Technical Problems?

If you're not reading this, you should be.

Baghdad Burning: "My father has a friend with a wife and 3 children who is currently working for an Italian internet company. He communicates online with his 'boss' who sits thousands of kilometers away, in Rome, safe and sure that there are people who need to feed their families doing the work in Baghdad. This friend, and a crew of male techies, work 10 hours a day, 6 days a week. They travel all over Baghdad, setting up networks. They travel in a beat-up SUV armed with cables, wires, pliers, network cards, installation CDs, and a Klashnikov for. . . you know. . . technical emergencies.

Each of the 20 guys who work with this company get $100/month. A hundred dollars for 260 hours a month comes to. . . $0.38/hour. My 16-year-old babysitter used to get more. The Italian company, like many other foreign companies, seems to think that $100 is appropriate for the present situation. One wonders the price of the original contract the Italian company got. . . how many countless millions are being spent so 20 guys can make $100/month to set up networks?"

The Age of Men

I'm 43 years old, and other than physically (especially at the moment with this damn kidney stone), I've always maintained an image of myself as that skinny kid, that not quite eleven years old, joining up with the Boy Scouts. Everyone back then was huge, stunningly competent, deeply knowledgeable about everything, and largely (thank god), benevolent.

I'm sure that picture was off, but that's how I saw them. I've worked to be like that. To others my own age, especially as a kid, I had a reputation of maturity beyond my years. Little did they know.

Earlier this week I returned home for my grandmother's funeral, and there they all were, a group of men whom I can't help thinking of in that same way as that little boy scout.I shouldn't be surprised, but I am.

My uncles, old men now, still each a force of nature. My Uncle Jim, a retired Navy fighter pilot. Uncle Charlie, an engineer and jet engine designer, also an accomplished pilot. Mike Munter, tall and white haired, gifted with natural authority. Even Raymond Richardson, now in his nineties. My grade school principle, and my father's before me. He worked his farm, just down the road from us. Imagine Abraham Lincoln as played by Buddy Ebsen.

They're just men, each with their own failings. Not supermen, certainly. They don't know me now, but they knew the child I once was, each from their own perspective. I wonder if they have the same feelings of giants preceding them as well. I suspect they do, when I hear them talk about my grandfather, long gone, and others of his generation. I suppose it is the way of things.

Eulogy for Mildred Williams Murray, 1914-2003

As I started to set down my thoughts this past Saturday morning I realized I should have been better prepared. Grandma took me aside nearly five years ago and asked me to deliver her eulogy. All of you here knew her to one degree or another and won’t be surprised by that. It’s one of the things she taught me over the years and one of the many things I’ve learned to value from her.

Let me get the simple biographical data out of the way, since it’s the least important things. She was born on September 4th, 1914, a Williams. For perspective, that’s the beginning of World War I. She married my grandfather, Richard Murray, who she called "Dick" in 1933. She had four sons and raised them just a few miles from here on the same farm my great-great grandfather started when he arrived from Ireland in the early 1860s. I grew up just across the field from her house in the home my great grandfather built. She was a fine country cook, kept garden, raised chickens and excelled in the crafts of knitting and quilt making. She was widowed early in life when my grandfather died in 1967 and she never remarried. She lived alone and independent the rest of her life, spending her last years in San Antonio. She had eight grandchildren, eightteen great grandchildren, and even one, so far, in the next generation.

I could go on about her accomplishments in life, who she knew, where she traveled, but those won’t tell you much about who she was. But I can share some of what I learned from her that may be more revealing than a simple biography. For some reason our family didn’t stick in one place. My mother’s side of the family all still live within a few miles of each other, but not us Murrays. I expect it’s that strong, independent streak that she helped instill in us. But I’ve never lost site that I am at heart a farm boy, raised on the prairies by a strong, independent family.

These lessons are in no particular order.

• Always drink your coffee black. You can read whatever you like into that, but I mean it as a plain truth. She loved a good cup of coffee and wouldn’t think of messing it up by dumping other stuff into it. I agree with her completely on this and my daughter, Kathleen, who is now making our morning coffee, drinks it black as well.
  
  
• A sense of humor will carry you through most of life’s difficulties. I know a lot of people that are easily crushed by changes of fate and fortune. A friend of mine who recently lost his job has gone through weeks of depression. My grandmother certainly didn’t have and easy life, but she never lost her capacity to laugh, enjoy a good story or a joke.
  
  
• Bear life’s indignities with as much grace as possible. I suppose this ties in with having a sense of humor. Illness, pain, and loss are difficult to bear and few of us escape them. All of us are entitled to a little complaining now and then and a sympathetic ear helps. But get back on your feet as soon as possible and move on.
  
  
• Create order out of chaos. Through the years of raising a family on the farm, many of those years without electricity, living alone, and even in her own passing, she always attempted to keep her house in order and secure all arrangements. You keep your house, your financial dealings, and as much as possible around you in it’s place, organized, and when possible, planned. She not only asked me to deliver her eulogy, but she prepared all of her own funeral arrangements well in advance.
  
  
• See through to the heart of things. When grandma was packing up to leave the farm for San Antonio, she insisted that I drive from Columbus to retrieve a beat up old cabinet she had stored in her basement for all the years she had lived there. It was wobbly and covered with at least 8 layers of paint. But she knew we enjoyed antiques and this old mess of a pie safe had set on her parents’ porch for as long as she could remember before it was hers. And she was right. After a hellacious job of stripping and refinishing, we discovered that it was beautiful, early American piece, probably a hundred and fifty years old.
  
  
• Make the hard decisions when you need to. A year ago my grandmother decided, on her own, to give up her car and stop driving. She talked with me at length about this and it was a very difficult thing for her to do. But unlike many, she knew it was time and she did it in her own way, on her schedule. She drove right up to the day her licenses expired, not giving up one moment of it. When we talked about it she knew that as hard as it was to give it up, it would have been harder still if someone had to take it away from her.
  
  
• Don’t be afraid to learn new things. In all the years she lived alone my grandmother traveled and enjoyed life. She even learned to swim late in life. And I couldn’t have been more surprised when she bought her own computer and started sending me email. It wasn’t easy for her to learn how to operate, but until this last year she regularly send me notes, recipes, and updates on other family members. I’ve spent my entire career working in the software industry, but I understand how difficult and frightening technology can be. But it never stopped her.

I could go on. I certainly don’t mean to imply that she was a perfect woman or a saint. She was a tough customer, a stern, hard woman at times. But I don’t expect I’ll ever have a really good piece of gooseberry pie again. I hope to share the values I’ve learned from her with my children, and someday, my own grandchildren.