I’m not a workaholic, I swear

After the post I wrote most recently and some discussions I’ve had with people in various parts of my life, I’ve run across a fair number of people who seem to think that this schedule I’ve been living, this logging of 60-70 hours of work a week, minimum, is fun.  That I do it because I like it and that somehow I’m not aware that it is inherently bad for me.

They are so, SO very wrong.  But they refuse to understand that this has been a matter of survival.  This has been the way that I’ve adapted to keep us afloat and alive and not living on the streets.  So few people truly understand that our economy here in the US has fundamentally changed.  Geoff and I are living proof that the old way, each having one job, having some security in that job, buying a house, and then eventually retiring just isn’t the way things work anymore.

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2015 has been kicking my ass

Regular readers will recall that a little while back I said we’d be away for a while due to the death of a friend.  Truth be told, his loss was, at the time, the latest in a long string of Very Hard Things 2015 had handed us.

It seems, however, that June might bright A New Hope.  (Sorry)  But, before we get to the good stuff, let’s go over where we’ve been, shall we?

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MLK and cultural appropriation

As a historian, and as someone who grew up in the South, I can’t help but shake my head at how a generation after the tumult of the 1950s and 1960s, we as a society are still struggling with virtually all of the issues that Dr. King fought against.  Don’t get me wrong, we have come a long way, even in my lifetime, but that progress still doesn’t mean that we live in a “post-racial” society.

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Footprints in the snow

I worked a half shift yesterday before I went to rehearsal last night.  I wasn’t really in any mood to deal with people but one of my coworkers had called out sick and another was sick and needed to go home.  Word had also spread about Rerun’s passing and this particular group of people, who are ordinarily nice to me, were super sweet and supportive.  I ended up with a lot of time to work in the quiet places and get some time alone.  I really appreciated it.

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Rerun S. Hopkins-Michael June 2003 – January 15, 2015

This is not the obituary I thought I’d be writing.  I really thought that Rerun would be with us for a while yet.  Rerun died this morning.  He was 11 years old.

What a handsome boy.
Rerun in profile, before he started to go silver in the muzzle.

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Filling gaps in family history

Part of the problem with doing family history is that there is so much missing.  Kelly and I both had relatives serving in the U.S. Navy in World War Two, and on a wide range of different ships.  Kelly had a grandfather that served on the USS Massachusetts (BB-59) during the war, and I had a grandfather that eventually served on the USS Cutlass (SS-478).  Interestingly enough, both of these vessels are well-documented, and even more fascinating, both of them still exist.

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Christmas Card 2014

We’re back at it again this year, we’re saving on postage being environmentally friendly and putting our Christmas Card online.  There’s also the time factor.  It took me more than 8 hours to wrap the Christmas gifts that are being shipped to 3 places in two other states and being handed out here in MA.  Actually mail merging the labels for the over 100 names on our list, labeling, signing and then mailing the cards (maybe not in that exact order) is WAY more time than I have.  So, an hour or so of photo editing it is.

And so, I give you, our 2014 Christmas Card.

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A beautiful and storied ship, part two

So like I was saying in my earlier post, I managed to get a pretty-much full tour of the Fletcher-class destroyer USS Cassin Young last Saturday.   I took a lot of pictures.

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Hello again, everyone. Long time no blog.

I am just now managing to recover from I guess what you might call a flare-up of my old back injury.  For a little while, it was pretty bad.  But it is getting better.  I have been utilizing the collection of canes that Kelly and I got not quite six years ago when I managed, in the space of a few months, to badly injure my right knee and then my back.  Probably the worst injuries, at least in terms of recovery time, that I have ever had.

But this current episode makes no sense to me.

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So much going on this past week. Oh, and Happy Halloween!

Perhaps, now that things are finally starting to calm down somewhat (and I am getting some sleep), I can get back to posting regularly on here.  It has been an eventful week.

First, a hearty congratulations to my nephew Will, who earned his Eagle Scout rank this week.  He worked hard for it, and deserves a lot of credit for being a pretty disciplined young man.  He was also fortunate to get a lot of support from friends and family, especially his mom (my sister Liz) and his dad (my brother-in-law Dan).   He’ll be off for college next year.  Eeek, I am old.

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