When I retired in 1986 I summed up that happy point of my life ending a career path in my life that took me many places to see the world both physically and conceptually.
I joined the Navy in 1961 to see the world. A travel adventure over the face of the earth but also a life adventure over the face of my perception of the world. Both adventures were experienced a step at a time. Navy adventure officially ended May 30th 1986. Seeing the world adventure continued.
What does that link to Oregon Lifeline?
Strange where following links takes me! Looking back at links behind me like looking in the bicycle mirror I have always used for a hundred thousand miles to be aware of what is behind me. Not so much to see where I have been. Memory sees that like waypoints. I look back to see what is coming up from behind so I can keep going safely ahead. In other places and situations I would call the it the "Street Smarts" App.
Some sense of direction is a good thing. Some inner voice that speaks that sense says I can't get to where I am going if I don't know where I am at. My niece liked how Buffalo Banzaei put it. Where you are is where you're at. The navigator on the ship had a response to the question "Where are we at": Steaming between boredom and tedium. It is a sailor thing since seafairers first went to sea. Then he went on to give the full standard reply.
What does that have to do with Oregon Life Line?
It is another adventure. Lewis and Clark choose sailors for their expedition because the found that those that endured the extreme hardship and dangers of sailing before the mast at sea to a destination called it an adventure. At sea there is no option to quit until the end of the voyage is reached except jumping off.
Out of 8 Ironman races there was only one I did not finish. DNF. I made an attempt to continue with one eye closed because concussion had me seeing two different images.
The broken ribs only hurt. I went down again and the ambulance took me to the finish.
What does that have to do with Oregon Life Line?
I didn't know when I started out adding the links below and stopped. I stopped because a different branch in the blog entry of links said look back in the mirror some thing is behind you that is important to where you are going.
The past came steaming up behind me like Vietnam recently did.
The SS Euragenies burned at sea with my parents aboard. In the launching of their life boat at midnight all aboard were washed out by a wave except my father. In anguish dad called out my my mothers name. Realizing that he could do no more to save here he cried "Whats the use?". Then a rope tossed down to him by a deck hand hit him. He did not take it. But then he did.
In the Navy we do not handle ropes. We handle lines. Dad was hauled onto the deck of a burning ship tossed by waves and abandoned ship with captain and crew in the other life boat. They were rescued the following morning. Later that day the Captain of my ship called me to his cabin. 3,000 miles away from my father shipmates threw a lifeline to me.
Sometimes we are thrown Life Lines. Sometimes they are thrown to us. It is always a choice to throw or grasp in either case. Some do neither. Some do both.
Steve thinks I threw a lifeline to him. I explained that he threw one to me. Then we talked about the Singer and the Song and distance as far as going to the East and the West. Two dimensions of travel. Then he linked that to going to the apposite side of the earth from Bend and where we would come out. I replied that there was an App for that. Then we talked about time travel and pyramids. I used the illustration of two points on q piece of paper joined by a linear line and folded the paper to to bring them together. Steve took another piece of paper and folded it into a pyramid.
He placed the folded pyramid on the counter pressed his finger down on the tip until it popped into an inverted pyramid. Then we talked about paradigm shifts.
A week ago I met Steve at the Deschutes County Building. We talked. A chance meeting but one driven by my inclination to talk with what some people call others as homeless. Home is where the heart is. His home was many miles out Alfalfa road and he needed water to survive out there. We got 9 gallons and I took him out to his home We went out to his camp deep in the juniper trees out Alfalfa Market Rd. He had made a pyramid tent structure and had survived winters there.
He might have survived this one too but maybe not.
What does that have to do with Oregon Life Line?
Steve is my roommate now and will move to a nearby apartment on Monday. Since I met him we have resolved many of his challenges including a lost benefit debit card and failure to receive a free phone. Also did clothes washing and clothes buying. He is now wearing a new winter jacket that came from Hawaii but that is another story linkage to a homeless person.
I had an old iPhone that I set up for Steve. Now I can find my friend with the App and he can find me. After taking care of more important things we found out what happened to his free phone. It was delivered but he did not get it. Same story for the replacement benefit debit card. The card was delivered to UPS not USPS General Delivery where he has a pseudo address he made up because everyone has to have an address. UPS obviously can't deliver to a pseudo address that is used for general delivery but looks like a real location address. He re-applied several times and was stuck in a "do loop". He got it before I even said a couple words to explain it.
Last week I joined Steve and his friends for Thanksgiving. Do Loops are broken after a certain number of repetitions that says the loop is going nowhere. That is an algorithmic function to get out of the loop.
Homeless is a Hopeless Do Loop.
Steve is an amazingly intelligent person as a function of wisdom. We talked about Presence/Absence theory and binary application of that theory to the hardware operation of computers. Giving meaning to the absence of a thing (nothing) makes it something in relationship to another thing. He got that too.
The absence of a Home or Hope has meaning in relation to Home and Hope.
Those that have the presence of Home and Hope in their.....call it Heart ...and recognize that the conceptual absence of Home and Hope has meaning. We are uniquely human by virtue of our intelligence that can create abstractions of meaning assigned to things that do not exist physically like a the concept of numerical Zero.
I would call Zero the Infinite Do Loop but that is a big leap in time and space..
I went with Steve to a Thanks giving meal with his friends to observe and process.
What I saw was a learning experience linking to deeper insight the more that what ai observed in reality structured itself conceptually. Call it a Darwin view of life. It is starting to look like Steve and I are more alike than we know.
I saw servers on food line that were serving something physical to those that needed it. Something conceptual as well to those on the receiving side that might break a loop of hopelessness. That is hope.
Hospital ships that my logistic ship went along side to replenish at sea off Vietnam were named Sanctuary and Hope. As we were alongside they continued to receive helicopters bearing those that needed Sanctuary and Hope. I watched that from the deck of my ship because I was Data Processing Division Officer and the responsibility of my Division was to receive message requests for supplies turn hard copy message information into punch cards then send them to another Division to pick and pack for delivery by alongside high line or by helicopter to outlaying ships.
My job was done for the hospital ship Hope I stood looking at then that gives my second flashback to Vietnam. The first one was in Kona after Ironman where I went back to corpsmen carrying watermelons on stretchers at down the back of a helicopter at Marble Mountain.
Hope and Home.....Present
Hope and Home ....Absent
Absolute and mutually exclusive binary states of being conceptually linked in a mysterious way until we discovered how to use presence/absence theory to create great things out of nothing.
Homeless and Hopeless are physical and conceptual shades of grey in-between where we throw lifeline to each other.
The lifeline?
I experience it as Inspiration. It is not confined to a linear one to one, hand to hand relationship on a two dimensional plane. Beyond one to one Inspiration is one to many and many to many in multi dimensional conceptual human space.
The best thing to give is what is passed on but does not diminish what is stored in where it came from. That is a Do Loop that goes somewhere instead of endless nowhere. Where is goes is beyond thinking to trust in feeling.
That is how I feel about it but verify by thinking about it.
Works for me.
How does this link to Oregon Life Line.
Trust that things are what they say they are but verify that they are in fact what they say they are by logic and reason and their functional results in an operating system.
Free phones? Look deeper into who benefits most from a free thing and the true nature of benefit. On one hand the benefit is a positive value we all admire. On the other hand it might not be but think it is. As it becomes easier to hide behind complexity it also become easier to find reduced to simplicity.
Let my little light shine.
https://www.puc.state.or.us/pages/rspf/otap.aspx
Telephone Assistance Programs
https://www.puc.state.or.us/Pages/rspf/index.aspx
One to Many search:
(OTAP)&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS806US806&oq=Oregon+Telephone+Assistance+Program+(OTAP)&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i61l2.7519j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
choose a branch
https://www.google.com/search?q=Oregon+Telephone+Assistance+Program+
link down it like a block chain and return to some previous point thought or felt to be the better to extend.
Some day AI will do the the heavy lifting of logic and thinking for us and free us to focus on the more abstract relationships of feelings.
Oregon Lifeline - Oregon Telephone Assistance Program (OTAP)
https://www.puc.state.or.us/Pages/rspf/otap.aspx
