Comments:
After graduating from IU in 1965 with a B.A. in chemistry, I went to the University of California at Santa Barbara and obtained a chemistry M.A. in 1968. Army active duty was next.
My IU R.O.T.C. 2-year Army tour of duty obligation was served at Ft. McClellan, Alabama, as a chemical weapons (choking, blood, tear, blister, nerve, smoke) instructor. There I met Ruth (future wife #1), an instructor in the Women's Army Corps. Ruth was from Colorado and single. I also met Norma (future wife #2), my secretary. Norma was from Mississippi with a husband and five children.
After the Army, I worked as a research chemist for Armstrong Cork Company in Lancaster, PA, developing flooring and ceiling products. When Ruth's Army tour was up, she moved to Lancaster where we married in 1970. Missing Indiana, I talked Ruth into moving to the Mullin settlement in Indiana early in 1976. My attorney father had a small heard of Black Angus cattle that I tended. I also did some grain farming with my cousin for eight years. During that time, I helped build us a new house in 1976, Wade was adopted in 1978 and Sara was adopted in 1984. Needing more income, in 1984 I began attending Purdue to become certified to teach math in middle and high school. That certification was completed in 1986.
After several substitute teacher jobs, I soon became weary of disciplining instead of teaching; and when an ad for a chemist in a new endeavor at the cement plant near Logansport appeared in 1987, I eagerly applied. I got the job and soon became manager of an independent analytical laboratory responsible for screening flammable hazardous waste used as a supplemental fuel in the production of cement. The flextime of the job allowed me to both tend the cattle and manage the lab. I remained lab manager until retirement in 2008.
In 1995, Ruth died. In 2001, while tarring a roof on my father's barn, I did not anchor the bottom of a ladder sitting on a cement slab well and fell, busting a knee on one leg and an ankle on the other leg. While in Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis getting my broken bones screwed together, I began to wonder if I were still alive or had died and gone to hell. After visits from Bob Small and Stan Adsit, I began to lean towards still alive. For rehabilitation and therapy I was transferred to Heritage Healthcare in West Lafayette. There Marilyn Snyder made sure I was well cared for. The last part of my three-month ordeal was spent at home moving around by wheelchair.
Here I must insert an ad for doing physical exercises. Mr. Geheb gave me a great science start. Mr. Berto gave me my start in fitness. At the beginning, I was not too keen on the taskmaster's football calisthenics designed to condition the body for the beating needed to play football; but, after the initial screaming for help, my muscles and lungs began to like the attention. The good feelings are not so much during the exercises, but after. The smell of aged perspiration adds to the ambience. And the great feel of a long, warm shower (when Charlie Boone got the water heater lit) is hard to beat. Since high school, I have devoted an hour or two a day, seven days a week, to some type of exercise program. My doctor and others think that my high degree of recovery from my fall is because of my dedication to being in good shape. I am still at it every day.
Late in 2007, Norma, my Army secretary 38 years prior, and I were married after her husband passed away earlier that year. In the 38 years, she had acquired two residences--one in Winona, Mississippi; one in Kings Beach, California, at the north end of Lake Tahoe. We were married in an evening outdoor ceremony at the Tahoe residence.
In late 2009 my 92-year-old parents (Lewis and Hazel) moved to a nursing home. About that same time I liquidated my small Angus herd. Norma, having acquired many antiques while she had a store in Reno, now having a readily available repairman with a strong back, rented space in Times Past Antiques located in the old Masonic Lodge Building on South Washington Street in Delphi.
My sister, Barbara, died September 5, 2012; she was 63. The damage done by many years of smoking allowed a cancer of the esophagus to block her intake of food. I was highly critical of her weakness to addiction, but I must commend her strength to reject medical intervention and rapidly move to the inevitable. Her son, Garret, survives.
Indiana is home base, but we usually play the best-weather seasons game among our three residences. Sometimes Norma takes me sight seeing in California and Mississippi, but normally I can be found around the house with my 'to do' list in my pocket and my tool belt around my waist. We did do some parasailing and sailplaning over Lake Tahoe and went through a gold mine in Virginia City. In Indiana I have more work latitude, such as using my backhoe to fix a ditch hole. At all residences she occasionally grants me computer time to compose and communicate on current, controversial conjectures.
Norma is a news junkie. I often hear her exclaim "Bad parenting!" as the reason for so many of the nation's problems. I think the root of the problems goes deeper and quote her Dr. David R. Hawkins, "We can only achieve quantum improvements in our lives if we quit thrasing and flailing at the branches and leaves of our current condition and get to work on the roots from which true success springs." Vinod Khosla, entrepreneur and founding CEO of Sun Microsystems, thinks, "If an innovative idea has a 90 percent probability of failing, then I like it. Why? Because it is likely to be the one that has a quantum jump in performance. In contrast, only pursuing high probability areas yields results that are all only incremental."
Here are two low probability roots of our current troubled economic and social conditions: The first is 'accidental' pregnancy. The most often cited 'accident' rate is 50%. That means a lot of ill-prepared, both mentally and economically, parents produce a lot of ill-bred children leading to a lot of very expensive, compassionate, incremental government programs. The present programs thrash and flail at the branches and leaves. A serious sex education and birth control program would get at the root; and as a bonus effectively eliminate the abortion issue.
The second root resides at the other end of life's spectrum--old age. The sanctity of life proponents and the medical profession have influenced our behavior to extend the life of the aged well beyond reasonable quality and affordability. Here in 2013, I am presently personally dealing with this in the care of my 96-year-old parents. They are leading a miserable life in a nursing home and are projected to consume over a million dollars in care before passing away. Oregon's 'Death With Dignity Act' is a step in the right direction. Sarah Palin set back the cause by calling part of what is needed "Death Panels". Norma and I often visit a nursing home and suggest a better name would be "Dignity Panels" or "Compassion Panels" or "Humane Panels". America's death customs must be changed to match America's dwindling resources and counter misuse of advanced life-extending medical technology.
Birth control and end-of-life management are low probability roots not because of their probatility of failure, but because of their low probability of implementation. Politicians avoid the subjects like the plague. They continue to thrash and flail at the peripheral problems and fail the country.
If you have read all 7,508 characters in this comment section so far, I appreciate your politeness and respect. If you wish to join in my battle to grub out the roots of many of America's problems, please visit and support: www.plannedparenthood.org, www.projectprevention.org, and www.mylastwishes.org.
