Needs, wants, consideration and knocks at the door

Knock, knock, knock…

Loud and insistent, I feared for the integrity of the old front door already warped and cracked and weak. Looking between the slats of the window blinds, I saw no car in the driveway and was about to walk away when the loud, insistent knocking came again. I opened the door a crack.

“Can I have a glass of water?” The brown eyes set in the wide face atop a tall, large figure of a woman met mine and must’ve registered the blank look I knew I had on my face.

“Remember me? I hang out with Tim sometimes and I just walked and realized I must be dehydrated.”

Parents, pet and horse owners need education now

There are two things that burn, and I mean burn me bad. First is harming a child. The second is harming an animal. Do you see the pattern here? Both are dependent on adults, on us, to protect them and to provide for them. That is an absolute. There is no room in that absolute for harm in any way, shape or form. Got that? Good.

Now, I’m no dummy. I know that there are people who don’t happen to take the responsibility of care, protection and providing for kids and animals as seriously as I do. I say, “Shame on them!” What part of being an adult, a responsible adult, don’t these people get? Didn’t their mommas take care of them? If their mommas didn’t do the job, didn’t they hope that some other responsible adult would step up to the plate and make it right for them?

The total far more than the sum

There wouldn’t be an ocean without all the drops, and every drip effects every drop. It’s simple. Two things can’t occupy the same space at the same time, so everything must shift with every movement. And what isn’t in motion? Boiled down, that’s what it amounts to; a drop, a drip, a ripple, a cascade of cause and effect, constantly. But, this airy, abstract jumble of philosophical mumbo-jumbo accomplishes nothing without every drop’s awareness of it and the absolute reality of being a part of the whole. There would be no ocean without all the drops, each and every one of them.

Privacy is a matter of common sense

Being online has become such a big part of our world that it’s almost unimaginable what life was like without it. For me, the most significant aspect of the role the Internet plays in my life has been the immediate access to information and knowledge. All you need is an Internet connection, and you can learn anything. Just as significant is that everyone is connected to just about everyone, virtually world-wide. It is empowering, powerful and infinite in potential.

While I may be jumping up and down in joy about being plugged into the world, many are not. There are privacy concerns and it’s no secret that some use the Internet for unscrupulous reasons. In this way, the Internet is no different than telephone or TV or any other form of mass communication. If a business or a government or a person decides to stick its nose into your life, it will find a way and you will be harmed, no matter what the vector. It happened before the Internet and it will happen always. That’s just the way it is.

What can you do to keep your private stuff private?

Caption this!

You know, as soon as I saw this photo come across my Google+ stream, I fell in love with it. There is so much going on in this photo that it tells its story quite well. But, the story it tells me is probably very different from the story that it tells you. I’m curious to know just what story this photo tells you.

So, go ahead and give it a caption. Whatever strikes your fancy.

An invitation to join Google+

 

The doors to the new and surprisingly great service are about half flung open with 150 invitations granted to current users. Google+ is what other social networks were meant to be and a whole lot more. So, have an invite. It’s on me.

Join Google+

From clean cut to cut clean off

So, this man comes in to my office today and sits there looking like Matt Damon, only shorter, younger, and not an actor. He’s one of the many guys around here working for one of the many fly-by-night companies working the Fayetteville Shale Play.

Ah, what a winning pair of blue eyes and a nice smile. Just a few years older than my son, I was wondering what he’d be like, but I liked him immediately. I got him talking.

“I love my wife. She’s been my wife for 12 years and she’ll be my wife for at least another 12,” he said, and he was serious. I liked him more.

“I don’t know where I’d be without my wife. She’s a real penny-pincher and we’ve got some savings. In fact, in the last 12 years, she’s splurged twice. She bought a car and she bought an iPad. I can’t figure that thing out, but she does amazing things with it.” I liked him even more.

The next guy came in and sat down, and I was struck by the contrast, though I couldn’t say how right away. He had the same short haircut as the first man, seemed clean-cut on the outside, but his skin was pale and peaked. His eyes were gray and his cheeks were sunken. When I met his eyes, they didn’t smile back, so the interaction between us was superficial at best.

When a newspaper has its own agenda, it can’t be trusted to report the news

Integrity : firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic values; incorruptibility : an unimpaired condition; soundness : the quality or state of being complete or undivided; completeness

I’m a news junkie. I didn’t used to be. I used to feel the news was nothing but doom and gloom, car accidents and drug busts, and politics. I never understood the value of a newspaper beyond the comics and the classifieds and housetraining a new puppy. My attitude changed when my love of writing led me to reporting for a few small newspapers, and in the course of researching to learn and understand what I got myself into.

The tangible, abstract heat of it all

The idea hits. It will be great. I can start here, I think, then while it’s starting to simmer…  ~poof~ …it’s gone. Just like that. It was a good idea, one that just had to be. Or so I thought. Then again, thinking is a relative concept; one far more abstract than tangible. No shit.

Climate control. No, not global warming and all that. (I boil when someone says, in the dead of winter during a particularly frosty freeze, “How can there be ‘global warming’ when it is this cold” in all indignation and disgust. “Oh, you dope,” I think to myself.) Climate control is this canned air. The non-stop buzz of the air conditioning, pumping out recycled, dead air into the confined space of these four walls. As dead as it may be, it’s a cool, comfortable 74 degrees. It’s cool, comfortable and safe.