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OUT OF THE BLUE

It happened nearly 50 years ago; only a couple months into my 27th year. I was in the process of failing to find a a crew position on a sailboat heading west to Hawaii. I wanted to feel three, possibly 4 weeks of sailing on a beam reach, a friendly currant adding to the knautical miles traveled. What could possibly go wrong? My first postcard invite fell thru, my next postcard will also fail but I don't know it yet. This was before email. Crew positions were applied for through the USPS after answering an ad from a yachting magazines. I was sitting on a bench in Marina Del Rey, the bronze statue of the Helmsman under a line of date figs off in the distance to my right. Before me in the bay, young people were renting  small sailboats named Sydney Sabots. Flat prow and stern, about 9' long, jibless spritsail and center-board. I was enjoying a burrito from a food cart when an old man approached the bench I was sitting on and sat down at the other end. I nodded to him and we return...
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FIREWORKS

4th of July means fireworks. Every adult, myself included, becomes a kid around fireworks. We look forward in anticipation for that day when fireworks displays will be going off once the sun goes down. In my early years 4th of July meant a family reunion at my grandma Ramsay's house in Molalla where the cousins would get together and play games and attendthe carnival, while the uncles parked cars in an unused piece of land behind grandma's house for fair-goers, rodeo-goers, or for the big parade. Meanwhile the aunts took over the kitchen and came up with scrumptious pies. Oh there were meals as well,  but those pies. And those three nights of the 4th of July weekend were rewarded by a spectacular pyrotechnic display. Later in about 4th or 5th grade I learned (or rather survived, a fundamental lesson in what makes a solid propellant, and what makes a huge bang, thanks to a used Estes rocket engine tube and my dad's 12 Guage shotgun shells. Over time a childhood friend, Lonni...
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MORE REFLECTIONS

Recently I wrote an essay reflecting on passive aggressive behavior. Old age being a time for reflection, I'm going to reflect on more things. Those of you who know me have probably asked yourself, "when is he going to bring up the Reflecting pool at the Lincoln Memorial?" You know me too well; I'm a walking cliche'. Unless you have been in a coma you probably know that the Goomba who Trump hired on a no-bid contract pooched the project,  not just fixing the leak in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool but making it worse. Floating islands of algae covered the reflecting pond between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial, once the reflecting pond recieved its water. Two former presidents joining with the other 44 to do a collective metaphorical forehead slap on the 47th president. To be fair, this was an ongoing issue but has been controlled better by other presidents even during the Great Depression. To compound the problem, National Parks workers were...
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REFLECTING ON PASSIVE-AGGRESSION

People accuse me of being passive-aggressive. Yeah, so what? Is it better to be aggressive-aggressive? Or maybe you think I should  just be simply passive. Like republikkkons are, as they watch an 80-year-old supremely passive-aggressive guy turn their party into a cliche' of comically stupid/corrupt government. The guy who Trump hired to paint the Lincoln Memorial could have stepped out of  Central Casting, or the Soprano's. A short, fat, Italian-American with a fat cigar a bulky manilla envelope in their breast-pocket, and you don't want to know what's in the waistband under his suit coat. Vincent Pastore or Steve Schirippa.  Yeah, I know I'm a smart-ass; I'm a cynic, thats what we do. I'm not here to analyze myself, others can do that whether I approve or not. But I have developed my cynicism over seven decades of living life and noticing people who I admire for their activities on behalf of those who aren't insiders in some passive-agressive financia...
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i DONT KNOW HOW TO WRITE.

I don't know exactly how to write; it's a mystery to me. It's not that I don't write, I do. It's just that the process remains a mystery to me. Some people outline what they write. Some create a block diagram. There are other tactics I've been told about, but I'm  too lazy. So I write in a style and manner in which I have become comfortable. Mostly I write satire.  Political satire, because I'm lazy. Nothing says lazy like picking up a turd dropped by a Republican candidate and dropping it in the alphabet soup of presidential shenanigans. And the turds abound in this group of stooges. There are many ways to express yourself in writing. Fiction, history, humor, satire. I'm told there are physicists who write, though it's a mystery to me what they write. I write because I have something to say. Something others don't care to hear. So I put my thoughts in writing so I can, from some future promontory tell people who didn't want to hear that,...
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I DON'T THINK WE'RE READY...

I DONT THINK WE'RE READY.. Mass media has made people, who's grasp on reality is tenuous at best, too confident in their ability. I recently saw where a post asked about Alexandria Ocasio Cortez' support if she ran for president. Naturally, one of our maga moron's contributed his two cents worth, the very penny no longer distributed by the treasury. "I don't think we're ready for AOC," he opined. And there you have it. A not very bright human who's only qualification to be a Podcaster is his affinity with maga, gives us his assessment of Alexadria Ocasio Cortez' fitness for running for public office. "I don't think we're ready for that". Perhaps he was thinking that he was thinking. Perhaps he doesn't know what qualifies as thinking.  Funny thing, in a popular democracy, where democracy is allowed to be practiced by those not at the power centers, people who pay close attention to the discussions, and the legislative quali...
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MY SECRET PLEASURE.

I have a secret internet activity. Something that has grown in dimension and intensity, since i started my internet activity. I used to feel awkward about it, embarrassed even. No, not that one! I'm a troll. I click on comments initiated from right-wing nut jobs. What's a rightwing nut job, you ask? Good question. It's like how Justice Potter Stewart described pornography, "I know it when I see it". If you come onto the screen with the insulting over-confidence of a watcher of websites populated by young, white, and dim-witted males in muscle shirts, you are almost surely a RWNJ. If your opinion is regarded by you on the same intellectual level as science, or medicine, or economics, you are an RWNJ. You are the kind of guy that will peer over the shoulder of a portrait artist on the street, and say, "I think you should make my old lady's lips fatter".  Where is that line between spirited discussion and verbal war? It is at the level of wit. It is the...
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