Some Mornings

Some mornings I begin the day by writing in my journal and reading from four inspirational daily readers that reside on my Kindle.  I’d like to say every morning but that would be a bold faced lie.  I’d like to say most mornings, but lately I’m not even close to most.  So, I’ll stick with Some Mornings, adding that those are the days that seem to go better than the rest.  If that is true, you might ask, why don’t I do it every day?   That is a topic for another morning.   Besides the books on my Kindle, there are three books (real books, hard covered!) on my desk that I read from: Dr. Bernie Siegal’s 365 Prescriptions for the Soul, Good Poems selected and introduced by Garrison Keillor, and A Year in Impressionism, a collection of 365 impressionist works by an assortment of artists.  One prescription for the soul, one poem and one impressionist painting … Some Mornings.

From the Middle

Since I threw a hissy-fit about political posts on Facebook this week, I suppose it would be imprudent to post something political here on Older Eyes – Bud’s Blog.  What follows isn’t meant to take sides but as commentary on what I’ve seen since the election of Donald Trump as the president of the United States.  I think I belong to a disappearing breed, the Moderate. That means I am liberal on some issues (mostly social), conservative on others (mostly economic and national defense), and somewhere in the middle on many.  Hence, Moderate.  I voted for John McCain and Mitt Romney because I felt that Barack Obama was too liberal and lacked experience.  This year, I voted for Hillary Clinton for two reasons … her experience and my concerns about the character of Donald Trump, which … if you care … you can read about in my post, Enough.

Throwback Thursday – Falling or Climbing

Would you believe I have over 1800 posts here on Older Eyes – Bud’s Blog?   Maybe that’s why new post topics seem hard to come by.  At any rate, I’ve decided to repost my favorites on Throw Back Thursday.   This post, Falling and Climbing, was originally posted in 2009 then again in 2011.   It is about the true meaning of love, at least as I see it.  It is about what it really means to have a soulmate who challenges you to be the best person you can be, not one who is a reason to leave the relationship you are in.

My wife and I are friends with a couple who are about ten years older than we are … and who have been married ten years longer.    When they’re out together, they get those aren’t they a cute old couple looks.   People often ask them, “How can we have a marriage like yours?”    The answer is this –  “If you want to have what we have, you have to go through what we went through,” a response I liked enough to use in my toast at my daughter’s wedding.

Friday Favorites – 9/12/2014

It is almost 3:00 pm in the afternoon.   On Friday.   And once again, I’m having trouble coming up with a Friday Favorite.   Oh, I’ve come up with a few ideas but upon searching the Older Eyes – Bud’s Blog archives, they’ve been done before.  After almost four years … 201 posts … I think this well is dry.   It’s not that there aren’t things I like enough to post about, I just don’t like them enough to call them a Favorite.  So, I’m making an executive … maybe an executive editor … decision.  This will be the last Friday Favorite, leaving only one theme day on Bud’s Blog, that being Monday Smiles.  It’s one thing to run out of favorites … running out of smiles would be a sad day indeed.  So this will be a Friday Favorites retrospective.

Friday Favorites 7/4/2014

courtesy wikipedia

Yesterday, I noticed a headline on Yahoo Sports – War Hero, Olympian Zamperini, Dies at 97.   I would guess that it’s a good chance that you don’t know of Zamperini … unless you are serious student of Olympic history or a fan of author, Laura Hillenbrand.  Louis Zamperini was a world class distance runner who outgrew a rebellious childhood through running, first at Torrance High then on the track team at the University of Southern California.  He ran the 5,000 meters for the U.S. in the 1936 Olympics where he earned some fame not for winning but for stealing Hitler’s personal Nazi flag.  In 1944, as a lieutenant in the Army Air Corps, his Liberator bomber went down at sea with only three survivors.  One died at sea, while Zamperini and another man, Russell Phillips, survived 47 days before coming ashore on the Marshall Islands, where they were captured by Japanese forces.  He was brutally tortured for two years until the end of the war and returned home struggling with Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome and alcoholism.  After attending a rally by Billy Graham, he became a born-again Christian and inspirational speaker, often focusing on the importance of forgiveness. He was to be the grand marshal of the 2015 Rose Parade in keeping with this year’s theme, Inspiring Stories.

Deja Vu Two

About thirty years ago, I was coaching my son, Aaron’s, soccer team.  He was about ten.  We decided it would be a good idea to have a parent – child game just for the fun of it.  I was waiting for someone to pass me the ball when I felt a sharp pain in the back of my calf.  After years of filching golf balls and caddying at the public golf course near my parent’s house, I immediately thought someone had hit me with a golf ball but when I turned to see, there was no one there.  I sat out the rest of the game and had to have several of the other Dads help me to my car afterwards.  That night, I couldn’t walk … I went out to the theater with Muri on crutches.

Friday Favorites 3/28/2014

The truth knocks on the door and you say, “Go away, I’m looking for the truth,” and so it goes away. Puzzling ― Robert M. Pirsig

Muri and I have always loved hardcover books, although we have gradually switched to trade paperbacks because of price.  In fact, Muri has started using the public library and more and more I’m reading on my Kindle or Kindle app.  But  when a book really moves me, there is something fitting about having a hardcover version to tuck away on that special shelf in the library to be revisited someday.  Yes, that someday doesn’t always come.   But sometimes, it does.  I have been back to visit my favorite passages in Alice Hoffmann’s Second Nature and laugh along with Yossarian at the inanity of the war in Catch Twenty-Two.   Lately, I’ve been running across quotes from Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, one of the unvisited hardcovers languishing on our bookshelf.   Here’s what I remember about it.   It was the story of a man and his son traveling across the country by motorcycle.  It was told in the first person by the father, a professor who became obsessed with understanding what constituted good writing and more, Quality in general, an obsession that eventually drove him insane and required electroshock therapy.  During the trip, he reconnects with his son and his pre-mental breakdown self, who he refers to as Phaedrus.

Bargain Aisle Discovery

When bookstores like Barnes and Noble meet what would seem to be the same certain fate as record stores … and my beloved Tower Records … one of the things I will miss most is a Bargain Aisle Discovery.  Oh, yes.  I’ll miss wandering through the store, looking through the book categories … mysteries, literature, self-help, spirituality … waiting for a title to call my name.   And I’ll miss the synchronicity of a title left out of place or on a table, a book that becomes a favorite, like The Artist’s Way did. But, oh, I will miss the the Bargain Aisle, where overstocks by well-known authors lie side-by-side with books by unknown authors whose first novels never quite took off.   I find unusual biographies I’d never read like A Three Dog Life and My Stroke of Insight keeping the company of art and music instruction books at a price too low to resist.  And then, there are the coffee table books full of glorious photography at a glorious discounts.  Freakin’ nirvana.

Friday Favorites 1/10/2104

Some years ago when, inspired by The Artist’s Way to be a writer rather than an engineer, I signed up for the creative writing program a Cal State University Fullerton.  And fortunately I didn’t quit my day job.  Because once the glow of The Artist’s Way wore off … and I spent some time getting to know myself better via the 12 Steps … I realized that I liked being an engineer … and had been  a writer as part of that career for years.  I realized that I could be an engineer and a writer.  It would take quite a few more years for me to accept that engineering would be my vocation while writing would be my avocation.  In my I’M A WRITER phase, I wrote a number of short stories and a novel.  I started at least two other novels.  In my mind’s eye, I pictured myself writing somewhat mystical romantic fiction in lovely descriptive prose with quirky but lovable characters that lived on the edge of magic.  I pictured myself writing like Alice Hoffman.  Didn’t happen.  I used to say, I thought I’d write like Alice Hoffman but I ended up writing like Elmore Leonard.  If only.  The point is my writing always had a comical edge and often a dark side.  I’m not sure if the novel was salvageable … I tried pitching it to several publishers without success.  What I gradually realized is that I didn’t have what it takes to grind a novel to publication … or agonize through writing another.  Yes, I know about self-publishing.  My ego dismisses it but I that’s just an excuse for not doing the work.  And with Older Eyes – Bud’s Blog, I think I’ve realized that I most enjoy writing the kind of semi-fiction (yes, I do occasionally hyperbolize … or outright invent … details) that I write here.

The Doldrums

There was once a boy named Milo who didn’t know what to do with himself — not just sometimes but always. When he was in school he longed to be out, and when he was out he longed to be in … Nothing really interested him — least of all the things that should have – Norton Juster in The Phantom Toolbooth

When my daughter was in junior high school, she took a brief interest in acting.  One of the plays she was in was The Phantom Tollbooth.  Back then, I was in my forties.  Life seemed to roll by mostly as I expected and seventy years old seemed very far away.  I was far less philosophical than I am now and much more interested in my daughter’s activities than the meaning of a play based upon a children’s classic.  In Tollbooth, Milo, the bored-out-of-his-gourd main character, receives a tollbooth upon returning from school one day and uses it and the accompanying map to journey to the Land of Wisdom in his toy car.   At first, bored and unfocused as usual, he drives aimlessly and ends up in … you guessed it … a land called the Doldrums where there is no color and both thinking and laughing are not allowed.  In the Doldrums, everyone does nothing … according to a very strict schedule.  In a humorous and pun-filled metaphorical journey, Milo travels through the City of Words, the Forest of Sight, the Valley of Sound, and the City of Numbers accompanied by his faithful companion, Tock the dog, who teaches him the value of making good use of time.  He eventually is able to defeat the demons of the Mountain of Ignorance and rescue the princesses, Rhyme and Reason.  When he returns to his once-boring room, he knows that he can use the lessons he learned in the Kingdom of Wisdom to appreciate the world around him.