Category Archives: service

The Hana Chronicles: Month Five, Day 1

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

May 22, 2026- This afternoon, we set up a plastic mat as a ramp that covered the small ledge between Hana’s play area and the dining room. She crawled up the ramp, with my bracing her feet and her mother on the other end of the ramp, encouraging her. Hana made it up into the dining room, looking surprised, as she looked down into her play area, then quite happy that we helped her.

Earlier today, she crawled over to the bookshelf in her play space and touch several book spines, babbling insistently, until I took a couple of books out and read them to her. When one of us reads, Hana looks attentively at the pages, and has taken to turning the pages herself and looking through the books.

She will now be slowly introduced to solid (pureed) foods, and watches us very intently as we eat, and how we use utensils. She will be shown how to use the soft rubber spoon, when we begin the feeding schedule (one solid food, for one meal, per day.), starting on Sunday.

Most importantly, her speaking and eye contact are acknowledged and affirmed. Insistent and enunciated babbling can be reasonably interpreted, given attention to body language and where her eyes and body are pointing. When she is acknowledged correctly, her face lights up, so we know we’re on the right track.

This is where we are as a family, five months in.

Loyalty

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

May 20,2026- My granddaughter kissed me on the shoulder, when I picked her up from the crib, after her first nap, this morning. She will roll over to get next to me, when I lower myself to her crawling area. She holds onto my shirt, when I am rocking her, at the end of a play period. A baby is motivated by survival instinct, and gravitates to the person(s) who show her/him the most consistent positive attention. That is the beginning of loyalty.

My own loyalties are very specifically ordered: Family, Faith, Friends, Humanity, Planet Earth. I am loyal to government when it treats the common people with love and respect. My loyalty to the Human Race requires standing up, when there is a widespread disregard for dignity and worth-no matter the source of that disdain. Furthermore, I see no conflict between standing up for my family and standing up for the planet. My family’s survival needs a healthy environment. I don’t want my granddaughter, or anyone else, ingesting a host of microplastics or breathing in Diesel fumes, generated by someone who is angry at Elon Musk, or at the environmental movement.

I am loyal to the Baha’i Faith. That also means that I show reverence and respect towards all creeds that are based on the Golden Mean. All knowledge comes from the Divine, else it is contrived, and is not true knowledge at all. We have never been left alone, nor will we ever be.

I am loyal to my friends, no matter how long it has been since we’ve seen one another or how often we may communicate. Many are overwhelmed by life and have both my daily blessings and constant thought. My loyalty should never be measured by how much money I spend on a person. I have a few in my circle, who are transactional. The only time I hear from them is when they are short on cash. I occasionally help one family with the basics, but generally speaking, I prefer my charity to be that which helps larger groups of people.

My loyalty to Humanity reflects a conviction that “all means all.” I don’t make a distinction between “rightwingers” and “leftwingers”, Christians and Muslims, citizens of one country as opposed to those of another. My only guidepost is to be discerning, as to the basic human rights of a given person. Even a tyrant has inherent dignity. If he/she chooses to squander that dignity, that is not a choice made by me. I will not harm anyone, but neither will I allow them to harm me or anyone close to me.

My loyalty to Earth lies in being as responsible a steward of what is in front of me and of the planet as a whole. Minimal trash, maximum recycling, regular maintenance and proper use of my motor vehicle, respect and kindness towards all life forms, to the greatest extent possible, conservation of resources-all these add up, when practiced regularly.

Loyalty begins with self-respect and is reflected outwards.

By Example

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Posted by on in Assistance, children, collaborating, Community, Education, Family, Inner Struggles, Personal goals, Personal Values, service, Social, Spiritual, Striving

May 11, 2026- Some of what I have modeled for Hana has been physical-even crawling on my hands and knees, a little, so she can see what is involved, and reading words from left to right, pointing,as she follows each word, I also explain what I;m doing, step by step, no matter how simple the task.

She maintains focus, quite a bit more than one might expect a 4.5-month-old infant to keep attention. It seems to be a matter of storing information, either for use in a week or two, as with crawling or the sequence of letters, to recall and use as a toddler.

Funny thing about example: One never knows when little eyes and ears are picking up on what is being said or done. I had given up cursing long before Aram was born, as I just didn’t see any use for such talk, when other words met my needs just as well. He was quite assertive, in calling out what he thought was behaviour that was not in sync with words, especially in middle childhood.

I have a feeling that Hana will do the same. She already communicates quite well, with body language, eye contact and babbles that are fairly comprehensible as words. There is even a fair amount of intonation that give a sense of what she wants to convey.

Example is just the least one can do, to build character in those for whom one is responsible. It is crucial in child rearing-and just as much so, in positions of public responsibility. I had a high bar to maintain, and did, as a teacher, counselor and building principal-and even as a substitute teacher, in my last years of work. I didn’t always meet the expectations of the higher echelon or of the governing boards, but my standing with all but a few students, co-workers and parents was constantly stable.

Elected officials, likewise, would do a whole lot better to adhere to the highest standard of conduct. It’s been a while since that bar has been met, by all too many in public office. This has nothing to do with ideology. As we have seen, there are honest, trustworthy conservatives and progressives alike and there are the opposite, among both camps.

Bringing oneself to account each day seems to be the most effective counter to backsliding and it pays dividends, in terms of how one’s example is followed.

Pros and Cons

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

April 24,2026- In a conversation with my son last night, he went over the pros and cons of living in this house, in this city, as opposed to living closer to DFW Airport and Fort Worth. The cost of living over there is a tad cheaper, as are housing costs. It’d be a shorter commute. His glass, and mine, are half full.

On the other hand, the houses would be smaller, and it would be more difficult for me to stay with them, as well as no room for expanding the family, should it come to that. He came to the point of counting blessings, pointing out the good schools, the nice neighbourhood and decent parks nearby, lots of children-a plus for the gregarious Hana- and everything that’s needed is no more than 15-20 minutes away.

I’m fairly easy, with regard to living situations. I let go of aspects of my life like frequent travel, mountain and canyon hiking and supervising shelters for the Red Cross, in order to prioritize Hana’s getting a solid start on her life, and so that her parents may continue to earn a living. Thomas Sowell’s Trade-Off Doctrine has been top of mind for many years now. I live nicely here, get a fair amount of exercise tending to my granddaughter-and will get more, as she becomes mobile. I am at the same point, friend-wise, that I was at in Prescott, after the first four months. Things will get better, just as thy did there.

The vagaries of my online connections, which were a problem for some months, have largely been straightened out. Those who want to keep in touch with me have noted the change in my e-mail address. The rest have fallen away and that is just part and parcel of life. Major accounts are still accessible.

The pros outweigh the cons.

True Blue

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Posted by on in Assistance, collaborating, Inspiration, Matters of Faith, Personal Values, service, Social, Spiritual, Striving

April 11, 2026- The penultimate speaker, in this evening’s memorial to the late Baha’i teacher, Glenford Mitchell, began by noting that the hour was getting late, and saying he would be brief. He then went on for ten minutes. No reminiscence about Mr.Mitchell could ever be ever be brief, though he himself was the model of brevity, in his talks and speeches. He simply meant too much, to too many people.

I sat for the live-streamed broadcast of this memorial because of the tenor of Mr. Mitchell’s work. An early founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Council (“Snick”) and co-author of “The Angry Black South” (1962), he became enamoured of the Teachings of Baha’ullah, first taught him by his paternal uncle, in his native Jamaica and coming again to the fore of his heart while he lived in Raleigh, NC as a student at Shaw University. Glenford threw himself more fully into Baha’i work and by dint of his devotion and work ethic, was elected to one Baha’i administrative body after another, serving fourteen years on the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of the United States, then twenty-six years on the Faith’s Supreme Body: The Universal House of Justice.

In his later years, Mr. Mitchell’s health declined, but his spirit kept on and he continued to welcome friends and family to his home, even if he could no longer walk or speak. His wife and family stood by him, and saw that his declining years were not those of misery. Glenford Mitchell’s spirit remained true blue-even through his passing on February 7.

Randy Smith, who also passed on recently, served the Baha’i Faith in Washington State and in Prescott Valley, AZ, for nearly thirty years. I knew Randy, and his wife, Linda, as steadfast, long-suffering community servants, in the Prescott area. Others recall the same about them, in the Olympia and Longview areas.Randy was most often found in his shop/garage, attached to the family home. He welcomed neighbours, including youths, who were either interested in his various projects or who simply wanted to borrow tools. He also spent long hours with his grandchildren, either when the family came up from the Phoenix area or when he and Linda went down there for a visit.

Randy was a quiet man, who shunned the limelight, but he was most often the first to arrive at a gathering, and one of the last to leave. Making sure a job was complete was his trademark. If that involved learning a new skill, well, that was a natural outgrowth of his upbringing in Ketchikan, at the southeastern tip of Alaska. Randy was also true blue.

It was my good fortune to have become familiar with Mr. Mitchell’s life and work and to have known Randy as a personal friend. May there more people who show themselves, like the scholar and the tradesman, as True Blue.

Re-assessing and renaming

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Posted by on in children, Community, Family, impediments, Inner Struggles, Matters of Faith, Personal Values, service, Social, Spiritual, Striving

March 19,2026- I propose, as some others already have, renaming the commemorative, unofficial holiday known as Cesar Chaves Day, National Farmworkers Day. Juneteenth is, rightfully, a Federal holiday; so should there be a day to honour all farmworkers. How many of us chowhounds would willingly pick potatoes and carrots all day long? How many would work the fields picking melons and strawberries? Even emptying trees of citrus fruit, apple, peaches and pears is backbreaking work!

A social justice movement is far more than the one or two who are its public face. I prefer to call the January holiday that has been focused on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Civil Rights Day. As much admiration and respect as I have for Dr. King, he himself would have been the first to say he was not a perfect individual. He had his lusts and pitfalls, though he has never been accused of such atrocities as those or which his contemporary, Cesar Chavez, has been posthumously charged.

The revelations documented in the New York Times illustrate the folly of adulation. Small children idolize their parents and grandparents. As they get older, they learn of their elders’ imperfections. Hopefully, they continue to love those elders, but they will know that they are not amidst living saints.Along those lines, we were wise, as a nation, to recast George Washington’s Birthday as Presidents Day- honouring at least those whose terms in office added luster to the nation’s history and offering a fair assessment of those whose terms did not.

Cesar Chavez apparently gave in to the worst elements of the culture in which he was raised, compounded by the bright lights and hero’s welcomes he received. It will be a step forward, for any future leaders, to transcend the impulse of feeling that there are lesser human beings, who owe them favours for what they have achieved.

There are no lesser human beings.

International Women’s Day

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

March 8, 2026- I had the best of intentions, ordering a lox and tomato bagel for my daughter-in-law , for International Women’s Day, especially as it was part of the local bagel shop’s fundraiser for prevention of violence against women and girls. Saved By The Bagel is a take-off on a popular 1980s sitcom, “Saved by the Bell”. Yunhee is on a dairy-free diet, for Hana’s sake, until mid-April. I forgot that bagel shops almost always add a shmear (cream cheese), so when I got the sandwich home, she contented herself with the tomato, onion and lettuce on the part of the bagel that had no shmear. She said she also doesn’t eat lox. It meant more to her that I honestly loved the beef stew she had made, three days ago. I had four bowls of it, two on the night it was made. I also spent the afternoon with Hana, so that Yunhee could have a few hours to go shopping for items she wanted, or the house needed.

One of those items was an electric chainsaw. She got a deal on it, and proudly presented it to me, knowing that I wanted to tend to the bough that was 80% severed from the oak tree in the front yard. I got the chain on the wand, but had to consult my neighbour on the corner, as to the finer points of tightening the chain. This led to his coming down to the yard and essentially cutting the bough and its branches, as the saw is one of his favourite tools. His son-in-law was along, to help me keep the ground around him free on fallen branches. There is nothing more dangerous than someone who gets carried away with a power tool. We three managed to get the job done in less than an hour. I offered them the better pieces of cut wood, but they declined. I got in my exercise by moving the debris to the back, by the alley, where I will cut the longer branches down to smaller units tomorrow.

That part had nothing to do with IWD, other than getting the men out of the house. International Women’s Day is never about men giving things. It is more about women empowering themselves. The notion that female humans are inherently worthwhile, and don’t need men to complete them, is oddly enough, only fairly recently a widespread concept. There have always been women who have stood on their own two feet, for life. Some have married; others just forged their own successful paths. Some have raised children; others found fostering animals more fulfilling; still others found the nurturing of ideas and creating products more to their liking.

On this International Women’s Day, I recall the lives of my grandmothers, who raised twenty children, between them; of my mother, who raised five of us and was the glue for her extended family; of my sister, who remains a matriarchal figure for her children and grandchildren; of my late wife, who earned three Master’s Degrees, the last while in declining health. There are women whose memorials I have visited: Civil Rights icons-Coretta Scott King, Fannie Lou Hamer, Nina Simone; Holocaust victim Hana Reiner, and astrophysicist Eleanor “Glo” Helin, whose asteroid research is celebrated at her place of work, Palomar Mountain. There are the women friends who work wonders, every single day, in fields from astrology to auto mechanics to home renovation.

Mostly, though, I look ahead, to all that my daughter-in-law has left to achieve and to all that my granddaughter can choose. My grandnieces, likewise, have an infinite realm of possibilities in front of them, because of the work that their mothers and grandmothers have put into having their strengths, ideas and dreams recognized and appreciated.

We’re all better off because of what women have done.

A Better Fit

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Posted by on in children, collaborating, Community, Education, Family, impediments, Inner Struggles, Personal Values, service, Social, Spiritual, Striving

February 23, 2026– While I was going through my twelve exercises, on the machines at Planet Fitness, this evening, a young woman nearby was benching 225 pounds. I passed by, on my way to the massage lounge, while she was resting, and offered a glance of encouragement. She certainly was performing a feat that I am unlikely to even remotely approach. She is doing something right for herself, and those in her circle who are encouraging such achievements deserve kudos as well.

This is the sort of elevative wraparound I want to build for Hana. The “Mighty Girl”ethos, not taking away from a similar network for boys, but making personal empowerment a universal child rearing model. This is not a zero-sum game, and those who insist it is are themselves only coming from a position of weakness-regardless of their personal trappings of wealth and power.

I have read a fair amount, recently, about the debilitative effects of patriarchy. It is not only the rich and powerful who operate under this system, as any young woman in a tradition-laden society, who has to marry the man who her father has arranged for her, finds, often to her sorrow. There are more subtle ways the patriarchy knocks the props out from under a woman or girl-linguistically, vocationally, or in terms of expectations. Perhaps the most insidious is the use of women who are either defeated or are somehow in league with those men who are maintaining the patriarchal system. There are several prominent examples of this phenomenon in our present society.

Hana will face many more choices, as she gets older. My main focus will be on helping her sift out the limiting agents of the patriarchy (including those who come on as glamourous or empowering, but are really old vinegar in new bottles). Her parents and I will be her sounding boards, and biggest cheer squad-and God help the person or persons who try to derail her.

No Infantilization

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

February 21, 2026- Hana was squalling about a break in the feeding action, until I came downstairs and reminded her, in a calm voice, that being burped was part of the feeding process. She stopped squalling, let herself be burped and went back to feeding.

I know all the warnings given to grandparents about not spoiling their little darlings. As loving as I am to her, though, I will never jive the little girl. Those cautions and that guidance which her parents have in place have my backing as well. I want her to succeed and to enjoy the best that life has to offer. Those things don’t come to someone who throws a fit, and that realization comes with the first sets of delays and procedures that an infant experiences.

I will not infantilize my granddaughter. Her feelings, and her language, when it comes, will be honoured with respect. I will hold her and comfort her as often as she needs; I will not, however, enable her intemperance. Calmly, but firmly, we are checking all reasons for any distress she is exhibiting, and she is most appreciative once the hunger, the gas pains or soiled diaper have been addressed. She already knows, after only two months, that she is being taken seriously by all three of her adults.

I learned a lot from the parents at Dharma Farm, in Paulden, AZ, about not babying infants. That does not mean skimping on nurturing. It means teaching patience, consideration and gentleness, from the time a child can recognize faces and voices. It will also mean being considerate of others, from the time Hana can walk and speak.

I look at the larger situation around our country today and see that there are far too many, even in positions of power, who have been infantilized and pampered, and who have learned to fulminate at critics; manipulating people and situations to their advantage, Whether this has come from a lack of spirituality or from overemphasis on the material side of life, it has laid low any society where people have become numbed to the machinations of the overindulged few.

While I shudder at some of the behaviour of people both in positions of authority and in positions of civic responsibility, I see where it started, and will do my small part to make sure a little girl coming up in the world doesn’t follow poor examples.

Cyclical

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Posted by on in Assistance, children, collaborating, Community, Family, Inspiration, Matters of Faith, Personal goals, Personal Values, service, Social, Spiritual, Striving

February 20, 2026- I heard a few days ago, and read this morning, that with Saturn and Neptune converging astrologically at O degrees Aries, a 6000 year cycle has come to an end and that a new one has begun. Savvier people than I, with regard to astrology, will have a clearer understanding of what that means,in that particular sense.

I do know, though, that there is, and has been, a unifying energy around the planet, released in 1844 by al-Bab and energized even more in 1863, by Baha’ullah. Like most such processes, it has been slow to unfold, even with two world wars, several civil wars in various nations (including the United States), a global economic depression, a global pandemic and various countries choosing to live-for a time-under authoritarian rule. The unity of the human race, however, is sure to be one of the processes that arise out of this new cycle. It cannot be imposed on us. We must choose it for ourselves. Truthfully, though, I don’t see that we have many other options.

It was said, two days ago, that many shopworn institutions will continue to collapse and fade away, with new institutions, more fitting for this day and age, rising up to take their place. We certainly are seeing that-and I am not talking about models of Artificial Intelligence whose main feature is the exacerbation of human greed. I am talking more about grassroots efforts at improving the quality of life-from language preservation activities, to experiments in backyard farming, to co-operative small groups of parents raising children across familial lines,to alliances of countries that are not being organized by one or more “major powers” .

I want to mention that in my own life, another sea change has taken place. Just as in 1981-82, I became a Baha’i. left the Roman Catholic faith, relinquished alcohol dependency and entered into wedlock; as in 1986-92, we left the United States and learned to live in the beautiful land and culture of South Korea, becoming parents to a beautiful little boy; as in 2011, I laid my beloved wife to rest, let go of a house and community in Phoenix and moved to Prescott, traveling widely and also devoting many hours to community service, so now has the call of grandparenthood been answered and a new community become my Home Base.

One cycle ends, indeed, and another begins.