I read this one to the youngest son the other day; sometimes, he will take a few minutes to humor me and let me read a poem to him. Since he was little, he’s always wanted to be a oceanographer. We’ve watched a seemingly unlimited number of documentaries on the sea, on oceanography, and on diving. So I thought that this was something he could, you know, get into.

We’ve been watching old Babylon 5 episodes for the last few months. B5 is, in my somewhat biased opinion, one of the most well written science fiction television series of all time. Unlike many of the other shows where episodes were mostly stand-alone within each season, B5 had an actual story arc. Whereas other shows had characters that stayed static, there is character development in B5. The series creator, J.

I’m not sure where Mary and her mother lived, but here in my part of Ohio nobody seems to want to buy trees out of residential neighborhood. I had a giant of a tree that started to split some thirty to forty feet in the air; being a good neighbor I decided to have it taken down so it wouldn’t crush the house next door. I figured it would be easy – surely someone would want my giant black walnut tree, right?

A cross is carved into my Grandfather’s headstone, but I have a hard time understanding why. My grandfather lived to the age of 90, and was many things in his life; he worked at the Cleveland Zoo as a teenager and tended to Balto, the sled dog of Iditarod fame; he served his country during World War II with the US Army Mine planters; he ran his own business for decades; he was a father, a grandfather, and a great grandfather.

The hearse carrying my Grandfather rolled to a stop under the salutes of the VFW firing party and the Army’s honor guard. I composed myself, and moved forward to the hearse to perform one last service for my Grandfather. We lined up on either side of the casket - myself and my cousins, brother-in-law Dan, and my Grandfather’s nephew Dirk. As we slowly slid the flag-draped casket from the hearse and onto the carriage, both detachments came to attention.