XXXVIII
Monday, August 9th, 2010the sum of the squares of the first three primes
Archive for the ‘life’ Category
starry night
Sunday, June 20th, 2010Yesterday morning I saw Wendy at the gym and we chatted a bit. She texted me later to tell me about about a public star-gazing party going on that evening that she’d heard about on the radio; she said she and Jon were planning to go.
Jon called me later and invited me over for the meal he was making prior to nightfall (those guys are great). Just for fun I grabbed my photo maker as I was heading out the door. On my way over to Jon and Wendy’s there were still a few clouds in the clearing sky and one of them presented a nice opportunity for a tricky shot (texting while driving may be illegal, not so sure about photography …).
Dinner was great. Jon did some expert grilling with an improvised marinade made from a hot sauce that Eddie Reese had introduced to us last month. Jon and Wendy can really cook!
When night fell we made our way over to St. Stephens high school. The star party was happening on the football field, and what a crew we found when we finally arrived. The biggest collection of astro-geeks that I’ve seen since my college days when I took a paleo-astronomy class for my social science credit (or was it fine arts?). Most were quite friendly and very willing to share the views from their fancy scopes. I grabbed a few long shutter shots of my own:
While I had my camera out I took a picture of the nearly half moon. Previously some doofus had seemingly tried to blind Wendy by telling her to look into his telescope while it was pointed at the moon without a light filter (the moon is actually quite bright). My photo
is definitely lower resolution, but also less blinding.
Being at this star party reminded me of the last star party I had attended, which was hilariously narrated by some Tennessee state park rangers during the Bicycle Ride Across Tennessee over the autumn equinox of 2005. I did that ride with David and his dad, and my mom and dad, and thinking of that reminded me that my parents had just gotten home from successfully completing their 8th (and allegedly last!) Oklahoma Freewheel.
Looking deep into the wonders of the universe from a dark hilltop on a starry night, and stirring up all these memories reminded me of how blessed I really am to have (and have had) such wonderful friends and family. And that made me think that today would be the first day for my own father to be only on the receiving end of these words: Happy Father’s Day, dad!
Springing into summer …
Friday, June 18th, 2010and yet … sometimes it feels like Autumn Fallin’.
A Blessing to Remember
Saturday, June 5th, 2010Thinking back, I cannot resolve the first memory of my grandfather; it seems that he was simply always there. Not “there” in the sense that he raised me or that he was around all the time. Just “there”. Part of the firmament. Extant. I recognize that I am fortunate in having known him. My own father and grandfather never met their respective grandfathers.
Last month my grandfather took his final breath. The hour after that moment was remarkable in the sense that it was the first hour in the previous 895,980 hours that grandfather was not breathing the air of this world. The following day was remarkable in that it was the first of the previous 37332 days that my grandfather was not alive. That’s no small number of days and, quite frankly, a plenitude of hours (certainly something to ponder the next time I am compelled to be waiting a hour for something tedious to be completed).
Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of all those hours (900,000 if you’re into rounding) is how many of them were happy. 895,000 hours is well over 102 years; while the average life span in this country may be 78.4 years, there are plenty of people who do not reach 51. Thus my grandfather enjoyed somewhere between 1.3 to 2 lifespans during his time in this world, yet the numbers go off the charts if you compare the happy hours he lived with those of the seemingly average american life. I was blessed to converse enough with my grandfather to know that, though he lived though many hard times, almost all of his days (and hours) were happy ones. Indeed, he considered himself to be “the luckiest man on earth.”
My grandfather’s funeral was remarkably well attended for a man who outlived almost all of his cohorts. Anyone who lives over 100 years is something of a legend in their own right, and my grandfather’s life included certain aspects that made him slightly more legendary than most. Indeed, I met more than one person attending the services who had known him only by reference.
I was privileged to be one of two family members to speak at my grandfather’s memorial service. What follows is the essence of what I said:
My name is Tyler Blessing.
On behalf of all the friends and family of Olin Douglas Blessing, and I include all of you among those, I thank you for coming to remember and celebrate his very long and full life.
I am Olie’s youngest grandson and the only grandson to share his wonderful family name. Barring an unexpected miracle, I am his last genetic hope for continuing that name (and Olie reminded me of this this one at least one occasion).
But I am the last only in name. Look around and you will see that I am far from alone among those who call Olie dad, or grampa or great-grampa. Together with his wife Mabel, Olie welcomed into this world two daughters and two sons, eight grandchildren and twelve great-grandchildren. In addition to growing his family, Olie made connections everywhere he went. Look around and you will see that you are far from alone in calling him friend, or neighbor, or even legend.
For most of us, Olie was our deepest connection to the past. A walking and talking piece of history. For some he was the last connection to the past. Now with that connection severed it is left to us to remember the past, but also to look forward to the future, as Olie did, and carry forward our portion of his amazing life.
Those who knew my grandfather Olie to be a man of very few words … did not know my grandfather Olie. Olie was a gregarious, well spoken, fun loving and happy soul. His ability to easily strike up a conversation with almost anyone very much defined his life. If you ever had a conversation with him you likely heard him say that he was the luckiest man alive. But the perception of luck is often in the eye of the beholder, and is sometimes simply the result of recognizing opportunity and working hard.
Olie was a master at recognizing opportunity when it came, and he was a hard worker. He was born in the house where he was raised, the fourth of seven children. The house had no computer, no TV, no radio, no plumbing and no electricity. His mother cooked on a coal fired stove, and the young olie made many trips outside to the well to get water and to coal bin to keep the fire going. In the mornings before school he milked the family cow, and in the afternoons he brought the cow home from pasture. When his father became sexton of the church, the young Olie helped him with the hard labor including digging many graves in the village cemetery. He even dug the grave for the younger brother of his best friend; most children in this country today would not be familiar with such a life.
Olie also worked hard in school an excelled. When the opportunity to go to college came in the form of funding a generous aunt, Olie seized it, and again he worked hard and excelled. When he graduated college during the great depression and a rare opportunity to apply for a job came along he took it, moved away to different state, worked hard and again succeeded. When his mentor at Dow Chemical, Dr. William Collings, offered him the opportunity to help build a new enterprise he accepted the challenge and became the first full-time employee of little company named Dow Corning. And again he worked hard and succeeded, and Dow Corning is no longer a little company. After forty years of hard work, when the company board offered him the opportunity to retire he accepted it.
All of his life Olie was grateful of the generosity he had received. And in turn he was very generous, and he was a magnificent provider for his growing family.
Though he was not baptized until after his 100th birthday I cannot remember a single family meal where Olie did not return thanks for the gifts bestowed upon himself and his family and his friends. He was a very grateful man, and with gratefulness comes happiness and these qualities defined his life much more than luckiness.
Olie was certainly blessed, but the truly lucky ones are those who have known him, especially those like me who have known him for every single day of our lives.
I ask you now to join me in remembering this amazing man.
And I ask you to join me in being grateful, very grateful, to have been blessed with the opportunity of knowing him.
And I think that I do not need to ask you to join me in missing him.
Moving Mountains
Wednesday, May 26th, 2010This evening as I listened attentively to a beautiful person say a beautiful thing about life made better by friends and acquaintances, it struck me just how blessed I was to have my own life similarly improved.
And after returning from my brief evening escape out of the office (and the final “stretch of the rules” for my extended taper) I received a message from my good friend Jon confirming that the last piece of an unlikely puzzle had suddenly fallen into place. Indeed, mountains had moved for me today, and it was all due to my wonderful friends.
And so, because of my friends moving mountains I am required to now correct an error I made last week. It turns out that last weekend in Atlanta was *not* the *last* hurrah for tech suits after all. As unlikely as anyone might have guessed, the actual *last* hurrah will now be this Saturday morning at the Texas Swim Center at 8:00 am. And a few of my (quite speedy) good friends will join me in taking one last run at the one that got away as we challenge the national record in the 200 Freestyle Relay. Everyone in the Austin area (friends and acquaintances alike) is invited to come and cheer us on (or simply come for the sheer entertainment value of watching grown men go around in skin tight body suits once worth $1000s but now asymptotically approaching $0 as the June 1st death date for technical swimming suits rapidly approaches). Either way it should be fun!
But if you come, don’t be late! We aim to dive off the blocks exactly at 8:00:00 am and be done just before 8:01:24.00 if all goes well. And why should it not? If your friends can help you move mountains, can they not also help you break records? After all that’s been done to make this meet happen, the swimming seems like the easy part!
Olin D. Blessing — Feb 17, 1908 – May 5, 2010
Wednesday, May 5th, 2010
NAMI Austin walk 2009
Saturday, October 10th, 2009
This morning in between swimming outside at 7am (was the air really 59 degrees? good thing the pool was heated to 79) and doing dryland training at 10am, I hoofed it downtown and joined some friends for the 2009 NAMI Austin walk, which started at 9 am at Auditorium shores and went north across the river, around the capitol building and back.
I took some photos at the event.
A fair number of dogs brought their humans with them (some a bit crazier than others):
APD helped with traffic control:
A lot of people had fun:
more upside
Wednesday, September 30th, 2009The rest of last weekend turned out to be about as beautiful as Friday evening. Saturday provided even more gorgeous sky shots.
And even the evening proved to be worthy of some imaging.
Sunday got off to something of a slow start. I had intended to get up early and run around the lake, since I haven’t seemed able to completely kick my cross training habit yet. But perhaps my body was asserting its opinion that running rather brutalizes it, as I ended up sleeping in until the sun was high enough to make the run seem unfun (and hence, not done). Instead of running around in a big circle downtown I instead stayed home, mowed the lawn, and trimmed back the bramble.
After that I thought it might be time to assess the growing things that I planted so many months ago.
By autumn, the meyer lemon tree, which at one point in the spring had over 100 blossoms, had only a sole surviving fruit:
The topsy turveys were something of a mixed bag. The serrano was somewhat fruitful, but not more than had it grown upside up:
The santa fe pepper produced only three or four peppers during the entire summer (but aren’t they cool looking? I think I’ll grow these again, but in the ground or a regular pot next time):
For most of the summer I was ready to accept the tomatillo as a total failure. It grew far more green leaves than either of the peppers (by a factor of 3 or 4), but never flowered. Still, I kept watering it (and it kept needing water). I suppose after several months of it essentially ignoring me I was not quite ready to give up on it (is that tenacity or just stubbornness)? Then, sometime around my birthday I noticed that it was actually flowering! Of course, since then it’s basically back to ignoring me. The flowers (amazingly) are still there, but as yet no fruit. It *has* been a really hot summer after all (far too hot for good growing). Perhaps the cooler fall weather will be more productive … I think I’m not quite ready to give up yet:
Finally, at some point over the summer I stuck a pineapple top in a pot. They’re rather slow to flower (2 years or so) but it’s fairly well taking off. I like to watch them grow:
Then I decided that it was probably time to change the oil in my car …
My new life
Monday, August 31st, 2009Sometimes change is in the air; sometimes it’s just in the mix; sometimes it’s good; sometimes it hurts; sometimes it’s needed; sometimes it’s all you have, and sometimes … well, sometimes it’s just for fun.
11 days ago I did something that qualifies as a definite change (well for me at least): I signed up to do the third triathlon of my life, and my first olympic distance tri.
SInce that defining moment I’ve discovered that being a triathlete requires a different kind of life. So far I’ve changed the way I eat, the way I live, and the way I treat other people.
The race is in downtown Austin and begins during the sunrise hours of labor day: 7 days from today. Hopefully more pre race posts will follow …
