A little reminder from the late astronomer Carl Sagan…
“The surface of the Earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean. On this shore, we’ve learned most of what we know. Recently, we’ve waded a little way out, maybe ankle-deep, and the water seems inviting. Some part of our being knows this is where we came from. We long to return, and we can, because the cosmos is also within us. We’re made of star stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.”
American Summer 2016
How do we make sense of the senseless?
Beheadings and car bombs on the other side of the world.
Civilian “soft targets,” from Paris to Brussels to Istanbul, suicide bombed by “martyrs” in the name of their God.
A slaughter in an Orlando nightclub.
Over 2,000 gun deaths in Chicago this year.
Cell phone video of highly questionable shootings of African Americans.
And now, the ambush and assassination of Dallas Police officers during an otherwise peaceful protest.
Ironically, this most recent national tragedy occurred very close to Dealey Plaza, the site of America’s most notorious assassination.
How do we make sense of the senseless?
We cannot.
But there are things we can do.
We can affect our own individual spheres of influence.
Our family, friends, neighbors and communities.
It starts small. It starts organically. It starts with you. And it grows.
We can choose reason over insanity.
We can choose light over darkness.
We can choose love over fear.
We can increase the peace.
In our communities, in our state, in our nation, in our world.
The good people in this world vastly outnumber the misguided, vicious ones.
I am convinced that in the end, love wins.
We just need to consciously, actively intend the light and the love a little more.
With Alan Weinkrantz at the 2014 KLRN Auction – June 21, 2014
Last night, in the blink of an eye, my friend Alan Weinkrantz left this world.
He was sitting down to dinner in an outdoor sidewalk cafe on a beautiful, starry June night.
I saw the news of his death appear on my iPhone around 9:30pm while I was participating in the final night of the KLRN Auction, raising funds for San Antonio’s PBS television station. Seconds later, KLRN VP Katrina Kehoe walked down the stairs from her position coordinating auction activities. I could see by the look of shock on her face that she had just read the news as well. We couldn’t wrap our heads around the notion that Alan was gone.
Alan volunteered for the KLRN Auction every year. He would probably have been with us last night if he were not in Israel, where he traveled frequently to participate in the country’s growing tech community.
When I read that Alan died at a Tel Aviv sidewalk cafe, my first thought was that an act of terror must have taken place. This was not terrorism, however, but a very tragic accident.
Reports indicate that as Alan was having dinner, a man had a heart attack while driving his car at a high rate of speed. The out of control vehicle instantaneously jumped the curb and slammed into the tables of the outdoor cafe.
Alan, another restaurant patron and the driver were killed at the scene. Six others were injured.
Alan was a wonderful man who exuded joy and enthusiasm. He was an evangelist and mentor for the tech and start up communities in San Antonio, in Israel and around the world.
He had a passion for technology, innovation, entrepreneurship and music. We shared a love for The Beatles and had wonderful conversations about the brilliance of their songs.
One of the most mind expanding ideas that Alan shared with me was that rock and roll music is code, akin to the code that is used to program computer software and apps.
Alan Weinkrantz’s 1005 Faces photo
As Alan said in this interview,
The idea began during I period when I was spending a lot of time at a good friend’s high-end guitar shop in San Antonio. Being surrounded by music all the time I started studying the history of rock n’ roll. And then it hit me.
It’s all code.
I went back in time, listening to old albums from the Kinks, the Who, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones. I realized that all the albums, the songs, the lyrics — they’re code. The code isn’t manifested as “lines of code” but rather in the stories built, layered and played.
If you look at the way musical history progressed, it seems each band was creating a new experience for their audience — not just musically but, story wise. We’re talking about their narrative, where they came from, how they got famous, their clothes, their sound and the overall experience which is just as important as the music itself — if not more.
Just like startups.
And just like startups, Rock & roll bands, work together iteratively. Collaboratively. And hopefully, harmonically.
I will always remember Alan for his contagious sense of wonder and his passion for big ideas. He mentored people of all ages seeking to find their path in a complex digital world, including me.
I trust he’s now in Rock and Roll Heaven, making music, creating code and embarking on his next cosmic adventures.
In the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make. – The Beatles
Beatles fan Alan Weinkrantz on Abbey Road
Learn more about Alan in this story by Bob Rivard in his Rivard Report.
Alan’s Facebook cover photo – His laptop at a sidewalk cafe
Above: Alan’s Facebook cover photo. His Mac at night at an outdoor cafe with the words, “Do Something That Matters.”
Perfect.
My Little Time Machine
A package I ordered from Amazon arrived at my doorstep yesterday afternoon, on the final day of the year.
It is a machine that scans and digitizes old photographic slides and negatives.
This little device, no larger than the size of a softball, may as well be a time machine because it drew me back into a world that only exists as distant memories in my mind.
A lifetime of old, dusty slides and negatives from the pre-digital era have followed me through life in shoe boxes and tattered envelopes. Luckily, I’ve had the good sense to hold onto them all of these years.
Many of these images had not been seen by human eyes in over five decades.
Until now.
As I placed them into the scanner, long lost family images suddenly flickered onto my computer screen with crisp, vibrant color and focus. I was transported back to my childhood, to a time before life became complicated and dear loved ones passed on much too soon.
In a flash, it’s the first Christmas I am aware of and I am sitting in front of a silvery Christmas tree as white morning light streams through the window.
I see the faces of my three sisters as children in the early Sixties, just as I remember them when I first arrived on this Earth.
I’m being held by my father on an Arizona highway as a toddler. He would pass on when I was four years old, but on this sunny day all is perfect in my little world.
My mother holds me close to her cheek. She is 37 and I’m not yet a year old.
I’m pushed in a stroller by my mother as my sister Beth holds my hand. It must be 1961 in this moment.
After an evening of time travel, I awakened into a new day and a new year.
It’s 2016.
How time flies.
When I was much younger, I remember adults telling me that the older you get, the faster time seems to fly by. The days, the weeks, the months, the years seem to whisk past faster than when you were younger.
When I first heard this, I figured it was just another odd thing that older people muse about. It didn’t make much sense to me.
Now I’m one of those older people. And it turns out they were right. The longer we live, the faster time seems to accelerate.
It’s nice to have a time machine.
To see those young faces. Some of them we haven’t seen in years.
To see that tiny being you used to be.
To recall the love, the innocence, the joy of life as you first felt it as a child.
That love, that innocence, that joy never goes away. It is the magic of this wondrous journey through life that is truly eternal. It is still there in the recesses of our memory.
It’s still a thought away.
It’s still a breath away.
Inexorably following us through time.
The First Christmas I Was Aware Of
My sisters Kathy, Beth and Rosemary – Early Sixties
With my father Frank – Arizona, 1961
Held by my mother – 1960
Going for a stroll with my mother Katherine and my sister Beth, 1961
Listen…
At night if you’re silent enough
…if you’re centered enough
…if you’re open enough
you can hear
the music of the spheres
Spheres, Muses, Angels
singing, whispering their secrets
The secrets you’ve known
for ten thousand years
but had forgotten
until just now
Tracy Frost
(In memory of Tracy Frost)
Every time it happens
We remind ourselves
That life
Is so fragile
So fleeting
We took this friend
For granted
So we resolve
To appreciate
To revere
To affirm
To celebrate
The amazing friends
In our life
Until…
We slip back
Into the trance
And forget
That all of this
Is a miracle
Until…
The next friend dies
And we remind ourselves
All over again
And again
And again
Until that dying friend
Is finally you
Sometimes the New Year or the Mid Year or the Full Moon whispers to you that your time is now. And like the year and the Moon, your days are full, but waning.
Perhaps now is the time to become more of the person you came here to be.
I wrote these words last night, as we moved into the midpoint of the year, in contemplation of the Full Moon and how it can symbolize not only the progression of our year, but of our lives.
Birth.
Growth.
Fullness.
Waning.
Death.
(Followed by Rebirth)
The fullness of the year, the fullness of the Moon and the fullness of your life is right now.
Love More.
Fear Less.
Laugh Often.
Breathe Consciously.
Forgive Everyone.
(that is all)
My father died in February of 1965. He was 42 years old and I was four. I was his youngest of five children.
I never knew him when I was an adult and I barely knew him past the age of three, as he served in Vietnam during the last year of his life.
Vietnam was my father’s second war, having flown B-17 bombers over Europe in World War II. He would later tell my mother and older siblings how the war haunted him and how he grieved for the prodigious loss of life that he witnessed and participated in.
Because I was so young when he died, I only have a handful of actual memories of my father.
I have the one item he wrote directly to me. It is 22 words inscribed in pencil on the back of a photograph he had kept in his wallet. It is one of five photos of his children that my father carried with him on his journey to and through Vietnam.
The photo is of his youngest son as he knew me in the last year of his life.
On the back he wrote,
“Kip,” You and your sisters and brother have been on the other side of the world – I love you son. Dad.”
More than 50 years later, I am touched that our father would carry photos of his children with him in a far away war.
How could he have known his son would treasure the message half a century later?
His words, “on the other side of the world,” have both the literal meaning he intended and a cosmic meaning now that he is indeed somewhere on the other side of this existence.
My brother and a sister have since joined him there.
As will I one day.
Until then, I carry the photo and those words with me, as he once did.
* ( This is a two-part blog: first, a post I made on Facebook, and then the idea of a wise friend who has chosen to bring people together )
First, my post…
Are we, as a people, asleep at the wheel?
Are we sleepwalking through our lives?
Our nation is so divisive these days.
We believe the dogma we identify with and demonize the other side.
For the most part, I’ve followed the lead of evolved human beings like my dear friend Gabe Quintanilla, who have decided not to talk about politics on Facebook, because it becomes so ugly so fast.
Yet I’m torn.
If people of conscience keep their mouths shut, then no evolution takes place.
Yet, when we speak, we are often drawn into the toxic, negative vibration.
I have dear friends on the left and on the right.
But the extreme (and well funded) political forces on the left and the right benefit from our demonizing each other.
We are better than this.
Let’s be human beings.
Let’s be conscious.
Let’s be open.
Ultimately, we want the same things… the best situation, the best culture, the best country, the best world we can co-create.
We can have different philosophies.
But that doesn’t make me an enemy of you, nor you an enemy of me.
We’re brothers and sisters.
We’re children of God and Goddess.
See the divinity in everyone.
Let’s start there.
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Now, Part Two…
Postscript:
My friend Gabe Quintanilla read the above post on Facebook and responded with this:
“This is one of the best posts that I have ever read on Facebook–written by my buddy, Chris Duel–it inspired me to throw out an idea…would anyone here or on Chris’ wall be interested in forming a lunch group that would meet once a month? Everyone invited–both the political left and right–just as a way of breaking bread–getting to know each other better–on a human level as opposed to just a viral FB friendship? If anyone is interested–let me know…”
Gabe got reaction…
