Where is it?

Under a bunch of stuff, is where.

I had started to get itchy about the whereabouts of my Palm, when Feht called. In the course of the conversation, I lifted a bunch of paper that's been lying on my reference desk for a while and... there it was.

In the meantime, I've been writing notes in a small pocket notebook (not that there are any earthshattering things to be noted down).

I find myself in a quandary when it comes to planning my everyday activities. I don't want to become like the fellow I read about in the United Airlines in-flight magazine while coming back from Atlanta (in a story about an air traveler who encounters an ambitious young man who has his life all planned out), but keeping track of what needs to be done, and the fact that it's been done (and, um, invoiced when appropriate) is something that, well... needs to be done.

My quandary is this: I'm not sure I can go back to using a paper planner, but I'm also not sure I'm ready to exclusively use a PDA.

It'll be something to think about while on the way to Houston (and yes, I did get the travel details from my client... they seem okay... I come back on the 15th, which will give me a Saturday on my own to do Anything I Want™).

* * *I ran across a book the other day in my storeroom titled This I Believe, by Edward R. Murrow, if memory serves, since the book has again gone back into the storeroom to mingle with its bretheren. It is one of those books from a different time, it seems, when people seemed more interested in thinking, and ideas, and discussion of those ideas than they are today. (Given that the development of the art of thinking has all but disappeared from education at all levels, this is hardly surprising, but I digress...)

I had hoped to find Robert Heinlein's contribution in this series of short essays by the leading lights of the era, but I guess it didn't make the cut. It took me a couple of days, but I finally found RH's words, recorded in 1952, in Requiem, by Yoji Kondo. I feel a lump forming in my throat whenever I read it.

I am not going to talk about religious beliefs but about matters so obvious that it has gone out of style to mention them. I believe in my neighbors. I know their faults, and I know their virtues far outweigh their faults.

Take Father Michael down our road a piece. I'm not of his creed, but I know that goodness and charity and loving kindness shine in his daily actions. I believe in Father Mike. If I'm in trouble, I'll go to him.

My next-door neighbor is a veterinary doctor. Doc will get out of bed after a hard day to help a stray cat. No fee -- no prospect of a fee -- I believe in Doc.

I believe in my townspeople. You can knock on any door in our town saying, "I'm hungry," and you will be fed. Our town is no exception. I've found the same ready charity everywhere. But for the one who says, "To heck with you -- I got mine," there are a hundred, a thousand who will say, "Sure, pal, sit down."

I know that despite all the warnings against hitchhikers I can step to the highway, thumb for a ride and in a few minutes a car or truck will stop and someone will say, "Climb in, Mac -- how far you going?"

I believe in my fellow citizens. Our headlines are splashed with crime yet for every criminal there are 10,000 honest, decent, kindly men. If it were not so, no child would live to grow up. Business could not go on from day to day. Decency is not news. It is buried in the obituaries, but it is a force stronger than crime. I believe in the patient gallantry of nurses and the tedious sacrifices of teachers. I believe in the unseen and unending fight against desperate odds that goes on quietly in almost every home in the land.

I believe in the honest craft of workmen. Take a look around you. There never were enough bosses to check up on all that work. From Independence Hall to the Grand Coulee Dam, these things were built level and square by craftsmen who were honest in their bones.

I believe that almost all politicians are honest...there are hundreds of thousands of politicians, low paid or not paid at all, doing their level best without thanks or glory to make our system work. If this were not true, we would never have gotten past the 13 colonies.

I believe in Rodger Young. You and I are free today because of endless unnamed heroes from Valley Forge to the Yalu River. I believe in -- I am proud to belong to -- the United States. Despite shortcomings from lynchings to bad faith in high places, our nation has had the most decent and kindly internal practices and foreign policies to be found anywhere in history.

And finally, I believe in my whole race. Yellow, white, black, red, brown. In the honesty, courage, intelligence, durability, and goodness of the overwhelming majority of my brothers and sisters everywhere on this planet. I am proud to be a human being. I believe that we have come this far by the skin of our teeth. That we always make it just by the skin of our teeth, but that we will always make it. Survive. Endure. I believe that this hairless embryo with the aching, oversize brain case and the opposable thumb, this animal barely up from the apes will endure. Will endure longer than his home planet -- will spread out to the stars and beyond, carrying with him his honesty and his insatiable curiosity, his unlimited courage, and his noble essential decency.

This I believe with all my heart.

I can't see where, essentially, things have changed that much in 50 years.

There goes that lump again.

Cheers...