment, I just know.  And, I relish the moments of sentience when two perfectly complementary and supplementary personalities share the same intersection of time!!!

Supremacy of numbers

Widespread use of computers has existed for 20-25 years now.  At first, they were a miracle  for lessening the workload of people.  A number of stages have ensued.  They removed the need for paper, but using paper was a habit hard for people to make since paper had been used abundantly in every facet of life for 200 years.  Finally, after 25 years, people learned to store information and files electronically in large volumes.  Computers also made communication instantaneous.  That too has taken 25 years for people to adjust to.  The fax machine should have disappeared at least a decade ago, but they were a habit hard to break.  Now, people finally have adjusted to receiving files through various means such as email, common forums like Google Docs, and attachments for in-person meetings such as with GoToMeeting.  Even legal documents can now have electronic signatures, so the world has been able to change some of its major habits.  But, change didn't come easy.

Computers have also opened the way to another foundation for communication. After years of working with programs like EXCEL, people are now ready for a new change that will likely take another 20 years or so because people are so entrenched in habits involving printed materials and words.  Algorithms are headed our way - not in just an area of life here and there.  That has already been happening.  Stock predictions are made based on algorithms.  Predicting events has been reduced to numbers in an algorithm.  Networks of people for marketing purposes is used regularly in an algorithm by Google to show you what you want to see.  Even words in reading and writing have been reduced to numbers in an algorithm for identifying the complexity level of conversations and writing.  And, words in testimony can be packaged in an algorithm for areas of deception in the "story" a person tells. Because of this groundwork, now people are ready to make much, much more available to algorithmic communication - numbers communication.

Apps are designed through numbers, software is a conglomeration of numbers organized to achieve particular goals, like EXCEL, even digital photography is composed and transmitted through the combination of pixel, location, and shades assigned a number.  Numbers are used in controlling the currency of a nation through statistics organized into algorithms.  Companies plan based on projections and inventory and sales - combined in an algorithm in order to accumulate wealth.  Yeah, changing to the importance of learning numbers and their organization over the importance of learning words and their organization will take a little while longer.  The footwork has taken place already.  The dinosaurs have identified themselves.  They will certainly fall and fall hard.  Algorithms will have a long life of their own because they will usher in the next age that will begin with holography and take us into space and other planetary contact.  Let me say adios... and good riddance... to those who want to strap us into the past and retard the development of the agile environment of organized  number communication that will take us to a world beyond our own.

De facto English

There is a particular piece of writing advice that I hear fairly often.  I don't know exactly when the idea was started.  I don't remember hearing it as a youth in school, but I have heard it often since the 1990s.  The movement started in Texas, called the New Jersey Writing Project in Texas, perpetuated it over a 20 year period, so it affected a great many teachers and their students.  The advice?  Limit or eliminate the use of the verb "to be" by writing more active verbs.  And the corollary is to write active verbs not passive ones.

When I first heard the advice, I thought it might have some wisdom behind it, so I tried following it.  But, fortunately, I was able to learn more and more about language in its various aspects, and began noticing that there was no wisdom to the advice.  Speech, which requires generating words using split second reasoning, uses stock phrases and redundancy of phrasing.  Thus, identifying and describing nouns after they are introduced (predicate nominatives and predicate adjectives) is a common strategy in conversation.  In writing, the immediacy of needing to develop thought disappears.  However, the need to identify and describe (or modify) doesn't disappear.  So, why would someone think limiting the use of "to be" would be a good idea?

After more contemplation and experience with those who teach writing, I think the notion began by teachers not fully understanding the use of the passive voice in English.  It is a very useful technique in a language's arsenal of expressions.  English is only one of many languages, modern and ancient, that have used the passive.  So, ignoring the use of the passive defies the logic of many peoples across the time continuum.  But, English teachers without training in grammar theory explain passive only as an alternative to the active.  The passive wording is a little lengthier than the active wording, so to a teacher who emphasizes economy of words in writing, it would seem more logical to use the shorter version of the idea.  Also, teachers like emphasizing the underlying structure of English to be SVO (subject-verb-object), which favors the use of an active verb.

So, it is the case of Pope's aphorism beginning with "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing..." that has characterized the reason for rampant misinformation.  There are three underlying structures to English logic, not one - SVO, SV, SVA,  (Subject-Verb-Agent, the sentence structure for passive voice).  And while SVO might dominate, albeit under 50% of most people's writing, and well under 50% of most people's speech, plenty of important ideas are expressed with the other two alternatives.

And, it is the Pope aphorism that explains why people need to rely on some extremely arbitrary notion.  Because passive voice is not understood as a bigger part of the language, it is targeted for elimination or restriction.  And, because the passive voice is very often confused for a nonpassive predicate adjective sentence construction, eliminating and restricting the use of forms of "to be" (because it is the common denominator of the two types) save teachers' faces, keeping their lack of understanding from showing.

It reminds me of the poem, For Want of a Nail.  Fortunately, language is larger than English class and very few people pay attention to elaborations of grammar.  While people may remember a teacher saying something about not writing forms of the verb "to be," they won't remember the rationale, so they continue to use the predicate nominative, predicate adjective, and passive voice constructions.

Power to the people who have ignored advice that merely saves face for a group of people who don't want to fully understand what they are teaching.  The people's way is the de facto English.  I love it when that happens.

It's such a lovely game

The movie Jobs is well worth seeing.  I love watching movies that show people's genius.  Among the characters in the movie is a man who joined with and sponsored Jobs when he first started.  He remained with Jobs as Apple grew into a multi-million dollar company.  He was one of Jobs' trusted friends.

But life has a few twists in it.  The scene in which the board of directors decides to rid Apple of Jobs' leadership is a very good one.  The friend that had so long been Jobs' most supportive partner was required to vote on whether to keep Jobs as Apple's leader or not.  The night before the vote, Jobs had asked his friend point blank, "Do I have your support?"  His friend said that he unequivocally had his support.  But, when asked the question in the board room amongst all the other members, Jobs' trusted friend raised his hand to vote in opposition to allowing Jobs to stay as president.  It was a moment of total betrayal.

Betrayal is the one issue that drives me over the edge.  It is the ultimate wound.  My favorite book, Aspen, has the exact same theme and a circumstance eerily similar to the one in Jobs.   But, Jobs has the twist I love, and it is this twist that separates it from Aspen.  Several years later Jobs is invited by a different board for Apple to return as president and CEO of the company.  This time, however, Jobs won't take the position unless the board supports him carte blanche.   So, Jobs goes to three of 5 board members and offers them a deal they can't refuse - a golden parachute so that they will not stand in his way ever again.  In the scene in which the third golden parachute is issued, Jobs does a beautiful thing... he hands the offer to his "friend" who several years back voted no for him to remain as president.  The circle becomes fully completed.  I wanted to cheer at that moment.  The rest of Jobs' story is one of revolutionizing America's way to get information and hear music... made possible by no one standing in his way.

I have a personal application of this issue in my own life.  And I love doing it in the legal arena.  Yes, the lovely game of showing deceptive language in testimony that has been sworn as truth.  Yes... full circle when people's lies come to light... and they nearly always act so surprised. Ha!