Day: September 22, 2020

“A human being is not one thing among others; things determine each other, but man is ultimately self-determining. What he becomes–within the limits of endowment and environment–he has made out of himself. In the concentration camps, for example, in this living laboratory and on this testing ground, we watched and witnessed some of our comrades behave like swine while others behaved like saints. Man has both potentialities within himself; which one is actualized depends on decisions but not on conditions.”

“Our generation is realistic, for we have come to know man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered the gas chambers upright, with the Lord’s Prayer  or the Shema Yisrael on his lips.”
-Viktor Frankl

“‘We may take refuge in our stereotypes,’ she said, ‘but we cannot hide there long. Because HIV asks only one thing of those it attacks: Are you human? And this is the right question — are you human? People with HIV have not entered some alien state of being. They are human. They have not earned cruelty and do not deserve meanness. They don’t benefit from being isolated or treated as outcasts. Each of them is exactly what God made: a person, not evil, deserving of our judgment; not victims, longing for our pity.'” – Mary Fisher via David France in How to Survive a Plague.

“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” -Mark Twain

Photographer: Jay Mantri

Free, thanks to his new-found “friends,” he was aware. Also that the fate of Beta Gruisian Detention Gate could certainly hang in the balance, light years away, Christopher knew that there wasn’t much time before he would be visiting. What was contenting, spiriting even, ironically a problem that, in the split second Christopher contemplated it, this time, it was this crew that was putting him right in the middle of it.

Steve and Bridges seemed all right. It didn’t matter much if they were, as Christopher was aware could be the case, bearing the shipment Christopher thought they had in stow, all the way to Beta Gruisian. It made sense. Why would Steve have readily set the coordinates?

Plus, there was the matter of the banking droid. B2W3 was the least friendly finance model Christopher had ever met. It was as if B2’s output was programmed specifically…

Losing ten years in the wink of an eye would be a dramatic life change. If I were ten years older than I am now, I would be forty-seven years old. If my life hadn’t changed in all that time, I wonder if I would be able to steer my life. If all of a sudden I were forty-seven, what would I do? I should think eHarmony™ would be a much more attractive proposition for me at that age. Maybe I’d sign up, filling out my profile with such designations as:

Age: 47

Seeking: a woman

My occupation: cemetery volunteer and social media addict. Facebook would be as much interesting as it is in my thirties!

Interests: Watching EastEnders–I wouldn’t mind jetting to England to be an old boy in London!

Enjoying the wisdom of getting old

Hopes for the future: Keeping aware of changes and developments in the world

On TV, the soap EastEnders has presented life in Albert Square in London since 1985, the story of the Beales and the Mitchells, and many other characters, all told.

It airs here in late-night TV slots on the weekend, many months behind its broadcast in England. I find the value to be to appreciate how it is to live in a community other than the one in your life, with which you are familiar.

The lives of soap characters can be interesting. There are confrontations and there are obstacles. If nothing else, it’s a bit of fun.

Watching EastEnders in October 2019, not long before the thirty-fifth anniversary of the show, I can remember a little how it was watching the thirtieth anniversary, five years ago, when the soap revealed that the Beale girl, Ian’s daughter, had been murdered, a mystery.

What interested me in particular now, to the extent…

You and I sit staring at the void
Waiting for the doom to take us over
The medieval TV show
Lights up your unlit room
Darkly, sparsely
Your body radiates a heat
That’s stronger than the cold wind
Blowing from the ocean
Right outside your window
The unsaid, the undead
An unknown fear lingers in the air
A future is being lost
In quicksands of denial
And yet,
We stare and wait for the doom
As the ocean longs for us.

Featured Artwork: Figure At A Window, 1925 by Salvador Dali

Walking among the falling leaves
As the moon breaks through the rain-laden clouds
We float, we bloom
Each breeze brings us closer together

Our scars merge
Our scarves intertwine
Our heartstrings play to the cosmos
Illuminating an immaculate iridescence

And you whisper in my ear….
“Darling, let us not settle for anything less
And when love does show up
Promise me, you wont fight it.”

Featured Artwork: NIGHT WHALE by Kerby Rosanes

Total watch count in 2018: 231 titles with a mere 29 new releases (2018 release). I have a lot more left to watch, notably Eighth Grade, The Favorite, If Beale Street Could Talk…

As 2015 draws to a close I cannot help but reflect on the past five years of my retirement.  At the conclusion of 2010 I stepped away from my career at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Illinois after thirty-two years, two months and three weeks of service.  This was a job that by and large I loved for the entirety of my affiliation with the University.

I began as a Building Service Worker I, which is a janitor, and it was a great step up for me financially. My pay doubled from my former position outside the school and there were excellent benefits.  I determined, early on, that if I was going to work in the custodial arena…I wanted to be a custodial professional.  Through God’s grace and hard work promotions came quickly…and for the last twenty-five years of my career I worked as either the assistant manager of the…

When Mary Jane asked me way back in March if I would like to go to Hawaii I was momentarily struck with disbelief.  I knew that we had already planned a month-long trip to Europe for June…and Hawaii seemed extremely ambitious for our 2014 travel schedule.  When I soon discovered that she was not kidding I responded with a hearty yes!  Traveling with two of my favorite people, Ron and Ira Kaye, to paradise, seemed to good to be true.  Well, the months flew by and December…the Hawaii month… soon arrived.  We landed at the Honolulu Airport after an eight and one half hour flight from Dallas, Texas.  After a quick vehicle change at the Thrifty Car Rental, I did not fit in the Mustang, we were off on highway H1 for the twelve-mile slow drive to Ewa Beach and our cabin.  The cabin was literally located about twenty feet…