Saturday, November 17, 2012

Another Indianapolis Rotary Club Invocation, delivered 10/16/2012


My son was married about a week ago.  As a matter of some coincidence, they chose to be married at the Speakeasy - a place connected to our speaker's businessincubator.  I hope it works as well for young couples as it does for young businesses.

The occasion of their marriage offered me time to reflect on love.  Of all the emotions it is the most difficult to explain.  The Apostle Paul wrote: "For there are these three things that endure: Faith, Hope and Love, but the greatest of these is Love."

I've set many goals in my life and achieved some success, but the achievement of which I am most proud is being married for 37 years.  A life of love shared with my wife.

Our love has changed through the years - the Greeks were the first to determined there were four types of love.  And I believe you can find all of them on display here today at Rotary:

Affection: We meet every week, sharing greetings, genuinely interested in listening to each other and doing business on the square.  You may not think this is love but of the four kinds it is the most natural and widely experienced.  An affection for nature, a cause, and a curiosity is love.  What soul could thrive apart from that?

Friendship: The old saying: "Make new friends, cherish the old.  One is silver the other gold" isn't an old saying here.  It's a part of our four way test; a pledge we make not to Rotary . . . but to each other.  Friendship is Chicken Soup for your soul. When you greet each other today consider it an opportunity to create a friendship that could last a lifetime.

Romance: Part nature but to this engineer's mind mostly mystery.  Easier to witness than explain; in full view at my son's wedding and - at my wedding and at your wedding.  Romance allows you to fall in love but land on clouds.  Romance is rewarded with caring, acceptance and fulfillment - so why don't we have more of it?

Charity: We gather today under a banner of service above self.  Unselfish love focused on bettering the world - but at the same time - ourselves.  Anne Frank said: “No one has ever become poor by giving.”

So be more in love today...practice all the different kinds: Affection, Friendship, Romance and Charity.  There probably isn't enough love in the world so commit yourself to making more of it today.
From Frank Zappa via Gregg Keesling:
Do what you wanna
Do what you will
Just don’t mess up your neighbor’s thrill
And as you pay the bill
Kindly leave a little tip
And help the next poor sucker on his one way trip

Sunday, November 11, 2012

Why [great] newspapers must survive

It struck me today why newspapers must survive and it was a bit surprising.  (Isn't it wonderful when you can be surprised by your own ideas?  As if they came from another person!)

Browsing the pages of the NY Times it occurred to me the exposure to information in a newspaper is nearly random.  I know the Times has a liberal bias.  I know the 'Book Review' section is about books.  So the exposure may not be truly random.  But the discoveries on each page are somewhat unpredictable and the field so wide that I find myself stumbling into new matter every time.  It is almost like a voyage of discovery into uncharted territories.  Like Darwin trolling the inlets of the Galápagos Islands.

Perhaps this simply discloses my sheltered, naive and uninformed existence.  But the Internet has made search so effective and efficient that it is hard to stumble across information unintentionally today.  Every key word your look for is in the results.  But what if other ideas, tangentially related or unrelated, in the general area or far flung, are interesting too?  How do you expose yourself to that?

Whether intentionally or not, newspapers are the way to do that.  Maybe they shouldn't be called newspapers anymore.  News is something the Internet can deliver faster and cheaper.  Maybe they should be called Random Information Delivery Vehicles or Curated Collections of Loosely Aggregated Facts and Opinions.  Those monikers don't exactly flow from the tongue ;)

In any regard, Newspapers should spoil us with surprises and keep us curious about random facts and figures, stories and insights and delicious details that aren't immediately useful for a long time.


Thursday, November 08, 2012

Thanks!

As reported on the IN Secretary of State's website, my candidacy for IN House District #53 resulted in 23% of the electorate voting for me!  That's a real bite out of the total votes cast 22778.  

My opponent would have otherwise run unopposed.  He is a good man and does a good job for our district.  BUT: the monogamy of ideas presented in a one party system is unhealthy for Indiana.  Nature loves experiments and diversity.  So should out political system.

I was impressed by the impotence of big budget political campaigns at the national level.  Billions of dollars could have been so much more productively spent.

Stay tuned to these pages for my plans concerning upcoming elections . . . THANKS AGAIN FOR YOUR SUPPORT!