Swans
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We are all on this earth with the same mission in life. The general welfare of mankind is the trust of white man and black, rich or poor, Christian or Jew, Mohammedan and Hindu.
--Albert Einstein
The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all of our lives.
--Albert Einstein
![[Pic: Carol Warner Christen]](./portrait/carenc.jpg)
My ancestors flowed from Ipswich, England, and from Wales about 370 years
ago, and from Winterbach, Germany, 121 years ago, to the United States;
they were Celts.
That background led to my current existence on a wonderful planet governed
by fools and knaves. Activist against war, Pres. of Women for Peace,
draft counselor during Vietnam War, married twice, five children, moved to
Oregon to further a career in design drafting for water projects which I
did for years in Chicago area steel mills, and municipal water districts.
In Oregon, it was the Trojan plant as-built and the prison system in Salem
so water would be available for a fire if all the toilets were flushed at
once which often occurred. I supervised the drafting room. A banking
glitch and the computer changed drafting forever in the early 1980s. I
became a computer business before the local offices had any by doing
background checks, editing, bookkeeping, you name it by computer.
When my mother became senile with dementia, we bought a run-down farm in
Oregon on 17 acres, raising goats, chickens, hay, and weeds in a swamp of
sorts. Our house is an 1894 hops barn converted since 1904 into a house.
I have it all feng suied and decorated with huge Picassos I painted on
some walls with all my artwork everywhere along with 2500 books and seven
computers. My husband is an electronic engineer so some of the computers
are his.
I am retired after nine bogus jobs with companies that wanted me to help
them cheat on one thing or another. I kept quitting and told my husband,
"I'm not working anymore under such conditions." I wrote out a spreadsheet
on my contribution to the household. He has four more years to catch up.
I love him. We are equals and have a constitution for the two of us. We
vote on any controversy after debate using a single-sentence format for
the "Be it resolved" part. It ended most all our arguments and nagging.
Carol Warner Christen has been contributing her work to Swans since January 2007. It can be accessed in the yearly archives, at:
A couple of examples...
• Fear, Distraction, Hypnosis, And The National Attention Span (January 2007): For four years, the United States has focused attention on foreign terror and ignored America. The price we shall pay will be steep. We, the People, need to wake up.
• Whose Free Will? (March 2007): America has transformed from a society of free will to one of determinism; it's time to rethink the premises of power and undo the laws that bind us and the capitalism that strangles us.