Life Fact #419: Mentor is a Temp Job

For once, I'm hesitant to project my own feelings or actions upon you the audience or reader of this humble musing. During your perusal of this missive should you find yourself slighted by my archetype, chalk it up to my own mental peculiarities and feel assured it was never my intention to include you in my projection and you have my apologies. For those of us who make it until the end, may we find that grain upon which another pearl will be created.

Mentors play a key role in all of our lives. I imagine the mentor is an off-shoot of a natural behavior we learn as children. The process whereby we ask one parent a question and get an answer that doesn't satisfy us and we seek out the other parent or grand parent, aunt, uncle, etc. The basic second opinion. Just to be clear, I'm not speaking of a child asking permission and using parents against each other to get what they want. Rather, something along the lines of, "Mom, why is the sky blue?" "Honey, the sky is blue because God made it that way." For my own part, this is where i went and asked my grandfather. "Papa, why is the sky blue?" Ever the photographer, he spoke of the sun being a yellow light and the atmosphere of the earth acting as a light filter, filtering out harmful solar rays leaving the sky the color we perceive to be blue. The real answer is a little more complicated, but it was on my level and a very satisfactory answer at the time. He was one of my first Mentors. Here is where the hyperbolic side of me wants to proclaim him the greatest, but i think that would only cheapen all of them. They each fulfilled as they did and that isn't something to be measured.
As time ticks away in life mentors come and go. Some we move away from , some move away from us and others leave this world behind for the next. My best visual analogy would be something along the lines of; our mentors place the cobblestones along our byway.
Now that I've reached what some like to call middle age and my children are all grown and gone, I like to think of myself as being the mentor. I'd like to think I'm handing out sage advice in the grand tradition of it all. I have arrived. Well, that's what I had thought until recently.
I had a nice phone call with my Dad in which he said something very puzzling. I'd rather fall on my sword than misquote him, just know it went something like this. One of his friends whom he'd known for many years died recently and he referred to this man, who is only a few years older than he, as a Mentor. My brain was spinning so fast after he said that i nearly got a nose bleed when it stopped and stopped it did. It was a jarring sudden train wreck kind of stop. What happened you ask?? Well, it absolutely turned everything I knew or believed i knew about mentoring on its head. How could someone in their seventies have a mentor? It's really quite simple, there's always a bigger fish.
With this revelation, I sat back and reevaluated what I knew a mentor to be. After days of reflection, the answer became so painfully obvious I had to give myself a timeout.
The first thing I needed to do was to come up with a better, more complete definition for mentor. I checked the American Heritage Dictionary and a couple of others. Their collective idea of mentor was as woefully incomplete as my own. After days of reflection, i have settled on a mentor as anyone or anything which lends sound advice either through words or actions. Yes! This does sound like everyone is a mentor at one time or another and to that I say, "Aren't they?" Though for the purposes of this I have amended my definition to include the phrase, "and those you seek out for same."
At my present age of Fifty Three-ish, the cast of characters I call on for advice is limited to about three. My best friend, a well grounded and very conservative man of comparable age has yet to fail to show me the other side of whatever it is I naturally see. An old friend, Rob, (I'm pretty sure he's the first Vulcan on Earth) has a innate talent for logical thought and seeing situations in the abstract. Then there is the first mentor, my mother. She had the ability to organically change peoples perception of their work and ultimately change their point of view. In effect, she'd get you to see your work with two sets of eyes. It's a tremendous skill to master. One, as yet, I have not. Unfortunately, she has joined those who've left this world behind. As with all mentors, some of her remains perpetuated by those previously advised.
I got a call from a young man whom I've known for some time. He needed to talk for a while. I could hear the distress in his voice when he said something very peculiar, "...at my age I should have all the answers." I told him that was just silly as I'm twice his age and don't have all the answers. I had him take a couple of deep breaths before I asked what the biggest problem was for which his answer was simple, "My bills," he said. I asked him if he could pay them today and the answer was no. He said with his new job, he should be able to make all of his bills just fine, but it's taking too long. I offered that he might set that feeling aside until payday and take his bills one at a time and not stress over them between this day and that.  He reminded me the bills would still be there and I asked him if he wanted to make everyone else in his house feel the way he does. His answer was, "of course not." This is when I let him on to that little secret, when you are grumpy, you'll make everyone you are around grumpy also. Well, either that or the others will choose to stay away from you. I had him give me a few examples where his reaction to things had affected others in a similar way to his: both positive and negative. He did. Then he told me he never realized his irritation with the progress in his life would affect his home life. He thanked me and had to leave for work. His spirits were better, but I told him it would take lots of practice before his demeanor would automatically lay down his irritations.
I have to thank my dad for opening me up to the possibility that you never outgrow the need for a mentor. Our mentors tend to be those closest to us. and in closing, they can be of any age. The day after I discovered my dad had a mentor in his eighties, I discovered I have a mentor under the age of....well let's just say she's not old enough to drive. She taught me the importance of putting your M and M's in alphabetical order. This is more important than you know. I miss my mom, am thankful for my dad, and love my niece.

Until I write again, Peace Be With You,
Dave

Boys and Their Fathers

     By this point in history, we've all heard the expression "It's like herding cats!" I can tell you from experience this phrase is relative to the "Cats" you are trying to herd!!!
     When it comes to these "Cats", The Shadow, The Jedi, and The Hulk; picture taking is prime-time sports! There were about a dozen taken in total and this is the best one. I love these guys, but damn they are singularly a handful; together they are a three ring show!
     The oldest brother stopped by for a couple of days. The youngest brother is getting married in a few weeks and the oldest isn't able to attend. So, as a consolation, he stopped in for a visit. It was a great joy having my three boys together. Like many of you whom have adult children. I stand in awe of them. They share such great familiarity and yet are so uniquely themselves. One feverishly claws back the layers on the bleeding edge of his career while another is engaged in mortal combat to find the top of the ladder by brute force all the while attempting to help everyone along the way (best of luck with that there Dude), and the other simply endures the modern age while struggling to come to grips with having been born five hundred years too late; as I said, "They are unique!" Despite their individual peculiarities, It's a comfort to know they're all really good guys. One might even say it's sort of a family tradition. One that may have skipped a generation?? At least for my own part. I can't say whether I am or not. I am certain you could easily find people with an opinion in both camps. Well??? Anyway, let me move forward by backing up a bit. Earlier this year through the miracle of modern science, I discovered the identity of my Biological Father. (An Aside: just looking at the term Biological Father. It's so clinical, formal, denuded of emotion. Somehow, it just doesn't seem fair though generally correct.)
     He's an interesting Cuss. I say this with the utmost respect and admiration. Perhaps Cuss isn't the best Nom De Gerre for him. There's always Rascal, Cheeky, Comical, Driven, Focused, Unique, ah hell, how about Dad. He's Dad. In the months since our discovery we've met up a few times for meals and visits. In short, meeting him has exceeded any expectations I could have held. He's married to a wondrous creature who I'm sure was created in a mad scientists secret lab somewhere. She is wicked! Wicked smart, wicked funny, etc... She's just Wickedly Awesome! Then again, she agreed to marry him, so he must have something going for him. Perhaps, he's simply a more experienced Cat. Yep, that's my father in a nutshell.
     Fifty-Three years is a long time to wait to meet your father. It doesn't take a PhD in Gerontology to know, statistically speaking, more water has passed under the bridge than there is left to pass; on this trip. It would be too easy for me and my mental quirks to feel incredibly sorry for myself. Hell, who knows, maybe I should, but I don't. I can't. There is absolutely nothing to be retrieved. All we have is the road ahead. Honestly, I'm really looking forward to it. I do have one confession to make. He does more in one day than I do in a week. If I ever had to follow him around I'd need to see if Elon Musk makes electric roller skates. Seriously, there is no grass growing under his feet.

     For those of you who have known me all of my life, this picture may give you pause. Take a good look. No, it's not me. It's my Father at about twenty. Freaky Huh!? If you thought it was me, you are not alone. I shared this picture, which I've been sitting on for a few months, with a select few of my "near and dear". Without exception, they couldn't place where this was taken. The reason is because they had assumed it was me. There was one exception; my favorite Aunt. Then again, she's her own brand of Wicked. If you get something past her, mark you calendar because you've done something. I will admit, there is a likeness, but i was never that thin. Okay, maybe I was, but the Army took care of that. Then again, there were three heat injuries that helped as well. Perhaps even a few Cheeseburgers too!!!
     One day not too long after we first met I got a call from him and he asked me if I wanted to get together for lunch in Dallas. I sat up straight and said, "yes sir, you bet." I figured he had some sort of business dealings in Dallas and he was squeezing me in between work functions, so I was "Johnny on the spot" at the Denny's where we decided to meet. He had previously told me that he would be unavailable for about a month. I was pretty excited that he had made time to grab lunch. We ate and talked and just visited in general. I told him I had gotten in trouble with Donna for not getting a picture of the two of us the first time we had lunch together and wasn't going to face her wrath on that subject again. He said he had no problem with a picture so I handed over my phone to an employee and what resulted was our first picture together. Even though, we are back lit and it makes it hard to see us, it's one of my favorite pics of all time.
     Remember when I told you about my Father in a nutshell above, spare me a couple more minutes and you'll find out how he became my Dad. I had assumed he was in Dallas for business and that it was luck or clever scheduling which afforded us this lunch. What would you say if I told you he drove up from Houston to  Dallas just to have lunch with me. Hold up a minute. We talk on the phone regularly, we share bad text messages (predictive text can make anyone illiterate), and he drove to Dallas and back for the sole purpose of taking me to lunch. "Boys and their Fathers!"

He drove up a Father and drove home a Dad.



Until I write again, Peace be with you!!!
Dave

My DNA Story, After 35 Years and Change, has Reached a Fork in the Road.

 The course of my life has been an ever churning torrent of rise and recede. Carving great canyons like the Rio Grande of home. A singular life, witness to: wonders and horrors, experience and innocence, rain and shine. No matter the circumstance this life is mine and strangely enough, i'm pretty damn good with that. 
Like many of you, i jumped out of the nest the instant I thought I had feathers. I had plans. For years I watched those plans fall by the wayside. Largely, they were fanciful dreams never really meant to be applicable in the modern world. Seriously, how was I ever going to play trumpet for Ed Shaughnessy and Doc Severinsen on The Tonight Show?? (I had to look up the spelling of one of those words. On the up side, it wasn't Ed.) Then there was my perverse desire to study giant squid with Jacques Cousteau. Me, a Desert Rat from West Texas.......not bloody likely. Finally, there is the thesis of this opus, finding my biological Father. Again one of those fanciful dreams, until Genealogical DNA testing went mainstream.

Back in February (2018) I bought a DNA kit from Family Tree for the Family Finder and a moderate Y DNA kit. I thought if I were going to search the databases, i'd want to use the narrowest possible criteria going in and could widen my search results from there. I uploaded my raw DNA file to GEDmatch.com and compared with even more people (see the previous two entries for the complete story). There were something in the neighborhood of 78 Thousand cousins on the GEDmatch list from Second Cousin to God only knows how to calculate the relationship. But, as I alluded to in my last posting there was one person at the top of my match chart with a remarkable amount of shared DNA. In fact, He was a perfect half match to me. Just for the tally sheet that would be 3487cM (Centimorgans) That's a Parent/Child match.

I'm going to call him, Mr Y! Now for the most important question, how old is (Oh yeah, present tense, he's very much still alive) Mr Y?? I'll tell you I nearly passed out when I discovered he is not in his 20's or 30s. He's at just the right age for a Father. Well, for a Father with an adult child in their early 50's anyway. At this moment, I needed a minute or two to wrap my head around the impossibility of things. So, I walked away from my computer and just mentally gnawed on that gristle all night.
The next day I ran a utility program to determine whether or not my raw file had been corrupted and it turned out to be a bit noisy, but well within guidelines.
I compared Mr Y to known relatives and my X matches and there were zero commonalities. Okay, so he's a new and stand alone entity. What to do now? Research. Can I put him and my mother in the same location at the same time. This turned out to be the easiest step of the process. He went to college in the same town Mom went to high school. Ultimately, I discovered they both went to that same high school and had a class together.

 There was never a question as to whether to contact him or not it was simply how. The Database had an email address for him, so ding dong there ya go. Now, I studied English Composition at the University of North Texas and have had training in how to write for nearly any occasion or purpose. Writing to contact a Father from an unknown child, weirdly enough, slipped by the curriculum committee when they were deciding on what was important to teach. I sent an email loosely styled on an obituary. I did my very best to use soft pleasant words that alluded to a close genetic match and so on and so forth, sent it, and waited about a week.
During this time, I forgot the first rule of writing and that is know your audience. Every day that went by without a reply was grueling. Why wouldn't he answer? Then my crazy started kicking in. What if he had died and noone had updated the website at his job? What if he thinks this is an internet hoax or scam? What if he's batshit crazy too and just refuses to reply. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. On day six, I sent him another email. This time it was styled on an Arnold Schwarzenegger action film character birthday greeting. Sort of?? 

The main concern for me, now that I had found Mr Y was that I really wanted to know if there were any medical conditions which ran in his family. It's wasn't long after I sent the second email and BING!!! I got a reply. simply enough, he wanted to know who my mother was and what color my hair was when i was a baby/kid. Additionally he wanted to know where I lived. I obliged and said that my grandmother had always said I was "Toe Headed". I think that's how you spell it, I've never looked it up. In the very next email he advised me that if I hadn't had a colonoscopy yet, I needed to go ahead and have that done. I'm not sure what I was looking for in an email, but that didn't exactly not count. and I said I would do just that knowing it to be a favorite of men everywhere!!!

This is the part of the story that gets more private. I'm not doing it to be mean, rather i'm doing it to be fair for all the other parties involved. I will say that since making initial contact Mr Y and I have shared a number of emails. This past weekend Mr and Mrs Y shared a marathon phone call with my domestic partner and myself. I will say a little about that call as I believe it germane to the greater thesis.
The call had a relaxed familiarity to it, even at times when it should have been awkward at best. As we talked, we discovered similarities in behavior and interest. So much so that I grew weary of Donna hitting me every time one came up. It was like being Indiana Jones at the end of a successful caper.

We plan to meet up with the Y's (Face to Face) in the near future. I, for one, am looking forward to it. I know the Domestic Partner is as well and so are the Y's. If you are reading this because you have questions about your ancestry, no matter the case, I say, stop waiting and get after it. Keep an open mind as nothing is ever how you picture it. That Indian Princess your grandpa's grandpa married might turn out to be Irish, and you won't be sitting around years from now wishing you had done it.

I genuinely have a fondness for The Y's as they are a matched set. I don't know how to compartmentalize this and am not about to try. I have found the rest of my family and i'm grateful. Many times I'm derided for my view of fair weather Christians and what Jimmy Buffett referred to as, "that thin line between Saturday night and Sunday morning." It is true, I am a confirmed Catholic, but i tend to lean more toward a Unitarian point of view. Toward that end, I do so thank God for this ever winding path, the family I have (old and brand spanking new), and all of you whom have touched my life along the way. I have found a peace I believed impossible.


Until I write again, Peace be with You!!!
Dave

A DNA Story 35 Years in the Making...and change

I would guess it fair to say, most of us have a pretty good idea of our genetic makeup. That is to say, largely, we know where we came from. Most of the people I know can spout off their parents,
grand parents, and to some degree even their great grand parents. Then there is the physical makeup: tall, short, stocky, thin, hair/eye/skin color. These are all fair indicators of ancestry. Next, religion can play a role in this. Lutheranism, probably German somewhere along the way, Presbyterianism, could be Scottish, Maronite Catholic? I'm thinking Lebanon. You get the idea. And then there is food.

The food we consume on special occasions, even on the odd weekend speaks volumes about who we are as people. So, for this, i'll simply stick to what I call ethnic food. For instance: if you eat Black-Eyed peas on New Years, you are probably connected to the southern United States. My first wife's mother (Helga) artfully made Beef Rouladen. A heavenly little package of thinly sliced beef wrapped around a pickle with some mustard and slow cooked in a clay cooker called a Romertorpf (My apologies if the spelling is incorrect). It may sound odd, but it's heavenly and very German. Among other things, my domestic partner Donna makes a meatloaf called Kibbeh (Kib-bee) and it's traditional Lebanese fare. My point here is we all have these ethnic markers around us all the time. We may not have all the answers on how we got here, but we carry the evidence of the journey and in many cases entrust this evidence to our children in the form of tradition.

Without going 20 postings deep, quite often our family names give us as good an insight into our ancestry as any other. Names like Cooper (Barrel Maker), Fletcher (the guy that puts feathers on arrows), and Wright or Smith (both denoting trades requiring the operation of forging iron) let us know our ancestors were most likely European and probably British. If you ever get curious about the origins of your surname, simply google (etymology of the surname *whatever your surname is.)

For my own journey, I took the four closest surnames; Duncan, Weyerts, Johnson, Williamson. This is actually pretty easy. Duncan is largely Scottish, Weyerts is German, both Johnson and Williamson are Scandinavian. Automatically I knew my ethnic chart on my DNA test would show Scotland, Germany, and Swedish or Norwegian. As you can tell by the image at the top of the page, the vast majority of my ethnic makeup is South Central Europe from France to Austria, including parts of Italy?? Insert giggle here as i'm the least Italian looking person on the planet short of say Jackie Chan?

This break down has everything to do with the algorithm they use to compile the data. As you can see in the picture with the purple boundaries, this second website's algorithm works a bit different as they show my German to be half of what the first one did and at the same time show the Scandinavian the first site didn't.

The important thing here is not to get too hung up on what a particular sites algorithm has you listed as because what you are is what you see in the mirror every morning and what others see when you interact with them. Side note: look on the bright side. The larger the sample size they have to work with the more accurate their algorithms will be. I'm predicting that in 20 years there won't be a speck of difference between the sites on ethnic origins. It really is simple statistics.

Another thing that happens when your test is completed, the service will show you a list of everyone in their database with whom you have a genetic match. For the standard consumer autosomal tests like, Family Tree DNA, Ancestry DNA, 23 and Me, etc. The matches carry you out to about 5th cousins. To put this into perspective: I used Family Tree DNA and when I saw my list of genetic matches and all of the 2nd to 4th cousins and noticed there were better than 4500 of them, I laughed.

Now, this is not all bad news. There is a measuring system to determine how closely you are related, but it's a little involved to get into here. If you want to know about the role of Centi-Morgans and SNPs, i'd suggest doing a YouTube search on reading your autosomal DNA report and then go to the ISOGG site and download a cheat sheet with the average numbers and their relationships. It's very handy. I forget what ISOGG stands for other than Genetic Genealogists. There are plenty of resources out there and many of them are in plain old "guy next door" language.

The top entry on my list of genetic matches was my cousin Dean Duncan. I knew him. He died a few years back, but he fit nicely into my family tree since I knew our association. The next closest match I'd never heard of. In fact, i'd never heard of any of the other names on the first page of the list. I sent out a few general "hello we match" type emails and it was still a big mystery as none of the surnames i'd heard of before.

Before I go further, it's important to know I have worked my mother's side of my family tree back to no less than 12 generations. In one spot, to the Massachusetts Bay Colony C.1630. This is just a short 10 years after the Mayflower hit town, so to speak.

So, I went back into research mode and discovered an independent website called GEDmatch.com. You can upload your raw DNA data file to them and they will search their database. Remember I said I had about 4500 cousins on Family Tree, well at GEDmatch that number went ridiculous. If you are a Pop Culture Nerd, that number went Plaid!!!  Not only that, but the relationship numbers were quite a bit higher. I saw my cousin Dean again and another bunch of names I didn't recognize. Then there was the first name on the list. The one with the highest percentage of matching DNA. The number was wholly unlikely.

Let me take a moment to say a few things. I started this whole journey filling in my family tree because my grandfather gave me a piece of paper written in his father's own hand listing the Duncan's back 7 or 8 generations from him. To put this in perspective, two of them were named after George Washington and that's a true story. (Actually, the 2nd had a son whom he named the 3rd) I was curious why they would have left Scotland for the United States. Toward that end the search continues and likely has no real resolution. The reason I augmented my approach to this task with a DNA test was on the off chance I may find some cousins or some other relative who may have more information on that or get an idea of who my Father may have been. Let's face it, i'm in my early 50's and that would make the likelihood of him being alive and kickin' a statistical longshot, but not impossible. Besides, long ago I found that picture of my mother at Stone Mountain Georgia with a tall good looking blond guy who I always believed was the guy and he went to Viet Nam. The romantic in me has always believed he died in Viet Nam and the closest i'd ever get to knowing him would be the monument in Washington D.C.. Then there is the dirty truth of it all, I put off a DNA test because of what I thought I might find. I lived a number of years with little or no regard for anything or anyone, even myself. The thought I may discover a child or children out there that I had no prior knowledge of was a distinct possibility. It's okay, I found my Manties and took the test. What I will say about the closest match on the report is; the match is about as closely related as one can get and they aren't in their 20's or 30's

Until I write again, Peace be with you
Dave

Prologue: Operation "Who's It?" a DNA story 35 years in the making.

"None of us are actually afraid of the dark; we are scared of what it conceals from us." Raymond Carver

--I do not fault my parents. They didn't get an instruction manual for life any more than I did. They did the best they could and that is all any parent can do--

I have decided to take a DNA test. Now for most of my contemporaries and even my Domestic Partner Donna, this would be somewhere between entertaining and mildly amusing. However, for me, as with nearly everything else that piques my interest, it's just not that simple. I have put this off for a number of years as not to cause anyone embarrassment and quite honestly, part of me fears what I won't or conceivably will find. This is likely to be a multi-part and quite lengthy posting, so I apologize now for my lack of brevity. Okay, so here is my side of those elements which led me here. Thank You.

(I'm fifteen at this point and terribly naive) On the way out of school that day, I was reminded by the school secretary that I needed my birth certificate by the next day or I would be dropped from Drivers Ed. So, I went home and expected to ask my Mom about it, again, but she wasn't home. The important papers were kept in a metal file box and I took it upon myself to go search for the document. 

I went into my parent's bedroom and stepped into no-man’s land. Being in there without being invited was forbidden. Despite my fears of being caught, i located the box, brushed away a half inch of crud, and opened the lid.  I rifled through the papers and found a birth certificate: The city was correct, born on an Air Force Base was correct, first and middle names were correct, and the birth date was correct. There was just one thing, the last name was wrong... Staring at this document, my young naive brain's first thought was; Wow! I have a brother born the same day as me. Does that mean I’m a twin? This is so cool! I continued searching for the birth certificate, the one bearing my surname and found nothing. 

For expediency, I'll stipulate that I had indeed found my own birth certificate. A revelation with far reaching implications and a singular truth. I am the product of an illegitimate union: A Bastard. Though few people even notice children born out of wedlock any longer, it wasn't so long ago where the last vestiges of this prejudice were firmly and stoically preserved, practiced, and held as something ordained from on high. 

Before I get ahead of myself, yes! I did get in trouble for rooting through the family files. Yes, there was an amount of drama and stories surrounding the origins of my birth. Setting down those stories into a narrative to accompany this journey serves neither the thesis nor those involved. I will however attempt to encapsulate the importance of a genetic history as a compliment to family (genetic or otherwise) and the incredibly fine line between belonging and litter on the highway.

I guess the first time I was truly inconvenienced by the last name I carry had to do with the U.S. Army and my enlistment. Since my Social Security card held one surname and my birth certificate another, I was lumped into a group of people who needed name and citizenship verification. Fortunately, i had recently gotten married and the girl I married took my name. In the truest of bureaucratic moves, they simply added an alias to my Social Security Account. This was good enough for the Army. Well, at least it was good enough for enlistment. 

In the middle of my second year of enlistment, i was selected to go to France for a test. Once again, the dual name thing caused me grief when I needed a security clearance upgrade to include a NATO designation. Eventually, I did get it, but not without some sacrifices. Toward that end, i won't even go into the whole Warrant Officer/ Helicopter Pilot debacle. Just know, at the end of that enlistment, I knew I was finished with the U.S. Army. I don't regret my service. In many ways it saved my life and yes i'd do it again. 

I spent the next thirty years, give or take, attempting to make my Social Security match my birth certificate. Interesting factoid, this was not rectified until I was forty-two years of age and was about to face some legal troubles as a result of the political landscape following Sept. 11, 2001. In the years following the 9/11 attacks I was unhireable due to the name game. This was the lowest. I'd been to the Social Security Administration so often we were all pretty much on a first name basis. One such trip I got lucky and met a man at the Social Security office in Denton, Texas who was originally from Kermit. He remembers the Social Security drives they had in the mid 1970's and in a whip of a pen all that dual name crap was a thing of the past. The other surname will always be associated with the file, but only in so far as a point of record keeping. Words escape me, but just like that I was whole.

There is an old adage: When one door closes another opens. For me, one recurring set of opening doors has led to Psychiatrists and Doctors from one end of my adult life to the other. I know, I know, what does this have to do with a birth certificate? Actually, not a lot, but they all contribute to the main topic here and that's, Why I got a DNA test. 

Studies have shown some mental illnesses to be genetically linked to the father. In my case, given the lack of a listed father on the birth certificate, it isn't as though I can call him up and find out what ails him. So, it's been old school trial and error. The other group of doors connected with these folks are your run of the mill, front line, general practitioner doctor. You know, the guy you go see when you get sick or need a physical. One of their standard forms is a medical history form. This is the form that wants to know if you or anyone in your family has suffered from three columns of diseases. At best, I've only been able to answer that half way.

Last year, I had a spot of skin cancer taken off my forearm which ended up running from side to side. This was the fourth piece I've had removed. In the middle of the procedure the doctor asked me if skin cancer runs in my family... Well, my Grandmother had skin cancer, but other than that I don't know. She certainly didn't seem to have it as often as I get it.  Months later I was at a Cardiologist Appointment and was asked if anyone in my family had a similar heart condition. I remember saying that I didn't know. He wondered if I could find out. We spoke briefly and decided it wasn't that important. 

Much like runway lights, my direction is painfully obvious. Get the DNA test. Don't these tests simply tell you where your ancestors were from?? Uh that should be easy, I’d say Europe, somewhere between Germany and Scotland. Okay, so maybe what I need to do first is to gather some information and do a little research on what it entails and what can be learned. This is a pile of reading and a surprising number of videos on the subject.

I learned quite a bit about the usefulness of DNA testing across a wide spectrum of need. It's time to do it or let it go Elsa!!! I ordered my test and in the next installment, I’ll fill in a few more of the blanks as to what i'm hoping to, and not to, discover.

Until I write again, Peace be with you,

Dave

The Romance Beneath Your Stove

Growing up in the high desert of west Texas such as I did, offered many advantages to interact with the world my city kids will never know. There was a freedom in that microenvironment. A freedom to explore, to individuate, and establish an intellectual foundation largely free of the hubris plaguing many of my metropolitan brethren. Before I get to back patting too furiously here, I'd like to say it wasn't because I was better than those more metropolitan kids, rather I/we had fewer choices when it came to our time. Hence, our simpler life afforded us entertainments and diversions which would have bored the hell out of our city counterparts. We all came to know, that at any time, any one of those diversions could be gone and perhaps we learned to appreciate them a little bit more.  

While my Grandfather fed me Heinlein and Asimov, he'd temper that with Maupassant and Chekov. Occasionally, he'd share a Playboy Magazine article with me. Salman Rushdie, Ray Bradbury, and others. I'm sure he hoped this would foster a love of math and all things space and science, but honestly all I got was romance and a racy picture or two. Now, let's not confuse romance and sex. I'm talking about romance here, though my head is suddenly filled with puns I'll spare you my excited, yet whimsical, state.

I didn't know it then, but it was the romance which drew me into these novels and short stories. You see, if you take a person or object and put them in an improbable/impossible situation and have them/it give freely of themselves/itself for the betterment of the other people or objects in the story it's a romance. Trust me when I say it isn't that hard, go enroll in an English Composition program and spend a whole bunch of money and you'll know it too. Or.....Just take my word for it.

Getting back to that crystal clear desert sky; many nights I'd lay out and just watch the movement of the world. Occasionally, I'd spot a satellite orbiting the earth, but mostly I'd just contemplate the vastness and the what ifs hidden above.  Somewhere along the way television and movies got involved. Star Trek was in syndication, Buck Rogers (horrible show), Battlestar Gallactica, etc. Then there were the movies like Star Trek The Motion Picture, Star Wars, Close Encounters, E.T., etc. Old movies like The Day The Earth Stood Still and TV shows, while not space oriented, still captured my imagination like, Night Gallery and The Twilight Zone. Suddenly, every time NASA farted, I wanted to watch.... This fascination with NASA really took hold of me one morning in Marana, Arizona. My Ex-wife and I were visiting her cousins and the Challenger flight happened that morning. I stood there watching the shuttle clear the tower and make it's quarter roll and then... well we all know what happened. For the briefest of moments, I felt like I let someone down. Then the Pundits (least favorite word) speculated on all manner of causality. Eventually, they fixated on the words Morton Thiokol and O Rings. Increasingly absent was the human side of the story. Our space launches had become so routine a catastrophic event had all but fallen away from the list of possible outcomes. As we know, the shuttle system was scrapped a number of years back due to the aging vehicles and the rising cost of maintenance. However, the space program has given us some pretty neat gadgets based on the technology developed from their work.

MRI, CT Scan, Programmable Pacemakers, and the list is awkwardly long, but one of my favorites has to be the use of LED's in brain surgery. These advances were all born on the back of heroes. Heroes like Gene Krantz and his homemade mission vest, Christa McAuliffe the school teacher on board the fated flight of the Challenger, and many many others. Faceless, Nameless, Dreamers attempting to convert the theoretical into the mundane only to discover a new definition of theoretical. 

Enter Elon Musk. I'll start this by saying, Hell Yes!

Hell Yes! I'm a fan. I don't care that he has the worst track record in history for meeting deadlines or that some of his ideas are so far afield they just don't make any sense to the average Joe. What I do care about is his lack of "we can't do that". We, collectively, have enough "we can't do that" coming out of Washington on a daily basis to set our country back two hundred years just to reach equilibrium. 

 While this next part relies heavily on Elon Musk, it's about SpaceX and not about his car company Tesla. (If you haven't driven one, don't. Doing so will change the way you see cars.)

When I first heard that SpaceX was going to make the Falcon 9 and that it would be reusable and the cost per launch would go from 60 Million to 600 Thousand I audibly laughed. I made a joke out of a rocket that took off and landed like Marvin the Martian. Yet, here we are. The damn thing takes off and lands like Marvin's. This is incredible. The software for the computer controls has to be an amazingly simple and yet fully fleshed out product. Let's start with something basic in landing one of these rockets. THE EARTH IS MOVING. The earth is not a stationary target. It is spinning inside a bubble of air, so the software has to match the speed of the planet, control the pitch, roll and yaw of them and burn and shut off all at very precise times. That's on the landing pads at Canaveral. When they land one on the drone ship, the also have to compensate for the pitch and roll of the deck. There are other factors like wind, atmospheric pressure and other things, but pitch, roll, and yaw are the important ones, then elevation. I'm no rocket scientist, so don't beat me up over my simplistic assessment, but to me these would be the biggies in making this thing land and you can't reuse it if you can't land it. Landing is where the cost savings comes from. I love watching them land. This week after the launch of Falcon Heavy, I got to see two of them land at the same time. That was the coolest thing ever!!!

...And then...

 

   Instead of a large concrete block, they really did shoot his Tesla Roadster into space!!!
This reminded me so much of the opening scene from the movie Heavy Metal when the guy returns to earth in a late fifties Corvette. It was exciting. It was romantic. It was just plain awesome!!!

I'm pretty sure I'm not the only person to think so, but the (ugly word alert) pundits were not impressed. Some called this the height of hubris. Why didn't he fill the compartment with science experiments on the cheap? Why didn't he launch an armada of cube satellites? All of these highly educated professionals had the same blinders on and just couldn't see it for what it was.  It was a test flight. There was a better than fair chance it could have ended in very large ball of fire. NASA used to send up large blocks of concrete as payload on test flights because it would shatter and burn up on reentry. Musk sent his own damn car into space to be the coolest art installation ever and had the whole thing blown up, the pundits would be talking about how foolish he was to risk his car like that.

So, when you go to bed tonight remember this: There is a Tesla Roadster 2.0 cruising through the galaxy 250 Million miles beneath the crap under your stove and that's romantic.

Until I write again, Peace be with you.
Dave

This past weekend, I made a quickie trek out to Alpine. Really and truly I needed to reset my taste-buds and renew my nose to country air. I just needed to get out of town for a couple of days. I was stale. Berutted: if you like. For a brief case of ad nauseum, my zest was all pith!
This July would have marked two years since i had taken any time to slow down and measure the world around me. Yes, my yardstick was dry rotten. Interestingly enough, once I hit town all I wanted to do was curl up at the hotel and sleep. I'm sure Karl Jung would have a wise theory or two about that, but the next part would have caused him some contradiction. I generally don't dream. I simply pass out and wait for the next day to start, but from the first night I dreamed of running.
Years ago, in a galaxy far far away, I ran. I'd been doing it since I was a kid. If I wasn't running, i was biking. So when I left High School at 17 I weighed about 180lbs, but it was all leg and butt. I could open beers with my toes, but struggled to carry in groceries with my chicken wing arms. Well, the Army got the arms in line with the legs and my first two company commanders were both runners. I had it on good advice that if my commander was into something I better be able to converse in it without sounding like an idiot. So, I started running after hours and early mornings. A few miles here and there. I kept it to a three day a week type thing. Honestly, i was never disciplined enough to be a serious road runner. Oh sure, I did take a crack at it.
In 1984, or there abouts, I and my company commander both ran the Mule Mountain Marathon from Bisbee to Ft Huachuca. He ran the full thing, I ran a half. We both started the race as the first member of a 5 man relay. I remember i crossed the 5 mile mark right at 30 minutes. It was 29 and change and Carrington my commander was about 10 or so seconds ahead of me. (Side note: Alberto Salazar ran that year and he was about 20 seconds ahead of me)
At the half, I crossed walking at just short of 1:40. I felt good. My legs were chapped and sore and my shoes had long since failed, but I felt pretty damn good. I was invited to have beers with my friends that night and i made it through about a half of one before I fell  asleep.
That next year, I met the Hoyt's in Tucson. I'm still blown away. In those few brief moments, i learned what a Father's Love really is. In a nutshell, it's something i'll never achieve, but in my own weird way I do try. That last sentence makes me a bit sad, but it is the honest truth.
At this time in life, i varied between 202 - 215 pounds. Which is too heavy for a runner, especially one of any distance. I was reminded of this regularly. The guy at the local shoe store there on Fry Street loved me. I stopped in regularly to get a new pair of Asics. He took pity on me with some pretty great discounts and naturally I sent everyone to him.
I ran in Tucson, Phoenix, hell the Army had an MWR (morale, Welfare, and Recreation) run through Death Valley. I did that one twice and it nearly killed me. So, that little voice in the back of my head about being too big to run came to the front and with a new wife came a new life. Oh, I still ran here and there, I largely gave up on running until i got back to Alpine in '89.
That period, I would get out and run the loop road, or to the airport and back, I ran in from the road side park out west of town and from the Y. It was a great stress reliever.
One of the last times I went out for a run was pretty early on in my current relationship. I had been going out pretty regularly for a two to three mile run, when one morning I had stopped out by the airport on my way back into town to walk and drink some water and I met a guy who was also out for a run. it turned out he was in town to make a superbowl commercial for Footlocker. Oddly enough, I had gotten a day job as Assistant to the Location Manager for that same shoot. The runner was Joe Falcon. He was a real nice man and yes, he did find it odd that someone of my size was out running. I couldn't believe that I had just met a world class runner in Alpine. The last I heard, he had become a police officer or something of that nature.
So........
I woke up from this dream where I was running around loop road, waving at Roy Dodson, who was painting a door leaned up against the rock wall in front of his house, with fireworks going off at the park in the middle of the day. I sat up. Then, I stood up and my feet groaned. Today, i'm somewhere north of 300 pounds. All the years of pavement pounding and the resulting arthritis and bone spurs reminded me i'm still too big to run, but as long as I keep moving toward the next destination i'm still in the race.
It is my custom to post around my Birthday even when I post nothing further in the year. I recently turned 52 and this will have to suffice as my celebratory post. These days my thoughts are of my family. My aging parents who no longer go to bed late and get up early, but have traded that for something horrifyingly different. My children whom have all grown and found lives of their very own. My little grandchildren whom I could never see enough. Most interestingly, i'm watching all the friends from all the years have their faces betrayed by time and the crisp colors of their hair turned into a rainbow of starlight revealing the pain and wisdom hard won in races of their own.
As I keep moving toward the next destination I pray that each of you stays in the race for you are valued. A little more wrinkle, a little more silver, or even being too big to run are preferable to no race at all.
Until I write again, Peace be with you.
Dave