Thoughts For The Day From Papa ‘a

Good Morning All & Happy Saturday and…Hooray, Hooray, for the eighth of May everyone!

Speaking of special days, here’s to my former co-worker and employee benefits consulting professional extraordinaire, Laurie, who celebrates her 62nd birthday today!  Here’s to you, Laurie!  You’ve come through much heartache in your life with your bright smile intact and have a servant’s heart for others.  The world became a better place when you entered it 62 years ago today.  Also, Happy Birthday to friend Bakari, who turns 23 today.  Congrats on earning a college education at Whitworth and being a “self-made person” (with much help from your faith in Jesus).  May you be a bright light in this world of ours in the years ahead!

Also, let me be one of the first to wish my long-time friend (lifetime friend for that matter), Mike, on his birthday which happens tomorrow, May 9th!  Here’s to you my friend…son, husband, father, grandfather, US Navy officer, superb swimmer, and military and commercial pilot extraordinaire!  Have fun on your special day of celebration!

Happy Birthday wishes also go to jazz/blues musician & guitarist Joe Bonamassa, who is 44 today;  to singer Enrique Iglesias, who turns 46 today; to actress Melissa Gilbert, who is 57 today; author of “Jaws”, Peter Benchley, who turns 81 today; and to singer Toni Tenille of “Captain & Tenille” fame, who turns 81 today!  Here’s to all of you!

Judy & I traveled with my son, Jake; his wife, Sarah; and our beloved granddaughter little miss Tempa Joanne (Tempa Jo) to Seattle Children’s Hospital for a couple of days this past week so that they could meet with the geneticist at the Hospital and receive helpful information about Tempa Jo’s condition and ways to make her quality of life better in the days ahead.  This effort will involve having Tempa Jo undergo a MRI, as the team at Seattle Children’s Hospital put together an appropriate Keto Diet formula that will hopefully help in reducing the bad effects of glycine build up in her body that could result in seizures down the road.  Remarkably, Tempa Jo is gaining weight and seems to be making progress in her development.  She is sure a beautiful little baby in all respects!  We’re sure enjoying her!  Boy howdy, is Seattle Children’s Hospital ever a mammoth place!  So many patients, so many medical care professionals there.  It’s located in Seattle’s Laurelhurst District, which is right next door to the University of Washington campus.  We stayed in a Silver Cloud Hotel not far from the Hospital.  It was a really nice property and rooms there seem to be fairly reasonable as rooms go in Seattle…about $135-140 per night.  Laurelhurst is a pretty neighborhood, for sure.  I was a little nervous driving in Seattle, for it’s been quite a while since I’ve been there.  I went down one side street where there was a solid line of cars parked on both sides of the street, making it possible for only one car to negotiate what was left of the “two-way” street…good thing no vehicle was trying to travel the opposite way!  Whew!  We made it all the way down the street!  Driving there really increases your adrenaline!  It was a good time for us to be with Jake, Sarah & Tempa Jo and we enjoyed every minute of our journey and adventure there with them!

Here’s the culinary tips from our Seattle trip…try out the food at “Din Tai Fung”, a Taiwanese restaurant in University Village Shopping Center, right off 45th Ave. in Laurelhurst.  Yummy Asian food that is a bit different than any other Asian food you might try.  Also, on your way to or from Seattle, stop by “Legendary Doughnuts” in Issaquah and try out their “Homer Simpson” giant glazed doughnut, their “Fred Flintstone” doughnut featuring Fruity Pebbles on top; and their “Apple Fritter” and so many others, too numerous to mention here.  You’ll be glad you did!  Some of the best doughnuts this side of the Mississippi, for sure!  They also have a panini called “The Gobbler” that adds some savory faire to the sweet.

I drove the way through the Cascades and we did run into some inclement weather near the top of Snoqualamie Pass, which isn’t unusual for Spring…lots of rain, wind, sleet, snow making driving conditions a bit dicey for a brief while, but we made it through!  My wife Judy spelled me on driving after we made it over the mountains and decided to expand my mind by purchasing some newspapers at an Ellensburg grocery store on the way through…The Seattle Times, The Ellensburg Daily Record and The Wall Street Journal…different editorial takes on the pressing issues of the day.  I think some of our better Presidents (i.e. Lincoln, FDR & Truman) used to read multiple newspapers from various parts of the country as a way to stay sharp and understand that the way folks looked at things wasn’t always “one way or the other,” taking the best from all and forming positions based on a broad view of things…something that is sorely needed these days, don’t you think?

Well, there was an editorial in the Daily Record entitled “Mars will not save human species” that I thought was especially through-provoking.  I, like I imagine many of you, were taken with the recent lift off of a drone helicopter on Mars and the successful landing of a rocket on land…so many technological advances in space exploration, it takes one’s breath away, don’t you think?  My son-in-law, David, who I admire greatly, argues rather convincingly that we need space exploration in order to make significant advances in technology to help planet Earth.  However, I’ve always been a bit conflicted by our government spending so much of our treasure on space ventures when we have so many pressing problems/issues here on Earth that need our attention and ingenuity to solve.  John Crisp, who wrote the editorial I mentioned puts it this way”  What could be more natural than going to Mars?  So far, civilization’s essential narrative has been exploration, discovery and migration from parts of our planet that are short on resources and overpopulated into new territory….In retrospect, this narrative seems inevitable, but it was always a series of choices driven by our unwillingness to live within the limits of local resources and the assumption that the resources elsewhere were unlimited.  In prospect, however, it’s a mistake to assume that colonizing the solar system is an inevitable extension of the story that got us to this point.  And it’s a fatal mistake to assume that Mars and beyond can serve as the safety valve that permits us to continue to ignore the problems that are making a decent life on Earth an increasingly sketchy proposition…As far as we know, Earth is unique, and humankind has evolved to exist in its unique ecological niche.  Consequently, human migration to other planets makes as much sense as transferring a herd of elephants from the wilds of Africa to Central Park or, since we’re talking about Mars, to the Mojave Desert…the survival of our species cannot rely on fantasies of migration to other planets.  In fact, entertaining such fantasies works against a realistic understanding of our tiny corner of the universe and our place in it.  The survival of our species requires learning to live in the place that we evolved to inhabit.  Did the capacity to live within our resources evolve along with our drive to explore?  Let’s hope so.  A failure to figure out how to survive on Earth before we try to go elsewhere will be fatal.”

John M. Crisp, “Mars will not save human species,” Daily Record (Ellensburg WA), Thursday, May 6, 2021, page A4.

On balance, I have to say that I come down in John Crisp’s school of thought on this issue.  Let’s get things right here on Earth first, and then send out our “Magellans” and our “Cooks” to explore strange new worlds.  I really think we should take care of things in our “home” first before venturing out into risky enterprises that may take years in which to reap the benefits of such exploration…although in fairness, Magellan, Cook and all the great explorers in history may never have ventured out if their governments had devoted their respective country’s resources solely to internal problems/issues which, by the way, never seem to get resolved…What do you think?  It just occurs to me that, with the world’s population continuing to increase, and the fact that God, our Creator, only made so much land and so much water (the seas…oceans), we are going to HAVE to focus efforts on sustainability of life at our home, which happens to be planet Earth…

Speaking of space travel, I came across another one of my “Outer Limits” 1964 trading cards…this one is entitled “Twin Space Terrors.”  It pictures two ugly looking creatures of unusual size with claw like hands from the planet Mercury.  The trading card says that “Just as Earth is ready to surrender (to these creatures), a group of scientists capture two of the enemy.  Under intense questioning, one of The Mercurians reveals the weakness of his people. The men from Mercury have supersensitive hearing and can hear sounds that Earth men cannot hear.  With this knowledge, Earth may have a way of defeating their enemies…” (to be continued on the next card–#29…only one problem…I don’t have Card #29!…I’ll have to go in e-Bay and/or another auction sight to see if I can find it!).

Here’s the trivia fact for the day:

The average person has approximately five dreams a night.  (Now that’s a lot of dreams!  Do you dream when you sleep?  Can you remember your dreams?  Ever since I started taking Melatonin to help me sleep longer, I’ve noticed that I can remember dreaming at night and sometimes can remember my dreams more vividly.  They say that dreaming means you are having a deeper, more restful sleep…is that true?  What do you think?

Here’s the trivia question for the day:

Q:  “Buffalo wings are named after what…an animal?…a city?…or a restaurant?

A:  “Buffalo wings were first introduced on July 29, 1964 at the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, New York.  The wings were the brainchild of Teressa Bellissimo who owned the bar with her husband Frank.  Upon the unannounced, late-night arrival of their son Dominic and his friends from college, Teressa needed a quick snack.  She came up with the idea of deep frying chicken wings (normally thrown away or reserved for stock) and tossing them in cayenne hot sauce.  The guys liked them so much that she put the “Buffalo Wings” on the menu the next day!  The City of Buffalo now celebrates “Chicken Wing Day” every July 29th.

Here are some thoughts for the day:

“I don’t believe you have to be better than everybody else.  I believe you have to be better than you ever thought you could be.”

—Ken Venturi, PGA golfing great (winner of the U.S. Open Golf Championship in the late 1950s)

“My years of ballet and jazz dance lessons didn’t make me any more graceful—they jut helped me from bumping into the furniture on stage.”

“I’m not going to be rockin’ n’ rollin’ when I’m 50 years old.  But you can be in your prime on television, compose songs, or write a Broadway play when you’re 50.”

—Toni Tennille, of “Captain & Tennille” fame, whose 81st birthday is today!

Here’s to a great Saturday and lots of love & good wishes to you and your loved ones!

Press on

Papa ‘a (Dad, Uncle Mark, Mark, etc.)