Welcome to 2024

So another year has passed us by. And the more I (thankfully) continue to age, the greater are the numbers of folks, whose names I recognize, who have passed into that Netherland called Death.  Yeah, that’s one of the real bummers of remaining alive—all the folks who don’t. I mean, Sandra Day O'Connor, Rosalyn Carter, Diane Feinstein, Jimmy Buffett, Tony Bennett, Alan Arkin . . . and the list goes on and on.

And then we have what used to be known as Politics.  Yeah, 2023 was quite a year for demonstrating the Decline and Fall of American Politics.  I have been at least aware of American politics and our government since maybe WW II, say the 1940s. FDR dominated that scene, but after Roosevelt, we had Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy (Ahhhhh), Johnson, and Nixon. And good old Ricardo, began a parade of characters, some good, some awful, but it was like we hit some rocky road of politicians. I mean, Ford was ok, and Jimmy Carter was briefly fine, but then he was abbreviated by that rascal Reagan (ugh). And then that idiot-malenfant George Bush, happily interrupted by Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama (a really, really smart Prez). But then the bottom dropped out and the republican party seemingly collapsed into a heap, replaced by some gangrenous, braindead political party, vaguely designated MAGAHeads. Happily Joe Biden kicked them out of the White House, but they have remained the official Party in Opposition (PIO). And ever since they lost, Fox News decided that the MAGAHeads deserved total wall-to-Wall “News” coverage.  And so, they never actually went away, and 2023 was filled from top to bottom with their news. Now, to be fair, a lot of the news about MAGAHeads was really news about new criminal indictments of their pseudo-leader, Donald J. Trump. He seemingly loves violating our criminal statutes. He rarely, if ever, pays his bills. He fails at all of his businesses. He fails at all of his personal adventures (marriages). His children practically shriek awfulness.

And yet, Americans take his make believe political candidacies seriously. Others who align themselves with politics on the Radical right side of the tracks—DeSantis, Haley, Christie, et al have to work really hard simply to continue trailing him.  Seemingly normal Americans declare they would vote for no one but the Trump. Really folks??? You’re not just pulling our chain, are you?

And many Americans think that Biden is just too old, and so they may not vote for him. Really folks??? You won’t vote for Joe cuz he’s old? But he actually still has a functioning brain, unlike his main opposition—the MAGAHead himself.  And if one examines America during 2023, it was not a bad year. There had been some inflation early on, but that seemed under control. Employment levels are good. Public investments that benefit the Middle Class are being made. He has been dealing with some pretty dicey foreign affairs, with Russia and Vlad the Impaler acting like Nazi Germany towards Ukraine, and Israel and Hamas killing one another with abandon.  There seemingly is no “Good side” in that region. Perhaps were we to ship off all of Hamas maybe to somewhere in the middle of the Saudi Desert, it might improve, but that ain’t gonna happen.

So, folks, if you think not voting is an option, then you are deciding to vote implicitly for Donald Trump. So, remember, in 2024, Not Voting is casting a vote for Trump.

And so we welcome our coming New Year. 2024 seems filled with promises of all kinds. But mainly I look on those promises as of the “Be Careful What You Wish For” kind.

Take care. Love your loved one. Be kind to strangers and, generally, to folks who seem in need. The world needs Kindness, Love, and Peace. Practice all. And Work Hard at whatever you do. 

Welcome to our New Year, 2024.

Life and Life

 With all the highly publicized killings going on in Gaza/Israel and in the Ukraine, I wondered about some recent talks officialdom has been holding about victim compensation. Like, if we kill 500 innocent civilians, including children, how much should we compensate the country?

So, what is human life worth? Is each life worth the cost of a case of beer?  Hmmm, tough one.

And then, after I arise early each morning, I trod downstairs and go outside to take a picture of the morning sunrise. And I accompany my picture, being posted on Facebook with, “Morning lovely. Be kind. Peace bro.” And then again, in the evening, as the sun commits itself to setting, I post another picture and write, “OK, It’s Time to Wine On. So Do It.”

But in between, an entire day of personal steps and events occurs. I look out the window and observe a bird at one of our feeders. Or our mailman stops by to drop off our daily mail and we chat briefly about his day and the events of that day.

And at some stage, I shove a toothbrush into my mouth and clean my teeth. But only after consuming some freshly brewed espresso, and a sliced mango. Or I go out into the garden with some clippers and snip off some unwanted plants in the garden.

Or I sit with a glass of wine, as we munch on some dinner while watching a British mystery, or comedy on our TV. And then, at some stage, we take off our night dress and climb into bed, and turn off the lights, as we both try to engage in that thing called Sleep.

See these are all little signs that we are not a case of beer, or some other commodity one may purchase at the corner store. We are living creatures. We breathe, we laugh, and sometimes we cry. And we think.  Yeah, that thinking thing. Something comes across your consciousness that today is December 7^th, and that springs a memory of that fateful day, December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor Day. Yeah, we’re really old, so we have an actual memory locked inside our heads.

Life is really a series of large and small memory snippets. We do things, or observe things and they are then tucked away into our brains.  See that doesn’t happen to a case of beer. Humans and really all other living creatures are memory banks. So, when we decide to kill off a bunch of humans of varying ages, we are eliminating those memory banks. And the young ones especially are deprived of all those creative acts and that slowly building memory bank filled with good and bad images.  And we, the world at large are also deprived of the acts those living creatures might have created. As we shoot or bomb that 3-year old, maybe we are killing the next Van Gogh, or Shakespeare, and we will never get to understand what our act of killing actually accomplished.

Killing is a truly mindless act, because if we thought about the act, it would become near to impossible to carry out.  In Gaza, folks who identify with Hamas seem not to mind killing folks, as long as those folks are Israeli. See, they don’t care that they are stealing future life events from people who identify as Israeli. And so, they also, without proper understanding, create within those same Israelis the same sense of armor around the brains that will allow Israelis to do the same thing to Hamas humans.

But it isn’t just in Gaza. Some idiot in Nevada, followed on the heels of another idiot in Texas, or was it somewhere else in America (so many shootings, so little time), managed to shoot innocent humans who had done nothing except wander into the wrong place at the wrong time.  See, with guns at their easy disposal, angry humans continue to cut off the future lives of other humans, who will then no longer experience watching a sunrise or a glorious sunset.

Killing is so final and eliminates hundreds, even thousands of gestures of love.  Life is really quite amazing. I am now in my 88^th year of that thing we call life.  And I have thousands of tiny events registered within my brain. Event images embedded within me that might have gone unnoticed had I died earlier.  I may die, any day now. Who knows? But I also may live another set of days and weeks and even years, creating and observing small and large things that others in the world may also observe.

Why can we not commit to peace and love?  Why can we ban books but not guns? Amazing really.

Well friends, continue to think and try to observe life all around you. Think about what happens to you today, and think, “I am grateful for the good things in my life”.  Try to be happy. But at least, try to BE. And do your best to allow that person next to you also BE.