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The Bright Side Will Win

I started watching this guy named Dan about a year ago on his YouTube channel after seeing one of his videos shared on Reddit that was a tour of his apartment in Russia.

I was fascinated.

Dan was wanting to make videos about what life is like where he lives in Russia while using the English that he had taught himself and wanted to improve upon so he could one day travel the world.

Eventually, his wife joined in on the videos, and they simply showed what life was like in their neighborhood, countryside, and just everyday life. Shopping at the mall, getting groceries, building his own house, and even starting a family.

Did you know that gas lines run above ground in Russia? Because I do now.

Dan’s stories and insights hit that spot in my heart that drives me to see more and more of the world that is as basic to the notion of driving to the end of a road just to see what’s there.

And then the invasion of Ukraine happened.

Dan’s content was a little hard to take at the beginning of the war from my perspective. It wavered along some perceived indifference to the conflict but still offered some valid insight on how their cost of living was being effected while steering clear of any viewpoints that could get them into trouble.

But one thing that is for certain is that his heart has no room for anyone or anything that goes against the notion of love and peace. On that, we could find some common ground.

And since this war has started, I’ve found other creators who offer similar insights from their various perspectives. Many of them have made their way out of Russia, some before and some after mobilization.

But I keep checking back on Dan and his family as new content appears, especially since his daughter turned one around the same time that Ukraine was invaded.

His recent content has been getting more downtrodden, and the latest (embedded at the bottom of this post) has a real sense of despair that has come over him.

He will be leaving Russia with his family. They will soon buy tickets and see where they can go, if they are not stopped at the airport. He doesn’t know. No one knows. All they can do is try.

At the end of the video, he said something that I wanted to transcribe because it’s something that I hold in my heart as well. It’s something we all need to believe.

The bright side will win.

The dark side is more easier to live in the dark side. In dark side, people can be very rich, very powerful because they have contract with major general and their life can be easier.

But in bright side, you can keep you soul. You can save your soul. And your heart.

The most expensive thing in this world is your soul.

Don’t trade your soul.

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What if We Worked Together on a Grander Scale

Something I’ve often wondered was why we haven’t made more of an effort to create some sort of entity to work together on problems that face the North American continent as a whole.

@ChuckGrassley on Twitter, October 24, 2022

What most people in elected offices do is play the political game of using issues like drugs and immigration as consistent cannon fodder for their own interests. It’s a constant tactic used to maintain their position in government, stoking their constituents into believing that their simple raising of the issue amounts to some sort of solution to the problem.

But it doesn’t. And it won’t.

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America, I Love You but You’re Bringing Me Down

4th of July Parade, Monticello, IA (2018)

Nothing is ever perfect, and things are always changing. This much I know to be true each and every day, whether it’s at work or life in general.

The one thing that I have a hard time accepting is when something goes backwards. When we give up on ways of doing things that were functioning relatively positively or just generally working pretty well due to some illogical voices of reason or lack of effort on how to make the big picture work for the sake of the greater good.

That makes it hard to convey any happiness about any freedoms or independence.

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The Lost Glory of War

January 17, 1991

I was 12 years old, laying on the floor as the afternoon sun faded away and doing my homework for my 6th-grade reading class for the next day.

The workbook was this stapled-together, quarter ream of light green pages that consisted of various English comprehension skills. I don’t recall it being difficult but do remember having that “big kid” feeling of being proud to have homework for school the next day.

Mike was 26 and talking through a tape recorder that we had started to use to send letters back and forth with. People had been doing that for years, but this cassette was almost two weeks old and from a land that I had a tough time understanding.

My oldest brother was talking about how things were going for him in the UAE.

Some months before that, my dad and I dug into the, dated but still relevant, collection of encyclopedia books in our house that they bought some time before my memories begin. At that point, these books might have been considered to be on the edge of being outdated, but I trusted those books with my fair share of reports that spared me having to go to the library up until that point. And sure enough, those musty books had information about the United Arab Emirates, and Mike was about to be stationed there with his Air Force squadron.

He went to college with the intent of enlisting to become a pilot, and I was always in such awe with all things military.

We have a deep history of people in my family who served in almost all branches of the armed forces, but Mike was the first one in ours.

Growing up as a kid in the wanning days of the Cold War and having other kids in the neighborhood with similar history in their extended families, the threat of conflict was always there. It became a fascination.

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The World Did Not End When Bill Clinton Was Elected President

I was 14 on the evening on November 3, 1992.

In the backseat of the car, Dad was driving, Mom in the passenger seat, 600 WMT on the radio, and the sun well below the horizon on a cold, fall night.

We had made the odd, Tuesday night run into Cedar Rapids to hit Sam’s Club, loading up the trunk with all sorts of bulk goods. Looking back on it now, maybe it was to get their minds off of what was going on that day. Usually these trips were a weekend event.

I can still remember not being very far from leaving the outskirts of the “big city” and going through the darkness of the country. We had been listening to the results come in on the radio the whole way there, but on the way home, the special bulletin hit.

Bill Clinton had been declared the winner and would become the next president.

In that backseat, I felt fear. Staring out into the darkness, I felt dread. My mind spiraled to the point where I felt like the world was going to end. The announcement scared me to my core.

I can’t remember what my parents said to each other about it, but they weren’t happy.

And then I just remember being cold.

I think about that night quite often. I think about those times quite often.

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Unexpected Wildlife Photography

While we were in Manning Park for their Dark Sky Festival last weekend, we decided to talk a walk around Lightning Lake to explore the area a little bit.  I had never been, so when we pulled into the day-use parking lot, I knew I had to grab my camera for the adventure. 

It actually ended up to be a great opportunity to not only take some breathtaking landscape photos, but some animals actually stopped to pose for me along the way.

Manning Park, Lightning Lake
Spruce Grouse
Manning Park, Lightning Lake
Baby Squirrel

The shade was very cool, and the sunlight was gloriously warm that day.

Manning Park, Lightning Lake
Manning Park, Lightning Lake
Manning Park, Lightning Lake
Manning Park, Lightning Lake
Manning Park, Lightning Lake
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Live – White, Discussion

I have been trying to get back to listening to whole albums, start to finish, and picked this one as a bit of throw back while I did some work on my laptop a few weeks back. 

While this was a band that I immersed myself into during my teenage fandom years, it really struck me how this song is so fitting for the divisive, political climate we exist in today.

I talk of freedom
You talk of the flag
I talk of revolution
You’d much rather brag
And as the decibels of this disenchanting discourse
Continue to dampen the day
The coin flips again and again, and again, and again
As our sanity walks away
All this discussion though politically correct
Is dead beyond destruction
Though it leaves me quite erect
And as the final sunset rolls behind the earth
And the clock is finally dead
I’ll look at you, you’ll look at me
And we’ll cry a lot
But this will be what we said
This will be what we said
Look where all this talking got us, baby

Songwriters: Chad Alan Gracey / Chad David Taylor / Edward Joel Kowalczyk / Patrick Dahlheimer
White, Discussion