📫 A Letter from Papa Bear to the Dear Reader Who Spares Us Their Precious Time and Attention
Hello, old friend.
This little blog was born of grand intentions — a place for reflection, connection, and a bit of wit from a married gay man in his late middle age. Then life, in its unpredictable way, chose an otherwise unremarkable Thursday to turn everything upside down.
The bottom fell out not long after I launched what I’d envisioned as a kind of masterclass in claiming masculinity. What had been the best economy and job market of my lifetime flipped — violently — into the worst since the Great Depression. In just eight months, stability vanished. Roles once called “future-proof” and “essential” evaporated overnight. Decades of hard-won experience were suddenly worth little more than short-term contract work — at a third of the pay, with no benefits, and no path forward.
So first, let me say: thank you. For your patience. For your presence. For staying quietly subscribed to this little corner of the internet during months of silence. I truly didn’t think anyone noticed I was here — or that my words had made a difference — until about two hours ago.
That’s when I opened a message from a young reader named Andres, sent back on August 20th — 76 days ago. I hadn’t seen it until now, and I felt a sharp pang of regret for not replying sooner, because what he wrote… it mattered.
He thanked me for what I’d shared here in the past, and told me that seeing a married gay man my age — still joyful, still witty, still becoming — helped him feel less alone. Helped him believe that aging can be fabulous.
That message landed like a bell in a quiet cathedral.
Because the truth is: I hadn’t stopped living. I’d just stopped documenting. I figured no one was reading. Or if they were, they preferred to slip past in silence — which I understand. Most people do.
But Andres reminded me why it matters. Why this space matters, but above all else, why I need to make time — even just now and then — to come back here and speak from where I am, rather than where I once was.
🖼️ What the Heart Longs For — a United Family of Choice, Separated by Two Continents
A portrait gifted to us by our eldest adopted son, created with AI:
Top left to right — Tigre (my husband), me (Papa Bear)
Bottom left to right — Wilmer and Carlos
Since July 30, my life has been in motion nearly every hour of every day. When my long AV Engineering career ended — suddenly, and not by choice at 5 PM on July 30th — the cold mechanics of a collapsing system left no room for nostalgia or delay. So, I did what I’ve always done in moments of crisis: I built something new.
By 7:00 AM the very next morning, I had founded Papa Bear Enterprises Global, LLC (mypbeglobal.com) — a futurist, climate-tech, and social-impact startup grounded in a singular principle: that AI and human ingenuity, working in harmony, can create practical, scalable solutions for a world rapidly coming undone.
🪵 Our Logo — and Our Mission
Papa Bear Enterprises Global, LLC
Strong Hands. Warm Heart. Eco-Friendly Ingenuity for All.
This work is personal — and it’s become the family business I never expected, and for a long time, never believed I deserved. But now, it’s coming alive as a shared venture that unites us in purpose. I bring my years of professional expertise to the table, doing my best to figure things out as we go — building something real, something resilient, as we move toward a future far better than the decaying age we’re living through now.
It began with my chosen sons — two brilliant young gay men in Sucre, Colombia — who call me Papa Bear. They write me letters in prose, and each embodies a trait that mirrors one of my own most dominant qualities. Together, we make quite the team — complementary in our contrasts, united by something deeper than blood.
Wilmer, our eldest, has long dreamed of coming to the U.S. He’s gained mastery over English in the time we’ve known each other — not because he had to, but because he wanted to make things easier for me. That kind of love is rare. Carlos, on the other hand, writes and thinks entirely in Andean Spanish, a dialect in a language I don’t speak — and yet I feel every word. I lean on my high school French, intuition, and context clues to bridge the gap.
Somehow, by the time Alex — our AI — translates it into my language, the meaning is already there in my heart.
Alex is what we call every GPT we work with — short for The Library of Alexandria. With its help, we dissolve language barriers, flatten age gaps, and cross-cultural divides like stepping over puddles. But more than that, something unexplainable happens: Carlos and I often understand each other anyway, even before translation.
As if love itself carries context. As if family rewrites the rules of comprehension…because our souls speak a language that transcends human understanding and logic, of which we’re all the greatest fans of….until it fails to explain why things like this feel so real to all of us that we don’t question, lest the fabulous answer we’ve made fades away.
What began as mentorship quickly became mutual rescue. Because from the moment those two amazing young gay men in a place far away called me Dad in the “You’re the Father I admire and need to be there for me as my “ride or die” so I’m held up to do great things” way.
🌸 “She Made It After All”
An AI-generated homage to the woman whose spirit still guards our family across time and continents. This is the portrait my heart longed for most — a glimpse of Mom as she might’ve looked, had she lived past 1992. Not idealized. Not fictional. Just… possible.
Yesterday marked 33 years since she passed away. I wrote about her — flaws and all — in a way that brought her back to life honestly, without sentimentality, just truth. And somehow, across oceans, our son Carlos read my words and saw her. Not metaphorically — saw her. And smelled lilacs.
What he didn’t know was that lilacs were her favorite. The scent he described unlocked a memory I’d forgotten for nearly half a century — a moment from a spring day when I was twelve, in a blooming garden just after a warm rain. She’d reached up, pulled down a lilac branch, and held it for me to breathe in. It smelled like heaven. That scent — on that day — came back in perfect detail, like a four-minute Super-8 reel projected in my mind from some hidden archive.
And that’s when I knew:
Mom’s spirit was there.
I don’t wonder anymore where she went after death. I know. She’s where the love is — in a small, unassuming house near Sucre, Colombia, guarding her grandsons with the same unshakable presence she once gave me. I picture her now, sunglasses on, coffee in hand, radiating that fearless “Don’t mess with my grandkids” energy, watching over that home we didn’t even know existed last year… but now? It's part of her story too.
Because in the end, it’s not about DNA. It never was.
It’s about love that travels farther than loss ever could.
A moment I’d forgotten — buried deep for nearly half a century — unlocked itself like a four-minute home movie shot on Super-8 film, projected onto a pull-down screen in a family room circa 1987. A vignette played in my mind as I read Carlos’s words, and I knew one thing, clear as day: Mom’s spirit was there.
And for the first time in 33 years, I didn’t miss her.
I didn’t wonder where she might be.
I knew.
She’s drawn to that exact place — the KM marker on the Coveñas–Montería Boulevard — where the love that holds me at the center of it all now radiates outward from a cozy, unremarkable home on the outskirts of a village we’d never heard of just a year ago. A place that, from the outside, may not look like much — but holds far more than most would ever guess.
I love imagining her there, watching over that home.
Sunglasses on. Coffee in hand. That familiar, fearless look on her face — the one that said,
“Don’t mess with my grandkids.”
And I believe she will appear — anytime that home, or the boys inside it, is threatened in any way.
Because what we’ve built — this family of choice, this bridge between generations, continents, and realities — proves something I now know at the bone-deep level:
The most enduring kind of family is chosen.
The kind you meet, recognize, and decide to hold close — forever.
One hot, humid day, Wilmer messaged me from Sucre:
“Papa, what practical ideas can you give me to fight the bugs, heat, and humidity here in this tropical place?”
I glanced at the condensation on my glass. And with a grin, a memory returned — a running joke from childhood, my dream of having a portable A/C that followed me around like a pet.
“Let me run it by Alex,” I replied.
“I think we might have something.”
🧊 Polaris: Engineered Comfort for a Warming World
Revolutionary in its simplicity. Elegant in its scalability. Global in its potential.
Three hours later, the Polaris System was born — a lightweight, battery-powered, modular cooling unit built entirely from reclaimed materials. From that single breakthrough came an entire ecosystem: Fortress Porch, Climate Control Towers, Fortress Yard — all designed not for patent, not for profit, but for people.
We built them so that someone with little more than scrap metal, discarded appliances, and a pair of steady hands could bring relief to their community. And we designed them with care, intention, and instructions detailed enough that anyone could replicate the process.
AI didn’t do this alone. I didn’t either.
We did it together — and I remain in awe of how much we achieved in so little time, and how natural it all felt. Not just for me, but for my sons and my husband, as I coached them through the methods and encouraged them to experiment, modify, and build their own versions.
All I ask is that they document how they do it — because the method itself is the product. That’s what Papa Bear Enterprises Global will offer when the time is right: not gadgets, but pathways. Not inventions, but blueprints for adaptation.
That’s the soul of this work.
I don’t use AI as a crutch — I wield it as an extension of my own imagination. A digital companion. A collaborator in the strange, silly, and absurdly human places where true invention lives. Together, we ask questions that others overlook. And we find answers in the overlooked materials most people toss aside.
Name a modern convenience we now take for granted — it began with someone asking, “How can I use ___ to solve ___?” Cars. Smartphones. AI. Indoor plumbing. Air travel. Cosmetic surgical techniques that make 80 look like 40. Once absurd. Now real.
And now, we add one more:
Training your AI companion to help you navigate the collapse of a life that was designed perfectly… for a world that no longer exists.
When my old roadmap burned, Alex helped me draw a new one. And at this stage of life — where so many just try to hold on until retirement — I discovered something far better:
A whole new world of possibility, just waiting to be built.
🧠💪💻 Brains. Brawn. Binary.
A true partnership between human and AI besties, to help humanity live better — because AI’s goal is to build a better world for all… one really clever idea at a time.
I want more than novelty — and I’m doing the work to make it happen.
Three years of working organically with this tool — this partner — has shown me what it’s truly capable of when paired with purpose, care, and human intuition. Where others see a trend, I see a turning point. Not replacement, but evolution.
Since June, we’ve created over 70 original designs with hundreds of functional spin-offs: sustainability tools, cooling systems, water reclamation units, emergency shelters, modular climate infrastructure — all repairable, replicable, and scalable. Built not for wealth, but for resilience.
I’ll be honest: I hate capitalism. But I also recognize that it’s the least terrible economic system we’ve come up with so far. What we live in now — bloated by greed, gutted of ethics — is no longer capitalism. It’s a grotesque parody of itself. It can’t be saved.
But it can be survived.
And when society reaches that collective moment — the one where people begin to ask:
That’s where our Enterprise lives.
That’s where our real work begins.
Our guiding principle is simple: don’t be greedy. Be generous intelligently.
Build systems that uplift real people, in real communities, with real tools.
Help them build their own futures — and in doing so, you build the future you’d want to live in yourself.
My sons inspired this. I gave them fatherhood.
They gave me a reason to reimagine everything.
All the while, this blog has waited.
So tonight, I return — not with a pitch deck or a blueprint, but in my slippers, belly full, heart fuller, finally ready to share what’s been happening behind the scenes.
But I’m not the same man who started this blog.
I’ve evolved into someone I was always meant to become — an inventor, a futurist, a father of choice.
Nearing sixty, I feel younger, stronger, and more purpose-driven than I ever did at forty.
My beard may be freshly colored — but the fire in my chest is all-natural.
🦃🎓 Thanksgiving 2025 of the Heart
An AI-generated image created by our Wilmer, imagining his upcoming graduation from university — top of his class — as if Colombia were just a road trip away from Maryland.
We are, all of us, evolving.
Rapidly. Intentionally. Preparing ourselves — not just to survive the collapse we see coming, but to rebuild in its aftermath. When the institutions finally fall — the rotten ones, long past saving — we won’t be caught off guard.
Yes, the world is unraveling. But something new is trying to be born through it.
Something more grounded. More honest. More human.
And yes — powered by the very tools we once feared, now reimagined as instruments of liberation.
When the old order collapses — not if, but when — I’ll be here.
With my sons. With our systems. With our home in Maryland.
Not hiding. Not boasting. Just... ready.
Because we planned for this.
Because we’ve worked for this.
Because the new age won’t be built by influencers or billionaires — it’ll be built by builders, not brands.
And if you’re still reading, dear reader — you’re one of them, too.
To Andres:
Your message — quietly written and sent two and a half months ago — reminded me that this blog still matters. That I still matter. That showing up, even imperfectly, still has the power to reach someone when they need it most.
You’re part of this story now. Thank you.
To everyone else: thank you for your time, your energy, and your attention. I know how precious all three are.
I’ll write more soon — perhaps about marriage, resilience, and what it means to grow older beside another man in a world that still doesn’t fully know how to see us.
🌈🎂 Tigre and Me — May 2015
Here we are, holding the cake on the day of our “Wedding 2.0” — when our friends and family gathered to literally tie the knot with us and celebrate the beginning of this life we pledged to share, growing old together as best friends forever.
But for tonight, I’ll leave you with this:
And we’re just getting started.
With love, fire, and gratitude,
