~ A new twist on an old theme.

It has been three months since I posted last.  I have probably lost all my regular readers.  In the web world this means one starts again, rebuilds the ruined words with new words, new mortar, new dots and dashes and periods and commas and the ever ready semi-colons that I like so much.

A hiatus is a good thing; like summer vacation or winter holidays or a Fourth of July picnic - it is not just a break in the year, it is an event into itself - it is perhaps even and only that which makes the whole year worthwhile, worth looking forward to.  Breaks are what one gets when a chance to get better presents itself, “a lucky break” (as if not all breaks are lucky).  Or, do you believe in “luck”.

The above mentioned break has not yet brought me a new roof (I’m still working on it), but it did bring word from a long lost relative that posted me in response to a post (on this site) that I posted long ago.  It was just the mention of a name, and the name was known and recognized and brought the possibility of hope - at least the hope that is entailed in the possession of new information, the clearing of deficits and mysteries, the finding of missing links.

A part of my family it seems came from Ireland.  It is a common boast, or lament; depending upon the politics, the interest in literature and pints - the intensity of feeling about religion and death and famine and the causes of it all, or the causes created by it all.  Or maybe as it’s Ireland; it’s really just all about the dancing, or the jig, or the blarney which is just another name for the yarn.  Life is like that; a fabric for the weaving, homespun fibers with warp and weave and the sometimes push of pedal and all the ups and downs that are as repetitious as the hills and as predictable if you know them.

I know a hill or two.  I’ve lived life long enough.  My eyes were not always just looking at my feet, watching each slow step in the march or walk ever forward - I did look up occasionally, if only just to see the sun.  It seems that my Irish forebears were “driven out of Ireland”; as if the need to eat is not motivation great enough, Catholic mouths always hungry, families too large to feed, there is little sympathy for that; or there was too little sympathy in England once for the plight of the poor, the occupied tenants of lands occupied by greater force and forces (military even) - but, has time changed so much?

But my forebears were not Catholic.  “It was the Catholics that drove them out, tried to kill them, followed the fleeing brothers to America even to harm them.“   Death squads they would call it if it happened today.  The year was (about) 1799, not 1845 or later.  It was not about the hunger perhaps, but more about the occupying armies, the foreign businesses and estates, the presence on the land by those who perhaps did not belong; or was it just about religion - some feel more deeply, more passionately, more murderous about their faith.

The words about “the Catholics” were passed down through succeeding generations.  The enemy was a religion, a people, not real faces.  The brothers though had faces.  They were relatives, unnamed perhaps, but relatives just the same, made better perhaps by the absence of real names; they could be anyone, even relatives of yours - provided that “the Catholics” never get them.  I’m bothered about “the Catholics”.

It’s the notion of Catholics of course that bothers me the most.  My relatives were people, not “Protestants”, they had lives and faces and hopes and dreams and evidently fears (which is why they left (old) Ireland.  Why cannot “Catholics” be the same, each person different, some good, some bad.  Was it “all the Catholics” that drove the Martin brothers out of Ireland?  I think not.  It was not the Catholics that were arrayed into squads of death; it was a religious passion too passionate that was bound to kill, not the many of the multitude.

So do we condone our Christian brothers for stealing babies to save them from a “Voodoo” fate?  Are our Moslem brethren not unlike “the Catholics”, too unspeakable to be despised?  Are Christians so lesser in the eyes of the Jewish faith?  When can all this religious rancoring just go away?  I’ve had enough.   I have no time for faith-based squabbling, or the cat-calls of scientists too inexperienced to earn their wings.  We all have so many better things to argue about, on which we might disagree; each person’s approach to God is not one of them.

So I’m looking for the bad guys; not Catholics, but people that would drive one away from home.  But, then again the bad guys might have been the Martins, my own blood in part, for others were in Ireland before them, first, and it is unlikely that the Martins were invited to the land - they probably just invaded, were invaders, had a message and a method.  It was not unlike Afghanistan after all - just a little closer.

Would you love me more if I were Jewish?  Would you hate me less if I were black?  Does it matter that “the three brothers Martin” were Protestants or Hindu; was the journey across the sea so necessary or so bad?  Would you like this post better if I were writing from Ireland, of Irish blood?  Isn’t it all just history, and isn’t most history just about the same?

So if you know of Irish history and can make any sense of any of this all - please write.  It might have been William Martin and his brother Michael (Michael Martin) and another brother yet unknown that were the victims (or causes) of such a vendetta as to raise passions to a murderous pitch.  The year was circa 1799 or thereabouts, maybe just before.  These boys fled to McKeesport, Pennsylvania if the story might be true; but, it’s from where they left that is of interest to me now.  These are my Irish roots.  If I’m not Catholic should I be sorry?  I think the greater loss is not to know your grandfather’s home.

[Note:  On page #206 of the History of Butler County (online) is more information about the William Martin family in question.  There is also the possibility that the story originated with Thomas Wilson (information on the same page), since he was called a Squire.  William Martin married Ellen Wilson, so it is possible that the “Martin family story” really originated with the Wilson family and the three brothers were really “Wilson’s”.  In this case the “Wilson outrage” (if it existed) would probably have occurred in Ireland sometime after 1760 and before 1790.]

[2010.02.03 / Wednesday - Posting the Night Away]

~ Pitchforks against the mediocrity.

Oh boy!  It’s again time to rail against the empire.  I used to live near New Empire, Nevada.  It was a suburb of Carson City; as if a city of 2,500 could have suburbs.  Carson did.  There was New Empire and Empire and Stewart and Mound House.  Dayton was too far away (then) to be a suburb.  There was only one house left in Lakeview.  It was to the left of the road as one went to Reno.  I used to mark that house in my mind as a point of evidence that the trip to Reno was really getting somewhere.  That was when I thought a thirty mile trip was a trip to somewhere.

Did I mention that we went to Reno often?  We did.  We went almost every week, maybe not; but it seemed like every week, on the weekends that we went.  We drove in the old (new) 1952 Ford Station wagon (woody).  Libbey Owens Ford glass windows rolled down - no air conditioning then.  But, that was in the summer.  In the winter it was cold.  And in New Empire it was always cold.

The new New Empire of America is said to be something different.  The real New Empire was always poor, always a bit tacky.  The houses were cheap and cheaply built.  Taxes were lower as New Empire was not Carson City; but then Carson City had a library and New Empire did not.  New Empire probably didn’t even have a police force, nor a fire department.  New Empire was really poor.  Maybe it had one park.  Most of the streets were not paved however.  But this post is a bit about parks and not streets.

The deal with the Parks and Recs Department was that our little local park would get two 18 foot trees if we waited until October to plant them.  We wanted them to be planted in late September (before the election) so that the politicos could get some credit.  Originally we wanted them to be planted in August - since we (the neighbors) were paying for the trees since the government (city) insists it is broke and maybe really is if you mean “broke” as the city government is broken beyond repair and not that they aren’t still stealing money from those few that still have some.  That’s “break” - as in the city will break each and every taxpayer until they’re broken.

What makes this all possible is the media.  The media distracts everyone with soundbites and glitz and sensation until everyone is so fried with words and word soup that alphabet soup looks like child’s play - which it is.  I ask you.  How many revolutions got started with people sitting around eating soup?  That’s the point.  If there is still soup there is no need for revolution.  Minds filled with soup are not revolutionary minds, nor even reform minded minds.  They are “soupy sales” type minds; muddled and mindless and always too awash in sensory disintegration and olfactory over-kill that there is little time for else - except the question of to add salt or not to salt; that IS the question.

So our society is placated by Comcast and Fox and MSNBC and Time-Hearst and ATT Communications.  I forget the real corporate names.  It is trivia that does not matter.  I do not buy the stocks so who really cares.  The average TV watcher in America has the attention spann of five words and three seconds - or is it three words and five seconds?  Anyway, every day this attention span is getting shorter.  It is the trivia, the trivialization of everything, that makes this whole thing work.  How can one talk of revolution when there are cooking shows and bank bailouts and broken election promises to permeate the story of barbeque Bob who fries up local prostitutes and serves them like mercury free tuna to do-gooder cops and other even more outrageous tales from the city; or is it Tales of the Empire of which I speak?

So when good minds go bad they do not remember little things like the height or caliper of trees.  The minds do not recall the difference between a Redwood and an Ash - this is an “urban forester” that I am talking about.  Titles do make so much difference, experts by any other name.

The point is that every leadership position in America is occupied by the mediocre.  The worst of us has risen to the top, like cream that after it sours still rises.  Chris Hedges (Empire of Illusion) calls these people courtesans.  I think he’s right.  They play at being leaders while they rape the society which they be rights should serve.  They are the leaders in government, in business, in organized religion, in non-profits too.  They are legion and everywhere and they are all the same.  They are judges; they are lawyers.  They are the pundits and critics and entertainers - every one, every where that you know or can imagine.  They are the celebrities (local as well as national) and they all have sold out for money and for power and (or) for fame.

To invoke “sell out” was the worst criticism one could make of someone else at some point in the sixties.  It was worse than hell.  It was worse than being a prostitute, a whore, a lady of the night or evening.  It was more contemptuous than calling someone a male stud - big stick and nothing more.  And now we are ruled and everyday more ruined by “sellouts” occupying places of power everywhere.  This is why we watch TV and do not fight.  We are willing to let the sellouts win.

So the forester (now the Superintendent) of Parks planted three trees instead of two.  Two inch calipers instead of four (for two) and a one inch caliper for one (a Redbud).  He thought we would not notice the difference - like giving five bucks in change when it should have been a hundred; who notices things like this any more?  The New Empire is not about honesty; it is about massage and manipulation and each TV show teaches how to always get it wrong.  “Wrong is Right”, is the new mantra; not Orwell so much as Lyndon (Johnson), assassination in plain sight, war with death and never victory - do you see it now?

So like do not cry for me Argentina, do not cry to me about your world of woes.  They are mostly made up.  They are street theater and a media event and television out of control and a local bureaucrat gone mad.  These little travails mean nothing.  How many people really are blown up by a car bomb?  It’s the mafia that invented it and Hollywood that promoted it.  The Taliban is just better at it - adaptation and innovation - Americans should be proud.  If you offered an insurance policy that would pay a million dollars (and it cost only $1) if you died by car bomb the insurance company would become truly rich - those are the real odds - not to worry, so get over it - car bombs are not real news; they just make you mad and sad and fearful about what’s good in life - like travel and walking in your neighborhood (even in Pakistan).

The media are the terrorists.  The anchors are the courtesans.  The “reporters” are the suicide bombers who throw their lives away for 15 seconds of fame.  Without them there would be so little damage.  These people do not report the news, they make it - they alone “make it happen”.  Turn them off and all the bad stuff begins to just go away.  Try it and you’ll see.

But, back to the park.  There’s no drinking fountain there, nor water for the trees.  Park Management is so lame.  Is it better for a small tree to die than a big one?  Can you divine the depths of the collective mediocre mind ruling the world, creating Empire, planting trees?

Pray for rain; but fire is probably more likely.

[2009.11.05 / Thursday - War of Words]

~ Stop the Stations.

It’s been snowing in Albuquerque.  It snowed for about an hour then ended as most snows in Albuquerque end, short and white and then a spate of blue skies and warmer weather.  Thought you should know.

Yesterday I was talking a bit about birds.  They are constant fuelers.  It is why they can fly.  Bird bodies are designed with a very fast metabolism that needs a lot of fuel to keep aloft.  The bigger birds, less swift and less efficient, carry a lot of this fuel with them.  These are the heavy birds of prey, vultures and condors and eagles; the type of bird that eats carrion and needs fresh meat and can’t kill things all the time or can’t even find things dead to eat (all of the time).

The constant fuelers are the smaller lighter birds.  They eat seeds and nuts and berries and like robins a worm or two or insect on the wing (eats the wings too).  Eat a little, fly a little.  Fuel and refuel constantly.  These birds are sleek and swift and efficient.  The nature model of course was inspired by a certain ruminating about electric buses; those in San Francisco.  I rode the electric buses in San Francisco in the olden days, green things really painted green and cream as these were the Muni colors.  Muni stood for Municipal Railway which was what the streetcars were and the cable cars pretended to be and the diesel buses were not as they had no rails either overhead or underground or even surface with which they were meant to follow.

The “rails” of course were there for fueling.  The streetcars and the electric buses were electric.  The cable cars were electric too, cables under the street always moving 24/7 or something close; kept moving by great electric motors located at the center of the system.  You can see the motive barn and museum if you go to San Francisco today.  Wear flowers in your hair.  Electricity can be so very green when it’s falling water that keeps it flowing, like from Hetch Hetchy in the Sierras owned by the City of San Francisco - but, I forget myself.  This post is about electric cars, not water.

The human body carries about three days of water and 21 days of fuel around in it.  It’s a lot of weight.  The weight slows the body down, impedes mobility, makes it hard to walk and lift and glide across the surface of the earth or planet or wherever you think you are.  Weight is like that.  The Wright Brothers first flight was short because of the dearth of fuel on board; like birds the craft was designed to fly and land and refuel and fly again - short soaring, short flights of fancy, a flyer that ate small meals of petroleum jelly or something like that - not aviation fuel.

I guess you get the drift of where this post is going.  Planes and cars and trucks are heavy with fuel so tend to be very inefficient.  They need all the fuel on board to get to their destination before they leave.  Much of the energy consumed by these devices is used just to carry the fuel necessary to get to the destination.  Electric trams and constant fueling devices don’t have this problem, don’t carry the wasted weight.  They are like birds, light and free and swift of wing or at least of wheel.

Some may disagree with me, but this I think is the real lesson of 9/11.  Too much fuel aboard and all you’re left with is a bomb.  The inherent inefficiency of jet aircraft was clearly demonstrated by the trade towers demonstration.  Nothing too bad would have happened if the transportation devices were designed with constant fueling in mind instead of carry the load theories of fuel.  Now lets talk a bit more seriously about the advantages of electricity assuming a constant fueling apparatus.

EV (Electric Vehicle) fueling stations are not the answer.  Big batteries in cars are not the answer.  Fuel on board is not the answer.  There are two kinds of electric cars; efficient ones without big batteries and the wasteful ones that are designed to sell real estate and offer a whole new venue for point of purchase advertising schemes.  Electric cars don’t need stations.  Electric cars do need wires or virtual wires to make them run.  All this was proven in San Francisco.  The big diesel buses filled to capacity could not make it up the hills.  Electric buses with batteries could not make it up the hills.  Electric buses with wires along the way charged up the hills and down them and made everybody happy (so little noise, so little effort, so inexpensive to operate).

So why spend billions of federal dollars creating a network of stations that only entrench an obsolete technology, that of fuel on board?  Why spend billions subsidizing patents on super-batteries that are super heavy and super-wasteful in their very existence?  The Volt (as a concept car) is revolting.  It is wasteful and ridicules.  Real electric cars will be wired, perhaps wired with virtual wires only, but the electric motor (motive) part is so very cheap and easy without the battery and battery weight problem.
It’s not too late to stop the madness of the transportation system of the future.  Batteries are not really green; only their cost is green and in this case the green is just about the money.

Real wires (like the Muni buses and the streetcars had) are probably unnecessary with the technology of today.  Two alternative approaches come to mind.  The first is predicated upon the microwave (beam and dish) transfer of electricity.  The distribution point puts the power out about eight inches above the road and each car has a receiving dish or two that automatically homes in on each frequently spaced transmitter.  The second approach is based on Tesla theory of resonance.  Electrical energy crosses open space by being charged with the appropriate amplitude and frequency.  The bottom line is that wireless electricity is not a new concept nor is it fantasy.  It would not take billions to make it work.

I don’t know how I feel about the future of cars.  They cost too much and the fuel costs too much too.  Trains are so much better and electric trains are the best and meg-lev electric trains are better still.  Is this something that Cramer or Oprah or Paris Hilton has to tell you?  Can no American think for themselves?  Are the experts merely clueless or are they too sold out to make anything really matter?

I grew up with electric trains.  Lionel promoted the third rail (subway) system.  Gilbert kept the rails at two.  I learned everything from this.  Neither Tootsie Toys, nor Dinky Toys, nor Matchbox, nor Hot Wheels ever needed a tank of gas.  These metal cars moved by an unseen hand that pushed them forward across the floor.  Maybe there’s a lesson in that too.  Fueling stations are so obsolete.  If you don’t believe me just fill up on a tank of gas and contemplate what the word “tanked” really means.

This post was originally going to be about slot cars and slot car racing.  Slot cars were electric too, fast things that moved on tracks and by remote control and Wow! were slot cars fun!  That was back in 1965, a toy car I guess; but more, a model.  And so this post ends like another Uncle Wiggly story, no ending at all really, just a teaser for another new beginning.  You can run out of gas; your battery can go dead - but electricity can run you along almost forever.

[2009.10.29 / Thursday - Constant fueling]

~ Illusion and waste in a modern America.

I have no idea who Marsha Thole is.  She is not a friend of mine.  Evidently she wrote an Op-Ed piece for the Albuquerque Journal that someone read, others read - I didn’t.  What I did do is pick up on the story in the Letters to the Editor section a few days later (today) and since the letters meshed with the Empire of Illusion (a book that I am reading) I took interest.  In fact, I have taken enough interest as to write this post; which writing posts lately has not seem interesting enough to be worth the effort.  I guess you have noticed.

In fairness I might say that it is raining today in Albuquerque.  It is raining enough as to keep me off the roof and that the roof work (I remind you) is about rain and leaks (leeks too) so it is not good that I am off the roof, but it is good that I am posting.  Marsha Thole may disagree by the time I’m finished with this.

The general idea here is that nobody in America wants to be a sucker.  W.C. Fields was right in his summarization of popular (or media) thought in America, “Never give a sucker an even break”.  I was raised with this mantra; not by my family, but by the media.  Everywhere people (media published people) were extolling the virtues of one-up-man-ship and the fears associated with being a loser.

The concept was that America was an egalitarian place; probably the only egalitarian place on the planet.  Everywhere else (according to this myth) everyone was always being cheated; fairplay was impossible; the privileged and various elites accompanied by various crooks and corrupt officials (and they were always accompanied by these nere-do-wells) always had the upper hand and always used that upper hand to make a mockery of the equality that Americans took for granted.

We must be careful about what “equal” means.  It is a concept.  It means such things as “equal before the law” (not “after” the law).  It means an “equal opportunity”, an “equal chance”, “equal pay for equal work”.  It means of course that there is or should be an “equal playing field” at the outset and it also means of course that there never will be an “equal outcome” to anything - because equality never really means equality.  Real equality is socialism, altruism, Jesusonian idealism and just another word for “sucker”.  And every true American fears more than anything being a sucker.

The concept of equality exists in America to appease the collective guilt that would (and does) arise naturally from participating in and supporting an inherently unfair system.  Altruism is based on the reality that equality does not and cannot exist in an imperfect world - end of discussion.  But altruism holds out the hope, even the promise, that being unequal will not lead to a life or a life experience that is unfair, unjust, monotonous, unfulfilled, wasted, or even wanting.  Altruism is the opposite of capitalism and greed.  True altruism requires the individual to be sensitive to and aware of the shortcomings of others and to desire, to be virtually consumed with the desire, to alleviate the real life needs caused by these shortcomings.  Altruism is never conditioned by convoluted arguments and impractical applications or inventions - it is always simple, and in being simple is always direct.

Sounds like Congress, doesn’t it?  Sounds like George “W” doesn’t it, or Ronald Reagan or LBJ or even FDR?  I think not.  Altruism transcends partisan politics and labeling; it transcends national identities and boundaries.  Altruism is universal as a concept and flourishes mostly where there is the most need and need is not what America is all about so it is no wonder that altruism enjoys such little value as it seemingly does in America.

But the rhetoric gets ahead of me.  Marsha Thole evidently fears that she and others like her are suckers.  They fear that they are working harder and getting less than the poor, the welfare cheats, those born less lucky or less rich than she (but of course she will deny being born “rich”).  She attributes all failure to “bad choices”, as if equality died at birth or even before birth in the case of most of those born to most unwed or unwanted “moms”.  Marsha Thole cannot see the blessings and the advantages that she was born with, that she garnered from the fortunate lives of others.  She cannot see the advantages that she has daily received from the exploitation of other nations, their resources, their labor pools.  She asserts that what she has is hers alone, accomplished by what she alone has done.  She is so very, very wrong.  She has done little or nothing in the greater scheme of things; she has failed to even help her self except at the cost of the attempted ruination and the successful exploitation of others.  And these multitudes of others she does not even know; she cares not that they exist.  She just sees everything as “I” and “My” and “Mine” and fears that she is the sucker not getting an even break.  She’s sad, so sad.  And she Op-Ed’s her sadness.

In reality “bad choices” is owning too many houses, being a landlord or landlady, earning more than $100,000 per person per year (and maybe that’s too much).  Bad choices is doing nothing with ones life except for buying things, buying cars that are excessive, taking too many trips to nowhere and flying first class and eating too well and staying in hotel rooms regularly that are too nice.  A very bad choice is having ones own jet, or having one available, and actually flying in it instead of using it to deliver food to Biafra or medicine to Botswana or someplace not better.

Bad choices is being in the top 1% or wanting to be in the top 1%.  The worst choice is staying there, thinking you deserve anything that the wealth has brought, thinking that you don’t deserve what the hoarding of the unfair wealth will bring.  Being rich is never better; it’s a suckers game; these people don’t deserve an even break.  Give them all the money and be happy for it.  Money becomes worthless when people stop doing things for money.  We get closer every day.

Americans live in the only eco-system based on cash; and we think we are all so “green”.  We do not understand green at all.  Green is not about money, making more of it, being carbon neutral as we squander away our lives.  Green is about leaving berries or worms for the next bird (if you’re a bird); not paying others to build your nest; not expecting to be born owning every feathered nest in town.  America needs a government and a Constitution because most Americans do not have the intelligence of birds, at least those in America in power don’t and those in America that support the power such as it is (don‘t).

On page #127 Chris Hedges presents a twist on the nature of human nature.  He quotes Christopher Peterson who seems to forget that free will exists.  Chris seems rather confused about so many things; but it is clear that he is in it for the money, green guy, not a bird-brain at all.

Who are the real suckers here?  America.  Can you hear me now?

[2009.10.28 / Wednesday - Played for a sucker]

~ Lincoln Logs, Lego’s, and glue.

I never played with Lego’s.  I played with bricks, with American bricks; they were made of wood blocks with pegs - they were made before Lego’s and plastic but otherwise they were about the same.  The scale of magnitude was of course different.  But this post is not about the differences between Lego blocks and American bricks.

I liked Lincoln Logs too.  You (one) could build houses.  Really ‘log cabins’ like Lincoln, the President; like the one he lived in except nicer, bigger, better roof.  You would take the toy logs and assemble them and build (construct) a one room or maybe two room castle and then put on the roof, maybe using the red or yellow end things and the green slats and then you (one) would marvel at the cabin and look through the door and windows maybe and feel really (really) good about accomplishment and progress and ones ability to be “just like Lincoln” or maybe like any proud owner (builder) of a “cabin in the woods”.

It was like that with bricks, but only better.  I built towers and pyramids and battleships and tanks like my brothers taught me.  We played at war.  Airplanes bombed the armored cars and the Long Toms and everything was made of bricks and the good part was the bricks cane apart and that was why the bombs seemed like they were real or the cascalading fire of explosives (bricks thrown by hand against other bricks assembled) seemed to recreate the carnage of real war and real destruction and reconstructed the fruitless, pointless, purposelessness of real war - build it just to destroy it; but, you don’t really have any idea of what I’m talking about because you never played with bricks.

Lego’s (the Lego blocks) were not like bricks.  They (Lego’s) snapped together with a cold and scientific efficiency.  They held together, they were plastic (not wood) and hence were immortal in the sense that plastic is endlessly recycled and bricks made of wood may rot or burn or warp with water or just waste away someday - dust to dust; it is the transformation thing, not the recycling thing, but who knows about those things anyhow?

Some kids just never got it.  They wanted permanence, not building blocks.  They wanted cities, not Lincoln Logs.  They were model builders; believed that models should never die, thought that each accomplishment was forever; the kind of kid that wanted a trophy for everything.  You know the type.

This kind of kid liked glue.  They preferred “airplane cement”, as if airplanes were really made with cement; never understood ‘lift’ and weight and what really made flight possible; lighter than air; folding paper pages into wings and launching them and watching them glide to earth (or the floor) - we played inside as children, cold days of autumn, five airplanes for a nickel, maybe more.

The real name of course was modeling cement, for use in making models - but most all the models were really airplanes then; ships and submarines were rare, nobody cared about model tanks except the German kids and most of them liked sports cars better; Mercedes Benz, a Chevy convertible, a Cadillac if you could stand to paint it pink or gold - as in solid gold Cadillac - now that was a real car.  Cultural literacy means that you’re still with me.

So “that kind of kid” applied airplane cement to everything.  He would glue his pancakes together if he could.  Maybe it was the vapors.  Maybe glue was sniffed without really sniffing, like trying Mary Jane and not inhaling, Bill Clinton was an airplane cement kind of kid - thought you should know.

These kids would glue Lincoln Logs together.  They just didn’t get it.  They didn’t understand the discovery, experimental nurture nature nature of life.  They wanted trophies and awards and things set in cement and set in stone and things never changing and sought to make everything glued together as if glue was the answer and as if Lincoln Logs and Lego’s should be used only once and then be set aside and plastered with blue ribbons (or red ones) as if they were exhibits at some county (or State) Fair.  Du Pont would make you happy.  Du Pont made airplane glue, other chemicals, one sniff and you knew; childhood should last forever.

This kind of kid has taken over.  She or he can be found on every block.  They are the “leaders” now.  They find their solace only in fixation; they see the flexibility of life as needing glue, glue will fix everything, bond things together, make things “stick”.  Do it once, then forget it.  Make a decision, then “stick” to it.  It’s a world of sticky notes, small pages stuck to larger ones because the larger pages can’t stand alone without getting lost; color outlines, pages flagged with pages with page flags flagged.  It is like a war in Afghanistan.  It is only glue and the glue people that hold it together.

So Obama won the Peace Prize.  And dynamite is the mortar for all the bricks.  And glue will make every Lego better; and where do these kids come from that are so fond of glue?  Silliness has come of age.  Silly people buy silly stocks.  Silly notions about the economy abound.  Silly hopes substitute for serious considerations.  It is silly putty that is now such a good substitute for glue (and glue was such a bad substitute for it all).

I have a dream.  The dream is that the Nobel Prize Committee will reconsider.  They will take back their prize.  They will apologize for their haste.  They will admit that they were just being silly, like kids with glue, some things stick together - others just don’t or shouldn’t or just aren’t a “forever” match.  Let’s face it kids; Obama is not a Peacemaker, doesn’t have it in him.  He likes war too much, likes deaths in Afghanistan, likes troops in India and Italy and Germany and probably France.  O-bomb-a.  It is his first or middle name; war stuff like glue; it’s a part of the guy, can’t dissolve it, it’s a sticky situation almost forever.

So, George Walker Bush got 9-1-1 in his first nine months as president.  Obama got the Peace Prize near the same point in his.  Which one was more unexpected?  Which one was more undeserved?  Which one will lead to the greater calamity in time?  Of course these kids are not fit to be Presidents.  They are like Peter Pan; they don’t believe in growing up, they want Neverland forever.

I favor reconsideration.

[2009.10.11 / Sunday - Reconsideration]

~ Time flies when Chicago is not the town.

The news is that Chicago is a musical, not an Olympic city.  It figures.  Even Eisenhower could not bring the Olympics to Kansas, Truman couldn’t bring them to Missouri, LBJ couldn’t bring the games to Dallas or even Fort Worth or Houston.  San Antonio would have been a good choice, but then again the Alamo might have caused too much intrigue.  An Olympic city must be big.  Maybe the Teheran Olympics would be a good exchange for nuclear power.  But with Obama behind the “Teheran Olympics” there are certain to be other, even better options in the political world of paydirt.

The point is that America, and the American president, does not carry much weight anymore.  My guess is that word is leeking out (or leaking out) about the deficit, the debt, the fact that America cannot and will not pay its bills.  I buy aluminum foil in big thick rolls at home depot.  I try to buy it, that is.  The fact is that Home Depot is short on aluminum; no futures or future it seems.  All the metal worth watching is heavy metal it seems and Home Depot doesn’t sell heavy metals; the company is in enough trouble trying to sell the light weight stuff.  Anyway, that is why I sought out a manager to manage my question about aluminum foil and tin foil hats and maybe it is only the vinyl sinkers that will kill you which is why I think that screws are better and that deck screws are the best; but hey, I’m over sixty now and I might have learned a thing or two in life.

The manager had a lot to say.  He offered to drive all over Albuquerque to find me aluminum so that I could buy it.  I was ready to buy six packs of coke so I could smash the cans flat and use them on my roof.  Things were not that desperate he assured me.  There really were at least twenty rolls of aluminum in all of New Mexico at Home Depots disposal, Lowes maybe had eleven more.  Thirty rolls of aluminum is a lot for any state given the recession and all.  Business is pretty slow and all.  It takes a lot of electricity to make aluminum.  You can’t afford to just have the metal hanging around, unused, waiting for buyers in stores that don’t have buyers that want to buy aluminum or other metals or maybe lumber even.

Anyway, the manager said the Home Depot is in for big changes soon.  It makes sense.  The company grew on the back of an economy that no longer exists.  Mail-order wood might be the answer.  Pay in advance for a two by four or two, have UPS deliver each bag of cement, join “paint of the month” club and you are sure to have the colors on hand that you might need come February.  His point (and mine) is that retail could look a lot different in the future; in the very near future.

Lumber stores used to be pretty much local.  Hardware stores always were.  You could buy chain without going to one.  Then “big box”  came  to town.  Prices were cheaper because the selection was less; odd size bolts were out; informed advice was out; the shopper was on her (and his) own and big carts could do all the work because one could no longer drive their pick-up truck to the pile of lumber in the rear.  Life changes.  Loading docks went the way of Palomino horses pulling dray wagons.  So let it be with Caesar and with Home Depot if it needs be - the truth will be interred with the bones.  Do I digress?

Should I be looking to the President for help with my new roof?  I don’t think he would understand it.  He is more used to roofs made of oil, like over the White House; big oil roofs, big Texas “T”, asphalt and tar and put up the whole La Brea tar pits up there if the house will just stay dry and the leeks (leaks) will stop and the rains will stay on the plains (in Spain) where they are supposed to.  The drip-drip-drip of the Chinese water torture is an evolutionary acquirement; it is rooted in the madness of a leaking (leeking) roof which should not be farmland and if it is farmland should not take the concept of drip irrigation way too far.  But, I was talking down the oil industry and trashing the concept of tar and feather roofs (assuming that birds land on them or even live in your neighborhood).

Maybe some day I will post about “virtual beach” and my back yard and why I ended up with a lot of sand that was good to have to mix cement and make concrete which is what I use to make my deck and make my roof which is flat, but waterproof; because concrete is better than dead dinosaurs (tar and oil and gasoline) anytime.  Which is not to say all my roof is flat (just the flat part - the deck part).  Most of my roof is tilted, which is like a slope, which is like good for water to run-off, which brings up the issue of water rights and water harvesting and maybe what the White House is doing to conserve water because the Southwest getting more water is more important than the Olympics going to Chicago; I just know that you saw that one coming.

If you grew up politically near one of the largest lakes in the world it is unlikely that you worry much about water.  In Chicago they still think that “wet and dry states” is about prohibition and rum running and bootlegging and alcohol.  In New Mexico we got news.  Much of Afghanistan too is dry; which is why (I guess) that Obama doesn’t understand Afghanistan and every time someone says “dry” he thinks it is about the fact that the Taliban doesn’t drink alcohol and then the conversation just goes nowhere as the Army Command drifts off to the Officers Club (to get a drink) and now you know why we’ll (meaning the USA) will never win this war and why the White House roof will never leak until there is no more oil in Texas (which may be far too soon).

Anyway, this whole post is a little like a metaphor; but is more like reality, a lesson, a how to treatise on how to make a better roof (details perhaps tomorrow).  The point is my roof is working and the President maybe not.  My roof is keeping the rains at bay; his roof is leaking badly.  In my corner of the desert life is good, we’ll harvest the rain maybe, all good things take time.  Rio means river; and all rivers originate in rain.  Somehow the President should have known that.

[2009.10.02 / Friday - Two weeks and a Cement Roof]

~ If you’re looking for race, this isn’t it.

There is something to be said for places and their associated climates that are wet, humid, moist but not really hot as in “hot and dry”.  There is something to be said for living “north”, as in the rainy north woods or the temperate north woods or just the northern plains where there are no woods, but the weather is nonetheless a bit more mild as in not bitten by the constant sun and the ever-beating solar presence.  I could go on.  If I went on I would not be talking about Albuquerque.

Albuquerque is about sun.  The airport is called “The Sunport”; enough said.  Albuquerque is the USA home of hot air ballooning; I repeat the words “hot air”, as if I haven’t already made my point.  I could go on about “hot” red chile or “hot” green chile and the red or green state slogan which never assumes that anyone ever has an option other than “hot”; we’re talking temperature here, not “hotties” as in New Jersey or Miami or Southern California.  Those places aren’t hot - they’re just warm when compared to Albuquerque and New Mexico.

New Mexico is not about wood.  It’s not that there isn’t any wood in New Mexico, it is that wood does not do well here.  Sure there are the latillas (little lats) that are the younger brothers of vigas (tree trunks that serve as beams).  Vigas and corbels are what made New Mexico, well New Mexico and New Spain, New Spain and a lot of other places what they are.  Afghanistan was made of mud bricks piled high and roofed over with vigas and latillas although they used different names for the beams and beam-ettes in Afghanistan.  The principal was the same.  People have been doing it for at least three-thousand years; three-hundred years more or less in “new” Mexico.  But, I was talking about wood.

In Afghanistan (which can also be very hot) they do not let the ends of the vigas hang out.  It is a pointless exercise in economy if not design.  They say it takes any society 1,000 years to learn this; so New Mexico is still new at the game while Afghanistan learned the lesson long ago.  It is about heat and weather and freeze-thaw and snow and rain.  The point is that the wooden ends rot and break away and splinter into nothing in no time when left exposed to the elements.  The “tips” may be good for hanging chilies, but they make no sense as architecture which should at its base be based in practical.

Survivors adapt to their environment, they don’t get “in your face” with it.  Which gets us back to wood.  Adobe houses do OK in New Mexico.  They reflect a tradition, not a science.  The native peoples were more inclined to build with rock, piled stones like in Chaco Canyon and numerous other places not overly influenced by the conquerors traditions.  Rock is good in New Mexico, it stands up to the sun, the solar flares, the solar excess that constitutes almost every day in Southwest living - rainy north woods this isn’t.

It has taken me what seems like a lifetime to learn this.  Rock, stone, fired brick, cement, clay tile, stucco - these are the natural materials of southwest living.  Wood is not on the list unless you’re inside.  It is not that there are no painted ladies - houses or the other kind - in New Mexico.  There are.  But, they require constant care and upkeep and a constant maintenance and repainting that most cannot easily afford.  The paint fails so quickly in New Mexico.  Turquoise is not a southwest color, it is a stone like agate or amethyst, rare and not everyday in use except in jewelry.  The southwest colors are sandstones, faded grays and faded blacks and faded reds and browns and cream colored vistas and hints of purple against the sky.

The color of my slate (Home Depot product) is “multi-colored”.  Home Depot used to sell a black, but now not so much.  There is nothing like the variations of nature in natural stone for bringing out what’s good in life.  A palate of the stuff costs only pennies when compared with the price per pound of corn or melons; chicken or even eggs - and unlike the foodstuffs the rock lasts almost forever and it’s been around for a lot longer than any government or political theory has.

The good news is that you can coat just about anything with rock.  Rock can cover wood, protect it better than any paint; just glue it on or wire it and bind the two with concrete.  There are such good glues available today if you know how to read and where to look.  Look at Home Depot.  Home Depot is where I live when I’m not at home.  I like walking down the empty aisles and watching the falling prices and the ever heightening stacks of unsold stuff.  You thought maybe this was a commercial for Home Depot.  It is not.  It is just a barometer.  And the barometer says, “buy rock”.

It kind of puts a new light on the term “rock and roll”.  In either case I love it; one for the memories, the other for tomorrow.  So, if I’m not writing you know where I will be, on the roof or otherwise outside, laying cement, replacing slate, moving mountains (at least that’s what it feels like at sixty).

So you might ask why if rock is so great, I buy it.  Drive any freeway.  Rock is everywhere and it seems so free.  The ancients built their houses with free rock, warm and comfortable with a little effort.  The water was nearby.  I ask this question myself.  What has gone so wrong that simple rock is now a commodity; something to exchange for cash; something found it stores and not in nature?  This is how removed we are from the planet of our birth.  But then again; maybe the future begins with “rock on”.

[2009.09.20 / Sunday - Multi-colored]

~ And then the rains came….

It rained last night in Albuquerque.  It rained hard, not the “hard rain” of which Dylan warned, but a heavy rain nonetheless, at least for Albuquerque.  The rain was also not the “monsoons” of New Mexico, not a “persistent wind”; if the winds were persistent then they would be monsoons; they’re not persistent, they are more erratic and unpredictable; they do not come from the southwest (Texas and the gulf is southeast).  No, the rain is not the monsoons at all.  Words and rain are axiomatic.  You know them both (like water) by their leaks.

My wife made potato-leak soup the other day.  Joy of French Cooking as they say.  The soup was good, very good.  But then leaks beget leaks; which is water mostly and the pot becomes like the roof - one holds the leaks, the other lets them go.  Books wet with water are never the same.  The pages warp and crinkle and the inks run and the glue of the binding comes unglued and one is left with an unholy mess provided that one easily may forget that books themselves are the works of God, rooted in trees, and one knows who is the only one that can make a tree.

In the old days I would weep at the untimely loss of any book.  I have two small books two hundred years old from my great-grandparents or older.  The words are in Swedish, Bible verses, higher thoughts, words to lift the hearts of men and women when it rains.  Rain is a metaphor for rain; for rainy days; for times that are trying and filled with loss and leaking books - ink running across the floor, words left in ruin and even the pages left in ruin from where no one ever again will read them.  Which is worse; the words left forever unwritten or the words once written now left in ink smeared ruin?  It is a quandary for the gods.  For both I weep; meaning for both categories of books.  The gods weep for themselves alone.  And the rain that falls might be best regarded as the tears of God.

There is always great portent written in each rain.  The high pressure lifts, the low pressure falls as measured by barometers - by the barometers of men, rheumatism; rheumatoid arthritis.  It is what makes the joints hurt, reduces flexibility, rain upon the window and no wiper blades to push it off - the metal arms just etch the windshield with ever deeper groves in glass.  “You needed new blades long ago”, someone will one day say.  “I know”, meaning “I knew” will be my answer; but for today the windshield is lost for lack of free money for just the blades, thin strips of rubber too complex and costly to easily replace.  Buy my Saab (born of jets); there is ack-ack in the air.  Are we going down?  Can’t see.

I don’t think a car roof ever leaked.  A convertible roof maybe, but not a real roof, not a hard-top made of metal or Plexiglas or carbon fiber like atop the real (fast) jets.  My first car roof was a fiberglass affair.  It bolted on over my 1952 MG-TD that had a soft-top once; not still around when I owned this car.  For fresh air the roof came off, stored it in the garage on edge (less space) or in the backyard where it served as a sometimes shelter for the dog.  She was not impressed.

For real fresh aire the windscreen folded down.  Two wing nuts on the windows sides, chrome-plated guide bars too, could have the windshield half up if I chose to do so.  That was when there was real choice in America; ones car windshield half up or half down; it makes a statement about who you are.  The government of course did away with all of that.  Riding goggles could no longer be the rage, no flying scarves, no leather jackets like bombardiers to keep one warm and the constant splotch of insects “off”.

My MG had side-curtains.  They bolted on to either door, simple metal frames covered in canvas and a window of yellowing cellophane (think scotch tape, but only thicker).  The canvas was torn and badly worn so I would not use them.  The word was pride.  I was young and it was easier to withstand the bite of cold than the bite of scorn.  I was always an aviator at heart.  MG - born of prop-planes, Spitfires, Red Baron and Blue Max - is that not what it’s all about?  Rugged individualism, individualists - hero or terrorist of the sky, you decide.  But I think both were cold.  I was cold in the winter in my MG, windows always open even when the top was on; but, the top never leaked.  The snow and rain merely blew in each side.

Does one really need a windshield on their Saab?  Mine may be gone soon.  Should I buy another or is the windshield “just fat”.  Fat is what we have gotten used to but do in fact not need.  Fat is the excess.  Fat is the luxuries of life when life without luxury would be so much better; more invigorating; more rewarding.  Fat is what makes an otherwise good story, bad.  The meal is ruined by the vintage of the wine, not the color.  Fat is the fear quotient in every deal; the “drop dead” consequences; the price too high to pay.  Fat is having to say, “I’m sorry” (whether you actually do say the words is not the issue).

I’m 61 now; the flip of when I was 16.  Maybe the windowless society is coming back; windshields unnecessary; the wind is at your back or in your face and maybe the winds blow and the rains come and the snow is blowing as in a gale and it doesn’t really matter because “I am alive” and the world in alive too and the times they are a’changin.  Mary Travers was alive then, too.  Concert at UN (UNR).  I posted about it once.  Drove my MG there and back.  The top was off.  The windshield was down (I think).  Or maybe that’s just how it must have been; it was so long ago.  Can one ever go back, or would one really want to?

This post was going to be about the economy; Part 2 of “Ben”.  It was going to be about getting the fat out of everything, of slimming down, about doing with less and being happy.  America can live a long time off its savings; unemployment hurts, but for most there is a check; food stamps; food pantries and thrift stores and uncle Joe’s garage.  There is always a car around; an untrashed clunker, good roof if nothing else.  We fight for the good life that never comes.  There is always rain.  And the roof will always leak, French soup or no.  We once asked the Japanese people to endure the unendurable.  We felt that the expectation was reasonable under the circumstances.  Maybe we did the islands a favor.  Maybe we need the favor returned.

A Great Austerity never hurt anyone.  It is wealth that’s weakness.  If flood is followed by fire; then next time they will not burn books, but only drown them - plastic bottles of water emptied over curling pages, ink running, glue dissolving, covers rippled by the wet.  It will be a nasty sight as the heralds of text messaging and I-pods and “I read it on the web” mentalities adjust the color of their screens and say, “I told you so, about the sudden demise of books”.

I will be patching my leaks tomorrow.  It may take days or weeks or quite possibly forever.  I think cement roofs may very well be the newest fashion.  The best apartments have them, why not a house.  As I tire in my efforts one question will drive me on.  Are the tears tears of joy, tears of sorrow, or just tears of pain?  Rest in peace Mary Travers.  And Thank You.

[2009.09.17 / Thursday - Fat City]

~ If it were Ben Franklin, it would have been, “a dollar saved is a dollar lost”.

I try so hard not to be political.  I try not to get embroiled in the affairs of idiots and the idiocy of the economy.  I know that I will live longer if I let the affairs of the world pass without my two bits, four quarters, eight six-pence, or five dollar gold piece worth of thoughts or advice flow from my lips - or the lip of my laptop; which is poetic, but not true (I write on a desktop, on a desktop).

So why should I assume that what Ben Bernanke is saying is true and not just poetic verbiage from a poet wannabe that is instead the Fed Chairman, which wouldn’t mean much if it weren’t for the money; salary and perks, like the perk of causing endless pain to the many millions  under whose “fed watch” pain is dispensed as if it were a health care program gone really (really) bad - which our health care system has already done, but that’s not Ben Bernanke’s watch - but, we’ll save that for another time.

So is Ben living in the past, or in the future, or in a never-never land of perpetual sunshine and temperatures hovering in the seventies and incomes in the high sixties (as in $680,000 per family per year) or how else is it that he can say, “the worst is probably over”.  He must be referring to the worst of it for his buddies and his peer group and his compatriots or co-conspirators or whatever you might want to call the bunch that makes the calls (at the fed) that has killed any hope of interest from savings like saving money in the bank that might make life worth living if one were interested in interest.

There’s no interest in Ben’s world.  A penny saved is just a copper out of circulation.  The copper would be better spent, circulated as a coin, not collected, not saved for a rainy day or sunny day or day of any other kind - it is thrift that is the enemy in Ben’s war of words.  He liked the song, “Hey, Big Spender, spend a little time with me.”  Ben was and is a Wall Street boy, Broadway or no way, bright lights and neon cheese and dinner at the Stork Club or Club 21 or nothing.  Of course the “recession” is over; there never was one in the first place, just read back at what Ben used to say.  He has always been a very slow learner.  And Ben has a lot to learn (yet).

There is (of course) no need to save when money grows on trees, is printed 24/7 with countless presses, is invented in bit streams of electronic dashes by the billions in a billionth of a second.  It’s Ben’s world.  Ben makes all the money, and if not all of it, most of it.  So he don’t need your lousy coppers, your tin pan pennies, your silver certificates, or even your gold bars which you may have scratched and saved to secure a future once known as “the American dream”.  Ben fills his banks with the counterfeit stuff, with federal reserve notes, money made not borrowed - made the old fashioned way, just paper and ink and computer strokes on a keyboard - no real work, certainly no pain - there is no pain in Ben’s world, Stork Club at eight if you please.

Does it really matter.  As you know I don’t believe in money anyway.  If money madness is the fastest way to get rid of it, so be it.  Faster is better.  We are the makers of speed - Carl Sandburg I believe.

But, for those that still believe in money, believe in health care, believe that science will save you from everything that is I have a few questions for you; and for Ben; and for all those who may be teaching economics or have “Bank Vice-President” printed on their business cards.  What does it take to unravel a seven or twelve trillion dollar economy?  Can you do it in just one day?  Can all the wealth that is be evaporated and transformed and transferred into one big vault, one giant super-fast computer guarded by just one man, one board, one planetary reserve of currency that can meet the needs of the millions (even billions) of money-minded folks everywhere just burning to barter a banknote for something better?

Of course the economy really did crash about a year ago.  Tinkle, tinkle - Crystal-nacht; but not just for the Jews - a financial crash for everybody; avoid walking barefoot on the shards, they can cause great pain.  We are living in the economic aftermath, the sitzkreig of the economic war, the phoney war after the war has been declared, but before it really becomes real - before we learn that our lives were long ago changed forever.  Now, like then, the gauntlet has been thrown down, what is past is past; but, we cannot fathom the tomorrow that that gauntlet brings.  We live (like then) in denial; not ready for the future, unreconciled to the past that turned against us, that turned on men as they turned from God.

So, in Ben do we have an answer?  Ben has studied all of this “before” by reading words, but perhaps not with wisdom.  All good Generals always refight the last war; are never ready for the next war, the new war, the “this” war.  Victory at Sea did not culminate in the invasion of Japan; it was one bomb carried on one ship, the (USS) Indianapolis that did the deed - the rest was airpower even if Hiroshima and Nagasaki were technically “ports”.  The Nagasaki bomb was delivered to Tinian by plane; planes of course were faster.  So in our nuclear metaphor what part of Wall Streets “meltdown” do we still not understand?

Most all of the Reichbank notes of the late 1920’s still exist.  When I was young almost everybody it seemed had one.  There was a one, or two, or five followed by many zeros.  You could focus on the ones, or twos, or fives; or you could focus on and count the zeros.  It is the numbers, not the naughts, that I and most others most often remembered.  They were pretty notes as banknotes go.  Gothic lettering, great serifed litigures with a flourish worthy of note, if not to note the note itself.  After thirty years people still saved them (the notes), they were money after all, and money even at its worst is still money (so people said) and so they saved them - saved the notes - still hoping that the money may come back, the value, something so pretty might once again buy something of value.  Hope springs eternal; such is our faith in every central bank.

Why worry?  Alfred E. Newman could not be wrong.  Buy some health care.  Buy a new car.  Buy a Nintendo for the kids.  Buy whatever might make you happy.  You can’t go wrong by spending it, by spending money if that is all you have.  Tangibles are always better.  Nothing is an asset; but sometimes just feeling value is good; touching it; holding something heavier than just paper in your hand (or plastic).
I prefer rock and brick and stone and cement - weight for value, density - do you get my point or is it the science of it all that you still don’t understand?

So Happy Birthday Ben.  It is your birthday is it not?  If not, why not?  Every new day is so glorious, so special, so pregnant with the possibility of learning something.  If this isn’t that special day then let’s pretend that it is.  It could be.  Maybe it should be.

[2009.09.16 / Thursday - Bernanke, Ben]

~ Why the Journal is not worth the price.

Now that you know that I live in Albuquerque you know that the “rag” that I read is the Albuquerque Journal.  It is probably typical of the declining papers of America, no worse and no better than the sad dogs that carry on the mastheads of a once proud journalistic empire that has been shattered into ruinous rubble.  All my friends that started as journalism majors have long since fled to law, or politics, or in one exceptional case inventing a patch for ripening apples (as yet an unproven concept).

To put too fine a point on the relationship between a government that based most of its hope on “freedom of the press” (meaning an actual press) and the reality of the substantial collapse of both journalism and the press and the seemingly simultaneous collapse of the larger empire of government would avoid the more basic reality of the importance of home to both press and government; to say nothing of the people themselves.  “We the people” (it was assumed) lived in homes; not in long-haul trucks, trailers, cars, or under freeway overpasses or half-hidden trees in parks.  If there is any doubt about this assumption you might wish to reread the articles about “quartering of troops” in the homes of America; something once assumed to be bad and wrong and worthy of governmental intervention to prevent.

So yes, we live in different times from times past.  So the Sunday Journal (catchy name) has a real estate section; suggesting a “real” Estate or just espousing a proliferation of a term that has probably lost all meaning - the word “Home” might be so much better, but the real part of real estate is the house, not a home, because a house is not a home to once again borrow book titles from books no longer read.  Are we getting there, yet?

The feature story is the “Gender Gap” (gender GAP).  The story unfolds to reveal that men are from Mars and women are from Venus and that those from earth are probably gender neutral or cross-gender or without gender which gets us back to journalistic styles which favor “I” or don’t favor “I” in favor of the they, or we, or favorite of all terms “personal” (as in choice) - as in its all about personal choice that is based on doing what the media or broadcast media tells you to do which is like having no choice at all.  Are we confused, yet?

In big splashy colors the Mars and Venus people agree on one thing - good schools.  Of course the front page of the paper reports (this same day) that good schools are of interest to only 12% of the electorate; since health care and the economy are stealing the whole show by taking up 100% of the interest; but the whole is about 130% (not 100%) because of “multiple responses” which means that 12% is not a good answer (should be less) and that’s what you get when education has been back-burnered for so long that it has been totally fried as in a microwave oven that doesn’t even have burners and you think I’m confused because all I know is what I read in the newspaper.  I think Will Rogers said that, first.

Under the splashy color Mars and Venus article is one about “Walkable” neighborhoods and the fact that walkable neighborhoods are better.  My neighborhood is not walkable because there isn’t a half-decent grocery (store) within three miles and the theory is that one needs to eat to live and there are no orchards or agricultural spaces or even cattle feed lots or hog farms within the three miles either.  So if Front Page and Real Estate are put together we might imagine that people are interested in a home (house) where one can walk to health care or maybe reaching further, walk to a better economy.  Which the “debt route” generally inherent to buying a home won’t get one to.

Do either men or women care about “affordability” in a home, low utility bills, low property taxes, nearby food or jobs?  No, both men and women want a Home Office; men want a real big garage; women want “updated” appliances.  It’s the cash for clunkers and the new cash for appliances crowd (other articles in this same newspaper).  The cub reporter of today is told to read the newspaper and then write the news; the idea of real world investigation or experience is as old hat as the idea that people permanently ensconced in cubicles in skyscrapers can’t (and shouldn’t) rule the world.

A house near a public park might be nice.  It might be better if the park had a drinking fountain.  But not so good if the drinking fountain was used by the homeless for bathing; or the park was full of graffiti; or the park was full of weeds or trash because the parks department didn’t empty the weeds or pick the trash or use chemicals to eliminate both - which brings up the question of living near chemicals (Bhopal, India comes to mind) but it might also mean living next to the tracks or freeways or buried gaslines or overhead transmission lines or even too near a major sewer artery that is hidden beneath the street (maybe your street) - but I posted about that one before.  Sewer lines like other infrastructure does and will collapse.  But hey guys, “don’t forget about those big closets for your girlfriend or your wife”.

Last week the (Albuquerque) Sunday Journal left off the second half of Barry Stone’s (Syndicated Columnist) blat about the virtue of home inspections.  So, this week the blat has been put first; top of the page; Real Estate page, that is.  Barry writes for the 500th time about the perils of black mold (a truly national threat worthy of Homeland Security) and uninspected room additions (your zoning officials should know).  I know that a five bedroom house with no garage probably has had a garage conversion, but that’s where a good eighth grade education comes in.

What is more important though - a home inspection report or a neighborhood inspection report?  Where are the sewer trunklines; what new transmission lines are planned; where is that half-way house for the criminally insane?  Is there bus service; are there food stores; what is the Ozone level after midnight?  How much have property taxes gone up in the past 10 years as a percentage of current home values?  How many nearby homes are owned by empty nesters wanting to downsize at any price; or owned by those soon to lose their jobs; or too poor to pay the premiums for Obama’s new health insurance company subsidy plan?  Some questions may never get answers, but for others the information in a report might make the answers easy.  Then people might start buying houses for parks and walkability and not because of the cream colored carpets and the size of the kitchen pantry.

If men were from Mars and women from Venus life on earth would be much better.  It is the earth patriots that are the problem; the born here, bred here, die here bunch.  They just “look around”, but don’t look very deeply, don’t think very much; think out of the box, but not off the planet.  The reason why so few believe in extra-terrestrials is that if life existed elsewhere in the universe life on earth would look so lame; the science so primitive; the ways of doing things and approaching problems so feeble and feeble-minded.  Would any one in their right mind buy a home on this planet?  Probably not.

Earth, September 2009 - maybe an interesting place to visit; but who would want to live there?

[2009.09.13 / Sunday - Buying a home]