Fidelacchius, Esperacchius, Amoracchius.

Archive for the ‘Family’ Category

Comic by Tatsuya Ishida

With the devastation of Ike, there is a lot that runs through your head.  included in the hardships of day to day life, is the inevitable question, “Is god out there?”.  Why would he allow this?  Or, Why would he do this to people?

I wonder if….  God is love.  That’s what they say isn’t it.  From the mortal experience, we seem to have all sorts of perspective on Love.  I believe we are allowed to have as much control over Nature as he does.  We forget though that both we and he have to play by the rules.  It’s funny but you can think of the Holy Ghost as a referree and all you have to do is ask, “Am I gonna win this one?  Is it worth losing the game?  What do I do?”. 

See,  existance has rules, and even God “walks the razors edge of necessity” (Skousen, Cleon) in what he can and cannot reveal to us without taking away our free will.  So, Heavenly Father is more aware of the rules, loopholes, and damage than we are.  But he doesn’t keep that hidden on purpose, we just have to faithfully ask.  As well as asking we are required to have faith that the “Universe is the great Equalizer” (Isani Cayetano).  We may not win this round, we may not understand God’s nature, but we must maintain faith that he is a fair and just God.  God will restore what is ours to us in time.

I have a testimony that God is just with us and that he allows us to have strife, temptation, and challenges.  He also promises to be with us when we ask of him.  He will return to us our righteousness, justice, mercy, goodness, kindness, injustices, intolerance, and all our doings.  God lives by the Golden Rule.  I think I’ll close this post with the words of Alma to Corianton, the son he loved so much he gave these great words of wisdom. (pulled from http://scriptures.lds.org)

12 And now behold, is the meaning of the word restoration to take a thing of a natural state and place it in an unnatural state, or to place it in a state opposite to its nature?

We stayed.  Both Kaylene and I prayed about it and we felt comfortable staying.  We experienced intermittent power loss throughout the night but by the morning the power was back on as well as the internet.  I wanted to include some pics and thoughts of this Hurricane called Ike.

Ok, so Ike has come and went and Houston is definitely worse for wear.  Centerpoint Energy controls the Power grid for central Houston/Harris County and has announced that only the Medical Center and Downtown area still have power.  They estimated that only half a million people have power and that it will be 1-3 weeks before the other 2.1million people (In Harris county only) will have power restored.  Galveston was hit hard, just as predicted, yet many of the residents stayed.  I guess they thought it would be fun.  After all this was the third Hurricane to blow our direction in the last 2 months. 

The Balinese Room

Ike decimated much of Galveston Island.  All allong the seawal was debris and devastation.  They were showing pictures of the streets lined with wreckage from a Hooters, Pier Fishing shops, and the Balinese Room.  The Balinese Room has been around for over 70 years and hosted such entertainers as Frank Sinatra and Bob Hope. 

One news reporter mentioned that there was debris covering the seawall boulevard for over 30-40 blocks.  It has been crazy to watch some of the new reports roll in.  I agree with Kaylene that watching to much of it makes you feel sick. 

The picture is from www.Click2Houston.com via the Associated Press.  Click on it and it will take you to the news link for the Balinese Room.

 Rodney was the nickname that my family gave to the raccoon who so huggingly gave me rabies.  I was a teenager in Aiken South Carolina and was weeding the bushes at the side of the house.  Afton was asleep on the couch and Mom was out doing errands.    I heard a strangling gurgled noise and turned around to see a raccoon standing at the end of the row.  Literally, standing on 2 feet, swaying like a drunkard.  I didn’t know what to do.  It was a short stalemate with me standing on one side not knowing what to do and him staring me down through a haze.

Quick as a flash, he closed the 10 foot distance, jumped, wrapped his legs around my leg, and started going to town on my knee with his little raccoon teeth.  It took me a second for shock to wear off, and then I kicked him across the yard.  I should have followed him to figure out where he was going, but instead, I ran inside yelling about how I had been bit by a raccoon.  Afton woke up long enough to look at me, say yeah right, and then role back around back to sleep. 

I waited until my mom came home, and told her that I’d been bit by a raccoon.  She didn’t believe me either, until I showed her the hole in my pants and said, why would I do this.  So we went to the Doctor and I had a Bazillion shots and had to come back for 5 more weeks while they rotated more shots on my body.  By the time I was half way finished with the shot treatment, I found out that the neighbor lady had also been bitten.  She had then dragged the raccon scratching, biting and hissing all the way from their Blueberry patch to the front steps of her house.  At this point her husband brought a baseball bat and beat the raccoon to death.  They sent it off for testing and sure enough….  It did have Rabies.

 BTW, I despise raccoons.  To quote Kaylene….

“They’re oversized cockroaches”.

Dedicated to the memory of Rodney the Rabid Raccoon. 

Comic owned by Mitch Clem at www.mitchclem.com

Here’s a current list of Classes I’ve finished and what I’ve got left over.  I just finished MY Natural Sciences II and Project Management coursework.  I’ve now got to finish my Portfolio Project before deciding what classes to choose for the rest of my term.  So I’m Halfway through my 3 year goal and on track.  Yay Me!!!

Classes Finished:
Term 1:
Education without Boundaries
Leadership and Professionalism
Quantitative Literacy
Term 2:
Foundations of Language and Communication
Quantitative Reasoning and Communication
IT Fundamentals I
IT Fundamentals II
IT Fundamentals III
Programming Fundamentals
Term 3:
Networks I
Ethics Part I
Ethics Part II
Social Science Part II: American History & Government, World History and Geography
Term 4:
Natural Science Part II:Concepts & Theories-Life, Earth, Space, and Physical Sciences
Project Management

Classes still to pass:
IT Portfolio
Client Systems
Web Technologies
Research, Writing and Oral Presentation
Rhetorical and Critical Writing
Reasoning & Problem Solving in the Context of the Humanities Part I
Reasoning & Problem Solving in the Context of the Humanities Part II
Programming Fundamentals II
Database I
Security I
Technical Writing
IT Capstone Project

Kevin Steele

Kaylene regularly posts on the family blog at jms.steelelife.com and on her sidebar she has polls that she created.  Yesterday she was creating a new post and I looked over at her administration page.  The polls sections had her latest title in, and since I hadn’t looked at the site yet (Yes, bad bad Kevin) I read the title and it looked like this.

Name your Favorite Coloured Family….

 WHAT!!!!  I looked over at my wife and said something to this affect “Well, I prefer the Cosby’s but are you sure that this is an appropriate thing to be polling about???”  She didn’t seem to worried about it…  She then pointed out that the title actually says “What’s your favorite Color Family”….  Like Reds, Blues or Greens.  DOH.  I should have payed more attention. 

And then again,  it’s not always me not paying attention.  She posted a nice post about her and little things that make up her life.  She had a section on family and posted this (It has since been changed). 

“Kevin, my husband for 7 years and my best friend for almost 8 now, he’s tall and strong, and takes good care of me, especially late at night.”

I read this and started laughing.  I read it out loud to her and she blushed, laughed, and quickly edited it out.  Too bad I have it here in my blog.  Mwa hahahaha.  Actually, the comment is about how late at night, I’ll go check on noises, get her Tylenol, etc…  Nightly though, it’s about how I switch sides with her to make it easier to feed Joseph.  I’m used to it that from a fairly dead sleep, I can get up and switch bedsides with out too much noise or hubub.  Her original comment was innocent enough though.

 I love you Kaylene.  Thanks for putting up with my misreadings.

This one is for Isani.  Isani Cayetano is our newest team member in the BCM IT Field Support group. 

Isani moved here with his wife Joy who is a first-year med student at Baylor.  Isani is from Belize and comes from Garifuna heritage.  He has a strong sense of his family, where he comes from, and who he is.  I admire him and we’ve gotten many chances to speak about his life and what makes him him.  One of the things he introduced to me is music from the Garifuna culture. 

Some “Quick Background” for those like me, who had never heard of the Garifuna before.  They are a group of people who descended from African Slaves and the Native Carribean Indians, mainly from Saint Vincent where they started out.  They have struggled through their last 200 hundred years of History.  They were caught in a territorial war between France and Britain and ended up being forcibly relocated to Honduras.  But to this day though the Garifuna People have spread from there to Belize, Roatan, Guatemala, and other Central American/Caribbean Nations.  They have their own language that is a mixture of Arawakan, French, Spanish, and others.  In listening to their music, I hear so many different cultures all in one very beautiful expression.

Their culture was in such decline that UNESCO declared the Garifuna Culture and Language Endangered.  It’s estimated that the population is 200,000-300,000 thousand Garifuna and that only 90,000 people still speak the  language.  To quote National Geographic: “The Garífuna were selected because of the vibrancy of their language, music, and dance. One tradition that incorporates all of these aspects is the dügü, a dance which Garífuna use to summon the spirits of their ancestors in an effort to resolve problems in their communities. This passionate ritual, which may last uninterrupted for three days and requires the attendance of every family member, even those who live outside Central America, promotes unity and peace among the Garífuna.”

Isani’s Uncle is Andy Palacio.  Though Andy recently passed, he was a long time evangelist for the Garifuna culture and keeping it alive. He worked hard and brought together other Garifuna musicians and they started creating music and recording it so that others could experience it.  They were called “Andy Palacio and the Garifuna Collective“.  I’ve been listening to their music from the CD Watina and wanted to share it with you.  I would prefer that people go out and purchase the music, so I’ll include one song I found on the web and an album cover and link to the site.

Yagane means canoe and is the story of an old man who has fallen out of his boat and is calling to his canoe to come get him.

YAGANE : [audio:https://kevin.steelelife.com/misuc/Yagane-(Canoe).mp3]

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to learn more Isani.

IMAGE INFO:  “I don’t own any of the images I used.  Image one is of Isani and I pulled it from his Facebook page.  The second image is of Andy Palacio and the Garifuna Collective.  The Third image is the CD Cover for Watina.