POTATOES

It definitely seems the lunatics are running the asylum. The entire “green energy” effort seems like an attempt to create a crisis where there wasn’t one. Global Warming will cause people to swelter, not because it is hotter outside, but because people will not be able to afford air conditioners inside.

I could go on and on, but you probably already are depressed by the state of affairs the world is getting sucked into, like poor bugs into a bathtub’s whirlpool. (Or perhaps, for those losers who think they are winning, like a moth circling around the seduction of a candle’s deadly flame). The spectacle is especially depressing when the mismanagement starts to make our food too expensive.

In their Ivory Towers, academics, without calluses on their hands, like to advise hard working men that they should not eat the food that sustains them. They scold that munching meat causes Global Warming due to the methane in bovine flatulence. Workers should instead eat tofu. The problem is that, on modernized farms, fossil fuels not only power the mechanized equipment, but also provide the fertilizer that grows the soy beans that make the tofu.

In other words, academics did not “think things through.” They had a first idea, and (perhaps due to marijuana) it seemed like sheer genius, so they never did the follow-up thinking, the feasibility studies.

Meanwhile the working man must do feasibility studies every day, just to survive. You don’t need to go to collage or smoke marijuana to have brilliant-seeming ideas, but they get checked on a regular basis by the harsh realities of life, unless you’re in an Ivory Tower.

Lastly, some academics forget they would starve without the working man. When they mock the working man, they are biting the hand that feeds. They are not as intelligent as they think. In fact, they are imbeciles, lunatics running a world which doesn’t have to be an asylum, but which mad-scientist academics make crazy.

One crazy thing I have heard some academics proclaim is that the world is overpopulated and that it would be a good thing to reduce the population by seven billion. I can only respond by saying that, if academics reduce the population by seven billion the decline will not be due to overpopulation, but rather due to academics so devoid of humanity that they make Hitler and Stalin look like pipsqueaks.

Worst is that these idiots will not listen to reason. If you are patient and kind, and try to very gently lead them in the direction of follow-up studies, they become furious and cancel you. They are bound and determined to be idiots all the way.

What to do? I personally just shrug, and plant potatoes.

Potatoes do have a vulnerability, as the Irish learned when their crop turned to slime and they suffered their terrible “Potato Famine”, but most of the time it is an amazingly productive crop, and doesn’t turn to slime, and therefore potatoes are a good friend of the poor. The reason so many Irish starved was because their population had boomed, not due to any largess on the part of their greedy English overlords, but because they could fall back on potatoes as a crop. And though many Irish starved when the crop failed, (especially their poor children), many emigrated, and England’s loss was America’s gain. Eventually England lost Ireland, just as England lost America, which weakened England, for the Irish were some of its finest soldiers. Intellectuals can parse the reasons all they want, but the Great British Empire’s fate was not determined by intellectuals, but by potatoes.

Where I used to skip working out in a gym, and instead got a wonderful workout spading, hoeing and raking soil in the garden each spring, I now am an old man with COPD. I used to love the way all my muscles burned in the spring, due to so much digging, but now I’m pathetic, and huff and puff after forking a single forkful with my spading fork. If I had any brains I’d give it up, and focus on writing.

But when I went to buy food for my Childcare’s rabbit, goat and eleven chickens, I passed by the bins of seed potatoes. I just couldn’t resist. I knew I didn’t have time to slice potatoes and dust the cut sides with sulfur, so I poked through the bins for the smallest seed potatoes, which do not require cutting. I found around sixty.

Today I got the last potato planted. Even though I do such work when I am officially “off duty” at the Childcare, I am seemingly a magnet, and children are allowed by those “on duty” to rush over and “help” me. They are no help at all, but I do enjoy their interest. They ask all sorts of questions, including “why do you huff and puff so much.” The “older” children, (age five rather than age almost-three) tell the younger ones how much fun it is to dig up the potatoes, in the late summer and fall. It is an education few get these days.

There is still much work to do, to get a good crop. The potatoes need a light top dressing of manure, and then to be “hilled”, and then (as we use no pesticides) there is a war with potato bugs. (“Hilling” is interesting, for some potatoes produce all their new tubers by the potato you planted, while others produce tubers along the up-growing stem, so if you pile four feet of dirt atop the tuber you planted you get potatoes all along four feet of stem.)

I am well aware I’m getting a bit old for such work, and today I began the process of getting a graduate of my Childcare to be a sort of “intern”. Back in the day you could just hire a twelve-year-old after school without paperwork, but with the lunatics running the asylum there is a slew of paperwork, pertaining to child-labor-laws, and various tax codes. Hopefully we can just get that useless, bureaucratic stuff done with, and face what really matters, which is growing potatoes.

And if our work is blessed by God and prospers, what will planting sixty potatoes roughly the size of ping-pong balls be?

Twelve were “Pontiac Pinks”, which are the fastest to mature. Each little potato should produce around three potatoes the size of oranges, as well as numerous small potatoes the size of marbles or peas. These are thin-skinned “new” potatoes which, when served with salt, butter and chopped parsley (grown nearby), or boiled and turned into various potato salads, are quite popular with the small children. For some reason new, pink potatoes apparently have more vitamins and antioxidants than regular potatoes, but small children could care less about nutrition; I think their appetite is born from being part of the process. In any case their parents are amazed that their children devour them; “He never eats potatoes at home.” But, to stick to economics, we could get twelve pounds of pink potatoes from those twelve little seed-potatoes.

Twelve were “Yukon Golds”. They take longer to mature, and are remarkable because their flesh is yellow. If you mash them they look like they are already loaded with butter. But I like them because they produce very big potatoes. Whoppers. Treat them right , and you can plant a potato the size of a ping-pong ball and get at least one the size of a grapefruit. We could get twenty pounds.

Eighteen were “Russets”, which are baking potatoes. They tend to be elongated, like overly fat pickles, and have thick skins. The larger ones are good baked, and the smaller are great when arranged around a roast in the oven, browning and sucking up the the flavor of whatever meat you are roasting. If you treat this group well you could harvest a crop of twenty-five pounds.

Lastly I planted eighteen “Kennebecs”. (Named after a river in Maine). These are best mashed, though they can be baked. They seem to like our local climate, and often produce more potatoes per plant than the others, ranging from as small as a pea to as large as a grapefruit. Mashed, they are especially creamy. In a best-case scenario, planting eighteen little seed-potatoes the size of pingball balls could produce a crop of thirty pounds.

Most of the pink potatoes get eaten up during the summer, but one might, (if one avoids goofing off), be blessed with a fifty pound sack of other potatoes to face the winter with.

A doddering old man like me might also be expected to successfully raise ten winter squash vines, which could produce between two and six squash per vine, and squash tend to weigh five pounds, so I’d have somewhere around one to three hundred pounds of squash.

Then it is not so hard to grow a short row of turnips and winter cabbages, and short rows of carrots and beets, so your root cellar also holds maybe 20 pounds of turnips, fifteen big, fat ten-pound cabbages, (150 pounds), plus 20 pounds of carrots and 20 of beets.

Also, to hang in the attic, one should grow a row of onions, and some garlic.

In other words, if one has a patch of dirt, it is not so hard for even a doddering old fool like me to face next fall unafraid of famine. I’ll have hundreds of pounds of starch which even a toothless old crone like myself can mash, and not bother with chewing. As young mothers go to the grocery stores and weep, for the shelves are empty due to election-year craziness, an their children are hungry, I can just sit there with what my hard work produced, munching my mashed this and my mashed that and smacking my lips, ignoring the crying children.

Sigh. I don’t think so. I don’t think I could stomach the mashed potatoes, because woman and children have an unfair advantage over men. They are allowed to cry, where men are supposed to die.

I have already lived a good life and been blessed far more than wealthier people. I have been through adventures that would freeze the blood of the wealthy, and, to be honest, their lives seem tedious and boring in contrast. Where they sit by a pool, and sit by a pool, and sit by a pool, and call it luxury, I have been on a sailboat in a screaming gale where the seas were higher than the mast. So who was more fortunate?

In any case, as I approach my end I really can’t imagine I would hog all my potatoes and turnips and cabbages and carrots and beets and onions and garlic to myself. For one thing, it is a ego-trip to give stuff away. For another thing, personal fasting supposedly has a spiritual benefit. For a third thing, I am more interested in the next world than the complete balderdash this world is increasingly entangled in.

Famine will come as quite a shock to young mothers who are currently deeply concerned about their son’s “sexual identity”. Some of these witless females are wandering a wilderness of disturbed values. Was George Washington a racist? Was Jesus a sexist and Satan a saint? Are men men and are women women? They haven’t got a clue, but famine has a wonderful ability to clarify the mind. When faced with the fact their child is starving, politics can be damned; they want a potato.

I’ve known poverty and hunger, due to my foolish choices, and I can assure you that there are times holding a fat, baking potato in your hand is worth more than holding an ingot of gold. You can’t eat gold, but, poke a potato with a fork a couple of times, put it in the microwave, and even without salt or butter, your child will stop crying, even if the child is within yourself.

What this means is that, when hunger gets bad, people will “sell their birthright for a mass of pottage”. Evil takes advantage of this, bribing people with various sorts of potatoes. However evil grows no actual potatoes; it prints “money” which “guarantees” potatoes. But if you grow none, a day comes when your “money” can buy none.

(If you want to see how swiftly “money” can become worthless, study the Wiemar Republic of Germany in the year 1923.)

And should that day come soon, due to election-year craziness, I’ll be happy to hand out my potatoes. It will be an ego-trip, to see the same women who mocked me thanking me, for a potato.

I will then pray to God that he forgives me for my ego trip. I’ll ask that he help me focus on what really feels good: Feeding the hungry. That is truly good, and while I can’t multiply fishes and loaves, I can grow potatoes, and it is an honor to make children happy with what I grow.

But….

Man does not live on potatoes alone. A filled paunch can’t end the ache of a hollow heart, while the aching of an empty stomach is greatly eased by the joy within a brimming heart, as you give your potatoes away.

Besides growing potatoes, I also grow poems. This is a different crop on a different level, a sort of inwardly Honest News, at a time too many genuflect to outward Fake News. In any case, even as I planted potatoes I harvested the following three sonnets,

Tonight I'll plant a garden in my mind.
I'll strew some stars and braid a comet's tail
And then stand back and hope the weather's kind
And doesn't shock my fields with nightmare's hail
But rather rains sweet honey, and the milk
From Milky Ways, so my strewn stars can sprout
Long rays. A child sees such rays in the black silk
Of night. Adults don't. For what brings about
Such rays are eyes full of tears, but dry 
Grow the eyes of so-called maturity.
Only in theaters do the grown-ups cry;
Only in the dark can the brighter stars show
The rays all deny, yet secretly grow. 

When you get old you are in no hurry
To go where you are going, for it's the grave,
And it seems a waste of time to worry
How one will be received. The peace we gave
Will await, so steep a tea of it now.
In the cool of the morning, be kind.
You need no wallet to smooth your creased brow
And still the roughed waters of your mind.
The fact is, we depart this world flat broke
And naked as we came, with our to-do list
Left behind, so it's something of a joke
To fret about tasks undone. What most have missed
Is the Peace that brings the sun up each day
Which has walked with us every step of the way. 

They're just clouds, but springtime transforms them
Into parades. A dream is nudging edges
Of the woken world; claw-branches again
Grow soft with lacy green; marsh's stark sedges
Also soften as an emerald stain
Expands like tea through the clear waters
Of azure skies...Am I awake? A strain
Of music dances unwritten. Otters
Poke up inquisitive. They're asking me
What I will write. I can't say. Like a calm
Before a storm, it's what you cannot see
That wants to manifest. Then, like a bomb
Of flowers, sudden sunrise will break
And end this dark dream we call being awake.

EVERYTHING WRONG

H.T. Webster was a cartoonist who was very popular in my parent’s and grandparent’s time, and who is now largely forgotten. Like the painter of Saturday Evening Post covers, Norman Rockwell, he felt it was his duty to help us to smile at ourselves. He didn’t much want to deal with the heavy duty stuff, such as racism and genocide, and preferred the innocent problems of old fashioned sexism, back when there were only two sexes. Of the over 15,000 cartoon panels he published in newspapers, hundreds were entitled either, “How To Torture Your Husband” or, “How To Torture Your Wife.” However even these cartoons tended to make the reader smile and shake their head over our insensitivity, rather than to infuriate people into holding demonstrations and fomenting riots and revolutions. Not that he was unaware of the horrors humanity is capable of bringing about. Rather he felt his job was not to further horror, but rather to make people smile. The cartoon below is from 1940, as the storm clouds of World War Two gathered.

The first cartoon is from 1938, when the suffering of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl were to some degree lessening, though many were still hard pressed to get by. By poking fun at a schoolboy’s deep depression over a temporary state of affairs, to a degree where the schoolboy states “everything wrong”, it reminds us, as adults, that whatever hardship we face is only temporary. “This too will pass”, and even, “Some day we will laugh about this.”

H.T.Webster left the world shortly before I entered. Perhaps we waved at each other as we passed. In any case, a memorial anthology of his best cartoons was in my parent’s bookshelf, and as a small boy I recall very much liking the “everything wrong” cartoon. I very much identified with the boy in the cartoon.

Perhaps it is because there is a power in New England which is resistant to spring. The warm air surges north from the south, but can’t quite make it all the way north. Various meteorological factors are involved, including but nor limited to “back door cold fronts” and “cold air damming”, but in essence what resists the surging warmth is a mighty sea-breeze. The high sun warms the land so that air rises, and draws the cold air inland from over the chilled North Atlantic to fill the vacated space. This might be bearable if it was only on the coast, but it often is hundreds of miles inland, past the Hudson River to our west, and hundreds of miles south, sometimes to Virginia.

Rather than the winds from a benign “Bermuda High” to our south, from the southwest and balmy and dry, we get winds from a high pressure to the north called “The Newfoundland Wheel”, and get cold east winds and drizzle. You want to play baseball but the base paths are muddy and the grass is wet. You can’t garden because the soil is clinging mud. Perhaps the only good thing is that sometimes the temperatures drop below fifty, and then even the black flies and mosquitoes go dormant and don’t bite. But for the most part one has the discouraged, depressed sense “everything wrong.”

Perhaps I should add to this the fact that, as the end of the school year approached, time slowed down, and it seemed the end of school would never come. Even back then, just as is true now, being normal could get you sneered-at in schools.

The so-called “teachers” doing this “disciplining” may change their definitions all they want, but sneering remains sneering, and boys remain boys. What was politically correct may be very different now from what it was in 1959 when Eisnerhower was president, but teachers are still bullies, for all their mouthing about how bullying is bad, and ordinary boys are “disciplined” by sneering as badly now, if not worse, than in 1959. Which makes boys yearn for the end of such a cold wind. They long for the summer, when the awful school is shut down, and the sneering ceases. But it seems summer will take forever to get here. And so “everything wrong”.

However, after what seemed like five or six forevers, the future would at last arrive, and I’d escape the sneering, and enjoy a wonderful time of healing, called “summer vacation”.

I don’t get to have summer vacations any more. I haven’t had one in over fifty years. But I still entertain the idea a beautiful future will arrive, and be much better than the present.

Back in 1923 H.T. Weber penned a cartoon imagining life a hundred years in the future, in 2023. It is interesting how he, without describing computers, glimpsed Spell Check and AI.

JUSTIFIABLE GENOCIDE

There is something annoyingly phony about the protests currently going on on collage campuses. The youths involved are either paid protesters, (and some aren’t so young), or else party protesters. The former would not be there if it wasn’t for the money, and the latter wouldn’t be there if it wasn’t for the fun. The indignation they muster is either about as superficial as a child dressed up as a monster on Halloween, or it is the genuine indignation of a person squirted by water. A surprising number of the protesters have only a vague idea what they are protesting about. Many chant slogans they are told to chant, but when asked to discuss the issues with some semblance of depth, they can’t do it.

One annoying consequence of this superficiality is that it waters down quite serious topics, such as racism and genocide. When just about anything you do can be called racism, genuine racism gets ignored. The chief example of this is the incredible statement, “All people with white skin are racist”, which, despite being a racist statement, blurs the distinction between what is racism and what is not.

People need to think more deeply than they do, and muster what is called “discernment.” There is an actual difference between good and evil, and people need to draw the distinction. However those who profit off selling snake oil prefer false advertising to Truth, prefer Fake News to Truth, and even like to confuse the weak-minded by saying Truth is a relativity, a subjective preference, and is so variable it doesn’t exist; cultures differ; Vikings felt warfare was heaven; Buddhists did not; if you say war is good you are racist against Buddhists, and if you say war is bad you are racist against Vikings; Therefore you are not allowed to have any opinion at all.

Yet, after creating this moral apathy, these same people can get as moralistic as a fussbudget, when it comes to anyone who opposes their watering-down of distinctions. If you point out there is a distinction between good and evil, you are not only racist and sexist and various other “ists”, but, by trying to defeat evil, you are guilty of “genocide”.

Well, let us think about that. If you state a certain viewpoint is wrong, are you guilty of attempting to obliterate another?

The word “genocide” didn’t even exist until it was created by a Pole who experienced the horrors of World War Two. It is defined, by the United Nations, as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”.

But what about Nazi’s? Were they not a “a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”? Is not the United Nations guilty of hypocrisy, when on one hand they advocate an end to genocide, but on the other hand they agree Nazi’s should be wiped from the face of the earth?

I personally detest Nazi’s, and only bring this up to demonstrate how, without the distinction between good and evil, almost any resistance can be seen as genocide, and racist.

Which is exactly what skulls-full-of-mush protestors are doing, when they accuse Israel of genocide, for fighting back against Hamas, whose very charter advocates the genocide of the Jews.

What Hamas did on October 7, 2023 was unspeakably vile and inexcusably evil. If it is genocide to want such behavior wiped from the face of the earth, so be it. It is justifiable genocide.

RIGHTEOUSNESS MILLING AROUND

People who define “milling around” as “loitering” do not understand the process of milling, as it was once done. Back in the “modern” world of our great-grandfathers, power, usually supplied by a water wheel of some sort, turned a great granite disk atop a stationary great granite disk. The top disk had slots cut into it towards the axle, something like the spokes of a wheel. The grain or corn to be milled started down these slots, but seldom made it to the center without being overridden and crushed between the two stones, becoming flour or meal which exited at the center. (Or perhaps it went the other way, from center outwards, in some cases.) In either case, as the grain or corn was trickled in to this grinding process there were initially no high tech scoops that efficiently pushed it into the slots; rather it agitated and bounced about at the entrance to the slots until dumb luck popped it into the slot. In other words, before it was milled it “milled around.”

My point is that “milling around” was part of the process. If grains or kernels stood still they would never enter the slot and be ground. There was no “loitering” involved in “milling around” (or “milling about”). In fact the agitation of grains of wheat or kernels of corn at the entrance of slots was necessary, if those wonderfully simple mills were to work.

As I have been feeling agitated, yet seem to be far from becoming any sort of refined “flour”, I therefore I think “milling around” is a good description of my current state. I am not loitering. I am part of a process above my pay-grade, in God’s hands. I am troubled, agitated, outraged, but lack the power to influence those who trouble, agitate, and outrage me.

I am not alone. The so-called “swamp” in Washington DC has resorted to corruption, calling it “ways and means”, which just isn’t right. Everyone knows it. They themselves know it, which makes them increasingly take steps to oppress the backlash they know is brewing, because they know they deserve it. They hope to delay the backlash until after they have lived their glutted lives, and then, like the French King once stated, “After Us, the deluge.”

However the American Revolution was not like France’s. It definitely had an ugly side, but nothing like France’s. Loyalists did hang the young schoolteacher Nathan Hale, but then acted astonished when they themselves were not hung, but sent packing to Canada, after they lost the war. And as these poor refugees fled north they received food and shelter from the very patriots they had despised. This is different from what the French revolution would have given them: The guillotine.

Despite all the wars and bloodshed, compared to other lands there is something very nice about America. It seems almost too kind. And, whatever it is, it is currently “milling around.”

I don’t find milling around a comfortable place to be. To be so agitated is all wrong. The righteous are overruled by bribed judges, over and over, as if filthy lucre mattered more than God. But what can we do? We “mill around.”

If I were given the time and resources to debate, I could explain why what is wrong is wrong, but such debate is exactly what “they” want to prevent. Therefore I, and countless others, wind up shadow-banned, marginalized, cancelled, unheeded, and part of a population “milling around.”

This is part of a repetitive process which occurs and reoccurs and re-reoccurs in history until we get sick of it. Good gets established as the “Law”, (or Constitution, or Bill of Rights), but then some slime-bags come along and think only suckers follow such sissy, Sunday-school rules, and they briefly prosper by cheating. I say “briefly” because, in the long run, history teaches us that “cheaters never prosper.” However, for a while they think they are smarter than everyone else.

The concept of there being a “Law” we follow to our benefit (and break to our detriment) is very ancient, and predates Moses and the Torah. Through the mists of time, scrutinizing clay tablets, we can catch glimpses of a “God of Righteousness” with a name something like “Zedek”, and this animates the mysterious appearance of Melchizedek, a “high priest of God”, in the wanderings of Abraham, long before Moses wrote the “Law” down.

The “Law” was written or dictated (or perhaps recalled after-the-fact; there is much debate about this,) by Moses as the Torah, which is basically the first five books of the Bible. It is not merely the foundation of Judaism, but also Christianity and Islam. Islam? Yes, for, although I am no scholar of the Koran, in 5:44 It states,

Indeed, We sent down the Torah, in which was guidance and light. The prophets who submitted [to God] judged by it for the Jews, as did the rabbis
and scholars by that with which they were entrusted of the Scripture of
God, and they were witnesses thereto. So do not fear the people but
fear Me, and do not exchange My verses for a small price [i.e., worldly
gain]. And whoever does not judge by what God has revealed – then it is
those who are the disbelievers

 

My personal reading of the above suggests that followers of Islam (and indeed everybody) had best be wary of hating Jews, lest in the process they hate those who are following the Torah, which would make the haters themselves, and not the Jews, the “disbelievers.”

Sadly Mohammedans, and Christians, and Jews, have all at times failed to “Judge by what God has revealed.” That is how religions founded on love are corrupted to hatred and horrible wars. The hypocrisy gives religion a bad name. The behavior of Catholics and Protestants towards each other, and Sunni and Shiite Moslem towards each other, has been barbaric. And that is between followers of the same dogma, who you would think could get along. If you can’t even get along in your own cult, how can you love your enemies? Consequently we see the mayhem of crusades. It is enough to turn anyone towards Atheism. However the fact of the matter is that this disgusting behavior is not proof religion is bad, but proof some don’t practice what they preach.

The sad fact (that we mortals are able to be seduced away from obedience to the “Law”) is ancient. One delightful thing about Judaism is that they don’t hide their failures, in their histories.

One thing that has always fascinated me is the political situation which is apparent in the time when Jews had no overlords, described in “Judges.” They were apparently what we now would call “Libertarian”. They needed no police, for they knew what the “Law” was, and obeyed it, until they got seduced and didn’t. Then all hell broke loose and they became terribly upset, and milled about, whereupon a “Judge” appeared to rescue them and get them back on track, in terms of obeying the “Law.”

Though this was occurring 3000 years ago, it seems suspiciously similar to our situation today, as we mill around. I am wondering if we are wishing for a modern day “judge”. Perhaps Donald Trump?

But the ancient scriptures also describe a time the Jews didn’t just want a “judge”, able to discern between good and evil, but rather wanted to abdicate their personal freedom and accept a “king”. I delight in how the prophet Samuel warned the Jews how costly such an abdication of freedom would be.

So Samuel reported all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking him for a king. 11 He said, “These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots; 12 and he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. 13 He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. 14 He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his courtiers. 15 He will take one-tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and his courtiers. 16 He will take your male and female slaves, and the best of your cattle^b and donkeys, and put them to his work. 17 He will take one-tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves.

America’s founding fathers wanted presidents to be short term “judges” and not long term “kings.” The first furthers freedom, and the second ends it.

In any case, I have no such power, as we currently mill about.

In some ways I’m glad I have no power, for the burden of telling people the difference between judges and kings would be great, especially because as soon as you have power you face an onslaught of seductions. What sort of fool might I make of myself? Suppose some publisher (who actually gagged at my poetry) told me he wept reading it, or some nubile maiden (who actually found my decrepit body so loathsome she wanted to vomit) told me I was irresistibly attractive? There’s no fool like an old fool, and I confess I’m susceptible to flattery, and therefore it is a good thing I never get any. Instead, I’m just milling about, with all sorts of other people who never get flattered.

Of course, there is something dangerous, even explosive, in the “milling around”. To continue my millstone analogy, people don’t think of flour as being like gunpowder, but when flour dust in the air was ignited by a spark in the old mills, there could be amazing explosions.

Perhaps we saw such an “explosion” in my little town, in broad daylight, at the “big” intersection of Main Street with the “Turnpike”. I pass through that intersection on my way to work, but not on my way home, (because I take a one-way road going home). Therefore I saw nothing unusual when I headed out to feed the goat at the Childcare at 2:00 PM, but later, at 6:55 PM, as I headed out after supper to a Bible Study, the intersection bore a remarkable graffiti.

(I took the above pictures a week after the event. The “burn outs” were even blacker when fresh.)

Usually such “burn outs” are the result of rebellious teenagers going wild at two AM, when no one can see them and report them. What I found striking was the above vehicle did its screaming pirouettes in broad daylight. Also there are some rumors the rebel wasn’t a teenager.

At this point there tends to be discussion about the danger involved, and the foolishness of risk, but there can be little doubt the graffiti which the burn-outs left in the center of a small town expresses a certain contempt towards authority. Then the discussion moves on to which authority is the contempt directed at: The “Law”? Or the busybody ordinances of bureaucrats who themselves are contemptuous of the “Law”?

I can’t say. Maybe a little of both. But I will say that I sense a pent up tension in the air, as people “mill about.” Nor do I feel it is only experienced by a particular political party in the United States. It seems to be world wide. People are simply fed up with a leadership which is increasingly contemptuous of the the “Law”, and increasingly disdainful of ordinary people who simply want to be left alone, and to live ordinary lives, where two sexes have babies in a wholesome and natural way, and support, nourish and raise their children to be good citizens. The simple and ordinary, which the “Law” teaches us is noble and beautiful, is increasingly under attack as being “racist” and “sexist” and “exploitation”, while that which is deviant and criminal is mollycoddled and praised and released without bail after committing horrific crimes.

We are pitted against each other, rather than brought into the brotherhood of unity, when in fact we are all in the same boat. Americans are at odds with the leadership of Iran and China, but the people of Iran and even China are also “milling around.”

Do you think the hard working people of China are not well aware of their government’s shortcomings? They are perhaps more aware than anyone else on earth. They laugh at us for ever trusting those we are starting to distrust, for they have experienced a century of cruelty. They have developed their own way of whispering what the government wants unspoken, and they are well aware of awful deeds, such as organ harvesting from hapless Uighur imprisoned without cause. They are “milling around” too, you know, and their leaders are very worried about it.

And so are the ordinary people of Iran. They too know about the Uighur, and they are incredulous that their leadership, which is so high and mighty about upholding Islam’s “Law”, is friendly with China and says not a word about China oppressing people simply for being Islamic.

In fact the whole world knows about the Uighur, but the leaders do nothing. Inaction is just one more unlawful thing they do among all the rest of the unlawful things they do, laughing up their sleeves at people who try to obey the “Law.” However the “milling around” seems to be getting louder and louder.

For the moment the “Law” seems powerless, but in fact it has a power greater than any leader’s. The “Law” is based upon Truth, and Truth remains true even when dictators disallow It being spoken. Dictators can scream and rage all they want, but Truth silently keeps smiling at them, for Truth cannot be anything other than what it is. It is invulnerable, and there is no kryptonite that can harm such a Superman. Most amazingly of all, Truth is Love, which is unfathomable to greedy, lustful and hateful dictators, and Love has a power so far above the heads of those who sneer at the “Law” that they are like worms under rocks.

This is what I personally feel is building in the “milling around” which I notice more and more.

The founding fathers of the United States were well aware of how people in leadership, (even they themselves), could be seduced and corrupted by greed, lust and hate, and they tried their best to create a government which would prevent such moral failures from gaining control. One device was free and fair elections. Free elections allow the “milling around” of the public to manifest in a manner that avoids bloodshed. However our last election was not free and fair, because the scofflaws in the “Swamp” don’t care about what the Founding Fathers cared about. I can’t imagine the upcoming election will be any different. However in a way it will be different. The “milling about” is far greater.

Many are nervous about bloodshed, and I confess I worry about that myself. But I also have a strange hope that the United States is different. We are a kindly nation, founded on the “Law”, and there may be something in our make-up that skips the bloodshed, and allows Truth to manifest in a way we can’t even imagine.

This strange hope was supported by the fact that on three recent occasions my intellect was reduced to despair. The current nonsense where students chant “Destroy the Jews” an “Death to America” is typical. Intellect is useless when you are dealing with appalling ignorance. One is reduced to moaning.

What good is moaning and groaning? Well, it seems fairly useless, but I chanced on something that struck me as rather wonderful in the sixth Chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans.

“….the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. ²⁷ And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.”

My current woes are not worth recounting, but take my word for it: On three occasions my intellect felt as smart as the wrong side of a rock. I had no answers, and if I was younger I might have expressed myself by screeching tires on a road, and leaving burn-out graffiti of black rubber. Instead I expressed myself by writing three sonnets. In each case I began without any idea what the poem would be about, and in each case they began basically as a groan. Yet in each case I amazed myself. The groan flowed out easily, without correction, and when I was done I felt amazingly revived.

For what it’s worth, here they are:

After outrunning the wolves, the lone stag
Stands on the hill, quietly contemplating 
Where to go next. Shall he climb yonder crag
And watch the sunset, or graze lush grass, sating
All hunger? Even beasts must make decisions.

I, too, must decide, but stand in a place
With no paths, or perhaps my vision's
Too weak to see them. Or maybe I face
Many paths like the spokes of an old wheel,
And I stand at the axle. Where to go?
What to do? I wish I could hear God's will
But my own logic's the poor guidance I know.
I run from wolves like the stag on the hill,
And then? I'm no shepherd. I'm a lost lamb.
I am a not-ness in need of "I Am."

It's spring, but the yellow flowers seem sad.
Sun's bright, but the north wind's crooner chills
With his piercing song. The world has gone mad
And the flowers all seem like a funeral's.
Where has gone hope? Forsythia splashes
Its yellow clowning, bobbing in the breeze,
But I'm not amused. Something glum dashes
The uplift, and If I wrote symphonies
They'd sing of sadness. Someone is missing
And the flowers remind me they're gone.
My lips are cold. They want to be kissing
As daffodils gleam their gold in the dawn.
This ache in my heart makes it quite clear
Love has not gone though love is not here. 

I am hungry for that first drumming roll 
Of thunder in the spring, informing all
We are under new management; the toll
We paid is abolished; Winter's downfall
Is accomplished; the wall that divided
Is smashed like Berlin's. Yet today's rain
Brought no lightning; it just provided
The spring with more chill. I tire of the pain
And look to the clouds for the longed-for shift.
All the world seems awaiting. Where's the thunder?
Wheres the glance of warmth that strangely uplifts
Without words? All the world seems to wonder
In a night so chilled the frogs cease their peeping.
Though men go to bed, no one is sleeping.

ARCTIC SEA-ICE –THE 2024 MAXIMUM–

(Note: This post was begun some weeks ago, but, due to interruptions, I’m only finishing it up tonight. Sorry if some of the graphs are dated.)

Well, we are past the yearly “sea-ice maximum”, so I suppose I should do a sea-ice post, but I’m rather uninspired. Rather than proving we are reaching the dreaded “tipping point”, any discussion about sea-ice has become a “moot point”. Further discussion is more or less pointless.

First, for many young Alarmists the idea of Global Warming is an indoctrination they’ve received from early in grade school. Both they and their teachers watched Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth” (2006) yet they were never exposed to the carefully thought-out decision by a British court which stated the movie was only one side of a political debate, and students shouldn’t be exposed to it without being informed Al Gore spoke eleven falsities. (2007).

https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/noel-sheppard/2007/10/09/court-identifies-eleven-inaccuracies-al-gores-inconvenient-truth

Such students and teachers don’t need to see any evidence to know Global Warming is “true”, because they were taught by teachers who didn’t need to see any evidence either, because it was in the book they taught from (or video they taught from.). For such people Global Warming is a pertinacious and deep rooted falsity, founded in faith in those who taught them. To question Global Warming questions the integrity of Miss Fruitisweet, a third grade teacher who was just about the only kind teacher they experienced in twelve years of academic monotony. She may have taught by the book, and the book may have held balderdash, but to question her integrity is like slaughtering a holy cow for burgers. Miss Fruitisweet was patient, kind and loving, and it wasn’t her fault that she too trusted an authority prone to balderdash. Miss Fruitisweet may have brainwashed innocent children, but she did so out of love, meaning well.

In any case, such brainwashed people tend to avoid actual discussion with pleas to authority: “The textbook says so” or “Dr. Pixiznose said so,” or “scientists say”, or “the science is settled,” or “the consensus agrees.” Actually discussing things becomes next to impossible with such people, because they don’t seem to know how to think; only how to believe.

Secondly, politics destroyed a lot of the best research being conducted, because politics demands science prove certain points and discredit others, whereas Truth doesn’t take sides. But the blustering bully of power politics imagined it could control Truth by funding scientists whose research agreed with “their side’s” agenda, and by de-funding those whose research dared disagree. It would not matter if “their side” was saying up was down, money talked, and funding made nonsense “true”.

Such funding is like bribing a judge. It turns the courtroom into a mockery of justice. The judge is not carefully weighing evidence, deeply concerned with righteousness. Instead he is unrighteous. Rather than the clear intellect of a clean conscious, and the purity of untarnished intuition focused on truth, bribes basically turn minds into whores, making a mockery of love, for money.

Besides Dr. Pixiznose’s tendency to be a whore, the media also have proved woefully susceptible to bribes, and became culpable for their sensationalist, blaring headlines of even the most absurd hypotheses that furthered the Global Warming hysteria, and their complete silence concerning the hard work of scientists who found reasons to have hope that the world wasn’t going to end by now. To deepen their disgrace, the media not only censored their own better judgement, but rabidly advocated the censorship of those with far better judgement than the media ever dared manifest.

Lastly, as politics descended from at least a semblance of righteousness into the current squalor of corruption, harmonious cooperation fell apart, especially in terms of arctic research. For example, the Russians were deeply interested in arctic research, considering the thousands of miles of coastline they own, facing the Arctic Sea. They had great resources they wished to exploit, but others felt such exploitation was a bad thing, for various reasons. However initially Russia was able to cooperate with other nations, as is apparent if you look back at my posts about the “Barneo” bases Russia set up every year, (right about now, In early April). Norway and the Ukraine worked hand in hand with Russia in these endeavors, which involved research, military exercises, and tourists who could afford to splurge big bucks, having a blast. Needless to say, Russia and Ukraine are no longer so cooperative, those lovely days are long gone, and “Barneo” is fading into a fond memory.

Even back in 2016 the politics at the Pole were getting intense. If you have the time, here’s a post (I’m rather fond of) about how crazy things were getting even back then.

ARCTIC SEA ICE –BARNEO 2016–THE MYSTERY OF THE MISSING JET–

Now eight years have past, and things have gone steadily downhill. The only good I can see is that the corruption has become so grotesque, and the sham so absurd, that people are getting downright sick of it. Even scientists working in hostile environments, where any outright questioning of Global Warming might get you swiftly fired or, if you have tenure, get your funding cut off, are scientists who tend to avoid mentioning Global Warming at all in the body of their papers, and only add a flimsy genuflection in the conclusion. I sense a sort of wink-wink, nudge-nudge in some of these obligatory genuflections, as if, between the lines, is written, “We all know this is bullshit, but here goes.”

Why are people fed up? Well, you can only screech the sky is falling for so long before people start to notice the sky isn’t.

For example, because air temperatures, and SST (Sea surface temperatures), were well above normal the past year, I expected more sea-ice to melt than usual, but that didn’t happen. In the chart below 1996 is the green line, while 2024 is the blue line. While the 1996 maximum was towards the end of February the 2024 maximum was delayed to the end of March, and while the 1996 level was well above 2024 towards the end of February, by the end of March they are roughly the same. There is no apparent “shocking decline” in the “extent”, despite the passage of 28 long years.

This is also apparent in the DMI graph of the March “extent” (an average for the entire month). In a sense the “trend line” looks silly, for the trend since 1996 has been basically flat, (follow the central line, indicating 15 km2 of extent, and you’ll see the two years are nearly the same.)

The “trend line” included in such graphs is based on the sea-ice level of 1979, which much evidence indicates was the highest level in recent times. Some say it is “the start of the satellite record”, but the first IPCC reports show graphs using satellite data which indicate far lower “extent” levels only a few years earlier, and we have this early “Nimbus” satellite shot from September 1969 which shows a large area of open water towards 80 degrees north latitude, north of Bering Strait.

It is fairly clear that sea-ice has always fluctuated between high and low levels. If you bother study history you see it has been doing so for some time. Willem Barentsz sighted the entrance of Raudfjorden in June of 1596 in a small, sail-powered wooden ship, whereas it would have taken a steel, diesel-powered ice-breaker to have reached the same spot in June of 2023. If I was foolish I could use 1596 as my start day, and create a rising “trend-line” from 1596 to 2023 which could freak everyone out by suggesting sea-ice was growing, and we were all about to freeze. And, back in 1979, we experienced a cold period which caused some false prophets to freak everyone out with “The Ice Age Scare”.

The funny thing is that some now attempt to assert “The Ice Age Scare” never happened.

However I was alive at the time, and can vouch that it did happen. In case you doubt an old man’s memory, Tony Heller used the “way back machine” to compile a long, long collection of media sensationalism which shows that the “Ice Age Scare” was a lot more than, as the above article suggests, “nine paragraphs”.

1970s Global Cooling Scare

1970s Global Cooling Scare

One interesting character in the Ice Age Scare was Steve Snider.

What was interesting about Steve was he switched so effortlessly from the Ice Age Scare to the Global Warming Scare. His primary interest seemed to be scaring the public. He seemed to think logic wasn’t enough, and the public was basically imbeciles, and needed to be bossed about by smart people, like himself. He moved on to become a notorious “gatekeeper” at Wikipedia, zealously removing any evidence that Global Warming was anything other than “settled science.” Then he unexpectedly did something I must do, and indeed all must do eventually. He died, at a relatively young age.

It must be odd to die when you think you have years ahead of you. You think you can continue to manipulate data, and that these manipulations of truth will eventually have some result other than the dishonesty you believe is justified. But you do not live to see that day, which you think will excuse all your dishonesty. Instead you are abruptly dead, and all you have to show is a lifetime of deceit. It must be especially hard if you are an Atheist. You die, and abruptly become aware Truth is calling you forward to be judged on what you have done. And what have you done? All you have done is make a good living denying Truth.

Personally I believe my departure from this creation will bring me face to face with Truth. Even back when I attempted Atheism, I believed the final nano-second I was existing would confront me with Truth. Was I honest, or was I a liar?

The problem with being a liar is that you lose touch with Truth. A discrepancy is created, as is displayed in the above graphs. At that point the liar can either confess their mistake, or double down on the lies, attempting to cover up prior lies with further lies. This only doubles the discrepancy, which eventually becomes glaring.

And this is the point we have reached with the arctic sea-ice “Death Spiral” hysteria. There is no “Death Spiral”. In fact, even during this very warm year, when there seemingly should be a decrease in sea-ice, the levels increase. What the heck is going on?

This is what a sane government would pay its scientists to figure out. Instead our insane government pays scientists to support a scare-story which justifies their declaring martial law, so they can have dictatorial powers. What they don’t understand is that, in setting aside real science, they are losing the power real science offers. They may be chuckling to themselves, thinking how a false disaster tricked the public into giving them control, but may at the same time be blind to a genuine disaster. They are sipping tea in a house with exotic rice-paper walls, floating on a houseboat midst water lilies, fed luxuries and fanned by a servile staff with English accents, oblivious to the fact they are just upstream from a thundering waterfall.

One danger we may be about to face is a repeat of the Dalton Minimum. That time of a “quiet sun” ended with a couple of volcanic convulsions that left ash in the ice core samples of both Greenland and Antarctica. One we can identify as Tambora in Indonesia, but the other is a mystery volcano. After all, this happened in 1810, and we hadn’t gotten our satellites up, quite yet.

All the ash and sulfur thrown into the atmosphere by these convulsions led to some bizarre weather, contributing to famines, which contributed to tremendous societal upheavals. (If you want specific details, go through my long-winded past posts.)

One thing they knew nothing about, during the Dalton Minimum, was what was occurring at the bottom of the sea. Now we are seeing a surge in the seismic activity along mid-ocean ridges, which suggests (to some) that besides the eruptions we can see, like the spectacular eruption of Tonga last summer, there are equally spectacular but totally hidden eruptions occurring over a mile down in the deep sea depths.

The temperature of the water down that deep is close to the freezing point of fresh water, and the sudden appearance of lava as hot as 2000 degrees is bound to change the status quo. How so? We have no idea.

We might have had some idea, if the great scientist Bill Gray had been funded. He wanted to study “thermohaline circulation”, however he was honest to Al Gore, and told Al he didn’t think CO2 had all that great an effect on climate, and Al Gore, to his eternal shame, severely cut the funding to an honest and brilliant man. So we know little about “thermohaline circulation”, while we have spent trillions on stuff that basically is disconnected from rational thinking, such as solar power, windmills and electric cars.

However odd stuff is certainly happening to our seas. During the El Nino last winter, when waters to the northeast of Australia are ordinarily cooler than normal, during El Ninos, they abruptly became warmer than normal. Yes, there was seismic activity, and yes, this is just west of the enormous Tonga eruption. And no, this has never been seen before. Lastly, it utterly screwed up many long range forecasts, (such as Joe Bastardi’s), because it introduced a never-seen-before variable.

Dr. Roy Spencer and Dr. John Christie at the University of Alabama noted a spike in temperatures.

I greatly respect these two men, but I will state their focus is on the atmosphere. They haven’t studied seafloor volcanoes much. They are interested in Tonga, but only because it vaporized so much water and sent the steam high into the atmosphere. Ordinarily they do not lower themselves from the heights to study the depths. They are less interested in eruptions two miles down, which may (or may not) have raised the temperatures of the sea-surface northeast of Australia. But I will state they showed an uncharacteristic interest in a study of whether or not there were “plumes” of warm water rising from the depths, which I think shows they knew something weird was going on.

I will also state that, when I peruse the comments following the post, “How Much Ocean Heating is Due To Deep-Sea Hydrothermal Vents?”, that appeared on Roy Spencer’s site, I am made painfully aware of my own ignorance. My value, if I have any, is primarily as an observer. Back when there were buoys with cameras bobbing about the Arctic Sea it was possible to observe many things which seemed to run contrary to what proponents of the “Death Spiral” theory promised us we’d see. However, once I leave observing and venture into theorizing I step off a shelf and am immediately over my head. Having confessed that, I will state I observed something weird happened last winter.

How Much Ocean Heating is Due To Deep-Sea Hydrothermal Vents?

What was weird? The abrupt appearance of warm water northeast of Australia was weird. It is difficult to explain how weird it was, but I’ll try.

When we attempt to understand a phenomenon such as the El Nino we try to stick to the facts, and not stray from those facts. Even if you believe the Red Sea can be parted, you are not allowed to use belief in your data. Therefore all the El Nino data we had went into creating a clumsy understanding of El Ninos within a computer model, and one component of that understanding was that waters northeast of Australia would be cooler than normal. But last winter utterly broke the rules. Perhaps the Red Sea did not part, but to conventional thinking it was nearly as astounding.

Yet the press ignored the event. It seemed quite unlike them, considering they blame nearly-every-thing-you-can-think-of on Global Warming, but perhaps some recognized the event repudiated the narrative. How so? Global Warming is not a localized event. Background radiation is fair and equal and effects all areas in a smooth manner. This event was concentrated northeast of Australia.

The study which Roy Spencer focused on in the above post was a bit primitive and underfunded. Basically a boat dragged sensors, like a biplane dragging an “Eat At Joe’s” sign up and down a beach. They found no evidence of “plumes” in the small area they crisscrossed, which disappointed me, but which seemed to relieve Christie and Spencer. Perhaps they took it as an indication the oceans were not controlling the atmosphere, and they were not focused on the wrong thing. Or perhaps not. But the fact they actually did look outside their field shows they are real scientists.

My problem is I poke about too much, and have seen evidence of “plumes” in other studies. One fellow was painstakingly tracking the strata of various types of seawater, sliding north like cards in a deck, in the Gulf Stream, with the strata determined by salinity and temperature, and just as the current crossed the mid Atlantic ridge his study got totally screwed up. Something mixed the waters, and, in the diagrams his study produced, the disruptions looked very much like “plumes”, at least to me.

This tickled my fancy, because it seems to me that any disruption of warm currents that basically flow from Florida to the North Pole could result in less sea-ice melting. This makes sense of what is initially counterintuitive: How could lava that warms the SST (sea-surface-temperatures) and atmosphere cause less sea-ice to melt? In this manner: Sea-ice is not melted most from above, but from below. If lava creates a “plume”, and the “plume” interrupts the import of warm waters, it is only logical less melting would occur.

And what happens next? Well, this is what concerns me. The records of long ago, created by using various proxies, show some times of warming followed by abrupt crashes in temperatures. If you want to talk about weird, these crashes are most mysterious. Basically we know they occurred, but not why. Various unverified theories are out there, the most noticed one, (by the mainstream media), involving freshwater lakes abruptly draining into the Atlantic when glacial plugs dissolved and crumbled, but although this may explain a particular down-spike it does not explain others. So I might as well throw my own unverified theory out there.

Suppose a quiet-sun period such as the Dalton Minimum winds down to its end, and the sun gets noisy again. The lava which was so active when the sun was so quiet might cease to be so active, and the abrupt cessation of this warming effect would have obvious repercussions. Some would be more immediate than others. However one repercussion might be a short-term downward plunge in temperature.

Where the Parry expedition in 1819 found summer waters open, and only became frozen in for a winter, and easily escaped the actic the next summer, the Franklin expedition got frozen in so solidly every man on two ships perished, starting in 1845 but likely, because they were so well prepared, taking at least two agonizing years to kill the final sailor. How could the same place get so much colder?

This what we should be studying. Why? Because, what if it is our fate? What happened before can happen again. Won’t we look like complete idiots if, over the next thirty years, there is a dramatic downturn in temperatures, just as we prepare for Global Warming.

This is where Al Gore and his ilk look particularly stupid. Rather than preparing us for disaster, he has diverted trillions of dollars away from what we should have been studying. How different our level of understanding might now be, if only he had heeded Dr. Bill Gray.

And how much I miss Robert W. Felix, and his “Ice Age Now” website.

Stay tuned, (though my focus these days is not so much on sea-ice, but rather rather on how to get back to honesty, and away from wasting so much time and money on bribery and lies.)

TAXTIME TURTLE

Below is the total mess I make of my wife’s lovely dining room when it comes time to do the taxes.

There is order in this chaos. The four piles on the far side of the table and eight piles on the counter represent the twelve months of the year, and I meticulously collect every bill and receipt I can possibly use as a “business expense”, because the more my business expenses are, the less my “profit” is, and profit is what they are after.

In actual fact my profit is zero. “Child Care” is no way to get rich, and for most “child care professionals” it is a way to scrimp by. It is a hand-to-mouth existence, a labor of love, a Christian ministry, and there is something vile about oily accountants from The Swamp wanting to know every detail of how you get by. It’s none of their business. It’s mine. They are ignorant of what I know.

First, in The Swamp’s eyes it tends to look like something fishy is going on, if you work hard and have a charitable nature. Saint Paul said spiritual behavior, to the worldly, looked like “foolishness.” I’d take it a step further, and say that, to a communist, charitable behavior looks like the counterrevolutionary acts of the petite bourgeois, who need to be purged, for only the state is allowed to be a benefactor.

Second, The Swamp wants you to divide yourself from your work, and keep careful track of what you do for your self and what you do for your business. This is absurd, when you are so absorbed in your work that it is your life. But bureaucrats likely want mothers to say, when they breastfeed, how much is for the child and how much is for the mother. They divide what is whole, and it rots what is wholesome.

Bureaucrats can never understand the generosity of the poor. How is it poor people give more than rich people? (This is an established fact, statistically proven by careful research, and should put every rich person to shame.)

The fact of the matter is that such charity is how the poor “get by”.

I took economics in school, and passed my A-level exam in the British system of 1971, even though me and math do not get along. Because I am educated in this way, I am fascinated by the way the poor “get by”, and seek to find a way to make it look more sensible in terms economists understand.

Here is an example:

I thought I’d be faster than usual, and complete my taxes way ahead of the deadline, but no sooner had I made a mess of my wife’s dining room table, when my wife broke three bones in her ankle, which involved surgery. The mess on the table just sat there, barely touched, for weeks, for I had to care for my wife, and also do all her work. A man never appreciates his wife’s workload until he has to do it. He seldom thinks about things such as the fact there is always toilet paper in the bathroom, until there is none there. Then the belittling ceases.

For example, I kid my wife a lot about how fast I go in and out of a store, while she takes longer, however when I had to do all the shopping, it took me three times as long, and I often forgot important items yet came home with some unnecessary stuff. (I bought “scrapple”, made of pork byproducts and cornmeal, because I liked it, sixty plus years ago, drenched in maple syrup during boyhood breakfasts. I didn’t know it existed any more, and when I saw it I figured I needed pampering, with my wife down and out.)

I was hard pressed to find time to cook the scrapple, or anything else, but grimly determined to be a good husband and provide my wife with all the weird stuff she eats, (not scrapple), but then all sorts of other kind women, or their husbands, began arriving at my door, with all sorts of dinners. It was so kind. I did cook breakfasts before rushing to work (when I’m supposedly retired), but when I dragged my butt home I think I only cooked three dinners in three weeks. The hearts of others provided. And some of the dinners that appeared were better than anything I could concoct.

I would have been grateful even if every meal was macaroni and cheese, but that is not my point. My point is how do you show such kindness, when doing your taxes? Can the people who brought me dinner take a deduction for the food they bought?

Not usually, but they should be able to do so. Not that The Swamp even wants to know about such generosity, let alone reduce your taxes if such kindness rules your entire life.

The United States was founded upon ideas full of such kindness. That is why there were so few taxes at first. There was no such thing as an income tax, because the traditional family farm fed, sheltered and clothed many, but the “profit” was minuscule. The government raised most of its money with tariffs on imported goods, and the Custom House at each port was a marble structure, sometimes with pillars in the front of it, for they had the power of the IRS.

It must have been nice to be alive before the income tax existed. Now, when I take kids fishing, I must save a slip of paper that shows I spent $2.50 on worms.

Once I could put the pedal to the metal
And burn the midnight oil. Those days are gone. 
Those hormones are gone. I yawn. My fettle
Is lacking. I'm slacking. I ignore dawn
And I'm not attacking the damn taxes
Like I should. Yet why should I worry?
Even if a man never relaxes
Age makes him like a turtle in a hurry.
My high speed is now to plod a bit faster.
I plod and I plod, and never scurry, 
As life doles out yet another disaster.
I'm not a pleased cat, arching and purry,
For I plod and I plod, which shows I care
And is how an old turtle outruns a young hare.

Sailing through night, my bright guiding star 
Is not made by me. Instead it's a gift.
I did not hang that light, twinkling afar,
And the same is true when my eyes uplift
In worship. My surging inspiration's
Not mine. It's a gift. All the good things 
In life are presents, yet also our nation's
woes, and all that clips our outstretched wings,
Are part of the given as well. Give credit
Where credit is due. We did not make God.
He made us. Grasp that tiller. Embed it
On heart and brain. I know that it sounds odd,
But God wants us shining like yonder star.
The less that you own, the richer you are.

HOPELESSNESS HOPES

Don't tell me to hope. This spring's too chilly.
Too much has gone wrong. I cannot describe
How hope looks foolish. The law looks silly
When judges are swayed by evil's bribe.

What use is the law when the judge breaks it?
What use is love when the lover forsakes it?
What good is a smile when every face fakes it?
What use is my heart when cruel fate breaks it?

Last night I heard the first querulous peep
Of a spring peeper. He paused, and again
Peeped. "O, shut up", I thought. I will weep
When the others reply. Nights warm, and then
A thousand shrill peeps will deafen sky again
And, bucking the odds, my heart will try, try again. 

Spring in New Hampshire

EASTER 2024

Tired of the highway, I wish that I
Could just sit in ruby sunset with You.
The goal is too far. I see that the sky
Stretches beyond horizons, and I can do
Nothing to claw it closer. I'll never
Get to Never-never, and so I plead
That You come here. I am not clever
Enough to know how to change route or speed
And bring distance near; distance stays distant,
When what we need is the sweet oasis
Of Your companionship. What we miss can't
Be touched by worldly paws, but Your touch is
What transformed the starved into a feaster
As darkest night dawned, amazing with Easter.

SUPER TUESDAY’S SNAKES AND LADDERS

One board game I disliked as a child was called, “snakes and ladders”. I didn’t like it because skill played no part. One was at the mercy of the roll of the dice, as you progressed towards the finish line. If you landed on a “snake”, you fell backwards, and if you landed on a “ladder”, you leapt forward.

The only way to control your destiny in such a board game is to cheat. You must gain some sort of control over how the dice roll. This may be illegal, but you do stand a far better chance of winning, unless your opponent is better at cheating, (or else catches you cheating, in which case the game may dissolve into a brawl).

Cheating seems to be how the game of politics is played in “The Swamp”, (IE: Washington DC.) They feel they are “the elite” and are smarter than the “deplorables”, (IE: Fellow Citizens). They do not really believe all men are created equal, nor that they should love their neighbor. Rather they feel that they should control their neighbor, because they are smart and the rabble (IE: Fellow Citizens) are ignorant. However the rabble are becoming roused, and the elite are increasingly fearful they are losing control. A storm is over Washington this “Super Tuesday.”

It shows up especially well on radar:

The funny thing is that elite in Washington DC would laugh at the idea that the physical reality of the weather has anything to do with the social climate they create with their cheating, even as they try to sell the idea to the Public that the Public is guilty of causing Global Warming.

The fact of the matter is that Creation is a unity. No man is an island, and all greedy attempts at segregation deny the reality of God’s plan for universal oneness, and do so in ways that stir up actual, physical storms. We do control the atmosphere we abide in, not by throwing virgins into volcanoes, nor by driving about in impractical electric vehicles, but more in the manner that the atmosphere of a movie is controlled by background mood music.

A historical example of the uncanny connection between men’s deeds and the weather appears in the fact that, when Hitler’s invasion of Poland forced even the peace-loving Chamberlain to conclude to his cabinet, “Well then, gentlemen, it is war”, there was a brilliant flash of lightning and deafening roar of thunder outside the House of Lords in London. Just a coincidence? I think not. It is as Shakespeare’s Hamlet stated, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy”, though perhaps we should update that to, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Hillary, than are dreamt of in your philosophy”.

The elite can write all the silly laws they want in their mire, thinking they control the vastness of weather (Global Warming preventions) and the minutia of viruses, (Coronavirus vaccines), but they don’t control either. They are pretenders.

They are desperate to cling to the powers they imagine they have gained, through their pretense. These words I write will most definitely be censored, though I write them to warn them, because I pity them. Actions have reactions, and, if one reaps what one sows, the swamp creatures are sowing thistles for themselves.

I’ve been addicted myself, and therefore have compassion towards addicts. I am part of a group striving to help youth escape fentanyl addiction. I wish I could also be of help to the elite, but they don’t admit they are addicted. (To power.)

The “swamp” needs to learn what fentanyl addicts have learned. To get what you desire is hell, compared to what you get when you suffer the agony of withdrawal symptoms.

The “swamp” scoffs at the idea I have anything to offer them, but are so scared of hearing me that they censor me (and millions of others).

They call me a “bitter clinger” (though I’ve never bought a gun) though they are the ones who cling, desperately, to power.

They display contempt towards the hands that feed them, dismissing the breadbasket of the nation as “flyover country.” Poor fools, can they not see what they are earning when they bite the hand that feeds? Don’t they see actions have reactions?

I’d like to go off on a long tangent at this point about the laws of Karma; of “reaping what you sow,” And also of “killing the goose that laid the golden egg”. Often it is better to deny yourself than to get what you want (but don’t need.)

The so-called “deplorable” tend to be poor, and must constantly sacrifice just to get by. They constantly deny themselves. Consequently they know of a sweet freedom, which those, who don’t deny themselves, are ignorant about.

What is this freedom you get? The fentanyl addict wants to know. They long to be free of the constant craving. They hunger to know about freedom, but the swamp is craven, and doesn’t want to know. However, as the swamp is suppose to be representing “the land of the free”, they damn well should want to know. What is this freedom I’m speaking about?

What is the freedom? It is the freedom from being controlled by a craving. Rather than hankering for money or power or fame, you can take them or leave them. You are not some child who will tantrum if they don’t get some toy, nor some adolescent who grieves greatly over infatuations. You just accept the Now.

Donald Trump seems a representative of such freedom. He is not controlled by the “swamps” cravings. All he has earned, through his wish to help us achieve the freedom enshrined in our constitution, is monstrous harassment, yet he remains free.

There is something very attractive about such freedom. It is inherently friendly. When Trump visited the border, he did not give the middle finger to illegal aliens, across the Rio Grande. Instead he cheerfully waved, and an excited voice returned from across the river: “Trump! Trump!” Trump laughed, “Even they like me! Isn’t it incredible?”

Yes, it is indeed incredible. It is also incredible that the governor standing up most for America’s integrity can’t stand up. In his wheelchair he stands taller than many who swagger, up to their armpits in the mire of the swamp.

It is incredible and even a little dream-like, and not a good sign for the swamp that despises impossible dreams, this Super Tuesday. Where they were sure they had loaded the dice and would land on a ladder, they see themselves landing in a swamp seething with snakes.