Late Night Memories

I worry sometimes that I am now capable of repeating myself.


That said, at the risk of showing signs of senility three memories came to mind tonight.


I have admitted in previous blogs sleep no longer seems to come easy to me. 


There is no question that with the stress of Lori's cancer and my fear of her prognosis should I fail to figure out a way to save her life, has made it so I no longer can blissfully drop of into dream land. 


I also am under enormous pressure to expand our production capacity for our company. The simple truth is I am very close. 


Once we get to about 2 million pounds of head on jumbo shrimp a year we become self sustainable. 


We really are very close. And I believe with the alliance I have formed with some very decent and honest individuals we may finally be tracking resolutely toward that objective. 


But tonight, it is late and I am tired but wide awake.


And for some reason three very special moments in my life have popped up in my memories. 


I have had a great life, full of adventure and wonder and frankly the life I would have picked given a choice has become my reality.


Tonight, unable to close my eyes I remembered a cougar I met that was in a rehab facility in Oregon. 


It is no secret I adore animals and I truly believe someday we will stop our war on them and learn to live with them as fellow citizens of our planet. 


Creatures that enjoy life as we do, have emotional bonds as we do and that sadly die as we do. 


As David Hume once wrote, "the difference between man and animal is one of degree not kind". 


In any case I remember this wild cat. I wonder what every happened to him.

Tonight, I also remembered a trip I made to Papua New Guinea around 2001. I was there to do a environmental survey of the possibility of a sustainable lobster harvest. 


A lot of good things happened that trip. I saved a sea turtle from being slaughtered for food in a market place, I visited a forgotten graveyard that had over 200 American servicemen buried and forgotten there that had died in WW11 for our freedom. 


But what I remember most was a blue starfish that I was told was a myth, that blue starfish did not exist. 


When I found it and held it in my hand I felt transformed and for me it was one of those rare moments when I realized that Darwin be damned, there is a  God and we might explain diversity through science, but we can not explain original cause without God.

And tonight for some strange reason Susan Butcher came into my head. The winner of three Iditarod dog races, a champion of better care for sled dogs, an insecure girl from Massachusetts who risked her life to prove she was brave, and a woman who became a dear  friend. 


Susan died a few years ago of cancer. I have never met someone since or before who lived life so fully. 


I wonder where her spirit is now? Is she in heaven watching, is she in stasis waiting, what happens to life forces so strong the entire planet shudders when they depart? 

I have lived a life most people would find hard to believe.


I have seen the world, seen sights in nature, and met so many "characters" along the way, that my life reads like a dime store paperback.


I grew up reading Edgar Rice Burroughs and H. Rider Haggard and Jack London and Robert Ruark and Hemingway and have experienced in many ways more than they where able to imagine. 


I have always maintained that the only thing you take with you when you leave this world is your memories. If that is true I will someday leave this world a very rich man. 


If you have not read my book "Under Cover" you might want to. 


It (I think) is available as an E-book and very inexpensive now from Amazon.


Don't read it to look at my life, read it to look at what is possible for anyone's life. 

"Us versus Them"

Ending the week and the month on a very positive business note. 


The new shading system has been installed in the greenhouse over the ponds and appears to be very effective in maintaining consistent pond temperatures.

The bio-floc (notice the green color, this is good) in the ponds appears very healthy and ready for stocking which should occur in early August.

The agreements for funding the initial phase of our expansion have been signed and we anticipate funding for expansion to begin to hit our accounts starting next week. 


We are currently interviewing for two new positions to begin wok for us in early August.


Next week we will begin interviewing engineering firms to choose the engineering group that will (hopefully) become our long term partner to design and work with us as we expand our production.


Finally, we start our search for a permanent site for our a full production farm next week.


And in a very important development over the past month as we were putting together the funding package that would provide us with the capital needed to pay for the expansion, we were questioned in great detail about several boutique operations each to some degree appearing to be similar to our highly proprietary system.


After a great deal of research our team of experts came up with the not surprising but nonetheless comforting conclusion, simply put, "It ain't so". 


Not one system out there is even remotely capable at any level of performing like what we have. Take a look at a excerpt from our internal investigation report. Names of specific boutique operations have been redacted to avoid disclosing any specific operations.

"Our approach is a large-scale commercial system that is conceived and designed to provide economically significant quantities (millions of pounds) at a premium price due to its large size, controlled rearing, and perfect condition.   We are quite certain that this approach is valid because we have piloted and prototyped the entire process.  

Part of our concept originates from ten years of federally funded research specifically targeted at closed and re-circulating aquaculture systems at six different USA universities .   One immediate thing that distinguishes us from al of that research and today's boutique aquaculture system's approach is a partitioned treatment system such as we employ. 

The important thing here is that GBT, Inc., has gone far (years) beyond the research in the 90's by creating a physical system that is a complete solution to the management of very large commercial systems.    

WE HAVE RATIONALIZED AND SCALED UP the zero discharge technology to a very significant commercial scale.   

We have also developed very robust treatment systems by selection of very specific bacteria for water treatment and we have a unique waste solids concentration and treatment capacity integrated into the system.

Boutique closed systems that have popped up in Nevada, Texas, Maryland, Virginia, and other places) appear to be barley beyond a pilot-demonstration stage of development with boutique marketing objectives. Their system energy losses in the majority of  climates where they are located are very high and that its costs them a lot of money to heat water.  

Each of these small boutique closed systems growing shrimp are trying to supply small local markets. We are very familiar with each of them.

They do not possess the integration of the biological, genetics, and mechanical systems that we possess.

Our genetics alone, has cost us several million USD of development and taken 5 years to perfect. These small scale operations that employ some of the aspects of our system have no access to our genetic line which enables us to grow our shrimp at a rate 3 times faster then any other system in the world.

Our approach, taught by pain in South Africa, is to find a semi-tropical or tropical location to implement a large-scale commercial system that virtually eliminates heating costs with passive temperature control engineering. 

GBT’s project and system is unique when you consider the pricing, quality and sizing of the shrimp sold by this company.

1.) The US market is primarily a heads off market and typically heads on product is sold to ethnic restaurants that deal with strictly ethnic customers such as Spanish, Greek, Italian and French.  Although that ethnic mix may sound like a lot of mixed culture Americans, the real problem is that these are Americans whose palates have become accustomed to firm shrimp processed head off and not heads on where softness between carapace and tail can develop, leading to a very unsatisfactory taste and mouth feel.

2.) Size is another issue to quantify.  The 21-25 ct. shrimp they promote on the various web sites at $8.00 per pound are in reality a finished count head off of 34, when a 23 ct. head on size is used.  A 34 ct. shrimp of good quality, farm raised, is valued at $3.00 a pound.  Thus, the $8.00 a pound shrimp at true value with heads removed would give you a per pound price of $11.94.  In other words the customer gets shrimp, which by the time eaten is probably not the best compared to a fresh frozen tail, but in real terms he theoretically pays almost 4 times the market sheet value because with the head off, which the customer won’t eat, he really getting 67% of the volume he paid for.  By the way, a 20-30 ct heads on shrimp of good quality has a market price of approximately $3.50 a pound.

It’s important to understand that there is a market for fresh (in limited quantities in the US) heads on; but a much larger market for a heads off product.  However, the usage of fresh is limited to small users or by retail outlets that have a small market area to promote the product.  When the economics of investment to return are looked at, the fact is that small fresh operations are limiting to our buyers, distributors and wholesalers whose customers use quantities of shrimp in the millions of pounds not tens of thousands. The only way to supply these volumes is through our proprietary system.

A Red Lobster will use over 50 million pounds of shrimp a year, a large distributor like SYSCO over 150 million pounds, plus, a year and major wholesaler over 60 million pounds a year. 

All of this product is frozen because most seafood restaurants and retailers prefer frozen in order to take advantage of buying opportunities and storage for volume buys.  Fresh does not typically fit into the scenario.

Although retailers show product that looks fresh, that product is usually thawed overnight and put into the seafood case the next morning.  In other words, fresh heads on shrimp are limiting and can become a quality concern from taste to appearance, unless, they are sold immediately from the seafood case.  That very seldom happens.

When you put it in financial terms, our system, can and will do volumes, process to customers desired market form, give that customer just in time inventories, show value added revenues, meet government and international ISO and HACCP standards, using our state of art science. 

To our knowledge there is not an operation in the world nor in current research that combines all of the variable aspects of our system. Indeed, given the current state of the industry it would take any competitor, even with money and expertise a minimum of ten years to 15 years to develop a system capable of producing what we can do today."

Somber Reflections on a Saturday Evening

I am back in Texas and getting ready to start working on expanding our production capacity for our company.


Lots to do. Need to find a permanent site for the initial expansion as well as one that will accommodate the full farm. 


It looks like August 1st will be the official kick off for the next phase of our developmental strategy. 


Last Tuesday Lori's MRI at John Hopkins showed no progression in her brain lesion. That is very encouraging news.


We now will wait until the first phase of her clinical trial using the Iniparib and the Irinotecan is complete, which is on August 30th. If the therapy is working and we have no progression and no new lesions or metastatic activity she will stay in the trial as we work to also get her into the ImMucin vaccine treatment. 


Our research and medical discussions have convinced us this combination offers real hope for a possible cure not just a chemo maintenance plan.


We have no illusions as to what we are up against but the thought of simply accepting a "go home and prepare for the inevitable" was unthinkable.  


Life is not easy. 


I learned yesterday that my good friend Robert Colona's, (the former state biologist for Maryland), 23 year old son, Garrett was killed in a small plane crash. Words cannot express the pain and empathy I feel for Robert. I had known Garrett for almost a decade. 


Sometimes even with strong faith, we simply must look to the heavens and cry, "why"? 


Like millions of other Americans I was horrified by the Colorado killings at the "Batman" premiere. 


Sometimes it is just hard to fathom why things happen as they do. 


I think someone once wrote that the definition of courage was,  "having fear but working through that fear to take action". 


I am finally old enough to have reached a point in my life where my fears while still real, they no longer terrify me, and I am able to move forward and take action even though the fears are there.


Maybe one key to having courage is getting old enough to gain the wisdom that we really have very little control over the vagaries of life in any case. 

And When I Have Fears and I Can't Sleep

Sleep has not come easy to me lately.


Age, stress, worry, lack of adequate physical exercise, or perhaps all of the aforementioned conditions (or perhaps a few I have not thought of)  have left me awake and restless through the night, far more often than I would like.


A full night with 6-7 hours of uninterrupted sleep has not been part of my daily slumbers for more months than I care to remember.


Tonight is no exception. I have to get up around 3:30 am and leave for the airport around 4 am. The first leg of my flight back to Maryland departs at 5:15 AM.


I started to panic a few minutes ago but as I have always done my entire life when the stress in my life begins to threaten to overwhelm me, I turn to books and usually can find an escape in the stories of the triumphs and travails of others, (fictional or not). 


Tonight, as I searched through some titles I came across a book that was a gift from Lori a few years back. 


It is a book of blank lined pages for those who cannot sleep during the night to take out and write down those thoughts that so often only appear after dark and always seem most dire then.


It is inter-spaced with sayings and quotes by certain notables or celebrities who have at one time or the other faced the dilemma of being unable to sleep.


I thought I would share a few with you. 


John Milton, "What hath night to do with sleep?"


C.S Lewis, "Many things - such as loving, going to sleep, or behaving unaffectedly - are done worst we try hardest to do them."


Chuck Palahniuk, "When you have insomnia, you're never really asleep, and you're never really awake."


James Keller, "It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness."


Lynn Johnston, "Not being able to sleep is terrible. You have the misery of having partied all night ...without the satisfaction."


Charles M. Schultz, "Sometimes I lie awake at night, and ask,, "Where have I gone wrong?" Then a voice says to me, "This is going to take more than one night."


F. Scott Fitzgerald, "In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o'clock in the morning."


Dorothy Parker, "How do people go to sleep? I'm afraid I have lost the knack."


Frank Sinatra, "I'm for anything that gets you through the night, be it prayer, tranquilizers, or a bottle of Jack Daniel's". 


Mark Twain, "I realize that from the cradle up I have been like the rest of the race - never quite sane in the night". 


F. Scott Fitzgerald (again). "The worst thing in the world is to try to sleep and not to. " 


Evelyn Waugh, " I haven't been to sleep for over a year. That's why I go to bed early. One needs more rest if one doesn't sleep". 


William Faulkner, "Tomorrow's night is nothing but one long sleepless wrestle with yesterday's omissions and regrets". 


Charlotte Bronte, "A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow". 


Jules Feiffer, "I told the doctor I was overtired, anxiety ridden, compulsively active, constantly depressed with recurring fits of paranoia. Turns out I"m normal". 


Jessamyn West, "Sleeplessness is a desert without vegetation or inhabitants".


George Carlin, "There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls". 


And finally I leave you with a personal favorite,


W.C. Fields, "The best cure for insomnia is to get a lot of sleep".


So, it is now almost 11 PM and I have to be up in 4 1/2 hours. 


Sleep it seems will elude me yet again this night but the quotes above and many more, from this little book, entitled, "I Can't Sleep" have brought me comfort despite that fact. 

Thoughts on July 9, 2012

Been very busy past ten days.


Took a trip to meet with some of our investors and began serious discussions on how to fund initial expansion phase of the company. 


Meet a lot of really great people.


It is amazing, when you get away from the world of financial professionals and investment bankers and brokers and talk directly to the people in America that work hard, earn a living, and truly keep our economy afloat how nice and honest most people really are. 


I felt that after these last five days on the road talking to people about our project, our company, and what we need to expand and why I really do not want to have to give up control and ownership in order to secure the needed funding, I felt that these people "got it". 


I am optimistic we may be close to to getting that missing piece of the puzzle in play very shortly.


Of course, got back late Friday night and immediately woke up Saturday sick as a dog.


Today after three days of feeling like "hell" went to local clinic and tested positive for "strep".


Got massive antibiotic shot, a Z-Pak and stuff should start feeling better soon.


Lori is in the third week of her clinical trial using an Iniparib / chemo therapy that we are praying will shrink her metastasises and at least temporarily blunt the aggressive nature of her cancer.


She has an MRI on July 17th to see if we can get a determination if this treatment is having any effect. At the very least we are praying the lesions are not growing and it would be wonderful if they showed signs of shrinkage.


I am flying back to Maryland this weekend. I want to be there for the MRI on the 17th.


Saw that Ernest Borgnine died. Always loved anything he was in from "McHale's Navy" to "The Wild Bunch" to the last role I saw him, a small part in the Bruce Willis movie "RED". He was a convincing screen presence. 


On a more cheerful note, I have to say, I like "Anger Management", the new sitcom with Charley Sheen. Say what you will he is funny, convincing, and for me comforting to watch.  While "Two and a Half Men" may never be matched "Anger Management" simply "isn't bad at all". 


Existence is so much like the ocean. It comes and goes, individuals flourish and then are gone, but the vast body of humanity like the sea, remains constant.


I thought about Eratosthenes today, the Greek who in the third century BC using a measuring stick and an angel, calculated the earth to be about 24,700 miles around. 


Using similar techniques today we know the earth's circumference is 27, 902 miles.  Eratosthenes was a pretty smart fellow.


I have been reading at the buzz over the discovery of the Higgs Bosom or the "god particle" a tag line of pure hyperbole if there ever was one.  


It is impressive scientists have finally (they think) the missing piece,  postulated years ago to exist.


Basically this is the very elusive particle that if confirmed explains how matter acquires mass and how the universe is held together and if some are right may explain how this complex universe came from nothing via a "Big Bang".


I like science and think it really does give us insight into our our world of reality operates. That said, I have never seen the conflict between science and God as valid. 


Our world of reality is clearly not God's world of reality. 


It is amusing, (in my opinion), that some scientists ( and people)  are so loathe to allow for even the possible existence of God that having all of this, "the world, the entire universe, the complexity of life on this tiny little world alone, everything from "howler monkey's" to the possibly newly discovered "Higgs Bosom", having all of this develop from "nothing" is more comforting to their intellectual mind and reason than the possibility of "God" existing.


Actually thinking about it it may be less than amusing it is sad. I suspect as my Grandmother said, "we will never understand God while we are mortal so we simply must have faith and hope of God's existence".


For me, having God as the explanation as to how this all happened is a lot more rational than "it all started from nothing". 


Life is truly wonderful if you can accept that it is also filled with times of tragedy and grief.