Smiles

This will be a short blog.  

As you know, for me and my family, 2014 has not been a good year.

So, it was very heartening that two very positive things have happened in the past few days.

First, after many significant and extremely diligent visits and examinations and questions and taste tests, GBT was able to announce this past week that we have signed our first overseas deal.

The following release was placed on the company web site this past Monday. (I think or maybe it was Sunday night.)

GBT Inks First International Project: Japan

GBT-International is honored to announce the signing of a joint-venture agreement to build a shrimp aquaculture facility using the GBT technology in Japan.  This will be the first GBT facility located outside of the United States. 

Contracts were signed after nearly a year of intense discussions with and in-person visits to GBT’s operations in Texas (that included multiple “tastings” of GBT shrimp) by an impressive range of the highest level of representatives of Japan’s cultural, financial and agricultural sectors.   Each approached the potential of bringing GBT to Japan with the same focus: safeguarding that nation’s strict standards of quality, safety, and excellence of seafood for the Japanese people. 

On every level, GBT shrimp received outstanding acclaim and approval.

The initial production “footprint” for Japanese operations is designed to increase according to an incremental and practical timetable.  The construction phase of the initial Japanese facility is targeted to break ground in the first quarter of 2015. 

The project will operate under the corporate auspices of GBT-International’s Japanese partners as GBT-Japan.  GBT-International will oversee construction, training, and technical management of the system.  GBT-Japan will provide on-site staffing and be responsible for day-to-day operations.  The chain of GBT bio-security will be maintained by the exclusive use of GBT-provided brood stock and PLs (Post Larvae) for stocking the bio-secure ponds.  Sustainable Sea Products International (SSPI) working with GBT-Japan will handle marketing and distribution.

This should mark a turning point and hopefully put an end to the past three years of countless questions such as, "do you really think your system will work?" or "are these projections and numbers real?"

The second very positive thing was that I came back to Maryland for a few days to attend to some things, both business and personal that I had simply let go unattended for far too long.

This is only the second time I have been back to our home in Maryland since the funeral and the last trip home (for Thanksgiving) my melancholy almost overwhelmed me.

Today, I went up take some carrots up to Charm and Annie, our two horses. I have not been able to even look at them the past year without tearing up.

Today, feeding Charm her carrots, remembering back over the almost 29 years I have had her, I smiled remembering how she looked as a six month old filly when I purchased her in Michigan. 

I smiled remembering how much Lori loved Charm and vice versa and the hours those two spent together back when we lived in Beallsville and brought Charm to Maryland from Michigan and virtually every week since that day Charm arrived. That is now over 18 years ago.

Arabian horses, if taken good care of, can live a long time. That said, Charm is approaching 29 (next March) and she is showing her age, but then again so am I.

But the point I am making is I smiled.

And that these two totally unrelated events were the first time in the past year that I have felt a true, good, and happy emotion inside of me, that let me actually smile.

                                      Charm and I today, December 10, 2014.

Thoughts on What is Important

I am in my new house and I have my cats and my dogs with me so do not think this blog is a whiny one.

Since the time I was 22 years old I have wanted to make a difference in the world. 

It started with my disgust and revulsion over how we treat our pets. 

We, a developed leading nation, kill millions of dogs and cats a year simply because we refuse to give them non-human rights and make it illegal to breed them without a guarantee of a home.

Then I looked at hunting. I hunted. As a kid growing up in Virginia, I was forced to hunt. It is disgusting, killing a life for fun, (and don't even try the argument I eat what I kill) is grotesque. 

Then I traveled the world. 

I went from a "dumb ass red neck" in Virginia to an educated world traveler, and as my late wife called me, became an "erudite redneck". 

I saw the global picture. 

I started out believing the guy who killed the elephant for 20 dollars for a tusk was the criminal. 

Then I learned the corporate CEO who flew in private planes while exploiting the world's resources were the real criminals and they were being aided and abetted by the governments of the world.

So, I set out 15 years ago to see if I could make a difference. 

Along the way I lost my wife and best friend to cancer. 

I have risked every nickel I owned to make my vision work. 

I have developed a persona of loneliness to be able to stay above the emotions and keep my eye on the end goal. 

Some one once said, "the only thing that allows evil to exist is for good men to do nothing."

GBT is going to break big and impressive in 2015. 

The real impact of what we have spent 15 years and 75 million US dollars developing will not be felt probably until long after I am dead.

It has been a few days over three months since Lori died and everyday I miss her. 

Our life together was not perfect, in fact it was a bit dysfunctional. 

But like the current popular song says, "my family is dysfunctional  but we have a good time killing each other." I miss Lori every day.

I am determined, even obsessed, to do something that can show the world that you can make a difference. 

In the next few weeks and months I am going to get more aggressive.

Has anyone even noticed that last week, India, has declared dolphins as "non-human persons" worthy of moral consideration?

Does anyone understand that the reason oil is $65 a barrel is because war is no longer the way to deal with thugs like Putin, but economy is?

Does anyone understand that without food and water, oil and gas, and beach houses are meaningless?

Does anyone get the fact that the world is no longer American -centric?

The world is totally inter connected which means inter-dependent. 

The insanity of "ISIS" and the foolishness of fundamentalism be it Christian or Islam or anything is that they are all dinosaurs. 

They are extinct and they just do not realize it. 

A few weeks ago not long after Lori died I received a vitriolic e-mail from the wife of a "very real friend."

In this e-mail she accused me of betraying my friend. 

Her e-mail was so hurtful, so filled with un-truths, so wrong at every level, I wanted to write back in kind. 

But I did not. 

I would like to think that finally after decades of being a total asshole, my wife has, finally from heaven above, looked down and is guiding me to do the right thing, not the "make me feel good thing" that I used to do.

So tonight I want to leave all of you with a great and warm story.

Charm, my Arabian mare I have had in my life for 29 years recently lost her buddy, a gelding of the last 4 years.

She was depressed, but through the wonderful kindness of Betty Davis, who takes care of Lori's and my two horses (Charm and Annie)  Charm found another friend, and she is no longer alone.

Maybe the secret to happiness or at least contentment is just that simple. 

Do not be alone. 

Charm and her new friend.

Enjoying Just Being Alive !

I have been going at everything pretty hard the past 5 years.

Work, especially having to rebuild an entire company and redesign a completely new technology and create a new system after the breach of agreements our "success" was rewarded with in South Africa, has been draining.

The onset of Lori's cancer, over 3 years ago, and the emotional and financial battle to help her beat this evil, has been to say the least, beyond "horrific".

That said, as of today she continues to defy the prognosticators and the "doom and gloom" groups, by simply being alive and enjoying the miracle of just living, each and every day. 

She even got out yesterday with Stephen and Victoria and had a great lunch at Moon Dogs in Rockport sitting by the Gulf of Mexico, watching the waves, and the sea gulls overhead, and enjoying the "miracle of life" everywhere around her.

So, when I woke up this morning and thought of everything I needed to do today just to be ready for the start of a new week I decided to change my behavior.

I decided to take a day and just enjoy the fact I am alive.

I have a great production crew on site in Texas only days away from stocking the largest indoor production shrimp ponds in the world. (At least, the largest of which we are aware.)

Our construction team is beginning to jell and perform at an amazing level of functionality and efficiency. 

We are assembling what I think is going to be a powerful Board of Governors that will become advisers to our company and eventually will be the pool of talent from which we will select our first Board of Directors, maybe as early as next year.

And I am in Maryland for a few days for business reasons.

Now if there is one time of the year that Maryland holds its own with the most beautiful spots on this earth it is here in the springtime. 

And after this particularly harsh winter these first new days of warmth and sunshine are like welcoming home a long lost friend or loved one.

So, I took a hike today. I walked out my front door along Seneca Creek and while I was never more than 1/2 mile from my house, everywhere I looked was new life.

I just read an article last night in the April 28th edition of "Time Magazine" about "Finding God In The Dark" a very interesting story about acclaimed American preacher Barbara Brown Taylor. I have never read any of her books but after this article you can bet I will be downloading at least one of them on my iPad asap.

So, maybe I was feeling a bit more spiritual than normal for me or maybe I finally had gotten a few decent nights of sleep, but I was in a very good mood when I woke up this morning and an early hour plus hike through the woods along the stream bed, only heightened that feeling.

Year round the miracle of life is every where if you look for it, but in the Spring here in Maryland it is absolutely busting lose.

The young fawns are everywhere. I know many of my neighbors see deer as pests which shows me how far people have become removed from the beauty of life. And how sad that is for them. (and I am not going to even let the thought of those who kill these beautiful creatures for "sport" ruin my mood today). 

There were new leaves on the  crab apple trees and cherry trees and apple trees that abound in Maryland but of course my favorites are the dogwoods that are blooming.

I always loved the story of the dog wood told to me years ago by my grandmother.

The story went that the dog wood used to be stronger and taller and harder and more solid then any other tree in the forest and its wood was prized for its length and strength and its lack of knots or blemishes.

It was so strong and straight that according to my grandmother (and I would not then nor would I even today 
:-) ever question her authority on all things spiritual) that:

"It was the tree the Romans sought out and cut down and used to make the cross on which Jesus Christ was crucified. 

So sad was this event that God in his mercy remade the dogwood tree and it became a spindly, small, bent, gnarly tree whose four petaled blossoms, stained with red at the end of each petal, and with a small crown of thorn like buds in the center, serve to remind all of humankind  and all Creation of the "sin" mankind committed and the sacrifice of the Lord. So that just as new life each spring follows the dead of winter, eternal life (for those that believe) always follows the "death" of this life on earth."

  

The dogwood tree and the blossom above are pictures from the two dogwood trees in my front yard.  The woods all along Seneca Creek abound with dogwoods in bloom this time of year. 

And they just make me smile.

After my walk I took a shower and grabbed a bag of carrots and went to visit Charm, my Arabian mare that is now 28 years old. 

As I have written before I have had Charm in my life since she was 6 months old and like springtime and dogwood trees and baby deer, each spring as I see her shed her winter coat and emerge a bit older but still sleek and still enjoying the sunshine and warmer weather (and yes, her carrots) I smile at the joy of just being alive.

        Charm, David, and Charm's friend, Logan, April 27, 2014.