Dash TV #34 Old Tucson

Perhaps you will recognize some of these:

2011

2011

2011

2007

Decisions and Ripple Effects

          How many of our decisions affect others?  Choosing to have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich over tuna fish may not have any kind of a ripple effect as making a choice to drive or walk toward oncoming traffic. 

          Yesterday morning Balras Sing Dhillon had stopped his car just outside of Myrtle Creek.  Whether it was a conscience decision or not is unknown. 

Police received a call about a vehicle stopped in the northbound left lane of the interstate approximately six in the morning and went to investigate. When they approached the vehicle, the driver took off. 

The driver continued for another mile before crashing into the medium.  He must have climbed over the medium after he abandoned his car.  Was he running from the police?  Was he so disoriented that he didn’t know what he was doing?  I believe the latter as it is said he ran onto the freeway and was struck by multiple cars that were going southbound.  Just before he died several people were affected by the decisions he had made.

Drivers between Exits 119 and 113 had nowhere to go.  They were stuck in traffic – lives were changed.  I do not know how many jobs were affected.  I know there were schools that were missing a number of instructors for one to three hours (depending on what time each school started).

The decision made created lost time – not only for the teachers but their students as well.  In one school the students of the absent instructors were required to go to the gym.  There they were given the choice to participate in physical activity or watch from the bleachers.  It was suggested they do homework or study – which many were obviously not doing as they surfed on cell phones or visited.

It was a weird day for everyone.  Instructors.  Students.  Aides.  Other community members who had been called to assist until the instructors arrived.

Often the decisions we make – whether consciously or not – affect others. The driver was a 35-year-old man from Lincoln, California.  We don’t know what brought him to Oregon.  That is what the media said.  The fatal accident is still under investigation as so much is unknown.

I am reminded of another incident also involving a car.  The driver had not taken his medication and was not supposed to be driving.  He wasn’t in his right mind when he made his decisions.  He drove onto the sidewalk and hit some students who were walking along 4000 West as they were returning home from Kearns Junior High.  Some media indicated there were seven students.  Other said five. 

I don’t recall the year it happened.  But I remember seeing the emergency lights spinning in the dark.  The road had been closed for more than 24 hours.  All the students involved had been taken to the hospital.  None of them were kept overnight as I recall. I don’t know what emotional scars were created or how long they lasted.

The one thing about Utah is there are alternatives.  There are back roads and exits that will still allow one to go in all four directions.  Here, in Oregon, there are not a lot of back roads or options.  We may think our decisions might not matter – but they do.

What is up with the lower case letter “a”?

          When we are taught to read the letters will sometimes give us problems.  Vowels don’t always make the same sound.  The pronunciation of “a’ sounds the same in words like “apple”  and  “cat” but differs when saying words like: “clay” or “talk”.  What’s even more confusing is seeing the letter “a” and writing it in a different way. 

          I don’t remember questioning that as a child, but I do as an adult. With so many fonts, the appearance of letters might appear differently from the other.  For example this font which I am currently using versus what comes up automatically in my computer.  I like this font so much better.  The “a” looks like what I’ve been taught to write, not this foreign letter that has an extra hook on top. 

          Who changed the font?  Who decided that we would learn to read “a” but write “a”? And why have our minds accepted both? Perhaps it’s designed to teach us about diversity.  If we can accept the differences among letters, why would we not do the same for people?

https://www.rocketspace.com/corporate-innovation/why-diversity-and-inclusion-driving-innovation-is-a-matter-of-life-and-death

A   A   A   A  a   a   a  a   G  G  G  g   g   J  J  J  

Dash TV #33 Tucson, Arizona

          I don’t know how often the boys went to Arizona to visit Roland’s sister, Jean before I joined the family.  I know Biff had lived with her for a while – perhaps a couple of years.  He had returned to live with Roland shortly before I met them all.

I remember driving to Tucson with Roland to pick the boys up three times after summer was over.  The first time we had gone all the way to Tucson to get them.  The second time we met them in Panquitch, Utah, believing it was a half-way point.  The third time was further down south at Glen Canyon Dam.  

We toured the facility before we parted ways and made observations on how much both Tony and Randy had grown. 

          Biff asked, “What about me?  Haven’t I grown?” His hair was like a small “Sideshow Bob” afro.  He was taller due to his hair.  But once he got it cut, he’d be back to his same size. He had also asked Roland if I was pregnant.  I was, but did not know it at the time.

          I have been to Tucson five times to visit Roland’s family.  The first time was before we were married when we had gone to get the boys so that they could start school.  All three of them would be starting junior high. I really don’t remember many details except that the boys wanted me to move faster when I was behind the wheel.  But that was on the return.  I was pretty wiped out during our first visit.

          The second time was when Jenna was three.  Roland and I took his mother to Old Tucson shortly after we arrived.  We allowed Jenna to stay home and get to know her cousins.  I don’t know how many pictures I took of Old Tucson.  And one who has internet can look up photos or may be familiar with scenes from many westerns or Little House on the Prarie.  I will not put all the photos I took in this post, but will create another post of some of the ones that I took (or were taken of me)

When we came home from Old Tucson, we found Jenna painting Kristen’s nails.  

I think we spent two or three days and Jenna had a blast getting to know her cousins – so much that she and John decided that she just stay and live with him.  They decided that if they dressed Jenna in John’s clothes that we would mistake her for him and wouldn’t take her with us. 

Of course we knew it was her.  They were both disappointed that they hadn’t fooled us and so she hid in his room.  She would not budge not even to say good-bye to Roland and me – or his mom who we were taking with us.  I did finally manage to trick her into either saying good-bye to a beloved stuffed animal that we had taken with us, or to retrieve her so that it too could live in Arizona.  When she got out to the car, I seat-belted her in and she cried for a good portion of the ride. 

When we stopped across the Utah border, I asked if she would like for us to buy a cactus for her (as she had been hinting for one the entire time we were in Arizona).  But she saw something else that she wanted more than the cactus.  We ended up buying a stick horse which she named “Pinky” (the same name as the small bear we had brought with us) I think she ended up giving that same name to four of her toys.

Two years later we returned for Uncle Mike’s funeral.  It was in January and the weather felt nice compared to Salt Lake – though those who lived in Arizona thought it was cold.  It appears I took a lot of pictures of the family though we were not there for long.  We left right after the funeral.

The following year we spent some time with the family at San Xavier.  As we walked through there were several statues of different saints.  Roland told Jenna that if she was good her Aunt Linda would tell her the names of each of the saints represented at which point Linda slugged Roland and he laughed.

We also went to Old Tucson as a family.  I think there were eight adults and three children who went. We all ended up riding the carousel and had stopped off for pizza on the way back to Jean’s house.  Jenna and I wanted pineapple on our pizza but Aunt Linda wouldn’t hear of it.  So Roland purchased two more pizzas so that Jenna and I could have our pineapple.  Guess whose pizzas were first to be eaten?

The pictures indicate that we had Tony with us.  As I recall, Biff could not get the time off work and Randy must have been on his mission.  I took more pictures of the family and our activities.  I am grateful to have the photographic memories.

My last visit to Tucson was in 2012.  That time we had Randy and Biff with us.  We had gone there for mom’s birthday (see this post)