tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5950664143576637249.post8008510734322807309..comments2024-03-22T18:01:20.065-05:00Comments on Geezer with a Grudge: Benchmarks and Standards and MortalityT.W. Dayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078254371483458356noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5950664143576637249.post-19545691789448621372010-04-14T15:42:06.543-05:002010-04-14T15:42:06.543-05:00I really liked reading that, as a guy who has writ...I really liked reading that, as a guy who has written for recreation I know exactly how you feel about self-censorship. I just never put it in words, but it was always lurking back there. I've thought about this since reading "Benchmarks and Standards and Mortality"<br />Thanks! (from Sanders)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5950664143576637249.post-68491667869868073062010-04-05T15:40:30.080-05:002010-04-05T15:40:30.080-05:00Thanks Martin. Some of the things you told me abou...Thanks Martin. Some of the things you told me about your father came back to me this week. I will always be honored to have been your friend. It's not often that a guy gets to hang out with someone he read about and tried to emulate when he was young; and ends up with a friend.T.W. Dayhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04078254371483458356noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5950664143576637249.post-78718706258749408072010-04-05T15:36:25.003-05:002010-04-05T15:36:25.003-05:00Kevin,
I'm not sure what I know about my rel...Kevin, <br /><br />I'm not sure what I know about my relationship with my father, but I'm pretty clear on some of my feelings. He was the best, saddest man I think I've ever known. One thing my brother and I are in agreement with is that we can not remember him ever laughing and we only remember him smiling for pictures with my step-mother. <br /><br />My draft call was avoided by joining the Navy in 1966 on their 6-months-and-in program. My Navy recruiter screwed up my physical date by two days and covered his butt by digging up asthma in my medical history and sending me to a local doctor for a preliminary physical. I failed that physical, mostly because my usual summer asthma had progressed to my usual summer pneumonia. I honestly did not know I had asthma, I just figured I was a wimp with allergies. After bombing the Navy physical, the Marines, Air Force, and Army passed on me and I was free. In the meantime, I'd been reading Halberstam's New York Times syndicated articles in a local paper and was convinced that my friends were dying for nothing. Still am. <br /><br />I'm not sure that information or energy has to be destroyed to become so random that it is no longer information or usable energy. Some of my father's energy and data will exist as long as my kids and I and my siblings' and their kids are alive and remember him. That may be what there is of life after death. It's not that bad, though. <br /><br />I think the worst part of my father's last years was that his faith, a very fundamentalist Christian faith, didn't give him much comfort. He was terrified of dying and clung to the misery that had become his life like he had finally lost confidence in his religion. For all that turmoil and conflict that it caused him in life, I'd have hoped it would be something calming in death. <br /><br />Thanks for your thoughts, <br /><br />TomT.W. Dayhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04078254371483458356noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5950664143576637249.post-57614176899817269822010-04-05T15:16:34.501-05:002010-04-05T15:16:34.501-05:00I am certainly familiar with that photograph of th...I am certainly familiar with that photograph of the Kamikaze airplane disappearing past the deck of a navy ship and into the sea, while AAA crews pay close attention.<br /> <br />I got called to my physical before the number system and birthdays came into use, and that at the time meant "You're going". I had no plan. The days passed and I didn't hear from them. I've never heard from them. I dreamed at the time that I was in a room on an upper floor with other men, being processed into the army, while out a window I could see my friends loading their TD1s into the van for the next trip to Mosport. <br /> <br />I think you are fortunate to have any idea what your relation to your parents was. I have no such idea, and just keep all that stuff stored away - a single, multi-variable equation whose solution is clearly impossible. People go to experts to get opinions but that's what they are, and I could do that myself. What I couldn't do is decide any of them was correct.<br /> <br />Maybe when I'm older.<br /> <br />The black hole term "event horizon" aptly describes things like generation gap, death, &c. No information can come across, but maths tell us that no information is destroyed, either. Ah well.<br /> <br />KCAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5950664143576637249.post-87664210871830118262010-04-05T15:15:15.438-05:002010-04-05T15:15:15.438-05:00Thank you Tom, for sharing with us. You are a good...Thank you Tom, for sharing with us. You are a good writer. Our friendship is one of the things I treasure from my years in Minnesota. MartinAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com