FORE!

July 18, 2022

As I was watching the final round of THE OPEN from the Old Course at St. Andrews, I had an odd thought. In most professional sports, the good guys stand out because so many players are assholes.  But in golf, it’s the assholes who stand out because so many players are genuinely nice people.

And curiously, the Saudi’s venal attempt to sports-wash their horrific and criminal record by throwing gobs of money at as many top flite PGA golfers as they can, enticing them to jump ship and come play for their LIV Tour, has managed to weed out virtually ALL the bad apples.

Here’s a list of the big names who took the oily blood money and ran.

• Patrick Reed ( arguably the most hated golfer on tour)
• Ian Poulter (#2)
• Brooks Koepka (bully and liar)
• Bryson Dechambeau (egotistical prick)
• Dustin Johnson (braindead redneck)
• Sergio Garcia (perpetual whiner)
• Phil Mickelson (disgraced liar, gambler, and champion BS artist)
• Matt Wolf (bragging punk who never won anything)
• Pat Perez (nasty fool)

I guess water always seeks its own level.

HAPPY FLAG DAY!

June 14, 2022

Whatever happened to American flag etiquette?  When I was growing up you would catch flak — usually from a veteran — if you didn’t follow the strict rules when flying the flag.  

They included:

• The flag should never be used for advertising purposes in any manner whatsoever.  Do not place or cause to be placed any word, figure, mark, picture, design, drawing, or any advertisement.  It should not be embroidered on such articles as cushions or handkerchiefs and the like, printed or otherwise impressed on paper napkins or boxes or anything that is designed for temporary use and discard. 
• No part of the flag should ever be used as a costume or athletic uniform.
• The flag should never be used as wearing apparel, bedding, or drapery. 
• It is the universal custom to display the flag only from sunrise to sunset on buildings and on stationary flagstaffs in the open. 
• The flag should not be displayed on days when the weather is inclement, except when an all-weather flag is displayed.
• The flag should not be draped over the hood, top, sides, or back of a vehicle or of a railroad train or a boat. 
• The flag should never be displayed with the union down, except as a signal of dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property.
• The flag should never touch anything beneath it, such as the ground, the floor, water, or merchandise.
• The flag should never be fastened, displayed, used, or stored in such a manner as to permit it to be easily torn, soiled, or damaged in any way.
• The flag should never have placed upon it, nor on any part of it, nor attached to it any mark, insignia, letter, word, figure, design, picture, or drawing of any nature.
• The flag, when it is in such condition that it is no longer a fitting emblem for display, should be destroyed in a dignified way, preferably by burning
• The flag represents a living country and is itself considered a living thing. 

I find it incredibly ironic that you can see one or more of these flag rules broken virtually every day of the year, by veterans, gun nuts screaming about their right to bear arms, patriotic vigilantes extolling the virtue and primacy of the U.S. Constitution, law & order types, boating bozos, and conservative wing nuts.  Those who wave the American flag self righteously from all of their moving parts, invariably treat that flag with ignorant disregard and disrespect. Oh say can you see?

• Flag rules copied from 4 U.S. Code § 8 – Respect for flag

LOCATION! LOCATION! LOCATION!

April 28, 2022

Where you choose to live is pretty much a sort of intelligence test.  Oh sure, hometowns, families, and economic circumstances can often suck you in and spit you out. But in the end, it really is just one of those super important decisions we get to make over the course of our lives. “Should I stay or should I go?”

I rode my bicycle twice across the United States and drove tractor trailers far and wide as a long-haul mover, plus I have always liked to travel. So, I’ve been to every state and explored a lot of ground, meeted and greeted, and got the lay of this land that’s yours and mine. And here’s what I think. Living in climate and cultural wastelands like the Dakotas or almost anywhere in the Midwest and Texas, is pretty dumb. They are, for the most part, rural ghettos.

Which leaves the mystery of funny, sunny Florida.  If it’s smart to move to the Sunshine State in order to avoid the cold of winter, then why do so many stupid people live there?

THE GOLDILOCKS PRINCIPLE

April 25, 2022

I grew up believing that my hometown of Annapolis, Maryland was the “Land of Pleasant Living”.  And a lot of people I know around ye olde Crabtowne still think the Chesapeake is the best place on earth to live. 

I have traveled far and wide, so I now know better.   Places like San Diego or Barcelona have ideal climates where it’s sunny and seventy-five year round.  While here in Maryland it’s a land of extremes.  Between July and August it’s too hot & humid to do anything other than Schvitz.  In addition, the Bay is teeming with jelly fish in the summer and the water is funky warm, so swimming is pretty much out.  And in winter, which stretches brutally from late November to early May, it’s cold and dreary, like Transylvania. So, do the math. Annapolis is almost uninhabitable for about seven months of the year. 

Spring and Fall are heavenly in Annapolis — though, in truth, the same could be said about most of America by varying degrees. 

And that’s why I have spent the last two winters in Florida.  As a retiree it’s a no brainer. 

But I am still trying to work out how to escape the crab pot Annapolis summers.  Lately, I’ve been searching for the Goldilocks Solution, a fun place to land where it’s not to hot in the summer, to complement my South Florida winter getaway where it’s not too cold in the winter. Oh, and I need water where I can swim too. 

Inna and I explored the Lake Erie area last summer and Cleveland and Buffalo were fun and quite refreshing. 

And then, there’s Europe.  Germany in August sounds intriguing.

HAVE A NICE DAY!

January 4, 2022

My home town of Annapolis, Maryland got hit with almost a foot of heavy/icy snow on the second day of the new year.  No one so it coming. And it had been years since we got such a wintry load.

In truth, I would have waited until spring before venturing outside in that freezing crap.  But all of our bushes and trees were bent forlornly downward as if trying return to the ground from whence they came. It was a disaster in the making and several large pine branches had already snapped from the weight.

I detest snow and all things cold, and was planning on heading south to warm and sunny Florida on January 10th, and not returning until May.  So, it’s all good, and I can start hating 2022 right out of the gate.

In order to go outside and beat the bushes, I donned more clothes than I have worn in over a year, other than when I sported my kilt ensemble to a wedding this past summer in Asbury Park, New Jersey.  And I hate long pants and heavy winter clothing as much as I despise the whole winter wonderland fiasco.

It doesn’t make me a bad person, or even crazy.  I’m just a hula boy.

But I did notice that a big snow storm will weed out all the guys with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD).

They are the ones who start relentlessly shoveling at first light.  After clearing their driveways, cars, and walks of snow, they immediately have to drive somewhere.  Anywhere.  And they will shovel the street if they have to in order to escape.

They are like scouts out on recon.  When they return, they walk around the neighborhood heroically, giving everyone a progress report on what streets have been plowed and which ones haven’t.

The jail-breakers are not bad people, and they probably aren’t all that crazy.  They just can’t sit still and they hate being hemmed in.

After saving our bushes and trees, I put on my shorts and settled in by the fire, reading a nice book.  I was done for the year. 

And I can promise you this: When the New Year rolls around this coming December, I will be long gone and sitting on the beach at Siesta Key before the ADD Boyz even think about breaking out their snow shovels.

HAVE A NICE DAY!

December 31, 2021

It’s the end of another year, 2021, a terribly disturbing year indeed. And in spite of all the uncertainty and death, tonight, many folks will still go through the motions and write down their New Year’s resolutions that in most cases won’t amount to a piss hole in a snowbank. Our memories and future dreams might just be mere notions, all subject to twisted time and chaos theory, but we are still tough little critters.

The thing I find most interesting about all this make believe is that we usually have no sense whatsoever that we will never engage in a cherished activity ever again. Who realizes they are having sex for the last time? Or saying goodbye to an old friend or loved one forever? Watching fireworks? Driving a car? Eating pizza? Swimming in the ocean? Wishing on a shooting star?

We all knew this was a temporary gig. Here today and gone tomorrow. But the fact that everything we do, every day of our lives, could be the Last Waltz, should make us all stop our complaining and promising, and just start telling everybody we hold dear just how much we love them each time we leave or hang up the phone.

I guess it really is like old Robby Burns said in the song “Auld Lang Syne”, which, for the record, means “old long since”:

Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And days of auld lang syne?

For auld lang syne, my dear
For auld lang syne
We’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet
For days of auld lang syne

HAVE A NICE DAY!

December 24, 2021

Humans have a limited capacity to be nice.  Because it’s hard work. And for most folks, it doesn’t come easy and takes too much effort.

I knew from an early age I didn’t have the “how’s it going?” gene. And while I have worked a lot of different jobs in my life, from long-haul truck driver to construction, I have never worked in customer service other than a brief stint at a golf course on the Eastern Shore upon my return from Grand Canyon. I hated it. I hated having to pretend that I cared about what the golfers wanted or felt. It as like torture, smiling all the time and using that baby talk voice — “Did you PLAY well?”

I would come home at the end of the day, after sucking up to people for way too long, and I had no more capacity to be agreeable. My girlfriend was like, “Why can’t you talk to me? Why can’t we share our day? Aren’t you interested in how I feel? What’s wrong with you?”

The truth was, I had nothing left for anyone else but me. I just wanted to be left alone. And it used to drive me crazy because I wanted to care, but I was just too tired.

I have an old friend named Jamie who is a golf pro. He is a champion ass kisser — the best I have ever seen. He can make you feel like you are incredibly special, and he does it in a way that isn’t smarmy or contrived.

I have another old acquaintance who owned a piledriving company and spent his life working his ass off. Some of the toughest work on the planet. And John has always believed that his money is just a little bit greener because he worked so hard to get it.

One night Jamie was late for a holiday party and when he arrived he apologized and said, “It was crazy busy at the golf course today because it was so warm, and I had to stay and close the place.”

To which John sarcastically replied, “Oh yeah, working at the golf course is pretty tough.”

Jamie spun around and growled, “Let me you tell you something. Kissing ass is every bit as hard as lifting rock!”

Truer words were never spoken.

And this can be very apropos when you are hanging with the relatives and friends this holiday season.

PUMP UP THE VOLUME

December 21, 2021

I spent a lot of November battling the leaves. They were relentless. All fall down. And my neighbors, or their surrogates, joined the fight, creating a cacophony of incessant motors throbbing away in different keys. The Song of Fall.

I bought a Toro blower/vac last year and it’s awesome. How the hell did I ever get by without one? And as I was emptying a bag of shredded leaves into our recycling bin, I flashed back to the good old days when we raked leaves for hours on end, building giant piles scattered across the lawn, waiting to be bagged or burned. The whole process was tiring and tedious, but incredibly rewarding at the end when everyone’s lawns were dotted with leaf piles, like brown and orange volcanos. I can still remember the smell of burning leaves like it was yesterday.

In the not-so-distant future, most Americans, especially suburban and urban dwellers, won’t know how to use a broom or a rake. Leaf blowers and vacuums now do the work of brooms and rakes.

And Latinos working in the landscaping business do most of the yard work.  So white folks don’t have a clue about tools that require actual physical labor, even the most basic, like sweeping and raking.

As our lives get easier they become far less memorable. And indispensable mainstays of our bygone days like analog clocks, paper maps, rotary phones, and garden rakes are relegated to the “What’s That, Daddy?” list of forgotten relics.

SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO?

December 17, 2021

COVID is kicking our big fat American asses. Delta is filling the hospitals above and beyond their capacity. And Omicron is knocking at the door. We are now into the fifth or sixth wave — I’ve lost track — and we still have proud murderers who refuse to get vaccinated and do so with impunity.

According to experts, the cause for this sudden rise in hospitalizations and death is the colder weather as people start spending more time inside. But then how does one explain that Florida is leading the nation on the COVID Hit Parade?

The real culprit seems pretty obvious. It’s the super spreader events taking place EVERYWHERE. Wherever there’s a college, there has been a football game every Saturday; thousands of people jammed in tightly, screaming and spitting, hugging and kissing, tailgating and celebrating for hours on end. And then on Sundays in almost every large city we have the same infectious spirit spreading with pro football. And they’re outside at least. But now we’re taking the shows inside. We have college and pro sports taking place inside packed arenas. We have sold out concerts and plays. The bars are filled with holiday revelers. The churches are crammed with the faithful. And it’s just like the good old days. But let’s not kid ourselves: in virus times, crowded events equal COVID spikes.

I got all three vaccines, never stopped wearing a mask inside, and maintained social distancing. I only go out to lunch with an old friend once a week. I am a poster child for being careful. And my lunch buddy, who also follows the CDC guidelines, just emailed me last night to say his wife had lunch with a dear friend who tested positive for COVID.

What’s a motha to do? Well, go get tested.

Turns out that is no longer as easy as it used to be. CVS is all booked up. The Anne Arundel County Health Department drive-in testing sites are few and far between — I mean, I don’t want to go to my doctor or anyplace inside and take the chance of infecting others. Right?

So, I have to wait two days until I can get an appointment thirty minutes from Annapolis in some parking lot god knows where. And then I will have to wait two or three days until I get the results. And if I don’t quarantine until I find out if I’m infected, just imagine how many people I might harm or even kill. With this lengthy scenario, contract tracing becomes an exercise in chasing our collective tails.

This is scary stuff and we don’t seem to have a handle on prevention, starting with the basics. And if Maryland, where the government and medical facilities are a cut above, can’t get its act together, try and imagine how screwed up it is in West Virginia or Alabama.

I’m kicking myself in the ass because I knew I should have taken that free ticket to Sunday’s Ravens/Packers game.

MY HEAD’S GOING TO EXPLODE!

December 15, 2021

Each day our brains have a limited capacity to absorb info.

Like any vessel or container — a glass, a swimming pool, a gas tank, or a suitcase — there is a certain amount of space, and after that, it’s all full. This isn’t a bunch of bs, the latest MRI and Artificial Intelligence analysis indicate we aren’t infinite thinkers.

We usually associate this burnout notion with work. After diligently pressing your nose against the office grindstone, you come home from your place of bidness and are pretty much braindead. Your spouse talks to you and it might as well be in another language. You are listening, but you aren’t really making much sense of what’s being said. And in order to completely turn off the static, you self-medicate — start drinking heavily or maybe smoke some tasty weed. You just want to turn the ol’ noggin completely off.

But it’s not just work that can fill your head to the brim. I was leading an epic tour last June around Colorado and Utah for about a month. Every day, I had to plan where we were going, how we’d get there, what the weather was going to be like, the trails we’d hike, where we would eat and camp, where to buy supplies, and a million other little details. I was with my good friend Jimmy Martin. I wasn’t getting paid. It wasn’t a job. But by sunset each day, my brain was usually fried and I just wanted to sit in my lawn chair, stair off into red red horizon, and get buzzed.

I’m not talking about being tired or stressed out. I’m talking about comprehension. I was incapable of balancing multiple thoughts. Multi-tasking was completely out of the question. My brain was all full and running on autopilot.

We humans are essentially mobile electrical machines. We are really just unpredictably complex processors. And, unfortunately, we don’t come with fuel gauges, so it’s hard to know how many gigs of storage we can hold at any given time. Maybe a future Fidbit will come with such a feature, measuring brain waves burned. And then we can ration our daily thoughts and have time at the end of each day to remember the dream .

LOOK AT ME!

December 8, 2021

Most people like to strut their stuff every once in a while.  It’s nice to be noticed.  But people with limited means, especially in rural parts of America, don’t get the opportunity to show off very often.

The two most popular ways for poor folk in the United States to stand out are:

1. Put up a shitload of Christmas lights, and even a double wide trailer will look special.  Rich folks will drive by your house to see the show.  And that’s why the best holiday light shows are usually in the poorest parts of almost any town.
2. Buy (or lease) a very fancy car, like a Corvette, and people will take notice.  And make sure you clean and wax it all the time, so it shines.

Christmas lights and cool cars are the great equalizers in our modern society.                 

SURVIVAL TEST

December 1, 2021

Well, it’s looking like the totalitarian states and dictatorships will be the only nations to ultimately survive future viral pandemics.

We are giving the latest COVID variant the scary sci-fi name Omicron, so it’s starting to get real and surreal all at the same time. And it seems likely that COVID or the flu will morph into something really nasty with a high mortality rate at some point in the not-so-distant future. That’s what viruses do. Adapt and survive. Kill or be killed.

If COVID-19 has taught us anything, it’s that a firm hand by government can definitely help mightily to keep death at bay. The strong survive.

China, the source of the COVID-19 virus — either naturally or unnaturally — is the most heavily populated nation on earth and home to almost 1.5 billion people. Before they even really knew what they were dealing with, they put entire regions of their vast country into full lockdown and shuttered the world’s second largest economy until contract tracing could work its magic and they got the virus under control. And that was without a vaccine!

When the Chinese government said, “Stay in your house!” everyone complied. When they said, “Wear a mask!” everyone complied. And when they said, “Take the Vaccine!” everyone complied. Because that’s they way the Chinese do business.

In China there are no personal freedoms — except those reluctantly granted by the government. People do what they’re told from the cradle to the grave. And when a deadly virus comes knocking, they immediately get with the program because their authoritarian system has proven that it can keep your ass alive.

In America, we have shown beyond a reasonable shadow of doubt that we are too stupid and selfish to survive, and it’s just a matter of time until some truly lethal virus will surface and we’ll all be doomed by our unquenchable thirst for personal freedom. And we will probably go down madly screaming, “Bring it on!” We are like a heavily armed Rumania (the nation in Europe with the lowest vaccination rate), sitting in the back of the classroom, shooting spitballs and making fun of the kids who are paying attention to the teacher.

We have been watching this idiotic scenario play itself out for years with our insane addiction to guns. We have proudly watched our children be brutally murdered in their classrooms and triumphantly cried “FREEDOM!” And for the past year we have refused to enforce the obvious protective public health measures throughout rural parts of the U.S. when they refuse to get the vaccine or wear masks and continue to die at criminally high rates. We love our freedom to die — and kill others — above all else. Apparently it’s the heartbeat of America.

Which brings us to this disturbing question: Why does Russia, one of the tightest run ships on the planetary sea, and a nation where almost everyone does what they’re told, have one of the highest rates of COVID deaths in spite of the fact that the Sputnik vaccine was the first on the market in August 2020? Well, the obvious answer is they are winnowing out the weak which are a strain on their thinly-stretched public services. So, while conspiracy fools in America worry about non-existent “death panels”, the Russians just let freedom ring and their seniors and sick folks die.

Twisted fate now has large segments of the Russian and American populations unvaccinated for completely different reasons. And who then is the wiser?

OPEN WIDE!

November 24, 2021

I recently was getting some dental work done and it suddenly hit me that dentists are essentially just master carpenters working in enamel, rather than wood or concrete.

They have fancy x-ray machines and some other high tech gizmos, but for the most part it’s the basic building construction arsenal in miniature.

The principles are also pretty much the same: dig out the rot until you hit good material, fill in the hole, and then sand it all down so it looks real pretty.

And whether it’s a new crown or a bathroom renovation, it always hurts like hell when you see the bill.

SAY WHAT?

November 21, 2021

For most of human history, there were no countries.  Nations simply didn’t exist in any sense of the word and every homeland on earth has had very fluid boundaries and multiple owners throughout most of human existence.  The nations of the world as we know them today are fairly new contrivances.

From 1,000 BC – 200 AD there were pockets of civilization along waterways — both sides of the Mediterranean, the Caspian and Red Seas, the Indian Ocean, and the River Nile.  The Egyptians pretty much ruled the roost because there was no one to really challenge their unrivaled power, other than the much weaker Assyrians (Syria), Etruscans (Italy), and the Greeks. Most of the planet, including the Americas, was essentially tribal.

By 250 AD there were a hodgepodge of long forgotten nation states like Thrace (Bulgaria), Bithynia (Turkey), Gaul (France), Illyricum (Serbia), and Numidia (Libya). But there were still no counties to speak of.

The next thousand years harkened in the Age of Empires.  The endless hit parade of Persians, Parthians, Romans, Ottomans, Austro-Hungarians, they all just kept rolling along, killing and plundering the world with wanton abandon. Nations took a back seat to kingdoms.

But it was language more than anything else that ultimately led to the makeup of the planet that we take for granted these days.  France is where they spoke French, German begat Germany, Italian became Italy, and so on down the line.  Language created national identities.

But national boundaries changed like the seasons and many of today’s countries didn’t even exist as late as 1915 — I’m talking big ones, like Poland, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Turkey, and all the Stans.

Once we had most of the nations in place, defined by their respective tongue-twisting languages, they all started, both large and small, to feel like they were quite important and took great exception to anything that might diminish their national pride. They began competing economically with and against one another and started forming military alliances, all culminating with two horrific world wars and endless regional conflicts right up to today.

The Bible talks about the Tower of Babel and God’s clever plan to create different languages to confound us all. And it worked like an evil charm.

There are about 6,500 languages on earth. There are 195 countries. Nations, like Sudan, Slovakia, Yemen, East Timor, and Kosovo, are perpetually dividing and conquering. Civil wars are popping up like wildfires all over the globe. There’s plenty of room for mischief.

Let’s just hope Bill Gates puts a universal translator chip in the next vaccine.

I’D GLADLY PAY YOU TUESAY FOR A HAMBURGER TODAY

November 13, 2021

Have you noticed that lately everyone who plays on the big stage seems to be making some very lofty promise?

Promising to fix some critical planetary problem within, say, thirty years is big news. EXTRA! EXTRA! read all about it!

President Biden recently announced a new target for the United States to achieve a 50-52 percent reduction from 2005 levels in net greenhouse gas pollution by 2030.

The Climate Summit in Glasgow is producing, in addition to its incredibly heavy carbon footprint, a laudable laundry list of glowing promises regarding climate change, fossil fuels, renewable energy, and sustainable development. We’re all in this together!

The oil companies like Exxon have adopted catchy advertising slogans like “Advancing Climate Solutions” and are promising to capture millions of metric tons of carbon each year, starting sometime real soon.

And Big Business is not about to be outdone. It seems like every ad you hear these days for virtually any well known company — Home Depot, Bayer, Amazon, all the auto makers, even financial giants — are ALL going to get their act together and help save the planet by 2030. Oh Boy!

2030 seems to be the most popular date. It’s close enough that it sounds significant, but far enough away that it can be easily ignored. Because here’s the thing, anybody can promise to do something in ten, or twenty, or thirty years. It sounds great. But without measurable milestones, there’s no way to make those promises come true. And if our environmental saviors don’t do what they said they would do, they just can go, “Oh well, we tried.” And in the meantime, they painted themselves green and sold a few more widgets.

On top of that, Trump has taught us that the truth is irrelevant and it’s okay — even a winning strategy — to lie through your teeth. And the folks at the top of the food chain are prolific liars with expensive advertising mojo.

These are the Top 10 Causes of Global Warming:

• Power Plants
• Transportation
• Farming
• Deforestation
• Fertilizers
• Oil Drilling
• Natural Gas Drilling
• Permafrost

Even in the face of hurricanes, wildfires, tornados, flooding, and megadroughts, does anyone really think we are going to use less power, drive less, outlaw tree cutting, move away from the water, pay way more for organic food, curtail drilling for oil and gas, give up plastics, or stop using the rivers and oceans as our public dumping ground?

Well, if you do, then here’s a promise: by the year 2076, on the 300th anniversary of America, they will have figured out how to turn horseshit into gold.

RUGGED INDIVIDUALSTS

November 11, 2021

Why do white guys in rural America wear checkered flannel shirts?

I spent a fair amount of time in the boonies this past year, starting with almost a month, camping out in Colorado and Utah, where checkered flannel shirts were the uniform of choice with all the white men and boys. See, that’s the thing, nobody makes farmers, ranchers, loggers, miners, or just plain fellas, living in the rural heartland of America, wear checkered shirts. It’s purely voluntary. WHY?

For some unknown reason, wearing a Pendleton shirt, or some knockoff of such, became synonymous with being a rugged macho man. Look at an LL Bean catalog, a TV commercial for off road trucks, the latest episode of “Yellowstone”, or a news feed from some godforsaken place in the Midwest that just got wiped out by a monster tornado, and you will see a guy with scraggly beard, wearing a checkered flannel shirt. WHY?

When I lived that manly life, working or the Forest Service at the Grand Canyon, I didn’t own any other kind of shirt. And all my friends and coworkers did the same. WHY?

They say that “clothes make the man“. And if that’s true, then checkered flannel shirts make a tough guy — or at least give off that vibe.

We humans are joiners. We love our teams, clubs, packs, bands of brothers, crews, and homies. It feels good to fit in. And flannel shirts fit real nice.

KEEP A SAFE DISTANCE

November 9, 2021

Way back in 1970, I was boarding at McDonogh School in Baltimore and I took drivers ed on several spring Saturdays, so I could take to the roads like the rest of American youth and pursue my destiny.

In those days they really stressed keeping the proper distance between you and the car in front. “A car length for every ten miles per hour” was the asphalt rule.

And they even had this goofy machine that simulated the time it took to hit the brake and stop. It had a brake pedal that was connected to a light. When the red light went off you were supposed to hit the brake as fast as you could and the machine registered how long it took you to react. We quickly learned there was always a brief delay in our response time as our eyes registered the light and then our brain told our feet to hit the brake. So, the faster you were traveling, the more distance you would need to account for the hard-wired lag time. Otherwise, you would plow into the back of the car in front if they suddenly stopped.

Okay. So, either the laws of physics have changed in the last fifty years, or our response times have gotten way faster, or we simply no longer care about avoiding accidents. Because it’s impossible to maintain the proper distance on a highway because people will constantly cut in between you and the car in front. And it makes you feel like a chump for even trying to be safe.

I was recently driving home on the Capital Beltway, one of the most dangerous roads on earth. It was raining lightly and cars were flying along like they were being pursued by demons. I was going ten miles over the posted speed limit of 55 mph. That meant I should maintain a distance of at least six car lengths behind the car in front of us. And I did.

As we were careening along on the squirrelly turns by the Mormon Temple I had three cars dart as if in synchronous orbit into the space I had allotted. So, I kept having to slow down and back off. It was maddening. It was scary. And it was just another day, rolling the deadly dice.

And then we wonder why there are accidents and endless backups every morning, noon, and night on all our busy highways.

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

October 15, 2021

I was recently walking through a CVS in Buffalo, New York — but it could have been anywhere in the country, really — and it suddenly hit me: We are fast becoming a third world nation.  

Walk through a pharmacy, grocery, or hardware store and you will usually find three things.

1. Gaping holes on the shelves where inventory has not been replaced.
2. Items strewn around haphazardly.
3. Listless, uncaring employees.

It reminds me of a Caribbean Island like Jamaica or St. Thomas.

Like most banana boat republics, almost everyone — liberal and conservative alike— are completely disillusioned with everything other than sports and video entertainment.  

People are scared of what’s happening. The prisons are full. Children are starving. Healthcare sucks. The homeless are everywhere. Corruption is rampant. The political leaders all lie, all the time. And the rich are getting obscenely richer.

And when you add in the fact that about half the population of the United States distrusts the government, doctors, and scientists, believing instead in crazy conspiracies and utter nonsense, we have all the ingredients for a strong man takeover and a loss of freedom and the rule of law in the not so distant future. And that will be the end of democracy and the grand American experiment.

COVID will, of course, be singled out as the culprit who broke America. But that’s a copout. I’m thinking the fault lines ran much deeper than a virus that appeared in early 2020. And they have been ripping us apart for many years now. COVID just exposed the deeper illness.

Personally, I’d blame it on The Gipper.

WHO WON?

September 15, 2021

Pro football is back in town! My friends and neighbors can now come out of their seasonal hibernation and go back to living their lives through the triumphs and defeats of total strangers in snazzy uniforms .

I walked into my local supermarket on Monday morning —the Baltimore Ravens were starting the season on Monday night football against the newly-christened Las Vegas Raiders — and it seemed like everyone was sporting a purple Ravens jersey with the name of their favorite star on the back. The guys stocking the shelves were doing their best imitations of sports talk radio. And their was a noticeable buzz in the air.

I used to be a sports junkie, until I married a wise Russian lady who helped me come to my senses and realize it was better and more satisfying to go for a bike ride or hike than watch others recreate. It took years to break my old habits, and I still like to watch the occasional playoff game or Super Bowl tilt. And I will listen or read about what’s happening after the fact. But my weekends no longer revolve around watching football.

I was a Colts and Oakland Raiders addict since childhood. As a little boy, I used to go up in my bedroom and cry myself to sleep when the Colts lost, and as a young adult it was not uncommon for me to get into fist fights, defending the honor of Kenny Stabler and the Silver & Black. So I totally understand how football can take over your life.

But why?

I see why people get crazy in support of their college team; if it’s your alma mater, then it’s like family.

But why should someone like myself, living in Annapolis, Maryland, be obsessed with a bunch of overpaid, arrogant, testosterone-dripping athletes who couldn’t care less if I live or die? And, yes, this question applies — probably even more so — to the fanatics in every country who literally worship their soccer teams.

What is it about sport that gives our lives meaning and sends us off the deep end? The root answer undoubtedly lies somewhere deep in our reptilian brain. This is caveman stuff, harkening back to the killing of mastodons and running for our lives, and the pure pleasure and excitement of sharing victory with our mates.

Then there’s the pride factor — if the Baltimore Ravens win, then their fans are winners by association. B’mo be da best, Hon!

But I gotta tell you: for those who aren’t obsessed with Sunday’s big game, it seems, to quote ol’ Willy the Shake, “A lot of sound and fury signifying nothing.”

IT’S NOT WHAT YOU THINK!

September 3, 2021

Hurricane Ida made landfall last Sunday at Grand Isle, Louisiana like a really badass joke. It was sixteen years to the day since Hurricane Katrina laid waste to New Orleans. What are the odds? Ida demolished the southern portion of the Bayou State before heading north through the South, the Mid-Atlantic, and the Northeast, leaving death and destruction in its wide, scimitar path. We even had a tornado less than a mile from my house in Annapolis, Maryland. New York City looked like Venice with skyscrapers.

Welcome to climate change, friends and neighbors. Life on the edge.

Yeah, I know, the same people who get their news from FOX, love the Trumpster, and won’t get the COVID vaccination, think that global warming is just another big lie. And let’s face it, people who won’t get a free vaccine to inoculate their own kids from a preventable disease and seem quite proud to watch them die, are never going to accept the hard, dry, hot, wet reality of the planet dangerously warming.

The Q People don’t care that the latest blockbuster climate report released by the normally wishy-washy Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), signed by almost 200 countries who normally can’t agree on where to go to dinner, says in over 600 pages that we are all essentially doomed. No amount of rain, wind, heat, drought, flooding, or weather mayhem is going to change the minds of at least a third of America. We all may be in the same boat, but a lot of us are rowing in opposite directions.

One of my favorite things on earth is a good scientific irony. And climate change comes wrapped in a real humdinger.

We know for a fact that past Ice Ages on earth were triggered by global warming. Melting ice at the North Pole overwhelms the deep, cold water trough off Greenland called the North Atlantic Oscillation which controls weather and climate on Earth. And when that happens most of the planet slowly turns into a giant popsicle thousands of feet thick. So, extreme heat ultimately leads to extreme cold.

Now, imagine the fun the Conservative media could have with that one if they only believed in truth and science.

SOLDIERING ON & ON

August 31, 2021

I served in the Navy during the Vietnam War, so I know a little about duty, honor, and war. That’s why I have always believed that we should never send troops to a foreign land unless our safety is really threatened. And when that happens, we should roll in like the Wrath of God, kill everything that breathes, and then come back home. I opposed the Vietnam War, Grenada, Kuwait, Iraq, and Afghanistan. We didn’t have a dog in any of those fights and no soldier should have been asked to lay down their life for natural resources, a proxy war, or political posturing.

Believe it or not, America used to be a peaceful, noninterventionist nation. We had a small military, we didn’t stick our nose where it didn’t belong, and most countries on earth actually admired us. They wanted to be us.

But World War I and World War II changed all that. We emerged as victorious warriors and ready to assume the role of policeman for the world. Today we have the third largest army with 1,400,000 active duty personnel. Only China and India have more troops. And we spend $760 billion a year on the military, which is more than the next 12 nations combined! And only a fool would believe we are truly any safer when all is said and done. I, in fact, would argue the exact opposite.

Since the Roman Empire, military powers have always had to keep their armies busy —  or buy them off — because when soldiers come home during times of peace, many of their members are unemployed and prone to drug abuse and general troublemaking. Can you say, “January 6th”?

And that’s why we need to bring our armies home from EVERYWHERE abroad and put them to work, rebuilding America’s bridges, municipal water lines, national parks, and whatever else needs fixing. Because as long as every state is economically connected to the military industrial complex through manpower and weapons, we will be in a constant state of war.

JABBERWOCKY

August 27, 2021

The deplorable right wing, evangelical Trump supporters, whose major, hot button issue has always been outlawing abortion, won’t take the COVID vaccine to save lives, not even their own.   But their braindead hypocrisy does not stop there.

They don’t trust the vaccine because it’s part of an insidious liberal conspiracy to plant chips in their bodies, follow their every move, and ultimately control their minds.  And in the name of personal freedom they would rather die. It’s hard to make this shit up.

And if that’s not loony enough, they are happy to embrace a myriad of unproven, and often patently unsafe, miracle cures they hear about from crackpots on the right wing media spew tubes, like the Trumpster’s go to snake oil cure Hydroxychloroquine. And apparently there is no bottom to the depths of stupidity to which these conspiracy fools will go. For instance, the Red States (the Confederacy) are now awash in Ivermectin, a dangerous drug used to deworm cows, that is being touted as a breakthrough cure for all things COVID. How’s that for the perfect metaphor?

But the latest fan favorite of the Freedom Pushers, like the Angel of Death, Florida Governor Ron Desanus, has turned reason and prevention on their ear by embracing a treatment that definitely works effectively against COVID, but which, ironically, is the product of abortion. They cannot get enough of, and have absolutely no hesitation taking Remdesivir, the Monoclonal Antibody Therapy that is produced from stem cells that come from aborted fetuses. This is what Trump was given when he caught the coronavirus and there was no vaccine. And many maskless Republican champions did the same.

Some of the most strident conservative voices, starting with FOX SCREWS, keep pumping up the volume in praise of the Dead Baby Juice, without realizing or caring, how hypocritical their message is.

Makes me really wonder how they plan to climb that ol’ stairway to heaven.

WATER RIGHTS & WRONGS

August 23, 2021

The Colorado River is the lifeblood of a vast majority of the west. Its mighty flow is governed by layer-upon-layer of federal laws, an international treaty, endless court decisions and decrees, countless contracts, and a slew of regulatory guidelines collectively known as the “Law of the River“.

But all Colorado tributaries lead back to a 1922 agreement called the Colorado Compact signed by the seven states and Mexico all located within the watershed — Colorado (where the river starts in Rocky Mountain National Park), Wyoming, New Mexico, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, and California (where the river ends in a dry wash in the Gulf of California). When the agreement was signed, no one had any idea how much water there really was, so they took a wild guess — 16.5 million acre feet. And then they divided the watershed into the Upper Basin comprised of Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico, and the Lower Basin which included California, Nevada, and Arizona. The Upper Basin got 7.5 maf, the Lower Basin got 7.5 maf, and 1.5 maf went to Mexico. Nobody ever really expected to give Mexico its fair share, unless by chance there was water left over after all the other greedy piggies grabbed their allocation. There wasn’t.

California and Colorado, of course, got the biggest shares, followed by Arizona, Utah, Wyoming, New Mexico, and Nevada. Most of the water originally went for agriculture, but with the advent of the metropolises in the desert, like Phoenix, towns started getting more and more. Las Vegas gets virtually all of Nevada’s allocation and would dry up and blow away in about a month without it. But here’s the thing, the nasty little secret surrounding the whole shady deal: there really wasn’t 16.5 maf to begin with. It was a made-up number. And at first it didn’t matter because there simply wasn’t that much demand. But once the western states began to grow, there was no way in hell that any state was ever going to get as much of the Colorado water as they were supposed to receive.

Now add in the hot, hard reality that the Colorado River watershed is into the twentieth year of a prolonged drought and there is no let up in sight. Experts are referring to it as the “Megadrought“. And that means there’s way less than 16.5 maf to go around.

In 2026, the Colorado Compact expires and the western states — we long since forgot about Mexico in the equation — will have to sit back down to renegotiate the water rights for each of the seven states. Can you imagine how much fun that’s going to be.

Water Law goes back to jolly old England and it’s predicated on the time honored tradition of “First in time, First in line.” The people who were the first to start sucking the nearby river, lake, creek, stream or spring get first dibs. Makes perfect sense.

And yet, you know who don’t get any of the western water? The Indians. And they will not even be sitting at the table with the big boys and girls in 2026.

During our recent travels around western Colorado and eastern Utah, we saw parched dry Indian villages like Montezuma Creek on the White Mesa Ute Reservation who live right next to the San Juan River and are not allowed to take a drop from the river running right through their town while white farmers many miles away have lush green fields fed by water that is piped and pumped from the San Juan.

So, you tell me, who got there first?

FILL ‘ER UP!

August 19, 2021

Many of our parks in America, especially our national parks, feature canyons, gorges, mountains, deserts, scenic overlooks, oceans, lakes, rivers — seemingly endless voids and large expanses of open water.

And I have noticed that lots of boys and men — rarely women — like to throw rocks into these blank spaces, be it a deep hole in the ground, the Grand Canyon, or the Atlantic Ocean at Acadia National Park. They walk to the edge, stare out in wonder, and then look for a small stone to chuck into the emptiness.

It’s like we humans have a territorial imperative to — what? Stake our claim? Watch a small rock drop slowly into great nothingness? Do we wonder what it might feel like to freefall and then hit the bottom? Does it reveal some truth about the mystery of life? Or is just a guy thing and we like to chuck rocks?

I know that in the scheme of things throwing rocks into the abyss aint a big deal. But it seems to happen instinctively, without conscious thought, which means it’s probably reptilian brain in origin and all about survival. And if that’s true, then we undoubtedly wouldn’t have made it this far as a species without a good pitching arm.

“NO SKIN” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLtv7OzokyI

WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE AND NOT A DROP TO DRINK

August 17, 2021

After roaming the Southwest in June I found the water shortage perplexing.

The Feds just solemnly declared a “water shortage” in the Western U.S., which was a bit like stating the patently obvious, but allows the Water Keepers to start significantly cutting allocations. In Arizona, it will be an 18% reduction, starting on January 1, and in Nevada it will be 7%. That’s a lot of water!

The farmers and ranchers are going to be the first ones to lose out. And the 25 million people that get their drinking water in Arizona, Nevada, California, and Mexico that get their water from Lake Mead are in for a rude awakening when the flow is reduced to a trickle. Where will they all golf?

Science magazine recently described western North America and northern Mexico as on a “megadrought-like trajectory”. And all the scientific experts predict that climate change guarantees it will just get a lot worse.

The big lakes, like Lake Powell, Mead, Faming Gorge, Blue Mesa, and Navajo, are at their lowest levels since they were first being filled — only a third of capacity and dropping quickly. The cities in the desert, like Las Vegas and Phoenix, are going to have to start rationing drinking water. And if all that isn’t bad enough, wildfires are out of control and no city or town is safe.

The reckoning soon come.

And yet, up in Western Colorado and Eastern Utah, in farm communities like Loma and Vernal, they were blasting water over the fields with industrial pivot sprinklers like there was no tomorrow. On a 100-degree, bright sunny day, they were bathing their crops nonstop, evaporation be damned. Near Hovenweep National Monument, some of the lush green alfalfa fields were literally flooded and water was running down the dirt roads. We saw this “use it or lose it” wanton waste throughout the entire Upper Colorado Basin.

So, when I hear these dire reports from the Department of Interior, eminent scientists at prestigious universities, angry politicians in water-guzzling desert cities, chicken little environmentalists, and those desperate farmers and cattle barons, I really have to scratch my head at the disconnect between what is, and what really is. And to be honest, I can’t tell the difference.

HERE TODAY AND GONE TOMORROW

August 13, 2021

The American Southwest has sure changed since I lived there between 1978-1994, working on the Kaibab National Forest near the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.

What hasn’t, you say?

Well, I’m not talking about some old houses coming down and modern new buildings going up, or unwelcome cultural changes. It’s way, way bigger and scarier than that.

Climate change is laying waste to the place. A prolonged drought that’s getting worse and worse every year is drying up the rivers, lakes, streams, creeks, reservoirs, and wells. It’s like Mother Nature is slowly cutting off the water. And without water, people wouldn’t last a summer in the Southwest. It’s just too sunbaked hot.

I mean, Vegas, Phoenix, Tucson, and Albuquerque, all sit in the middle of a desert. As the celebrated historian Wallace Stegner pointed out many years ago, life gets real sketchy out there “Beyond the Hundredth Meridian” .

And as the water dries up the wildfires roll in, burning the forests and towns with an almost calculated chaos.

When Jimmy and I drove into Price, Utah in June, the mountains on the west side of town — IN THE TOWN —  were on fire. Helicopters were dropping red, fire-retardant slurry on the flaming hillsides, and no one in town seemed to even notice. Just another hot, smoky day in paradise.

And the once, “pinch me I must be dreaming”, deep blue skies are but a fleeting memory, replaced by a murky haze that resembles the humid skies of the East.

So, welcome to the future, friends and neighbors. A future where the towns of the Southwest slowly but surely run out of life-sustaining water and the whole place goes up in flames.

Where will all the people go?

THE GOOD SAMARITAN PARADOX

August 10, 2021

I spent the month of June with my old friend Jimmy Martin, exploring Western Colorado and Eastern Utah.  It was an epic adventure with temps hovering around 110 every day as wildfires raged across the parched landscape like big scary monsters on the rampage.  The grueling trip pressed all the buttons and was a real endurance test for two old geezers who hadn’t hiked and camped out under such extreme conditions in a very long while.  But we came through with flying colors.

Along the way, some curious peculiarities popped out at me and I thought I might share them with my friends.

And so, for the next week, I will be dropping a little nugget of Southwestern Truth in your lap for your consideration.

The first is what I call the Good Samaritan Paradox.  And it goes like this.  Rural people are, as a rule, white, conservative, close-minded, borderline-racist, gun-toting, bible-thumping, evangelical Christians, who supported Trump.  I probably don’t agree with them about much of anything.  But if I was stranded and in need of help, they would undoubtedly render assistance without question.  But urban liberals — my kind of people — would be unlikely to help a stranger in need because they are far less trusting of people they don’t know.

JUST SIGN ON THE DOTTED LINE

June 8, 2021

​War and treaties go hand-in-hand, like love and marriage.  They are, at best, just brief interludes in between the real action.

There have been well over a thousand treaties signed during the course of human events, starting well before the time of Christ. The first known treaty was between the Lagash and Umma of Mesopotamia in 2100 BC.

Some of my favorites include:

• The Eternal Peace (532)
• Peace of Constance (1183)
• Golden Bull of Sicily (1222)
• First Peace of Thorn (1411)
• Treaty of Perpetual Peace (1502)
• Treaty of Nonsuch (1585)
• Two Row Wampum Treaty (1613)
• Secret Treaty of Dover (1670)
• Batman’s Treaty (1835)
• Pact of Steel (1939)
• Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (1961)
• Convention on the Law of Treaties (1969)

That last one pretty much sums the whole treaty thing up — just double-talk wiggle words on fancy paper.

Paris and London have always been very popular places to sign treaties and there are at least ten named for each, sometimes without France or Britain even having a dog in the fight.

There have been Edicts & Agreements, Peaces & Pacts, Unions & Alliances, Pacifications & Truces, Covenants & Oaths, Conventions & Protocols, and a multitude of Declarations.

Broken treaties throughout American history are synonymous with the U.S. Government and Native Americans.  In case you’re counting, there were 370 of them. Most were signed at a forgotten fort or creek.  The Canadians just gave each treaty they signed with the Indians a number.  They signed the last one, Treaty 11, in 1921 with the First Nations.

The most recent treaty was the Aachen Treaty of 2019, signed between the French and the Germans, dealing with regional military, cultural, and political issues, including mutual defense.  

Yeah, good luck with that.

THE WAR TO END ALL WARS

June 6. 2021

In honor of D-Day, we should remember that up until the 1800s there really were no countries.  There were only empires.

A genuine badass, like Charlemagne, or Caesar Augustus, Atilla the Hun, or Genghis Khan, put together a fearsome army and then conquered land and people, not nations.  Eventually they got too far afield and couldn’t control such a vast area.  Or, they simply died and their family was weak or stupid. And they were subsequently overrun by the next invincible army.

The hit parade of all powerful vanishing empires is pretty amusing and nonsensical, if you forget about the millions of victims they left in their wake: Egyptian, Hittite, Roman, Ottoman, Mongol, they all conquered for glory and the spoils of war. They took because they could, and they kept taking until they couldn’t.

Amidst all of this carnage it’s easy to lose track of the fact that this mindless mayhem was the single most important factor in the advance of civilization around the globe.  It led to and precipitated virtually every significant advance in the human race — the wheel, eyeglasses, the compass, gunpowder, the printing press, railroads, ambulances, the telegraph, ships, weapons, radar, computers, penicillin, airplanes, drones, the Magna Carta, and virtually every revolution and subsequent constitution in every country on earth.  Without constant war, we would be nothing today.  And that’s a sobering thought indeed.

WAR! WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR?

June 4, 2021

The history of the earth from 3,000 BC up until now can be summed up in one short sentence: KILL OR BE KILLED.  

We have all heard about the Vikings, Mongols, and Huns, raping and pillaging their way across Europe and beyond.  But they were just the tip of the lance.   Starting with the Dynasty of Ur (2125 B.C.), there were an endless stream of marauders with funny names that no one has ever heard of before, like the:

• Kassites
• Mittannians
• Seleucids
• Lykkians
• Cimbri
• Vercellae
• Allamanni
• Suevi
• Carolingians
• Almoravides
• Almohades
• Pomeranian
• Pechenegs

Goodness, gracious, it sounds like a Star Trek show.  And in many ways it was. To boldly go forth and annihilate has always been the primary directive.

So, there’s really no secret why the Arabs are constantly fighting the Jews, or the Hutus are slaughtering Tutsis in Rawanda, or the Nuer and Dinkas keep warring in Sudan, or the North Koreans endlessly battle the South Koreans, or even rural America hates urban America.  Humans like to fight.  It is arguably what we do best.

And believe it or not, there is way less of it these days, but war is always just around the next corner.

BON APPETIT!

June 1, 2021

When the weather is nice, dining in the out-of-doors is always a nice treat.  But during Covid Times its popularity really took off as whole city blocks in most U.S. cities were closed to vehicles while tables, bubbles, tents, and yurts were dragged out into the street for our dining pleasure.

I spent the winter down in sunny Florida, where Covid never reared its ugly head — at least according to its crackpot thug of a Governor, Ron Desantis — and open air bars and restaurants were hoppin’ & boppin’ nonstop throughout the pandemic.  Inna and I were recently out in Denver where they have two expansive pedestrian streets lined with incredibly popular outdoor dining venues, Laramie Street and Sixteenth Avenue.  And Boulder’s Pearl Street runs the entire length of its lovely downtown and is filled with alfresco eateries, catering to every culinary desire. Dining under the stars is safer and more enjoyable.

The other day I was walking around the City Dock and up Main Street in Annapolis where I live.  The weather was stellar, the town was packed with happy families attending the Naval Academy Graduation Week festivities, and almost all of the outdoor tables were occupied.  I thought I was on Las Ramblas in Barcelona.

And as I heard loud music blaring from one of the restaurants — one of the worst in town — it suddenly hit me.

Restaurants that blast music usually suck.  They use the music to attract your attention, like a shiny thing, and draw you in for some fried, greasy food that you will totally regret eating and will stay with you the rest of the day.

According to a recent study, published in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Sciences, loud music gets people excited and stressed out while softer sounds have a calming affect. Diners exposed to loud music order food significantly higher in calories. And it doesn’t matter what kind of music it is.

In addition, loud music while you are eating is annoying and makes it almost impossible to carry on a conversation.  Its sole purpose is to distract and numb the senses.

Think about it. Have you ever eaten in a good restaurant with tasty food where there was loud music? 

CALL OF THE WILD

May 25, 2021

These days, cicadas are the talk of the town. And that’s before they all start singing loudly from the treetops, trying their best to get laid.

Cicadas have a very compelling story.  Every seventeen years, millions of the little buggers emerge from underground hibernation, all over the United States, to live for a brief short weeks.  Their sole mission is to find a mate and make the next underground generation who will in turn crawl back into the cold, dark ground and lie dormant for another seventeen years.  

Like humans, each hatch gets a cool name.  The Class of 2021 is called Brood X.  

They make music and attract a lover by rubbing their legs madly together, like making fire with sticks.  And their love call chorus can be as loud as a jet plane.

They have bulging red eyeballs and see-through wings that are totally sci-fi creepy.  

And sometimes there are so many of them that they literally cover the ground, or a tree, or maybe your patio furniture, like a swarming brown mass of love.  They move and fly very slowly and resemble zombies in a lust fog.  Most of the time, they don’t seem to know where the hell they are going.  

I was working in the yard the other day and one landed on my head and just sat there.  And later, one flew onto my shoulder and stared at me with those big googly eyes. 

And every day there are more and more of them, their crinkly, translucent exoskeletons clinging to almost everything like bug ghosts.  

In truth, they give off a distinctive Stephen King vibe.

​But luckily for us, cicadas are harmless​.  Imagine if cicadas were dangerous.  If they could bite or sting, or were venomous, Spring would be scary as hell.

DON’T TREAD ON ME

May 20, 2021

​I have ridden my bicycle across the United States twice, covering vast expanses of rural America.  I lived in the Southwest near the Grand Canyon for fifteen years.  And Inna & I regularly ride our bikes through rustic countryside, like Maryland’s Eastern Shore.  

During my meandering travels, I have noticed a common denominator in all these fairly rundown forlorn places: Fat, bearded white guys, driving giant expensive, brand new, shiny-clean pickup trucks, who live in trailers and shitholes adorned with no trespassing signs.

​These proud patriots might live in a shack, but they invariably drive monster trucks with all the bells and whistles.  In addition to the “STAY OUT – THIS MEANS YOU!” warning signs nailed to the scraggly trees around their property, most added TRUMP flags to the mix these last four years  And it always made me chuckle.

I mean, ​who exactly do they think wants to intrude upon their privacy or steal their pit bull?

WHO CAN WE TRUST?

May 17, 2021

Well, it looks like we’re down to only two good guys, Warren Buffet & Dr. Anthony Fauci.  By this I mean men of monumental stature and unquestionable integrity, respected throughout the world, and who genuinely seem to care about the well-being of the rest of the herd.

There are, of course, countless women who would fit the bill, because women are, as a general rule, kinder, more ethical, and caring than most men.  But other than a few truly exemplary, high-powered ladies like German Chancellor Angela Merkle and Christine Lagarde at the European Central Bank, women are kept under wraps in our male-dominated world — literally.

I used to think there were three good men, but now that we have learned that Bill Gates was regularly palling around with that monumental scumbag Jeffery Epstein and the Royal Rapist, Prince Andrew, screwing underage girls with wanton abandon, that just leaves us with two guys to trust on the world stage.  And they both are in their eighties.

What does that say about the state of MAN–kind?

A PLACE TO LAY YOUR HEAD

May 12, 2021

​It seems like HOMELESSNESS in America is is getting more and more horrific with each passing day.  And in large cities like Denver where we recently spent some time, the numbers of pitiful, wayward souls roaming the downtown streets was truly astonishing.

I am not going to presume to tackle or explain the issue of homelessness in America. It is way beyond my ken.  But to see so many disheveled and filthy people carrying their curious possessions on their backs or in shopping carts was mind numbing and very disturbing.  

In Denver, the majority of the street folk were young men and women (mostly men), and often with dogs and musical instruments.  And almost all of them looked quite healthy.

So, it’s tempting to, in the words of Bruce Hornsby’s anthem “The Way It Is”, dismissively write them all off and just spit out, “Get a job!”  

But then you get close to many of them and realize they are babbling incoherently to themselves and are clearly deranged. 

Letting the mentally ill loose on our city streets began on Ronny Reagan’s cold-hearted watch.  And no one seemed to notice.  We still don’t, really. In plain sight and out of mind.

 We have money galore for cops, weapons, and missions to Mars, but why should our tax dollars go to the thousands of crazy people living in our parks and under bridges in America? Why indeed.

And, yes, many of the homeless in Denver were smoking cigarettes at $10 a pack and the smell of weed permeated almost every group and encampment.  But that doesn’t make them any less nuts.

And many won’t take help even when it’s offered.  They prefer to live outside.  Being inside freaks them out severely.  They’re like crazy hunter-gatherers.

How could most of them hold down a regular job?  They may look normal in passing, but many are autistic, or bipolar, or simply batshit crazy. And who would hire them?

The City of Denver definitely cares about this problem.  They provide clean bathrooms, soup kitchens, and free showers near the areas where the homeless gather, like Civic Center Park, right across from the golden-domed State Capital Building. But there are streets like Colfax and Martin Luther King Boulevard that are lined with tents — veritable villages of doom.

Homelessness is a head-scratcher, wrapped inside a mystery, all surrounded by a blinding perpetual fog.  And anyone who says they have the answer to the problem is blowing smoke.

The one thing I am certain of is this: homelessness dehumanizes us ALL.

WHO’S WATCHING US NOW?

May 5, 2021

People are pretty mindful these days about what others might think, so they try their best to keep their thoughts and written words to themselves.  Many of my friends are perpetually worried that some politically incorrect statement or indication of political intent might appear on their Facebook page and piss off someone important in their lives — even those they have yet to meet.

It’s certainly true that Facebook and Twitter are ablaze with divisive messages from the left and right.  And I have definitely added fuel to that fire this past year, attacking Trump and his know nothing  Reschlublican followers.  

See, I can’t help myself.

But a recent Pew Research Center survey of U.S. adults indicates that only 9% of social media users say they often post or share things about political or social issues, while 70% claim they never or rarely post something controversial or inflammatory. The vast majority of the people on Facebook don’t follow or care much about politics or changing the world.  There’s way more interest in cats.

But that doesn’t stop the politically indifferent from being afraid of getting sucked into the black hole of nasty social debate.  They tend to steer clear of that angry trap like it was the plague, so they don’t leave a record of their indiscretion that will be indelibly recorded in the annals of social media forever.

In fact, most people won’t even click “LIKE” for something even moderately controversial, or associated with someone with a sketchy reputation, even when they agree, for fear that it will one day come back and bite them in the ass.

I know this is true because my “A Tale Told By An Idiot” pieces consistently get about 300 hits, sometimes more.  And yet no story has ever gotten more than two or three likes.  So, either hundreds of people keep reading everything I write, but apparently they don’t like it, or maybe they just want to stay under the radar.

And that’s fine with me.  I’m just glad that more than six people and a dog like to read my words.  And besides, I know y’all really love me anyhow.

ANOTHER BRICK IN THE WALL

May 3, 2021

I was riding my bike around Annapolis in the late afternoon last week and I saw hundreds of little girls — I’m guessing they were all maybe ten years old — learning to play lacrosse on the fields at Germantown school.

Their parents were sitting at the edges of the fields in folding lawn chairs, looking harried and stressed after work.  I’m sure getting kids to their youth league sporting events at rush hour on a weekday around the DC metro area is a giant pain in the ass.

I don’t get why parents feel compelled to enroll their small children in organized sports at such an early age.  I mean, do little kids really need to be taught compliance before they are, let’s say, twelve or thirteen?

I played lacrosse with the neighborhood kids when we were mere munchkins.  But we would just ride our bikes over to Farragut Field at the Naval Academy and fire away at one of the goals, in between playing “Combat” in the woods and exploring the shoreline of the Severn River.  Our parents never knew where the hell we were or what we were up to.  Mrs. Childs rang a loud school bell each evening that we could hear from at least a mile away and when the bell sounded, we all knew it was time to go home for dinner.

As I stood watching the teeny-tiny squealing girls, wielding lacrosse sticks bigger than they were, I marveled at how early in life kids — at least well-off white kids — start playing team sports these days.

From my geezer vantage point, there’s an insidious quality to this well-meaning parental recreation plan because there are insistent whistles constantly blowing and hotheaded coaches hollering instructions, which cannot possibly be good for adolescents.

Most of the pee-wee lacrosse girls stood in small groups, twirling their long sticks and paying little attention to the loud coaches.  But at some point, each little lassie was compelled to get with the program even though hardly any of them could catch or throw the ball.  It was all quite comical.

So, while the girls might not have been learning any real lacrosse skills, they were being groomed, like frolicking puppies, to instantly respond to commands.  It was pure Pavlovian condition and response.  When the whistle blows, stop what you’re doing and pay close attention.

What a great idea!  In fact, I think we should integrate the whistle into adult life, not just kiddy sports.  Give all the bosses whistles.  And we will have already been trained since early childhood to freeze whenever we hear a whistle, like obedient slaves, and await further orders.  After all, don’t we all want to be on a winning team?

BRINGING ENERGY TO YOUR MORNINGS

May 1, 2021

​I’m not a coffee drinker.  Never was.  Never will be.  I can’t even stand the smell of it.

But my wife Inna is totally addicted to it — literally can’t function in the morning without it.  And when we travel, my morning mission is to find at least two steaming cups of Americana Grande.  See!  I’m well trained and I know my stuff.

I find the whole coffee thing pretty amusing.  It’s the start the day ritual for millions and without it, I’m thinking there would be a lot more speed freaks.

Coffee first appeared in 15th century Yemen in Sufi shrines where the priests roasted coffee seeds and then brewed them pretty much like we do it today.

And it actually makes perfect sense that coffee’s roots were first planted in religious ground because most Coffeeites exhibit an almost spiritual reverence toward their favorite blend.

When I worked at the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, I used to sit in the Tawes Garden and watch the many hundreds of people walking into work each morning. And I noticed that they held their blessed cups of Joe in front of themselves like they were carrying a sacred chalice.  It was probably so they didn’t spill the hot beverage on themselves, but it always reminded me of acolytes carrying the holy elixir at some religious ceremony, like Communion.  I jokingly christened the morning procession the Dance of the Golden Goblet.

If an alien saw so many people on the street, carrying their coffee so carefully in their outstretched hands, doggedly aimed at their collective destinations, they would probably think it was some form of propulsion.  And I guess it kind of is.

EVIL IS AS EVIL DOES

April 28, 2021

The Trumpsters essentially fall into two tribal camps where there is a considerable amount of dangerous inbreeding.

First, there are the deplorable white supremacists, pretending to be patriots while embracing a criminal dictator in the name of liberty and personal freedom, simply because they are terrified of losing power to dark skinned people.

Second, and even more troublesome, are the so-called Christian evangelicals who follow Trump blindly without question or reserve and who often refer to him as an “Angel of God”, simply because he opposes abortion — except, of course, for the women he knocks up — even though he has sexually assaulted multiple women and underage girls, cheated on all of his many wives with hookers and porn stars, and bragged about grabbing random women by the pussy.

You really can’t make this crazy shit up.

ONE TOKE OVER THE LINE

April 26, 2021

I used to be a drug addict.  I smoked weed pretty much every day from the age of twenty until I was fifty.  I don’t regret a wasted minute or a single toke.  And I always inhaled.

Now, I know there are lots of folks reading this and thinking, “Pot isn’t addictive.  And even if it is, who cares?  It’s a victimless crime.”

And while I would agree with that general line of thought, I think it’s also fair to say that something ain’t quite right if you feel the need to get high for 7,000 straight days.

When I was young, I got wasted with reckless abandon, getting crazed with friends and strangers alike, experimenting with little rhyme or reason, testing the limits, feeling groovy, and always drawing attention to myself.  I was also prone to heavy drinking — often of the binge variety. It was big fun being the life of the party and sex, drugs and rock & roll were my holy trinity.

As I grew older, booze and herb became a sort of pleasure crutch, a release from the daily grind of job and family — or the lack there of — and a form of self-medication. Harmless fun.

And when I finally headed onto the back stretch of life, drugs became a pain reliever — both physical and mental. Getting high was at best an afterthought.

But make no mistake, regular — as in daily — drug use — and by that I especially mean liquor — is probably indicative of some sort of psychological disorder, and no doubt topped off with too much stress. 

I’m not saying drugs are bad.  They feel too good to be bad.  And I have my medical weed card, so I’m still in the game and not trying to pretend that I am any better or wiser than anyone else.  But my experience as a drug pro tells me that if you are getting lit every day or night, it’s masking a fundamental unhappiness and insecurity.

Now, I can hear a lot of you going, “This is BS.  I come home from work and have a drink or a little puff to unwind every night.  No harm.  No foul.”

Unwinding after work is a family tradition in America, passed down from one generation to the next, like heart disease.

I didn’t get married until I was 59.  Inna has made me happier than I ever dreamed I could be — or deserved.  Soon after marrying, I left politics and took a stress-free job as the “trails guy” with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources.  And then I retired.  I was finally at peace.  

And you know what happened after that?  I stopped drinking and doing a pinch hit every night.  It wasn’t a conscious decision.  It turns out that I just didn’t need my daily dose anymore.  I was stoned cold happy. And these days I only get buzzed after a long hike or bike ride when I’m feeling tired and sore, or on special occasions with friends.

So, in the end, I’ve powered back from 350 to maybe 50 painkillers a year, and maybe now I can afford to keep going without a painted on smile… and take that trip around the world on gossamer wings.

DUMMY DOWN

April 22, 2021

Most of the red states in the U.S. have poor schools and limited internet. And that’s a fact. It’s the special sauce in Goober Gumbo.

According to US News & World Report, the Master of All Lists, when it comes to educating its citizens, nine of the ten worst states in this country are Trump strongholds and encompass the entire heart of Dixie: Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and South Carolina.

The five best states are: New Jersey, Massachusetts, Florida, Washington, and Colorado.

And the five states with the worst internet connectivity follow the same rural, know nothing, Republican bias: Montana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Wyoming.

In fact, twelve of the next thirteen states with lousy internet access voted for Trump both times and by large margins. Do you see a pattern here?

That’s twenty-six solid red states that don’t have a clue about the world around them — simple, God-fearing, gun-toting folk who think COVID is a joke, refuse to get vaccines, deny climate change, and truly believe the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.

And you know what?  That’s just fine with the Republican folks running the political show in these backward states.  And it explains why they are always happy to cut their state’s education budget rather than raise taxes. Because a dumb electorate is easily manipulated and lied to. Hell, the Russians and the Chinese have been doing this for years now.

NO ROOM IN THE INN

April 20, 2021

We hear a lot these days about the disparity between rich and poor. Economists often describe it as “the second Gilded Age” (a term coined by Mark Twain), when the robber barons in their Newport mansions owned everybody and everything, and did so with impunity. At the same time, Conservative, white southern states passed Jim Crow legislation, creating a system of legal racial segregation in public and private facilities. Sound familiar?

The Gilded Age came to a crashing halt with the Panic of 1893, a deep depression that lasted until 1897. And in 1896, William McKinley, the Republican Governor of Ohio, defeated the Nebraska Congressman William Jennings Bryan, and was elected President as part of a sectional political realignment in America that saw an election map very similar to Biden versus Trump, with the South and rural America voting Democrat and the urban industrial states voting Republican. And guess what followed? The Progressive Era.

Which leads me to a warning.

Sometimes a set of facts is so utterly shameful and disturbing that it needs no explanation, finger pointing, or excuses. And the next time you find yourself thinking how great America is, please consider this ugly truth.

There isn’t a state in America where a person working full time for minimum wage can afford a one-bedroom apartment at the fair-market rent.

I’m betting this one is going to come back and bite us in the ass one day soon.

SALUTE MY BOOTS

April 19, 2021

Here in America, we plop the courtesy title “Honorable” in front of the names of current and retired high-ranking federal and state officials, judges, and even some local officials.  As a general rule, anyone elected to public office is entitled to be addressed as the Honorable for life.  But once dead, they lose the title.  

I think there’s a joke in there somewhere.

I tried to find out how this dubious tradition began and drew a blank.  Google provided no clear explanation.  Apparently, it’s a throwback to jolly old England where everyone gets a title of some sort, like Queen Elizabeth’s recently deceased husband Phillip who held the following, tongue-twisting titles attached to his name: “His Royal Highness The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, Earl of Merioneth, Baron Greenwich, Royal Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, Extra Knight of the Most Ancient and Most Noble Order of the Thistle, Member of the Order of Merit, Grand Master and First and Principal Knight Grand Cross of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, Knight of the Order of Australia, Additional Member of the Order of New Zealand, Extra Companion of the Queen’s Service Order, Royal Chief of the Order of Logohu, Extraordinary Companion of the Order of Canada, Extraordinary Commander of the Order of Military Merit, Canadian Forces Decoration, Lord of Her Majesty’s Most Honourable Privy Council, Privy Councillor of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada, Personal Aide-de-Camp to Her Majesty, Lord High Admiral of the United Kingdom.”

Few people in America consider their elected officials to be honorable in any way.  I know I don’t.  I may like and even respect some of them, but I have never been able to stomach the notion of calling some elected official “Honourable”. I worked in politics for twenty-five years and can count on one hand the truly honest ones I met or worked with — and invariably they were women.

It’s like Willy the Shake said about those who protest too much.  Because if you have to make the plebs tack a fancy pants title like “Honorable” in front of your name, you probably aren’t.

WE THE PEOPLE

April 17, 2021

The batshit crazy Congressional patriots, like Matt Gaetz (the child molester) and QAnon kook Marjorie Taylor Greene (who stalked the students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland), have just started a new group called the America First Caucus in order to defend the Constitution and Anglo-Saxons (white people). And all the Trumpsters, Proud Boys, Boogaloo Boys, and other white supremacists are always preaching and wailing about the sanctity of the U.S. Constitution. Crazy people in camo go around shoving pocket Constitutions into other’s faces, yelling, “READ IT!”

So, I decided to do a little research on this revered document that has suddenly come back into vogue, and I found a good story in the New Yorker by Jill Lepore about the history of all modern constitutions.  Turns out the vast majority were the product of war. People get violent and scared and they feel compelled to protect their rights with words. Sometimes rulers create constitutions in return for taxes, so they can wage more war. And freedom of the press is uniformly selected as the most important right. Imagine that …

Ours, like most Constitutions of the 1700s, was cribbed from Montesquieu’s 1748 “Spirit of the Laws”, which in turn led to Catherine the Great’s Russian Constitution called the Nakaz in 1767 — twenty years before the U.S. Constitution was ratified. And the first American Constitution was actually produced by the colony of New Hampshire in 1776. Every other colony quickly followed suit. Constitutions were a dime a dozen by the time the Constitutional Convention met in Philadelphia in 1787.

The American origin story claims the U.S. Constitution was the enlightened brainchild of James Madison and the Founding Fathers. But, in truth, they were essentially well-read plagiarizers and drunken pitch men. And there was very little original thought involved.

Trump showed us the fragile nature of our Constitution, refusing to honor subpoenas, rigging the Justice Department, milking the government like a dairy cow for his personal financial benefit, claiming the President was above the law, colluding with a foreign adversary, refusing to accept his 2020 defeat while trying to overturn the election results in Georgia by strong-arming their Secretary of State, and leading a violent insurrection against Congress.

Where the hell was the Constitution of the United States when we needed her?

As constitutional law professor Sanford Levinson recently said, “To the extent that we continue thoughtlessly to venerate, and therefore not subject to truly critical examinations, our Constitution, we are in the position of the battered wife who continues to profess the ‘essential goodness’ of her abusive husband.”

DUCK & COVER

April 16, 2021

The mass killing of 8 people at the FedEx facility in Indianapolis last night was the country’s deadliest shooting since 10 people were killed on March 22 in a grocery shooting in Colorado.

That’s only 25 days!  And we report it like it’s some sort of milestone accomplishment.

No industrialized nation on Earth would allow such violence to devastate its people day in and day out for years on end.  Not a single one. In hillbilly Australia they had one mass shooting at a Mall and within a year they had enacted strict gun laws.

But here in the freedom-loving USofA we have at least one mass shooting EVERY DAY.  And it doesn’t even seem to register.  It’s covered like a weather event — out of our hands, an act of God.

Apparently it’s one of the key ingredients in making America great … again … and again … and …

LIBERATION DAY

April 15, 2021

I got my second dose of the Pfizer vaccine yesterday at the mass vaccination site in Bowie, Maryland.

Can I get an “AMEN”!

I had no discernable reaction to either shot other than a sore arm and an odd tingling sensation with the second that lasted for about twenty-four hours.

As I sat in my car, waiting to be jabbed with some of the magic elixir, I heard three scary stories on the news that made me shudder.

1. Only about forty percent of the military are willing to be vaccinated.
2. Only fifty percent of the police and fire personnel have gotten a vaccine.
3. The Governors of Texas and Florida have made it illegal to ask people to show a COVID-19 Vaccination Record Card (also known as a vaccine passport) from the Center For Disease Control.

Which leads me to the irrevocable conclusion that personal freedom will ultimately spell our doom when some pandemic with a high mortality rate — like Ebola — rears its ugly head and large numbers of patriotic Americans chose to exercise their constitutional right to die and take as many others with them as they can.

LET THERE BE LIGHT

Apr 14, 2021

I had cataract surgery yesterday on my left eye and Dr. Maria Scott and her incredible staff performed the most spectacular magic trick I have ever witnessed. Right before my very eyes, they gave me back my eye sight.

The surgery was hardly the walk in the park I had been led to believe it was going to be by many friends and acquaintances who underwent the procedure. 

It’s not painful, but it’s creepy weird — sort of like traveling eye-first through the Crab Nebula as the surgeon presses large, bright-light equipment (a laser) onto your clamped-open eye while an assistant constantly squirts some unknown drops into the picture — probably like wetting a drill bit to keep the eye from burning up. 

I was always on the edge of deep pain that thankfully never came.  But it was lurking there, just below the surface, whispering, “I’m right here if you need me.”

Time stood still.

Dr. Scott hovered above and out of sight, a distant voice, like God, reassuring me that I was doing fine and telling me calmly, but sternly, not to move — I assumed so the laser didn’t slice my eyeball to shreds — most likely just to ensure precision.

But the whole time I was eyeballing my way through the kaleidoscopic cosmos, I was thinking, “If you move, you will never see again.”

And then it was over.

Inna took me home and I crawled under the covers of my darkened bedroom and slept for twelve hours, like a wounded pup.

This morning I awoke to a world I don’t remember ever seeing before. EVER! A world of crystal clear clarity that literally shines with a brilliant luster. It’s like everything was power washed and then polished to a shiny glow.

What an age of wonder we live in when someone can give you back the gift of sight in the mere blink of an eye.

LINING UP

Apr 12, 2021

Have you ever noticed that whatever line you get in is always the slowest?

Maybe it’s just me. Perhaps I hate waiting for almost anything. I am impatient by nature and temperament, and lines tend to drive me up the wall.

I know it’s crazy. My wife tells me how stupid and childish my behavior is whenever we are caught in a traffic jam and I can’t stop whining. But it’s maddening as hell because it really seems like I always pick the line that is dead stopped while the other two lanes are steadily moving along.

It’s the same with ticket lines, or restaurant lines, or store lines — all the bloody lines we are forever trapped in all the days of our lives.

So riddle me this: How can you tell which is the fastest line?

Golfing at the Plantation

FORE!

April 9, 2021

After Georgia passed its recent voter suppression laws to ensure Republican supremacy in the Peach State, several of the corporate behemoths centered in Atlanta, like Coca Cola and Delta, pushed back against political racism and threatened to take their business elsewhere. And Major League Baseball even cancelled the summer All Star Game in Atlanta. It’s been quite the week.

So, one might reasonably expect the Professional Golf Association (PGA) might use the azalea backdrop of Augusta National Country Club, the home of this weekend’s Masters tournament, to express their disappointment at Georgia’s blatant attempt to limit minority participation in future state elections. But that didn’t happen.

Why would it?

Augusta hosted the Masters for forty years before opening the field — or its membership — to people of color. And nary a peep was ever heard from the golf gods. It wasn’t until 1975, that the African-American golf legend Lee Elder broke the long and storied tradition of segregation at one of America’s most prestigious golf tournaments. Augusta has always played by its own rules and its own clock.

In response to the nationwide call for the PGA to take a stand against the week-old Georgia Jim Crow laws, the PGA President Jim Richerson and Augusta Chairman Fred Ridley, played it safe and steered clear of politics. Instead, they staged a minstrel show where Lee Elder as Ol’ Uncle Step & Fetch It, was joined for the ceremonial first shot by Jack “Trump Is Great” Nicklaus, and Gary Player, a white South African champion of Apartheid.

Rumor has it, the club will also establish a black woman’s golf scholarship at a nearby college because change comes slowly and old times there are not forgotten.