Pistolero

I visited one of my brothers today.

I awoke early, about 4:30, brushed my teeth, and hit the road. Because my visit was to involve helping him plant a garden there was no point to showering. I reached his house around 7:30 this morning; I woke him up by calling him from my cell phone as I sat outside his house.

The trip down to see him was as much for my own sanity and serenity as it was to help him with the garden. I just needed a little time on the highway to clear my head. And I wanted time outdoors in the country, where I could smell the earth and hear birds chirp and not hear traffic and sirens.

My niece and her husband joined us an hour or two after I got there and they did most of the work in the garden. They planted a variety of peppers, eggplant, okra, several types of tomatoes, pinto beans, a variety of Paraguayan beans, cucumbers, a fig tree, and a lime tree. It's going to be a nice garden.

I spent much of my time disassembling a monstrous old satellite dish, one of the old-style 10-foot diameter beasts. It hadn't worked in years and has simply been an eyesore. With not much effort, we got the dish down. There remains a very heavy-duty steel post in the ground, though. It' probably six feet tall and an additional three feet or more is buried in concrete beneath the ground. I suspect the post will remain for some time to come.

We only worked until around 2 pm, so the day was not long at all, but it was a good start to some needed planting and sprucing up. There's much left to be done, but I think we got enough accomplished to get the ball rolling.

I want to go back and work outside, cleaning up the place and behaving as if I were living in my place in the country. There's something about that environment that I love, even though it's not the most beautiful place...it's just being outside in the quiet, in a relatively private place.

Speaking of quiet, we disrupted the quiet by shooting a 22-rifle. I'm not a gun person, not at all, but I tried my hand at shooting some cans off a box. Dead-eye John, they call me. My brother and his son-in-law also fired off a few rounds from my brother's pistol. My issue with guns (other than...they are guns) is that they are loud. I'm content to shoot a few rounds if it won't disturb or scare someone, but even out in the country, I suspect people hearing gunshots might not feel a deep level of comfort.

Zen Garden

I awoke an hour later than normal today, probably because I went to bed a couple of hours later than normal. I will correct that tonight so that I'm up at the more reasonable, and absolutely peaceful, hour of 5:00 am. I'm looking forward to an earlier sunrise so I can go outside and drink my coffee in the breaking light.

Early morning is the time I'm most reflective and contemplative. It's when I'm at my most serene. I feel like I need to be serene more often. Time to build my Zen garden.

Too Quick to Judge

I do not have enough experience with our justice system, in any capacity, to write about it with even a modicum of expertise. I can only express my opinions. Of course, I can express what I hope is true our justice system.

And what I hope is true of our justice system is that the principle of "innocent until proven guilty" really does form an important foundation of the system. Despite the fact that I think some, perhaps many, defense attorneys are not the noble people they might like us to believe they are, I believe they are, as a group, doing important work. They must do everything they can to call into question the state's arguments intended to prove guilt. Their job is open the door to doubts that their clients are guilty. And they must try to introduce doubts that the processes followed in making the case against their clients were conducted in accord with the rules.

We can't afford to make it easy for the government to prosecute anyone. If we ever relax and say it's OK to overlook the rules because someone is "obviously" guilty, we will be putting our freedom in jeopardy.

I don't like criminals any more than the next guy, but I happen to believe deeply in justice. Justice doesn't occur when we look the other way and let the state steamroll the bad guys. The bad guys deserve to be jailed, imprisoned, etc., but only after they are proven guilty, beyond any reasonable doubt and in accordance with the rules of evidence, etc.

I hate to see "obviously" guilty people walk due to a technicality. But I'd hate it even more to see innocent people lose their freedom due to our laziness or our too-quick-to-judge attitudes.

We Have Met the Enemy

Just when I think I have conquered it, it raises its ugly head and there I am again. Of course its head and mine are one.

New Office Space

I spent my morning looking at options for office space. You see my current office space is OK, except for the fact that the AC and heat rarely work. My staff and I are, on a routine basis, freezing or melting. I have told the building management I cannot tolerate that and that it must be fixed. They smile, assure me it's being addressed, and do nothing.

Life's too short. So I'm looking. I've found a few decent options. Soon, I'll have to decide which space to select. And then I will have to tell me client their addresses are changing. Not that it's a big deal, but some boards get antsy at such news; they think there's more to it than there is.

Anyway, it's a hassle and it's an expense and it's an annoyance. But I'm afraid it's necessary. I'm unwilling to put our folks through it again.

So, new office space! Woo!

Hypocrisy

I've been watching news coverage of the horrific events taking place in Japan. A monstrous earthquake with a magnitude of 8.9. Giant tsunamis sweeping in from the sea, crushing buildings and boats and roads and washing people and their dreams into oblivion. And now, serious concerns about the possible meltdown of at least one nuclear plant, following a severe explosion inside the plant.

We watch, helplessly, from this side of the globe, wondering what we can do, wishing we could do something. Perhaps we can do a bit. We can offer aid, we can send money and supplies and assistance in recovery and reclamation. But we can't undo, in years, what the forces of nature have done in an instant.

As I witness these horrible events captured on video, it occurs to me how remarkably fragile our lives are. We may be sturdy and we may have wills of steel that will ensure we will fight back and rebuild, but, ultimately, we are fragile beings who don't recognize our own fragility.

I won't say the infrastructure that has been destroyed by the earthquake and tsunami was not important. It was, no doubt, especially to the people who depended on it. But if we could retrieve the distant memories of our species, we would recall that we do not need all the things we have grown accustomed to having and have decided we "need" today. Our ancestors lived without electricity, without communications, without roads. Sure, it was a different and far more difficult life, but they lived it.

If only we could be content to have the real necessities like clean water, adequate shelter, and enough food. If all of us were content with those basics, and did not strive always for more, more, more, we would be better prepared...psychologically, at least, to cope with the inevitable eruptions of nature's fury.

Easy to say, of course, as I sit in my air-conditioned home, typing on my computer, drinking my coffee from freshly-ground beans. Are we all this hypocritical? Yes, I think so.

Cielito Lindo

This is perhaps the best commercial I have ever seen. Cielito Lindo is a Mexican Ranchera tune, written by Quirino Mendoza y Cortés, who died in 1957. The song was written about 1882.

Bottle It

If I could bottle what I know and administer that knowledge to temporaries I hire for short periods of time, I could get enormous amounts of work done. I could take enormous amounts of time off. I could take time to exercise.