Dumbass Kids with Chainsaws

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

A British landmark and the central focus of a UNESCO World Heritage Site was destroyed this past Thursday evening when a sixteen-year-old boy with a large chainsaw made his mark on the history of the world by deliberately felling the beautiful old tree.     The tree had been growing in a dip called "Sycamore Gap" along the famed Hadrian's Wall in Northumberland in the north of England for more than two centuries.    Hadrian's Wall is a 73-mile stone structure that was built by the Romans more than 1900 years ago to mark the northern boundary of their empire in Britain.  

The tree, actually a "hawthorn" and not a "sycamore,"  was one of the most beloved and photographed trees in the world.  It had been featured with actor Kevin Costner in its branches in the 1990 film, "Robin Hood Prince of Thieves."  The tree was actually growing so close to Hadrian's Wall that when the teenaged miscreant cut it down, the tree landed on one side of the wall while the stump remained on the other.

The dumbass kid with the chainsaw was arrested but is now out on bail.  A man in his sixties was also arrested in connection with the crime.

I will admit to being conflicted as to what the punishment should be for murdering a tree, especially when the murder was committed by a seemingly mentally and morally underdeveloped teenager, but I am of a mind that the punishment should be something substantive. 

Meanwhile, in the United States of America, several backwater GOP members of Congress, the equivalent of dumbass kids with chainsaws, are holding the United States government hostage with threats of a shutdown this evening because they don't like a funding deal that their leader, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, worked out with President Biden several months ago.  As his party renegs on the agreement,  McCarthy ignores the ticking clock and wallows in impotence and self-pity.   The useless Speaker of the House can do little more than twiddle his thumbs as the government crawls toward a shutdown at midnight tonight.

Like the kid in England who murdered the historic tree, the GOP members of Congress who are intent on murdering our democracy, which is also between two-and-three hundred years old, deserve a punishment that is substantive.  Perhaps their current spate of costly jackassery will inspire the voters back home to take them to the electoral woodshed!

Hair Length Is Still an Issue in Texas Schools

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

Sometimes it feels as though the last sixty or seventy years just did not even happen in places like Texas.  I thought the ridiculous "hair" wars in schools ended back in the 1960's when principals were often tasked with measuring the length of male students' sideburns to insure that they did not extend below the midpoint of the students' ears.  Sideburns which exceeded that length, by even a fraction of an inch, could - and no doubt, did - lead to unwanted pregnancies, drug use, and even socialist tendencies.  So hair, especially after the kids went crazy listening to those "Beatles" and other bands from Britain in the '60's, became a big issue - a very big issue - and the schools were the front line in the defense of society's important norms.

But all of that crap eventually went away.  Long hair for men crossed style barriers, and generational barriers, and before long even well-healed grandfathers were sporting hair over their collars and earrings.  The world changed - but just not in Texas.

There is a seventeen-year-old black student in a suburb of Houston, Texas, who has been serving in-school suspension (which means he does not get to sit in on his regular classes) since August 31st because his school district does not like the cut of his hair.  No, the student is not sporting some twelve-inch Afro that would interfere with the classroom view of students sitting behind him.  He has a very fancy, and undoubtedly expensive, set of dreadlocks which appear to be plastered tightly to his head and not interfering with anyone's line-of-sight, including his own.  (And there is not even a hint of sideburns!)

But the school authorities say that if those dread locks were freed from their tight knots and the plastering effects of hair care products, the lad's hair would then extend beyond the school's length limits for boys' hair.

The seventeen-year-old's mother, who claims that the school's treatment of her son is causing her emotional duress, has filed a complaint with the Texas Education Agency claiming that the school's dress code (hair code) violates the state's new legislation called the CROWN Act (Create a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair) which outlaws racial discrimination based on hairstyles.  The CROWN Act went into effect on September 1st, one day after the student began his prolonged in-school detention. 

The boy and his mother this week also filed a federal civil rights lawsuit claiming that student's suspension is a violation of the state's CROWN Act, and that the state's  governor and attorney general have failed to enforce the act.

The school district, which believes that the CROWN Act does not address the length of a student's hair, has filed a lawsuit in state district court asking for the law to be clarified.

The student was released from detention briefly one morning this past week, but was promptly taken back into detention by the school's principal for wearing an earring (which his mother says he did not do) and again because of the length of his hair.

The school superintendent has said that he believes the school's dress code is legal and "teaches students to conform as a sacrifice benefiting everyone."

It seems unclear at this point as to what sacrifices white students are being asked to make.  But hey, it's Texas.

Regarding the school district, a spokesman for the family said, "The hammer of accountability is coming.  You will no longer discriminate or be racist or ignorant to children on our watch."

Swing that hammer!

Private Company Brings High-Speed Rail to Florida

by Pa Rock

Rail-Riding Citizen Journalist

While there are times that the entire state of Florida seems to be stuck in the last century, at least from social and political perspectives, it is apparently racing forward in the field of transportation.  Last week a private company in the "book-ban" and "don't say gay" state launched a high-speed rail service between Orlando and Miami - with a stop in West Palm Beach - that makes the 235 mile trip in three-and-a half-hours.  And while that is far from super-sonic, it is quite fast for land travel.  During the 235-mile trip the train reaches speeds of up to 125 miles per hour, and is, according to its promotional materials, greener and safer than other forms of transportation.

The line is operated by "Brightline," which, in turn, is owned by the Forest Investment Group.   It is the first private, intercity rail operation to begin service in the United States in over a century.  The company began running the shorter (70-mile) route between West Palm Beach and Miami in 2018.  It is also building a line between Southern California and Las Vegas which should open in 2027 and will reach speeds of up to 190 miles per hour.

The only other high-speed rail service currently in operation in the United States is the Amtrak Acela Line that runs from Boston to Washington, DC, which benefits many of the nation's "haves" as well as a big chunk of its political class.  The Amtrak Acela Line has been in operation since 2000,  Amtrak is owned by American taxpayers and operated by the federal government.

"Brightline" is charging business-class riders $158 for a round-trip ticket between Orlando and Miami, and a first-class ticket is going for $298.   Families and groups can buy four round-trip tickets for $398.  Thirty-two trains run the route daily.

While small private rail lines are laudable and fill a gap, it will take the resources of the national government to provide the necessary rail infrastructure to create a nationwide high-speed rail service.  The Biden campaign made noises in the 2020 election cycle about establishing high-speed rail travel across the United States, but so far that program does not seem to have moved beyond the level of campaign noise.  A good, strong, high-speed rail network could do much to bring the country together, as well as move us toward a greener and safer future.    And there really is no case for waiting.  

Wake up, @SecretaryPete, and get the high-speed trains rolling!

When Children Traveled as US Mail

by Pa Rock

Student of History

The concept of "mail" went through a significant change in 1913 when the US Postal Service introduced parcel post service, a practice which allowed for the mailing of packages, some of which were unusual such as those involving the shipment of live animals.  Some animal shipments continue to this very day, with live baby chicks being a fairly common example.

During the earliest years of parcel post delivery an unusual practice developed where some people would ship their children to visit relatives by parcel post.   The children were measured, weighed, and had the correct postage affixed on a tag and then turned over to postal authorities for transportation and delivery.

Yesterday I received an advertisement from Newspapers.com, a subsidiary of Ancestry.com, that sells a  subscription service which allows researchers to peruse many collections of old newspapers on-line.  In that advertisement, Newspapers.com published several actual old newspaper accounts of children who were transported through the US Mail.  Here are three of the several that were included in the advertisement::

From the Minden (Ohio) Courier on January 30, 1913:

REAL BABY IN PARCELS POST.

Delivery Made by a Carrier at Batavia, Ohio

Batavia, O - A mail carrier on rural route No. 5, out of this place, is the first to accept and deliver under parcel post conditions a live baby.  The baby, a boy, weighing 10 and 3/4 pounds, just within the eleven-pound limit, is the child of Mr. and Mrs. Jesse Beagle, of near Glen.  The package was well wrapped and ready for "mailing" when the carrier got it.  Its measurement reached seventy-two inches, also just within the law, which makes seventy-two inches the limit.   The postage was 15 cents and the "parcel" was insured for $50.

From the Public Ledger:  March 30, 1915

GIRL SENT BY PARCEL POST.

Savannah, Ga.,  March 29 - Little 6-year-old Edna Neff, who weighs under the 50-pound limit, wearing a placard bearing her name and destination and 50 cents in parcel post stamps passed through the terminal station here on her way from Pensacola, Fla., to Christiansburg, Va.

From the Mountain Democrat and Placerville Times

GIRL SENT BY PARCEL POST

NEW LEXINGTON, Ohio, Dec. 1 - When the mail arrived here yesterday, Postoffice employees were surprised to find in it an eight-year-old girl bearing a tag which had been placed on her by New York immigration officers, reading:  "This child, Julia Kohan, is going to her father, John Kohan, box 117, R.F.D. No. 4, "New Lexington, Ohio."  After a breakfast supplied by the Postmaster, the child was taken in care of a rural delivery carrier to the home of her father, who lives six miles south of here.   The trip of 7,000 miles from Bavaria was made by her alone.

The practice of sending children by mail ended around 1920.

Several other similar stories were included in the advertisement.  They certainly shine an interesting light on a very odd page in American history.  For those with an interest in family history or just history in general, Newspapers.com offers a unique and worthwhile service.  I have been a subscriber to the service in the past and have unearthed several very interesting family stories in their digital archives.   It is a valuable research tool.

Bezos Wants It All!

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

American billionaire and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is a man who sucks more vigorously than any vacuum the Hoover Company ever produced.  Not only does Bezos control Amazon, the world's largest on-line retailer, he also has his heavy hand in the entertainment industry with  Amazon Studios as well as the Prime streaming network and all of the other "independent" networks which peddle their streaming services through Prime.  Bezos has a firm grip on the "free" press with his ownership of the Washington Post, one of our nation's two or three premier newspapers, and Bezos even has his own space flight company, Blue Origin, and has ridden one of his own rockets into space.  

Jeff Bezos appears to be the man who has it all - or at least a man who intends to have it all.

Bezos manages at-home shopping for millions of people around the globe, and he has created his own delivery force to get many of those goods from his world-wide network of warehouses onto the front porches of customers in some of the most far-flung places imaginable.  Those pesky little Amazon delivery vans are as ubiquitous in major US cities and suburbs today as taxicabs were just a few years ago.

But in spite of how much Jeff Bezos has - or controls - it never seems to be enough.  Last year he bumped the subscription rate of his Amazon Prime membership from $119 to $139 per year, an overreach that slowed subscriptions.  He also went from one "Prime Day" a year (a major on-line sales event) last year to two per annum - and next year there will be an even bigger affront to consumers when  Amazon will begin infusing its standard streaming service with commercials and then charging its Prime subscribers an additional three dollars a month get the same service commercial-free.

Think about that sweet deal (for Bezos):  He will make lots of extra cash by adding commercials to his streamed programming, he will already be selling subscriptions for people to watch the streamed programs, he has the ability to raise the fees for watching the streamed programs whenever the mood hits him - as he did last year - and now, if the couch potatoes want to skip the commercials, they can pay him three more dollars each and every month!

If Bezos sucked any harder, the carpet tacks would be flying out of the floorboards!

Hey, fellow couch potatoes, keep your butts firmly planted where they are because the change between-and-under the couch cushions may soon be the only spendable income that we have left!  Jeff Bezos may not have it all yet, but by God he is coming for it!

Bezos wants it all!

Writers' Strike Appears to be Ending

 

by Pa Rock

Union Supporter

The word on the wire this morning is that the five-month-long strike by the Writers Guild of America may be on the verge of ending with what the union is calling an "exceptional" agreement for the writers.   Details haven't been announced yet, and the membership will still have to approve the approve the agreement, but the news at this point sounds very promising.  

Screen and television writers have been on strike since May causing disruptions in programming and the delay of many film and television projects.  The writers went on strike to address inequities in residual payments for programs which are being viewed through streaming services, and as a way of addressing concerns about the impact that artificial intelligence (AI) can play in the future of writing for the entertainment industry.

The Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA) joined the writers on strike in July of this year.  That marked the first time that the two major groups have been on strike at the same time since 1960.

Congratulations to the members of the Writers Guild of America.  May the new contract offer truly be "exceptional" -  and may the members of the Screen Actors Guild experience their own negotiating success in the very near future.  The work that all of you do is a critical component of American arts and culture.

And congratulations in particular to one member of the Writers Guild of America (West) from the Kansas City area.  Your old dad could not be happier or prouder!  Keep writing!

Breaking Bread with Intelligent, Unarmed People

 

by Pa Rock

Rural Resident

Living on a country lane far out in the Missouri Ozarks, it is sometimes easy to forget that there are others in the world, besides myself, who do not fall down in adoration every time Donald Trump's name is mentioned. Yesterday I had some company from an urban area - Memphis, Tennessee - whose work experience and thoughts on life and politics are more closely aligned with my own than those of most of the people whom I have lived around for the past decade, and the experience was refreshing and delightful.

My father served in the Army Air Corps in Europe during World War II.  His best friend and tent-mate during much of his time in England and France was a a young man from Memphis by the name of Joe Spake.  I have previously mentioned some of some of the experiences that Dad and Joe shared during the war in this blog.    Joe and Wanda Spake and their two older children came to visit us in Missouri a couple of times when I was in the early years of elementary school, and we visited their home one time in Memphis when all of us kids were very young.  Joe died young at the age of forty-one, and our families lost contact, but I always remembered the unusual "Spake" surname and the fact that they were from Memphis.

I was a civilian working as a social worker with the US Air Force prior to retiring about ten years ago.  From the summer of 2010 until the summer of 2012 I was working at Kadena Air Base on Okinawa.  One day sometime during that two-year period as I was driving back onto the air base following lunch, I was listening to Armed Forces Radio (AFN) on my car radio and a program featuring blues music was playing.  As I was pulling onto base, the show ended, and the host came on to sign off.  He said that the programs had featured Blues from Beal Street in Memphis, and that his name was Jim Spake.

When I got back to office I got on Google and began to explore.  I found a Spake in Memphis who sold real-estate and emailed him. In his response Joe said that he was the son of my dad's friend from the army, that Jim, whom I had heard on the radio from the far side of the world, was his brother, and that he was going to refer to email on to their sister, Carrie, who "ran things" for the family.  Carrie, who was also a social worker, and I became friends through email and have corresponded off-and-on ever since.

This past week Carrie and her husband, a retired school psychologist and also a "Joe," have been on a mini-vacation in Arkansas and Missouri exploring museums and Harry Truman sights, and yesterday, on their way home to Memphis, they stopped in to see me at my home.  It was the first time Carrie and I had seen each other since we were very little children.  I told her that I felt our fathers - who are both gone now - would have been very pleased to know that we had connected again, and she agreed.

Most of our time together was spent having a long lunch at a large cafe in town.  In hindsight it was sort of amusing.  The restaurant was crowded when we arrived and much of our conversation centered on politics and our mutual dislike of Trump - and we all spoke in very quiet and hushed tones so as not to be noticed by others in the restaurant, most of whom were undoubtedly Trumpers.  But it was fun, almost exhilarating for me to be able to say what I pleased, even if it was very quietly!

As an indication of the type of place where we dining, there there was a fancy new pistol and case being raffled off at the cash register.  Although there were no signs posted about the purpose of the raffle, there was a sign saying that the tickets were ten dollars each.  Carrie and Joe said they didn't own any guns, and neither do I - which definitely makes me an outlier in this community!

Back home after lunch we strolled out to my paw-paw patch were the fruit is ripe and beginning to fall from the trees.  I sent my guests home with a bag of fragrant "Ozark bananas."

We had enjoyed a very nice visit, and it had been so good to break bread with intelligent, unarmed people!

Tim Macy at Forty-Four!

 

by Pa Rock

Proud Papa

It was forty-four years ago this morning that my youngest, Timothy Dylan Macy, entered this world in the very busy delivery room of St. Francis Hospital in Mountain View, Missouri.  That momentous day, so long ago now, feels like it was just yesterday.  Tim had an older brother and sister waiting on him at home, and he hit the ground running and just never stopped!

Today Tim and his wonderful wife, Erin, are the parents of two children, Olive, a budding young actress, is eleven, and her younger brother, Sullivan "Sully," a future all-of-fame baseball player and stand-up comic, is seven.  They are a busy family.  Erin works full-time in the field of speech correction, and Tim works in commerce where he earns a salary and insurance, has a side-hustle business at home that generates a better income than I have ever made, and in his "spare" time is a full-time Dad who is also a professional writer and has had two of his film scripts made into major movies (and here "major" means having run on both Showtime and Prime on multiple occasions).

Tim has an engaging personality, and people who know him, like him - and he makes his dad proud every day!  

Happy birthday, Tim.  May your next forty-four years be even more productive and joyful than the ones which have already tiptoed by, and may they always be filled with wonder!

Airport Food for Dummies: The Strange Case of the $78 Burger and Fries!

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

David Brooks is a political columnist for the New York Times and an occasional television news personality.  Brooks is one of the people that the Republican Party props up whenever it is accused of not having an intellectual component, and he attempts to support Republican positions from reasoned and thoughtful perspectives rather than just belching vitriol or the party's mean-spirited talking points.  But even though Brooks routinely represents the Republican point of view in journalism's Old Gray Lady, he is far from being a William F. Buckley.

(I'm not sure why, but when I hear David Brooks' name, I always see Lindsey Graham in my mind's eye.  I guess that is my issue, and not theirs.)

Brooks generally comes across as something between lackluster and dignified, and he leaves the partisan barking to others, but this week, for reasons apparently known unto himself, David Brooks dropped that staid persona for a few brief moments and tried to engage in some political snark - and his attempt proved to be a rolling disaster that is still being laughed about and ridiculed days later.

The columnist was having a meal (of sorts) at the airport in Newark, New Jersey, when he decided to take a picture of his food and post it on Twitter as a potshot at the Biden economy.  The photo was of a burger, fries, and what appeared to be a small glass of whiskey on the rocks.  His text read:  

"This meal just cost me $78 at Newark Airport.   This is why Americans think the economy is terrible."

The twitterverse immediately realized that something was amiss with the Brooks' tweet.  Yes, airport food is over-the-top expensive, but not even the new Kansas City Airport could get away with charging $78 for a burger and fries and a drink.  The tweets started to fly and quickly headed toward a consensus that the bill must have included libations for the columnist - and that perhaps he had drunk enough to where he actually did think that the $78 was the cost of the meal - sans alcohol.  Soon someone from the eatery from which Brooks had tweeted became aware of his post and tweeted back that eighty percent of the $78 total and been the journalist's bar tab.

Whoops.

The moral of this story is never tweet while drinking, or, if you do, at least be grounded in real life.

(And yes, I do realize that "Twitter" now has another name, but this is my blog and here I will call it whatever I damned well please!  And if Leon Elon Musk doesn't like it, he can park a new, high-end model Tesla in my drive and we can discuss it!)

Trump's Killer Vanity

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and a confidante to Donald Trump during part of his tenure in the White House, is out with a new book giving some insight into her time near the pinnacle of our nation's power.  In her book, whose title is "Enough," Ms. Hutchinson sheds some light on Trump's refusal to wear a face mask during the height of the pandemic.  

Ms. Hutchinson, who later would become a problematic witness against Trump when she appeared before the House January 6th Investigative Committee, discussed Trump's refusal to wear a face mask during his tour of a Honeywell mask-making factory in May of 2020.  She said that he had initially donned a white N95 mask at the White House and asked aides what they thought.   Trump, who was always consumed with vanity, did not want to appear in a manner that would incite negative comment.

Ms. Cassidy said that of everyone present, she was the only one to object.  When Trump asked her why, she pointed to the white straps of the mask which had turned dark when they smudged his 'bronzer" face make-up.  She said Trump became angry at others in the room for not pointing that out to him, and that he then refused to wear a mask - even to tour a plant that manufactured them.

Trump tested positive for COVID a few months later on September 26th, 2020, but he kept his diagnosis secret until October 2nd.  During that time he managed to infect former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie who landed in a hospital ICU with what could have been a terminal case of the virus.

Not only did Donald Trump's rampant vanity result in serious illness to others who worked around him, his example of parading around maskless undoubtedly helped to influence many of his clueless admirers to behave in the same reckless fashion, and contributed not only to the national COVID mortality rates, but to the the disease's longevity as well.

People got sick and died just so Donald Trump could pretend to have a nice tan.

Herman Cain, I'm looking at you.

Moms for Liberty is Anything But

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

They grew up in the monotony of the suburbs, living lives that didn't match those pictured in the reality shows.    They were far less interesting than those who bared their souls, and sometimes their breasts, on the Jerry Springer Show or Maury Povich.  And they would have gone on bobbing inconsequentially in tn the lesser tributaries of life until they eventually sank out of sight forever were it not for the great loud trumpet that came along at the at the depths of their despair:  Facebook.

People who had once had their vitriol limited to snide attacks on others across the backyard fence on laundry day, now had a means to spew their stuff far and wide and to connect with other troglodytes who shared the same malevolent mindsets.   Groups were formed, actions taken, and suddenly these spawn of Springer were running amok in society and threatening the very foundations of civilization.

Moms for Liberty is one such group.   It is a collection of frustrated individuals whose lives were essentially relegated to those of passers-by until they hit the motherlode of attention-gathering when they discovered the gold in being moral arbiters for public schools.  Now suddenly, through no formal education or training, they have elevated themselves to be the deciders of what is and is not appropriate material in school curricula.  They work as field monkeys for national right-wing groups circulating lists of books that they have never read - and stirring up outrage in their local communities to have those same books pulled from library and classroom shelves.

These people do not want their children exposed to lifestyles that they find personally offensive, and, in particular, they relish targeting anything which varies from straight (heterosexual) male and female gender roles.

The problem, of course, is that they also do not want YOUR children exposed to any lifestyles which vary from what the censors regard as "normal."  Not only do they not want their children, and YOURS, being exposed to real life, many don't even want them to hear the word "gay" uttered in a classroom.  

Pulling books from shelves, banning books, sometimes even burning books . . . it just doesn't feel like education, does it?  Those of us who have been around for awhile understand that the pendulum swings, and when the craziness on the right reaches intolerable levels, it will begin swinging to the left and correcting the excesses of the authoritarians.  Still, the knowledge that things will ultimately get better does not make the chains of ignorance that are currently being used to restrain education any less cumbersome or troubling.

If you want your children to grow up ignorant and out of touch with the world, shame on you - but by all means try your hardest to control their education.  Kids are resilient and many will survive their parents' best efforts to manage their learning experiences and their environment.    But as you manage your kids' education, also be aware that your ideas, no matter how valid they seem to you, are not the gold standard of educational theory.  Other people want other learning experiences for their kids, with other outcomes, 

If you don't want your child being exposed to a particular book at school, talk to the teacher and make an alternative arrangement for your child - but leave mine alone!  If you feel something needs to be pulled from a classroom, pull your child - but leave mine alone!   And if you feel schools truly need more liberty, then go away and let the teachers teach - free of your threats, taunts, and moralistic nonsense. 

Moms for Liberty is truly a colossal misnomer.   There is no "liberty" in them telling the rest of us how to raise our children.

Susan Collins Threatens to Wear a Bikini to Work

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

Republicans in the House and Senate may not give a damn whether kids in their home districts and states have adequate food, shelter, and educational opportunities, but when their leaders at the Capitol go messing with congressional dress codes, all hell is going to break loose - especially if they think the codes are being changed to accommodate some hoody-wearing Democrat.  This week Senator Schumer, the Democratic leader in the US Senate announced that the Senate would no longer enforce its informal dress code.  Some took that as a capitulation to the clothing preferences of Senator Fetterman of Pennsylvania who prefers to wear Carhart work shirts, hoodies, and shorts over the old Senate standard of jackets and ties for male senators.

It was an outrage and some Republicans howled mightily.  One of the most prominent howlers wasn't even a member of the Senate.  Marjorie Taylor Greene, a loud and obnoxious Republican member of the House, went on a rampage about "etiquette," and seemed to be promoting the idea that the Senate was going to hell in a hoody.  Ms. Greene, who a few days earlier had been flashing pictures of Hunter Biden's penis in a House hearing, is certainly, in her own mind, at least, one of the most self-righteous and morally rigorous people ever to serve in Congress.  Marge knows that God is fortunate to have her on his team.

Generally Democrats seem to be accepting of the relaxed dress code, and Republicans are trying to score a few political points with faux outrage over what they portray as a loosening of standards.  For his part, Senator Fetterman joked on Twitter that if he were vaping and groping at a musical theatre production, Republicans would see him as some sort of hero.   House GOP vaper and groper Lauren Boebert declined to engage in that conversation with him.

And while Republicans often prove too severe and serious in matters of commonsense things like personal comfort and dress codes, some of them can still cough up occasional classic snark to lighten the mood.   Senator Susan Collins of Maine, a generally humorless individual who recently called police over a sidewalk chalk drawing in front of her home, probably caught more than a few of her dower colleagues off guard when she commented that with the new relaxed dress code she might just wear a "bikini" to the Senate chamber.

Or, to quote Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now,  "The horror!  The horror!"

Compared to Marjorie Taylor Greene's porn and Susan Collins threat of coming to work in a bikini, Fetterman's hoody isn't so bloody awful after all!

 

Flying Taxis in Two Years!

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

Joby Aviation, Inc, a publicly owned company, has announced plans to begin making 500 flying taxis a year at a 140-acre site at the Dayton International Airport in Dayton, Ohio, the hometown of the Wright Brothers.  The small, electric aircraft will have the ability to take off and land vertically, like helicopters, and transport a pilot and up to four passengers a distance of 200 miles.  In a press release the company said that it envisions picking passengers up from rooftops and transporting them to airports, or perhaps the other way around.  The objective would be to avoid congested ground traffic.
 
The company plans to start production in 2025 and place the flying taxis in aerial ride-sharing networks.  It will employ up to 2,000 people.  The $500 million project is supported by a large incentive grant from the state of Ohio as well as through partnerships with Toyota, Delta Airlines, Intel, and Uber.  The US Department of Energy has also invited the electric flying taxi manufacturer to apply for a “clean energy” loan.

Some might argue that this new technology and transportation option will give the "haves" one more way to rise above having to share space with the "have nots."
 
There is the world of the future, America.  Bumper-to-bumper cars on the ground – many of which will be driverless, air taxis and drones filling the skies, and Starlink satellites jockeying for space in outer space.  No wonder Elon Musk wants to fly off to Mars!
 

Trump and Melania are having 'Nice Dinners'

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

If someone wished to describe a joyless marriage, one way to do it might be to portray the couple as partaking in "nice dinners" together.

Apparently Melania Trump, the fifty-three-year-old former underwear model, has been missing from her husband’s campaign ever since he announced his third run for the White House last November.  She has been out of sight so long that it is beginning to raise some eyebrows among the politically curious.  There have even been “wanted” posters for her appearing on the internet, and a plane with a banner saying “Where’s Melania?” was seen flying over Trump’s Mar-a-Lago motel complex.
 
This weekend two national journalists asked Trump about his absent wife.  He told NBC’s Kristen Welker, the new host of “Meet the Press,” that Melania would rejoin the campaign “pretty soon.”  He said that he liked to keep her away from politics because it’s ”so nasty and so mean,” something which he knows plenty about, and much of which can be traced directly back to him.
 
Later that same day in a conversation with Megyn Kelly on Fox, Trump said that his wife was with their son, Barron, at school.  He tried to fluff his spouse’s image by saying that she had been a very popular First Lady and also claiming, incorrectly, that she had appeared on the cover of Vogue before they met.  Trump then, without being asked, defended his relationship with Melania.  He said, “Our dinners are nice.  We get along.  We actually get along very well.”
 
Donald Trump did not get into whether he still throws plates of food at the wall as he eats – or not.

The Rattlesnake Garage and Other Tales

 

by Pa Rock

Respecter of Nature

Having lived in Arizona for several years I became familiar with various aspects of the unique wildlife of that state and area.  Some of it was on a personal level, such as the night I woke up being stung by a scorpion who was fighting with me for control of the bedsheet.  I also had a grackle (a type of desert crow) with whom I would share my breakfast sandwich each morning when I arrived at the military base where I worked.  Bob, the grackle, got to where he recognized my car as I drove onto the base and he would follow me to where I parked and then wait impatiently on the ground for me to begin sharing breakfast.

I collected second-hand critter tales, as well, like the one told to me by a friend regarding a javelina (wild pig) running past her and brushing up against her leg one evening as she was out for a stroll.  Another friend was out with her unleashed pet chihuahua going for a similar walk one evening  - that's when you walk in the Phoenix area, when it begins to cool off in the evenings or very early in the morning - and as this friend was walking a coyote ran up and grabbed the chihuahua in its jaws and ran off.  The coyote soon dropped the scared dog though, perhaps deciding that it was not in the mood for Mexican food after all.

There was also a small incorporated town out in the western stretches of Phoenix where gangs of wild chihuahuas roamed freely and authorities could not figure out a way to bring them under control.  (I always thought there might be a PIXAR movie somewhere in that scenario.)  Another time there was a story in the news about an older home whose walls were so full of bees that he house ultimately had to be torn down.

The desert may appear to some to be a bleak and dying landscape, but it is home to a great diversity of creatures and they all struggle daily to survive and thrive.

This week there was another Arizona wildlife story in the news, and it, too, occurred in the Phoenix area, or what the Arizona Chamber of Commerce refers to as "The Valley of the Sun."  A homeowner in the Phoenix suburb of Mesa called a snake removal service after he spotted a couple of diamondback rattlesnakes in his garage.  The owner suspected that he had three of the deadly creatures living in his garage, but when the professional "snake wrangler" arrived to remove them, she found that instead of three snakes, there were twenty:  five adults, including one which was pregnant, and fifteen babies.  The removal expert also found evidence (snakeskins) indicating that there had been as many as forty in the garage in the past.  Many of the ones she removed - with long metal tongs - were wrapped around the hot water heater which was operating out of the garage.

The lesson in all of those aforementioned cases is that nature does what it has to do in order to survive. As man encroaches, nature fights back - as long and as hard as it can.

This week I have an armadillo punching holes across my back yard here in the Ozarks, and the deer have been right up next to the house eating the late blooms off of the squash plants.  I wish them all a bountiful harvest and a warm and secure winter.  The same goes for the many groundhogs and multitudes of birds and squirrels with whom I temporarily co-exist.  There is room for all of us.

Missouri Stops Books as Gifts to Prisoners

 

by Pa Rock

Missouri Citizen

There was a disturbing story this week in "The Defender," a minority-owned-and-run newspaper out of the Kansas City area.  The Missouri Department of Corrections is preparing to stop allowing prisoners in the show-me state to receive books as gifts from friends and relatives on the outside.  Beginning on September 25th, if an inmate wants a particular book that isn't available in the prison's limited library, he will have to order it himself through a short list of outside vendors.

If Gramma wants to send him a book through Amazon, she can just go pound sand.  

The decision to stop books from friends and family has been criticized by outside agencies because many prisoners do not have the means to purchase their own books, and the argument is also made that books bring a stabilizing influence into the prison system and often function as gateways to the future as they help prepare prisoners for life and work on the outside.  Books also provide an emotional release from the rigors of living in a caged environment.

The Department of Corrections says that it is attempting to stop the flow of drugs and contraband into the prison system, and last year, as a part of that effort, it instituted a program that stopped most physical mail from reaching prisoners.   Now all mail, except for legal correspondence, is opened and electronically scanned onto computer tablets for the prisoners to read.

Prisoners respond that most of the drugs entering the prison system are brought in by prison employees.

I'm not sure how Gramma buying a book through Amazon and then having them ship it to her convict could result in drugs coming into the prison.  But I am admittedly naive.  Jeff Bezos, are you working a new hustle?

Reading inspires and gives people hope - and ultimately helps to create better citizens.  Keeping even one person down hobbles us all.  

Bombs Fell on Acapulco

 

by Pa Rock

Lyricist

Yesterday I used this space to highlight one of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis's presidential campaign stratagems - denying science.  In that piece I talked about Ron's advice to his fellow Floridians, those under the age of sixty-five, to not take the new COVID boosters which are about to become available nationwide.  It was a stunningly ignorant piece of advice from an elected official who should be looking out for the health and welfare of the people he was elected to serve, and it provides some clear insights into how he would serve the nation in the event he ever figures out a path to the White House.

When it comes to disingenuous and even dangerous political malarkey, Ron DeSantis just keeps cranking it out.   Another of his tactics is to stir up nativist rage by attacking immigrants and US immigration policy.  Several months ago the Florida governor made news by sending a planeload of confused asylum seekers to Martha's Vineyard where they were dumped.   A big problem with that ploy to generate publicity on Fox News was that DeSantis couldn't find a planeload of confused asylum seekers in Florida, so he had to borrow some from Texas.  It was a bit of star-spangled showboating funded from the pockets of already over-burdened Florida taxpayers.

But that's Ron.  Any road that gets him to the White House, no matter how low.

Yesterday DeSantis was in the news again, and once more he was beating his populist war drum.  The politician, whose military credibility centers on a short stint as a lawyer for the Navy's Seal Team One, now says that he won't rule out possible missile strikes in Mexico.   

Well, yee-haw!  Go get 'em, Ronbo!  But if you send any actual troops across the border, just make sure that Trump's Great Wall doesn't fall on them.   Yes, air strikes on Mexico!   That would certainly resonate well in the deepest, darkest, most ignorant corners of the Republican MAGA base.  You would cut a fine figure of a military commander by pulling on a tailor-made, freshly starched camouflage shirt - with the sleeves rolled up, a la Zelenskyy, a comfortable pair of new denim jeans, and those lovely white rain boots!

To set the mood for the the war with our next-door neighbor and long-term trading partner, I have penned a little parody which can be sung to the tune of "Stars Fell on Alabama," and bears similarity to the Jimmy Buffett version of that song.  (And if anyone knows Randy Rainbow, please tell him that he can have it.)

Here it is, Ronbo, your new campaign ballad:  You can "muchas gracias" me later!

Bombs Fell on Acapulco  (A Parody) 

by Pa Rock 

Moonlight and boat drinks, fire fights in the air

All the world a horror scope.

Was it so primeval?  Did it fill us with despair?

Did we even dare to hope?

 

We lived our little drama, 

We kissed on a beach of sand,

As bombs fell on Acapulco last night.

 

I can’t forget the glamor,

your eyes held in flashing light,

As bombs fell on Acapulco last night.

 

I never planned in my imagination.

A situation, so dastardly.

Our very beach that no one else could enter,

With shrapnel flying at you and me, dear.

 

Hear my heart beat like a hammer,

My lungs filled with smoke and fright,

As bombs fell on Acapulco last night.

 

Yes, we lived our little drama

We kissed upon a sandy dune,

As bombs fell on Acapulco last night.

Ronbo Takes Political Potshots at Pandemic

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is flailing around desperately trying to find some issue that will catch fire with the voters and carry him to the White House.  Yesterday he returned to one of his past winners, an attack on the federal government's attempts to control the spread of COVID.  In a stunning denial of reality and the results of extensive medical research, DeSantis and Florida's surgeon general  recommended that Florida residents under the age of sixty-five not get the new COVID booster shots.

The day before yesterday, however, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had gone on record as approving and recommending those shots for most Americans over the age of six months.

DeSantis, who was once supportive of vaccinations to end the pandemic, has wavered in his support of public health measures like taking vaccines and wearing masks as public resentment against restrictions and inconveniences caused by the pandemic began to rise.  After the CDC announced its approval and support of the new vaccine on Tuesday, DeSantis decided on Wednesday to hop on that political pony and see if he could ride it all the way to the White House.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has stated that is is confident in the safety and effectiveness of the new vaccines.  The Center for Disease Control and Prevention is on record as saying the new boosters are effective against the original virus as well as a couple of more prominent variants.  DeSantis, who spoke out against "the jab" at the recent GOP presidential debate, describes the continued vaccine regimen as an expansion of government control.

DeSantis bemoaned the new round of COVID booster shots this way:

"I will not stand by and let the FDA and CDC use healthy Floridians as guinea pigs for new booster shots that have not been proven safe or effective."

But others would undoubtedly argue that:

1. The shots have been deemed safe and effective by the Food and Drug Administration;  and, 
2. Vaccines are intended to be used on healthy people - to keep them healthy;  and,
3. Medical malarkey endangers public health.

New COVID cases in Florida have topped 24,000 for the past two consecutive weeks, and Florida hospitals are currently reporting more COVID cases than any other state.   That's what's really happening in the Sunshine State, Governor DeSantis.  It's all just political posturing on your part, and political posturing seldom results in healthy outcomes.

Enjoy your stay in Fantasyland, Ronbo.

Boebert, the Musical

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

Some people would rather be the show than see the show.

Last weekend at a theatre in Denver, Colorado, a 36-year-old grandmother by the name of Lauren Boebert and her companion were ejected from a musical production of Beetlejuice which was being performed by a Broadway touring company.   The couple were apparently vaping, singing along to the performance, taking pictures and recording with a cell phone, talking loudly, and making a general nuisance of themselves.   After several complaints from other audience members, theatre staff approached Boebert and her friend during intermission and gave them a warning about their unacceptable behavior.    But it went unheeded and the complaints from others in the audience resumed less than five minutes into the second act.  Police were called, and Ms. Boebert and her fellow reveler were escorted to the door.

Boebert, of course, is the two-term congresswoman from western Colorado.  In addition to being a member of the right-wing GOP Freedom Caucus that has been giving House Speaker Kevin McCarthy fits all year, she has also managed to keep her name in the news by engaging in a public feud with fellow Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene.  Boebert is primarily known in the House for being stridently anti-abortion and for backing the "rights" of gun owners.  She was once denied entry into the House chamber after a metal detector went off as she was trying to enter, and she refused to let security check the bag that she was carrying.  That same year Boebert sent out Christmas cards with a family photo in which all of her children were armed.

The congresswoman has also made news this year with a pair of family dramas, including the birth of her first grandchild to her seventeen-year-old son and his girlfriend - and the filing of divorce papers against her husband of seventeen years, the father of her four sons.

Boebert's staff have confirmed that the congresswoman was escorted out of the theatre.  They also described their boss as a patron of the performing arts.

Congresswoman Boebert does seem to enjoy being performance art.  An article in The Denver Post recapped the entire incident but failed to mention if audience members applauded as she was removed from the theatre.  I'm betting that some did.

Dodging the COVID

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

I had only been one place in the last week, so it was pretty damned obvious where I had picked up whatever medical malady that was kicking my butt.

It had all started with the visit to a speciality physician where the staff was running around calling me "buddy" and everyone acted like they were starring in a remake of "Animal House" where someone had forgotten to order the kegs.  It was there that one brave germ had sought to flee the insanity and had chosen me as his escape vehicle.

A day or so later I was already feeling the beginnings of the subtle body ache which I suspected would eventually manifest itself as the flu.  Saturday night I woke in the middle of the night feeling generally uncomfortable and could not get back to sleep.  That's not unusual for me, and I knew that I would probably sleep well on Sunday night because this stuff usually never happened to me two nights in a row.

And I might have slept well on Sunday night if I hadn't been awakened thirty minutes before midnight by that sinister diabetes monitor telling me that my blood sugar level had sunk below seventy.  I crawled out of bed, ate a couple of Fig Newtons, took care of another personal issue, went back to bed, and spent the rest of the night dealing with hacking cough that sounded like it was straight out of a hospital enphysema ward in the 1950's.

The coughing slowed yesterday morning when I got out of bed and tended to the morning chores of feeding breakfast to the neighbor's cat and opening the chicken coop where the guinea sleeps each night in blissful solitude.  But when I went back to the house and crawled back into bed hoping for at least a few minutes of real sleep, the coughing kicked back in.  Lay down, cough - stand up, no cough.  I have worked with people who could sleep standing up, but unfortunately I am not one of them.

So I got back out of bed, cancelled some appointments, and began getting my affairs in order.

Here in the Ozarks we usually start the recovery process by talking to our friends and neighbors and getting their medical opinions before bothering (or paying) doctors.  Fortunately, I don't have many friends or relatives, so I was done with that phase of the recovery by the early afternoon.  Almost to a person they told me that I had "the COVID."  A few also shared their "whiskey" cures:  whiskey and lemon, whiskey and tea, whiskey and prune juice - it'll kick the crap right out of the danged old COVID!"

And here it is always "the" COVID.  Don't ask me why.  It's a hillbilly thing.

Armed with all of that medical shit knowledge, I next turned to the other professionals for their opinions.  I called the clinic where my doctor works and left a message for his nurse to call me.  When she called back I gave her my symptoms and gave her my self-diagnosis of "Flu."    "No," she told me, "We haven't had any cases of the flu yet.  Would you like to come in and be tested for COVID."

"It's always been a dream of mine," I said.  She gave me instructions on where to park and how to access the person who would perform the test at my car.  Fifteen minutes later I was parked under a big awning at the rear of the clinic along with several others, and fifteen minutes after that I was very uncomfortable as a nurse's aide jammed a Q-tip up my left nostril.   As she was leaving the aide told me that a nurse practitioner would be back out in fifteen minutes with my results. It was more like and hour-and-a half, but I am on the extreme right edge of the productivity bell curve, so I can wait - and I always do so with a smile on my face.

When the nurse practitioner came out she walked straight up to me and said, "How are you doing, my friend?"  To which I replied, "I was hoping you would tell me."

"Well, my friend" she said, "I'm pleased to tell you that you are COVID free." 

I could handle "my friend" a little better than "buddy," but not much.  "It's the flu, isn't it?" I said.

"No, my friend, we don't have any flu here yet."  Then the whipped out her stethoscope and began listening to my lungs - and soon announced that the right one was was full of crap.  People who know me well would undoubtedly argue that she came up short on that diagnosis because they regard me as being completely full of crap!

The nurse practitioner provided me with some prescriptions, told me to drink plenty of water, and sent me home.  The prescriptions included a kick-ass cough syrup which is what I really wanted in the first place.   It was twenty dollars and neither of my insurance companies would cover it, (which means it must be good), so there went two days north of meals.

But I have quit coughing, gotten some sleep, and feel w whole lot better now.

And I am thinking of starting a screenplay, tentative title, "May Left Nostril."

And I am still completely full of crap - thank you very much!

Guns Have More Protections than Children

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

New Mexico Governor Michelle Luhan Grisham did something very bold this week in an effort to protect children in her state's largest city from gun violence.  There has recently been a spate of child deaths and injuries in Albuquerque that were due, in large part, to the ready availability of guns in that metropolitan area - and Luhan Grisham felt that she could not just stand by and let the carnage continue.   

This week Governor Michelle Luhan Grisham said that she has had enough of the senseless killing of children, and she announced a 30-day ban on the "right" to carry guns in the public spaces and state office buildings of Albuquerque.  When she made her announcement, Luhan Grisham said that she knew her edict would be challenged in court, but she felt something had to be done.  She declared shootings in Albuquerque to be a public health emergency, and, as the governor of the state of New Mexico, she took a pro-active action to remedy that health problem.

Predictably, the heavens opened and the righteous wrath of gun owners quickly rained down on the parched deserts of New Mexico.

Republicans love to point their fingers and react in horror to crime in areas controlled by Democrats, but when leaders try to fix the problem, they had best not be coming for Joe Bob's guns.  And Luhan Grisham is, of course, a Democrat.

There was a lawsuit filed on Day One by a gun rights' group, and a whole host of politicians of both parties lined up to say they would not enforce the governor's new policy - including one Democratic prosecutor whom she had appointed.

In 1881, the city of Tombstone, Arizona, was facing an onslaught of gun violence, and it enacted a city ordinance that prohibited the open carrying of guns in that Wild West hellhole - and Virgil Earp enforced it.  There was a crime problem and politicians fixed it. 

The point is that thoughts an prayers don't impact gun violence - at all - and the only way to reduce the number of children dying from gun violence is to enact sensible regulations for gun ownership and use.  But Joe Bob doesn't have time to be bothered with background checks, waiting periods, gun safety training, or even securing his weapons at home.   Joe Bob knows that one day the government will come for his guns like those libtards did in Tombstone, and when it does he will need all of the quick firepower he can muster.

And if Joe Bob, Junior takes his daddy's unsecured, high-powered  guns to school and murders his classmates, well . . . shit happens.

Thank you Governor Michelle Luhan Grisham for having the courage to address a serious public health issue that most politicians run from.  Children are more important than guns, and people who believe otherwise are less than human.

Politics in America: Green Acres or Jurassic Park

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

I read a small blurb on the internet yesterday in which a political commentator succinctly described the differences in how the two political parties in the United States operate.  The Republican Party, the writer noted, is controlled by their base, an insane mob of about forty percent of the American electorate  who support Donald Trump with a religious fervor and have a whole host of attendant issues such as racism, homophobia, a need for male dominance in society, and the "right" of everyone in society who looks and behaves like them to be well-armed and unfettered by any form of government regulation.  The "leaders" of the Republican Party, the writer noted, do not lead but instead cower in fear before the rabble.

The Democrats, on the other hand, lead from the top down.  Their leaders are older, grayer, and more skilled in the ways of genteel traditions and polite society - and they are attached to their power positions within the party and the government with the strength of barnacles who require sandblasting to be removed from the hulls of ships.  The leaders of the Democratic Party do not fall all over themselves making way for the political youngsters to advance through the system and learn the ropes of how to govern and get things done.  They instead tend to prattle on about the benefits of "institutional knowledge," all the while denying the next generation opportunities to get elected to office and gain any of that "institutional knowledge" for themselves.   Getting things done is the purview of the codgers.  Many Democratic politicians will pass on a gold retirement watch and instead wait patiently for a toe tag.

So we are stuck with a situation in which the Republican Speaker of the House and his committee chairmen resemble the cast of "Green Acres," and the Democratic leaders lumber about as though they are starring in yet another remake of "Jurassic Park."

While the lines between the hillbillies and the dinosaurs don't split perfectly between the parties, in general they are very real.  Yes, the Republicans in the Senate are saddled with a fog-bound Mitchosaurus, and he is proclaiming loudly that he will finish his term.  But the Trump lunatics don't like Mitch, and him winning another term in 2026 seems highly unlikely.

And speaking of dinosaurs, 83-year-old Nancy Pelosi said this week that she will seek another term in Congress.  The only reason that she seemed to verbalize for refusing to leave Jurassic Park had something to do with controlling Trump, though he would have no chance of ever carrying her posh, blue-blood, bigly Democratic district in San Francisco.  Nancy is stuffing her own ego.    That's what dinosaurs do.

The Republicans need to focus of cleaning their own house, perhaps with a flamethrower, and the Democrats need to open theirs up to a little more actual democracy.  Right now politics in America feels like it is the worst of two worlds.

Buddy Goes to the Eye Doctor

 

by Pa Rock

When I retired from my civilian job with the US military back in 2014, I opted to keep my federal government health, vision, and dental insurance in force.  The health insurance portion of that equation was a smart move because for almost exactly the same money that a Medicare supplement policy would have cost, I got a second complete insurance policy to use as a supplement, and that policy also supplements the piss-poor Medicare Part D drug coverage - so I seldom had to pay any co-pays on medicines.  (But it's far from "free" because I pay insurance premiums out the wazoo.)

But the other two coverages that I had with the federal government - vision and dental - have not worked out as well, and it was hard finding providers who would take either one.  My current dentist, whom I really like, will accept the dental insurance, but while it would cover a major portion of the bill with the dentists of Phoenix, Arizona, I always wind up owing a respectable balance after the insurance settles with my local dentist here in West Plains.

And eye doctors have been a particular struggle.  I finally found one down in the wilds of Arkansas who would accept the plan and I was with him for several years, even after he quit accepting the plan with no warning, but eventually for a variety of reasons, I decided to change providers.  I found one in a Missouri community several miles away, and made my initial visit for a diabetic eye exam earlier this week.

The visit to the new provider was unremarkable in most respects.  My eyes were dilated and I was given basically the same battery of exams as with the previous provider - and this time there was no ugly co-pay.  But I ordered new glasses based on the new prescription, and I will judge the quality of the optometrist's work by how well I can see to read and work at the computer when the new glasses arrive next week.

There was, however, one aspect of the visit caught me off guard and left me feeling somewhat uncomfortable - and that had to do with the level of familiarity expressed by the staff.  The first woman who dealt with me called me "darlin'," and I was alright with that, but from that point on every employee of the practice except for the provider called me either "Buddy" or "Bud."  There was something about that constant drumbeat of a childlike appellation that made me feel like I was being treated as a child - and the more I heard it, the less I liked it.

I had a wonderful high school teacher named Buddy Powell.  He taught "Citizenship" and was truly inspirational.  But that Buddy spent a lifetime earning and burnishing his nickname.  It wasn't some shortcut stuck on him by people who were too busy or too lazy to learn and use his real name.  I also had a little black goat named Buddy who liked to ride shotgun in my old Chevy Cavalier convertible - and he truly was my buddy.   And I remember that the Clinton's acquired a puppy while they were in the White House that Bill named "Buddy" after and uncle of his by the same name - and Bill's Buddy was probably just as happy with his name as my little goat was with his.

But if the person you are dealing with hasn't said "Hey, please call me Buddy," or doesn't have a history of being your actual buddy, referring to them in that manner sounds more like you are talking to a two-year-old rather than as an adult who is trying to obtain a service through your business.

Maybe instead of "Buddy" they should call me "Crabby!"

Elon is in it for the Power

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

There are, it seems, somewhere north of three thousand billionaires o the planet, while, at the same time, more that seven hundred million people around the globe live in extreme, life-threatening poverty.  The disparity between the "haves" and the "have nots" on our small planet is unconscionable and immoral.

But it is what it is.

It is unlikely that any of the world's billionaires got to their exalted economic status through good works and constantly applying the Golden Rule in their dealings with others, but now that they have enough economic security to see their heirs and descendants comfortably through the next few millennia, it would seem that they could share some of their riches to pull others out of the reach of disease, pestilence, and starvation.

Some in fact do.

There are all types of billionaires, from adventurers like Hamish Harding, the Brit who died when the submersible in which he was a passenger imploded while trying to reach the Titanic, to recluses like the late Howard Hughes.    There are good billionaires who are focused on the needs of those less fortunate and the future of the planet - including the likes of Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and MacKenzie Bezos, and there are less good billionaires who, while exercising some charitable instincts, will still pick your pockets at every opportunity.  Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Prime, and the Washington Post, is such a creature.  And then there are the fringe billionaires, a group that includes phonies, wannabes, dubious, and barely billionaires, like Donald Trump, who rush around endlessly proclaiming their wealth and constantly trying to keep their name and image in front of the public in a way of solidifying their status as members of the Billionaire's Club.

There are also billionaires whose thrust in life is to run things.  They are the ones who are in it for the power that their wealth can exert.  And when it comes to power billionaires, Elon Musk, is definitely the big dog.

There have been two major reports in the news in recent weeks regarding the life and power of Musk.  The first was by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ronan Farrow in a report that he published in the New Yorker entitled "Elon Musk's Shadow Rule" and subtitled "How the US government came to rely on the tech billionaire - and is now struggling to rein him in."  It was published on August 21st and can be accessed free over the internet.  

In that article Farrow details how Musk had identified areas in which the government should be actively engaged in public endeavors, but has instead, for a variety of reasons withdrawn in favor of private enterprise. - and Elon Musk, (surprise, surprise) has stepped into several of those areas and gained an awkward control over things that should be in the public domain or that are necessary to control  large portions of government activities, the economy, and even war and peace.

Farrow notes that sixty percent of electric vehicle recharging stations are currently controlled by Musk, a platform that will give him (the majority owner of Tesla) an out-sized influence over the push toward green energy. But a lot of what Ronan Farrow concentrates on in this article is the Musk dominance in space. His company, SpaceX, is currently the only option that the United States has for sending astronauts into space and bringing them safely back to earth.  And SpaceX has set up a satellite communication system called Starlink that has so far brought satellite services and connectivity to over sixty countries.  There are currently over eight thousand manmade satellites orbiting the earth, and over half of them belong to Elon Musk.

Musk's satellite system, Starlink, was used to keep Ukraine connected to the internet and to keep its military struggle against the Russian invasion operational during the early days of the war when Russia tried to shut down the country's communications.  Musk had responded to a plea for help from Ukraine and gave them access to his already-established satellite communication system.  But not too long after Ukraine became dependent on Musk, he had some second thoughts about his involvement in a military operation and temporarily pulled the plug - leaving a submarine drone attack by Ukraine against the Russian fleet in Crimea to falter in the water.

Suddenly is was dawning on people in the US military and government that Musk was behaving more like an independent nation state in geopolitical affairs than he was as a private citizen assisting with what should have been a government-directed project.

Farrow also focuses on Musk's bursts of erratic behavior, such as those we have all witnessed with his hands-on operation of Twitter, or X as it is now known, and he makes references to the billionaire's reported drug use.

Farrow's article dwells on the power aspect of Elon Musk.

There has also been a lot of hype in the press over the last couple of days regarding a biography of Musk by skilled biographer Walter Isaacson.  The book, titled simply "Elon Musk," will be available in bookstores on September 12th.  One of the stories in the book that has received a lot of press has to do with Musk turning off Ukraine's satellite connection while that country was in the midst of the submarine drone attack on the Russian fleet, an effort that failed due to Musk's intervention.

But by writing a book-length biography instead of a long magazine article, Isaacson had more space to reveal the character he was trying to illuminate.  Isaacson spent two years shadowing Musk in order to gain a some level of personal understanding of the man, and he interviewed friend and foe alike.  Apparently from the reviews that I have read, Walter Isaacson acknowledges Elon Musk as a ruthless power player, and then tries to explain that ruthlessness in terms of Elon being bullied by other youngsters in the South African neighborhood where he grew up, including one beating that was notably severe - as well as daddy issues.

Both works of research on the life and times of Elon Musk are currently (or soon will be) available to anyone who has an interest in understanding the complexities and motives of the world's richest human.  Elon Musk is a man who seems to be motivated by a need for power and a desire to be right at the center of everyone's attention, and if those are his goals in life, he is already a raging success.  But if he has any desire to be remembered as a great human being instead of just a powerful person, he still has a long way to go.

It's about more than just you meeting your needs, Elon, it's also about taking care of the world and its people - those who are surviving, day-by-day, on the fringes of catastrophe - the world that has given you all that you have.  Take a lunch with Bill Gates and listen to what he has to say.  It would be time well spent - for you and the rest of the world as well.

Rolling Stones Begin Gathering Moss

 

by Pa Rock

Cultural Observer

Three of the current four members of the 20th century British rock band, The Rolling Stones, came together in London earlier this week to hype the release of their first album of original music in eighteen years.  The Stones' collection of new music will premier on October 20th.  It is titled "Hackney Diamonds," a slang term for shards of broken glass left over from break-ins.

The Rolling Stones formed in 1962 at a time when the Berlin Wall was just a year old, Britain's Queen Elizabeth was completing her first decade on the throne, John Kennedy was President of the United States, and seven years before man would set foot on the moon.  The original band consisted of six members and is now down to four, only two of whom, vocalist Mick Jagger and guitarist Keith Richards, have been with the band through its entire existence.  Jagger (now 80) and Richards (79) were both at this week's promotional event, along with Ronnie Woods (76) a guitarist who has been with the group since 1975.  Charlie Watts, the band's original drummer, died in 2020, but will be featured on a couple of cuts on the new album that were recorded the year before his death.

The promotion for the upcoming album was held at the "Hackney Empire," a historic theatre in the Hackney section of London.  American entertainer Jimmy Fallon conducted a twenty-minute interview of the three band mates.    The audience of journalists and other invitees were not permitted to ask questions.

According to an article in the New York Times, "dozens" of people gathered in front of the Hackney Empire to watch the three skinny, elderly rockers wearing shiny black suits and shades, walk down the theatre's red carpet.  One sixteen year-old-girl who was passing by asked what the gathering was about, and when she was told that it was a promotional event for The Rolling Stones, she said, "I've heard of them, I think."  And then she boarded a bus for home.

The moss is starting to take over.

Message on an Egg

 

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist
 
Here is a bit of oddball history that has recently been in the national press:
 
Mary Foss was twenty years old and still single when she and some friends who were at work packing eggs into cartons at a factory in Iowa decided to have some fun by putting a simple message on a few eggs.   The note that Mary put on four or five eggs read:  "Whoever gets this egg, please write me.  Miss Mary Foss, Forest City, Iowa,   April 2, 1951."
 
They knew the eggs were being shipped to the east coast and thought that at least one of them might get lucky and snag a pen pal through their efforts.  None of them had any luck making contact with a stranger - until this year.
 
Mary had always wanted to see New York City, and she was hopeful of making a connection with someone from there.
 
Mary Foss got married not too long after she sent her egg messages to the east coast, and she became Mary Starn.  Mary is now ninety-two.   She has two daughters, the oldest of whom is now seventy.  Mary's girls grew up hearing stories of the fun that Mary and her friends had while they worked at packing eggs, and they had heard about their mother sending out eggs with her name and address and never receiving any replies.
 
Most of the eggs on which the girls wrote their names and addresses were undoubtedly cracked and eaten, but one was set aside as a curiosity by a fellow who had found it in a dozen eggs that he had purchased in New York City.  The guy set the odd egg aside for fifty years or so, and then about twenty years ago he came across it while he was living in the New York Burrough of Staten Island and gave it to a young neighbor.
 
This year that neighbor, who now lives in New Jersey, came across a feature on Facebook entitled:  "Weird and Wonderful Second Hand Finds that Just Need to be Shared," and he posted the story about the egg which was still in his possession.  Several Facebook readers took an interest in the egg with a message, and helped to spread the word - and eventually it was noticed by a cousin of Mary's oldest daughter.   
 
After several phone calls and much disbelief, Mary Foss Starn learned that one of the eggs that she had so carefully marked seventy-two years ago had survived and was still in tact.  (The center had dried over the years, but the shell was still whole.)
 
The egg's current owner, a Mr. Amalfitano, said that he is looking for a museum or historical society to which he could donate the egg that would preserve it and tell Mary's story.  Mary said that she is glad to have a new friend.  “I’ve finally gotten my pen pal,” she said, “and it only took seventy-two years!”