Wanda

About 39 years ago I and my mother came to meet a young lady at the train station in Los Angeles.

She was in the process of lightening the load on her shoulders by the weight of the father of her three children. He wasn’t a villainous man but amoral to a criminal point. He never understood the concept that just because he had done "IT" did not make it right or acceptable.

She had in tow the three children mentioned above. A beautiful slightly reserved six year-old girl a gregarious four year-old and the happiest little two year-old boy I have ever known. The two younger ones ran and jumped into my arms and for the first time I became "Uncle Dave." Well, "Uncle David" actually the change to Dave came many years later when I was in the Navy but that is a different story.

The young lady didn’t bring much with her. Beyond the children and some cloths she brought a bright mind and a determination to take care of herself and her family. No High School diploma, no notable job skills and no real insight into how she was going to accomplish the goal she had set for herself. As she had spent her life so far taking care of herself, her children and a house she found her first work in a rest home doing the same for the elderly residents. She was honest, hard working and funny and everybody loved her, I think, because she honestly cared for the people she took care of. It wasn’t just a job, she was the closest thing to family many of them had and that’s how she treated them, like family.

Through her work she developed an interest in health care as an occupation that might help her build a life beyond next week’s paycheck. She took classes and got certified as a Respiratory Therapist. That was over thirty years ago and she is still at it. Today she has a beautiful house a loving husband a whole mess of kids and grand kids all of whom think the world revolves around her and she has that same determination to take care of herself and her now very extended family.

She’s going to be sixty later this year.

She’s my big sister and I couldn’t be more proud of her if she were president of the United States.

Uncle Dave

OK! 9/11

A couple of people have asked why I didn’t put anything about 9-11 on my blog on 9-11. I think the reason was that everyone else in the world who has access to a forum wrote, produced, plagiarized or copied something about 9-11. Yes it is an important event in the history of our country and it shall go down in the history of the world as a seminal event in world politics. Though indirectly so, from it sprang such acts as the trains of Madrid and the subways of London. But also sprang the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

From the point of view of the instigators of 9-11, I suspect it was a great success. Of course the aftermath went a bit farther than they expected as the war in Afghanistan toppled the one regime in the world that openly backed Osama Bin Laden in his war on the west. However, I suspect, they see the war in Iraq as the United States having built them a grand new playground in which to play at terrorism and in which to push their view of a world dominated by Fundamentalist Islam.

I don’t think we have ever had a president who has played so handily into the hands of our sworn enemies. He may well bankrupt the country with his personal vendetta based on a perceived, unsuccessful wrong done to his father and, by the way, having nothing to do with 9-11. I am morally certain, considering the fact that Bush I stopped the first Iraq war when it had been won, that he would not have backed the second Iraq War had it not been Bush II manufacturing it.

Back in 1992 I voted for Clinton to punish Bush for not killing Saddam Hussein. I was wrong, and history has shown me how wrong. I have no substantial complaints about how Bill Clinton ran the country, however I think we would have been a bit better off had Bush I had a second term. It probably would have prevented Bush II from ever reaching his present office.

Bush II is a tragedy of the democratic process. One man one vote means one stupid man one vote, one smart man one vote. It is the best system out there but it has some disturbing flaws. Do you realize that had there been a requirement that presidential candidates pass an 8th grade world history and geography final that Bush II would not have been allowed to run? I’m not positive that Clinton would have passed either but he would have done a lot better than Bush II. The fact that Al Gore would have gotten an "A" probably wouldn’t have helped his chances of winning.

If I have angered at least half of my readers with this missive, I am successful. If I have made all of them think, I am ecstatic.

Uncle Dave

He's Gone... No Longer to Annoy Animals

Turns out I was wrong about Steve Erwin. I always assumed his fate was to be alligator or crocodile excrement.

There are people in the world that (for the betterment of mankind) are to dangerous or stupid to be allowed to live, as by living the life they choose in a most public venue they set a very bad example for the most impressionable among us.

We owe it to posterity to set an example for our progeny that if followed won’t get them killed. There are exceptions to this rule, but none of them end with said offspring becoming menu items or targets of primal vengeance.

Steve Erwin is dead and in his dying he has set a much better example for our children than he ever did by living. In life he showed that taking foolish dangerous chances was fun and exciting. In death he showed that taking foolish dangerous chances will get you killed. I hope the other celebrities who follow in his footsteps learn from his precedent or they will probably set the same example themselves, preferable, if they must, before they incite more of our young to die while handling poisonous snakes or wrestling alligators.

Could this have been pay-back for taking his one month old baby into the crocodile pen? I sincerely hope whatever was in Mr. Erwin that caused him to do these sorts of things was not hereditary.

Karma, is equal opportunity but none the less she can be a bitch. If you survive doing spectacularly dangerous things in a community forum, it stands to reason that the one you don’t survive will be a public moment as well.

If you keep on sticking your sausage into the sausage grinder just out of reach of the blades your sausage will eventually become Sausage.

You want to live an exciting life? Ride a skateboard down a hill, Sky-Dive, Bungee-Jump, do back flips off the high board but don’t go around angering beasts with big sharp teeth, poisonous fangs or claws. You may think it’s fun, but at best it is most annoying to the beasts. Our natural fears of such things may be pre-historic in origin, but they exist for good reason, don’t ignore them.

Uncle Dave

Today is my birthday. I don’t particularly think about celebrating it, but observing it makes sense to me.

When I was a kid birthdays had a lot of power to hurt me. Back when I allowed myself the luxury of gathering up wrongs done to me and holding them close like little treasures to be taken out and marveled over in the dark and held against those I imagined had done those wrongs to me. Christmas worked that way too. If I didn’t think I had gotten enough or hadn’t gotten exactly what I had wanted than I held that "Wrong" against someone in particular and the "World in General."

You learn these things, these habits, from observing the people around you but to un-learn them you are pretty much on your own. So this birthday I am going to give myself a present, a really big one. I am going to let go of all these "Wrongs" I have perceived done to me and start anew, free of bad feelings held toward anyone. They were, after all existing only in my mind, and certainly mine to do with as I please. So for the last time I will take out these treasures and inspect them carefully then let them go free to wander the cosmos or dissipate into the nothing from which they were made. I’ll have to do this as they come to me as for the moment I can’t think of a one.

Uncle Dave