The coffee that Elisabeth and I had planned for yesterday did not come about. We did have coffee, but Elisabeth was at the Chinook, while I was at the downtown Bay store. But we communicated intensely by texting, which made me now more proficient at it. Since I was downtown anyway I texted John for a lunch meet, which worked out splendidly!

We did have coffee, but Elisabeth was at the Chinook, while I was at the downtown Bay store.

Later in the day and evening I made serious progress with reading my old floppy disks, about eighty all told. I classified them into three categories as follows. Readable outright, readable but with obscure file extensions such as ‘.sam’, as well as the old .wp cum WordPerfect files. Thirdly there were the disks that wanted ‘formatting’! This I interpret as the FAT section being corrupted, while the files are still there.

I’ll have to find out whether the last can be recovered, while the file extension problem showed some solutions after a web search. The readable files I can start moving from the readable floppies to a USB memory. And by the way, the USB floppy drive that Michelle lent me performed very well under Windows-7 OS. Thanks Michelle:-)!

Later lunch with Herman, my turn for the tab at which we take turns ‘religiously’. This in tune with much of our subject matter.:-)!

I want to make a note here of the lines I wrote back in 1991 at the Porpoise Bay campsite as I referred to this week’s entries. The total writing is sixteen (16) page long, but I will just quote the pertinent lines from the middle of page thirteen (13) as follows.

“To assume responsibility of our own destiny so to speak, is the meaning of life that ‘men’ seeks to find in religion, cults and groupthink, or to full fill it through material possession - you only live once and the better be envied than bemoaned and if I don’t do it some one else will.”

On those pages I then go on to say that humankind has only made a beginning as a species and will have to learn to live on this planet by means of managing the problems we ourselves cause, such over population and pollution, among many others. At the bottom of page fourteen (14) I mention that the so required goals will not come from the handed down, but that ’men’ must give meaning to ‘his’ own world. On page fifteen (15) I add in quotes: “The meaning of human life is to shape its own destiny.”

So far my references to those handwritten notes of Porpoise Bay. What strikes me today about these notions from 1991 is their similarity in sentiment about our human tasks and purpose. This need to take responsibility was already present in my thoughts back at that time.

What I have added over time are two aspects. One is that we must act respecting the handed down human traditions, albeit with applying our modern knowledge and insights. Secondly, the notion to take responsibility for our own actions and present situation has changed into an imperative, not to be ignored.

In this regard it is encouraging to see that since the middle of the twentieth century humankind’s international activities and organisations have vastly increased.

In this regard it is encouraging to see that since the middle of the twentieth century humankind’s international activities and organisations have vastly increased. This combines today with the apparent awareness on the part of the major world powers - UN security council - of the need to set particular interests aside, when larger and more serious problem demand solutions. I.e. to day’s conundrum in the Syrian Middle East.

Even though progress is slow, but we must not fail take note of it, because it does map the way out of the dilemmas of interest and armed conflicts. Stability is crucial here, as the following Arab saying illustrates:
"One year of anarchy is worse than one hundred years of dictatorship.”
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