Tax Reform. Always a popular issue that happens to be peaking in interest.
Recently I sent an email to someone in town explaining my interest in a certain local issue in reply to his question of why I was interested in it. My reply was that I have done to much headbanging examining and proposing solutions to world and national problems that would have no effect on their solution that I wanted to focus on a local problem that my efforts could resolve.
I said to him that it was a "think global, act local" shift in my efforts. I did not say it but honestly it is more like my favorite phrase "hunker in the bunker". The last refuge from a problem that I can do nothing about. In the navy when we conducted a battle problem one of the last exercises conducted was response to a nuclear attack at sea. The joke was to bend over and kiss your ass goodbye. Oddly the exercise culminated with an abandon ship drill. Later, the abandon ship drill took on a different significance in my life.
The phrase "Why Bother" sticks in my mind as the ultimate cry of surrender. It was cried in anguish by my father after a wave swept everyone but him out of a life boat launched from a burning cargo ship in the North Sea on 22 October, 1972 leaving only him remaining in it. Among those swept out was my mother. Some survived she did not.
The forward boat fall failed to release leaving the boat in the waves but still attached alongside the ship. A crewman on deck named Jesus saw what had happened and thew a line down to my father. He looked a the line and said "Why bother, whats the use?". He had cried out my mother's name after emerging from the wave that washed her away knowing she was gone.
Jesus urged him to grab the line to be hauled back aboard. Dad only looked at it swinging in front of him. I think it was some small amount of hope that caused him to grab it, tie it around himself and be pulled back aboard. He launched in the second and last life boat with the captain and remaining crew. They watched their ship burn through the night and the following morning they were rescued by a passing ship.
Mom was buried 31 October, 1972.
It wasn't until this morning that I realized that the my personal acknowledgement of anguish and frustration at my ability to change something that I could never have any real effect on changing was expressed to someone a few days ago on the 1st of November. This morning I recalled what my father had said in anguish long ago. He died of cancer in 1975,. He was born 23, November 1903. The same year the Wright brothers flew at Kitty Hawk. I have now exceeded him in age. My youngest grandson was born 23 November, 2003.
Dad could fix anything. I am sure he took great pride in that. I certainly took pride in saying that my dad could fix anything when other kids said my dad could beat your dad. I want to be like him. Somebody that could fix even the biggest problem. At his funeral my brother-in-law said he could fix anything but a broken heart. Wish I had said that but I knew it.
Dad worked in refrigeration installation and repair early in life. A trade that then required skills in many crafts. He knew how to make or fix a wide variety of things. A jack of all trades. That was in the early days of the last century. A time when the Industrial Age way rapidly advancing. He lived in exciting times and knew how to get things done with the tools of the time to make and mend. I learned so much from him but what I learned the most is to be like him. Someone that finds self worth in the ability to creatively fix things for others. Fix things to the extent of self sacrifice. To me it is a core component of love.
This is getting personal but Sundays are always the day for me to pursue such personal things. Analogous to muscle memory things learned early in the environment of life, which was family and the Catholic church for me, continue to remain as a large part of who I am influencing what I do. It is summed up to only two thing which is the constant thread of thought that winds its way through this entire blog like it does my life. There are only two things. What a thing "Is" and what a thing "Does". Applied to myself it is "Who" I am and "What" I do. Those two things have to shake hands with one another because they are the same. That ultimate unity of epiphany struck me in the dark on road to the Energy Lab at age 50. The link frames the nature of the place. Explaining the personal experience would take a lot more.
Some changes in life come slowly others happen in an instant. Some of those things happen in an instant of real time. Others happen in a flash beyond real time where maybe we see the reality of the truth of an entire lifetime that was always there. I have often called the beauty of that flash as "seeing the writing on the wall" in this blog and applied it to many things. The flash beyond the domain of real time was not just seeing myself but knowing and believing........hard to explain....cause and effect but something got made and fixed at the same instant! Life ultimate narrows down to that in the end? It was like seeing the joy of the future before getting there.
I'll come back to this digression but take the rest of what I added to it and move it to the next blog entry were it focuses on the first part of the subject of this blog entry.
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