Good morning Boys and Girls.

7:30 a.m. Monday. Hot, hot, hot. Heat index is supposed to be 100 today. From what I understand, this means that it will feel like 100 degrees even though it may really only be 99.9 out there.

*note to self: take a thing of water

So, my friend has this little plaque in the hallway leading to her door that reads, " Gud giver os nodderne - men han knaekker den ikke for os."

It's a quote from Hans Christian Andersen, of fairy tale fame that translates into English as "God gives us nuts, but he doesn't crack them for us."

I thought about the little saying as I drove home from her house the other day. On the one hand it's merely a cute little observation. -True enough even when taken literally. If we look at it as I'm sure he meant it though, it's a wonderful allegory for our responsibilities as caretakers of this planet, each other and our own lives.

We have been given this earth to use and live upon. A damn nice deal. But, we should remember that we're tenants, not the landlords here. And it doesn't even matter whether you're a believer in God or have any religious affiliations, the fact of the matter is, the planet has been here a lot longer than we have, and it will be here long after we're gone. OUR job is to peaceably enjoy the premises and leave it in the same condition we received it excluding normal wear and tear. We're allowed to crack the nuts, but we're not allowed to kill any trees.

That goes for our relationship with other people as well. As a race, we're given the opportunity to enjoy living out little snippets of eternity; our lives perhaps being the nuts, and we're given plenty of food, water, and the ability to shelter ourselves; maybe see that as the cracking of those same nuts, but if we leave ourselves "in the shell" and don't tap the resources of our own opportunities in life, we're just those hard shells. We'll exist till that shell rots, by which time the meat inside will be useless to anyone who happens upon it, as well as to ourselves.

At it's simplest, the saying seems to say that opportunities may indeed present themselves, but it's OUR job to take advantage of them. At least that's what I get out of it. We have opportunities in front of us now. There are problems to be sure, but our response to those problems will determine whether the planet is a healthier place when we leave it, or whether it is a poisoned orchard with way too many of the trees having been killed off out of spite instead of having selectively pruned bad branches to help even those trees grow and flourish, despite being a different species of fruit.

Be good to everyone.

Good morning Boys and Girls.

(ring... ring... ring... ring...)

"Hello?"

"Morning."

"HI!. Wow. "You're calling early. Bet you're not in my time zone."

"Oh. Sorry. Did I wake you?"

"Well, yeah, I guess so. But it's okay. I got in late. I should be up anyway. Where are ya Jesus?"

"Rome. It's one in the afternoon here. Maybe I didn't do the math right."

"No, it's fine. Were you there for the meeting to discuss the possibilities of a cease-fire the other day?"

"Not really, but since I was here, I listened in. Wasn't pretty."

"So I gather. So how you doing?"

"I'm okay. This whole thing is crazy."

"Well, yeah... It is. Explain it. Isn't Hezbollah just another terrorist organization? What the hell are they doing having all this conventional weaponry?"

"Well, see, that's the problem. To a large segment of the Arab world, they're not seen as terrorists at all. It was Hezbollah that made Israel give up on occupying Southern Lebanon twenty years ago, and they've been recruiting and growing since '82."

"I've read that. Which is, I assume is why Israel has been holding so many of them for so long. They're a real threat, and Israel knows it."

"Exactly..."

"But they ARE terrorists."

"Well, it's a dumb label. They are extremists, but they aren't seen in the same light as al Qeda even by many moderates in the Middle East. To be frank, many people see them as, well "patriots," sort of, though that's not really the right word."

"Aren't they being largely funded and supplied by Iran?"

"Definitely, but it's more like Iran is helping an already established and growing outfit, than sending in tons of soldiers and guns to start things up. It's the same philosophy the U.S. used when they were supplying weapons and support to bin Laden and his people to defend Afghanistan against the Soviets in the eighties."

"That's something that's always bothered me. Especially when I read that Moscow helped Muslim extremists get a foothold in the first place."

"Oh, that's just clap-trap written by people who like to make connections between all the enemies of the U.S. It's meant to bolster the "us against the world" argument. There wasn't much of that, but it's true that many of their weapons were Soviet made. They sold guns and armaments just like the U.S. does. That was about cold hard cash."

"It half-sounds like you're an apologist for Hezbollah."

"No. I'm not. Trying to understand why things are the way they are is the only way to figure out how to move forward..."

"So what's your take on the "The free world's got to go get-'em all" position."

"It understandable. Everyone's frustrated, but it's also absurd. Well, it's absurd unless you want the entire future of humanity to be one of constant war, which, admittedly, is a trade-off it seems like some people are willing to make. As long as people insist on thinking of themselves as morally superior to the other side, it very well may be the way things go."

"But Jesus, these people will do anything. They want the whole world Muslim and will kill us all eventually if we don't stop them."

"Oh please. That's the craziest thing I've ever heard. How did that work out for the Christians when they tried that? They..."

"But Jesus, that's what they say! Half of the Arab world thinks Israel needs to be wiped off the map and they see us as... well, the great Satan."

"I know. That's why things need to cool off and we need to examine WHY these people feel this way with cool heads..."

"THAT'S absurd!"

"Hey, surr, look, you want the human race to be around in fifty years?"

"Well, of course."

"Then this is the ONLY way to go. Wars tend to escalate. And eventually this one looks to go to the top floor if we let it. Every day we find new and more efficient ways to kill people. It's not like we're talking about bows and arrows anymore."

"True. But we stopped Hitler, didn't we?"

"And you see this as a simlar problem?"

"I don't, but I hear it used as an argument all the time."

"Apples and Oranges. No. More like apples and brown rice. Not even the same food group. Look. There's a point where who's right and who's wrong - and who's got God on their side stops mattering. Soon, and that time is here already as far as I'm concerned, the "winners" will be the people who start looking at the other side as human beings and do their best to make sure that the other side knows it. What really fuels ALL this stuff, is righteous indignation. It's the "of course I'm right" mentality being held by both sides that keeps this thing burning. And the only thing that can ever stop it, is when we let go of that, and by "we" I mean everyone; all sides. But..."

"But, what?"

"It has to start with one of the sides. If not? That's the ball-game."

"(chuckling) Isn't that when you come back to reign in peace for a thousand years?"

"Don't get me started on that, um... stuff. (snickers)"

"Be careful over there."

"I will. I'm going to Paris tomorrow. I'll call you from there in a few days."

"Okay. See ya."

"Bye."

(click.)

Good morning Boys and Girls.

It's almost eight, and I have to leave for work in a few minutes. Looks like rain and I want to get as much done as I can before it hits, assuming it does.

Thinking of taking time off here, though I do enjoy it so. We'll see. Maybe something will strike me later, but the ideas I've had for the next few days wouldn't be anything more than me rehashing stuff that seems so very obvious to me, and it's just the same stuff I've written about before though perhaps from slightly different angles. And, since right now that seems sort of fruitless and pointless, I think I need to rethink what I should write about.

Perhaps the muse will pluck my twanger at some point later today.

Enjoy your day.

Good morning Boys and Girls.

I'm worn out. I give up. I may need a couple of days to readjust my thinking so this blog reflects my new outlook. This is where I'll be going:

The only prudent course of action is more War. There's no getting around it.

There's no Global Warming. Just another liberal ruse.

Yeah, we've made mistakes in the Middle East, but only tiny ones and really we should have been there sooner and with more force. F*ck'em. Then we could have opened more coffee shops - and sooner.

Terrorists were born that way. Our job is just to kill everyone who claims membership in one of their groups, or anyone we think might be in one of them. If we kill other people along the way? -f*ck'em. Too bad.

Yeah, we helped Saddam's power grow. So what? -that was then. Doesn't have anything to do with today.

We don't need to change anything about US. We're perfect except for the things liberals have screwed up in the country.

The administration's policies would turn this country around if only taxes were lower for the rich.

George Bush is brilliant.

The constitution doesn't specifically say we should provide education to our young, so there shouldn't be any public schools. And there should be NO public health care. F*ck' the poor. If you can't pay for it? -you're not entitled to anything.

Affirmative action has ruined this country. See how the white's are downtrodden now? -it's all the fault of liberals.

Oil is the only way to fuel our stuff and always will be until it's all gone. (Only fags would be caught dead in one of them Hybrids or Flex-fuel junkers anyway.)

Our National security should be based on whatever the hell we feel like it should be based on at any given moment. As far as oil goes, it's ours anyway. We just pay the towel-heads to get it out of the ground for us. If they didn't sell to us, they'd be breaching OUR national security, and that too would be grounds for sending the marines.

Oh, a minimum wage keeps people down.

Democrats LOVE big government.

...and Al Gore lies every time he opens his mouth. I know, cuz I've been told so.

I'm gonna go buy some guns and listen to talk radio. From now on I'm gonna be a rugged individualist - ya know, who thinks the way a nice big group of other people think, which is, of course, the source from which I'll get my ideas.

Oh, and if a question is inconvenient to answer, or if the answer might make any of my positions seem less than sound, I'll ignore it.


There.


Now I'll fit in.


Be good to everyone, No, screw that.

F*ck'em.

 
(And after a few weeks of this, I'll probably have to hook up a hose to the exhaust.) 

Good morning Boys and Girls.

Once upon a time a small boy watched as his parents and baby sister died as a result of a mortar landing near his house. His parents were good hard-working people who'd done as much as they could for him and his sister.

Where he lived, there wasn't much in the way of support for orphans, and soon he found himself living on the street among other children who'd lost their families.

As he grew older, an organization claiming that they were fighting the very people who'd killed his parents asked him to become one of them. He listened and learned what they taught him. Soon he believed everything he was told and decided he was willing to die himself if it meant helping avenge his family.

The end.

Simple story, huh? Not too many details here.

Understand this. THIS IS what preemptive attacks breed.

I'm all for strategic attacks to root out people we KNOW have hurt us. But they'd better be surgical in their preciseness and they'd better not create more people who want to do us harm.

If we're going to claim that Muslims all over the world want to do us and the rest of the free world harm - which is exactly what a hell of a lot of people think is the case - and if we're gong to start acting as though their lives don't matter as long as we're getting some of the bad guys with every attack, then, my friends, we are sewing the seeds of our own destruction. And worse? We'll deserve what we get.

I'm sick of the vitriolic rhetoric being spewed by people who otherwise seem to have plenty of common sense, and know better.

Maybe if your family was killed, you'd be all forgiving. Great. Some folks might be. But - and this is a BIG but - what if, as you think about it, you decide that what happened to your family was part of a bigger evil plan. What if you start being TAUGHT that this is the case.

You too would likely become a warrior in the cause against your family's killers.

For God's sake people, let's think this through.



Be good to everyone.

Good morning Boys and Girls!

Sorry if this post has a slight odor of B.O. accompanying it.

It's me.

Went to Metro Detroit yesterday and worked hard in the morning, had a nice lunch with a friend, and then worked some more... and some more.

Left for home about 8:30 p.m. exhausted. Got to near Lansing and pulled over in a rest area about 9:45 to close my eyes for a minute or two.

Right.

Woke up at about three in the morning and got back on the road, feeling silly. Had to use the john so I stopped at the last rest area before my exit, maybe twenty miles east of here, at about 4:00.

Somehow, I fell asleep again and woke up about an hour ago. Since I had a package waiting for me at FedEx-Kinkos, I went there and to my P.O. box and stopped at a Mickey D's for a coffee and then, finally, just walked in here ten minutes ago.

It's only two hours and a half hours to Detroit from here, yet I turned coming home into an eleven hour marathon. Weird. And? I haven't showered since the night before last and it was pretty hot yesterday, so any of you planning on coming for breakfast? -uh... I wouldn't, at least till I'm done writing this piece of tripe and have hopped in the shower for an hour or so and have scrubbed the thick layer of funky re-dried sweat from my clogged pores.

Ain't that a nice visual?

Too much information?

Aw, come on.

Be good to everyone.

Hello.

Jesus reporting today.

So I read surr's thing about us planning on going golfing yesterday. I was kidding, and I'm pretty sure he knew it. I had NO desire to spend the afternoon driving him around in his little cart. He played. I stayed here and worked.

I came here to relax, but to be honest, I can't get comfortable. This isn't surrogate's fault, I'd be feeling like this no matter where I'd spent the weekend.

This conflict between Hezbollah and Israel has my mind spinning. I can't do a thing about it, but it sure has me feeling sad and very concerned. What the hell is the point of this, from either side? Israel thinks they need to move Hezbollah away from the border to avoid this kind of stuff in the future, and Hezbollah doesn't think Israel should even exist in the first place. It's all ridiculous, and dangerous as all get out.

Sometimes I wish Israel would pack it in and just buy a plot of land somewhere else in the world. Take a few shovels-full of "sacred earth" and start over elsewhere. Call me crazy. Did Dad promise the Jews a homeland? Sure, but he didn't say where OR when and this is going to get crazier and crazier - and I just hate seeing people killing each other over what they perceive as their birth right, by virtue of their ancestry... and frankly, that goes for both sides. It's insane.

I have no idea what to suggest. To me? It's a perfect case for Solomon, except that in this case, neither side really seems to care whether the baby is killed, as long as the other side doesn't get even half the corpse.

I am a Jew, but I could care less about hanging around Israel. Someone suggested this idea, kiddingly, but it makes as much sense as anything else... Maybe the US could broker a deal for the Baja Peninsula... Set up a new Jerusalem and Tel Aviv right on the ocean... Bam. Name it Isreal. Then make whoever gets control of what's now Israel promise to make all the old buildings and historic sites available to anyone who wants to visit. Whatever, one of these groups is eventually going to have to be the bigger people and give up this land. It's gotten to that point. I can't stand it when "It is written" becomes an excuse for people to behave badly.

Sometimes I think it goes back to the term "chosen people." What was really meant by that was that even though they were oppressed at the time all this stuff was being recorded, and once again let me stress that things were not recorded all that perfectly, was that Dad considered them (us) just as important as anyone else.

We survived for a long long time without a "nation." Maybe it's time for us to get back to wandering a while, in the name of peace. See, somehow, it IS hard to completely ignore the claims of the rest of the folks who think they deserve the land too. Not that their claims are any more valid, but not that they're LESS valid either.

In my mind, the people who will deserve the land the most, will be those who are willing, finally, to give it up.

Regardless, if this continues for much longer, what with the continuing advances in weaponry and both sides willingness to use it relatively indiscriminately, eventually the only people left in the area, will be dead ones.

It sort of reminds me of that bumper sticker so popular a few years ago among gun nuts in the U.S.: "You can take my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers."

Okay. If you insist. And congrats. You won. Too bad you're all too dead to enjoy the victory.

It's absurd.


Have a nice day.

Good morning Boys and Girls.

The ides of July. July 15th. Middle 'o' the month.

Sunny, hot and hazy this morning. Foggy really, though it's already burned off most of the way now at 7:55 a.m.

Yesterday I went a'blog shopping. I read many of the ones I like to read, plus a bunch of new ones, then a few that I KNOW tend to make my skin crawl.

I'm still amazed by the goof-balls out there who don't understand how the C.I.A works, even a little. Now, lord knows (small "l") they've done their share of bad stuff over the years and I'm sure they still do, but by and large they do it with good intentions, or with what they see as good intentions. Regardless, much of their work, hell MOST of their work, is done clandestinely. It's the way they operate. It is, actually, the way their HAVE to operate to be effective.

In my life I've known two people who worked for the C.I.A. for a number of years. Both are long retired, and in fact may be dead now as far as I know, as they were both the Fathers of friends of mine from long ago with whom I haven't kept in touch. They knew each other and had worked together a few times many years earlier. I knew one much better than the other and we'd ask him questions about his work all the time when I was in High School, which was soon after he'd retired. He would never answer many of our questions, but he did give us some interesting information that did little but spur further questions from us, which he didn't answer.

Mr. G. had been an F.B.I. agent for a few years, back in the heyday of the Hoover era when he was recruited. He told us how that came to happen, but I don't remember the story exactly. It was mundane and had something to do with helping stop some fruit shipments from Mexico that weren't being done legally. Seemed harmless to me, but I guess it was a fairly big deal. One of the guys he worked with on the case hired him or recruited him, or however it worked, and for the next fifteen years, he worked for "the spooks."

His "job" was running a fake import brokerage office in a few South American countries, though "fake" isn't really the right word. They actually did the work of an importer, setting up regular shipments of hundreds of items over the years and establishing a good business. During the years-long process of putting together and running this venture though, what they were really trying to accomplish, and from what he said they were very successful at, was in figuring out which of these companies were also shipping heroin and pot into the U.S. and establishing who was in control of those businesses.

What drove him nuts, was when they'd get all the goods conceivable on someone, and then nothing would happen, which he said felt like the norm, too much of the time.

The point is, he and a few others ran this business for over ten years, all the while full time employees of the C.I.A. and no one knew it, in his case, except his wife and his bosses. To anyone else, it would have appeared that he was just a broker with offices in a few South American Cities and New York.

When he retired? Smooth sailing. No one ever gave him up.

Now in the case of Valerie Plame, we've got all these right-wing goof-balls who, because her cover was good, (and really because they can't stand the fact that their heroes in the White House committed a crime) are claiming she wasn't under-cover, even though dozens of her fellow agents have come forward to say how effective she was in her job. One of the most vocal of her supporters, and someone who worked with her for a long time is from my hometown of Royal Oak, Michigan. I've heard him interviewed a few times during the time this fiasco has played out. He is livid. Oh, and he's a conservative Republican.

Guess these agents are just big fat liars, huh?

Why would they lie about it? What do they have to gain?

Great questions.


Be good to everyone.

Good morning Boys and Girls.


8:16 a.m. Friday. Supposed to be 93 degrees today.

Went to bed at 11:00 and just woke up. What's with that? I'm usually awake within ten minutes either way of six hours after I go to bed, no matter what. I slept nine hours? Me?

Weird. Perhaps I wear myself out more when it's really hot out. Not sure, but I do feel really especially well rested this morning. Maybe I should go out and conquer the world!

Or maybe it was the phone call I got last night just before bed...

"Hello?"

"Hey surr."

"HI Jesus! How are ya?"

"I'm fine. Tired, but fine."

"Where are you?"

"I'm in Chicago. Just got in. Left Northern Israel Wednesday at noon."

"Geez. What's the deal over there? It looks crazy on the news."

"Same old, same old. Tit for tat. Eye for an eye... It'll stay the same till either one side kills the other or till someone gets wise to the game."

"But Lebanon? That's kind of strange. Seems like they've been okay with each other for a while."

"Hezbollah. You know they're not okay with things..."

"Yeah. just didn't..."

"I don't want to talk about it right now... I'm too tired."

"Okay. What's up?"

"Just this trip. It wore me out. How about with you?"

"With me? Not much. Work. Was planning on going over to Detroit to watch the old guys play golf this weekend in the Senior Players Championship, but? -it's gonna be real hot, so I don't know. Have a chance to meet Gary Maccord with his sister-in-law and her husband."

"Oh. That's neat..."

"But it's supposed to be over 90 and humid all weekend, so I don't know if I feel like standing around in a crowd. What are you doing?"

"Well I have to be in Kalamazoo tonight. I'm going to hop on the train and go there this afternoon, but I wondered if you'd want to get together tomorrow or Sunday?"

"Sure! That'll make the decision easier. Feel like driving a golf cart around Sunday afternoon? A friend of mine wants to play if I'm in town and she's a great cook. Maybe we could do dinner over there afterward. I think you'd have fun."

"Perfect. I need to relax for a couple of days. Maybe I'll try hitting a putter off the tee."

"A driver."

"Huh?"

"A driver. You us a putter when you're on the green. Ya know, for putting."

"Whatever."

"Well... they are quite different."

"Okay! Like I care about that. I'll call you when I know when I'm going to be done in Kazoo. Is that okay?"

"Sure! I'll look forward to seeing you."

"Okay. Thanks surr."

"See you soon. Hey, want to write the post for Sunday or Monday?"

"Sure."

"Cool! Bye."

"So long."

(click)


Be good to everyone.

Good morning Boys and Girls.

At what point do we stop worrying so much about the world at large and begin to worry about our own little piece of it?

Feel like I'm getting to that point, again, and I'm sort of ashamed of it. For me, though, this sort of thing come in waves. For a while, I'll see possibilities for change and I'll get sort of excited, then, when those changes are quashed, many times by what amounts to cheating by those who like the status quo, I'll get complacent so as not to become depressed or outraged, and I'll start to worry more about whether I'm keeping my knees relaxed during my chip shots, or whether I'm over-heating the pan when I'm caramelizing onions and garlic, or should I take on more customers to spell the slow times, knowing that when things are busy I won't be able to handle them properly...

Me, me, me.

My grandmother used to say that the key to happiness was to make sure you were doing things for others. For those of you who've read this blog a while, you've read that one before. Sorry. But I KNOW it's true, and sometimes, for a while, I'll keep it in mind and try to live the adage actively. When I do? -I'm more creative, more ambitious, more excited about life and hence, more productive.

And? I not only LIKE people more, I care about the outside world more and feel less as though it just doesn't matter, that the world is going to hell in a hand-basket, and no amount of "concern" on my part or anyone else's is going to make a hill of beans worth of difference.

So I get BACK on the bandwagon. Look for little things I can do to "make a difference." And sure as hell, as soon as I start to feel better, f*cking Ann Coulter will come out with another book, or the fact that Cheney wasn't indicted will be painted as vindication that everything is sunny and rosy in the administration, and clearly above board. Or some jerk-off will start in with trying to equate gay marriage with the end of civilization as we know it, or, or, or....

And my blood pressure goes up, and my cynicism returns and I start thinking "How stupid can these people be? SCREW it! Maybe there's a Rockford Files rerun on T.V." (Okay, so that one's a stretch... but I did like the old guy who played his father...)

Which is... exactly what "THEY" want. Hey look! I got to my point!

Never give up. (I'm saying this to ME, by the way.)

Never!

(Pronounced "Ne-vahhh" - preferably with a haughty and affected *New England accent.)


Be good to everyone.

*Think: "Blue State" 

Good morning Boys and Girls.

Over the course of the last couple of years, while maintaining this blog, more than once I've been pleasantly surprised at the originality and clear thinking displayed within many of the posts I've read here on tBlog.

Of late, however - and obviously this is just my opinion - we seem to be in a real down period with regards to content.

In the article on the tBlog home page, it says there are 80,000 active blogs on this site. That may very well be, but for the life of me, I can't find more than a dozen or two that capture my interest enough to read on a regular basis.

Having said that, I know it's not a fair statement since there are so many written in languages that I'm simply unable to read, and for all I know, there my be hundreds or thousands that are just great, but as for the ones written in English? -I'm finding it damn thin.

And I keep wondering why that is? Is it just me?

I'd love some suggestions, by the way.

Be good to everyone.

Good morning Boys and Girls and Happy July 4th!

Interesting way to wake up this morning... to a slightly charred odor wafting through the old apartment.

Last night about 10:30 p.m., probably for the first time in my adult life, I put a little package of pizza rolls in the oven. I was hungry. Don't remember ever even buying pizza rolls before.

Well, let me assure you of this. If you're gonna cook 'em, remember you are doing so well before you go to bed, cuz 10 hours at 400 turns them into tiny little black chunks of carbon, and sort of stinks up your place.

Perhaps I could crush them into a fine powder, dilute them in some sort of solvent medium and make paint or ink out of the mess.

Dumb.

Okay... I'm breaking a promise here... shoot me. Yes, I know I said I wouldn't talk about it much but... I played golf yesterday. And, I played poorly. So poorly, in fact, that I felt like I'd never had a club in my hands before. Tough course? -sure, but not THAT tough. Felt like a spastic monkey out there... (And this is in no way intended to disparage monkeys with difficulties.)

So, a thought or two on the holiday.

Parades galore today. Private fireworks displays have been evident just by looking out my windows for a few days with the big municipal ones around here expected tonight.

I've read some of the pro and con stories about fireworks possession and use in the papers and on line - a topic on which I don't have an opinion - I just hope people think and are careful.

Sometimes I wish I'd been around at the beginning of the forming of this country, -maybe just been a fly on the wall, No... I think I'd want to have had the knowledge I have now about the way the country would grow and spread so I could clue the founding fathers in on the fact that they needed to take the immense growth and expansion we've experienced over the past couple of hundred years into the way they devised things.

I can't imagine them ever dreaming we'd be a country of three hundred million people in a mere two-hundred and thirty-two years; the span of just three decent lifetimes.

Maybe that foreknowledge wouldn't have changed a thing, but I'd have loved for them to have it to work with. Hell, I'd think just knowing that, for instance, computers would exist and be available to everyone everywhere (and would be used for all purposes, both good and bad) might just have given them pause about the way, just a few years after independence was declared and then won, that the constitution would have been written when addressing such things as *privacy rights and "possible" government and business intrusion into our everyday lives.

So maybe I'd want to have been a TALKING fly on the wall.

We are sooooo young. We are a blip on the timeline of humanity, let alone the world or the universe. How is it we think we know so much? How is it we talk of the forming of this nation as though it was so very long ago? It was yesterday!

I remember taking a few history classes as a younger human and thinking, "Man oh man, this was all so long ago. How can any of this stuff matter today?"

Wish I'd had enough life experience to see the connections. Maybe George Carlin is right. Maybe we do need to live life backwards. Maybe we need to be in school when we're old enough to understand the importance of what we're learning.

Well this sure jumps around a bit, doesn't it? -maybe like the sparks off a sparkler?

No?

Oh well.


Be good to everyone - and be careful with those bottle rockets.

You could put an eye out.

*Yes, I know privacy rights, per sey, aren't addressed in the constitution. I have a feeling that, based on the spirit of the rest of the words, that they would have been had they known where technology would go, and how large the country would become, but then I also think they'd have addressed the sepparation of church and state in a much clearer manner had they realized.... oh, never mind...

Good afternoon Boys and Girls!

Nice weekend so far?

Mine has been. My son came over here Friday night and we spent some nice time together.

Dragged him and a close friend to my favorite Chinese restaurant for Dim Sum and Chow Fung (plus the best Hot and Sour soup I've ever had) after we'd played golf early yesterday morning.

He left in the early evening.

Finally tried out the pool at my place which the landlord has finally gotten around to opening. Twas a tad cool at first, but it'll be nice to have it available after hot days at work, and since no one is living downstairs right now, guess it's my own private wet retreat.

Speaking of wet...

Thursday morning as I left for work I took the route through the neighborhood to the expressway. As I pulled around a curve in the road, I saw a woman half kneeling - half crouching, after having just adjusted a lawn sprinkler. I could see the dried brown patch of grass she was trying to make sure she was hitting with the water, but her hand was half covering her mouth as though she was deep in thought, and for some reason I didn't get the impression it was the lawn she was thinking about. She turned her head ever so slightly as I drove by, and I caught the look on her face. Her worry was evident and I wanted to stop the car right that instant to ask her if everything was okay, though somehow I didn't think it was.

As I worked that day, and even when I was driving around from account to account, the look on her face kept popping back into me head and I wondered what in her life was causing such concern. Is there a sick child? An aging parent? Marital problems? Money stuff?

At the end of the day I drove home and deliberately went through the neighborhood again, something I rarely do going home, but I wondered if that woman would be out there again and I'd be given some clue to what was bothering her. 

She wasn't in her yard, of course, and the sprinkler sat where she'd put it that morning, but the water wasn't running, and I put the situation out of my mind where it remained till I laid down for bed that night.

Was I nuts? I thought... What had I planned on doing? Stopping and asking her what the problem was? Hell, she'd have probably called the cops. I would have if I were her. "Some nut-job is here harassing me... I don't know if he's dangerous, but he's sure creeping me out...."

Weird. Hope she's okay though.

Be good to everyone.