23andOMG....

I sat there looking at my phone in disbelief.

No way. Wow... No way.....

This cannot be happening.......

I guess I should start with a little background. I have had three fathers in my life.

That's two more than the standard, so let me start with the one with whom I share a name; Walter Joseph Lucas.

My father was 50 when I was born, so you could say he was late to the game when it came to having children. My sister Lisa is two years older that I am. I knew my father had been married twice before, but the few times he did talk about it were very brief. He would just say his previous wife did not want to have children and he did. It seemed reasonable enough.

Even into adulthood, I never pushed him to tell me more. He had a very complicated relationship with his own family. He was born in 1915 on a ranch near Lockeford Ca. His father died when he was 18 or 19 and he had to take over the responsibilities of running the family ranch. I'm sure he did all he could for his mom, but there was definitely some bad blood between he and his siblings. I only know the little he told me about his family, and I don't know their side of the story, so I cannot judge what really happened.

My father was two generations older than me. He rode a horse to school, and milked thirty cows by hand before and after school. His life was work, money and family, but mostly work. He could not get into the Army during WWII because he was deaf in one ear. He worked in the shipyards at Mare Island, building PT boats during the war years.

By the time I came into the world my father was a successful rancher, real estate broker and owned a land leveling business. He had an extraordinary work ethic and drive. I can best describe him as a combination between John Wayne and Donald Trump. Just imagine that for a moment.

Starting off on our ranch in Clements, our family seemed to be on the move most of my early years. We moved to a ranch on the John Day River near Mitchell Oregon when I was a toddler.

He tied me onto my first horse when I was two years old, and sent me plodding off down the dirt road to the bunkhouse where the cowboys lived. My mom said the snowfall that winter was the biggest in decades. You could ride a snowmobile over the corrals without touching a post. That was enough for her. Somehow, we ended up back in California, in Orland. That's the first house I can remember, but we were soon on the move again to the tiny town of Oak Run, north east of Redding.

I loved Oak Run. My father had wheeled and dealed his way into a big ranch there. It was several thousand acres of red dirt, lava rock and oak trees, but it also had a few hundred acres of good bottomland where we could raise hay.

The ranch at Oak Run was a giant playground for me. There was a lot of work, but my father never seemed to drive me like I'm sure his father drove him in his youth. Those were different times. That drive came out of sheer necessity.

I learned to operate the ranch trucks and tractors when I was old enough to reach the pedals. I fed cows, cut hay, and helped irrigate the fields. But only when I was asked or I wanted to. It was not forced labor to be sure, but there wasn't a lot of laying around the house either.

I was turned loose much of the time. In the summers, I would leave the house after breakfast and sometimes not come back until evening. We always had dogs on the ranch, lots of them. They were my constant companions since I didn't have any bothers. Lisa didn't see the enjoyment in damming up streams, throwing rocks, or chasing frogs down at the creek all day.

As I grew older, I was given more responsibility, and expected to do more. By twelve I was gathering cattle in the summer heat, driving Caterpillars, clearing brush or skidding logs. Most of these things were semi-dangerous for a twelve-year-old kid, but I survived.

My father had a way of teaching that could be summed up by the old Nike slogan: Just do it. He never took the time to patiently teach me how to do anything; he just put me in the seat and told me to do it. Drive this D-8 Caterpillar, clear this brush off these hills, I'll be back when you're finished. For a kid, it was equal parts excitement and terror, but that's just the way he was.

He would also let me skip school to go to the Shasta Livestock Auction in Cottonwood on Fridays. I would spend the day running around the sorting pens, while he was in Ellington Peek's office doing business. He would also let me go on business trips with him. I would sit quietly at a table full of businessmen and listen to million dollar deals be made. It was a unique experience for a young man. However, some of favorite times were in his old blue Jeep Cherokee where he and I would go 'check the cows'.

I loved my father, as most sons do. I loved him despite the fact that mine was very flawed, like all fathers are.

My father was an alcoholic. Ever since I can remember, my father drank, a lot. He was a maintenance drinker. He was never falling-down drunk, and he was never hung-over. He would always get up at 6:00 the next day ready to work. Back before computers and cell phones, business was done by telephone. After dinner, my father would start making his business calls. Every night, he sat at the kitchen table, talking on the phone and having several large 'hi-balls'.

We went through stretches where things would be fine for a time. Then, if the cattle prices or real estate market would go down, the stresses and pressures he put on himself would start to boil over. It was very volatile around our house, but then again, my father seemed to live in a constant state of chaos.

In the late 70's my father's ranching business started to take off. I remember the bankers from Bank of California sitting at our dinner table asking my father how large of a credit line he wanted. They were just giving money away, and they were taking my father's word he had the cattle to cover that amount of credit. All with a wink and nod. (Think of the housing bubble in 2008)

He bought a new ranch in Lakeview Oregon. He bought new pickups, horse trailers, semi-trucks, hired more cowboys and a mechanic. We even built a pool and a new addition to the house. It was a good time for our family. Well, until it all came crashing down a few years later.

He was always in conflict with the neighboring ranches, including one actual range war complete with sheriff's deputies, a helicopter and me standing in front of a gate with a lever action rifle to make sure the neighbors didn't push their cattle out of that gate onto the road.

My father made and lost several fortunes in his life. He never seemed to find a balance he could reach. He always wanted more; he always wanted to move forward, never content with where he was. My father was a complicated man.

He loved us kids, but he couldn't stop drinking. He had my life planned out and expected me to take over his 'empire' when the time came. But he spent almost no time teaching me how to do it. He was hard working, but had a soft heart. He could also bend a rule, or outright break it if stood between him and his business success. He never talked about his own feelings, and rarely how he felt about you, unless he has been drinking. Even then it was 50-50 propositions. You were either the best kid in world, or a huge disappointment.

Much like I described him as a combination of John Wayne and Donald Trump, many people loved my father and thought he was a great guy. Others thought he was a son of bitch. I think, in the end, they were both right.

After another lost fortune, our family ended up here in Yolo County. He bought a house with 20 acres after the bank took back the ranch in Oak Run, and he went to work leasing ranches and running steers and heifers for other ranchers.

He stayed in the real estate business, and never letting well enough alone, he took my mom and my sister's interest in cutting hair and turned that into a business. He opened a beauty salon in Vacaville for my mom and sister to run while he had his real estate office next door.

I was in college and discovering the world outside of ranching, hay bales, and cattle. In other words, I was have a great time.

It wasn't until I met my future wife that my interest turned back to the ranch. She loved it out there. Being a city girl, she couldn't understand why I didn't want to ride horses if I had the opportunity. To me horses meant work, and 14-hour days gathering cattle in the brush from sunup till sundown. Why would you want to ride them for fun?

We both were going to school at American River College, but I was still a year from getting my associates degree, so when my wife transferred to UC Davis, I went to work for my father running cattle. We lived on a ranch my father leased in Dunningan. I think I made $600 a month plus the nine hundred square foot house we lived in. Those were good times.

However, like all things cyclical, the good times are always followed by tough times, and that came in 1991. My father was again overextending, and planning as if the good times would always be good. He hated paying taxes, so for every dollar he made in the cattle business or real estate business, he leased a new ranch, or built new corrals or helped my wife and I buy a place of our own. Our house was just about complete, and with my father's help, we had just made our first annual balloon payment on the new place.

One day he was in Sacramento at a deposition, not surprisingly, he was being sued by one of our neighbors for some semi-shady way he sold their ranch, when he felt sick. He came home and stayed there for a while before my mother convinced him he had to go to the hospital.

I was irrigating the alfalfa at my place when I got the word he was headed to the hospital. He sat in the ER at Woodland Hospital for three or four hours while the doctors tried to figure out what was wrong with him. By the time a new doctor came on and decided he was bleeding internally, it was too late. He had an aneurysm of his aorta. They air lifted him to UC Davis Med Center. They performed surgery to repair the tear in the aorta, but he had lost too much blood and died the next day.

Not that there is ever a good time to lose a parent, but it could not have come at a worse time for our family. The cattle market was heading into a decline along with the real estate market. Loosing not only my father, but also my employer and the person who had engineered my life, was a huge hit. Even though I had my real estate salesman's license and was working on my father's ranch, I had let him make almost all my decisions for me. He was running the show, and now he was gone.

I was very immature for someone in my position. At twenty-five, I should have been ready for this day, but I wasn't. Not by a long shot. I went through the motions of gathering the cattle, and trying to help my mom figure out if we should keep the leases on the ranches. In the end, with all my father's bills and past due taxes, we had to sell everything, my house included, and start over.

At the time, all you see are the problems, all you feel is the pain, all you want is to have things put back the way they were. That isn't going to happen. You have to move, you have to go forward, you have to grow.

15 years later, I was working in the technology field, something I really liked, we had two children, and I was making a good living. My mom and sister were living in North Idaho and my mom had a met a man.

This is where I met my second father, Paul.

Paul is a so much different from Walt Sr.

He is soft spoken and kind. He's a patient, caring man, and he is very happy with the life he has. He is content, or at least at peace with his place in the world. Paul is a contractor, although he's retired now. He's a hard worker, but doesn't chase the almighty dollar at all costs. He likes to read, and loves working on his classic cars. He is interested in the world around him. He is self-aware in a way my father never was.

I could not have picked a better person for my mother to marry. He loves her dearly, and she has found someone to love without having to deal with the whirlwind of chaos and volatility.

Living sixteen hours away, I don't get to see them as often as I would like, but I have never worried a moment about my mother since Paul entered her life. He is wonderful, and I owe him more than I can say. He is the perfect second father.

So wait, I thought you said this was a story about three fathers? Yes, I'm getting to that.

Shortly after my father passed away, my mother told Lisa and I that dad had two sons with his first wife, long ago. He had told her not to tell us kids, but now that he was gone, she thought the time was right. She didn't have any names, just the little my father had told her.

This was fascinating to me and it started me on a long journey to find my lost relatives. Ancestry was a new service, and I signed up looking to see if I could find my lost half brothers. I had no luck. I tried to find his first wife, but without her maiden name, you cannot find birth records and such with the counties involved.

I think I solved the mystery a few years back when I found a census record of my father living in Stockton with his first wife Zelda, her mother, and two small children with different last names. So, I think those kids were my father's stepsons, and would be no relation to me. A bit anticlimactic, but the mystery was solved.

Enter the new DNA registry 23andMe.

I had always heard from my father that he was mostly Irish with some French from my grandmother. My mom is full Portuguese, half from the Azores and the other half from Portugal by way of Brazil.

I wanted to see how true that was and signed up. A week or so later a package arrived. I followed the instructions and spit into the little tube, sealed it up and mailed it back. They said it would take about 6 weeks to get the results.

I didn't think I would find too many surprises, but being a huge history buff, I thought it would be cool to be able trace my heritage. I received an email saying my results were in and I logged on and looked at my DNA make up. Nothing too startling. I was 28% British/Irish, 25% Broadly Northwest European, and 35% Iberian, (Spain/Portugal) with the rest a mash up of mostly European make up.

This tracked almost exactly the way I thought it would. Oh well.

I had traced my father's family back to Prince Charles County Maryland in 1731 through Ancestry, and I thought there may have been an American melting pot, genetic wildcard thrown in there somewhere. But it turned out I'm just a plain old American white guy.

I had told my mom about the 23andMe findings and she wanted to know why I was so interested in it? I said I found it fascinating to know for sure where you come from. Knowing what part of the world you came from, tracing your history and such.

I thought that was the end of the story.

A few days later I received an email from 23andMe asking if I wanted to search for my DNA relatives. Sure, why not. I clicked the link.....Oh boy....

I looked at the page for a minute and reread it a few times just to make sure.

I have two half-sisters.

No way. No. Way.

I clicked on their names and looked at their profiles.

No way.

How could this be? They must belong to dad, but when were they born? I found a link to send them a message. What do you say? Hi, I'm your long lost half brother, where did you come from?

I sent each one a message. I had so many questions. I asked if they knew my father, and did they know about my sister and I?

Pam was the first to respond:

 ”.... Tracy and I now know how we are half sisters through information told to us by our mothers when we were young adults. I'd be happy to connect if you want to solve this mystery for yourself. It is just because our parents really wanted us to be born, and all they did to arrange for our arrivals. I was born in 1961. Tracy in 1967. It will benefit us all to know the health and genetic data. So glad to find you. :)"

Wait? What?

I was a little slow on the uptake here just because it seemed so strange. With Pam being born in 61, that was before my mom and dad were married, so no foul there, but Tracy was born in 67, two years after me. Why would our all our parents really want us to be born? I could see my dad having a bit of fun, but I'm pretty sure my mom would not have been okay with my father out populating the planet.

Like I said, it was staring me in the face, but I hadn't put it all together.

I sent both a message saying it looked like my father was a bit of a scoundrel. I think Pam and Tracy had a correspondence between each other and decided to have Pam spill the beans:

"Well, not a scoundrel actually. I don't want to shock you, but since you are over 50, I think you can handle it. When I was 14, I found out that my father (my legal father) was not my biological father. Before my parents married, he had a vasectomy. It couldn't be reversed. My parents really wanted me, so they went to a specialist in San Francisco who arranged for a sperm donor. All they knew was he was a medical student who was healthy and had a great health history and already had a family and children. I was never to have known. Back then, the secrecy was thought best for the child being conceived. At 14 when I chose to sever my ties to my father, my mother told me the truth of my paternal creation. I didn't know about any of you, but always thought that this medical student may have made several donations. Lol. I met Tracy last year through her daughter making a connection to me. We were both stunned. Tracy found out from her mom about the medical student on her 22nd birthday. She is still very close to her legal father, so she is cautious about making it known because she doesn't want him to feel bad. So was your legal father a medical student? Tracy and I don't know if you were from donation like us or if our parent’s donor was both your legal and genetic dad. Sorry for the shock if you didn't know." 

Wow..... No way.

I was shocked.

So the only man I ever knew as my father was not my biological father.

No flippin' way.

As I sat there staring at my phone, I felt a rush of different feelings.

This changes everything.

Then again, it changes nothing.

My father will always be my father. He raised me, for better or worse. It was surreal to me that a man from my father's generation would use a donor to have children. He was nothing if not a man's man. With all his success, all that money, there must have been something missing. There must have been a huge hole in his life he needed to fill with children. It made me wonder about those two stepsons he had with his first wife, and how it must have hurt to lose them when they were divorced.

My head was swimming, but it was late and I went to bed with lots of different thoughts rattling around. What was I going to say to my mom? Should I even bring this up? I had to. It was just too much to let go. Besides, my mom did nothing wrong. She did something extraordinary to bring me into this world. The doctors had instructed her not to tell me about my biological father. She kept the secret for over 50 years. She did it out of love, and that is a great reason.

The next day I called my mom in the morning. We spoke for a while and then I told her the story that Pam told me. The story of Children's Hospital in San Francisco, and the donor, and the instruction not to tell us kids. When I finished, I asked, "So, do you have anything you want to tell me?" There was a bit of a pause, "Well, I would say that my story is the same story you just told me."

We talked about dad and her not being able to have children, and the special clinic at Children's hospital was the cutting edge for the 1960s. It was very expensive, but it was their only hope of having children. My sister was conceived the same way. Mom said she never really thought about it about it after a few years, and didn’t think it was important to tell us after dad died. We were going through enough turmoil at the time.

The fact that I signed up for the DNA tests out of pure curiosity was something they couldn't have even imagined back in the 1960s. If I had not spit in that little tube, I would have never known about my biological father.

So, the real question is: Now what?

What does it change? Like I said before; it changes everything and it changes nothing.

Walt Sr. will always be my father. He raised me, he showed what it was to be a man, to work hard, and he showed me you can do more than you think is possible. I will always love that man.

So what about my biological father? Do I want to know more about him? Yeah, I guess so. I would like to see a picture of him, and see if I look anything like him. I would like to know something about his personality, his temperament. Those kinds of things.

I'm sure he never imagined DNA testing, and that three strangers would someday find each other through an ounce of saliva. I wonder if he would want to know how we turned out?

So many questions.

In the end, I am glad I know. I am also glad my mother and father went to that specialist in San Francisco. I am here.

I have a wonderful family, a wonderful life, and memories to last me a few lifetimes. I am hoping to get together one day with my half sisters; that would be cool. Hey, 23andMe is a new company, not many people have signed up, there may be more of us half siblings out there. I always wanted a brother. (Sorry Lisa, love ya)

A Stoics commencement speech

Thank you Principal _______ for that kind introduction, and for the opportunity to speak to this graduating class of 2018.

Before you walk across this stage and try not to screw up the handshake-diploma hand off, I would like to impart a few ideas I think are worth understanding.

Number one: The world does not care about you.
It wants to squeeze every ounce of production, or consumption, out of you.

If you are working for it, or dating it, the world wants everything you have. Maximum effort is what is expected of you. In return, the word will give just enough to keep you from leaving.

The other side of that equation is the world wants you to consume as much stuff as you can. Through an exchange of dollars or through your time and attention. It wants you to want. If the world can convince you to want it enough, it will own you.

Number two: Life is suffering tainted by malevolence.
If you are not suffering right now, wait a while, you soon will be. Even if you are not, chances are someone in your immediate circle of friends or family is suffering. It is as inevitable as the turning of the earth.

People have an immense capacity for evil, and that includes you. You know what hurts you, therefore you know just how to hurt other people. You will do precisely that, unless you learn to control it.

Number three: Happiness is a fool's errand.
Waiting around for something or someone to make you happy is letting the world control your emotional well-being. Sovereignty in your own metal state is critical. Do not sub-contract your emotional well-being to anyone or anything.

Number four: You are dying.
Right now, at this very instant, you are dying. You cannot get back yesterday; it is gone. You cannot reach into tomorrow, it may never get here. You have right now, and that is all you have. Do something with it. Which takes us to number five.

Number five: Find some damn meaning in your life.
Meaning will be the antidote to the suffering and malevolence. If your life has meaning, if you are doing even the smallest things to make you a better human being, you will be making the world a slightly better place.

So that's about it.

Many of you think you are going to 'change the world'. I'm sure you will hear many times tonight from other speakers, valedictorians and such. Let me assure you, you will not.

If you do change the world, you may just make it worse. The world is infinitely complex.  Our world is filled with physical matter we barely understand, with countless interconnected systems we do not understand, and inhabited by billions of people we can't possibly understand. All working together and opposing each other at the same time. Like I said, infinitely complex. You are not smart enough to fix everything wrong with this world, this continent, this nation, this state, county, city or neighborhood.

Accept that most of you will do nothing 'special' with your lives. You will not cure cancer, end oppression, or invent a device to turn something useless into something useful. With one caveat. You could turn yourself into something useful.

You want to do something useful with your life? Here you go:

Find some small part of yourself that needs fixing and make the decision to fix it. Then find something a little bigger to fix, then fix that. Repeat this process until you die. If you run out of problems with yourself, start on your family, if you fix all those before you die, try working on your neighborhood.

If we all did this, we wouldn't need to change the world. The world would be working just fine.

(Many of these ideas I stole from Jordan B Peterson lectures and his book 12 rules for life)

I can't tell you exactly why, but I know there is a change happening.

Some on the left may look at 2018 as the time everything changed.

This is the wonderful historian, Shelby Foote talking about southerners being able to think back to their high water mark during the Civil War. They had not suffered many defeats leading up to that third day of battle in the rolling hills of Pennsylvania. They had out-fought, out-generaled, and plain outfoxed the Union army for three years. However, it was all about to come crashing down around their heads.

Lee had come so close to victory on that first day, and again came within a whisker of turning the Union flank on the second day. He thought an all-out assault on the middle of Meade's line would break the Union forces and send them into retreat back towards Washington.

Lee was wrong, and in his heart, I think he knew it. Longstreet, Lee's second in command was dumbfounded by the decision to attack. He knew all they had to do was to disengage and move to a position between the Union army and Washington DC, on ground of their choosing, where they would have all the advantages. Lincoln would force Meade to attack no matter how much the geography and fortifications favored the confederates. But as Longstreet would later say, Lee had his blood up, and said "The enemy is there and I intend to strike him." Lee over ruled Longstreet.

Maybe the only person who didn't understand the folly of what was about to happen was Confederate General George Edward Pickett. He had always been the reserve force, kept behind to plug holes and to cover any surprises that might come Lee's way. He was eager to finally get out front and lead a glorious charge that would lead to a critical victory.

I went with my son on his fifth grade school trip to the East Coast. One of the highlights for me was Gettysburg. I stood on the Emmitsburg Road and looked across that open, rising grade that ran about 3/4 of a mile from the woods to the stone wall on Cemetery Hill where Hancock's men waited to repulse the charge.

If I were in those woods, rolling a cigarette and putting a fresh cap on the nipple of my Enfield musket, looking over that field, I'm not sure I could have screwed up the nerve to get in line and march up that ridge. The were exposed to artillery fire the entire long, uphill slope only to face the entire Second Corp of the Army of the Potomac behind a stone wall. Pickett's men must have known they were headed into a meat grinder, but they went anyway.

Anyway, that line from Faulkner's novel kind of reminds me of what I think is happening right now in America.

When emotion over rides logic, the results are usually not pretty. On the far left, the social justice warriors and those who participate in what has been rightly named the Oppression Olympics, have been winning battles on college campuses and town hall meeting by screaming and shouting down anyone who dare oppose them.

Two generations of progressives have been taught to let their emotions and feelings drive their actions. What's happening now is simply the result of identity politics when you play it out long enough. The left are eating their own and they are being defeated by facts they cannot get past by screaming names at their opponents.

I'm not saying that conservatives are winning over converts as much as I'm seeing folks on the left getting bullied out of their own political beliefs. Not because they are suddenly moving to the right, but because they are not able to keep up with postmodern ideology of "intersectionality".

It does not matter if you marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr in Selma, if you picked grapes with Caesar Chavez, or wrote a letter of support to Caitlyn Jenner; if you do not fully support this hour's latest social justice movement, you are not on the "right side of history".

If you mistakenly call someone by something other than their newest preferred gender pronoun, or you don't want to burn police stations to the ground, or you don't accept homeless deficating on the sidewalk in front of you doorway or business, you're a terrible person, rotten to the core. No room to apologize, no room for debate, no time for a reasoned discussion of the issues, you're a racist, a bigot, and probably a Nazi too.

I have seen so many people who were died in the wool lefties start to rethink their views after being attacked for not toeing the line in the crazy world of intersectionality.

If you disagree with any one thing, you're immediately labeled alt-right. Everyone who does not believe what the progressives believe is now a Nazi.

Ben Shapiro, who is a staunch conservative, and a practicing Orthodox Jew has been called a Nazi and a member of the alt-right even though he was named the number one target of the alt-right in 2016. You know you've jumped the shark when you're calling a practicing Jew a Nazi.

Dave Rubin is a case in point. He is a married, gay man. He's pro-choice, pro-legalization of drugs, he even had a show on The Young Turks network. He's pretty much the poster child for everything the left believes in. But he got fed up with the progressive's outrage at anything and everything that offended them. Their attacks on free speech.

He found out if you come to the defense of one of your friends who questions the progressive line, the left will attack you. He found if you question just one of their ideas, they will immediately call you a bigot and, even humorously, a homophobe. When you're calling a married gay man a homophobe, well, you know the rest.


Enter Kanye West. Oh boy. The guy who once stood up on live TV after Hurricane Katrina and said George Bush hates black people. Yeah, that guy. He shook up the world of rap/Hollywood/celebrity/popular culture with one tweet.

 

Candace Owens is a black woman who says it's not only healthy, but necessary for the black community to think for themselves. She warns the black community not buy in to the group-think that has kept them a monolithic voting block for the democratic party. She feels they are being exploited by the democrats and are in a worse position after decades of blind allegiance. 

Kanye's 28 million Twitter followers had a WTF moment when they saw that tweet. Well, that is after they Googled who Candace was. 

The backlash was swift and vicious. There is simply no room on the progressive left to agree with Candace Owens on anything. She is an enemy, and a dangerous one at that. A young, articulate black woman who will not be silenced by her critics. 

Then Kanye did something unforgivable. 

The progressive left almost had a stroke. Supporting a conservative/libertarian woman is one thing, supporting the Devil incarnate is something else. Heck, one rapper actually called for the Crips street gang to murder Kanye.

I point out these things because I think the progressive left reached, then passed, the tipping point years ago, it's just taken this long to see the ship staring to sink.

The sexual assault cases that rocked Hollywood has played a part too. The ultra progressives who have been telling the world about the republican's war on women have also been hiding the worst kept secret in Hollywood: Some of the biggest movers, shakers and democratic fundraisers on the left have been using that power to sexually assault women for decades.

Everyone knew, they just didn't want to speak up about these powerful monsters because it might cost them advancement, cash or their jobs. It's just easier to point your anger at conservatives while you are actually being abused by those who say they are the champions of progressive values.

Like I said. I think the price you pay for allowing extremism to run your party is you lose many of your friends along the way. Many mainstream democrats who think the Antifa, Black Lives Matter, and many of the social justice movements that now define their party are way too extreme for them to support.   

Many democrats are saying, to quote Jordan B. Peterson, wait just a minute Bucko. Not only has my party tolerated this craziness, they now demand that I support it unconditionally or I'm some kind of bigot or Nazi? No thanks.

I can already here the lefties response. What about the real Nazis? What about Charlottesville? Okay, lets talk about that. Yes, there are some real racists on the right who want to play this game of identity politics. Are they a threat to our society or our nation? No. They have no power. They have no numbers. Oh, and when they break the law, they are being thrown in prison.

In a nation of 340 million people you got a hundred or so people to carry Tiki Torches from Home Depot down the street at night chanting the Jews will not take our place. Very scary indeed. Remember that whole thing started as a demonstration about confederate statues. Many of the people there who opposed tearing down the statues were all lumped in with the Tiki-Nazis.

I think that's why Trump said there were 'good people' on both sides at Charlottesville. He wanted to keep the statues up (I don't by the way) and had that thought in his mind. He just said something off the cuff he had been thinking for the past few days without understanding what was going on with the Tiki-Nazis. Either that or he sides with Nazis who want to kill his son in law, who is Jewish, his own daughter who has converted, and his grandchildren who are being raised Jewish.

So either Trump just spoke without thinking, (I know, shocking right?) or he secretly hates his own family and wants them replaced by people more racially pure?

Back to the progressives on the far left.

I truly think the Marxist college professor class, the young socialist and the Hollywood elite will look back at the 2016-2017 years as their high water mark. The will look back to a time when all you had to is call someone a racist or a bigot and they would shut up and start to back-track and apologize. Even if they knew they were right.

When you call everyone a racist, a bigot, a homophobe and a Nazi, after a while people think, hey I know that person, they aren't any of those things. They start to question what else are these extremists lying about? They wonder what they will be called if they stand up for their friends or the values that once were bedrock planks in their party's platform?

I think we are at a point where many mainstream democrats are ready call B.S. They are ready to tell these people, if the democratic party cannot take back control from those who are playing the identity politics game, I'm out.

Many already have. If you are a Classical Liberal, someone who supports liberty over control, come find some new friends in the libertarian/conservative movement.

We don't care who you marry, what you smoke, or if you drive an electric car with a 'Vegans Forever' bumper sticker. If you are for a slightly smaller, accountable government, come on over. If you are for free speech, the open exchange of ideas, even and especially ones you disagree with, come on in. The water is fine.

Patreon. How to drive the money from content down to the creators.

It's an age old problem. If you are creative, and that's what motivates you, how do you do what you love and still pay the bills?

Like Jack Conte, the creator of Patreon says, patronage has been around for centuries. Mozart, Shakespeare, Leonardo da Vinci, they were all supported by patrons who funded their art.

In these days of multi media, social media, subscription media, and just more and more outlets delivering content, it's hard to discover new talent through the avalanche of media. As a new artist, musician, writer, or craftsman, it's hard to gain traction and gather a following.

Even if you do make a name for yourself, and people like your work, it's hard to make a living when most platforms are free. Pretty much everyone under thirty has been raised on free music, podcasts, and even pirated PDFs of books.

What about journalists? Newspapers are closing or cutting staff every day as they struggle to pay for paper, ink, rent and salaries. If you're a really hard working, fair journalists, and your newspaper is going under, or you're tired of writing more and more pieces for the same or less money, what do you do? Could a patronage model save even journalism? Maybe.

So how does it Patreon work?

Pretty simple really. You find bands, artists, writers, or video makers and pledge them a certain amount per month. As little as a dollar a month makes you a Patron. Some of the artists allow different monthly pledge levels to unlock more access or special offers. You can change or stop your pledges any time you want. There's no long term commitment. 

You help support what you think has value, what you think has worth. In a world where Nicki Minaj sold over ten million albums last year, and thousands of talented artists went back to work at Footlocker and FedEx because they ran out of gas money, it seems we could do a bit better with a new model.

What if you found a killer new band that played at a club and you wanted to support them. If they have a Patreon page, you can pledge them $1 a month. By itself, it's nothing. But if they got ten people to pledge a dollar a month at every show they played, and maybe a few folks who pledged five or ten dollars a month, that would add up fast. If you're not very good, or you don't connect with people, this will not work. If you're passionate about what you produce, and you connect with folks, you could have a steady stream of money coming in every month.

If that band or that writer, or podcaster hasn't put out content in a while, you may drop them. Maybe you found someone you like better. It's the free market at its purest form.

What about a writer? Do you write daily/weekly/monthly pieces? Easy enough to get people to pledge per piece or just monthly. What if you are writing a novel? How could that work? Maybe post your rough outline or your first chapter and ask for support to help while you complete your work. Give them updates and let them know how it's going.

I know I eat out too often. It's easy for me to blow $20 on coffee, lunch and snack in a day. What if I found four or five cool people who were chasing their dreams and I supported them? How cool would it be if a couple of your friends did too?

What if we could move the money from marketers and content platforms down to the creators? What if we could change the game, and make more dreams come true, one dollar at a time?

Tribe of Mentors.

It's been a while since my last post. Sorry, life gets aways from you at times, like a three year old at the zoo.

Between our son's wedding, and our daughter's newly found interest in boys, Dawn and I have been doing a lot of sitting home at night watching Netflix series and generally being indentured servants to The Littles, our three small dogs.

We have been going to the movies more often and taken some afternoon drives on the weekend. Yes, we are experiencing the empty nest that I've heard so much about. The bright side is our grocery bill has gone down.

I've also been reading more. I used to read three books a month as my overflowing bookshelves can attest. I read almost exclusively non-fiction books of historical, political or spiritual nature. A lot of my reading time is being taken over with podcasts. I listen to them on the drive to work and on my walks at lunchtime. One of the books I am currently reading came from a podcast where I heard Tim Ferriss talking about his book Tribe of Mentors. It seemed like a great read. To quote Tim's website description:

A compilation of tools, tactics, and habits from 130+ of the world’s top performers. From iconic entrepreneurs to elite athletes, from artists to billionaire investors, their short profiles can help you answer life’s most challenging questions, achieve extraordinary results, and transform your life.

I don't know about the transforming your life part, I think if you want to sell books that's just something you have to say these days, but it is very interesting. So to give you a inside peek, here are the 11 questions Tim asked all those successful people.

1. What is the book or books you’ve given the most as a gift, and why? Or what are one to three books that have greatly influenced your life?

2. What purchase of $100 or less has most positively impacted your life in the last six months( or in recent memory)? My readers love specifics like brand and model, where you found it, etc.

3. How has a failure or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Do you have a “favorite failure” of yours?

4. If you could have a gigantic billboard anywhere with anything on it- metaphorically speaking, getting a message out to millions or billions- what would it say and why? It could a few words or a paragraph.

5. What is one of the best or most worthwhile investments you’ve ever made?

6. What is an unusual habit or an absurd thing that you love?

7. In the last five years, what new belief, behavior, or habit has most improved your life?

8. What advice would you give to a smart, driven college student about to enter the “real world”? What advice should they ignore?

9. What are bad recommendations you hear in the profession or area of expertise?

10. In the last five years, what have you become better at saying no to? What new realizations and/or approaches helped? Any other tips?

11. When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, or have you lost your focus temporarily what do you do? What questions do you ask yourself?

Pretty cool. So what are yours answers?

Day of days

Today, my son is getting married.

That is a strange sentence to write. He is our oldest, and while he's 24, I still think he's very young to be getting married. To which he reminds me that's two years older than I was when Dawn and I were married.

His bride Ana is a wonderful young lady. Kind, caring, and lovely both inside and out. They are a great match for each other. She is a detailed, orderly person and keeps Steven on track. Steven is rock solid for her and is always there to support her.  They are great together.

It's a strange day for me as I do not have job to do. Out here in our area, I'm usually the one officiating the wedding. Not today. Today I get to take it all in. They have decided to have their pastor Brandon officiate the wedding, and I'm all in favor of that. Ana has guided Steven back to a stronger connection with his faith, along with her family, the entire worship team, and staff at The Rock of Roseville. This is a very good thing.

I see many families dragging their kids to church. It usually doesn't turn out well in the long run. It's great when they are young, but when they approach high school, it can become counter productive. If you are forcing them to church on Sundays, all they are looking for are the flaws in the people there, and all they are listening to is their internal dialogue about hypocrisy and judgement.

Their faith has to be their own. You cannot transplant your faith into their souls, as much as we would like to. They need to connect with God in a way that's meaningful to them. It may be through another church, it may even be a break from church and time of self reflection.

I am so grateful to Ana and the entire Haines family for helping Steven reconnect with Jesus. It's been a tremendous blessing.

I'm still trying to digest the fact that my boy is moving out and moving on. It's going to take some getting used to.

Being my only son, we share a pretty close relationship. We share the same love of music, movies, books and a strange sense of humor. We are both introverts, and need time to think things over.

I may need longer than usual to come to terms with this new chapter in our lives.

Not sure what I will say today when I get the chance this evening. It's hard to put into words how proud I am of the man he has become. About how I am so confident he will be a great husband for Ana. How much I love him.

I'm going to miss our breakfasts together. I'm going to miss seeing him around the house. I'm going to miss him asking me questions. I'm just going to miss him period.

I am such a proud father of the groom today.

Letter to Abbie

(A surprise letter I was supposed to write to my daughter for her senior year class trip to the redwoods)

Dear Abigail,
Is there anything worse for you than to read a personal letter in front of a group of people? Well, just think, only 10 more months and you will not have to see these people again, unless it’s on a voluntary basis.

There were probably quite a few heartwarming letters read tonight, I’m sure this one will not be as good, but I’m going to write it anyway.

In every graduation, commencement, wedding, or even funeral, we often hear how wonderful the person in question is or was. When it comes to family, our biases seem to run deep. Our kid is the cutest, smartest, most wonderful kid in the world. All families say that, and most mean it, but it can’t be true. Where do all the average, and less than average people come from if everyone is so amazing?

I write this letter in all honesty. Without exaggeration, or embellishment. You are truly amazing. You are.

You are intelligent.
Intelligent in a way that may not show up on a test or in an easily measured metric. You have real world experience. You have been exposed to the adult world for some time now. You work in it, you are surrounded by it. You know what is expected of you in this grown up world. You know the value of hard work. Not just the monetary value of work, but the satisfaction of seeing a job through to completion and understanding the consequences if it does not get done right. This will give you a leg up when you get out on your own.

You are kind.
I don’t think I’ve ever had to reprimand you for being mean to someone. I understand that you can be a pain in the butt for some of your teachers, but deep down inside you don’t like mean people and would like everyone to get along. You can hold a grudge, and that is something you will get better with as you get older. You will realize that in the big scheme of your life, the little, petty, crap you will come across can simply be ignored and forgotten.

You are beautiful.
Not just in the way God made you, but as a complete human being. Unless you are being Crabby Abbie, then you’re not so cute. There are people who spend way too much time, money and effort trying to make themselves look a certain way; you don’t have to. You beauty is natural. Your smile and your personality brighten a room when you walk in. You should smile more often.

You are very focused.
That is a good thing, but it can have certain drawbacks. Never let your ‘To Do List’ overwhelm your capacity to stop and enjoy the little things. A sunrise, or a sunset. Quiet time alone with God. A five minute conversation with a friend. The roar of the ocean. Stop and take it in. This life goes by fast, don’t miss the good stuff.

You have everything you need to succeed.
There are many ways to measure success. If you watch too much TV or stay glued to your phone, it's easy to have society define success for you. Nice house, cool car, a loving family with 2.3 kids. If that's what you want, great. If not, great. Define your own success. What is important to you? Do that. You know how to work hard, you are honest, and you are kind. Those three things will bring you success in any endeavor. If you want to get a Master's degree in business or if you want to live on the road as horse trainer, or any number of things you have never even thought of yet, you can do it.

Don't worry about what you want to do with your life; you're young. Do lots of things. If you want to try something, try it. Go full tilt at it for two years with all your heart. If it doesn't work out the way you wanted, you will still be smart, kind, beautiful, focused and in your early twenties. Then try something else for two years. If you don't like where that road is taking you, find another road. If it doesn't work out, well, you know the rest....

You are a remarkable young woman. Know that.  Know it down to your toes. I am incredibly proud of you and I hope you have the best senior year you can imagine.

I love you, Dad.