The wind turbine installed at the county shops in Great Falls has a monthly amortized cost of $1,175 and generates in an average month $500 worth of electricity.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Windmill_04.JPG
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John’s Family Tree
The year was 2023.
Supper was over and John opened his backpack. He had homework every night. His parent, Blake, sat down at the kitchen table to offer support. John’s other parent, Mike, was not home yet. He had been working extra lately and had a long commute besides.
One of the assignments was to create a pedigree chart, a genealogy. John put his name in the first blank: John Andrew Smith. He looked to Blake, his parent, questioning. What name should he put in the upper line, Blake’s or Mikes? He put in Blake Phillip Bigelow. In the lower line, he entered Michael Sebastian Crowell. When John’s parents had married in 2013, Mike had kept his birth name. Crowell’s name went where the mother’s name usually would go. When a child has two fathers, deciding which father goes on which line is a toss-up. The way John had filled it in made Mike appear in the mother’s position.
How did John get the last name Smith with parents whose names were Bigelow and Crowell? When he was born, Blake and Mike decided that in order to keep it clear that he was as much one’s as the other’s, they would give him a neutral name. They chose the most common American surname: Smith. That way, little John would not know which one of them had contributed physically to his birth. The presumption of equal contribution could be maintained; his name would not give anything away.
“Who were your parents?” said John.
“My father is Stephen Marks Bigelow and my mother is Mary Abigail Spencer,” said Blake.
John wrote the names.
“Who were Mike’s parents?” asked John.
“His dad is Fred Crowell and his mother is Dorothy, I don’t remember her maiden name,” said Blake.
John wrote these names.
They worked back on Blake’s side of the family tree. Mike helped John fill in his side later that evening.
After saying prayers, as Blake and Mike were tucking John into bed, John suddenly got really quiet.
Noticing this, Mike said, “Is there anything the matter John?”
John said, “I’d really like to know someday which of you is my dad.”
Blake and Mike looked at each other signaling the need to hide any alarm.
“We are both your dad,” said Mike.
“Yes, we both are,” affirmed Blake. “We both love you with all our hearts.”
“Is either one of you my mother?” asked John. “Every person on my genealogy chart has a father and a mother except me. Is there something wrong with me? Is it my fault?”
Blake spoke soothingly. “We both love you so much, we are trying to do a better job for you even than parents do in families where a father and mother sometimes do not love their kids enough.”
John left off asking and Mike and Blake decided to let his silence be the conclusion of that night’s talk.
John lay awake for a good time after this. He had often wondered what he only tonight was able to ask. Whose was he? Was Blake his father? He thought he looked more like Blake than Mike. Mike had a dark skin color and black hair. John’s hair and Mike’s were similar and their faces both freckled under summer suns.
“I must be Blake’s son, not Mike’s. I can’t be both. So I put the right name on the upper section of the genealogy chart,” thought John.
“Who is my mother?” he questioned. “Everyone else I know has a mother and all the people further back than my parents have both kinds of parents. Someone must be my mother.”
He lay there thinking of what kind of woman she must be. He thought, “My genealogy chart is half wrong, the Mike half, I think. I wonder if I’ll get a 50% when I turn it in.”
He turned over with a slight shiver of loss. “I love both my parents. They are so good to me. But they are hiding something from me. There is a secret about my life they will not tell me. They are not exactly lying; they only are leaving something unsaid. I do not really know who I am. They cannot mean to hurt me; they’ve never hurt me, but not knowing half of my history does hurt.”
The next day at school, each child showed his pedigree chart and told a short story of an ancestor. John told about his great-grandfather on Blake’s side-John felt this was the surest way to be honest in claiming an ancestor- who had taught carpentry in school and who was present when a young student slipped and had one of his fingers cut off in a saw.
Each student pinned his or her chart on the bulletin board.
Not a single student made fun of John for his pedigree chart; most didn’t even notice the difference between his and the others. But John still felt uneasy.
When his parents got John to talk about school that day, John’s uneasiness and the pedigree chart being the source of it became obvious.
Blake called a school board member and the superintendent. Over a series of meetings Blake and Mike and some other parents who they got to join their cause persuaded school officials to instruct teachers to drop genealogy projects from the curriculum. Ancestry was just too touchy. Kids would not be asked to tell of their origins and family background. It would save some kids from uneasiness.
But the subject was not closed as far as John was concerned. He promised himself that he would find his mother. Many questions came to him. What kind of a woman was she? In what way was he like her? What countries were her ancestors, and his, from? Had she and Blake and Mike met? Did they pay her? How much? Did she have other children? Where were they? Could he ever meet them? Why had she left him motherless? Would he be smarter and better if she, rather than Mike, had raised him?
“Mike, I think, is trying to be my mother. But he is not like my friends’ mothers. They are different than fathers. And Mike is much more like Blake than my friends’ mothers are like their fathers,” he thought.
In later years, when John’s capacity for investigation grew, he was told not to try to find his mother. Some laws stood in the way. The laws had been written to give sanction to the situation of two men married. If the mother was know-able, it would slight their dignity as parents, a slight the law had corrected. The child had to keep silent, to refuse his or her curiosity, to be satisfied with half a pedigree chart. Then the marital decisions of the parents would appear flawless.
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I asked the USPS for daily, weekly and monthly information on revenues for Montana’s Post Offices. They said they would provide it if I pay $1,156,917.80.
That accounting software I and other taxpayers bought them doesn’t seem too good. I want my money back.
Maybe sales people at Quicken should give them a call and offer to sell them Quickbooks.
A downtown retailer with Quickbooks’ $199.96 software could generate revenue and expense reports in a jiffy.
This news report is what prompted my interest:
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I finished this book yesterday. Reading it felt like the conquest of a peak. When I understood the flowery, yet beguilingly simple, prose, I felt enlightened. I’m afraid that my reading muscles are not quite equal to Eliot’s compositional powers.
The plot did not heat up until about page 690. Still, the amusing and relatable characters moved the story along. One can see onesself and acquaintances so well in the characters she draws. I admire Caleb, Mr. Farebrother, Mary and Dorothea. I will strive to avoid the foibles of Dr. Lydgate, Rosamond and Mr. Bulstrode.
Much in it amused me.
Reading it was worthwhile. I expect to read The Mill on the Floss, also by Eliot, in a later year.
I watched the BBC mini-series, 99% of it, that is, and feel that it misses so much that can only be expressed by book.
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Three North Korean Escapees
MSU Ballroom. Put on by the MSU Leadership Institute.
Kobe was the lead organizer.
April 22, 2013
Mother and two young adult daughters
450 people in attendance
“God saved us, his miraculous power.”
“I want to thank God first…”
“I am glad to share my testimony…”
“I have spoken in many churches but this is the first time to give my testimony in such a public event.”
Their family was eight in number, now they are only three. One daughter may be still alive in human trafficking subjection.
“America is heaven.”
North Korea is “a socialist nation.”
They spoke of government purges.
You can be imprisoned for a slip of the tongue, maybe something uncomplimentary about Kim. Other family members go to prison along with you. Some families have three generations in the prison system, with children being born in captivity.
They want God to move the hearts of all to pray for freedom for North Koreans. “I appeal to all of you…” It is their wish that NK would collapse.
Instead of Ten Commandments, they are required to obey the Ten Rules, revealed by the dictator. Children call the dictator “Dear Father” when they get yearly candy on the ruler’s birthday. In schools they are taught loyalty to the party and its leader through brainwashing. “Idol worship, of Kim, is instilled from age three.”
People are not free to travel. The only reasons allowed for travel are funerals and weddings. None but the elite go to the capitol city. People have to participate in self-criticism meetings, like in other communist countries in recent decades.
The regime freezes children to death. They have no homes and parents. Orphanages are cruel where the strong children hassle and take things from the weak, younger ones.
From 1994-1999 three million died of starvation.
Two boys in an orphanage looked about eight years of age to the youngest daughter when she was twelve; she was shocked to find out that they were eighteen.
These three have been in the U.S. for five years. The mother knew that the family would dwindle to less than three if she did not take extreme measures, so they made four crossings into China but were repatriated three times after Chinese police found them out. In China, hiding and living on the margins, the girls tended sheep and pigs. Back in NK, the girls had to pretend to be without parents and not to know each other. The mother told them where to meet up and they always were reunited. Finally, on their fourth escape, the UN High Commissioner on Refugees in China took their case. A Christian pastor in Seattle spent $10,000 for their move to the US. The younger daughter manages a home health care business, I think in Washington, D.C., in which the older daughter works. The older daughter has a NK defector aid agency. The younger daughter wants to be a lawyer. She was born in 1991. She works all day, then studies English from 6:30-10 pm.
They suffered beatings in prison and starvation. In hiding, dozens of people were crowded in a very small rom. Insects plagued them. They could not cry out over their pains, or they would be found. People bit their tongues and lips to keep silent. During one period, they were weakened by having nothing to eat for ten days. They only had water. A dead mouse was discovered. Grandma roasted it. The sizzling fat aroma was delicious; the mouse tasted like a feast.
The mother read the words of the Christian hymn, From Greenland’s Icy Mountains.
From Greenland’s icy mountains,
From India’s coral strand;
Where Afric’s sunny fountains
Roll down their golden sand
Salvation, oh salvation!
The joyful sound proclaim,
Till earth’s remotest nation
Has heard Messiah’s name.
“Do not send food or medicine aid through official channels as it only goes to party officials and the elite, or allows the government to stockpile for war. These items do not reach average people.”
They have numerous nurses, (universal access!), but little medicine. All the medicine goes to a favored few, party elites.
They said Americans cannot understand the warped mentality of NK’s dictators who take advantage of American gullibility in aid programs.
Many of tonight’s attendees probably had little idea of the desperation experienced under that socialist government. The moving witness we heard demolishes the arguments doubters of free enterprise, property rights, individualism, restrained government and American exceptionalism. Their story was spellbinding, the room was silent. Likely some tears fell.
North Korea is a socialist nation.
“America is heaven.”
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Tamerlane
A name in the news
One of the Boston bombing suspects is named Tamerlan
Tamerlane: 1336-1405
A Turkish conqueror
In religion, he was a zealous Moslem
The ground which had been occupied by flourishing cities was often marked by his abominable trophies, by columns or pyramids of human heads.
Perhaps his conscience would have been startled if a priest of philosopher had dared to number the millions of victims whom he had sacrificed to the establishment of peace and order.
He erected on the ruins of Baghdad a pyramid of ninety thousand heads.
Four thousand Armenians were buried alive for the brave and faithful discharge of their duty.
Christian prisoners were offered the choice of abjurgation or death.
From Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Chapter 65
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I use The New Lifetime Reading Plan and Reading List for a Lifetime as guides.
The New Lifetime Reading Plan has 194 specific titles. It also lists sixteen authors whose recommended titles are too many to list. Fore example, it recommends reading all of Shakespeare and Selected Poems of W.H. Auden.
I’ve read thirty-one of the specific titles and parts of the works of other named authors such as Shakespeare, Murasaki Aristotle, Sun-Tzu, Aurelius, Augustine, Moliere, Locke, Rousseau, Mill, Emerson, Boswell, Poe, Ibsen, Dickinson, Chekhov, Frost and Solzhenitsyn.
I’m about one-sixth of the way through this list. I’d better buckle down if I’m going to get them all read before death. Some that I have read I want to read again.
Reading List for a Lifetime has 112 titles. I’ve read 40 of them, putting me more than a third of the way through.
Right now I’m reading Middlemarch. It’s an unexpected delight. The prose is complex but the effort to understand it is rewarding. Eliot is humorous in her depictions of characters’ thoughts and actions. So far there is no gripping plot, and I’m past half-way, but the people keep me going.
I did take a break from Middlemarch for a few days to read two Dave Barry books, one of which was Dave Barry Does Japan. His gift for humor is bodacious.
This approach to history and literature has been most enlightening and pleasurable.
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