One thing I adore about America’s homespun music is that, within the songs ordinary people devise for their own amusement, is that they often encapsulate profound intellectual debates, in simple and often humorous ways.
For example, the United States is currently at the point of a civil war about who should control power. Should the government control the power of propane? Or the people? Who should say whether or not we should have gas stoves. Whose business is it?
A creepy element of this conflict involves some people saying, “Just leave us alone.” But the government says, “It is our duty to help you.” Then the government feels entitled to “help” people who want to be left alone. The governors become bullies, shoving into people’s lives when they are not wanted. Then people say, “Mind your own business.”
Another creepy element involves people who have become “welfare dependents” and who actually do want help, yet fail to get help from the government because the officials in charge of money are directing the power-of-the-purse elsewhere. These “welfare dependent” people feel they are the government’s business, and cry out, “Mind your own business.”
(For a current example, in the horrible Lahaina fires in Hawaii those who depended on the government expected the government to supply water to fight fires, sirens to warn of fires, and proper management of traffic in an emergency, but the government felt it wasn’t their business; their “focus” was elsewhere.)
(Lahaina was especially troubling because the people who trusted traffic authority died, while those who defied the traffic authorities escaped. This should suggest that the “business” of your own survival is best left to you.)
The United States is based upon the idea that the best person to be in charge of our business is ourselves. Yet our new government seems to suggest they are wiser, and should be in charge of our business.
So who are we talking to, when we say, “mind your own business.”
Tweezers-intellectuals like Karl Marx wrote miles and miles of tedious print parsing and re-parsing the tiresome topic of where the dividing line should be between public and personal “business”, but American bumpkins with banjos, fiddles and guitars covered the vast subject in less than two minutes, (and got your toes tapping.)
What I find fascinating is the admission in the music that when you work for someone who “signs the check” that you are doing their business. No man is an island. We are on the same team. However unspoken in such an interaction is the idea that the employer will be doing your business. He must pay enough, and respect your dignity as an equal. If he fails…….
It is my boss's business that I do.
It is not your business. That is true.
And if boss asks too much, and I am through
I sing, "It's nobody's business what I do".
If my gal drives a limousine, and I
Supply the gasoline, it's nobody's
Business what I do. Yet way up high
God's eyes are seeing; His deities
All aim at freeing. Maybe angels have
Some work to do. And, because they have got
No fleshy body's earthly autograph,
It's no body's business what I've thought.
It's no body's business. It's no body's
Business. And yet it proves that God is.
I’m not going to comment on this, except to say it is upsetting. It should be shared. May the light of Truth shine and reveal what is true and what is evil.
In the land of hopes and dreams I now see
You are the sunrise. All is a wasteland
Without You. All hope is sterility
And dreams are but bubbles. It is Your hand
That touches and brings life to the landscape.
All the birds sing. The morning swings gold gates
Open wide, and why? Why do the clouds drape
Royal robes? For whom do the cups and plates
Clatter in kitchens? Why do dishwashers
Smile, as sleepyheads sip their first coffee?
All for You, of course. Though the wish-watchers
Try to tempt, those with eyes that see
See even temptation's but a detour
And part of the path that leads all to Your door.
I’m tired of the battle to get real information accepted, in a society ruled by people who have a strange belief there is some bizarre good in being wrong.
They call it “propaganda”, but it boils down to attempting to brainwash people into believing Fake News is real news. When people object and speak the truth, they get cancelled. People are told that the only way they will make money is to tow the line, to mouth the balderdash of political correctness even when it is absurd, or else face being fired, marginalized, excommunicated, banned from the perks of polite company; people must parrot inanities. So inanities are all we get. Then the general public gets tired of being treated like they all have IQ’s of 45 and believe the balderdash. I get tired as well.
The media, (whoever “they” are), thinks it has the public all figured out, and calls people the “market.” They think they have only to advertise and the market will succumb to whatever their blandishments are; stupid people will obediently buy even absurd and useless objects. If told hula hoops are desirable, the sheep will buy hula hoops.
What they fail to understand is that, back in the day, few “experts” thought hula hoops were likely to sell. Most “experts” likely deemed hula hoops a bad investment. The public did not make hula hoops a profitable item because “experts” tweaked peon’s brains into buying them, but rather because the cheap advertisements of those times made hula hoops look like fun. Inexpensive fun. And people tried them out and discovered that, yes indeed, they were a laugh. Word spread. The salesman had a hit, and made a bundle.
The same is true for music. Some think that, if they buy all the recording studios, they will control all the artists, and be able to have a say in what the public calls a “hit.” Instead they spoil what they control.
For example, when I was young Walt Disney was still alive, and his emphasis was upon optimism and wholesomeness and good overcoming evil. He was a “hit”, (although perhaps he was not as hard-hitting concerning the difficult issues of those times as other film-makers were). He understood people don’t always want to be confronted by hard-hitting issues. Not only do they not want that, but they often don’t need that, and Walt gave them a place where they could relax and be happy. He made bundles of money simply by being a breath of fresh air. He also had a certain power to motivate optimism and wholesomeness and good. Then…..certain people coveted that power. After Walt died they thought that they might “control” as Walt had “controlled”, if they only could take over his company. So they took over. But what they they then attempted completely backfired, and they have lost billions of dollars and are in danger of bankrupting what once was a “cash cow.”
In like manner the brand of beer called “Bud Light” was a “cash cow”, but certain people felt that spicing their idea with the beer’s popularity might woo the public into accepting their idea. This too completely backfired. The beer’s sales dropped so precipitously that hundreds have lost their jobs.
Country music singers didn’t much like it when such manipulative, propaganda-prone people bought up the big recording studios where they recorded their songs. They did not like being told what they they could sing about. It was a wrench in the works, and made a hassle where there had been no hassle before. The quality of music suffered. To some degree even country music was dropping precipitously in its popularity.
At this point one tends to become depressed. Those who think they control the “market” are destroying the “market.” They are attempting to sell what people don’t want to buy. They offer the Fake News of propaganda, but people don’t want to buy it. Furthermore, even if people attempt to buy it (in an attempt to be “correct”) they find simply can’t buy it, because it is repellent to people’s hearts.
It is as if all that is attractive has been removed from a menu, and replaced with items that make a person want to gag. If you argue such disgusting stuff shouldn’t be served, you are cancelled, (which I suppose would be, in this analogy, tantamount to being booted from the restaurant).
I’m tired of this, as are many others, which has resulted in the phenomenon of “hits” appearing from outside of the major recording studios and major Hollywood studios. Anthony Moody’s “I’m Just Sayin'” rocketed to #1, though produced by an inconsequential and independent studio.
And the low budget “Sounds Of Freedom” exploded to become the most popular movie of the summer:
This should be seen as evidence that the so-called “sheep” can’t be told what to graze upon. They know what they like. Sheep like green grass, and object when you try to feed them horseshit. This does not require a high IQ.
Rather than understanding this basic reality, what the “Elite” tend to do is to either crush the song-writers and film-makers who appear from outside their control, or else try to seduce the film-makers and song-writers with money, getting them to sign contracts that control them. The elite are addicted to “control”, for they are myopic and can’t see beyond power.
It never seems to occur to such people that they don’t control. The people and the popularity they seek to control was not their doing. They did not make them or it. It was all made by the Maker.
The most recent person to appear out of the blue and, without any advertising and promotion (by those who like to feel they are in control), to become a “hit”, is Oliver Anthony, who rocketed from twenty “views” to ten million, in just six days.
One thing interesting to me is that many describe Oliver’s music not as “country music” but as a “folk songs”. When I was young “folk music” was basically owned by the left wing, and even by communists. Now “the folk” have become what the leaders call “conservative”, which has the left wing in a bit of a panic. The new Woody Guthrie is not on “their side”? How can that be?!!
I actually am praying for the people who succeed “against the rules”. It bears repeating: What the “Elite” tend to do is to either crush the song-writers and film-makers who appear from outside their control, or else to seduce the film-makers and song-writers. They seek to regain control of something they never actually controlled.
In a sense the “elite’s” theory of control is like a person who thinks the way to control his boat is to control the river. They imagine they will never have to get their oars wet, if they control the river. But some laws cannot be changed; they cannot make water flow uphill, and as they entertain their delusions their boat is bobbing inexorably downstream into the rapids above a waterfall.
To tweak this analogy: In order to control the river the “elite” build levees, and, in order to to make the levee’s dry dirt pack down better, they add some water to the dirt so it won’t crumble, and sticks together and packs better, but this only works up to a point; after the dirt reaches a certain level of moisture adding water turns it into mud, and it no longer holds water back. (You cannot build a levee out of chocolate syrup.) In other words, what once worked doesn’t work any more.
Propaganda eventually loses its effectiveness. People develop an immunity. Like after the boy “cried wolf” too many times, people are no longer motivated. Towards its end, all the hoopla the Soviet Union attempted to generate about “five year plans” generated little beyond a complete lack of enthusiasm among its workers; they had heard it all before and knew the words were empty.
In conclusion, the public is not as stupid as the elite think they are. Ordinary people may be disdained as “sheeple”, “bitter clingers” and “deplorables”, and may be scornfully described as being easily brainwashed and manipulated, but they are underestimated, for no credit is given to the human heart, and to the heart’s innate ability to recognize Truth, and also to recognize balderdash. Propaganda ceases to be effective, and is actually the antithesis of what moves people.
This leads one to the immediate question: What, then, actually does move people? What makes a hit be a hit? The answer is simple: Truth.
This leads me to thirst for more of the Truth, for it is obviously far more nourishing than balderdash. Beyond a certain point all political debating becomes tiresome, for the deck is stacked against Truth, and speaking Truth to power only gets you hassled. Therefore I hope I can be forgiven if I just wander off from all the uproar into obscure corners of thought where one can look about for Truth without creating angst.
One such remote place involved the arrowhead pictured at the start of this post, found while excavating a Swiss village that existed roughly 3250 years ago.
This is a nice and far away place, about as remote from current affairs as you can get. Yet even in the haze of this distance one can see the powers of Truth, surprising and amazing people, and forcing them to cast aside their preconceptions.
One newer development in archeology involves the ability to trace metal objects discovered in such sites back to where the metal was mined. Different mines have different trace metals mixed with their predominant ores, and therefore it becomes possible to know, for example, where the tin, mixed with copper to make bronze, came from.
It initially was felt that most metals were mined locally, under the assumption prehistoric people were bumpkins who didn’t get around much, however increasingly it became apparent ancient peoples traveled more widely than we formerly believed. For example, an ingot of tin from Cornwall was found in Sweden. In fact, the more metals were studied, the more widely traveled the people of the past seemed to become.
I delighted in the knowledge which modern science was able to extract from corroded, old artifacts, because it always annoyed me that, when I was younger, archeologists and anthropologists so often took a rather snooty attitude which saw themselves as more evolved than past peoples, who sometimes were treated as is they were not much more intellectual than chimpanzees. I was far more inclined to see past peoples as residents of a Golden Age which fell, an Atlantis that was ruined, an Avalon we should strive to return to. I was told I was a hopeless romantic and must learn to be factual, and that the facts were the facts.
Which were?
The facts were we didn’t have many facts. Somehow people took this bare minimum of Truth and used it to have no imagination. Because they had never left the drab hallways of academia, they projected that world-view onto people of the Bronze Age. I, however, was never accepted into such hallowed halls and ivory towers, and therefore, despite not being a particularly courageous soul, knew of storms at sea, and finding myself in far lands among very different peoples, and therefore I projected very different possibilities through the haze onto the peoples of the Bronze Age.
So, of course, it tickled me pink to see a bumpkin like myself was right, and the learned academics were wrong, when it came to ancient peoples. They certainly were not chimpanzees, and likely knew things we don’t. They traveled more than we would think possible, considering the restrictions of their technology, and engineered things we are amazed by, considering the limits of their technology, but what fascinated me most was their metallurgy.
I was initially lured backwards in time by my discovery that the Viking colony at L’Anse aux Meadows actually mined and smelted bog iron, in order to make nails for ships. I was surprised such technology existed among such a small group of people, so far away from Europe, especially as I knew the smelting of iron took a long time to appear in world history, due to the higher temperatures required in the process. My mind was drawn backwards two thousand years, and then five thousand years, and then twenty thousand years.
The first firing of clay apparently occurred when the glaciers was still burdening the land in the last ice age. With sea-levels 300 feet lower, it is likely many of the best coastal sites are now hidden under water, however up in the mountains of Czechoslovakia weights for fishing nets were needed, and it was easier to make a weight with a hole in it from clay, and to then fire the clay, than to drill holes in stones. As far as we know, this is when firing clay began, and all knowledge of metallurgy came through the firing of clay, as a side effect.
The progress came about slowly, which some suggest demonstrates the people were not very smart. I think perhaps it demonstrates they were smarter, because the societies they formed were very stable, and untroubled by the trauma of change. Most of the advancements that came about were due to the retreat of the ice age glaciers. They were climate changes that occurred outside society, and not because societies were as neurotic as ours now are, or so I think as my wondering wanders.
The creation of pottery occurred because herds of reindeer vanished to the north, and people either had to follow them, or move towards agricultural lifestyles in the vast prairies the glaciers left behind. This agricultural lifestyle necessitated storage pots, and then, to make the pots more impervious to water, hotter fires were required, and kilns replaced open fires. As fires became hotter various combinations of clay were experimented with, with various results, and likely it was through such experimentation that the smelting of ores entered men’s knowledge. The first metals had lower melting points.
The mixing of metals into alloys was likely accidentally discovered; the first bronze was likely created because at one site copper ore occurred naturally with arsenic, and likely this discovery was soon followed by the discovery arsenic was poisonous, and led to a preference to bronze made with tin. This led to tin being traded over long distances.
We know much because pottery survives shipwrecks, and amphorae of wine and oil were worth trading over long distances. Metals do not survive the corrosion of seawater as well, (unless it is gold or silver), and tin “rots” in cold weather, but we do come across some ancient artifacts preserved under the right conditions, and are able to sit back and wonder.
To me it seems that the inquisitive members of ancient societies would have come to know of far away lands, and differing ways of making pottery and fabric and metals, and even have toyed with possible advancements, while remaining members of a very stable and happy society. Some advancements likely were not made simply because they were not necessary. Truth was there and people were happy, and therefore a particular Truth, such as the fact iron is harder than bronze, was not yet needed. It was there, awaiting a future day.
Iron was known about, because we have a few examples of ancient artifacts made of iron, for example in the tombs of pharaohs. Pure iron does rarely occur in nature, but most originally came from meteorites. The actual smelting of iron began to be seen as much as three hundred years before the catastrophic end of the Bronze Age around 1200 BC, so the Truth about iron was available when needed, but I don’t want to wonder about that particular catastrophe. I’m trying to avoid the topic of catastrophes. I’d rather ponder more peaceful and changeless times, and think about the subject of the arrowhead found by the lake in Switzerland.
It makes sense that an arrowhead of meteoric iron should be found in that area, for a meteor called the Twannberg Meteorite fell nearby; six fragments have been found, but it is likely other fragments were discovered by people of the past, and put to use, though no objects were found prior to the arrowhead. So the arrowhead was carefully tested, and to the astonishment of all it did not come from the Twannberg Meteorite. It came from the Kaalijarv Meteorite on a Baltic Sea island in Estonia, more than a thousand miles away. This meteor hit with an explosion like Hiroshima’s, burning forests three miles away, and it’s largest chunk left a sizable crater.
The question then becomes, why would a person bring an arrowhead made of rare iron from one source of meteoric iron to another source of meteoric iron?
This is a Truth we likely will never know, but into my mind’s eye drifts a man of long ago seeking Truth. A wonderful fiction I’ll likely never write is unfolding as a fantasy in my brow. An Ode to an Arrowhead sings softly in my imagination.
People are capable of far more than the “elite” ever dream, in their scorn, and such capable people have at their fingertips Truth the elite, sadly, may never know.
One thing missed by fretful people who focus on how far CO2 rises above 400 ppm atop Mona Loa, is how greatly CO2 levels vary in a down-to-earth garden.
During the night fungus is active but photosynthesis has ceased, so CO2 levels soar up towards 1000 ppm. At dawn plants wake to a rich environment with high CO2 levels, and growth explodes as photosynthesis leaps into action. CO2 levels then plunge as plants gobble it up. By noon CO2 is down to “normal” levels, and growth slows greatly despite the fact sunshine is at its peak intensity. In the afternoon plants hardly grow at all, for, in the microcosm, CO2 sinks to very low “Ice Age” levels below 300 ppm.
So it turns out high CO2 levels are natural, and have a part to play in the ordinary, humdrum growth of the vegetables that are supposedly better for you than french fries.
So do not fret, fretful people. Out in your backyard garden CO2 soars above 1000 ppm and then crashes to 180 ppm, but your cabbages are not rolling about in pain. They take it in stride, and do most of their growing in the morning when the dew is still drying in the grass. And if a cabbage can take it, than so can you.
The sun is still up at the Pole, but sinking towards the horizon, and at this point in the summer it starts to loose its power. When at it’s highest it makes people manic, for it is high enough to warm twenty-four hours a day. But those heady days are done. Now, if a cloud passes over the sun, a skim of ice grows on the water bucket.
Back in the pre-lock-down days, when people were free, there used to be whack-job college students out on the Arctic Sea every summer, supposedly documenting the “Death Spiral” of Sea-ice, but actually just having fun. They had feared they’d have to work a Real Job at a car wash all summer, but had written a proposal B.S.ing about the scientific value of being the first to reach the Pole by Pogo-stick, and to their complete amazement someone bought their B.S., and they abruptly had an amazing (to a student) $80,000.00 to play with. And then, through the wonders off satellite technology, I could sit back, click onto their website, and watch young clowns having the time of their lives.
It was always the same. During June and July the sunshine made them crazy. They were in no hurry. Then, right about now, it was like a shadow rose. All of a sudden they were in a great, big hurry. Summer does not last forever, and the Arctic Sea is especially clear about this.
Evidence is seen in the fact that temperatures dip below freezing long before the sun actually sets on September 20. Temperatures tend to dip below freezing around August 15, according to the Danish Meteorology Institute.
This year is represented by the orange line, in the above graph, and you can see that this year we actually first dipped below freezing on July 29. But today we have poked “above normal” for the fifth time since April 24, so I suppose the other 104 days of spring and summer’s cool will be ignored, and we can expect headlines screaming “Polar Temperatures Above Normal.”
In actual fact this site has documented for ten years that around this time of year, every recent year, temperatures have tended to move from below normal to above normal. I assume it is because this time of year the sun stops being a major influence, and temperatures are instead determined by the humidity of the air, which in turn is determined by the temperature of the sea water.
This blows a hole in the Death Spiral Theory. It blows a hole today, and it blew a hole fifteen years ago. The Death Spiral Theory has such a hole blown in it that it resembles a pigeon shot by a bazooka.
Why? Because the Death Spiral Theory depends on the idea of ice-free water absorbing sunshine.
This actually occurs in parts of the Arctic Sea which are ice-free when the sun is thirty degrees high in the sky. Along the coasts of the marginal seas, especially close to river deltas pouring out summer waters, water temperatures are sun-warmed and get far above freezing. However, further out, ice in the water makes the water be ice-water, and ice-water must be, by definition, at the freezing point (which can vary due to salinity.) By the time large parts of the Arctic Sea start to show waters that are largely ice-free, the sun has sunk down to ten degrees above the horizon, or lower.
At this point the water no longer absorbs sunlight. If you doubt me, and are at a beach, go snorkeling in the late afternoon when the sun dips down near the horizon. Above the surface it may still be definitely daylight, but underwater it is night.
This occurs because the “albedo” of water increases greatly when light hits it at a shallow angle. Rather than penetrating the light is reflected. In fact the “albedo” of glassy water is greater than that of dirty snow, when the sun is down near the horizon. And this blows a huge hole in the Death Spiral Theory.
Why? Because the sea-ice will keep right on melting for another month, (not due to warm air above but due to slightly warmer waters beneath), and yet any open waters exposed will not absorb heat from sunshine. In fact the waters will lose heat through being exposed, and will reflect heat because the sun hits at such an increasingly shallow angle. For the next thirty days any exposure of water will represent a net loss, not a net gain, of heat for the Arctic Sea. In other words, rather than a “Death Spiral” that endlessly results in less sea-ice, open water tends to counterbalance things, and increase sea-ice.
If you look back through millions of words on this blog, going all the way back to July 2013, you will see me being very patient with Alarmists. Over and over I point out the “Death Spiral” fails to verify it’s assertions. Meanwhile my observations, (if you dignify them to the status of a “theory”), over and over do verify.
Have we yet seen the ice-free Pole Al Gore promised us would occur by 2016? No. Instead we see what amazes me a little, considering the warmth of the oceans. Sea-ice “extent” is higher than other recent years.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I am under the impression that a “spiral” is suppose to move in a certain direction. In the case of a “Death Spiral” the direction is down. This is not down.
I would like to move on to the far more interesting topic of the warming seas, and what is warming them, for that is reality and what we should be attending to. However, sadly, we are ruled by some with a poor grasp of reality.
It is my understanding that next week Fraudulent Biden will declare a “Climate Emergency”, and will attempt to enact “emergency powers”, as if we were at war.
There is no emergency. The weather is what the weather is, and includes some extremes, but the weather is usually nice and boring. However to say there is no emergency may get me in trouble.
After all, simply saying there is no Arctic Death Spiral apparently got me “shadow banned.” (Or maybe it was some other honesty.)
If you look back in this blog you will see that, during the China Virus “emergency”, when they enacted “lock downs”, I refused to be locked down, and my Childcare never closed. True, I found a loophole in the law that made me look legal for not closing, but the fact of the matter is that if I’d had no loophole I likely would have broken the law, because the law was basically unlawful.
If the puppet president actually declares a “climate emergency”, and actually attempts to enact various “lock-downs” (such as rationing gasoline and outlawing gas stoves), I fear it may be “a bridge too far”.
The public has been very patient, (amazingly so), but it seems those who relied on distorting truth are cornered rats, because truth is exposing their distortions. To declare an emergency when there is no emergency is something only a cornered rat would do.
Things could happen very rapidly. After all the talk about “tipping points” involving things like arctic sea-ice, the actual “tipping point” might be the walls closing in on Fraudulent Biden and his “bag-man” son Hunter, about to be exposed for bribery. In such a desperate situation, why not declare a “climate emergency” and attempt to grab dictatorial powers? If you get away with it you rule America; if you lose you go to jail, which is what you may get if you do nothing.
Hopefully saner heads will work hard behind the scenes, but I have not seen much evidence of sanity this past decade. Therefore, though I hope for the best, I prepare for the worst.
What is the worst? Well, this blog may be judged “traitorous” for stating there is no emergency. Then I vanish, to join the ranks of the “disappeared”.
What does this mean, in terms of what I have long stated: “Stand by the Truth and the Truth will stand by you.”
Will it prove Truth is weak? After all, all I have been guilty of is a thirst for the Truth, because Truth is beauty. I have steadfastly refused to accept anything simply because it is politically correct to do so. At the same time, I have never fired anyone for their beliefs, nor struck anyone for their beliefs, nor burned down their business. My worst offense is to ridicule some for their beliefs, but that is justified when they are ridiculous, and started the fight by ridiculing me. And now they perhaps win the fight by cancelling me. So, did Truth stand by me?
Does it matter? In a battle those who fall don’t “win” in a worldly sense. In the Battle of Gettysburg 25,000 fell on each side. 50,000 didn’t “win”, though both sides felt they stood by some version of mortal truth, (without a capital “T”). However their sacrifice changed the course of human history: (Namely, for a while slavery was illegal, though it is now making a comeback.)
In the end Truth, I like to believe, is there to help those who fall in battle back to their non-physical feet, after they “drop their physical body.” Death is something we fear only until the door opens. Then? Well, William Blake’s final words were the exclamation, “The angels are tying ribbons to my toes!”
Truth is the only thing worthy of worship, and those who deem it wise to distort and pervert and mangle Truth are like those who crucified Christ. Any short-term euphoria they gained had a hell of a hangover.
Simply watching the untruthful, it seems to me they do a fairly good job of destroying themselves, without any help from me, or from thunderbolts from heaven. The rot must set in if you behave in a rotten manner. No perfume can cover the stink of your shit, if you shit in inappropriate places, like your own pants.
If his fraudulence does proclaim a climate emergency, it seems he is digging his own grave. But in the process I may vanish. In which case I assert: Truth alone is worthy of worship.
I’m glad I have a sense of humor, for something, (I’m not sure if it is God or Satan), has been out to make mincemeat of my plans the past week.
Perhaps the principle disruption was “jury duty”.
I enjoyed the experience, despite the fact it ruined my plans. It is nice to know that. despite the efforts of Fraudulent Biden and the Swamp, the beauty of our Republic is still functioning, (at least in out of the way places).
It was a civil case, involving an unfortunate person who slipped and fell in January, 2018, and was badly hurt. Was the person to blame, or someone else?
I may describe the case in greater detail in some future post, but at this time all that matters is that I was attempting to focus fully on my civic duty, and even though that duty was itself a disruption, new disruptions arose.
The funniest was this: Someone fixed the old church clock that tolled the hours. Many dislike the tolling, for although pre computer-age programing makes the bell be quiet between nine and six AM, many sleep beyond six AM these days. In any case, I heard the bell start to toll after a night plagued by insomnia, and counted the dongs.
At the seventh “dong” I felt alarm, for I thought it was six. At eleven I chuckled, for I knew it wasn’t that late. At fourteen I chuckled, because we are not on military time. At a hundred-and-twenty-six I arose from bed annoyed, because the joke was stale. At over a thousand “dongs” the phone rang, and it was the employee who was in charge of opening my Childcare. Besides the “dong-dong-dong-dong” in one background there was a beep-beep-beep-beep in another background. The heat and humidity of the summer night had set off all the smoke alarms at the childcare. That was when my sense of humor kicked in. All the donging and beeping was too absurd to be grumpy about. (Sort of like the current government.)
In any case shutting off circuit-breaker-number-four silenced the racket at the childcare, and I could rush off to jury duty to give my attention to a winter parking lot, and deliberate with eleven others, and arrive at our decision. Having given the matter as much of my attention as was possible, (with all the donging and beeping), I could leave it behind and return to ordinary life, where I was immediately snapped from snow to fire, struck by awareness of wildfires in Hawaii. My eldest brother lives there. The media I consulted provided this map:
Some juvenile reporter clipped and pasted this map without bothering to see what it referred to. I think it is a cumulative total over ten years, ending years ago. But I didn’t know that, and simply saw all the fires around Pearl Harbor. There are currently no fires there. But I sent my brother a frantic text; basically, “Are you alive?”
I was reassured to learn he was alive.
He had actually flown into Hawaii that morning, and, as he always finds the cheapest flights, he found a flight that was practically empty, because it stopped where everyone was fleeing, on its way to Pearl Harbor.
From the air my brother could see some burned grasslands and smoke, but not over the hill from the airport to the devastation in Lahaina.
He told me he’d report further after he left, but had to catch his next flight.
Anyway, I was reassured, but also aware my thoughts were completely scattered. My plans are past being ruined. It makes me laugh. I can’t even remember what my plans were.
My thoughts are scattered like sheep across sky.
The wolves wear lipstick. They are not cruel
But distract me every time that I try
To gather my thoughts. I feel I'm a fool
To even attempt to be what's called sane.
I want to focus on things other than
A grandchild's birthday. My wife will explain
Childhood hinges, as only a mother can.
I want to focus on truth and beauty
But a letter in the mail from the court
Informs me I must show for jury duty,
Which is not the place I want to report.
Oh Lord, please pour out your mercy on me
And allow me to write some pure poetry.
It is odd how life intrudes upon our efforts to introduce sanity and order into our schedule. For example, last weekend I planned to be alone, but instead had five grandchildren under age six in my house. For another example, yesterday morning someone wound the clock in the old Baptist Church, and the bell began tolling out the hours. I suppose there is some way of shutting it down at night, but it begins chiming again in the morning too early for most modern people.
When I first heard it tolling this morning it was twilight but cloudy, and I was uncertain of the time, so I listened to hear how many times it tolled. At thirteen o’clock I grinned, and at twenty-five o’clock I chuckled. Someone was going to catch hell for this. At around two-hundred o’clock the joke was getting old, and I got up. You can only listen to dong-dong-dong-dong-dong for so long. It loses its romance. At around one-thousand-three-hundred-fifty-two o’clock the phone rang. It was the employee opening our Childcare. The heat and humidity had set off all the smoke alarms, and she had to move the children outside to escape the piercing peeps. So I escaped the dong-dong-dong-dong to arrive at peep-peep-peep-peep. Turned off a circuit breaker, and blessed silence returned, sort of. At a Childcare there is seldom true silence.
I still had an hour before Jury Duty, so I added up hours and submitted the payroll, and then glanced at what was next on my list. It was a request to write a brief memorial to a deceased Mom. It was different, because the Mom died ten years ago.
I couldn’t manage it, and rushed off to sit in a jury 45 minutes away, listening to emotional people, and attempting to be as rational as the alien Spock in “Star Trek”. And then…..I’m not allowed to talk about it.
Life is weird at times. I’m not allowed to write about what is actually happening right now, but am asked to write ten years after.
So……here’s some ten-years-after writing:
I knew Donna in a superficial manner from church but came to know her better when she helpedout at our Farm/childcare.
At that time, over a decade ago, I was still striving to make the farm be profitable as a dairy, producing goat milk and cheese. I still felt the childcare was but a temporary stepping-stone on the way to farming full time.
Reality begged to differ, and I was stressed out because I had to spend so much time dealing with the childcare side of things that I didn’t have enough time for the farming side. Farming was increasingly looking like one of those dreams that don’t come true, and this made me a very crabby boss to work for. One of the nicest things about Donna was that she forgave me for my impatience and crabbiness. I think it was because she liked farming and animals so much that she would put up with a sourpuss like me, to do it.
One thing in particular I remember. During a very hectic day she asked me what to do, and I had other things to attend to, so I sent her off to clean a goat’s stable in the barn. I think I may have told her I’d be out shortly to tell her what to do next, but some childcare emergency distracted me. I forgot her completely until after we had closed, and I was heading out to milk the goats.
I then saw Donna had gone home, but not before cleaning a lot more than a single stall. She cleaned all the stalls. I couldn’t recognize the small barn. Everything was swept and neat. There were even small painted signs with each goat’s name, on the doors to the stalls.
Every farmer dreams of finding a worker like Donna, but sadly her doctor said the dust in the stables was bad for her, and she would have to stop working for me. Only then did I realize she had health concerns. She sure seemed healthy to me.
When you asked me to remember her I found myself looking around the stable, which is now a mess, remembering how clean it was. She hammered nails into the wall in various places to hang tools. Then I recalled an odd tool I never use. When I looked it still hung there, where Donna left it.
It is odd to think ten years ago was when this blog first started. 1390 posts ago. He who I shall not name was starting his second term. No one dreamed Trump would be president. No one dreamed of the China Virus. I had a clear idea where this blog was going, but, you know, it is odd how life intrudes upon our efforts to introduce sanity and order into our schedule.
I am serving on a jury this week. My routine is destroyed. However it is a sacrifice well worth it, especially in these trying times. It is an opportunity to serve my country, which is a wonderful thing for an old fossil like myself, who would be laughed at, if I tried to join the army.
I am not allowed to tell you anything about the trial. This, in and of itself, is a different sort of trial. It is a trial for me, because I am into self-expression. I want to use my powers of observation, and to be a blabbermouth about what I see. I hate being told to bite my tongue.
I am allowed to tell you this: The jury is instructed to attend ONLY to evidence presented at the trial. Every effort possible is made to avoid “outside influences”. We are instructed to talk with no “outsiders” including our spouses. (My dog is wondering why I have become so silent.)
We of the jury are not allowed to even talk among ourselves until “deliberation” begins. We are to be all ears, listening to evidence given, and then cross examined. They are very serious about this demand you be all ears.
How serious? Well, if a lawyer uses a word we don’t know, we are not allowed to look it up in the dictionary. Only the evidence given and cross examined is to be considered. We can’t read newspapers or search the internet. What we don’t know (and yearn to discover) is not as important as the presentations from two sides which form the “known”.
I asked the judge if we could keep notes. The answer was a flat, “No”, because the time we spent writing notes would be time we did not spend listening. Our job was not to research. Our job was to focus on what was presented.
This is out of character for me. When told basic blather by the “Fake News” I distrust it, and (avoiding Google) seek search engines to research, research, research, which often arrives at evidence that the “Fake News” is fake.
I have become a very cynical person, in many ways, because my initial optimism has run up against so many who lie. I have crashed against such blatant bias that I have become biased against the biased.
However a member of a jury is asked to set all bias aside.
Gosh! It sure is nice!
(Updates will follow, when allowed, because by then “deliberation” will have concluded.)
This spring I had to face the fact the decay of my physical body had reached a degree where I simply couldn’t do a big garden any more. As a man who refuses to age gracefully, I didn’t “go gentle into that good night,” but rather made a mess of things, starting a garden I could not complete. I was helped in this endeavor by rains that turned the garden into a swamp, and it is always soothing to the ego to have weather to blame, but deep down I faced a sad fact: I haven’t got what it takes, any more.
I was made aware this day would someday come long ago, when still a boy, when my father reached the limits of his athletic capacity as a surgeon. In his case the limit was highlighted by the fact he’d already pushed past a limitation many other men would have been defeated by: At age 34 he’d been cripple by polio, and was told he could never operate again. He refused to face this “fact”, fought his handicap, and came back so successfully that when he was 42, he was ready when a boy arrived at his hospital missing his arm; the arm lay in a separate ice-chest; my father, with fellow surgeons and nurses, successfully reattached the arm.
That example of superb teamwork was something he was most proud of, yet only a year later his world was crashing around him. He was like a great baseball pitcher who wins the World Series at the very end of his career, and yet during the next spring-training is dropped from the team, as he can’t throw a fastball by a single batter.
In a sense this created a conflict between a “never surrender” attitude and a “bow out gracefully” attitude. If my father had bowed out gracefully when crippled by polio, a boy would have lost his arm. However a decade later his refusal to quit seemed proof he had lost his mind.
One solution I came up with was to chose a career I wouldn’t need to quit, when I grew old. Fingers didn’t seem to give out as quickly as backbones and knees. If my brain still worked, I wanted to be able to work at age eighty-nine, like Rubinstein. (Perhaps I couldn’t play a piano with my fingers, but I could play a typewriter.)
A second reason to write was given to me by my grandfather. He bewailed the fact he hadn’t written. He was, I think, roughly 75 years old at the time, and had lived a fine life, but had little in the way of a written record of how fine it was. He had to rely on memory alone, when looking back, and apparently a fog had descended over certain details. “I wish I had kept a diary!” he exclaimed. I was impressed. The man was calm and mild mannered, and such a display of passion was unusual. So I kept a diary.
A third reason to write was because I read “The Real Diary of a Real Boy” (1906) during the winter of 1961-1962, and glimpsed something hard to speak.
What impressed me, as a boy, was that the boy-writer, (there is argument about how much of the book was an actual boy’s diary and how much was a forgery fabricated by a middle-aged man remembering boyhood), is often a fool, but steals your heart all the same. As the boy writes he himself has no idea why he feels the way he feels, but you as a reader do understand. Although the lad misbehaves and deserves his comeuppances, you are in sympathy with him every step of the way. Or, at least, I was.
I think my life lacked such understanding. I felt that perhaps, in some way I didn’t understand, I could gain such understanding if I kept a diary, like the “real boy” did a century earlier.
Well, here it is, sixty-one years later, and my garden is a mire full of towering weeds, so perhaps it is time to retire from physical work and to merely work my fingers like a Rubinstein, being “a writer.”
With these thoughts in mind I went to the attic, where I store my old writing, and was, to be honest, appalled. I have written an amazing amount in sixty-one years, and in some ways the prospect of rereading it all was (and is) not the slightest bit appealing. It is best described by the simple phrase, “I don’t want to go there.”
It is not the writing from times of stress that distresses. Usually the stress leaves little time to write, so there are but brief notes, and the most exciting parts of life are under-described. However afterwards a sort of PTSD sets in, and the writing is so tedious a stalactite seems more speedy, developing its point. In essence exciting times get ten pages, and boring times get a thousand.
I had a little talk with my grandfather, (who left this world nearly a half century ago), a few days ago, and I basically told him he doesn’t know how lucky he was that he did not keep a diary. There may be a very good reason for the amnesia that afflicts all.
However I am stuck with the reality I created, which involves keeping records. Considering I can’t garden, it seems I should make use of the capacity I still have to harvest some good from the records I kept, which very few other people have.
To be blunt, as I sat down in the attic and began to poke through the heaps of old diaries, I did not feel blessed to have what other’s lacked. I felt accursed.
To have been so arrogant as to collect such piles of yellowing paper seemed like taking “selfies”, hour after hour, week after week, year after year. Of what use is such a heap of photographs? In some respects is seems as cold as kissing a mirror. Where is the love of others, midst such a focus on self?
When I looked upon my life’s work, from that particular angle, it seemed devoid of goodness. The ego was seizing a crown it did not deserve, like Macbeth killing Duncan. The result of such gain is what Macbeth states at his end:
Tomorrow, and
Tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace
From day to day
To the last syllable of
Recorded time,
And all our yesterdays
Have lighted fools
The way to dusty death.
Out! Out brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow;
A poor player that struts
And frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more.
It is a tale told by an idiot,
Full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
To be honest, without God, my life’s work truly is sound and fury, signifying nothing. I am no different from creatures of the swamp in Washington DC, who have seized the crown of power like a bunch of Macbeths, and who increasingly look like idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
However a small voice spoke to me, as I sat in the attic in my dejection. It nudged me, reminding me I hadn’t been totally selfish. I craved the understanding I glimpsed reading “The Real Diary of a Real Boy.” And understanding is not a thing which can co-exist with selfishness. It requires two people, one understanding and another understood.
When one keeps a diary much that one writes may be nothing one wishes to share with fellow mankind. It may be a rant, a prolonged outpouring of PTSD, full of unfair blaming and even hate, and one may wish to burn it when one is done, however this denies a secret fact: The diary is written to someone. Even if no such mortal exists, the diary talks to Someone who understands, even when the person scribbling doesn’t.
At some point, when feeling very misunderstood, and even agreeing with those who misunderstood me, when they opined that my writing wasn’t intelligible, I asked myself, “Who am I talking to, as I write this gibberish?” The only answer I could come up with was, “God”. For God alone could understand such gibberish.
I immediately felt better. That happens, when you feel understood, even if you yourself don’t understand yourself. Even if you are all wet, you find yourself singing in the rain.
In other words, even if you haven’t come up with the intellectual answers to whatever perplexes you, you can still feel understood. This is a darn good thing, for we are not Einsteins and there is much we all have to learn, yet we still can feel understood. We can rejoice in the pleasure of such understanding, and sing in the rain.
This sense of “feeling understood” is therefore a power, though we call it a “mood”. Even if one is an Atheist, being uplifted from Macbeth’s despair to singing-in-the-rain cannot be ignored. It must be accepted as a “factor in life”, even if not as a “Shepherd”.
I confess that, looking backwards through sixty-one years of tedious notes, I am grateful to the “Shepherd”. However, due to my great respect for Atheists, I will try to pretend blessings are merely a “factor in life.”
Looking back through my own tedious writing I often laugh despite myself because, midst two thousand words of blather, some imp within me speaks twenty words of very funny common sense. I think that, if I’m to be some sort of editor of myself, I likely should focus on such snippets of humor. Even if it is only a small part of my dreary prose, I think it is likely what kept me alive. (Also it will spare the reader much blather.)
However early in my life such wit could not find words, and had a habit of appearing as doodles. In grade school I got in trouble, as did my naughty peers, for cartoons. As I got older, such cartoons tended to appear about the edges of what I wrote, not to illustrate what I was writing, but for no reason I could see (but perhaps a psychologist could guess at.)
An example of such an illustrated poem dates from January 28, 1970, when I was still sixteen. It is such a confused mess I think only God could fully understand it, though some mere mortals will laugh at it in a semi-understanding way, (and some psychologists will make guesses and be wrong.)
The poem itself is serious (for a sixteen-year-old) and has to do with whether it is worth the wait. (Likely a young woman was involved.) However the surrounding cartoons fascinate me for they represent sidetracks my mind branched off onto as I wrote the poem. In the future I would often find my writing wandered off onto such sidetracks and got lost in a wilderness of blather. Cartoons are better.
It is fun to play the psychologist, looking through the cartoons. They are actually remarkably organized, in the way only a creative subconscious can manage. There seems to be a lot of trinities. Clockwise, starting at the upper right, we see a person is falling, and a trinity of responses. Two are indifferent, with the first fishing the depths
And the second a picture of nonchalance
But the third is rushing to rescue, though one wonders if the rescuer is capable.
Moving on, the next trinity also involves falling. We see three skiers, the standing, the falling, and the fallen,
Moving right along, the next trinity is divided into a loner, naked and plunging to the depths
And partners scaling the heights
The trinity is then examined from another angle, in greater detail
And the trinity becomes the devilish, the saintly, and the…um…the undecided? There then seems to be some thought given to whether the undecided is a “puppit” or not.
The idea of being a puppet apparently leaves the loner brokenhearted
It is worth running away from
However the partners fare better
My manuscript may not rival William Blake’s illustrated poems
But there is something wonderfully cheerful about making a cartoon out of sorrow. It seems to involve feeling understood without needing to understand.
After all, at age sixteen I misunderstood many things, and was under the illusion that masculinity involved being as promiscuous as James Bond, and that virginity was shameful, and therefore a poem about “waiting” cannot be expected to be dripping with deep spiritual understanding. In fact I was cruising for a bruising, and heading for The School Of Hard Knocks at warp speed. I had many reasons to be depressed, which is what you get when you think wrong is right. Yet I managed to feel understood.
This brings me back to the subject of who you are writing to, when you write a diary you want no one to see. For that matter, who was Macbeth talking to, in his soliloquy of abject despair?
I think it must be God, due to the healing that comes from it. It is what is good about having “a good cry”. It is what makes self-expression so refreshing.
Not that we don’t require some restraint. An abusive person likely will say his or her self-expression feels good. However if God is not within, a hole corrodes at ones heart, and one ends up like Macbeth, and life “is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
In any case, I’m through a page one in my attic……. 20,000 to go.
Sunrise's Swansong 