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By Ben, 29 August, 2023

One Night in Cleveland

In 1996, my sister and her boyfriend had just moved into a new apartment in Pittsburgh, and they invited my family to join them for Christmas. I decided to take the bus there from my college in Grinnell, Iowa, which meant I had layovers in Des Moines, Chicago, and Cleveland. As I recall, the Cleveland layover was from roughly 11pm to 2am.

The Cleveland bus terminal back then was one big hall, with gates on three sides and a ticket counter on the fourth, with seats in the middle of the room and restrooms up a flight of stairs. I settled in to wait.

By admin, 4 July, 2023

Newyearsletter 2023

Here is the text and the photo collage of our 2023 new years letter.

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  • newyearsletter
By Ben, 27 March, 2023

Ben's 2017 Facebook quips

  • I suspect the reason there's no movie of Han and Leia's wedding is because they changed their last names to Duet. Kyllo Ren's birth name was Ben Trio. If they'd had another kid, they would have just gone with Ensemble.

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  • Facebook quips
By Ben, 3 March, 2023

It's a UNIX system! I know this!

30 years ago this summer, between my junior and senior years of high school, I was the Oklahoma delegate to the Department of Energy's Supercomputer Honors Program at Lawrence-Livermore National Lab. There, among other things, we all learned to use UNIX both on the command line and in X11.

By Ben, 12 February, 2023

Some things I've learned from Dad

Both my parents turn 80 this year. Dad's birthday is first. Here are some of the life lessons I've learned from him specifically, that I wouldn't have got from just any father.

The road less traveled is there to be explored.

Dad has always made it his business to know where every road or path goes and what one can find there. He rarely takes the same route twice in a row. Often a routine trip home from church in Tulsa or visiting his parents in OKC would turn into an adventure in the countryside, as he would spot a road he didn't recognize and turn off to explore it.

By admin, 14 June, 2022

Ben's 2016 Facebook quips

If I were a right-wing conspiracy theorist, I would think that the reason the Democrats are allowing the Trump presidency farce to play out is so that all the white supremacists and misogynists feel comfortable identifying themselves on social media, in order to compile a registry of such people for use after Clinton takes office. Because otherwise I would have to admit that I was totally dead wrong about Obama's motives for the last 8 years, and that would be awkward.Mining ever closer to the present...

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  • Facebook quips
By admin, 14 May, 2022

Beyond Evolution

When I finished reading The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow, I immediately started reading it a second time. I can count on one hand the number of times I've immediately reread a book, and two of them were on similar topics, so before I tell you what I thought of the new book, I'll tell you about the other two so we can see how they relate.

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  • reviews
By admin, 28 April, 2022

Ben's 2015 Facebook quips

Continuing on towards the present:

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  • Facebook quips
By Ben, 28 March, 2022

Ben's 2014 Facebook quips

mining progressively closer to the surface:

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  • Facebook quips
By admin, 24 February, 2022

Ben's 2013 Facebook quips

More stuff worth saving from a sinking ship:

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  • Facebook quips

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"Blue Boat Home" is the name of a UU hymn by Peter Mayer, about how we are all travelers on the Earth. We have his permission and blessing to use the name for this site.