Auggy

good tennis times with Woody... fun errands and stuff with Lucy... nice parties for Sarah... Mom turned 85...

all pretty wild... so thankful... Morphing...

enjoying being a little lighter on my feet...

the burbs, kids, values

was reading that kids today are getting their values from their PEERS, because the world and culture and traditions and especially FAMILIES are in such CHAOS...

and I can kind of see that now...

it is a mish mash of values... when I grew up, everyone got their values from their parents and their churches... but everyone had 2 parents and went to church...

I think I broke away by going to college and reading and being influenced by peers
much later in life...

I don't know how different it is today... do kids become set in their thinking at a younger age... has TV and the INTERNET changed things...

maybe kids get influenced at the same age today, but just less by family and college...

the family and cultural traditions and lifestyles and physical living conditions seem so different...

yet, I'm not comfortable deciding where people get their world view... where people get their moral compass... where and how behavior and beliefs are formed...

my fear is that we are in less intellectual times... and is the blame to be placed on affluence or technology or what???

in a sense, culture has always been transmitted by the environment of the individual... if so, then as the environment changes, so would the transmission...

:)

My Father

my father lived and died well... he was a REAL trooper... he understood... he lived without complaining too much... he was thankful to be alive even tho in pain... AND, when it was too much, he finally died, but was pleasant and cheerful to the very end...

he really really died well without complaining... I wonder if he knows I know that... he never complained... I mean just enough only to tell me how he felt, but he NEVER dwelt on it... NEVER dwelt on negative things... he would think to himself, would I rather be dead, and he would say to himself NO... and he would keep on living... in the end, when his heart was giving out, he didn't complain... he accepted it was time for him to go...

but my father didn't really understand things... I mean he just knew there was life and death... and as painful as life got for him, he would think to himself, I still am more happy being alive than dead... he didn't know why he felt that way, and even tho he claimed to be and acted religiously, believing I assume in the Catholic Church etc... he didn't want to die and go to heaven... he seemed to prefer being here on earth...

I guess it is a real case of nature vs culture... nature told my father to LIVE... culture told my father heaven awaited him... even tho he believed in the culture he was brought up in, the NATURAL instinct to LIVE was with him to the very end...

I just think that is interesting...