Decisions Decisions

 ... and the impossibility of making tasty choices in the infoverse ...

Well .... may I say, damn?  Who would have thought that this close to a Presidential primary we'd be faced with two unpalatable choices; one decidedly more unsavory that the other one, who's merely gone from bland to past sell by date.  

Normally, I would just hold my nose and take the past-prime option over the clearly toxic one, but I am not sure my stomach could handle either this time around.  I may have to leave the table if the menu goes unchanged.  Ugh, not a very democratically spirited solution, I agree, but my appetite has been quashed for this election and I can't think of a spice that can renew my taste for it.

I hope my situation is just a result of being too engaged with the infoverse of news (mostly opinion, really), and frantic posts on Facebook, You-Tube, and various other social media platforms that get all too much of my attention, oh, these past 8 years or so.

I think I will experiment over the next couple of months and try to avoid that infoverse, or at least limit my exposure, and see whether my appetite returns.  I know there's not a chance in the epicurean universe of me gaining a liking for the Agent Orange - flavored menu choice, but maybe, just maybe, I can learn to tolerate the nearly-spoiled offering.  Perhaps a bout of COVID might help 😬

Stay safe everyone, drink plenty of water, and shop for nose-clips ahead of the election ...

Welcome to the Beginning (of the End?)

... when time flies too fast, but not fast enough ...

Woof, what a hell of a lot happened since the last time I put words to these digital pages.

A Global Pandemic

The Great(er) Political Polarization

The Rise and Faltering of the Age of Elon

Oh, and Wars Ending and Wars Beginning, let's not pass that by.

I kept my written silence during the insane 2020 Presidential campaign and its psychotic aftermath, and through all of the sadness of the growing pandemic.  Through bright spots of hope, and the deep depression of seeing hope, if not outright fail, then become diluted by forces seemingly beyond the control (or even care) of those we trusted with power.

Why keep mum through all that?  

 I was busy, sure.  But that's not the reason.  I started this blog to have a 'place' where I could say the things I need to say 'out loud'.  Mostly unfiltered and with a touch of humor.  Even when I knew that few if any would ever read my words, I kept it up as a kind of therapy.  But even I have an overload limit where events and their coverage in the media just become too much to grok and digest.  My passion to write flamed, guttered, flared, and then blew out.

What's changed now?

Well, I am older, less busy with actual work, and even more affected by the schism in this country than before.  I have more now that I want to say, as useless as saying it will be.  Plus, my family will kill me if I continue dumping my thoughts at them.

So ... if you are looking for a roller-coaster ride through my peculiar views on the news and the wonders and dangers of our World, tighten your seat belt and move away from any door plugs.

Where did 2018 go?

I don't know about you, but for me 2018's been a blur.

Talk about time flying when you are having fun.  I'd say it flies even faster when you are NOT having fun, or at least you WILL it to fly faster and just get it over with.

That's what 2018 has largely been to me.  Something to get over with, to get through, to survive if you will.

I think that's been the attitude of slightly more than half this nation's people too.  Who wants to stay in this time, with all of it's highlighting of human failing?  Let's please close our eyes and skip ahead, skip ahead.  Maybe when we open them again we'll be in a better place.

2019, is that you?

Heroes and Friends

... or, when the brightest lights go out how do you find your way?

You would have to be a recluse bordering on hermitage, or the reddest of red-state Trumpists to feel good about the news of the Country and the World these days.  But we somehow get by without walking fully-clothed into the Pacific or swan-diving in our cars off Angeles Crest.

This on-the-brink-of-depair state hits those of a certain age the hardest, since we also are feeling unmoored from 'our time' as well.  We are being slowly disconnected from the people and things that strengthened our view of our country and our world; the sources of courage and hope during all the years of almost unrelentingly sad news blaring at us from our TVs and from our newspapers, and now from our multi-various 'screens'.

Even in our darkest times we had Heroes, who would speak words of encouragement, or lead by example; sometimes sacrificing their careers or even lives for the right thing.

We also had cheerleaders and those who simply made us remember the good things still surrounding us, through their words and actions in print, in films, on screen, or through disembodied voices over the radio.

These Heroes and familiar Friends kept us grounded and upbeat, through every damn thing the worst of our kind could dredge up and throw at us. (And that was an awful lot).

MAGA-Maniacal

 Of all the incomprehensibilities spewing out of the red-state Trumpian geyser,  MAGA, or 'Make American Great Again' is the first and foremost.  It Trumps 'Lock Her Up', and 'Build that Wall', or even 'Fake News'.

MAGA implies that America WAS great at one time, but currently is NOT.  And that Trump, or the populist but thoughtless movement of which he is the leader and symbol, can make it great AGAIN.

This is ironic and doesn't make sense, given that the self-same supporters of MAGA are the first to cry 'America is the Greatest country on Earth', and claim that millions of immigrants want to come and partake of that greatness.

So what is it? Are we Great or Not Great?

Of course, I'm kidding.  I know the MAGA movement is really saying that Americans of primarily caucasian lineage living 'traditional' lifestyles and wrapped in a familiar religion are what makes America great, and anything or anybody displaying different values would undermine that greatness.

But that attitude, aside from being innately racist, grossly inhumane, and irreligious, is a bad plan for the future.

Sure, short term change can be (and probably will be) painful and disruptive. But without change there is no way to find better ways to live together as a human society. Without change we will never solve age-old problems that may only be solved given new perspectives.

In other words, societies need fresh blood, and new ideas.  Change in the form of immigration has brought just that to America over the centuries, and it can do it again.  In fact, the greatness of our country depends on it.

Build a wall and all we will do is stagnate behind it.

So,

Maintain America's Greatness by Allowing immigration. MAGA, indeed.

House Rich

... or why its getting weirder in America ...

Almost 17 years ago, my wife and I moved our family into a larger house in a new neighborhood.  We needed the space desperately to avoid the appearance of hoarding.  Although if I'd known the commercial appeal that 'real life' hoarding stories would one day generate, maybe we'd of stayed and gotten rich by being the pack rats we (seemingly) are.

But let me not digress.  This piece is about that larger house and the neighborhood around it.  A nice place, don't you know.

When we moved in, it was a place full of people mixing across a large swath of the economy, from the LA wealthy to the LA poor(-ish), and all between.  There were long-time resident ethno-cultural groups here cheek by jowl with the usual SoCal majority mix of whites/Hispanics.  Streets were lined with mom-and-pop one-off shops and independent restaurants among the car body shops and senior living complexes. An interesting place to live. Not splashy, but comfy.

During the big housing bubble prices for homes in the area became expensive out of proportion to any real value, but hey, the banks were giving away jumbo loans at 0 down.  In much of the outlying areas of LA, the Great Home Ownership Rush was On.  In my neighborhood it was there, but more subdued since the people who already lived there weren't in the mood to sell, and not much new was being built.  Besides, if we sold, where would we move?  We liked it where we were.

Then the bubble burst and everywhere you looked house prices were dropping like those Turkey's in WKRP's Thanksgiving Giveaway.  They dropped where I live too, but not as much.

And now, 8 years after that bubble burst, with other areas still recovering, LA housing prices have been rising with a bullet, nowhere more so than in my neighborhood.  They now stand at triple (or more) the price they fetched 17 years ago, beyond even the crazy highs of the bubble.  This extreme rise in value has led some locals to finally sell-up, grab the profit, and move to cheaper climes and buy a retirement mansion.  Good for them, I would say, only the people who are buying up and moving in are not the same kinds of people as those leaving, so the personality of the neighborhood is changing.

And how could it not? People who can afford to pay 1 million and up for homes that were half that 10 years ago are not like me - and probably not like you. They are Rich.  Not billionaires, but certainly millionaires, multiply so.  Either that, or they are far more skilled in managing their money than the average American, sadly including me.

I don't know exactly where they are coming from; another part of LA, refugees from even higher prices in the San Francisco Bay Area, or hillbillies who struck Texas Tea, Black Gold, Oil that is!

Wherever they are coming from they are changing the place.  Everywhere you look long-time businesses are closing and trendy, hip places are opening up, in chase of the money they just know is there.  Sometimes they close too, and another trendy spot takes its place. It's like America has acquired ADHD, or at least a shortening attention span.

Ok, I'll admit, I can't directly tie the rapid increase in house prices (and apartment rents) and their new richey owners to the change in businesses, but hey its a pattern that LA has seen elsewhere.  Like  that nice place I used to live with my family in the too-small house I sold to to get into the bigger house.  That older place is even trendier and hipper now.

People who held on there and here, and have not sold into this booming market, really like where they live and don't want to leave. But these places are changing around them into something increasingly unrecognizable and weird.

Whether we, the residents of those places where a rising tide of incredible (and to me inscrutable) affluence is leaving us as beachcomber's on a strange shore, can adapt and love the new normal, is a question without any clear answer.   I plan to stay until every other restaurant is trendy-casual and all burgers are gourmet, and/or until Home Owners Associations rear their intrusive, ugly heads. Even then I'll probably stay, since, like I said, it's a nice place.

Loss and Love

or, why darkness never completely extinguishes light

 It's a common belief that bad things happen to good people.  Or that the good die young. But that's not really accurate.

These things are thought because when good people have misfortune or die, others take more notice.  Because they were good.  The passing of good through the world leaves a wake.

The wife of a social media friend of mine recently passed away after a tenacious battle with pancreatic cancer.  If you don't  know about that kind of cancer consider yourself lucky.  It's a King Kong Bitch of a disease.

Because my friend is a friend through the world wide web and I've never actually met him, I also never met his wife.  I only knew her through his occasional mentions.  But I could tell much from those scraps.

I could tell she was loved, and loving.  I could tell she was smart. And I could tell she shared much of my friend's passions in life.

What I couldn't tell and didn't know was that she was sick, and sick with such a terrible form of cancer.

Just yesterday my friend told his friends at our communal forum that she had passed away.  He gave the news in the context of participation in our shared passion of motorcycle racing.  You see, his wife was the best of us in the game of predicting who might win, and the finishing order of the runners-up.  In fact, she was a whiz at it.

In his telling, he mentioned also what she'd meant to him; how she had supported him in his own racing and moto-interests for decades.  How she was strong; a fighter.

He mentioned the hole her passing had created and how he and his family were trying to pull it together and get on with life.

That's a hard ask, even if the grief may be tinged (as it often is in cases of prolonged cancer) with some relief at the ending of a loved one's ordeal.  But it's an ask that is answerable, because although good people may leave a gap when they die, their cumulative good effects on others over the years remain undiminished; the benefits reaped from knowing then still vital.

So, a good person's progress through life was stopped by a merciless cancer.  But her memory and her goodness will carry on with my friend and his family.  In this temporary darkness they now experience the light she bequeathed them will shine and lead the way out.

That's the enduring promise of Love. That it will not be diminished by Loss.  And why where there is Love there is never true darkness.

Rest in Peace