Mankind are a herd of knaves and fools. It is necessary to join the crowd, or get out of their way, in order not to be trampled to death by them.
   -William Hazlitt

Technorati Tags: quotes

It is certainly not my intention for this weblog to become an “all death, all the time” site, nor would it be the preference of my Dad, whose recent passing has been the origin of much of the emotions posted here, along with the driver behind most of my personal activities.

I more often than not write on subjects political or related here at Random Fate, but some things transcend politics. I have tried to pay tribute to my father, who I know would be embarrassed if he thought that others were paying any attention to his actions, but he was one of those unacknowledged pillars which hold up our society without any acknowledgment or reward.

Therefore, I feel compelled to point out his unrecognized contribution, contrarian that he raised me to be.

As my brother said in his eulogy to my father, my Dad was a man who when he arrives at the gates to heaven would say, “Thanks for opening them, but I’m sorry you had to go through the trouble for me.”

My father enjoyed listening to Ray Charles, even though in his married life he had only the rare opportunity to do so after his children were born (including me forty-one years ago), so I originally picked this song to finish his funeral service, in tribute to the love I know he had for my Mom (yes, even as their son, I know the love he had for his woman… listen to the song, I often feel I am the only one outside of the two who does understand):

I got a woman

My mother thought that my Dad’s mom (his mother is a true Baptist through and through… for whatever that means) would be offended by the song, so she suggested this song because my Dad loved the beat to it:

I don’t need no doctor

I suggested to my Mom that the title and the lyric might seem in poor taste at the end of a funeral, especially of a man who had died ultimately because of the effects of cancer, so we ended up with this song that I thought was trite, but which since most told my Mom the funeral was “beautiful” I guess fit their expectations, although my Dad might have disagreed, but funerals are for the living, not the dead, so he didn’t get the vote I wanted for him:

Georgia on my mind

Which although in some ways sad, still had the Ray Charles beat that fitted my Dad…

My Dad was unique, even in a nation of over 260 million.

That is his legacy for me, and I treasure it.

I did my best for him in the funeral, but I know he always wanted for my Mom to be safe and OK, so that has been my primary goal and task since he died, regardless of any other concerns.

I’ll mourn for my Dad when I have time. After seeing his printouts of emails from me and our IM conversations, I have literally NO regrets, because I am positively CERTAIN he understood my respect and love for him, but I still have the sadness that any person has when he loses someone he loves, but my sadness can wait while I ensure that his wife whom he loved is taken care of.

It still hurts when I let myself remember and regret for him, though, and I cry then, even though I know it is not what he would want.

The tears are both for me and for him, for the years we did not have together that I wished for him.

I haven’t written a lot lately for several reasons, among which are:

1) I moved from France back to the US

2) I’ve had only intermittent connections to the Internet in that time

3) The PC laptop I bought to replace my slower, seemingly dead laptop has a keyboard that is difficult to use (it requires an inordinate amount of force for certain keys to register, and even light touches on the touchpad seem to disable the keyboard completely, I suspect there is a problem with the keyboard driver at the least since it occasionally slips into a mode where I have to use the “caps-lock” key to get lower-case letters… that is a problem I’ve NEVER had before)

4) My Mac laptop seems to be having problems that may be related to the earlier issues that were caused by damaged RAM (in other words, I may have damaged the motherboard of the laptop that causes intermittent problems with both the hard-disk and the RAM that will not be solved until I get a new Mac laptop)

5) I’ve had some major changes in my life, including moving back from France to the US, changing jobs (yes, even though I’m still in R&D with the same company, the job DID change), having to deal with the affairs of my father after he died, ensuring the future welfare of my Mom, along with a LOT of other changes that will not be disclosed here

So…

There it is.

Many topics have arisen that make me wish I had the personal, intellectual bandwidth to write about them (as opposed to merely the technological bandwidth, which every yahoo with a computer and Internet connection has, and whose thoughts are generally worth the electrons that record them…), items political, technical, and personal. Unfortunately, I haven’t had the time nor energy to do them justice, so I have refrained, unlike most of the half-assed posts I see in blogworld, a tendency that is all the more obvious when examined after my enforced absence from the scene.

So…

There it is.

I will continue to do my best in posting things that at least strive to be thoughtful if not completely original and unique.