Thank You For Lettin' Me...

The world gets crazy.  Our brains get full of worry and what-ifs (ironically except for "what if I stopped worrying about what-ifs?").

Our blood pressure rises and before we know it we are starting our heavily caps locked social media posts with words like: 'RANT' or 'WARNING'.  Seems more like anti-social media at times...

What I'm trying to say is, we get caught up and we forget to say thank you.  I don't mean thank you as in 'please and'.  I mean we straight up forget or downright overlook the good stuff, which is just down wrong.  Am I right?

So, I'm going to say some thanks and hopefully you'll  see some of mine that apply to you too.

 Image courtesy of Felixco, Inc. at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Thank you for allowing a reasonable distance between your car and mine.
Thank you for letting me in front of you in line.
Thank you for picking up the phone.
Thank you for laughing at my awkward jokes.
Thank you for commenting on my post.
Thank you for the likes, shares, and pokes?
Thank you for accepting my pizza coupon that expired.
Thank you for the concern when I look tired.
Thank you for the extra napkins.  It's as if you knew what could happen!
Thank you for bringing chocolate candy.
Thank you for reading my rambling.
See how full of thanks we could be, 
Just by me seeing you and you seeing me?
Strange or familiar we're much the same
When we remove the busy and the pain.
Thanks for giving ourselves the chance
To see beyond our circumstance.


Happy New Year!!

How Many Parents Do You Really Have?

Image courtesy of supakitmod at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

You may think that most people have no more than two parents.  Could you possibly be wrong?  I'm asking...

Perhaps you have one or more voluntary parents.  What constitutes a voluntary parent you ask?

A voluntary parent is an adult that loves and nurtures a child (or a grown-up child) with which they share no blood relation.

They are adults that care for us out of compassion, rather than obligation.

Sometimes the voluntary parent holds a potentially meaningless title or prefix like ‘step’ or ‘in-law’.  These mean different things to different people and often require an explanation of the relationship. 

The voluntary parent does things without thanks and with acceptance of the fact that you’ll probably never send them a birthday card.

The voluntary parent can teach you a lot about yourself because they see you more objectively than perhaps the rest of your family does.

The voluntary parent rarely plays the guilt card.

You probably won’t become a duplicate of your voluntary parent as you age, but you will miss them fiercely between visits, sometimes even more than your ‘real’ parents.

The bonds between you and your voluntary parents are very special and cannot be broken by time or distance.

So here’s to the parents who are just as important as... your parents.  Here’s to the Steps, the Aunts and Uncles, and yes, the In-laws.  Thanks for the love, the laughs, and the lessons.  I cherish all of you.

I miss you, Dad!

Gig Bless Us, Every One...

Image courtesy of geralt at Pixabay.com

Once upon a time 

I traveled store to store.  Nowadays I one stop shop:  veggies aisle one, curtains aisle four.

When I lost my way I'd consult giant maps, which I never could fold, only wad in my lap.  

Now I can make calls or send texts, while I drive

Multitasking technology keeps me alive.

When I get where I'm going the car does its own parking.

It charges and self navigates each embarking.

If I get home late and it's past dinner time, I just send emoji and pizza is mine!

What's on tv I never need know, because magic devices record all my shows.  

For every desire there's most surely an app

All our wishes, whims, wants with simply a tap

Instant gratification is our new motto

With the time we're all saving, Oh the places we'll go!

I'd like to go camping but there's no wifi 

What good are pictures of a brilliant night sky

If I cannot tweet them or share them for likes?

No Snapchat of marshmallows?  Seems a bit trite.

Off I must go, I've no more time for typing.  While I'm writing this poem, I could be off Skyping.

Thank the batteries and chargers that make my life happen

And may gigs bless this grid we've so foolishly fastened.

A poem by Gen Clever

Are We Alone?

People like to talk definitively.  Wikipedia has empowered us.  We earthlings can speak on practically any subject and even spew valid facts after just a spot of research.  Library?  Pshaw!  Where am I going with this you ask?  If you read the title, you may have guessed that I’m going to tell you that aliens exist.   Your guess would be semi-accurate.  I’m going to tell you that aliens could exist, and we couldn’t know for certain if they didn’t. 

Image courtesy of Victor Habbick at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

When we look up into the night sky, we are only seeing 0.000003% of our own galaxy.  Our galaxy (the Milky Way for those of you just joining us) is one of an estimated 500 billion galaxies in the universe.  Add to that the human eye sees less than 1% of the visible spectrum of light.  Visible light is only 2.3% of the whole electromagnetic spectrum, or 0.0035% on a linear scale.  That’s fancy science talk for ‘humans can’t see very much of what can be seen’.  See?

The technologies we’ve discovered and developed to help us see what's invisible to the naked eye are relatively new in the grand scheme of it all.  The median age of terrestrial planets in our galaxy is about one billion years older than the age of the Earth.  Earthlings are infantile compared to what’s out there.  How could we recognize aliens if we don’t understand their technology?  You don't expect me to get the jokes in a foreign film without subtitles do you?

Image courtesy of Comfreak at Pixabay.com

Thirdly, how do we know aliens want to be seen?  Perhaps Kathleen Madigan was accurate when she joked about Earth being 'the Alabama of the universe'.  Maybe they don’t want to be contacted by us. I mean, look at us!  If aliens are more advanced, wouldn’t it be pretty easy for them to ‘hide’ from us?  We on earth hide all the time.  We have camouflage, stealth technology, cloaking devices, whatever Predator does in those movies...

Finally, Dr. Frank Drake, the founder of SETI (Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence), says that digital technology is ‘hiding’ us from aliens.  We were once surrounded by a huge shell of radiation from analog TV, radio, and radar transmissions.  These signals are vanishing in the wake of digital technology.  We are turning ourselves into white noise in space.  If we ever did knock on an alien’s door, we are now hiding behind the bushes in their front yard.  We are silly stupid juveniles who don't even know what 90% of the universe is made up of. We just named it 'Dark Matter' and moved on.  So, are we alone?  I'm asking...

http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/2007-08/1188407794.Ph.r.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2523058/Camouflage-suits-make-wearers-impossible-see.html

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2010/02/invisible-extraterrestrials-one-of-worlds-leading-physicist-says-they-could-exist-in-forms-we-cant-c.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/7077464/Earth-becoming-invisible-to-aliens.html