It is 2013 and Birdie and I are approaching having lived three quarters of a century. One of my discoveries of old age is that just about every function falters. My ability to quickly integrate visual, audio and mental images is nearly gone. Therefore, I believe I should stop progressing (past 1984) the rough draft and try to finish up what I have. God willing, when that is completed, I will pick up the story. However, if He is not, there are many around who lived the rest of the story.
So why am I writing this and what can you expect. Birdie and I were just two naive teenagers when God brought us together as freshman at Bandon High School. We didn't live through any great adventures. We didn't achieve great accomplishments. We didn't travel to exotic places. We were the plain; the average of our times, the bumpkins so Birdie likes to say. But most of the people at any time in history live ordinary lives. We usually read about the few who are extraordinary because it makes more interesting reading. But that gives a view only of what the times were like for a few. You can expect to learn more than you ever wanted to know about the times for ordinary people; our times: about a lifetime of learning, about the relatives before us that we knew, about our struggles and achievements, about our faith and our philosophy and …aha, who we were.
Birdie and I, when in high school, used to occasionally visit my grandparents, Charles Henry and Ora Ethel Seiwell, in their small home on Elmira street in Bandon. They loved to tell stories of their old days. Grandpa loved to tell stories about when he was hauling freight with his horses and wagon. Grandma wanted to tell stories also and she would pull Birdie away and talk to her although we both wanted to listen to Grandpa's tales. Years later, when I got interested in our family tree, I realized that my grandparents knew many of my ancestors (like Grandma's mother and father who came to Oregon in a wagon train in 1851 as children) I had never met and could have told us many stories about them but I had failed to ask. I realized what an important opportunity I had missed. So one of my intentions is to tell some stories that tell something about the people I knew which most of you will not.
It is not possible for me to write a history without including thoughts on philosophy and politics. They are part of our history. Our religion is Christianity and our philosophy is conservatism (one of my favorite quotes, Churchill I think, "If you are under 30 and are not a liberal you have no heart; if you are over 30 and are not a conservative, you have no head."). My entire adult career has been in science and I try to be skeptical, logical and analytical. I will attempt to separate out all discussion of religion and I will make every effort to present it as logically and analytically as possible. The intent is not conversion but discussion, or as Birdie loves to say "food for thought".
Since I realize some of you cannot take religion in too large of doses, I will put a few paragraphs at the beginning of each chapter; in italics if you would dare skip it.
I tend to separate the people of the world into liberal and conservative. However, both of these terms have a lot of baggage and mean something different to each person. So I will define my meaning: The primary difference is how we interpret these three points of the Declaration of Independence: "inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". A liberal believes that the government should redistribute from the more successful (richer) to the less successful (poorer) in order to make happiness (as defined by 'things') more equal. This, of course, is at a huge sacrifice of liberty, at least for the more successful. Most liberals also are willing to sacrifice life (of the unborn) for happiness (more things) for the adults. The conservatives, on the other hand, believe that a right to 'pursuit of happiness' simply means that all should have an opportunity to pursue happiness and what you end up with (both 'things' and pride of accomplishment) is primarily determined by how willing you are to make sacrifices, make good decisions and work hard. Government's primary role is to protect the rights of the citizens and provide for the countries security. Government's secondary role includes providing a safety net for those incapable of achieving a barely acceptable level of happiness on their own which implies some redistribution of wealth. Conservatives should be willing to protect everyone's right to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness, even the unborn. Obviously this is a continuum and, just as obvious, no one is pure liberal or pure conservative. Young people have little invested in their welfare and cannot see why everyone should not have roughly the same. As your investment in time, talent and sacrifice becomes substantial, however, it is not so obvious that those who refused to make the investment should receive the same as those who did. It is not so clear, for example, to the student who puts in long hours studying to achieve a four point by acing the test that the one who partied all night and did poorly on the test should get the same grade, and ultimately an equal chance for the same job. In a more relevant and real example, my brother Gilbert had equal opportunities to go to college but he passed on it and, in fact, scoffed at me for taking a low paying job at Tektronix, Inc. so I could go to school when, as he pointed out, I could make twice as much setting chokers as a logger. Later, when I had progressed past him in pay, the government was willing to help his children go to school but refused to help mine. Consequently, I became big on choices and sacrifices and getting what you have earned and down on redistribution.
My career was a big part of our lives during our 30's to 60's. Obviously I will include that but when I get into some of the gory details that would be boring to many I will put it in an addendum. The thirty-year period starting in the mid 1960's was a pretty exciting time to be in the electronics field. The people at Fairchild Semiconductor in San Jose were developing the first crude metal oxide semiconductors (MOS) that led to integrated circuits and finally to the multitude of products made possible by that technology. To give some perspective to that, in the late 1960's some were envisioning the future engineer/scientist having a personal work station that tied into a large computer that many had access to. The problem was that no display technology existed to store a display while the computer was servicing someone else and memory was so limited and so expensive that refreshing cathode ray tube displays was impractical. At Tektronix we developed a storage cathode ray tube large enough for a display (11") and it was pretty successful for several years. However, the inherent ability of MOS memory to be made smaller and cheaper with each new generation soon provided memory that was viable to refresh the CRT display. Another example is that before I left Tektronix in 1972, I read articles about the development of charge-coupled devices (CCD) that were touted to make possible digital cameras and small digital TV cameras. I thought at the time they were over selling the idea but it turns out they were right on, it totally revolutionized the image business by the end of the century; companies like Kodak, that I had always considered to be part of what we meant when we said America, were obsolete.
link to table of contents: Let Us Learn Table of Contents