Posts Tagged ‘non-Ham topic’

And people think I’m nuts!

A hat tip to the AWT blog for this one!

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP – When you care to send the very least!

Almost there!

Christmas is almost upon us.

Preparations are winding down. Hopefully, all your trees are trimmed, houses have been decorated, gifts bought and wrapped, and all baking done and goodies carefully put away.

As Mary and Joseph travel towards the star, may your hearts find wishes granted and prayers answered.

May you and your loved ones be blessed this Christmas with the Peace that is beyond all understanding.

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP – When you care to send the very least!

Hesitation

I have hesitated to comment about the events that took place last Friday in Newtown, CT a scant hundred miles away.  This blog is supposed to be a fun and sometimes even uplifting place – a place to escape the unspeakable horrors that sometimes invade our world.  But some things need to be said; for we live in this world and cannot evade the realities.

Like many others, I was filled with shock, horror and grief.
As a parent, I was horrified.  I cannot even begin to imagine the pain and emptiness pervading the souls of those parents and grandparents  who have lost a child – the girls and boys who have lost a sibling – the husbands who lost their wives, the one young man who lost his intended fiancé. If I was in any one of their places, I would want to die. I cannot imagine my life without my wife, or my son or my daughter.  My prayers go out to them, that in this time of intense grief, that God will be with them for support and comfort.
As a second tier responder, my heart  goes out to the police and EMS personnel who were on scene.  What they witnessed will never go away.  They will forevermore, have indelibly imprinted in their memories the scene of carnage and pure evil that happened there.  In addition to the pain of others that they had to deal with, there will always be personal questions – “Could I have done more?” “Could I have done something different?”  Even though these brave men and women did an absolute heroic and “textbook” job by preventing more killing than actually took place, they are human, too.  Their desire, their instinct, their reason for being  is to defend, protect, help and heal.  Their utter inability to do more than the monumental job they did will weigh heavily on some of them.  In their minds, their job is do more, they always think they can do more – it’s a hard reality to learn that sometimes, you can’t.
The debates will go on about gun control and should we allow this and should we allow that.  For the record, I do not own a gun and I have no desire  to own one. That being said, I do not have a problem with law abiding citizens who do. Gun control laws are necessary, to be sure. But thinking that you can legislate this problem away by banning guns altogether is an answer that is cheap, and is the easy way out. What created the incident at Sandy Hook, and incidents like these run way deeper than just people getting their hands on guns.
I am now going to state a couple of personal beliefs that will be very unpopular, and even considered “Right Wing Whacko” by some.
As a society, we have abandoned certain values that have served us so well in past generations.
In many cases, the reverence for life, from beginning to end, has completely disappeared.  Life is no longer held sacred, no longer believed to be a gift from God. It is a thing to be used, bought and sold, initiated or terminated as we see fit.  The dignity of personhood is gone. It is becoming more and more commonplace to  see others as “things” and “commodities” to be used for the purposes of gaining wealth, sexual pleasure, or whatever else is desired.  Or even worse, people are considered “obstacles” to be gotten rid of, or to be ignored.  Life has become cheap; and unfortunately, some people have no problem whatsoever, taking lives that are not theirs , or even their own.
The importance of the family, as the building block of civilization has been disappearing with lightspeed.  For thousands of years, a mother and a father raised a family and taught their children the necessary values required to maintain a civil society.  Today, in many instances, we see “kids having kids”.  We need to have adult men and women forming deep and lifetime commitments, who will be faithful and true to each other and to their children.  Our disposable society has come to the point where the family has become disposable, also.  Anything goes – today, people get married (or not), have kids and then walk away when “My wife doesn’t understand me” or “My husband doesn’t love me anymore”.  That has to stop.  We need adults to be adults and kids to be kids.  A good and stable family life is the key to a successful and thriving society.
Secondly, we have to be proponents of true love.  Love is not bounding from bed to bed, from relationship to relationship, seeing how many times you can “score”.  Men have to suck it up, and “be men” – good husbands and faithful fathers.  Same thing goes for women, you have to decide to be good wives and faithful mothers.  When you take that step and decide to get married, you are in essence subjugating your own desires and wants and putting ahead of yourself the lives of your spouse and children.  This is not an easy task; as by human nature we are all selfish and tend to think of ourselves first.  But when you are willing to put another person or persons before yourself – that is true love.   Love is an ongoing,  conscious decision, it takes a lot of hard work and dedication, it’s not just a feeling that comes and goes.
Thirdly, education has to begin at home.  When it comes down to it, it is the school’s responsibility to teach reading, writing, arithmetic, etc – subjects of knowledge.  Teachers are not parents – parents are supposed to be parents.  It is the parent’s job to teach honesty, integrity, reliability, accountability and all the other virtues and moral values which form a well rounded human being, and in turn a civil society.  This is a daunting task – ask any new parent. Children do not come with an owner’s manual. But thank God, up until now we seem to have been given the ability to figure it out for thousands of years.  It takes time, a lot of love and a lot of patience, a lot of self denial – sometimes more than you think you have in you.  But if can lose your pride and get down on your knees and ask God for the help you need, He will grant it.
When the foundations of society falls apart, it is no surprise that ensuing chaos occurs.  Unless we reverse the path we seem to be on, things will only get worse – not better.  But, if we were to revert to the values and morals that were held so dear and sacred for so long, I truly believe our society will heal and improve.  Evil will always be with us – but with God’s help we can fight back, if we choose to.
Sorry for the rant – next post will be radio related (I promise!)

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP – When you care to send the very least!

Thanksgiving – Part 2 – Personal

As you’ve read this blog throughout 2012, it’s been kind of a tough year for W2LJ and family. There have been many trials and tribulations:

My Mom passed away in May, Marianne’s Mom passed away in October. My Mom’s best friend’s husband passed away this September – and even though he wasn’t a blood relative, he was “family” nonetheless. Our cat Sadie passed away this February and we found out this summer, that our dog Jesse has cancer. We’re dealing with Jesse on a day by day basis, trying to keep our 13 year old friend as comfortable as we can. And then we had Hurricane Sandy and the aftermath to deal with. And to top all of that off, I was notified by the company that I work for, that we lost the contract for my department where I work; so I will probably be facing unemployment sometime in December or early next year.

But I’m not the only one with troubles, some have less …. some have more. And I know that even with all that we have been through and continue to endure, my family has been and continues to be richly blessed.

Thanks be to God, I still have a job, if even for a little while. Marianne, Joey and Cara and I all are all in good health. We have a safe, warm house to live in and have plenty of food. Marianne is in no danger of losing her job, so even if I have to collect unemployment insurance for a time while I look for a new job, we won’t starve. We still have my big sister Ann Marie and her family; and we still have Marianne’s brother Tim and his wife, as well as extended family. I have my friends and I have Amateur Radio (the world’s greatest hobby) and I have all of you – whom I consider to be good friends as well.

So I am thankful, for all of that and more. God has been so good to us and continues to be – He truly deserves my thanks, this coming Thursday and always. So when we gather around the table tomorrow, I am hoping to be able to say Grace and give thanks in a steady, strong and unwavering voice. It will be an emotional moment for me and may be difficult to do without faltering, but my thanks to God will be completely from the bottom of my heart.

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP – When you care to send the very least!

Thanksgiving – Part 1

I really like Thanksgiving – it is my favorite holiday.

I know that I have many readers that are not from the US, who might have heard of Thanksgiving; but might not be familiar with the history behind the holiday. Here’s a short and by no means authoritative version, of the US version of Thanksgiving. Our Canadian friends also celebrate Thanksgiving (on the second Monday of October); but the historical basis behind their celebration is different than ours.

In the year 1620 a small ship named the Mayflower, left Plymouth, England and headed for “The New World”. The passengers were mainly a group of people known as Pilgrims, who had left England to come to a new land where they could practice their religion publicly without oppression or harassment. The rest of the passengers were people who wanted to come and settle a new land and make a life for themselves.

The Mayflower landed at what is now known as Plymouth, Massachusetts in November of 1620. Shortly after landing, the settlers came in contact with an Indian (read – Native American for the PC crowd) who was a member of the Abenaki tribe. A few days later this Native American returned with a friend named Squanto, who was a member of the Pawtuxet tribe. Earlier in his life, Squanto had been kidnapped by an English sea captain who had sold him into slavery. Squanto escaped and managed to get to London for a time, where he was able to successfully find a way to get back to America (and learn the English language in the process). Squanto introduced the Pilgrims to the nearby Wampanoag tribe. With Squanto’s help, an alliance was formed between the Wampanoag and the settlers which lasted for a period of over 50 years. If this alliance hadn’t been formed, the settlers probably would have totally perished that first harsh Winter. Even though the Wampanoag chief, Massasoit had donated food and provisions to the settlers to see them through that first brutal and snowy cold Winter, almost half of the passengers of the Mayflower perished from scurvy, malnutrition and other disease.

The following Spring, Squanto and the Indians taught the surviving Pilgrims where to fish, how to catch eels, how to plant corn, barley and other crops, which indigenous plants were poisonous and which were not, among other things. The planting and growing season of 1621 proved to be exceptionally good, ending with a bountiful harvest that would, without a doubt, be more than enough to sustain the Pilgrims through the next Winter. The leader of the settlement, Plymouth Plantation, declared that a feast be held that November. It lasted three days and the Native Americans were invited to celebrate the bountiful harvest; and 90 came. The Pilgrims had just completed a “Fowling mission” and the Wampanoag brought five freshly killed deer – so the menu from the First Thanksgiving feast (according to written records) consisted of venison, turkey, goose, duck, various fish (cod and bass among them), eels, clams (quahogs), and fruits and vegetables. As the Pilgrims stores of sugar were used up, there was probably not much in the way of pies or cakes!

Days of Thanksgiving have been proclaimed on and off throughout our history, beginning during the Revolutionary War. But Thanksgiving, as we come to know it, came into its own when a national Thanksgiving Day on the last Thursday of November was proclaimed by Abraham Lincoln in 1863. And since that time, it has been celebrated annually.

On a radio note – last weekend, I tried hauling up the W3EDP without much success.  Trying to bring down the short end of the frayed and snapped Zepp was futile as it is unmercifully snagged in my neighbors trees and bushes.  So a new plan evolved, which I will try to implement this coming weekend.  Instead of using the mast on that side of the yard, I will run the W3EDP from the house to the maple, horizontally (actually sloping slightly upwards).  Then from the maple, I will allow it to slope down towards the privacy fence post in that far corner of the yard and will tie it off with however much antenna rope I will need – probably no more that 5 -6 feet worth.

I am hoping that the old saying will hold true – “Where there is a will, there’s a way!”

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP – When you care to send the very least!

Getting a lot of this

 And I’m not sure why.

But Blogger is doing a decent job detecting it and keeping it away from your eyes.  Roughly 50 spam comments are left each day, peddling knock off designer handbags, knock off Ugg boots, knock off Viagra and Cialis among other things.  Many are in languages that I am not even certain as to where they originated! I see some Cyrillic, so some have to be coming from Russia, but there are other languages that I don’t even recognize – although I have seen a few in Polish, too.

Spam, it’s not just tasty meat in a can anymore!

This blog has been spam free since 2005 and will stay that way, if I have anything to say about it!

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP – When you care to send the very least!

Veteran’s Day – 2012

A most sincere and humble “Thank You so much!” to all those who have and continue to serve our Nation in the Armed Forces.  We will never be able to adequately repay your service.

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP – When you care to send the very least!


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