February 09, 2016
Buddy missing
Buddy was last seen on video leaving the cat door at 2am Saturday morning (late Friday night) while I was travelling. Jeffrey Bilyeau says he hasn't been home since. I just got home last night, I don't see him anywhere. I knocked on the neighbors' doors and called for him. I hope he's curled up in someone's house and not coyote food. We live on Grandview in Woodside, up 84, near Alice's restaurant.
January 26, 2016
What Kind of Man?
Sheldon Richard Bentley
October 31, 1941 - January 22, 2016.
What Kind of Man?
Asleep beside his exhausted mother.
Visitors silently wonder, What kind of man will he be?
Born into an environment he can't begin to fathom.
He will be a son, and maybe a father, husband, teacher
and good friend, to laugh, learn, cry and play?
A kind person that people trust.
And who will teach him life's subtle things?
It's up to all of us, we have a responsibility,
to help him learn, to turn the other cheek,
to enable other men to become good men too.
The man this baby becomes will be determined by all of us;
other men and women, weak and strong, young and old.
We will plant the sapling of the next sturdy oaks.
In seven decades, however, when lowered
in his final silk home,visitors will know,
What kind of man was he.
for if we have done our part,
all will know his life had left its mark.
Rich in relationships, friends and family,
loved and respected for his presence and
effect on others, his marker will aptly read,
“Here Lies a Good Man”
--Sheldon Bentley, 2011
February 22, 2014
You want a Physicists to speak at your funeral
This isn't my work, credits are below, but it's nice to have a model of the Universe that is backed by observation and doesn't require a leap of faith.
You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy is created in the universe and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, ever vibration, every BTU of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid the energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got.
And at one point, you'd hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell him that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off you like children, their ways forever changed by you. And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her eyes, that those photons created within her constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever.
And the physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. There may be a few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it. And he will tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even as we who mourn continue in the heat of our own lives.
And you'll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you that they need not have faith; indeed, they should not have faith. Let them know that they can measure, that scientists have measured precisely the conservation of energy and found it accurate, verifiable and consistent across space and time. You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound and that they'll be comforted to know your energy is still around. According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone. You're just less orderly. Amen.
This is a transcript of a speech given by writer and performer Aaron Freeman on NPR News "All Things Considered". You can listen to it here: http://n.pr/1cbAGLl