cc: file, Diane Cluff, Darrell and Nancy Krueger, Pauline Nelson via mail, Sara and Des Penny, Grandma Hafen via Tony Hafen, Claude and Katherine Warner, and Lloyd and Luana Warner.
"Tomorrow (.../9824.html) came Wednesday with the deposit of the $300,000 ernest money. It became more real Friday with notification the $100,000 ernest money to MuSE had been expanded with notification of the $900,000 being sent by wire. I guess I will feel better when the next $6,700,000 is deposited, finalizing the startup investment. Tomorrow also came on Wednesday because I received a wonderful post card from Rob. He said:
The first vacation the kids go on without one parent, after a divorce, just has to be hard on everyone. I have kept myself very distracted with work, and yet I still find tears quite often. It was nice to get a post card from Rob. It brought back hundreds of memories of post cards.
When I served in the England East Mission (October 1970 to November 1972), I sent a post card to my Grandma Hafen every week. She gave me all of those post cards after I returned. They are buried in one of the 100+ boxes in my bedroom. Melanie is going to work for me this summer, and one of the things I hope she accomplishes is to help me sort through all of those boxes. A lot of it will be thrown away, and some stuff, like the post cards, will be scanned, hyperlinked to stanza's in Prime Words, and to these Thoughtlets. With the additional income from Continuum Resources, ASA, I intend to start building the ELDO described in the preface Prime Words. Hopefully this will mean something to you kids someday.
Remember how when I traveled for Landmark all of the time I would send out post cards to my Primary Class, to my Teacher's Quorum, to all of the Young Men and Young Women I was responsible for when I was in the Bishopric, and especially to you kids? Shannon Conners was in my primary class when I first started doing this. She loved Panda Bears, and I would send her post cards of Panda's from China. She sent me a graduation announcement and I sent her a dictionary from all of us. I made a crack in my note about how all of her success as a student came from being in my Primary Class (ha ha), and earlier this month she wrote to me:
Last Sunday I was talking to Ron Burgerner when Tyler came and sat by his Dad and said hi. He then proceeded to say, `Do you remember all of those post cards you sent us?' I responded `Yes.' He said, `I didn't understand then, and I am starting to understand now. Thank you. You were a good teacher.' I cried in my heart because I feel so inadequate at that which means the most to me. E-mails are easier for most people to trash than post cards. Hopefully, by creating a permanent on-line file of Thoughtlets, eventually with an internal key word search engine, and a chronological listing of referenced events, my inadequacies will become a strength for you kids (see Ether 12:27 [.../9821.html]). Hopefully, whatever it is Tyler is starting to understand, will become something you and I will also come to understand, and hopefully it will be worthwhile. It is so easy to get caught up in the moment, we forget to create memories. We forget to take the time to write post cards.
Monday morning I drove up to Round Top, Texas after dropping Brother Law off at the bus depot. I met a friend and we looked at some property we have talked about purchasing. There are two log cabins built in the late 1840's, which sit on 8 acres, and an old house built in the early 1850's, which includes 55 acres of beautiful meadows, forrests, and rolling hills. I got bit by an insect on my thigh, and within two days it had swelled up in a perfect circle about four inches in diameter with a large bruise on the top. I guess it is a good thing I don't have the money, because I might have just bought myself more bites and fewer post cards.
Monday afternoon and Tuesday were spent working on Continuum Resources. Tuesday night I went to RePAIRS. A lady that hadn't been there for six months came back, and she made a comment about how we wouldn't be there if everything was ok in our lives. I really do feel pretty good about my life right now, and I have spent free moments the rest of the week trying to put words around why it can be useful to go to RePAIRS (or to church), especially when everything is going along pretty good in one's life. It seems there is always new things to learn, new ways to look at the guards at Buckingham Palace, new post cards to write.
Wednesday, I spent the day getting data ready to be loaded into the MuSE environment in Albequerque. In fact, I finished the last tape at about 3:00 in the morning. It was 03:43:14 when I responded to an e-mail Ben sent me. I packed, cleaned up my office a little bit, had a shower and shaved, and was ready when John Amason picked me up at 5:45 to go to Albuquerque. Needless to say I slept on the ride to the airport and on the plane ride. It was an exciting two days. I will be glad when all of the non-disclosures (my definition of this phrase is `there is nothing to be disclosed') are over, and I can tell you all the things which happen at startup of a company. I know it was intense. Friday afternoon, I found a moment and slipped away from everyone, and went in the demo room alone for a while to find a few moments to write myself some mental post cards.
The Solar System demonstration was still running. In this application, the MuSE shell allows you to travel between each of the planets, all of their moons, to show their orbital paths, to bring up photos of the planets, and to proportionally scale them so you can see all of the planets and all of their rings and moons as they orbit around the sun. It is absolutely beautiful. I put the displays back in stero, zoomed in on the solar system, sped time up, and sat in a chair in the dark and watched the solar system dance in and around my head. My mind went to Alma's conversation with Korihor:
As I sat there watching the planets swirl around the sun, I wanted each of you to experience the beauty with me. I was awestruck with my own nothingness. I really felt in my head and my heart the insignificance of my divorce and dwelling on being rejected, in the overall scheme of the universe. I was totally awestruck by the majesty and beauty of God's creations. And to think minuscule man could create such an elaborate representation of God's handiwork. This is the stuff of post cards.
When I got back to the house Friday night there was a wonderful e-mail (electronic post card) from Sarah Nelson, Ben's wife and my new daughter- in-law. She and Ben had called Monday evening, just as we were getting ready to have the closing prayer for our Family Home Evening Group. Her closing sentances has caused me seriously look at myself:
I have always felt family comes first in my life. I spent days debating with myself on the proper order for the first stanza of the Epilogue in Prime Words (page 227). `Family, Church, Work' was my conclusion of the right priorities for me. As I said in my response to Sarah earlier today:
As I get older, I am hopefully realizing others do not see the world the same way I do. Despite our best intentions, it can be beyond our control when other people exercise their inalienable rights of free agency. I just need to be patient, waiting, like the Sun or Jupiter, for the opportunity to attract passing stars into my gravitational field. In the meantime, we can send post cards of all of the beautiful things in our world and hope this redirects choices.
Saturday John and I worked on prototype web pages for Continuum Resources, and a presentation we will give at the all day planning meeting tomorrow (http://www.walden3d.com/wvs/continuum user: continuum password: strawman98). Then I went and used my Landmark and HyperMedia software at Energy Innovations to build images for my Aberdeen presentations. I got home about 11:15 last night. By the time I talked to John, and typed out a job description for Melanie, I was ready to go to sleep and too tired to write any post cards.
I slept in this morning, and missed a call from Roice. I havn't been able to get hold of him since then. Sara gave me a nice basket of candy for Father's Day. Melanie and Rob had lunch with Brother Law, Paige and myself. There was a wonderful lesson in Priesthood on `Preventing Personal Apostasy.' I was particularly struck by one quote on page 80:
As I gear up mentally for a very busy week, I wonder how Paul is doing. Have only got one letter from him in the last few weeks. I worry about Roice, and how he was feeling when he came to town for the wedding. I am pleased Melanie and Rob went to church firesides tonight. I wish Sara would spend more time with me. And I am very proud of Ben and Sarah. If there was only a way to capture all of this, it would make some wonderful post cards."