Top 25 Things About Marriage

    I am not sure if I can put these top things about marriage in a proper prioritized order. Also, I can only posit my opinions, which may be skewed, biased, and/or plain wrong.

    1. The children that married people, generally a man and woman betrothed, bring into the world benefit from learning and growing with at least two parents, who, while they may be very different in their styles and temperaments in parenting and teaching and molding, because a mom and dad do invariable have their differences, the children can learn and observe and perhaps emulate their favorite, or even by default, the most or least effective parent. In a best-case scenario, both parents would have great qualities that the children would want to emulate and pattern themselves after. Worst-case, neither parent is worthy of following. But there is a double chance of getting things right with two instead of one. Correct?

    2. Married people normally have romantic lives in which they enjoy each other's company. Some people call this the honeymoon period, which may last a week, a month, a year, or for some other arbitrary amount of time, or even decades, according to some mid-range and older couples that most of us have observed. Right? If not, we need to You Tube better old people testimonials. There are tons of happy elderly couples, until one or both of them loses their mind or goes tortuously or tragically pushing up daisies, leaving their partner sadly alone.

    3. The courting (or dating, or chilling, in more modern parlance) leading up to marriage can be pretty spectacular and memorable, mostly for good reasons. Some of the weeding out process can help the courters figure out some preliminary dos and don'ts of behavior and communication, or the time of dating is key to determine whether to simply just move on from the relationship instead of pursuing things further, involving rings, wedding showers and parties, and large life commitments and all sorts of life-changing events and circumstance that are rather hard to undo. However, changes given, there are many a divorce lawyer who has set up their bounteous retirement portfolios based on the undoings, custody battles, and cat fight legal battles of said break-ups and divorces of failed marriages.

    4. Taxes in many places are beneficial to married couples, as opposed to those who are single or shacking up without putting a ring on it. Of course, civil suits and judges, and those blood sucking aforementioned divorce lawyers, do prosper and thrive on the unsettling of would-be matrimonial blisses. I can understand why some couples try avoiding the procurement of a legal marriage document through their local municipal county magistrates and then just tear it up after a few years, many times the wealthier party feeling that he is being cheated, or many times both. And who gets visitation? Suffering succotash! Even Foghorn Leghorn knows money matters in marriage and split families is a big deal.

    5. Photographers make good money from wedding photos.

    6. Wedding planners and music DJs make some decent coin in all these wedding occasions and parties.

    7. Pastry chefs and bakers make money related to weddings. Caterers of all types. My cousin had a wedding and consequent marriage (that only lasted a year) where the broccoli alone coast 400 or 800 dollars. Very lucrative, this industry of parties and receptions. Money to flow and spread the love, so to speak. They make good moolah to celebrate marriage! So do bride and gown shops, and tuxedo and suit establishments.

    8. Is this, this marriage thing, all about the economy and spurring the fiscal coffers of the whole human society? Maybe? I remember learning about the dowry system in high school anthropology. Even in far flung communities in the Middle of the Sahara, or the Calipari, the Gobi, the Atacama, the Great Sandy, or some other forgotten desert region, families benefit from the marriages of their children, socially, but perhaps more crucially, economically. Cha ching, say we pro-marriage folks! Amirite?

    9. Others make money from weddings. And honeymoons. And last but not least, the jewelers, the blood-diamond miners and modern-day slave drivers of Sierra Leone and South Africa! What would our world be if we could not find huge crystal rocks affixed to the dainty digits of brides and grooms, at the mere cost of thousands of dirt-poor grubby hands who are forced to toil and labor for pennies and piasters and barely feed themselves and their impoverished families? The wedding diamond industry is so beautiful! How can we resist this market of modern-day debauchery? But alas, we do not have to see or think about it, so who cares if the extractors suffer to produce them? The end result justifies the means. Yes? Symbols of matrimony are sweet, no matter those that suffer for them.

    10. Anyway, I digress, Marriage in and of itself is for the sacrifice of the better society; some of us are the bigger losers in the process. It can be harder to be the mother, often. Baby birthing, tending, cooking, cleaning. Not as many of us dads do those things. If we can share the burdens, how so much for the better. Then again, if you are the breadwinner electrical line runner father, and you get zapped and scorched and never make it home, being a dad can be difficult, too.

    11. Some married couples are lucky or fortunate when the parents are able to help them out financially. So, this is a way for generations to help out the next ones down the line.

    12. Marriage is romantic and exciting. How many movies, books, plays, and Hallmark and other cards are dedicated to marriage and its heights and pitfalls? Not to mention all sorts of enhancing ointments and jellies. Okay, I know I just grossed out some audiences. Sorry, marriage can get intimately uncomfortable. But those things are nice. like when someone is being poked, prodded, and invaded in a hospital and the victim needs someone to be there to survive. Yowza, too soon.

    13. Okay, is this just an institution set up by patriarchal authorities to suppress and exploit the downtrodden, the weak, those with little or no power, or especially the women? What is up with all the polygamy over the millennia, where one king in Siam or the Mongol Empire or the Utah Territory gets to sire his progeny through dozens and dozens of his baby carriers and concubines? England broke off from the celibate Roman Church because he wanted more sovereignty over his marriage tastes, casting off one woman for another? What of the Hindus who would burn the remaining wife when her already past husband had been led to the pyre? Are the women the ones who lose out the most in this transactional paradigm? My good friend might be right: is marriage all its cracked up to be?

    14. Marriage is quite traditional, as we know. Most societies encourage it. It is an institution that is the basis for the nuclear family; people divide and create their residences on it. The nice quaint home with a chimney and the white picket fence. It may include a grandparent or some crazy aunt, but it centers around the married couple. Each person takes his or her place in the house in accordance with the man and woman of the house. The master bedroom, the master bath, his and hers towels or sinks, even the mugs and plates can reflect the married couple, as well as some closets or garage tools, and vehicles and assorted playthings and guns or pantries or decorations or whatever each party collects and prefers. Perhaps each side has his favorite seat at the dinner table, or seat in the family room, or certainly his or her side of the bed.

    15. Family photos.

    16. Many matrimonies are awesome and fruitful!

    17. If you cannot succeed in your first marriage, and you have been bilged by the self-same predatory family/divorce lawyers of disgusting acclaim, mentioned now ad nauseum, then a second or even third marriage might be the right fix. Marriage may not be the right fit for all, but at least many people do not get just one shot. Second chances can be the elixir. Or third. Not many people get married knowing or planning to divorce, although there are those gold-diggers who plan on early death of their targeted spouse, but marriage is not always the end all, be all. Like a house insurance policy or a lifetime warrantee, the marriage contract can be negotiated to the benefit of all or most of the parties.

    18. Marriage and family traditions. Traditions can be swell. It depends.

    19. Did I mention tax incentives?

    20. Being in the same house with your best friend can be quite joyous. Especially if you do not drive each other bonkers. If it is your spouse, in fact, that is your bestie that cohabites and that best friend does not wind up being a French poodle, or the mailman or a trash collector, even better.

    21. Some religions, like that of yours truly, proclaim marriage as the highest holy sacrament that we can achieve, and it carries on for eternity. Whatever that means. Do we hang out with our celestial partner and none other into the eternities, for forever and a day? We have doctrine and precepts that claim that is the case. Meanwhile, if you are another type of Christian, you might count on being alone and non-tangible, perhaps married to God the Father, who is also without parts and passions. Oh, religious thoughts! What to think? Marriage is holy to most, but not as much as for some priests and nuns staying only dedicated in the flesh to the One above. Marriage with the Divine, as it were. Hard to be one flesh with an eternal mate if you do not end up having flesh. 

    22. What else is great or okay about marriage? Constancy or consistency. It can be very tiring and chaotic to go from one relationship to the next. Although some find that practice preferable to be locked and bonded to one ball and chain. Same can be good. Pick your poison.

    23. Being one flesh, as Paul declared, can be pretty soul warming. Sometimes one partner can think of the other as himself or herself. If one hurts, the other does too. If one celebrates in joy, so does the other. Two becoming one is sort of a beautiful concept, in science and physics, and even philosophically. The duality of man (slash woman). The ying yang. A cosmic balance. Cheech and Chong. Simon, AND Garfunkel. Okay, Sonny and Cher, the Captain and Taneal.  Well, Cher moved on to other dudes, but they did make a great hit that many of us apply to marriage and couples. Ask Bill Murray about it in Ground Hog's Day. You got me, babe?

    24. Having rights and privileges to the others' personal affairs. Legal claims and sharing things and estates are allowed, which helps the bonds of togetherness and a family unit be stronger than one person by themselves. We need a custodian, soulmate, or caretaker when one goes down. The buddy system works in swimming or hiking in the Appalachians. Makes sense that a dynamic duo works in normal life.

    25. What more can I say that I have not written and intimated already about the top things about marriage? That I long to hear her triumphs and joys, and share in her heartaches and misgivings, that I hope to talk to her after longer absences, or even in short interludes, or that I love her more now than I ever thought possible, that I cannot imagine a world where I am not linked to her, and could not imagine not sharing in her everyday life or goals, ambitions and interests? That I want to know how she is doing, that I want to make her life better, and only make her cry if it is a good cry, and how I miss her in only anticipating being gone for a day, or a week, or four months, or terribly longer from one another? That I know that she is the better part of me and that I cannot repay her but only tell her that I owe her, and I am willing to pay it back somehow, but like the mercy and kindness of our Father in Heaven, I can never truly compensate for my failings, but I need her love, kindness, and mercy to allow me to be with her always, and I want to be with her always, whatever that means, and that I never want it to end?

    And, since marriage involves a second party, it is not all about me. Of course, the partner has to have her or his purchase and pleasure in the whole enterprise. I had my four criteria in looking for a partner when a young 21-year-old, returned from my mission where I was dedicated to my Lord, and thinking about my future spouse. It entered my thoughts so much, perhaps too much. My last priority and hope for my mate was: yes, she has to like me. No matter what I think and consider of her, she has to be the one that sees me as a fit for companionship. Right?

    Yes, those are some top things about marriage.

Emotional Wheel: My Current or Latest Feelings

    According to this Wheel of Emotions that my wife brought home, I was identifying some negative emotions attached to sub-set words. What were they?

    Sad: guilty - Remorseful, ashamed

    Fear: insecure - Inferior, inadequate

    But on the flip side, the happiness that I feel looks like the following:

    Happy: intimate - playful, sensitive

    I am not sure as to the overall accuracy of this wheel of emotions. For instance, two thirds or more of the emotions are more negative. I am not sure if that is truly representative of who we are as a people, or as individuals.

    I found a different emotion wheel developed by Robert Plutchik in 1980, which has more positive representations of emotions. Perhaps that is more correct?

    I do not know. There are more emotions from the get-go in his, 8 to begin with instead of six.

    Other charts online have more emotions, too, which tend to have more positive feelings than the one that the local high school disseminated.

    Maybe I am being too critical or nitpicky. But then again, I have a few negative emotions going on because of current circumstances, but hopefully we can figure out what is the most accurate or appropriate to our own cases and emotional makeups.

    

 

 Cosmic Battles Part II: My Goals

    I have things, imperatives, missions, goals or objectives to fulfill and accomplish. Can I list them?

    Sure:

    1. Please and worship, follow and obey God. I have my ways, which I think work. But I can improve. Most religious people are striving to live better. We are not finished products. I preach and practice.

    2. Love and serve my wife. I have over 25 years knowing her. I have come up short a few ways, but I am willing to learn and grow and do better. She accepts me even when I fail or do not do things optimally. But like God, she allows me to make mistakes and forgives me many shortcomings. She sees a lot of good in me, which is what we believe God does, too.

    3. Love and provide for my children. There are ways to improve and be better, closer, more connected. And of course, work for their sustenance, education, and health care.

    4. Work. Make money. Gather experience and professional skills. Pay taxes. Pay and donate to tithing and fast offerings.

    5. Do my callings and do ministering with faith. Minister visit to my people. Know them and pray for them.

    6. Be a loyal patriot and a soldier.

    7. Be a good person and research good things, create good things. Write good things.

    8. Obey the law and strive to do what is right.

    9. Pray and study.

    10. Love God and follow the commandments. Keep that loop up.

    That explains a lot of my imperatives. I can de-emphasize some other things.

    Oh, yeah: exercise! Do those things. B-ball. Plank. Table tennis. Maybe some pickle ball or tennis.

People Die All the Time: Some Do at Rates Higher than Others

    A lot of the themes of which I write about is life and death. Serious and important stuff. Most of us care about life and death. Life is preferable; death is the eventual but sadder alternative.

    It does happen all the time. A distant relative of a friend, or a former brother-in-law, passed away a couple weeks ago in Arkansas. Age 52. Too soon? Younger people die all the time, too.

    Young kids are dying in places like Africa: Sudan, Zambia, others, because some billionaires of our country decided a few months ago to cut off a lot of their support and aid. Kids are dying way to much in the Gaza Strip, Palestine, as the Israeli Defense Forces either kinetically strike throughout the densely populated zones, or the children are dying of diseases and starvation.

    Kids are getting killed in Ukraine-- that happens. Putin has bombed Ukrainian pediatric cancer hospitals. Yes. This war is well over three years old; it looks to end soon, God willing. I am not sure how much divine intervention is involved there. 

    Children die in all places from genetic defects, early onset sicknesses, accidents. With the warmer temperatures kids disappear and drown most summers. Sometimes in rivers, ponds, and of course swimming pools. Very sad. Recreation can lead to early death.

    So many sad cases. 

    Most of us young'ns make it.

    We need to do more to keep them alive.

    Do we let war, or greed, or apathy, let small children die? Do we do kill others, or let others die because of decisions that we make, or even in avoiding engaging in the ways to not let people die? Do we not do our most to protect others? Health insurance seems to be one of these issues about helping or protecting others from death, from dying before they should. Laws protect us from hurting and killing one another, many of them for public affairs of safety and others are created and upheld for people in their relationships, like restraining orders in cases of threats and harm, or divorce and custody laws.

    Can we do all we can to lessen or decrease the amount of deaths that happen to us and others? Can we be safer in what we practice and do?

    I think that we have serious and moral obligations to act in such ways. We need to strive to protect ourselves and others. This is part of the discussion and debate about abortion, too, for example. Do we protect unborn life? Do we protect and defend the lives of the mothers? It is not possible to save both, in many cases.

    How can we save lives? What do we need to do to protect more?

    People decry George Bush and Tony Blair for unnecessarily invading Iraq in 2003, but I saw it as a way to save lives. Too many Kurds and Shia were dying. But it cost us a lot. We made a lot of mistakes over there, too. But that is for another day. Like Paul Bremer. Yeesh.

    Anyway, let us do our best to keep ourselves healthy and alive.

    Yes, choose life and security. Let's all live longer, please. 

 All Roads Lead to Rome - Not Really

    There is a new Pope, born and raised in Chicago. We have a new Pax Americana. That means that the world is being run, like the "world" was run by Rome over two thousand years ago, by the country in which we serve and live in, the United States of America.

    We are the greatest, the wealthiest, the most powerful. Our words and actions and monies have sway everywhere. The Romans ruled the known world back in the ancient days for a thousand years. However,  many peoples across the globe did not fall under their prevue back then, like the indigenous across the planet, or even the less civilized parts of Europe and the Middle East. While Rome was "in charge", there were still vast swaths of advanced civilizations like Japan, China, and India where people were not under its rule or affected much by it. Perhaps indirectly, both those Asian and other native cultures and societies managed to develop separately and independently of Roman influence.

    Likewise today in 2025, we are a mixed world of globalized powers, with strong oil-rich nations, other G8 or G7 powers linked to the U.S. but with their own sovereign interests, plus there are hundreds of zones outside of U.S. presence where they have their own cultures and rhythms external to the United States. Russia, Turkey, Ethiopia, on and on.

    We are not the end all be all. But we are a part of the world plans.

    And now we have a home grown American in the Vatican, which leads and guides the worldwide "universal" church.

    Where do all roads lead to? Not necessarily Rome or Washington D.C. or New York or London or Paris, or Beijing or Hong Kong, Tokyo, or New Delhi.

    We share the world and try to influence as we may.

    How do we lead or rule, or how do we share the planet?

    It's an us thing. Not, U.S. alone or just the most powerful. 

    All of us make up an intense, diverse, growing world of people and things.

There is a Cosmic Struggle: Solo Said "All of it is True"

    In each of us there are imperatives and truths that we must live and strive for.

    I have had a few friends that have taken their own lives. Some of them were really smart, most or all of them were brave and true, kind and strong. But, and so sadly, I think that they may have forgotten a few things. Like what? There are lots of imperatives that are true for each of us, both individually and collectively. Internal and external truths abound; we should never forget these truths, realities, battles, or struggles!

    Do not give up or stop pressing. The cosmic battles and wars are true. Each of us have stakes in them. Everywhere, all the time.

    What do I mean?

    Here it is: If you believe in it, or something, if the thing or person or system or concept means something significant to you, it is real. Do those who give up on life forget that these things were true? I think so. I write this in part to remind all of us that we are all part of the cosmic struggles that exist. May we never forget nor ignore that we are in it, and we matter in the cosmic plays of life.

    Fact or fiction, it works either way. If you believe it, as they say in the iconic baseball film, "they will come." Harrison Ford's epic anti-hero character in a later Star Wars uttered dramatically to his wayward son that all of it "was true." No more superstitions or hokey religions for his spirit, now beyond the pale of temporal life. Our hopes, fears, quests, and missions are true, you all.

    

    Empirical science is normally accepted as generally true to most people in the 21st century. However, there are plenty of global warming deniers, there are those that believe that the earth is flat, and other ridiculous ideas that have been disproven empirically. 

    In the Christian sense, there are approximately two billion believers in the Son of God, Jesus of Nazareth, who paid for our sins and died and resurrected in order to give us eternal life and the pathway back to God. If we believe it, it is our reality. Not provable by traditional scientific standards, but millions upon millions are ultimately convinced and convicted of its truth. Its implications bear influence in our lives from the reasons why we pick our work and mates, down to the smallest decisions and choices we make on a daily basis.

    Islam has similar conviction and presence, while the other world religions also have their impact and sway. Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, all the native indigenous traditions, all have their believers and practitioners with their current and future realities. In some countries and environments people are largely affected by their native cultures, which can be a bigger influence than religious or doctrinal beliefs and precepts.

    We have political beliefs and systems that hugely affect how we think and behave. Capitalism, socialism, communism, totalitarianism. All of them have a tremendous bearing in how we live and act. Economics becomes the harsh and real truth for almost all of us. How we work, live, travel: it affects our conversations and thought processes, and how our rules and laws will contour our very motivations, actions, and movements. Should I speed? Should I run that yellow? There are physical and moral laws that affect us in all moments. Should I have more calories? Should I try a drug or herb, or imbibe a certain drink. If I do intake these consumables, what should happen next?

    There is romance and family and relationship realities that we go by. Hugely influential in everything for most of us. Who do we live for? Work for, sacrifice, sweat and bleed for? Who do we pine and dream about? Many of these familial relations and links fit into our economic and religious imperatives. As Christians and Muslims and Jews, there are a multitude of what the spouse and the children and the parents mean to us. Not to leave out other faith traditions.

    Secular people of all varieties value human relations and commitments, regardless of the underpinning connections or implications of God and how we fit in the human family. Divinely based or not, parents and spouses and romantic interests determine much of our legal, emotional, and physical drives and efforts.

    I think that these things greatly affected my buddies Rob and Nicholas. They lost sight of some things, I presume, because of their thoughts about the above, human relations, but forgetting about other imperatives. Their jobs, their country, their spiritual and fraternal connections. Perhaps they could not see past these important things?

    I cannot explain the human brain, or our hearts.

    In the secular realm, ever growing in this modern day and age in which we live, we have much to live for and strive for. There are those who put utmost value on our planet and nature, or human beings, or animals and their environments, or some seek for less tangible things like honor, power, justice. Still others strive for more material wants, to include money and wealth, amazing possessions or experiences through adventures or vacations, highly favored achievements like races or other outstanding performances like feats of daring or skill. 

    What do we value or cherish? Beating the enemy in a competition? Beating out our own fears or apprehensions? Conquering oneself, overcoming on one's own? Working so hard that we vanquish the doldrums of self-lassitude? Reading a book? Completing a work of art? Writing a book, or a story? Standing up for the weak? Serving others. Giving a gift to a loved one or perhaps a complete stranger? Saving a helpless person or animal in distress? Paying homage to the dead? Learning a new concept, or mastering a difficult task? To land the perfect job, to execute the perfect plan, to achieve the most excellent workday, or week, or year?

    Sure, all of the above give us satisfaction and joy. Most of these can be measured and are real in ways to quantify or at least describe and depict.

    And then there are the fictions and fantasies. Oh, man! To include crushes, flirtations, dalliances, obsessions, passions, prayers, and all sorts of things based on hopes, dreams, and imaginations of things that are not truly pertinent to our solid lives or our tangible gain. Things of our mind that may not prove real enough. Yet, these ideas or distant objects may influence our motivations and our hearts, our longings in the conscious, the sub-conscious and the unconscious. These "non-real" flights of fancy can overwhelm or consume us! Like me with sports or teams or players, or a character from a film, a singer from a concert, or the people that we admire near or far on all the genres of life, from the television to all the panoplies of where we live and breathe. It could be the memories and sentiments of yesteryear, or family members or friends that we have not seen for long periods, including the dead. Even those that have passed may possess our wills and dreams.

    We long for what? For God, for salvation and peace, for love and romance, security and prosperity, for adventure and accomplishment, for some addictions or compulsions, friends and families, faith and organizations, arts and beautiful works, for causes and notions, countries and pledges, standards and laws, oaths and covenants, promises and commitments. For good food, drinks, entertainment, friendships, and on and on. Yet, there are limits to our wants and needs.

    We are only so finite, there can only be so many desires.

    There are ends to our ultimate hopes and prayers. 

    What does it all mean? We are complex and simple, intricate and basic.

    We are paradoxes. We can spend inordinate hours or years on things of nothing further, games of chance or games of the mind, on people or places or efforts that yield nothing further, nothing of import. Yet we did all that. Consumed by things of little or no worth. And most of us, hopefully, make it through.

    We hope and pray.

    We ask for forgiveness of past wrongs, of former flights of untoward thoughts or actions, we ask for pardon from our creators, the masters of our universe, the loves of our lives, the cherished ones who have moved on from this life already, the wounded and dead of past wars, past lifetimes, past eras.

    We offer them thanks and plead for mercy and love and acceptance and more wisdom and justice and righteousness and joy.

    And this is all a part of the cosmic struggle. My friends Rob and Nicholas were smart enough, kind enough, tough enough, to know that there were cosmic struggles on this earth and this time that still needed them, that despite the sadness of some setbacks, a broken relationship with a girlfriend, or perhaps sadder future prospects, or the second divorce after yet another deployment, and estrangement from his teenage daughter, that life still had battles to be fought and wars to be won.

    May we all see that. See those struggles as cosmic, and worth it, and that we must find the efforts significant of tackling and engaging and continue to live and breathe, to go on, to persist, and endure.

    Endure through the tough times and continue to fight. Take in breaths, despite the trials and setbacks. The heartaches and losses. 

    We must press on in all the cosmic battles, the overall war against the attrition and loss that cuts too many of us down.

    May I, and you, and we, persist in these battles and the wars to come, as we have made this far as a human race and that we have much more to go.

    I do not think these battles will ever truly end.

    Thus, stay the course and resolve to do better, or at least keep keeping on.

    Struggle and wriggle and squeeze what we can from this life, hour to hour, day to day, and make this cosmic battle and war what it is. Our best and only way to achieve the ultimate victory over failure. Surviving, even without complete excellence, is triumph. Lasting until the end. Pausing and resting are okay, but not giving up and quitting for good.

    Choose life, choose to give and continue sharing.

    Please.

    The cosmos demands it.

    It is not just me. It is all of us. We all matter a great deal. This I know.

    I am not sure how I know many things. But I know we matter. And, we shall overcome through continuing to battle.

    Keep on keeping on.

    

Charles Strauss, born in 1928. He Added to our Lives

    Oh, the people born before the Great Depression! Now passing away from us, like the others of his age. We know few people now in their 90s, but we are grateful that they make it this long. Dick Van Dyke, Carol Burnett. The great comedy actors and laughers such as they. Still hanging on!

    I did not know Charles Strauss much by name, but I knew his work. Growing up, "Annie" made an impression on me. It came out in 1977. Broadway, I am sure. Carol Burnett did a movie version of it. The only problem was, that version profaned too much. But the stage version was clean enough, along with all the music, and I loved it. I saw the production in Bloomington by fifth grade, and I was memorizing many lines. Many, for me. I have not been that good at memorizing things verbatim, so when I do, it stands out. Even now into my 50s I struggle, perhaps more so, to memorize. 

    This has hurt me, maybe over the last few years more and more. 

    But, Annie and the songs were formidable to me. This man made an impact on me and millions of others. "Bye, Bye, Birdie" was a good show at the high school a few years ago. We enjoyed it.

    Thanks, Charles! You appeared to a be a total winner! Nothing bad to know or say about you!

    We appreciate all that you shared with the rest of us.

    The sun has come up, and it is tomorrow. Days that are grey are less lonely because of your talents and contributions.

    God bless you and all yours, and all of us through you and your works.

    Rest in musical and restful peace.

 Did I Do Enough? Have I Done Well? Was I Who I Should Have Been?

    It is normal to question ourselves. Especially if we are going through hard times. My last two months have been somewhat difficult and disappointing. These times make me, like most people, wonder if I am good enough, smart enough, Have I tried hard enough? Was I too complacent? Did I commit too many errors? Are my priorities not correct? Did I spend too much time distracted from what is most important?

    Uff. 

    Did I make poor decisions this last year? Yes. Did I make mistakes, many of which should have been avoided? Of course. Have I had times of poor judgment and effort? Yes.

    After all this review, I realize that I did many good things, too. Overall, I did okay. I stayed above water. I lived, I loved, I tried to help others as I could.

    I believe in Jesus Christ and His Kingdom. I belong to it, and I have participated. I have asked for forgiveness , I have tried to achieve Oneness and reconciliation with Him and my family, fellow saints and brothers and sisters.

    I have hope.

    I will continue, I will persist.

    And we must look to Jesus and live. 

    Grateful for my life, my wife, my family, my nation, and leaders, beyond faults and problems.

    I must be centered and at peace. I will go forward and be grateful, content.

    And God oversees us all. I trust in Him, and His plan.

    Blog on.

    

 Love Poetry and Love, Feelings

    My wife remarked that she was proud or grateful for some of the birthing marks that she has acquired in giving birth to and raising our children. I agree. I am proud, appreciative, and forever grateful for the contributions and sacrifices that she has submitted to in order to form and sustain our children.

    I remembered writing a poem along those lines after our first child. The scars were beatific, a stigmata in a way, of pain and love, sacrifice and devotion. I did not tell her that at the moment last night, but I reminded her of it this morning. Her reaction to it back then, well over twenty years ago, was "Wow, he really does love me!" 

    Yes, I really do. I did then and I do now. She has not stopped caring, giving, sharing, loving, sacrificing for our children. She does all that for me, too, her husband.

    I write poetry; it is not my main source of expression. I like prose, like this very entry, better. But song, lyric, and poetry can hit notes (pun intended), that mere words cannot touch or cover as well.

    Roses are red, violets are blue.

    All those things: emotions, sentiments, analysis, records, are represented in stories and the arts, through the media of film, literature, song, plays, poems, visual arts like paintings and sculptures.

    My lost poetry will be found. I have it scattered across books and journals, random pages and leaves of paper in at least three stories of my house. May they not burn in a fire, and forever be lost to the vagaries of time and woe.

    Might those words and sentiments be collected and gathered, re-shared and contemplated, perhaps relaying to the once and future me and you and us what might be achieved through searching heart and mind, soul and conscience. 

    What else is there? Work, achievement, love, war, battles, races, games, all the things that we film and photograph, document and record.

    Like this.

    Blog it.

 When I was 21: I wrote in my Journal, Like My Daughters 

    I read some from it this morning, to my wife, before she swam. It helped her achieve a couple of moments of unconsciousness, also known as sleep, as she said that she had been up or awake since 3:00 am.

    "Are you awake?" Pause. "Yes, I am."

    Okay, I think. My words have their effect. I am glad to give her brain a little respite, relax.

    I wrote some poetry, or flowing words of sorts, in January and February of 1992, or 2000-8, as I called it. My journal I filled in about 10 months, the ones following my two-year mission.

    Little was I to know that I would marry my future spouse in the year 2000. Two thousand. Conan O'Brien and their show celebrated it, back in the earlier 1990s, like me counting down to the millennium. 

    25 years later, I am re-reading it, this compendium of thoughts and feelings. My wife had read from her journal from 1997 and 1998, when she had moved to Washington D.C. and Las Vegas, Nevada. She went there in April 1998, a question that I had wondered for many years. Some dates are not quite solid to her. Like when she graduated high school, or her age when her father left her home. 1991, 1992, 1993... Or 1994. 

    Admittedly, many memories and even dates get hazy in my mind, in my memory banks. I am sometimes surprised what I have forgotten. Such is life. I have reasons, many reasons, to memorize more things in the now, the present, and there are many things that I have failed to learn verbatim. Like the exercise commands of the Army. It cost me, only last summer. June of 2024. Ugh. Cost me chances to promote one more time.

    Like my failures of 2018. Not the greatest year, not the worst. It turned into much worse for some I know, so I could not have space for too much complaint. Must be grateful, I knew.

    I know that.

    So, that is a surmisal of the life of me over thirty years, well over thirty years.

    Time moves on.

A capture of one poem from January, 1992? 23rd of January (2000-8).

    "Hundreds of pages

        

     Through the ages

     Have confounded the sages

    While soul cages

    Ages and ages of many, many years "

    I penned a line, and wrote about the above. Investigating myself, my thoughts, my life.

    

    

Us in Time for a Short Period; He Begat Me, I Begat Thee

Us in Time for a Short Period; He Begat Me, I Begat Thee (We in Time?)

    We only live so long. Some make it to one hundred years. They are few and far between. My uncle Harry made it to one hundred years-old; he was gone a couple months later. Most of us do not make it to the 90s. How much time do we need? All right, his spirit left, but his body was interred at the federal cemetery in central Pennsylvania. Next to his lifelong partner, my aunt, who passed 25 years prior. Perhaps she only made it to age 70.

    I just learned of a 52-year-old woman in Arkansas, the sister of a man that I met when we were children, a cousin to distant family of mine, who died in a car accident, maybe a week ago. She is buried now. Her life chapter is over. She lived a bit more than half a century. How long do we live?

    Whether it is 33 or 66, or more, we all will have only so much time to live. To make our marks.

    Adam and Eve lived 6,000 years ago? They lived very long lives, we believe.

    Perhaps so.

    Many of them back in the ancient Bible times lived hundreds and hundreds of years. Like Noah and Methusaleh, according to Genesis.

    Us now? Lucky to make sixty, for many. Others make their 70s and 80s.

    Like our family histories, meticulously kept and worked by us living. Some ancestors have a first name, a death date, a place of birth or death. Mere basic facts. So many of us are reduced to random or incomplete date. Better than a person who never was recorded at all, and perhaps not even given a marked grave.

    Millions of us in our shared families, some only a few generations ago, are mere foot notes, blips with no further information. Since the time of the print press, many people have larger footprints in our records, and now it seems the rise of the Internet many more of us are immortalized through all the things that have captured us in the data centers, servers, and the ether net Clouds or wherever our online lives and data is stored.

    Waxing nostalgic. Thinking of existence, types of permanence, or impermanence, or ephemerality. Our meaning and place in this world.

    We, as mere blips, while eking out our lives and meanings on this mortal plane. This is what we know, for now.

    What of me, and the millions who are not notorious, but we exist in this 21st century through the social media?

    What of all this blogging?

    What of my life, now longer than shorter. Made it more than halfway, pretty sure.

 The United States is Morally Responsible to Protect and Bolster Others

    What does our country stand for? What do we aspire to? Are we greedy capitalists? While we have a good number of those types, more of us are not greedy, yet we do care about the bottom line: we have to pay the current bills, or debts accrued. In many cases we need to build up the future retirement equities. Some people have worked out their future savings very well. Others of us struggle to put away enough money and value to feel secure, even approaching our mid-fifties.

    Enough about me.

    We as a country have a history of freedom and justice, which also contains much hardship, cruelty, injustice, and bald self-interest that has hurt many others. Native Americans, the African enslaved, women of all colors, miners or other laborers who have struggled, body and soul, to work out their wages while being killed by the very commodity and livelihood that sustained them: coal, for example. The coal dusts would kill off those that were closest to its extraction. Black lung, many suffered and died from.

    

    Energy in the form of whale oil, and timber, and later all other means, to include earth and sea-extracted gas and oil, thermonuclear and geothermal, solar and wind; all these fuels and energies provided the mechanisms for our nation to build itself and become stronger.

    

    By World War II the United States had become the strongest country in the world, our vast yet ever shrinking globalized planet. It has been multiple generations and we are still the strongest, the wealthiest, the most powerful, the most feared and respected.

    We, the United States, attract millions of immigrants, and have done so all of its existence since the 1700s. The colonies all did even before the Articles of Confederation. An ever-growing land of power, freedoms, and dreams. We have not stopped, even until now, mostly through the halfway point of 2025. We are still the city on the hill, as Reagan quoted the Bible.

    We cannot hide our light under a bushel. We are part and parcel of the hope and promise of the planet.

    Have we forfeited our place as a benevolent friend and helper in the world? Have we become part of the insular, selfish, self-serving part of those that do not look to help their neighbors and brothers? 

    This year, as far as for the arbitrary cuts and mishandlings of the "government efficiency", yes. There are people cut off from their medicines that derives from our wealth, mercy, and largesse. We became the evil Scrooge of Dickens, not the reformed kind and generous one. We are letting Tiny Tim suffer and die.

    What, is this I say?

    We were never perfect. We saved Europe from itself twice, this past century. We saved South Korea, which is still free and sovereign today. Three quarters of a century later. We attempted to save Vietnam, which ended up a quagmire and painful tar baby that we had to sadly remove ourselves from. Gratefully they turned into a land better than draconian China, a nation of murderers, and of course a hundred times better than North Korea, or what would become the genocidal Cambodia next door, or further past in time the autocratic and deadly Burma, aka Myanmar.

    We, the United States, shed much blood in southeast Asia, trying to save them from themselves, worried about the Vietnamese and Thai and Malaysians and Indonesians (domino theory), and ultimately the rest of us, as we feared the awful systems of Marx and Engels would wreak havoc and suffering as it has in Russia, the Soviet Union, and China, which sucked in Tibet, and Cuba, and Laos, and other Communist regimes across the underdeveloped or poor world. South America and the Central isthmus, where the Sandinista of Nicaragua popped up after Castro's Cuba, Chile a blip in the aisles of history, playing so seriously with its ways of socialism and communism, alternative ways to what the United States has achieved and wanted to establish elsewhere.

    Africa was the battleground for these theories and political systems, as was parts of the Arab world. Europe rose and fell with Communism, under Stalin or Tito of Yugoslavia, versus the rest of us NATO partners, to include our free and proud Canada. We helped, aided, supported, and strengthened the great Western democracies, the traditional powers that now enjoyed liberal republican governments of what we recognize as the freest and most dynamic, to include Japan and Taiwan, the aforementioned Korean land, to the south, with economic capitalism being the bulwark of hope and solidity, spread across the planet in the far off Australia and New Zealand, the whole Pacific, great pockets of Asia and Africa, like the ever-developing India, South Africa, some other oil-rich counties across that at times too troubled continent. Angola fought with Marxist notions and struggles, as did others, countries that even now are scarcely heard of. Guinea-Bissau, for example.

    Brazil has its fights and battles for a fair republic, as did Argentina to the south. These in a few decades past, while Venezuela post-Chaves, now in the era of Maduro, fights for its way to allow the people to live. Indonesia fought through the period of Sukarno and then Suharto, and continues, we hope, in a way of democracy today.

    Meanwhile, we the United States, stay strong and mostly magnanimous, through both trade and charity. We are the world's big brother, enforcing with the European Union the values that matter most. Free trade, stability, peace, prosperity, good health, opportunity, brotherly love, also known as fraternal goodness.

    We send out folks to bring the world better hopes and systems. Medicine, systems of better food growth and productivity. Our military, the hard power that most, even the worst despots, acknowledge and respect, enable the soft powers of missionaries, philanthropists, medical professionals, development arbiters like agronomists, artists, or other humane professionals to spread and share and intersperse their trades and practices. Money usually speaks the loudest, but the voluntary efforts go far and wide as well, into the hearts and minds of all that we touch.

    In Kuwait and other lands, we bolster their existence, otherwise swallowed up by its northern neighbor Iraq, or if not them Saudi Arabia or Iran. They are a free monarchy because of our military and later diplomatic interventions. Each Arab land, each Muslim country, each democracy, large or small, each Christian or Hindu or Buddhist or some other system of belief nation, like the semi-sovereign Greenland, looks to us, the great and quasi-omnipotent United States superpower, some call the hegemon, under a "Pax Americana", to maintain a world of peace and possibility.

    Again, Reagan said we were the City on the Hill. We are. We are not the feckless and awful Scrooges of cutting off the hands and arms of those that we choose to buoy. We are not selfish and mean, Stalinist or Maoist killers and prison camp builders. We do not openly violate and abuse the rights and privileges of those that we rule over and choose to support. We do not lord it over the native Americans, or the field workers of our vast crop lands, here or abroad. We do not stick it to the poor of the inner cities or the impoverished of Appalachia. We help the sick, we comfort the indigent, we provide care and humanitarian and educational services for those born with physical and mental handicaps. We give support and share resources with those born with less brain cells, or limbs, or organs. To the blind and the deaf we sacrifice to make their and our lives more whole, bringing up the chasm of inequality to be closer to fair, loving, kind.

    That is who and what the United States is. 

    Sacrifice is sacred. We are honor-bound to be the brave and the caretaking to the weakest of our brothers and sisters, the infirm and the chronically buffeted. Those born with less, we give and share of our own strength to make them whole, as we all become whole and complete as a society.

    Who created the "Great Society"? Who coined it, was it Franklin Delano Roosevelt? If not him, a grand human and humanitarian, another U.S. president or civil rights leader, a man or woman who sacrificed or made sacred, holy, even hallowed as Lincoln would say, the efforts of blood and sweat and tears of all our forefathers, our mothers and grandmothers, our aunts and uncles and forebears on and on back to all the great contributions of those throughout history who have made us who we are.

    We hold up the martyrs, the countless ones of the Mid-evil centuries of Europe, the priests and nuns spread across the entire planet, the mothers and fathers and kings and queens of all our royal families, the kind and benevolent ones like Princess Diana of England, Great Britain, who like the beatific Mother Teresa showed love and care to those most underprivileged, be they the destitute of Calcutta or the jungle poor of southeast Asia, the hapless children playing among the thousands of mines that littered their local environs and fields.

    We have modern day faces of love and magnanimousness. Bono of the rock group U2, George Clooney of Hollywood fame, the modern-day technological magnate Bill Gates, and his ex-wife, Melinda, philanthropists and humanitarians who look to lessen the burdens of millions of otherwise forgotten and outcast hands and mouths that look to some type of hope and chance to make it past the local killers of river disease blindness, or malaria, or diptheria, or any number of other preventable diseases, which of course include the more modern HIV and AIDs.

    We, the United States of America, have programs to combat and mitigate such plagues and evils. We can be better, stronger, kinder. We can be bigger and more beautiful, from our largesse and mercy, our strength and bounty, rather than be craven and mealy mouthed, petty and mean. Stupid, cruel, and trite, to use some other words.

    We are not that. Are we?

    No, we are the country from where my parents went to West Africa and gave of themselves to save and succor others. To save little children bloated with worms, many of whom destined to die before turning five years-old. A land where men and women had goiters, large protrusions hanging from their necks, because there was no iodized salt to stave off those terrible growths. Where a man had infected genitalia that needed to be transported in a wheel barrel.

    Do we let these brothers and sisters suffer so? Not this American. We suffer and even die to prevent these horrific scenes and tragic events and cases. We fight and bleed to stop the autocrats, the despots, the murderers like Al-Assad or Putin or Kim, who systematically murder and plunder among their own people and those close by.

    Who are, we America? Who are we, United States?

    We are a City on a Hill. Norway understands this. I believe that France and Germany do, too. Spain, Italy, Poland, Finland, Denmark, Netherlands. Mexico? Argentina? Chile? Japan, and on and on.

    We are the hope and dream of the world? We cannot put out the fires and warming lights that we have lit for centuries, that we have developed over the decades and centuries.

    We will not, we cannot, stop who we are supposed to be.

    Saviors on Mount Zion. That is who my America is. We look to Israel or Jordan to better the human condition. Can we? Do we? Those countries are other cases, as our friends and allies, sure. Save them for another day.

    For now, we the U.S. must be who we were meant to be: kind, strong, true.

    Wake up, U.S. Be who you are supposed to be. I will live and die trying.

    That is who I am, and what we are.