A Week in North Carolina

Tuesday, July 31st, 2007 11:53pm

Spent the last week in a house on Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina, which is right next to Wilmington. I guess I should mention that the house has a two-level back deck with views of the ocean. Oh, and the lower level of the deck leads to a nice path out into the yard area. Oh, and that path continues through the yard (which should probably be termed “sand dunes”) right down to the beach. It was not a bad place to spend a week. What’s interesting, though, is that I spent the entire week with my family. | Read the rest of this entry …

A Good Weekend with Kubb!

Sunday, June 24th, 2007 10:24pm

It’s good to get back to the basics. For me, that was visiting family in Vermont. I spent my Friday-night through Sunday-afternoon at my sister’s place hanging out with her and her husband. My brother and his family, who live about 20 minutes away, stopped by on Saturday and Sunday to have meals and hang out. It was a nice weekend for a visit and I think my presence might have provided a nice excuse for a distraction from chores. Of course, my brother is not so easily distracted and was mowing my sister’s lawn when I left (not because she’d asked him to or because of any obligation, simply because he felt like doing so). Of course, he and his family had also climbed Camel’s Hump (which is part of the incredible view from my sister’s house’s front deck) on Saturday morning and hit about 7 miles of trails Sunday morning (well before I’d woken up either day, I might mention). Did I mention that we played Kubb? | Read the rest of this entry …

Memorial Day

Monday, May 28th, 2007 1:11pm

Another Memorial Day has arrived and I want to urge all my American friends (and for all my friends from other countries, the same sentiments hold true for your own national days of remembrance) to take a few moments today to remember the meaning and the purpose of this day. We all have strong opinions about the politics behind the wars for which we ask our soldiers to fight, but today let the politics slide and remember the simple truth that our soldiers have always risen to the call and fought for our country when asked. This day is for them and not for politics. There are many, very simple ways to do this and given what we are acknowledging, a few moments from our day in remembrance and thanks is no hardship. As I’ve written before on this blog, I take some time read aloud two poems that I think capture the essence of Memorial Day. One is Walt Whitman’s “Song of the Banner at Daybreak” which espouses true patriotism. The second is Wilfred Owen’s “Soldier’s Dream” which, in its brief two stanzas, captures the horror of war (Wilfred Owen was killed while serving in World War I). My thanks, as inconsequential as they are, to those from all generations and all walks of life who have fought and died for our country.

Frontline: Spying on the Home Front

Sunday, May 20th, 2007 2:05pm

It’s not secret that I’m not a big fan of giving up our civil liberties or the rights afforded us by the Constitution for a sense of security, often a false sense of a security. But one of the biggest problems arguing against the various abuses of our privacy by the current Bush administration has been the belief many people have that “only the bad people will be affected”. It’s this willful ignorance and willingness to turn a blind eye that allows governments to take advantage of their citizenry. For those of you who believe this way, I urge you to watch the recent Frontline show entitled: Spying on the Home Front. You can even watch it online at PBS.org. After you’re done and you’ve got that sick feeling in your gut that occurs when you realize that you’ve been betraying the ideals, indeed the very foundations of your nation out of sheer laziness and fear, take a moment to do something simple: join the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organization that is fighting to protect our privacy in this new, digital age where the old rules are being ignored and new ones have not yet been made.

Why Do We Hate Our Freedoms?

Wednesday, April 25th, 2007 10:18pm

Maybe the founders of this country got it wrong. Maybe people really don’t want freedom. Perhaps it’s just too damn much work to have to think for oneself instead of having someone else tell you what to do. They tried pretty damn hard, even put it down on paper, but we can’t seem to take these ideas at face value. They’re pretty simple too, designed to be applied regardless of the variable nature of time and government. But we just can’t help but search for ways to give up these rights, or take these rights away from people with whom we disagree. | Read the rest of this entry …

How Not To Manage

Monday, April 23rd, 2007 12:44am

I’m not a manager. I’m doing just fine working in the trenches (although I work way too many weird hours) and don’t have any desire to work the political world of management. I have no doubt that I could do it and successful, but I don’t want to don the required “suit” mentality Therefore this post comes by way of a “those who don’t know, teach” angle as I really don’t have the experience. Some may say that I shouldn’t judge what I don’t know, but I believe there’s a certain amount of common sense involved in managing others and there are some situations that beg to be excoriated. By way of a “for example”: recently, the Senior Vice President of my organization within the company for which I work invited my team to lunch. This lunch turned out to be, from the email sent to us by his assistant, pizza and salad served in a conference room. The lunch, in fact, turned out to be pizza only, the salad either forgotten or diverted by hungry vegetarians. Further, no input was requested from our team regarding what kind of pizza we would enjoy eating, which seems like a reasonable thing to ask given that we were giving up our lunch hour for this pow-wow with senior management. Finally, no information was given to us regarding what this meeting was for, what the agenda might be or what we might do to prepare. We went in blind to a lunch bereft of salad and featuring 2 out of 3 pizzas that no one wanted to eat. | Read the rest of this entry …

Putting it in Perspective

Monday, April 23rd, 2007 12:43am

The events at Virginia Tech were certainly a tragedy. Yet more people die every day in Iraq and Afghanistan, many of them our own sons and daughters. None of these people are any less important or valuable than those who died at VT. Yet our flag is at half-staff for the victims of a suicidal gunman, but not for our own soldiers returning home in their flag-draped coffins (surely no less worthy?). Sadly there is just as little logic behind the deaths of those in Iraq, at least from an American-intervention perspective, as there is in the twisted logic that led to the rampage at VT. I don’t mean to belittle the loss of the loved ones in the VT tragedy or the sacrifices made by those sent to Iraq, but mean to bring focus to the fact that thousands have died in a war that has nothing at all to do with a war on terror (remember the real roots of our misguided actions against Iraq people: it wasn’t terror or 9/11, despite what the media and our administration would revise history to say, but a failed UN resolution). Yes, what happened at VT was terrible, and my heart and thoughts go to the families and victims. But please, remember that our sons and daughters are in harm’s way and dying every day because of an administration that cares only for its own agenda and not for the people it purports to represent. Please put the tragedy at VT in perspective and remember that many young men and women of the same age as those who died at VT are in danger as well.

Please remember (before commenting in dumb-ass ways) that I’m not a Republican or a Democrat, a liberal or a conservative…I am Independent. This is not a call for withdrawal from Iraq (we’re beyond that point and must see it through or risk greater instability and loss of life for those we leave behind) but rather a plea for focus.

Virginia Tech

Tuesday, April 17th, 2007 10:46pm

I’ve had a powerful urge to blog about the Virginia Tech shootings, but every time I thought about it I found myself drifting into politics, gun-control and big-media-bashing. None of that matters right now, though. All that matters is that we all take time to say goodbye to all the victims and to take a moment to think about those wounded, physically or emotionally, and to hope (or pray, if you’re so inclined) that they recover as fully as is possible. The world we have built for ourselves won’t let us stay out of the mud for long, so take the time now to honor the memories of the dead as well as the lives of the survivors, their friends and their families.

RIP Kurt Vonnegut

Thursday, April 12th, 2007 12:22pm

Author Kurt Vonnegut died last night; he was 84. He was hospitalized after suffering injuries from a fall several weeks back. Take a moment to remember him and pick up one of his books and give it a read. If you have a chance, track down some of his many essays. He traveled all over giving lectures and talks about the state of the world and his Humanist philosophy. I was lucky enough to attend one of his lectures at my University back when I was in school, and I’ve been a fan of his writing for years.

Insulting the Victim

Friday, April 06th, 2007 3:40pm

Wow…some people are just plain twisted and evil.