Wayward Landlubber

    I'm a socialist. It took me a long time to admit it to myself, it took even longer before i could be confident enough to admit it publicly. That is a good thing. It shows thought, it shows deliberation. We liberals are used to that. It's what makes us what we are.       I grew up in a time during which, and just after, congress was having communist witch-hunts. People then had no clear idea between socialism and communism. The same ignorance exists today, some 70-odd years later. Mostly in one particular party. A party well-practiced in witch-hunting. Today's witch hunters have made witches from LGBTQ PLUS people. They have made witches of teachers and school boards for teaching Critical Race Theory (which is not taught until first-year law school) though any history that places slavery in a bad light would be too critical. They have vilified any mention of DES (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) in the workplace, though they do not have a seat in the ex...

     I am competant in one language. I'm not bragging, but I can usually find a pretty good word and if I can't, I know where to go to find one. By most recollections that makes me a liberal. By today's standards there are few on the right that claim that honor. Mark Twain once said the "difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug". Conservatives today could be more correctly compared, not to the lightning bug, but the dung beetle. Lightning bug is an etymological, or is that entymological continent away.       As a youngster I used to hear from people, who had the wisdom lines to support their thesis, that Adolph Hitler was known as a dynamic speaker. Some of the film of his speeches would seem to confirm this. Since my linguistic competancy is not German, I cannot say if his syntax and sentence composition were competant or not. Judging by recent experience, there are some well...

     My youngest son Aidan has a wry, ironic sense of humor. I don't  know where he got it. His mother has a good sense of humor, that would be one place to look. When he was in 3rd grade his mother moved them to Dundee, from Northeast Portland. New school, rural location, conservative politics. Aidan was out of his element. Even worse, he started school in Dundee after the winter break. I had the boys on weekends and I tried to provide them with fun, enriching opportunities. When in the car, I would play DVDs of music I liked, this was the early days of streaming and i'm not an early adapter. I also searched the library files for old humorists, to cater to their developing sense of humor. Tom Lehrer's musical parodies (First you get down on your knees, fiddle with your Rosary, then you bow with deep respect and/ genuflect, genuflect, genuflect), Smother's Brothers, Allen Sherman (Hello muddah, hello fawda, here I am at Camp Grenada). Aiden was also into Weird Al Yan...

     I used to enjoy building bicycle wheels. I was a dues-paying member of the Bicycle Repair Collective, which allowed me shop space, tools and workbenches, lubricants and bicycle parts. It was a relaxing past-time. A bicycle wheel is held straight and true thanks to the spokes pulling together on the rim with the same tension. This is called dynamic tension. Anyone who has ever seen a spoke break will have an idea how it works. One acquaintance who was employed by the Bike Gallery used a tuning fork to check a completed wheel.      Congress could take a lesson. A bicycle wheel has 26, 32, or 36 spokes depending on whether the bike is a racing bike a road-bike or an off-rode bike, and depending on the weight of the rider. Congress has 100 senators and 435 members in the House. Because the Senators are elected by the whole state, they usually must be careful to not lose votes among the middle and left within their states. Even in red states there are voter...

     I've been thinking about Leonard Leo lately. I've thought about him since I first learned that he contributes to our carbon footprint, and maybe his absence would be a net gain. But lately my thoughts on him extend beyond the times of my hoped for daily bowel movements.       Leo, if you didn't know, heads the Federalist Society and is responsible for recommending every Republican jurist in the higher courts since Clarence Thomas. He is a youngish man, on the threshold of 60. (Oh! If only he could be sliced into 60 pieces and stapled to the threshold of 60 doorsteps.) He has this irritating smile. Sort of a cross between Dick Cheney and Willy Loman. There is probably a Macchiavelian story on how he got to control this much power with literally billions of dollars of dark money to achieve whatever conservative, no heartless, thing the one-tenth of 1% desires. Delving into this sinister route through politics would take too much of the time I have l...

     I like words. No, I love words. I like the written word and the spoken word. Words can enlighten, they can instruct, they can amuse, they can move you to anger and to sorrow. And they can deceive. It is not the words, but the user of words who we blame for misusing words. There are books of words which tell us, with words, how those words can be used.      When Guttenberg invented movable type and a printing press in the mid 1400s, it wasn't to print the Bible that was his first use, as is often proposed, it was to print indulgences for the church. The church which Martin Luther protested against. And the very use of indulgences was one of the things that convinced Martin Luther to protest. It then was used to print the stories that the public loved. A public that was learning to write and read.  The Bible had been forbidden to lay readers at the time. Perhaps the church hierarchy wished to prevent the laity from being woke. Whatever the reason, i...

     On May 24, 2022 at 11:30 AM, a gunman entered Robb Elementary School in Uvalde Texas and began shooting. By this time he had already shot his grandmother in the face and fired at and missed two people near the school. He had also texted a German online friend, telling him that he was going to kill his grandmother and more could be expected. He had spent nine months obtaining the necessary equipment to do the deed. He was not yet 18 years-old when he started his quest. He first asked his sister and one other person to purchase the weapons for him. In spite of being Texans in good standing they both declined his request.      In November and December of 2021 he was able to purchase online several accessories necessary to carry out his grim deed; a rifle sling, a carrier vest, a snap-on trigger system and 60 rounds of ammunition. It is not clear from the Texas House committee report if the seller of these implements asked if he was yet 18 years-old, or wh...