Family for Christmas

Since Rachel and Brad had to return to St. Thomas on Christmas day we had Christmas dinner at Kelly's house a day early this year, then opened presents at our house Christmas Eve.

Kelly's family plus gracen

 

Four generations: Gracen, Tara, Rachel, Dorothy

 

Four girl cousins: Jenna, Marley, Samantha, Tara

 

Jenna helps Grandma decorate cookies.

 

Gracen takes a break from decorating to have some juice and

sample the cookies.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Christmas Projects

I did a couple of wood and art projects this year for Christmas. The first one is this table and chairs for our 22 month old great grand daughter, Gracen.

 

I hand painted the characters on the furniture.

 

Dorothy wanted a coffee cup rack close

to the coffee pot. Here is what I came up

with.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Teenager Marley

It doesn't seem very long at all that

Marley Kate looked like this. Something

happened.  Marley became a teenager.

 

 

Marley looks on as Jenna and Gracen pull all 13 candles

from the cake to lick the icing from them.

 

 

Grandchildern grow up way too fast.

 

 

 

 

Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men

I'm reading a book called Rascals in Paradise by James Michener and A. Grove Day. This book was published in 1957 and I'm surprised I'm just now discovering it. My daughter, Rachel, brought it to me from the Caribbean last summer. It's a non fiction account of the lives of some of the most amazing and nefarious people who lived their lives in the South Pacific. Pirates, mutineers, fortune hunters, or just people wanting to find a tropical paradise to while away the years. Here's one vignette I found in the introduction that I think relates to my previous post about creating our own narrative thereby our own reality.

     "In the 1930's there was in Australia a learned gentleman who clearly foresaw that a great war was about to break over the world.  He had no desire to participate in this foolish war, but he had to conclude from his studies that Europe was going to explode and that the resulting fires would involve Africa and much of Asia.  With extraordinary clairvoyance he deduced that Australia, left unprotected because the military men were preoccupied with Europe, would surely become a temptation to Asia and would probably be overrun.
     Wishing to avoid such a debacle, he spent considerable time in determining what course a sensible man should follow if he wanted to escape the onrushing cataclysm.  He considered flight into the dead heart of Australia, but concluded that although he could probably hide out in that forbidding region, life without adequate water would be intolerable.  Next he contemplated removal to America, but dismissed this as impractical in view of the certainty that America would also be involved in the war.
    Finally, by a process of the most careful logic, he decided that his only secure refuge from the world's insanity lay on some tropical island. He reasoned, 'There I will find adequate water from the rains, food from the breadfruit and coconut trees, and fish from the lagoons. There will be safety from the airplanes which will be bombing important cities.  And thanks to the missionaries, the natives will probably not eat me.'
     Fortified with such conclusions, he studied the Pacific and narrowed his choice of islands to the one that offered every advantage: remoteness, security, a good life, and a storm cellar until the universal hurricane had subsided.
     Thereupon, in the late summer of 1939, one week before Germany invaded Poland, this wise Australian fled to his particular South Pacific refuge.  He went to the almost unknown island of Guadalcanal."

Stories We Tell Ourselves

Scientists wrestle with the question of whether the universe would exist without an observer. There are over 6 billion observers on this planet which means there are over 6 billion realities. We take in all of the stimuli and data through our senses and over a lifetime our brains create the reality we live in. Reality for some people is a brittle shell they’ve built around themselves and must continually patch and reinforce to keep it from caving in. There are humans whose concept of God was formed as a child in Sunday School and they would feel threatened by the idea of a deity that wasn’t a kindly old gentleman that sits on a throne in the sky and grants them their every wish, or who vote for a political party that panders to their limited world view and allow no information into their mind that might undermine that view, or those who found a vocation early in life and define themselves by it, whether it be butcher, baker or candle stick maker. Their universe must be nailed down and unchanging for them to feel secure.

Change is a mystery. Although this universe is held together and operates by certain physical laws which should keep things constant, there is an element of entropy or chaos that results in things never being quite the same as they were at an earlier point in time and space.

It is a characteristic of human nature that we both resist change and yet crave it. Washington Irving said, “There is certain relief in change, even though it be from bad to worse! As I have often found in traveling in a stagecoach, that it is often a comfort to shift one's position, and be bruised in a new place”

I have a lovely and devoted wife, two beautiful daughters, and six grand children that think I'm the cat's pajamas. Losing the love and affection of my family through death or alienation is a change that I fear. I heard a preacher say that we should expect to lose our loved ones. It happens to every one of us eventually. We should prepare ourselves for it. Each life change; each loss or gain is an element in a chain reaction that echoes through the years. Deep within our psyches change in who we are is the response to change in our environment.

Now, here’s the metaphysical rub.

There are people whose sense of reality is fluid and evolving. They discard old concepts as they learn new ones. Ideologies and creeds must actually work in their daily lives for them to embrace them. They belong to many tribes whose memberships overlap and blend.

We take in all the information our senses perceive over a lifetime and build our own reality or world view from it. But, there are forces that attempt to manipulate our world view; political ideology, religious dogma, the latest scientific theory, the evening news, even popular psychology and culture. There’s a Bible verse that I like that says, “Don’t let the world squeeze you into its own mold”. That’s good advice. We need to become logical thinkers and filter the information we receive through a healthy skepticism.

In regard to unexpected happenings, we write the narrative of our own reality. For most of us this narrative must contain certainty. We don’t like to think that we could be undone by improbable events. I read a book by Nassim Taleb titled “The Black Swan - The Impact of the Highly Improbable” In it he tells the story of a turkey who lives for 1000 days and is comfortable and well fed. All he has learned in his life indicates that the comfort will continue indefinitely. Then one day the farmer shows up with an axe. We would like to think that we have control and then when something extreme happens, whether it’s being blindsided by a truck or winning the lottery, we have to create an explanation that makes it appear less random.

We are all living a story that we tell ourselves.