I just came across this tweet from Teh Donald™, which I’m quite sure is part of the collection of tweets where he has previously said something about someone else (usually Obama) that is actually applicable to his presidency. Donald John Trump has severely wounded irony and satire. It remains to be seen if we’ll ever recover a normal, decent sense of humor.
I’m also (not sure this is the right word) “pleased” to see this very special one was originally born on my 67th birthday and will now follow me all the days of my life . . . which are far fewer than they were even then.
A friend of mine on Facebook shared the following quote by Bertrand Russell, which was sent to Sir Oswald Mosely in response to a request by Mosely to debate the merits of fascism.
There is no doubt in my mind the Trump administration, and the bulk of the Republican Party that’s currently enabling him, are fascists. They have every intent of restricting our freedoms and keeping us in relative poverty and misery, all so a few may get wealthy at our expense. We must not allow this to happen. We must not give away those precious rights and freedoms we’ve won, and that so many have suffered to gain.
The original anti-fascist movement prepares to disrupt a large Nazi gathering
Dear Sir Oswald,
Thank you for your letter and for your enclosures. I have given some thought to our recent correspondence. It is always difficult to decide on how to respond to people whose ethos is so alien and, in fact, repellent to one’s own. It is not that I take exception to the general points made by you but that every ounce of my energy has been devoted to an active opposition to cruel bigotry, compulsive violence, and the sadistic persecution which has characterised the philosophy and practice of fascism.
I feel obliged to say that the emotional universes we inhabit are so distinct, and in deepest ways opposed, that nothing fruitful or sincere could ever emerge from association between us.
I should like you to understand the intensity of this conviction on my part. It is not out of any attempt to be rude that I say this but because of all that I value in human experience and human achievement.
Kind of interesting to be spending part of my birthday waiting for my younger daughter to get out of school. I hadn’t quite put my foot on what always feels just a bit strange every time I’m here.
It finally hit me. It’s the knowledge I’m at least 54 years older than the oldest kids here. I’d venture to say the vast majority of parents here are no more than 30 years older than their kids. I mostly don’t feel like an outlier, but I am.
I’m also processing the reality that Alyssa had far more challenges than Aimee, who also has three friends who’ve known each other since kindergarten or the first grade, and whose families we have spent a lot of time with over the years. Alyssa doesn’t have any friends like that, which troubles me deeply.
I guess I’m living in interesting times. All I have to do is stay healthy and productive for about another eight to ten years. Slice pie!
In September of 2002, nearly four months after my 55th birthday, I became a father for the first time in my life. I was in China with Linda, who would later take me as her husband, to adopt our Aimee. Actually, since we weren’t married she had to adopt as a single mother and I was sort of along for the ride, though I was all in.
As part of the process, I had joined a Yahoo chat group especially for parents and prospective parents adopting in China. I also joined a group led by internationally adopted adults who were willing to share their experiences, as well as their admonishments.
I was very active for a while and what follows is one of my posts (from October of 2005) that is still being shared every month with prospective parents of Chinese children being adopted by people in the U.S.:
************
Gosh, Gordon. You ask such simple questions. My heart truly aches (along with my head) contemplating what our children will eventually deal with as they grow older and their ability to understand matures and develops.
I agree with you, in that we can’t possibly settle the abandonment issue for them. As you say, they own it and we, at best, are innocent bystanders. (I won’t even discuss on this list what “at worst” might be for fear of provoking a firestorm of protest.) What I think we can do is respect them enough to let them take the lead, by becoming loving, attentive listeners. As they gather experiences and come to realizations about the meaning of their lives, we need to be there for them; nonjudgmental, understanding, and supportive. It doesn’t hurt to read about the experiences of adult adoptees (from their own mouths – or fingers) and their parents.
Even then, we have no guarantee they will be able to answer their own questions, or resolve the issues (real or perceived) they will deal with. As you know, I have been following the discussions on IAT for some time now. It has changed how I view my role as an adoptive parent and, at times, I find myself somewhat uncomfortable with it. I consider the discomfort part of my growing process for, as you also know, it isn’t stopping Linda and I from returning to adopt another child.
I know you and Patti well enough to believe you will give it everything you’ve got (and maybe a little more) to do right by your children. If you haven’t already, you might want to read Cheri Register’s book “Beyond Good Intentions: a Mother Reflects on Raising Internationally Adopted Children.” I hope others will contribute to this thread. I think it’s important to understand these issues as early as possible, preferable before one travels to China.
I wanted to check out the new Black Bear Diner here in Simi, so I took Alyssa there for lunch today. I had checked out their menu and was a bit blown away by how calorious most items were, but knowing they serve cinnamon roll French toast kinda tugs at my very raison d’etre.
Unfortunately, when we arrived, it appeared the parking lot was full and there were lots of people waiting outside. Alyssa, who isn’t exactly shy, noted that all the people waiting appeared to be considerably overweight. She did not want to eat there, as she’s long been concerned with eating healthy and wants to eat more of a plant-based diet.
We ended up eating Vietnamese food at the Bamboo Cafe. She had chicken with lemongrass over vermicelli. She struggled with the veggies, but I admire her doggedness. As for me, I’m definitely heading there for breakfast soon. I’ve got to try that cinnamon roll French toast, probably with a side of bacon . . . and coffee, of course.
I’ve been getting more and more comfortable with Photoshop’s many editing tools, chief among them layers, cloning, blending, and various level adjustments.
I find politics, especially the clowns in the Trump administration, wonderful subjects for my efforts. For instance, recently the Attorney General, William Barr, responded to a question about whether or not he was worried about his legacy with the following:
“I am at the end of my career. Everyone dies and I am not, you know, I don’t believe in the Homeric idea that you know, immortality comes by, you know, having odes sung about you over the centuries, you know?”
Aside from his use of the filler “you know” four times in one sentence, I was stuck with the thought, “is he being stoic or nihilistic?” I’m still not sure, but the statement reminded me of a song by George Harrison. I found a pic of the album cover, researched then downloaded the proper font, and tweaked the cover like so:
I think he looks appropriately unconcerned, don’t you?
I’ve started blogging again here at Systems Savvy and needed to do some research on my history doing so. I came across the following blog post on another, now defunct blog site, The Cranky Curmudgeon, which I wrote on October 29, 2008. I entitled it “Talk About Your Angst!” I forgot I wrote it and I’m somewhat amazed that my characterization of the Bush admin sounds quite similar to my characterization of the Trump admin. We’re doing something wrong . . . bigly!
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
Barack Obama Makes a point during debate with John McCain
Well, here we are . . .
what is it? . . about six days out from what I’m thinking is the most
important election of my lifetime. Any election involving Nixon, Reagan,
or either of the Bush gangster family was, of course, important, but
this one – whew! After eight years of so thoroughly screwing up
everything they touched, I am on pins and needles waiting to see if we
get a brand new start at fixing things, or if we get something possibly
worse than George Bush.
I think I need to explain something too.
Although I take the position George Bush and his administration screwed
up everything they touched, I think it’s important to note they did
exactly what they had planned to do all along. The failures were not
truly failures, as they fit into the general plan. Don’t think for one
moment these criminals weren’t working toward the dream so famously
articulated by Grover Norquist when he said his goal was to shrink
government “down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.”
I have no doubt that is exactly what has been going on, especially when
government means services for the people, as opposed to handouts for
the well-connected. We have witnessed the most massive re-distribution
of national wealth, certainly in my lifetime. Now, perhaps, we can see
some of that bleeding stanched.
Six more days! I am on pins and
needles. We so desperately need to take this nation in another
direction; to back away from the arrogant unilateralism and the move
toward the so-called “unitary executive”; the use of torture and the
spying on our own citizens; and the outright flaunting of the
Constitution when it serves the narrow interests of the administration.
Obama has created one of the flattest campaign organizations ever,
thanks in large part to his team’s understanding and use of information
technology. Let’s see if they can translate this knowledge into a new
politics of engagement and involvement . . . and – dare I say –
democracy.
I’ve been blogging now for at least 13 years. My first post on this blog was on January 8, 2008. Prior to that, I had a Blogger presence I called The Cranky Curmudgeon, where I mostly vented about things that pissed me off and that I thought might piss off others as well. Those posts still exist. You can find the first of them, which I posted on February 23, 2006, right here. Some of them I reposted here in “Systems Savvy.” Prior to that I had another site on Blogger called “A Muse Me”. I can find the reason I said I was starting the blog, but I can’t find any posts and I have no recollection of writing—or deleting—any of them.
I had many reasons for blogging. Prior to starting my own blog, I was blogging internally at Rocketdyne and wanted to test my voice outside the firewall. When I retired in 2010, I realized there weren’t very many people my age who were active bloggers. I reckoned, in addition to offering my thoughts on Systems Thinking, social media for business, religion, and lots of politics, I thought I might shed some light on what it’s like as one ages and approaches the end of life. Not in the way folks have blogged about their terminal disease (as I don’t yet have one), but rather about the aging process when one can only guess at how it’s going to go . . . and the evidence keeps changing as time rolls by.
People who have followed this blog site for a while no doubt know that I have had surgery to have a melanoma removed from my lower back, as well as a few lymph nodes taken from my arm pit and my groin. I spent an awful lot of time out in the sun as a boy and young man, when the only thing anyone wore for protection from it was zinc oxide. When I used to surf we put it on our noses and lower lips. Otherwise it was things like Coppertone or baby oil with iodine in it. We were enamored with being tan, which meant we were “fit”. Little did we know just how damaging being out in the sun so frequently was.
When my family used to go for three and four-day weekends to Palm Springs, which was generally the only kind of vacation we got, I would invariably get a really bad sunburn on my shoulders and back, which required me to wear a t-shirt in the water for the rest of the time we were there. I remember my skin peeling in sheets and thinking how cool it looked, never realizing the damage I was doing to myself.
Fast forward to today. I was going to start this post off by using the term “chicken skin” because that’s what I thought people called what happens to human skin when one reaches a certain age and it becomes a bit parchment like. It’s also referred to as crepe skin. I am fortunate in that, even at almost 72, I have virtually no wrinkles on my face. I do, however, have a lot of wrinkles and other weird things happening to my arms . . . especially my arms, probably because they’ve received more sunlight over the years than any other part of me.
I mentioned this to my dermatologist and he said it’s just normal, aging skin. Nevertheless, the transformation is something I find fascinating, especially when viewed at through the magnification available with my iPhone XR. Below are two photos. Actually one is an enlargement from the other. I was sitting in my car, waiting for my younger daughter to get out of school when I took this pic of my arm. I actually used the magnifier, took the pic at the high magnification level, then pinched out to the whole photo, both of which I saved to my phone. Note the first one looks pretty normal, at least for a man of my age. Yes, it’s a bit wrinkly, sports a few freckles and moles, and may be a bit dry, but still pretty normal.
This second one, however, is (for me) a mind blower, especially when you look at my skin in juxtaposition to the cloth of the shirt I’m wearing. BTW – this is an enlargement of the inner elbow from the above photo. Even looking at my arm as I’m writing this, it doesn’t look anything like it does in this enlargement. I think it’s a combination of the magnification and the angle of the light hitting my skin. I still can’t get over how weird it looks, though.
So . . . any of you out there who read this and are in your thirties, forties, or fifties, here’s something really exciting for you to look forward to. You’re welcome!
Last weekend was my oldest daughter Aimee’s final dance recital in High School. Our local paper did a nice little feature, and that’s her in the very front of the line of ballerinas. She’s been doing pointe for at least her Senior year. I can’t believe she’s graduating in about three weeks. Frankly, I’m not handling this transition all that well right now.
Our Aimee’s Final Ballet Performance
I lost—and
grieved over—the relationship we had when we adopted Alyssa, who
required so much attention, and it was exacerbated by Aimee’s quiet
nature. Part of me fears we’ll never be close (typing these words nearly
brings me to tears). I’ll get over it, but there’s a part of me that
worries I haven’t really been a good parent and it’s too late to do
anything about it. Another part of me thinks I’m being silly, but it’s
not helping right now. Hopefully, it’s just the gloomy weather that’s
affecting me.
I posted this on Facebook and got quite a lot of wonderful replies, most of them assuring me that most, if not all, parents feel inadequate and many recounted stories of their own experiences with their children. I’m grateful for the friends I have on Facebook, many of whom are also friends IRL. Quite a few of them were with us when we adopted both our girls, so they have a special connection to us. In responding to some of them, I offered another picture of Aimee, which I think is gorgeous (as is she). I’m including it here as well. Both photos were taken with my iPhone XR, without flash, which was prohibited during the performance. They’re not close to being HiRes, but they’re serviceable.
Kind of interesting to be spending part of my birthday waiting for my younger daughter to get out of school. I hadn’t quite put my foot on what always feels just a bit strange every time I’m here.
In September of 2002, nearly four months after my 55th birthday, I became a father for the first time in my life. I was in China with Linda, who would later take me as her husband, to adopt our Aimee. Actually, since we weren’t married she had to adopt as a single mother and I was sort of along for the ride, though I was all in.
I wanted to check out the new Black Bear Diner here in Simi, so I took Alyssa there for lunch today. I had checked out their menu and was a bit blown away by how calorious most items were, but knowing they serve cinnamon roll French toast kinda tugs at my very raison d’etre.
