the unlikely orange

to my three sons, as i sit down to write these words to you, summer is gasping out its very last breaths.  when the sun makes it a new day tomorrow, you will soon be rising for the first day of school.  it is an interesting moment to be caught in: a kind of swirling whirlpool of excitement and sadness; a reluctant farewell to what has been an absolutely amazing summer, and an expectant joy about the year ahead. and it has been an awesome summer.  we've been to the beach and built a fort.  you went to summer camp and steelers training camp and made sourdough.  we saw a grand slam at a baseball game, made slushies, and danced like crazy fools in the front row at a great concert on tussey mountain.  we've eaten well, explored together, sung at the top of our lungs, and grown closer together.  no small wonder that its hard to let go of all that. but if you knew the adventure that lies ahead, you would not be grumbling about alarm clocks, hom...

my friends, this unparalleled woman is celebrating a birthday today, and i cannot help but stop and say thanks that she was born.  every once in a while i imagine my life without her, and it is a dark and grim vision.  in this vision, there are no children living in my house, no voices singing opera from the shower, no kids books strewn across the living room.  in this vision, i eat spaghetti-o's from a can for dinner every night, and i am stuck in every rut i've ever gotten into.  in this terrifying vision the color of everything is gray, music sounds like a monotonous drone, and everything feels like long, cold nights.  but she was born! and somehow our paths were blessed to cross, and somehow i was able to convince her that spending her life with me wouldn't be as awful as it might have seemed, and somehow these last 19 years feel like the blink of an eye; like a colorful, melodic, sun-drenched, joy-filled, broken-but-blessed blink-of-an-eye journey....

i remember watching the old cartoon “The Jetsons” as a kid, enjoying the idea of flying cars, and robots making your meals for you at the push of a button.   at some point i concluded that this was a vision of our future, and sometimes, i have to admit, i look around and wonder where the flying cars are, or why we haven’t figured out a way to have smell-a-vision.   i mean, it’s 2018, people!   if i cant taste it through the TV, i want to at least smell what they’re making on the Great British Bakeoff!   but today i read an amazing article by Avinash Kaushik about some of the technological advances that are happening in our world; things that will continue to unfold and evolve during our lifetimes.    he anticipates that by the time the next generation is reaching adulthood that we will have two categories of humans: organic and augmented.   he further suggests that by 2075 or 2100 all humans could be augmented.   augmented how?   wel...