My Old Friend George

Found at last!! My old friend George Kistner. We had some crazy times in high school. He had a late 40s Chevy convertible that we used to bomb around in until it blew the engine. Thank god for auto shop. I loved to have dinner with his family, all big people, because the food was good and plentiful and everyone was joyful. I lost track of George in the early 60s when he was working as a chemist for a company that made coatings for labels, so the label wouldn't come off easily. I remember one particular challenge was to fine a coating that Mr. Clean wouldn't remove!! I haven't actually gotten in touch yet, just got the email about finding him an hour ago, but I am really looking forward to contact. See ya soon George, and I bet you didn't forget this teasing call: "George! George Kistner my A**!" We all love you boy.

Car photo: www.flickr.com/photos/80643375@N00/2669287270/

The Future, The Truth and Hope

One of those days when the future looms large for some reason. And it's not a pretty future either. Henry Pollack has just published a book called "A World Without Ice", and documents in very graphic terms what will, read that again, WILL be happening in the next decades centuries and mellenia when, read that WHEN most or all of the ice on the planet will be gone. No room left for platitudes or prayers. Disaster is around the corner and moving inexorably towards us. The world will be facing massive population displacement as the seas unstoppably encroach on the land. Famine, disease, war. Not a pretty picture. And we are the cause. Too many of us using too much of the earth to sustain us. With the population still growing the possibility of turning around the juggernaut diminishes with each birth. What are we to do? Well, that's the question isn't it? If the dynamics for the melting of the ice are already operating and can't be reversed, what indeed. I think the answer is "nothing". We can do nothing meaningful at this point to do more than slow things down a little. Doesn't mean we shouldn't try though. Just around the corner with the beast may be the cure as well. I wouldn't bet on it. No harm in hoping. I am certain that the world that will emerge from the chaos to come will be a well balanced and hospitable one. Probably eventually semi-stone age if there are any of us left. And we will be spared the future disaster of global population overgrowth because there won't be enough fossil fuel left to fuel another industrial revolution. So the next time we cycle we may actually be in a better place. In balance with nature, not destroying it. Now that is hopeful is it not?

Book cover from: www.worldwithoutice.com/

Desperation

He stood before the bathroom mirror. His father's straight razor in hand wondering how he got to this place. The only way out was a quick cut and oblivion. He started to move his hand and stopped short: how could the children ever survive the tableau in the bathroom when they came in the morning to pee? What terrible visions would haunt them and what guilt would they falsely bear for his act of cowardice? Slowly the razor dropped.
This story is based on a poem that a friend wrote about his brush with suicide. I thought at the time he shared it that while it was well written and darkly attractive, it held no real meaning for me.
Some years later I was perched on the edge of a very dark place. In hindsight I know it was a depressed and lonely place, a place with all options closed and no way out. Very early one morning I loaded my 44 magnum with a single cartridge and moved quietly to the family room. I sat a while trying to think of any unexplored options, and found none. The path was clear and best for all. With the hammer pulled back and finger on the very sensitive trigger I slowly placed the barrel deep in my mouth. I thought at least that the pain of life would be over with the sudden pain of death.
Then Dick's poem floated in my consciousness and I though "what will my children think when they hear the explosion? What will they find, and how will they survive?" I knew in that instant where my friend had been, and why he stopped. He saved all of us, and no one knew but me.
The next day seemed brighter, and options that weren't there before seemed to be possible. I had often though of that expression "it is always darkest before the dawn" and wondered how you could tell when it was darkest. I know now.

Photo sources: theinvisibleagent.wordpress.com/2009/05/page/3/
world.guns.ru/handguns/hg100-e.htm

My Three Sons

Some of you will remember the old TV series starring Fred MacMurry (who?). Good sitcom with a message at times. I never really thought that I would have my very own 3 sons. But there you go. Three sons that are as different as chalk and cheese. Matt, Hal and John. Matt is a successful academic coming off a career in business. Hal is a successful business man and a rising star in his company, and John is a successful provider of employment for lots of people. They are all good-natured and hard working. They love life and get the most out of it. Between the three there are two wonderful spouses (spice? of life).

One of the many stories in the family relates to F-11. Many years ago I joked that I had an electronic copy of my will, and if any of them pissed me off all I had to do was hit F-11 and they were out of the will. It became a vague threat of "be careful, F-11 is right around the corner". Or just a murmured "F-11". The truth is that I have never had the slightest reason to invoke the F-11 option, and I doubt if I ever will. These guys are all that anyone could imagine or want.

I keep the option open, though, for old times sake. And you never know. Someday someone may forget an important date, or forget to call ...............

Thoughts on god, or God, or gods, or Gods.

First, before you get angry and dump this essay let me say that I think religion is very important to many people. But not to all people. I recently read a few chapters in a world religions text and noticed that the word god was always written with a capital "G" when used with no specific context or when talking about one of the Abramhamic religions, but when any other religion was discussed the word always had a lower case "g". The authors claim unbiased views of world religions but this very usage implies ascendancy of one god over others.

I have just finished reviewing the religious practices of about 15 or so various cultures and found with one exception that they are all male centered. Apparently god only talks to men. (The exception was Christian Science, founded by a woman to whom god talked,but still based on one of the male centered religions.)I find this very interesting since at least half the humans in the world are female. Now, before you go off on Isis or some other god of the ancient world realize that I am not claiming that there were no female gods. The pantheon of gods collectively has female gods. And I don't know all of them or their status, but I am willing to bet that few or none are the "top" god in what ever culture they are ruling at the moment.

This leads me to think that gods were thought up by men as a device to explain the unexplainable. Gods thought up by men. Gods thought up by men. Worth repeating when you think of the obverse. Gods thinking up men. If that is the case where did women come from? Well, it is obvious to me that if god or gods thought up men they also thought up women. Then would one would think that they have equal standing. But no, the gods favor men. Why? Because men are better? Wiser? Stronger? (Got me there, although I had a rib broken by a playful woman that could whip me in a fight any day) For the most part men and women have the same innate capacities and given equal opportunities can achieve equal results. I am not denying that there are probably some tasks that are more naturally suited to one over the other, but these are probably mostly trivial.

No, for me the evidence of most of the religions being male centered is convincing. I believe that men created gods for their own uses and the "monster" got out of the bag. With the evolution of priests (or priest-like stations like shaman for example) most men lost control of their destinies as well as women. I can find no, read that zero, convincing argument or evidence that there is anything ever remotely like a god in the universe, much less one that is male and cares about us.

That said let me return to the beginning: religion is a very good thing for many people. It is a constant source of strength and support. I don't suppose all the evil done in the name of religion is worth mentioning. (Doesn't the image above make you feel better than an angry hairy thunderer flinging lightning bolts. This is the Hindu god, Ram.)

Photo source:www.indianchild.com/hindu_god.htm

My Other Mother

My mother was born in 1903 in Milwaukee. Her father was a German cooper and her mother was a Gypsy. A real Gypsy. Mother had had 3 sisters, all older, and was brought up Catholic. (She left the church when she was 15 because a priest wouldn't let her light a candle for her mother unless she paid for it. She challenged him about only rich people getting to heaven, turned and never went back to a Catholic church again.) They were poor, and as each sister married and moved out the house got less crowded. Her mother dropped on the street in 1910 and died on the spot. Nobody knows why she died. Nobody now knows where she is buried. A little girl was too much for her father, so she was sent to live with her oldest sister, married but childless. Her uncle abused her until she went out on her own at 14. The year was 1917. She got a job with the telephone company and moved in with another operator who became her life-long friend. She was an exotic beauty and soon was modeling for various photographers and artists. She was a flapper, a dancer and a general hell-raiser. She met her husband, my father, in 1921 and was married in 1925. The Roaring 20's. He was a hell-raiser too, so they raised hell together throughout the 20's and 30's and endured the Great Depression with a large group of close friends and a lot of bathtub gin. My father was a graduate electrical engineer and had steady work all through those tough years. She raised hell and had a ball. They tried for children, but she could not keep a pregnancy, so in 1937 they adopted my brother. That did it. Thank you Tom for me.
World War II came along and so did I. My father worked in D.C. during the war years (they had moved from Milwaukee to New York in the 30's) She stayed home coping with 2 boys, rationing and a old friend that desperately wanted her (and never getting her. He was an undertaker and she made my father promise that when she died "he" would never touch her body. I don't know if my father ever knew of the attempted betrayal by his friend).

After the war she spent the next 5 summers living in a surplus army tent at the end of a potato field hauling water a mile from the farm house at the end of the road, using a latrine and getting sprayed several time a summer with pesticide from a bi-plane crop duster. She got a tick bite and contracted what was diagnosed as tick fever, and was never the same again.
Enter my Other Mother.
She went down hill pretty fast after that. We moved into a new neighborhood in 1950 and she had an "nervous breakdown" shortly after that. She took loads of Valium when they came out, and got shock treatments several times in the early 50's. She suffered from a continuous string of physical problems, some "in her mind" to quote the family Doc., and some of an infirm body. She smoked like a chimney, lost weight, got emphysema and died in 1971 of heart failure.
I often wonder what life would have been like if my original mother had survived into my adolescence and adult life. She was such a risk-taker and hell-raiser there is no telling how the family would have been different. But she didn't. I miss them both and love them both for different reasons, and wish them well where ever they may be.

shoot the bear

In my distant past I was a "yute", as they say in Brooklyn. In the early 50's there was an arcade game that involved shooting at moving animals with lenses in their bodies with a rifle with a light in the barrel. So when you "shot" the light flashed and if you aimed accurately at the lens in the animal you "got" it and it did something. I remember the bear specifically but don't really know why. Anyway, when you hit the bear, it reared up, roared and turned around and went in the other direction. You scored a point. If you keep hitting the bear it kept roaring and turning and you kept scoring.

For years I have been using the analogy "like a bear in a shooting gallery" when someone turns abruptly and moves on. I have had to explain this to numerous people who probably then and now think I an nuts. Well, nuts to you of little faith. Watch the video and you will see what I mean. Where the hell the stuff on YouTube comes from I do not know (of course I know really, just look at the link, what I mean is I am amazed that anyone has all this stuff).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCko28VS4FU

Now, that may not be the most exciting video you have ever watched, but by golly I grew up with games like that and they are still better than all that video crap. So there.

Mystery Woman and Fear Filled Eyes

Today I saw her again. See was dressed the same as all the other times I have seen her. Sweat pants, running shoes, some kind of pull-over top. Hair long, dirty blond and stringy. She walks along the hard shoulder of the divided highway with a slight stagger like she is a bit drunk. She veers onto the roadway an inch or two and then back on the shoulder. She turns and looks over her own shoulder, her face full of fear. Today she had a backpack, stuffed with who-knows-what. Sometimes she walks west but today she was walking east. This means that sometime during her walks she crosses 4 busy lanes of traffic. Sometimes she changes direction and starts to walk the other way, only to change again and go back the way she was going, eyes fearful both ways.
The first time I saw her I thought she was really high and in danger of getting run over. I looked for a highway patrol car (always some in this stretch) and there was one on the side of the road in the direction she was walking (lurching more like it). The trooper would have seen her coming and taken some action (I thought). The things I noticed most were the staggering walk and the fearful looking over her shoulder.
I know she has a story and big problems. I wonder if she is on the street because of the drastic cut in treatment for poor people when many facilities were closed or underfunded? I wonder if the current health care debate takes mystery women with fear in their eyes into consideration at all? Somehow I doubt it. I guess that she will end up on a slab somewhere, crushed and cold. The only meds in her system alcohol and heroine, or crack or crystal meth. Where a simple prescription of something, a bed and some counseling would probably save her, she lingers in fear. What a crappy system.

Photo credit: http://wittgensteinforum.wordpress.com/2007/10/

"Things I Learned on the way to Other Things"

Years ago there was a columnist that occasionally included a column called "Things I Learned on the Way to Other Things" or something close to that. I tried to find the reference to it and failed. I remember the stacks at U of M, U of F and FSU. Being in undergraduate and graduate school for a total of 13 years gave me lots of miles in stacks. Add a few public libraries and you probably get something like 15 or 16 years of perusing. Usually I had a quest of some kind, looking for something specific or some genre to consider. But in sweeping along the shelves often something caught my eye. I would pause, take out the book and glance through it. More often than not I'd sit somewhere and have a little read. I found a wonderful quartet called "The Book of the New Sun" by Gene Wolfe this way. The story of an apprentice torturer in a time when that was a legitimate occupation. And others. My point? Well, its this: when you are on the way to something, keep your eyes, ears and mind open to other things as well. You never know what you will find on the way. Oh, and yes, it takes more time too. Going to the library was always a risky business for me. Never knew when I'd get out.
Book cover from: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60211.The_Shadow_of_the_Torturer

IPA, Yummm.

IPA. Now that is a word (is it a word? I=India, P=Pale, A=Ale. Put together it's a word to me, or maybe an acronym?) that causes a deep sigh and taste remembered. A fine hoppy brew, wonderfully colored (what color? not really sure since I am colorblind. Maybe golden or reddish?) with a good up-front smell and an long lingering taste on the back of the tongue. And if an IPA is a really good one, the burp refreshed the taste. Wonderful. To quote Goeffrey Holder "Marvelous!" Other drinks? Well, there are a few such as red and white wine and water, but for staying power and sheer je ne sais quoi nothing beats it.

Photo from: http://www.antipope.org/fisherrow/index.html