TJ Hirst

Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom:
and with all thy getting get understanding.

Proverbs 4:7

^{For more of my thoughts on wisdom, read Wisdom’s Writing on the Wall.
Have you taken my poll on Finding What Inspires? I would love your feedback.}

Our Dish Network Satellite Receiver has gone bad, again. This is the third time in two years! It is under warranty, though. The new one arrived this week, and now we are mourning the recordings we are going to lose from the DVR (digital video recorder) on our old receiver. Paul called Dish Network to learn if we could transfer those to the new receiver. Sure, they said, it will cost just $40 and involve a complicated process. We decided we’re not that attached, although our children expressed otherwise at dinner.

Here’s some FINDS that we are sad to be losing:

The Lake House: I am a little embarrassed to say that this movie has been on my DVR nearly nine months, and I may have watched it . . . . hmmm . . . nearly nine times. This romantic drama with a little mystery stars Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves and is not at all like that other movie they were in together. The two things I liked most about it—the music and the setting—connected me to the story. I use the word connect deliberately because that’s the theme.

The characters, Alex and Kate, are both seeking a connection to something or someone, and although they live two years apart, a mail box at a lake house connects them. Kate is returning to a “place where she feels most like herself,” but as Alex describes the lake house, “It is a glass box with a view of everything around it but with no connection to what you’re looking at.” I love a story strongly based on setting, in which the time and/or place becomes as much a character as anyone in it. This one carries me beyond just the parameters of these two people to be able to imagine my own connections.

When The Lake House was released in 2006, the critics didn’t love this movie, finding the plot to be a little far-fetched with a confusing time paradox. Paul watched it with me, twice in fact, most likely because his profession was represented. He enjoyed it the first time and then the persistent “movie architect” persona began to grate on him. Sometimes it seems that architects are often characterized, even more than other professions, as how someone thinks they might be with little connection to reality. Still, the music (most of which is unfortunately not on the soundtrack), the Chicago scenery, and the mystery of the plot overcome all of those criticisms for me, and I found a place for it on my DVR. You can connect to it with this trailer.

Stranger than Fiction: To get a real feeling for the fun and creative tone of this comedy/drama you have to visit the official site. Go ahead, click on it, and then enter the site. “While the cursor waits for it to load,” is narrated by a voice (Emma Thompson) just like the one Harold Crick, an IRS agent, hears in his head when his own life starts being narrated by an author. The story is clever and the character’s idiosyncrasies even more so. I love how the story combines the discovery of Harold’s highly serious situation with the humorous highlights from an array of personalities.

Harold is attracted to a woman who is his opposite, Ana, the owner of a bakery he is auditing, and he eventually brings her a variety of “flours.” The mix of characters and their philosophies are refreshing, keeping me from feeling that I am being driven to identify with just one. Thus, their different approaches to life prepare me for the thought-provoking ending. After viewing this several times, I consistently say to myself: Why can’t I come up with a story like this? Several possible influences for the original story have been identified. But this one is something for every storyteller to work toward.

And here’s some other stuff we will miss from our DVR:

Seven Samurai: This Japanese film from the 50’s is nearly four hours long and Paul has found great enjoyment watching it in short time segments late at night. He is only half-way through and now it’s gone.

Corpse Bride: My husband is passing down his love of Tim Burton to our teen.

And finally, we say goodbye to Planet Earth and any new Sponge Bob episodes that the children have recorded but haven’t seen, yet.

^{Have you taken my poll on Finding What Inspires? I would love your feedback.}

feedback: n. 2. The return of information about the result of a process or activity; an evaluative response.

My husband surprised me with this website for Christmas. (Well, it’s a hobby isn’t it?) I’ve been writing, and he’s been helping me as his gift ever since. It’s a team effort, even though he is mostly in the background.

I am big on feedback. I know from Google Analytics that you are out there reading, but comments are kind of slim so I’m not sure what you think.

May I ask?

Will you take a look around? Check out my pages, my favorite posts, and other post categories you might like. Then, answer the poll and/or leave a comment with your opinion on Finding What Inspires.

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Guest Post: by eh, tj’s 13-year-old daughter

Each day I try to find an answer to this question:

“Have I seen the hand of God reaching out to touch us today?”

The thing I like about doing this is that it’s more than the actual blessing that helps me—it’s the process. Let me clarify. It began when I had had a little trouble that had lowered my spirits significantly. My mom suggested I start writing down an answer to The Question every day.

So each day now, I sit down at the computer and type. Sometimes it isn’t an immediate answer, sometimes it requires a searching of my day. I think about everything that has happened, or what hasn’t. The process of asking helps me reflect on my life and see what has happened. I recognize that I’m not forgotten.

Part 7 (final post) in a series
previous entries

David Jensen saw first hand the results of leadership decisions in the Vietnam War. That sometimes caused David to wonder about the way leaders like Robert McNamara, the secretary of defense, decided what to do. He said:

McNamara had a real technological way of handling things and tried to solve the war through technology. They would track truck traffic. We kind of laughed at it; we knew a lot of trucks got down and back and made a lot of trips. We would say to ourselves, ‘It’s not working.’

Even though David sometimes disagreed with certain decisions, he always mentally aligned himself with the military and knew they had an important job to do. Since the only real news they received was the Air Force Times newspaper, he didn’t pay much attention to the news events in the United States or the increasing protests against the war.

“Everything was pro military and pro war.” David said. “When you are in the military that’s the way it is. You’re on that team.

David was chosen as a flight instructor for OV-10s to check out other pilots for combat and as a functional test pilot for the OV-10, even though he was a fairly young officer. “When the aircraft had battle damage, and had been worked over, I would take it without external pods over friendly territory and run it through its paces.”

One day, a month before he came home, David was in the intelligence briefing room. Roger Witte, his roommate, was out flying A1s over Northern Laos.

Roger’s wing man came into the briefing room and asked David, “Have you heard?”

David said, “Heard what?” Roger Witte had taken a hit and had been killed.

Roger had been a good roommate and friend who often liked to joke around. He was also a spiritual leader, serving the LDS servicemen as their group leader. His faith lived on in an artistic creation he made before his death:

He had painted a mural on the inside of our hooch of the creation of the world that he taken from a church book. After he died, the base engineer cut the plywood wall out and shipped it all back to his wife.

Gary Haws, David’s other roommate, was almost ready to go home, and he escorted the remains back to the United States and made all the funeral arrangements. David’s faith helped him to keep perspective when death came. He said:

You kind of look at life a lot differently. We were saddened, but I guess we just moved ahead. It was our job. Those who didn’t have a gospel perspective, they would drink a lot to deal with it.

In July 1971 David Jensen was reassigned out of Nakhon Phanom (NKP) Thailand to come back to the United States. His assignment was to be a flight instructor in the T38 back in Big Spring, TX, where he had gone to pilots’ school.

Many news or movie images of returning Vietnam veterans show men struggling to adjust to the routines of life after the war. For David, though, the return transition wasn’t difficult. This time he was coming back into familiar territory. “I don’t think it was traumatic for us. Maybe for those on the ground it was worse. It was good to be home, to be back with my family and involved with them,” he said.

Probably the most difficult part for him was the realization that many people in the United States did not respect the work the veterans had done. He said:

It was that time when everyone hated that we were in the war. We came home and we couldn’t figure out what was going on. We thought we should be welcomed home as heroes; but we were not.

Personally, he felt a sense of accomplishment in his service. He was honored with other pilots at an impressive award ceremony at Webb Air Force Base, with the returning men all dressed in their blues. The wing commander came by and presented him with his awards including eleven air medals and the Distinguished Flying Cross.

In 2006, David Jensen stood in front of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. He found the names of Roger Witte and Doug Sealy among over 55,000 names on The Wall and made a tracing of them. He remembered them and reflected on his experiences. “I had served my country. I did my job. I continued to do my job.”

As a fther, he has since shared his story, a piece at a time with his family. David’s son, Steven Jensen, wrote his impressions toward his father’s service:

What is heroism? In war it is going above and beyond the call of duty to protect your comrades and the citizens of your nation. It has aspects of altruism, perhaps it is altruism. . . the foregoing of the self, what “I” want and, instead, serving others.

The service that veterans give is indeed an immeasurable support to the United States of America and all its citizens. Their stories show how they and their families, individually, have born the weight of conflicts to provide protection and freedom to citizen and non-citizen alike, most often without recognition. Each story, like this one, is a memorial of those sacrifices.