13 Random Childhood Facts

Camille Crawford tagged me to participate in this meme started by John Gillespie.

Hmmm....13 facts about my childhood?

1. My experience in public, in performance, began in Grade 2. I sang a song at a school event, like a Christmas concert or something. The first time I sang over a microphone. I knew even then there was something special about that. I literally felt the electricity. No, it wasn't a shock from the mic.
   
2. I've said this before. I read War & Peace at the age of 12. It's where I first heard of Freemasonry.
3. I remember the pedal car I got for my fifth birthday. It was like a fancy Oldsmobile, hot pink and black.
4. I'm a lousy swimmer because I took swimming lessons when I was a kid and ended up in the middle of the pool one day when we were practising drown-proofing. You're not supposed to really travel when you're doing that "raise your head and breathe" thing, but somehow I did. I got very tired and had a lot of trouble making it back to the side of the pool. I nearly drowned doing drown-proofing. Never been much of a swimmer since.
5. I got the strap unjustly in Grade 5. Maybe that was the beginning of a certain disrespect for authority.
6. I remember the fireflies in Mansfield Ohio where we used to visit relatives. My grandfather would pack us in the old Chrysler at 4 am or so and drive straight through. Fireflies were a delight, and unknown to me in Lunchbucket. The streets in Mansfield also had something I'd never seen...some of them were paved with bricks.
7. One night at a wedding, a hochzeit at the German club, I stood in front of the bandstand all night, pretending I was playing the trumpet.
8. Same German club. Christmas was a mixed blessing, because Santa Claus, the German version, carried a BIG staff. You never knew whether he was going to give you candy or a smack on the butt.
9. I remember the sense of freedom and joy I had when one day my grandfather (who, along with my grandmother, took care of me during summers cuz my parents both worked) gave me permission to ride my bike anywhere I wanted in the whole city!
10. It took me a long time to learn how to ride a bike. (And then, the first time I rode around the block without the training wheels, I hit an old lady.)
11. Catlic spool boy: I trained hard and earnestly to be an altar boy. This was in the days when you still had to do the stuff in Latin. The very first day I was to assist at Mass, 7 o'clock in the bloody morning (!) I was excited and nervous. I was also all alone. The experienced kid who was supposed to be my partner never showed up. It was not a happy first Mass.
12. Catlic spool boy 2: I have a cousin who as a youngster was so obsessed with becoming a priest that he in fact had his own chapel (this is like at age 10-12) with an altar and all the trappings and he would say Mass (and take up the collection.) He turned out to be rather unstable and was turned down for the seminary. Not much of a surprise there, I guess.
13. I loved to read (and still do)...anything I could get my hands on. From classics to comics. I even read the articles in Playboy.

That's it! That was fun. And isn't it amazing how a few random facts can practically sum up parts of your life, eh?

Now I suppose I must tag somebody. Tag...you're it: Awannabe, Anna at Box1715, and Christy at Hint of Poetry. OK?

Larry Hits the Goals Post

As I said in an earlier posting, I was tagged by Camille Crawford to participate in the Gotta Get Goals meme initiated by Alex Shalman. I do believe this is the original graphic from Alex Shalman's blog, in which he challenged denizens of the international blogomat to list their goals and link back to him so he could compile results. I agreed to do this, but it's taken some time to get my act together. But finally, I'm ready. I include this graphic here because it's related in a way to one of the goals described below.


For starters, I think it's fair to say I'm not really a goal-oriented person. Maybe that's a flaw. I can tell you that it has contributed to a certain sense of drift throughout the course of my life, to the point that I have not accomplished all I am capable of. But I have noticed that if I write things down, for example on a ToDo list, I tend ToDo them. Otherwise they get shuffled around and sometimes shuffled right off the agenda. So a nudge from Camille is a good thing.

As I thought about these goals it became apparent that some are short or medium-term. Others are more long term, almost wishful-thinking. I don't think any of them are "wildest dreams over the top" as Alex suggests. But some are definitely more...metaphysical, let's say.

So here are the more immediate goals:

1. Finish and promote my CD of spoken word & music, called Wordsong. This is a combination of poetry and some prose set to music that I've composed. Much of it is done, but there are loose ends.

2. Publish the book of poetry I've been working on for some time.

3. Two novels are in the works. One is Larry Keiler: The Unauthorized Autobiography, pieces of which you can read here. The other is one in which Pablo Picasso is the central character. Both of these are unfinished. I let them go for a long time, for reasons I won't go into here, but I feel as if I'm getting close to being ready to tackle them again. Writing this blog plays a part in that.

All of the above are things I expect to be wildly popular and successful
thanks to the support of all you bloggers and blogettes out there.

4. Learn more about website design, website construction, you know, like code & style sheets & all that, including how to make graphics like the one in Alex's blog, so that at some point in the near future I really can be master of my domain.

5. Improve and deepen my relationship with my partner, Suzy Homemaker.

And now for the longer-term goals:

5. I'm not really a wealth-seeking kind of person. I just need enough, that's all. Having said that, though, how fantastic it would be to have the wealth of Bill Gates. How fantastic to have one-fiftieth the wealth of Bill Gates. But, as a Buddhist person, I can only think of one reason to have that much money, and that is to use it for the benefit of others. What else? I can only drive one car at a time. I can only live in one place at a time. I can only sit in one hot tub until my skin gets wrinkly. In fact, if I were as wealthy as Bill Gates, I wouldn't need to own anything (except for whatever it is that brings in that wealth.) I could afford to be homeless. I could afford to be without a car, a plane, a boat. I could afford to support the Dharma and the spread of Buddha's teachings, and the lives of dedicated Buddhists everywhere. I could build temples, stupas, universities, monasteries, retreat centres. Call that a goal. One of my wildest ones.

The Dharma, for that matter any religious movement, has always depended on the support of wealthy patrons. The Buddha received support from many rich people, including kings. The park where the Buddha spent a good portion of every year was donated to him and his followers by a fabulously wealthy man named Anathapindika. Lama Zopa Rinpoche has a project to build a statue of Maitreya, the future Buddha, the largest statue in the world. I'd like to be able to pull the cheque out of my pocket that pays for the whole thing.

6. To fulfill what are called in Tibetan Buddhism The Four Immeasurables:

How wonderful it would be if all sentient beings were to abide in equanimity,
Free of hatred and attachment!
May they abide in equanimity!
I myself will cause them to abide in equanimity!
Please, guru-Buddha, grant me blessings to be able to do this.

How wonderful it would be if all sentient beings had happiness and the cause of happiness!
May they have happiness and its cause!
I shall cause them to have these!
Please, guru-Buddha, grant me blessings to be able to do this.

How wonderful it would be if all sentient beings were free of suffering and its cause!
May they be free of suffering and its cause!
I myself will free them from suffering and its cause!
Please, guru-Buddha, grant me blessings to be able to do this.

How wonderful it would be if all sentient beings were never separated from the happiness of higher rebirth and liberation!
May they never separated from the happiness of higher rebirth and liberation!
I myself will cause them never to be separated from these!
Please, guru-Buddha, grant me blessings to be able to do this.

7. To achieve Buddhahood. (Not too ambitious for someone who's not too ambitious, eh?) Ever since I was quite young, I've believed in the perfectibility of the human race, if not in the physical sense, then in the metaphysical. I've felt that mankind could evolve or develop into perfection, something akin to god. Buddhism holds out that promise for me.

That's it. That's all for now. Except that since we're playing tag, I think I'm supposed to suggest this idea to someone else. So, if they are willing to play along, here are two:

John Gillespie at Sensitivity to Things

Awannabe at The Missing Blog Meets the Big Bad World

Gotta Get Goals Meme

Camille Crawford over at Now has invited me to participate in a meme, based on an original posting by Alex Shalman entitled Gotta Get Goals.

All you veteran bloggers probably know what a meme is. Basically, I don't, except for what I've gleaned from reading (very quickly) the original post and Camille's, which she called Goals...A Meme. The theme of this meme is evident in the title. You write about your goals. And link back to the other blogs. And forward to someone else. Sort of a chain blog (as opposed to letter) with velvet links.

So this post is just to announce that I'm going to participate. But I need some time to write that post. Cuz I take it seriously. And I have a busy few days ahead so I can't say how long it will take.

But here's a teaser:
Goal #1: Write a post for the Gotta Get Goals meme.