Futurelawyer

Happy Birthday, Angel.

Happy Birthday, Angel.

Happy Birthday, Diane.

An Idea I Can Get Behind.

My blog has always been a politics free zone. However, there is always an exception to every rule. In the case of Government, as much as we Americans complain about our system, most of us wouldn't trade capitalism for socialism. We believe in individual effort and accomplishment, and that government, while it should punish wrongdoers and regulate human conduct only for reasons directly related to safety and so forth, should not be able to control how we live our lives. If we don't learn the lessons of history (socialism never works), we are doomed to repeat it. That is why I groan when I see young people protest, and act out, and destroy property for causes they clearly do not understand. I blame their parents, who have taught them that they should be protected from every slight or uncomfortable truth. We have raised a society of snowflakes. Just as Jonathan Swift suggested his "modest proposal", this sign suggests that we open the eyes of our children. 

Before We Were Fathers.

When he stepped into the sunshine,

he remembered a young boy

swimming in a lake,

and sitting in an aluminum chair,

fishing for catfish and bream.

The metal stringer lay at his feet,

in the water,

and the caught fish flopped around

for a while.

He remembered looking down

as the sun set,

and he saw the shadowy figure

of a water moccasin slithering

next to his feet.

He ran to the cabin,

and vowed never to put his feet in the lake

again.

The next morning,

the sun reappeared

and the dawn greeted him with a smile,

and he went to the lake again,

to pick up his stringer

filled with fish

he could eat.

When he saw the stringer laying by the chair,

there were only skeletal remains

where the fish had been,

and he realized that the snake

had a meal

during the night.

He got in the car and drove to work.

He remembered the simplicity of youth,

and the eternal cycle of birth

and life,

and death,

as if it all had happened before.

#ParrotSunday - Happy Father's Day.

Rio Says Happy Flag Day.

Rio Says Happy Flag Day! 

Rio Says Happy Flag Day.

Rio Says Happy Flag Day! 

#TBT - Nothing New Under The Sun.

The quote from Ecclesiastes came to mind when I saw this post from Mark W. on X: The Yeats poem was written over 100 years ago; but it could be describing our current human situation, couldn't it? The Stoics teach us that there is nothing new, and that everything repeats itself. If that is the case, we should be living in the present, since we have no control over events. Certainly, we do what we can do to influence the good; but living a good life requires some detachment from the folly of others. Get out there today, and live a good life.

#Father'sDay - Fatherhood Has Nothing To Do With Biology.

My natural father died when I was five years old. While I wish he had been around when I was growing up, and I have written about him and his life before, the man who raised me was my step-father, who married my mom when I was in first grade, just two years after my dad died. He and I couldn't have been more different. He was quiet and taciturn and a disciplinarian. He grew up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin, and was a Navy lifer. However, without his urging, I would have spent my youth in a library, and never learned to love baseball, or how to fish, or what hard physical labor was all about. His discipline, and that of the nuns who taught me in parochial school, molded me, and I am fortunate to have had them, even though, at the time, I thought I was in Hell on Earth. When my step-father died, I wrote this poem in his honor, and read it at his funeral. Fatherhood isn't about biology. It is about teaching, and molding, and being there.

He remembered when

he walked 8 batters in a row,

and his father left him in the game.

He remembered when

he wanted to stay in the house

and read a book,

and his Father taught him

to hit a baseball.

He remembered the day

he got to drive the Mustang to school.

His father gave him the keys

and no lectures.

He remembered being punished.

He always believed it hurt his father more.

He remembered the job

unloading box cars on college breaks.

He remembered his father’s hand on his shoulders

in the middle of the night

when he was at the movies.

He remembered working in the yard

on hot Saturdays,

just so he could go to the movies

late in the afternoon.

When his father died,

the priest said pious things

about an honorable man.

He knew that the priest

had no idea

what was on the other side of midnight.

He prayed anyway,

because that is what his father

would have wanted him to do.