Sunday, July 26, 2015

Embrace the moments...

“Time spent with cats is never wasted.”
- Sigmund Freud

The years have taken a toll on my girl Leah. What was once a spry, take charge and by the way no prisoners feline, is now an older gal with a spontaneously fused sacral spine from arthritis, causing slower movement and a lot more rest in the day than in previous years.

On the day of this post, the planet has rotated 24,872 times since my birth and 5,838 for her.  Skipping the math, and for clarification, I am 68 and she a ‘gnat’s eyelash’ short of 16.

Cat’s lives, as it turns out, are calculated differently.

According to Tracie Hotchner, author of the Cat Bible:

o   1-month-old kitten = 6-month-old human baby
o   3-month-old kitten = 4-year-old child
o   A 1-year-old cat has reached adulthood, the equivalent of 18 human years
o   2 human years = 24 cat years
o   8 human years = 50 cat years
o   12 human years = 70 cat years
o   14 human years = 80 cat years
o   16 human years = 84 cat years

By these calculations, she is a dowager in the eighth decade of her life.

Getting along…
For years, the hallmark of our relationship was a predictable early morning and late evening ritual.

At the start of the day…the start of her day…she would slip silently along the rug covered bedroom floor, hop to the bed, climb on my back where, through the cobwebs of transitioning from sleep to wake, I sensed an additional 10 pounds parked between my shoulder blades…her energetic purring like a small vibrator.

“Hey You. Here I am…let’s get this day started!”

As I flipped from tummy to back, she with the aplomb of a lumbar jack in a log rolling competition expertly stayed on top. There we rested for a few minutes…two souls meditating in the mindlessness of the early morning as our – well my – engines began to increase their revolutions in preparation for the start of the day.  Certain I was awake, and her ‘ear scratching and back rubbing’ cup full, off she hopped in anticipation of breakfast, normally at the hand of my human partner Molly.

At night, as I slipped into bed to read, do crossword puzzles or whatever, this little figure would suddenly appear beside me, climb to my chest and purr away for a few more minutes of quality time.

As she looked at me, I could imagine her saying. “It’s nice to be here isn’t it - a good day for me, how about you?”

Once in awhile she might climb into my lap while I watched TV, but most of our quality time opened and closed the day…this was our time.

Time and gravity…
The last couple of years, her routine has changed. She still comes to bed early in the morning. No hopping up these days, but a slow and deliberate climb up the four steps by my side of the bed, where she rather indelicately steps on and over me on her way to Molly. There she perches, rests and purrs as though the years have meant nothing.  She doesn’t come to me at night any more at all.

A curious thing, however, has emerged in our relationship. Since I now work out of our home, I find Leah hanging around more and in different ways. After getting coffee and heading to the back yard as the sun greets the morning sky, she limps out the door just to be with me as I sip away and read.

When watching TV for the news or some program of interest, she comes to me. This is not intermittent, from time to time; this is every time I sit for a few moments.  If I don’t pick her up (I mentioned there is little hopping left in those rear end springs), she softly scratches the side of my leg and stares as if to say in clever alliteration,

“I am looking for a little lap loving…you had BETTER pick me up!”

If I take an afternoon nap, no matter where she is hiding in the house, I hear the uneven pitter patter of feet (no rugs on the bedroom floor of our Tucson home), the now familiar ‘up the steps’ hobble as two eyes emerge at the side of the bed, pausing as if asking permission and then slipping to my chest we drift away together for a few unconscious moments…

”This is kinda nice isn’t it?” her calming purrs suggests.

The workday has become the most notable to me. I spend a lot of hours behind the computer, and as I sit typing or reading, I feel a gentle rubbing on the side of my leg. Pushing back my chair, there she sits looking for a little company. When I pick her up and place her beside me on the desk she turns and wiggles, then she lies beside my arm, falls asleep with an apparent sense of contentment I cannot find words to describe.

“Yeah, this is good…just you and me working away Zzzzzzzz…”

The consequence of this is that we spend much more time together than in the past. In some regards, I began to feel she was becoming really needy…

Recently, a realization, real or imagined, slipped into my consciousness. While I don’t know what or how she thinks, the sense I get is that she is saying to me in her own way…

“Listen here, my friend, my time is much shorter than yours, and I won’t be here too terribly much longer. I want there to be NO QUESTION as to how much I love and have loved you in my life. My intention is to give you as much of myself as I possibly can while I am still here…. “


Today is all there is for any of us, but there is little doubt when that little creature’s time is done, my heart will appreciate every gentle touch and every single purr…

- ted

Sunday, July 19, 2015

A day at the office...

“You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself, any direction you choose.”
- Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss)

BANG…BLING…BLANG…@#$!...CRASH – the loud and unrelenting sound broke the silent darkness of the room.

“Wait!” – “What!” – “Where I am I?” – “What time is it?” – “Am I dreaming?!”

The alarm had just gone off and as happens when one is in deep sleep, the awakening brings a completely alien world.  The disorientation of being suddenly awakened can be profoundly disturbing; sometimes taking hours to feel a sense of normalcy of equilibrium.

This is typically followed by mild grumbling, questioning the sanity of using these devices in the first place. It is like waking up with cognitive bad breath accented by a dose of stale mental garlic and onions!!

Why do this?
We almost never use alarms to wake us. The decades of routine have set internal rhythms simply waking us at the appointed time.  In the strangest of ways, this phenomenon is programmable. I can, for example, tell myself to wake at a certain time, and with the punctuality of this annoying electronic device, I am able to do so.  

That would, mean getting up earlier. The ‘let’s sleep in’ algorithm has yet to be sorted out.

The crazy thing about setting an alarm, is that one gives their will over to these devices out of the concern that this one time, the ‘internal clock’ will fail leading to over sleeping, and in this case, a missed flight. The reason it is crazy, is the years of experience suggest a consistent level of control over waking up – Ah the frailty of the human spirit!!

This Friday morning the office was an American Airlines three and a half hour flight to Chicago; a respite in a taxi to the hotel, a moderately comfortable room with a desk, followed by a faculty dinner.  The day that had begun before four in the morning, ended in the late evening hours, slipping between the sheets and boarding a single passenger vessel for a night’s journey on what some mythic cultures call, the “…great river of the sky…”

The coming morning needed none of the electronic trappings that had so challenged my sense of reality the day before…nope, no flights to catch…nothing more than a pre-conference breakfast, so late in relation to my normal biorhythms I could have overridden my internal ‘wake up clock’ by a large margin…still making the conference with time to spare! That, of course, could have happened if I knew how to sleep in!

Work done…the commute home…
The meeting went well, as did my “…15 minutes of [presentation] fame…” and before you knew it, the workday was done.  At 4PM (16:00) the taxi was waiting to whisk me back to the mighty airship that would carry me home where tucking into my own bed had now taken a place in the forefront of my mind.

Optimism - expecting a different outcome…
Unfortunately, I had forgotten I was flying home from Chicago O’Hare airport…Flying in and out of here, sometimes is like have an injury that is bad enough to make you say to yourself, “I will never do that silly thing again.”

Sadly, the brain seems to forget pain and discomfort, and often we repeat things that might hurts us, because we think the results will be different.

Over the years, coming to and from the ‘Windy City,’ or flying through it on the way to some other destination, has proven to be challenging and if not painful, certainly tiring. More uncomfortable seats than I like to remember, have supported my weary bones while waiting for a delayed flight.

This night turned out to be no different!

I always look forward to longer flights because I usually can get a fair amount of work done…you know, quiet time…no phone calls or internet. At night, after a long day, however, the crushing reality of fatigue collides with good intention and more often than not, as on this flight, fatigue does most of the winning – the long flight home a restless, moderately uncomfortable experience.

In the end, after a number of delays, that silver winged bird brought me to a safe landing sometime near the 11:30 (23:30) hour.  The 35-minute drive home was only made tolerable by the cheery smile that awaited me as Molly picked me up.

It was well after midnight when I collapsed into bed (no slipping gently between the sheets here!) and fell into the abyss of exhaustion.

The morning came near the five o’clock hour. I thought, as I often do, Maybe I’ll go back to sleep for a few more restful minutes.   I lay there, for the next 30 or so, unsuccessfully negotiating a little more sleep.

This morning, like many ‘short nights’ in the past brought a new day with yet unknown adventures. 


The good news…even though the night was brief…my entry into this conscious revolution of the planet was much less alarming!

- ted

Sunday, July 12, 2015

The best is free...

“Time to get up…time to wake up…
time to get up in the morning.
Time to end rest…time for our best…
time to get up in the morning…”
- Anonymous

A humming bird was quietly investigating the grapefruit tree, Texas Ranger bush and long past flowering buds of the barrel cactus in the yard. Dove and quail were ‘singing in’ the new day as they and the rest of the desert wild life woke to spend their coming hours foraging for, or becoming another creature’s, daily fare.

The moon was still clear in the sky above the clouds moving in on the eastern horizon - the air a little heavy, for the desert, as monsoon season would bring afternoon rains. Even in the desert there is an unmistakable clean and refreshing smell – you can almost feel – when the rains come.

There is something about watching the curtain rise in the darkened theater of the Sonoran Desert. At first everything is the same color, as though the normally functioning eye is totally colorblind.

Then, in the subtlest of ways, a salmon wisp of color tinges the bottom of a barely discernable stratus cloud appearing strung out like a malformed piece of cloth in the northeastern sky. It appears visually as one might imagine the ‘first chair’ violin sets the tuning note for an orchestra preparing to play.

With its appearance, other clouds become visible in the eastern sky, grey and apparently ominous above the Catalina mountains….BUT then….then as the first act opens, a huge sheet of stratus clouds, as though waiting for their cue, begin to emerge with brilliant pinks and then reds controlled by some unseen hand on the rheostat of the universe. For the briefest of moments it holds the eye and mind, both wishing it would stay just as it is.

Again as if on cue, these clouds lose their color…now appearing grey…now white for the day as they move on and morph and dissipate and build, precursors for the coming cumulonimbus storm clouds following their scent.

The color show ends with a large and dense block of clouds lighted in the yellowish tinge one sees in the night sky when a city’s electric landscape provides a signpost of its presence beneath a darkened sky.

Soon, the morning concert ends and all the lighter weight clouds become whitish wraiths in the fully lit morning sky…the more dense of the bunch remaining “…50 shades of grey…” undefined by human behavior, but rather by the master conductor.

One cannot help but be taken by the amazing cycle of life that begins anew each day. While the morning show is spectacular, it is even more difficult to appreciate the ability to be taken by its cycle of beauty.

We have been blessed with two gifts – one of which is to see what happens to the things around us, and how they appear to interact. The other is to have the ability as a spectator of life, to be grateful for it.

We have an animal body, not terribly unlike the bodies of all other living creatures. We eat, sleep, protect ourselves and procreate our species, then cycle off the planet as any other body does. In this respect we are no different than the beast.

We also have, however, the ability to understand and use that understanding to appreciate life around us.

We have binocular sight to navigate our world, but there is more. God has made color and texture that permits us to appreciate our sight…not simply as a tool for survival and navigation, but rather for understanding. If all of the objects in our universe fell outside of the frequency with which we see, we would not know they were there and what would be the point.

It is not the clouds in the sky that make the music, but the processing mind that is given to appreciate its meaning.

While there is much in common that we have with the irrational, survival based creatures of the earth, we have the ability to understand…to seek…to learn, for it is one thing to see and use something, it is another to understand…and that can take a lifetime of quiet consideration.

It is written, “Wisdom is the principle thing, therefore get wisdom, but with all thy getting, get understanding…”


“A humming bird was quietly investigating the grapefruit tree…” and I continue to pray for understanding…

- ted

Sunday, July 5, 2015

Another day? Not really...


“It does not take a majority to prevail, but rather an irate,
tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires
of freedom in the minds of men.”
- Samuel Adams

The sun was just coming up over the harbor as a woman jogged slowly along the waterfront in the Fells Point section of the city.

Seagulls made their way across the horizon against a billowy background of greyish white clouds promising rain before day’s end.  Unlike the desert where we live, the humid sea air fits like a custom made costume created by a master tailor…its salt laden scent invigorating as the day began.

A flock of pigeons in an early morning formation noticed me sitting on the deck and made a hasty breathtaking turn in unison over my head disappearing into the building warmth. Just across the ‘boat slips’ filled with varying sized water craft and yachts, two pelicans were perched atop an apartment building on a pier…sentries watching the water in search of any breakfast delicacy venturing too close to Its shimmering surface.

A memorable day…
It was July 4th, 2015 and as the day began to unfold, people would prepare for celebrations marked by family gatherings, barbecued meats of all sorts, snacks, carbonated soft drinks and beer.

The American Declaration of Independence was not actually signed on this date in 1776, but rather adopted. The official signing took place August 2nd, with a straggler or two affixing their signatures a little later.

While this date celebrates the United States ‘declared independence,’ freedom from the British was by no means a sure thing. Indeed, the war of 1812 between the British and this country was so important that, had the fledgling country NOT defeated the British, Canada might have had an extra Province or two and everyone in this country might speak with a decidedly British accent. 

This city played an important part in the unfolding theater of the American democratic experiment...

Baltimore plays a role…
While the Americans did not have a Navy, they commissioned men who owned small ships, built for speed called Baltimore Clippers. During the war, these ‘privateers’ wrecked havoc on British commerce by attacking cargo ships and confiscating their goods. In the northwest portion of Baltimore harbor stood Fells Point where these ‘Clippers’ were built.

Consequently, the Crown sent Alexander Cochrane, a British Vice Admiral, to clean up this nest of ‘pirates,’ building these ships and using Baltimore harbor for protection.


Fort McHenry stood at the narrow opening of the Patapsco River protecting the 
harbor. It was the only barrier to entry against the powerful British Navy.
On September 12th, 1812 an armada of British ships anchored 2 miles off the shores of Fort McHenry and at six the next morning commenced a 25-hour cannon and rocket barrage. While both sides armament had the range against their enemy, neither side’s arsenal was particularly accurate.  During the night of the 13th the weather was stormy making the British bombardment even less effective.

On the 14th with the Fort still intact and unwilling to surrender, Cochrane fearing he would run out of ammunition, made the decision to cease his attack and withdraw – the harbor saved.

Providence, you've got to love it...
At the same time, an attorney from Washington by the name of Francis Scott Key, had come to Baltimore to negotiate the release of a prominent Baltimore physician William Beanes being held prisoner aboard the British ship HMS Tonnant.

Successfully negotiating Beanes release, Key and Beanes were placed on a small American ship held by the British until after the siege of the fort. It was from this ship, anchored 8 miles away from Fort McHenry that Key watched the battle unfold and end. 

Following the bombardment, Major George Amistead, commander of McHenry, order the raising of a 32’x40’ (9.7x12m) recently commissioned American flag. The flag was so large, Key was able to see it from his vantage point.

These events inspired him to write a poem titled: Defence of Fort McHenry.  It was four stanzas long recounting what he had witnessed and how seeing the flag across the bay moved him.

Some time thereafter the poem was set to music borrowed from Englishman John Stafford Smith's song called: ‘The Anacreontic Song” - the musical theme of the Anacreontic Society named after the Greek poet Anacreon.

The song was first adopted by the United States Navy in 1889 to be played at the raising of the flag, and given its official place in the American narrative by Congressional resolution on March 3rd 1931. The music and lyrics became what we now consider the National Anthem of the United States: The Star Spangled Banner!

Morning to evening…
It is with this backdrop, in this city I drank a cup of morning coffee from the deck overlooking Baltimore harbor, on the Patapsco River, surrounded by a history fraught with intrigue and the hand of providence.

As the day ended and darkness shrouded Baltimore’s inner harbor, I stood the deck once again watching fireworks – “…the rockets red glare, the bombs bursting in air…” – with a sense of awe and appreciation for this historical event and the opportunity to celebrate it in Baltimore steeped so rich in the tapestry of American history.

Wherever you were on July 4th this year; however you celebrated the day; whoever you celebrated it with; and whatever you did to celebrate it, take a moment to remember those brave men and women who fought and died protecting our freedom on this date in history, for those who continued the fight into the 1800s, and for those who fight to this day ensuring our continued freedoms and way of life…


- ted