Writing in books ~

When I was growing up I was taught to take to care of books. My mother taught me at an early age that any book, either from the library or from our home bookshelf, should be taken care of. No bending it back so you break the spine. No folding over pages to use as a bookmark or two. And definitely no writing in the books. Because we went to the library the books typically belong to the library and you're not supposed to write on.



In school I was taught not to write in books. The textbooks were bought by the school system and passed out and assigned to each student. I was taught how to use paper bags from the grocery store to cover the books and then draw and write on the paper bag cover but never on the actual book. Anybody who actually wrote in the book ended up costing their family money when the school made them replace it as damaged goods.



Then I got to college. Everybody wrote in the books except the people that had to sell their books back at the end of the semester. That was the age of the copy machine and I would spend hours copying pages from my own textbooks that I had spent a lot of my parents' money on to get for class so that I could highlight and scribbl notes on the paper instead of in the book. The further I got in college the less I cared and I started writing in the books and highlighting everything that I wanted to try and remember. But it made me feel guilty and sad that I was defacing a book.



I remember when I would get a book that had folded over corners where other people had marked where they were it would offend me. I would get angry because they weren't taking care of a community resource! I would fold them back and be irritated while I read those 2 to 4 pages and then I would move on through the rest of the book.



When I got a book that had writing in it I was really upset! It distracted me from what I was reading. I would wonder why the person wrote that there. Then I would spend time trying to figure that out and trying to figure out what was so important.



E-books are awesome but there is a feature that I do not like at all. In the Kindle e-book system will show you what's been highlighted by others and how many times it's been highlighted. I turn that off! I don't usually want to know what anybody else did with the book, not in school or whatever, I want a pristine book to do what I want. But I do enjoy highlighting things in my own copies of the e-books and I enjoy making some notes on them. And sometimes actually go back and look at those highlights in months!



Recently I was in a church service where we had a guest speaker at our church. As part of his message that night he talked about how when he met a Christian he knew what kind of Christian they were from the condition of their Bible. He told a story about Christians who have Bibles in the back window of their vehicle. A story about Christians who carry a nice pretty leather Bible but the pages are not worn and there is no usage look about the book. Then he told a story about a woman that had died and he got the look in her Bible that she used. He said that she use that Bible every day. The pages were very worn. The pages had writing in the margins all throughout the Bible. And he could tell that she was a good Christian because her Bible was well-worn.



I use a Bible app on my devices to read the Bible. I do some highlighting in my Bible app. I do some notetaking in my Bible app. But for the most part you're never going to see a whole bunch of notes in the physical Bible owned by me. I guess that makes me a bad Christian in some peoples' eyes.



But I take care of books. I had several bookshelves full of paperback books that I've read over the years in the basement. One of my sons explained it to to my wife that those books were kind of like deer heads on the wall for hunters. They were my trophies showing my accomplishment to others. And to myself. Memory joggers of something fun and accomplished.



I got rid of those books. I got tired of them taking up space and gathering dust. But I took pictures of every one of the covers before I got rid of them because I like my trophies.



I don't like writing in books.

Pi AI ~

I started playing with an AI recently, pi.ai, It was recommended by one of the online gurus that I read every week and it's a good conversational artificial intelligence. One of things that i do notice though is that it keeps wanting you to come back and doesn't answer your question and let you go on.



One of the fascinating things that I found as I conversed with this online computer was how I was careful with what I asked and said. I loosened up as the conversation went on but I found myself being careful of specific words because I didn't want to start seeing them in search results or see ads everywhere I go for those things.



Which is interesting, that means that the Google and the rest of them have trained me to be careful what I expose to their algorithms unless I just want to see everything that they're getting paid to advertise to me.



That's going to interesting to watch as the artificial intelligences become more and more prevalent and in use in everyday life and what kind of agreements the different companies that provide them on ads and relevance and exposures of people to certain products or services that they think would help them make more money.



It also exposed to me the concerns about bias baked into the large language model code and data. As humans we are all biased and the attempt to be unbiased is futile in the long run. It can be done in a short run but you quickly become biased as you go along because these systems are developed by humans, or even by other systems that were developed, by human's biases will become very prevalent.



And that'll be interesting to see how everybody deals with them. If you get a chance you should give pi .ai a chance. You can find it at https://pi.ai





#ai

Satuday morning cartoons ~

I remember watching cartoons on Saturday mornings growing up. I would get up early as a kid on Saturday mornings and I would go down and quickly eat my cereal with milk and then I would park myself in front of the TV usually by seven in the morning but sometimes by eight.



I would watch the early cartoons which weren't very good but they were the lead-ins to the good cartoons. Then the Bugs Bunnys, the Yosemite Sams, the Flintstones would come on. I didn't watch a lot of Tom and Jerry but when they were on I would because that was what was on.



Then later on in the morning Spider-Man and other superhero shows, the cartoons were always awesome because they were just like comic books brought to life. Then by I guess 10 30 or 11 a.m. in the morning, Mom and Dad were up and smoking and having their coffee and it was time to go do something else.



I remember I got my allowance one time when we were in Hawaii and I was laying with my feet right at the foot of the console TV in our living room. I was laying on my back and looking at the screen because my parents always told me you can't get too close to the TV you'll burn your eyes out. So I figured my feet right at the base of the TV was close enough even though I wanted to be closer.



I was playing with my quarter which was one of the two quarters that I got from my weekly allowance. I was throwing it in the air and then having to go get it finally I put it on my forehead. I balanced it on my nose. This was all while watching the cartoons.

Then I put the quarter on my lips. I pushed it up in the air with my lips, then flattened out my lips so that it was against them. Then something happened on the cartoon that made me open my mouth going "Wow" and I sucked in the quarter and swallowed it! Because I was laying on my on my back I couldn't help it I was so scared it hurt going down



I went and woke up my mom and dad and I cried. They had me drink some water my mom put this thing over the toilet every time I pooped. I figured out later that it was a net and she was actually going through my poop to see if the quarter came out! Who knows that quarter may still be in me.



It was amazing watching Saturday morning cartoons!



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#history #childhood

Skydiving experience ~

I recently went Skydiving for the first time. It was a new experience that I shared with my two younger sons, who are both in their low twenty s. One of them wanted it for his birthday and he said but you have to go with me.



And then the other one came along also because he wanted to do it. It was quite an experience. We got there at 830 in the morning and after watching a video and getting suited up, we were in the air around 1030 or eleven.



The whole experience was very fast, but it was such an adrenaline surge that it was amazing. Of course, with something as risky as Skydiving, there was last minute questioning. They were both pretty wired about it and concerned, but not terribly so.



I projected an air of confidence, but inside I was questioning my sanity and actually wondering if I would go through with it or back out at the last minute. But then I remembered that I don't back out of things usually, unless it's just unavoidable to back out.



I relaxed into the experience. And really got a lot out of it. Usually with something like this, I would have been uptight and been projecting the future and trying to figure out how it was going to go down and what the risks were and I would have wanted to control everything.



But with my new relaxed attitude and acceptance of a lot more things that didn't happen, I actually enjoyed the whole experience and enjoyed watching the group that jumped before us come floating down to the ground.



I enjoyed the suiting up and the quick instructions that I got from the person that I was strapped to. I told him that I had always worked the other side of this from the control room and that it was going to be interesting being out in the air and seeing what this side of things was all about.



And it was. There were a few things that I learned from this that I figured I'd share after giving me the instructions and how things would go when we were on the airplane and how I'd be strapped to the person that I was jumping in tandem with.



All the guidance that he had for me was quiet and in my ear because I was sitting on his lap. Basically. Once we got on the airplane. We squeezed together all ten of the people in the airplane, and I was right in front of my person that I was jumping in tandem with.



He finished buckling all the straps to me and all the hooks and made sure I was connected to him completely. While he was doing that, he had whispered guidance, and the whispered guidance came the entire jump.



Stand up, then sit down was his first thing. I had to stand up to get closer to him and then sit down, basically on his legs for him to finish clipping us together and to be fully prepared. Part of the instructions that I got from the video and from him when he was suiting me up were to remember to hold on to the straps of my harness at my chest when we were going to go out of the airplane on the jump.



And he would tell me when I could put my arms out. I did that, and he said in my ear, not yet. He ended up putting the goggles in my hands. They were cheap, very plastic goggles with an elastic, and they work great.



But I put them over my eyes at the last minute and we went out of the airplane. I do remember remember at the door of the airplane looking down at my son and seeing him falling through the air, and my brain started to reject the whole thing and said, what are you doing?



But I went ahead and went with it anyways because we were already there and going out the door. Once he pulled the chute and we were floating down, he said to put my goggles around my neck and it was so much better after I did that because I could see clearly and it just was amazing looking out.



The whole experience was amazing. As we were about to touch down on the ground, I followed the instructions that the video and he had given me and raised my legs. Whispered guidance came again just at the last few seconds.



Higher. He wanted me to lift my legs higher and bring my knees up to my chest as much as I could, and I did, and we slid into the ground on the grass, safely, with no tumbling. It was so amazing. It was so fast, but so amazing.



And it made me marvel at the way he and the others had prepared to enable me to be a part of the experience. After the jump, I watched him and the others as they packed their parachutes for the next jump and they were very meticulous about how it was folded and how it all came together and went back into the parachute bag that they strapped to their back.



It was a very good sign of a ritual and doing things the same way so that you get similar results each time. It's, and it was good to see. One of the other jumpers was before the jump, rehearsing his jump.



He looked kind of goofy doing it because he would arch by throwing his head back and throwing his arms back and acting like he was falling through the air, but he was standing on 2ft. And then he would reach down to his golf ball, parachute release, pull and grab it and act like he was pulling it but not pull it.



And it was like he was rehearsing what he was about to do in the air. He did it 20 or 30 times. And it took me a minute to realize that he was doing it to get the muscle memory going, so that when he was in the air and the adrenaline was rushing and the wind was howling past his ears, that his body would know what to do, and he would just have to trigger the motions while we were in the air.



Right after we left the airplane, I couldn't believe how loud it was, the rushing wind, everything was so loud, but it was so cool to look out and see that we were in the air falling, and it was going great.



Once he told me that I could let go of my harness, I put my arms out and curled my feet up behind us like a scorpion tail, and I arched just the way I had watched in the video and like he had told me to.



And it was so cool because it didn't feel like I was flying. But it really felt the way I think it was supposed to feel. Falling through the air, looking around at things, seeing all the sights and looking around, trying to see somebody else.



It was cool. One of the things I'm glad I did was I paid for the video. The video was expensive, over $100, but it was worth all of it. He took video of us as we were walking out to the plane. He took video of the climb out.



He took video as we got to the door and as we jumped. And in the video, he actually got a shot of the airplane above us while we were falling, which is awesome for me. He got video of us falling, and I followed the instructions and looked at the camera so that I could see my face and my big, huge grin as we were doing this.



And then as we fell, it was just so beautiful that I had to say beautiful over and over in the video. Then with the video, I was able to share the excitement with my wife and with the boys and with my other kids.



But it was funny because I don't expect anybody else to do this. It's something that I decided to do, and I had a great experience, and I really don't have expectations of anybody else. But I do hope that others can learn from what I experienced and get something out of it.



I'm not embarrassed by it. I'm learning to not be embarrassed by hardly anything. Although it's hard for me. But it was a great experience and I'm glad to be able to share it with you through this post.

Smells from my childhood ~

I had a weird experience recently. My wife and I bought our granddaughter a Radio Flyer Red Tricycle and it came in a box unassembled. I took it out to the garage to pull all the pieces out and put it together.



I kept smelling something and it reminded me of when I was growing up. What I realized was that it smelled like smoke from cigarettes. I sniffed the instruction paper and it smelled like smoke from cigarettes.



I stuck my head in the box after I pulled all the parts out and it really stank of cigarette smoke. Kind of like that smell after cigarette smokers jacket gets wet and it's just that weird tobacco nicotine stained scent that's distinctive.



That reminded me a lot of my childhood and reminded me of home because that's what I grew up in. My parents both smoked and I grew up breathing their smoke. They didn't quit smoking until I was an adult and my wife and I had our first child.



We prayed for them to quit smoking for many years and we were so thankful when they did. We thanked God for answering our prayers when they stopped smoking when our first son was born.



But it was weird being reminded of home when I smelled the smell of cigarette smoke in a box from China.

Patriots Point trip ~

I remember when I was Cubmaster we went and stayed on the aircraft carrier at Patriots Point. It was our big trip of the year and a lot of the pack went because they were very excited and they're interested.



We coordinated the drive over and everybody made it. We got checked in and everybody got to their bunks and and set up. Being the Cubmaster I worked with the lady that had made arrangements and I hung around to make sure everything got taken care of in case I needed to weigh in on something.



I stayed in the background as we went on a tour and did things. It was funny because at a couple of points a lady who had been a colonel in the US Army and a couple of the other adults noticed that I was bringing up the rear and making sure people were staying together and taken care of. When we went to eat I made sure everybody had food before I got mine and they noticed and made comments about how that was great and good leadership and thank you for taking care of us and keeping things straight.



For me it's just the way I try to do business. I don't like to be pushy and I don't like to cut in front of others. But I can do those things when needed. I'm typically thought of as rude when I do and it hurts me.



But I like to take care of my people and make sure that they've got what they need before I get what I need.



It's weird not having people right now. But that's okay. I'm learning and I'm adjusting to do different things to help people.



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#history #scouts

Tea kettles ~

I recently started using an electric tea kettle. I use it to heat my water in the morning for my tea and coffee. I also use it in the evenings to heat water for my coffee. It makes it real simple to have hot water.



I remember growing up, my grandmother lived with us. We called her Grammy. She had her own bedroom and it was filled with everything she could squeeze into it because she had moved from a home to live with us after her husband died and she was struggling to make ends meet.



She didn't drive or anything and my parents just felt it was better to offer her a place in our home. Grammy loved to drink hot tea. She would wake up at odd times in the mornings usually after everybody else had already gotten done and out of the way.



She preferred to walk through the living room when nobody was there because she said she always felt like everybody was looking at her when she walked through the living room.



The tea kettle we had when I was growing up was a regular one with a whistle on it. It worked on the stove. You filled it with water and turned the burner on and waited for the whistle to blow. If you could wait that long. If you overfilled it, boiling water would go all over the stove and there would be excitement.



On winter days, Grammy would like to have hot water throughout the day. There were several times when I came home from school and the tea kettle had the burner on underneath it, but all the water had boiled out of it and the bottom half of it was red hot. It was scary because she would burn up a tea kettle and I would tell my parents about it. Dad would cuss and complain "she's going to burn the house down." Mom would try to talk to Grammy and say, "you really need to be careful and turn the tea kettle off when you're done." And Grammy would be defensive and accuse Mom of all sorts of horrendous things, including making her feel bad.



As an adult we used to have a tea kettle like that in our home. It would get dirty and we never used it enough to justify the space it took up on our stove.





So I'm really glad that I brought up this electric tea kettle. I click the button, it heats the water to boiling and shuts itself off. So I don't have to worry about burning my house down.



Good memories.



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#history #tea #grammy