Merry Christmas

To all who read this blog. I hope you have a most wonderful Christmas and a great coming year.

To those who have never read this blog, I wish you a Merry Christmas.

Connecticut has become a zombie state

The governor is cheering the fact that the legislature has passed a bill that orders state agencies not to approve or grant any permit to individuals who have been put on the Federal no fly list. This action was taken after the President mentioned using executive action to achieve the same goal at Federal level.

That's just wrong ... and is possibly illegal.

The rights of the people, as stated in the Constitution and law can only be modified by action of the legislature. The no fly list is an administrative action by a federal agency and is kept secret by that same agency. In fact, the process used to decide who will be enshrined on the list is classified and not available to the public.

Now we have a state saying that a secret administrative decision by a Star Chamber can be used to deny an individual rights that are permissible by law. The Second Amendment protagonists are up in arms (not sure if that was an intentional pun) but everyone needs to be aware that the concept behind these actions can and will be abrogated by fiat.

If you are on a "List" you can be denied a professional license, a business license, a technical license and even a drivers license if a state employee decides that you are an "enemy of the state". That is not what the Constitution says and we need to be concerned about the direction society is being driven by those who believe they know better than you or me.  

Question of the day

Watching the media make up and spin the story of the San Bernardino terrorist incident there is not a lot I can say in response. The picture says what I'm thinking

9 Things to keep in mind

This has been around for years, but it is always topical

9 THINGS TO KEEP IN MIND TODAY

 

#9   Death is the number 1 killer in the world.

 

#8   Life is sexually transmitted.

 

#7   Good health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.

 

#6   Men have two motivations: hunger and hanky panky, and they can't tell them apart.  If you see a gleam in his eyes, make him a sandwich.

 

#5   Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day.  Teach a person to use the Internet and they won't bother you for weeks, months, maybe years.

 

#4   Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in the hospital, dying of nothing.

 

#3   All of us could take a lesson from the weather.  It pays no attention to criticism.

 

#2   In the 60's, people took acid to make the world weird.  Now the world is weird, and people take Prozac to make it normal.

 

#1   Life is like a jar of jalapeno peppers.  What you do today may be a burning issue tomorrow.

For Adults Only

This past week has taught me that "higher education" does not necessarily result in "higher intelligence". My mind has a difficult time grasping the concept that people need Trigger Warnings that a discussion or an article might, just might offend the listener/reader. Or that people require a Safe Space where they don't have to have reality intrude on their concept of self.

If you believe in closing your mind to other ideas and if you feel threatened by other peoples thoughts I suggest you stop reading now:

If you need a Trigger Warning or a Safe Space, you are a child who should not be allowed out in public without a responsible adult to watch over you.

Because you are not an adult.

An adult accepts resonsibility for their own actions.

An adult isn't offended by someone who disagrees with them.

An adult knows how to have reasoned discourse without getting emotional.

An adult does not require others to support him/her.

An adult knows that words are just that, words.

An adult knows that their actions define who they are, not what others may think or feel about them.

A child, throws tantrums when they do not get their way.

A child wants others to do everything for them.

A child screams and yells at others when their own wishes and desires are not met.

A child cannot stand not  being the center of attention and being pampered.

A child is incapable of having reasoned discourse or a civil conversation.


So if you need a "Trigger Warning" or a "Safe Space" you are NOT an Adult.

You are a CHILD.

Maybe it's time you grow up like the rest of us.  and if someone who claims to be an adult tells you that you need those warnings and spaces?  They are simply children trying to masquerade as an adult, and trying to lead you into being just as self centered and spoiled as they are.

Taking Resposibility

 I work with a wide variety of personalities in my job as a mediator. Since I’m supposed to be non-judgmental while I guide the parties to a mutually agreeable solution to their problem I spend a lot of time listening to stories that support their position. Often, the stories are exactly that … a story. Designed to explain why things happened the way they did.

And all too often the story completely denies any responsibility for what happened.

Just recently I had a case where the defendant blamed the plaintiff for the injury the plaintiff had received because “they should have been walking on the other sidewalk across the street”  and “the medical treatment they got cost too much money and I don’t believe I need to pay that much” for the injury caused by their negligence. They were eager to admit that an injury had happened, but blind to their responsibility for causing the accident and the injury. It was all the other person’s fault for being present and therefore they were responsible for the accident.

Believing as they did, the defendant insisted that they didn’t need to discuss the situation and certainly didn’t owe any money to anyone. They also believed that the plaintiff owed them money for having the temerity to sue them for damages. Not all mediations are successful and this one went back to the court … where the judge ruled the defendant had totally responsibility and must pay for the damages. Something any reasonable observer could have predicted.

In my practice I’m seeing this attitude occurring all too often because my generation taught the younger generation that failure is society’s fault and that the individual is not responsible for anything other than self-satisfaction. And the younger generation continued and expanded that silliness by insisting that no one should suffer the stigma of failure.

I don’t have any solution, all I can do is hope that in the future (near future, I hope) the idea of resiliency and responsibility takes root and finds fertile ground.  

Laughter is the best medicine

Several years ago I had the "opportunity" to mediate a dispute between two adult males. I can't call them gentlemen because their actions and behavior belied the concept of gentle and polite conduct.

One party was a real estate salesman who managed to talk the other party into bankrolling his excursion into the world of buying cheap and selling dear, i.e.: flipping rundown houses to gullible buyers. He was a good salesman, and I'm sure had the ability to successfully sell booze to Baptists, but his weakness was believing that because he was a successful salesman he also knew construction and project management. Events proved him wrong on both counts, but that certainly didn't stop him from believing he could pull a renovation off at the expense of whoever was bankrolling his project.

His partner was an equally good salesman, only his forte was separating people from their money with a variety of financial schemes, not the least of which was never paying an expense out of his share and always shorting the profits in his favor. Cheap seemed to be his mantra and if a coat of paint would cover the mold he would argue that watering the paint was the way to go.

The dispute that brought them to my attention was a simple purchase, renovation and resale of a house in an gentrified suburban setting. What should have been a 6 week flip had, by the time they came to me, lasted more than two years. People who live off the credulity of others depend on  verbal agreements and rarely utilize the written word to document their actions. Contracts are anathema and major decisions are made verbally  in a "we are both honest businessmen" state of mind. There was absolutely nothing documented outside the legally required property transfer when they bought the structure and even that contained clauses that a lawyer would find suspect and a judge would most likely find criminal. Both parties tried their best to persuade me that while he was as pure as driven snow the person sitting opposite him was the devil incarnate and that I should not believe a word he was saying.

My job was to find common ground and guide the parties towards arriving at a mutually agreed solution to the problem. Dealing with two self centered uncaught proto-felons was a sure route to failure and after several hours of listening to their repetitious justification as to why I should believe them and not the other guy I finally decided that they were never going to address the essential task of resolving the issue.

It didn't bother me that I sent them away without solving their problem. A problem they did not want to resolve, because each wanted to crush the other ... I guess because without knowing why, they each saw themselves in the other and didn't like what they saw.

My final task that day was to wait until they had departed so I could laugh out loud over their verbal antics and unprofessional behavior. As my folks used to say "You have to laugh, otherwise you'll cry"

Are we circling the drain?

 

In the past 50 years I’ve lived the experience of my country descending from an aware, confident and capable country to a neurotic, divided and self-centered collective of tribal states struggling for local supremacy.  I also believe that all the little power hungry groups that work so hard to create “today’s crisis” are not the true and basic cause of the issues we face as a nation. Black, White, Conservative, Liberal, Atheist, Practicing (fill in your religion), Left, Right, etc. are all labels that reflect what I believe to be the two positions that divide our culture.

 

What divides us as a nation more than anything else are the political, economic and social positions that proclaim that government is either the problem or the answer to all the problems we are struggling to resolve. These days they are usually describes as “Statists” or “Libertarian” and those are labels I can work with. Basically Statists are committed to the position that government is the answer and that anything that is not permitted by law is forbidden. Libertarians on the other hand are firm in their opinion that government is the problem and that if it is not forbidden by law it is permitted.  

 

While these positions might seem to be irreconcilable our system of governance over the past 239 years proves that if reasonable people, regardless of their political position are willing to listen to the other person’s opinion and to negotiate fairly the best possible solution will be arrived at. Our present problem is that, as a society, we have lost the ability to listen and negotiate and find common ground. Driven by liberal and narcissist attitudes and now an attitude adopted by all members of the social order we are a polarized nation.

 

I have concerns about how we can return to the balanced and cooperative society we once were. There is a high probability that whatever the solution(s) might be it will be dissociative and perhaps even violent. I grieve for my children and their children and apologize that as an ancestor I didn’t do a better job in preparing the way for them.

Sal

Salt is an ancient commodity that was, at times, used as a portion of the wages paid to soldiers in the Roman Army. Its use as a portion of wages was so ubiquitous that the Latin word for salt became the root word for salary.

Even today salt is used in trade in many parts of the world as a substitute for cash. The third world is the biggest user of salt as a unit of trade which brings us to a story I read about the use of salt in  American Public Education.

Under the gentle dictate of Michelle Obama and her renowned school lunch program the disposal rate of bland, tasteless and inedible has soared and only the garbage man is happy with the school lunch program forced on future generations by a lady who's only authority comes from a marriage and not from ability.

Enterprising kids are smuggling salt into their lunch rooms and trading or selling it to other kids. One school administrator was quoted as saying, in an article written by Elizabeth Harrington:

 Children are creating their own black markets to trade and sell salt due to First Lady Michelle Obama’s school lunch rules. During a hearing before the House Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education, chaired by Rep. Todd Rokita (R., Ind.), a school administrator told Congress of the “unintended consequences” of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act. “Perhaps the most colorful example in my district is that students have been caught bringing–and even selling–salt, pepper, and sugar in school to add taste to perceived bland and tasteless cafeteria food,” said John S. Payne, the president of Blackford County School Board of Trustees in Hartford City, Indiana. “This ‘contraband’ economy is just one example of many that reinforce the call for flexibility [with the rules],” he said.

With the track record of inept and useless decisions by the political leadership we now have I have great fear for the stunts they will try in the remaining years of the administration

25 May 15

Memorial Day

My Lady had a chance to fill a long held desire this past week when she had an opportunity to be an escort for a Veteran on an Honor Flight and tour of Washington. For those of you who are not familiar with the Honor Flight project it’s a nationwide program that gives elderly veterans an opportunity to tour the military monuments in the DC area and to receive the accolades of those of us who are not of “The Greatest Generation”.

 

There were about 28 Veterans on the flight My Lady volunteered for and each one of them was accompanied by one or two escorts who sole duty was to take care of their charge and to assure that he or she (they were mostly male) came to no harm. It was a long day for all, with an airport assemble at 0400 hours (That’s oh dark awful time) and a return to the local airport at 0030 the following morning (that’s really oh dark awful), since the Veterans were all in in their late eighty’s and ninety’s it was a long, long day. And the escorts, although they are generally younger were more than ready to get home and get some rest. In one day they had visited the monuments, been honored by all the military services, attended a wreath laying at Arlington Cemetery and had suffered the indignity of a cancelled air flight and bus breakdowns that should never have happened.

 

On a side note, when the bus they were riding in expired at the side of the road, the Marines jumped in and not only provided a VIP bus, they staffed it with strong and willing troopers to help the Veterans. And the Marines were not alone, the Air Force provided an active duty member to accompany one old gentleman whose escort could not make the trip and the Army provided the Army Band and an Honor Guard welcome and the Metro government of DC gave the arriving plane a water cannon welcome. It was a long and busy day, but it demonstrated the reality that the people of this country appreciate the effort given by those who came before and fought to maintain the country we have.

 

My Lady is impressed by the resiliency of those who served in prior wars and their willingness to put up with the heat, humidity and the length of the day. These are not people who gripe and moan and complain about the minor events of the day, like the Timex watch they took a licking and keep on ticking. WW II and Korea made them into upright and resilient people who are today enjoying each day as it comes and we lose some of them each and every day. They will be missed by those who care.

 

This weekend is the Memorial Day weekend and it was created for us, all of us, to remember those who previously served and suffered in prior wars. It is not National BBQ day, it’s a day to give thanks for the Veterans and the liberties we enjoy. Enjoy a BBQ with friends and family, but when you say grace before eating remember the Veterans who made it possible.

LGBT

 

The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender community is a politically active part of our social structure because they see the only way to get social acceptance is by altering the political environment to their advantage. The LGBT community is a minority one, and like all minorities has been abused in varying degree by the majority population. In some parts of the world being “different” is a capital crime and I can’t fault any minority that wants to assure its wellbeing in any way it can.

 

The focus issue, for LGBT’s these days is to legislatively allow for civil marriage, and they are becoming increasingly successful on a state by state basis in meeting their goal of legal and social acceptance of their vison of a more equal social order. I applaud their success and would like to see all states, and the federal government accept the fact that people who have other sexual desires are free to engage if their actions don’t cause harm to other people. Recent studies indicate that as a portion of population the LGBT advocates comprise slightly less than 2% of the population and are certainly not a threat to the rest of the population. As a result the burden for the rest of us is to finally decide if marriage is a social, political or religious institution. The answer might also be “none of the above” but we must have finally resolve the noisy conversation that blinds us to more important social issues that face us.

 

If marriage between same sex couples is now ok I can’t help but look forward to a push to also allow polygamist and polyandrous families, and I anticipate watching, and listening to arguments why one individual should not have multiple spouses. It’s only a matter of time before someone from the Church of Latter Day Saints (the Mormons) advances the argument that allowing same sex marriage is no different in the eyes of the law than allowing one person to have multiple partners of the opposite (or even the same) sex.

 

As a people watcher the next few years will be very interesting!

PEOPLE

3 May 15

Over the years, we have lived in many homes, most of them larger than the home we currently live in. Because we are reluctant to just abandon “our stuff” we rent climate controlled space in a local storage facility where we keep excess furniture from previous years and new items we have purchased for the Staging business My Lady operates.  A typical week will find us utilizing the storage area several times and often at odd hours.

Yesterday we had to retrieve a refrigerator dolly from the unit prior to buying a file card cabinet we intend to convert to a small parts storage unit for her sewing room. A two minute pickup went away when I walked into the isle where our unit is located only to find the isle blocked by trash. A pile about 5 feet wide, 3 feet deep and 25 feet long was filled with empty boxes, broken glass and furniture and sundry other stuff the person obviously considered too unimportant for them to take care of.  Whoever made the mess just left it for someone else to clean up, since obviously they considered themselves too important to care about their trash?

What should have been a short visit turned into an extended effort while we cleared the way to our unit, informed storage unit management and finally got the dolly into the truck. By the time we arrived at the sale site for the cabinet it had been sold and we were out of luck.

If I could find the person who left the trash for others to pick up I’d most likely have some harsh words for him, but I know I’d be talking to empty air since the level of narcissism I see as a court mediator is increasing. So we will grumble about such people and write blog reports and get on with our lives in the hope we don’t run into such people too often.

We stand of many shoulders

I was young, still in elementary school and had not a clue which direction my future would take when I was asked “What do want to be when you grow up?” Having just read a book on cultural anthropology (although I think the title was something like Recent Discoveries in Archaeology) and the chapter that grabbed my attention was a discussion on flint knapping in the Stone Age. Without a clue as to what I was doing I decided to try to make a stone spear point, just for fun.

Little did I realize that the period of time between simply knocking two stones together and deliberately pressure pointing a flake was at least 40,000 generations of slow and painful development and all I got for my battering two rocks together was an abused rock and several smashed fingers. My respect for our long lost common ancestors was one of life’s epochal events that lead to my appreciation of history and understanding that we all too often forget the powerful shoulders we today stand upon!

From the Oldwan hand axes of 2.6 million years ago to the sophisticated Achuelean axes of 500,000 years ago reflect a development of the human brain to do strategic planning. The Stone Age hand tool tells us of an ability to see the final object within the lump (or later flake) of stone in the makers hand. This ability to visualize abstract goals reflects the development of the human fore brain (prefrontal cortex) and its capacity to see what you want and the proficiency to verbalize what your mind is seeing. An ability that many anthropologists did not believe our ancestors had.

Several studies have trained students to make Achuelean tools but rarely do the students produce an object that would meet the standards of the original makers of Stone Age tools. It has been surmised that given sufficient time and experience modern man could match the casual efforts of our Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon. Modern Neuropathology studies have determined that the mental effort required to visualize and make a stone tool actually alters the physical structure of the brain, which in turn made it easier to do it again and make it better this time.

We owe it to our remote ancestors who started out beating two rocks together for everything that we now know as modern society.

Maybe I shouldn’t have stopped when I smashed my fingers!

Easter Thoughts

5 April 2015

The day before Easter I was nonplussed to see that many local churches were having their Easter Egg Hunts on Saturday. Adding to my confusion was learning that the eggs were plastic and the contents were candy.

I feel that I must be alone in remembering that religious thought about Easter includes recognition that an egg is the perfect symbol for the rebirth that both spring and the Resurrection bring with them. Out of a closed container with no identity the germ of life flourishes and out of a simple egg a complex life emerges.

As an “older gentleman” I can remember churches having Easter Dawn services, in my case on the beach of the Atlantic Ocean shore and that a real “Easter Egg” was presented to church members in remembrance of the resurrection that is the sole reason for the day. Since those youthful days the Yuppie and Millennial generations have adopted political correctness that doesn’t allow for individual performance or attitude.

Real eggs might have Salmonella and grubby fingers might get the egg dirty while they take that awful shell off it and then they could make the innocent child sick! Anyway clean candy, stuffed into a plastic egg is always better for the kids and who cares about their weight and dental condition, that’s all in the future and we don’t think about that.

Call me a curmudgeon, but I believe that an honest appreciation of the historical and religious beginnings of our society, and an honest application of those beginnings to our social thought needs to happen.

Random Thoughts

8 Mar 15

While enjoying a soft spring like day by trolling through the Internet I ran across two “news” items that are joined by the narcissism of the actors, but are otherwise unrelated.

It seems that America’s most inept fugitive is not happy living in the workers’ paradise that is modern Russia and has applied for political asylum in Switzerland. Edward Snowden would “love to live in Switzerland”, but after being rejected by the 21 other countries he has requested asylum I suspect that his latest desire will be frustrated by the reluctance of yet another government to welcome a self-aggrandizing fugitive into its space. Mr. Snowden is reluctant to return to the United States because he claims he would not get a fair and open trial. My feeling is that he would get a most public and open trial (and one that is as fair as the legal system allows) but that he knows that if he does return to this country he would not get out of prison for many years.

The other news item concerns the continuing quest by the militant Islam State, the self-styled Caliphate to destroy anything they proclaim to be modern and contrary to their religious viewpoint. In addition to messily executing anyone they feel is even a minor threat to their squalid existence they have now taken on the task of destroying artifacts of civilizations that predate by millennia the “religion of peace” they claim to follow. After destroying Assyrian statues in a museum in Mosul they set their sights higher and are now destroying the large (by ancient standards) city of Hatra. A city that was founded in the 13^th century BCE, about 1900 years before Mohamad even thought of repurposing a nomadic moon god as the center point of a religion he created as part of his efforts to build a personal empire.

But ISIS doesn’t care that all of today’s people and cultures are built on the successes of past people and cultures. In their narcissism they seek only to destroy that which they cannot claim. I also find it interesting that they are using explosives and bulldozers to accomplish their goals. Their level of civilization is so far removed from societies of today (including other Muslim cultures) that in order to be true to their belief system they should be using stone hammers to batter the past into oblivion.

The common thread between Snowden and ISIS is that both are so self-absorbed that they fail to see that humanity views them as unworthy of respect and good only for the dustbin of history. Unfortunately it looks like tossing both into the past will be a long and painful process.     

Looking But not seeing

This story is several years old and is about a family in Union County IL who try to be self sufficient. The Benson family has a small farm with a woodlot that is growing a reasonable amount of sugar maples.

Early Spring with its increasing hours of daylight brings a sap rise in the trees that can be extracted and boiled down to maple syrup. With just a little effort the family could make a lot of sugar for the year. We have all seen pictures of sugar bushes with buckets hanging from the trees and read annual newspaper articles about syrup production. It's almost iconic.

The Benson's use a traditional syrup collection method and hang buckets on the trees to collect the sap, but one Spring morning in 2012 they found their house surrounded by a police SWAT team who was there because someone had told them the sap buckets were indicative of a meth lab.

Fortunately the police had both common sense and a sweet tooth and the Benson's gave each of the officers a sample of their product. But I wonder what level of paranoia it takes to call a bucket hanging on a tree a meth lab?

Some People .......

As stated previously, I'm a people watcher. I love to observe people doing strange things while believing they are acting in a normal manner. Sometimes my observations are made while surfing the Internet, and on special occasions I even run across of tofer of people being ... "people"

An oxygen thief by the name of Frank Van Den Bleeken is serving a natural life sentence in a Belgian prison for the rape and murder of a young women. In my mind a major part of any prison sentence is the taking away of the felons right to choose much of what happens in his life. Do the crime and you will do the time ... endless, repetitive and boring time for the rest of your life in this case. But this guy decided that endless, boring days until the natural end of his days were causing him emotional distress and under Belgian law an unresolvable emotional state is sufficient grounds for euthanasia. A state review board (in this case an actual death panel) agreed and decided that he could be transferred to a facility in Holland where he could then (and this is my thinking) evade and abrogate the sentence imposed by the court.

Now I grant you willfully dieing is a very strange way to get out of prison, but the people who agreed with his thinking are also demonstrating a equally strange sort of logic. He was sent to prison for a reason and should not be allowed to substitute his own solution for a problem he caused by his own sick behavior.

Fortunately the Ministry of  Justice overruled the decision and Mr Bleeken remains in prison.

Good Deeds and Their Just Reward

The faculty at Harvard University rallied to the support of the Obama administration during the planning and implementation of the Affordable Care Act (now THAT is a wonderful misnomer!) and in fact several of them were central to writing the act and helping conceal  the impact of the legislation on the general public and individuals. But all good deeds are ultimately rewarded and the faculty at the school is now up in arms because the Health Care Insurance they worked so hard to implement is now biting them on the economic ass.

Their present health plans are reported to be one of the most generous plans, far exceeding the scope of plans available to the nearly everyone else... it can well be called a Cadillac to plans. Under the law they worked so hard to create they are now seeing their benefits being eroded and their cost rising exponentially ... and they are "unhappy". 

In their resolution opposing the changes to the University health plan they claim it is causing "distress" and generating anxiety" in addition to imposing a financial burden on their pocketbooks. Welcome to the world the rest of us live in

It brings a smile to my heart to see these emotionally isolated  Ivory Tower Twits coming face to face with reality. Can you say Schadenfreude?

Fresh Times are Coming

New Year always brings a moment of reflection ... what was and what might the future hold. My Lady and I have a tradition of planning where we want to be this time next year. Great plans are afoot even as we speak and only time will tell if we achieve them.

Future plans are always built on past experience, and I've had lots of experience! Some of the memorable have been:

Family - I have a great family that I'm proud of, my wife is a joy, our kids are wonderful and dear to our hearts and the grand kids are magnificent. I'm blessed that they allow me to associate.

I'm self employed and suffer from a boss that is too good to me, but in the past I've had my fair share of bosses that ranged all over the leadership landscape. The best bosses always had a sense of humor.

We need to spend more time at the range this year and hopefully expand our armoury. Not that we anticipate bad things, we just like being able to express our feeling through loud noise.

To all who know, work and associate with me, and for all who have not had the opportunity to do so

Happy New Year