A week ago, we were camped at Fort Massac State Park, along the southern border of Illinois, on the Ohio River. Fort Massac is just a short distance away from Paducah Kentucky, on the other side of the river.

If you have anything to do with quilting — or any interest at all in quilts — The American Quilt Museum is a wonderful place to stop. This was my second visit…, and Karen’s third!

After spending an hour or so in the museum, we went out to eat and then stopped at Hancock’s of Paducah, a giant fabric store. We escaped without too many purchases.

Before heading back to the campground, we spent a little bit of time exploring the historic downtown area of Paducah. It’s a nice area that seems to be thriving, certainly more than a lot of old downtown areas these days. It has many of the same sort of stores that a lot of the historic downtown areas have, though, thankfully, there was not an excess of t-shirt and stupid-souvenir shops.

While we didn’t walk into many shops, we did find one that had an interesting interior courtyard, with some nice metal sculpture — for sale, of course.

The name of the shop is Bebe’s Artisan Market and it had a number of interesting pieces for sale.

Bebe’s is located on a very picturesque side street just a couple of blocks off of the river.

We’re sitting in a B arnes and Noble in Peoria, Illinois, catching up on e-mail and other stuff.

Today was supposed to be a rainy day so we decided to look for Barnes and Noble stores in the area that we are in so we could get online.  Turned out there was about 10 within 60 miles, but none closer than 50 miles, so we decided to drive to Peoria, Illinois.

We had planned on leaving last Wednesday, but decided that we didn’t want to drive through the remnants of Gustav all day, so delayed a day.  It started raining Tuesday and rained hard all day Wednesday.  We had a lot of water running through the yard off of the road.  Fortunately, though, we live near the top of a hill in the Ozarks, so flooding is never a real concern.  We did get word today that the main highway from our area going north is going to be closed for a month for road repairs.  We figure it was probably slides due to all of the wet weather that we’ve been getting this year.

The drive Thursday was wet most of the day, but there wasn’t any bad rain.  By the time we got to our destination, Fort Massac State Park, we hadn’t seen any rain in a couple of hours and the ground was dry.  Fort Massac is the site of several forts dating back as far as the French and Indian War, each fort built over the ruins of the older ones.  It is located on the Ohio River in southern Illinois, across the river from Paducah, Kentucky.

On Friday, we visited the quilt museum in Paducah, a huge fabric store (Hancocks of Paducah), and the old downtown area.  I’ll have pictures that I’ll be posting later from there and other places.

Saturday, we took a long drive and got some photos of a old native mounds site and another really neat state park, the name of which eludes me right now…, more photos.  We drove through the old river town of Cairo, Illinois.  I got a couple of shots from the Ohio River, but none from the Cairo.  It seems to be a dying town.

Yesterday, we drove to Starved Rock State Park in north central Illinois.  It seems to be very large.  We’ll be exploring it some tomorrow when the weather will be better.  From there, we’ll be going into Wisconsin on Wednesday.

Hopefully the remnants from this next hurricane will not come back around and go though our area back home.  Everything is so saturated.  Fortunately, we’ve got family, friends, and the neighbors watching and checking the place so we will know right away if there is anything wrong.

While we are traveling, I won’t be checking in as much on all of the feeds that I normally use and won’t be able to comment while we’re traveling.  We will be at a campground starting Wednesday that will have wireless.

At the end of January, I went back to work at the place I retired from as a contractor.  Last Friday was the last day of the contract.

For most of my career, I worked as an operations instructor in nuclear power, both in the Navy (40 months) and at a commercial plant (24 years).  As in many jobs, there was more to it than just the teaching. And, unfortunately, as the company went from a moderate sized utility to a corporation operating the 2nd largest nuclear fleet, there was a lot of additional administrative requirements.

By the time I retired, enjoyment of my job was long gone, except for the small percentage of the time that I actually spent in the classroom. That, combined with a number of administrative burdens and other issues, contributed to my decision to retire when I reached 55.

My plan was to take at least a year off before even considering looking for work.  By the end of the first six months, I had no intentions of actively seeking work.

Work came seeking me a year after my last real day of work.

That would have been the average life expectancy of a person diagnosed with lupus 40 years ago — 5 years.

Twenty years ago, when my wife was diagnosed with it, the life expectancy was — possibly a normal life expectancy.

Karen was in pain, she was weak, she tired out quickly.  One doctor dismissed her symtoms as being “in her head.”  She made an appointment with a different doctor in the same clinic.  He didn’t know what it was for sure, but he was suspicious of the rash and sent her to a dermatologist.  The dermatologist identified the disorder and lined her up with a specialist in Little Rock.

She was diagnosed with lupus and other related disorders, including fibromyalgia and polymiositis. Fortunately, through the care of this doctor and doing what she is supposed to do, she has been in medicated remission for many years.  When she backs too far off of the meds, symptoms start to reappear, so she must maintain a low level dose of them.  She does have pains related to the disorders and she isn’t able to build strength easily — it has to be slow and gradual.  Other than that, though, she lives a normal and healthy life.

Today, she went to a dermatologist for a small rash that has been rather stubborn.  It turns out is is probably related, so she is going to have to be a little more careful with staying out of the sun and/or using sunscreen.

It was the same dermatologist that diagnosed the lupus on August 23, 1988.  It was the first time she’s been back since he referred her to the specialist.

How cool is that?

Note: the picture above was taken last September about a mile out on a trail in Canyonlands National Park.

Not having a job as of the end of next Friday is not a bad thing for me, as some of my few long time readers would know.

You see, I’m retired and this job was just a 7 month contract gig with 4 weeks off in the first half. So, starting next Saturday, I’ll be back to full-time retirement.

The contract job was back at the place I retired from and my office — until next Friday — is three doors down from my old office.  Except for a few weeks here and there, I had worked in the same building from April 1983 until I retired at the end of February 2007.

The last several months have been very fulfilling as I was able to do the parts of the job that I really enjoyed without getting overwhelmed with all of the administrative stuff  that in-house staff has to deal with — the kind of stuff that was part of the reason that I retired when I did.

Today I was walking back to the office with an empty cardboard box for loading up my few personal possessions when I ran into the department manager.  I remarked that there was a lot less accumulation with a 6 month temporary gig than there had been for 24 years as an employee.

She laughed and then said that they could probably find someplace to store it where it would be there waiting for me when I come back for another gig in about 11 months.

Hmmm… take a year off from work, then work for 6 months doing what I enjoy, then eleven months off and come back for another 6 month gig.  Better than working full time, that’s for sure.

Note: the guy in the picture is not me or anyone I am related to.  I was 7 years old when this picture was snapped.

1907 Theater Poster

Library of Congress

Over time, the meanings of words can change drastically. In my lifetime, one word whose meaning has changed more than just about any other is gay.

When I was growing up, the word had nothing at all, as far as I knew, with sexual preferences. There were other words that were used for that, words that could be — and were — used as verbal weapons. Gay, on the other hand, implied joy, happiness, pleasantness — in other words, it had positive and pleasant connotations.

Today, when someone refers to another individual as gay, they are not implying anything about positive emotions, but neither are they, necessarily, saying anything negative. In many ways, the transformed word has supplanted other words that, in their own way and the way they were used, were twisted and nasty.

And that’s generally a good thing.

But the old words are still there, along with the hate and bigotry. And that’s unfortunate.

Definitions of gay on the Web:

• cheery: bright and pleasant; promoting a feeling of cheer; “a cheery hello”; “a gay sunny room”; “a sunny smile”
• full of or showing high-spirited merriment; “when hearts were young and gay”; “a poet could not but be gay, in such a jocund company”- Wordsworth; “the jolly crowd at the reunion”; “jolly old Saint Nick”; “a jovial old gentleman”; “have a merry Christmas”; “peals of merry laughter”; “a mirthful …
• given to social pleasures often including dissipation; “led a gay Bohemian life”; “a gay old rogue with an eye for the ladies”
• brave: brightly colored and showy; “girls decked out in brave new dresses”; “brave banners flying”; “`braw’ is a Scottish word”; “a dress a bit too gay for her years”; “birds with gay plumage”
• offering fun and gaiety; “a festive (or festal) occasion”; “gay and exciting night life”; “a merry evening”
• homosexual or arousing homosexual desires
• homosexual: someone who practices homosexuality; having a sexual attraction to persons of the same sex
  wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

Years ago, I read a book called Black Like Me, and, as I recall, it had quite an impact on me.

In 1959, the author of the book, John Howard Griffin, a white man, undertook a project on his own to darken his skin and go into the American South to see what life was really like for the blacks there.

Recently, I was questioned by a black lady about my interest in her blog and part of my explanation included that I had read Black Like Me as a young man and that it had made an impression on me.  She is an older lady and what she is doing with her life today as well as her her reflections on the past is fascinating.  I don’t know if I was able to explain satisfactorily why a middle aged white guy with a science and technology background would be interested in the blogging of an old black lady grounded in the humanities.

While in Little Rock last Sunday, I found and purchased a copy of the book and read it from cover to cover over the next couple of evenings. This is the third time that I have read it, and, once again, it has made an impression.

The South that Griffin visited as a black man in 1959 for the most part no longer exists outside of the history books and memories. Segregated schools and separate facilities — or lack of facilities — for non-whites have been left in the past.

However, hatred, racism, and bigotry have not been been left behind. Prejudice, unfortunately, is still alive and well.

“But,” the reader asks, “What does that have to do with your changes, with your moving out of your comfort zone.”

The answer is that I have not fully addressed my own prejudices and I carefully stay away from anything that has anything to do with race, homosexuality, gender bias, profiling, immigration and anything else that is related to the prejudices of others.

Lorelle VanFossen has a blog challenge for readers to “blog about where you find your inspiration to blog.”

Going forward, and in moving out of my comfort zone of only writing about things that are safe, I will be looking for and writing about things that challenge my perceptions and the perceptions of others.    I’m going to be diplomatic and still try to use reason, logic, and persuasion in presenting things that might be a little uncomfortable for me, and , perhaps, for some readers.  But, I won’t be avoiding all of the hard topics that I steered clear of in the past.

I’ll still be doing many of the things that I did before on the blog, of course, including photography and travel.

I plan to re-read Black Like Me again soon.

…blowing in the wind.

For some reason the title of this post reminded me of a classic song from my youth.

I didn’t intend the previous post asking about who I am voting for to be a trick.  Rather, I was presenting a stereotypical representation of what I could be like.  The regular visitors who responded, though, saw through it.

All of my statements were true.  They just weren’t the complete truth.

I did vote for Reagan for president and for George Herbert Walker Bush in his first election for the presidency.  I voted against Bush in his second term because he wasn’t doing what I thought he needed to do on the economy.  I never voted for his son.

While I can trace many of my ancestors to colonial America, my grandmother was 100% Moravian, her parents coming to America in the early 1900s…, and they were Catholic, which I didn’t know until recently.  Her husband, my grandfather, was an ardent denier of his Native American ancestry, which was actually pretty diluted as far as I can tell.  I grew up believing my heritage was entirely white, anglo, and protestant.

While I believe abortion to be a very bad thing, I don’t oppose it and I certainly don’t want things to go back to the way it was before Roe v. Wade.

I am uncomfortable with gay marriage.  That’s not the same thing as being against it.  I’m not and that is a recent change, within the last week, for me.  I voted against it when it came up for a vote in a state constitutional ammendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman.  I would not vote the same today.

In some small degree my vote is going to be about race and age. Barack Obama is a relatively young man of mixed ancestry who has taken much of the best of both cultures and is moving beyond it.  Electing Barack Obama would show to our young people and the world that the great potential of the American Dream is still alive and well, despite everything that is going on.

In general, I like John McCain.  If McCain had been the nominee in 2000, he would have had my vote.  However, today, John McCain is not the best choice for me — though he was the best out of all the Republicans, in my view — and part of that is because he is just too old.

The most important thing, though, for me in this election, is that we have a good turnout for this election, no matter who people are voting for.

If you aren’t registered to vote, do it soon!

If you are registered, please make sure you vote for the candidates of your choice!

I’ve made up my mind on who I’ll be voting for in less than three months.

I’d be interested in visitor comments on who they think I will be voting for.  Here’s some more information that might help:

I haven’t always voted, but in previous presidential elections where I did, I voted for Ronald Reagan and George Bush.

Before I went in the navy, I lived in the older George Bush’s congressional district in Texas and for some reason I paid atttention to what he was doing over the years.  I knew when he was ambassador to China and head of the CIA.

I can trace my ancestry back to the 1600s in Virgina, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New Jersey — WASP all the way (White Anglo Saxon Protestant) — and if I ain’t, I’m not tellin’.

As a couple, we are better off than we were 4 years ago and 8 years ago.  I have benefited personally and professionally from the policies of the current administration.

I served in the United States Navy for just short of nine years and was honorably discharged at the end of my last enlistment.  I got most of my college education under the G.I. Bill.

I own a rifle and a shotgun and have fired the shotgun from my front yard.

We live in the south along a country highway and I drive a big red pickup truck.  We’re into camping and RVing.

I graduated from high school in 1970 from a southern school that was not yet integrated.  Our kids graduated from an all white southern high school in the 1990s.

When I was in high school, we were poor “white trash.”

I supported the invasion of “Iraq,” though I wasn’t sure we were doing the right thing.

I support controlled and responsible drilling for oil offshore and in areas like ANWR.  The technology is there to do it with minimal impact to the environment.

I believe that we need, as a country, to invest heavily in new nuclear power plants.  Nuclear power has a proven track record and we are going to need a lot of new electrical power capability if we are going to really move away from foreign oil.

I am a small investor in oil and natural gas production.  I’m not a speculator.  My investments are at the well-head.

I’ve been retired for over a year and a half.  When I was working, I didn’t talk about politics because most of the people I worked with had very different views.  I’m back contracting in the same office I retired from and, surprisingly, we are in much more agreement than we used to be.

A very small part of my reasons for voting the way I will be voting is based on the racial heritage of the candidates.

I think an abortion is a very bad thing.

I’m uncomfortable with gays getting married.

A very small part of my reasons for voting the way I will be voting is based on the ages of the candidates.

Please make a guess about who you think I’m going to be voting for.  After a reasonable period of time, I will let ya’ll know in a post who I will be voting for.