What people give up

I sit on Easy Street if I think about it.  I really don't have to leave my house except for work and exer.cise.  It's a self-contained bubble.  I eat there, watch t.v. there, sleep there, compute there, and enjoy year-round 74 degree temperature there.  Sometimes I drive to the store, but I don't have to.  I can order nearly all food to my front door.  I can order anything online, really, so that I never have to go to a store.  I can receive clothing, shoes, computers, furniture, dessert, vitamins, prescriptions,just whatever.  It's really a great day and age to live in.

But then, occasionally, I get to see something else that still exists in the world.  I had an occasion to visit with some young people who were in the U.S. from other countries.  They were all here on student visas because they wanted the education that America offers.  Those with an American education, they said, catapult themselves far ahead of the crowd when they return.  One young lady told me she comes every single day of the week without fail to her classes.  She gets to the school after riding the light rail 2 hours in the mornings.  Every afternoon is the same trip - two hours to her house to study.  But she will return to Vietnam as a pharmacist and be able to have the highest quality of life there. 

Another young man's story made me really grateful that I really don't have to lift a finger anymore, but reminded me of some of the days gone by.  Originally he rode the light rail to school, but then he moved so that he could be closer to the school.  He still walked to and from, and everywhere else he wanted to go.  Finally, he was able to buy a bicycle.  Now, it takes him only 30 minutes to ride to and from.  When he returns with his MBA to Nigeria, he will outstrip any of his home-grown colleagues with opportunities for business and a luxurious life because he will be paid handsomely.  

Even students from China, the second leading economy in the world, come to the U.S. for the same reason.  One young woman wanted very much to get a graduate degree in international business because even though she was at the head of her classes in China, she knew that her income would be limited.  She wanted a degree that would allow her to be in her homeland as a business woman, but to have the added dimension of great respect from the business community because they valued international experience over the intelligent people who never left the country.  She worked diligently to learn English fluently so that she would have no disadvantage in the graduate school competing against native English-speaking Americans for the best grades.  She gave up her upper adolescent years to strive for her goals.  She has to live with people she doesn't know and has to make friends in different states as she pursues her education.

After these visits, I returned to my house, to my life of irrealis compared to the students I visited with.  I have had to do some hard things in life.  I haven't always been able to receive life sustenance at my doorstep.  But I am in awe of people who give away so much of their lives, much more than what I had to endure, to achieve a quality of life mainly from living in the best economy in the world and taking advantage of some of its perks.  I find my self grateful, and I admire those who live as I do, but who gave up friends, family, language, culture, and familiarity to accomplish a dream for a high quality of life.

Next phase please

One of the most amazing advances is the ability to stream a television subscription to any device.  I think it's amazing because of what it will pave the way for.  All communication is meant to be streamed.  The television companies have dominated the streaming business for 70 years.  But their shelf life is at an end.  Now people can choose when, where, and what they want to stream.  All that is needed  is an internet Reaconnection.

It follows that if I can receive video transmission of any kind on any device, that sooner or later, devices will begin to send and receive video transmissions much like we receive email and text at the moment.  It will just be video instead.  The capability already exists, it's just not packaged in consumable form at the moment.  However, when it becomes readily available, then no longer will people be willing to stop and text or stop antype an email.  They will simply press "record," then "send."  The video will play the message on the other end.

That will in turn put pressure on the industry that publishes books or any other type of printed material for both entertainment and education, even including the little short messages found in Twitter and Instant Messaging.

In case one wonders about the wisdom of leaving behind print, one has only to look at what happened with the fax machine.  The fax was useful for about a 15 year period, some of those years after .pdf files were available.  But, very soon after Adobe made available transmissible documents through digital files, electronic signatures were made into law.  A few years thereafter, real estate documents, legal documents, and other important filings. began to be used, and a person's real signature was no longer required.  PINs and digital IDs are a whole lot more valuable these days than signatures.  No one needed the fax machine any longer.  They're museum pieces now,

The world has changed.  Those who can't stream a live video on Facebook, who can't snapchat an experience, or who don't have a smart t.v. with streaming programs of what they want to watch will not do well in the phase that's coming.  The coming phase will be feature the populace wearing Fitbit-like bracelets for small amounts of information (not necessarily health related) and screens that transmit light beams for 3D viewing.  Clarenden Schools will fare well.  Businesses always adapt.  The legal world will not be far behind other businesses.  The medical profession will absolutely expand and become infinitely better at diagnosing and treating diseases.  The public will adapt (some of them kicking and screaming).  But the next 50 years will be a pole away from the last 50 years.  Imagine routine trips to Mars and doctors diagnoses sent to you without doctors' visits.  Imagine self-driven cars and electro-magnetic trains everywhere between cities.  Imagine wireless electricity and living in a home with mostly holographic furniture rather than real furniture.  Imagine never talking with someone if they only voice call.   They either show their faces or you will not accept their calls.

Ah-h-h the possiblities!!!  I think I'll do some meditating now by streaming I💗Radio from the t.v... kicking back to enjoy the next phase!

A new face

I found myself on a university campus today.  International students were learning English.  They had plans of continuing their educations at American universities, but had begun their educations by bringing their language skills up to near-native fluency levels before trying to listen to professors teach them their career knowledge.

The lesson started with a short speaking exercise in which each student answered a question from the professor.  At the first grammatical mistake made, the student had to stop speaking.  There was nothing from a book.  They listened to a song so they could learn vocabulary, cultural implications of phrases, idioms, and native pronunciation.  A speaking exercise occurred where students sat across from each other in rows.  They were given a topic and 3 minutes to discuss it.  When the 3 minutes were up, one side of the row moved one chair to their left so students could have new speaking partners.  Other activities came and went since this was a three-hour class.  One was a reading activity, but there were no books.  An internet website was used for the activity.  And one activity involved writing but there was no pen or paper.  Students were writing in an online journal, not with the end result as an essay but as a check for specific grammar evidence.  Writing was to support their speech.  They practiced listening by watching a psychologist speak on YouTube about how the brain remembers.  Comprehension check of this was done by oral rather than written questioning.

Amazing. A whole three-hour block of time with no books, no labs, very little reading and writing except to enhance their speaking abilities.  Now that's a good environment for learning a language.  And when the students came to class they had either a phone or a computer.  They sat at tables.  Each table had a plug built into it for their devices to charge.  The lesson included use of a USA Today app so that students could choose two pictures to complete an exercise where they came to a podium to speak about the pictures.  When it came time to type into their journals about a third of the students use their thumbs and fingers to type on their phones.  The others logged into their journal by computers and typed away. 

In just a few short years, this classroom experience, which has already been transformed from the laborious days of books, writing, and labs, into even a better environment because it will have a seamless environment between the real and virtual worlds and include even less writing and more interaction as a way of learning.  I cannot wait for the next five years to complete the evolution from a learning culture heavily invested in books, classroom, reading, writing, and desks in rows to a world of three dimensional learning, sometimes virtual bringing anything you want to study, no matter how remote, and sometimes real, interacting with physical object and people around you.

Yes, there was a ten-year war from 2007 to 2017.  Technology and visual presentation have annihilated education as it happened in 2007 and before.  The dinosaurs who wanted the status quo before all the changes have begun to die.  Now there is nothing holding the next phase of virtual and real integration from happening.  Alex Kipman in the video below will preview what is already being done and which will be done on a more widespread basis in the short term ahead. 

Can you imagine how much easier space exploration and colonization will be when students began learning with what happens on this stage?  (Most pertinent to the answer to this question is the 4 minutes between time slot 10:00 and 14:00 in the video.)

Leave it!!!

The ancient Greeks used a phrase, "This one having said, he said," is a literal translation of the Greek words.  In English, of course, such a word-for-word translation would be ludicrous to make.  English speakers don't speak this way.  If someone said something once, then says the same thing again, a translator surely would render the words said again, repeated, or reiterated.  He reiterated would be a sound translation of the Greek phrase because that is something English speakers would actually say or write.

How education is accomplished in this country troubles me a lot.  It seems to me that education of this country's children is a little like translating a Greek phrase word for word instead of trying to render a Greek phrase into a usable equivalent in English.  Yes, education has been around for a really, really long time in the world.  But, Plato and Edward DeVere/Shakespeare received really different types of education.  That's because they were educated about 2000 years apart.  One would hope the two were educated differently since they lived in vastly different time periods.

If I think back to the times of education around 1950-1975, I think of an education without computers, without cell phones, without Skype, without internet in a car that students drove to school.  I think of a time when students were expected to get jobs after school or do homework until supper time or later.  I think of a time when music came from AM radio and juke boxes.  In order to communicate to an outside source from one's own car, a person had to have a CB radio.  That's right.  The world was vastly different.

And yet, the schools today still educate as if they were in the same world.  When was the last time you saw a student using Skype to speak with someone else in another city or country for an assignment - right, you haven't.  When was the last time you saw a student use graphic information when telling a teacher how to solve a math problem - right, you haven't.  When was the last time a student was able to use a 3D printer to copy something for a project to work on - right, you haven't.  When was the last time you saw someone using his or her cell phone to make a YouTube presentation for the homework assigned - right, you haven't.  When was the last time you saw a classroom in which students used software from which to learn or compute from - right, you haven't.  When was the last time you saw video blog responses as a means of learning from others - right you haven't.  And when was the last time you saw someone experimenting with the next form of learning in today's classroom, the holographic platform - right, you haven't.

Plato is dead; DeVere is dead.  They left their marks to be sure, but the world has traveled 500 more times around the sun since DeVere.  And, it has traveled 50 more times around since last century's heydays of education.  Education today should not be just a little different.  It should be a quantum leap different from anything from the last half of the 1900s.  Methods should be a far cry different for sure!  Reporting and measuring those methods should reflect the complete difference from anything the late 1900s used as well.  Anything less than a complete departure from days gone by frauds students and families and keeps them from living a fruitful, qualitative life.

Let's leave the word-for-word translation business of education from the last century.  Let's translate education into the usable world of the present, something a quantum leap different from what has been!!!

Having an understanding

When people pronounce words, they are pretty unaware of the sounds they are producing.  I walked into a class not long ago where the students had just learned the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).  In the IPA, each sound has a separate symbol, so it is much easier to isolate sounds than using the English alphabet which duplicates sounds for letters.  They were practicing words like pen and pin, then and than, where the spelling is different, having fun discovering how they really pronounced the words.  People think they are pronouncing the words differently when in reality, their dialects produce them in exactly the same way, sounding the same.  In speech usage, context determines which word is meant, not pronunciation, since they are pronounced the same.  Din and den is another pair among the many that could be cited here.

It's not true just in English either.  I have heard many a Spanish speaking person say Spanish pronunciation is easier than English pronunciation because each vowel only has one sound.  Of course, that is not true, just a perception or a learned precept.  Para, for example, has only one sound in some dialects, but has two in much of the regional Spanish in Texas.  The second a has a schwa sound rather than the mid-vowel pronunciation of the first vowel.  The word jabon, too, contains a dialect variant for the first sound of the word.  Some speakers pronounce it like an h in English while others pronounce like the Greek letter chi, the overly aspirated, non-plosive guttural consonant akin to k in English.

As it pertains to values and notions, I find that many people are unaware of their world view in comparison to those around them.  Perception and masks (like regional dialects) exist in various areas of life, affecting our world views, and people are blind to them.  One of the real trademarks of an education is being able to see something through more than one filter or mask.  That helps in establishing views and values that allow for more than one perception.  It prevents being notional about matters.  It allows for tolerance among friends and acquaintances.  It also helps us to choose sounder ideas about our own views from the different views that exist.  Understanding is a good medicine for many situations.  Awareness of why differences exist is the interim step to having an understanding.

At the end of twists and turns

Some people have made comments about the recent show Arrival.  In particular, I remember the comments they made about the language aspect portrayed in the movie.  The movie was very short on particulars, but it must have been enough to gain the respect of the public.

As I look at the first contact idea of sharing a language with another human species, I don't really have a cohesive theory about it.  However, I have given some thought about it since I heard a documentary about a man who claims to have heard an alien language and duplicated it for the television show.  It was a series of clicks, spaced like Morse Code dots and dashes.

In Arrival the language was communicated in written form, circles to be exact.  The circles have flame-like portions placed in different positions around the circle, and the flame-like designations seemed to be logographic or hieroglyphic in nature.  Of course, it was an invented language, but a cleverly conceived one.  The linguist in the movie, played by Amy Adams, was able to retrieve whole ideas from her "translations" of a number of different occurrences of the circles.

I am really thinking that any first contact we might have will exhibit the advancement of communication since an intelligence that could find us on Earth could dispense with something primitive like writing.  Even in our own culture, writing is taking a greatly diminished role from what it has been in the past.  So telepathy will probably occur because telepathy deals with thought patterns, and an advanced intelligence could communicate with the same thought patterns, especially if their culture had gone through similar phases of communication like Earth humans have passed through.

It's an intriguing study.  I would love to be on the communication team that has first contact with another intelligent species.  It would be challenging in many ways and pioneering to say the least, not knowing what to expect next.  At the moment I am pleased to just figure out how life is going to treat me next.  It is so filled with twists, turns and curves of all kinds that it poses challenges enough for me to figure out.  If trying to figure out the various relationships that occur is anything like figuring out another species' way of communicating, then I will happen on its many facets and be dismayed, fascinated, and elated, all in turn.

That's why it is called a journey.

Arrival as predicted... It's 2017

This is the year - 2017!  The end of the 10-year war for dominance of technology.

In the year 2000, a colleague of mine and I began planning a book to write on the loss of reading and writing over the first quarter century of the second millennium.  As we progressed, we realized that it could even happen before 2025.  Unfortunately, my colleague moved away and we abandoned our project.  However, I decided to continue in one form or another working on the idea.

At first, I outlined chapters for a book.  I found I didn't really have time for such a venture, so I put it aside for a while.  Also, life took some sharp turns in my life as well which included the death of my son after a prolonged bout with cancer.  Other almost equally severe events happened, but in the year 2007, I was able to focus again on the issue of reading and writing disappearing.  After spending time in a more than a few conversations, it became apparent that two camps existed, those who believed as I did, and those who believed I was a lunatic for even thinking that writing or reading was on its way out.  Even most of those who agreed that it would disappear thought I was a bit too quick on the draw with my date of 2025.

Out of these conversations, I wanted to chart, and thereby "prove," unscientifically, that the end was imminent and would arrive quicker than people thought.  I decided to take to the blog as my format for charting this evolution.

I want to refer to my first blog on the subject dated 2/10/08 and entitled Year 2 - and you probably missed year 1.  The blog sets out the thesis and says that a 10-year war from 2007-2017 has started for the dominance of how everything will be communicated after that point.  

For a second look at that blog, click on the year 2008 on the right margin opposite this blog and scroll to the blog for February 10th. (Entries are in reverse chronological order).

Holographic design and transmission was predicted as the catalyst and replacement for reading and writing.  In the year 2017, that prediction is fully on target and will prove to be the leading discovery to wean society from its dependence on the written word.  

Pure Genius is merely the beginning of all that will become available by the year 2025.  This year the first blog of each month, the charting will begin for the demise of the written word and the leap into the next phase of communication and the different areas that will be affected most by this evolution.

To continue the dinosaur analogy that I have followed all through the years with this blog, the asteroid has hit the Earth.  The dinosaurs closest to the blast have already died.  Shockwaves and subsequent incendiary flying debris are about to take the second round of victims.  It's time to get on board with the quantum leap that will begin in earnest by 2025.

The speck in your own eye

I see a certain arrogance from time to time from people who consider themselves better than most in the use of grammar, spelling, and punctuation.  These people usually memorize rules governing the three areas and then expect all people everywhere to do the same.  At least one website is dedicated to these rules so people can memorize them.  And, those who memorize the rules condescend or browbeat others who choose not to.  It's and its are the two spellings that I encounter the most as being misspelled, but according to a list put out by Dictionary.com, the words your and you're are misspelled more often.  Ever feel judged for using it's in place of its or your in place of you're?

When I was twenty-something, I played this arrogance game with language rules when it came to holding others to the notion of standard English, but then I found that people could challenge my own notions of language that I had no answer to.  So, I quit playing language games with others.  Making people feel inferior is far from the acceptance I desire to have for others.  Far beyond the games people play with spelling and punctuation, some syntactic constructions defy memorization and require a deeper knowledge of when something appears in language, and I was unprepared for that requirement.  Who was I to hold someone accountable when I couldn't do the same in the same language game just a different area?

Why would someone say, for instance, We were given tickets for the concert, rather than (Name of party) gave me the tickets for the concert?  I didn't know at that time.  Or, why would someone who had influence on teachers of English in schools want to perpetuate the idea that action verbs, such as A key lay on the table, make a "stronger" sentence construction than a verb form of BE with a "dummy" subject, like There was a key on the table?  I didn't know at the time how to discount this self glorified "writing guru's" arrogance.  Is there a definition for "strength" in sentence construction?  Does a graduated continuum exist for a "weak to strong" verb or sentence construction?  I understand "style" and "sentence variation," but "strength?" Never. Strength is a nebulous, immeasurable term in syntax.

Then there's my favorite, the "phrasal verb."  Coined by Quaker religious essayist Logan Smith in 1925, the term didn't catch on with linguists after Chomsky in the 1950s.  Grammarians who taught ESL used a variation of the phrase beginning in the 1960s, but the base term fell into disfavor because of its ambiguity.  However, some teachers of foreign languages still like to use this old term in verb phrases such as If you will put out the money for the venture, I will run the operation.  Not many people feel the need to analyze the phrase put out because of its complexity.  They just use it, as did I when I was twenty-something and arrogant.

Working with ideas in syntax and semantics, discourse and conversation analysis, and phonology have changed every smidgen of arrogance away from memorizing a few rules.  Memorizing rules is really, really easy comparatively.  Imposing a few rules on others who can outstrip my knowledge in many other areas of life, like writing software programs, negotiating business deals, and making money in the stock market seems ludicrous.  What is the real point to an education?  To make it work for you in your endeavors in life, or show how you memorized something important to yourself and not to most other people?

English grammarians need to get over feeling smug and superior for learning well one tiny speck of knowledge in the much more encompassing field of language use.  Someone might ask them to explain the literary term synecdoche or the phonological principle of obligatory countour principle someday and their arrogance will disappear with the embarrassment they should feel for only knowing one small corner of rules in a very broad, well established academic domain.

Caught in the middle

Last Friday I lived in a time warp.  I was alive, of course, in the present.  But, I went in the early afternoon to the show "Passengers."  It was a well done, well written movie, redeeming hope in people.  The whole movie was set in the future and both settings and characters' actions were appropriate for future happenings.  For 2 hours I soaked in the time many years beyond my present.

In the early evening, I sat down to watch another movie on television from 19 years ago, "Seven Years in Tibet."  It was set in the three-year period 1947-1950.  All the action and other props corresponded to that time period.  People wrote in longhand, for instance, in leather-bound journals.  Clothes were not made from lighter fabrics, but coarser, heavier ones.  Although motorized vehicles were present in the world, the setting of Tibet showed a world of walking everywhere across harsh terrain, giving a sense of 100 years earlier in time.

The day marked, I think, the microcosm of the brain.  We have hopes and dreams, so some of our actions are ones that are carried out in hopes of future outcomes and what they will yield for us.  We also realize we are trapped in the present moment.  We get to the future by steps, but the future is really just imagination and desire.  And then there's the memory track we reflect on from time to time.  It helps us see retroactively with 20/20 vision, or at least vision with more perspicuity.

Closing out the year, I hope for a clear and plausible glimpse of the future with the right steps in line to achieve it, satisfying moments of the present, and a lucid interpretation of past events with full enjoyment of the sacred moments that flash across our minds from time to time.

Transformative

On June 29, 2007, the world was transformed.  Onto a stage in California Steve Jobs walked out to introduce the world to a way to communicate not only with people, telephone-style, but with websites all over the planet.  Also a person could choose from an array of games to play.  A person would no longer have to use separate devices to talk, listen to music, or surf the net.

On July 15th, 2008, the iphone was discontinued.  But, the iphone had not failed.  The second edition of the phone was put out.  Thus, was born a transformative way of talking, using the web, playing games, taking pictures, listening to songs, and much, much more.  Apps began with about 25,000 to use, but soon proliferated.  At present, who could really live a quality life without a "smart" phone as they are now called.

It's time again.  It won't be Steve Jobs walking out on a stage, but someone with just as much drive and vision.  It won't be a development of a device to integrate tools, but something much more powerful and forward thinking.  The world of the hololens was introduced in March of 2015.  Its applications are only now being explored.  The one above is for education.  NASA already uses it in exploring and understanding Mars virtually.  Applications exist for taking virtual, holographic expeditions in Macchu Picchu, and the Roman Colliseum.  Archaeology and history have truly come alive, not in name only.  These applications will proliferate until babies born in this year will grow up knowing two worlds - virtual and real.  They will be seamless.  One will travel between the two without thinking twice about it.  They will enter one, leaving the other, as easily as a person taps on an app today to leave the real world for a moment with a screen.

I hope to live to see it.  It will be so exciting!  I am ready to be transformed.

A little understanding goes a long way

"Sheesh UPS AND USPS I know your busy but you could have rang the doorbell so I knew my stuff was here."          
(Written by a doctor of pharmocology working as a pharmacist, graduate of Oklahoma University, age 31)

The above was a caption written to a picture of boxes delivered and stacked next to this person's front door.

I learned in school that any generation could change the language to fit their needs and preferences.  There is no amount of cajoling (or grade punishment in school) that will change what a generation decides to do with the language they speak. 

I went to school in the 20th century.  My English is different from the people who learned their English in the 21st century in certain usages for pronouns and verbs (and a few other items) as exhibited in the quotation above.  I don't lament the differences.  I know what is inevitable.  The principle of language change is continuous and constant.  After all, I really wouldn't want to read Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in the English of that day.  (Line 1 - Whan that aprill with his shoures soote, 1387 C.E.).

If I live to see my great grandchildren, I know they will add some nuances of their generation to the language.  And, if I wake up in two hundred years from now, I would probably struggle to keep up with the conversation.

All of this is to say that we don't have to like or accept change in any facet of life.  But we do have to recognize differences and causes.  A lack of that makes us arrogant or bitter or both.  It seems a more satisfying principle to acknowledge or understand diversity.

Who's in the mirrror?

 I walked into a restaurant last week and looked up at the monitor near the table we were being seated at.  I couldn't hear the TV at all, but the deaf captioning was on, so I could follow what was being said.  The first thing I read was, "I knew the note was from him because there was grammatical mistakes in it."  I laughed out loud and couldn't help but comment on his statement.

I find this a real problem in the world I see everyday.  Not the grammatical error part, but the fact that someone wants to make an observation by criticizing the very thing they themselves are doing - sometimes in the very same way.  I am usually amazed at the blindness of the speaker.  I'm not perfect at doing this either, so I am criticizing myself.  I do, however, try to keep it to a minimum, and I try to rectify matters when I realize I did the very thing I don't like.

This Christmas season, my priority is to be a whole lot more accepting because when I talk about someone else's errors... there's grammatical mistakes in my own.

What does "time spent" give you?

Learning a language can be rather challenging at times.  When people learn English, for example, they, at some point in their intermediate path, encounter that words spelled the same have different grammatical categories in usage.  Program is one such example.  The word can be be used as a verb and a noun.  The question always arises, "How can you tell the difference?"  This allows for the discussion on whether an article or determiner precedes the word or whether it shows a verb suffix or verb auxiliary.  Of course, an article or determiner is not always present when used as a noun, and a suffix or auxiliary verb is not always used when used as a verb.  That, in turn allows for further discussion about the location in a sentence a noun can be placed or the location of a verb after a subject in a sentence.  Of course, counter-examples to that rule abound as well, such as the use of the verb as an imperative where no subject to the verb appears.

In my few years on Earth I have found living about the same as learning a language.  First we learn something like lying is bad, then we find that lying has degrees to it, like white lies and black ones.  Then we find ways not to state the truth exactly, but to "fudge" the truth or become silent about something so that the absence of the truth is evident, but it's not lying.  Then we find ways to say what happened in such a way as to hide the lie.  "Dancing around the truth" it's called.  Of course, there is the expression, "glossing the truth."

It takes time, but eventually, experience tells you both how to speak a language and how to filter out lies from truth.  Fluency in one gives fluency in the other,  I like being around people who have time both in language and living.  I trust them a little more.  They know how to tell the difference - in verbs and nouns and in living decently.  Viva "time spent."

Giving ourselves destiny

Who's writing history textbooks these days?  Not just these days, but in my lifetime too.  Abraham Lincoln gets treated incredibly well in the books I have ever been exposed to.  It's not easy to figure out why this is so.  The U.S. had a slavery issue at the time.  Lincoln's solution was a decisive one and the fastest solution to accomplish.  The political establishment after the war campaigned long and hard (and rather brutally) to ensure that the issue of slavery would not reappear.  Part of doing this meant that they needed to treat the leader of the war to free slaves in the best light possible.  So they did.  Lincoln was a hero, a decisive man who pushed for right to be done.  He was wise and led the country out of a dark chapter in its history.

The other side of the coin is not bright and shiny like history books tell it.  Lincoln was an on again, off again politician, losing in as many races as he gained office.  He was elected with less than 40% of the popular vote.  He wasn't even on the ballot in 10 of the 15 states that formed the southern slave states.  In his own Republican convention before the election, Lincoln obtained the Republican party nomination on the third round of balloting.  In the main election, Lincoln's position on slavery was the most divisive, stating that if war was necessary to end slavery, then he would wage it.  The other three candidates had more diplomatic stances, such as allowing each new state in the Union decide its status of slave or free, having an alternating pattern of free-slave-free-slave status as they entered the Union, or trying to bring pressure on the South through economic modifications.  When Lincoln won, the Southern states wasted no time in seceding, nine of them before Lincoln was inaugurated.

The most divisive president in U.S. history is remembered kindly.  He has books published about him touting how he lingered long on his decision for war, concerned about the great lines of division that would be caused.  He has movies made of how he labored with Congress to win their support for getting Black Americans to have the right of citizenship.  Modern books contain the wit and wisdom of Lincoln.  It's one of the greatest sell jobs ever.

We all have a choice on which voices we choose to hear.  We all decide how we want to interpret the world around us.  We all select which details to remember and drop from memory.  And we all elect to act and react in ways we deem consistent with all the details.  That's what gives us individuality.  Even those we love choose, decide, select, and act according to a little different line of thinking than we have.  It's what gives us our destinies.

Hanging around

I hear NFL commentators use a phrase nearly every Sunday as they narrate a game that is close.  The phrase is used when a team is ahead most of the game and in the fourth quarter, the other team is still within striking distance to win.  That's when I hear, "if you let someone hang around long enough, they will beat you."

I have seen that principle happen in life more times than not.  That has made me adopt the philosophy of hanging around.  Even if I didn't think I could actually get a job or get a job I wanted, I would try to hang around to see what would happen.  That philosophy has not worked for me in the two things in life I wanted the most, but it has worked out in many other arenas of life.

The NFL has other philosophies of life worth adopting.  Another one I have adopted is that from time to time, you will lose even if you are winning more than losing or if you have a winning streak going.  Losing is part of the game, but it doesn't have to keep you from having a winning record.  But the main thing to remember in every game that is played is that if you can hang around long enough, you can beat the opposition.  I love that that is true.

Dying satisfied

I watched a number of Science channel episodes on the universe yesterday.  They were all quite enlightening.  Not all the information was new.  However, the information turned my mind to how majestic the universe is all over again.  Several of the pictures delivered to us from the Hubble telescope amaze with their clarity of many of the nearby galaxies and galaxy networks.  The number of stars represented in the skies outside the Milky Way is boggling.  The number of planets circling those stars make the mind spin with calculations.

So, when I look up at night from my humble home on Earth and peer through a haze of an atmosphere, my mind goes wild with imagination.  What life is peering back at us outside our galaxy?  Where is that life?  What form does it have?  Have they been around longer than humans?  Are religions the same on all planets?  Does intelligent life have governments like Earth's?  Is there love and marriage and sex on those planets?  Can others exist outside of the three dimensions humans exist in?  What do they know that we don't know?

I feel a little trapped, being here on Earth.  But one day, before I die, I hope to see at least the planets up close and personal in our solar system in all of their holographic beauty.  I would love to simulate walking on Neptune or flying past Pluto.  I can die satisfied whenever that happens.

Flags we see

Life many times unfurls like a flag.  We have been told by those older than we are what the flag looks like, but we are only able to see the flag for the first time as it unfurls.  We make our plans based on what we have been told that the flag looks like, but really, we shouldn't.  The flags are sometimes similar, but at least half of the time, the flags are unique.  And, we don't know during which unfurling the flag will be the same or different.

I say this because I had counted on the flag being the same as I was told when I embarked on adulthood.  As it stands now, my flag has only been similar in some instances as my former generation's flags.  It also has been true that the older I get, or the more the flag unfurls, the more different it appears from what was told to me or what I had expected.

I have noticed that some people hate their flags as they see it for the first time, seeing what they expected.  They were hoping to see something they didn't expect.  I also have noticed that many think they can predict accurately what they will see as the flags new portions appear to them.  Satisfaction in life is based on reactions to the flags they see.  I am working on my reactions.  I have been sorely mistaken at times.  I know I can't predict accurately, so I am left with molding an attitude of satisfaction as I learn to react with a beautiful spirit.

Spending money

I'm one of those that doesn't spend my leisure moments performing manual labor if I have made the money to pay for a service.  I would rather spend leisure time doing hobbies I like or going places that give me pleasure.  One of those jobs I freely entrust to other hands is mowing my lawn.

Each Saturday I count out the money for my lawn mowing person and put it into an envelope with his name on it.  My granddaughter, who spends most Saturdays with me,  either watches or helps me fill the envelope.  When it comes time to pay the person, I let her hand the envelope to him.  She takes great pride in helping to pay for the lawn.

A week ago, I was about to go for groceries at the store.  I was rounding up my money from wallet and the place I empty my pockets.  My granddaughter saw me and wanted to help pay for the groceries.  she went to the place we had envelopes, then to her little money box that she keeps because she is learning how to save and how to count money.  She put a fair amount of change of different denominations, which she thought was a lot of money, and handed it to me.  "Use this."

I smiled really big, told her thanks.  It took me a couple of minutes more to round up my keys and get ready to go, and as I was leaving, she said, "Don't forget to spend my money."  I thanked her prolifically.

My granddaughter is 4 years old.  I was humbled at what a child works hard at contributing to a larger cause.  Somewhere up the path of life that principle gets reversed.  I love her purity of heart, singleness of purpose, and all-for-one attitude.   Life taints I know.  But what a crystal clear memory I have of a time when her heart was pure beyond belief!

Options

I spoke with a young man from Nepal today.  He received his education there, and was in the U.S. to try to start studying at a university here.  My job was to ask him a question to help him practice his English.  So, I asked him, "Do you believe there is life on other planets?"

The answer was simply an opinion question.  Mainly I was listening for grammatical structure of his utterances to check for his understanding of ideas from the question.  In the course of his answer, he said that the sun was the only light in the universe, and that other stars were not suns with light and heat of their own, but reflections from the Earth's sun.  Therefore, there was no life elsewhere, only here with our sun.

Grammatically speaking, everything was fine.  Semantically speaking, there was a great amount of entanglement with his answer.  I didn't question what he was saying.  I listened only, which was my job.

However, if the young man learned this kind of science in his country, I know he is not ready for an education in the U.S.  I did ask as my last question to him if it would matter to him that other explanations of the universe existed.  He said, "No."

Education is a wonderful thing in that it expands one's horizons.  This young man will find that is true if he really does continue with his education.  I'm not overly concerned with his answer.  People either opt in or out of an education.  He will get to choose if he will allow evidence to develop his future thought.  If he opts out, of course, he will fit in better with the world he left behind, and will probably rejoin them.  If he opts in, he will love what enlightenment has to offer in this and a thousand other matters.  He will be in for the trip of his life.  I hope he opts in.

On the canvas of darkness

Night has fallen.  It's a little earlier than it has been falling because summer is in its death throes.  The readout on the clock is still approaching 8:00.  It's a sign that my time of day, the cover of dark, is kicking in for 6 months.  The night soothes my mind, allowing it clarity to see my path clearly, and invites me to imagine what lies ahead so I can save steps during the day.  Darkness is the canvas on which I can produce pictures of possible outcomes given certain scenarios.  Night is my close friend.