So much to discuss, so much forgotten, oh and continuing a story at some point

Well I have been out of town and out of touch for the last ten days and even more considering we were getting ready to leave beforehand.

Yes, thanks for asking, I did have a great trip. And watch out I am completely out of sorts right now.

We were in Spain and I am recovering from a day long journey back and wild weather once we got back. We get all the way back to DFW and then the weather goes crazy. I do have to be grateful that we landed before it went wild, but the ride home from the airport was almost two hours not because of traffic, but because of the storms that hit late last night. Just leaving the airport complex was almost an hour. The whole-time visibility was barely fifty feet and our ride stopped multiple times on the shoulder because of this visibility problem. The winds were so strong they were blowing branches off the trees that lined the road. One branch was so big it stopped traffic completely till people could go around it. And it is raining today off and on. And normally this wouldn’t be too bad, especially since we took this day off to recuperate, but it was raining almost the whole time we were in Spain. I am a bit tired of the rain right now.

There is so much to discuss, but we do have one responsibility that I need to address this evening, so this will be brief.  Actually, I have many, but spent over an hour on hold with the IRS and then when I got someone and was speaking to them and the line disconnected. Now calling back they are saying they are too busy to take anymore calls. Ugh!!!!!

The main one though is a meeting the better half and I need to attend. Other than that, taking it easy today.

I enjoyed Spain and the better half took a beaucoup of pictures, so we have the memories to last us. I am an old American I have determined. There is much different and adapting was somewhat difficult.  They like their ham in Spain and I am not too big of a fan of ham and it gives me indigestion unless I eat very small amounts. It was interesting though to eat some and tasted much better than it does here in the States. At one restaurant they were treating us to some ham they thought was special and it was very tasty. I did have a couple of very small slices. The wine is a different story. We definitely had more than a glass or two throughout the visit and enjoyed it all very much.  We kept trying to go to restaurants to eat Tapas, but wherever we went it seemed like we never had that opportunity or were just missing the boat so to speak. We did eat a variety of food we had never had before. At one place which was probably the most fun they lined up plates on the counter to choose from and brought around hot dishes throughout the evening. Everything was charged by the size of the stick that came out of the food. You just piled them up on the table as you ate them. Interesting concept, but it led you to try many different items since each serving was equivalent to a small sandwich. One interesting plate I had was smoked salmon wrapped around cream cheese glazed with eel sauce. There were some dishes I tried and please do not ask me what they were, just be happy this old dog could try a new plate or three. One was scary as heck looking, but I went for it and it was quite good. No, I did not eat any squid, octopus or whatever. I have tried that before and no thanks. My daughter and wife did get fried calamari at one restaurant and two or three bites is the extent I eat of that.

We did much and walked an extraordinary amount, but all in all a great trip. I would say we would go back, but since we have such a limited travel budget for the last ten years, I would prefer new travel experiences. If we ever have the budget to have an extended trip in Europe we would circle back through and maybe see either the north western portion of Spain or the Barcelona area. We were mainly in Madrid with a couple of day trips to other cities. I do have to say Toledo was great and could have been better, but the whole day was full scale raining, so it dampened the whole mood. (pun intended and meant).  Glad to have gone and glad to be home.

Again, so much to discuss and I do not know if I will circle back. The Sri Lanka situation was made even more frightening since we were out of the country and apparently there was some small-scale plan to attack Sevilla while we were in Spain and that was a city we had as a possible destination. The Mueller report came out and as always too much political hyperbole by both sides and no real plan to address it properly.

I do want to get back to my story so will work to include in my next post. Time to get ready for tonight’s meeting. And if I get my act together, I will post a few pictures of our trip.

Cheers

Well another April Fool’s day has come and gone……. Plus, a bit of the start of another story

So, I got pranked on April Fool’s day at work, quick one, but 15 seconds of frustration for me and 10 seconds of laughs for everyone else. Life went on except I am sicker than a dog right now.

Otherwise the Democrats are still clueless, Trump is still an unlaughable fraud and the Republican Party has their head so far up their back end it is unrecognizable.

And in a Vanity Fair piece a hedge fund billionaire talks about his fear of revolution, you know, he seems not to be a fan of pitch forks stuck up his back end. What thoroughly ticked me off is he proposes some very worthwhile public policy goals. Here we are after almost forty years of wage stagnation for the middle class and one billionaire who makes money off market movement, not real business is smelling the tea leaves and thinks better public policy is a good idea. Shaking my frigging head. Seriously, so what is he going to do about it, probably nothing and sell (sail would be appropriate, but sell is more his style) off into the sunset of American Democracy on his 180-foot yacht.  And add the CEO of JP Morgan, Senor Dimon is going to donate $375 Million to some fund for better education or something. So, he wants a few people proficient in technology serfs so his business can survive all the hacking many corporations have to endure. Seriously, he is cherry picking some education initiative he thinks will make a real dent in America’s lack of education especially in technology. I thought business people were supposed to invest their money wisely. Why doesn’t he take some of that money and invest in his lobbyists lobbying for better public education all around; or better healthcare, or initiatives to open up more opportunity for all lowering college expenses or invest that money to help close the wage gap he so immensely enjoys. So, who is more clueless, the elitists or the Democrats? A tie I guess.

The Democrats should pursue the problems with Trump and his fraud, but they should not make this the sole reason they are in the headlines. They need to spend their days creating strong moderate public policy initiatives to force Trump’s hand with the part of his base that cares about this country and their well-being. Not everyone who supports Trump is an alt right nut trying to destroy our country and Constitution. Many are hard working Americans being defrauded. And the best way to wake them up is plaster the print and airwaves with proposals for Social Security, Medicare and Healthcare, Education, affordable college, real infrastructure initiatives, and tax reform of the tax reform. If anything, saying you have a better tax plan after people are seeing some discrepancies between what they heard and what they are getting might help. And policy on lowering tax burden on social security payments will make more than a few Trump supporters stand up and listen. Trump would not be able to handle a policy battle. He can’t and won’t. The Democrats need to stay calm through his madness and keep proposing solid public policy. If they need any ideas, my 2012 platform is still available, otherwise they need to get creative themselves. Trumpet public policy between now and 2020 and keep the investigations on the back burner publicly so when Trump leaves office some of his base will have left him. The alt right destroyers of Democracy will still cry foul and attempt to fight, but the majority of our country will be headed in the right direction. Or we can do what I always say we need to do,,,,,, we need new parties that represent the Middle and working class. Honestly, I am more conservative than my policy initiatives, but I am also practical. Go back and read my stuff from 2012. It may not be perfect, but is better than anything right now, oh except for that clueless billionaire’s ideas mentioned above. And they sound so familiar to me…hint hint hint

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And occasionally, I type a bunch of words trying to coalesce them into a viable story. As regular readers know, I do this over several posts, adding bits and pieces in an ad hoc fashion so these stories take some strange twists and turns, and some have serious plot holes. Well believe it or not I have started the process of editing these stories that hopefully there may be real product from my ideas. For the time being this is an idea that in some shape form or fashion has come up in my imagination before and reared its head again today. This is truly based on this one idea that I am about to start today, beyond what is about to be written is going to be interesting to find out. And so it goes

He woke up walking along a corridor. Waking up is the only way he could describe it. He could say he became conscious but waking up seemed more appropriate. He felt like he came out of a dream of some life he could not remember and found himself in this corridor. The corridor was not too thin, not as wide as maybe a city street, yet much wider than walking down the hall of an office building. For some reason he thought about what he was wearing, taking notice of this was important, yet he did not know why. He was wearing pants like what we think of as blue jeans, something similar to a flannel shirt untucked with a t-shirt underneath, and tennis shoes, nothing fancy, a nice pair of walking shoes. He did not use this description in his head. He knew he was wearing something over his body, for us to understand though this description is used. There was nothing on his head. He felt comfortable.

Also, as he walked he heard the continual hum of some type of machinery or activity coming from inside the tall structures that lined both sides of the corridor he walked. The corridor was long, yet he had not noticed. He was just walking and walking along the same corridor. The same tall structures lined both sides. And the stretched up into something he did not recognize, in fact he could not determine how tall were the structures. He could feel the top of them, maybe not see them. Looking up he saw what looked like a horizon where they met something, but he still couldn’t distinguish a definite top of the structure versus what they stretched into. Also, as he walked along the corridor there would be other corridors that branched off at precise right angles. He didn’t measure them; it is a description for us so we might have an idea of the environment he found himself. The corridor seemed to have no end.

He kept walking and passing by each turn. It was quite a while before he even thought maybe he should turn into one of these side corridors. He stopped at one and peered down it for some time. Time as we think about it did not exist for him or at least in this place. He stared without understanding why he was staring. The corridor looked the same as the one he was walking. He did not know of making a decision, yet he was deciding. He stayed in the same corridor and walked on. The corridor continued and so did his walking. The sound also continued. Occasionally he sensed changes in the sound, a pitch higher, a change in, was there a minor repetitive change, or the humming become interspersed with very subtle breaks, maybe nanoseconds of silence in between the hum. He could not tell exactly what he was hearing, he just sensed something in the humming wasn’t 100 percent smooth.

There were also flickers of light in the structures, or was it flashes, or lights on in the structures yet he could only see partially in a structure. He couldn’t tell. He became aware of the slight differences in the sound and the potential for some type of lighting maybe even different colored lights only after having walked a long time. He did not remember when he became aware or if this was a change. It was slowly dawning on him as he walked. He started to consciously watch and listen and see and he stopped. To what? Did it matter? He wasn’t sure, but since he noticed the sound and lights, he paid more attention. And he continued to walk. How far had he walked? This was not something he thought about it. It is something more we think about. Is he tired? He didn’t know. He had senses. He had feelings, but tired wasn’t something that concerned him. Time didn’t exist. Distance didn’t exist. He just kept walking trying to perceive the slight changes in the humming and the lights that seemed to appear in the structures. And suddenly it occurred to him this may be endless and then that thought may have come about because an end seemed to appear. In the distance along the long straight line of structures something about the perception of the structures coming together seemed different. As you know from basic elementary art class you draw two lines coming together at the horizon point whenever you want to show something going on for a distance. He had seen the structures down the corridor always coming together at some type of horizon point as he walked, now he saw them seem to stop farther down the corridor. Something was there, yet he could not tell what it was. What we call curiosity hit him. He did not feel curious as we feel, but now he was driven to reach this new point and find whatever it may be. Unconsciously he picked up the pace.

To be continued.

And Cheers

Make many many many babies

And make more (and I am angry, I will get to that shortly)

Why, you ask?

Simple, it gives you a better chance you have of someone taking care of you in old age. Trite you reply. Well please go to a nursing home or a retirement home or a Medicaid facility or skilled care facility or wherever and get ready to realize how sad we are as a society. Okay maybe a bit much, I do know for a fact many people take care of their parents, maybe even a large majority in some shape form or fashion. My wife and I took care of ours, I know many people in various scenarios at work, church, and friends and acquaintances that do.

Yet go. You will be amazed or worse shocked at how many older people are there day in and day out with no visitors. And if you go regularly the depression of it all will scare you.  We tried taking care of our parents by ourselves. The task is overwhelming even with help. With my Mother, she lived in a true retirement home so there was someone always around, she felt good because she had her own apartment in the building and we could visit regularly and if emergencies happened, which they did, they had staff to call an ambulance if needed. If she got sick, we could get her to the doctor or hospital. She had a debilitating disease and it wore on her over time. Again, we had help and a family member who is a nurse who could help us with understanding the problems she was going through. Even there which was nice, had social events, group outings, etc,,, there were people whose only contact with others was with other residents, not their family. And you could tell in their faces when us and other families would come to Sunday dinner or whenever to visit. My Mom spent her entire pension check just to live there. It was nice, but not fancy. I can tell you I was glad she had the resources, plus me and my siblings.

Now imagine someone of modest means or on Medicaid and no family or no family that cared. Wow, depression city. My Mother in Law lived off a small pension and social security. She had Alzheimer’s so we took care of her at home for as long as we could. This is very draining on a family, especially since our children our spread out in ages and the younger two were still living at home. Alzheimer’s is a very sad disease and the kids struggled with trying to understand what was happening with their Grandmother. Eventually we had to put her in a facility that took Medicaid. And wow there were way too many people there who never saw visitors. This was many years ago but going there with my wife or visiting my Mom for the last couple of years left a lasting impression on me. Scares me to think what we are doing as a society.

So why exactly am I mad. First the above, where are the families. Boy you need to make sure not to piss off the kids, huh? Or, what actually happened in their lives where they are left to rot on a bed being looked at by caregivers with minimal training so they the corporations do not have to pay much. The wonder is so many of these caregivers’ care and get involved with their residents. Minor miracle there it seems. Anyway, having seen it for years, I still am left wondering what do we do?

And this is why I am mad. The same people who scream they are pro-life, do nothing about life once people are born. Pro-life is respect of life from conception to natural death. Alpha – omega and all in between. Yet do they care about education, equal opportunity, living wage, treating each other with respect, and being with people in their last days to share those fleeting moments or help us with protecting social security and Medicare/Medicaid? Being pro-life has nothing to do with being Republican or Democrat; it has everything to do with life. Everything!

Yes, I saw Unplanned this weekend. Fair warning if you are a bit squeamish, (and I am), there are a couple moments in the film that are a bit rough. Apparently, this is why it has a “R” rating. I encourage you to go because it is a wakeup call. Yes, it is definitely one sided. It is not some major production like Star Wars or a Marvel movie. It is very simple. You do not have to agree with some of the evangelical approach to pro-life, but it is a start. If you want a more heart-warming pro-life story read “The Diplomat” on www.Smashwords.com by the same author as the Red Chair. There are many stories that have the same titles, so match up those two stories to find the story noted here.

The key though is birth is a start, not the end of a pro-life journey and way too many people simply ignore what is truly needed to be pro-life from conception to natural death. Way too many people, including certain politicians who turn on the pro-life verbiage when it is convenient, but what about the 600 other issues we face in life? It just doesn’t make the edge of the radar screen with them. We allow our politicians to tell us what they represent, when in actuality, they only represent themselves and their words are so different from their actions.

So, if you want to argue with a pro-life person. Start at the end of life and work backwards, if they can meet you there, then you truly have someone who believes in pro-life. Do not bother with anyone else, they are not the real McCoy.

Cheers