After the fire, Renewal!

4:00?  Well, guess that’s about right.  Can’t complain too much—glad to be up and able to do a bit of writing.  Apartment quiet, in any case, and almost no noise coming off of the street.  Good.

Brain had me lying in bed thinking for about 30 minutes before I got up.  Never can seem to remember those thoughts after getting up, though.  Maybe one, though, the one connected with the house fire.  And that is, the very next time I find myself walking away from a burning house I will immediately start a journal to chronicle what I would like to say, which is: What Happens Next! 

To start with, that journal will discuss the firefighters and their work.  It will then move on to the need for and finding temporary quarters.  It will then move on to working with the insurance company and finding a contractor to make the needed repairs, or, as the case may be, to rebuild the house.  Exciting stuff, right?  Well, it would have been if the feeling of having the rug pulled out from under you were not an underlying factor in your life, or, as the case may be (is) in your lives!  As I may have said somewhere before, while we have never had a “why me (us)” thought, the question is still one that may occur and the answer lies in our relation to our higher power and the universe, I guess.  Does the Lord, indeed, have a reason for our survival?  If so, what might that be.  And, considering the vastness of our universe, there is that biblical question, “What is man, that thou art mindful of him?” 

Too much to go into now, I guess.  The next thing for us involves doctors (Jennie’s knee,) the house (which our adjuster insists will be ready by the time he has scheduled us to be out of the apartment on September 30, according to an email I just found,) and the return to the newly restored house and the furnishing of same with newly yet-to-be-acquired furniture.  Considering the timing of this note, we have two months (today is 7/27/2018) to finalize everything and be ready to move --well, no, more precisely to have accomplished that move into our new home.  A lot to do.

Guess the planning for the furniture and the move begins today.  And, since I’ve been up for about an hour and a half now, maybe I just might get a little more sleep before I need to start.  (See how things seem to work out, if you give them time?)

Sheesh!  More on this and everything else later.

A lot of work—exciting, no?

Time? 5:30.

Morning muses

Well, it’s happened again.  I’m up, trip to the loo.  Tobi’s up too (same for him!)  Back indoors, Tobi in bed with Jennie, and me with this.  Honestly, though, first I was back in bed too, but my alzheimer’s brain (still undiagnosed, liking it that way) required this back to the laptop time.   Not something new, of course, just the way things are.

Thinking going in all directions.  Guess that “Great Courses” thing on “Mindfulness” might be helpful (at least that is my hope.)  Will continue with that later, at a more enlightened hour, in any case.  For now, though, I’ll just attempt to revive what was there while I was doing my supine best to just get back to sleep.  Unsuccessfully, you see. 

Well, now on the laptop and first to Facebook.  Some success there—found a way to capture a “friends” list, something that used to be easy but that has succumbed to the Facebook geniuses’ need to keep changing things.  Guess that’s OK (not really,) it’s just what they do to justify their salaries.  Guess they gotta do something.  Wish I could justify a salary like many of them have.  Not likely, though.  Guess many of us are wishing that.  Not likely for any of us, though. 

My old friend and mentor, Bill Landiss, at the Georgia Tech Wesley Foundation, once shared a quote from Kierkegaard, “Life is just one damn thing after another, then there’s death.”  What else is there to say, one might say?  We all are on our ride on our own “Ship of fools,” each of us with a one-way ticket, at that.  Or so I think. 

Maybe that idea that we continue to return for life-times over and over again has some merit, though.  From the earliest of my days, I remember walking down some steps, holding the hand of my mother (or so I think) going with a group of people into what might be a fallout shelter, or a bomb shelter, somewhere in Great Britain, perhaps, during World War Two.  My birth in July of 1944 might support the idea of a direct hit on that bomb shelter, leaving me with an uncertain time in transition to that rebirth in 1944.  Can I be certain this is a memory of a time in an earlier life, or maybe just a memory of some movie I was taken to in the earliest of my years?  Good question, is about the best I can do here.

Moving from that notion to the present, all I can say is the myriad of thoughts I found so unavoidable while lying on my back with Jennie and Tobi to my side have, as usual, dispersed into the blackness of the night, and left me here, awake somewhat, doing what I do in situations like this.  Morningbrain reins.  God Help Me!

(Guess I’ll try again.  Hope I don’t wake either of my bedmates.) 

Not again (yes, again, and again, and...)

Not again (yes, again, and again, and...)
One more time--5:30 or so (man did I get that name right.) Perusing facebook after trying to deal with several problems that I couldn't just roll over and forget about, I found the following:

Regarding Trump the sociopath, Marie Doug provided the following reference on a Jackson Bowman page.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/07/trump-and-sociopathy/491966/

Marie Doug: Donald Trump is a Brooklyn kid and very New York. If you’ve never lived/loved New Yorkers, you are not likely to recognize the big, bold persona... 
Trump’s not a sociopath, in any case... although if ppl only read hostile media about him, they will get wild ideas about him...

Me: Marie Doug, No, but thanks for the reference. Will read it later--seems things always happen on Sunday mornings around here. Cat is meowing, dog can't seem to have a movement or take a leak, one of the various smoke detectors seems to want attention--do you suppose a few angels were reading Job and decided to try again? With me and my life, and maybe more. Maybe if they got together and came up with a way to get those silly humans to start lobbing nuclear bombs at each other they could have a few eons of peace while the earth returned to pre-human existence and began, via evolution, to come up with some other top predator species. Well, I certainly don't know about that, but, Sunday morning or no, I will have to do something about that damn smoke detector, the cat, and, of course, my poor dog. S**t ! And, yes, I've lived with a few New Yorkers, while in the military inTurkey, and you are right. They can be trying. But they also can be thoughtful and fun to be around. Trump, though? Hope God gets wind of those angels before, as "they" say, all hell breaks loose.

Gotta get some sleep. Jennie watching “In Touch.” Maybe that might help

Disconcerting Dreams

Woke up about 4:30 this morning.  Not unusual, but this time it was due to a dream.  Something must have been bothering me and my subconscious was trying to work on it a bit, giving me a picture show to boot.  Today I am a bit bothered, though, since the only thing I remember was some short, fat guy indicating he planned to kill some more people, and then turning his back on me to go do it, and me standing there with a pistol in my hand.  Did I kill him?  Don’t know—I woke up.  Now, I don’t have anything against short people—compared to some people I see from time to time, I am a short guy myself.  And the same may be said about fat people:  All I need to do is ask any doc and I will be told I am probably about 30 pounds overweight, myself.  Maybe my subconscious was telling me what I tell myself about these attributes.  Again, I just don’t know.

One thing I do know is this.  The next time this happens, I will not do a roll-over.  Instead, I will drag my complaining carcass out of my bed, take a few valerian capsules, open up my trusty hp, and try to make some sense out of my remembrance before the valerian begins to kick in. 

Problems in the night.  Sometime the dreams make some sort of sense.  This one was making sense, I guess, until I awoke, remembering just the very last of the clip.

I’ve never shot anyone.  Guess I didn’t want to start last night—dream or no dream.

Donald Trump--should he be worried?

In the past 55 years, the length of time I have been able to vote for the presidency in our national elections, I have, without fail, listened to the candidates, considered all the possibilities, and cast my vote, religiously, as a participant in our most important once-every-four-years national referendum in support of our preeminent democratic republic.  I have done this to affirm my citizenship and my support of this required, if optional, duty all must share in if this country is to remain the great country that our founders intended it to be.

Interestingly enough, my analyses of the candidates have, more often than not, led me to vote for the candidate who was eventually to lose.  Did I have a problem with that?  No, not really, it’s just that I realized early in the game my values did not usually mirror the values of the majority of my fellow Americans.  Is there something wrong with me?  My answer is no, that’s just the way things are.  If Americans can be viewed as part of a bell-shaped curve, half of us will almost always be on one side, while the remainder will be on the other.  America is America, and I love it just the same.  Usually I have found the winner to be someone who cared for my America just as much as did I, even though they might have been the lesser of the two in my initial estimation. 

This time, though, I wonder.  Today’s President is as crude and rude now, as President, as he was as the leader of the World Wrestling Federation and he uses his background in his dealings with others as if they all were WWF aficionados in love with their undisputed champion, their leader, the WWF’s owner and final arbiter, Donald Trump. 

Does this give me any concern for the future?  Well,  what do you think?

If I were this President, I would worry about my protectors.  Just how long might it be before one of them decides the best thing he or she might do for America would be to end the reign of this person, since he (or she) had the capability and the access and since the worst he might do is spend the rest of his life in jail awaiting a decision by the Supreme Court as to whether or not his action could be considered as the exercise of his power of free speech and that his defense of America warranted that exercise since the Congress was apparently hopelessly incapable of doing its duty to protect the country from this, its first sociopathic President.

Who knows, in years to come, this person, this killer of an American President, just might become the person most Americans would grow to believe was the greatest American Hero. 

A good thing?  You be the judge.  One thing’s for sure:  I would not want to be in Donald Trump’s shoes—not now, not ever.

You?

A little autobiography, anyone?

If you are thinking about what, exactly, your legacy might consist of, one of the first things you probably should consider is what, exactly, do you know about your great-grandmothers and your great-grandfathers?  Think about that for a minute or two and then read on.

Now, if you’re like me, you will answer this question with a definite, “not very much.”  And, if you’re like most of us, today, that is what your great-grandchildren will have to say about you if anyone might ask them the question after they have put on a few years themselves.  OK by you?  Well, it wasn’t OK by me, and that is the reason for this brief discussion.  You see, I couldn’t even tell you the names of any of my great-grandfathers or great-grandmothers other than one, “Bappy” Benham, was her name, and that “Bappy,” or so I was told, came from 4 year old great-grandson Steve when he visited her in Princeton, Indiana, many, many long years ago.  (How he came up with that name is a mystery to me.) 

And maybe, just maybe, that is exactly why I am sitting here, in my living room, at four in the morning, adding key stroke after key stroke to a desktop file called “SVGeddesAutobiography.IN-PROCESS.”  I’ve been working on this file for about 16 months, and what I thought would be a done deal in about four months is stretching out just a bit.  And, you know what?  That’s just fine with me.  So far I have about 180 pages.  I expect what I thought would be done after about 100 to 150 pages when I began probably will end up as a 200 to 250 page work.  In any case, we will see about that, whenever, and I will have filled in a few blanks for anyone who can claim me as one of his or her forefathers should they care to take the time to read the book.  And, you know what?  They just might learn a thing or two about themselves while they learn a thing or two about me.  And that, in my book, if in no one else’s, could be a good thing.

Well, I guess it's time to stop.  Wife wanders in, dog in tow, saying:  "He wants to go out."  So, it’s “up, up, and away!”  (Remember that?)  And out to the front yard we two go (for about two minutes or so) to dewater.  Then back inside.  Then to bed (both of us—he’s gotten his relief, and the valarian I took a short while after I awoke has finally kicked in, which is to say I, too, will soon find some relief.)

Bye for now.

Well, a couple more hours sleep and I’m back at it—this autobiography thing, that is.  You know, I like what I’m doing.  You might too, if you give it a try.  And, do you think your great, great grandchildren might appreciate it too?  You won’t really know, but I think an educated guess might be made:  Damn right they will!

SVG

31 October 2017

And, for what it's worth, if you think you might like to follow me down this path, the easiest thing to do would be to start with a short how-to-do at Amazon.com.  Try clicking here:  https://www.amazon.com/ebook/dp/B01LA5IZUU/  You just might find it to be the best $2.99 you have spent in a long, long time.

Friends are as friends do

Well, it’s 5:30, Monday morning.  Great time to get up and write a bit—right?  Well it is for me:   Morningbrain attacks like this are something I have learned to live with.  Sometime they are very productive.

This time, I awoke thinking of someone.  This someone is a person who has been very special in my life, and it is time I recognized that fact, and passed it on to him.  (A copy of this will be delivered to his address sometime soon.)

Now, my friend would not want the publicity—he’s just not that type of guy.  He is, though, one of the best friends any person would ever want to have.

My friend (who, for purposes of this work, shall remain anonymous,) is someone I have known for many years, since childhood.  Still, if I had just met him a short while ago, I suspect the following would ring true to me and to anyone else who might have a close relationship with him.

He is the kind of guy who always seems to have a smile on his face, and a twinkle in his eye, and a friendly thing to say whenever I meet him.  Do I like him because of this?

He is the kind of guy who never forces an opinion on me, but who always is able to bring a meaningful comment to any conversation, regardless of the topic.  Do I like him because of this?

He is the kind of guy who tends to be quiet, one who lets others talk, one who is a good listener, always.  Do I like him because of this?

He is the kind of guy who will go out of his way to help you, if he thinks you need it.  Would anyone like him because of this?

To have friends, you have to be a friend, right?  Well, he has ‘em, by the bushel.

Would you like to have a friend like this?  You bet you would (if you said “no,” you would be lying, I’m sure.) 

And you know the crazy thing?  My friend doesn’t seem to think much of himself.  You know what, though?  He’s the only one who thinks that way.  This guy is loved.  All he needs to do is accept that as a fact, (“and acceptance is the answer to all my problems today”) and realize regardless of whatever he thinks he may have done or been in the past that makes him doubt himself today, that is all immaterial, long since forgotten and forgiven, no doubt.  And, if that problem has to do with someone else, a father, a brother, maybe even an ex-wife, whatever, “acceptance” works there, too.  No sense in having anyone else’s opinions, or whatever, continue to eat your lunch today. 

He is my friend, and I am just one of many who love him just the way he is.

SVG  24 October 2017

Bigfoot Convention, 2017 with J. Jones

Notes from the second “Annual” International Bigfoot Conference

By:  S.V. Geddes, CSRA Environmental Examiner

Three Rivers Convention Center, located in Kennewick, part of the Tri-City area associated with the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state, was the location of this three-day conference about “Bigfoot” held the first through third of September 2017. Two local residents were in attendance:  An area veterinarian of note, Dr. J. Jones and a local environmental writer and one-time environmental systems manager, Mr. S.V. Geddes, were there to gather information about the subject and meet individuals who may be useful as contacts in the future.  While it is understood many feel the subject is a bit less than a scientific reality, the dozen or so presenters, a few of whom are discussed below, would definitely disagree. 

Derek Randles of the Olympic Project, discussed the project’s work.  The Olympic Project is an association of dedicated researchers, investigators, biologists and trackers committed to documenting the existence of Sasquatch through science and education.  (Sasquatch is just one of the names used for Bigfoot.  Other names, mainly from other countries, include Yeti, Ts'emekwes, Yowie, to name just a few.)

Dr. Jeff Meldrum:  2017 marks the 50th anniversary of the Patterson-Gimlin film, a film showing a Bigfoot (purportedly) walking across a meadow into a forest. Having weathered repeated attempts to discredit it over the past half century, the P-G film repeatedly emerges unscathed, as new understanding of hominoid evolution and advances in forensic technologies reveal new insights into the film and its subject. Dr. Meldrum examines a small sample of these insights that Patterson could not have anticipated 50 years ago, which speak to the credibility of this foremost photographic evidence for the existence of relict hominoids in North America.

Dr. John Bindernagel:  Most people at this conference already know that proposing the Sasquatch or Bigfoot as an existing North American mammal has generated scientific resistance to a degree which was unexpected by some, given the quality and abundance of evidence supporting this interpretation.  As one of a small minority of scientists in the relevant scientific disciplines attempting to overcome this scientific resistance, Dr. Bindernagel has relied heavily on evidence documented by amateur investigators.

Also presenting was a member of our “local” academic community, Dr. David Floyd, Associate Professor of English at Charleston Southern University.   His primary research deals with the consistent presence of Bigfoot-type creatures in folklore and legend throughout human history, and the theory, far from being merely some psychological archetype or cultural emblem, that there is a substantive, biological reality behind the accounts of this mysterious creature.

The presentations were interesting and varied.  So, how does this affect me, you might ask?  Well, if that little “Bigfoot” that has been eating the extra catfood you have been putting out by your back porch should hurt itself and seek your assistance, you just might want to know where to go to get that help.  That being the case, Dr. Jones and his team at the Ark Animal Hospital in Aiken (https://www.facebook.com/Ark.in.Aiken/) is the place, in the CSRA, in any case.  Seriously, though, you never know what might happen when it concerns this animal called “Bigfoot.” 

And as for that “annual” convention—should you have any questions, you might go to https://www.internationalbigfootconference.com/ (which is where the information on presenters provided above is found.)  While reservations for the 2018 Conference are not available at this time, the desired information should be on this web site sometime early next year.  Who knows, maybe you just might run into Dr. Jones and Examiner Geddes at the third annual convention, should you decide to attend.

For pix associated with this article, you might try:  https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1496190297141209&set=pcb.1496196407140598&type=3&theater

Painkillers and other ‘problems’

I have a problem (and,) my problem is pain.  What do you suppose I should do about it?  Well, the obvious answer, to me at least, is I should take my problem to my doctor and see what he might be able to do about it:  And therein lies the rub:  My doctor does not want to prescribe pain killers.  So--why is this?

It seems pain killers are now a popular issue of choice for our lawmakers.  All of them (the lawmakers, not the pain killers) are jumping on this bandwagon lest they be seen as promoting the use of these addictive substances, mostly the oxycodons, or hydrocodons (each has various commercial names) and the problems (addiction, overdose, death) that may accompany their misuse.  And, while our legislators’ injecting their (questionable) opinions, bills, and votes into this issue may make them seem responsive and give them an issue that may increase their popularity in some quarters, it does nothing for the person who may benefit from using the medications in question—the person in pain.

Our legislators need to examine problems and issues that relate to the public.  Our doctors need to deal with problems and issues that relate to the needs of each individual patient.  While some time the twain will meet, when the legislators interject themselves between the doctors and their patients, they are making public decisions on issues that should be kept between two individuals—the doctor and his patient.  Public solutions are not solutions that may be tailored to the needs of individuals, as the decisions of doctors for and with their patients must of necessity be tailored to each individual situation. 

If our legislators insist on inserting themselves between us and our doctors, I think we need to insert ourselves between our legislators and their jobs. 

Correcting my pain is not a public matter.  My legislator needs to remove himself from interfering with my relationship with my doctor.

My pain is not a public problem.  

What, or where, is Ninety Six?

Watching CBS this morning, January 2, 2017, I found Conor Knighton’s clip on “Visiting all of the National Parks” interesting.  (http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/on-the-trail-years-end/  If you choose to call up this address, sorry about the leading commercial—guess CBS has to pay their bills some way.)  In any case, Ric Nipper, a friend of mine from Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina, and I have been taking annual trips to various Georgia and South Carolina sites for several years.  This year, we ended up in Ninety Six.

I had a dear French teacher in High School, who told her students she had grown up in Ninety Six.  Now, I have had occasion, over the past quite a few years, to drive down one or more of our state roads near Ninety Six, and I had noticed highway signs pointing “To Ninety Six,” but, until Ric and I set out on our annual pilgrimage to wherever, I had never even given consideration to visiting Mme. Butler’s home town.  Nor did Ric, or I, give any consideration to going there when we left Aiken this year just before Thanksgiving.   Guess we just gravitated in that direction.  So, you say, why bring this up now?  Well, it seems this year, we inadvertently went to a South Carolina National Park Service site—the one in Ninety Six.

And, should you need a reason to try this site, maybe the fact that it is one National Park site you might be able to visit and see in just one day might provide that reason: https://www.nps.gov/nisi/index.htm.  Now, before I go any further, let me quibble just a bit.  The National Park Service calls the Ninety Six site a “National Historic Site,” making it one of nine sites in the state on its list of places you might like to visit:  (https://www.nps.gov/state/sc/index.htm) .   In any case, if you are anywhere near it (it is close to Greenwood, SC,) I recommend it to you, whether or not it qualifies as a “National Park,” proper.

I would also recommend the other eight sites on the NPS’s above list (most of which I have had the pleasure to visit in the past) as being worth your time.  Maybe, next Thanksgiving, I might be able to convince my friend Ric to come a day or so early so we can show our wives this little bit of history, just down the road from Aiken, in Ninety Six, South Carolina.  As road trips go, this is a “good 'un.”