Keeping it simple and close to home this year . . . counting our blessings that are more plentiful than we deserve.

Merry Christmas from the ol’ Okie!

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Interior center stack of the upcoming Tesla S:

Tesla is Elon Musk’s company that currently makes the little electric sports car. He also started/runs SpaceX. His company is the first private U.S. rocket company to send a payload into orbit. Their Dragon capsule can either deliver cargo or be outfitted to accomodate up to 7 astronauts and is scheduled to have a close rendezvous with the International Space Station before the end of this year.

All of the science fiction from my youth had space being conquered/developed by private enterprise. Governments militarize it — the private sector makes it pay.

Musk was the co-founder of PayPal and got his mega-hundred-millions when PP was sold to Ebay. He’s now a automotive manufacturer and a space pioneer . . . not a bad way to redistribute his own wealth by creating companies, creating high-tech jobs — paying it forward to better humanity, and I’m sure, hoping to make a few billion bucks in the process.

What is it about this that Progressives just can’t manage to understand?

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[In June of 2005 I wrote this post about my dad for Father's Day, and re-posted it a few years later . . . it's no less pertinent today -- so, please enjoy!]

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There are only a few things that I wouldn’t give up to be able to sit at that table again and talk with that farsighted, hairy guy, among them my mortal soul, but almost everything else would be in play.

That’s MY DAD! All 190-some-odd pounds of rough hewn, sunburned, 100% human male. Sometimes I wonder what he really thought of his 125-pound, pink-skinned, soft-handed son who couldn’t chop wood for poop, whose pigs got loose and got run over on the highway, who was deathly afraid of snakes and who refused to go to medical school because he wanted to be “an artist”. But, no matter what, as long as I gave whatever I was doing a 100% effort, he was with me in support. That was his way. I actually thought it was a little weird, at the time.

Now that I am getting to know him as he was at 25, I see that he made his own way in life, against tremendous odds, and without much, if any, help. He was just trying to save me from having to learn a lot of life’s lessons the hard way. Unfortunately, there is only one way to learn life’s lessons, and that is to live through them, and pay attention! Many of my generation still have not learned that one. God help us, if things don’t change, it looks as if we’ll be known as the “Gimme gimmes” all the way to the grave.

I loved this man. We never had a major falling out — although he was never fond of my mid-back-length hair in the 70s — so we never had to have one of those later-in-life reunions. When my son’s mother left me in California and returned with him to northeastern Oklahoma, Dad stepped up and did what he could to provide some Baker male influence for the boy. They loved each other so very much. I was proud, but also a bit jealous at being out-of-the-loop.

Sometime in the late 80s, he started interacting with everyone a bit less than usual, and minor chores like sharpening the lawnmower blade, or fixing a rusty door hinge became huge tasks that were too confusing for him. By the early 90s, he had forgotten who I was, although he was more than content to sit and have pleasant conversation with this stranger from California, wherever that was. In late April, 1995, he left us for a better place. Mom waited around until January, ’03 before deciding it was time to finally join him.

Lover, warrior, husband, father, grandfather, church deacon, Sunday school teacher, pharmacist, business owner, friend –

Most definitely a member of “The Greatest Generation”.

Happy Father’s Day, Dad . . . I miss you. (db)

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My friend Randy H., who moved out here to LA a few weeks before I did in ’83 has a young daughter in her early 20s named Ashley. An amazing gal, she and her sister have become financially independent by excelling in martial arts and becoming instructors in same. Both are talented artists and are attending Otis Parsons College of Art & Design. Both are also half Japanese.

Ashley was recently diagnosed with “takayasu arteritis“, a condition afflicting mostly Asian women between 15-30 years of age that causes a multitude of severe problems with the aorta. Ashley’s condition did not respond to the steroid treatments and she will be undergoing open heart surgery tomorrow.

Please say a prayer for Ashley, and her family. If you can place her on any prayer lists it would be a big help.

Thank you . . .

A blessed Easter to you and yours,

Okie

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Fifty nine years ago today, couldn’t tell ya the time without tearing the place apart to find the birth certificate (at least I DO HAVE ONE! ), a 5-plus pound baby boy was born in a clinic in Tulsa Oklahoma. Some poor soul, for reasons unknown, was unable, or unwilling to keep the child that her body had produced, and instead of finding some back-alley abortion option had carried it to term and then had given it up for adoption.

A few hours after being born, that baby boy went home with the only parents he ever knew, James (Duke) and Anna Mae Baker to a little house on No. Cincinatti in Tulsa. A few years later the crew moved to a farm outside of Collinsville where I had a near idyllic childhood. I often think back in wonder at all the experiences had on that plot of land, especially when I see the kids getting out of middle-school a few blocks from here walking home, texting or talking on their smart phones, beating the neighbors flowers with sticks, talkin’ trash at each other . . . knowing that they are going home to their Playstations and iPods, YouTube video making and the like. They’ll never know what they have missed out on, but their souls will long for something . . . more.

Each year on this day I reflect on the thought that if Roe vs Wade had been the law of the land in February 1952, I am most certain that I would not be here to write this. Many tens of millions of nascent human beings have had their lives terminated since that SCOTUS decision. I truly wish that folks would make the right choice when faced with an unwanted pregnancy, and choose LIFE. There’s always some good folks out there without kids of their own — waiting, wanting to love and raise that baby as their very own.

So, thanks birth mom, whoever, wherever you are/were — my birthday wish is that there will be many more like you with the strength and courage to do the right thing. Who knows, 59 years from now, some grateful son or daughter might just be thanking you . . .

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Just makin’ pies and rolls and all manner of good things . . . counting our blessings that are more plentiful than we deserve.

Merry Christmas from the ol’ Okie!

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“And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them,
and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.

And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold,
I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.

For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.

And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe
wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude
of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”

Merry Christmas

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