CHRONICLES: A Good Quote

"Savor the fruit of life, my young friends. It has a sweet taste when it is fresh from the vine. But don't live too long. The taste turns bitter after time." -Ronald D. Moore as spoken by the character Kor.

That is all.

CHRONICLES: A Two-Year-Old, a One-Year-Old, and Captain America

Today has been action-packed. Trying to organize and keep up a house alone while a toddler and a puppy are running around all crazy... awesome. Every time I'm two seconds into a project, I turn around and this is usually the result: "Malcolm, don't touch that!" "Dash, don't chew those up!" "Malcolm, stop putting dog food in the water dish!" It's tiring.

But it is what it is, and I can't complain. Life is good for the most part.

Vivid dreams lately. I dreamed of a friend of mine from way back in the day, running into this friend in the wreckage of my hometown after some fire, and getting to know each other again after som significant changes in life. I also dreamed of another person I barely knew in high school, his wife and their toddler daughter, and how happy they were for me to finally meet her. These things rarely make sense when I wake up, but when I'm sleeping, they seem as normal as any other day's reality.

Work has been pretty busy, but we're working to make it through the summer. It's been incredibly fruitful for everyone involved, and the rut we experienced in the wintertime sometimes seems all but gone. However, there are still very blatant reminders of how diffcult it is and how the storm is far from over. That being said, there's lots to do to keep my focus and attention.

Especially at home. Malcolm is napping and Dash is laying on the floor next to my chair. It's mellow, at least for a second, so I'm taking advantage of the time by pushing through some chores and errands. Bart went into town and took the trash with him. Lyss is pulling a while day at the salon. Harry is just now very quietly stalking into the bedroom to avoid Dash's hyper-vigilant dog-hearing. She hasn't quite warmed to the dog yet, and prefers to stay either out of sight or out of reach. The top of the fridge is her new favorite place to hide.

At least, for now, the coffee is still warm. Time to get to work.

THOUGHTS: Bahai?

Today I was reading a series of essays called "Bahai" by Horace Holly. One of the quotes I found there, and I'm paraphrasing here, was "to not find the Christ in Muhammed or the Buddha is to not find the Christ in Christ." I had to think about it for a while, and then, like a wave, a seriousness washed over me. The idea that someone who holds their religon as pure and infallble truth so much that all others must be completely dissimilar and utterly false... it's so narrow. I have a father. My friend has a father. We both have fathers. They are both our fathers. But my father does not negate my friend's father. Why is this the case in religion? Why does it all have to be so tied in? Why don't people respect the fact that we are each given a path to discover, and when we discover that, it's ours alone. It doesn't belong to a tradition, a family, a church, or a congregation. It doesn't belong in Scientific Law. Nobody can ever own what we discover, what we learn and what we choose. This being said, how on earth can we ever presume that our idea, our single awareness of what is, must, out of the billions of us currently here and the billions we've buried since time began, that your singular comprehension of the way things are must be right?  I think it's safe to say that everyone has an idea, and their idea comes from many places. Many people may have very similar ideas, but is it all the same, so much as to say it's right? Is it even remotely noble to kill for those ideals, or even to keep people in a "free" country from being truly free based on who they love?

Something to think about.

CHRONICLES: A Brief Summary of Alaskan Independence

I'm sitting here without a clue as to what I should be blogging about. It's an all-too-frequent process for me. I'd limit that statemet to recent history, but.. come on.. really?

It seems lately that there is much sadness surrounding much of the world. I talked to a friend who told me that Wyoming is putting various resolutions into place that could, if necessary, make them a stand-alone country outside of the rest of the United States. (It's interesting to note, however, that part of this also included the purchase of an aircraft carrier. No joke.) Then I did a mess of research about Alaska's storied past. To me, the "chechako" (newb for the kids), it's fascinating to discover some of this stuff.

Alaska was purchased by the United States for some ridiculously low amount of money. Even when adjusted for inflation, it's still brain-numbingly cheap. For a long time, it was a territory, which meant the United States could come in, take whatever they wanted as far as resources go, and go on their way. Understandably bitter, the sourdoughs (the people that have been here forever, not the natives, but the oldest transplants) wanted Alaska to have more power. Supposedly, the desired outcome was control of their own resources, ideally resulting in becomming an independent country. However, for whatever incentive, the most viable option at the time was joining the United States, which resulted in a long and steady relationship of respect and relative independence.

As the years went on, an undercurrent of sentiment began to rise in some of the locals that the people in Washington, so well disconnected from the state up here, have slowly worked into chipping away at the Alaskan control of itself. As recently as 2010, initiatives were brought to the state government promoting Alaska's withdrawl from the rest of the country to establish itself as an independent nation. Sean Parnell, then Lt. Governor, and the Alaska Supreme Court quickly struck it down, the latter citing cecession as illegal and unconstitutional. I read their verdict online, as well as the petition itself. Nowhere in the petetion is the word "cecession" written. However, it's in the verdict something like twenty-six times.

Now I'm not completely for Alaskan Independence. I simply feel that there was once an America that was free, whose people were educated, motivated, and allowed to exist without persecution, subtle or blatant. I also recognize that the America I refer to seems to be easing more and more closely to a dangerous precipice, and, from where I'm looking, Alaska hasn't deteriorated to that extent. I acknowledge the argument that Alaska accepts more government money per capita than any other state. However, in a state with no infrastructure that's over twice as large as Texas, has a very significant wealth in natural resources, and a population of less than 800,000 statewide, that's understandable. I would go on to say that, had Alaska control of it's own oil, timber, fish, and growth, much of that federal subsity wouldn't be necessary.

Sigh... at any rate, lots to think about that interests me. This is a fascinating place.

CHRONICLES: The Rise of Dash

Yesterday I fell in love. With a boy. A little boy. A one year old. With only three legs. Dash is a chocolate lab mix, and the lady at the vet clinic has been trying to find a home for him for four months. Every interested potential family has been hesitant because of his disability. In our family, we see it as joy in a challenge. So, with that, we adopted Dash. He's awesome. Lots of energy. Great around kids. Great with other dogs. Big. Playful. Awesome. Seems like he's been around forever already, and it hasn't even been a full 24 hours. Malcolm loves him and feeds him all the time, establishing their own relationship. They chase each other, and Malcolm has already given him a kiss and a hug.

Dogs... best friends.

PROPHESY: The Lookout, The Tower

I was told by Craig, the seasoned local, that if I could get up to where the old hammer was stuck in the rock and pull it out, i'd be the first to do so in fifty years. I wasn't quite as taken with that as I was simply getting to this place. It was new and exciting.

We set out mid-afternoon on a nice day, driving on a relatively flat dirt road, a rarity for this area. Ketchikan never really had trains, but this was as nice as any old narrow gauge track in Colorado. When we got to the end of the road, I looked ahead, and there, about one hundred yards ahead (right where Craig had said), was the rock. It was perpendicular to us, about fifteen feet tall, twenty five feet deep, and maybe fifty feet wide. It sat on a hill which put it just above the trees, and given our height already, I was already imagining what the view would be from atop.

As my bride and I approached and the sun began to set, we could see the silhouettes of the old hammer on top. It was actually a climbing axe, and I could see that the business end was in the air and the handle was actually embedded in the earth. I wondered how I was going to climb the front of it. Difficult, but not impossible. Suddenly it dawned on me: what was behind this slab? I bushwacked through a short thicket of alders and found a gentle, sandy ramp that climbed the length of the backside.

We scrambled up there. By now, it was dusk, and we stood on top of the giant, sandstone block. We looked down over the city. What was one the small, remote "city" of Ketchikan was now truly a city. The lights on the towers of the bridge across the Narrows flashed brightly against the shadows of the mountains of Gravina Island. The Tower, recently completed, stood over the remodelled Marine View and Tongass Towers. It looked like a cross between the CN Tower in Toronto and the Space Needle in Seattle, it's cream-colored concrete painted with red, blue, and green lights from the low end of the cylinder at it's peak. I retrieved my camera phone from my pocket and snagged a picture.

I leaned over to show my father-in-law what he was looking at, and, as I took my focus from the small screen, realized that the environment had suddenly shifted. Getting my bearings, I found myself in town, in a building under remodelling construction. Jim, an old customer of mine from my days at the sign shop, was there chatting my ear off about how lucky we both were to have had the foresight to buy as much property as we did before the boom. Now things were good, and we were both very successful.

As I woke this morning, I couldn't help but wonder what the future will truly hold for us all. With any certainty, though, what is guaranteed is only limited by what we choose to devote to it.

CHRONICLES: The Rise of Dash

Yesterday I fell in love. With a boy. A little boy. A one year old. With only three legs. Dash is a chocolate lab mix, and the lady at the vet clinic has been trying to find a home for him for four months. Every interested potential family has been hesitant because of his disability. In our family, we see it as joy in a challenge. So, with that, we adopted Dash. He's awesome. Lots of energy. Great around kids. Great with other dogs. Big. Playful. Awesome. Seems like he's been around forever already, and it hasn't even been a full 24 hours. Malcolm loves him and feeds him all the time, establishing their own relationship. They chase each other, and Malcolm has already given him a kiss and a hug.

Dogs... best friends.