Random Thoughts on the Last Day of the Month

Ok, it is the last day of the first month of 2013.

How fast did this go?

I mean really, I am starting to sound like my grandfather but shit, time seems to be racing by.

I was home in Maryland from the 21st through the 29th. My red doberman, Mae, is still going strong. She is almost 16, impossible but true.

She came to our family while we still lived in Beallsville and that was over 15 years ago.

She is and will be, my last big dog.

I am down to my last few weeks in the RGV. I expect to move my base of operations to Corpus Christi, Texas by the end of February.

My son, Stephen and I will be house hunting this Saturday, in the Corpus area.

Lots happening.

Should get the engineering report on our proposed site next week. Preliminary results look excellent. If the engineers say OK, we should close on the land in February. Maybe as early as the 24th. Then it is truly, "balls to the wall" to start construction.

Lori's next big days are the 12th and 13th of February. New MRI's and new CT's will tell us if the lesion in her brain is passive, shrinking, or progressing. Regardless of the outcome we have a definitive strategy to "go to" for the next fight.

Hard to believe it has been 15 months since she was diagnosed with metastatic brain cancer.

Learning to live with cancer is a true art form. My grandmother always said, "God never gives you more than you can handle". That is probably true, but it is amazing what you can learn to handle.  

If you have not read any books by Lincoln Child and Douglas Preston, or Jim Butcher, or Christopher Moore, you are cheating yourself and not availing yourself of ways to recharge your batteries for life's challenges. 

Flying to Des Moines, Iowa for a meeting on the 7th. Love Des Moines. One of the last great steak houses in the world is there. The 801 "ChopHouse" Restaurant is a throwback to the golden years of great food and greater bars. 

It is too bad that a few good drinks and a good steak has become politically incorrect. 

I remember another story about my grandmother.

Once my dad was giving my grandmother (his mother) some good natured grief implying she was a hypocrite.

My grandmother, who was a God fearing Baptist was getting agitated as the old man gave her crap about taking money in the collection plate from all the old drunks, adulterers, and other sinners who came together church on Sunday morning. 

As Grandma grew red in the face I thought, "wow, looks like the old man has her on the defensive". But I was so wrong.

After about three minutes of constant heckling Grandma whirled around and stood about two inches from my Dad's face and said, "Let me tell you something Roy Lee, there is nothing wrong with taking the devil's money to use it to kick him out of hell". 

How true is that ?????

A Poignant Memory and Some Good News

I promised I would write a whole blog soon all about Elle, our yellow lab who passed away just before this past Christmas. I am still too sad to actually try and capture even a few memories and emotions about this wonderful friend and companion, who was with us for nearly 13 years, but for some reason today, I wanted to keep her fresh in my mind. So here is a picture of her at home a few days before she passed away. 

I got some very good news the other day. All five of the possums I rescued and sent to rehabilitation with a wonderful wildlife rehab lady here in Texas, have survived, and are ready for release. Here is a picture she sent me yesterday of one of the group.

I like possums. I think they are sorely misunderstood and mistreated. The fact these five have made it to adulthood (against all odds, if you know anything about possums) and are ready to be released into a relatively safe environment is a very, very, satisfying moment for me. 

The following picture was taken today of my son, Stephen, with a 57 gram shrimp from pond 11. 

Now that is a jumbo shrimp.    

                                                                                      
We should be able to close on the land that will be our future home for the company here in Texas by the first week in February. 

As I have written recently on this blog, we are so ready to start commercial production, that all of us involved with the project here the past two years can hardly contain ourselves. 

Eight Things I Know

Today for some obscure reason I came to realize that despite my University of Michigan education, my years as a avid reader, my extensive global experience, and far too many hours of television viewing, at this juncture in my existence, there are at least eight things I really know for sure. (I am hopeful, even optimistic, that I may have some other basic truths mastered but for the moment these are what I know to be solid and true in my mind). 

There is a God. He, it, she, may be mysterious, the end game may not be an Earthly paradise, and who knows if as individuals we will even have any sense or memory of our identities on this earth but  the simple fact is, all of this cosmic activity is not the inevitable consequence of a "Big Bang" or just dumb "unthinking" coincidence. 

Something intelligent is behind all of this and that you can bank on. 

Love really is the most powerful force known to humans. It does not matter if it is the love of a child, a pet, a spouse, a parent; real, true, non-physical, honest love trumps everything, even your own self survival instincts. This is so true as to be axiomatic. 

This one you are not going to like. Most people are simply not that bright. That is not to say they are stupid or bad or even ignorant they just do not have the capacity to "get it". They move through life in their own narrow field of existence and the big picture never is made clear to them. If you are reading this and do not get my point, you are proving it. 

Empathy is a rare trait in human beings. You would think given that we are mortal, suffer, fear, and die, that we would be more attuned to other humans and other creatures that suffer and endure the same. As a species we do not. We still allow millions of animals who are sentient and who die exactly as we do to be slaughtered for our food, used for our science, snuffed out for our pleasure, despite our own fears of death and pain and mortality.  

Jeremy Bentham once wrote, "the question is not can they think but can they suffer?" We still as a species don't get it. 

In point of fact Bentham's quote was even more amazing considering he made it in the 18th century. He wrote:

 "The day has been, I am sad to say in many places it is not yet past, in which the greater part of the species, under the denomination of slaves, have been treated by the law exactly upon the same footing, as, in England for example, the inferior races of animals are still. The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been witholden from them but by the hand of tyranny. The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor. It may one day come to be recognised that the number of the legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason or perhaps the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog, is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day or a week or even a month, old. But suppose the case were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer? (From Wikipedia).

I also now realize that having wealth gives you choices and options. So, money is important. I could be trite and say that while money does not buy happiness it does make being miserable so much better.  

That however would not encapsulate the seriousness of what I am saying here. Having wealth in the 21st century (and probably in every century before) gives you and your loved ones better options and choices in living. 

It may not bring happiness but it allows you to make choices that can help you find whatever  your particular brand of happiness or the pursuit of that happiness is at that moment and beyond. 

Life will never be long enough. Living, actually experience is relative. If we live to 60 , we bemoan the fact we wish we had made it to 70, at 70, we wish for 80 but the truth is if we lived too be a 100, each of us who be no wiser and no smarter than we are at 40, maybe even 30. We are pretty much who we are by the time we are 20 the rest is just an accumulation of different experiences. 

99% of our problems are the consequences of our own choices. I always hated this one. I heard it early and from a variety of sources but the damnable fact, is we pretty much make our own choices and we have to live with them. This unfortunately makes us far more responsible for our lives than we wish to be and is an uncomfortable epiphany. Luckily for most people they never come to accept this. 

Finally, most people live and exist and pass their lives in fear. Thoreau was so on the money He wrote,“Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.”

We are a fearful species. As I wrote recently in a blog, a good friend recently told me that " fear was an absence of faith" and that is probably very true but the fact is that most people exist in a state of fearfulness. 

Back to Work

The following pictures tell the story that words cannot.

Sometimes given the personal crisis I have been battling the past two years I forget how sweet the progress we have made in our aquaculture business is.

Today was one of those days when it again hit home how far we have come since we broke ground on our R&D facility here in South Texas a little over 19 months ago.

We are just completing our final growth trials at true commercial production levels. The results are beyond amazing.

Nick with weight sample group

3 Fifty gram plus 

                                       One sample group 
                                        

The fact is that we grow shrimp larger, in greater densities, with better survival rates than anyone else in the world. 

And we do so in a system that does not discharge nasty, unclean water back into the environment. 

In point of fact, we basically recycle our water which we make cleaner in our system than it is when we bring it in from the ocean.

We tested weights in all 10 of our stocked ponds in the R&D facility today. In the ponds that have held the shrimp the longest (ponds 11 and 12) our average weights are approaching or exceeding fifty grams and we have densities close to 3 kilograms a cubic meter. 

So, we are ready to harvest 11 and 12 in the next two weeks, and have five ponds coming on line for harvest every three weeks respectively after that with better weights and densities. 

Time to expand production. Time to show the world. 

Learning to Enjoy Living Again

I had a great Christmas.

                                
       It snowed (well at least we had snow flurries Christmas Eve). 

We had a great Christmas tree. 

                                              We dressed up Bart the bear.

It will be two years in February that Lori was diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer.

In about three weeks it will be 14 months since it metastasized in her brain.

In one month, it will be six months since three teams of doctors told us she would be dead by now.

It is difficult to learn to live with cancer.

The fear and the anticipation of what might come next can over ride and suck out the joy of any daily happiness. 

But if you are lucky (and blessed) enough to have the person you care about begin to beat the odds, a certain strength begins to manifest itself in you. 

You start to realize that Churchill was right (as usual) and that as he said so eloquently:

"Success is not final; Failure is not fatal, 

it is the courage to continue that counts". 

A very close friend of mine told me over the holiday that "fear is the absence of faith". 

What he said resonated with me. 

There will be a lot of challenges ahead in 2013.

There will be doubts, concerns, and yes, even fears. My faith has always been an "ebb and flow" kind of process for me. 

But, and this is the very important "but", life will go on. We all will face the challenges and if we do not become paralyzed by the fear, life will continue to be wonderful and even joyful, and as it was meant to be at its very best, magical.

I saw "The Hobbit" over Christmas. 

See it, the messages in it make it timeless and the fun of it brings back the feelings and wonder you had as a kid.

We lost Elle, our yellow lab over Christmas and Molly, our 14 year old poodle as well. They are missed but the memories of them now bring smiles (instead of tears) every time they cross my thoughts. 

I find myself these past few days feeling more positive, (again) then negative. I am looking (again) at the wonder and fun in living and not focusing on the end game but on the game itself.

We all know how the game must end for us all, but it really is "how you live" that defines the quality of your life.

Stay tuned, I am ready to win a few more victories, vanquish a few more powerful foes, enjoy a few more sensations, and marvel a bit longer at this thing called life. 

In short, I am learning to enjoy living again. 

Isn't that a "kick in the head"?