Fighting Back

In the past 24 hours I have watched my wife and friend of 20 years go into a comatose state brought on by pure fear and hopelessness. 

Yes, the chemical explanation is the return of her metastatic activity in her brain terrified her and she produced so much of a cortisol over load in her brain that it literally shut down her brain's ability to the extent that her bodily functions began to fail.

In short her fear of dying almost killed her.

We have battled through this and it appears she is now coming out of this almost coma like state and is beginning to eat and smile and almost enjoy the mere fact that she is alive, again.

It is too early too say, and the next few weeks will be very critical, but for the moment she is fighting back.

During this period of time, though obviously not to the same degree of severity and certainly not to the same degree of finality, we held very ugly meetings with representatives from a supplier with whom we are very dissatisfied.

Yesterday, a good friend and investor and very important part of our company and I spent two hours dealing with the representatives from a major manufacturer of an important piece of the mechanical design of our system for our company battling over whether they "did or did not" provide to us (based on the design and functionality of what we felt we had purchased and believed we had agreed upon contractually for them to provide) and deliver to us what we in fact felt we had paid and agreed too.

I won't name names or trash the actual company and its representatives (that would probably get me in trouble even on my own blog, given the litigious nature of the world in which we live today) but long story short, they were liars and "bull shitters". 

Even given the fact that there is always pretty much two sides to every story this two hour discussion defied belief.

In short, despite an embarrassingly long list of documented design, manufacturing and installation, deficiencies they absolutely, without shame, argued that not a single problem was their fault. 

Now sitting aside the fact that it is statistically impossible for any of us, let alone a company or conglomerate, to be perfect in any given situation and that in any disagreement there are always mistakes made by both sides, the attempts at intimidation and the overweening arrogance of their position bordered on the pathological.

No resolution has been ratified though there is some hope that this pathology was simply a posturing game and that we will be able to move forward without metaphorical bloodshed, (read litigation or arbitration with counter claims and only the lawyers getting richer) yet, the combination of Lori's condition juxtaposed against the absurdity of the posturing of this supplier yielded in a very unexpected way an "epiphany".

The world has gotten to the point where we don't fight back, even when we know we are right. 

Maybe it is we are too comfortable and scared to lose that level of comfortable existence, maybe we are too scared of death and despair to let it have an opportunity to over take us, maybe we are embarrassed or afraid to be embarrassed or embarrass those whom we care for, maybe we are just cowards, but the truth is we don't fight back. 

I am not talking about bull shit political wars and regional conflicts, I am talking how as individuals we have lost our nerve. 

My epiphany is that we have lost our ability to stand up in the world of twitter and texting and Face book, and other social media and say,"that is bull shit" and I did not do that or this, or whatever the hell it is of which I or we are being accused of, by whomever for whatever.

We are afraid of being accused of anything and everything because the world has evolved where "accusation equals guilt" and for some stupid reason we give a damn about how the great impersonal body of "them" judges us.

I read the most tragic article I have read in a long time about a human being today. 

Usually it is stories about animals that tear my heart apart but today, I think on Yahoo, (I may be wrong about the source), I read a story about a young girl who was denied attending her prom and she killed herself. 

How fucked up have we become?

First of all who in the hell has the right or authority on some damn school board to tell a young girl she cannot attend her own damn prom. 

And the fact that she had absolutely no support group around her strong enough to help her through this trauma, to the extent that she felt her only choice was suicide, is a condemnation on all of us.

None of us are perfect, no one is without sin, I believe in a God and in my case, I believe Jesus was God made physical on this earth to enable us to have some chance to live beyond this stupid material-spirit realm.

But neither Jesus nor God nor belief in both or any other deity makes us perfect. 

We are imperfect, we mess up, we sin, "God forbid", we even have bad thoughts, and we do bad things, but not every sin, not every wicked thought, not every failing, is deserving of societal judgement, let alone condemnation and punishment. 

Any body ever hear of "Judge not least ye be judged".

Nor should it have to go to court or be adjudicated by the "system", that nebulous, unreal, false, and flawed concept of "them" who be in power. 

No one should be in power. 

No government, no body of imperfect assholes, should decide and pass judgment on and for other imperfect assholes. 

Dammit, I hate to sound like Ronald Reagan but given that aside from certain things that are just wrong, like "boiling babies in bath water" or enslaving 5 year olds to work in mines, damn near everything else is cultural and relativistic. 

You kill someone, then " Lex talionis" (probably spelled that wrong) or an "eye for an eye", but truthfully short of that, people need to start fighting back.

One size does not fit all and by "God", there are two sides to every story and nothing is as simple as we all want it to be.

We put up dome 2 today. 

A friend sent me an article from the New York Times touting the fact that some guy (and I give this guy great credit) is now producing 40,000 pounds of shrimp a year in a warehouse somewhere up north. 

If GBT hits half of our production figures two of our domes will produce 1 million plus pounds of shrimp a year.

This is what our farm looks like as of today. 

We have a ways to go and we have some challenges but we are making progress toward finding a sustainable, ethical, way of feeding large amounts of people with copious amounts of healthy and natural marine protein that does not endanger the oceans. 

One of the most moving cartoons of the American Revolution, I think done by Franklin but perhaps some other patriot, was the one where they had a snake cut into thirteen colonies with the caption, "either we hang together or surely they will hang us separately".

We need to quit aiding and abetting "them", we need to start giving our fellow citizens the "the benefit of the doubt", we need to go back to "innocent until proven guilty", not guilty unless you can prove you are innocent".

In short, we need to start "fighting back". 

We to cry "bull shit" on the fake solutions, the false promises, the failed initiatives, and fix the earth ourselves and not let "them" tell us or dictate to us how we have to do it. 

"They" are not fixing anything. 

They are just judging and punishing and taxing us while "they" enrich and empower themselves. 

Fight back, we really do not have anything to lose.

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. 

Things That Made Me Smile This Week

The past week has not been one of my favorite seven days.

Some historian/minister somewhere, (I actually am so tired of this kind of crap that I hardly read the piece) now claims that Jesus Christ was a construction of the Roman Empire's imagination, invented to distract the Jews from violence against the Empire.

Then there was an article debunking King David of the Old Testament as a war monger conqueror who basically used force to combine Israel and Judah and that is why we have the modern Jewish state and the almost universal support by the Jewish people of Israel.

Then there where the endless articles and talk shows regurgitating the ongoing lies and posturing of Congress and the President as each side tried to make the other seem like the villain in the current fiscal crisis which frankly is simply the latest expression of the greed and ignorance of those we continue to elect to run the government.

I watched the entertainment industry press continue to condemn Miley Cyrus and are now all her "haters" for doing what in my opinion Cher, Madonna, Lady Gaga, hell even, Tina Turner did in their day, i.e. use sex to sell records. Miley just seemed to do it better. I mean a world wide number 1 song two weeks after shaking her butt and sticking her tongue out of the side of her mouth on an awards show designed to feature the outrageous.

And finally while rereading one of my favorite books "Fly Fishing through the Midlife Crisis" by author Howell Raines, I came across an old article from the early nineties that basically called Raines everything from a "liar" to an "egotist" to a "fraud". 

Plus Michigan lost to Penn State on Saturday. I mean how sad was that.

So, today, a Sunday, I decided to ignore all social media, all news outlets, all reporters, and all scholars, and other sundry and prolific pundits be they, sports commentator's acting like they know something the rest of us don't, be they comedians acting as political commentator's or be they political pundits who are so stupid as to even make bad comedians. 

Seriously, I ignored every freaking expert out there. Did not look at CNN or FOX or HBO or read a paper or pick up a new book exposing someone or something, or doing some form of revisionism. 

Instead I went for a long hike early in the morning, stopped and watched sea gulls fly "en masse" seeking scraps from happy looking tourists, watched two jack rabbits running like crazy across a field and drove a few hundred miles and just thought. 

It has been a while since I just thought. 

And I thought about things that made me happy, like how lucky I am to still be alive and pretty healthy for my age. And that made me smile.

I smiled at the thought of the young female alligator Stephen caught out of pond six on the site and we put on a sanctuary earlier this week. 

Not many people would  "save" an alligator but to me she is one of God's creatures, as surely as we are. That made me smile.

And I smiled and remembered I used to like "Hannah Montana" and I that I still like Miley Cyrus and her new music, as much (or more) then I used to like Cher and Madonna, etc.

I smiled with the realization that I lost all respect for all politicians decades ago, which probably does not say very much positive about me. But it made me smile anyway.

I remembered what I think was Mark Twain's or maybe Will Roger's famous comment that "Congress was the only true criminal class in America". 

True then, truer now. And I smiled.

And I smiled even more when I thought about how for 2,000 years plus, countless individuals and institutions have tried to tear down Jesus Christ and he just emerges stronger and purer and a more remarkable proof of God's existence than we as humans can or will ever grasp while we are on this earth.

And I thought, regardless of Howell Raines perfections or imperfections Chapter 9 "The Black Dog" in his book on "Fly Fishing Through the Midlife Crisis" just may be the most honest and lucid explanation of why and how men fear and react to age, mortality, and death ever written. 

And for that alone Howell Raines deserves our gratitude and appreciation. And again thinking of that single chapter made me smile. 

I smiled when I recalled that even in the Old Testament no one ever said King David was perfect, he was a human being. 

That is the whole point of Jesus, we are so flawed without him we really have no chance of something better after this life ends. That really made me smile.

And I thought if you want to buy in to the views of all the pseudo-genius's, who think they have all the answers of how the universe began (it just appeared out of nothing aka "The Big Bang"), what the universe is comprised of ( strings, particles, energy, or something), etc., that do not believe anything exists for us after this life ends, then there isn't anything to look forward to regardless. 

That made me smile and actually laugh out loud.

So, at the end of the day as I pulled my truck back into the parking lot and saw Lori in her wheelchair laughing and playing with one of the poodles despite the cancer demon she is fighting, I smiled yet again.

As I walked into the house my cell phone beeped and I looked down and saw a text from a friend who went to Penn State. That did not make me smile. 

Hey, nothing is 100%.