Archive for the ‘My dearest son’ Category

Happy 32 Bday, My Dearest Son

Sunday, April 24th, 2011

My Dearest Son,

Today is Easter Sunday and it is also your Birthday. Happy Birthday to you!

Today you are thirty two years of age. I remember the moments of the greatest day of my life. For on that day you were born and I held you in my arms and I peered into your eyes and I asked you who was in there. The power of the memory of it brings tears to my eyes on this very day.


Happy 32 Birthday, My Dearest Son

I have done a visualization drawing while I was filled with the sound renderings of Yusuf (aka Cat Stevens), a powerful voice from my youth whose songs sustain me now, through his new album “An Other Cup” which is inspired by his Muslim faith.

The Will of the Divine

I have included a picture of my father who is your grandfather taken when his parents lived for a time in Livingston, Montana. His father had come from Tennessee and his mother had come from Strum, Wisconsin. His parents had most likely met when Ira was traveling with the Northern Pacific railroad and met Lydia at some social occasion of her working as a school teacher in Belgrade, Montana. They got married and moved for a while with the railroad and they finally settled in Laurel, Montana.

Oliver Sullivan, Livingston Montana, 1917

My Dearest Son

Thursday, April 22nd, 2010

My Dearest Son,

Here are some writings from yesterday and this morning. The day finds me up early and hard at the task of publishing at my blog. Congratulations in having landed a decent half time job. Good luck on finding the other half. I am proud of you for having attained the first step of getting back to gainful employment.

4:44 AM 34 degrees F, in Woodbury, Minnesota it is a glorious morning and I must be soon into the shower and off to work. However I have until 4:58 to write you a letter. I will do it the way most people send letters these days, by typing them into a computer keyboard.

You told me you do your computer browsing at the Library. I am so happy that the Billings Library is properly funded. Perhaps you should give them a resume. Your computer skills would be helpful in keeping the computers (available to the poor) operating properly. You would be able to assist in many ways with the computer’s smooth operation and the occasional human needing assistance. Don’t know about working at the library but it is a noble profession, that being a servant of humanity at the level of helping the poor gain access to computers.

4:20 PM and 61 degrees F in Woodbury. I am home for the day and thought I would continue this letter until I am called to dinner. Your mom is such a great cook that I look forward to each meal. You are a great cook too. You will soon have the freedom to be able to feed yourself and friends delicious meals that you prepare. Yumm!

I must say that blogging you a letter is a new experience for me. The problem is that it takes time to reread and revise. I think I still prefer hand writing but we’ll give direct blogging a fair test.

I guess part of it for me is that I have not done a proper backup of the blog because I do not know how and have not the time to learn. It is a hassle to have good backups.

If you would like to have more of a conversation on any of the writings at the blog you can always write a comment. If you would like admin privileges to post writings at the blog please let me know and I can look into sending you the proper request that grants you the right privileges.

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The Billings Yard

Sunday, April 18th, 2010

My Dearest Son,

I have attached a letter I wrote to you, concerning your walks alongside the rail yard of what used to be called the Northern Pacific Railroad. That was the railroad your great grandfather Ira Sullivan worked for while he helped his wife Lydia raise their three young boys Oliver, the oldest, Wilber, and Robert, the youngest.

Oliver and his younger brothers grew up in Laurel, Montana where their father worked in the hump yard of the Northern Pacific (NP) Railroad. He spent his days and nights, depending on his shift, switching rail cars from train to train, turning the occasional car that needed to be turned to face the other direction, so the proper door would open when the car was spotted at its final destination siding.

Out of Laural some trains went south towards Denver, some went west towards Seattle, and some went east towards Saint Paul and Chicago. Your great grandfather Ira helped sort those trains in the Laurel yard. If you are ever of the mind to write a nice simulation game I think a rail yard of the 1920′s and 30′s would make an interesting setting.

Your grandfather Oliver Sullivan was the General Yardmaster for the Billings rail yard of the Northern Pacific Railroad in the 1950′s through the 1970′s. As you walk alongside the rail yards I hope you will remember your ancestors, men who at your age used to walk those very same streets of Billings fifty to a hundred years before.

Should you need a place to call home you would be well advised to claim Billings, Montana as your ancestral home. Perhaps I will someday drive with you up to Laurel and I will show you your grandfather’s boyhood home. It is now owned by a cousin whose mother Mabel was one of the sisters of your great grandmother Lydia.

Mabel and Lydia raised their families a couple blocks apart among the 5 acre farm area east of Laurel, Montana. Lydia owned four five acre tracts. One for her and one for each of her three boys.

The two sisters grew up in Strum, Wisconsin. Lydia was trained as a teacher. Upon graduation she decided that she would travel upon the recently completed Northern Pacific Railroad on her way to Butte, Montana.

“Where are you headed, miss?”, the Conductor inquired.

“Butte Montana, I am going there to be a school teacher.”

“Oh miss. You don’t want to go to Butte. It is too rough of a town for someone so refined as yourself. Why don’t you get off at Belgrade and walk over to see the Superintendent of Schools. He is a friend of mine who will gladly hire you to teach in Belgrade.”

The railroad conductor put your great grandmother off at Belgrade, Montana with a reminder to introduce herself to the Superintendent. She did and was hired as a school teacher. She worked there until meeting Ira who wooed her and wedded her and moved her to Whitehall. They followed the railroad to Laurel.

Please see the attached photograph of your great grandfather in a wagon being pulled by a goat. The sign says 1917 when Oliver would have been two years old. Perhaps they lived in Livingston for a time or perhaps the picture was taken on the trip down to Laurel. And then please enjoy the recent picture of 91 year Oliver four years ago studying Vista.

Should you decide to claim Billings, Montana as your ancestral home, you can proudly tell people that you have railroading, coal mining, and computers in your blood. The coal mining comes from you other great grandfather Ralph Lumley, out of Red Lodge, Montana.

Should Red Lodge beckon you, know that it is the childhood growing up place of your grandmother Helen, who married Oliver. Between income from the Red Lodge mine and income from selling peas to the Red Lodge cannery and milk to the Red Lodge dairy Ralph and Mary Lumley raised their family in Red Lodge during the Great Depression. These and other family stories will each be told in their turn.

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112A Son, IBM History, and Digg

Friday, January 23rd, 2009

112A Son, IBM History, and Digg — by Lyno Sullivan

For the current and following days, I plan to post blog pages for some more recent hand writings in my id™ (Inventors Diary). The following letter to my son goes back two weeks and picks up the back story at that point. The in-line URL links are for those readers wishing to be reminded of the original incidents.

Saturday, January 10, 2009

My dearest son,

Yesterday I posted the story about my 1970 design for the self-driving portable computer.

http://digg.com/design/My_First_Portable_Computer

http://peaceengine.com/blog/2009/01/09/1124-my-first-portable-computer/

On January 4, 2009 my blog website had first reached 200 unique visitors for a day. I hoped to better those stats with the writing about my portable computer. Alas, it was not to be. As always, I begin each major post by snapping a profile of beginning site traffic.

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I thought that today would be a good day to catch you up in a letter. I posted two blog entries today. Each contained a letter to IBM.

The first letter was written in 1998 concerning the adoption by IBM of the Linux operating system. The second was a letter I wrote in 1995 concerning OS2 Warp Desktop, Server, and Developer. I posted them at my blog and at digg,com.

http://digg.com/linux_unix/IBM_and_GNU_Linux_Letter_of_1998

http://peaceengine.com/blog/2009/01/10/1125-ibm-and-gnulinux-letter-of-1998/

http://digg.com/linux_unix/The_Death_of_OS2_in_1995

http://peaceengine.com/blog/2009/01/10/1126-the-death-of-os2-in-1995/

It is now 4PM and the first post, which is seven and a quarter hours later, has received forty diggs. The most recent post has received twenty diggs. after two and three quarter hours. I am tending to the shouts I receive and am, otherwise, pondering things at work.

I find the repetitive motion gaming pattern of digg.com to be relaxing. I know it to be time wasteful and yet I allow the time to pass by. I think about selling some product but what would I sell? My ego. Would it be a waste of time to set about selling my ego? Service above self is my motto. The lost service time is perhaps the biggest loss of all.

. . . RESOURCES . . .

this: http://peaceengine.com/blog/2009/01/23/112a-son-ibm-history-and-digg/
digg: http://digg.com/people/Son_IBM_History_and_Digg

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111K My Newest digg.com Friend, Welcome

Monday, December 29th, 2008

111K My Newest digg.com Friend, Welcome

My newest digg.com friend,

If you are new to digg.com please read this post if you want to know about why I selected you to be my friend, how I found you, what digg,com friendship means to me, and what behavior you can expect from me.

. . . Welcome . . .

I bid you welcome. I have invited you to become my friend. I may have done so because you befriended my first, in which case we are now a “Mutual Friend”. Otherwise, I have become your fan, in which case I am inviting you to review my profile and decide for yourself if you will befriend me in turn.

. . . The kind of friend I am . . .

I must introduce myself so that you may know the kind of friend I am. If you are new to digg.com Game playing I do recommend some behavioral norms (below) for your own consideration. Beyond guidelines for normative behavior, the primary question surrounding every dig.com Player is the question of motivation. In other words, why digg.com instead of someplace else.

. . . I seek friends . . .

I seek people promoting their own writings and works of all forms. I seek the authoritative source themselves. I seek friends who editorialize well. I seek friends who dig into the Internet and expose authoritative sources.

I am the authoritative source for all reports of my reality. You are the same for yourself. I don’t mind reality; in fact, I prefer it. I tend to ignore people who are in too big of a hurry. I am in digg.com to slow down and relax.

. . . hurrying by and slowing down . . .

I understand being in a hurry. I too was young once and developing a career. However, I was blessed early in life to have found my wife,now of thirty-six years–that is half of my projected lifespan–for a stable pair-bonded relationship is life’s greatest gift. As the arc of my life approaches and passes its zenith, I have begun to publish my writings as my best way of giving back, in service to humanity, some of the blessings I have received.

. . . I became your fan because . . .

I became your fan for one of the following reasons:

1) you appeared inexperienced in digg.com and you submitted an item in a way that I thought was well done,
2) you submitted something on a topic that interests me,
3) you submitted well written comments which were either thoughtful or funny,
4) when I looked at your favorites, one or more of them appealed to me,
5) you posted a link to a document, picture, or video wherein I invested measurable time; I wanted to thank you for making my day better,
6) your About is informative and makes you sound somewhere on the normal side of life,
7) I have a wide latitude of normalcy that is well short of creepy and a little this side of boring,
8) something you showed me or told me caused me to pause, ponder, and contemplate perceivable truth and other esoterica of life,
9) your item caused me to laugh,
10) you showed me a kindness or gave me good cheer in some commentary in my digg.com posting or in my Peace Engine™ blog
11) you asked me to befriend you in your commentary at http://blog.peaceengine.com/, or,
12) something else moved me to become your ardent and dutiful fan.

. . . letters to my son . . .

I invest time in writing letters to my prodigal son who became a heroin junkie which led him into prison where he now bides his time. My son accepted the Muslim faith for which I hold him in high esteem. I write letters encouraging him in his faith and offering support and insight into his condition and life in general. My son first recommended me to digg.com when it was in its infancy.

Once I have written letters into my journal I photocopy them and mail them to him. He writes responses on the backsides of those photocopies. I plan to post some of our joint correspondence at my blog under a pure copyleft license, meaning others may do with my son’s and my works as they will providing derived works are copyleft also.

. . . A letter to my son . . .

My dearest son,

I just completed a major digg.com project and my body needs to relax by writing to you. A father fears for his son’s life more than he fears for his own life. Why this should be so I cannot say.

I know that you are cursed the same as me with the manic gene that throws our body into a frenzy of activity sustained sometimes for hour upon hour of the guiding the chariot of our creative soul, enabling us sustained focus upon a single minded objective.

Writing, for those of us born with the manic gene, is the best way of allowing the body to detach from technology and computers, which conspire to consume all of our free time. Every human relaxes in their own special way. Writing is my way and I commend it to you for your consideration.

Relaxation with and by means of caffeine, nicotine, and drugs like alcohol, sex, and obsessive-compulsive behaviors (like computers and the Internet) are fun in moderation and addictive in excess. I am hopeful for you that your faith will see you to the place where sobriety and temperance in all outside influences becomes the norm.

Computers and especially the Internet impose an extra stress onto the human psyche, in that they permit unlimited drill-down into information. Humans need to enjoy games that have boundaries. This is the reason why writing onto a twenty-four line page of text places a very natural depth of feeling progression with a visible limitation.

The body needs to set limitations on its own behavior otherwise chaos may prevail. Bodies like ours, with the manic gene, need to avoid all harmful addictions and enjoy any other addictions in moderation.

I commend the wisdom of my life unto you in these writings. Please use all of my writings under the purest form of copyleft, to your best effort and in so far as you find truth within.

And now my son, family, friends, and fans, this twenty-four page cycle draws to a close [on page 112O]. On page 111O (the previous page cycle) we discussed my id™ (Inventor’s Diary) first published
cycle 111 and quickly shall complete
the 112 twenty-four page cycle and
begin 113 with a turning from this page
unto 1131 which begins a new adventure.

. . . RESOURCES: . . .

This: http://peaceengine.com/blog/2008/12/29/111k-my-newest-diggcom-friend-welcome/

Digg: http://digg.com/people/My_Newest_digg_com_Friend_Welcome

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. . . Author’s End Notes . . .

The page numbering system is confusing at first because it counts pages in the base twenty-four counting system {1,2,…,9,1,B,…M,N,O} without using zero. There are also two page sequences. First, the blog entries are numbered–page K (twenty) of the 111 cycle. Second, the closing page twenty-four (capital O) of the written page 112 cycle. I apologize for the confusion and advise ignoring them unless important to the reader.

Believe it or not, my current numbering and naming systems meets all of my needs for preserving an orderly life and being able to uniquely name stuff and find it when I go looking for it.

I like to keep various snapshots of my current computer and Internet activity. They serve to remind me of whence I have come. They are little memory markers in time. I commend the idea to my blog keeping friends.

My current digg.com favorites
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My current digg.com About
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With friends numbering 228, this is my activity summary to date at my digg.com Profile
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And http://blog.peaceengine.com/ before the next blog is prepared
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And, finally, a summary of the blog thus far:
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After my post to Persons I located my next door neighbors and, finding both posts well done, I found two new friends. I like to know who my next door neighbors are when I post just in case there is serendipity afoot.
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After much deliberation I selected my next newest friend based upon serendipity and I let her know.
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111H Christmas Day 2008 An Anchor for a Man

Thursday, December 25th, 2008

Christmas, 2008, High Noon, Woodbury, Minnesota, by Lyno Sullivan
This: http://peaceengine.com/blog/2008/12/25/111h-christmas-day-2008-an-anchor-for-a-man/
Digg: http://digg.com/people/Christmas_Day_An_Anchor_for_a_Man

An Anchor for one Day

Having hand-written two letters to his son, the father typed his blog entry for the day, scanned the images of those hand-drawn pages, and constructed his blog upon the upon the Internet.

Then the man refreshed himself by resting. For a timely rest and refreshment is an essential part of blogging experience. Then the man published his blog and the following letters appeared upon the Internet for the very first time upon earth.

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[111H_11_1129_color_Anchor_for_a_Man]

Christmas Day, 2008, Woodbury, MN

My dearest son,

It was delightful talking with you this Christmas morning, 2008. I am finding these letters to you to be helpful in giving my writing focus. It gives me an audience that is to some degree universal. For every man is a biological son of another man.

Yours and my relationship is both mundane and profound, commonplace and extraordinary, and, on the whole for me, a blessing from God. Why must a father bring God into the discourse with his son? Every human male I ever met, in so far as I can discern, needs God (as male) and some holy Mother as an anchor of his existence. When a man can find no anchor in his life he must move into that mental frame of reference wherein he has a true father and a true mother and a holy spirit soul in contact with his mother and his father.

Otherwise a man without an anchor is adrift in life.
God serves as an
anchor for a man. Father serves as an
anchor for a man. Mother serves as an
anchor for a man. Child serves as an
anchor for a man.

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Christmas Day, 2008

My dearest son,

I am feeling somewhat manic this afternoon and in need of an “Anchor for a Day”. That’s what Christmas is to me. It is an anchor in my life. For one day a year let me remember the life of Jesus, his earthly father and mother, and his heavenly Father.

I am not much of a fan of Easter because of its message of life everlasting. Death is sad. The birth of Jesus is a glad day because it fulfills its purpose as an Anchor for Man, and Anchor for Woman, an Anchor for Child, and Anchor for Grandchild, and an anchor for Soul.

A man’s free running mind needs to be able to toss out an anchor into the storms of life, from time to time.

Christmas is the day all humans may choose to honor the life of Jesus, or not. That’s why Santa Claus is real. Santa Claus is a second reason to celebrate Christmas, as is the full moon of the
shortest day in the Northern hemisphere and the
longest day in the Southern hemisphere and the
day annointed of, by, and unto the life of Jesus.

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digg title: Christmas Day, An Anchor for a Man

Topic: These inspirational letters from a father to his son are worth a read after Christmas. They remind us of the need for anchors in our reality.

12:10 Scan Images
12:30 Back to work from scanning and chat
12:30 Begin image_copy_fix_review process
12:35 Begin construct blog post
12:45 Begin convert hand-written to type
1:00 Begin convert hand-written to type
1:15 Begin digg entry
1:30 Upload blog entry
2:00 PM explore digg.com prior to upload
2:20 PM done (3 hour blog and promotion complete)