I finished a biography of Alan Turing and it got me thinking about codes and hidden things. In the techie world there’s a method called Steganography. Literally, hidden writing.

I thought I would take a shot at writing something with a secret hidden within. Yet try to hide it in plain sight.

For those of you that read it to the end, I’ll unveil the secret of the words. For most of you, they’ve been in your head as often as in mine.

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“Where are we going?” she asked.
“It doesn’t really matter, does it?” he answered.
Began like this before, he thought, she’ll come around.
“I can’t say, what I don’t know.”
“Can’t we just go home?
“Begin the whole thing over? he asked.
“To at least try,” she argued.
“Knowin’ what they did?”
“But, maybe it’s different now.”
“Then why are they still trying to kill us?”
“I just thought….
“Know what you need to do, you need to navigate.”
“It’s not as easy without the primary computer.”
Growing images flooded the screen, Sweet Jesus!” she said.
“Strong evasion tactics, Caroline, now!”

“Well done, daughter of mine, the diamonds laser bursts showed no signs of damage and rust.”
“I’ll take over the helm, go rest, Dad.”
“Be careful, lots of stray matter our here.”
“Damned unlikely I’ll hit anything,”she argued.
“Here comes the point where you leave the bridge, go.”
“Comes the time to drop out of hyperspace,wake me,” he said.
“Your not supposed to be here anymore, go.”
Ghost images arose on the screen.
“Again?” she thought.

“Hello, Caroline,” the words echoing in her headset.
“Darkness awaits you unless you return my property.”
“My property, you mean, stolen when you killed my mother.”
“Old and past us now,” came the reply.
“Friend, we are gathering, we’re coming for you, soon,” she said
“I’ve been waiting for that moment, I’ll save you for last, make you watch daddy die.”
“Come around,vector twenty degrees, or he’ll get a fix on our position,” her father commanded.
To think after all this time he believes me incapable of piloting a starship, she thought.
“Talk to me, Caroline….”
With a smile, she found the relay ship, and fired. No sounds, only the emptiness of silence.
“You never cease to surprise me, Caroline,” a new relay sprung to life.
Again, she found and destroyed it.

In hyperspace, time slows.
The sensation of motion ceases.
White streaks of light, fleeing from lightyears ago, flash by.
Room for error in navigation, narrows
With each passing moment, distances accumulate.
Black holes stand out, huge, vast, ravenous, eaters of time itself.
Curtains of particles relentlessly impact the outer shell.
Near collisions are avoided, encountered, and avoided again.
The ship is guided by intuition of experience
Station to planet, planet to star, star to galaxy.

When Caroline hears the first, weak signal she strains to isolate it.
“I have it,” she says.
“Think you can follow it?”
“Back as far as I need to, check for anyone nearby first.”
On the monitors, no other vessel appears, blank Kodachrome, colorless
All seems secure.
The time to end this terror is now
“Crap!”
“I don’t like the sound of that,” her father said.
“Learned from the best, I’ll fix it.”
In a moment she had the position laid in to the weapons control.
High energy bursts ended the surveillance by the drone
“School is over,” she said,”they flunked.”

Spring, or this planet’s version, had just begun
Was on a day like this, she last saw her mother
Never again, though.
Waiting for the moment she paid that bastard back kept her going.
For too many, similar thoughts of revenge drove them
“Us,” she said, “I mean we need to go,” still struggling with the new language.
“Girl, how are you?” a familiar voice greeted her
“It can’t be, you’re alive?” Caroline said.
Ran towards the voice, hugging her tightly.
“One minute there, girl, how’d you get here?” Alnon MacArthur asked.
“Step back a minute, and I’lll tell you,” Caroline answered
Ahead the park loomed in lush green, “Let’s walk, there’s much to tell.”

Email me what you think it is, and I’ll show you the answer. Joe.Broadmeadow@hotmail.com

With all the turmoil in the world, the viciousness of political divisiveness, the violent dogma of religious zealotry, we can learn something about perspective,

From a sunset.

At any given point in time the sun exists in all it’s various phases simultaneously. Sunrise, midday, sunset, and all the permutations in between.

Depending on the time of year and hemisphere, some of those states do not exist, yet do exist elsewhere.

How can this be?

Perspective.

As I watched a beautiful Aruban sunset, it occurred to me that some 180 degrees of longitude away, someone was watching a sunrise.

At precisely the same moment, on the same planet, viewing the same star, our perspectives were at once totally opposite, completely different, yet equally accurate.

We were both right.

If we fail to appreciate another perspective, insist on our point of view being correct, deny the validity of a different point of view, we all lose.

In this world where religious zealots of all denominations and creed (almost exclusively dominated and controlled by men) justify genocide on instructions from some god (again exclusively interpreted by men) it is because they lack empathy for different perspectives.

In this world where a grief stricken son can shoot and kill a doctor because, from his perspective, the doctor was the cause of his mother’s death, perhaps if he had taken a moment to look at it from the doctor’s perspective, or even his mother’s, those two men would still be alive and a young family’s grief avoided.

In this world where those that disagree with the policies of the sitting President, describe him as a Muslim as if that alone should disqualify him as the President, perhaps if they understood the perspective of the Islamic world, as long as the Islamic world returns the gesture, this would be a better place.

So, next time you watch a sunset/sunrise, remember that somewhere in the world another human being is watching a sunrise/sunset. Both of you have different, yet equally valuable, perspectives.

By appreciating the difference, we can grow the commonality of our existence.

Upon our entrance into this world, the first touch for most of us is a human hand, a doctor or nurse, mid-wife, or even a Good Samaritan.

Hands play such an important part of our lives, guiding us, holding us, pulling us back, or pushing us forward.

I have many memories of the hands I have held in my life; the most distinctive of them, my grandfather’s hands.  Of my two grandfathers, I only recall my maternal grandfather with any detail.  My paternal grandfather died before I developed any retrievable memory.

I have a recollection of walking with my grandfather near the ocean.   I had to reach up to hold his hand as we walked.  At some point, we stopped and sat.  He continued to hold my hand.

I was fascinated by the lines and marks, twists and turns of his sixty, or so, year old hands.

They were intricate maps of all he had experienced, from his own youth, to his time in the Navy, through the Depression, from raising four children, to experiencing the births of many grandchildren.

If the eyes are the window to the soul; hands are the canvas on which we paint our life.

As I looked at those hands, I did not realize he would be leaving this life such a short time later.  I wondered what those hands experienced.  People they had touched, things they had made, the warmth of the sun, or the cold of winter felt over his time.

Therefore, it shocked me the other day, as I looked at my own hands.  Once smooth in my memories of that time with my grandfather, now showing their own signs of the imprint of a life, I hope, well lived.

I believe I have more time for the lines on my hands to record more of life, things to hold, sensations to feel.  Yet, I cannot help but wonder when my hands became as my Grandfather’s. Where did that time go?

We have two Yorkies, Ralph and Max.

 As you can see from this image.  They enjoy doing nothing.  They quite enjoy it, actually.  We can learn much from their approach to a happy life.

The rules are simple.

Upon awaking in the morning they require either a walk or to be let out into the fenced in back yard, depending on where they are staying.  During the walk, or release, they require plants, trees, fences, or any other inanimate object exhuming interesting odors, preferably of the urine of another dog, so they can then impose their superior position and mark accordingly.

The next step, demonstrates the slight differences in the two.  Max simply runs until the next in the normal bodily elimination process commences, stops wherever he is, completes the project, and continues on.  Sometimes starting off prior to actual completion.

Ralph uses a more deliberative approach.  Turning and turning and turning and turning in circles until he has establish the precisely perfect position, angle, and landing zone.  Remaining motionless during the delivery, then artfully disguising the evidence with leaves and sticks, using the motion resembling a a center snapping the football, to prevent it being disturbed by any other creature.

The next critical step is for them to receive these unnaturally green colored objects, resembling human toothbrushes, which they devour in seconds.  The purpose is to assist in improving their breath.  To steal a line I heard in a movie once, their breath smells like an old lady fart filtered through an onion.  The green thing faces a Herculean task.

Then, they consume a 1/4 can of dog food each (remember they are small dogs) and they are content.

They waddle over to their bed and promptly fall asleep.  This, mind you, is after only being awake for about 30 minutes after sleeping at least 8 hours.

After napping, Ralph does enjoy being chased while he carries a soccer ball like soft toy.  He revels in his ability to put himself on one side of an object, just out of reach, and maintaining this position as you run around.  He considers this high art.

Max, sits and watches.  Once in a while, Max decides to take the toy from Ralph and run like a maniac throughout the house, occasionally stopping to show Ralph he has taken possession of the toy, causing another round of chasing.

He seems to enjoy torturing Ralph this way.

Other than that, they require nothing.  They enjoy their life.  No Wifi, no big screen TV, no cars (although they do enjoy riding in one and putting the windows down), no iPads, Nike sneakers, nothing.

Their secret is to enjoy being alive because they are alive.  That’s it.  Simple needs, simple things, happy lives.

We can learn a lot from two Yorkies.

My wife and I decided to go for a walk in the woods today. Nothing like the Appalachian Trail, mind you, just a short, pleasant walk.

We headed to a trail in Cumberland off Angel Road, the Veronica Geddes Bowen Wildlife Preserve.  The area is a 35-acre preserve that runs between Angel Road and the Monastery property on Diamond Hill Road.  A very nice, rolling walk through woods.

As we walked along, memories of an early trek in this area came flooding back to me.  Hikes from a long time ago, taken here by my two cousins, Dave Moreau and Joe Szpila, and I.

Back then, more than 40 years ago, we would gather at my cousin’s house on Red Gate Road and rehearse our musical talents in our quest to be rock stars.

Needing a break from these intensive creativity sessions, we would wander in the wood through these same trails I now found myself.

The memories of those simpler times bought a smile to my face.

We ambled along, passing old stonewalls that once delineated pastures and boundaries, comprised of stones stacked by the first European settlers, areas once forested, then turned to fields, now returning to forest.

I thought of the Native Americans that once freely roamed here, perhaps for thousands of years, until driven out by those same settlers.

There is a marker, hidden here in these woods, known as Nine Men’s Misery. It commemorates the site of a massacre of nine colonists during King Phillip’s War. As if the misery of the Native Americans, involving their almost total annihilation, was undeserving of such monuments.

I did not appreciate the irony then.

When my cousins and I walked these woods, we enjoyed the innocence of youth.  Over the ensuing 40-some years the entanglements and complications of adulthood slowly engulfed us.

Nevertheless, for a few moments today, I recalled those pleasant walks.  Undoubtedly we discussed many things we would do in our lives, achieving musical stardom being only around the corner, and did not even realize how good our lives were then.

More than forty years have passed since I last walked these woods. The reality of life is that I do not have another forty years left to wait to do it again. So I will return here, soon.

We all have places, walked with family and friends, that remind us of how precious life is.  Ambling along wooded paths, seeing visions of a different time, recalling the laughter shared from innocence, is a great thing.

There is something good in living a life that gives one the opportunity to recall those times.  Not in a desire to return to them, but reaping the benefit in the rejuvenation of one’s outlook on life.

Go for a walk in the woods.  You never know what memories you will see, or create.