Chance meeting

I only saw him once and it was only for a little while. I was trying not to eavesdrop on a conversation he was having with someone else. After a few minutes I gave up the ruse of pretending not to pay attention and I listened, wide-eyed, to his tales of life in the boxing ring. When the conversation was finished he approached me and said, "I've been noticing you. You look really sweet. Would you like to go out sometime?" and I said, "Ummmm.... maybe?" and since I didn't have anything to write his phone number on I handed him a book that I carried around all the time and he wrote his name and his phone number on the front page.

Every time I opened that book (which was every time I needed a laugh, aka, every day) I saw the name and the number and went through the usual should I/shouldn't I routine. To be honest, I was pretty intimidated by the man's size. He was literally a heavyweight boxer, and it showed. 6' 5" and 250+ pounds of muscle. My Aunt Patty would always say, "Call the boxer!" and I can't count how many times I chickened out.

For years, long after the book had been left behind and the phone number (but not the name) forgotten, I kicked myself regularly for not at least striking up a friendship with the guy. Many times I looked for him online. I could always find his boxing stats, but not the person.

Fast forward to modern times.

Baited breath. I define that as the three or four seconds between the time I click on the link that says "Obituaries" until the page loads and I can reassure myself that nobody I care about has gone away.

And there it was. The name written in my treasured old book. The age was right. The nickname was right. I didn't even know the man but the knowledge of his death took my breath away. No mention of his boxing career in the obituary, no mention of the death of a local boxer in the newspapers, but it was him, and he was gone.

And again I kick myself, because I had the chance to be his friend and I blew it.

No doubt he forgot about me ten minutes after he autographed my book, but I never forgot about him, and I never will. When one contemplates their own death, can they possibly imagine how many lives they touched, or how many people will be sad about the world losing them?

Extreme regret on my part.

Rest in Peace Brian Scott.

No Forgiveness, No Mercy

While I've never given a care about Kansas politics, a political ad I just saw on TV shocked me. The candidate, Jerry Moran, is a Republican, a member of the party that constantly panders to and counts on the vote of the Religious Right, yet his message is most un-Christianly. He's criticizing his opponent for supporting amnesty (aka mercy, forgiveness) for undocumented immigrants. Take note of the sharp barb on the wire fence at the end of the video clip:

Now, I never presume to know the mind of God, outside of what is written, so I can speak with confidence and references about the religious perspective of the above political ad.

Here's God on the subject of immigrants:

Leviticus 19:33-34 When an alien lives with you in your land, do not mistreat him. The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt. I am the LORD your God.

Exodus 22:21 Do not mistreat an alien or oppress him, for you were aliens in Egypt.


Exodus 23:9 Do not oppress an alien; you yourselves know how it feels to be aliens, because you were aliens in Egypt.

Deuteronomy 10:19 And you are to love those who are aliens, for you yourselves were aliens in Egypt.

Here's Jesus on forgiveness and mercy:

Matthew 5:7 Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.

Matthew 6:14-15 For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.

So you see, we don't need to wonder about how God wants us to treat immigrants, regardless of how they came to be in their new land. And we don't need to wonder about how Jesus feels about Amnesty. It's written in plain English, above.

The "NO AMNESTY" crowd would rather see families torn apart, they'd rather see children who were born American citizens deported to the other side of a border where drug war violence and poverty is rampant, they would like to deny health care to sick children whose parents came to our country the only way they could, they want to deny education to children who grew up in the United States, albeit without the proper paperwork. If the Religious Right, the mainstay of the Republican Party, doesn't speak out against "NO AMNESTY", then they need to start calling themselves the Religious Wrong, because their God and their Savior are very clear on the matter. I guess we will find out after the primary election votes have been counted.

And maybe someday politicians will be willing to take on the root of the "immigration problem," i.e., NAFTA-induced economic disparity and the futile War on Drugs, that cause human beings to flee their homelands in search of the American Dream the only way that's realistically possible for them.

Oil in the Creek

Everywhere I go and everything I do, I'm thinking about the oil leak in the Gulf. It's always in the corner of the peripheral vision of my mind's eye like a news graphic.

On the way to the library:

At the grocery store:

Eating my favorite foods:

Lately, though, there's a new graphic competing for space in my peripheral worldview:

It gets even worse when I'm walking through Sugar Creek:

Beautiful Sugar Creek, Missouri, is somewhat a BP town. It started out 100+ years ago as a Standard Oil town. Our grandparents and great-grandparents came from the "Old Country" (Czechoslovakia, Croatia, Hungary, etc.) to a land they were told had streets paved with gold, and none that I knew of were disappointed with the reality of the "New World". There was good paying work for the strong Hunkies who made their homes in the town near the bluffs of the Missouri River. They worked hard and many (if not most) used part of their paychecks to invest in the company that was their families' bread and butter.

Many Creekers who didn't work at the refinery were shrewd enough to know a solid company when they saw one, and it's hard to throw a rock in Sugar Creek nowadays without hitting someone who either worked for, saved for, or inherited Standard Oil stock, which later would be called Amoco stock. The refinery closed up shop in the early 1980s, taking almost all the jobs but leaving behind a community liberally dotted with Amoco shareholders, who became BP shareholders when Amoco was bought by British Petroleum in the 1990s. The Standard/Amoco/BP stock and its quarterly dividends have been the economic mainstay for many a senior citizen who worked hard during the town's heyday (when the refinery belched fumes that made the whole town smell like rotten eggs but nobody went hungry or shoe-less like they did in the Old Country), and the stock has provided financial security for families who lost loved ones to cancer caused by the benzines that, like the stock, the refinery left behind. Sugar Creek, Missouri, by-product of the American Dream, God bless it. Neither war nor Depression nor loss of the refinery has diminished this town's spirit

But can any of us survive this???

Live TV : Ustream

Go to Father

An obscure old poem that I stumbled upon:

"Go to Father!" she said
When I asked her to wed,
And she knew that I knew
That her father was dead,
And she knew that I knew
What a life he had led,
So she knew that I knew
What she meant when she said,
"Go to Father!"

Amateur Forestry

I got this bud from a guy I met who's from Humboldt County, California

It's not what you (might) think. It came from a sequoia tree, the tallest tree in the world. That's right, I'm going to grow my very own Redwood Forest right here in the Heart of America.

(Coming Soon)

The seeds are happily germinating (I hope) in a Ziploc® bag between two wet paper towels.

It will nicely complement my future lemon tree grove

Fourteen years and three months from now I'm going to have the freshest lemonade in all of Kansas City!

Now if I can just figure out how to germinate a coconut... or where to find the seeds in a pineapple... Google will be there for me when I'm ready. Professor Ulichne assures me that at some point in the distant future, Kansas City will be beach-front property. This is one the ways I'm preparing for that.