Trump Guilty

 So, convicted on all 34 counts. Seems good, right?

But then, I remember Trump saying, “I could get a gun, go out on Fifth Avenue, shoot somebody, and my support would increase.” Remember that? Yeah, and guess what, his support seems to be going up. Now, to be fair, it ain’t over til it’s over, but still . . . I could imagine it. Trump gets a gun, goes out on Fifth Avenue, shoots someone, is filmed doing it by a bystander, and then the pictures appear on TV. His supporters? “That’s fake. They Photoshopped it.”

And, so the games begin. And I am astonished that a convicted felon can still run for President. Think on that. My first presidential election, Dwight Eisenhower was running against Adlai Stevenson. How about that? Dwight Eisenhower as a republican, and now Donald Trump in that same position. Donald Trump . . . a republican candidate for US President. How the mighty have fallen. And I can imagine, Ike spinning over and over in his grave.  Actually, thinking back on all the elections I have witnessed, I cannot conjure up a single republican even remotely like Donald Trump.   I mean, Nixon seemed a baddie, and I was not too fond of The Ronald.  And then there’s Shrub. But, by comparison, don’t they all seem wise and reasonable as Presidents?  Trump??? As US President???? Surely you are not serious America.

And Mike Johnson just made himself a laughing stock with his statements about how unfair was this trial. Really, Mike??? Were you not paying attention, at all?  Oh, no, it turns out you are as much a joke as Speaker as Donald Trump would be as President. Apparently, no republican has any ethical sense at all any longer. Republicans are now all swamp dwellers.

And I can almost see Mr. Alito, sitting at his bench awaiting the arrival of an appeal from his favorite dude, Mr. Trump. We do know now that the SCOTUS is corrupt (sorry for the judges who are actually honest). So when Trump’s case arrives inevitably at SCOTUS, Trump will waltz off Fifth Avenue laughing, assuming he doesn’t get run over first.

And so, America continues to sink into the abyss of formerly great nation-states. I think even Reagan would be appalled. Bye Bye America.

Getting Old

As I continue to head towards that Netherland of 90 years old, this December, I think I am finally beginning to sense that aura of OLD. I had not really sensed much change in my personal body-sense. But lately, I notice little things. For example, I will be doing something minor, brushing my teeth perhaps.  And then I will look down and think, huh, this small thing I am doing, I will suddenly cease doing.  Or, I will be in the garden, and sink a pitchfork into the earth, and think, I am doing this, but for how long? Each action is a tiny event, one that is carried out in the millions by others. And most of us think not at all about those tiny gestures. We just do them, and that is called LIFE.

And so each day proceeds with tiny gestures that we scarcely notice. We raise a glass and say, “To Us”, and then it is over. We then begin drinking that fluid.  Or, we get into our car, and turn it on, then begin driving. And we barely notice that we steer so as to remain on the proper side of the highway, and we apply brakes when needed to avoid crunching into the car in front.  And then life goes on without our noticing it.  Every once in a while, someone inquires how old I am. And I tell them, with as much humor as I can muster, and then we all laugh.  But then I realize that, HEY, none of my relatives made it this long. Huh!

And then LIFE goes on. But then something new. I notice now that our weather notices are changing. We generally check our weather by turning to the Weather App on our phone. And it says, No rain is expected for the next four hours.  Or maybe it forecasts a storm approaching and informs us what to expect. But I am noticing lately, maybe since I have become really conscious of Climate Change, that the weather seems different. It used to be either clear, or cloudy and then maybe some rain would fall out of the sky.  But lately, it never just rains. Instead, the sky opens up and pours this heavy downpour, sometimes with great noise and wind.

And if we stumble across the TV newscaster, he doesn’t just tell us whether we should expect rain. No, instead, he forecasts the probability that a severe storm will come across our property and destroy it. “There is a 75% chance that a storm will cross your county and tear up the houses therein,” Yeah, it doesn’t just rain anymore. Now, it is either calm, or a tornado may be on the way.

So, this is Life in the 21^st Century?  Yeah, it’s different. Now to be fair, folks around the world are still killing one another, just because they can. Yeah, the Russians continue to shoot up, or blow up anything that moves in the Ukraine. And the Israeli’s continue to blow up anything that smells of HAMAS. To be fair, HAMAS keeps on killing Israeli’s so as to provoke them continuously. Apparently, the world of humans has never tired of killing one another.  I’ve been around here since 1934, and the killing machines have simply never stopped except ever so briefly.

And now, The Donald and his MAGAHeads are promising another “Bloodbath” (his term not mine) should we the people decide to re-elect Joe Biden. And yet, Americans continue to support him.  Really America?? You are seriously thinking of voting for him again in November??  So we really have re-entered 1936 Germany, but somehow, I don’t see the Canadians or the British coming to save us from him. Nope, it’s all on us, and we will have to live out the consequences. Yeah, America, Life has Consequences.

And so my aging continues. But who will end sooner –Me , or America?  Wait and see. Let the Games Begin.

Why?

This morning, as we drove out to go to our workout place, we passed an older dude who was obviously homeless.  As we drove past him, I began to wonder, what if I were homeless? There would no longer be any point to my life, so should I not end it?  But then, it occurred to me, does my life have any more point than his? Were I him, would I actually end it all?

I am now approaching 90—this December. I no longer work for a living. I gave that up a long while ago. So, does working create the point to life? Or, is there something else? I mean, I believe in no God(dess). So, I do not believe that some outer being caused me to be born.  All of my elders are now long gone. And all of my younger family are now independent of me. That is, none of them rely on me for support. In fact, the reverse is true. We stay alive in our nice little bungalow, and consume life because our youngsters now support us. We would have run out of money a long time ago, were it not for our children.

But suppose that stopped, or simply was not available to us. We might well be homeless right now. And if that were true, then would we just end it?

This all makes me consider, why are we here at all? To be fair, Carol continues to contribute to life, through her quilting and through her teaching. I do neither. Yeah, I still take photos and create my artsy works, which nobody buys. But that’s really it. So, if you don’t really do anything much, is there any point to continuing?  I guess it’s that age-old question, why are we all here?

Oh, oh, I wonder. Suppose we are all here just to acquire stuff that we can all then leave to the next generation? I mean, each of us kind of wanders through life, going from this place to the next. As we wander, we pick up this thing and that, some pretty nice, others just ordinary.  Then what do we do when it’s time to end it? Well, whether we do it purposefully or not, our stuff is passed on to someone in the next generation.  See, we can’t all wander everywhere, but a bunch of us can wander to way more places and pick up way more trinkets than just one person. And so, maybe that’s what life is all about. Yeah, it’s all about acquiring and then passing crap on. That’s it. Finally, I understand the whole purpose of human life on Earth.

So, buy on folks. You are living Life’s purpose.

Wow!

If there were a God, I’ll be she would be pleased now.

Support Life

 We have been watching a program called This Is Us.  In many ways it is the most amazing family drama we have ever seen.  The casting, the acting, and the writing are all superb.  It is a show about . . . LIFE.  The show is all about a family, in which two of the family members are white twins, and one is a Black person who was adopted at the same age and timing as the two white twins.  So, the kids are triplets, with the Black baby replacing one of the three White babies who failed to remain alive after birth.  So, the family still essentially has triplets, but one of them happens to be Black.  Kind of an amazing story line that follows the kids and the rest of the family as they all age into adults and old folks.

The Black baby is treated throughout as just one of the family triplets. The kids seem to get along fine and the parent-child relationships seem to remain fine pretty much throughout.

But, as the kids age, that Black baby becomes a highly successful Black man, who marries and creates his own family. Now, largely, the Black thing only begins to intervene as the young Black man ages into adulthood and then confronts the world, wherein Black humans are in fact treated differently.

So, as the story progresses, we get the first touches of what it is like to grow up as a Black Human being in America.  Now, I am approaching 90 and grew up in Manhattan, but then traveled to several parts of the US and that larger world out there.  When I was growing up in Manhattan, I had no real sense of Black Humans. I lived on Second Avenue, near 71^st Street. So far as I know, during the 1930s and 1940s, Black Humans lived in Manhattan, but above 125th Street, in that place known as Harlem. I remember no Blacks in PS 82, where I attended school. And, when we played stickball, marbles and hide and seek on 71^st Street with my gang, all my buds were White.  I would take the subway up to the Bronx to have Sunday dinner with my Grandma and Aunties, but again I came across no Blacks.

And so I continued maturing, entering high school up in Rockland County, Spring Valley by name.  My Mother was afraid we (my bro and me) would get killed playing on the streets in Manhattan, so she moved us across the river. And still, an all-white neighborhood and a largely (but not completely) White high school.

And then I traveled more, going to Stanford out in California, moving about a bit in California as an aerospace engineer, and then moving for four years to India, to help that Indian government use more advanced planning technology managing its booming economy. Now, that was interesting. I did in fact meet some Blacks there, but more, I met and became friends with India’s wide array of people covering the entire spectrum of human skin coloring.  The folks who lived in the north were every bit as white as me, where the folks who lived in the South tended to be even darker than many African folks.  Oh, and they all spoke different languages, although most also spoke English.

So, there I acquired an understanding of multi-colored human gatherings without serious problems. Oh, skin coloration in India is a bit of an issue, but it lacked the dynamic seen here, where Black skin implied a heritage of slavery.

Still, I managed to gain a better understanding of Life as a person of color. Still, this program we watch brought back to me an understanding that Black folks lead different lives, even if they are as educated and commercially successful as their White counterparts.  They are treated differently by many people, and We Whites tend not to even notice.

And so, this program, This Is Us, has brought back to me another view of what being Black and living in America means.

And then I am being besieged with news about Israel and Gaza, where first the HAMAS Arabs launched an attack killing hundreds of innocent Israelis, followed by the inevitable return attack by Israel, killing thousands of innocent Palestinians.  And that mess brings home to me what it might be like to live as an Arab, or an Israeli in that place called The Middle East.

See, when I go out into our town, shopping or meeting people, I am treated as just another old white dude, or maybe, just another member of our Concord/North Carolina community.  So, see, I don’t stand out. Were I Black, or in some way demonstrably Arab, people might well treat me differently.  

And this all makes me think that Life should be the same for all folks, but it isn’t.  I understand that your own personal approach to life will change how that thing called Life treats you. But I also know that, regardless of your own personal best approach, your own Life will be different if you are a person of color, or now, even an Arab. We all need to be aware of this Life approach. So, try to treat folks you meet fairly and try to be pleasant, regardless of the physical differences between you and the folks you meet. It might make their lives a bit nicer, and wouldn’t that be a good thing?