A Door to the Soul

Have you ever heard the saying "The eyes are the window to the soul" If this is true then music is the doorway to the soul. While the eyes may allow you to glimpse what lies in a persons soul, music is a direct conduit to the interior.

At work I have been listening to a lot of Pandora during the day. I have slowly been refining my list and feel like it has taken me to a special spot. While listening to the music I find myself filled with hopes, dreams, desires, and reflection. For example take this line:

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...

-John Lennon 1971

Still a poignant reminder that the world is full of violence and war all in the name of countries whom may or may not represent the people that live within their border, which themselves are only imaginary lines on a map. Do you really think ithe people of Lhasa really wanted to be part of the People's Republic?

Another line that I love:

I gave up coffee and cigarettes
I hate to say it hasn’t helped me yet
I thought my problems would just dissipate
And all my pain would be in yesterday

- Michelle Featherstone

It reminds me that you can destroy the outward signs of the things that are affecting your life, but unless you address the underlying problem then the pain will still be there. And finally the last line for today

In Catholic school as vicious as Roman rule
I got my knuckles bruised by a lady in black
And I held my tongue as she told me
"Son fear is the heart of love"
So I never went back

-Death Cab for Cutie

I think about this line a lot and how it relates to parenting. Some people think that you can only be an authority figure to your children and some think that you should only be their friend. Now I don't claim to be an expert but I think that it has to be a blend of both worlds. If to much to the authority side then you have kids who lie and sneak, to much to the friends side and you have unruly hellions battling the prospect of teen pregnancy. My thought are to let you children know that you will be there best friend but they have to abide by the rules laid out. I think respect on both sides equals a relationship that is beneficial for all.

So find yourself a hope, a dream, or a reflection. Its waiting for you in a song.

A stirring confession....

An American Hero died yesterday (obviously I started this one about a month ago). Senator Ted Kennedy was first elected in 1962 and has served as a senator since that time. While most people who read this probably think of him as the devil, his service to his country in indeniable and should be remembered.

That brings me to a confession, one that has been met with great disdain by many, and is openly mocked by others. I voted for Barak Obama.

Since this event I have heard it all. You would think that I might of voted for a fellow named Adolf or Joseph. But here is the rub...I am not a democrat, at least I don't think I am. I don't believe in strict business regulation, am not necessarily pro-choice, and fall somewhere on the right side of the gun debate. I also don't necessarily consider myself a republican. More of a middle of the road type of guy.

So how did America get to the point that we only have a choice between two parties for president? Here's the thing, according to wikipedia (an irefutable sourch of fact) the founding fathers didn't even like political parties. It further goes on to describe the structure of political parties and how you join one just by saying that you did.

So if it's so easy to create a political party, I am going to create one right now --> The American Party. So the rules to be a part of this party are simple: 1) be educated about the issues 2) Vote in your local, state, and federal elections. 3) Love America and genuinely want whats best for it. 4) Always try to be a good person.

That's all the rules, pretty simple hu. I think my mom would call that common sense (apparently most people think I got a little short changed in the common sense bank). So the next time you enter a political debate and someone asks whether you are a conservative, liberal, Republican, or Democrat you can look them in the eye and say that you are none of those. You are a member of the American Party and am free to make educated choices on a variety of issues.

Achievment

It has been a while since I have posted, to be honest I don't know how people update their blogs so often. I have been meaning to write this post for weeks, but just have never found the time.

A few months ago (man that went fast) somebody I know got to attend their eighth grade graduation, congrats to that person I am very happy for you. The funny thing is that their grades sucked and to top it all off they missed the last month and a half of school. Now maybe I am a hardliner but what kind of achievement is graduating eight grade? I seem to remember that eighth grade was easy and required no effort.

I think we are becoming a society that rewards people for achieving nothing, as a result people are terrified and distraught when something remotely close to failure occurs. We now give out children trophies for participation or just signing up. Now if little Tommy doesn't get to play quarterback you have Tommy Sr. yelling at the coach and saying his soon deserves to play quarterback, all I want to know is why?

Why do we instill a sense of entitlement into our children? I am a firm believer in telling my boys that they can be whatever they want to be, but they will have to put in hard work to get there. Just because they want to do something, doesn't mean that they are entitled to it. They have to work hard and earn their dreams.

Hello Sports Fans

Wow, I never realized that once I started my own blog it would entail so much work. It takes a lot of effort to constantly be posting new posts, updating the pictures, and all the other crap that makes a blog interesting to read.

We just spent a great weekend up at the cabin meeting (or re-meeting some) her brothers from her dad's side. The only damper on the weekend was the constant rain/stormy weather.

So projects abound at the Johnson house. I got myself entangled in a project quite beyond my abilities--putting together a swing set for the boys. We are into it about ten hours so far and have a long, long way to go. I am excited for the boys to be able to enjoy it though.

Things at ICI (that's were I work) are going great so far. Haven't had to travel down south again yet, and hopefully not for a while. It has been pretty busy overall and that has been really nice. I figure I have never had a job yet that keeps one busy all the time (or even most of the time). I included a picture of the stand we will be working on. Should be great.

Fried Chicken

Hello friends, neighbors, and confidants. Today we write from the land on confedercy and seafood, the great state of Mississippi. I am down here for work and staying with my brother (whom I am waiting to wake up so we can go). I have to say I really like it down here.

Last night we went to eat at this place called lil' rays. We had ourselves a mess of boiled crawfish and fried catfish, it was delicous. Nothing like southern food to keep somebody fat and happy.

So I was trying to sleep last night and was having some strange dreams and it makes you wonder what they are all about. Do dreams try to giver glimpses of the future, tell us something deep, or is it just our mind letting go? It is hard to tell I suppose. I read a book once about lucid dreaming and it was really interesting. Basically a lucid dream is so real your body thinks it is awake, not only that but your mind is concious that it is a dream and you are able to manipulate/influence the dream. It is some pretty crazy stuff, give it a google and check it out for your self.

That's all for me today. I will try to post some pictures later (as of right now I don't know how to do it from a cell phone).

Another Song Like

Just a quick song update:

Life in Disguise by. The Slip

Boys and Injury

So something about having two boys means a lot of blood flows in our house.  The latest incident was a week or so ago when we were watching a little Planet Earth, the boys were pretending to be gazelles hunted by the wild dogs (Elle). All the sudden we are presented with this:

Now not sure if chelsea posted this or not, but Kamden branded Karson with a

 soldering iron the other day. Well half the clan was freaking out and the other half was excited to field dress the wound. A few minutes later we were good as new and back on the wild dog hunt.

So I have decided that blogging is easier when work is really slow. Since the transition to Industrial it has been so busy I have barley had time to pee let alone philosophize on my blog. Things are well though, amazingly so. It is crazy to thing that about 8 months ago I could have swore the end of my world was near, it seemed like bad things just kept happening. Now I see the same thing occurring in one of my friends lives, it just seems like mishap after mishap. Well you know the old saying "Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger", that definitely applies.

Gravedigger

So pandora keeps kicking up this Dave Matthews song. Traditionally I am not a huge Dave fan but I sure like this song. Here are the lyrics:

Cyrus Jones 1810 to 1913
Made his great grandchildren believe

You could live to a 103
A hundred and three is forever when you’re just a little kid
So, Cyrus Jones lived forever

Gravedigger
When you dig my grave
Could you make it shallow
So that I can feel the rain
Gravedigger

Muriel Stonewall 1903 to 1954
She lost both of her babies in the second great war
Now, you should never have to watch your only children lowered in the ground
I mean you should never have to bury your own babiesGravedigger
When you dig my grave
Could you make it shallow
So that I can feel the rain
Gravedigger

Ring around the rosey
Pocket full o'posey
Ashes to ashes
{Musical intro}
We all fall down

Gravedigger
When you dig my grave
Could you make it shallow
So that I can feel the rain
Oh Gravedigger

Little Mikey Carson '67 to '75
He rode his bike like the devil until the day he died
When he grows up he wants to be Mr. Vertigo on the flying trapeze
Oh, 1940 to 1992--

Gravedigger
When you dig my grave
could you make it shallow
So that I can feel the rain
Grave digger
When you dig my grave
Could you make it shallow
So that I can feel the rain
I can feel the rain
I can feel the rain
Gravedigger
When you dig my grave
Could you make it shallow
So that I can feel the rain
Gravedigger
Gravedigger

So you can go here to listen to it. The bad news is you have to register, but its free and worth it.

No Deep Thoughts For Today

So no deep thoughts or dramatic revelations for today, just a quick update from the 'Ho. 

So last week of Premier Technologies this week (sort of) but that story will come out in a bit.

One quick rant to get off my chest: So I have a facebook account (who doesn't) and to be honest it is mostly annoying. I keep up with a few friends, but most of the time don't particularly pay attention to it. I think the the most ludicrous thing about facebook is the people that people say they are friends with: for example take my brother Jade. Jade is a nice likable guy, one of my best friends, I just checked his facebook page and he has 311 friends listed on it. Now to put that in perspective that is more people than were in mine and Jade's graduating classes combined. I thought I would provide a little tidbit for all you facebook junkies courtesy of Merriam Webster:

Friend: one attached to another by affection or esteem OR a favored companion

Acquaintance:person whom one knows but who is not a particularly close friend

So stop putting every blasted person you have ever met onto your facebook page. So what you might ask brought on this facebook wrath. I received this from a supposed facebook friend:

Subject: Mortgage Rates, NOW might be the right time.
Hey everyone just wanted you all to be aware that mortgage rates are around record lows.  The rates are in the 4-5% range right now and we don't know how much longer they will stay down like this.  If you are looking to refinance or get into a new home, now might be the time.  Not to mention the new home buyer credit of $8,000.
Message me back or give me a call at 208-589-xxxx if you want to know more about rates, what the benefit of refinancing might do for you or just to talk and catch me up on your lives.

Thanks,
Mxxx Bxxxxx
Mountainview Mortgage

ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME. 

So after the latest intrusion into my life I got reacquainted with the delete friend button and cleared out some of the deadwood from the facebook account.

As for the Premier story, I am finished here on Friday. After that it is Industrial Constrution. The good news is it looks like they are going to keep me on as a consultant, so that should be a nice benefit, and if things don't work out I have a place to come back to. Any ways back to the grind.

Hope, Fear, And Change

So today was a big day at work. I will get to why but first would like to explore the emotions involved.

First is fear. The fear started recently. It is fear of the unknown and fear of change. We are about to leap of a precipice where we hope something good will happen but we don't really know. Fear is one of the strongest emotions that a person can

 experience. I think it is amazing how much more often we are driven by fear than by hope. Fear of failure, fear of change, fear of success, all of these different fears control the things that we do. It is always easy to travel a road into the unknown, the true challenge comes when the road ends and the future is uncertain. Do you believe in yourself and divine inspiration enough to persevere. Think of Columbus sailing into the unknown, now that is overcoming fear.

Hope started to blossom a couple months ago. Hope for new and better things, 

and hope for the possibilities that the future can bring. Hope is a funny thing because usually there is no certainty that the things you hope for will come to pass, 

often times there is a large degree of uncertainty, but still we pursue the things we hope for, sometimes to the detriment of the things we have. Imagine how different the world would be if Ben Franklin didn't hope for something different or conversely if Hitler didn't hope for the Aryan nation. Hope is a fickle thing indeed. But I have hope (probably too much to be honest) that tomorrow can always be better than today. Sometimes when there are storm clouds outside and a ray of sun bursts through I always think: This represents hope.

Finally the change. Today I put my notice in at Premier. We are venturing off into the unknown again. Thankfully I have a wonderful partner by my side. With her I always have hope that tomorrow will bring a better world.

The Dichotomy Of My Life

I was driving up to Island Park on Thursday and was awe struck by the view on the way. It made me reflect on a few things. I see the world as an engineer. I see balanced forces, energy transfer, and fracture planes. I still remember when the power went out in New York City, watching the people walk across the Brooklyn Bridge all I could wonder was if the bridge was designed for that many people and whether people were denser than cars. (I think about the same density but I am not sure).

I am also a pseudo scientist. I believe in carbon dating and think Darwin was divinely inspired to devise the theory of evolution. The funny thing about it is that when I see F=MA I see the plan of the creator. I see laws put into place to create order and provide a framework for the works to come. When I read the theory's of Darwin I see the creation being acted out. Of course the oceans were created first, then the fish, then the animal, and finally humans. This theory of evolution is just explaining the creation to people who do not understand. I love that in the Hebrew bible, and other places, the world was organized from existing matter and not created out of the void. Why is that important? Because we all know energy is not created or destroyed only transferred. See in my opinion, understanding science provides irreconcilable proof of the divine.

I believe this because no matter where you are or what you are doing F=MA, heat always flows from cold to hot, and random chance is not enough to make these things true.

The Homeless, On Teachers, and Music

Kind of an ecclectic mix of topics today, but they have been weighing on my mind.

Topic 1: The homeless. I was listening to NPR morning edition the other day and they were talking about a tent city on the banks of the American river in Sacramento, CA. A year ago there were approximatly four people living in this city, now there are hundreds. I used to think homeless people were there by their own lack of motivatino, but now I am not so sure. I have definitly never been a big fan of welfare, but when you see the bankers at AIG getting million dollar bonuses after $170 billion of taxpayer money went into the company. That means we could have given every unemployed person in the country almost $14,000 (and that is just from the AIG money). If you were to take all $700 billion of the bailout money that ammounts to a hefty salary of $56,000. So the question is: Is the economy  better off with banks staying afloat to give a few massive bonuses to the people who screwed it all up in the first place OR should we invest in the people....I guess we will never know since we (or rather politicians who recieve massive donations from the banking industry and a treasury secratary intimatly involved with Wall St.) already picked option 1.

On to topic two: Teachers. To start this section off I would like to say I have always wanted to be a teacher, unfortunatly I also wanted my wife to stay home with the kids, and I wanted food on the table. So instead of following the dream of teaching I became an engineer. Again on NPR this morning there was a piece on the Washington D.C. school district and what a mess it was. This brings to my mind a question: What is happening to our schools. I remember high school fondly. Now time may have dulled these memories but Shelley High School back in the day was a good place to be. I thought it was overall a little bit (I would say quite a bit) to easy but that is more of a personal thing. Overall SHS served me well enough to graduate from the U of I, Princeton, and be admitted to the University of Michigan Business School (ranked 1st when I was there). I would credit alot of that to good teachers and a wife/girlfriend who always thought I could reach higher. So what happened? These days students (the ones I know at least) in shelley hate school, can not seem to turn in assignments, and are failing misserably. And it is not an isolated thing. In Michigan I taught sunday school and only half of the kids could read. They also hated school, didn't turn stuff in, and basically didn't care. So what happened? Are teachers failing our students? Are parents completly disinterested? Or are kids just that much dumber then when we went to school? Not sure but worth some thought.

Finally this post is over. The last topic is Music. The South by Southwest music festival starts today, and it reminded me how much I love music. There is a website called Pandora.com. If you have never been there you should definitly check it out. I have some good stations set up and can send them to you if you want (just let me know).  

The Opening Salvo

So after much deliberation I decided to branch out from my wife and start my own blog. I will leave the family pictures and recaps to the better looking Johnson and focus more on the rantings and ravings of the more eccentric Johnson. 

I decided to call the blog Reading the Strings. The basis of the name is the Three Fates (or Moirae) from Greek mythology. Legend has it that each persons life is a thread in the tapestry woven by these fates. When your life is done, your thread is clipped.  Well hopefully this blog is the view of the world from my string. Sometimes just a rant and sometimes a thoughtful discourse on the course of things, hopefully always poignant.