. . . son, sibling, husband, father, grandfather, friend, neighbor, world citizen
TID BITS | Chron File
As time goes on this section will grow and grow to the point that earlier posts will get buried. The Mutterings and Musings (M & M) section herein archives selected posts in a way that makes these access easier.
wp.me/p1VARv-1ik
Love my grand kids. Each their own kind of special – talented, curious, respectful, and creative.
This is Matthew. The oldest. He taught me how to be Opa (Papa to them).
It’s been a lifetime since Brother Ed and high school philosophy, religion and writing classes. Brother Ed had most of us kids scratching our heads. He also had students, turned adults, who returned to campus to visit and praise him. Not an easy thing to forget. Not an easy thing to overlook as a student. His “thesis-antithesis-thesis” lesson is rock solid. I speak of it to this day, hoping it interjects positivity into life, our collective lives.
Willi-Anton – 2021, March 11
Here, here, Brother Edward, your mantra lives. To all those skeptics who say we are doomed to our prejudices, I say bunk! To those who insist that heart-felt opinions can’t be changed, I say bunk.
2011, November, 23 [orig. post date]
NOVEMBER 17th – Anthony, our Grandson’s birthday. He was born years after his great grandfather passed away which was 17 years after his wife, Anthony’s grandmother, my mother.
willi-anton 2021, March 11
Life certainly has its moments. Synergy for many of us.
In any case, November 17 is a day I reflect on how Light follows Darkness in our family. This is just as true in 2021 as it was in 2011 when I memorialized it as recalled below.
Brothers Lee are thinking today, November 17th, is our memorial day with all the respect owed the veterans we honor on their days. Dad passed away 5-years ago and 17-years to the day after Mom.
This special day goes easier this year for this particular son, as I celebrate my grandson, Anthony’s, 1st Birthday today. He rem59inds me that life is precious, short, and ever so amazing.
Life inevitably brings darker days and then flashes bright lights to show us hope, faith and charity are always there to light the pathway back. The real challenge is not the darkness, it’s nature’s counterpoint, it’s having the presence of mind and strength of character to open our eyes so as not to miss the unpredictable, these unexpected rays of light.
Dad and Mom you said goodbye to your son Norman and then hello to son Michael. This last year Dawne Wood Lee and the family said hello to Anthony, yet had to say goodbye to Papa Wood. Such is the circle of life and we do our best today to remember the better moments, which our children and grandchildren make just a little easier to do?
Thinking about Ulrick A. Lee and Michael Lee today – hoping many happy moments for them today.
2011, November 17 [orig. publish date]
A “voice” from the grave below is a collection of statements by Albert Einstein. Yes, Einstein. He may unwitting be the father of “Intellectual Design”; that is, before it was hijacked by modern-day “Institutionalists” – those who are taking a page from the Pharisees of old Jerusalem.
I’ll bet you thought Einstein was a purebred atheist. An even better bet is that you personally believe in what many call the God of our American Founding Fathers, which is thought to be a popular construction of the Christian God. My reading of history says we should look again. Are you curious about the various constructions of God the US Founding Fathers believed in? Are you curious about Einstein’s evolving philosophies around God, community, and life in general?
A plausible letter from Albert Einstein, although this one here is a composite construction by me using his life long collection of thoughts from Einstein over his writing career. He spoke, he wrote, and he evolved. He was quite the philosopher, not just a nuclear scientists.
The human mind is unable to conceive of the four dimensions, so how can it conceive of a God, before whom a thousand years and a thousand dimensions are as one? [No matter] I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know his thoughts. What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism [religion for the sake of religion]. Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind. My God transcends a personal God avoiding dogma and theology and favoring the meaningful unity of the natural and the spiritual. What separates me from most so-called atheists is a feeling of utter humility toward the unattainable secrets of the harmony of the cosmos. In the view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognize, there are yet people who say there is no God. [Do remember] when the answer is simple, God is speaking.]
wp.me/p1VARv-191
In 2004-2005 I was full force working for and in support of this pioneering, member-driven KT Support organization, It became my fulltime focus. I had the time for sure. I was basically bed-ridden by doctor’s orders and unemployed via permanent disability.
Willi-Anton
The Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, in particular is due a ton of gratitude for sponsoring its work and listening to that first mom that walked the halls of the Gonda Vascular Clinic hoping one of their doctors would agree to treat her daughter and then to support a world thirsty for knowledge and research. These mutual efforts created the first US-based full force Klippel-Trenaunay reference and referral center.
Today, as I work on an international basis, it is profoundly satisfying to hear of other Countries and their respective member-driven Support Groups reaching out within their counties.
Klippel Trenaunay Support Group [k-t.org]
… the first-in-the-world Klippel-Trenaunay Syndrome Support Group
… the pioneers of KT Suport Groups
General Links
Hospitals, Clinics and Institutions of Care
Research & Papers
In a previous post I described my motivations in 2005 and 2011. This current day post provides additional background on my overall journey with KT and associated Congenital Vascular Anomalies, with focus on my diagnosis in 1997 and a all-in dedication since to KT education, awareness and support. It’s a semi-retired perspective.
From our archives – I was finally diagnosed with Klippel-Trenaunay Syndrome in 1997, at 43 years old.
It took until 2003 for the US Social Security Administration to finally accept my doctors’ prescriptions and prognosis.
By 2004 I had found and attended my first two Medical Support Conferences in the US.
By 2005 I was writing about my personal and medical experiences; as well as, the medical data, studies, and research I found while doing extensive homework on bona-fide professional work products like those from the US NIH (National Institute of Health).
By 2006 I was a fulltime volunteer as an online support person in several groups across the world, the US having the more dominant presence, largely because of the Facebook explosion. This lead to me accepting a Board of Director position with a legacy Medical Support Organization for several years. What else to do, but pass on what I had learned, learned by necessity. Those 6 years fighting through the US Social Security gauntlet had forced me to be better informed than the average US bureaucrat doctor.
At the end of 2020, I semi-retired from being a fulltime volunteer moderator and mentor in online Support Groups for KT and associated Congenital Vascular Malformations. Having spent 15 years in support of KT and associated Congenital Vascular Anomalies, I semi-retired. I had committed to stay fully active until then.
Now, I’m back to my own creative instincts and writing again. The social media based support groups are well established and will flourish, provided Facebook doesn’t collapse. I have returned to being the daily homework person – researching professional information and publish studies in order to create the 3rd and final version of SEEN, YET NOT HEARD.
The final version, my end days will be in the form of conversations with fellow warriors. I look forward to it.
The post below speaks to initial motivations in 2005 and continued motivations in 2011; as well as, measures outcomes.
The image above introduced the 1st edition (2005) of my online Journal.
This coded Table took me days to code. I had always struggled with learning how to code in any language. Old school HTML was even harder because it is a very flat language that failed, to this day, to be a modern language, a 3rd generation (object-oriented) language.
In 2011 Visual Coding, backed by facilitated HTML, enabled me to deliver a 2nd edition. Today, I learn and use Block Coding to deliver the 3rd edition of the online journals.
From our archives – Somethings are best understood within the context of personal endeavor. In so much as this endeavor – Seen But Not Heard – is an open journal containing articles on personal and social matters, there are going to be writings posted here that will leave some readers wondering why I’m putting this information into the public arena where “strangers” might see it. I’m expecting that it is these very items, the personal items, which will offer a clearer understanding of how and why my “tamer” writings have a deeper foundation than just a cursory interest or popular relevance.
The articles herein on Klippel-Trenaunay Syndrome are illustrative. When I write about healthcare and, in particular, universal healthcare managed by bureaucracies including both private insurance carriers and governments, I can’t help but bring my unique and relevant experiences to bear. So, with careful consideration I’m writing about a serious medical condition that has haunted me my entire life. As will learn reading through my journal my gestation, development, maturation and now aging processes have been dramatically impact by a congenital aberration called Klippel-Trenaunay Syndrome. This all to real experience has taken me, my parents, my wife and kids on numerous journeys, some more enlightening than others. Routine medical practices, once in a lifetime medical practices, medical insurance practices, workers compensation practices, struggles with employers, access to public buildings, government health care (military style) and social security disability have all been unusually eventful for us.
I hope by being open about these my neighbors and friends will equally share in my passion to better these institutions through active citizenry, rather than leaving it for the other guy to figure out. I do believe in many ways we are our brothers keeper and I’m hopeful our society never degrades or devalues this ideal to the point that we feel so isolated and alone that we seek solace in self-imposed caves or hobbit holes.
2011, September 8 [orig. post date]
wp.me/p1VARv-17E
. . . a deeper dive into my mental framework that has me creating my own space.
A couple of thoughts about this fresh start – I’m the sort that takes a walk and is happy to meet and great along the way. We can talk about your newly planted flowers, even the headline news, or what’s been on your mind for the last several days. It’s a pleasure to have neighbors who like having neighbors. Long gone are the corner pubs or the busy park benches so here we are making the best of our new world. I’m looking forward to reading, reflection and writing, and the conversations these bring.
I look forward to hearing from you whether friend or passer-by. This independent platform is my main page, my “Profile”. It includes a private chatroom, so private I have it hidden form Internet web-bots and people surfing the internet. These entities can locate me, the Profile part of me, but not the chatroom content.
Do forgive my known weakness in grammar. I’m the son of an immigrant mother – and trust me my Catholic education missed the boat in this matter. Oh, they taught me to think alright, but not so much how to spell or where to put commas.
I do not have a personal Editor, so please feel free to offer corrections or changes. I take no offense to constructive complaints of voice, suicide by comma or any other matter pertaining to construction or form. I would not be happy if I lost the message to poor grammar.
I’m giving fair notice that I do have at least one pet peeve about today’s social networking. I’ve spent just enough time on networks like the YAHOO and the Huffington Post to become deeply frustrated by drive-by’s which characterize and/or leave twitter-class responses rather than set the table for meaningful conversations.
It’s not the hall monitor that troubles me, I certainly find myself calling folks out when they seem to be disingenuous, or are hostile to open dialogue and well intended banter. It’s the all things are life and death politics that has ruined friendly discourse. Not even Comedy is immune to this social degradation. Quite frankly I am not your psychologist or your Congressional Representative.
STRENGTH THOUGH VIRTUE – This was the motto of one of a centuries old Lee Clan of Ireland. I like it! I’ll strive to live up to it.
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