On Sunday, February 14, Lynda and I headed out on a road trip to San Antonio. The purpose was for me to attend and speak at the Environmental Connection 16 conference, the annual conference of the International Erosion Control Association. We had begun to make this an annual event in 2011, 2012, and 2013. Then life circumstances got in the way and I attended alone in 2014 and 2015.

We had to accommodate life this year, as Lynda’s mom is living with us. We either had to find a place for her to take her along. We decided on the latter, knowing we would be slowed down, but feeling better about having her along with us instead of bunking in with someone else. For sure she couldn’t stay alone. Lynda also wanted to take our not-quite-3-year-old granddaughter along, but I vetoed that. It would be extra driving to Oklahoma City to get her, extra luggage and gear to carry, REALLY being slowed down. No, while I enjoy the grandkids immensely, this wasn’t going to happen.

Except, that Sunday morning, as we were preparing to leave, we got a text from our daughter in OKC. She had almost fainted in the shower. Clearly something was wrong. Lynda immediately said we should offer to take the granddaughter off her hands for the week. That scheme was approved, and so off to OKC we went. I guess I’m just an old softy.

Due to the extra driving, we didn’t get into Dallas that night until almost 10 p.m. I had planned on us getting in before dark. The next day, when we visited the 6th Floor Museum (the Kennedy Assassination site), we had our hands full between corralling Elise and helping Esther to work the audio tour guide gadget. I saw much less of the museum than I had hoped to. But at least I saw it, and walked the grassy knoll, in fulfillment of a dream I’ve had for some time.

Then it was on to San Antonio, getting in a little later in the evening than I’d hoped for. On Tuesday we saw the Alamo, then went down to the River Walk for lunch, then back to the hotel for an afternoon of rest. All of this was walking, as our hotel was right downtown, not far from the main attractions. That evening I had dinner with my old high school/college friend Alex Larson, who has lived there for 14 or so years and who I hadn’t seen for 42 years. That was good to see each other and rehash old times while Lynda, Esther, and Elise walked to the downtown Denny’s, the restaurant that would become our main eatery.

Wednesday through Friday was the conference, so my days were tied up. But I turned down every invitation for evening activities, and decided just to go back to the hotel and help my wife with the 90 year old and almost-3-year-old. I spoke three times at the conference, giving the same paper twice and teaching a half-day class. This is my sixth straight year to speak at it.

Saturday we decided to go to the zoo. It was a great time, though Esther had trouble getting the hang of the motorized wheelchair. In hindsight we would have been better off getting a manual one and having me push her. We saw lots of great things at the zoo. The temperature was just right, the crowd was large but not oppressively so. We had a good time.

Then Sunday, Feb 21, we headed home. We did the drive to Oklahoma City in less time than expected, had dinner with the kids, dropped Elise off, and headed home, arriving about 11:00 p.m.  I forget what the mileage was on the trip counter, but I think over 2,000 miles. I’m glad it all turned out okay. I got back in the groove without any trouble, and had a somewhat productive week afterward.

A young man I know, Billy McConnell, passed away this week, age 36. The first report was that perhaps two competing medications caused him to vomit in his sleep, not wake up, and choke to death. Today his grandfather told me that wasn’t correct. He had a blood clot go to his lung, and he died from that.

Billy had a difficult life, having significant physical and learning disabilities. He had neurofibromatosis, which runs in his family. His eyesight was quite poor, and he may have been legally blind. He had some speech difficulties, though I never knew how much was physical and how much was development. For sure he was developmentally challenged. Yes, Billy had many physical and developmental problems.

He was pretty much raised by his grandparents, at least all the time I knew him. We attend the same church, and I got to know Billy. In 1992 I started a teen Bible quizzing program at our church, which is one of our denominational programs. This part of the country was, at the time, a hotbed of teen Bible quizzing activity, and the top quizzers and teams in the nation typically came out of our region, either Oklahoma or Arkansas. Billy came out for it the next year, probably in his 9th grade year. He was the same age as my son.

At first I wasn’t so sure about that. The little I knew of him at the time I knew he didn’t have the abilities to compete. However, we had enough teens to have both an “A” team and a “B” team (and sometimes a “C” team), and I didn’t want to turn anyone down. So Billy came out for Bible quizzing. I don’t know how much he studied—if he even could study. He came faithfully to practice, and went on all of our quizzes, most of which were out-of-town over-nighters. He didn’t often “jump” to answer questions, or if he did he didn’t often get the answer right. But he came out; he absorbed the word of God; and he competed.

I recall a quiz in Oklahoma City, I think in Billy’s second year in the program. He was on the B team. Right after lunch, when the event turned from round robin groups to double-elimination tournaments, our B team had their first quiz in the large room, with the big quizzing set-up. The operator of the equipment slid the name “Bentonville” into the marquee. This was in one of the lower tournament brackets, and our B team quizzed against a team of similar abilities. The others on the team were more advanced than Billy, though they were by no means experts or top competitors. The A team, which I was coaching, wouldn’t quiz for half an hour, so I stayed to watch a while.

The first question, one of our quizzers jumped. In this set-up you had to walk ten or twenty feet to a microphone, and say the answer into it so the judges could hear. That meant your answer was audible throughout the large room.  A fairly large audience would hear how you answered. This first boy actually had an easy question, and got it right. Bentonville led 20-0. On the second question, the second boy on the team jumped, walked to the mic, and gave the right answer. Bentonville was up 40-0.

On the third question, Billy felt that he knew the answer, and he jumped before anyone else did. The quizmaster called him to the mic. He walked toward the mic with confidence, and gave the right answer. It was neither a hard or easy question—it was an average question, one that you had to know something about the part of the Bible being studied to get right. Obviously, Billy had either studied or had picked it up along the way. The rules say that when the third person on a team gets an answer correct, the team gets a 10 point bonus. So Billy got 30 points for that answer, and, three questions into a twenty question quiz, the Bentonville B team had a 70-0 lead.

That was a great moment, for the team and for Billy. I got to stay a few more minutes before having to go on and corral my team and get them ready for their quiz. I heard later that the B team won its quiz. Billy had a big part in it.

I need to share one other story about Billy. This was at church, one Wednesday evening. Back then the church had a dinner every Wednesday night, not so much for fundraising but for fellowship. This Wednesday I sat across from Billy. A couple of other adults (not his grandparents) were close, including one who was in authority in the church. Billy said something that was disparaging of someone else. I’m not sure he knew what his words really meant. I gently corrected him and explained what he had done and how he might have handled things differently. The adult in authority who was nearby laughed. Billy shortly had finished eating and left. I asked that adult why he laughed. He said, “Billy’s hopeless. Don’t waste your time trying to help him.”

With all his difficulties, Billy was never going to be a valedictorian. He would never be able to beautifully recite poetry; or drive a car; or partake in so many of the activities others his age did. But to be laughed at, to be abandoned, to be denied the help he could use to do what he could, and excel to the best of his abilities…well, that just wasn’t right.

I don’t know if his time in teen Bible quizzing helped Billy much or not. I’d like to think it did. I certainly think the efforts I made with him helped me; hopefully they helped him as well.

I would see Billy now and then through the years after he became an adult, either when he visited at church, or when we happened to see each other around town. We always had a brief and pleasant conversation. He didn’t seem to change much. I think, at his passing, it had been three years since our last contact. I would have liked to have seen him again, and am saddened that I never will anymore in this life.

Rest in peace, Billy. Condolences to his extended family.

I know I was supposed to publish a post on Sunday, and another one today. Truth is, however, that I’m brain dead right now. I couldn’t force out a post if I wanted to. Yet I have work to do this evening, writing work.

I’ll try to be back on my regular posting schedule next week.

I’ve been away from the blog for a while. Today is the first time I’ve been here in over three weeks, and it’s been longer than that since I’ve posted. I haven’t been idle, however.

July 24-26 was my wife’s high school reunion back in Meade, Kansas. That was a fun weekend. The July 31-Aug 2 was her paternal family reunion in Dodge City, Kansas. I was the reunion planner for that (go figure).  We stayed the full week in the area between the two reunions.

I want to write a couple of blog posts on the family reunion, but need some time to get those together, along with some photos. I’ll be back with those posts.

I also have two or three book reviews to do. Again, I’m not quite ready to write those yet. Hopefully I’ll get one done on Wednesday.

And, of course, I need to do an update on what’s going on with my writing life. I do some of that on my Facebook author page, but will also add some posts here as well. Again, I just need some time to get to them.

So, here I am, finally back at my blog, not able to do much more than tell you what’s coming up. Hopefully I can be regular at blogging for the next month or two, at least twice a week.

I don’t often get into politics on this blog, but will today. Those who come here to read about my writing life, or engineering, or anything but politics, just gloss over this. I just discovered I have never created a blog category for “politics”, which shows how I avoid the discussion. I was going to blog about belt loops today, but will save that for another time.

Right now the raging debate is on religious freedom acts coming from State legislatures. As I write this, Indiana has passed one that the governor has signed. Arkansas has passed one that awaits Governor Hutchinson’s action. These two states thus join 19 others that already have such a law on the books. It’s also said these laws are similar to the Federal law passed in 1993 by bipartisan votes in the Democratic controlled Congress and signed by President Clinton. The laws from the early 1990s were for the purpose of making sure a few Native Americans could smoke their peyote (how fitting based on who supported it), and has no relationship to the current debate.

The debate centers on whether these laws are thinly veiled attempts to legalize discrimination against the homosexual community. Somewhere in the USA a baker refused to make the cake for the wedding of a same-sex couple. That case is winding its way through the court system, and is now, I believe, awaiting SCOTUS action. The homosexual community and others are against these laws, and believe that a person in a public business should not be allowed chose who they will serve and who they won’t.

Others debate that the laws are necessary because a person should be allowed to make a statement about whether they support a cause or not. Partaking in a cause through serving it as a business could be interpreted as supporting it. Hence, they want the right to refuse service as an expression of religious freedom and free speech. Refusing service is not discrimination, or if it is a person’s right to free speech trumps another’s right not to be discriminated against.

Both sides discuss this in relation to racial discrimination, some saying it’s essentially the same, others saying it’s very different. Refusing service to a person of another race is and should be against the law, all say. Some say refusing service to a person based on sexual orientation is the same as it is based on racial reasons; other say no, the two are very different. That’s the arguments, as I understand them. I could be wrong in some of these points, or over-simplifying. I have not researched this or read any of the laws involved. All I know is what I hear on television and read in the news.

My thought about this: I don’t care. Pass the laws or don’t pass the laws. Defend my free speech or take it away from me. Defend my religious liberty or take it away from me. I don’t care. How I live my life will be exactly the same.

I lived in Saudi Arabia for two and a half years, more than 30 years ago. At the time we couldn’t openly practice Christianity. There were no churches. Oh, in the western communities of Aramco there were unofficial churches, which met in Western school auditoriums, and for a while we were able to attend those. The government knew about them. Back in the early 1950s the king called in the oil executives, told them he knew all about their Christian gatherings and the pastors brought into his country as “special teachers”. You may keep them, he said, but if anyone ever tries to convert a Moslem they will be gone on the next airplane.

That had no bearing on our worshiping God, or practicing our Christianity. While we could we went to the “church” nearest us. When that was closed to us who didn’t work for the oil company, we got together with other Christians in our apartments or villas, maybe ten to twenty people, and worshipped how we wanted to. Those were very meaningful times of worship, more meaningful, in fact, because we were breaking the law to do it.

Typical of the debate I see, a Facebook friend (who I don’t really know, but I have an on-line connection to her through a common interest) posted this.

“Christians”, be careful who you condemn. You may find yourself in the next group denied service in a business because you may not be “Christian” enough to suit the owners.

I don’t know if she means this to be a warning, a prediction, or a threat. I don’t care. I find it interesting that she equates refusing to serve someone as condemnation. That is so far from true as to be laughable. Just because we oppose what someone is doing does not mean we condemn them. People in my office accept continuing education credits from vendor presentations. I understand this to be against the continuing education laws in most if not all states, and so I won’t accept those credits and encourage others not to accept them. But I don’t condemn those who accept them. We simply disagree.

But if this is a prediction or a threat, and service refusals to Christians are coming, I don’t care. Let them come. It won’t affect my worship practices one bit. I will continue to serve the living God in the way I see right. I will see being refused service because I am a practicing Christian to be a badge of honor, remembering that they did much worse to Jesus than to me.

Recently a homosexual hairdresser refused to any longer do the hair of New Mexico’s female governor because she came out in opposition to same-sex marriage. It actually doesn’t matter that he’s homosexual. He could be heterosexual and take the same position, refusing service for political reasons. I wonder what would happen to his right to refuse her service if these laws pass, or don’t pass. Of course, his reasons were political, I guess, not religious. Do we need a Political Freedom Restoration Act to protect his right to refuse to do business with a person who takes a political stand with which he disagrees? I assume he is not condemning her. he just doesn’t want to do business with her because of her political stance.

And that’s the crux of the matter so far as I’m concerned. Disagreement does not equal condemnation. At least it doesn’t in my mind, though it seems to in this friend’s mind. She condemns “Christians” for supporting these laws, even as she accuses “Christians” of condemning homosexuals simply because of a disagreement on same-sex marriage.

The debate gets coarser and harsher. Must disagreement be interpreted and labeled as condemnation? The sides are bucking up, not simply disagreeing and going on with their friendships and lives. All of which makes me less than optimistic about the future of the USA.