Remember today all those who serve in the protection of our freedoms, and especially all those that gave their life in the service of their country and us the grateful citizens of the USA!

Flurries

Flurries of the fantastical claims

To disturb, disrupt are their aims

We are smart and can detect certain lies

But we listen and something inside us dies

Open your eyes and see the world anew

Find the truth if you can, in this word stew

And yet the it continues, wind and rain

Distorting the view through the pane

Maybe we’ll learn and understand

Fantasy, and truth intertwine again

It is right and proper that we encourage learning and accomplishment.   This season we congratulate Tiana, Andrew, Ethan, Mikayla, Elaina and Christina among the many others that have achieved the conference of degrees that allow them to enter the next phase of life journey.   It’s hard work to make it thru to the next level and very special to do so with honors.  These young people are critical to our future. They will be the leaders and practitioners implementing and evolving our society.

The traditions of robes, and sashes and medals and ropes have evolved over time to represent academic accomplishments and leadership honors. They should be understood and valued.  The garb and trappings of graduation goes back to medieval clergy robes, and subsequent evolution to 12th century schools of advanced learning, where graduation considered a step.  The Latin word for step is ‘gradus’.  And so too today’s graduates make a step into the next of life-learning-phases.  With hope and pride, we watch them achieve.  Proud of their accomplishments and hope they will make our world an ever better and safer place.  Millions of graduates at all levels, making their steps to the next level, so many with hope and so great the accomplishments.  Surely we will all benefit from their future works, and so we encourage and are encouraged by these young people!

The person who founded Mother’s Day came to regret it.  Anna Jarvis intended the day for us all to honor the mother that gave us birth, and instead it became widely commercialized.  See https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/13/us/mothers-day-anna-jarvis-trnd/index.html

I think giving mom something, flowers and candy, or out to brunch or dinner is nice, but showing you really love and appreciate how much mom means to the family is what’s most important.   Say I love you and appreciate all you do, and I will try to be always the best I can be.   I suspect those words from the heart, or for mother’s that are past as a prayer, are the essence of what mom’s want. Appreciation for their sacrifice and understanding that they want their children to be the best they can be.

Picasso once said that “art is a lie that reveals the truth”

Are we not the same?  Do we hide behind our pride and vanity to avoid risking the truth?  Our frailties’ and ego, and fears of failure keep us from being open about our love and being really the best we can be.

We are truth wrapped in a lie

Our ego, our fears and silly pride

Our mothers know and can see

They know the best we can be

They’ve held us from moment of birth

They know all of heaven and earth

Be thankful for chance to see

The very best we all can be

Thank you, my mom and all moms, that want the best of all of us!

I read an article this morning that presents a disturbing picture of enormous pressures on labor that can be expected in the next couple of decades.   It will affect all aspects of society deeply.  The combination of demographics, i.e. aging workforce, automation that will consume lower income and middle class jobs, and a consequently growing in-equality, will place pressure on society, government, and businesses.

https://reconnomics.com/2018/05/05/bain-has-seen-the-future-of-labor-and-its-not-pretty/

If correct, this report indicates as many as 50% of labor jobs will be negatively affected by automation.  Only 20% will benefit from the delivery of new technology to the market, and those who benefit will be at the top of the food chain and will benefit from enhanced productivity.

The article addresses how business, and governments will need to react to the changes, and how investors should view the macro trends indicated.  I want to focus on the implication for families, for the next generation.

Businesses will do their thing to maximize profit and keep costs down, and therefore cause ever increasing pressure on labor.  Government will respond by becoming an even bigger customer; buying infrastructure, and borrowing and taxing more to make up for a diminishing middle-class.  Consequently in-equality will increase in the USA.

Families must encourage education for their children.  Being left behind, means very low-end service jobs.  As factory workers, and warehouse workers, transportation and other middle class labor is forced out of jobs by automation, they will necessary squeeze low-end services, thus pushing pay down further.  Value is going to be in jobs that cannot be automated, such as required services, in health care, engineering, legal, and in financial management.   The importance of investment in time, energy and money in securing appropriate training and education will never be greater.   In the past one could work their way up from the factory floor to management.  One could open a restaurant and through trial and error figure out how to deliver a better product and build a life-style.   The journey today and in the coming decades without education will be a lot more difficult and the competition will be extraordinary.

New Home

Quietly with enjoyment morning alone

I sit and experience the breathing of our new home

The fireplace the furnace the sunlight

The shadows as well as the sun bright

The quiet sense of accomplished task

Of muscle weary relaxed at last

Funny all there is to do

When your home is so new

Think of everything you use in a day

You will not remember it all anyway

It’s the little things like tools, stools and tape

It’s chip clips, and paper and band aids for a scrape

Then the boxes and packages and Styrofoam

Piles of stuff to be unpacked to make a house a home

The little balls of Styrofoam never leave

They escape as they dance and weave

Already there’s a junk drawer just a few days in

It’s inevitable I suppose, but it makes your head spin

Well it’s been fun and funny and tiring too

But happy to move here as long as I’m with you!

Pen and Paper

A heavy pen and paper white

Thoughtfully compose and make it right

Like poets of ancient times

Working out thoughts and careful rhymes

Mistakes you could readily find

Or hesitance and change of mind

The flow of ink across the pages

Captured thought and texture for the ages

The beauty of being outside while I write

Birds of prey wheel in flight

Ospreys hunting for their meal

Like search for words to make us feel

More often failing and trying again

So cross it out and try again

Discipline of mind and thought

Perfect words and phrases sought

Overcoming this minds futility

Pen and papers the perfect utility

Karaoke

I sit and nurse a drink and watch with amusement

I think that human history is resplendent with refinement in fermentation

Drink forever a magnificent fuel for social engagement

Surely the history of and primal need for song must parallel that of drink

But what damage could you do around the campfire, or hearth I wonder

While I listen to friends in low places, where whiskey drowns, and beer chases, I ponder

That a century ago, Edison brings us the microphone along with lights

And the Japanese, naturally industrialize it all

I can only hope everyone here has had enough to drink

And that Jimmy Buffett forgives me when I lay waste to Margaretville

It has come to my turn at the karaoke mike…

I blew out my flip flop, stepped on a pop top;
Cut my heel, had to cruise on back home.
But there’s booze in the blender…

Pick-up Baseball

Just a lad of about five or six, mom said enough, now go play

I knew of a park two blocks away

I rode my bike, dad had just taught me how to ride without training wheels

Not really a park, it was land carved out under the power lines

Early summer, and there are kids gathering around a makeshift field

Rocky base path worn in the grass, nothing more

A fence that define the edge of the so-called park

Some swings and a monkey bar in the corner that no one paid attention to

A cylinder or two of huge concrete pipe, that judging by graffiti someone cared about

Hey kid, do you want to play baseball?

Sure….

Are you left or right handed?

I don’t know? 

They toss me a ball I try to catch with my left, drop it and throw it back

They said I was right handed, and gave me a glove for my left-hand, which confused me

A bat was tossed, and an older boy and older girl picked up sides

Nervous I waited and was finally picked last and sent to right field

But that didn’t make sense either I was on the left side of the field where they told me to stand

I loved playing, I loved that they figured out how to make up teams, and everyone was welcome, this game of baseball was incredible.

We played there for a few years, as I got older, I eventually was picking teams

I was telling a new kid where to stand in right field

No-one really cared who won, only that we had the joy of playing for hours

I played until I hit a homerun over the fence and clobbered a car one day

It was time to move to a bigger field, wear uniforms and play a game I came to love 

I heard the Deacon at church on Friday talk about what Christ’s death on the cross and subsequent resurrection meant to him.  He talked about how we are taught that Christ died for our sins, and through his resurrection we may be forgiven, thus opening the gates of heaven to us sinners.  He rejects this simple transactional view for one that is more transformational.  That God did not need a sacrifice by his son to forgive his children.  God could do so out of love as he pleases, and its human hubris that interprets the events in this transactional way.  I think this is where he was going, but I stopped listening and started thinking on my own… that we may think of the demonstration and example of Christ’s sacrifice, in the context of proving that a life commitment to loving others, to doing good, and of humility and sacrifice can be extended through one’s life, through death, and lives on forever in a spirit and form that remains transformational today.  The legacy of Christ and his love lives on today two millenniums later and has spread around the world. This is an example that says that we can transform beyond our human frailties into a spirit and legacy that lives on.  I believe that this is the true message of Easter.  That how we live defines, much more than how we interact with our complex worlds, but how we influence others, and how that influences others, and it extends through generations.  So, we are influenced by Christ’s teachings today, you are influencing today your friends, your families, your casual acquaintances and even potential enemies, and they will influence others in a geometric sequence of legacy that extends on forever.  So, he is risen, and he influences us today, and we should remember always that we are doing the same.  That we are too a transformational influence in our worlds.  What would you like that influence to be?  One of love I hope!