cc: file, Tony Hafen, Pauline Nelson via mail, Sara and Des Penny, and Maxine Shirts
"Last Sunday, the first time I called my Mom at her new residence in LaVerikin, I mentioned Andrea and I might go to Australia. She immediately came back with a statement about the number of caves there are in Australia. I responded that Australia is a continent, is very big, and there are probably no more caves there per unit area than there are here in the United States. Then I said, `Don't you remember the times you took us over to see Lehman's Caves and the good times we had?' She responded, `Well, I tried to make sure we had good times and good memories.' And Mom, so you did. Thank you for those times. I apologize I too often get caught up in anger about other stuff and forget or let get buried all of the good times.
And what is this other stuff? I recall on one of our walks over to the Hunan Restaurant Mom telling me how angry and upset she was with her Mom and Dad. And I recall Grandma Hafen telling Grandpa Hafen how much it upset her for his Father to come and visit and to pee all over the floor. So where did this family tradition start? A long, long time ago, in a place far, far away. And it continues with you kids. Matt told Andrea today how upset he was at being left at church 6 years ago, even though he admitted having left and walked home many times on his own. And as I reflect on all of this, I come to the conclusion, kids too often react to the concerns of a loving parent out of a family script. It is true the family scripts include conversations like the following as we drove to Galveston Island for Ethan's second birthday yesterday:
Simply the words and concerns of a loving parent, packaged in
a way certain to get a negative response from the listener.
And the thing is, we each do it. It comes with caring. And as
I have considered what kind of words to write this week, I can
see that my words will be received the same way as Andrea's
were by Matt. Oh well! Maybe someday you will all see how I
have attempted to do the best I can within the emotional scripts
I have been blessed to carry around. Emotional scripts that
make it easier to tell Daniel Yergin, a famous man I have only
met a couple of times, how proud I am of Ben, than it is to tell
Ben how proud I am of Ben. Emotional scripts that make it very
hard for me to carry on a conversation on the telephone,
especially if there is any chance of rejection or an emotional
reaction from the conversation. Emotional scripts that result
in me overcompensating the rudder, when I see the ship of my
life or of those I care about and love the most, going in some
direction which scares me. It would be so much smoother if
we trusted and were not so scared by the choices those we love
make. Free agency is a scary thing.
In terms of my week, it was busy. Monday, Thursday, and Friday were spent interpreting Jude's Nigerian Marginal Fields. Tuesday and Wednesday Andrea and I went to New York. It took all day Tuesday to travel to New York. Wei He met us at the airport in his Lexus. Hard to believe it has only been 13 years since he came to the US as one of my three Chinese students, each of whom are still here. We got to see where the World Trade Center was from the New Jersey side. There was a teleconference, which caught me up on a lot of the work Albert and Roger have been doing. We had a wonderful Chinese dinner, and were able to catch up more with what everyone is doing (and I ate too much). Steve Joseph was in town, and so it was the first time in quite a while we have had the whole vPatch group together.
Andrea and I stayed with Wei He and his wife Xue Fen (which means snow fragrance). They have a beautiful house in a town close to Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory. They have fixed it up so nice. Beautiful hardwood floors, so clean you could eat off of them. And William He, my chinese grandson (../0026.html) has grown up. He is two, and it was fun to play trains with him. He is spoiled, and seems to handle it well. We took several digital photos, and hopefully they will get posted on the web in the next few weeks. Both Wei and Xue Fen kept calling me his Grandpa, and it felt good to know I have made a positive difference in their lives. They only speak Chinese to William, and he is picking up English from neighbors and TV. Definitely they are showing the concerns of loving parents. Xue Fen was so worried about having us stay with them because their guest bed did not have a headboard. Hopefully she now knows this, like most, is an unfounded fear. We were the first guests they have had stay with them. It was very special.
Andrea spent Thursday with Steve Joseph and his son touring New York, including going to the top of the Empire State Building. She could see 25 miles. It was a beautiful day. I gave a talk in the morning on the Infinite GridSM (see http://www.walden3d.com/ig/details) to a group called CIESIN which does GIS (Geographical Information Services) work for the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency). They said I have identified a nitche, and it is not something that justifies changing from the way they are doing things. I find it is often that way with IP (Intellectual Property), i.e. that you can tell your business plans to anyone you want to, and unless they are already working in the specific area you are, they will say, `That's nice!', and at best give advice for improving your product or service. In the afternoon I gave my talk `The Impending Obsolesence of Maps' to 40 Columbia students. There were a few questions. However, they were pretty laid back, at least compared to giving the same type of talk to students at BYU (0211.html).
Roger and I had a nice lunch discussion, and we outlined an approach for creating cash flow and contacts to fund our various activities. It is based on Bob Sneider's model of teaching schools to keep in contact with the industry, identifying clients, making contacts for studies, and then entering into exploration partnerships. We defined six new courses which can be the basis of feeding our efforts:
We placed a call to IHRDC, and it will be interesting to see if anything comes from this think session. Andrea certainly agreed when I summarized the conversation for everyone and pointed out how Roger and I are always moving on to the next new thing and not finishing the latest things we are doing. Roger is doing some really neat things in Homeland Security. It was fun to spend a couple of days with this group of friends. Wei took us to the airport, and we got home just after midnight. It was Matt's first experience of being left home alone. He did fine. He took one of his friends with him to see the Astro's game we missed on Tuesday night. I was pleased with how well he did, and must admit there were concerns of a loving parent as we left him to go to New York. Friday night we went to see `Spy Kids 2.' What a fine movie! This is my idea of a just about perfect movie. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Yesterday we spent the day in Galveston at Sarah's parents beach house / retirement house. It is the last house on the northwest corner of the street Mike Forrest's beach house is on (../0033.html). We got there about 11:00. Ethan is a bundle of energy. We went to the beach for a couple of hours. Most of the time was spent trying to keep up with Ethan as he threw a rubber bone to Jack (Sarah's parent's dog), and took turns holding it in his mouth with Jack. He was a lot of fun in the waves and then burying him in the sand. We also buried Matt in the sand, and have some `interesting' photos of him buried. Lunch was hamburgers, pasta salad, potato salad, and all the fixings. Andrea had brought some chocolate chip cookies. It was fun to watch Ethan open his presents. He is almost as spoiled as William. Maybe this will be a tradition with each of my grandchildren? We watched `Fellowship of the Ring,' which just came out on video, and also Marti's sky diving experience. It was fun to sit out on the swing and enjoy the breeze as the sun went down. Andrea and I went for a nice walk along the beach, just after dark. It was the best look at the stars I've had since Big Bend (0222.html). We got home about 11:00 PM, and I was tired.
Today in sacrament meeting Shannon Conners, who along with Melanie was one of the girls in my first short lived term as a Primary Teacher, was a speaker. She followed young Brother Harrison, who had given an eloquent lecture on the power of having the priesthood in the home and in his life. Shannon could not talk to start with, and finally she was able to wipe away the tears and say how much she misses having the priesthood in her home, in otherwords how hard it is having divorced parents and not having Jim at home. Her message was about the power the temples can have in our individual lives. Her words resulted in a new stanza for Prime Words:
The sacrament meeting speaker was David Peterson, one of Alan and
Brent Peterson's brothers who moved back from the middle-east
a couple of years ago. He talked about the Family Proclamation
(my only previous reference was in Thoughtlet ../9902.html),
the fifth proclamation made by the Prophet and the 12 Apostles
since the restoration. Last week in Priesthood Meeting we also
had a lesson on the Family Proclamation, with a challenge to
teach it to our children. So I am going to start my teaching of
this message by quoting it:
Maybe I'm just overly experiencing the concerns of a loving parent,
or maybe it is a family script, but I have kind of been down today.
It is sad such positive things can sometimes get me feeling like
such a failure. Oh well! Matt just came in and asked me:
`How did the armadillo cross the road? I told him, `I don't know.'
And he responded, `It didn't.' At least he got me laughing again.
Hope you each have a good week."