Hot, Flat and Crowded

On a rainy fourth of July, I finally finished Hot, Flat and Crowded by Thomas Friedman.

I was interested in the book for a couple of reasons. The first reason was that I thoroughly enjoyed reading "The World is Flat". The second reason, and most important one, is that I am a human being that was charged with taking care of this earth by my creator.

I've been trying to be more efficient my whole life and hate the idea of consuming things. It is a vain chasing of the wind.

Thomas brings to light several examples that make you laugh because they are so ridiculous and several examples that make you cry because they are so shameful and embarrassing. As I was carrying this book around for several months, I got lots of polarized comments from people in elevators, people on the beach or wherever else I found myself reading it.

The end of a baseball career

It all started ten years ago when Adam decided to play T-ball at Shadybrook park.

He had so much fun playing T-ball that his older sister joined the team the following year before she moved on to softball.

Adam's next step was Veteran's park coach pitch Rookie league. They had a team that lost the championship game by a few runs and developed friendships that would spill over into other sports down the road.

As all the boys developed at different rates to different final sizes, speeds and strengths, it has been a joy to watch them rotate from team to team.

My favorite year to watch one of Adam's teams was his final season as a Pirate in the Cal Ripken minor league. This team know how to have fun winning.

In Adam's final Babe Ruth season as a Twin, he can definitely measure his maturity and struggles on the baseball field side by side with the rest of life.


Baseball in Lexington is an enjoyable but demanding lifestyle and I am glad that Adam had a chance to complete all the city has to offer in this sport.

Ben's Open House

Ben graduated from NorthWood High School this year. It was good to see many friends who had children that graduated with Ben.

It was also really good to see Ben's whole family there together. Peter and Stephanie just moved back to Nappanee and are settling in. Peter is the youth leader for Living Gospel church.

Bud and Vickie did a great job of decorating the garage with all of Ben's 4H and sports awards.

At the open house, Jackie cut the cake and put it on plates for three hours while I was the photographer.

It was a gorgeous day. Much better than Bethany's was four years ago. Most of the guests recalled that day when a tornado warning and strong winds force an emergency shutdown that included stuffing guests and a 30 foot canopy into a 20 foot garage.

The most photographed subject for Bethany's wedding shower and Ben's open house was Charlie Mattern. Here Charlie is developing some stick skills after watching Adam play for half an hour. It will be a while until Charlie can fill Adam's flip flops, but he has a head start on Lacrosse.

Ego Lessons from Chappy ( Iron Eagle )

When the kids were young, they watched Iron Eagle over and over. Their whole generation grew up viewing people in authority as default thinkers that never challenged the status quo.

The lessons that Adam learned from this movie now meet reality in High School... OK, I have to take some of the blame as well for the DNA that I gave him and the thinking patterns that I have demonstrated to him.

Please read the following script while imagining the following substitutions:

• Chapman is me doing my best Louis Gossett, Jr imitation
• General is Jackie wavering between pardoning her son from prison while considering the safeness of just visiting him there everyday.
• Mr. Masters is young Adam Eby
  
• Air Force Academy is replaced with Lexington Catholic High School.

Chapman: "Begging the General's pardon, I urge you to reevaluate that decision. Letting this boy loose, would be a big mistake. He already has demonstrated his inability to keep his big mouth shut. I would suggest sending him to an instituion, that can order him to keep that big mouth shut."

General: "Are you saying, we should confine this boy to some kind of penal facility?

Chapman: "As a matter of speaking yes sir, you see sir,.. Mr. Masters has applied to the Air Force Academy an institution well-suited for this kind of treatment, eh, unfortunately his application has some.. resistance. I was wondering if you could eh.."

Technically, Adam has not applied to Lexington Catholic, but it still sounds like a great idea for a young man that struggles with positional authority and can not keep his big mouth shut. He may find Lexington Catholic more challenging than IB at Tates Creek, he already does plenty of creative thinking, activity and social service.

Jackie is working on helping Adam understand his limitations as the middle child by making him read about birth order and I'm trying to get him to spend some time upgrading his PC from Windows XP to Ubunto instead of watching TV.

If he can just change his birth order, he might be a good leader some day.

I also think memorizing Romans 12 would be good. The whole chapter is applicable to life's problems whether you want to lead as a middle child or make friends as an oldest child.

If anyone else has any suggestions, we are grasping at straws.

Becca's 13th Birthday Party

Becca's birthday party was a huge surprise for her. She went with Carmen to pick up the birthday cake for her sleep over that she had planned for a few friends on Saturday night.

This faux sleepover was carefully approved by Mom and followed by lots of phone calls to make sure that each girl knew that it was not going to happen but there was indeed a party and sleepover on Friday.

Becca came home and headed for the basement to talk to Grandpa and me. When I noticed that she had a couple of movies in her hand, I asked her if she was going to start them now. She told me that we had to wait until her sleepover on Saturday. Several girls behind a counter and under the pool table did not make a peep as Becca expressed her disappointment in me for not remembering that she had a birthday coming up and a sleepover.

Of course, Jackie had games for the party.

The girls liked the games in the back yard, and the neighbors like the scavenger hunt as the girls could only collect one item per house. Somehow, the word got out that Dave Bond had potatoes.

This party was not comparable to Adam or Carmen's 13th birthday parties in one very specific characteristic: V-O-L-U-M-E-! It might be a while until my ears recover.

Green Revolution Hits Wakarusa

The mayors of Wakarusa and Nappanee have announced plans for EMC to build electric motors in Wakarusa. Nice Job, cousin Larry. Somehow, I bet that Richard Pletcher and Larry Andrews contributed to this.

Elkhart Truth: Hybrid vehicle venture energizes two towns

Electric Motors Corporation

Why Northern Indiana just might be the perfect place to make electric transportation a reality by re-introducing Henry Ford to Thomas Edison:

1. Labor availability (Absence of RV jobs)
2. Empty Manufacturing Facilities
3. Skills match for low volume craftmanship
   
4. Slower pace: Horseless Buggy might work!
5. Astronaut-Farmer connection
   • Purdue University Engineering
   • Small farm business sustainability tenacity
   • Local supply of Ethanol
6. History of Studebaker
7. Recent sting from Hummer
8. Indiana was willing to reduce corporate tax burden for the venture

Here is a Larry Thompson's first cousin (my father) riding a different kind of horseless buggy.

From Aunt Helen's Photo Album

The Noblest Invention

A friend at work gave me a book entitled The Noblest Invention. This illustrated history of the bicycle is very well done.

The forward by Lance Armstrong reminded me of the first bike (red, white and blue banana seat) my parents bought for me.

It reminded me of the freedom that a Free Spirit ten speed from Sears gave me to ride anywhere in Elkhart County to bail hay all day and return that night. It reminded me of friends that I used to ride with when I was a boy.

It reminded me of my habit to repack bearings regularly so I could ride every Sunday without too much resistance or crank noise.

It reminded me that I was on my bike when I knew that Jackie was God's gift to me long before she accepted that dreaded fact.

It reminded me of the first high end road bike, Schwinn Le Tour, that I purchased used from a guy that needed $50 and didn't need the bike that his parents bought for him for closer to $500. Later when I took that bike to Purdue, it was too high end and all I had left was a cut cable lock hanging on a bike rack at married student housing. I remember staring at the empty rack, wishing that I hadn't sold my Free Spirit for $25 a few years back.

It reminded me of my first vehicle that required insurance and a license, which happened to be a Honda CM400. A simple iteration that allowed me to go to farther places faster.

It reminded me of my second motorcycle, a Night Hawk that I rode two hours every weekend from Purdue to wherever Jackie was in whatever whether was between us. After we were married, I rode it to work and remember a day when Jackie had to wear a snowmobile suit behind me when her car wouldn't start one winter day in Lafayette.

It reminded me of a tall skinny friend on a big orange rode bike that rode everyday when I first moved to Lexington and how I struggled to keep up with him one day while we traveled 134 miles to Bloomington. I foolishly dropped out of the pack two hours into the ride, and had to skip pitstops to catch up or else I would not have made it. After catching them, I never left the pack again.

It reminded me of a friend that invited me to mountain bike for the first time in Albequeque and how cactus thorns release air pressure that makes carrying a bike easier than riding it.

It reminded me of the cost of freedom and independence and how dangerous that can be if not handled responsibly.

I will never be known as a bike racer, let alone the greatest cyclist to ever walk the earth like Lance, but I do agree that a bike has got to be near the top of the invention list. However, like all things created, obsessions can be destructive and erase all the freedom that was originally experienced.

I'm glad that the friends that I rode with last Saturday understand how a bike can be used for real freedom.

Easter Sunday

 
 

Flamingos, Fish and Fruit bats

Becca and I spent the morning at Tampa Lowry Park Zoo taking pictures and eating ice cream.

Most of the pictures taken did not include Becca, but it just so happens that these do.

The zoo has been called the best children's zoo in the nation and it definitely had a lot of children. The groups of kids and teachers tended to hang out in the covered areas and the petting zoos so we didn't run into too many crowds until we went to get some ice cream at noon.

I got my ice cream in a cone because I am very environmentally conscious about the decisions that I make while I am reading Hot, Flat, and Crowded all week.

Becca may love animals, but she ate her ice cream from a Styrofoam cup with a plastic spoon so she may as well have been killing endangered species with her bare hands instead of warming them to a slow death one plastic spoon at a time.

Angered by her choices to destroy the earth, a giant fruit bat swept her away and hung her upside down in his exhibit.

Becca promised to eat her ice cream from a cone from now on, so the fruit bat let her go.

Who built our vacation spot

Entrepreneurs and engineers worked together to build an accessible island in this comfortable corner of the Gulf of Mexico that is called Clearwater Beach.

The only concrete section of the first wooden bridge is all that stands today after being torn down in the 1924. Our boat tour guide tells us that a barge served as the gateway to decide whether foot travel across the barge or boat travel while the barge temporarily moved away from the bridge. Today a few birds roost there.

That bridge was obsoleted by the "Million Dollar Bridge" that had mechanical equipment that would lift the bridge to allow boats to pass. When Jackie's family traveled to Clearwater in 1983, they traveled across the $1M bridge. After being torn down in 2002, the remainder of that bridge is being used as a fisherman's pier.


The fixed span bridge that we crossed to reach our vacation spot obseleted the $1M bridge and was budgeted at $30M but ended up costing $90M and using a whole lot of concrete to provide automobile traffic flow and boat passing to occur 100% of the time with more lanes of traffic, but still jammed at both ends with idling cars.

There were two other fixed span bridges and another that had yet to be torn down.

Throughout the tour, there were many landmarks that were remnants of the work of the Army Corp of Engineers as the made the intracoastal waterway in the shallow waters of the Gulf in the 1940's.

The result is a nice place to rest, enjoy sunshine and eat good seafood.

Kyle is a mermaid

In order to make Kyle feel welcome on our family vacation, we decided to bury him in sand, burn the top of his forehead and sculpt him into the shape of Ariel the mermaid.

While most of us just moved the sand from the area immediately adjacent to Kyle with our bare hands and a frisbee, Adam decided to import some heavier sand that was a little closer to the ocean.

When looking at the picture, Kyle said "That's Tight". I pointed out that it was just cohesion and momentum that gave the appearance of tight. These boys really need to study harder in physics class.

Welcome to Morrow

With the economy looking like it has no tomorrow, Jackie and I decided to take the family on a "free" vacation before our travel award points expired or the company that honors them went bankrupt as that seems to be vogue.

Jackie booked a pit stop for us at a Hampton Inn along I-75 in Morrow, GA because of its location about midway to our destination of Clearwater Beach.

Kyle Polley, Adam and I were having breakfast when Kyle noticed the double meaning of the sign that we all missed the night before, "Welcome to Morrow".

We discussed the fact that Tomorrow never gets here, but we also discussed that as new creations, we also house tomorrow, yesterday and today within our jars of clay.

The value of quality to a craftsman

I'm still reading "The Craftsman" by Richard Sennett.

I read this morning that a focus on people within a company can drive the craftsman away. If you want to attract and retain craftsman, a company should instead focus on quality of the product.

Sennett describes Deming as complex and cautionary. The complexity is that to arouse the aspiration for quality and make good on it, the organization itself has to be well crafted in form. It needs open immediate communication, but it needs to wait to bring its products to market until they are really good. Deming knew these aspects of organization seldom appear on management charts of who reports to whom. Deming was not, however, a simple salesman, a booster of quality; he recognized that quality-driven work, focused on achieving good concrete results, does not necessarily unify or sustain organizations.

Lacrosse Scrimmage in Knoxville, TN

We traveled to Knoxville this weekend for Adam's Lacrosse team to get three scrimmages on Saturday.

The picture to the left shows Coach Andrew giving Adam (#6 Black) some tips before play was ready to start against CHS. Adam looked more comfortable today than he did last fall, but as a freshman, he still has a lot to learn about the game.

They were supposed to have a fourth scrimmage and a full game on Sunday, but the weather did not cooperate.

Adam stayed with friends at a teammate's vacation house, so Jackie and I enjoyed the weekend hanging out with some of the Lacrosse parents.

This picture was taken while Adam (#6 White) had the ball or shortly after losing it. He avoided a body check by getting a little lower than the opponent. Throughout the day, Adam consistantly was able to stay low, but needs to work on keeping his feet underneath him while attacking.

My basketball coaches always told me I was out of control, I suspect that I looked a little like Adam "falling forward" with the ball.

Tates Creek finished the day with a respectable 1-2 record considering the age of the players.

Valentines Dinner hosted by the Youth Group

The Tatesbrook youth group served twenty some tables in the basement of the church for Valentines day.

Jackie and I went out to eat on February 7th, because we knew we would be in the kitchen on February 14th.

Kelley Thomas, Matt Hind, Kim Foster, Josh Covington and Erin Markert all did a great job serving with the youth that night.

Kelley and Gadis must have worked all day getting tables and decorations into the basement. They did a great job preparing. It wasn't until we started tearing down all the decorations that I realized just how much work it was to move in the furniture and decorate it.

After they served the guests and the guests had left the building, the youth sat down for a spaghetti dinner of their own.