WTF?

27. April 2012 · Comments Off on WTF? · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General Nonsense, Good God, Health and Wellness, Local, Media Matters Not, Politics, Rant, sarcasm · Tags: , , , , , ,

That’s the feeling, really – as Blondie and I walk the dogs of a morning, and discuss such weighty matters as who remembered to bring sufficient poopy bags, if it is safe enough to let the Weevil off leash long enough to have a brisk run up and down the long fence behind which lives another Boxer mix who carries on a sort of fence to fence tag run, how many tomatoes we are likely to get from our current planting of garden bounty, if there will be enough cucumbers to make a decent batch of pickle spears soon, what to have for dinner that evening … and the morning gleanings of various internet news sites that we favor, upon rising from our slumbers first thing of a morning.

I favor Instapundit myself – out of long habit, even if he did drop this site from his blogroll a couple of years ago, but my daughter favors a combination of TMZ and the Daily Mail website, which (oddly enough) often puts up items of American news days before it appears in our own very dear mainstream media organs. Nope, tis true, tis true: sensationalist, twee, celebrity-addled, frequently misspelled/ungrammatical/confusing/sentimental-enough-to-trigger-a-diabetic-reaction, the DM still unashamedly and without much bias that I can detect covers the news. What a concept, hey? (Leaving aside the DM’s editorial bias, whatever it might be. When it comes to Brit newspapers, I used to favor the London Times and the Spectator myself, until they put everything interesting behind a paywall, then the Telegraph, and even the Guardian – until … well, that last just went beyond the pale for me. The lefty establishment bias just got to hard to take. God knows what the Grauniad thinks of the Tea Party; I don’t have a stomach strong enough to check.)

Anyway – to see ourselves as the DM sees us. My daughter notes the increasing numbers of American commenters, who ask why they hell do they have to go to a British newspaper site to see relatively unbiased American news. I’d guess it’s probably because the DM doesn’t seem to actually have a rep in among the White House Press Whores, or among the local establishment in whatever city the interesting story of the moment comes from. So, they can tell the story and access-to-the-elite-establishment be damned. Kind of refreshing, actually: what was the old press motto? To comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable – damned if it doesn’t seem that principle has been reversed, in these degraded modern days.

Anyway – we were talking about a wide-ranging number of topics, but actually, they weren’t all that wide-ranging. Mostly it was the various aspects of the Federal Gummint’s heavy and strangling hand descending on a variety of concerns and businesses: the EPA going after coal-burning power plants (what – do they want rolling blackouts?), the Department of Labor going all ‘it’s for the chiiiiiiiildren!’ in forbidding children, tweens and teens from working certain essential jobs on family farms, hammering the Catholic church for not handing out free birth control like it was Skittles, the EPA going after rabbit breeders, the Justice Department casually allowing weapons to walk from border states into Mexico, prosecuting Gibson guitar manufacturing enterprise for using certain kinds of imported wood, the TSA (who easily could be the most despised organization in the US today but for all the competition from the EPA) feeling up four-year old girls and ripping off wheelchair bound veterans, the NOAA enthusiastically ruining the livelihoods of New England independent fishermen … and the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman imbroglio, with respect to flash-mob violence and the disinclination of our own very dear Department of Justice to become involved in prosecuting those who incite racial violence. Long list it was, too. So, I don’t think I want to get fitted for a tinfoil hat just yet … but WTF do these various numbskulls think they are doing? Exactly how far do they think people can be pushed before an individual or a community entirely looses patience? I mean – do they want large numbers of Americans to openly defy the Feds, nonviolently or otherwise? Is this deliberate incitement or just dumbassery on an epic scale?

I know, cheerful thinking for a morning walk. I think I’ll go fire up the canning kettle, and put aside another dozen jars of home made pickles, relishes and sauerkraut. To the best of my knowledge, the EPA or the DOJ hasn’t come out regulating against that … yet.
(Links here. Impossible to embed links any more…
https://truthfarmer.wordpress.com/2012/02/05/rabbit-raid-redux-six-bells-farm-update/
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903895904576542942027859286.html
http://pjmedia.com/blog/new-regulations-crush-new-england-fisheries/

Not Such a Merry Christmas

19. December 2010 · Comments Off on Not Such a Merry Christmas · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Health and Wellness

For a number of reasons – some to do with the general economy, and the fact that advance sales for Daughter of Texas are not quite to the degree that I hoped they would be, and that the Tiny Publishing Bidness lost a whopping good bid on publishing a book that would have set us up for a year, and the client I do office work can’t pay me until January when he has a big closing on a chunk of real estate . . . no, all that depressing enough, but relatively small potatoes next to family trouble.

Dad was being treated for walking pneumonia the last couple of weeks; he sounded chipper enough when I talked to him a week ago Friday – the regular Friday Nite call. The pneumonia made him tired, so he and Mom were dialing back on their regular mid-December Christmas reception at their house; their friends were going to handle a lot of it, so that Dad could take a rest. No plans for Blondie and I to make the trip out to California this year – can’t afford it, and my brothers and sister and their families all were making plans to be elsewhere, so no point, really. They sounded fine, otherwise.

So, not quite prepared for my sister Pip to call on Wednesday morning: Dad’s condition had gotten very bad, catastrophically bad, very, very suddenly, on Tuesday afternoon. He couldn’t walk, was only semi-conscious – and the upshot of it was that he was admitted to the hospital Friday night, to be operated on for bleeding into the brain. There’s apparently some congestive heart failure involved there too. My brothers and sister have been taking turns to be with them; Dad is fine – I guess the surgery has been a success so far, but Saturday night, Mom had a horrific nose-bleed, to the point where Pip called the ambulance. Mom’s blood pressure was through the roof from stress. She went into the hospital overnight, but was released on Sunday. Dad is still in the hospital, and will probably need a long convalescence . . . we’re all beginning to be afraid they’ve come to the end of their stretch of independence in their house. They’re both turning 80 next year, and the house they love is at the ass-end of nowhere, with a huge garden and grounds that they are less and less able to take care of. They may be able to get some kind of home-health care assistance – just have to see. Their insurance is adequate to this point, but Pip and Alex both have families with children.

The tentative plan is for me to go out to California after New Years, by train, when we can afford it. Going by train may actually be cheaper, since I refuse to fly; the TSA screening is just the final straw for me. Going by train, I can take along enough stuff that I can stay with Mom and Dad into late February or early March. If they get internet at their house, I’ll be able to keep up with the various projects and work that I have going on. I might even be able to interest Dad into the wonderful wacky world of the internet. He’s been reluctant, so far – but I’ll bet I can get him into blogging . . .

As for now, we’re sticking close to the phone. Not much interested in Christmas stuff. If I wind up going to California, there’s a ton of stuff I have to finish first; all this time, we’re hoping that Dad will recover enough that he can stay in the house; Mom can’t stay there alone, and there’s a million variables, and we don’t even know what half of them are at this point.

You’re Doing What?

04. April 2010 · Comments Off on You’re Doing What? · Categories: Health and Wellness

That seems to be the response from people who met me later in life.  People who knew me when I was younger, think it’s kind of normal.

Last week I started a program at a local medical vocational college to become a certified massage therapist.

It has a lot to do with this mind/body/spirit thing that I’ve stopped a started over too many years of my life.  I’ve begun down the road to get those three pieces parts of me integrated and then I let one thing or another distract me off that path.  I’m starting to feel like I’m at a point in my life that it’s now or never.  It’s something I’ve always wanted to do and now that I’m closer to 50 than to 40, so I’m becoming very aware that one of these days I’m going to run out of tomorrows.

I’ve been pretty good the past three months about keeping my commitment to do some T`ai Chi or Chi Gung every morning before I get ready for work.  I’m pretty sure that I’ll be adding Yoga to that here pretty soon as well.  I’ve got arthritis well throughout my lower back, knees and ankles, the result of years at a desk and of doing stupid things with my body and not listening when I was told to “let things heal before you etc.”  Beautiful Wife and I both go to a massage therapist when we can afford one and for both of us, the results have been the same.  A massage therapist has done more for what ails us than any doctor ever has.  This way I can get my wife on a table more than once a month and I may be getting a new career.  I may not do it full time but I can see me doing it part time.

I have to tell you the truth, it’s pretty hard.  This may very well be the hardest thing I’ve ever taken on.  It’s sort of like the NCO Academy in that it’s information with a firehouse and there’s a LOT of material.  I’m exhausted, pretty sure I’ve taken on too much, and I haven’t been this happy in years.  I’ve spent too much time in the past couple of years, coming home, turning on the TV and falling into my recliner.  I don’t know much, but I do know that kind of behavior is pretty much what took my Dad out.  I’m much better when I’m doin’ something.

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