My dad had a fishing buddy named Pete Dick. His name was not nearly as unfortunate as that of Pete's brother, Green. I don't know what nick names people gave to their penises back when Pete was born, but I suspect that dick was not one of them. Or maybe Green's parents enjoyed cruel irony. I looked in the phone book to see how many Dicks I would insult by this story, and I found that there were only a few left in the area, although their were a good many sons of Dick. But this story is not about names or dicks, it is about Pete.
What Pete was, was a drunk. Not a garden variety steady drinking, hard to tell when drunk, drunk like my dad; Pete was a spectacular binge drinker. He would stay completely sober for any where from three months to a year, then fall off the wagon, and stay dead drunk for two or three weeks. During the drunken episodes, he did not work, and if he ate, it was very little. He would emerge from his drunken state, thin and haggard, with a three week growth of beard, clean himself up, go back to Lock mill, and resume work. Apparently Lock Mill had a very lenient absentee policy.
Pete would also emerge from drunkenness completely broke. In my earliest memories of Pete, he lived at Lock Hall. This was a big, three story boarding house that stood right across Church Street from the Lock Mill office, on the property where Danny's is located now. Once, after Lock Hall closed down, I went into the building through an unlocked window. Up on the third floor, I found the fire escape. It consisted of a window and a big thick rope that you could throw out of the window. I guess, in case of fire, it was more effective than tying bed sheets together, but not by much. I cut loose the rope and took it home; It made a great swing. Later, after Lock Hall closed down, he moved down the street to another house where he rented a room. Sometimes when he was on a drunk, he would become an inhabitant of "Tick City". This was the wooded area east of Church Street where McCachern Blvd. is now. Tick City was off limits to normal people and children like myself, so I never actually visited it. Back then, Concord was dry, and some times the drunks would resort to drinking a high alcohol aftershave called Polly Peach. My dad said the ground was littered with thousands of the little bottles about the size and shape of a Texas Pete bottle. I suspect that you could perform a little archeological dig in the woods along the greenway and still find some of these little bottles. I guess Polly Peach went well with a Sundrop chaser. Speaking of chasers, I don't remember anyone of my dad's generation ever mixing any kind of alcohoic drink, they drank it straight with a "chaser". The equivalent of a shot and a beer.
Because of his unfortunate drinking habit, Pete didn't have anything. He didn't drive or have a car, a wife, or house. He had one rod and reel, and one double barreled shot gun. I guess he had a variety of clothing, but his clothes were unremarkable, at least to me. When my dad would pick Pete up to go hunting, he would come out the door with his shot gun, and if dad picked him up to go fishing, he would come out with his rod and reel, nothing else, regardless of the number of days they might be gone.
Pete was a good bit older than my dad, so the drinking had its ultimate effect on Pete before it did my dad. I think the binge drinking was the equivalent of being hit in the head with a sledge hammer four times a year as opposed to a light tap on the scull with a claw hammer every Saturday night. Pete finally got to the DT's stage, and was thrown out of his boarding house for starting a camp fire in the middle of his bedroom floor. His sister in Albemarle volunteered to take Pete in. There were two unfortunate results of this charity. His drinking hobby was completely curtailed, and according to my dad, when Pete died, his worst nightmare was implemented. Pete had a morbid fear of having his body donated to science and hung in some lab suspended by tongs in his ears.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Monday, March 22, 2010
Immigration
I'm going to surprise all of you who think I am the worlds biggest liberal. I just finished a book called "Little Bee" (A nice couple of hours after "Infinite Jest"), about a young Nigerian girl who stows away on a freighter to Great Britain to escape political strife. It's a sad, heart warming and ultimately heart rendering story about this girl's quest for freedom, and Great Britain's draconian immigration policies. The book reminds me of "Tortilla Curtain", another book with similar overtones, about a poor Mexican family trying to make it as illegals in Los Angeles.
I can't blame anyone for trying to escape the tyranny or poverty of their respective countries, they are only doing what anyone with a sense of self-preservation would try to do. If I lived in some third world hell hole, I hope I would try to escape myself. I do blame the corrupt and greedy governments that do very little, if anything, to improve the conditions of the citizens in most of these countries. And I blame countries with progressive governments, for self serving actions that have allowed these conditions to exist. And, yes I include the United States in that last statement. Anti communism, United Fruit, the Panama Canal, drug wars, Batista, Castro, Allende, Haiti, you name the place or cause, we've meddled. And a lot of that meddling has been solely for our national interests, regardless of the impact on the common people who live in these places.
I am pragmatic enough to understand that countries do have national interests. It is in Mexico's national interest to use the United states as a safety valve for it's poor, underclass population. Migration to the United States brings hard currency to Mexico, while removing a segment of the population that might foment unrest or even revolution in their home country. No matter how sympathetic we are towards these poor and oppressed immigrants, it is not in our nation's best interest to allow this to continue. There are over one half of a billion people in Latin and South America, and over one hundred million people in Mexico alone. The United States cannot possibly absorb even a small portion of the vast numbers of these people looking for a better life.
There are already between thirteen and sixteen million illegal immigrants from Latin and South America in the USA. They cannot be allowed to stay here. If we allow them to assimilate into the United States, and become citizens, their political influence will assure that the floodgates of Hispanic immigration will open. Here's something that strikes me about this whole Hispanic Immigration issue. The Hispanic immigrants in the United States only have one Grand Falloon in common, That is, their common language, Spanish. By encouraging bilingualism in the United States, we have reinforced the united front that Hispanic People put forth to block reasonable immigration control. Here are a few of my arguments for controlling our borders.
I would say that any Mexican with any sense of history believes (and rightfully so), that the entire US southwest and California was stolen from Mexico, and that in an ideal world, this territory should be reunited with Mexico. With the incredible increases of Hispanic population in these areas, how long will it be until there is a movement to reunite these states with Mexico. I know this sounds far fetched, and I risk losing credibility by saying it, but long term, if there is a serious tear in our national fabric, this is one of the fault lines upon which our nation would divide.
The illegal immigrant labor force is stealing American jobs. Don't tell me they are taking jobs that Americans don't want. That is a lie perpetuated by greedy Americans that don't want to pay other Americans a living wage. I'm in the construction business, and I've seen how it works. An American contractor hires a few Spanish speaking employees, soon he finds one who can speak English well enough to take instructions, and then before long, potential English speaking American employees are passed over for other Hispanic workers. Blacks should be rioting in the streets over this practice. From what I have seen, it is nearly impossible for a young black under educated man to get a decent job in this country. Blacks have been stereotyped as lazy, undependable, and dishonest, while Hispanics are considered hardworking trouble free employees. Of course one of the big reasons the Hispanics are hardworking and trouble free, is that if they are illegal, they are really at the mercy of their employers. If illegals were not here, Blacks and whites would be sought out to fill these jobs. They might not be quite as pliable as the illegal immigrants, but employers would make do.
I don't believe that we need illegal immigrants to do our work for us. They don't do the necessary labor, they perform the luxury labor. Here's what I mean. The industries that employ illegals include the following: Agriculture, Construction, meat processing (poultry, beef, pork, chicken.), and service(restaurant, hotel, landscaping etc.). There are others, but you will see where I'm headed with this.
In agriculture, farmers have taken the luxury of using illegal laborers to pick their crops instead of investing in capital improvements and innovations that would have allowed the use of less manpower. They have widely used illegal labor, even though there are workers available through the H2B visa program. I've read that only about fifty thousand workers are employed through the H2B system. Farmers have discovered that it is cheaper, their is less red tape, and they do not have to provide adequate facilities if illegals are used.
In construction, the average size of a new home has doubled since the nineteen seventies, aided to a great extent by the use of illegal workers.
Today, we have the luxury of eating almost twice the amount of meat we consumed in the nineteen fifties. I've read that is takes about nine pounds of grain to produce one pound of poultry, so, our increase in meat consumption indirectly causes an increase in grain consumption. The availability if cheap foreign labor has kept meat and poultry cost low so that we eat much more than is good for us or our environment.
And then there is the luxury of service. How many of our families had landscaping services in the fifties and sixties? How often did we eat out, or travel or have our houses cleaned.
All of these things I've mentioned are luxuries that we could cut back on or do without if we did not have illegal labor keeping the cost low.
Even though the direct labor costs are lower by using illegal labor, the indirect costs, which we all pay, but do not see, are squeezing us dry. Just look at our costs for providing services for the illegals. Health care, schools, social programs, crime, these are all costs that we as individual taxpayers are paying, while the employers are getting off scot free. And there is the cost to provide these same services to American workers who are displaced by the illegals.
We don't need to build fences or increase border patrols to stop illegals from crossing our borders, what we have to implement is attrition by enforcement. We as a country have to make it nearly impossible for employers and individuals to hire illegals. Here's what we need to do.
Employers must be required to check the national registry for proper documentation immediately upon hiring any employee. Right now, the immediate check of employees is voluntary. None of this business of filling out and sending in a form, which comes back six months later, from some government bureaucrat, saying that Jose's social security number does not match his name. "Please check and resubmit the proper documentation". Enforce the laws that define a subcontractor versus an employee, so that the employer cannot mail out a 1099 form to some bogus address, and then wash his hands of the matter. Strictly enforce laws prohibiting individuals from hiring labor under the table. Make employers and individuals subject to fines and or imprisonment so steep that no company or individual would dare take the chance of hiring an illegal. Without jobs, most illegals would have to go home. If these laws were enforced, no company would have a labor cost advantage over any other company. As things stand now, companies that want to hire American workers are at a competitive disadvantage, and are often forced to break the laws to compete.
Okay, there is my shockingly right wing stance on immigration. My apologies to all of the perfectly fine Hispanic illegals out there who just had the bad luck to be born poor in a third world country. As Bill Clinton characterized Bush's compassionate conservatism: "I'd really like to help, but I just can't, I just can't."
I can't blame anyone for trying to escape the tyranny or poverty of their respective countries, they are only doing what anyone with a sense of self-preservation would try to do. If I lived in some third world hell hole, I hope I would try to escape myself. I do blame the corrupt and greedy governments that do very little, if anything, to improve the conditions of the citizens in most of these countries. And I blame countries with progressive governments, for self serving actions that have allowed these conditions to exist. And, yes I include the United States in that last statement. Anti communism, United Fruit, the Panama Canal, drug wars, Batista, Castro, Allende, Haiti, you name the place or cause, we've meddled. And a lot of that meddling has been solely for our national interests, regardless of the impact on the common people who live in these places.
I am pragmatic enough to understand that countries do have national interests. It is in Mexico's national interest to use the United states as a safety valve for it's poor, underclass population. Migration to the United States brings hard currency to Mexico, while removing a segment of the population that might foment unrest or even revolution in their home country. No matter how sympathetic we are towards these poor and oppressed immigrants, it is not in our nation's best interest to allow this to continue. There are over one half of a billion people in Latin and South America, and over one hundred million people in Mexico alone. The United States cannot possibly absorb even a small portion of the vast numbers of these people looking for a better life.
There are already between thirteen and sixteen million illegal immigrants from Latin and South America in the USA. They cannot be allowed to stay here. If we allow them to assimilate into the United States, and become citizens, their political influence will assure that the floodgates of Hispanic immigration will open. Here's something that strikes me about this whole Hispanic Immigration issue. The Hispanic immigrants in the United States only have one Grand Falloon in common, That is, their common language, Spanish. By encouraging bilingualism in the United States, we have reinforced the united front that Hispanic People put forth to block reasonable immigration control. Here are a few of my arguments for controlling our borders.
I would say that any Mexican with any sense of history believes (and rightfully so), that the entire US southwest and California was stolen from Mexico, and that in an ideal world, this territory should be reunited with Mexico. With the incredible increases of Hispanic population in these areas, how long will it be until there is a movement to reunite these states with Mexico. I know this sounds far fetched, and I risk losing credibility by saying it, but long term, if there is a serious tear in our national fabric, this is one of the fault lines upon which our nation would divide.
The illegal immigrant labor force is stealing American jobs. Don't tell me they are taking jobs that Americans don't want. That is a lie perpetuated by greedy Americans that don't want to pay other Americans a living wage. I'm in the construction business, and I've seen how it works. An American contractor hires a few Spanish speaking employees, soon he finds one who can speak English well enough to take instructions, and then before long, potential English speaking American employees are passed over for other Hispanic workers. Blacks should be rioting in the streets over this practice. From what I have seen, it is nearly impossible for a young black under educated man to get a decent job in this country. Blacks have been stereotyped as lazy, undependable, and dishonest, while Hispanics are considered hardworking trouble free employees. Of course one of the big reasons the Hispanics are hardworking and trouble free, is that if they are illegal, they are really at the mercy of their employers. If illegals were not here, Blacks and whites would be sought out to fill these jobs. They might not be quite as pliable as the illegal immigrants, but employers would make do.
I don't believe that we need illegal immigrants to do our work for us. They don't do the necessary labor, they perform the luxury labor. Here's what I mean. The industries that employ illegals include the following: Agriculture, Construction, meat processing (poultry, beef, pork, chicken.), and service(restaurant, hotel, landscaping etc.). There are others, but you will see where I'm headed with this.
In agriculture, farmers have taken the luxury of using illegal laborers to pick their crops instead of investing in capital improvements and innovations that would have allowed the use of less manpower. They have widely used illegal labor, even though there are workers available through the H2B visa program. I've read that only about fifty thousand workers are employed through the H2B system. Farmers have discovered that it is cheaper, their is less red tape, and they do not have to provide adequate facilities if illegals are used.
In construction, the average size of a new home has doubled since the nineteen seventies, aided to a great extent by the use of illegal workers.
Today, we have the luxury of eating almost twice the amount of meat we consumed in the nineteen fifties. I've read that is takes about nine pounds of grain to produce one pound of poultry, so, our increase in meat consumption indirectly causes an increase in grain consumption. The availability if cheap foreign labor has kept meat and poultry cost low so that we eat much more than is good for us or our environment.
And then there is the luxury of service. How many of our families had landscaping services in the fifties and sixties? How often did we eat out, or travel or have our houses cleaned.
All of these things I've mentioned are luxuries that we could cut back on or do without if we did not have illegal labor keeping the cost low.
Even though the direct labor costs are lower by using illegal labor, the indirect costs, which we all pay, but do not see, are squeezing us dry. Just look at our costs for providing services for the illegals. Health care, schools, social programs, crime, these are all costs that we as individual taxpayers are paying, while the employers are getting off scot free. And there is the cost to provide these same services to American workers who are displaced by the illegals.
We don't need to build fences or increase border patrols to stop illegals from crossing our borders, what we have to implement is attrition by enforcement. We as a country have to make it nearly impossible for employers and individuals to hire illegals. Here's what we need to do.
Employers must be required to check the national registry for proper documentation immediately upon hiring any employee. Right now, the immediate check of employees is voluntary. None of this business of filling out and sending in a form, which comes back six months later, from some government bureaucrat, saying that Jose's social security number does not match his name. "Please check and resubmit the proper documentation". Enforce the laws that define a subcontractor versus an employee, so that the employer cannot mail out a 1099 form to some bogus address, and then wash his hands of the matter. Strictly enforce laws prohibiting individuals from hiring labor under the table. Make employers and individuals subject to fines and or imprisonment so steep that no company or individual would dare take the chance of hiring an illegal. Without jobs, most illegals would have to go home. If these laws were enforced, no company would have a labor cost advantage over any other company. As things stand now, companies that want to hire American workers are at a competitive disadvantage, and are often forced to break the laws to compete.
Okay, there is my shockingly right wing stance on immigration. My apologies to all of the perfectly fine Hispanic illegals out there who just had the bad luck to be born poor in a third world country. As Bill Clinton characterized Bush's compassionate conservatism: "I'd really like to help, but I just can't, I just can't."
Health Care
The health care bill passed the house less than twenty four hours ago, and already I'm seeing a whole new wave of people who have lost their ability to think. Yes, government health care is a form of socialism, so what! So is Social Security, Medicare, public schools, libraries, the post office, our highway system, our sewer and water systems, you name it, the government is involved in all types of social programs for the common good of all its citizens. It is naive to think that our modern society can exist with out these programs. And it is naive to think that we as a nation can continue on our current path with regards to health care without government intervention.
Here's the bottom line. In the United States the total cost of health care for every man, woman and child is currently over $13,000.00 each per year. The rest of the modern industrialized world spends less than half of that amount on health care, and the savings are achieved through government run or regulated universal health care. In these countries, every one is covered, there are no medical bankruptcies, and people do not go to emergency rooms because there is no other care available to them. Yes, they sometimes have to wait for elective surgery, but so do we. Depending on the country and the circumstances, there may be some triage based upon your age and condition, but in this country we have the cruelest triage of all; You can get any surgery you want if you can pay for it. For all the money we spend, we are not any healthier for it, our infant mortality rates and our longevity lags well behind countries with universal health care. And, all of this wonderful health care we are so proud of is costing each us an extra six thousand dollars a year. Stop and think what that six thousand represents. That is money that could be spent on roads, schools, libraries, and things that would improve our individual lives.
Of course, most of us never see the thirteen thousand a year come out of our own wallets, and that is the big problem. Our employers, or the government picks up most of the tab. Even if we are self insured, the insurance Ponzi scheme hides the true cost of our health care until we are old or sick enough that they jack up our premiums and try to drive us out of the system, and let the government pay for our care, or in so many cases, we have to do without.
Here's what will happen if we don't take steps toward universal government run health care. Health care costs will continue to rise, Insurance premiums will rise in response. More and more people will drop their insurance, and more and more employers will drop employee coverage, or increase the employee share of the burden. As people and employers drop out of insurance coverage, the premium pool for the insurance companies will become smaller, and they will raise rates for the rest of us who are trying to hold on to our insurance. Sick people without insurance will crowd the hospital emergency rooms, lose there savings, jobs, and homes, or stick the government with more costs, which the taxpayers will bear. This will continue until the entire system collapses, and then where will the world's greatest health care system be? If you don't believe this, take a look at California, where rates for individuals who buy their on health insurance coverage have seen their rates increase by 29% in the last year as younger people and unemployed or underemployed people have dropped their insurance, leaving a smaller and sicker pool to pay the premiums.
There are really four types of people who are against government run health care, and three of the four have one thing in common. They all currently have health insurance coverage and they believe that any change to the system will adversely affect them. They are the people on medicare (a social program), people who are insured by their employers (don't bet on that continuing), and people who are wealthy enough to believe they can afford private insurance coverage no matter what happens (don't bet on that either). There's a forth group also, and it includes most of the people in the first three groups. These are the people that would rather spout some worn out cliche about socialism, or liberals, or President Obama, than stop and do some serious thinking.
Here's the bottom line. In the United States the total cost of health care for every man, woman and child is currently over $13,000.00 each per year. The rest of the modern industrialized world spends less than half of that amount on health care, and the savings are achieved through government run or regulated universal health care. In these countries, every one is covered, there are no medical bankruptcies, and people do not go to emergency rooms because there is no other care available to them. Yes, they sometimes have to wait for elective surgery, but so do we. Depending on the country and the circumstances, there may be some triage based upon your age and condition, but in this country we have the cruelest triage of all; You can get any surgery you want if you can pay for it. For all the money we spend, we are not any healthier for it, our infant mortality rates and our longevity lags well behind countries with universal health care. And, all of this wonderful health care we are so proud of is costing each us an extra six thousand dollars a year. Stop and think what that six thousand represents. That is money that could be spent on roads, schools, libraries, and things that would improve our individual lives.
Of course, most of us never see the thirteen thousand a year come out of our own wallets, and that is the big problem. Our employers, or the government picks up most of the tab. Even if we are self insured, the insurance Ponzi scheme hides the true cost of our health care until we are old or sick enough that they jack up our premiums and try to drive us out of the system, and let the government pay for our care, or in so many cases, we have to do without.
Here's what will happen if we don't take steps toward universal government run health care. Health care costs will continue to rise, Insurance premiums will rise in response. More and more people will drop their insurance, and more and more employers will drop employee coverage, or increase the employee share of the burden. As people and employers drop out of insurance coverage, the premium pool for the insurance companies will become smaller, and they will raise rates for the rest of us who are trying to hold on to our insurance. Sick people without insurance will crowd the hospital emergency rooms, lose there savings, jobs, and homes, or stick the government with more costs, which the taxpayers will bear. This will continue until the entire system collapses, and then where will the world's greatest health care system be? If you don't believe this, take a look at California, where rates for individuals who buy their on health insurance coverage have seen their rates increase by 29% in the last year as younger people and unemployed or underemployed people have dropped their insurance, leaving a smaller and sicker pool to pay the premiums.
There are really four types of people who are against government run health care, and three of the four have one thing in common. They all currently have health insurance coverage and they believe that any change to the system will adversely affect them. They are the people on medicare (a social program), people who are insured by their employers (don't bet on that continuing), and people who are wealthy enough to believe they can afford private insurance coverage no matter what happens (don't bet on that either). There's a forth group also, and it includes most of the people in the first three groups. These are the people that would rather spout some worn out cliche about socialism, or liberals, or President Obama, than stop and do some serious thinking.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
"Infinite Jest"
I haven't written a post in over two weeks, I've been on a mission. In my December 28th post, I commented on my new Christmas toys, one of which was a new Kindle Reader. At that time, I had just started the book, "Infinite Jest" by David Foster Wallace. I'm proud, and somewhat relieved to say that I finished it today. One thousand and fifty nine pages of the toughest reading I've ever encountered. I'm only somewhat relieved to be finished, because I wish he had invested another three years and one thousand pages and finished the damned thing. It just ends, no plot resolution, characters in limbo, loose strings untied. No sequel, the author committed suicide in 2008. Still, it's one of the best books I've ever read. The author wrote the most insightful and descriptive passages that you will ever find in modern literature. Here is a very brief synopsis.
The book (published in 1996) describes a slightly futuristic America in which the United States, Canada, and Mexico have formed a loose coalition called O.N.A.N., with the USA as the dominant partner. The plot centers around a tennis academy founded by an eccentric scientist and film maker, and around a recovering addict halfway house just down the hill from the academy in Boston Mass. The main characters include the three sons of the academy founder; One a tennis prodigy and student at the academy, one a professional football player, and the third, a mildly retarded and handicapped idiot savant. There is Don Gatley, the recovering substance abuser and murderer, and Madam Psychosis, the formally beautiful woman who is a member of a group of hideously and improbably deformed people who have sworn to always wear a veil in public. There is a group of wheelchair bound Quebecois separatist terrorists, who are pursuing a sinister plot to kill Americans through the use of a film , which, if watched, removes the will of the viewer to do anything but watch the film. A cross dressing spy, a sadist dog killer, and at least a hundred minor characters that get major play. Of course they are all integral to the plot. I guess you would classify the book as a dark science fiction comedy, although large portions of the book are neither dark nor comedic, and the book feels more prescient than science fiction.
I think that I am going to read fifty or so works of popular fiction, and then read "Infinite Jest" once again.
The book (published in 1996) describes a slightly futuristic America in which the United States, Canada, and Mexico have formed a loose coalition called O.N.A.N., with the USA as the dominant partner. The plot centers around a tennis academy founded by an eccentric scientist and film maker, and around a recovering addict halfway house just down the hill from the academy in Boston Mass. The main characters include the three sons of the academy founder; One a tennis prodigy and student at the academy, one a professional football player, and the third, a mildly retarded and handicapped idiot savant. There is Don Gatley, the recovering substance abuser and murderer, and Madam Psychosis, the formally beautiful woman who is a member of a group of hideously and improbably deformed people who have sworn to always wear a veil in public. There is a group of wheelchair bound Quebecois separatist terrorists, who are pursuing a sinister plot to kill Americans through the use of a film , which, if watched, removes the will of the viewer to do anything but watch the film. A cross dressing spy, a sadist dog killer, and at least a hundred minor characters that get major play. Of course they are all integral to the plot. I guess you would classify the book as a dark science fiction comedy, although large portions of the book are neither dark nor comedic, and the book feels more prescient than science fiction.
I think that I am going to read fifty or so works of popular fiction, and then read "Infinite Jest" once again.
Monday, March 8, 2010
Ah Spring
Spring officially starts this weekend, at least for me. Daylight savings time kicks in on Sunday, and its not a day too soon. We've had a little Spring teaser the last couple of days with mid-sixties days and cool nights. I know there's more cold weather coming, after all, the average last spring frost is not until around the sixteenth of April, but I can tell that old man winter's back is broken. I got a good bike ride in today, and also yesterday. Maybe I won't have to go to spinning sessions but a few more times before I can start hitting the road every day. I've always like to ride a bike, but I got pretty serious about it about twenty five years ago, when my knees got so bad that I could no longer run. It's always tough in the Spring to get started again. I get out of shape over the winter, and the first month or so of riding is brutal.
The worst part is that I'm a year older every spring. If it weren't for mirrors and bicycles, I would swear that I'm still in my thirties. You know the old line; "Look in the mirror and see your father's face". Holy crap! When did that happen. The thing that really scares me is that I remember seeing my dad's butt and thighs when he was in his late seventies. Or should I say, what was left of his butt and thighs. My dad was a big guy like me, and I remember he had big powerful forearms like a baseball player or a lumberjack. Unfortunately, he was a truly professional drunk, while I still maintain my amateur status. The bike though, is the true measure of my age. There's this fitness formula, two twenty minus your age, that determines your maximum heart rate. A thirty year old, according to this formula has a maximum heart rate of 190, while sixty two year old (me) has a maximum of 158. This is like the laws of physics, like trying to defy gravity. No matter how hard you work out, you are tethered to your maximum heart rate. It means that you can't climb as long and hard as you did when you were thirty, you can't sprint as far or as fast, you just don't f-----g have it. (Honest to God, tears came to my eyes as I wrote this.) Over all, I'm pretty fit..........
Time out for an important news flash, channel nine will be over head at any minute. My wife just informed me that there is a whole cadre of fire trucks and equipment outside our house. After an in depth investigation, I have determined the following: My next door neighbor was having some plumbing work done at his house, and the plumber broke some kind of old device that was mounted in the basement. It was filled with Mercury, which spilled out into a big puddle on the floor. The neighbors did a little Internet investigation, and ended up calling the EPA. The EPA informed them that they should call the local fire department, and after they did so, the fire department showed up with the complete Hazmat unit, which includes two tractor trailers full of equipment, a fire truck, ambulance, and miscellaneous fireman, policemen and officials. They have been over there for at least an hour. So, back to my post.
Over all, I'm pretty fit, although who knows what might be waiting to bite me in the ass at any moment. I do physical work for a living, and I'm still pretty strong. I have not yet developed man boobs, although, when I put my heart monitor on this afternoon, I noticed that the strap did enhance my cleavage a little. I've always been very competitive, although not by any means a great athlete, and it hurts me more than you can imagine that I can't keep up with the young guys, but occasionally, I foolishly try.
Another distraction, as I'm writing this post, I'm also watching my favorite show; "Chuck". The show is stupid and banal, but I like it, particularly, I like Yvonne Strahovski, the hottest girl on TV. She had me after the episode where she put both hands on a counter top, and with out taking her hands off of the counter top, she leaped onto it. It's the equivalent of a man jumping into the air and putting his pants on. Did I mention that she's very attractive? Yes, I'm old, but not dead. Where was I?
Spring. It's just around the corner. Another day older and deeper in oxygen dept. In about three weeks I'll start sailboat racing. At least I don't have to depend on my heart rate for a victory. Unfortunately, sailing and biking compete for the same time slots. The story of my life, so many hobbies and so little time.
The worst part is that I'm a year older every spring. If it weren't for mirrors and bicycles, I would swear that I'm still in my thirties. You know the old line; "Look in the mirror and see your father's face". Holy crap! When did that happen. The thing that really scares me is that I remember seeing my dad's butt and thighs when he was in his late seventies. Or should I say, what was left of his butt and thighs. My dad was a big guy like me, and I remember he had big powerful forearms like a baseball player or a lumberjack. Unfortunately, he was a truly professional drunk, while I still maintain my amateur status. The bike though, is the true measure of my age. There's this fitness formula, two twenty minus your age, that determines your maximum heart rate. A thirty year old, according to this formula has a maximum heart rate of 190, while sixty two year old (me) has a maximum of 158. This is like the laws of physics, like trying to defy gravity. No matter how hard you work out, you are tethered to your maximum heart rate. It means that you can't climb as long and hard as you did when you were thirty, you can't sprint as far or as fast, you just don't f-----g have it. (Honest to God, tears came to my eyes as I wrote this.) Over all, I'm pretty fit..........
Time out for an important news flash, channel nine will be over head at any minute. My wife just informed me that there is a whole cadre of fire trucks and equipment outside our house. After an in depth investigation, I have determined the following: My next door neighbor was having some plumbing work done at his house, and the plumber broke some kind of old device that was mounted in the basement. It was filled with Mercury, which spilled out into a big puddle on the floor. The neighbors did a little Internet investigation, and ended up calling the EPA. The EPA informed them that they should call the local fire department, and after they did so, the fire department showed up with the complete Hazmat unit, which includes two tractor trailers full of equipment, a fire truck, ambulance, and miscellaneous fireman, policemen and officials. They have been over there for at least an hour. So, back to my post.
Over all, I'm pretty fit, although who knows what might be waiting to bite me in the ass at any moment. I do physical work for a living, and I'm still pretty strong. I have not yet developed man boobs, although, when I put my heart monitor on this afternoon, I noticed that the strap did enhance my cleavage a little. I've always been very competitive, although not by any means a great athlete, and it hurts me more than you can imagine that I can't keep up with the young guys, but occasionally, I foolishly try.
Another distraction, as I'm writing this post, I'm also watching my favorite show; "Chuck". The show is stupid and banal, but I like it, particularly, I like Yvonne Strahovski, the hottest girl on TV. She had me after the episode where she put both hands on a counter top, and with out taking her hands off of the counter top, she leaped onto it. It's the equivalent of a man jumping into the air and putting his pants on. Did I mention that she's very attractive? Yes, I'm old, but not dead. Where was I?
Spring. It's just around the corner. Another day older and deeper in oxygen dept. In about three weeks I'll start sailboat racing. At least I don't have to depend on my heart rate for a victory. Unfortunately, sailing and biking compete for the same time slots. The story of my life, so many hobbies and so little time.
Sunday, March 7, 2010
A November Disaster
Sadly for the Democrats in America and for the Country itself, ignorant Republicans vote and ignorant Democrats don't. I'm not saying that there are not a lot of smart and well informed voters on both sides, I'm just saying that the Republicans have done a better job of convincing their constituents to vote against their best interests. If you look at some of the poorest states and districts in the country, you have to wonder, why did so many of these poor people vote Republican, or not vote at all. Mississippi, probably the poorest state in the country has a Republican Governor, two Republican Senators and one out of the four districts has a Republican Congressman.
Race plays a part in the over all equation. In 2008, blacks voted at about the same rates as whites, around 68% of the population. Hispanic and Asian voting also increased, although not at quite as high of a percentage. In 2006 however, all three minority populations lagged behind whites in percentage of voters by race. The white population voted at about 49 percent, while the combined black, Asian, and Hispanic voters only turned out at about 35%. These 2006 numbers bode ill for the democrats in the 2010 midterms.
The other reason that the republicans did so well during the Bush years, is the Karl Rove tactic of convincing mostly white voters to vote because of various wedge issues. You know the ones I'm talking about: Gay marriage, gays in the military, abortion, and gun control. A friend of mine characterized the Republican strategy with this analogy. He used the example of Cherokee County North Carolina, a white Republican stronghold, which includes Murphy, Andrews, and Robbinsville (Which I've been told had a billboard up in the sixties that said "Nigger, don't let the sun set on you in Robbinsville). The essence of the strategy was to convince voters that they needed to keep their guns so that they could kill niggers, queers, and abortionists in the name of the Lord. Now, to their credit, most of the people in Cherokee County would probably not do any of those things, but this proposition was put forth in such a push come to shove manner, that the citizens decided that these things were more important than economic security or health care. Couple these ideas with the current strategy of blaming the democrats for running up the deficit, and the collapse of the economy, and you can see what's going to happen in November.
Race plays a part in the over all equation. In 2008, blacks voted at about the same rates as whites, around 68% of the population. Hispanic and Asian voting also increased, although not at quite as high of a percentage. In 2006 however, all three minority populations lagged behind whites in percentage of voters by race. The white population voted at about 49 percent, while the combined black, Asian, and Hispanic voters only turned out at about 35%. These 2006 numbers bode ill for the democrats in the 2010 midterms.
The other reason that the republicans did so well during the Bush years, is the Karl Rove tactic of convincing mostly white voters to vote because of various wedge issues. You know the ones I'm talking about: Gay marriage, gays in the military, abortion, and gun control. A friend of mine characterized the Republican strategy with this analogy. He used the example of Cherokee County North Carolina, a white Republican stronghold, which includes Murphy, Andrews, and Robbinsville (Which I've been told had a billboard up in the sixties that said "Nigger, don't let the sun set on you in Robbinsville). The essence of the strategy was to convince voters that they needed to keep their guns so that they could kill niggers, queers, and abortionists in the name of the Lord. Now, to their credit, most of the people in Cherokee County would probably not do any of those things, but this proposition was put forth in such a push come to shove manner, that the citizens decided that these things were more important than economic security or health care. Couple these ideas with the current strategy of blaming the democrats for running up the deficit, and the collapse of the economy, and you can see what's going to happen in November.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
My Room
When I bought my house, a little over thirty years ago, we were looking the place over with the broker, and I noticed a small window that opened from the crawl space. I got down on my knees and, with my face right against the glass, I could see a small dug out space with a green rocking chair setting in it. Back then, it wasn't expected that the homeowners make themselves scarce when there was a showing to potential buyers, so I asked the old lady who owned the house if it had a basement. She explained to me that, no, there was not a basement, it was just a place her son , Yen, dug out, where he liked to spend his time sitting in the green chair under the house.
I knew the old lady's grandsons, they were about my age, and I had met Yen before. I think that Yen had suffered from PTSD (called shell shock back then), and he was far from normal. He could drive, and once he took me and his two nephews swimming a nearby creek. I remember, he got in the water about neck deep, and just stood there for at least an hour, with out moving or talking. Yen came to a bad end, he was killed by a self inflicted gunshot wound in what appeared to be a hunting accident in the woods behind McAllister School. Yen's parents, being well on in years, had decided to move to Virginia to live with their daughter. One of the prerequisites to selling the house was that they realized enough money from the sell to dig Yen up and take him with them.
I don't particularly care to sit in a chair under the house, and not having been to war, I don't suffer from PTSD, but I do appreciate Yen's preference for solitude in a confined space. I'm writing this post from my little fortress of solitude, upstairs across from the bed room. It's the place where I spend most of my spare time when I'm awake, and a good bit of time when I'm not.
It's a tiny little room, only seven feet wide, and thirteen feet long. It's a lot more crowded and cluttered than Andy Rooney's office. I sit at an old wooden desk in a chair with a high back, so that my head is supported when I doze off. It looks out through two floor to ceiling windows to my back yard. Right now the blinds are open so that, this afternoon, I could watch the snow that fell, but right now all I can see is the black of night. My wife's desk is also in the room. It is one of those big wooden office desks with a lower side section at right angles to the main desk. It takes up one entire end of the room and I can rest my feet on the end of it if I want to. In addition to the two desks, there are two computers, two printers, a little table with phone and answering machine, two guitars, a file cabinet, two desk lamps and a pole lamp, a paper shredder, a book case that takes up the entire other end of the room, a TV, two chairs, my Kindle, and me. It gets a little crowded when Kathy is in the room, but fortunately, this room is not where she prefers to spend her time. No reflection on me I hope. There are no pictures on what little wall space there is, but when my laptop is not in use, it slide shows the pictures I have filed on it. Facebook is generally running, and I check it from time to time. I have to go all the way downstairs to get a fresh beer, but there's no place to put a refrigerator without moving my wife's desk out, and I haven't even bothered to ask. I don't drink that much any way. My desk has one of those pull out boards for extra space beside the chair. It serves as a nice footrest, with my laptop laptopped, or when I'm reading or watching TV. Right now I can actually see part of the top of my desk, but when I set my computer down on it, it will be completely obscured.
Spring will be here soon, and maybe I'll come out of my hole. When it gets warm enough, I might go for a swim.
I knew the old lady's grandsons, they were about my age, and I had met Yen before. I think that Yen had suffered from PTSD (called shell shock back then), and he was far from normal. He could drive, and once he took me and his two nephews swimming a nearby creek. I remember, he got in the water about neck deep, and just stood there for at least an hour, with out moving or talking. Yen came to a bad end, he was killed by a self inflicted gunshot wound in what appeared to be a hunting accident in the woods behind McAllister School. Yen's parents, being well on in years, had decided to move to Virginia to live with their daughter. One of the prerequisites to selling the house was that they realized enough money from the sell to dig Yen up and take him with them.
I don't particularly care to sit in a chair under the house, and not having been to war, I don't suffer from PTSD, but I do appreciate Yen's preference for solitude in a confined space. I'm writing this post from my little fortress of solitude, upstairs across from the bed room. It's the place where I spend most of my spare time when I'm awake, and a good bit of time when I'm not.
It's a tiny little room, only seven feet wide, and thirteen feet long. It's a lot more crowded and cluttered than Andy Rooney's office. I sit at an old wooden desk in a chair with a high back, so that my head is supported when I doze off. It looks out through two floor to ceiling windows to my back yard. Right now the blinds are open so that, this afternoon, I could watch the snow that fell, but right now all I can see is the black of night. My wife's desk is also in the room. It is one of those big wooden office desks with a lower side section at right angles to the main desk. It takes up one entire end of the room and I can rest my feet on the end of it if I want to. In addition to the two desks, there are two computers, two printers, a little table with phone and answering machine, two guitars, a file cabinet, two desk lamps and a pole lamp, a paper shredder, a book case that takes up the entire other end of the room, a TV, two chairs, my Kindle, and me. It gets a little crowded when Kathy is in the room, but fortunately, this room is not where she prefers to spend her time. No reflection on me I hope. There are no pictures on what little wall space there is, but when my laptop is not in use, it slide shows the pictures I have filed on it. Facebook is generally running, and I check it from time to time. I have to go all the way downstairs to get a fresh beer, but there's no place to put a refrigerator without moving my wife's desk out, and I haven't even bothered to ask. I don't drink that much any way. My desk has one of those pull out boards for extra space beside the chair. It serves as a nice footrest, with my laptop laptopped, or when I'm reading or watching TV. Right now I can actually see part of the top of my desk, but when I set my computer down on it, it will be completely obscured.
Spring will be here soon, and maybe I'll come out of my hole. When it gets warm enough, I might go for a swim.
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