crates | January 28, 2009
Sometimes I get irritated…irritated at the shifting nature of reality. Change, always change, like quicksilver…when I think I have it, it morphs, chameleon-like into something else. People I knew in my youth have grown grey, wrinkled. I expect people to act the same, but they don’t. Why do I have to constantly readjust my way [...]
crates | December 17, 2008
The autumn leaves have pretty much all fallen, stripped from the tree branches by the high winds that have swept through the area. Here are some of the photos that I have taken on my favorite walk to the beach. My favorite type of morning is when the mist curls through the forest and the [...]
crates | December 6, 2008
I recently reread Latro of the Mist which combines two of Gene Wolfe’s books (Soldier of the Mist and Soldier of Arete) into one book. In this book Wolfe (who has been described by some as one of the best writers in the English language) tells the story of Latro, a Roman, who suffered [...]
crates | December 4, 2008
I have recently become fascinated by the idea of sentience in machines and the nature of consciousness. To explore this idea and to work it out in my own mind, I began to write a story about the subject. Below is an excerpt: “My drowsiness instantly vanished, replaced by an anger [...]
crates | November 30, 2008
It seems to me that most people make friends very easily. I do not. It is not that I don’t feel the need for friends or that I am not open to friendship, but it seems that there are few people with whom I “click” with to the extent that I can grow close [...]
crates | October 7, 2008
See September 8 blog for an introduction to this topic. As I talked about before, the Y chromosome is only passed down from father to son, and can be used to find out information about a male’s paternal ancestry. This chromosome contains about 58 million base pairs containing 86 genes or 27 depending on whom you [...]
crates | September 18, 2008
I got a call at work thirty minutes ago…my father said that my beloved mother and his precious wife left us at 9:40 pm CDT. She was surrounded by all her children (except me) and by almost all her grandchildren. I was not present because I thought I’d work a bit more to earn the money [...]
crates | September 13, 2008
At times it is almost overwhelming watching my father hold my mother’s hand and tell her that he has loved her since she was fifteen years old. This December they will have been married sixty-six years. My father will be 84 and my mother 83. She still will kiss you when you bend over to [...]
crates | September 8, 2008
For many years I have been interested in the history of my family. The advent of computers has sped up this process and recently a new tool has been added to the process–DNA analysis. Recently when I was in Texas, I noticed that the genealogy web site, Ancestry.com, had a half price sale [...]
crates | August 17, 2008
Blackberries We were just friends when you tripped on the blackberry vine. I got to my knees beside you and Helped pick out the thorns, Putting your fingers in my mouth to Bite them out with my teeth. Then to make you laugh I fed you Sun-warmed blackberries Lying there in the grass, and Then I [...]