HAPPY PLEASE BE SAFE THANKSGIVING

 Until the era of trains, freeways and cheap flight tickets the holidays were pretty much an at home holiday. At best we would go to the grandparents in Eugene and the Portland contingent would make the two hour drive to Eugene. That's two hours on the 5. I have no idea how long it would have taken on old 99. I know it took us almost an hour to do the just under forty miles on the truck route of hwy 59.

So this zipping off to the other side of the country for the holidays has really only been going on since the early sixties. Come on, It's one Thanksgiving and maybe one Christmas. To try and make sure there are no empty places at the tables next year

And I'm reminded of a scene in the movie 1776. John and Abigail Adams are having a long distance mental conversation. John has been gone for months. Why doesn't he come home for a visit. "It's only three hundred miles. If you left right now you could be home in only eight days." 

That was brought on by the digging through the family tree. If the Thanksgiving holiday had been celebrated in the colonies getting the family together, well probably wouldn't happen. At least not very often. If James and Abigail Heaton, living in the colony of New Jersey had decided to risk the North Atlantic they would have had to leave in October. Hope the seas and the storms were cooperative spend at least three weeks at sea aboard a boat about a hundred feet long with no passenger cabins. Probably landing at Liverpool. 

Once you are back in England where do you go? The Heatons are from West Yorkshire in the north and the Paxons hail from Buckingham county near London. It's a little further to London but the abysmal roads are even more abysmal the further north you travel. Which is why the whole trip would never have happened in the first place. Catch the Pilgrim Adventure on TCM sometime. I assume the boats were a little better by the seventeen seventies but, The North Atlantic in the fall was no joke and you didn't sail if you didn't have to.

And yes, I probably should have had this bright idea last week before folks started traveling. You catch that note "lost at sea" for a Massachusetts man, or shipwrecked for a a couple of guys from the Viking era you stop and think. To Skype or Zoom or cell phone for this Thanksgiving is no great sacrifice to make sure that you all are there for the next Thanksgiving.

And a special thanks to all the folks who have to work on this day. And probably would have been working anyway. First responders, doctors, nurses, care givers, those deployed overseas or on bases on the other side of the country. Saying thank you for your service seems very trite, but it's all I've got. 

COMIC BOOKS WITH EXTRAS

 Way back in the dark ages, when I was buying comic books. The comic usually had a one page prose story tucked in. Don't remember many but, there was one about a frontier doctor that introduced the idea of the placebo. Don't remember what was wrong with the patient but the sugar pills worked. And introduced the idea that sometimes the problem was in the patient's mind not her body. 

One story ws about a young cowboy who had spent all his extra money on a silver decorated saddle. The ranch owner had a young daughter who loved her pony just about as much as the cowboy loved that saddle. One night the stable caught fire and he could only save one thing. His saddle or the pony. And this being early sixties, he saved the pony. And had his saddle replaced. 

There was the story about the Piltdown Man. Presented at a time when there were still very few hominid fossils and no way to date fossils except by analyzing the stratigraphy of a site. Most of them were from France and Germany. There was some headscratching from the start but England had her very own early human. Pride trumped asking too many questions for nearly forty years. 

The skull was from a modern human, the jaw fragments and altered teeth were from an Orangutang. The whole set of fragments treated chemically to make them look old. The scientists involved with either discovery or support were safely dead and, you probably don't blush in the afterlife. It's main importance now is that it is still being dragged out by critics of natural selection. Look up the evidence you are criticizing for crying out loud. 

And there was this little poem that probably stuck the longest and ignited a life long love of English history. "King Henry VIII to six wives was wedded. One died, one survived, two divorced, two beheaded. Heck this was Oregon logging town I'd never even heard of divorce. And I knew old kings had a lot of power but never heard of any that had them killed.

The devil, so they say is in the details. Henry was married to Katherine of Aragon for more than twenty years. Sons she bore him, they all died. His one daughter Mary survived. Took some study to understand why Henry was so determined to have a son. The idea of a woman reigning in her own name had only happened once in English history. Matilda daughter of Henry I, and that led to civil war. Marry a subject and the other lords are likely to be jelous at best, potential rebels at worst. Marry a foreigner and your kingdom is likely to get dragged into foreign policy decisions that don't benefit you country. Mary discovered that.

So he kept trying. Dragged England out of the Roman church to do it. Anne Boleyn gave him a daughter Elizabeth and may have had at least one, possibly two miscariages. Jane had a son, and died doing it. Anne of Cleves never had a chance to try. The political reasons for a Protestant marriage disappeared. Anne accepted annulment and a very nice settlement in exchange for cooperation. Heck, look at it from her point of view. A palace, some manor houses, three thousand pounds a year, freedom and indepencence, She was a rarity. A woman of rank with no man except the king to tell her what to do. He styled her his "sister." She must have been fairly happy. Even after Henry died a few years later she didn't attempt to either marry or return to Cleves. 

Fat, ailing and ill Henry tried again. Anne may have been charged with adultery on trumped up charged but there was no doubt about the guilt of Kathryn Howard. Barely more than a teenager she was a pawn in the behind the scenes tug of war between the religous reformers and the Catholic party. Henry married one last time. Katherine Parr was twice widowed with experience dealing in older husbands with health problems. She managed to outlive Henry, barely. Wives were pawns in the religious rivalries. 

But what would have happened if one or two of the those sones Katherine of Aragon lost. With a young Henry or Richard safely in the nursery the other five marriages probably would never have happened. No young King  Edward being brought up Protestant by his Seymore uncles and ambitions lords. And more importantly, no Elizabeth. Navigating the tides of between Lutheran Germany, Catholic France and Spain and, Spain's rebelious provinces in the low countries. There might have been a queen Mary of Scotland but, she wouldn't have been plotting to become queen of England. No armada from Spain. Without the covert help and financial support of England what would have happened in the provinces that became Belgium and the Netherlands? Even poor battered Ireland might have had a different histoty if the religious wars had played out differently.

Perhaps no James I, no Charles I, perhaps no English Civil war and where would we be now? Interesting thought experiment. And a side note. While Henry VII raised a fairly healthy family Arthur the oldest died young. Henry VIII managed three between three wives. Henry's elder sister married a prince who became king of Scotland and only one child lived long enough to take the throne. His younger sister married a good healthy Englishman and not only lost her son early but died young herself. I'd love to see what that Tudor DNA looked like. 

Like most kids I read comic books. But ours had a little extra that probably can't be found now.

SHE TOOK A RING FROM HER FINGER

Watched the documentary again today. It's on YouTube. Love the epilogue. The kids running up to him, can't pick them up with his bad back. But smiling. His desk was open in the middle. I can remember shot of John Jr. playing under the desk while his dad worked. And got curious. Jackie was coming off a C Section less than four months before. They lost a son five and half weeks premature to a syndrome they could probably handle now. 

She didn't often go on those political junkets with Kennedy. Makes me wonder if they saw the trip as a chance to just get out of Washington. And for the most part it was a good trip. Crowds were welcoming. People smiling. Then the shots rang out. And it reverberated around the world. And I will hear those damn, muffled, one hundred beats per minute drums for the rest of my life. 

 Mom and I stayed up last night and watched the documentary Four Days in November on TCM. As the story unfolded I recognized something that I was probably too young to realize fifty years ago. How much we owed Jackie Kennedy. By Monday she was done crying, at least for a few hours. Veiled in black and straight as a blade she led that procession from the Capitol to the Cathedral.

He wasn't perfect. Neither was she. He had flaws that probably would have kept him from running in our "we have to know every last secret of your life" era. And what does it say about us?

Their marriage had bent, but it hadn't broken. Air Force One was waiting. The casket was still open when she took off her wedding ring. Then the casket was closed and the journey back to Washington and a waiting country began. The ring was returned to her later but the image caught and held. When senator Mike Mansfield delivered the eulogy under the Capitol Rotunda on Sunday November 24 it became a refrain.

There was a sound of laughter; in a moment, it was no more. And so she took a ring from her finger and placed it in his hands.

There was a wit in a man neither young nor old, but a wit full of an old man's wisdom and of a child's wisdom, and then, in a moment it was no more. And so she took a ring from her finger and placed it in his hands.

There was a man marked with the scars of his love of country, a body active with the surge of a life far, far from spent and, in a moment, it was no more. And so she took a ring from her finger and placed it in his hands.

There was a father with a little boy, a little girl and a joy of each in the other. In a moment it was no more, and so she took a ring from her finger and placed it in his hands.

There was a husband who asked much and gave much, and out of the giving and the asking wove with a woman what could not be broken in life, and in a moment it was no more. And so she took a ring from her finger and placed it in his hands, and kissed him and closed the lid of a coffin.

A piece of each of us died at that moment. Yet, in death he gave of himself to us. He gave us of a good heart from which the laughter came. He gave us of a profound wit, from which a great leadership emerged. He gave us of a kindness and a strength fused into a human courage to seek peace without fear.

He gave us of his love that we, too, in turn, might give. He gave that we might give of ourselves, that we might give to one another until there would be no room, no room at all, for the bigotry, the hatred, prejudice, and the arrogance which converged in that moment of horror to strike him down.

In leaving us -- these gifts, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, President of the United States, leaves with us. Will we take them, Mr. President? Will we have, now, the sense and the responsibility and the courage to take them?

I pray to God that we shall and under God we will.

DREAMS OR NIGHTMARES?

Fifty seven years ago today, give or take a couple of hours, I was in eighth grade homeroom. Our assistant principal entered the room, gave Mrs. Redmond a piece of paper. President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas, Texas. Looking back I don't know if admin thought it was better to go from room to room or if they just couldn't trust their voices over the intercom. Presidents had been murdered before but, this happened on TV. Until the funeral on Monday the country basically ground to a halt. The secret service practically had multiple breakdowns when LBJ announced he was walking to the cathedral with everybody else. If I'm afraid to go out where the American people can see me I don't deserve to be president. Or words to that effect. That day in Dallas and what came after changed this country. I believe the fallout is still happening. 

 This weekend is the fiftieth anniversary of death of a president. If you were in grade school or older on November 22 you’ll know who I’m talking about. If you weren’t you’re probably wondering what all the hub bub is about. I’ve never really thought of myself as part of a declining generation before, but that death in Dallas marked the beginning of a series of events that almost defined a generation.

Montgomery, Dallas, Birmingham, Selma, Memphis, Kent State, Watts, Los Angeles, Vietnam. History landed in our living rooms every time we turned on the evening news. The Summer of Love turned into decades of destruction that haunt us like hungry ghosts. Good laws had unintended consequences. The voting rights act allows minorities to vote. Gerrymandering state houses work to make sure they get to vote for as few candidates as possible.

Integrating the suburbs meant that those with money and mobility could leave the cities with their crowded streets and poverty behind. The city became the place where you worked, played, bought drugs and headed home to the house, minivan and 2.5 kids. Safe in gated communities we could ignore the blasted neighborhoods with too few jobs, crumbling schools and damn few local role models. Public spaces are turned into “free speech” zones or strip malls where there’s no “public” space at all.

Vietnam taught the military and the elected hired help two important lessons. Pay somebody else to do the dirty work and keep the media as far away from the action as possible. The mid seventies to the early nineties were years of death, torture and displacement for hundreds of thousands of people living in Central and South America as the US channeled aid, equipment and millions of tax dollars into the pockets of brutal dictators who claimed they were fighting “subversives” and our war on drugs. Turns out the war on drugs was a great way to channel off the books military aid into those countries.

The Great Communicator challenged Gorbachev to “tear down this wall” in Berlin while our proxies were blowing up fields, shanties, tenements and refugees in El Salvador and Guatamala; it almost never made the evening news. It sure as hell didn’t make it into the local papers.

When we finally chose to do our own dirty work in the Middle East the military made damn sure that the correspondents weren’t allowed to go nosing around on their own. And some of the ones who did try ended up being murdered by the extremists on the other side. Now technology makes it possible for a technician in a control room in the continental US to push a button and kill without ever seeing the ones who die. No more Ed Murrows hitching rides on British bombers and filing reports on the missions.

Voters put a Black man in the White House in 2008 and we pretended that this proved we were living in a post racial society while every new day proves that the divides are deeper and deadlier than ever.

Who knows. Maybe this generation has to pass before we can finally heal the divisions and finally make at least part of the dream Jack Kennedy described for us when he took office half a century ago.

BUGS (CAT) AND THE GREAT WINE EXPLOSION

I'm looking for something else in my blog. and still not finding it. However I ran across this. If you know cats and have a good imagination you can see this "situation" play out. Drenched cat who only wants to get away. Pandemoniam. And a laugh at the end of a week that really could use a good laugh or ten. And this as I am hanging on to my last good nerve.

Without further ado. "Bugs and the Great Wine Explosion." And can you just imagine the mess. 

This piece is an absolute riot. It would make a great cartoon short. I believe DH stands for dear husband. As for Bugs levitating when hit with the wine cork? Back when Midge was about six months old and we were still using the laundry basket for an upside down play pen. She was by the front door when the mailman left a package and rang the doorbell. We don't get a lot of company and at that point the Midgelet absolutely, totally hated doors. Doorbell rang and about five seconds later she was in the back closet. Eyes about the size of saucers. And still in the laundry basket play pen.

"Bugs and The Great Wine Explosion

By Franny Syufy

It all started soooo innocently...
DH and I were strolling down memory lane decided to revist our ill-spent youth by buying a bottle of Asti Spumonte, a sparkling wine that sort of tastes like apples. We wanted it for dinner and DH decided to put it in the freezer...where we promptly forgot about it.

When we got it out of the freezer, it looked pretty frozen. For reasons that can only be described as male, DH decided it to open the bottle just as Bugs, with his back turned to him, decided to eat some kibble half a kitchen away. Before I could yell, "Contents under pressure, you idiot!" DH popped the cork.

Which flew. Across the room. Hitting Bugs on the butt. With considerable force. He levitated four feet vertically into the air — just in time to meet the stream of Asti Spumonte ice winging its way through the air. Mid-air collision: cat, half-frozen wine, DH trying to save cat.

Howls. From Bugs and DH, who catches Bugs, claws first, because they are now fully extended and working with piston-like energy in full getaway mode because DH has the bottle, which is making splurting noises and foaming in an alarming manner, in the other hand . Bugs uses DH's chest as a launching pad and races off in blind panic through the livingroom, showering flecks of wine ice everywhere he goes.

And where does he take cover? In our bed of course, under the duvet, rolling wildly to get the nasty-smelling cold stuff OFF his back. Which meant, of course, that he had to have a bath, because not only is he sticky, but we're concerned that wine just can't be good for brown cats. Although Tum, whom we caught lapping at the pool of melted wine in the kitchen, clearly did not agree, given the protest he made when we locked him downstairs for the duration of clean-up.

Anyways, Bugs, wet and completely disgusted, has banished us to the bench for a prolonged time-out with prejudice. Anybody like a glass of winecicle?

- drunementon

Franny's Note: "the bench" refers to the "Mean Mommy Bench," aka MMB, where forum members are relegated for acts cruel and inhumane toward cats. You'll find one or more of us huddled there at any given time, sharing hot cocoa, ice tea, or wine, depending on the season and our degree of remorse."

SILENCE

 I wrote this just over five years ago. When these words were written I never in my wildest nightmares imagined this country would end up where the last four years have taken us. I still hightly recommend Lernoux's Children of God. If you can find a copy. It's out of print. The internet archive has copies you just have to go through the hassle of reborrowing the book every hour. 

I’m not sure of the date; it was probably early to mid seventies.

“The atmosphere in the church was tense. Crowded inside were several hundred young Brazilians, there to attend an afternoon Mass for a fellow student killed by the military police. Outside the church, stationed in the plaza and all along the thoroughfares that crisscross this part of downtown Rio De Janeiro, were soldiers from the 1^st Division of the Brazilian Army.

Earlier in the week, after the first funeral mass for the student, mounted police had attacked all those leaving the church. On the morning of this, the second Mass, the city had been readied as though for war, with machine-gun nests at the crossroads, armored cars, barbed wire entanglements, and aerial patrols. When the Mass ended, the unarmed people inside the church would have to confront the military. Set in the middle of a large plaza/parking lot that straddles Avenida Presidente Vargas, the Candelaria church is an unprotected island, with no narrow side streets or alleys for refuge. Surely more people would die this afternoon.

One of the priests forbade any in the congregation to leave the church ahead of the clergy. Dressed in alb and stole, the fifteen priests than followed Bishop Jose Castro Pinto out into the plaza, where, holding one another by the hand, they formed a line to confront the drawn sabers of a row of mounted military police. Slowly, slowly, this strange procession forced the horses to fall back. The priests then moved down Avenida Presidente Vargas to Avenida Rio Branco, the crossroads of downtown Rio. Forming a protective arc around Candelaria until the last person had left. It was only then, in the crossroads, that the cavalry and soldiers lashed into the crowd with their batons, hurling tear gas grenades, but at least there was somewhere to flee, someplace to hide”  Cry of the People by Penny Lernoux pp 313-314. The US media lapped up the picture of the student confronting the tank at Tiananmin Square in China. Nowhere have I ever seen a picture of this. Fourteen men against an army. Standing between death and their people. 

Of course we have to protect our liberties. And we protect our freedom by working to protect the freedom of others. Too often since WWII we turned away, looked away, sat in the corner with our fingers in our ears, eyes closed, humming. Loudly. Until the nineties the excuse was “the commies are coming, the commies are coming.” Since 2001 it’s “the terrorists are coming, the terrorists are coming.” 

We not only closed our eyes and ears to what was happening in Latin America from the sixties to the nineties. We aided, abetted, trained, paid; gave aid, comfort and cold hard cash to murderers and torturers. The few in this country who tried to ring the firebell were denounced as traitors, communist sympathizers if not actual communists. Sound familiar? Only now the cry traitors, cowards, etc. etc, so on and so forth. Rush, Glenn, Sarah, Michelle, Alan, all the rest and especially Mitt. Are you out there? 

Trouble is, and I can’t remember who said it or find the quote in Lernoux’s book again, “you can’t spread democracy by killing people” whether they’re farmers accused of aiding subversives tribesmen living too close to the drone strike.

Pastor Niemoller’s lament updated for the late twentieth and twenty first century.

They came for the Indians in the rain forest, but it those trees and those Indians didn't live in my country and I’m not an Indian so I didn't object.

They came for the farmers trying to scratch out a living for their families. And I’m not a mestizo farmer so I didn't speak out.

They came for those who tried to protect the rain forests and all who live in them. The forest is so big how can it all be destroyed? I still didn't speak.

They came for the teachers. And still I didn't raise my voice.

They came for the workers trying to organize some kind of unions. My silence was deafening.

They came for the lay church workers, the nuns, the brothers, the missionaries. My voice was lost in a black hole.

They came for the priests, a bishop or three and one archbishop. Hello! Is there anyone out there?

Now they've come to my country. For the immigrants, the Muslims, for those who fight for enough to feed their families, for those who try to protect the land and those who live from the land, for those with skin a different color, for those who call God or the Goddess by a different name. And finally they came for me and there was only silence. 

To be honest I got to the end of this, it's been awhile since I've reread it, and it was a kick in the stomach. I was reworking Neimoller's words. I haven't been silent but three years worth of illness, rehab, moving to the other side of the state, I haven't been very vocal either. Damn. 

SLASHING AT THE TIES THAT BIND

I'm digging through older blog entries looking for some specific information when I ran across this piece from right after the 2012 election. Not only has nothing changed, Most of it gotten worse. Perhaps we have finally hit a tipping point. Keep all the voters that put us over the top this year energized along with the rest of us.  

For nearly forty years the right has waged an unrelenting assault on some of the ideas that help hold our society together.

The belief that anyone would want to make a career of public service is derided. Career politicians they’re called and not to be trusted. When the cat is sick I don’t go to the Buick garage and when the car needs work I don’t go to the vet.  The myth that rank amateurs can do the nation’s business leaves the door wide open for the think tanks and lobbyists to assume control. Paul Ryan never did explain his budget plans if R & R were elected. Rumor has it that his budget and suggestions for the budget came from lobbying organizations and think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation which might explain why he couldn’t explain the figures. Forgot to do his homework.

Which brings us to the second umbrella idea.  The law and the judges that interpret it. From the time of Edward Coke in the seventeenth century most of us have accepted that there has to be a final arbiter. And individual judge or a panel of jurists with the final say on what the law says. I don’t always agree with the results, but I don’t try to undercut their authority just because I don’t agree with the results. Over and over we hear the term “activist judge’ when the right doesn't agree with the results. And that the majority should rule. Never admitting to themselves that there might be a time when they are in the minority and needing protection. There has to be a final, hopefully neutral arbiter.  And we all need to remember that where there is one there is a majority of one and the courts are the last protection for those majorities of one.

Now on to the teachers and the education system. How can teachers do their jobs when the respect they need to do that job is constantly undercut.  Laws that allow wet behind the ears kids to refuse to learn what they need to know to compete in science with other countries because it might go against their belief in a cobbled together, cherry picked set of scriptures that were never meant to be taken literally in the first place. I was taught genetics in biology at the U of O by guys who’d been put up for the Nobel Prize for heaven’s sake. I’d have no more dared question them than I could fly to the moon. At least until I’d taken a few classes. And yes I question my faith but it wasn’t caused by anything I learned in the science class room.

And in the last two election cycles we’re being warned to distrust our fellow citizens. With a solution in search of a problem the drum beat of “voter fraud” has been heard in state after state. Even though there is almost no evidence of voter fraud. And the little we've seen this election cycle appears to have been almost all on the Republican side. 

So who benefits when the groups that help hold society together are discredited and demoralized. The would be puppet masters. The would be puppet masters who may have to wait just a little longer to remake America in their image. And the excuses that are coming out of the right are absolutely delicious.  

If I ran a business that took a shellacking on the scale of Tuesday's election I'd be on the phone to my customers wanting to know what the hell was wrong. And I wouldn't sit there telling them that my product was just fine, they were wrong. You know when you drop a hammer on your toe and it hurts you don't keep dropping that hammer over and over and over.  

A NEW DISEASE

 Danger: Entering Jackie's rant zone.

I posted this on my original (now retired) blog. I've been searching for something else, but ran across this. With the clock counting down to certifying the election I believe we have an epidemic of a previously unidentified disease. I can't claim this. It was in a letter to the editor in my hometown paper. Drum roll please.

Cranial Rectal Syndrome: The condition of having your head so far up your ass you can see the light beyond your tonsils.

Color me disgusted with our soon to be ex so called president and his bootlicking supporteers. Lindsey Graham springs to mind today. 

ECONOMIC PORN

 

The times they may be achanging. Reliable rumer has it that Eddie Munster lookalike Paul Ryan used to hand out copies of Atlas Shrugged to his new hires. I don't know if he ever asked them if they actully read the damn book.

I think I read the Fountainhead in Jr. High after seeing the movie on TV. Haven't seen it since so I suspect the film left out an important subplot. And being all of say fourteen I kind of missed absorbing in the book. When the so called hero's girlfriend turns him down? He rapes her. All she needed was a good shagging and she immediately falls under his spell. His building doesn't get built according to his dreams so he rapes it. Excuse me. Blows it up.

Ok. I'm a logger's kid. Before dad was a logger he was a farm kid. Every summer the kids worked the harvest. Farm by farm. Sort of sexist by our outlook now. The boys worked the fields and the girls helped feed them. Ten cents a day extra if you took the teams home with you and brought them back in the morning fed, curried, harnessed and ready to hitch up. Note. Dad's best friend got put on the end of the line. He was a leftie. No farmer could do all the work on his/her own. 

Dad was a logger before the field went to heavy mechanization. Self loading trucks, smaller crews. Partly because it was getting harder to get crews and because even now logging is one of the most dangerous jobs in the country. To be safe a crew depends on each other. Can't do it on your own. 

Sidenote: Workman's comp insurance premiums are figured on lost time accidents. I don't know how it's figured now but when dad was working a work related death was an automatic TEN THOUSAND HOURS. A fairly small company in western Oregon company lost four men in a landslide one day. The company got out of the cutting side of the business, contracted it out and still ran the mills.

I am getting somewhere with this. I tried Atlas Shrugged. I think I got about half way through and tried my usual cheat. Jump to the last couple of chapters just to see how the damned book turns out. I got about half way through Galt's "manifesto" and took the book back to the library. She was a crappy writer, her characters were cardboard. And as a kid who watched her father try to keep going, and then get tossed on the trash heap when his body finally got too hurt to go on I found her so called philosophy totslly unbelievable. Damn it. My sisters, especially the youngest, never knew dad when he wasn't hurting. 

Only people who work in offices with degrees in management or economics can pretend that we have any control over events more than a few years down the road. That you can make an investment plant that will guarantee much of anything for more than a few years is a pipe dream. You get hurt on the job, there's the recession from hell, there's a pandemic and those plans go out the window. Mismanage the response from the top and it get a hundred times worse. 

Throw in Rand desciples with an individual who shouldn't be trusted to take care of a gerbil much less a country and well, here we are. Heck I wouldn't let the Current Occupant look after a pet rock much less a living thing. Does anyone in that family have a pet? I know the boys like killing things. 

Someone joked on the FB entry where I found this that the kid should stick to comics or porn. Actualluy as far as I'm concerned Rand's philosophy is a form of pornography that justifies economic exploitation in plae of sexual exploitation. Everything has a price. The water we drink. the air we breathe, the food we need to survive. Yes there are costs but the US has a peculiar form of socialism. The profits are privatized while the costs in destroyed lives, pollution, soil loss, climate change are dumped on the shoulders of the taxpayers. 

All of a sudden this is looking like at least a two parter because I have a bit of a horror story on the back burner,

RESPECT

I will admit that I am more than slightly weird. When girls my age were reading romances I was reading about submarines, DNA, the history of almost anything, the geography of almost anywhere. Did read a couple of romance novels. Bored me to tears. 

 "When that moment comes, men will not follow you because you're a big, mean, tough son of a bitch. They will not follow you because they fear you. They will not follow you because you're better educated, or older, or more experienced. They will not follow you because you out rank them. They will not follow you because you're their friend or father figure or because they love you. And they damned sure won't follow you for freedom and democracy or other high ideals. No, Sailors, Marines, Soldiers, Airmen will follow your orders in that moment, they will give up their lives on your command, for one reason, and one reason only - respect.

Respect cannot be bought, it cannot be forced, it cannot be bargained for - it must be earned. It must be earned each and every day, by every action, by every word, because when that moment comes it is far, far too late. You'll have seconds at most, and either you are that person men will follow into battle, or you're not. It's that simple. That is what it is to be a Chief. That is what it is to be a Warrant.

That is what it is to be a leader.

Rest in peace, Ed. Your sacrifice was not in vain."

From Jim Wright at Stonekiettle Station.. It is part of his Remembering December 7 entry back in 2007.  It's the story of a ship and two men. The ship was the battleship Nevada. The men were an ensign, Joseph Taussig, and a Chief Warrant Officer, Edwin Hill. It was Sunday morning. Taussig was officer of the deck and in charge of the anti air cratt guns. Hill was the chief Boatswains mate. Part of his duteis involved the mooring lines and anchors. As luck or providence would have it drills were being conducted in engineering and several of her boilers were hot. As luck or providence would have it the Nevada was at the end of the line on Battleship row, sister ship the Pensylvania was in dry dock. 

Already under fire Ensign Taussiig ordered the ship to make for open sea. There was no one on the dock to release the lines. Hill ordered his crew to swim to the dock and let go the mooring lines. At that point, at Wright relates the events, Hill and his crew had done their duty. The Nevada was clear of the dock. heading open sea. He ordered his crew to swim back to the ship. And they obeyed that order. As Wright put it "that's when you find out what you are made of." And that is when your crew follows that order, 

Note: The west coast and Hawaii are not exactly known naval bases sitting right next to open sea. If the Nimitz batle group is in harbor in an emergency she has to make her way through Puget Sound first. I believe its at least a hundred miles. Pearl Harbor is a lovely sheltered harbor with a relatively narrow channel entrance and Ford Island right in front of it on the navy side.The Nevada had to make her way past Ford Island. Past the blazing Arizona, past the capsizing New Jersey and past the Oklahoma. 

Battleship row December 7, 1941. Those ship images are not to scale and darn it Hospital Point is not labeled but I believe it's just past the dry docks before a ship would enter the main channel. Just in time for the second wave of Japanese planes. The Nevada became a prime target. On fire, taking on water, Taussig was ordered to beach her at hospital point. Hill and part of his crew were on the stern probably trying to release the anchor when a five hundred fifty pound bomb hit the ship. Hill and his crew were killed. Ensign Taussig was in charge of his anti aircraft guns when he was severly wounded. Lost a leg, was awarded the navy cross, and returned to duty. Hill was awarded the Medal of Honor. Posthumosly.

I'm not a big believer in wars. I wish fervently that humans could find a way to settle our differences without blasting the living hell out of each other. I realize this entry is sort of disjointed. Take the time, please to read Chief Warrant Officer, retired Jim Writght's entry. After four years of the current occupant if our military is still functional it's because of officers like him and not the individual in the oval office who has been quoted "they're losers and suckers." Couldn't get to the Tomb of the Unknown on time on Verteran's Day, acted like he'd rather be somewhere else. (That or he's having trouble standing still for any length of time. I can't either but I have problems with my back and bum legs.What's his excuse?) 

I guess that's my biggest problem with #45. I can't respect the man. You can not respect someone but still admit that they are good at their jobs. He can't even do that and I won't waste my time cataloging everythig else he's either failed at or proved he's a boor, a bore, and a borderline pedophile. 

THE GANG WHO REALLY COULDN'T SHOOT STRAIGHT

I haven't dropped off the face of the earth but this elecrtion would try the patience of a saint. And I am no saint. On the up side my kid sister's middle son just welcomed a son into this chancy world. And I am sure that mom is smiling. 

 So. Most of the news services, including Fox, have called the election for Joe Biden. Joe, just plain Joe who has a wife who hopes to keep teaching, two dogs and I don't know how many grand children. His eyes smile even when he isn't smiling. He can give a whole short speech and actually make sense. He appears to be ready to hit the ground running with little or no help from our soon to be ex president. My opinion is my own and my blood pressure won't take a full tirade. Use imaginations. Look up Shakespearean cursing. 

What has #45 been doing during the last ten days? Playing golf, nothing new in that, Over one hundred members of his security detail are quarantined. Members of his staff are testing positive. His rallies have been described as super spreader events. The virus is escalating. As of next Wednesday Oregon goes back to full lock down. 

What else has he been doing. Tweeting. Watching the new super conservative, conspiracy spreading "news" service, One America News Network, having his lawyers file lawsuits that get tossed almost before the judge sees them, and trying to find ways to hijack the electoral college. The briefly floated idea would have legislatures controlled by the Republicans throw out the votes and send a slate of electors loyal to Trump no matter what the votes cast say.

The idea seems to have died aborning, probably for several reasons. First you don't change rules after the game is played. You want to try to change the rules for the next election? Go for it. You're likely to find that members of your party at the state level are not in lockstep with the national party. And almost none of the so called swing states are in the south. 

This has probably been the most honest election in the history of the country. Almost no cases of real fraud. Some glitches in counting, but those were corrected almost immediately. One set of affadavits in a Michigan suit included the statement that he couldn't understand why "so many members of the armed forces didn't vote for #45. You make the veterans health care system worse than it already is, call our service men and women suckers and losers, and worst of all can't seem to understand that our governement is not allowed to unleash our armed forces on our own people. 

"You didn't vote for me so screw you" seems to the the message for the day. We're all shadowy extras in the movie titled "The Life of Trump." He was screaming "I've been robbed" almost before the polls closed. He's still screaming it and his base is eating it up. We're probably fortunate that this bunch is a bunch of basically, inept, incompetants. Can you imagine where we'd be if they had realized that another stimulus package and some effort to control the virus would probably gotten him reelected no matter how well organized those supporting Biden were. 

Steve Bannon was no help. Imagining in public that putting Dr. Fauci's head on a pike next to the White House might be a Good Thing. After all it worked for Henry VIII. Not really. When Christina of Denmark was approached with a marriage proposal, wife number four, she is reported to have ramarked that she would say yes. If she had two necks. And Sir Thomas More became a saint. 

More later. 

NO JUSTICE NO PEACE

 This is a quote from the Wickipedia article on the constitution. This is a direct quote. My read is that the legislature sets up how the presidential electors are chosen. The legislature does not choose them directly. In Oregon the slate of electors is chosen during the primary. We don't do conventions. I'm guessing most states do that. Not sure about caucus states. 

"Clause 2: Method of choosing electors[edit]

Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector."

 

Mr. Levin does have law degrees. He has done mostly politcal work for Republican administrations or right wing think tanks. My guess is that he knows this. It's more let's muddy the waters to undermine a Biden administration. He was against Trump until Trump was elected then became a full time Trump supporter. And any other opinions I will keep to myself right now. 

We cannot slack off now. This is the long haul folks. We will not turn things around with this election. At best we can slow the slide. What makes me sad is that I will probably not be around to see the end of this madness. 

YOU WANT BETTER VOTERS VALUE EDUCATION

in and out of the classroom. This is stream of consciousness I admit it. 

 I've read countless entries on FB blaming our schools for the ignorance of some voters. Folks look around. I really do not watch much TV. I do catch commercials for show I'll never watch. Shows I know my coworkers over the years did watch. Survivor. American Idol. Dancing with the Stars. Some goof ball show that had their contestants doing outrageous stunts to win something. Don't know what. Never watched to find out. Probably money. Most folks don't humiliate themselves or eat bugs for free. 

When was the last time you saw somong reading a book on TV. I can't speak for the movies I haven't seen very many over the past few years and most of those were more than a few years old. Jon Luc Picard in Next Gen. Frank and Henry Reagan in Blue Bloods. Keiko O'Brian started a school on the space station in Deep Space Nine and was shown in the class room over several episodes. There are numeroous sceens in Blue Bloods where the kids are quizzed about school work, school projects. The traditional location for homework in the Reagan house is the kitchen. Nice touch. 

The study in the ranch house in the old Virginian series had a wall book case with drawers below, shelves above. Heck even the ranch house in Bonanza had a book case and I believe I've seen every family member reading at least once. Including Hoss. The son who was more in touch with what the land could teach him.

Anyway. We had books and magazines in our house on a logger's pay. My grand parents had a set of World Book Encyclpedias that they gave mom. Heck I even read the first aid book. 

I don't know how the curriculem is structured these days. In my day (heaven help me my codger genes are showing) Jr high and Sr high had set periods. English, social studies so on. two years of basic science, earth/space science, and biology. Two years of elective science. A period each of English and Social studies. In Oakridge we hit US history three times. Fifth grade, eighth grade, junior year. Periods of fifty five minutes. T

That's less than five hours a week over four quarters of nine weeks each. Plus home work assignments. Folks that is a drop in the bucket. Almost no support in the media. A culture that at best downplays learning or at worst ridicules it. Learning is "eliteist." Whatever that means. Science is ridiculed as fake news. "I've done research on the internet." Youtube most likely. Breitbart, Praeger "University". University my ass. 

Teachers like my cousin Greg in Egene, my sister, a nephew teaching science down in Texas work their asses off in this country and are met with lousy pay and next to no respect in too many communities. Jim Wright over in Stonekettle Station keeps ringing the bell "you want a better country you need better citizens." You want better citizens? You have to support learning not only in the classroom but in the culture. Find a used copy of Carl Sagan's Demon Haunted World. It's on Kindle but it is pricey. 

I could go on and on and on. You want to know why our student's don't place very well compared to other countries. Finland,, Japan, China. even India when the family can afford it value education. Their kids value education.

I beleive it's North Carolina just elected a twenty five year old candidate for the house withno political experience, no education (apparently) beyound high school. runs a company with one employee, him. 

I am no fan of literacy tests but is you want to vote? Pass the test new cititzens have to take. Written or verbal. Maybe with a little coaching. Heck make it open book, or open computer. We covered voting and how elections are run in Modern Problems my senior year. We got a crash course in Oregon doing the work it took to get vote by mail. 

Damn it you do not mob the voting centers. You don't see democrats doing this. But hey it worked so well for the Republicans back in 2000 and now they let us carry guns. Way to go. Well this wandered all over the place, time to go.

And too many commericials show parents as pals. Not parents. You want to get your kid to eat. Serve them mac and cheese. And don't take the time to go shopping. Sucscribe to a meal service at twice the cost. Simple dishes made with basic recipes and time. Time to share with the kids. Time to get them to help. Heck one thing I sort of remember from toddler days was MY cupboard in the kitchen. An old pan, a couple cans, a wooden spoon. But I was in the kitchen while mom was. Dan built a fence after he came home and found me tethered to the clothes line while mom worked in the garden. We didn't even get a TV until 1956. And then it wasn't on that much. Thank you. Thank you. 

AN ARMY OR A FIZZLED FIRE CRACKER

Well this tale grew with the telling. LOL.

According to one online source Trump's army of poll watchers looks more like a platoon, or a fizzled fire cracker. Apparently very few supporters have signed up and even fewer have actually showed up. As one veteren of elections pointed out actual poll watching is about as "exciting as watching paint dry." 

And while both sides point to the 2000 recounts in Florida I suspect that 2000 was a perfect storm of events that probably will never happen again. The networks called Florida while the polls were still open in the Panhandle. Gore conceded and then he retracted. Those thrice damned "hanging chads." I believe that style of ballot isn't used anymore. And so far most of the courts seem reluctant to radically interevene in most elections. 

In Oregon there's a little slightly squashed circle next to the candidtate's name. A small circle.You carefully fill it in with a ball point pen. Complete the ballot, put it in the secrecy (optional) envelope, put the whole thing in the official envelope, sign itm and either mail it, drop it off in a collection box, or take it to the elections office. Don't even have to put a stamp on it anymore. Back when the voters were arguing over vote by mail one lawsuit claimed the cost of a stamp was a "poll tax," forbidden under the constitution. Courts shot that one down. I believe that was the last ral challenge. And we have been voting by mail for more than a generation. 

Anyway I realized about an hour ago that there were no breathless, multiple entries on FB with viedeos of that "poll watching army" the trumpistas tried to scare us with. And Jim Wright over at  Stonekettle Station has a new essay up and had this to report from a drive around his neighborhood.

"Made a tour of the 3 major polling stations in my area:

The massive Baptist church where I would normally vote in person? No Trumpers waving flags. No Trump signs. This is a major difference from last time when the parking lot was full of shouting stormtrumpers.

One glum looking white guy going in.

The community center in the predominantly black neighborhood? No Trump signs. No stormtrumpers in their trucks with their idiotic cult flags. Nothing.

Major turnout. Smiles. People waving cheerfully at us as we rolled through the packed parking lot.

The voting office in the middle of town?

No Trump signs. Saw ONE truck with a Trump flag in the parking lot.

Lot of grim looking white people. Lot of cheerful looking black people.

The fact that the parking lots outside of these polling stations AREN'T full of shouting Trumpers is a real change from last time. And for THIS area? The land of guns, grits, Jaysus, and Matt Gaetz? That's a hell of a thing"

There were reports of robocalls in Flint, Michigan telling voters that long lines were expected today so perhaps they should wait until WEDNESDAY. Nobody was buying that. In fact most of the Republican campaign sounds more like a version of The Gang that Couldn't Shoot Straight than the real thing. I guess too many campaign workers were too busy trying to figure out how to divert campaign funds into their pockets to do the jobs they were supposed to be doing. Don't get me wrong. I'm glad the right hand didn't seem to to know what the left had was doing. Or was even attached to the same body. In the same room. In the same building or even on the same planet.

I was expecting that army of poll watchers to be there to protect God, Country, and the American Jaysus from the hordes of Marxist, Socialist, Godless Heathens come hell, high water or sky on fire as my old logger daddy used to say. Or maybe it's easier to be part of a what amounts to a flash mob, driving in your big ass pick up or SUV behind tinted glass with little chance of actually being arrested than showing up at a real polling address where every move will be watched, possibly filmed and you are one sneeze from having the polling hotlines being called.

And I hoped to heck I won't be eating these words in the morning.