Avoiding pain

I have a question for all those undecided voters who went ahead and voted against Hillary just because they were brainwashed into thinking that she would have been wrong for the country. Now we have a child bully in power who seems hell bent on destroying our social fabric with hateful words, misogyinist thinking and egotistical attitudes.

Why would we inflict more pain on vulnerable parts of our population such as those who are ill and poor and maybe homeless, those who have depended on others for help in doing just every day things, and the young who have no power or say in their treatment.

Remember- all men must die.

How we live is important to me, and the end is immaterial. We can feel no pain after we check out, so it behooves us to make our present life as comfortable as we can.

That is not always possible if we are wracked with worry about our health, our slide into helplessnes, and the future of our young.

A case in point is my daughter Pam who fought breast cancer. If she had not had the benefit of the California helath service, it would have been much shorter and a lot more brutal. As it was she wished she would have had someone willing to put a bullet in her head to end the pain.

Is this the kind of society we want?

We have been accostomed to having certain basic health services, and when they are threatened as they are now, we tend to worry, which causes harmful enzymes to flow, and thereby causing real physical damage to our bodies.

Does your inner humane gauge tick over and land on the positive side? Are you willing to admit that maybe it is not a good idea to give more money to rich people at the expense of the poor?

I am not calling for a system of socialism, or any ism, just an examination of what each of us would like to see our country be.

Behaving badly

The funeral of Otto Warmbeir was so sad, and I think it could have been avoided.

Where were Otto’s good manners? Did his parents teach him to tear posters off walls of all the hotels that he had ever visited? Where was the good sense of a young tourist who should have read the rules of foreign travel?

All his great education was for naught if he could not understand that simple good manners apply whether he is in America or Timbucktu.

What would have we thought if he went to Paris and started stealing posters?

I blame his parents, and I think they have no cause to lay all the trouble on someone else.

Anyone who has read the news or kept up with international events knows that the North Koreans are a bit unbalanced, and should act accordingly.

Potty mouth

Potty mouth leaders

6/15/17

Now that the grievance holders are starting to exercise their Second Amendment Right to Bear Arms, and taking to the streets and warehouses to correct their grievances with spraying bullets, I have to wonder where the inspiration for this action came from.

We do not have to look very far. It comes from the very top.

No squalling back bencher in British Parliament has done more to use words as weapons, with various nasty views shouted from the campaign podium against all manner of people.

This flaming rhetoric is bound to find an echo in the population.

The U.S. Congress is now faced with the problem of trying to come to terms with the atmosphere that they have created with nasty comments against their political opponents, and to decide if this is really productive in getting the country on the right path to “Greatness”.

I was disgusted by the invocation given in Congress by the chaplain after the shooting on the baseball field in Alexandria yesterday. His words appealed to an unresponsive deity which was the height of hypocrisy. Where was this high and mighty lord and heavenly father when the words were twisted to hurt women, gays, Muslims and political opponents?

Where was the “blessing and protection” that are so readily invoked by members of the clergy?

We need a lot more honesty when we get up in public and speak our minds. We need civility and logic instead of superstition when dealing with the mentally ill who obtain assault rifles legally and then proceed to take out their frustrations on human targets.

As history shows, whole populations can be whipped up into hysteria and rioting by a charismatic speaker. We need word wranglers in Congress and the White House to put some brakes on the potty mouths. The social media is being grossly misused in this respect, and with the speed of light a nasty quote goes around the world and down through the ages. Forever.

Gone

Another one bites the dust

6/11/17

Well, that title is maybe not too nice to start with as it refers to the death of an old woman who happened to be a classmate of mine in 1954. It is just ironic that she is the second of my contemporaries to leave this vale of tears in the last three months.

We had a few things in common in that her dad drove the bus that picked me up and took me to grade school. We had Algebra class and gym together when I was a freshman in Liberty Union High School.

During that Algebra class which she excelled in and I was in danger of not passing without tutoring, we were all criticized by the teacher.

Since he made another classmate cry over criticism I chose to laugh in this face.

When my friend Joyce complimented me later in gym class I said that it was a case of either laughing or crying, so I chose to laugh.

This friend, even though she was a whizz at math was not so wise in biology and dropped out to get married before she graduated. I always felt a bit of superiority for that as she was so much of a scholar, but evidently had deeper issues that only sex could cure.

Later on in her life, after bearing a few children, helping her husband run his business she was effectually dumped by her philandering husband.

Back to school she went and finished her high school education and then on to college for a business degree.

This led to jobs with Chevron and a stint overseas.

I was reconnected to her life when we both were volunteering at a local museum.

There I learned that she had traveled to Kazakhstan to do the payroll for Chevron oil field workers.

We compared travel notes and how we found life in Tibet as a tourist and Kazakhstan as a payroll clerk.

She bought a house in a gated community in California and I bought a really old, really small house in Western state New York. I wonder how many girls from the Class of 1957 had such adventures?

Leaks

So now we know somewhat of what goes on in Washington D.C. I was struck by the serious nature of the Russian matter, and think that we are too worried about “Leaks” than the real dangers. A leak is when you feel the wetness in your underpants.

The Russian danger which is going to continue, should be foremost in our minds.

On another note , I have come to the conclusion that Mr.McCain is getting a bit too old for the politcal life, and comes accross as a doddering old has been.

He should shut up if he can’t think straight.

I have always questioned the timing of Mr. Comey’s revelations about Hillary’s e-mail.

This past election was a farce, and we shouod look to more women getting elected at more local levels to clean up and straighten out those “Good Old Boys.”

From the sound of the hearing on who said what to whom, we are in for a lot of discussion among the “talking heads” on television.

I can take only so much, and then retreat to books and old movies.

Forgot?

Forgetting?

6/5/17

I am a senior citizen, and can be forgiven for my many memory lapses. I forget old movie star’s names, but can remember their faces and the movies they were in. I forget the word “gluten” when it is on the tip of my tongue but will not emerge as a word.

I however can do the “7 Little Words” puzzle in less than ten minutes.

The latest in the Sacramento Bee has these answers:

Gibraltar, sinus, prequel, Vichy, limelight, Hathaway, and curs.

 

Clues are given and the number of letters in each answer, so that by looking at all the fractured words, the answers can be reconstructed.

Now, at my age I have made out many employment forms, and at least one security clearance interview with the FBI.

While young, I could go back and list all the addresses and phone numbers that were connected to my name, and all my relations ‘names and residences.

In today’s connected and documented world there is no “forgetting”.

According to David Freed, in his editorial Kushner ‘forgot’ Russian contact? Don’t’ even joke, he pointed out that when he omitted a nick name in one of his security interviews, the government official treated it as a major security lapse.

How does an important person like Jared Kushner get off claiming he forgot that he met with a Russian official and discussed various topics that both parties were involved in?

The answer is that either he has the attention span of a gnat, or he is lying through his pearly whites.

I go for lying. He cannot be more forgetful than an 80 year old granny, and still be able to negotiate the shoals of the Washington D.C. “swamp.”

And by the way it still has not been drained.

Diki

5/24/17

Another Biography

Dalai Lama, My son

A Mother’s Story, by Diki Tsering

Edited and introduced by Khedroob Thondup

Diki is the given name of the Dalai Lamas mother.

She had an extremely hard life, bearing sixteen children and losing almost half. She learned to control her feelings.

She was also highly superstitious and gave credence to dreams for direction in everyday life. She believed in ghosts and visions of mythical animals.

She said that she was “a daughter of peasants”, but that did not mean she was poor. Her clan owned various properties and had 600 horses by the time she went to Lhasa. They also hired servants and seasonal workers. She could not read or write, and never learned English, so this story is filtered through her children’s accounts.

Men ruled clan life, and women were highly restricted in their manner of dress, mourning rituals, and travel.

She admits that she was warned about eating only food that had been prepared in her own kitchen, and believed that her husband was poisoned for political purposes when visiting one of his farms.

All the origin stories of the process of choosing the next Dalai Lama have not exactly matched up. Several of her children wrote books too, and they have different details according to whomever they interviewed.

Diki related that she was told that her 3 year old son was the choice even though he was among 16 and then 3 boys to be “tested.”

The Dalai Lama himself states that he does not remember anything from that time. I have mentioned in other essays how this choice was managed, and it was based on the fact that an older brother had already gone into a monastery and was ready to be a companion to the younger brother while he was raised and taught by the ruling monks. This story was a public relation hodgepodge, and needs much more transparency. It does not inspire me to give credit to any “supernatural” forces in finding the 14^th Dalai Lama.