Just Fair Justice in Fairness

What's the difference between "Fair" and "Just?" Fairness not as in beauty, "Who's the fairest of them all?" Fairness as in equitable. Justice not as in the judge, but what he is trusted by the people to make day after day.

Fairness implies that it must be agreeable to the judgment of all involved. Justice seems to appeal to an objective judgment by a higher authority. "Justice was done," is a phrase usually given by those who comment on a justice system rendering it's judgment to the guilty party as an agreeable conclusion, usually meaning that there's consensus of fairness. Oi vey.

Fair can be used in a court setting. "He must be given a fair trial." But a fair trial doesn't seem to include the tried in terms of his opinion of it, does it? It seems to imply a fair chance to plead his case for innocence of the crime at hand. Yet justice only enters the courtroom when the jury renders it's verdict, and even then it's not guaranteed.

So fair depends on everyone with a stake in the matter. Just only depends on one judgment, none but God Himself, ultimately.

"Life isn't fair." We all learn that one early enough. The world won't care if how things shake out doesn't meet with your approval. If it did, no one would be happy for long. Life is not just, either. If it was, millions of people killed by a dictator would want their lives back. So what point is there to this?

Simply: Working for justice is noble. Working for fairness is for lawyers. One is worth your time, the other thinks their time is worth your money. Working for justice is attainable sometimes. Working for fairness will never be attainable everytime simply because no one is ever truly satisfied.

Take Me Home

I've been reminded so often lately of my ultimate destination. Home, as in the title of this, my personal blog, is what folks know as heaven. It comes up when I look at Facebook a lot. I see my friends and how they cope with their losses, a child here, a mother or grandmother there. It never seems to go away. It's a just a breath away in my mind. Ironically, for everyone, it is just a breath or two away. There are no guarantees that your next breath won't be your last. Instead of a sense of dread or fear, I now find myself filled with a sense of hope. Isn't that a weird turn? Instead of writing about the Road, I'm writing about Home. And yet, that's the aim of my journey. It's what keeps me motivated.

I've been a subtle fan of Phil Collins since his creative cover of "Love Don't Come Easy." Yet the chorus of another song "Take Me Home" keeps knocking around in my head and heart. His video is creative and the song enjoyable.



I long to see Home. I've had experiences in my life that have fully convinced me that my spirit is real. It is something I can't measure or touch, but I can tell you that, while my body is mine, it is not all of me. It is not Steve Walden in his entirety. I know that if I died right here, right now, that it would be amazing and real in a sense that few earthly sensations are. I wouldn't be able to describe how lifting off the ground and looking around would be so exhilarating and freeing, but I would relish it.

So often, we look at life as a brief 70-90 year stint on this planet. We don't know what life is! I cannot prove to you that life is a mirror in which we only glimpse briefly for a few moments in our many years what truly life can be, but I can tell you that there is One Who can, and His Word leaves little doubt. In his writing about the rapture, Paul says "in the blink of an eye" that we who live until Jesus comes will be changed and caught up in the air with Him. It won't be a painful ordeal. If we die, we may feel pain through our bodies, but the moment it stops feeling, that's the end of the pain. We go from that instant to being with the Lord. What's to fear?

I guess living with pain for years has changed my perspective quite a bit. If I do go home without much advance notice, I want folks to know that I have total peace about it. I ache over those who are left behind, but there's one certain way to see me again. And if you take advantage of that offer, I promise I will not throw in a fish emblem for your car. I will, however, give you a big hug when I see you next time.

Starship Crossing

I am a trekkie.

I freely and openly admit that here and now. As with all serious affectations, it started with a family member. In this case, I blame my brother, Mark, who is the other bookend for my family and 12 years older. I still look up to him in a way I suspect all little brothers naturally do. For Mark, I suspect this makes him feel slightly uncomfortable. Like me, he can be painfully conscious of his failings and I think having a brother as a yap dog and worshipper. Still, I've lived in awe of his abilities and talents. His gift of a working Space Shuttle was perhaps the greatest and most timely gifts I've ever gotten. Okay, okay, it was a model, but with the exception skipping the SRB sep, it performed exactly like the real thing.

Mark planted the seeds of Star Trek. Since I've known him, Mark has had the ability to recite word-for-word any of the original series (TOS) episodes, though he has long since stopped performing on cue. When I was 5 years old, we went to Disneyland and oddly we went back to the motel room for a nap in the afternoon. Mark found a station playing an episode and laying there, he would say the lines verbatim before th actors would. I found it mesmerizing and strangely comforting. If Mark knew what happened in the episode, then everything should turn out well by the end of the show. A redshirt may die, but Kirk, Scotty, McCoy, Uhura, Spock and the rest would make it through okay. To this day, Star Trek is a touchstone for me to think about him.

Growing up, I would watch the episodes in syndication every time I was allowed to stay up as late as KWGN, our local independent station in Denver would show the reruns nightly, usually 9 or 10 p.m. or later. For many years, they'd run a 10/11 double-header, one with TOS and one TNG. Eventually that became TNG and DS9 and by then my inner Trekkie had asserted itself, at least at home.

I liked Spock and the way he would get into it with Bones. I wanted to be Jim Kirk and be able to save the day with my courage and daring. I was utterly deflated when I discovered that they were no longer making the series and that the actors had aged quite a bit since it ended. Around the time that Star Trek II - The Wrath Of Khan came out, I was horrified to hear  that Kirk (William Shatner) had gone bald, and that even worse, he was too vain to appear without a wig. For me, it was inconsistent with the character of Kirk and I found it to hard to like either Kirk or Shatner until I learned to separate the two. Somehow, I still find Kirk tainted by Shatner's vanity. Even though I make the separation of actor and character, some part of me must not be able to fully understand the difference.

My autistic tendencies might be at work in that, and probably run rampant throughout my Trekkie life. I too know nearly every line of nearly every episode of The Next Generation after watching episodes I had taped until 2001, when I found my library had the boxed DVD sets. They had seven DVDs for seven seasons. I would have only a week to watch those seven DVDs, an entire season of TNG. To Karen's dismay, I would attempt and usually succeed in doing so.

Karen does not share my enthusiasm for Star Trek or Sci-fi in general, and I have needed to temper my enthusiasm as a result. She's different from me. Sometimes I find that we are polar opposites in preference or opinion and Trek is something she doesn't get. I used to let it bother me until I discovered that my unhappiness actually was making her upset with herself. Our love naturally manifests itself in the desire to please each other, and when the other is discontent, it causes me or her deep distress. When I found out, I naturally released her and purposefully resolved never to put her in that distress again. It hurt her, and it could have alienated me, so to speak, from her. My kids find it a little more relatable but they don't have more than a few episodes memorized [Melodramatic chuckle, sotto voce] ...yet.

A Post With Waterproof Paint

Life sure has changed in a few years, culminating at 40, I expect. Until a year ago, I was a cat person. This in the face of a cat allergy that once produced mild respiratory distress and swelled both eyes shut. We even went so far as to get manx kittens from a couple of breeders a few years back in order to allow me to still enjoy them. Manx lack an enzyme in their saliva that tends to produce the dander that provokes the allergy symptoms. Manx are incredibly aloof, which is not the case with the Burmese chocolate brown, yellow eyed females my mother has loved since before I was born. It is this "love me when I want to be loved otherwise you don't exist" aloofness that has forced a change.

Now, I'm a dogger. I have changed sides in the cats vs. dogs debate. And, I'm starting to wonder if one is enough. Ace, my year old loyal to a fault Labrador, is incredibly social. If he were any more social, I would fear for his safety. If you are accepted by us as a friend, you are part of his pack and therefore subject to extensive welcoming by him. This does include the customary sniffing in areas that, for the life of me, I'll never appreciate why, are exactly the height of a Labrador's head. So part of me still does appreciate aloofness at times.

He's not "intact," as breeders say, although for all his beauty, you would want to clone him. Actually, it is his sweetness and loyalty that you wish you could bottle, not just his looks. He likes to chase our two Manx whose aloofness seems to be crumbling one claw at a time to his impetuous persistence. He will not kill them, I don't think. He's never once shown anger to them. He's always wagged his tale on approach.

Manx cats don't speak Dog, I don't think, anyway. They haven't let on. On the other hand, I think they've regretted trying to teach him Cat. They've repeatedly said, "Stay back!" and now Ace tries saying it back by swiping his paw at them, presuming, I think that "Stay back!" means "I love you." Half the words in Dog mean some variant of "I love you." The other words are "Out. Out now. Out, please! and Do you want me to eat that for you?"

So, Ace needs a friend, if only to spare my aging Manx's nerves. We're praying about it, because at this point, a paid brother, half-brother or cousin would not be in the cards. It would also increase our dog food consumption and waste removal, things we struggle with like all dog owners. Still, I figure that the more dogs I have, the warmer this house will be. Or maybe is it the more broken-in and loved on the furniture is. Regardless, one lesson we've learned is that dogs will teach you to keep your treasures in heaven. It's the only place they can't reach your stuff.

These Amazing Shadows

I watched a few documentaries about films and film making last night. One of them was These Amazing Shadows. It was about finding and preserving films in the Library of Congress. One of the interviewees quoted the literal "Librarian" of the Library of Congress, James H. Billington, who said in his own interview after 20 years of service on June 30, 2007, this amazing pontification:

"Stories unite people. Theories divide them."

I see why my daughter wants to write stories.