Category: Musings

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Have you noticed?

It hit me this morning over my coffee, that I wasn’t being inundated with COVID news. Anthony Fauci hasn’t been doing the chat TV interview circuit.

I guess all we needed was a war, rising gas prices, and the threat of inflation to break the fear mongering of the national media. Or did these things simply cure COVID?

Even CNN’s front web page has only 1 covid related item. Since I haven’t watched CNN in over a year, I’d bet there’s still the crawler at the bottom of the screen giving COVID statistics.

To be sure, COVID is not gone. It’s still out there doing what viruses do. It’s mutating. There are other variants appearing and at this point those variants appears to be following the normal viral lifecycle. Greater infectiousness, lower fatality.

Gee, all it took was the threat of a nuclear war and upcoming midterm elections to stop COVID doom in the United States.

Humans! What a species.

I call this better, because like most people I was sick and tired of the “DOOM ON YOU” messaging of the media about COVID.

“COVID is gonna kill you,” To which I said, “Okay, but when? I wished it would just get on with it.”

Now I find myself thinking along the lines I used to think about during the Cold War.

Several media outlets have spoken about a nuclear exchange and again, I’m like, “Fine. Whatever!”

This is perhaps a fatalistic view but with Nukes, at least it’s likely to be quick. I live within 10 miles of a military base.

I suppose I’ve grown tired of the constant doom. We’re all going to die sometime. I’d prefer to just go about my day without being reminded of it every 10 minutes. Which is why I don’t watch the news, I’ll read about the latest threat to all life of the planet in my own time.

If you’d really like to get your panties in a bunch, Look up gamma ray bursts. Somewhere in the universe a long time ago, a star collapsed or blew up. As its core ceased to exist, the star emitted an intense focused burst of gamma rays. Those gamma rays are at this moment blazing across the universe at the speed of light. We can’t see them because the universe is too big for us to have instruments trained on the entire sky.

A gamma extinction event could come at any time from any direction. It’s only luck that it hasn’t happened yet. But the day is still young! Why don’t we have constant interviews from pundits and wags telling us how to build shelters, or suicide booths?

Here’s why, Gamma rays tend to blast through anything and unless they’re absorbed by immense distance, or something with sufficient mass between their point of origin and us. A Gamma burst could sterilize the entire planet. Everything burns.

There’s a complete sense of powerlessness. It’s too big, too beyond our petty concerns. It’s unthinkable, instead we maintain our beliefs that we are special, and some deity will protect us. We can’t begin to process the enormity of something like this, the unfairness, the annihilation of our “special” species, and so we ignore it.

Our own sun could do us with an intense solar flare at any moment. That, our scientists would see coming and we’d have 30 minutes or so to say goodbye.

The sky changes color, the Aurora Borealis is, for a brief instant visible across the entire planet as the high energy particles interact with the shield created by the magnetic field of our planet. There are pretty colors and the sentient population of the planet stands in amazement. Then the shield is overwhelmed and poof! Everything burns.

The next day, the sun still rises and Earth spins on.

A million years later, some weird bacteria rises up from some protected cavern in the deepest part of what used to be an ocean, or falls to Earth aboard an icy comet and life starts again.

There is nothing we can do about it, just as we couldn’t stop a pandemic. Pandemics happen almost like clockwork. So do extinction events.

Mars, had all the elements for life. Until a huge asteroid smacked the planet. Some scientists think that the impact disrupted that planet’s core enough to cause the magnetic shielding to fail permanently. Then it was just a matter of time, the solar wind carrying off the atmosphere atom by atom, just so much dust in the wind so to speak. Solar radiation increased and well, the results are obvious. A cold, dry, desolate, dead world.

Another couple million years and the remaining atmosphere of Mars will be gone. 5 or 6 billion years later, our sun expands and the inner solar system is recycled. Who knows, a hundred billion years later, maybe all those atoms will coalesce forming a new planetary system. Then again, maybe not. It’s the luck of the draw.

Because in the back of my mind I try to see the whole of creation, (Not just Earth, but the universe,) I guess I have a slightly different view. It’s tough to maintain that view with all the constant noise from daily events. But my view gives me comfort.

It also tends to make me willing to discard things that I cannot control. I prefer instead to focus on what I can speak of, or directly change, or control.

I couldn’t prevent the COVID pandemic, but I could speak facts and try to remind people that it wasn’t a complete death sentence. Measles decimated the native people of Hawaii. Smallpox decimated the native peoples of North America. The Black Plague killed 1/4 of Europe. The 1914 influenza and subsequent waves killed 50 million people.

And the world spun on. Humanity continued. There are no guarantees. Dance in the light while you can, don’t worry about a guaranteed tomorrow. Live now, in this time and place and make the best of it.

We can prevent a nuclear war. We can choose to live in peace with each other. We can choose to be kind. We can choose not to be petty, or hateful, we can step into each new day as a gift, fearless of what may happen and joyful in choosing to live, love, learn, and become our best selves.

I guess, I believe that the echos of us reverberate throughout the universe. The infinitesimally small transmissions of electrical activity in our brains scatter out in all directions across space and time. Perhaps, those transmissions spark inspiration, or recognition of beauty, or a moment of kindness in an unimaginable species 100 billion years from now. Or, a moment of cruelty, destruction, or harm.

My choice is to stumble toward the light, to be better than I was yesterday. I choose to believe that a decent act, a kind act, or my dancing in the sunlight in joy, will at some point stay the hand of a tyrant on a distant world, or cause a child to smile seeing beauty in something commonplace.

That’s my immortality.

Even if that doesn’t actually work across billions of years. It may make a difference here, now.

Oh I’ll still rail against things that bug me. I’m human and our focus is so easily narrowed to things that annoy. I forgive myself for that.

I just have to remember to reach for being a citizen of the Universe instead of just the Earth.

Look up at the night sky, be awed at the majesty and beauty.

Be at peace with yourself and others. Create and experience all the joy you can.

The choice is yours.

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We’re coming up on Spring

Technically the first day of spring in the Northern Hemisphere is March 20.

That’s the official calendar and Equinox date.

My dog, the trees in the yard, and the flower beds, have a slightly different perspective.

The dog is shedding… A LOT! In the past 2 weeks he’s dropped most of his undercoat.

He’s a husky mix and as near as I can tell he’s got three different layers of fur. The outer coat is longish and seems built to shed snow, water, and ice. The mid coat is pretty dense and looks like it’s built as a wind breaking layer. The under coat is fluffy and reminds me of my down jacket.

That last coat is also prone to static attraction, and flies around the house when I’m running the vacuum. I caught myself chasing little bits of fluff with the vacuum the other day and suddenly understood why the vacuuming chore was taking twice as long as usual.

When he starts shedding the undercoat, he’s also more prone to matting so I’ve been brushing him every other day.

You’d think, “Oh, that’s nice…” You’d be wrong. The dog thinks that brushing is a game. So he plays and spins and tries to keep the brush away.

Admittedly, it’s funny.

What’s not funny is that after the brushing is done. I’m covered head to toe in static charged downey fur and I look a lot like a Yeti. (Brushing is best done outside, prior to a shower, or putting on clean clothes.)

I also try to brush him when there are no breezes. The neighbors probably don’t like clumps of fur the size of small rabbits blowing across their lawns.

Brushing him outside made me notice the large pine trees are greening. There are buds on some of the ground cover plants. As the snow recedes, I’m seeing the work that I’ll have to do in the yard.

I’m seeing greening of the maple in the front yard and sprouts in the flower beds.

If the temps remain warm, I’ve got a plan to fire up the chainsaw and vigorously prune the Apache Plume which has become a little too wild for my tastes. It’s a neat plant but this one has become rather large and threatens to take over the planet.

I need to fence off the vegetable beds. The dog loves digging in the soft soil. That’s great for him, (ahem,) but I want to grow vegetables this year. I don’t want to plant a bunch of vegetables only to have to battle the dog and rabbits. The rabbits are enough of a challenge!

Last year, the vegetable garden wasn’t remotely possible because the dog was new to the household and had no sense of boundaries. I’ve concluded that he still has no sense of boundaries and that a fence will be necessary.

While I’m fencing off the vegetable beds, I’m thinking I’ll fence off the area under the main deck. (Again to keep the dog out of that area. He likes to dig for buried treasure and an unknown number of toys have disappeared into the abyss under that deck.)

The overall plan is to get the spring gardening out of the way, which will make room for my trim and house painting projects.

It’s at these times that I wish I had a pick up truck. I’d like to be able to take cuttings and other stuff to the dump on my schedule instead of stacking it, then borrowing or renting a truck.

There are also a lot of little building projects that I’m thinking about doing.

I’d enjoy doing the projects, but I’m light on tools to accomplish the tasks. I could see myself spending $800 bucks in tools to assemble $150 in projects.

I suppose it really comes down to would I get $800 worth of pleasure and satisfaction out of the work.

Forget the lumber costs! Even decent sawhorses are obscenely expensive these days. Then there’s the issue of being able to store the tools when not in use. The other half also doesn’t much in the way of boundaries in the garage. It’s a royal pain in the butt to climb over all kinds of junk to get to my tools.

I suppose, I can start by cleaning and reorganizing the garage while it’s still too cool to work in the yard. Then I can do the yard work, rent a truck and take all of the crap to the dump. Once that’s done, I can begin the building projects.

It’s a bit like pulling a loose thread on a sweater, one thing leads to another, and another, then before you know it, your sweater is just a pile of yarn.

I’m tired just thinking about it! Oh well, I’ve got a few weeks to think on it.

That compound miter saw looks awfully nice though…

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Why we can’t have nice things…

Four years ago I was leaving a grocery store near my apartment when a complete stranger walked up to me and commented on my watch.

It wasn’t uncommon for my colleagues to notice it or comment on it. It was not even that uncommon for a clerk in a shop to notice my watch, (particularly if they were male,) and say something like, “nice,” while looking at my wrist.

That day in front of the grocery store, this guy who appeared homeless commented about my watch in a very loud voice. He said something like, “That’s a really nice watch, what did that set you back 10 grand 15 grand?” What caught my attention was that he was speaking loudly enough for pretty much the entire shopping plaza to hear him. I’m a suspicious person, and in the back of my brain a thought popped in, “Why is this guy announcing this? Is he calling to an accomplice?”

I politely said in an equally loud voice, “Thank you for the compliment, it’s amazing how many compliments I get on this cheap $200 Hong Kong knock off. Would you like to hold it? “

At that point the man lost interest. Thank god he didn’t call my bluff.

This event was about the 3rd or 4th I’d experienced in 2 weeks. Admittedly, I wasn’t living in the best neighborhood at the time, but up to that point I hadn’t felt particularly unsafe.

The watch in question is not a knock off.

I purchased it 14 years ago for about 7K. I’d lost a rather large watch collection in a fire and decided that I simply wanted a single very nice watch that I never took off. I’d worn my watch continuously since I put it on in the store.

There were some who scolded me for wearing such a nice watch while doing yard work, working on a car, building, painting, swimming, or just living. I really thought nothing of it.

It is my watch, and since it was the only one I owned, it was easier to keep it on my wrist than to keep track of it, if I took it off.

The watch itself has held up very well. I sent it in for routine service on its tenth birthday. The service center gave it a tune up, and a clean bill of health. complemented me on two things. 1) it was in excellent shape and 2) that they’d guessed I wore it every day and thought that was very cool.

They didn’t even charge me for the replacement of 2 links in the band that had taken the brunt of a saw kickback. The watch band had saved me from a very nasty cut on my wrist. As part of the service the watch was also appraised. I was a bit shocked, and pleased, to discover that my watch had more than doubled in value.

After the repeated incidents in public where the watch garnered unwanted and intrusive attention, (it’s still considered rude to ask a stranger what they paid for something isn’t it?) I decided it was time to put my beautiful functional timepiece in a safe and buy something cheap and ubiquitous.

I’ve enjoyed the lockdowns over the past two years because if I’m around home, or in my little mountain town I’ve been able to wear my nice watch. I also wore it with complete confidence on a recent trip to Florida. Some men in Florida noticed my watch, they just nodded in appreciation, and smiled. You know… “Old School Politeness.”

My cheap watch is an Apple watch. It’s nice, but having to recharge it daily is a pain in the butt. The advantage is that everyone has one and in that homogeneity is safety.

No-one is likely to mug me for an Apple Watch.

The sadness is that my beautiful, simple, functional, watch sits in the safe. I do wear it if I’m camping, diving, or know that I’m not likely to encounter crowds of people. I also wear it more in the Winter when a jacket or long sleeves afford cover for it.

Within the past month or two, I read a news item where a man in Los Angeles had been robbed of his Rolex, at gunpoint after an induced car accident.

Today There was a report from England in The Sunday Times talking about an apparently organized group of thieves who are targeting high end watch wearers. The article is here and it’s brazen.

Most of the men report being approached by lovely women asking for their signature on a petition or something. In some cases the women become handsy and quite forward, talking non stop. In a few cases they’ve offered sex or other enticements.

Often the men are so flabbergasted they don’t realize their watch is gone until the woman has left.

I’ve heard of expensive hookers, but these guys aren’t even getting blow jobs for their 10 to 20K!

The article mentions that the thieves seem to be targeting Rolexes.

The supply of Rolexes is thin and the resale market is booming.

Rolex among other high end watches retain their value worldwide. They’re easy to transport, and with a hot resale market the thief can dump the merchandise quickly.

I’ve been jonesing for a watch that I can safely wear daily that doesn’t require recharging or batteries.

I guess you could say I’m bored with the Apple Watch and its attendant software updates, power requirements, and fiddling.

I think fondly of my nice watch. Ten years, one watch, and zero trouble. Ahh, simplicity!

I’d been looking at a nice simple Omega. But that too is a high end watch and subject to the same targeting by thieves. That being said, I may get one anyway.

I suppose that a venerable Timex might be the best way to go.

It does make me wonder how long will it be before we’re all driving the same car, all wearing the same clothes, all wearing the same watch, and all using the same mobile phone?

Is that where this is going, will we all be stuck with a “one size fits all” solution just to fight crime?

That’s not freedom. That’s the old Soviet Union, North Korea, or China. I want the freedom to have nice things without worrying about becoming a target.

I’m also just old school enough to want a concealed carry permit and a stout .45 on my hip. I’d rather leave the thieves gut shot and bleeding out on the sidewalk. (Why gut shot? Because it’s an agonizing death.) People don’t usually think of me, and mercy at the same time.

I find myself thinking that all it would take is 1 year of would be criminals stacking up in the morgues, and crime would be almost nonexistent. I figure we’d either run out of criminals, or criminals would decide crime itself was too risky.

Unfortunately, especially in California, criminals have been given the upper hand and they’re continuing to press their advantage. Apparently this is also true elsewhere in the world.

Maybe I’ll go with a Timex until I’m able to move to a state where they’ve remembered, “An armed society is a polite society.”

Maybe sometime in the near future folks will wake the hell up and realize The “Wild West” era came to a close in part because we all agreed that a robust police force was preferable to daily shoot-outs at the saloon.

That’s provided that the morons running things haven’t burned the history books or forgotten how to read them.

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I read the “News” today… I Feel like I’m in a time warp.

Everything I read was reminiscent of the Obama Years.

Perhaps this time around is a little more chaotic but nothing has changed.

Reading the news was a bit like watching a soap opera. You can skip days or weeks, but when you do get around to watching, you haven’t missed much, if anything at all.

I did happen to notice that Kamala Harris is notably absent and has been for at least a week or two.

President Biden is still bloviating on about the Russian / Ukraine issues, While the President of the Ukraine has been quoted as saying the issue is resolving.

Justin Trudeau is being heckled in Parliament and openly laughed at. I’d guess his career is at an end. Doesn’t Canada have a no confidence vote?

Ah well, the soap opera goes on, and nothing changes, except the price of goods and fuel. They keep going up.

I’m as disinterested in the “News” and politics as I was during the Obama years. The nut jobs have full control of the asylum and the midterms can’t come soon enough.

Maybe this time we can get some people in office that actually do their jobs. I’m not holding my breath or anything but I’d love to see a bunch of non-politicians swept into office. You know, folks that had businesses and employees and actually produced something.

That is, of course, until they were forced out of business by mandates and lockdowns.

It seems to me those are the people who have the time, the knowledge, logic, and will, to stand up to the establishment powers and say, “NO!”

Maybe, they’d be able to set things back on course by applying their business acumen and common sense.

The one thing I’m certain of, is that all of the career politicians of any political stripe need to get THE BOOT.

I’m probably just whistling past the graveyard. There are a lot more people caught up in their individual divisiveness and specialized causes than there are people who look at the larger picture. I’m fairly sure that whoever is elected in the midterms will just be more of the same old crap.

Well, back to ignoring the news for a week or so unless something really interesting captures my attention.

I’m over the soap opera.

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DHS may Not be our Friend

A New York Post article dated Feb 9, 2022 and another article in Law Enforcement Today talk about a DHS Bulletin describing the current heightened state of alert regarding threats to the nation.

There was a similar article yesterday in Breitbart. I’m not linking to that one. Some of these articles engaged in hyperbole suggesting that the DHS said If you question the Government you might be a terrorist. At least one article referred to Secretary Mayorkas press conference where he may have misstated or overstated the DHS Bulletin.

Titles like:

“We are all terror threats? DHS says “mistrust of US government” means you may be a terrorist“

While not incorrect, may lead a casual reader to incorrect conclusions.

The DHS Bulletin is uh, concerning, in one regard. I think it is worthy of noting the line that seems to have generated the attention.

“the proliferation of false or misleading narratives, which sow discord or undermine public trust in U.S. government institutions;”

To anyone raised in the 1960’s or 1970’s that line would raise eyebrows.

In those decades it was commonplace for the younger generation to apply the thinking, Question Everything, Don’t trust the MAN (meaning government), Trust no-one over 30.

These were turbulent decades. Mounting evidence that the American People had been lied to about many things peaked with the Watergate Scandal and President Nixon’s subsequent resignation.

For many, the revelations were heart breaking. Up to that time, it was sort of accepted as truth that our government was operating in the best interests of the people.

If someone in authority told a citizen to keep quiet about something in the interest of National Security, the citizen would do as asked. There was faith on the part of that citizen that they didn’t know all the facts, and that the Authorities knew the bigger picture and were in a position to invoke National Security interest. The citizen gladly did their patriotic duty.

After revelations about Agent Orange, Nixon’s resignation, revelations about DDT, scandals about vaccinations that went horribly wrong, government medical experimentation in Tuskegee, the unsafe effects of above and below ground nuclear weapons testing, and a long litany of scandals regarding Government Approved projects, our faith in government was, in my opinion broken.

As it turned out, those people asking questions, those who didn’t trust “The Man,” actually had a point.

These were the conspiracy “nut jobs” of the time. They had local meetings, and mimeographed, (if you don’t know that term, look it up. Acetone fumes in an enclosed space could get you high as a kite,) newsletters they passed out. The Information Age as we know it today didn’t exist. Agents from the FBI, CIA, NSA, or DIA were always infiltrating these conspiracy groups, just to keep an eye on them and learn what they knew.

You see us “Boomers” have heard statements like this before. What followed these statements often involved intimidation, threats, and arrests.

Senator Joe McCarthys famous line, “Are you now or have you ever been a member of the communist party,” still echoed from 1954. The Hollywood black lists were still in full force in the ’60s and ’70s.

Involvement with some groups could get you labeled a “possible subversive” and that label could impact your employment options for years. It didn’t have to be true, all you needed was the label in a file that would show up on a background check. The FBI had files on anyone remotely associated with so called subversive organizations.

I once lived with a roommate who’d been involved with some three letter organization. For two solid years all of my mail was delivered opened and hastily stuffed back into the envelope.

It wasn’t until much later in my life that I found out I’d been carefully watched during those years as a possible security threat. This information came to me as part of an in-depth security check I’d agreed to for a particular employment situation.

That was the day, I wondered if I’d finally “Sold Out”, and was becoming “The Man”.

At the time I was well over 30 so I figured it was high time. The Job was a good one, the money was great, and I wasn’t building weapons.

Over the last 5 to 10 years I’ve concluded that in an ironic way, I’ve been building weapons for most of my career. The exception was during the time I worked for an actual defense contractor. The irony of that is also not lost on me.

The weapons I built weren’t conceived as weapons. They were mechanisms that were built with the altruistic goal of freeing information. I thought if information flowed freely that it couldn’t be controlled. The despots, elitists, and powerful couldn’t hide their misdeeds from the public as they’d done in the past.

I never imagined the way that such information flow and devices could be weaponized. I never imagined that anyone would want to monitor the communications of an entire nation. Although there was the example of the old USSR doing it. That should have been a “Spoiler Alert”.

I was laboring under the illusion that the American Government would never do it. I wanted to trust in the government once more. Then came the allegation that the Obama Administration was in fact monitoring cellphone communications and archiving virtually all of them, with the help of the NSA.

Shortly after, we found that your cellphone even without GPS, was trackable and that our Government had built software that could locate your phone in a given area, building a record of your daily movements, then putting those movements on a map.

Did the government need to know where you stopped for coffee every morning on the way to work? This was ostensibly to assist in fighting terrorism and dated back to the Patriot Act, signed into law by Bush. The very people and entities I was hoping to stop, took our good intentions, innocence, and idealism, and fashioned horrible weapons. Weapons not to be used in time of war against a common enemy, but weapons to be used against their own citizens.

Oppenheimer was right. We should not question if we can do a thing, but rather should we do a thing.

It’s been said that a modern cellphone with GPS is the NSA, CIA, and FBI’s, wet dream. Everyone carrying around a tracking device that can be tuned into easily and efficiently with a few strokes on a keyboard providing an individual’s location within a few meters is the stuff of Orwellian nightmares on its own. Add to that corporations willingness to censor contrary points of view, backed by calls from government officials to sanction such censorship is terrifying.

One could read…

“the proliferation of false or misleading narratives, which sow discord or undermine public trust in U.S. government institutions;”

… as a call for the Government to begin active censorship of all unapproved narrative. Coming as it does from the DHS, this chills me to the bone.

In that light, I ask when does the DHS rename itself “This Ministry of Truth”?

As a “Boomer,” admittedly I’m on the tail end of that designation, I’ve been astounded by the breathtaking compliance and lack of questioning on the part of the American People over the past two years.

If as the hyperbolic headlines suggest, those who question the government may be considered terrorists.

I ask, what the hell happened? How did the lessons of McCarthyism get forgotten? How did the lessons of the ’60s, ’70s, and even ’80s get memory holed? How is it possible, with information flowing freely and unrestricted, that we’re at this point?

Does this mean that now, in my 6th decade, I’m suddenly a seditionist, a terrorist, a criminal?

What would be my crimes?

Asking questions?
Thinking for myself?
Having a lifelong aversion to a government that I justifiably never fully trusted?
Speaking out against actions, I think unjust?
Calling out politicians or others that I think should answer the people, but who do not?

If these are crimes, then this blog site contains abundant evidence of my guilt. Should I put my affairs in order in anticipation of the knock on my door and eventual “Suicide” from a shot to the back of my head?

I doubt I’m worth a bullet to these people. After all I don’t have Joe Rogan’s following. No, they’ll break the door down at 4 am and seize all my electronics, they’ll try to silence me and others like me by denying us access to the information network.

The question is, would that silence us, or just radicalize us further?

I wonder how much an old manual typewriter and hand cranked mimeograph machine cost these days. Can you even buy Acetone anymore? I’d bet without checking, Acetone is on the list of controlled substances.

No matter, those of us of a certain age still remember our organic chemistry. Who knows? Maybe someone even remembers the recipe.

Truth and Freedom ring like a bell. A truth, spoken or read, resonates in individuals that encounter it.

That resonance spreads and builds to questions. Those questions demand answers and cannot be denied forever.

This seems to be the one thing that totalitarian states always forget.

Truth sets the innocent free, and damns the guilty.

Let’s hope that the DHS bulletin simply contains a poorly worded statement.

In the event that our government is moving in a totalitarian direction, it’s time for us all to speak out, demanding that our concerns are heard and acted upon.