Musings and Realizations

In the wake of the disaster in Lone Grove, my first realization is that perhaps we Oklahomans live too much in regular proximity to the tremendous power of tornadoes. There's a joke that you know you're an Okie when you hear a tornado siren and immediately go out to look for the funnel. We know the score as we live here, we know what we're supposed to do, and sometimes we take it for granted that we live close to them but won't get hit ourselves. Unfortunately, that lackadaisical attitude sometimes costs some of us our lives.

I've also had a realization about my time in Denver as compared to where I am here now. I lived in Denver, but I never felt it was my home...and the results of nearly my entire life there shows it. Instability in my career, no long-term friendships, removal of prior activities (for example, umpiring, which I did for 6 years straight before I moved to Colo.). Sure, I gained things that I might not have gained had I stayed in Oklahoma, like my career and experiences in the tech industry, or climbing 14ers, or the best and most important, meeting Heidi, but I'm already reconnecting and regaining more in 6 months here than I did in 12 years in Colorado. I never really understood or agreed with much that was done there, and so it really is best that for the most part, Colorado and I have parted ways. I can look back now without the bitterness that I had while I lived there.

I was reading an article today about the "live" music performances at recent high-profile events. Jennifer Hudson at the Super Bowl...the all-star string quartet at the inauguration...I didn't know they were both prerecorded. The author of the article spoke of it in terms of a drive for perfection, but I see more. I see the modern tendency for Man to put himself in the center of the universe, and strive to maintain control and dominance of everything around him and dictate terms to the universe. If you can maintain total control of a situation by completely presetting it, why not? I saw a lot of the same thing as Heidi and I went through the birth experience; lots of women just set a date and have a C-section. There's the Pregnant Man. There's the octuplets lady in California. Mankind likes to wave its technology and thumb its nose at Nature, at uncertainty of any kind. Ask the folks in Lone Grove how well that works out sometimes.

Thanks for reading along.