Relay for Life

This morning I get to walk in the Fullerton Relay for Life. It’s an event sponsored by the American Cancer Society. I get to walk as a survivor.

My one year anniversary of my cancer diagnosis is coming up on the 18^th of this month and I still have a hard time getting my head around the idea that I had cancer let alone that I am now considered a cancer survivor. 

We all face moments in our lives, events that are life-changing.  I guess this was one of those events for me. 

As I look back, I wonder just how I have changed and how this event has changed me. This is not an easy thing for me to see. I am a positive person and have always enjoyed and appreciated a sunrise and a sunset. I didn’t suddenly have an epiphany and swing my life around to become super volunteer. For me this was another stepping stone, another door to go through in living out God’s will for my life.

I will say that I have become less tolerant of complaining and I realize a little more clearly now that life is finite and I shouldn’t waste a minute on worry. Unlike the feelings of immortality you feel when you are young, this event and the year since has brought into clear focus that God only gives us so much time and reminds me that ‘I have become painfully aware that there are fewer days ahead than there are behind’ to quote a favorite line from one of my favorite movies.

So, all-in-all, today I will walk in the Relay for Life with my son Matt and it will remind me to enjoy the moment and appreciate what I have now and remind me that I don’t have time to waste.

More on $2 Tomato's

I'm finding that I really like this blogging stuff. Because of a busy schedule, I don't get to sit down and write as much as I would like, but I get to it when I can. So, apologies to those who have asked questions about my previous blog. I'm just now (6:30am on a Saturday morning) getting to respond.

So, here are some answers to questions;

a) do you have any "farming' experience at all? If not, did you just talk to the guy at Lowe's (or Home Depot) to get basic info or did you research a little to get a farming knowledge foundation?

I'm really a 'Rambo' type farmer. I mix some planting soil into my existing ground, or pot, or planter, I buy a tomato plant from Lowes or Home Depot and stick it in the ground. I really didn't do any research other than to ask when to plant what - and then I generally find I ignore what I've been told and plant what I want to plant. I do water the plants two to three times a week, other than that, I don't do anything else. By the way, my inspiration for the planter box in my previous blog came from my friend Jeff Wilson.

b) how long is the tomato planting season? I ask because my mother grows tomatoes and she planted a few weeks ago.

Well, I've heard that tomato plants are pretty hearty and will grow almost any time of year. I usually plant them in March just because spring is around the corner and the weather is usually turning nicer in Southern California.  I've harvested tomato's until August. I've heard that if you buy or make some kind of green house or plant them in a pot in a garden window, they'll grow almost year round.

c) how long before they're is a harvest?

I probably won't start picking tomato's until at least the end of May into June.

Hope this helps.

$2 Tomatoes

Have any of you had enough of paying $2 for a tomato? Well, I have and I decided to do something about it. Back in the 1940's during World War II people made Victory Gardens in order to save money on vegetables and I figured that I could do the same in today's crummy economy. I just can't stand the idea of paying $2 for a vegetable. Besides, I figured that for $3, I could buy a tomato plant and at the very least grow a couple of tomatoes and save some money. The big problem was how and where to plant a garden for as cheap as possible.

Like so many people in Southern California, we don't have a great deal of land to turn into a garden and what we do have is filled with low maintenance plants (because very few of us like to garden) and sculptured lawns. I was inspired by some friends who built a couple of raised garden boxes in their backyard and I decided to build one myself and plant some vegetables.

The first part was the hardest and required that I actually get up out of my very comfortable chair (chairs by the way can be rated by the characteristic of flop. On a flop-quality scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the best flop quality, mine rates a 10) and perform some physical labor! I decided to make the basic raised planter box as simple as possible. I decided to build a box 3' x 6'. The dimensions of the box itself are derived from a standard length of board, 1"x6"x6' in this case. I purchase 3 redwood boards of this dimension at Home Depot. I also had to purchase some soil and of course the tomato plant (and a couple of pepper plants). Now I will admit that although I had to lift the material into and out of the car and carry it to the backyard, this wasn't really the physical part.

The physical part was in actually digging up part of the backyard. You might ask, why did you have to dig up part of the backyard to in order to plant the garden? Why not just nail the boards together, throw the newly assembled box on top of the grass and fill er' with dirt? Well, two reasons. First, the ground around my house is hard enough to absorb a meteor strike without a dent and covered with grass. If you want plants to have any kind of root structure and thus grow, it's important to break up the soil and remove the grass. Second, well, I can't think of a second right now - too tired after so much tilling of the Earth. You can see from the picture that I tilled (big farmer word) a patch of Earth a little bigger than the 3'x 6' dimensions of the box frame I would make. Since the patch of future garden was small I didn't resort to renting a rototiller, instead, I opted for the more manly method of turning the plot with a pick and a shovel (thus the reason I'm so tired now - very manly but tired).

Next, I built the raised box. As I mentioned before, I used some standard size lumber in the design of this box. Because I purchased 3, 1"x6"x6' pieces of redwood, I could use two for the sides and cut one in half to make the ends of the box frame. I used galvanized, 3 inch screws to join the pieces together. Notice I said I used screws. Anyone who uses nails on a project for anything other than framing a house should be tared and feathered.

Next, I filled the box to the top with some good garden soil (6 cubic feet - two bags worth from Home Depot). I turned this well into the existing soil .

e

Now you might think that this would be the point at which you could plant the veggies. Well, not quite yet. My family is the typical American family, at least from 1960 standards with the Husband (that's me) the wife, a son and a daughter, a cat and a dog. Your response to this of course is to say SOOOOO!. The husband, the wife, the son the daughter and the cat have very little affect on the garden. However, the dog is a different story. We have a chocolate lab named Ella who loves to eat things - basically anything that she can swallow. She has in the past eaten socks, pull cords from sweatshirts, many pairs of underwear (two of which became stuck and had to be surgically removed) berries off my blue berry bushes and so, so much more. Today, she found the new soil I purchased a tasty treat and began to eat great mouthfuls of the stuff. So in order to keep Ella out of the garden and thus prevent my veggies from being eaten before they get to my plate, I built a fence around the garden. I have some extra rabbit fence (no, that's just what it's called, I don't have a problem with rabbits, only the dog). I cut 6' and 3' sections and stapled these to some 2 foot long stakes. We'll see if this keeps Ella out of the garden (I have a similar fence around my blue berry bushes and my planters. As I said, Ella will eat anything she can swallow). Being a Lab, she usually is too lazy to overcome such obstacles by jumping over them.

Finally, I planted by vegetable bushes. I hope to plant more in the future. This may seem like a lot just to save a few bucks, but with prices the way they are I'll take any saving's I can get.

America's Vision

I listened to the President’s State of the Union address last night and I came away feeling confused and saddened. It wasn’t because of the rampant partisan politics and the vicious personal attacks by both the far left and far right that we’ve had to endure over the last two years. It wasn’t watching as left-wing Democratic liberals (excuse me, the politically correct term is ‘progressives’) were forced to sit with right wing Republican ultra-conservatives. It was the impression that we as a country are lost and our leaders are nothing more than men and women ‘looking for a vision’ to quote a line from one of my favorite movies.

One of the fulcrums of this search for a vision is the idea of a ‘Green Economy’ and ‘Green jobs.’ It appears that our good President and the esteemed leadership of our country want us all to fall in line with this grand vision, retrain ourselves for the resulting explosion of economic growth that is promised and prepare the way for future generations to enjoy this new found vision. The problem is it’s a vision without direction or purpose. When President Kennedy proposed putting a man on the moon in the early 1960’s it was a clear and direct vision to spur technology, provide jobs and motivate a nation to achieve the potential of greatness it was capable of reaching. It touched that desire that resides in all humans to see what’s over the horizon. It excited the explorer in all of us. From what I’ve read it wasn’t that President Kennedy liked the idea of a space program, in fact like many liberal Democrat’s he really saw it as a waste of time and money. But, it was something concrete that people could get their hands and heads around and it answered a growing technological threat from the Soviet Union with the launch of Sputnik. The bottom line was that it was a brilliant strategic and political move that inspired a country and provided a way for the government of the United States through NASA to lead the nation toward a new vision of greatness. I’m afraid that President Obama’s vision just doesn’t ring with the same tones of inspiration and greatness as President Kennedy’s vision.

First, unlike the space program which provided very clear and direct goals; build rockets, spacecraft and a supporting industry to send men and women into space, the idea of a green economy is at best a nebulous idea born out of reaction to inconclusive and hotly debated global climate change studies, hype from a former vice president turned venture capitalist, a failed economy that resulted from unrestrained global corporate greed and a desire to be energy independent. It is a concept that in itself is actually a truly worthy endeavor. We as a nation should not be dependent on any other country for our energy needs and we should work toward preserving and protecting our limited natural resources. Unfortunately, not even President Obama seems to be able to clearly define what a green economy is and where it should be heading. Promoting a small business man from Oregon who converted his business to ‘green’ really didn’t tell us what that entailed or how many new jobs were created.

This brings me to my second concern. How is this concept of a green economy helping us create jobs? I am an engineer by education and training and I’ve worked in everything from aerospace to the medical industry as a result. President Obama touted how some fifty year old mother re-educated herself to become a bio-chemical engineer. My feeling is good for her. I myself recently earned a masters degree in Information Technology (oh my gosh – one of the components of the Presidents new vision for America!) I’m for anyone improving themselves at any age and redefining the direction of their life, but you have to do it for a reason. I can almost guarantee you that the person the President was referring to did it because there was potential for immediate work and not to pursue the President’s grand new vision for America’s future. He’s missed the point here again. Five green jobs here and a hundred there doesn’t make up for the ten’s of thousands of science, engineering and technical jobs that have been lost to overseas companies and as a result of this President’s change of vision for America. If you doubt this consider that NASA, America’s agency for leading us into space exploration laid off over ten thousand scientists, engineers and technical support staff in 2010 as a result of the end of the space shuttle program and the cancellation of the Ares program. How is adding to the unemployment lines helping our economy? Did the government have a plan for placing these highly trained people into their touted green job environment? The answer is simply no and if you think private industry is in a position to absorb more scientific and technical staff think again. I work at least for the moment for a major aerospace company and I can tell you with certainty that with unemployment holding steady at between 9% and 10% nationally and layoffs occurring on a regular basis my company is not in a hiring mode. It appears that once more the President is reacting instead of being proactive.

Finally, President Obama doesn’t seem to see the big picture set on the global stage and if he does, he thinks his concept of this new green age will be the answer. If you hadn’t noticed, because I am an engineer, I tend to look at issues with a bent toward technology. But there are also some realities that we as a nation simply can’t ignore. The space race of the 1960’s was a result of the very real threat of the Soviet Union being the dominant force in space. In this new millennium the problem is the same only the players have changed. Discount just for the moment the fact that in a few months the only way we will be able to send Americans into space is on a Russian built and launched Soyuz spacecraft. What about China and Japan. China is making no bones about the fact that they want to go to the moon first – again – and be the dominant power in space. What does that mean for America? Do we really want China to be up there alone? The big question then becomes; should we allow China uncontrolled access to space? We weren’t willing to take that chance with the old Soviet Union. Why are we willing to take that chance now? What if they decide to put purely ‘defensive’ weapons in space – shouldn’t we be in a position to deny them this capability?  Also, let’s consider for a moment the future benefits of exploring space. Because we live on a planet with finite resources, shouldn’t we be considering the vast resources of harvestable elements contained on other planets and in the asteroid belt? I know this sounds like a bunch of science fiction, but what was science fiction 40 years ago has become reality today and will become reality in the future.

I agree with President Obama that this nation is in desperate need of a vision for the future. We are a great nation of great people and we need to remember what makes us great – it’s now and always has been our capability to look beyond this moment beyond these current problems to the future. Building new roads, bullet trains and becoming energy independent is not the end-all. The development and maintenance of a strong and viable infrastructure is imperative to keep our nation strong, but it should not be our primary vision of the future but a support for a new vision. What we need are leaders with a true vision who can guide us to the future.