Moving On

An interesting exercise - at any time in your life - is to ask yourself, "If there were no constraints, what would I really like to do when I grow up?"  I've done this several times in my life and the answer seems to change with time and experience.

During this period of enforced leisure - I have certainly not been idle! - the answer to this question kind of caught me off guard.  It all started years ago when I got interested in public education.  One book led to another and pretty soon I had purchased a set of the 'Great Books of the Western World' published by Britannica and edited by Hutchins and Adler.  I've been slowly working my way through those over the ensuing years. 

Along the way I served a term on the local school board and absolutely loved the experience.  I also had the good fortune to spend over a decade talking to alumni of St. John's, a small great books college with campuses in Annapolis, MD and Santa Fe, NM on their alumni email list.  They were most gracious in allowing me to join their conversation. 

Over the years I have come to appreciate the intrinsic value of a liberal arts education.  Indeed, contrary to all the talking heads and politicians, I would assert that, while a focus on math and science excellence are important to the future well being of our nation, those disciplines are weakened substantially when not anchored to a solid liberal arts foundation.  Technical detail absent an appreciation of our humanity seems to me a sterile, if not dangerous, situation.  Not to mention the fact that we are learning slowly and painfully that silo's of technical excellence serve as barriers to progress in an increasingly complex world. 

So the answer to the question, "What next?" was shaped by these experiences.  And the answer is, drum roll please, "When I grow up I want to be president of a small liberal arts college."

In the next few posts I'll publish some of the public comments and papers I've written.  I am interested in your feedback on my ideas.  Some are naive I am sure since they were written early on in my awakening to the importance of the great ideas.  But there is some substance contained in the papers and your thoughts and observations are coveted as part and parcel of my preparations to pursue this next chapter in my adventure.

 

An Interesting Couple of Weeks

Boarding the plane at Washington National I was still relishing the weekend I'd just spent with my oldest daughter and her husband and kids down in North Carolina.  That visit was prompted by a job offer in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emerites that would have me leaving the country within a couple of weeks.  The offer was very sweet.  Not only were the pay and benefits excellent, my bride would be able to join me at the end of the current school year - for as long as we wanted to stay in the Middle East.

My flight took me through Milwaukee and as I left the airplane I reflexively reached for my cell phone to check email.  There was an email from the company I was going to work for and I figured it would provide flight details.  I opened the email and much to my surprise found that it informed me that the customer had canceled the job and the offer was retracted.  Jeez!

Since I was on my way out to Phoenix to see my mom and sister and the tickets were already paid for, I chose to continue on.  After sending my wife a copy of the email to let her know the latest status I boarded the flight and arrived in Phoenix without incident.  Spent an wonderful week with mom.  She had recently moved to a retirement community and it was absolutely stunning.  The staff were well trained, friendly and helpful and mom had decorated her one bedroom efficiency tastefully, quite a restful space.  We had a great two day visit and I got to see my sister and her husband as well.

Then I hopped a flight to El Paso to attend my youngest daughter's change of command ceremony.  A Captain in the Army, Rachell was taking command of a Military Intelligence Company in the 2nd Brigade of the 1st Armored Division.  Most definitely a red letter day in her career and I was thrilled to be there.  As I watched the rehearsals memories of my days as a rifle company commander flooded back.  Rachell and I had a great time talking about the challenges she would face and she was very patient with my enthusiasm. 

I met David, her boyfriend while I was there, and as expected, David asked for Rachell's hand in marriage.  After a heart-to-heart talk I told David I was sorry but I couldn't give him my permission because it was not mine to give.  I savored the stunned look and then explained very carefully that Eva and I had talked this possibility over before I'd left and we had agreed to provide our permission.  We wanted David to understand very clearly that marriage in our family was a two person affair.  The relief that flooded his face was almost palpable.  Later on I let Rachell know about our conversation and she was as happy as David to have that behind them!
 
After two days in El Paso I strapped another aircraft to my posterior and flew off to a connecting flight in Houston.  When I landed there, same drill, pull out the cell phone and check emails.  Hmmm, that's interesting, a note from one of the companies that included me in a proposal a while back.  Congratulations, you have a job!

So I left Virginia with a job in Abu Dhabi and returned home with a job not ten minutes from my house.  Ain't life grand?!

But the story doesn't end here...while I am thrilled to have a job, I started the process of redefining myself during the layoff by asking myself what I would do if there were no constraints.  The answer surprised and intrigued me enough that I am well into a rebranding and marketing campaign to pursue that dream.  We'll see...no telling how long or how successful that effort will be.  At least now I'm contributing again.

In the next few posts I'll give you an idea of where I'm headed.

When I Die...

One of the joys of being laid off lies in the time to read and think about what I've read.  It's been a long time since I've had the time to carefully read and digest something that interests me.

In fact, it's been so long that I have developed habits that are hard to defeat.  I've become use to devouring a piece quickly and moving on to the next data source with little or no time for reflection on what I've read and how it fits in the larger picture some of us call a world view.  As a consequence, at least for me, my worldview tends to get fuzzy and in need of repair on a regular basis.  What do I really believe? Why?  How do I work new knowledge into what I already know, especially if it is contradictory yet believable?  With precious little time for this hard work it's not hard to understand why so many of us tend to be mentally and intellectually fractured, frazzled, and fuzzy.

So anyway, I just finished reading an article by Connie Barlow, "Death, Budgets, and Intergenerational Justice" (http://bit.ly/pqFR77).  Ms Barlow argues that our medical system guarantees long life, lived in awful conditions and at great expenese for many of us.  She argues that we need to have the courage to meet our end with joy and without needless, expensive artificial extension.

Got me to thinking about 'ends.'  We all experience as we grow, HS graduation, college graduation, end of child bearing age, end of a marriage, loss of a friend or loved one.  Barlow argues that as a society we are afraid of our own final end and that is reflected in our medical extension of life - often absent any quality or purpose.

That sure seemed to fit my dad's end.  Dad died of Parkinson's disease and over about a five or six year period I watched a 6'1" Marine's Marine shrivel physically and mentally.  While he maintained a certain mental acuity, he also suffered from afternoon disorientation.  At one point early on, he wandered out into the back yard, fell, could not get up, and only by the grace of God, did we discover him before he died of exposure.  After that we watched him like a hawk to prevent another re-occurence and to prevent him from taking the car and hurting himself and someone else.  Barlow observes that in days gone by, loved ones might let someone in dad's condition wander off for a 'natural' death and that was more humane than extending life without quality and at horrendous cost.

I was also reminded of the prolonged, heartbreaking passing of one of my most influential mentors.  This Marine suffered a stroke on the operating table and spent almost a year completely paralyzed and unable to speak.  I remember several conversations with this giant in my life where we both agreed that we didn't want to be kept alive artificially.   Yet he lingered for over a year, mind active, but trapped in a useless body.  Ugh.

That brings us to the threshold of the huge debate about whether or not the medical profession or government should play a role in those decisions.  It's not my purpose to address that here.

What I do want to address is fairly simply stated.  It's my prayer that my wife and children will afford me the luxury of dying without unnatural life extension or heroic efforts.  I don't want to linger without purpose or quality of life, I don't want to be a burden.  So if I contract Parkinson's and tend to wander in the afternoons.  Let me go, let me die with dignity...please.

Oh the irony...

Well, I was on the way home the other day, driving south along 495 at the mixing bowl when I got pulled over by one of Virginia's finest for...drum roll please...changing lanes not once, not twice, not three time, but four whole times WITHOUT SIGNALING.  Oh the horror!  I can't believe they didn't throw me in the hoosgow and throw away the keys.

Jeez.  Anyway, it will cost me almost a $100 to clear the books.  Crap! I hate it when that happens!  But I got to thinking about it and in the end the joke is on the jerk who so politely gave me a ticket for changing lanes not once, not twice,...oh sorry I'm still a little P.O.ed - can you tell?

So the joke is on the state trooper.  You see, I will pay that ticket with my next unemployment check.  And the trooper's taxes go to support that little helping hand - so in a way, the good trooper is literally paying for the ticket he issued.  Ain't life grand?!

Took the Dogs for a Walk

Took the dogs for a walk today.  We have three Chesapeake Bay Retrievers and if we don't exercise them every day they become a real hand full.  One of my favorite places to take the dogs is on the base at Quantico.  There is a back road that goes for a couple of miles back to the Breckenridge Reservoir dam.  The dam has a spectacular 5 or 6 story spillway that feeds three large ponds, each separated by a small damn.  These three ponds then empty into a creek that meanders back and forth across the road.  The road is lined by tall trees and is usually shaded at all times of the day except high noon.  The road is gated right now because they are laying a water main from the reservoir to some newly constructed buildings.

The stream is pretty special because it is stocked every year with trout.  The trout don't get very big, but it's such a beautiful little stream that I really enjoy working it.

So anyway, today I took the dogs down there for a walk.  Usually we take them swimming and have them retrieve plastic dummy's.  They absolutely love this and it's great exercise.  But today I figure I'll just walk up the road and let them explore.  It's a really nice morning, temps in the upper 70s and not too humid.  The peace and quiet and occasional light breeze are really refreshing.  The dogs work the road and stream, the male marking the territory all the way - where does all that urine come from!?  The females casting back and forth across the road.  At each point where the stream crosses the road the dogs splash merrily into the water looking for sticks to play with.  Occasionally I'll throw a rock into the deep water so they'll get to swim a little.

We go about a mile up the road and stop at one of the stream crossings where I can sit for a spell before we head back.  While we're sitting there a novel idea niggles it's way into my mind.  I'm look at the water as it flows across some flat rocks.  The water splits and spills over the rocks in many different directions and the thought that crosses my mind is, "What if time is like water."

Weird huh?  But what sparked the thought was one of Morgan Freeman's episodes of "Into the Wormhole."  This is one of the bennies of not working and your wife being away visiting family - you can watch this kind of stuff.  So anyway on this episode, entitled I think, 'Does Time Really Exist?', one of the ideas explored was whether or not time had two dimensions instead of the one we normally think of.

So now I'm watching water going every which way and thinking, "What if time has volume, just like water.  What if time is like a current of water that has eddy's and whirlpools and backwaters?  Now I'm not the guy that can do the math, but the idea is intriguing.  What if we are all like fish that live in the huge current of time and we aren't aware of other dimensions of time because we rarely get close to the edges of the current where the whirlpools and eddies are.  So time to us seems to be one dimensional - all going in one direction - past to present to future.

But many of us have experienced an intense event when time seems to slow down and we are aware of absolutely every detail.  Some people label time in these events as time dilation.  So there are places in the current where there are slow points.  And what about whirlpools.  Wouldn't that kind of be like dejavu when we feel like we've experienced some thing before?

And athletes talk about a particular state of mind when they are absolutely zeroed in on the technique of their sport as being "in the zone" or "in the flow" - interesting choice of words, no?

So what if time has volume just like water - wonder what that does to the math?  If time has volume them E=mc2  has more than one dimension and our universe must be much different than we think it is.  Or not.

Like I said, I'm not smart enough to crunch the numbers, but conceptually, the idea of time having volume is a neat idea.  Made for a very pleasant sit by the creek before trekking back to the car.

Hmmm...

For years I have dinked around with the idea of writing several books.  I actually have one written and have several more banging around in my head.  I've been doing a little here and there to move toward the goal of publishing, but always a full time job and commute provided a convenient excuse for putting off the effort to move forward in a meaningful way.

I wonder if getting laid off is God's way of saying, "OK dumby get off your duff and write!  You've whined long enough about not having enough time, now show Me what you've got!"


Hmmm.....guess I should get off my duff...

Selling the Honda

When my wife picked me up at the used car dealer where I sold the Honda her first question was, "Are you OK?"

It was a wonderful question for two reasons.  First and foremost it was a moving demonstration of her concern for my mental and emotional well being.  Second, because I had been thinking about it while waiting for her I was able to tell her honestly that I was just fine.

And I was and am.  I really liked that Honda.  It was as tricked out as a 2008 Accord could be.  Navigation system, bluetooth, voice command, SiriusXM, line in hook up for an mp3 player, dual climate control.  Great car - it was like getting into the cockpit of a small jet.  Great instrumentation, lighting at night was superb.  Great little car.

And it was easy to part with.  That surprised me a little.  But I didn't feel any regret.  Selling it was just something that had to be done quickly and efficiently - we simply couldn't afford the payment anymore.  So I sold it, easy.  Very pragmatic decision.  Made me feel good that I was able to act without regret.  Useless emotion when it comes to a car anyway.