Thursday, February 16, 2017

Endangered species

     In 1973, a very politically active era, the Endangered Species Act showed up as the war in Vietnam wore out. It didn't protect the most vulnerable top predator, Man, from his follies.

     Go looking for Americans, American families, and American values.  They only appear by accident and are suddenly attacked by rude comments, snide remarks and deploying faces of disgust. Oh, black and white movies have many of them for review, and the Hallmark programming would like you to believe they have them, but don't look too close.

    I do wish you all the fun of rebuilding a great lifetime, remembering everything changes, including yourself, find some of those things that George Washington and Robert E. Lee thought worth fighting and perhaps dying for... they are also the only things worth living for, but then you should already know what you are living for. Don't you?

Sunday, January 22, 2017

Ah, it is all over now....

   Tuesday morning there was an early wake up, make the coffee, prepare breakfast and wait for the youngsters to wake and pack out. Most of their packing was done the night before, so a light breakfast and moving stuff to the Caravan, I have been allowing my son to do all the driving on his cellphone with Wave for the entire time, he only asked if I recommended something or knew a better way around. 

    All too short, lots of new to me places in Tacoma and Seattle visited with the family, my wife didn't always tag along, she is still recovering from her last foot surgery. But she had them to prepare meals for and talk to and hug. We said good-bye to them twice before they got into the TSA inspection area, and then they were gone. 

   We rode back home, parked the car and then went inside to collapse in the empty. House so large suddenly and we are just rattling around in it. I am taking the children's channel off to get back to cowboy western movies or FOXNews... seems there is about to be a sudden collapse of the foolish, a quiet resistance of the smarter ones and a victory speech by the incoming President's supporters. I like to see work and results, thank you.

  Friday the pseudo-coronation, Saturday the Woman's Walk without the ladies and nurturing mother types (seems killing the unborn is supposed to be a right of women - just Huns with sabres - hoisting the dying almost infants in the air). I do keep noticing not enough love in the air, lots of sex and noise, but not enough love.

   Our youth group  is providing twelve competitors for Bible quiz, I am now supposed to help them study, all stuff I should know, but we will see - have have portions of the Preamble to the Constitution still memorized, I could do Bible verses.

   There are guns and ammunition back in the home, and we won a dollar on my wife's last purchase for five from the lottery.  About right for a government program.  Fifty percent of a dollar goes to winners, the other fifty percent is for the folks running everything.  Netflix.com is a better value.

Monday, January 16, 2017

Sunday is gone but the memory remains...

  Off to church, heard Pastor Frank tell me about tithing, I would tell him later that he missed one of my favorites - the one I always called the picnic tithe. No, I won't quote which book and verse it comes from, but it is old testament. Then coffee and doughnut, didn't get one of either, and off to Sunday school. Good Sunday school, I was given two new students that spoke no American English, and the Children's Pastor knows I have no skills in Korean. Although I did get to use the phrase for being very sorry about myself and actions. It wasn't for me, but one of the boys decided to surprise and bother the young lady writing PEACE on the whiteboard. He slammed into the board erasing the first part of the word and scaring the girl.
   Way to go, clod. He would feel miserable for the remained of the class. I actually got to give them a lesson in economics and jealousy of different nations for the success of others. Getting ready for Moses and the basket on the water.  We gave the two new boys names like Thomas and Jacob, which were close enough to their Korean names, but biblical for church. The shocked and frightened girl went back to drawing on the white board behind me, she put pictures of herself crying and someone being knocked out and luckily she wasn't drawing me with my lack of killing the little goof, which may have disappointed her.
   Christine had come in looking sixteen with make up and heels, I had to tell her she was trying to look too attractive and too old. Didn't cross the line telling her that old men would be thinking awful things about her, her mother had better. Rachael (her younger sister) copies everything she does, and the world is a fool place already. from ten to sixteen they all try so hard to look older and pretty. And then from twenty-eight to seniority they want to have that natural blossoming of sixteen to eighteen again...  I got to send them all off to rice and seaweed soup - no meat anywhere nor turnips either. I waited and talked to some of the boys from another class. One had seen me at the base exchange, he told me that Anthony's Pizza there is the best anywhere. We discussed the military, his father is serving, and I mentioned that my son was in the Navy and most of the old men of the church had been in uniform, too.  When you meet old guys it is often difficult to think they were ever young and played football. There was a really young boy throwing perfect spirals up to the boys on the playground tower - I was amazed, and hope he gets to keep it up.
    Back home and I watch two playoff games, Green Bay and Pittsburgh were my choices, but the games were great because we never knew who was going to win. New England for the whole thing, right?  We will see, ever notice they don't do polls on the people's choice for performance competitions? Cause it just doesn't affect the game. 

Saturday, January 14, 2017

Light posting life is moving too quickly...

   I should not blame Face book for my lack of blogging, but admit when I am thinking away from the computer nothing sticks and I don't have an interesting point of view. If I have nothing to say I should just sit in the corner and keep quiet.

   But family has come to visit the Seattle Tacoma area and us'ns (grandma and papa) and they all move faster than the speed of elders.  Which is wonderful, imagine not having to sit quietly absorbing all the fears of monetary collapse and buy gold and silver now. Or the really critical stuff like which dress designers are going to be making a statement at the inaugural-ball, or the giant list of all those really important folks that are boycotting the event so they can hold up the economy and get the cows milked and horses harnessed and keep the coalfires burning.  There just isn't room for 300 million plus and media coverage is going to be spotty.

Trip to the zoo was great. Saw three tigers, two snow fox, one polar bear, two musk oxen, one reindeer, lots of fish and sharks, four red wolves and a peacock. And finally a rest area to slow down in.



Tuesday, January 10, 2017

I don't know that the problem is gun violence or immediate communications...

  So, a human male flies to a city, takes his legally carried firearm and ammunition out of his checked baggage loads the magazines and then the weapon and then goes hunting victims. The victims have been conditioned to cower or flee confrontation with killers, the stone age types that would throw stuff beat their chest roar and actually attack the Towering Goliath have been civilized into prey-upon-us targets, or as I said victims.

   There is communication, the public employees are called to handle the ripple in the national fabric of watchers not doers. The killer is disarmed and taken into custody, everyone gets to carry on, unless they don't want to pay the extra fee for carrying on... sorry, that was a poor joke. But as I understand it, the national news and the higher up the reactionary command chain are just getting the news while the wounded are being carted off --- someone says (it is reported) that gun shots are happening somewhere else we must go to lock down... But I don't think they should ever go to lock down. That means the terrorists won, they make the national media and the really important stuff of building a strong nation and community values is shoved off to the side because there is a story here, they have dead in the port.

  That whole story and background have been shelved until someone wants to change the law about transportation of firearms - not realizing that the arms aren't the problem, that killer (what ever his reason) is the problem. Highly educated and highly paid Senators were asking a job applicant about universal background checks today -- again like the government in its great efficiency could really decide in its wisdom which citizens are safe and sane enough to carry a weapon. Having studied History and noted the number of assassinations completed by the professional dedicated body guards and security forces, it isn't the weapon that is the problem. It is the human in every case.

   The message from immediate communications is that someone far away can make the best decision, and if the human isn't on the ground where all is happening, that human can't. They can make their best decision, but Monday morning quarterbacks have never won a Sunday game.

   I begin to believe that communications are driving the need to broadcast and make things happen, and it had better be fast as light, cause that is how fast we can accept the response. I have been many places that I wish the response had happened long before I was in it up to my butt in alligators. There are prophecies that come true, but they always come from God, our problem remains the same - humans will act for or against them, we often pretend that government is our local representative of God in all His Goodness... and that has never been true.

    Now all the people that aren't quivering in fear of terrorists or hidden assassins just waiting for a camera crew or a local with a smart phone with connections to record his killing blow - are having the best life they can, including traveling to destinations they have purchased tickets for, unless some fool government official's best answer is they must be run across the taxi way waving their hands in the air to show they aren't shooting anyone. Sigh, have you seen what is happening? The effect of the terrorist is magnified by the communications and the inept government response. Thank your first responders and medial evacuation teams - they got the victims to medical aid. That was something the government got right.

Saturday, January 7, 2017

Birthday, again?

   Not having a school year, nor other timeline for time's passing it seems to come up quicker.

    I decided to pretend I am seventy, when only sixty-nine, because it is my seventieth year upon the planet.  There is too large a cake upon our table with a package underneath I only need the love that comes with the thought of giving me something in celebration, but because I don't need the food nor the gift - I will be happy I was so well thought of and treated, and I will pay the price in my future for their kindness. A hug and a smile always go farther for making my world better, cultural norms based on economic values are easy to measure - but a real hug and a real smile will always be beyond price.

   I am going to shift gears, when will that phrase be gone from conversation? Straighten up the desks and the bookcase in the Computer cave. Just so I have area to set more stuff down until I get it out to be boxed for future consideration. It has to start moving, being a perfection that wants more, the best and don't ever throw away the rest.  I have stuff, too much stuff.  Did I trade love for stuff? I have so much, stuff.   Pile it, catalog it, pack it up and out - to be considered another day, in another world.

    I have been promised a steak dinner, might even sneak a movie in - just because the memory is going to be so much better than more stuff. Happy birthday world, another year with Earl in your history.





   

Wednesday, January 4, 2017

Now where is that stufff...

  I was looking for something, and couldn't find it, asked for help and didn't find it. Then this morning, early, as I made coffee I found it, put on my reading glasses and read it. As I was shuffling papers I found the Porcupine Patrol patch, amazing, finding one thing after another.

  Went to Facebook and didn't find anything worth noting, seems that the fake news has over taken the national media, the political media, and Facebook is constantly generating fool stuff to check your level out against...

   So, breakfast, pack for YMCA and depart at 0758 because I have stuff to do and it just isn't getting done.