Category Archive

I’ve written about this picture at length before.  It’s me with mom & dad at Sibley Hospital in 1970.  Dad had cancer and was scheduled to have his eye removed.  The doctors were not sure what they would find when they looked around….so this was meant to be a possible “final family picture.”  Dad would still die far too young, but thankfully we would have 14 more years after this photo.

I’ve thought much more about my father in these past couple months.  Dad died before the proliferation of cable TV news and well before the internet.  Although I think I know – I still wonder what he would be like now had he lived.  He was so curious….he was researching home computers when he died in 1984.

Dad hated ignorance and intolerance…I don’t think he would have devolved into the Fox News watching/Angry Old White Guy.  I do think that he would be appalled by the way we judge others and by our political discourse.  I frequently discuss the lessons that my dad tried to teach me as a boy.  One of his favorite methods of getting a point across was to have me look up a word in the dictionary.  Dinner came to a screeching halt on more than one occasion while he sent me to retrieve the big red book.  One evening the word was “empathy.”  I wish I remembered the situation that prompted it, but I don’t.

It seems like empathy has pretty much disappeared.  A little more would sure be useful.  Empathy won’t solve all our issues, but I can’t think of a better first step for us all.  That includes our Presidential candidates.  I’ve only seen empathy from two or three of them and I’ve really only seen it from one candidate on a consistent basis.  Let’s begin there.  Look it up if you need to.

After letting one blog die a slow death, I created this one 15 months ago for a fresh start.  So much for that.  Although as the days get shorter, I feel the need to write and to revive this blog.  There’s a lot on my mind right now, but very little that I can seem to assimilate into anything worthwhile.  It will come.

So for now Veteran’s Day gives me an excuse to remember my dad.  Dad was a navy pilot and served during the Korean War.

He seldom talked about his service, but I bet we would have discussed it had he lived much beyond his 55th birthday and my 21st.  I’ve got a box in my garage with a bunch of 8mm movies and slides from his tour.  I’m going to have to pick through those some day….it’s hard to do so without him around to narrate.  Still, remembering this picture on this day lead to much internet research about his aircraft carrier (the Antietam) and his planes (I used to think they were P-51 Mustangs, but now I believe they were F4U Corsairs.)

This is another one of those pictures that I’m so glad exists as it prompted a couple unexpected hours today.  Thanks, dad.