Pappa Hardy's Musings on Life.

This morning I woke up to the darkness that comes in the middle of winter. It was fairly late in the morning. It was 6am and it was dark outside. Frankly, for me this is a depressing time of year and it is a trial for me because Winter seems to last forever. I am a sunshine kind of guy and I hate to have darkness outside all of the time.

It was also real cold. I hate the cold as well. I can tell that these bones are no longer made for the cold of winter, and that someday I may want to relocate to a warmer climate that is further south, and which will bring more light. Winter, oh Winter how I hate you.

As I have moved away from the date I was operated on (about 2 ½) weeks ago now, I am slowly getting some of my strength back. I am also taking less pain medication, which makes me more grounded in reality.

As a result, I have realized that I have so many things that need to be done, that stopped when first I went on vacation, then my mother passed away, and finally, I had this surgery. I am picking up the pieces, and they are scattered all over. It is not easy but I am sure that I will get there and that my life will be all put back together in the way that I want.

I woke up this morning from a nice sleep with no hope. I was very depressed. I think I over did it yesterday. I went without ice on my knee and resting for many hours and that did cause a response in my already stressed body.

I kept asking myself why this had happened to me, why I was having to deal with the pain, discomfort, and the rebuilding and rehabilitation of my knee, and why I was up at that time of the day. It was not a fun moment in this process of making things better.

There is hope. I realize slowly but am realizing that I need to measure the pace of my rehabilitation. I won’t be all better at once. It will take me time to get my leg better and to get over this spot I find myself in. I also realize that in the long term this is the best thing for me. I was in great pain and the leg was not doing it’s job.

I thought yesterday was New Years. Today I wake up to the rose parade and now there are college football games all over the airwaves. It sure doesn’t look like a New Years day. We are in the middle of a winter drought and there is no snow on the ground and I feel like I should be out working in the good weather.

That brings up my current situation. I am still recovering from me total knee surgery. While I intellectually knew what was coming, that never prepares you for the actuality of being dependent on others. You don’t sleep well, you are in constant pain, and my personal nursing support team (Bonnie and Julie) are afraid of letting me do much of anything. I have so much that I need to do that they won’t let me get too. They don’t seem to want to let me do much of anything that is fun. I mean really, I want to go skiing. What seems to be the problem?

What a year. So much has happened this year. I have seen the death of one of my parents. There have been changes in employment, changes in my health, and changes in the family. The challenge is in keeping up with the changes, instead of only reflecting on them at the end of the year. Tomorrow is the beginning of a new year, and a new slate to write on. I must have a better written record at the end of next year.

Yesterday’s power outage in Southern Utah County and two other Utah counties, which started at 9am in Spanish Fork and finally ended shortly after 11am, taught me a few things about myself. I think the thing that it really taught me was that I have been watching too many science fiction TV shows and movies, with the common theme that we are going to have an end of civilization calamity, probably brought on by a terrorist act or some other such event cataclysmic event.

When the power went down, my first thoughts were of inconvenience, but then right after that I wondered, could this be an act by terrorists to make us not only helpless but totally helpless. Isn’t it amazing how dependent we are on modern power sources and conveniences? The power winked and then went down, and suddenly, several projects I was working on at the computer were gone, unsaved, and unfinished. Oh the pain. I sat there, trying to mentally will the power pack on with no loss to my electronic files.

I sat there, realizing soon that there wasn’t much I could actually do now. The phones were gone, the lights out, the computer screen dark. The cell phone worked, but it was updating software and couldn’t be accessed. Oh my, the world had come to a stop. I drove home to go to a doctor’s appointment, the traffic lights out. Everyone for the most part was obeying traffic laws. However, the thought still lingered, could this be the beginning of the end. We are so dependent on a simple concept called electricity. Finally, while in a dark room looking for something for lunch, the lights came back on. Civilization restored. Ahh, my fears were washed away and order restored. Funny where your mind runs to when things change in a fundamental way.

It has been almost 6 months. I feel the call of the ocean. I feel the call of traveling. I love to travel, and the call is getting more intense to go out and cruise on the ocean and see new places and have new experiences. This is getting tough to do because I have responsibilities and a job at home.

I can’t explain the soothing that the open sea brings to me. I don’t understand why I love so much the sound of the open ocean, the wave action, and the crash as it hits against the side of the ship. I love looking horizon to horizon and seeing nothing but water.

I love coming into a new port, exploring new places. I feel the call of the ocean deep in my bones and want so much to satisfy that call.

Maybe it’s a just a sign that I am getting older, or maybe it’s something else, but I sure seem to be worried much more about the weather than I ever was before. I watch the weather forecasts with rapt attention, wondering what the next week or two will bring us. I think about how winter is on its way and how much I wish warmer weather would stay.

I look at the weather map and start to think to myself, I wish I had a home in St. George or Mesquite for the winter. I wish it weren’t so hot there right now and maybe I would go and stay the weekend. I find myself less tolerant of the extremes, the way hot days of summer or the way cold days of winter.

I love snow, but I don’t want 3 feet of snow on the ground. I just want a nice tolerable climate that allows me to enjoy the weather. Yeah, maybe it’s a sign that I am getting older.

A good friend of mine recently on his website pasted a list of his top 20 songs from the 1960s. He invited me to respond about my list, and also indicate what factors I used in making my choices. I am really having trouble doing that exercise. There are a number of reasons why. When I grew up as a teenager, it was during that turbulent decade of the 60’s. For me, that decade holds a fascination of who we are as a country and how I got where I am as a person.

The decade of the 60’s was a decade of newness, new ideas, new approaches to solving problems. It was also a war decade, a decade of protests and cities on fire. It was a decade of achievement (man first went into space and landed on the moon). At times I feel we have been so mediocre since then.

Music was no less exciting. The decade started with the Elvis Presley phenomenon and ended with Abbey Road and the breakup of the Beatles. Great music was made in that decade. It moved many people. For me, it is impossible to first separate out a 20 top ten list and not include the Beatles. The Beatles helped define the decade the musical landscape like no other group. Of course, the Beatles were not the decade and there was great music made by others.

Secondly, for me personally sometimes it is impossible to separate the single from the Album. For instance, the Beatles Abbey Road has so many connections to me on a deep emotional level. I would go to sleep listening to the second side of that beautiful album. On my mission, I would sing those songs to myself as I rode the Chinese countryside in Taiwan and suffered heat, rain, typhoon, and other challenges. The missionary experience was about more than music and weather though.

There are many great songs from the 60’s, and many great albums. It is hard to separate those two out. I dare not rank the songs that I love from that era. They include such songs as Hey Jude by the Beatles, Legend of a Mind by the Moody Blues, and Suite Judy Blue Eyes by Crosby Stills, and Nash. Not to be forgotten are such songs as Monday, Monday by the Mama and Papas, Creque Alley by the same group. Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin was another song that connects with me, Voices in the Sky by the Moody Blues, and many, many more.

There was so much diversity and creativity then. There has been great music since then, but I have trouble separating out the music I love from the experiences that have defined me.

A recent letter to the editor sent to “The Economist” in response to an editorial in the July 2nd issue of that magazine:

Editor

I thought I had found an unbiased well thought out magazine that reported the news. I have eagerly waited each week for my new addition of the “The Economist”. That was the case that is until I received the most recent issue with the Caption on front, “The End of the Space Age”. I eagerly turned to the lead article, only to find it to be one of the most biased and condescending pieces I have ever read.

The constant referring to “Space Cadets” as a way to classify anyone who has interest in human space exploration told me where this writer was. Such condescension in my opinion does not belong in any magazine that would purport to be professional. Marginalizing your readers or someone who might believe in the exploration of space for other than economic means I believe is below the purpose of being for this magazine. It should be anyway. By marginalizing your readers, you will also lose them. You have lost me. I was ready to re-up my subscription. Now, I have been reading your articles not certain that bias hasn’t stuck it’s ugly head into the articles I have been reading. Thank you for waking me up to your lack of professionalism.

Exploring space is much more than the economics. It is much more than what makes a TV program exciting. It is much more than how much it costs of our resources, our time, and our being. Frankly, one of the most important reasons for going is that we are diversifying our risk. Must business people who are into investing their resources for the future understand that concept. Robert Heinlien once said something to the affect that we should never leave all of our eggs in one basket. If we don’t push out and explore and learn how to live elsewhere, we are allowing all of our eggs to be broken. Someone should have told the dinosaurs that they should have invested in diversifying their risk. A promising race of reptiles didn’t live past a piece of space junk that crashed into the Yucatan peninsula and exterminated most of those animals 65 million years ago and caused mass extinction.

We are a fragile race of beings, living on one world together. As the Apollo astronauts witnessed, we are on a dot in space. We need to make sure that dot doesn’t get erased and the human race that lives here is not extinguished. I am sorry that you believe that the ISS is a waste of money. I am sorry that exploration of the moon, and then maybe later Mars seems like a colossal waste of money on the dreams of your “Space Cadets”. I am so sorry that you are excited that this waste of money seems to be ending with the end of the Space Shuttle, and the end of the “Space Age”. I am sorry that you lack imagination.

Mike Hardy
Payson, Utah-Not on the Space Coast