one for the weekend

The last of the grandpa bits I have to share:

Epilogue

As I sit here at this machine I think a lot about the future, not my future but the future of mankind and how it will affect my grandchildren. I see a changing world just as I saw and read about it during the industrial revolution. I foresee a new revolution coming, in fact it is here and going to continue into the lives of many new generations. I see this as, not the age of machines, as in the industrial revolution, but as a revolution of ideas, the information revolution.

When I was young not everyone had even a crude radio, and our family didn’t even have electricity. Who dreamed of computers, jet airplanes, automobiles, microwave ovens and hundreds of unbelievable ideas that have come to fruition? I remember reading a story once about a man who resigned from the U. S. patent office in Washington back in the thirties because he thought that everything that could be invented had already been patented.

I sit and think now about “Dolly” a cloned sheep and “Molly” her soon to be offspring and hear them talking about cloning humans, and DNA and other scientific breakthroughs. I know that to live in the world of the future it is going to require many things for those who wish to succeed. I try never to give advice but if my kids were young I would want them to become proficient with computers and get a good formal education and specialize in some work area. I would also say to them, don’t allow anyone to set your limitations but try to go as far as you can and you will determine your own limitations.

I just went out and watched the television for the news and it was all about ice storms and I came back to this thinking that one ice storm can stop all of these modern machines like the computers, refrigeration, heating, microwaves and automobiles become useless, but I’m sure they will soon invent some way to handle this problem also. I know that they already have computers that switch to batteries when the electricity is down. Now back to what I was saying.....Remember the Chinese saying, every journey begins with the first step. Don’t be afraid to take that first step.

I was reading recently about Jonathan Swift the author of Gulliver’s Travels and was surprised that he wrote about the two moons of Jupiter and even described them back in the fifteen hundreds. This got me thinking about Jules Verne and how he wrote about the submarine and all about the deep seas. Then I read about Nostradamas and all of the predictions he made, like World War II and the airplanes and many, many more astounding predictions, and I say to myself, “who gives them this information?” If it is a god, why doesn’t he give this information to all of us?

I don’t remember it but have read about Bell saying to his assistant after he made his first phone call “I need you and I can’t think of his name”. Was it Watson? I guess we have come a long way and I think, we are just beginning. Makes me wish I was going to be here to see what happens.

Eddie often quoted passages from literature and one that comes to mind is, even though I can’t remember what it’s from, or who wrote it, it’s something like Snowscape or Winter Scene:

Oh, tell me not in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream,
And the soul is dead that slumbers,
And life is NOT what it seems.

Also one that she wrote not long before she died.

No sickness like hate
No gift like health
No faith like trust
No joy like peace........

Ednagene Herbert
June 1994

And now I will borrow from Leigh Hunt but adapt it some:

Eddie kissed me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in.
Time, you thief! who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in.
Say I’m weary, say I’m sad;
Say that health and wealth have missed me;
Say I’m growing old, but add -
Eddie kissed me !
And That Ends It !!!