The new norm for me is also deeply engrained.

Sometimes, you know what you must write, but it just does not fit the time of the moment. That has been the story with this post the past seven days. The delete button has been pushed at various times over the last week, but the time was just not then. Some have even suggested that,"Oh, you have a writer block".  Uh! no, I don't. Thoughts flow from my head like a creek running wild below a mountain bridge. And, for more fact there, that bridge was washed away a day after I had left the Big Thompson River Canyon  area in Colorado. I could have been killed. That story could be written, but there again, it's not it's moment in time. In fact, July of 1976 was it's time. Not mine.

Never-the-less, I keep trying to sort volume numbers from chapter numbers and sometimes, enough falls out that somehow probably makes more sense to me than to my readers, but hey, that's life!. This is a hard time for me without the medical part anyway.

Although, I came to a resolution with myself as to how I would continue to remember my son each year without the grief and pain that I have felt the past twenty-two years. If it had not been for my strong faith, sometimes I wonder were I would be today mentally. Yet, I have been able to work my way though this to a point that I think my son would be very pleased and I can accept that the good Lord gave my son to me for 26 years. Trying to imagine those 26 years with out him would not be possible.

The thing that has sifted though the nets of time is the fact that I have begun to realize just how many men that I know that have lost their first born or other station of birth of their son. It absolutely blows my mind to read a list of names that I have jotted down as it came to mind that I have worked with so many men and women that have lost a son. It's not an easy thing to be able to recall those  names, including two of my best friends and dozens of others that I have known over the years.

Sometimes, I  have felt that I should reach out and start a support group, but there are plenty of those already. What I'm searching for is a far deeper purpose.Not only why my son was taken at such a prime time in his life,but the things that I don't know. I'd love to know where he went in Germany when he made a trip there before he graduated from college. He had ask me if he could take a year off. Asking my permission was something I never expected him to do, although he did everything right by the book.  

Last year was the final year of mourning. I took on a 20-year mourning when I learned of his death.So, frankly, my mind has been occupied with how to unhitch from that mourning period and still remember the time of his death and burial. I'm making my way to that point in time when I will finally find out if I can get through that period and still feel that loss. The pain will never go away. I know this already. But, at the same time, I want to remember him from some of the things that he wrote to me from trips to Put-In-Bay Island he made with friends while he was working toward his degree.I still read some of his letters and I can hear his voice as if he were telling me what he had written on the pages that I was holding. In the separation, the first year and the last year of the deep mourn period were not counted.

In all fairness to my two remaining children. I love you both in the same degree that I loved your brother. I have discussed this before in that each of you were equal to me in some special way, from my daughter being my first girl, your younger brother being the only one that I witnessed his birth besides being the baby of the family. I could never pick a favorite. I love you all equally. Always remember that. 

A Sign In A Yard Today Said:

Hope 

Has Not Been Cancelled.

The High Meadows Are in Full Bloom After Early May Rains.

One of the last trips to the high meadows of North Texas saw the cutting of  last seasons stubs from a very pretty season. Ironically, one of the first trips there this spring after my hospital stay during the month of May was somewhat of a shocker to see the blooms and colors going across the meadows like a paint brush of color on a fresh canvas.


Suffice it to say, the meadows are off to a spectacular start this season. The only thing left now is to cross the fingers and toes that the fall season will be far better to view and enjoy than the Spring of 2020.

Thistle Blooms

Major color display over several high meadows have got a good start.

I Must Be Pushing 6 or 7 of My Nine Lives.

Well,---boy is that a misnomer!--- It's been another 20-day stay in the hospital again. This one was not a pretty site either. Surprisingly, I had a pretty restful night back in my own bed last night and halfway felt human this morning. That might be stretching it a bit, but hey! I'm walking, talking, and even had a little breakfast. It seems that the anesthesiology works well but is a bit of a demon as it leaves your body.

I've have a lot of chances to observe this process since the Monday before Thanksgiving last. Each time, it reveals a few more details about it's devilish departure from my system. Generally, a weeks time is about normal for me, but of course, I've had way to many overlapping episodes (i.e. another new pacemaker plus an Ablation procedure on top of that). Heck yes, I'm sore!!.

The kicker in all of this is that the surgery the Monday before Thanksgiving that was finished on the part one side is still  not finished thanks to the worse Governor the State of Texas has had in years. He was a terrible Attorney General, and is following that lead as a terrible Governor. Generally, I don't get political, but I'm Scottish and I speak my mind. Lets go back a step. I'm Gaelic in the full Scottish tradition!!! That's pretty entrenched, friends.

A Thistle along a railroad track 

One of my last adventures

I've missed a lot of the springtime blooms

Got A Peak At The New Rangers Organ Yesterday.

And now,  for the young first responder that will be playing it, "don't be discouraged. I learned on a church's Hammond." There are places for it, I suppose. I'm not an electronic organ guy.By my second year, my teacher said to my dad," Next week, we are going to the Big Baptist Church so he can move on to the real King of Instruments".Of course, I hadn't formed any opinions at that point What did I know? I just followed my dad's  lead Life just got exciting! The new organ was a three manual pipe with 42 ranks.

Now, I will say in the defense  of the Rangers.Purchasing a three manual was not a mistake. Over time, as the young man becomes  familiar and more familiar with what it can do from pre set stops and draw bars. He will be as happy a as bee in a working bee hive.

Now, there are some arena's that have fantastic pipe organs. I was hoping that the Rangers would go the extra mile.Maybe in time, they might still revisit that thought. I am sill just happy that three manual sits in the crow's nest.It must be that Rangers didn't get to enough Hockey Games. Hockey loved the sound of pipe organs over ice!

Take Me Out To The Ball Game....

Spring Wild Flowers

Earth Day Turns 50 and the Cuyahoga River Is Not Even On Fire!

That little photo from the crew of Apollo 17 that is called the "Blue Marble" was a shocker for the humans down below (it could also be up above) on that blue marble. It still is, for that matter. But somehow, we have made some progress. Everyone is talking about seeing things that have not been visible in years and yet, the scientist are telling us, it's not those kinds of emissions that is turning the blue marble warmer and warmer. Now, that's the big shocker! My mother would always tell us boys that you need to be looking in the opposite direction when you see astonishing headlines. She was more right than she was wrong.

It has come out now (Mother, are you looking down on us for this?) that the bigger wealth guys of Silicon Valley are in multi-million dollar luxury bunkers 11-feet below grown in New Zealand. Some made it there just in time before New Zealand closed its borders to foreigners (fresh off their private jet). As it turns out further, it appears that Bill Gates has been stashing food in his basement for a pandemic for years. Now, somehow, this all must be some kind of new "insider trading" (of information, that is). It seems kind of weird, but applying mom's old adage, diversion technique tactics are still at play here. Give $100 million to help the pandemic and stash another 20 thou of green beans and corn and fruit cocktail, peaches and pears. The old boys in Silicon Valley were dealing in real estate before the contractor with a privacy seal on his list of names that had been ordering up these bunkers. The numbers were a bit higher than what you can count on both hands (and feet). There also appeared to be a rather long waiting list,too.


Here, it's the time to also mention again ( been doing this quite a bit lately) what the TxDot guy said to me while we talked on the I-635 project job site  when he said, "The People in Dallas are asleep at the wheel".) The point being:it isn't just Dallas, it's the whole dang country. The rest of the world has been running up to speed for years it seems.



In the 1969 edition of the Cuyahoga River burn, I'm old enough to remember that. At the time it was rather funny. The fires have been put out where it burned. The Flats have turned into brewing companies attached to restaurants and the mouth of the river still meets Lake Erie is free of debit and oil without a fire. The steel mills have long gone away, especially J&L then Bethlehem. It was the time when the Mini--Mills were appearing. They produced only one product and ran the mill on  270 workers vs, U.S. Steel or the other two big integrated mills that produced many products and many sizes of those products, employed 2,000 workers or more and ran around the clock on three full shifts. Times have certainly changed but human greed continues in our wealthy brothers and sisters.

So,  as we celebrate the 50th anniversary/birthday of Earth Day, April 22, 1970-2020 around the world, Life is sweet, but it's not going to be unless we all awake and start pitching in to save the world that has a shelf life of about another 4 Billion years for us to find out how we can take a world population with us to that exoplanet don't you see.

Ansel Adams and my mother would have been good friends because he and John Muir would have enjoyed her biscuits around those camp fires. I miss her biscuits.

This 747-200 (heavily modified, I might add.)