The Crane Technique

Saturday, February 28, 2026

What a Long Strange Trip It's Been

I feel like I've lived many lives. Childhood. College. Post-college in Eugene. Moving to Portland. Having children. Losing my dad. Losing Emily. Covid. All these feel like different lives, and I would have trouble remembering the person I was before and after each step. As time fades on you get to an age where you start to take account of your own mortality. Time goes by faster the older we get. As a child, we want to be an adult, and as an adult, we yearn for the carefree bliss of childhood. What do I want my legacy to be? Will I be a grandparent? What lives will my children live as adults? What will life be like for me once I no longer have to work? I've spent most of my life sacrificing for others, sometimes at the expense of myself, and I wonder emotionally how I will handle life when I don't have to live that way. These things I cannot know until I make it that far. I also understand each day is a gift, and each day could be our last, although some days I don't have the energy to live that day to its fullest. I want to live in the moment and savor these last few years of having my kids still both living with me every day. Soon, that will not be something I'll have, and I may find myself alone. That day will be the start of another new life. Probably not the last life I live, but certainly one of the last ones. I want that life to be a meaningful one but I don't know what that means yet.

Monday, February 16, 2026

Is This Thing Still On?

I am not sure why but I thought about this blog today and wondered if it still existed and yes it does. It looks like it's been 9 or so years since I updated this thing. Yeah life has changed a lot. In 2018 I lost the greatest man I'll ever know, my dad Larry Liedtke, very unexpectedly and in front of me and my mom and my children of a heart attack. A year later I would have to say goodbye to my wife and the mother of my children Emily. Her death was complicated as was her life and our relationship. I know she'd be proud of our two children Rem and Mady, the two most opposite kids a dad will ever have. They are also my two favorite people on the planet. I also want them to know that they will always be loved more than they will ever know and I couldn't be more proud of them. They'll never learn as much from me as I have learned from them but I hope they take the lessons I tried to impart on them. Nothing means more than family, life is going to knock you down but it's how you get up from that knock down that shows your real character and perhaps the hardest one there is : to live in the present and believe in yourself. Rem 19 and Mady 16 below. Picture is Rem at Frog Pond Farms in Wilsonville, Oregon in October of 2025 and Mady at THE 2026 OSAA State Cheerleading championships were Mady at and her teammates at Mountainside High finished 3rd.