When the Sun Explodes...

My son is getting older, and the things that he hears are finally rattling around and sticking in his noggin’. That’s a good thing, but that introduces problems and issues that I have been wrestling with myself.

I’m an engineer. I work in things that exploit all the knowledge that mankind has gathered over the millennia. I am a problem solver. I use logic, experimentation, experience, and in many ways, the scientific method to fix the issues that I have to solve. For most of my life, I have been a religious believer. Truth is garnered by feelings, impressions, and the world has magical elements. Holding those two propositions in my mind as fundamental axioms has caused me no end of strife and conflict. I have built hedges around portions of my mind to keep the two from being in conflict and that has worked for a long time.

My son asked me a question. He’s seen the astronomy shows that I watch. He understands many of these concepts. “How long until the sun explodes and when it does, is that how Heavenly Father is going to cleanse the earth?”

Aside from this being a question that I might have wrestled with a couple of decades earlier, and here my 11 year-old is asking me this question, I really didn’t want to answer it. I quickly dismissed it, and I’m sure he was taken back by my abrupt reply.

That wasn’t fair to him. Those are the kind of questions I want him to ask. I want to deal honestly with him and perhaps let him know and understand that some of these questions aren’t easily, nor answered in a way that may or may not be harmonious with the people we know and love. Later that night I took him aside and answered the question, to the best of my ability.

People have different outlooks on life. The way we come to answers may be different. I think that science doesn’t posit God because there is no real place for magic. There is no place for an infinite being in an ultimately closed system. Religion doesn’t answer many of the questions we are asking. I don’t think there are many places for dinosaurs in a religious worldview. We can try to justify things, and that works for some. Perhaps the earth being cleansed by fire is nuclear war or the sun expanding into a red giant. Either one is a horrific event, especially the red giant event as the earth would be consumed by the sun and who wants to inherit a pile of ash, meek or not?

You can believe what you will. You can change your beliefs. I have. I’ve changed my beliefs and outlook many times. My political views are quite a bit different now than they were just a few years ago. I told my son that he can choose what he believes. He doesn’t have to take my word for it, his mother’s, his Sunday School teacher, or his school books. Find out what works for you, so you don’t have that internal conflict, that cognitive dissonance that people tend to get when you are told and believe different things. Growing up religious in a secular society presents its problems. How we deal with it is an individual matter. I wish I could give my son a good, concrete answer, but I can’t. I’m not there yet myself.

Honesty

While I think this topic is more important than just a blog post can deliver, I have been wanting to write this for several weeks. I know I'll do a lousy job, but I wanted to give it a shot.

 On a religious themed bulletin board, a poster started a topic on "Why can't we just talk to each other?" While the topic was more of a religious nature, dealing with belief and nonbelief, I was struck that it speaks to a much larger issue. I have had some personal experience with this.

 Over the past several years I've had to come to terms with a lot of things in my past. Things that I wasn't proud of and things that I needed to get off my chest. The internet allowed me to talk to the people involved and let them know of my feelings and change of heart. I had some long and painful discussions with those I care about on some very personal issues. It was gut-wrenching and I didn't realize how poisoned my mind was due to my own inability to be honest, to talk to those people around me about what I was going through, and what I had gone through. While my issues are legion, let me get into one particular item, and yes, it does deal with religion.

 I bring this particular issue up because it is something I rarely discussed. I think it has a social stigma. I definitely felt that I couldn't discuss this openly and honestly among my peers. I didn't feel I could go off narrative. I hated my mission. It was the hardest, most miserable time I have ever had in my life. I know, how can I say such a thing? The reasons are many, and I wasn't honest with myself or those around me for many years. I was severely depressed on my mission. I was failing at everything I tried. Money wasn't reaching me and while the depression ate my will away, I was pretty much starving for two months in one of my areas. I had a nervous breakdown while I was out. I did pull myself out of it, and the last year was tolerable, mostly because I finally saw an end to it.

 I never talked about it much afterwards. While I was dating I mentioned that I was a "Returned Missionary" if asked, but that is all I said. I know I didn't have it as hard as others, and most of the issues were situational and psychological. I can say fairly easily that if I went on a humanitarian type mission, my experience would probably have been much different.

 Only recently have I come to the point where I could talk about it. I talked with my wife and those that were directly concerned, trying to finally put an end to the internal strife I was feeling. I made a quick mention of it in a church meeting, but as quickly left the topic. There isn't much room, I feel, for those who do go off the narrative. We want our young people to go on missions. We don't talk about the negative.

 We don't talk about the negative. Why not? Why not prepare our children better for dealing with the issues that they will face? Why are we not honest with each other in terms of our experiences? I know I might be alone in my feelings, and I don't preach them as everlasting truth. I don't go out of my way to say everyone will have a horrible experience as I know that isn't true, but I do see how much damage I did to myself and others around me by holding it in.

Not often do students remember for 24 hours very many words taught by their teachers. Yet 50 years later some former students recall with lasting appreciation the words one teacher had her class repeat at the beginning of each day. Every school morning this rather unpretentious, plain, wise lady implanted the meaning of honesty into our minds by having us recite “A lie is any communication given to another with the intent to deceive.”

When I compare this definition with that found in the dictionary, which states, “A lie is an untrue statement made with the intent of deceiving,” I greatly appreciate her definition. A lie can be effectively communicated without words ever being spoken. Sometimes a nod of the head or silence can deceive. Recommending a questionable business investment, making a false entry in a ledger, devious use of flattery, or failure to divulge all pertinent facts are a few other ways to communicate the lie.

After having us go through this daily ritual, this wonderful lady, who never married but who had such a motherly influence over many of us, would teach with few words the importance of communicating truth under all circumstances. Often she simply said, “Don’t tell lies. Don’t share lies. Don’t participate in lies.”

--Marvin J. Ashton (https://www.lds.org/general-conference/1982/04/this-is-no-harm?lang=eng)

I think we live in a culture of dishonesty, and if we hold it in, it damages us. It did me. While I don't spread whatever my feelings and thoughts of my mission as the standard, there are others that had similar experiences to mine, and they also rarely talk about it.

 I refer you to this article, http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jun/07-vital-signs-paralyzed-by-faith/. While I can't say my issues were this bad, I do understand them. I contemplated the social price I would have paid if I had left my mission, and they were huge to a man of 20 years.

 I also suggest the following video. I think it says it better than any words I can spout.


Ah please talk to me
Won't you please talk to me
We can unlock this misery
Come on, come talk to me

 I did not come to steal
This all is so unreal
Can't you show me how you feel now
Come on, come talk to me
Come talk to me

 I can imagine the moment
Breaking out through the silence
All the things that we both might say
And the heart it will not be denied
Till we're both on the same damn side
All the barriers blown away

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRLjpXLEp1A

I freely admit that this wasn't my only issue that needed to be sorted out, and that I do have a few other "identities" on the web so I am not easily identified on boards and blogs. I might not be completely honest yet, but I do have to protect others and myself in other areas. Take that for what it is worth.

I reserve the right to modify and extend my remarks.

St. Louis



This is a power station located in Springfield. I've told
many of my friends that I often stop and look at
them occasionally. This time I was stopped at a
McDonalds across the highway from it waiting for the rain
to pass.

 There was a project at work attempting to correct some faulty data in our reports. It was to dominate my life at work for about three weeks. I was seeing my opportunity to get out of town while the weather was warm quickly disappearing. I almost begged for some time off after we made the data switch. I asked for 3 days off, and they gave it to me, but on the condition that some other things were finished too. In reality, that meant I got two days off. One of the only perks you get for staying long at my company is that you get more time off. The problem is getting the chance to use it.

I packed up my things and put the saddlebags on bike and at noon on Tuesday, headed south.


The bridges over the canal. I-270 is the farthest bridge
and the closest bridge is the road through the park.

  The trip south was pretty uneventful. I encountered some rain near Springfield and did some interchange hopping. It seemed whenever I got on the highway, it started raining. Once I actually got south of the city, it was clear riding. Illinois is a long state and crossing it diagonally takes a good deal of time. I arrived at my motel at around 7:30.

The next morning I got up and had breakfast and headed about 10 miles west to the Chain of Rocks Canal. I had heard that they converted an old 


This is a single barge going through the Chain of Rocks
Canal. Notice the standing bow wave. The power it
takes to move these through the water is impressive.

 bridge across the river for pedestrians. I wanted to walk it. The bridge was used for the original Route 66 and it was unusual in that it had a corner about 2/3 of the way across. I'm not sure why it did, but it did. Info. I also drove down to where the lock was, but it was closed off for security reasons. I crossed the river on 270 and headed north to see the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers. I am very interested in things that seem mundane to others. The merging of the rivers are historic and this is where many of the westward trails started, not to mention where Louis and Clark started their journeys. It wasn't dramatic, just two rivers getting together.


This is the original bridge that they converted to a ped
bridge. It was where Route 66 crossed the Mississippi.

I traveled south to St. Louis. I wanted to take a few pictures and pester friends with picture texts. I was impressed with the height of the arch. I'm not sure I would have been able to keep my sanity if I was asked to help build it. Just a bit too high up for me. I did lay down under it halfway between two ends. I wondered if this is where ideas came for Larry Niven or his illustrators on his Ringworld books. It was a very interesting experience. I hung around there, got a nice sunburn on my face and also visited the courthouse across the mall. I found that Dred Scott's trials were held there before the appeals headed him to the Supreme Court. It was pretty much the beginning of the Civil War on the legal front.



Confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers.

 I retired back to the motel room and prepared for my ride back. I intended to ride up the river road to the Quad Cities, but since I've done that in the past, if I needed to change my plans, I could.

I was met with a warm morning, and me with my warmest cycle jacket, and a traffic jam on the highway. I took an opportunity to get off the road and bypassed the jam and headed north. My clothes were wet with sweat by the time I stopped for gas in Alton. I adjusted things a bit, took some pictures of some caves, and headed to the confluence of the Illinois and Mississippi river.



My ugly mug in front of the Gateway Arch.

 There wasn't much to see, other than just nature, at the confluence. It wasn't a stark end of the river, but a bunch of islands. There was a nice power station across the Mississippi and I would have taken a picture, but it was a 4 lane highway and nowhere to pull over. It was a scenic trip, and I enjoyed the river communities that I drove through, but no gas stations and I found I was in need of fuel. I finally went through Pleasant Hill and found a gas station.

I travelled north and saw a sign that I was to pass through Kinderhook. There was some people there that forged a few small plates and sent them up to Joseph Smith where he proceeded to translate them. There are alternative ideas about the incident out there too (see Kinderhook Plates) and the debate goes on in apologetic circles. It was a place that I didn't expect to find, nor had I ever looked where it was.

It soon became colder and as I headed through Hamilton on my way to Nauvoo, I experienced about one minute of drenching rain. Great. I took a cold ride up to Nauvoo along the river on the wet road. I'm glad that there wasn't a lot of other people on the road. I didn't want to feel pressed as newly wet roads are dangerous.



Kinderhook of the Kinderhook Plates fame. Not something
that the LDS Church talks about much for now obvious
reasons.

I pulled into Nauvoo State Park to dry off and get my liner in the jacket as it had become quite cold. After that short rest, I rode up to the temple. I've always wanted to take that curve and see the temple on a motorcycle. It wasn't as fantastic as I had imagined. I took a picture and headed north, trying to outrun the dark grey blob approaching from the west.

A stop at Montrose and checking weather.com on my phone verified that I needed to move to outrun the rain. I decided that diagonally on US 34 was the best way to stay dry. If I could get north of Mendota, I thought I would be free and clear. No such luck. I hit consistent rain north of Princeton and actually the worst downpours were north of Mendota. So much for my hopes.



My quick stop in Nauvoo, trying to keep ahead
of the rain.

In pulled in to home around 6:00pm. I could barely move after such a long ride through wind and rain. I had water pooling in my boots. By the time I got the cycle in the garage, I was shaking pretty bad. I took a warm shower, put on dry clothes and turned up the heat. Since it was obvious that Fall had officially arrived, I wondered when the next bike ride would be. Still not sure. This ride was the longest and hardest I have taken yet.

A nice bike ride...yeah right.

I decided to use the opportunity of a nice Sunday morning to take a few of my kids out for a bike ride down across the river. This was the first attempt at getting Ellie out on the roads since last year. Last year it ended badly. During that fateful trip, we entered the bike path and it angled down as well as a slow turn to the left. Unfortunately, Ellie had an old used bike that has seen better days and for whatever reason, she went down and badly skinned her arm and leg. Tracy played ambulance and came down to get the girl and the bike.  So, one of my two trips with Ellie last year caused her pain and bloodshed.

On a side note, a friend’s husband had just recently been in an accident and was fairly banged up. This brought into question my own love of cycling as well as my recent purchase of a motorcycle. I didn’t know what to think about it.

So this year, we purchased new bikes for the kids and the warm weather was a good place to start the riding season. Ellie wasn’t all that comfortable with shifting the bike yet and I had to tell her forcefully to “own the bike” and turn the shifter until that chain moved. We then went past the area where she spilled last year and she was proud of that. The trip to the river was pretty uneventful otherwise. We went across the bridge there just for the experience and then went to the north. Ellie said she wanted to go across the river and see where we had found Dave (our cat) and go along the paths there. Again, nothing eventful, except that she had a hard time keeping up, even though I was going as slow as I felt comfortable with. We crossed the streets going into South Elgin and I looked to the west and realized that we had to head home. The storms that weren’t expected until the afternoon looked like they were making an early appearance.

I must say that I did, once again, acknowledge that I absolutely love riding a bike. I have a cheap $80 bike, but I ride that thing hard. I feel so good with the burn in the legs and the crackle of dirt and gravel under the wheels. I could feel the arteries unclogging and the head clearing up. I wanted to ride for hours and hours just to feel that burn longer.

As we turned onto the road into South Elgin, I had to urge Ellie to move a little faster. Honestly, we weren’t moving much faster than walking. I was hoping to get under the bridge in SE before the heavens opened up. We did get to SE and the thunder was rumbling pretty strong. I decided that we could probably make a dash to home, as the edge of the clouds was visible. We crossed 31 and headed up the bluff. Then the lightning kicked in. It was directly overhead and Ellie was starting to become unnerved by the flash and noise. Then raindrops hit… I figured we couldn’t go on with Ellie in that state so I pulled up the kids into a nursing home’s porch to wait out the rain. I paged Tracy to come and get Ellie as she was clearly out of it at this point.

As I saw the downpour, I felt horrible to ask my wife to come out in this weather. Ellie had started to calm down once the lightning had moved on. A passer by drove up and offered to load our bikes and take us home but I told him that my wife was coming and thanked him for his consideration. Shortly after that, one of the aids came out and offered us to come inside. I felt that while I’m sure the residents would have greatly appreciated the company, I don’t think my somewhat shy kids wouldn’t take too well to being the center of attention of all those old people. Maybe if I had steeled them up to it before, sure, we could visit, but not on such short notice.

Tracy came and we realized that we couldn’t fit the bike in the van, and by that time the rain had tapered off. Ellie had settled down so we decided to ride the west of the way home. I thanked Tracy for all that she had gone through and apologized once again to Ellie for all the adventures she had when we went out for rides. She did cry once again on the way home so I told her how proud I was and that she was doing fine. By the time we got on our street, the second wave of rain was hitting and we did get a little wet, but otherwise we survived.

So much for a nice, calming, morning ride. I hope later rides are more uplifting.

Currahee!

Rating:	★★★★
Category:	Books
Genre:	History
Author:	Donald R. Burgett

I’m going to do a quick review of “Currahee!” but it is actually a review of the series. The books were written by Donald R. Burgett. The series also includes “The Road to Arnhem”, “Seven Roads to Hell”, and “Beyond the Rhine”. The unit that Mr. Burgett was a member of was the 101st Airborn which is the same unit as Band of Brothers’ fame and mirrors the experiences in that book.
First, my impressions of the books themselves was that this could have easily been made into one book instead of 4 separate books. I think that was a market decision to obtain more money from the customers.
Mr. Burgett didn’t hold any punches. He was very matter of fact in his narrative. If he liked something, he stated and if he didn’t, likewise. Some of the circumstances were harrowing, and I guess when you have people trying to kill you while you are trying to kill them, it can lead to those kind of experiences. Some of the items that I found interesting are as follows.
In Market Garden, they were stationed at a house that was 1 foot underwater and for 24 hours, standing in that water looking for the Germans on the other side of the river. Also, what was pronounced was that he had to live on English rations, which were far from enjoyable.
The Bastogne book demonstrated how desperate the fighting was. Taking station in cold frozen foxholes with dense fog, fighting Tiger tanks to marching through snow covered fields and being ambushed by a German squad and shooting them at very, very close range. The most profound was probably when they were withdrawing and taking station in the trees and realizing that they were dug in right in the middle of germans doing the exact same thing.
The drive through southern Germany and liberating the concentration camp so near Landsberg Prison as well as rolling through Berchtesgarden on through Austria. The most jawdropping was their assault on a surrendered german officer for his racial rants and subsequent discovery of a train loaded with gold bars.
It was a very good book, very simply written by a man who didn’t have anything to hide. You can’t read American World War Two history without reading these books.

Double Date

On a recent “double-date” with good friends, I noticed a woman seated in the back corner. She had a black blouse with tattered sleeves. She had make up but not overtly so. She was texting away on her phone, no idea to whom. It made me think of my dating days, and how I would handle things differently if I did it today.  I was a nothing more than a dumb guy dating. I was miserly in my compliments and awkward in my demeanor.  I never have overcome the awkwardness, unfortunately. While I was watching, her date, I assume, returned to her table, she looked up with a smile that wasn’t faked or forced. I wondered if the man realized how she appeared to be happy at his return. Did he appreciate the time she took to look nice for him? From his dress, he didn’t seem to have taken much time in his appearance, being dressed in jeans and T-shirt. 

I looked at my wife and rejoined the conversation with our friends and once again had that surge of emotion that this woman has given up her life to be with me, and wondered if I am vocal enough with her, telling her how much she means to me? The evening, early as it was (I’m hoping it isn’t the onset of geriatric time) was soon over and we all entered the car for our trip home to our children. I leaned over to Tracy and told her how beautiful she was, that I enjoyed being with her. We have had few opportunities in the past decade for any kind of dating with each other, and I truly enjoy my time with her. I hope that now our children are getting older, with our careers firmly established, we can restart our courtship… Hopefully, she’ll still like me after all these hectic years.

Ten Items or Less

Rating:	★★★
Category:	Movies
Genre:	Comedy

This movie starred Morgan Freeman, which is the sole reason I rented it. It tracks the day of an actor researching a role and how he connects with a supermarket clerk. Now, if you're going to connect with a supermarket clerk, make sure she is a good looking one. It really isn't all that insightful, at least I didn't feel that it was, but it did make me think about what it means to just fall into someone's life and have a really good time. I know that might be the essence of friendship, but this was done in the span of a day. I sometimes wish I was that spontaneous, and perhaps one day I will be.

This is a good flick. It wasn't a long movie, but it made its point. It still isn't "500 Days of Summer", but it is a good "relationship" movie.