Celebrating 50 Years!

“The most creative act you will ever undertake is the act of creating yourself.” ― Deepak Chopra, The Way of the Wizard: Twenty Spiritual Lessons for Creating the Life You Want

A Child of 1963: What happened in 1963? Major News Stories include start of Beatlemania, Martin Luther King, Jr. delivers his “I have a dream” speech, members of Ku Klux Klan dynamite Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama and US President John F Kennedy is assassinated. On the Ides of March (the anniversary of Julius Caesar’s assassination), I was prematurely born in Jacksonville Arkansas.

Not surprising, I proudly identify myself as a liberal and card-carrying member of the American Civil Liberties Union. I am happily married and a proud father of four great boys. I also fall within what is known as Generation X (the older side).

The Digital Age:
Wikipedia Excerpts of Generation X: “The 2011 publication ‘The Generation X Report’, based on annual surveys used in the Longitudinal Study of today’s adults, finds that Gen Xers, who are defined in the report as people born between 1961 and 1981, are highly educated, active, balanced, happy and family oriented. Generation X experienced the introduction of the personal computer, the start of the video game era, cable television and the Internet. Other events include the AIDS epidemic, the War on Drugs, the Iran hostage crisis, the Persian Gulf War, the Dot-com bubble, the emergence of alternative rock, new wave music, electronic music, synthpop, glam metal, pop punk, grunge,rap music and hip hop. They were often called the MTV Generation.”

I witness an example of such technological change during a new episode of the TV series “The Americans” on FX. The story is set in the 80’s during the Reagan years and is about Soviet spies living in the US. A suspected spy is found in a hospital and the FBI needs to discover his ID in the US and all they have is a picture of his face from the morgue. Today, facial recognition would be run using programs that access international databases (often including data from our allies) and a result is processed within minutes. Back then, they had to fax the photo to all the local police departments to have them search and review manually all the driver’s license photos for a match that might come back after several days. Modern processing power is amazing.

God Bless Pope Francis: During my lifetime, the following Popes have led my Catholic Church:
Paul VI (1963-78)
John Paul I (1978)
Blessed John Paul II (1978-2005)
Benedict XVI (2005-2013)
Francis (2013—)

My favorite was Blessed John Paul II who I felt represented my faith in a positive way. I pray for Pope Francis that he will make the right decisions for our church going forward. I am encouraged by the fact that he is from the Jesuit order and that he often clashed with political leaders in Argentina to defend the poor.  My first impression from seeing him on TV was a good one.