Sure, there is love, security and a lot more in life.  However, after 84 years, I've found that something called   confidence   is key to a successful life of comfort and happiness.  The beauty of this state of mind is that you can help anyone around you--not only your family and friends, but more so, your community, local and throughout the world--to gain confidence by suggesting a pathway towards this objective. At one point, the title of this posting today was THE GIFT OF CONFIDENCE.  This is because one grows up with no sense of what confidence is all about.  I found that someone in your family, teachers, coaches and even organizations provide you this gift that, if you learn it right, can lead to a better life.  Actually all of them, in my case, were involved. But then, I thought about that word, confidence, and found it is a lot more meaningful to underscore the significance of power. Confidence is contagious.   You can more effectively...

  The Viking Tir leaves Vienna this afternoon for Budapest, which will be featured in my blog tomorrow.  Today.  I'll instead post a sci-tech article which usually appears on Wednesdays. I regularly report on information provided by the American Energy Society.  While this society promotes energy, it tries to protect the environment, and attempts to curb global warming is an important goal. This year, the  AES writer of the year is Rosanna Xia . Her works offers new ways for us to think about resiliency and our relationship with the environment. Xia is an environmental reporter for the  Los Angeles Times . She wrote an award-winning 2023 book,  California Against the Sea . This year, she released  Out of Plain Sight,  a documentary film about the half a million barrels of toxic waste that were quietly dumped into the ocean decades ago, just off the coast of Los Angeles. I haven't read her book, nor seen her documentary, but understand from wh...

The first half of my life was spent preparing myself for my final 42 years.  This was a mostly trying and stressful period involving a less than ideal youth, then struggles to get through school, my first few jobs and accompanying life, ending two months later on a Sunday with  Part 15E , so it was a spiritual conclusion to my final transition.  I never did count the number of actual postings, but I suspect it was around 25 parts.  The ending had to do with golf, the disappearance and re-appearance of an  8-iron cover.  That was the final clue to whether the beyond after death would be eternal gloom or Heaven. Today, I provide only one transition, but hint about a final one, for this, after all, is Sunday.  I'm 84 years old, so let me summarize what happened during the first phase, from 0-42, and follow with the years 42-84.  As this is 2024, that key transition year was 1982. I can't seem to find this photo, but as a one-year old baby, I was fat....