Bill Buckner Gone! 69 is too young...

Bill Buckner Gone! 69 is too young...

He was part of a lot of us. He plays a part of me. Why?

Why not?

For those who paid attention to baseball in 1986.

A fall guy, a tragic hero. 

A great guy.

Rest in peace.

Parenting is a Horse Trip of 6,000 Miles Part 1

Parenting is a Horse Trip of 6,000 Miles (Part 1)

If you are a parent you should understand this allegory. If you are a child you should understand it, too. I have been feeling and contemplating such things as an adult parent lately. I think of it, this extended metaphor, analyze and share it in order to understand myself, others, and life as I know it.

Parenting is like taking various travelers (depending on the number of children) on a journey on horseback for 6,000 miles. The point is to get them there, and it requires sacrfice and work. Others, everyone, share the ride and the journey; we all are going along the same ride for more or less of the same path. The way includes plains and and moutains, rivers and obstacles, great views and exhilarating moments, highs and lows, times of peace and peril.

6,000 miles is roughly representative of the amount of days that a child will be a dependent subject to their mother and father, give or take the time of pregnancy until the age of 18. After 18 years of age, this is not the end of the journey in toto, but the metaphorical voyage of 6,000 miles of youthdom has been reached; then it is on to bigger things as a more mature, more independent, more autonomous person.

Adulthood awaits after the journey of being a child, the first 6,000 miles.

Parents are horseman, with steeds that amble as they may, as adult custodians have been gifted and earned responsibility over times and circumstances to be purveyors and guides. Each rider, now a guide of their own sort, has been trained in their own fashion and custom, usually formed in a lifetime themselves a great deal by their parents before them. These horse riders and guides have recollection and access to their own journeys of a former six thousand miles. And, as life is amply evident, we observe and learn of the rides and sojourns of countless others. Some accounts we know and intuit greater than others. Some may not seem to have any corollary for some. 

The metaphorical horse journeys of a billion Chinese or another billion Indians of the sub-continent may not have any appeal or rhyme or reason to the New York city dweller, or to the central African villager. Yet, we are all born of parents. Almost all parents have similar hopes and aspirations for their young. From the arctic poles to the tropics, all of us are wending our ways across time and space. Parents are universally hitched to their charges. We all have access to the knowledge of the horse journey. Unfortunately, not all children or parents have a horse that works in the best manner as horses do. Perhaps some people have horses with severe faults, or the analogy of a horse is not right at all. Mules, donkeys, burros may be more fitting for the metaphor of how we take the trail of life. Some are so disadvantaged at birth and during life that perhaps there is no metaphoric comparison to any animal. Some people have to lug their own way without the greater vehicle of an animal to help carry their burdens and ease the way. This would be people born without limbs... good bone structure, mental and genetic weaknesses. Some of them we "carry" on our horses.

Originally for the story of this allegory I did not want to involve more than horses, i.e. mules and donkeys and camels and elephants. We could argue that some people have naturally more powerful or enduring beasts of burden like those larger steeds mentioned. The horse analogy is close enough to a real truth and still complex with intricate nuances. We will continue to compare our individual and family life-path composition and wherewithal to horses, for the purposes of this argument.

The Way

Horse riders and their caravans have many different approaches to riding, traveling, feeding, inter-marrying, socializing, helping others, sharing, saving goods for future contingencies, etcetera.

So, this is a metaphor. An extended metaphor, an allegory about our diversity and uniqueness.

The horse that we ride --and the way we ride it, the adventures arrived at thereupon-- is a metaphor for our mental, physical, social, spiritual, educational, and personal life and posture.

After those first six thousand miles of youth, likely alongside our own parents, most of us keep going on the earth. Some go onward to 12,000 miles (age 36), 18,000 miles (age 54), 24,000 miles (age 70), and on beyond for many. Interesting, perhaps, to note that the circumference of the planet is approximately 25,000 miles around, and that by making it to 70 plus years perhaps the journeyperson has made it "around the world". Not in eighty days, but in a lifetime. My own mother, a horse guide to me and others, lived to age 73 and some change, which is approximately the equivalent of the circumference of the earth. I am glad she made it that far. Notably, for some of my five horseriders, they have not been able to ride along with her since 2014, and my parenting and skills have lacker her direct input as another source of a surrogate mentor guide along the way.

I cherish that the older ones remember her. I hope some of my recounting can assist all in keeping her "alive" and present along the trail. 6,000 miles and beyond. She and her gilded horse, a unique and powerful, fun and funny

For my youngest, who was only turning three at the time of my mother's death, it is somewhat unfair that she hears much about the legend of this horse rider, not able to witness her horsemanship with her own eyes and ears as she is now approaching her own first 3,000 miles. And yet, there is comfort in the fact that shared stories and memories can bring this person alive to a young rider, and the lessons learned and recounted will have a living effect on those still ambling along.

Videos, photos, journals, memories, all those things considered as family lore or even genealogy help us co-riders move along with background, context, and orientation for our own individual and collective trips along the the way.

Jim Morrison and the Doors have a famous song called "Riders on the Storm." Fitting for him, Morrison, a rider in rougher pathways who faced steep challenges along with the successes of life, this gifted musical talent who left the path at age 27, 3,000 miles into adulthood. A renowned book about him has the attention of some; a few readers take stock in it and account for their own pathways and methods of moving along.

I have still not read it. I would like to. Hopefully before I am 54. There a few hundred other books that I would like to read before then... There are a few that I would like to write.

Sharing and recounting the voyages, the journeys, the rides, of our co-travelers is a large part of what I like to do. I see, I witness, I fathom the rides of people past and present. I compare, I contrast, I assess and I judge. I remember and I forget. Life is "pasajera", as they say in Spanish. (Translated from Google: "transient". I heard the "pasajera" saying a bit when I was younger. "Transient" may not capture the Spanish meaning, to me, but it comes close. Ephemeral might work better. In 1 Nephi Nephi writes "like a dream." Perhaps ephemeral like our dreams. Surreal and hard to either grasp or hold on to. Difficult to make tangible and nearly impossible to retain.

The brain, the mind, and the soul cannot recall all things at all times. Yet, we continue our journey, on our metaphorical horses, remembering with clarity or not.

We move on, we press on, we age and we continue along our way, riding the horse or even some other beast of burden, no matter what way we choose to ride the steed. It is possible to digress and wander, to lose our way and/or remain stagnant upon the path. Sad and tragic cases come to mind.

As a small child my father would take us to visit the young lady who was crippled for life when she sneeked out of her house as a restless teenager; she was nearly killed in a car accident. She did not die, but suffered brain damage and physical harm that left here in a convalescent home. That is where I met her. As a small child she was a little but scary, but we could tell she was nice.

I will call her Jaycee. I happened to see here many years later when I had reached adulthood. Parts of me had forgotten about her. I had spent those years since my younger years at her bedside traipsing around the globe and delving into other worlds and their respective cultures. Meanwhile she was in the same building, as I recall. Was her "horse" taken from her?

In this allegory, Jaycee's horse was crippled or physically eliminated. She became a non-self sufficient person on the pathway to 6,000 miles, 12,000 miles, 18,000 miles. We cannot control all things. Her dad became the primary care-taker for her, and eventually the state or another family member.

Our choices only take us so far. Fate steps in, too. 

End of Part 1.

Vietnam: Reflecting in my 40s

Vietnam: Reflecting in my 40s

Ummm, I thought I had written about this and saved it a couple weeks ago, but I just re-opened it and found nothing...

Not sure if I thought it out more than I actually wrote...

For the record, I start a lot of blog posts and articles and save them for a while before finishing. 

How did I start it, if I already did? Let me try now, two weeks from doing an Army thing down south...

Each U.S. conflict and war has left its wounds and scars on its people and those who it engages with in those aggressive campaigns.

We (most of us) Americans like to think that we are fighting for the right when we get involved in military matters. This feeling of correctness helps substantiate the violence waged in that action, large or small, short term or long term. Right or not, the soldiers, marines, sailors, enemies, and civilians involved can become traumatized. Searching for understanding of these things can have its effects, too. Millions are left with mental and psychological wounds, along with all the physical ills.

I think that some of those effects, after-effects, if you will, have touched or impacted me.

Vietnam and its bloody long war in Southeast Asia had us questioning the rightness of it. It haunts us still, in 2019. Perhaps it haunts me, like all somber events in our human history.

Read up on it all you can; I have my own personal feelings and perspectives on it. They are many.

1. Growing up in the 1970s and becoming an adolescent in the 1980s, I was aware of the the major military conflicts and wars of my country before 1960. I knew a lot about them at a young age. Vietnam, ending for us in April 1975 when I was four, was a mystery to me. Not many people talked about it. I was unaware, and it took me by surprise when I was 10 or 11 years old.

What was this? Where was this? Who was this? Not Koreans, not Chinese, not Japanese... Another East Asian enemy, called Charlie and worse... And from my own era, not those of my parents or grandparents or before...

2.  These U.S. veterans were traumatized in large part because the wounded and otherwise non-injured survivors were pilloried and marginalized, by us, the American citizenry. Millions spat upon their efforts and service.

3. There were gross errors committed throughout our involvement in Vietnam and Cambodia and Laos against the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese. Civilians were too often hurt and brutalized. The nation suffered greatly; it was a long civil war where the U.S., like the Korean conflict before it,

tried to support the southern democratic government. But this was not Korea, we came to sadly learn.

4. The overall effort to stop the world wide march of Communism was noble to those of the West; the Domino Theory seemed like it was true. Thailand was saved, although ironically a few short years later the Viet Cong saved the Cambodians from their tormentors the Khmer Rouge. 

5. I watched movies and television series about Vietnam over the years, as our nation was dealing with the whole mess. Some resonated, some horrified, some showed beauty and reconciliation. I saw some foreign films, usually French made, about the country.

6. I grew to know people from Vietnam here in the United States. I also worked with and befriended Americans who loved the Vietnamese people and culture, I learned more about their food and drinks and hospitality.

7. Moving to Virginia well into my thirties, I began visiting U.S. Civil War sites, Revolutionary War markers and memorials, modern day cemeteries that hold the graves of countless U.S. fallen heroes from all the years past. I looked at their names, contemplated their stories. I reworked the campaigns of the known generals and leaders, pictured the innumerous narratives of those on the ground.

8.  I joined the military myself, rubbed shoulders and swapped tails with hundreds and hundreds of soldiers, marines, seamen, air force personnel, coast guard, international forces, those that have sacrificed. I worked overseas and I even had a Vietnam veteran roommate for a few months. I got to know my knew step father-in-law, a wounded Marine vet from the heat of the peak of the war, the late 1960s, when hundreds of ours were cut down monthly. The last major war of our country, although Afghanistan and Iraq have taken their toil on us, our psyche, our collective guilt.

9. Into my forties, becoming a more mature father and husband and uncle, (hopefully), but perhaps more acquainted with the grief of loss and longing, I found myself thinking more of the terrible losses of those who died, who left their best years ahead of them, their potential children unborn and lives unfulfilled. Vietnam was not as bad in total numbers of casualties for our troops as the World Wars or the U.S. Civil war. I observed my own dad getting emotional about it, thinking of his peers who passed away and I saw that proclivity in me. I could get teary by certain songs or memories, or recountings of the terrors and tragedies. I gathered my own stories of loss and death, both of Vietnam and other eras, including my own.  Some people believe most of my stories somehow involves someone who dies. It happens. I sometimes found myself getting hyper-emotional when contemplating the past and the remaining wounded from Vietnam. Not depressed. Melancholy in an empathic way. I consider it sublime, since we do die in so many ways for the causes to be thought of as for a higher cause, for some reason we gave up these lives so tragically but there is a meaning to each life. Silver linings populate the clouds floating over the fields of our lost ones. Many have no marked graves; they remain in the earth and sea.

10. Vietnam is now our friend. My step father-in-law went back there with my mother-in-law and his son in peace and friendship. They fear China, a bit like us in the West, the proclaimed Communist Party leftover. Our mostly young men who died there, others tortured like the incredible John McCain, have left a legacy of effort, blood, and tears for us and the world.

Mistaken mission? Improper military strategy? Were countries like Malaysia and others saved from these totalitarian regimes? Hard to know, difficult to assess. Poor analysis of the will of the nationalism of the Vietnamese versus the threat of their Communist ideology?

Mixed answers of yes and maybe to all of these.

Reflecting and remembering is the best I know to do; I will do it for the foreseeable future. You might be able to understand why after reading this. I don't know all the reasons myself, but it influences how I and we see things. Do not repeat errors of the past; count your blessings, and move forward with all possible lessons learned to make a better present and future.

Long live Vietnam.

Self-Definition

Self-Definition

As my oldest child is swiftly arriving at her age of legal adulthood, it has become a time of perhaps more self-reflection than usual. Earning my education degree in my late 20s provided a time of reflection on my life at that time, especially in the educational psychology class of spring 1998; perhaps establishing a standard for future reflections and self-assessments. I think it was a propitious time for my own inward self-search and the subsequent journal documentation, since I had spent the previous two plus years "finding myself" after a college degree, i.e. working, dating, investigating professional and academic opportunities and fields.

One note of self-analysis: I was bent on obtaining a college degree as my own parents had not done. At least no 4 years Bachelors. They helped me do that, and I kept moving.

I proceeded to work in different fields, not many with substantial success.

Exploring a bit.

More on individual and collective reflections: recently I have been able to speak with my own octogenarian father, some on the past, which is an interesting exercise. I can remind him of things long forgotten from 37 years ago, or more.

I am approaching 50. No small feat.

No huge deal, turning a half century, nothing too special. There are millions, almost billions presently alive (2019), who have achieved that milestone. Nothing big, but still an accomplishment. Reason to celebrate. Usually. Hopefully.

Turning 18 is a cool deal too, a reason to cherish. It is an achievement both by the individual and the parents involved, and the entire village that raised him or her, as more popularly coined by the generational source of enlightenment, Hillary Clinton. Politics aside, no offense meant, just poking some fun at a representative of the government and political community that has spurned and otherwise used me for years. Long live our diplomats and the greater U.S. government!

I love them and serve them, as they do us. Exclamation points, for emphasis. !!!

Sarcasm to be interpreted as it may. A little Vonnegut-esque barb.

I digress. Which is somewhat like reflecting, self-analysis.

Writing.

We all develop self-identities and characters based on our own traits and those of our parents, role models, cultural touchstones. Could be teachers, coaches, artists, world or local leaders.

Most of us figure out who we want to be, who we confide in, how we think and process, by accepting or rejecting, collecting or offloading knowledge and habits and customs and styles, some strongly influenced by our parents, siblings, peers and cohorts. 

Accept or reject what I say.

Trust but verify.

Figure out who you are, who to put confidence and loyalty in, what you trust and how you operate.

Have fun.

Define yourself with care and aplomb, with some regret but a lot of trying.

Be who you are, if even you believe you were meant for such things.

I think all that is true.

 

Physical Education, Physical Life

Physical Education, Physical Life

My favorite "classes" as a child in elementary school?

Gym and recess. Moving and playing. I think a lot of imagination was used as well.

I learned to like reading and doing some of the sciences, too. However, physical movement and play were where it was at, when grouped with peers and compelled to learn formal classroom things in the days of public education. Playing, imagining, creating, organizing, competing, striving for some order, some intangible essence or meaning, or other noble things as little people...

As an adult I have had to use physical exercises, labor and strength, in order get some of the tasks done. I have earned money by the sweat of my brow. This, in coordination with others in factories, plants, fields, houses, buildings, movie and television sets, army trainings, camps and bivouacs, maneuvers, convoys, orienteering, hikes, and marches.

What percentage of Americans--and expanding beyond our borders throughout the world-- labor with their hands and backs to survive?

With the increase of technology and computers nineteen years into the 21st century many people find themselves in less strenuous physical working environments.

Do we move enough? Do we work hard enough? Do we exercise just for fun?  And is "working out" just for the sake of non-work related cardio and muscle building exercises the right thing?

Should we put our muscles and lungs and brains into voluntary, pro bono projects and better things?

Should our hands work more on things that make all of us better, not just the body and health of one?

Yes. We should work and sweat and toil more with others.

Like in the Army National Guard. Boy Scouts. Sports for youth and the less fortunate. Habitat for Humanity. Soup kitchens and food for the needy.

Move-ins and raking and snow shovelings.

We need to labor, to apply our physical education and gymnasium sessions of years past, to our neighbors. To ourselves.

We are collectively powerful. We can and should toil and sweat for purposes beyond our own ellipticals and weights and work out machines.

Unless all those fitness gyms are the new yoga, the new age spiritually nurturing centers for the body and spirit.

Living for One

Living for One

Millions, perhaps by now billions, have died for him. Millions, even billions of human beings have lived for Him.

His name is uttered at times with no other sentiment than that of contempt or disgust, but it is uttered with more power because of the weight of it.

Jesus. Christ.

Yes, you've heard.

You have said the name a few times yourself, perhaps in great esteem and reverence, perhaps not. Maybe you mentioned the name in historical context, in a rather secular fashion. Positively, negatively, neutrally, his name is a thing.

Either way, you are very familiar with its pronunciation and utterance.

If I had belabored the very name in its proffering, perhaps you would have guessed it sooner than later. It is large, it is well known.

In the United States, in English, this name is somewhat ubiquitous. Even, sometimes more so even, among the non-believers.

Is there a barb in this when used as epithet, even by those who have no respect or intrinsic belief for the person Himself?

Perhaps subconsciously, if not overtly done.

How do you say it?

I try to say it with reverence, with love, with respect. Not as a cudgel, but perhaps I have used it as so when I wish to be more severe, maybe when angry or insulted.  Admittedly, His name should not be used out of spite or rage.

Use it wisely, thoughtfully.

Think about it, about Him.

About you.

Bryce Moves Up the HR List. As a Phillie.

Bryce Moves Up the HR List. As a Phillie.

372.	Bryce Harper (8, 26)	191	L	HR Log

 

	Hal McRae (19)	191	R	HR Log
	Chris Young (13)	191	R	HR Log
375.	Glenn Davis (10)	190	R	HR Log
	Willie Jones (15)	190	R	HR Log
	Ernie Lombardi+ (17)	190	R	HR Log
378.	Bob Bailey (17)	189	R	HR Log
	Charlie Keller (13)	189	L	HR Log
	J.T. Snow (16)	189	L	HR Log
	Preston Wilson (10)	189	R	HR Log
382.	J.J. Hardy (13)	188	R	HR Log
	A.J. Pierzynski (19)	188	L	HR Log
	Darrell Porter (17)	188	L	HR Log
	B.J. Surhoff (19)	188	L	HR Log
386.	Josh Donaldson (9, 33)	187	R	HR Log
	Bobby Higginson (11)	187	L	HR Log
	Mike Stanley (15)	187	R	HR Log