Why I went to college

draft

Being here sick, tired, weak, unable to continue serving humanity's cleaning needs until well, I briefly remembered why I went to college, really remembered.

I wanted to know. I wanted to know the power questions and the power answers. I wanted to know what the "knowers" thought. I knew from socializing with college graduates while in foreign lands that there was much more worth knowing and I did not know much if any of it. I knew there was a language within English that was so different, more powerful than the language I was using, although it was the same language. Now I understand that this is an "intellectual" side of the English language. (Now I'm overheating from fever. Funny words following.)

So I went to college and studied hard and then not so hard, and then hard again, and then went on my own path to "college." I was a maverick, reading outside the curriculum, which turned out to be the best idea. I had a couple good role models, it turns out. I did not do well, but I did what I wanted to do. I did explore ideas, people, nature, events, and on and on.

I remember MEAL, an acronym for metaphysics, epistemology, axiology, and logic. I remember studying each as discrete subjects, and then as related, and then finding the axis of it all, social and physical ecology. That's where it lead.

"Art, religion, philosophy, science, social affairs," these terms, too, the American Pragmatist Santayana claimed to be the "realm of being." I suppose there's more between the words, but like MEAL, these words help to place the full of it into some perspective. Well done George!

Now I am writing about suicide because I clean the remains of suicides. I sometimes wonder the "why?" of suicide. Then I remember Durkheim's book, Suicide. Ah, I wanted to know, and Durkheim helped. Education is a good thing. I never thought that I would learn about suicide while in college.

I remember sitting in foxholes at night, fighting the urge to sleep, to fall into a deadly void for moments. Ah, to sleep, to relax, to extend myself into the a dreamland void of non-wake, non-suffering. Sleeplessness is suffering, I have learned. And soldiers suffer so much. I believe that it actually hurt, staying awake that way. I believe that I wondered how different it would all become with the passage of a 7.62 lead ball from an AK 47 through my brain. I may have even wondered if sending a smaller, maybe more deadly 5.62 round through my head might achieve the same peaceful affect as sleep. How could I continue to stay awake?

I staid awake because "Charley" lived well in the dark and he wanted to kill me, and he wanted to kill me real bad, even at the risk of his own life. His friends were just as bad. Sometimes they tried, and because they tried, I learned the skill of staying awake. Staying awake, I learned to think the deep thoughts during the night. I thought the small thoughts too, the thoughts from daylight hours when I watched ants march across the bottom of my foxhole.

These were the "low land" ants. Then there were the "high land" ants, those marching across the parapet in singular order, silent to all but their opposing ant armies. Little did they know or want to know their brethren below gained a much less useful perspective of the World. Their lowland brethern were bound by the limits of their horizon, 4 cliffs, dirt walls surrounding their line-of-march. Occasionally dirt and clods of dirt fell upon them or in front of their line-of-march. They marched on, anyway. What a big difference in perspective they experienced. Perspective would give me big thoughts and little thoughts with more words and a greater ability to nuance ideas, events, and nature.

My thoughts lead to my own perspective of the World as I sat there watching the clouds gather in the sky, way off. As hours passed, as I took my own two hour sleep breaks (If one can sleep for 2 hours in a rice paddy or rain forest.), those "way off" clouds made a slow march of their own to my tiny foxhole below. "How different the World looked from up there" I often wondered.

From the clouds, I might be able to see for miles and miles around. I might see from Saigon to Beinhoe, from War Zone D to the Happy Valley. Maybe I could see Charley?

I sat, legs and feet dangling over the edge of my foxhole many dark nights. I could sometimes see comrades to my left and right, sometimes to my rear, sometimes forward of me. I could see trees, vines, maybe a trail or two. I saw the sky, the clouds, and the stars. I saw the stars a lot. I had not grown up watching the stars. In Vietnam, I watched the stars from my foxhole. The sky stood out so clearly. The Big Dipper and Little Dipper were often subjects of conversation among my foxhole companions, whenever I had one, and I usually did. I will not, cannot forget them, stars, comrades, or Charley.

So I learned the skill of staying awake for inordinate amounts of time and during night time hours when I should have been asleep. I also learned the skill of juxtaposing nature for a more meaningful view of the World and its inhabitants. During these times I thought the big thoughts with my small collection of words, words that I wanted to add to when I could go to college some day. I had not thought of college before, but now it was something to think about. "Why did people go there" and maybe I need to go there and see what is going on. "After this, why not?"

"MEAL would bring more meaning to what I thought those nights in my foxhole.

It is so ironic, too, how "Charley" may have influenced my decision to go to college more than any other character in my life's short story.
I will close for now and perhaps resume this thread at a later date, when I feel better.

North Pole Could be Ice-Free This Summer

The North Pole's ice may not break apart this summer - a first in human history.

Here I am, 61, born Green because I've always asked, "What if," and it turns out that there probably IS something to global warming. Life would have been better for me if I had not been asking myself those silly little questions about limits to growth, those Malthusian-Marxian-Darwinian questions before I had the intellectual ability to articulate these powerful ideas and others. Little did I know at 8 years old that my conjuring about the limits to growth in the Downey cemetary were setting a foundation for fundamental environmental analysis and ecological theory.

I wish Ruddy Devilla was still alive. I miss his skill with these things. Global Warming doesn't take much skill though, at least not much mental power for anyone with time in a green house. It's "no-brainer."

When I ran for office in 88 as a "Green," I did not bring Global Warming up because of the breadth-and-depth of cement headism in Orange County. "What's the point," I used to say to myself. Use something tangible as a Green issue, something like the loss of species' habitat and the long-term survival of species in the wild.

Then there were women's issues, which are obviously on the back-burner, judging by the ignorance of so many women that I have seen - - Breeders and couch sitters, besides those in destitute life-styles and still popping out the babies. 7 Billion humans will be on this planet in less than 15 years. So whose going to feed them? Whose going to house them? Whose going to give them jobs and thereby keep them off the streets? They sure as hell are not going to go into intellectual endeavors, or study technology, or avoid snake oil, trinkets, and bread and circuses. What a fat mess! They'll destroy what's left of wild nature.

What about water? Where's the clean water going to come from?

I had it right then, and I have it right now. The real issues are environmental. Terrorism is nothing new, and in a sense, terrorism has environmental roots, which I don't have time for now. I needed to get the link down. Ruddy I miss those conversations so much.

Eddie Evans
Crime Scene Cleanup

HIV - Am I Infected?

Tap to go to information.

A Florida senior citizen,

A Florida senior citizen, 76, drove his brand new Corvette convertible out of the dealership.

Taking off down the road, he floored it to 80 mph, enjoying the wind blowing through what little hair he had left.

'Amazing,' he thought as he flew down I-75, pushing the pedal even more.

Looking in his rear view mirror, he saw the highway patrol behind him, blue lights flashing and siren blaring.

He floored it to 100mph, then 110, then 120.

Suddenly he thought, 'What am I doing? I'm too old for this,' and pulled over to await the Trooper's arrival.

Pulling in behind him, the Trooper walked up to the Corvette, looked at his watch and said,

'Sir, my shift ends in 30 minutes. Today is Friday. If you can give me a reason for speeding that I've never heard before, I'll let you go.'

The old gentleman paused. Then said,

'Years ago, my wife ran off with a Florida State Trooper. I thought you were bringing her back.'

'Have a good day, Sir, ' replied the Trooper.

Ultraviolet Light on the tiny and from the great and mighty.

One thing I enjoy about cleaning trauma scenes outdoors is the Sun's ultraviolet light. Toss a bloody, paper towel in the sunlight and bingo, those pesky micro-organisms sunburn to death. I am told that nothing kills micro-organisms in blood like light from the Sun, ultraviolet light. Judging from those sunburns I earned at the beach in my younger years, I have no doubt in the Sun's power to destroy my microscopic friends. In fact, I can recall the "bad kid" down the block toasting ants with sunlight. He focused the Sun's rays through the magnified glass and poof! Army's of tiny critters were innocently toasted by no fault of their own. The micro guys live in the dark by chance or design, and never live out of the dark by chance or design.

I guess that I've been lucky to clean in the high deserts of a number of southwester states. I've been burnt for sure, never toasted, though. Higher elevations allow more ultraviolet light to pass through the thin air, sunrise to sunset. Throw in the oven-dry, blowing wind and blood's crimson red turns volcanic black in minutes, wind or no wind. I have much respect for our Sun's ability to destroy life forms from 93 million miles away.

It is with great humility and awe that I read today about an ultraviolet light observation from an exploding supernovae. Imagine an exploding star producing the light of a million stars upon its extinction. Imagine that "The really cool thing about our observations is this light traveling ahead of the shock wave traveled through the star before it was destroyed."

It is all so great and grand, so dwarfing too. We are indeed tiny critters in a vary great and mighty place. We too can burn by no fault of our own. Check the pictures out: exploding supernovae.

Eddie Evans
Crime Scene Cleanup

Addiction

The below story from an anonymous writer is one of those stories that we read about far too seldom.

Drug addiction is monstrous, and I find that food addiction may come from the same place way down deep.

Addiction is in fact a big green monster buried deep within each of us. And maybe this metaphor is a little too colorful for the problematic reference to a Freudian unconscious state or the hypnotic trance states. In any case, as a metaphor it helps to explain that place in human consciousness that psychoanalysts have long suspected exists deep down. (And no, Skinner would not agree with any of this.)

So long as we keep it in check, we can manage in our world of temptations. Once loose, the temptations become trading posts between the green monster and the inner-most parts of our Being. Day by day we lose our reason to the green monster of addiction. We become a creature caught between pain and pleasure as the addiction monster trades pleasure for pieces of our humanness. We willingly and reluctantly sell-off our reason for swift moments of satiation.

"I have a website, wwwxyzanonymous.com, that I set up about a year ago. It is a lot of fun. I put it together, decided on which products to sell, do all of the advertising and contacting, and I love it! I never thought I would be able to do it. I was a meth addict for 16 years. I have been clean for 6 years (7 on September 25) and there was a time that I couldn't remember how many $1 bills to take back when I put a $5 in the collection plate at meetings. It was scary! Turns out I still have a brain cell or two left.

Since I got clean I went to school and got my AA degree and finished a medical records office assistant course. I got a couple of certificates, one in coding and one in transcription, and I chose transcription as a career. That's my "day job", even though I work swing shift. The website is growing slowly, which is how I want it right now. Although it is my passion, it is definitely not my main source of income. Yet. Someday I will take some business classes, probably set up another site or two, and hopefully grow a good retirement! That is the plan, anyway."

So here we have a success story in the Reason's counter-attack on addiction. There is something about humanity that deserves that second, even third chance. Because addiction is so powerful, proof is right outside the door, I'll do my part for combating the green monster wherever it appears, even inside me.

Eddie Evans
Crime Scene Cleanup