Category Archives: Inspiration

Powering Through

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Posted by on in children, Family, impediments, Inner Struggles, Inspiration, Personal Values, Social, Striving

January 22,2026-

My son worked at clearing all our yards of leaves-until close to 11:30 p.m. A suctioning, mulching and bagging tool, carried on his back, made a four hour job shrink to two .

This came about after he put in eight hours of work and spent a few hours with his daughter.

My daughter-in-law, after seeing her mother off at the airport, came back determined to handle her own mothering duties as independently as possible. She did just fine, which shows that one’s most heartfelt efforts to give advice, while appreciated, need to be tempered with letting the recipient of the advice integrate it into own skillsets.

Hana, for her part, is working on turning over and is practicing crawling up from the belly of the person holding her, up to the shoulder. She also has a couple of one-syllable utterances: “Hi”, when seeing me first thing in the morning and “Oww”, when something hurts. The latter is incorporated in the accompanying cry.

My little family is a remarkable trio, powering through life.

Inclusion

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Posted by on in collaborating, Community, Historical, Inspiration, Personal Values, Social, Spiritual, Striving

January 19, 2026-

We have come too far, as a nation and as a species, to go back to a world in which fever dreams of a “Master Race” or favoured status of one group over another can dictate policy or social coda.

I say this on a day when many people honour the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. it is not a liberal or conservative matter. One of Dr. King’s lieutenants was Ralph Abernathy, a social conservative and sometime Republican, who also did not wish to be relegated to second-class status. Another was a noted progressive, Jesse Jackson, who has spearheaded the movement towards full inclusion.

Two years ago, when I was still in Prescott, for MLK Day, a presenter spoke of the concept that “All means all”. She said that conservatives are part of the mix. She also said that no one group should be allowed to limit any other.

That arrangement allows even extremists to speak freely, while putting a check on their ability to act against the rights of those they seek to dominate.

That, to me, is the basis for social inclusion.

Passages

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Posted by on in children, collaborating, Family, Inspiration, Matters of Faith, Personal Values, Social, Spiritual

January 17, 2026-

Hana will never know seven of her great grandparents. Five of them, including my Dad and Penny’s parents, passed some time ago. My Mom has been gone for 1 1/2 years. Yunhee’s maternal grandfather bid farewell this evening.

I recall stories about my own maternal grandfather. He was, by all accounts, a hard- working man, who warned anyone who would listen about the rise of Fascism. That was in the Boston of the late 1920s and early ‘30s.

My maternal grandmother was a bright light of my early years. She would walk down the hill to visit, when we lived less than a mile away. After we moved to our own house, she would take the bus to our corner and walk down Adams Avenue. Either way, she was a reliable presence, until she became ill and passed on, in 1960.

My paternal grandparents were also endearing people. Grampy underwent an experimental heart bypass, in 1955 and didn’t make it through. Nana was more of an enduring presence, living to see and enjoy 49 grandchildren, then 10 great grands. she, too, would take the bus from her neighbourhood in nearby Lynn and one of us would pick her up at Saugus Center.

Hana will know them, and her grandmother, Penny, through stories and pictures. It will be a while, hopefully, before she encounters death as a part of life. Her maternal grandparents and I will keep ourselves active and healthy, and hopefully the impermanence of life will come to be understood in a positive context. I will teach her about spiritual energy, when she is old enough to understand such matters.

In the meantime, I will just be backing her up with prayers, and by holding her close, in a reassuring manner.

Sanctuary

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Posted by on in Assistance, children, collaborating, Community, Family, impediments, Inspiration, Personal Values, Social, Spiritual, Striving

January 13, 2026- Granddaughter had a tough day today. Our little Capricorn had to take not one, but two, trips in the car, so being in the car seat-one of her least favourite activities-was just part of the agenda. The other stuff was more of a personal nature-the normal ups and downs of being a newborn. This house, though, is her sanctuary-and Grandfather’s arms are a bower. None of us here will let anything wreck her day, and if she has, as her father occasionally had, a tough time, I will set anything else aside and just hold and rock her.

When Hana is upset, and I have her with me, she will look me in the eye while crying, almost as if hoping to see and feel being understood. That, she is, and the group of us will figure out what is bothering her, either from her physical cues or by noting anything that has happened, during feeding or elimination, that might be causing her distress.

Every human being deserves sanctuary. The sanctuary for the innocent is protection from harm. The sanctuary for the criminal is due process. In 2016, Donald Trump asked one fair question: “Where was the sanctuary for Kate Steinle?” She was the young lady who was killed by a violent man who was in the United States illegally. Kate Steinle was in a place for people on holiday. She, and everyone else there, deserved a safe environment.

The same is true for every other person who has been killed or assaulted by someone filled with rage. They deserved a safe place. Think about that, before commenting on whether anyone going about their business deserved death or injury, for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Fire Blankets and Urban Walking

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Posted by on in children, Community, Family, impediments, Inspiration, Personal Values, Social, Spiritual, Striving

January 12, 2026- My order of three fire suppression blankets came today. These blankets offer considerable protection in the event of a house fire, so we have one on each floor and a third in the laundry room, next to the garage. They are easier to use than a fire extinguisher, though hopefully we won’t need to use them at all.

I spent a good part of this afternoon in the nearby city of McKinney, which is our county seat, and the location of a KIA dealership. I first caught a Lyft to downtown, not being sure just how far it was, or how difficult it might be to get there from the dealer. Finding the main bookstore closed, I walked around the interesting downtown, and settled in at Collective Coffee, which reminds me, favourably, of Prescott’s Wild Iris or Century Lounge. I can see myself frequenting Collective, when in McKinney on one errand or another.

After indulging in a latte and slice of coffee cake, I checked the distance back to the dealership. It was 1.5 miles, mostly along a pleasant residential street, so I made the walk. The houses are largely of Victorian vintage, many with turrets. There are a few businesses in midtown, but the mini-malls wait until closer to U.S. 75. I am accustomed to navigating walking paths near major thoroughfares, though, and this area has crosswalks that allow for safe passage over highway approaches, just shy of the actual on-ramps. I was back at the dealership in less than a half-hour.

The service department caught up with a few recalls and gave me a schedule for maintenance. It’s good to be at a KIA dealer, after four years of winging it.

Back home, all were glad to see me. Hana relaxed her head on my shoulder and let out a big sigh, as I helped her into sleep mode tonight. Grandpa will not let her down.

Hoblitzelle Afternoon

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Posted by on in Assistance, children, Community, Hiking and Nature, Inspiration, Personal goals, Personal Values, Social

January 11, 2026- Sunday brings with it a commitment to clean my bathroom(done) and do my laundry (after I write this post). Hana time was plentiful today, but as any grandparent of a newborn knows, it could have been more. There is no task that is “not my job”, when it comes to our little girl’s well-being.

With the baby fed and asleep, and my personal space in order, I took some time, this afternoon,. to visit the western edge of our neighbourhood park: Hoblitzelle. The park was named for Karl and Esther Hoblitzelle, philanthropists in the Dallas area during the 1940s and ’50s. It has a short set of trails, on either side of Alma Road, in east Plano. Most of the trails are paved, and being a Great Plains environment, mostly flat.

Still, the sense of nature is quite fulfilling, and I will be glad to bring Hana there, frequently, once she is ambulatory and can enjoy playgrounds and the views of Russell Creek.That’s a year or two off, so, in the meantime, this will be one of the places I frequent, in order to get in some hikes.

Oaks at rest, Hoblitzelle Park, Plano
A short, broad trail, Hoblitzelle Park
Another oak at rest, Hoblitzelle Park
Mirror images, in Russell Creek, Hoblitzelle Park
Lingering colours, along Russell Creek
Limestone and tree debris, Russell Creek
Russell Creek flowing northward
Small fishing pond, south end of Hoblitzelle Park

So went my first of many visits to Plano area parks.

Edith Renfrow Smith

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Posted by on in collaborating, Community, Historical, Inspiration, Personal goals, Personal Values, Social, Spiritual, Striving

January 10, 2026- She largely minded her own business, focusing on getting an education-even in the aftermath of Plessy vs.Ferguson, and then on educating others, for over forty years, and being vindicated by the decision in Brown vs. Board of Education. Edith Renfrow Smith was a product of small town Iowa, and in fact was the only African-American at her school in Grinnell and the first at its highly-regarded college, which she graduated in 1937. Edith died yesterday, in her adopted home of Chicago. She was 111.

Mrs. Smith was a mentor to the great jazz pianist, Herbie Hancock, who was her neighbour in Chicago. She gently encouraged him to attend Grinnell College, which he did, turning a dual interest in engineering and music into a career of innovation in piano jazz. She also met several prominent Black-Americans, from Gwendolyn Brooks to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., during her years in Chicago.

I look at the lives of people like Mrs. Smith, who welcomed guests into her home, almost until the day she passed, as examples of how one can live life to the full, through a mix of civic engagement and maintaining a modicum of privacy. As the granddaughter of a runaway slave who himself built a new life in the free state of Iowa, she found a love for education and self-improvement were instilled in her. She passed those on to her two daughters and to her grandchildren. She also passed along the philosophy of greeting everyone with a smile. It was important to her that this small act was the basis for making the world a better place.

The balance set forth by Mrs. Smith is as fine a model to follow into advanced age, as any I have seen.

Wondering about Clouds

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Posted by on in Assistance, children, collaborating, Community, Family, Hiking and Nature, impediments, Inspiration, Personal Values, Service Activities, Social, Spiritual

January 9, 2026- In my early evening time with Hana, she was gazing up at the clouds and the tree in our front yard. The big upper windows allow plenty of room for a child to look up and out, especially when wrapped in the safety of loving arms. I told her about how clouds give trees life-giving water, just like we are feeding her life-giving milk. She continued to look at the scene outside. Her pre-lingual brain is, no doubt, saving images, with repeat observation and hearing similar words with regard to what she sees.

I wonder, too, about clouds, though of a different kind. The mental clouds we use to “shield” ourselves from the reality of things outside or even from our own shadow selves-misgivings, shrill self-condemnation, lack of impulse control, can be useful in the sense of giving time to process those negative elements and let them flow out. Held on too tightly, they can be energy-sapping and unnecessarily limiting.

That is the wisdom of nature: Clouds come, drop their load of rain or snow, and move along-so long as we,in our rush to make a profit or craving to hold onto ideas that have lost their efficacy, do not continue with policies and behaviours that interrupt the water cycle. Nature ebbs and flows well enough on its own. We have the choice of learning to flow with it, as many ancient cultures did, or of acting in arrogance and trying to supersede the natural rhythm.

Thumb Rockets

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Posted by on in children, Community, Family, Inspiration, Personal Values, Social, Spiritual, Striving

January 7, 2026- “Let me show you a trick that your granddaughter will think is the stupidest thing she ever saw”, the new friend from McKinney said over lunch at a local deli. He proceeded to have me wrap a piece of paper around my thumb, and twist it to make a little “hat” for the thumb. He’s right; I think Hana would roll her eyes at that part, when she is about eight or nine. He then had me make an OK sign with my other thumb and forefinger, put it around my wrapped thumb and pull the thumb out of the paper, but in such a way that it made the paper go up and out- a thumb rocket.

D is an interesting man who has not had an easy life. That puts him in good company with a number of people I’ve known over the years. The difference is, he’s made mostly good choices, from the time he was a child. Growing up in the north of this Metroplex, when it was a long ways from being a Metroplex, he’s seen it all happen. Still, as I watched, the farmer in him caught a small rat by the tail and disposed if it in a way that a man who has plowed through hard knocks for eight decades would do without batting an eyelash. (No, that was NOT in the deli).

Time with a good ole boy is spent in a way similar to how time is spent with a First Nations person, a nomad of the Negev, or a campesino anywhere in the Southwest or Mexico. The watch stays hidden, because schedules don’t matter. D told stories of his childhood and his large family. A lot of his experiences mirror those of my male elders. Farm life is a great connector. After the nearly ninety-minute lunch, I drove around the area a bit, to ponder all that I had heard.

I will see D., and other local Baha’is, on a regular basis, so perhaps I will earn other “tricks” that will make my granddaughter alternately giggle and groan.

A Little Bottle

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Posted by on in children, Community, Family, Inspiration, Personal Values, Social, Spiritual, Striving

January 4, 2026- It was my turn to feed Hana her “lunch” bottle of pumped milk. The focus is in developing her posture and promoting good digestion, so I supported her in an upright position. At the halfway point, she let up and we walked around a bit, while I burped her and told her about all the good things that will be outside, when she gets old enough to go out in a stroller, and afterward. A few minutes later, we sat back down and she finished the bottle.

She has started to look around, especially trying to find her maternal grandmother, who has been the strongest presence in her life, besides her parents. Of course, at two weeks, she can see mostly large figures and bright colours. The voices, though, are what are the easiest to identify. Those little eyes, though, have started to search.

I will be an increasing presence in Hana’s life, especially after Halmoni goes back to Korea, at month’s end. There are other things to do in the interim, mostly getting my vehicle registered in Texas and changing my driver’s license to the Lone Star state as well. Planet Fitness is a mile from here, so I just have to convince them to accept the same e-mail that I used at the Prescott club. It seems silly to have to have a special e-mail, solely for a gym membership, but technology can be ludicrous at times. Other aspects-Red Cross, Farmers Market, American Legion and the Baha’i Center, will need to be visited this week. The bank, the VA and chiropractic will round things off.

The little girl, and her little bottle, will be the most important parts of my life, for months to come.