Blog Lafayette

Valentines Day is here again. As a husband and someone who loves his wife, I have to say that today has been a great time to spend with her. Life has a way of getting a little busy and hectic. So it is truly a blessing when I get to spend the day with my favorite person in this world and my best friend too. We didn’t spend a lot of money, and we didn’t do anything very exciting but we were together. In my book every moment I get to spend with her is a moment well spent. Here’s hoping that each and every one of you have had as good a day. Make sure you let that special person know how you feel. Life is too short not to.

Have a great Lafayette Valentines Day!

We had a great Halloween evening here in Lafayette. Several of the kids in the neighborhood came to our house to get treats and the chance to say the familiar phrase “Trick or Treat”. I have to say that I was glad to see parents standing by to make sure that their little ones were safe.

You might ask why I make any comment at all about the parents being present. I guess it shows my age a little. When I was young enough to trick or treat, parents did not tag along with the their kids. We were let out in town and then told to show up at a certain location at a set time so that mom or dad could pick us up. I remember spending many Halloweens running around with my friends from school for entire evenings without parental supervision.

Wow! Parents reading this who have younger children probably cannot comprehend how a mother or father could allow their kids to have so little supervision on Halloween or on any other night for that matter. Parents were not less responsible in those days as you may be thinking. Parents loved their children just as much then as now. Things were just different that’s all. There seemed to be less crime against children in those days. I am sad that there is such a need to be more vigilant these days but I am glad to know that parents today take such special care of their children.

We can hope for a day that would see the absence of any people who would hurt our children, but until that day, God bless the good parents who take the time to see their children safe on all days of the year.

One thing that I like about Lafayette Indiana is the technology focus in this town. It doesn’t hurt that Purdue University makes its home in West Lafayette. Purdue is nick-named the “Cradle of Astronauts” and has a School of Aeronautics and Astronautics. I was a fan of the astronaut program when I was growing up in the 60s and I distinctly remember owning the Apollo module for the GI Joe of the time. You can bet I wish I still owned those highly collectible items now! Purdue has turned out 22 astronauts with names such as Neil Armstrong, Gene Cernan, Gus Grissom, Roger Chaffee, Janice E. Voss, and Mary Ellen Weber.

We also have the Purdue Research Park which is home to several companies that do high profile, high tech research in many fields such as medicine and engineering. This is not a town that is happy to fade away into the dust of retirement and obscurity.

As I take the time to think about the technology all around me. I realize that most of us in today’s world take it all for granted. My grandfather was born in 1895. Would he take any of this for granted? We now have the ability to speak to each other at any time from any place. We can send and receive information, photos, documents, videos, music and much more with an ease that has never been seen on our planet. We have machines that can make decisions about their environment and make adjustments accordingly to fit the situation. We even have the ability to publish our own content such as this blog. Gone are the days of using a bulky printing press that required the user to change each individual letter in the press before even one page of print could be turned out. Gone are the days when it would take days to go where we can now travel in hours. When my grandfather was born, this world we now live in would have seemed like a pure fantasy of imagination to any writer, and would have been treated as such. Look at the changes in the world since that time.

I leave you with one last question. What will the world look like 100 years from now? Wow! Hard to imagine isn’t it? I only hope that it is a world of hope, and peace, and love. That is the true constant between all our times and ages. The technology changes but the need for love never will.