Category Archives: Personal History

I forgot to meditate today

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Thus ending a streak of 2,288 consecutive days on the cushion. More than 6 years without a miss. My best guess of when I started meditating would be May of 2008 so I’ve been at it for about 16 years and started tracking my practice (in a spreadsheet) in 2014. Back in 2015 I missed a day because I was sick with pneumonia and the following year I missed because I was attending my 50th high school class reunion.

How did I forget to meditate today? Not sure. Just got busy. Woke up in the middle of the night with the realization that my string was broken. How do I feel about this lapse? Sad wouldn’t be the right word. Maybe a little disappointed? I’m going with nostalgic. And a little relief that whatever pressure came with such a streak is gone. Perhaps I was sitting every day so I could make that spreadsheet entry rather than simply practicing awareness.

Like the man said, the only day that counts is today.

PS: Going forward I will not be tracking consecutive days of meditation practice. Rather, the total number of days practiced since I began tracking in 2014. [3,683]

PPS: This seems like a good time to retire the spreadsheet as well. I’m now logging my daily sessions in Calendar on my MacBook.

Snore

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The company I worked for (28 years) held a managers retreat every year. The boss would take half a dozen of us to some nice resort for three or four days. One year, probably 20 or 30 years ago, the retreat was held at a very nice, almost swanky, resort in New Mexico or Arizona one of the rectangular states. The rooms were expensive enough the boss asked us to share rooms and I was paired up with our chief financial officer. 

Not long after the lights went out my roommate started snoring more loudly than I have ever heard a human being snore. After half an hour or so, I got up and went down to the lobby with the intention of sleeping in one of the nice chairs. However, the night clerk politely explained that was against resort policy. I asked if there were other rooms available and he assured me they were booked up. 

In desperation, I asked him to accompany me to our room. When we reached our floor and started walking down the hall, we got about halfway to the room when the night clerk stopped, tilted his head to the side, listening. He looked at me and asked, “Is that…?” Half a hallway away he could hear my roommate snoring through the closed door.

I followed him back to the lobby, and he was kind enough to find a room for me.

Saturday Night at the Movies

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While endlessly scrolling through the hundreds (thousands?) of movie titles in Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, HBO Max, and all the other streaming services, I flashed back to my youth (‘50s and ‘60s) when watching a movie on TV was a rare treat. Following from Wikipedia:

NBC Saturday Night at the Movies was the first TV show to broadcast relatively recent feature films from major studios. The series premiered on September 23, 1961, and ran until October 1978, spawning many imitators. Previously, television stations had been only been able to show older, low-budget, black-and-white films that wouldn’t be shown at movie theaters. In the late 1970s, competition from cable television and home video led to a decline in viewership.

It’s difficult to convey what a treat it was to watch a feature-length movie on network TV. The “late show” usually came on right after the ten o’clock news and ran into the wee hours with lots of commercials. We could never have imagined watching almost any film ever produced. Never mind on-demand streaming to a hand-held device.

Sol Astrachan 1929-2022

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Sol Astrachan, long time business owner and resident of Kennett, Missouri, passed away this morning at his home in Kennett. Sol Astrachan was born in Poland in 1929, and later moved with his family to Russia. When he was nine his family immigrated to the United States. After a short stay in St. Louis, Mr. Astrachan went to Kennett, Missouri, where he has lived ever since. Mr. Astrachan served a term on the Kennett city council (1961-1963) and two terms as mayor (1963-1971) of Kennett. (Obituary)

Sol was a good friend to my father and a good (and courageous) mayor. Sol graduated from Kennett High School in 1947. Photo below of senior class. Sol was interviewed by Will Sarvis for the Missouri State Historical Society on October 28, 1998 at his home in Kennett.

 

Broseley, Missouri High School Senior Class (1943)

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Broseley, Missouri High School Senior Class of 1943. My mom (not in this photo) would have been 18 in 1945. She had a sweater like the one the young man on the left is wearing. I had (and wore) it for a while. Major news events of 1943:

  • Allied forces take back North Africa
  • Italy Surrenders to Allied Forces
  • Dambuster Raids on German dams
  • Warsaw Jewish Ghetto Uprising
  • Due to shortages America sees it’s first rationing
  • The Glenn Miller Orchestra provided the most popular music of the time.
  • The Pentagon, considered to be the world’s largest office building is completed

74

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Today is my 74th birthday. I’ve never been one for big celebrations. I struggle to see anything special about the day. A cultural thing, perhaps… like Valentine’s Day or Memorial Day. I thought I’d be wiser by this time, depending on how one defines wisdom.

When I think about the future these days, it tends to be in years rather than decades. Mortality and death are no longer abstractions. For the last dozen years I’ve viewed god and the universe through the lens of Buddhism and zen. I’ve concluded the self and free will are illusions. In short, this is It. William Gibson said it nicely in All Tomorrow’s Parties:

“He, like everyone else, is exactly where, exactly what, exactly when he is meant to be. It is the Tao.

PS: The clip below was floating around, unattached, in the media library and this seemed like a good place to park it.

The best neighbor… is no neighbor

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We’ve been living in our home for 35 years. We built it in 1986 on about 3.5 acres of wooded land (A). In January of 2020 we purchased an additional 3 acres (B) when the lady who owned it died. Our closest neighbors (a woman and her adult daughter) have been talking about selling their home (C) for a couple of years but never seemed serious, until this year when they bought a house in “in town,” as we used to say.

One day a couple of months ago she told us she was going to put her home on the market. When she told me the asking price, I said we’d buy it. No inspection, no appraisal, no haggling. We closed on the sale yesterday at noon. We haven’t told many about the purchase because it happened pretty fast. But the first question is always, “So, what are you going to do with the property? Sell it? Rent it?” The answer is, nothing. The woman and her daughter are — in all likelihood — the last people who will ever live in that house. Why, you might ask?

Have you ever lived next to a really bad neighbor? It can make every day a living hell. But you could sell the place to some nice folks, you say. But you can’t control to whom they sell it, I reply. No, the best neighbor is no neighbor. And we didn’t buy the property for the house. We bought it for the towering, hundred-year-old oak trees. I think of it as a tiny nature preserve. The thought of someone cutting down those trees so their whiny little brats can have a swimming pool was… unthinkable. Or coming home to that TRUMP 2024 sign every day. Or their pit bull terrorizing our dog. No way, Jose.

To my way of thinking, we don’t really own the land. We own the privilege of living on it. Or saying who does or does not live on it. But we are nothing more than temporary stewards. And as we enter our Golden Years, Barb and I place great value on privacy. How does one put a price on something so precious? Oh yeah, did I mention the quiet? You can hear your heart beat. And at night the only light you can see is a yard light a mile or so away.

So we called the propane people to come get their tank. A plumber will winterize the house. The phone and electric are disconnected. And we’ll start giving away the appliances. What remains will be a big old storage building I’ve been calling The Annex.

This chapter is just beginning so watch this space for updates.

When you could buy a home for $7,000

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This is the house were my brother and I grew up. Our parents purchased (newly constructed) the little two-bedroom/one-bath house for $7,000 in 1955. We’d been living in tiny rent houses and my mom was determined to own their own home. My father was terrified at taking on so much debt (30 year mortgage). I’m guessing it took them the full 30 to pay it off.