Reunion-

I related in a previous blog that I am what I call an 'a-social' person. Not anti-social. I don't dislike humanity in mass or in individuals, though I have met a few individuals who may challenge that. I simply do not have a strong need for human interaction. Seclusion is comfortable for me. Even relative isolation. I would make an excellent hermit, assuming that there is some standard to be met to become a hermit.

I haven't really checked.

Knowing this about myself I work against my natural tendency to withdraw into books and games and stories, and have at least some social interaction. As a consequence I actually have a family, and they seem able to tolerate me well enough. I cherish them for themselves, but also for keeping me human.

So, along comes my 40th high school reunion, and I decide to go. Why? Because I was socially involved during those years and longed to renew those old ties? Not really. I dreamed of piloting (or at least crewing) on a star ship during those high school years. Reality did not often intrude on my inner world. I interacted with my fellow inmates of the high school as reasonable politeness required, but did not build a lot of strong bonds.

I went to the reunion because I thought going would be interesting, and I do recall (vaguely) some pleasant interactions with people during those high school years. I went. I am glad I did. I went to school with some very nice people. With the span of our time apart being far greater than the few years we were together, it was somewhat like meeting these people for the first time.

One of my friends from those years, and several years before high school, came and spent a lot of the reunion time with me. Jerry Ross, one of my best friends. He expressed a positive recollection for that friendship, something that I share with him. It was a good friendship. One that we would like to continue, after a small four decade absence from one another.

I also learned that another good friend from those childhood days did not survive to attend this event. Manuel Ortega was a valuable element in my formative years, and I am sorry I could not see him again.

Having moved back to the Rogue Valley after many years away I may have opportunity to renew friendships from ancient days. I may have opportunity to build friendships that ought to have been, were I less engaged in realms of fantasy and my own imagination and involved more with living human beings.

That remains to be seen. I no longer just read about star ships and fantastic realms. I write such stories. With publication beginning in a matter of weeks I may be just as far away as ever.

I hope not. The class of 1971 deserves a better friend than that.

Lawns-

I have  been away from blogging for a time, now. Selling a house. Moving. Buying a house. Busy. Now I am sold, bought and moved. Now I have a house. Now I have a lawn. Two, in fact. One in front, one in the back. Pretty well established. Coming back nicely from the time of neglect during the process of the sale.

Nice features. Concrete perimeters to fend off the attempts of non-lawn to take over the lawn, and the lawn to expand beyond the desired limits. A programmable watering system. Yep. Water and mow, mostly.

I have been watering and mowing. Trimming. Doing stuff. Not such amazing stuff, unless you are familiar with my philosophy towards lawns. I think they are an unnecessary thing, an absorb-er of time, money and energy. Yet now I have two, and I take care of them.

Life is made interesting by contradictions.

I do like lawns in parks and on golf courses. People earn their livings caring for such lawns, and many are quite beautiful to see and enjoy. Home lawns, however, are different. They are taken care of by people who have already put in their time earning a living. Precious non-working time is spent on lawns. Fine, for those who love lawns. Some of us have other things to do with our non-working time.

Now that I am retired, however, I find it is not so bad. After all, I am not spending a lot of my time working and working over-time. So, if I burn a few hours of each day puttering about the yard it is actually rather nice. The 'settling in' is still taking place, but once we are established I can get back to my writing and finish the process of publishing my books. Plus my World of Warcraft time, of course.

Oh, and blogging.

Two Business Ideas-

Being retired from working in the jail I have a bit of time on my hands. One of the things I have done with that time is think about starting a business. Now, I am not a businessman. I have not earned my money by going into business and doing business and getting paid for the business I did. I have usually had jobs. I have tried a few of those business like Amway, including Amway. They didn't work for me.

Why not? Because I am not a businessman by nature. The doing of business does not grab me and inspire me and get me up raring to go in the morning. Still, I sometimes think about business. I have ideas.


Here are two of them. Feel free to grab these ideas and make them real for you. If you are truly business oriented these could be really good. I would come to these businesses and do business, if I wasn't already busy.

Ready? First idea: A restaurant that specializes in artisan breads and sauces to dip them in. Yep, that's it. Bread. Really good bread, like the stuff we get in Pescadero whenever someone goes to Pescadero. Which is not often. Artichoke bread. Really good stuff.

So, anyway, back at Savory or Sweet n' Sour or whatever the place gets named, bread is sold. Bread and a nice variety of sauces crafted fresh every day right on the premises. The bread could be made elsewhere by artisans who make bread and be brought in. The sauces, however, are made right there.

The customer buys some bread, or a variety of breads, and gets to help themselves to little bowls of the various sauces. Then they dip and eat. And drink lots of the beverages also available on the premises. Good bread and savory sauces demand pairings with teas, wines, and beer. Pairings could even be recommended in a suitably snooty fashion.

Idea number two: A little bar. In Japan there are little businesses like tiny cocktail bars and little sushi bars and the like. Places that hold ten to twelve customers. Intimate. Artful. Tiny.

I was thinking of a little whiskey bar. Ten seats, six at the bar, four at little tables. Maybe call it Hole in the Wall or something cute like that. Lots of polished wood. Behind the bar a very nice collection of whiskey. Reasonable prices, of course, as much so as things like single malt scotch can allow. Three main servings: Whiskey, water, and whiskey and water. Oh, and ice is available.

Two ideas. Why don't I do it? Well, I am not a business man. I lack the money to risk, and more so I lack the drive to take passing fancy and give it flesh. Even simple businesses like this require time and money and effort. Do I really want to have to craft sauces for hours every day? Do I really want to stand behind a tiny bar hour after hour, serving single malts by the ounce?

No, I don't. But, if you do, let me know where you are running these businesses. I will stop by and patronize your establishments.

If I'm not busy, of course.

Knitting together a story-

I am near the end of my third book in the fantasy adventure series I am writing. Still not published, but getting closer every day. I had just resolved a scene and come up with a next scene, kind of an interlude. I have the final scene of the book finished in my mind. In between was a gap. What to write to fill that gap?

Due to some recent real-life matters largely beyond my control (much like life in general) I had some time to kill. The writing has been good in this time, since it has been productive. However, I rather like having something to do with my hands when I just "sits and thinks." I sometimes whittle to fill that need, but this winter I took up loom knitting.

So, being in need of some sittin' and thinkin', I took up my loom and began to knit a bit. It works wonders. I wrote the interlude in my head, or at least got a good outline with some flesh on it. I wrote the final scene and did a rewrite, also in my head. Dropped the knitting to make some notes. Picked up the loom again and started looping yarn and turning the stitches with the little hook.

While I looped and stitched I thought about my story so far, and some other stories that had influence on the tale. Tale. "Spinning a yarn." Yarn is used in knitting. Hmmm. Hercules is in a recent scene, though not really Hercules. Just a guy loosely based on Hercules. One primary character is a Pinocchio. What stories to look at in my memory and imagination for that next scene?

Snow White? Perhaps. Sleeping Beauty? Yes, that will work. A previous scene in the series would serve as foreshadowing for that idea. You know, where a hint of 'what is to come' is dropped into the story and later comes about and you as the reader go "Ahhh, yes!"

So I sits and thinks and sits and knits and this outline forms in my head and I drop the knitting and make notes and then I take up the loom again and knit on as I thinks.

The knitting is working really well. I can't cut myself, don't have to sharpen anything, and I don't get wood chips all over the place. When I need to drop the work to make a note or something it is a bit less involved, since I wear a protective glove on one hand when I whittle but don't when I knit. I don't have to find a safe place for the knife, take off the glove, yada yada.

The masculinity thing is no issue, since I have a creative mind and have read lots of stuff and I am as good at justification as anyone else. For a lot of centuries in a lot of cultures men were weavers and tailors and textile manufacturers more so than women, so who is to say that my knitting isn't a manly thing? Also, I can use manly colors to make manly scarves and blankets. Manly.

Now I have my bridge scene in mind and notes made, but I am making some progress on the blanket piece I am working on so I keep knitting. It is pretty relaxing, just looping and stitching and stuff... Oh. Here's an idea. Yes. I will make a note. Hmmm. That won't fit into the framework of book three.

I just knitted myself into book four. Cool! I think that book four should be about four scarves, three hats and at least one full-sized blanket long.

I need to pick up some more yarn!

A Man Walks into a Bar in Heaven-

How sufficient is the grace of God? For those who don't know, the grace of God is that bit of forgiveness he has for where your Do's are not greater than your Don't's. In other words, it is His forgiving your sins not because you do enough good stuff to erase the bad stuff. It is simply because the blood of Jesus Christ is sufficient as a sacrifice to pay for those sins. All of them. Forever.

How sufficient is the grace of God? I had an image in my mind of walking into a bar in Heaven. (The bar is symbolic; it's something that shouldn't be in Heaven according to traditional perspectives. Just run with this.) I see sitting at a table Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Billy Graham, and any Pope of your choice. (It is sad that I know the first names of two human monsters and not one name associated with a Pope.)

They are laughing and having some really good beer. It has to be good. This is Heaven. They invite me over to join them. What should I think? What should I do? Hitler and Stalin were rather nasty guys. They were responsible for a lot of people dying in rather unpleasant ways. Some of the Popes (sorry to all of you Pope fans) were not a lot better.

That's the question. (Billy Graham is there just to give some people a righteous dude they would expect to be there. By the way, he admitted to being a sinner.) Is the grace of God sufficient to pay for the sins of someone like Hitler? Most people, even people who don't give much credence to the idea of sin, would consider Hitler a really sinful sinner. His is a high-water mark of sin. Hard to beat, unless you are Genghis Khan or someone like that.

I say, yes. Sin is sin. A little or a lot, it demanded the death of Jesus Christ. Now for those who don't know, Jesus was without sin. The Son of God and all of that. He offered Himself as a substitute for each and every sinner. When it comes down to the whole sacrifice-for-sin thing, He did it for me. Me. My sin, as paltry as my sin may be on the Hitler scale, demanded the sacrifice of the sinless Son of God. And, He did it willingly.

How does this grace thing work? It is so simple that huge volumes of volumes have been written on the matter. You just believe. You believe enough to know that you rightly will stand before God as your judge. What will you plead? Guilty, of course. Then you simply state that you rely on the blood of Christ, and nothing else.

That's what I intend. I have nothing more to offer. Nothing else is sufficient. Nothing more is necessary. The blood of Christ, His voluntary sacrifice, is sufficient. The grace of God is sufficient. I depend upon it.

Who will be there in Heaven? Other than me, I don't really know. If they are redeemed by the blood of Jesus, however, I will certainly be glad to sit down and have a beer with them.

Will there be beer there? Of course. Beer, and really good sandwiches.

It's Heaven, don't you know?

Satire and the Sacred-

I am a Christian. My Christian background, however, encompasses Atheism and Agnosticism. I had a conversion experience and as a consequence I consciously sought to submit the wholeness of my being to the Christian way of thinking and doing.

Unfortunately, like so many things in this world, there is and is not one singular Christianity. Being the spiritual adventurer I was in my youth I sought a broad range of experiences within the Christian community. I have fellowshipped with a lot of believers from a lot of backgrounds. I attended a mission in my early Christian experience and received training. I attended a Christian college for a time. I have seen a lot of Christianity.

Because I do not espouse any one particular narrow view of Christianity I am possibly more open to sacrilegious humor than a lot of my brothers and sisters. I believe both God and the Church are strong enough to stand up to a bit of ridicule and a few bad jokes. I also believe that within satire can be found valuable information.

The satirist is a very perceptive creature. Humorists are, in general. They lock onto inconsistencies and weaknesses in positions and arguments and shine a bright light on them. They point and laugh. Granted, this may be painful if they are pointing and laughing at something you hold sacred. On the other hand, anything you hold to be precious and valuable should be important enough to examine carefully.

If something is so precious as to be deemed holy it should be examined carefully and often. The light of satire can aid in this examination. Institutions and orders provide structure for living out ideals, and can be very good. Idealization beyond the point of critical examination, however, puts these institutions at risk of falling out of order. Without the light of satire, along with other sources of illumination, the flaws can go unattended and the structure will eventually collapse.

Human heroes have flaws, and recognizing those flaws does not show disrespect if they are genuine and factual flaws. If your hero has to be swathed in band-aids to keep up the hero image, perhaps your hero ought to be downgraded to a highly respected regular person. There is nothing wrong with that. A human hero shouldn't really be anything more.

This sanctification beyond examination can happen in politics. It often does. Sometimes it is a leader who deifies himself beyond the realm of examination or accountability. There are a few of those in the world today. I must note that they are not fond of satirists. They don't like lights shining where flaws might be exposed.

Certain political orders are equally uninterested in comic examination. Some political parties are also not fond of the light of satire. A lot of individual leaders and aspirants to leadership don't particularly like being  the butt of jokes. Yet the light of satire and the barb of the lampoon can provide insight and guide a real leader toward better leadership.

I recall that in the jail where I worked there was a fellow worker who could imitate me. I regret that I never had the opportunity to see that. I think it would be interesting. I doubt that I would have been offended, and suspect I would have found it funny. More importantly, it would have been enlightening. Sadly, it is an experience I have not had.

If you cannot see the humor in someone seeking to roast your sacred cow, perhaps you need to adjust your perspective. If someone or something is worthy of sanctification, it is worthy of careful and consistent examination. The light of satire can aid in this examination. Don't waste a resource.

Besides, it might really be a good joke. Laugh often. Laugh well.

Where are you, Robin Hood?

When I think about the pirates who raped our nation and ruined our economy, I get angry. When I think of the politicians who then gave the pirates money and got into bed with them, I get angry. When I see a protracted war in which our government is wringing the life out of our soldiers and then not taking any kind of real care of them, I get angry.

This is not a good kind of angry. I can't do much with it. Since I can't do much with it, there is a festering in my soul. I could get sick as a consequence. So, sometimes I write stories to cleanse my inner self. Unfortunately, a lot of my characters have been killing and dying, lately. Who wants to read that all of the time? It just isn't wholesome.

So, I got to thinking. How about a character who robs banks but never uses a gun and writes the threatening notes in such fine and non-threatening prose that the teller doesn't feel frightened and just gives up the money? And then this character gives the money to a homeless shelter, or a housing project for the poor, or any one of a multitude of fine charitable venues?

Of course, he only targets banks associated with the big corporations that raped the people, and so is simply "redistributing" the bail-out money the government stole from the people to give to the rich. Kind of a Robin Hood guy. Such a fine Robin Hood that really high profile lawyers take his case and get him off time after time. Yeah. And the judges go along, because this is RIGHT and GOOD.

Then more Robin Hoods crop up, and eventually the billions of dollars of the PEOPLE'S money gets moved to better places than the coffers of pirates.

What a ridiculous fantasy. I can't write that! Nobody would believe it.

Then I though I might write an opinion piece. This piece. And then it would go viral, and at least one guy or gal with enough intestinal fortitude would take it and run with it, and the billions of stolen dollars would find their ways to places where they are needed, and not just coveted. And others would copy this criminal and eventually the billions of stolen dollars would return to the people and...

Another ridiculous fantasy. Imagine my work going viral! Who do I think I am? Lady Gaga? Justin Bieber? At least they give something of substance to the world. I am just venting my overtaxed spleen onto the Internet so I don't get some kind of sick.

Still, I have to ask; Robin Hood, where are you? Wouldn't it be interesting? Imagine!