The last two years have been a rollercoaster in my life. First I quit AEP for a job with Scientech in Florida. After surviving Hurricane Andrew in 1992 I really had no desire to return to Florida. However I was lured with a manager position and the slick recruiting talk of my future boss. I quit AEP in Dec 2008 and moved to Palm Harbor. My family moved down a month later and the fun began.


The first week I was with Scientech I could tell the entire recruiting pitch had been based on a beautiful facade with nothing to back it up. I was a manager managing a mirage. My blood pressure shot up to 185/140 and would not come down despite doubling my blood pressure medicine. When my family moved down, and my favorite lazy boy chair, my blood pressure returned to normal.

To make a long story extremely short I did the best I could, but it was like trying to make cold molasses flow uphill in this economy. I knew I was doomed from the beginning. Back home our house did not sell and then we had the water damage incident. A realtor flushed a toilet which overflowed for two weeks. Over ninety percent of our house was damaged and the insurance company, despite being paid $3000 for the policy, had a loophole and did not pay a red cent. Never buy Farmers Insurance.

Eventually I was let go and moved back to our house in Michigan. My brother and his friends came to our rescue and fixed our main floor and they actually made it better than the original. We ended up putting $40,000 on our credit cards to fix the house. Florida unemployment was about the lowest in the nation and I only received $1200 a month. I had a few job interviews, but nothing substantial. The severance from Scientech was only two weeks pay and I had to promise never to say anything bad about them, so I won’t. Neither will I say anything good about them.

Now I am in Washington, with my family back home in Michigan. The contract position I have is a temporary one, although it could last years. I am working as a Radiological Control Technician and helping clean up the huge environmental nightmare the government created from years of making atomic weapons. Seems there idea of controls was to bury material and then hope for the best. The best didn’t happen and the stuff started getting into the groundwater, so now we spend billions to clean up the mess. I like the guys I am working with and I like the area I am in. Although the area I work is desert, the beautiful snow capped mountains are only a ninety minute drive away.

Though all the trials and tribulations I have kept my faith. My faith sustains me, on most days faith is all that keeps me going. When I came here I inquired about an old friend and was told he committed suicide in 2004. That has affected my emotional state as well as being away from home. But I know, I really do know, that God is with me wherever I am. When I had open heart surgery in 1998 I actually died after the operation and had to go under the knife and be opened up again. Thankfully it happened in intensive care and not later. But I survived and what I saw sustains me to this day. I may not want to die, and I’m trying not to hurry it along, but I do not fear death.

Occasionally I think that being terminated from Scientech was a good thing. I started writing again, and had the chance to preach again, and my faith and my passion kept the demon of depression at bay. I have experienced the love that passes all understanding; I knocked and the door was opened. Remember you are what you believe, and if you believe in nothing, then nothing you will be.

This is a sermon I gave at Triniity Episcopal Church in Niles, Michigan, on July 18, 2010.  The sermon was on the topic of Martha and Mary.  This is only the third sermon I have given and the first with our Priest present.


Open my lips, O Lord, and my mouth shall proclaim your praise.




Today we heard the story of Martha and Mary. Martha is busy cooking and preparing for dinner. Martha’s sister Mary, is not helping and instead sits at the feet of Jesus. The sisters and their brother Lazarus must have been quite close to Jesus. In John, Chapter 11, we are told the story of Martha and Mary sending for Jesus because Lazarus was sick. Jesus comes to Bethany after Lazarus is dead and raises him from the grave.

Later Jesus returns and in John, Chapter 12, he is invited to dinner at the household of Martha. As in Luke, Martha is serving the meal, however this time Mary is anointing the feet of Jesus with oil. So there are two different viewpoints of the meal at Martha’s house. Each version has Martha serving and Mary listening to, or anointing, Jesus.

Seems like Martha is the only one doing any work and Mary is being very attentive to Jesus. In Luke, Martha complains about Mary and in John, Judas complains about Mary. Jesus rebukes both Judas and Martha for their complaints about Mary. Now it is apparent that Jesus loved the whole family, but perhaps Mary was his favorite because she was interested in his teaching. After all, Jesus was at the house with his disciples and Martha must have really worked herself into a frenzy trying to prepare a meal for so many. There is no mention of Lazarus helping out; indeed in Jewish society he would have been expected to be the host while the women prepared the meal.

So why does Jesus rebuke Martha? Wasn’t Martha working for the Lord? Was Mary lazy? From the passages it is hard to tell. But we do know that Jesus loved to teach. Indeed food had never been an issue with Jesus; remember the loaves of breads and the fish. His disciples were very important to him and it is obvious that Jesus was changing society as he preached to women and had disciples that were women. The rebuke of Martha can seem quite harsh, especially since Martha was working very hard to please the Lord. Why did Jesus favor Mary over Martha?

From the brief glimpses we are given in John and Luke we can picture that Martha was the oldest of the siblings, and we are told it is Martha’s house. So Martha would have been used to ordering Mary to help with the chores, food preparation, and such. We do not know if Mary was resentful or lazy. All we can gleam from the stories is that Mary was fond of Jesus and she wanted to learn the message that he was teaching.

We do not know if Martha was disrespectful when she tattled on Mary for not helping her. It must have been very hurtful to Martha when Jesus basically said that only one thing was really required and that Mary was doing it, so leave her alone. How did Martha feel? Did she sulk, burn the food, cry, we do not know. What we do know is that Jesus was more concerned with saving the soul of one person, Mary, than he was with having a meal. His priority was spiritual, not physical.

So how does that relate to us? On Father’s day this year I was tasked with cooking for our daughter’s graduation party. I was busy running around, doing my best imitation of Martha. Guests were arriving and everyone was having fun, but me. Now Jesus didn’t march in and rebuke me for wallowing in self-pity. I realized that even though it was Father’s day the day was not about me, it was about our graduate. The story of Martha and Mary popped into my head and I thought about how I was feeling and I sympathized with Martha. How many of us have been like Martha in our lives? I venture to say almost everyone, be it at work or home, has been resentful of some person we did not think was pulling their share. I also realize that our feelings may have been justified, if someone is watching a football game instead of helping; that can hardly be compared to that person skipping out of work to go to Church or to sit at the feet of Jesus while he teaches.

Clearly Jesus emphasizes that his message is the good thing, the good news that is more important than food, or sleep, or any of our earthly needs. For the word is forever and the flesh is for naught. When I am very tired and wake up on a Sunday morning, sometimes the urge is to go back to sleep, I tell myself that listening to the word of God is much more important than satisfying my own personal desires. Countless Martyrs have given their lives just for their belief in Jesus? Why shouldn’t I be able to sacrifice my sleep, my food, my money, for the cause of Christ?

But we know that Jesus loved Martha and if the rebuke seems harsh it was in all probability a gentle reminder to Martha that what he was doing was important, that his message was more than just a story meant to entertain the guests and disciples. Indeed after Lazarus died Jesus asked Martha if she believed in him and she responded that she believed he was the Son of God and the Messiah. So Martha obviously had heard his message and she believed in him.

Before we leave church today I would like everyone to look at the stained glass window depicting the sisters, Martha and Mary. Take a minute and reflect upon your own life. Has there been a time when we have ignored Jesus because we thought something else was more important? The famous running back for the Chicago Bears, Gale Sayers, once wrote a book entitled I Am Third. Gale writes that The Lord is first, my friends are second, and I am third. How many of us put ourselves third?

Remember what Jesus said was the greatest commandant, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” And I believe that if we place God first in our lives, and remember what is truly important, then goodness and love will flow out of us and touch the lives of our neighbors and friends.

When the world seems hectic and you are suffering from anxiety or panic, remember the verse from Psalm 46, “Be still and know that I am God.” For in our stillness, in the calming of our mind, and body, and soul, that is when we can truly feel the presence of God. Be still! Amen

The age of computers.  Now if you have a problem you can e-mail support instead of calling them.  E-mails are very easy to ignore.  Unlike a ringing phone, the e-mail can sit gathering cyber dust in a virtual mailbox, inevitably meeting the scythe of the deleter.  At least if a human support person hung up the phone our anger would be immediate.  Now we are left to wonder if the e-mail was ever read. 

The DO NOT CALL list was a thing of beauty, twenty years late but by and large, worth the wait.  Now they tried a do not spam list ...ha!  Spam filters are at best a nuisance because they filter the occasional "good" e-mail and people such as myself don't bother going through hundreds of spam mails every day to see if a "good" e-mail was thrown to the side.  So perhaps the customer support people at Google, besides being very busy, overlooked my e-mail because it was considered spam.  Indeed the amount of customer service inquires probably amounts to what I would consider SPAM (hundreds if not thousands of e-mails).  So instead of becoming angry I merely remain frustrated, not knowing if my e-mail request for help was spammed away into the equivalent of a dead letter file, or merely ignored because I am annoying the customer support person.  The assumption of course is that Google is populated by people.  I best not look behind the curtain.

I watched the State of the Union speech last night and by the end my blood was boiling. Our democracy is not working. Even calling our government a democracy is a misnomer since we do not directly elect our president, instead relegating our votes to an electoral college. However, I digress and shall endeavor to keep on topic.
What made my simmering hemoglobin begin to boil was the obvious divide between the Republicans and Democrats. When one group stands in mass or another sits in mass it tells me we do not have free thinkers in our system. As long as our politicians are beholding to special interests and party bosses we have no true democracy.
Money rules, and I suspect with their latest ruling even the Supreme Court has been bought. It is precisely because of this greed on the part of our ruling classes that the United States is becoming a second tier power. Did anyone notice the Republicans sat on their hands when Obama said he wants to take away tax breaks from companies that export our jobs? Of course they do not want the companies they all hold stock in to lose any breaks. And if the companies have less money to spend who will fill the coffers of the politicians?
Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, The Huffington Post, they are all a joke. Take away their money and see if they still would be as “passionate” about this country as they claim to be. Where are all of our intelligent people? Do we have any wise people in the United States that actually care about our country more than their pocket books? I dare say you would be hard pressed to find a congressman or senator that lives a Spartan lifestyle. And if they did they would quickly become an outcast in the political world.
Capitalism works only when it is kept in check by a strong government. Why don’t the politicians get that?
Why can’t we have a strong independent party? Where are the free thinkers and the people that make this country great? Every nation that has ever been on this earth has failed for one reason or another. They usually fail from within due to corruption and greed. From all the signs we are heading towards a big fall in this country.
In 1977 I took an oath to defend my country from all enemies, foreign and domestic. How can I defend our country from ourselves?

A lot has happened since I last posted in this blog. Last December I quit my mind-numbing, soul-sucking job at AEP and gave up driving through whiteouts, downed trees, and dodging suicidal deer. Now I am dodging blue-hairs and palm fronds.

Scientech is my new employer and selling software and conducting training is my job. We sell an excellent control charting software that is used by numerous Chemistry Labs. I also conduct training for power plant chemistry and get to travel extensively.

My wife and one stepson came along for the ride. My daughter stayed in Michigan to stay near her friends and I miss her dearly. My life has taken many twists and turns. I left Florida in 1992 after Hurricane Andrew destroyed my house and most of my belongings. Now I'm back, although I told my wife that we will rent and not buy. I still have the desire to retire in the mountains out west, but for now the warm sun feels great on my tired old bones.

I am sitting here contemplating birthday number fifty, only two days away and counting. As an INFP personality is want to do, I spend a lot of time in introspection. I spend so much time thinking that I rarely find myself doing. Sometimes the lack of taking action can be paralyzing. Alas, like all of my human brethren I trudge on, hoping and praying for salvation, railing against the injustices of the world, and wondering why God doesn't destroy us.

I sit and contemplate the physical part of my body. After a major heart surgery (Ross Procedure 1998), torn ACL, degenerative arthritis in both knees, and the usual bough ts of common illnesses, I find it amazing that I can still run 5k races, albeit at a snail's pace, lift weights, albeit not as heavy as before, and basically function pretty well. We adjust physically to handicaps pretty well. It is the emotional adjustment that can be taxing at times.

I think hitting forty and having the heart surgery was more of a midlife crisis. My grandfather died at 51 and my father at 58. This could be my decade or maybe I will continue the trend and make it to 65. Researching my ancestry I found a four times removed grandfather who fought in the War of 1812 and lived to be 96. Fought in a war and with no medicine lived to be 96. Go figure, but then again they didn't have the endless streams of pollution going into the water, food, and air, that we have today. That is why we need medicine to cope with the crap we have suffered our own bodies to endure.

Where is our Shangri-La? Where is justice? We can fly to the moon, but we cannot stop kooks bombing us. We can transplant hearts,but we cannot stop genocide. We can cure the one,but not the many. We Islamic terrosrist who claim they need to kill to protect God. Is God so weak he needs a feeble minded murderer to defend him against innocent women and children? My God is not weak, he does not need protecting. My God desires love, not hate. The god of Osama is not the true God of Christian, Muslims, or Jews.

I want to do good in the world. I have a friend whose entire family went on a mission to the Phillipines. As usual I sit and ponder, amazed at my own inability to act.

Certainly has been a long time since I last posted. Nothing much has changed in my life the last few months. This summer my family, consisting of two teenage girls and two pre-teenage boys, and my wife, took a trip through Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona.


The highlights of the trip from my point of view were seeing my step-brother for the first time in ten years and staying in Ouray Colorado for three days. I will write more later on our adventures, but once again I came home yearning to live in the mountains.

Our church had to let our priest go because of finances. I have filled in and led the services on a couple of occasions and the other times we have hired visiting priests. I have considered going to a seminary but my wife has threatened divorce if I do.

Work sucks, my managers are evil buggers who lost their souls years ago. Amazing how they can treat people like dirt and then brag about it. Out of 1300 people we have had 77 quit this year alone. That is a high turnover but AEP does not care as long as the plant produces power.

Christmastime is the only part of winter that I truly enjoy. Yes, the first snow is always beautiful, but then driving and shoveling become a chore and make the snow more of a nuisance than anything. Christmas is truly a time of brotherhood and goodwill to men.

Speaking of which, I joined a men's group at my church. We meet every Saturday morning and so far it has been a rewarding experience. Unfortunately when I came home from work this afternoon there was a message on my machine that one of our members fell down his stairs and broke his nose and an eye socket--ouch. I pray that he recovers soon, he really is a good man. In fact he spent this last Saturday helping to feed the homeless here in Niles.

My writers group has also become a rewarding experience. the introvert in me struggles to engage in conversation. However the passion in my soul is writing and that wins out over introversion.

Christmas is a time to give thanks. It is also a time to remember our loved ones, both those who are living and the departed. My fondest memories of youth are spending Christmas Eve at my Great Grandmother's house. Oh, how I wish I could return to those days.

Today is Pearl harbor day and it would do us all well to remember what happened so long ago. We all think that the world was a simpler place back then. In some respects it was. But in the world of politics it was pretty much the same. Reading Upton Sinclair has opened my eyes to a lot of the political intrigue that existed in the early part of the last century. In some ways the Middle East has not advanced. Assassination was the political weapon of choice in that time and in the Middle east it still seems to be that way. God help Lebanon--certainly no one else will. the Persians are setting their site on a new empire, the Europeans hide from the inevitable, and American stumbles with corrupt, inept, and sometimes incredibly stupid politics and media.

911 should have been a wake-up call to our politicians and to our society. Alas, it was temporary and the ridiculous people who set our sights on Iraq have set us back over thirty years. Our military is to small to fight a real war. We Americans are not willing to sacrifice our children to stupid needless wars, but the time will come when we will pay for our short sightedness.

Back to Pearl harbor, I googled a satellite picture of Pearl Harbor. The water was so clear that you can see the Arizona. That is a sad reminder of what can happen when we let our guard down.

Fighting for religion--have you ever heard anything so stupid? Muslims kill Christians and vice versa all in the name of defending our God. You clueless misguided people. Do you think God is so weak that he needs your help in defending himself? Do you not believe that God could wipe us all out of existence with a breath? The reason the Osamas of the world kill is because they want too. Look at the way the Palestinans cheered on 911. Look at George Bush justify killing thousands of innocents in the name of religion with the excuse that we are fighting for what is right. Perhaps we are right ... perhaps. But when Jesus tells us to turn the other cheek we cannot possibly justify going to another country and the killing of thousands of women and children. No more so than that sick bastard Osama and his band of deranged misanthropes.

I say abandon the Earth, venture forth to the stars and colonize new planets. Leave the meek minded behind to destroy this ball of dirt and themselves in the process. Spend the billions on research, not in conquest. We could be on Mars already if we had spent the money on research and not war. My God Bush, if you wanted to destroy the Iraqi people then drop a Nuke on them. Meanwhile drop one on everyone else that doesn't want to be a Capitalist.

Listen you moron fundamentalists of all the world's religions. God is God ... get it ... he needs your faith, your worship, your love. He does not need you to kill innocents in his name, in his defense. Those who crave power are evil, make no mistake about it, no one wants power for altrusitic reasons. God gave us dominion over animals--not dominion over each other. Everyone is equal in the eyes of God.

Go ahead and kill the children of God. You will gain dominion over Earth for a few years and then what do you plan on doing for eternity? Those who believe in a just and loving God know that our salvation will be in the afterlife.

Quit killing each other in the name of religion. If you are going to kill be truthful. You kill for greed, power, property, self-satisfaction, ignorance, lust, and just plain evil. Evil is pervasive on this planet and that has never been more evident then in last 100 years.

Stop murdering each other!! That is my ramble for today. This monkey has been on my back for a long time and I wanted to get it off. I will be more cheerful next time.

Writing is fun!

There is nothing I enjoy more than writing. Okay, maybe sex, but writing does give me a high. I can sit for hours pounding away at the keys and when I finally run out of steam I feel exhausted and fulfilled.

How about our president going to Vietnam and making a speech about Iraq. Somebody on his staff has a screw loose. The older I get the more cynical I become on the subject of politics. I am currently reading Between Worlds by Upton Sinclair. This is the second in a series of eleven books dealing with World War I politics and going forward to the cold war. The main character, Lanny Budd, is an interesting youth and I look forward to reading about his further adventures.

Work is not fun anymore. Who am I kidding? It never was fun. Try working in a nuclear power plant, the money is excellent, the people intelligent, and the politics bizarre. Even intelligent people act stupid when they put their own agendas first and ignore everyone else. The longer I work the more Dilbertish situations I see. Believe it or not, my sojourn in the Navy was more enjoyable. Most of the people in the Navy looked out for each other. For sure there were backstabbers, I think that is the worlds third oldest profession after prostitution and politics. But most of the time in the navy I worked with a good crew, we worked hard and we partied hard.

Enough pontification and rambling for tonight. Time to polish up a story for my writers group.

This is my first ramble in my blog. I chose the name Insular Tahiti from a quote by Melville. "For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half known life. God keep thee! Push not off from that isle, thou canst never return."

So what is my half-known life? Where is my, Insular Tahiti, confined inside this not so verdant body of flesh? I have endured the fully known horrors of life: death of loved ones, destruction of Hurricane Andrew, Open-Heart Surgery with a near death experience, divorce, depression, and more. The half-known is more insidious. I was born with a vivid imagination, a wandering daydreaming mind that for some years has served me well. I wrote my first story in 1970 and then quit. I wrote again in 1996 and then quit. Finally after my heart surgery I decided to do something for myself and I enrolled in a Master of Liberal Studies as Indiana University. During the next four years I took many English classes and for my Master's Thesis I wrote a novel that earned me an A. I tried to get it published and after many a rejection letter I put my marketing efforts on hiatus--2005. Now I have joined a writers group and I am slowly getting the resolve to write again.

The ideas I have kept locked up inside my cranial cavity have served the purpose of keeping me sane. Or maybe that is my bane--the fantasy in my head seems so much more pleasant than the outside world. Perhaps that is where the soul rests and seeks comfort.

I must warn any readers who might have stumbled into this blog. I plan on rambling philosophical from my opinion of our Military Industrial--Cheney Driven--World Dominating--Greed and it's conflict with our Christian "love thy neighbor," religious philosophy. I will wax poetical on the difficulty of getting published, the fun and excitement of a first draft, and the emotional turmoil of raising a teenage daughter that does not like school.

There is nothing I enjoy more than writing and nothing I abhor more that criticism. But, alas, that is life.