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!

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?

[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!]

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)

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

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 . . .

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!

---

“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

Should have known it wasn’t going to be just another dog walk. As we came up on Saint Monica the little white paper bags with lighted tea candles places out on the sidewalk and a much larger-than-normal crowd going to Mass was a first clue. The general peace and quiet, after the wailing Gerber ambulance had passed of course, was another. After having bee very cold here for days, today it was sunny, relatively warm and the winds were dead still — clue three.

I sometimes dread this early-AM Sunday walk, as there is no throw-away paper to pick up for the wife so I don’t trod up to tony Montana Avenue where those paper-boxes are, instead we, Missy da Schnoodle and I, walk a few extra blocks longer on California, past St. Monica and down to Wilshire Boulevard. The dread comes from all the usual derelicts and other homeless that hang out there, the scariest being the psychotics. Not unusual to meet several of them within a couple of blocks. For some reason today, there were none of those, and few of the others.

As I walked by I looked into the papered-up-from-the-inside windows of vacant stores, and saw what for all intent and purposes was a homeless guy with a little gray dog with a Christmas bandanna looking back at me. I really gotta do somethin’ about my before-coffee dog-walk wardrobe — Oh, ya betcha!

As I came upon the local Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf I saw this little guy walking out of their patio and down the small flight of steps nursing his coffee and then turning in my direction. He was short, couldn’t tell if he was Hispanic, but was of some kind of nationality. The oddest thing was that he was wearing what looked like plaid pajamas all wrapped up on his head like an odd, turban-shaped hat. I was expecting a plea for money and was dreading that as I had nothing on me but ID and a phone.

As I walked by I glanced at him with my peripheral vision and heard him softly say, “Pray for me . . .”

Not missing a beat or a step I simply said, “OK, I will.”

“Thank you,” was the reply, now coming from behind me.

Immediately I bowed my head slightly and asked the Lord for intervention for this poor fellow, to provide for him what he is needing, to take away his pain, to be there for him in whatever sorrow he is feeling. And, I kept walking . . .

My eyes were welling up with tears to go along with the constant juicing of my recently acquired allergies. I realized that for the first time since the passing of my wife’s mother over two years ago I was beginning to feel some Christmas spirit again.

Guess it’s me that should be thanking him . . .

The other day on Facebook one of my cousins asked, “What are you thankful for?” My comment to his post was:

A recent study, sorry for no link, indicates that those who are “grateful” are happier than those who have no gratitude for anything. How very true that seems to be in my own life.

Happy Thanksgiving everybody!

‘Okie’

As you can see from today’s U.S. flag image, it’s a gray, kinda dreary am here at Casa Okie. We’re only 11 blocks away from the Palisades bluff overlooking Santa Monica Beach and there one has an unfettered WSW panoramic view of the Pacific. This morning on the dog walk, the water was as gray and angry looking as the sky, with smallish swells breaking finally into tiny waves only a few yards away from the sand. The paper says that south facing beaches will see surf with 8-ft. faces sometime today, and the infamous “Wedge” should have some 15-footers! Ambulances and neck-stabilizers for everybody!!!!

Probably not many of you readers left — haven’t written in I can’t remember how long now. A stream of mostly steady work will do that to someone like me . . . after 8 hours or so looking at this monitor, doing another couple to blog is something these old eyes aren’t liking. Will try to be more consistent though, as I do miss it.

Another big part of it is that I feel that every time I hit Drudge, or Ace, or Google News — the hits they just keep on a comin’! Is Glenn Beck right . . . that we should be preparing for the financial apocalypse? Is Obama going to pack the SCOTUS with hard-lefties that will over time finish the dismantling of the Constitution that he seems so bent to accomplish? Can we take back the House and maybe even the Senate in Nov.? Will the BP oil well ever stop vomiting oil into the gulf? Are we as a society going to let this one disaster force us to abandon the use of fossil fuels and suffer the higher cost of alternate energy sources? Will the Taliban win in Afghanistan and then take over a nuclear-armed Pakistan? Will India nuke Pakistan if that happens? Will Iran finally get nukes, and use them on Israel, or will the Israelis take out the Iranian facilities? Will that begin Armageddon?

Criminy!!! I actually think about these things — worry about these things? Usually about the time I get this worked up I turn to The Anchoress for some comforting words about everything is going to God’s plan, but today she has some thoughts on the past, current and future states of our educational system and a great list of July 4th linkage.

Crazy! Obama’s approval and disapproval numbers are now statistically the same. He started his term with about 63% approval and only 20% disapproval, and in less than 18 months has lost half the country. Maybe we will take the House and Senate this fall after all.

Over at The Kitchen Cabinet, my home-away-from-home, Sonja Eddings Brown presents a detailed look at the original July 4, 1776. And I know we’ve showcased this video before, but today it’s totally relevant . . . and still totally awesome! Enjoy.

Hey, stay safe out there — don’t be this idiot!

Have yourselves a great Independence Day!!!!!

Both my mom and my wife’s mom are gone, so this Mother’s Day is tinged with a bit o’ sadness to go along with the cherished memories of those that had been so very dear to our lives. In honor of them I’m re-posting one of my fondest remembrances of my third to last trip back to see Mom, and also the post that I did to commemorate my mother-in-law upon her passing.

The likes of these two grand ladies don’t come around all that often . . .

The Low Sound of Rolling Thunder

I’m really too tired to write this, but I don’t want it to disappear in the ether of my forgetfulness. I awoke this AM to the low sonic vibrations of distant thunder, a rare occurance in southern California in the month of September. Intrigued, I listened for a bit and came to realize that whatever storm cell was causing this was headed my way, as the thunder came more often, and was louder each time. Oh great! The dog’s gonna go ballistic! Fireworks and thunder cause her to hyperventilate, like she’s about to have a stroke or something! She did, so I didn’t sleep much, if at all, after that. Then I had a powerful incidence of memory . . .

Three years ago last month, just after August 22nd, my mother’s birthday, was the last time that I can remember listening and waiting with much anticipation for a lightening storm. We had gone to Drumright, OK to have some Bar-B-Que and had returned just in time to see the threatening clouds building in the north-west sky. As often happens in Oklahoma in August, the super-heated air of summer was being overrun by a cold front off the Rockies, and thunderhead cloud tops rising up to 60,000 ft. were being flat topped by the upper atmosphere hyper-winds. They were also causing a lot of up and down air flow inside the behemoths, which was causing the buildup of a tremendous amount of static electricity just waiting for some way to come to ground. Hey, I’m not Mr. Wizard, but I do remember some of this cloud stuff.

The sky had taken on a rather sickly-greenish hue, and the bottoms of the clouds looked quilted, cottage cheese like — not a good sign. But my Aunt Juanita and Uncle Daniel had a below-ground storm shelter just a couple of blocks away, so it didn’t seem too threatening.

I could smell the ozone in the air from all the lightening.

There it was — the low rolling sound of distant thunder! I poured myself a soda in a plastic tumbler and went outside to the tiny front porch, sat in the porch swing and watched the storm roll in.

It got louder — a lot quicker than I thought it would. I could see the lightening now as it streaked across the sky. It was as if God himself was creating a most unbelievable mixed media experience — I guess he was at that. Intense white-hot flashes of bolt lightening shot from the heavens to penetrate the earth leaving gray artifacts on my retinas. I blinked to clear my vision with only a small amount of success. CRAAAAAAAAASSSSSHHHHHHHHHH! BOOOOOOM! Man, that was close! More sky-to-sky spider webbing of flashes, followed by sharp cracks and sizzles. My God, the colors! Even stronger smell of ozone. This was getting close!

Time to turn on the TV and see just what we were dealing with. Mom had watched her show and gotten herself ready for bed. It’s only 9pm, but she’s 81 and doesn’t stay up late, actually she never did. Early to bed and all that. The Doppler radar reports showed that this storm was huge, and was going to not only last for quite a while, but that the most intense cells were going to pass right over us there in Oilton. Great . . . I do like a bit of storm, but this didn’t look so good. And there was rotation showing up in some spots and that was coming our way too.

I guess you can figure out that a tornado didn’t spirit us away to the land of Oz. Heck, I already live there! So I watched a bit of tube, had some ice cream, called the wife, then retired to bed with a book. I’m lying in the little bed in the little second bed room of my Mom’s little house, the only light on in the house. I could hear the gentle sound of a light snore in Mom’s room.

BLAAAAAAAAMMMMM! The loudest thunderclap of the entire evening followed an incredibly bright flash, then the light went out. No sound at all — everything was out. I heard her get up and saw the beam of a small flashlight. I got up and went into her room. We sat on the edge of her bed and looked out the window into the seriously black night.

It began to hail — a lot! Marble sized chunks of ice were hammering against the metal roof of her car port, which I had helped her pick out the birthday before, so that the new paint job on her little 80′s something Ford wouldn’t be destroyed by sun and such — like this hail!

We talked a bit, about what I can’t remember now, but it was good. Finally the hail stopped, the rain let up, and the electrical storm moved on toward Tulsa, where it did a good bit of damage. Tiredness overcame us and we both went back to bed. When I woke up, the electrical crews were already out and fixing the transformer on the pole next to Mom’s little house. It hadn’t been hit directly by the lightening, but the strike was close enough to trip the transformer’s breaker or something. We had power early that AM.

When I packed and left that morning I didn’t know that it would be the last time I would see her when she wasn’t near death in a hospital bed. As always, she stood on that little porch, with a tear in her eye, waving goodbye to her son who was headed back to California. Why, she could never understand. It’s good that we don’t know what is going to happen, otherwise I could never have left her that day.

A funny thing about that night. When I was sitting up with her — looking out at the hail, the rain, the flashes of lightening — it was as if 45 years had never happened. I was 5 years old again.

I awoke this AM to the low sonic vibrations of distant thunder — and to memories . . . I sure do miss her.

Carolyn Young — 10/23/1921–4/16/2008

Eighty-six and 1/2 years ago . . .

Carolyn Young was born the fifth child to John and Carrie Barteaux, immigrants from Nova Scotia, who had made their fortune in Boston and migrated west to Santa Monica, CA. In fact, they were only three blocks away from being as west as possible in this little community with their home on the 1/4 block plot at 3rd and Washington. Carolyn was the late child, the whoops, not exactly “planned” bundle of joy as her brother and three sisters were all much older than her. Her life started out as one of great privilege, but it didn’t stay that way.

Her father was one of the early movers and shakers of the Los Angeles business community, with factories in the city, mines in the high desert and Mexico and other homes in Big Bear, Palm Springs and on Catalina Island. He was part of the great LA water-wars, buying up land from farmers and creating one of the outer valley sub-divisions. Think Chinatown’s Noah Cross, without the “weirdness”. The boxer Jack Dempsey was a family friend, and Barteaux was a member of all the clubs one just had to be associated with to be a successful man of business. In this world, there was not much use for a late child day-to-day, so Carolyn was sent off to boarding school, which she absolutely hated!

Her older siblings had grown up at the beach. In fact, the beach seems to be a part of the DNA of this family. In the old photo albums there are scores of shots of that great stretch of sand & surf that I’ve come to know so well in the 20 years I’ve know Carolyn’s daughter, the Amazing SoCal wife, whom I write about from time to time. Being sent packing and away from that life for much of the year didn’t sit well with young Carolyn, however she made up for it later in life by following in her mother’s footsteps, and raising her own children “at the beach”.

About the time Carolyn was finishing high school, the Barteauxs divorced, with her mother getting a very short end of the family financial stick, maybe a splinter, probably less than that. No community property laws back then you know, and the family attorney decided to side with the one that signed the checks, so Mrs. Barteaux found herself no longer living near the beach, no longer living a life of privilege, watching her former husband continue the high life with his new trophy wife, until his untimely death just a few short years later.

Two of Carolyn’s three sisters were movie star glamorous, and hobnobbed with the Hollywood elite of that time, dating actors, with Gigi getting a proposal from Glenn Ford, which for some reason she refused. Margaret married Walter, a test pilot, who flew Clark Gable and Carol Lombard to their wedding tryst, and later he died in the crash of one of his planes. There was further tragedy in this clan, as both Gigi and Margaret died in their twenties, Gigi from complications after an appendectomy and Margie from Hotchkin’s disease. The third sister, Gertie, lived on until the late 70s but also came to a tragic end. Brother Morton, ‘Bart’, served in WWII and wound up living in Hawaii plying the tiki trade into old age.

During the war, Carolyn became one of the Rosie Riveters working for Douglas Aircraft and near the war’s end she met Allan Young, home on leave from the Navy. After the war, they got married in Vegas and after a short span of living in Alaska while Allan worked as a deep sea fisherman, they came back to Santa Monica and established their family. She gave him two sons and a daughter, who produced among them six grandchildren. As a life-long homemaker, one of her greatest joys were the grandchildren, especially the oldest, who took on the daunting task of her caretaker during the last four years of her life.

I met this amazing lady just under 20 years ago when I started dating her daughter. She wasn’t much impressed with this at-the-time not-so-old an Okie. In fact, for those that were native Californians living during the time of the Dust Bowl days, the term “Okie” was about as reviled as “illegal immigrant” is today, for basically the same reason. It took a long time to win her over, but the last fifteen years or so we developed a strong respect for each other and after the death of my mom five years ago, she became “mom” to me.

I spent most of the day before she passed in the hospital, watching her struggle valiantly to stay with us just one more day. There was little to be done, except for giving her ice chips and water, and helping her sit up to breathe, clear her lungs as much as possible. You see, her daughter is a tax accountant with her own agency, and that next to last day was April 15th, her tax deadline. After literally seven-days and seven-nights working for two and 1/2 months, the thought of adding the death of her mom before that deadline was over to her daughter’s life was out of the question — she waited until 7:48 the next morning and passed peacefully, and in dignity, in the presence of her youngest son. We missed being there by ten minutes . . .

At the hospital, the floor nurse on duty came up to me and said, “It’s not scientific, but I do believe that this is not an end, but only a beginning. I feel her still here, watching all of you, and she is proud of what she sees.” I assured her that we were also believers and felt the same way. The next hours were amazing in their own right, with her main doctor coming in and spending a few minutes with us in the room. This is rare, as many doctors can’t face the death of their patients, some even going to far as putting off as long as possible signing of the death certificates, according to our funeral director. As we were leaving the ward, we came across her surgeon from last summer, who had successfully performed colon cancer surgery on her at age 85. He was very gracious as well. Amazing couple of docs, and the oncology ward at Saint John’s gave outstanding care and support.

After a beautiful ceremony in celebration of her life, we laid Carolyn to rest this last Thursday at Woodlawn Cemetery here in Santa Monica, just a couple of plots over from Allen, her long estranged, but never divorced husband. It’s close enough . . . to give him an earful for eternity. We drove by yesterday, the enormous mound of flowers covering the grave still fresh and vibrant — as if not yet wanting to let her go.

I promised See Dubya over a week ago that I would try to put into words what I’ve learned from all this, so here goes. Death is sad, unavoidable and natural — nothing to be afraid of, if you are ready for the afterlife. Sometimes, it’s a blessing. The hole that’s left in your psyche and your emotions will take much time to fill. Sometimes, like the line in the movie Lars and the Real Girl, it’s important that you just come and “sit”, and do nothing — just “sit” and “be there”. We don’t allow ourselves nearly enough time just to “be there” with those we love and care about.

Maybe the most important thing learned was the incredible strength of the human spirit. That even though you are so weak that you can’t hold a tissue up to your face, you can be strong enough to hold off the angel of death for another 24 hours. I’ve seen a lot of things in my 56 years on planet Earth, but I’ve never before been witness to anything like that.

Godspeed Carolyn Young — your spirit is free at last . . .

Happy Mother’s Day!

And one thought that Monty Python was merely “comedy” — one would have thought wrong.

Gotta remember that these guys really HATE each other, both side have nukes, and would just love to fry the other into glass.

Still, good handshake at the end. As Ace remarked, “Indian and Pakistani Border Guards Take Turns Trying to Out-Lunatic Each Other” — ain’t that the truth!

28 years ago today, I became a father for the first, and only time.

This first one’s for you!

Celtic Woman — what beautiful voices, and the fiddle player is the “bomb”!

Last night finished up re-watching the extended Lord of the Rings films — an hour or so at a time every few nights — took a while. The music in those three movies is a trip!

Not sure why this next one moves me so much — maybe it’s a Braveheart thing . . .

A brief moment from today’s AM dog walk. Sorry about the quality, 2-1/2 year-old-cell-phone video don’t ya know. The ocean was the color of Hawaii, deep crystalline blue, not our usual West coast greenish blue-gray. Not much chop, not much swell — single white fishing boat out stalking halibut . . . Had to unzip the ol’ jacket even.

It’s a beautiful day!

Sometimes — ya just gotta have a little break for some awesome fun.

Don’t miss number 1!

Happy to deliver!

Yeah, yeah . . . I misspelled her name: “Missy da Schnoodle” it should read. Sheesh!

Fifty eight years ago today a proud and grateful Tulsa couple accepted into their hearts and home a 5-pound baby boy, a castaway only an hour or so old, who in today’s climate of ‘planned parenthood’ thinking wouldn’t have been born at all. For some reason, God hadn’t allowed them to have their own flesh-&-blood progeny, so they got stuck with me, and later on, my sis. We got the best end of the deal, as I can’t imagine a better pair of human beings to have been raised by.

So, it’s clear and chilly out here in the People’s Republic of Santa Monica, Iran’s rulers are rattling their Feb. 11th sabers, the east coast is buried in snow, it’s snowing in Dallas, and the NYT is claiming that all this cold weather and snow is because of Global Warming. Yakoff Smirnoff is right, it is a great country!

So, happy birthday to one aging Aquarium Water Dragon . . . uh, that’d be me!

Just in case you’ve been wondering why this ol’ Okie has been so quiet lately, it’s not because I haven’t had anything to write about — I just haven’t had any time! Here’s why . . .

Launching today, November 17th, 2009, The Kitchen Cabinet PAC is the supporting website for the recently created Conservative Womens’ Political Action Committee of the same name.

Designed to help give a strong voice to women throughout the US and its territories, commonwealths and military facilities all over the globe, The Kitchen Cabinet PAC features educational articles, national contact information (The White House, Senate and House of Representatives) and will soon offer a user-supplied nationwide directory of political and service organizations.

Arthur Baker Design (Okie’s Santa Monica based design company) worked with the PAC’s creator Sonja Eddings Brown to provide a rich user experience for KC-PAC visitors. WordPress is used for the CMS. The donation element of the site is from Blue Swarm and was originally developed for Mitt Romney’s Presidential run and now powers the donation functions for a multitude of candidate-campaigns and charities.

There’s still lots to be done, and as my regular readers will probably guess, I’m beyond stoked to have been given the opportunity to work on this important website!

Hey, what are you doin’ gawkin’ around here? Go take a peek!

100 greatest hits of YouTube in 4 minutes:

[H/t: DrewM at Ace]

Technorati Tags: 100 greatest hits of YouTube in 4 minutes

Bug bites can be irritating. Even if they aren’t serious like a Black Widow or Fiddleback spider bite, or super painful like a hornet sting, if you have an allergic reaction to one it can be a bit, shall we say, concerning. This was the case about three weeks ago for me. I had two bites, one on my inner right bicep and one on the middle-left side of my back. The one on my arm was swelling up a lot and getting discolored so the wife makes me go to the dermatologist.

Well, our usual Doc was booked, and couldn’t see me the next day either, so from a friends referral I went to another medical group and at least got in to see a physician’s assistant. Nice gal, very personable, very thorough. When she looked at my back she said that there was a little something that she’d like to biopsy, just to be on the safe side. Why not? She gave me a script for creme for the bite and all was fine and dandy in a day or two.

Two weeks later, on a very busy day, I get a call from her — she didn’t sound so perky which threw up a few red flags on my end.

The biopsied tissue had come back malignant — it was a melanoma. My stomach was starting to churn a bit on hearing that. However, she said that it appeared to be a very early-stage malignancy so not to be freaked out, but she gave me the number of a recommended surgeon and strongly suggested that I call him, like right after hanging up with her. Which I most certainly did.

I had surgery yesterday to get that crap off and out of me. The doc said that everything went extremely well, and it looks like all will be good. We’ll know after that chunk of my back is analyzed. I see him on Thursday and should find out then.

When I first met the surgeon he told me that I was a very lucky man. I wasn’t due for another full dermatological exam for another six months, and that six months might have been the difference between being able to blog for another five years or . . .

Don’t put off getting looked at. I’ll get to know my new gal pretty well as I will have to have quarterly exams for a year or so to be on the safe side. The only rub at this point was that before the surgery date the surgeon had me go back for another look and they biopsied two more little buggers. I’m thinkin’ good thoughts though. Don’t need to be payin’ for a new addition to the surgeon’s house don’t ya know.

Seriously — get yourself checked. Your life does depend upon it!

On Sept. 24th, 2004 your obedient Okie setup a Blogger account and Okie On The Lam blog was born. It was a Sunday afternoon and instead of being wary of the “whitespace”, or the blank writing box on the monitor, I acquiesced to the old adage, “writers write” — and so I wrote this article called Initial Post:

This being the first post, I was feeling compelled to make some grand statement of intent, deliver a personal manifesto or write a bio — something to reveal the individual behind the blog. But hey, I’m not gonna do that, at least, not now. Better that the posts themselves lead to those kind of revelations over time. I will say that being a conservative and living in the Peoples Republic of Santa Monica here in the Los Angeles basin is more often than not, verrrrry interesting.

Something that caught my eye this week was the ESSAY article in the back of Time Magazine’s 9/27 edition. The first line (Imagine that America is a car.) grabbed my attention, fancy that. This essay appears in the same issue where this bastion of liberal thinking tries to come to grips with the recent CBS 60 minutes fiasco. See a teaser of that article, subtitled “The CBS flap is one more sign of the ferocious struggle between political partisans to see the world their way”. Partisans seeing the world their way? What I witnessed was the blogosphere doing the research that a world class news organization should have done, and calling them on it when they discovered out right fraud was being perpetrated!

The mainstream media seems to be having a very hard time adjusting to the proliferation of information outlets on cable, talk radio and the internet, especially those that resonate with a conservative voice. The youthful campaigners for change from the 60’s & 70’s are now the old men of hide bound tradition, and they are fighting as hard as their forebears did to maintain the status quo. Having gone through the university system during the 70’s, I actually find this hilarious.

[This next segment is sure dated, now!]

The masses now have many different sources of information, opinions and styles of delivery to sample, making it shameful if one is not well informed. Like it hard and brutal? Try Hannity & Colmes on Fox (Conservative) or Chris Matthew’s Hardball on MSNBC (Liberal). Rather laugh? There’s Dennis Miller (C) on MSNBC or The Daily Show with John Stewart (L) on Comedy Central. Slate will give you a liberal perspective while the main commentators of conservative thought can be found at the Townhall. And of course, there are all those blogs!

Maybe Time, Newsweek, CBS, NBC, ABC et all are wringing her hands over the shift in influence, but I’m having a great time tracking this election cycle. It’s even cutting into my car magazine reading time. Can’t wait for election day, or maybe the day after when those Kerry/Edwards stickers I see on all those Volvos around here start getting covered up with HILLARY in ‘08. Geez! Let’s get the war done and start getting Condi ready to run . . .

I’ll get better at this, really I will — db

Well, I almost got it right with the Hillary call for the Dems, but my Condi affection was seriously misplaced.

A lot has happened in these last five years. However, the MSM is still acting as if they are collectively without a clue. The partisan divide is getting wider, faster, despite our self-proclaimed post-racial President. Being a conservative on the Westside of Los Angeles still isn’t easy, and is still quite politically lonely. I have met, both in person and online, many fine conservative bloggers, some of which I call friends even though I don’t really know them — or, maybe I do really know them. Some of my readers are very loyal, even though I go through depressions and time of scant postings. Many thanks to you guys for that!

It’s hard if not impossible to stay inactive now that it seems our basic freedoms are under daily attack by these socialist-community organizers that have taken over the Executive branch of our government, with constant support by the increasingly left-leaning Democratic party leadership. Their fantastical overreach on Cap & Trade and National Health Care is making the 2010 election cycle crucial, and exciting. I plan to be more politically proactive than I have ever previously imagined. As that happens, I’ll take you along for the ride.

Whether or not I have kept that last promise in my initial post I leave up to you.

Thanks for reading . . . here’s to the next five.