The latest up to date diversions and fears fostered upon the U.S. masses by the millionaire TV talking heads who shout up hate and fear and the more they do it, the more money they make and help themselves to ensure their position in the 24 hour cable TV news(propaganda) business. Oh yes, some right wingnut politicians both in and out of office are fanning the fear fantasys of the masses also.
Salmonella from eggs. Since most people don't eat them raw and cook them, no problem.
Just another hysteria that rears it's head like the various flus, lettuce, Dengue fever in Florida, etc. These media made hysterias come around just like regular return visits of hurricanes. Expect them.
Poor baseball player Roger Clemens. Imagine, congress is charging him with lying about steroid use. Gee, a bunch of truthful legislators are actually charging a baseball legend with lying. Imagine that!
Building a Muslim community center two blocks from the 9-11 site. Like who gives a shit. It neither causes me to lose money or make money, eat or not eat, have fun or not have fun. Religion is religion---the people infected by all religions are going to do what they want in their fervent zeal. Even the founding Father, Thomas Jefferson, said he could not fight against religious ignorance. Go back to the 1920s and see what an uproar was caused by putting up a Jewish Temple in certain neighborhoods. Or witness the outcry in the small southern Baptist towns when a Catholic church was being built in the twenties.Or more recently, A Catholic for President like Kennedy. Hell no. The M&M's , Mexican and Muslim are going to
be the object of hate and fear with that slice of the our citizenry who feel less than adequate. Last time I read our Constitution, the part about Religious freedom was not cut out.
For my part, I don't care for the dark forces of religious superstition and don't care for any religion. But, the Constitution allows anyone to build a structure to bay at the moon if they want to.
Illegal aliens and Arizona law and subsequent overturning of it in Fed. court. Why hell, those Spanish speaking Indo-Hispanics such as Juan the dishwasher are going to bankrupt this country and cause every English speaking person to be deaf , dumb and mute as they will not be able to understand what's going on. Every damn grape, cherry, tomato, orange picking one of them should be rounded up and sent where they came from. The same goes for every tile laying, brick laying, landscaping, framing and roofing brown skin SOB should be removed from our pure blood society.
Just because their work product help build America doesn't mean doodly squat. We need to change our Constitution and not allow their offspring born in the US, even those who serve in our military, to stay here.
Obama is a closet Muslim born in Kenya who wants to convert this country to Islam and while doing so wants to change our form of government into some socialistic, fascistic , Islamist, Nazism, communist form. He definitely is not a Christian like our citizens. It's a good cynical ploy to distract from the real issues. It's a sugarcoated high for millionaire talk show hosts who stroke their celebrity chins in puzzlement while promoting disingenuous diatribes about free speech and sacred free markets and the American Dream. The democrats are saying he needs to show more Christianity by seeing him prostate in prayer at a church and the republicans are saying he's a muslim. Not to all---Our Constitution specifically declares that there is no religious test or requirement to be President or hold public office.
This is: Saturday Night Battle of the Blowhards - the World Wrestling vs. Raw video game of American media culture. Nothing is more fun than a zealot, a microphone and two minutes of hate. The ratings jump and the pundit's paychecks zoom higher in direct proportion to the level of controversy.
Gay marriage in California court case. Hell, that's going to affect our blissful heterosexual marital conditions in this country notwithstanding that 50 of modern marriages end up in divorce and 40% of children born in the United States are bastards. Poor Sara Palin's bastard grandchild-- Deuteronomy 23:2 A bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD; even to his tenth generation shall he not enter into the congregation of the LORD. Since gays do not produce bastards, it would see to be a good thing if they could marry and would encourage the morality of only having sex within marriage.
Returning the marginal Fed. Tax rate before Bush only for the couples making over $250,000--wow! going from 36% to 39.6%. Whoooo! A whopping 3.6% increase for those whose NET INCOME after deductions is over $250,000. ie the GROSS income would
generally have to be north of $350,000. We're paying the lowest marginal rates in my lifetime. U.S. Corporations pay the lowest effective tax rate anywhere. Because of the thousands of corporate deductions and use of offshore tax sheltering corporations. The right wing pundits would have you believe that our economy would get legs again if we lowered taxes and all would be hunky dory. You can't lower any lower than zero which most oil companies pay.
Mandatory health insurance unconstitutional. Forget auto insurance which is mandatory and Homeowners and Flood if you have a mortgage.So mandatory health insurance is unconstitutional , but auto, home and flood no. Go figure Senator blowhard.
Al Quai da is under ever rock and in every country and if we don't hunt them down and exterminate every single last one of them, they will descend on us like locusts and cut our heads off. They will come by land, air and sea. They will sneak across our porous borders. They will fly in courtesy of American Airlines. They will make balsa rafts and mount a beach landing. Be afraid. Beeee very afraid. Common sense
tells any rational person that for every one you kill, you create two or more. Why we can spend trillions killing them through this century. Well, we could if we don't go broke first.
Lindsey Lohans future after being incarcerated. This is important to know and talk about.
Is Bret Favre really going to return and play for the Vikings?
Is Tiger Woods finished?
There's new ones every week. It's hard to keep up with the newest methods to sedate and divert the American public from serious issues that can bring down our
Republic like lowered educational expectations, off shoring of jobs, bloated defense(offense) spending, rising health care costs, budget deficits, trade deficits, etc
Meanwhile, China and Russia and I suspect a lot of other countries are patiently doing their thing and watching the crumbling of the American Empire due
to the disfunctionality of it's evolved social structure and diversion from reality. They can readily see that our political system is total chaos and our people
are fearful and confused with a crashing economy. They know that the military/industrial complex has ballooned for the sake of profit and is adverse to
the American citizen's interests. Most of the major corporate sectors such as Big Pharma, Medical and Hospital Corporations, Oil Corporations, Media
Corporations, Banking and Financial Corporations are adverse to the common citizen's interest. It's all about profit and corporate responsibility to society be damned.
Our elected officials, aided and abetted by millions of corporate lobbyists have become corrupt petty thieves for their millions in corporate donations.
You Joe Blow and Mary Nobody don't stand a chance against this corporate bribery. You nobodies are also being media manipulated against your own interests.
After a couple of days of driving through back roads(not the interstates) and rural communities which we do every summer, I can positively tell you we have a lot of growth in two facets of American life. The growth of "Jesus" churches and the raw poverty of our people. If you sit in the comfort of your home watching TV, you might
not notice the "Jesusification" of America unless you listen to the many evangelical TV and radio stations. You definitely will not confront the raw face of utter poverty
that I have seen spread over the same back roads for 30 years. I now see every summer huge increases of rural poverty. Such increases have been phenomenal in the last 10 years. I couldn't have imagined it.
I'm not hopeful. American's anger and fear has been manipulated against their own best interests and they haven't caught on. Diverted and sedated from economic reality, there seems little hope. There's an old saying I learned as a young man from a farmer. "It's hard to have your head in fantasy land when you're walking in cow shit." Well, in today's climate, it doesn't seem to hard.
So be it after a few days of being on the road again and experiencing the real Americana and writing about it and pissing off a few who might read this.
Bob White
PS Oh yes, thank you George W. Bush for the invasions of Muslim countries and allowing hundreds of thousands of Somalian, Iraqui, Afghanistan refugees to repatriate to our country to
enjoy the freedom to practise Islam. Why over a 100,000 thousand of them were relocated to Florida alone. Kinda reminds one of the Vietnam refugee wave doesn't it.
Bob White
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Ten Things I Don't Understand About People
1. People who don't like motorcycles-- I was attracted to them as a little kid. It's probably genetic.People have been riding horses for thousands of years. They have sat upon them the same way you sit on a motorcycle. After thousands of years , I'm sure there is a genetic component to have a mode of transportation between your legs. I use to love horses and rode extensively as a young man. The problem with horses is that you have to saddle and bridle them. When finished riding, you have to
remove the saddle and bridle and store them then you have to curry the horse down and feed it. It's a damn chore. With a motorcycle , I just park it and forget it. Also, if Carmen and I had to ride one horse to Alaska like we did my Harley, we would still be riding and probably would have gone through 3 or 4 horses. Believe me. There's nothing more fun than being on an open back road through mountains
on a motorcycle.
2. People who do not like to travel----To me the world has always been an oyster. It's like one giant candy store where you never run out of new types of candy to taste. Although I have a lot of formal education, the travels that I have done in my life and still do have educated me in a way that college could never do. We live on a little ball suspended in space. This little ball is so different depending upon the location. Different people, different languages, different food, different culture, different architecture and different histories. I guess some of us are born with a driving innate curiosity about this little globe and it's surface contents. I was fortunate to have been born with this drive and can say I'm a better person for it. It teaches one tolerance and understanding of your fellow globe occupant. Provincial, I'm not.
Mark Twain said it best when he wrote, "It liberates the dullard to travel--you never saw a bigoted, opinionated, stubborn,masterminded, self-conceited, almighty mean man in your life but he had stuck in one place since he was born and thought God made the world and dyspepsia and bile for his especial comfort and satisfaction. Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad,wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime."
3. Religions-----I've never understood religious people. I have never been religious since a little boy and frankly, I've never believed in some invisible guy in the sky that could intervene in my life. I realize that the culture one is born in is the big determinant of how one thinks. But, I never understood how rational thinking people could not overcome these superstitions. I'm not just talking about Christianity, but all religions contemporary or in the past. We live in modern times where carbon dating is done and archeologists continue to make discoveries about our ancestors. Modern genetic studies reflects a continuous genetic map of how we crawled out of the African region. How can a rational person believe that some God blew into a piece of dirt and made man and then yanked a rib from him and made women. PS We still have the same number of ribs on either side. Have can you read the Bible and not understand that these were the writings of ancient Arab scribes who had no concept of modernity as we do? Can't people accept the fact that no one knows why or how life forms are on this planet without making up fantasy reasons?
It's not hard to say these few words of "I don't know." What is the need for having a make believe "Father?" We all had real fathers and that's enough.
4. Forgiveness---I've never understood people who don't forgive others for perceived slights. I've had close friends who have stabbed me in the back in business and otherwise. I've forgiven them. Many, I still maintain a friendship with. At least the ones still alive. At my age, many have passed on. I try not to
hold grudges as I'm more the victim than they are. I admit it is hard to forgive, but realized in later life that I was doing more damage to myself by holding onto those feelings. I learned to let 'em go.
5. People who get personal and mad when discussing a subject----This, I've never understood. I can sit and argue and discuss my position from daylight to dark and will never get personal with the one I'm in disagreement with. I don't dislike a person who doesn't agree with me on politics or any other subject. I dislike them when they get personal and mad. There are some people I have disagreed with strongly in my life yet we've remained friends. I treasure them. They will stick to the subject and we can but heads all night over drinks and neither of us will get mad. Those people are few and far between that can discuss on an academic level in a civil
manner. They don't say "aww shit. You don't know what you're talking about." They say this because they don't have the experience or intellectual level to give any other reply. I try to avoid them in my old age as much as possible, but since I'm a highly social person and go enjoy the social life in bistros, I have run into them occasionally. It also depends upon the level of education of the bar patrons. I almost never run across those types of people in Jinja where I go 2 or 3 times a week here in Albuquerque. I've enjoyed tremendous mind soaring conversations and have learned much. Also tremendous discussions where we disagree and don't get personal and are still friends. It's a rare bistro for sure.
6. People with a lack of curiosity about things-----To me everything is a subject of inquiry and observation. You may think I'm crazy when I've posted picture and video of the huge ant pile next to my Albuquerque place. These are very large black ants a half inch long that do not bite. I can observe them for an hour at a time. I learned that they will carry one who has died to the same burial location some 15 feet away.
I've watched them cooperate in the moving of a fairly large rock. I normally feed them once a day with some piece of fruit and watch them gratefully eat it. They crawl on my shoes and ankles and I gingerly pick them off. Believe me, they are intelligent. It's just we cannot communicate with them. I can stare at the hummingbird's behavior for hours at a time on my balcony. The different species have predictable diferent behaviour. I've driven people all over the Western states in my car showing them highlights of areas. I've noticed that many of the people don't hardly ever look out the window , but instead stare straight ahead as if fixated on the road. They don't observe anything and after the trip cannot describe what they have seen. One time I drove a very close friend of mine to Brownsville, Tx Louisiana and we were returning when I inadvertently went to the right on Hwy 77 where there is a Y intersection about 8 miles from downtown Corpus Christi, Tx. I had gone about four miles when I realized my mistake and said to my friend, what the hell, you've never seen Corpus and the ocean front let's just go and I'll show it to you. His reply---"Shit, you see one city, you've seen them all." I said OK and wheeled the car around. What can you say to uncurious people like him? He also is the
type that stares straight ahead. I'm still vitally interested in people. They , to me, are the most interesting life forms on earth. I try to read them quickly and am fairly good at it due to being a lifelong salesman. I don't get fooled very much unless the persona has a latent mental or emotional illness which cause them to change in a millisecond. Believe me, there are a lot of them out there who seem normal. I have visited all of the many Indian ruins here in New Mexico. Many are way out of the way. I revisit many also and just sit on one of their stone structures
and imagine what kind of life went on in these ancient pueblos. I have read extensively on the Anasazi Indians which is the generic term for all the ancient Indians that inhabited the area of New Mexico, Eastern Arizona and Southern Colorado. They are the ones that were not nomadic like the plains Indians and built many cities and cave dwelling. Some of their Pueblos had as many as 3,000 rooms and up to four stories in height. I'm curious about any and everthing.
7. People who do not read and learn thoughout life---This has always been a puzzle to me. I suppose it goes to what I've written above. Lack of curiosity of how man has arrived to the point of where he is today. I read voraciously out of a desire to learn about any and everything. No, I don't read fiction. I read to learn about medicine, physics, science, sociology, history, politics, traveling, finances, etc. I want to know about what smarter people than I know so I can be a little smarter. Education and learning is a lifelong process. It doesn't stop in high school or the university where you get a smattering of knowledge. No, it is a continual process until you die. Most people come to an abrupt halt in leaning after their formal education.
Let's say you have a degree in engineering or geology. Well, you might know about those subjects, yet have almost no knowledge outside your baliwick. This is the rule
rather than the exception. In order to fill in your knowledge, then you must read and read about other areas of knowledge to make yourself a whole being. Then, I've known people who graduated from college, but the college did not go through them. They just about forgot every thing they were supposed to have learned the day after
graduation. There are many of those walking about also. Then, I've known individuals who dropped out of high school,say in the 10 grade, who have self educated themselves with more reasoning powers and knowledge than some PHDs.I'm enthralled with these types of people. Yes, learning is a life long endeavor.
8. People who do not like to be out in nature--I can't figure this one out either. I love to be out in the deep woods, mountains and desert. I hike and mountain bike almost daily when I'm in Albuquerque. I seldom see people up on the trails overlooking the metro area of Albuquerque which is a million people. I see deer, elk, snakes, Bob White quail, coyotes and all sorts of other animals and birds up in these mountain trails. I sit and wonder as I look down upon the city and why aren't there more people up here enjoying the natural beauty. Beats the hell out of me.
9. People who do not like boating. ----I've always had some sort of boat from a young kid at 10yrs. old when I had a 14ft. Thompson wood boat and a 5hp Royal outboard. I've had all sorts of boats since then. I had a Rhodes 19 sailboatin New Orleans which I sailed on Lake Ponchartrain as a single man. I had a 17ft Starcraft with a 90hp Evinrude in New Orleans after I married. When I moved to Brownsville, Tx, I immediately bought a used 23ft open console powered by an inline 6 cyl.Volvo engine and outdrive. I would take this craft out as far as 50 miles into gulf by myself and troll. Later on, I sold it and bought a 35ft. Pearson sailboat and sailed it many years. In Florida, I've had many boats culminating with my 35 Chaparral. I've always loved to be out on the water. It's a great escape from the maddening crowd. I don't understand people who do not love the water and the ocean. I can sit on my dock and just stare at the water. I do this often just before sundown. Something in my genes I suppose.
10. People who do not dance or sing.----Thankfully I'm married to a lady who would rather dance than go out and buy a bunch of bric a brac crap and who doesn't care for malls. We love to dance and have done it all over the world and will continue to do it until we are physically unable if that ever occurrs. Dancing is therapy. It puts your brain into a zone where the constant chattering of one's mind completely stops. It has the added benefit of exercise. As to singing, I love it even though my singing voice has really deteriorated badly. I don't care. I do it for me as some sorta therapy which I don't understand. I know that most people are self concious about singing and dancing. I don't understand that though. Who cares how you sing or dance? You do if for yourself as a therapeutic stress reliever. It works for us.
"To write is to think, and to write well is to think well," David McCullough
Bob White
remove the saddle and bridle and store them then you have to curry the horse down and feed it. It's a damn chore. With a motorcycle , I just park it and forget it. Also, if Carmen and I had to ride one horse to Alaska like we did my Harley, we would still be riding and probably would have gone through 3 or 4 horses. Believe me. There's nothing more fun than being on an open back road through mountains
on a motorcycle.
2. People who do not like to travel----To me the world has always been an oyster. It's like one giant candy store where you never run out of new types of candy to taste. Although I have a lot of formal education, the travels that I have done in my life and still do have educated me in a way that college could never do. We live on a little ball suspended in space. This little ball is so different depending upon the location. Different people, different languages, different food, different culture, different architecture and different histories. I guess some of us are born with a driving innate curiosity about this little globe and it's surface contents. I was fortunate to have been born with this drive and can say I'm a better person for it. It teaches one tolerance and understanding of your fellow globe occupant. Provincial, I'm not.
Mark Twain said it best when he wrote, "It liberates the dullard to travel--you never saw a bigoted, opinionated, stubborn,masterminded, self-conceited, almighty mean man in your life but he had stuck in one place since he was born and thought God made the world and dyspepsia and bile for his especial comfort and satisfaction. Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad,wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime."
3. Religions-----I've never understood religious people. I have never been religious since a little boy and frankly, I've never believed in some invisible guy in the sky that could intervene in my life. I realize that the culture one is born in is the big determinant of how one thinks. But, I never understood how rational thinking people could not overcome these superstitions. I'm not just talking about Christianity, but all religions contemporary or in the past. We live in modern times where carbon dating is done and archeologists continue to make discoveries about our ancestors. Modern genetic studies reflects a continuous genetic map of how we crawled out of the African region. How can a rational person believe that some God blew into a piece of dirt and made man and then yanked a rib from him and made women. PS We still have the same number of ribs on either side. Have can you read the Bible and not understand that these were the writings of ancient Arab scribes who had no concept of modernity as we do? Can't people accept the fact that no one knows why or how life forms are on this planet without making up fantasy reasons?
It's not hard to say these few words of "I don't know." What is the need for having a make believe "Father?" We all had real fathers and that's enough.
4. Forgiveness---I've never understood people who don't forgive others for perceived slights. I've had close friends who have stabbed me in the back in business and otherwise. I've forgiven them. Many, I still maintain a friendship with. At least the ones still alive. At my age, many have passed on. I try not to
hold grudges as I'm more the victim than they are. I admit it is hard to forgive, but realized in later life that I was doing more damage to myself by holding onto those feelings. I learned to let 'em go.
5. People who get personal and mad when discussing a subject----This, I've never understood. I can sit and argue and discuss my position from daylight to dark and will never get personal with the one I'm in disagreement with. I don't dislike a person who doesn't agree with me on politics or any other subject. I dislike them when they get personal and mad. There are some people I have disagreed with strongly in my life yet we've remained friends. I treasure them. They will stick to the subject and we can but heads all night over drinks and neither of us will get mad. Those people are few and far between that can discuss on an academic level in a civil
manner. They don't say "aww shit. You don't know what you're talking about." They say this because they don't have the experience or intellectual level to give any other reply. I try to avoid them in my old age as much as possible, but since I'm a highly social person and go enjoy the social life in bistros, I have run into them occasionally. It also depends upon the level of education of the bar patrons. I almost never run across those types of people in Jinja where I go 2 or 3 times a week here in Albuquerque. I've enjoyed tremendous mind soaring conversations and have learned much. Also tremendous discussions where we disagree and don't get personal and are still friends. It's a rare bistro for sure.
6. People with a lack of curiosity about things-----To me everything is a subject of inquiry and observation. You may think I'm crazy when I've posted picture and video of the huge ant pile next to my Albuquerque place. These are very large black ants a half inch long that do not bite. I can observe them for an hour at a time. I learned that they will carry one who has died to the same burial location some 15 feet away.
I've watched them cooperate in the moving of a fairly large rock. I normally feed them once a day with some piece of fruit and watch them gratefully eat it. They crawl on my shoes and ankles and I gingerly pick them off. Believe me, they are intelligent. It's just we cannot communicate with them. I can stare at the hummingbird's behavior for hours at a time on my balcony. The different species have predictable diferent behaviour. I've driven people all over the Western states in my car showing them highlights of areas. I've noticed that many of the people don't hardly ever look out the window , but instead stare straight ahead as if fixated on the road. They don't observe anything and after the trip cannot describe what they have seen. One time I drove a very close friend of mine to Brownsville, Tx Louisiana and we were returning when I inadvertently went to the right on Hwy 77 where there is a Y intersection about 8 miles from downtown Corpus Christi, Tx. I had gone about four miles when I realized my mistake and said to my friend, what the hell, you've never seen Corpus and the ocean front let's just go and I'll show it to you. His reply---"Shit, you see one city, you've seen them all." I said OK and wheeled the car around. What can you say to uncurious people like him? He also is the
type that stares straight ahead. I'm still vitally interested in people. They , to me, are the most interesting life forms on earth. I try to read them quickly and am fairly good at it due to being a lifelong salesman. I don't get fooled very much unless the persona has a latent mental or emotional illness which cause them to change in a millisecond. Believe me, there are a lot of them out there who seem normal. I have visited all of the many Indian ruins here in New Mexico. Many are way out of the way. I revisit many also and just sit on one of their stone structures
and imagine what kind of life went on in these ancient pueblos. I have read extensively on the Anasazi Indians which is the generic term for all the ancient Indians that inhabited the area of New Mexico, Eastern Arizona and Southern Colorado. They are the ones that were not nomadic like the plains Indians and built many cities and cave dwelling. Some of their Pueblos had as many as 3,000 rooms and up to four stories in height. I'm curious about any and everthing.
7. People who do not read and learn thoughout life---This has always been a puzzle to me. I suppose it goes to what I've written above. Lack of curiosity of how man has arrived to the point of where he is today. I read voraciously out of a desire to learn about any and everything. No, I don't read fiction. I read to learn about medicine, physics, science, sociology, history, politics, traveling, finances, etc. I want to know about what smarter people than I know so I can be a little smarter. Education and learning is a lifelong process. It doesn't stop in high school or the university where you get a smattering of knowledge. No, it is a continual process until you die. Most people come to an abrupt halt in leaning after their formal education.
Let's say you have a degree in engineering or geology. Well, you might know about those subjects, yet have almost no knowledge outside your baliwick. This is the rule
rather than the exception. In order to fill in your knowledge, then you must read and read about other areas of knowledge to make yourself a whole being. Then, I've known people who graduated from college, but the college did not go through them. They just about forgot every thing they were supposed to have learned the day after
graduation. There are many of those walking about also. Then, I've known individuals who dropped out of high school,say in the 10 grade, who have self educated themselves with more reasoning powers and knowledge than some PHDs.I'm enthralled with these types of people. Yes, learning is a life long endeavor.
8. People who do not like to be out in nature--I can't figure this one out either. I love to be out in the deep woods, mountains and desert. I hike and mountain bike almost daily when I'm in Albuquerque. I seldom see people up on the trails overlooking the metro area of Albuquerque which is a million people. I see deer, elk, snakes, Bob White quail, coyotes and all sorts of other animals and birds up in these mountain trails. I sit and wonder as I look down upon the city and why aren't there more people up here enjoying the natural beauty. Beats the hell out of me.
9. People who do not like boating. ----I've always had some sort of boat from a young kid at 10yrs. old when I had a 14ft. Thompson wood boat and a 5hp Royal outboard. I've had all sorts of boats since then. I had a Rhodes 19 sailboatin New Orleans which I sailed on Lake Ponchartrain as a single man. I had a 17ft Starcraft with a 90hp Evinrude in New Orleans after I married. When I moved to Brownsville, Tx, I immediately bought a used 23ft open console powered by an inline 6 cyl.Volvo engine and outdrive. I would take this craft out as far as 50 miles into gulf by myself and troll. Later on, I sold it and bought a 35ft. Pearson sailboat and sailed it many years. In Florida, I've had many boats culminating with my 35 Chaparral. I've always loved to be out on the water. It's a great escape from the maddening crowd. I don't understand people who do not love the water and the ocean. I can sit on my dock and just stare at the water. I do this often just before sundown. Something in my genes I suppose.
10. People who do not dance or sing.----Thankfully I'm married to a lady who would rather dance than go out and buy a bunch of bric a brac crap and who doesn't care for malls. We love to dance and have done it all over the world and will continue to do it until we are physically unable if that ever occurrs. Dancing is therapy. It puts your brain into a zone where the constant chattering of one's mind completely stops. It has the added benefit of exercise. As to singing, I love it even though my singing voice has really deteriorated badly. I don't care. I do it for me as some sorta therapy which I don't understand. I know that most people are self concious about singing and dancing. I don't understand that though. Who cares how you sing or dance? You do if for yourself as a therapeutic stress reliever. It works for us.
"To write is to think, and to write well is to think well," David McCullough
Bob White
People Don't Like Facts
Funny thing! I still believed in the naive presumption that people still could be swayed by facts.
That is until the last 10 years or so.
I remember when facts settled arguments, but that was before any discussion descended down to a shouting match and back before everything was so partisan, back before it was permissible to simply dismiss any facts that didn't bolster your view.
It use to be if we had an argument and either one of us produced authoritive facts, then either on of us could be persuaded to accept those facts. We might produce different facts in countering the other's facts, but we didn't just dismiss those facts out of hand and pretend these facts didn't exist.
I've had a couple of long time friends who broke friendship with me as they did not like to hear facts as it was irritating to them as these facts went against their world view of how they perceived the world. Facts had nothing to do with their view.
But, that's what has happened in America today. Whether it's the moon landing, death panels or whether Obama was born in Hawaii.
Facts don't mean diddly squat in modern America.
If you listen to talk radio or the motor mouths on the cable news networks or even read the letter to the editor section of your daily newspaper, you can hear and see the most outlandish un factual diatribes found anywhere in the world. Yeah, and they
do it with a straight face full well knowing that the typical American has completely lost the critical thinking skills to discern truth from fiction.
The myriad Internet emails that are received and passed along knocking a particular politician are designed by very smart people who have an agenda and they know that the typical person will pass these vicious attack emails without bothering
to check the facts. Yeah, we as a people are alienated from objective truth and divorced from logic. No one bothers to fact check these emails though Snopes.com, Truth or fiction.com or Urbanlegends.about.com.
We simply will not sift out facts that does not validate what we wish to believe or hear no voices that do not echo ourselves.
But, objective reality does not change because a person refuses to accept it. The fact that you refuse to believe there is tiger does not change the fact that there is a tiger and you shouldn't have to find out by being eaten.
Yep, we've come a long way from that old TV detective series in the fifties where Sgt. Friday would say "just the facts mam."
Bob
That is until the last 10 years or so.
I remember when facts settled arguments, but that was before any discussion descended down to a shouting match and back before everything was so partisan, back before it was permissible to simply dismiss any facts that didn't bolster your view.
It use to be if we had an argument and either one of us produced authoritive facts, then either on of us could be persuaded to accept those facts. We might produce different facts in countering the other's facts, but we didn't just dismiss those facts out of hand and pretend these facts didn't exist.
I've had a couple of long time friends who broke friendship with me as they did not like to hear facts as it was irritating to them as these facts went against their world view of how they perceived the world. Facts had nothing to do with their view.
But, that's what has happened in America today. Whether it's the moon landing, death panels or whether Obama was born in Hawaii.
Facts don't mean diddly squat in modern America.
If you listen to talk radio or the motor mouths on the cable news networks or even read the letter to the editor section of your daily newspaper, you can hear and see the most outlandish un factual diatribes found anywhere in the world. Yeah, and they
do it with a straight face full well knowing that the typical American has completely lost the critical thinking skills to discern truth from fiction.
The myriad Internet emails that are received and passed along knocking a particular politician are designed by very smart people who have an agenda and they know that the typical person will pass these vicious attack emails without bothering
to check the facts. Yeah, we as a people are alienated from objective truth and divorced from logic. No one bothers to fact check these emails though Snopes.com, Truth or fiction.com or Urbanlegends.about.com.
We simply will not sift out facts that does not validate what we wish to believe or hear no voices that do not echo ourselves.
But, objective reality does not change because a person refuses to accept it. The fact that you refuse to believe there is tiger does not change the fact that there is a tiger and you shouldn't have to find out by being eaten.
Yep, we've come a long way from that old TV detective series in the fifties where Sgt. Friday would say "just the facts mam."
Bob
The Renaissance Man.
How does a man become a Renaissance Man and what is a Renaissance Man?
The definition I like from the dictionary is a "Modern learner who is always attempting to acquire more than superficial knowledge about many different interests."
Most men are well trained in their particular avocation. After all, this is how they earn the income to support themselves and their families. They
have little time to pursue other areas of knowledge. The interesting thing about educating yourself beyond the area of supporting yourself is that
the more educated you become about many different areas of knowledge, the more you want to learn. It's like good wine, you want more.
Once a man is relieved of the shoulder harness and walking the same daily path and pulling the same load, a man is free to get off that rutted trail
and explore other trails of knowledge. When we are young, we had the opportunity to do so and now that we're retired we have that opportunity.
For instance, when I was young I read incessantly about any and everything. My parents had bought a set of Compton encyclopedias from a door to
door salesman. In all fairness, the set is about half the number of books in a set today. I would read each book many times over from cover to cover.
I did this between 9 and 12 years old. By doing that, it gave me knowledge that there was a heluva lot more to learn than what they taught you in school.
Also, as a young kid, I learned I could change the points and condensor on my various motor bikes and later on, on my cars. I could change a flat tire on a car or motor bike.I learned to replace the shear pin on my outboard motor. I learned to adjust the solid valve push rods on my 6 cylinder volvo boat engine.
In high school, my spyder gear in the rear end went out due to my popping the clutch on my 51 Ford. I took it out and went to a junk yard and got another
one and spent nearly all day replacing it.
I had a 3 speed transmission on my Harley 45 cubic inch motorcycle. I changed the left foot operated clutch to a suicide clutch by cutting off the lower part and the spring that would hold the clutch engaged. So, in order to stop, I would press the clutch lever down and have to hold it down till I was ready to start moving. I could only stop with my right leg holding the bike up. Unfortunately, I trashed a lot of transmission as when I would shift with my left hand on the shift knob mounted on the left sided of my gas tank, the clutch lever would engage very abrubtly.
I paid for the first transmission rebuild and watched over the mechanics shoulder to show me how. I rebuilt it three times after that.
I have always changed the engine oil and filter on every car I owned until the quick oil change places came out. I got lazy then. But, I do change the oil on my two boat engines as well as the oil on the two outdrives.
The point I'm making is that I was not a trained professional mechanic, but I was willing to learn how to do some mechanical jobs as accomplishing then
was fun and rewarding and leaves you with a sense of accomplishment. I change all the water pump impellers on my boat. When I first did it, it was a knuckle
busting slow process. I've done it so many times now, it's a breeze. I replaced the carburator on the Kohler generator set on my boat after screwing up the old
carburator trying all sorts of things to get it started.
Yes, I will admit I've fixed things until I've broken them. But, I did put the effort in and won't make the same mistake twice.
I'm no electrician. But, I've changed light fixtures, put up many ceiling fans, changed light switches. Well, the electrical panel was dated in our Albuquerque
home and a leak in the garage roof had allowed water to enter the panel. It was badly rusted and the several of the breaker fuses were bad. I could find
no replacements for these fuses as no one made them anymore. I decided to replace the whole damn panel. I dove into it and managed to do it in one full
day last June. I always had it in the back of my head that If I ran into a problem I couldn't solve, I could stop and always call an electrician.
I'm no plumber, but I've replaced bath and kitchen water faucets. Really pretty simple these days with flexible screw on lines. I've replaced a dishwasher here
in my Albuquerque place as well as a garbage disposal. Pretty simple and straight forward. I've replaced many toilets in my various homes over the years.
The hot water heater went out in my Albuquerque home. I went down and picked on up from Lowes and brought it back and Carmen and I replaced it.The only hard part was the soldering which took me a while to get the hang of.
I'm not a tile professional, but I've set 4 inch by 4 inch tiles around every door, window and opening in my Florida home. It took me about a week. I got the
idea from a home I'd seen in California. I've laid saltillo tile and laid broken tiles in a home we had in Louisiana.
I'm not a bricklayer, but have done a lot of repair jobs over the years. The latest were the bricks had all come lose from two large planters by my dock.
It took me a few hours to replace the bad bricks and to straighten the walls etc. I built a brick barbecue pit in a Louisiana home and Carmen and I both
laid a brick patio in the back of the home and erected a 6ft. fence around it.
I'm no professional house painter, but Carmen and I have repainted the exterior of our Florida home twice. I use the roller and she uses the brush for the small
places. Carmen and I put up crown moulding in all our rooms in Florida last year.
The point is, I was never trained in any of these endeavors , but felt that if somebody else can do it, I'll give it a try even if I fail.
Retired as I am, there is no reason why I can't continue to learn about new things.
One damn thing I will never ever do again is fixing a flat. I worked in my uncle's service station one summer when I was 16. I learned to break the tire from
the wheel and repair it. That was hard and it was before the mechanical ones the shops have today. Getting the tire on and off the wheel was not a job
for sissies and especially so for a larger truck tire. I know my right arm doubled in size from swinging the large hammer hitting the crowbar like device.
I'm not a professional welder, but learned to use a gas welder using a wire hanger rod for the weld. I did brazing as a teen ager on a couple of my motor cycles.
we had an ornamental metal door consisting of artistic rods in our house in Texas. They were rusting and falling apart. I went out and bought an Oxi-Accetylene
welding set with the tank. I spent several afternoons replacing the rods and welding them into place. It was fun.
I'm not a professional fiberglass guy. Yet, I took out the fiberglassed wooden floor from my 23ft. console fishing boat in Texas. I cut and replaced all the flooring
on it and fiberglassed the top with 3 layers of fiberglass cloth. My Albuquerque upstairs balcony has a four foot wall around it with a 1 1/2 inch thick board by
12 inches wide that sit on top and runs 18 feet. The wood was become soft and rotted and there were places you could put knife into it and the rotten wood would
leave a hole. I thought about replacing that large board, but then I decided to fiberglass over it. I first slathered on fiberglass resin and let it sink into the rotten wood.I kept giving it a coat every hour until it was a smooth surface. I then put on two layers of fiberglass cloth and resin. It came out beautiful.
It's kinda fun learning new skills.
I decided to finish out my Junior and Senior university years by hopping in my 55 Ford and driving to Mexico City by myself and enrolling in Mexico City College.
I'm still in awe that my parents permitted this. I didn't speak a word of Spanish. Anyway, I graduated with a BA in Foreign trade and later got a Master's in Economic there.
Mexico City College was an affiliate of the Ivy League Brown University and many of my College mates were from dynastic and famous families from both the US and Mexico.
I had to learn to fit in really quick and lose my redneck yahoo persona. People like Phil Grace of the Grace Shipping lines, Bill Andrews whose father invented the process of imprinting on cans, George Sikorsky of the Helicopter company, Mike Bermudez whose dad was the head of the Organization of the American States(OAS) plus many more. The student body was so radically different than LSU and Northwestern State back in Louisiana, that I thought I had landed on an alien planet. Many of the students were from California and the North East. I had never been around people like that before.
Quite a few were younger CIA people who were sent there to give them an international perspective and to learn Spanish to later be placed somewhere in Latin America I stayed in a boarding house the first semester where there were two to a room and my roomate there was Thomas Tuling who was in the CIA and later became a pretty high figure in the agency and who later in my life proved to be a way for me to make some extra cash money which I won't go reveal.
Anyway, by going off to this college, I matured super fast and was introduced into another world and a way of being ,which I otherwise, would not have been if I would have finished my education in Louisiana. Learning Spanish fluently has added to the richness of my life in moving between the two cultures and enjoying the music, literature and the diversity of the Hispanic people consisting of 600 million people below our southern border.
It has been fun learning from traveling all over the world and meeting and conversing will all types of people. Actually walking over the islands in the S. Pacific where blood drained into the ocean from both the Japanese and Americans. One day I walked into the jungle in Saipan on a trail and set down on a fallen log. My imagination took off. I could smell the gun powder and blood and see bodies falling everywhere. I scuba dived in Truk and saw Japanese zeros resting on the bottom of the Truk lagoon with pilots still in their harness and flying gear. That was really spooky and still think about it often. I walked across the runway on Tinian Island where the Enola Gay took off with the atomic bomb. I've seen our landing craft rusting in 4 feet of water. I've seen the shells of our rusting tanks all over the S. Pacific islands. I climbed the mountains in Truk and saw Japanese gun emplacements. It looked like the Japs walked away from them the day before. I went on this odyssey in 1983 by myself for one month.
I've traveled to many places in the Orient. Drank a river in the Phillipines, Singapore and Hong Cong. Played blackjack in Macau, Monaco, France, Italy and England. Visited the New Territories in China.
I've been all over Europe visiting WW2 sites and Roman ruins. For me Spain is the most interesting due to the history of the Arabic interface with Europe where the
Muslims and Jews lived side by side in the most educated place in the world at that time. It was like Methodists and Presbyterians living side by side. Southern Spain had the highest standard of living in the world at that time until the Christian Crusaders under orders from Pope Urban came down and slaughtered them and started the Inquisition. The Arab mosques and Jewish temples are a sight to see in Spain. Magnificent architecture. There are a lot of Roman ruins in Spain also.
It has been fun learning to fly, riding a motorcycle all over the US, Canada and Alaska. I had three very close calls flying. I was flying around Lake Ponchartrain with Carmen in the right seat when she suddenly felt hot oil on her leg. Well an oil leak had occurred and I wheeled around and made it back to Lake front Airport in New Orleans before the engine siezed up.
Another time, a friend and I were flying his old C model Beechcraft back from Acapulco, we decided to land in Ciudad Victoria instead of Tampico to refill.
Ciudad Victoria is a little further. We had head winds and with the cheap Mexican fuel we flew on fumes with both guages reading empty for 10 minutes. We leaned the engines and slowly lost altitude. There was no way to set the plane down in these rugged mountains. We made it to the runway and as soon as we touched down the engines quit. We were shaking with fear for a half hour after that. What is strange is that not a single word was spoken between us for 15 minutes before we landed. We knew our situation and we thought we were going to die.
The 3rd time was we flew to Grande Isle from New Orleans to go scuba diving on the offshore rigs. We had four scuba tanks, weight belts, spear guns, etc in the back seat. It was an old under powered Cessna 170 A model tail dragger. After we dived we returned to the plane late afternoon. It was a dirt runway which was muddy and a short runway. There was a power line not to far from the end of the runway. It's was his plane and I was riding shotgun. I advised him to make a short field takeoff. ie give it 10 % flaps and power the engine up to redline while holding the brakes then letting it go. No he said, there's no need to. So off we went with no flaps. Well, the muddy runway has a lot of friction with the tires grooving in the mush. When we broke from the ground I readily calculated there was no way we were going to make it over that power line. I screamed at Jim and told him we can't make it. Well the dumb SOB said we could and kept going. At the last few seconds, I wasn't about to die with this guy who only had one eye and lacked depth perception. I yelled take your hands off your wheel and shoved my wheel in and nosed down and we went under the power line. I told him if I had not been a pilot you would have killed yourself and your passenger. Jim Arnsten was his name and he's passed on. He never had a pilot's license in his life as he couldn't pass a physical with just one eye. He flew for years in his old beat up plane. The moral to this story is never fly with an unlicensed one eyed pilot in an underpowered plane with a lot of weight in it and
taking off on a muddy dirt runway.
So I suppose I can be called a Renaissance man having done all kinds of repairs to broken things as well as making things better with my hands and reading and being curious about all things and having had the learning experiences of exploring this little globe with all it's differences. Plus exercising my rights and freedoms to run and get elected to public office when I disagreed with their politics. All citizens should have that experience in our democratic republic.
I continue to read and learn about any and all things as well as travel. I continue to be a bistro raconteur meeting and talking with people. It is amazing what you can
learn from people smarter than you in their field.
Just in the Jinja bar over the years, I've learned about laser weaponry, the development of drones for warfare which were developed here in Sandia Labs. I've learned about what goes into the building of a small jet plane called the Eclipse which is built in Albuqerque. I've learned about how Bill Gates was when the Physician owner of Microsoft here in Albuquerque hired him to be a salesman for Microsoft. (Contrary to belief, Bill Gates did not start Microsoft). I talked with one of Microsoft's first employees who wrote code with the Physician and Paul Allen.
I've learned a lot from physicians who frequent the Jinja bar. I've learned about the New Mexico geology from a couple of geologists who come in there. Just the other night I was talking with two high school head football coaches who told me that the damn players don't give a damn anymore about discipline and they talk back at you and being a high school coach is a thankless job and not as rewarding as it was just 20 years ago. In just 20 short years the youth culture has changed.
In Jinja, I have discussed Federal taxation with both a CPA and two IRS agents. I've always done my own taxes since I can remember. I have never ever paid for someone
to do my taxes as I know more about my tax status than any other person. I did my Schedule C business taxes the whole time I was in business and my personal taxes when I was an employee. There are certain things a third party tax prepayer might not be willing to do. I've always taken the very aggressive approach figuring I would just pay up if I was audited which I was only one time and had to come up with a few hundred dollars re writing off my automobile. They only got me for one year and I had done it for years and continued to do it after I was audited and never was audited again. ie write off 90% use of my car as a business deduction.
One of the best tax avoidence methods is to own a foreign business. I owned a small restaurant in San Jose, Costa Rica from 1987 to 1992. Naturally, it never made a profit. I wrote off all my airline tickets due to being there 10 days out of every month for five years. I wrote off my apartment rent there as well as other sundry items. I would do a separate Schedule C for the restaurant business and my insurance business and attach the two Schedule Cs to my 1040. The restaurant Schedule C always had a net loss and this would be deducted from my insurance business Schedule C. A heck of a good legal tax shelter. I was never audited by the IRS on this.
As for writing my thoughts down, I've probably improved over the years. Back in 1994, I came in second in the Texas Wide Writer's Contest under the category of Satire and Parody. I sent in two satires on the mythical Texas cowboy. I've written quite a few satires over the years , but never submitted any more to a writer's contest. I've written pages and pages of poetry, most of which I lost due to a computer hard drive crash some years ago. I now back up everything.
I've found that writing is a great mental exercise in that a person has to focus his thoughts and recollections in an organized manner. It requires a disciplined approach. My style of writing is straight forward without a lot of flowery excess words. I try to put myself in the reader's position when I write. I don't like to read anything with a lot of verbose unnecessary verbiage where the writer seems to want to make you read forever before they get to the point.
As to the point of what I've written above, it's about attempting to be a "Man for All Seasons." A renaissance man. A man who is well traveled, knows a lot about a lot, but not in great depth, but more than superficial and who has a lot of curiosity about all things under the sun and who has an insatiable desire to continue learning from books, internet, other people and travel.
And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count - it's the life in your years.
I'm thankful that I have stuffed a lot of life's content into my years and will continue to do so.
Bob
The definition I like from the dictionary is a "Modern learner who is always attempting to acquire more than superficial knowledge about many different interests."
Most men are well trained in their particular avocation. After all, this is how they earn the income to support themselves and their families. They
have little time to pursue other areas of knowledge. The interesting thing about educating yourself beyond the area of supporting yourself is that
the more educated you become about many different areas of knowledge, the more you want to learn. It's like good wine, you want more.
Once a man is relieved of the shoulder harness and walking the same daily path and pulling the same load, a man is free to get off that rutted trail
and explore other trails of knowledge. When we are young, we had the opportunity to do so and now that we're retired we have that opportunity.
For instance, when I was young I read incessantly about any and everything. My parents had bought a set of Compton encyclopedias from a door to
door salesman. In all fairness, the set is about half the number of books in a set today. I would read each book many times over from cover to cover.
I did this between 9 and 12 years old. By doing that, it gave me knowledge that there was a heluva lot more to learn than what they taught you in school.
Also, as a young kid, I learned I could change the points and condensor on my various motor bikes and later on, on my cars. I could change a flat tire on a car or motor bike.I learned to replace the shear pin on my outboard motor. I learned to adjust the solid valve push rods on my 6 cylinder volvo boat engine.
In high school, my spyder gear in the rear end went out due to my popping the clutch on my 51 Ford. I took it out and went to a junk yard and got another
one and spent nearly all day replacing it.
I had a 3 speed transmission on my Harley 45 cubic inch motorcycle. I changed the left foot operated clutch to a suicide clutch by cutting off the lower part and the spring that would hold the clutch engaged. So, in order to stop, I would press the clutch lever down and have to hold it down till I was ready to start moving. I could only stop with my right leg holding the bike up. Unfortunately, I trashed a lot of transmission as when I would shift with my left hand on the shift knob mounted on the left sided of my gas tank, the clutch lever would engage very abrubtly.
I paid for the first transmission rebuild and watched over the mechanics shoulder to show me how. I rebuilt it three times after that.
I have always changed the engine oil and filter on every car I owned until the quick oil change places came out. I got lazy then. But, I do change the oil on my two boat engines as well as the oil on the two outdrives.
The point I'm making is that I was not a trained professional mechanic, but I was willing to learn how to do some mechanical jobs as accomplishing then
was fun and rewarding and leaves you with a sense of accomplishment. I change all the water pump impellers on my boat. When I first did it, it was a knuckle
busting slow process. I've done it so many times now, it's a breeze. I replaced the carburator on the Kohler generator set on my boat after screwing up the old
carburator trying all sorts of things to get it started.
Yes, I will admit I've fixed things until I've broken them. But, I did put the effort in and won't make the same mistake twice.
I'm no electrician. But, I've changed light fixtures, put up many ceiling fans, changed light switches. Well, the electrical panel was dated in our Albuquerque
home and a leak in the garage roof had allowed water to enter the panel. It was badly rusted and the several of the breaker fuses were bad. I could find
no replacements for these fuses as no one made them anymore. I decided to replace the whole damn panel. I dove into it and managed to do it in one full
day last June. I always had it in the back of my head that If I ran into a problem I couldn't solve, I could stop and always call an electrician.
I'm no plumber, but I've replaced bath and kitchen water faucets. Really pretty simple these days with flexible screw on lines. I've replaced a dishwasher here
in my Albuquerque place as well as a garbage disposal. Pretty simple and straight forward. I've replaced many toilets in my various homes over the years.
The hot water heater went out in my Albuquerque home. I went down and picked on up from Lowes and brought it back and Carmen and I replaced it.The only hard part was the soldering which took me a while to get the hang of.
I'm not a tile professional, but I've set 4 inch by 4 inch tiles around every door, window and opening in my Florida home. It took me about a week. I got the
idea from a home I'd seen in California. I've laid saltillo tile and laid broken tiles in a home we had in Louisiana.
I'm not a bricklayer, but have done a lot of repair jobs over the years. The latest were the bricks had all come lose from two large planters by my dock.
It took me a few hours to replace the bad bricks and to straighten the walls etc. I built a brick barbecue pit in a Louisiana home and Carmen and I both
laid a brick patio in the back of the home and erected a 6ft. fence around it.
I'm no professional house painter, but Carmen and I have repainted the exterior of our Florida home twice. I use the roller and she uses the brush for the small
places. Carmen and I put up crown moulding in all our rooms in Florida last year.
The point is, I was never trained in any of these endeavors , but felt that if somebody else can do it, I'll give it a try even if I fail.
Retired as I am, there is no reason why I can't continue to learn about new things.
One damn thing I will never ever do again is fixing a flat. I worked in my uncle's service station one summer when I was 16. I learned to break the tire from
the wheel and repair it. That was hard and it was before the mechanical ones the shops have today. Getting the tire on and off the wheel was not a job
for sissies and especially so for a larger truck tire. I know my right arm doubled in size from swinging the large hammer hitting the crowbar like device.
I'm not a professional welder, but learned to use a gas welder using a wire hanger rod for the weld. I did brazing as a teen ager on a couple of my motor cycles.
we had an ornamental metal door consisting of artistic rods in our house in Texas. They were rusting and falling apart. I went out and bought an Oxi-Accetylene
welding set with the tank. I spent several afternoons replacing the rods and welding them into place. It was fun.
I'm not a professional fiberglass guy. Yet, I took out the fiberglassed wooden floor from my 23ft. console fishing boat in Texas. I cut and replaced all the flooring
on it and fiberglassed the top with 3 layers of fiberglass cloth. My Albuquerque upstairs balcony has a four foot wall around it with a 1 1/2 inch thick board by
12 inches wide that sit on top and runs 18 feet. The wood was become soft and rotted and there were places you could put knife into it and the rotten wood would
leave a hole. I thought about replacing that large board, but then I decided to fiberglass over it. I first slathered on fiberglass resin and let it sink into the rotten wood.I kept giving it a coat every hour until it was a smooth surface. I then put on two layers of fiberglass cloth and resin. It came out beautiful.
It's kinda fun learning new skills.
I decided to finish out my Junior and Senior university years by hopping in my 55 Ford and driving to Mexico City by myself and enrolling in Mexico City College.
I'm still in awe that my parents permitted this. I didn't speak a word of Spanish. Anyway, I graduated with a BA in Foreign trade and later got a Master's in Economic there.
Mexico City College was an affiliate of the Ivy League Brown University and many of my College mates were from dynastic and famous families from both the US and Mexico.
I had to learn to fit in really quick and lose my redneck yahoo persona. People like Phil Grace of the Grace Shipping lines, Bill Andrews whose father invented the process of imprinting on cans, George Sikorsky of the Helicopter company, Mike Bermudez whose dad was the head of the Organization of the American States(OAS) plus many more. The student body was so radically different than LSU and Northwestern State back in Louisiana, that I thought I had landed on an alien planet. Many of the students were from California and the North East. I had never been around people like that before.
Quite a few were younger CIA people who were sent there to give them an international perspective and to learn Spanish to later be placed somewhere in Latin America I stayed in a boarding house the first semester where there were two to a room and my roomate there was Thomas Tuling who was in the CIA and later became a pretty high figure in the agency and who later in my life proved to be a way for me to make some extra cash money which I won't go reveal.
Anyway, by going off to this college, I matured super fast and was introduced into another world and a way of being ,which I otherwise, would not have been if I would have finished my education in Louisiana. Learning Spanish fluently has added to the richness of my life in moving between the two cultures and enjoying the music, literature and the diversity of the Hispanic people consisting of 600 million people below our southern border.
It has been fun learning from traveling all over the world and meeting and conversing will all types of people. Actually walking over the islands in the S. Pacific where blood drained into the ocean from both the Japanese and Americans. One day I walked into the jungle in Saipan on a trail and set down on a fallen log. My imagination took off. I could smell the gun powder and blood and see bodies falling everywhere. I scuba dived in Truk and saw Japanese zeros resting on the bottom of the Truk lagoon with pilots still in their harness and flying gear. That was really spooky and still think about it often. I walked across the runway on Tinian Island where the Enola Gay took off with the atomic bomb. I've seen our landing craft rusting in 4 feet of water. I've seen the shells of our rusting tanks all over the S. Pacific islands. I climbed the mountains in Truk and saw Japanese gun emplacements. It looked like the Japs walked away from them the day before. I went on this odyssey in 1983 by myself for one month.
I've traveled to many places in the Orient. Drank a river in the Phillipines, Singapore and Hong Cong. Played blackjack in Macau, Monaco, France, Italy and England. Visited the New Territories in China.
I've been all over Europe visiting WW2 sites and Roman ruins. For me Spain is the most interesting due to the history of the Arabic interface with Europe where the
Muslims and Jews lived side by side in the most educated place in the world at that time. It was like Methodists and Presbyterians living side by side. Southern Spain had the highest standard of living in the world at that time until the Christian Crusaders under orders from Pope Urban came down and slaughtered them and started the Inquisition. The Arab mosques and Jewish temples are a sight to see in Spain. Magnificent architecture. There are a lot of Roman ruins in Spain also.
It has been fun learning to fly, riding a motorcycle all over the US, Canada and Alaska. I had three very close calls flying. I was flying around Lake Ponchartrain with Carmen in the right seat when she suddenly felt hot oil on her leg. Well an oil leak had occurred and I wheeled around and made it back to Lake front Airport in New Orleans before the engine siezed up.
Another time, a friend and I were flying his old C model Beechcraft back from Acapulco, we decided to land in Ciudad Victoria instead of Tampico to refill.
Ciudad Victoria is a little further. We had head winds and with the cheap Mexican fuel we flew on fumes with both guages reading empty for 10 minutes. We leaned the engines and slowly lost altitude. There was no way to set the plane down in these rugged mountains. We made it to the runway and as soon as we touched down the engines quit. We were shaking with fear for a half hour after that. What is strange is that not a single word was spoken between us for 15 minutes before we landed. We knew our situation and we thought we were going to die.
The 3rd time was we flew to Grande Isle from New Orleans to go scuba diving on the offshore rigs. We had four scuba tanks, weight belts, spear guns, etc in the back seat. It was an old under powered Cessna 170 A model tail dragger. After we dived we returned to the plane late afternoon. It was a dirt runway which was muddy and a short runway. There was a power line not to far from the end of the runway. It's was his plane and I was riding shotgun. I advised him to make a short field takeoff. ie give it 10 % flaps and power the engine up to redline while holding the brakes then letting it go. No he said, there's no need to. So off we went with no flaps. Well, the muddy runway has a lot of friction with the tires grooving in the mush. When we broke from the ground I readily calculated there was no way we were going to make it over that power line. I screamed at Jim and told him we can't make it. Well the dumb SOB said we could and kept going. At the last few seconds, I wasn't about to die with this guy who only had one eye and lacked depth perception. I yelled take your hands off your wheel and shoved my wheel in and nosed down and we went under the power line. I told him if I had not been a pilot you would have killed yourself and your passenger. Jim Arnsten was his name and he's passed on. He never had a pilot's license in his life as he couldn't pass a physical with just one eye. He flew for years in his old beat up plane. The moral to this story is never fly with an unlicensed one eyed pilot in an underpowered plane with a lot of weight in it and
taking off on a muddy dirt runway.
So I suppose I can be called a Renaissance man having done all kinds of repairs to broken things as well as making things better with my hands and reading and being curious about all things and having had the learning experiences of exploring this little globe with all it's differences. Plus exercising my rights and freedoms to run and get elected to public office when I disagreed with their politics. All citizens should have that experience in our democratic republic.
I continue to read and learn about any and all things as well as travel. I continue to be a bistro raconteur meeting and talking with people. It is amazing what you can
learn from people smarter than you in their field.
Just in the Jinja bar over the years, I've learned about laser weaponry, the development of drones for warfare which were developed here in Sandia Labs. I've learned about what goes into the building of a small jet plane called the Eclipse which is built in Albuqerque. I've learned about how Bill Gates was when the Physician owner of Microsoft here in Albuquerque hired him to be a salesman for Microsoft. (Contrary to belief, Bill Gates did not start Microsoft). I talked with one of Microsoft's first employees who wrote code with the Physician and Paul Allen.
I've learned a lot from physicians who frequent the Jinja bar. I've learned about the New Mexico geology from a couple of geologists who come in there. Just the other night I was talking with two high school head football coaches who told me that the damn players don't give a damn anymore about discipline and they talk back at you and being a high school coach is a thankless job and not as rewarding as it was just 20 years ago. In just 20 short years the youth culture has changed.
In Jinja, I have discussed Federal taxation with both a CPA and two IRS agents. I've always done my own taxes since I can remember. I have never ever paid for someone
to do my taxes as I know more about my tax status than any other person. I did my Schedule C business taxes the whole time I was in business and my personal taxes when I was an employee. There are certain things a third party tax prepayer might not be willing to do. I've always taken the very aggressive approach figuring I would just pay up if I was audited which I was only one time and had to come up with a few hundred dollars re writing off my automobile. They only got me for one year and I had done it for years and continued to do it after I was audited and never was audited again. ie write off 90% use of my car as a business deduction.
One of the best tax avoidence methods is to own a foreign business. I owned a small restaurant in San Jose, Costa Rica from 1987 to 1992. Naturally, it never made a profit. I wrote off all my airline tickets due to being there 10 days out of every month for five years. I wrote off my apartment rent there as well as other sundry items. I would do a separate Schedule C for the restaurant business and my insurance business and attach the two Schedule Cs to my 1040. The restaurant Schedule C always had a net loss and this would be deducted from my insurance business Schedule C. A heck of a good legal tax shelter. I was never audited by the IRS on this.
As for writing my thoughts down, I've probably improved over the years. Back in 1994, I came in second in the Texas Wide Writer's Contest under the category of Satire and Parody. I sent in two satires on the mythical Texas cowboy. I've written quite a few satires over the years , but never submitted any more to a writer's contest. I've written pages and pages of poetry, most of which I lost due to a computer hard drive crash some years ago. I now back up everything.
I've found that writing is a great mental exercise in that a person has to focus his thoughts and recollections in an organized manner. It requires a disciplined approach. My style of writing is straight forward without a lot of flowery excess words. I try to put myself in the reader's position when I write. I don't like to read anything with a lot of verbose unnecessary verbiage where the writer seems to want to make you read forever before they get to the point.
As to the point of what I've written above, it's about attempting to be a "Man for All Seasons." A renaissance man. A man who is well traveled, knows a lot about a lot, but not in great depth, but more than superficial and who has a lot of curiosity about all things under the sun and who has an insatiable desire to continue learning from books, internet, other people and travel.
And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count - it's the life in your years.
I'm thankful that I have stuffed a lot of life's content into my years and will continue to do so.
Bob
Things I've Learned Going On Age 72
Some things I've learned going on age 72.
I've learned that if things are going bad, I don't need to go there with them.
I've learned that if you wait to my age to retire and enjoy the good life, you've waited too long.
I've learned that it's reasonable to enjoy your success, but not to be overly confident of it and that you cannot change
what things you might have wanted to change in your past, but you can leave them behind.
I've learned that yes, there are some people who were born to be intrinsically bad and are incorrigible.
I've learned that you cannot go on a trip without gaining at least ten pounds.
I've learned that aging is important.
I've learned that my lifelong love/hate of exercise has rewarded me richly in old age with strength, agility and stamina.
I've learned that some of the most articulate and smartest people I've ever met have been at a bar.
I've learned the best way to get to know a country and it's people is traveling on a Harley on the backroads for weeks at a time.
I've learned that if you feel lonely, it's because you built walls instead of bridges.
I've learned that I loved less than I should have.
I've learned to sing and dance as if nobody was listening or watching.
I've learned that "stay" is a beautiful word in the vocabulary of a friend.
I've learned that I don't now have the desire to hunt and kill animals or birds like I use to love to do.
I've learned that friends can turn on you for little reason and strangers can comfort you.
I've learned that I didn't know how to eat healthy until about 15 years ago.
I've learned that this planet is a pretty small place.
I've learned you get a different perspective of the U.S. when living in another country.
I've learned that as I became older, I became infinitely more tolerant of the differences in people and lifestyles than when I was a young southern yahoo.
I've learned though extensive world travel that people are pretty much the same all over regarding what they want out of life.
I've learned that jealously and envy are more common in people than I used to believe.
I've learned that few men in their forties are immune to falling in love with a younger women and wrecking their marriage.
I've learned re the above, that when the romance cools with the other, your wife is who you should really be with.
I've learned that I really did choose the right wife after all.
I've learned that it's not important to know how to achieve a goal first as long as you know how to arrive at a goal and reach it.
I've learned that when one's curiosity about all things dies down, it's like a candle burning out. So if you are lucky and born with this gift, keep the candle burning.
I've learned that enjoying the trip along the way is just as much fun as arriving at your destination.
I've learned that you can be self directed and not have to go with the herd or go with the flow.
I've leaned that the majority of people are born, live and die within fifty miles of their birthplace.
I've learned to take other people's slights without getting upset.
I've learned that in politics and religion, facts mean nothing and emotion means everything.
I've learned that memories and experiences are the wallet of an older guy and you needed to have filled this wallet to have a boundless spirit in old age.
I've learned not to worry about old age as it doesn't last very long.
I've learned that one's formal education is but about 25% of your education and education is a life long endeavor.
I've learned that I still have a lot more to learn and more important, still have the spirit to learn more.
I've learned that typing was the most useful course I took in high school.
I've learned that free style writing is one of the most creative things you can do to keep your mind sharp and focused.
Bob White
September 30, 2010
I've learned that if things are going bad, I don't need to go there with them.
I've learned that if you wait to my age to retire and enjoy the good life, you've waited too long.
I've learned that it's reasonable to enjoy your success, but not to be overly confident of it and that you cannot change
what things you might have wanted to change in your past, but you can leave them behind.
I've learned that yes, there are some people who were born to be intrinsically bad and are incorrigible.
I've learned that you cannot go on a trip without gaining at least ten pounds.
I've learned that aging is important.
I've learned that my lifelong love/hate of exercise has rewarded me richly in old age with strength, agility and stamina.
I've learned that some of the most articulate and smartest people I've ever met have been at a bar.
I've learned the best way to get to know a country and it's people is traveling on a Harley on the backroads for weeks at a time.
I've learned that if you feel lonely, it's because you built walls instead of bridges.
I've learned that I loved less than I should have.
I've learned to sing and dance as if nobody was listening or watching.
I've learned that "stay" is a beautiful word in the vocabulary of a friend.
I've learned that I don't now have the desire to hunt and kill animals or birds like I use to love to do.
I've learned that friends can turn on you for little reason and strangers can comfort you.
I've learned that I didn't know how to eat healthy until about 15 years ago.
I've learned that this planet is a pretty small place.
I've learned you get a different perspective of the U.S. when living in another country.
I've learned that as I became older, I became infinitely more tolerant of the differences in people and lifestyles than when I was a young southern yahoo.
I've learned though extensive world travel that people are pretty much the same all over regarding what they want out of life.
I've learned that jealously and envy are more common in people than I used to believe.
I've learned that few men in their forties are immune to falling in love with a younger women and wrecking their marriage.
I've learned re the above, that when the romance cools with the other, your wife is who you should really be with.
I've learned that I really did choose the right wife after all.
I've learned that it's not important to know how to achieve a goal first as long as you know how to arrive at a goal and reach it.
I've learned that when one's curiosity about all things dies down, it's like a candle burning out. So if you are lucky and born with this gift, keep the candle burning.
I've learned that enjoying the trip along the way is just as much fun as arriving at your destination.
I've learned that you can be self directed and not have to go with the herd or go with the flow.
I've leaned that the majority of people are born, live and die within fifty miles of their birthplace.
I've learned to take other people's slights without getting upset.
I've learned that in politics and religion, facts mean nothing and emotion means everything.
I've learned that memories and experiences are the wallet of an older guy and you needed to have filled this wallet to have a boundless spirit in old age.
I've learned not to worry about old age as it doesn't last very long.
I've learned that one's formal education is but about 25% of your education and education is a life long endeavor.
I've learned that I still have a lot more to learn and more important, still have the spirit to learn more.
I've learned that typing was the most useful course I took in high school.
I've learned that free style writing is one of the most creative things you can do to keep your mind sharp and focused.
Bob White
September 30, 2010
Pray In Private
I have always been continually amazed at how supposedly people who call themselves Christians and pack churches screaming, dancing and shouting and praying
in front of each other when these actions are specifically condemned in the Bible. Do they read the Bible or if they do, do they just ignore this instruction. Humans are funny animals.
Those who want the state to engage in public worship or to have prayer in schools, are defying His injunction:
"When you pray, be not like the pretenders, who prefer to pray in the synagogues and in the public square in the sight of others. In truth I tell you, that is all the profit they will have. But you, when you pray, go into your inner chamber and, locking the door, pray in hiding to your Father who sees you in hiding and will reward you."--Matthew 6:5-6
The above admonition is a key to understanding the true nature of spirituality. Good works are best done in secret. Charity is humble. Faith is personal. A relationship with God is carried out in private, not public.
Just like you don't put a private telephone conversation with a loved one on Speakerphone for your acquaintances to hear, true prayer to your Father is
meant for an intimate moment alone.
When someone speaks to God in public, they are posturing for the public, currying favor with the listeners or readers rather than with God. God want to hear what is in your heart, not what you want others to hear. How many times have you spoken lies aloud into the telephone for the ears of other listeners? Don't do this to God.
Look around you, if you see false posturing and boasting about their relationship with God, you can be sure it is a lie. Love of God does not boast, or preen, or posture, or parade. Public piety is the mindless display of the peacock, or of the pea-brain, or of the pea-soul. it is gaudy feathers, strutting and unGodly squawking, only.
When someone is pushing you to believe as they do, generally it is not to believe as they want you to believe. Look for the money in it for them. Often they stand to make money out of you, but sometimes it is just the public admiration they live for, the prestige, the esteem or the vote.
Make you own peace with God as you know him. Public piety, like false patriotism is a refuge and a pulpit for scoundrels.
Burn into your mind Matthew 6:5-6
Bob White ____
in front of each other when these actions are specifically condemned in the Bible. Do they read the Bible or if they do, do they just ignore this instruction. Humans are funny animals.
Those who want the state to engage in public worship or to have prayer in schools, are defying His injunction:
"When you pray, be not like the pretenders, who prefer to pray in the synagogues and in the public square in the sight of others. In truth I tell you, that is all the profit they will have. But you, when you pray, go into your inner chamber and, locking the door, pray in hiding to your Father who sees you in hiding and will reward you."--Matthew 6:5-6
The above admonition is a key to understanding the true nature of spirituality. Good works are best done in secret. Charity is humble. Faith is personal. A relationship with God is carried out in private, not public.
Just like you don't put a private telephone conversation with a loved one on Speakerphone for your acquaintances to hear, true prayer to your Father is
meant for an intimate moment alone.
When someone speaks to God in public, they are posturing for the public, currying favor with the listeners or readers rather than with God. God want to hear what is in your heart, not what you want others to hear. How many times have you spoken lies aloud into the telephone for the ears of other listeners? Don't do this to God.
Look around you, if you see false posturing and boasting about their relationship with God, you can be sure it is a lie. Love of God does not boast, or preen, or posture, or parade. Public piety is the mindless display of the peacock, or of the pea-brain, or of the pea-soul. it is gaudy feathers, strutting and unGodly squawking, only.
When someone is pushing you to believe as they do, generally it is not to believe as they want you to believe. Look for the money in it for them. Often they stand to make money out of you, but sometimes it is just the public admiration they live for, the prestige, the esteem or the vote.
Make you own peace with God as you know him. Public piety, like false patriotism is a refuge and a pulpit for scoundrels.
Burn into your mind Matthew 6:5-6
Bob White ____
Rememberances From My Youth
My Moments of Remembrances From Age 6 to 14 during Springtime and Summer in South Louisiana
The smell of jasmine, orange blossoms, magnolias and honeysuckle. It was aroma therapy for sure.
Seeing the big breasted Robins return.
Going barefooted for 5 months causing the soles of your feet to harden and you could run barefoot over a gravel road.
Swimming in the crystal clear Bogue Chitto river naked with both whites and blacks.
Stealing flares from parked railroad cars. I was caught and brought before the Juvenile authorities who only warned me.
Always sleeping by an open window with the attic fan drawing in air.
Listening after school to Inner Sanctum, The Fat Man, Sky King.
Catching green back turtles and selling them to the Post cereal guy who came around every Friday.
Rising at dawn to go to the lake a block away and cast my arm off using a jitterbug lure and occasionally catching a bass.
Setting my 3 muskrat traps at the lake's edge and never catching one.
Getting a dollar every Saturday from my parents. Catching the bus downtown for 5 cents each way. Going to the movies for 15 cents.Eating a candy bar in the movies for 5 cents. Afterward, going to Sip and Nip cafe and having a hamburger and malted milk 40 cents.Afterward, going by the newsstand and buying a comic book for 10 cents. When I got home, I still had 25 cents left over.
Riding on my Doodlebug motor scooter and later my Servi-Cycle.
Big bream and Sac a Lait(crappie) would bed in the early spring and I would catch a mess with a cane pole using worms or crickets.
Running all over the lake with my 14 ft. Thompson boat and five hp Royal outboard.
Using my boat to go to the island in the lake and camping out.
Taking my 22 rifle on the crossbars of my bike and riding to the swamps below the lake spillway and shooting anything that moved.
When the lake rose from the rains, going to the spillway and catching large shad with my hands like a bear catches salmon.
Shooting gar fish from the bridge over the spillway with my 22 rifle. They would come up to roll.
Riding my bike for miles and miles exploring.
Riding my bike 10 miles down Perkins road to my black friend Nat's little wooden shack where his mother would feed us cheese and crackers.
Catching crawfish with a piece of bacon tied to a string. Boiling the crawfish right there in a soup can and eating them.
Riding my bike over every inch and cranny of the large LSU campus and especially loving the building that housed the fossil displays.
Selling soft drinks in the stands of LSU football games, basketball and Boxing. I made good money.
Killing more birds than I care to remember with my Red Rider BB gun.
Building tree houses. How I never fell is beyond me.
Washing glasses and opening oysters in my Dad's Silver Dollar Bar and Lounge.
Watching people lose their paychecks in the slot and pinball machines in my Dad's bar. Due to that, I never put a dime into a slot machine.
No TV and no air conditioning. We didn't sit for long and were always active outdoors.
Catching flying squirrels in a trap and domesticating them to be friendly pets.
Catching baby raccoons and doing the same. I had one I named Bill that followed me around.
Spending two weeks every summer at Camp Cherokee or Camp Windywood swimming, horseback riding and just having fun.
Oh yes, I got a 20 gauge single shot Harrington and Richardson shot gun for my 12th birthday. No animal or bird life was safe from me.
My parents pretty much left me to my own devices and I was really free to enjoy a Huckleberry Finn type of youth.
I wish more kids today could have enjoyed a childhood like mine. Not any more with Helicopter parents watching over them.It's hard to imagine parents letting their kids having this freedom much less letting them run around with a rifle or a shotgun.
Contrasting that with today and it was two different worlds completely.
Bob White
The smell of jasmine, orange blossoms, magnolias and honeysuckle. It was aroma therapy for sure.
Seeing the big breasted Robins return.
Going barefooted for 5 months causing the soles of your feet to harden and you could run barefoot over a gravel road.
Swimming in the crystal clear Bogue Chitto river naked with both whites and blacks.
Stealing flares from parked railroad cars. I was caught and brought before the Juvenile authorities who only warned me.
Always sleeping by an open window with the attic fan drawing in air.
Listening after school to Inner Sanctum, The Fat Man, Sky King.
Catching green back turtles and selling them to the Post cereal guy who came around every Friday.
Rising at dawn to go to the lake a block away and cast my arm off using a jitterbug lure and occasionally catching a bass.
Setting my 3 muskrat traps at the lake's edge and never catching one.
Getting a dollar every Saturday from my parents. Catching the bus downtown for 5 cents each way. Going to the movies for 15 cents.Eating a candy bar in the movies for 5 cents. Afterward, going to Sip and Nip cafe and having a hamburger and malted milk 40 cents.Afterward, going by the newsstand and buying a comic book for 10 cents. When I got home, I still had 25 cents left over.
Riding on my Doodlebug motor scooter and later my Servi-Cycle.
Big bream and Sac a Lait(crappie) would bed in the early spring and I would catch a mess with a cane pole using worms or crickets.
Running all over the lake with my 14 ft. Thompson boat and five hp Royal outboard.
Using my boat to go to the island in the lake and camping out.
Taking my 22 rifle on the crossbars of my bike and riding to the swamps below the lake spillway and shooting anything that moved.
When the lake rose from the rains, going to the spillway and catching large shad with my hands like a bear catches salmon.
Shooting gar fish from the bridge over the spillway with my 22 rifle. They would come up to roll.
Riding my bike for miles and miles exploring.
Riding my bike 10 miles down Perkins road to my black friend Nat's little wooden shack where his mother would feed us cheese and crackers.
Catching crawfish with a piece of bacon tied to a string. Boiling the crawfish right there in a soup can and eating them.
Riding my bike over every inch and cranny of the large LSU campus and especially loving the building that housed the fossil displays.
Selling soft drinks in the stands of LSU football games, basketball and Boxing. I made good money.
Killing more birds than I care to remember with my Red Rider BB gun.
Building tree houses. How I never fell is beyond me.
Washing glasses and opening oysters in my Dad's Silver Dollar Bar and Lounge.
Watching people lose their paychecks in the slot and pinball machines in my Dad's bar. Due to that, I never put a dime into a slot machine.
No TV and no air conditioning. We didn't sit for long and were always active outdoors.
Catching flying squirrels in a trap and domesticating them to be friendly pets.
Catching baby raccoons and doing the same. I had one I named Bill that followed me around.
Spending two weeks every summer at Camp Cherokee or Camp Windywood swimming, horseback riding and just having fun.
Oh yes, I got a 20 gauge single shot Harrington and Richardson shot gun for my 12th birthday. No animal or bird life was safe from me.
My parents pretty much left me to my own devices and I was really free to enjoy a Huckleberry Finn type of youth.
I wish more kids today could have enjoyed a childhood like mine. Not any more with Helicopter parents watching over them.It's hard to imagine parents letting their kids having this freedom much less letting them run around with a rifle or a shotgun.
Contrasting that with today and it was two different worlds completely.
Bob White
Sometimes I Wake Up Pissed and Angry
Sometimes I wake up scared and angry. I suppose many others do too.
Why am I angry when I first wake up. Well, I think of all the people
that have been crappy to me. There's a long list of names in my old age
going back to the first grade.
But, then I say to myself that's in the past and then generally get over
it.
But, then I am scared first thing in the morning.
The media is shouting: The world is over! The debt ceiling is going to
fall on us and shatter! The Europe contagion is going
to spread. Swine flu will turn into dog flu will turn to cat flu and
infect everyone. I'll get a mosquito bite and die. I'll go down
on my Harley and take Carmen with me. What if the stock market goes to
ZERO? What if something happens to my kids? Or, heaven forbid, to me! What if I die of a long, lingering painful disease when I’m older. What if I make a fool of myself…again. What if someone I want to like me, doesn't like me. What if I don't get
done anything I want to get done? What if I forget to answer the right
emails? What if traffic on my blog is down? What if I make lots of mistakes in a
row and go broke?
I've been embarrassed many times. Like at dinners where I said the wrong
thing and everyone ended up with the guests disliking me. Where I've
split the rear of my pants out in public. Or at parties where I maybe had
a bit too much to drink and spewed idiocy. Or I lent the wrong person
money.
Holy…I've made the wrong choices almost every single day of my life.
What the heck happened? Nada! Zip!
And yet here I am. At this moment I'm pretty happy. After I wake up and
discard the cloud of sleep I forget about all of that pain, fear, agony,
crying, desperation, futility,embarrassment, shame – here I am writing to you. It’s not like I'm a super success. A lot of people are more successful than I. It doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter that some don't like my scribbling. I do it for me and
that gives me some satisfaction crafting a few words together.
All of the above is just a concise snapshot of life as we humans
experience it. Just give me a glass of red wine in the evening and I'm
perfectly content with my situation in life sitting and socializing at night at the bar at Jinjas and verbal jabbing with my fellow Jinjaites regulars.
Life really is pretty simple as long as I think this way.
Why am I angry when I first wake up. Well, I think of all the people
that have been crappy to me. There's a long list of names in my old age
going back to the first grade.
But, then I say to myself that's in the past and then generally get over
it.
But, then I am scared first thing in the morning.
The media is shouting: The world is over! The debt ceiling is going to
fall on us and shatter! The Europe contagion is going
to spread. Swine flu will turn into dog flu will turn to cat flu and
infect everyone. I'll get a mosquito bite and die. I'll go down
on my Harley and take Carmen with me. What if the stock market goes to
ZERO? What if something happens to my kids? Or, heaven forbid, to me! What if I die of a long, lingering painful disease when I’m older. What if I make a fool of myself…again. What if someone I want to like me, doesn't like me. What if I don't get
done anything I want to get done? What if I forget to answer the right
emails? What if traffic on my blog is down? What if I make lots of mistakes in a
row and go broke?
I've been embarrassed many times. Like at dinners where I said the wrong
thing and everyone ended up with the guests disliking me. Where I've
split the rear of my pants out in public. Or at parties where I maybe had
a bit too much to drink and spewed idiocy. Or I lent the wrong person
money.
Holy…I've made the wrong choices almost every single day of my life.
What the heck happened? Nada! Zip!
And yet here I am. At this moment I'm pretty happy. After I wake up and
discard the cloud of sleep I forget about all of that pain, fear, agony,
crying, desperation, futility,embarrassment, shame – here I am writing to you. It’s not like I'm a super success. A lot of people are more successful than I. It doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter that some don't like my scribbling. I do it for me and
that gives me some satisfaction crafting a few words together.
All of the above is just a concise snapshot of life as we humans
experience it. Just give me a glass of red wine in the evening and I'm
perfectly content with my situation in life sitting and socializing at night at the bar at Jinjas and verbal jabbing with my fellow Jinjaites regulars.
Life really is pretty simple as long as I think this way.
What the Arabs Contributed to Western Civilization
Just for the hell of it, I thought I would jot down a concise and accurate overview of why we call the Arabian peninsula the "cradle of civilization."
When human kind made the leap from hunter and gatherers it began probably during the Sumerian era which goes back as far a 5,000BC. They had the first written language using the Cuneiform script in about 4,000BC. It was made up of pictographs inscribed on clay tablets. Note that humans inscribed on rocks, cave walls, wood, stone tablets and clay tablets before paper was invented. The first language that we know of is Sumerian and it sprang up in Iraq.
The cuneiform alphabet and Sumerian language was last used in about 50AD because it had been supplanted by Aramaic which gradually supplanted the cuneiform alphabet and Sumrian language. Aramaic began about 3.000BC with it's beginnings in what is now called Syria. It was the language of Jesus and of many of the Biblical scribes. It is the language of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the first religious books of the Hebrews and the Bible.
But, I digressed, paper was invented about 2,700BC from Papyrus reeds growing along rivers such as the Nile. It was perfected by the Chinese in 105AD.
Our modern alphabet is composed of the ancient Arabic symbols with an infusion later of Greek and Latin symbols.
The ancient Arabs invented the three Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
The Western world is Christian because the Roman Emperor Constantine declared that the Roman Empire would be Christian in his edict of Milan in 313AD. He did it because his two cousins were planning to overthrow him and he asked that the Arab Christian tribes in the middle east help him defend himself. They agreed to do it on the condition that he name Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire which was from Ireland down through Spain. Hundreds of thousands of Europeans were killed enforcing this edict. Constantine with the help of the Arab Christian tribes were successful in the battle against his two cousins and keeping him in office.
That is why the western world has it's predominate religion Christianity. If you're a Christian,you can thank Constantine or the Arab tribes. You decide.
Incidently, Constantine liked the Christian Arab tribes so much that he set up his headquarter of the Roman empire in Turkey and called it Constantinople.
So far we've seen that the Arabs gave us our alphabet and religion. Just to list a few, here are some contributions to civilization besides a written language
with an alphabet and our religions.
In food, they gave us oranges, lemons, sugar, peach, plums, olives, rice, ginger, cloves, melons, shallots, pepper, dates, figs, and coffee
In numbers and math they invented the concept of zero, algebra, trigonometry and established longitude and latitude measurements.They invented first adding machine called the Abacus and the compass. Their use of the arch and pillars influenced architecture in Europe.
For the ladies, they invented lipstick, eye shadow, perfume, nail polish, hair dyes and body lotions.
They invented the water wheel, cisterns, systems of irrigation and the water clock. They wrote about and studied and invented optical instruments paving the way for telescopes and microscopes, etc. They invented tiles and glazing.They perfected the art of making leather soft for clothing and using
dyes to change the color.
They developed the art of crucible steel forging. They hardened the steel and etched elaborate drawings on them. We've all heard of the Damascus sword.
In music they invented the harp, lyre, zither, drum, tambourine, flute, oboe, and all the reed instruments that are played today. They also invented the bagpipe which
was introduced into Europe by the early Crusaders. The earliest examples of a stringed necked instrument date back to Syria in about 3,000 BC. It was the forerunner of the modern guitar.
They gave the world the first codes of law. What law student hasn't heard of Hammurabi's Code. This code spelled out Tort law, family relations, etc
The first university in the world was founded in Damascus, Syria.
There are so many other contributions to civilization that are too numerous to list such as the common fork. They didn't eat with their hands as Europeans did.
But, personally, I believe the greatest contribution they gave the world was the phonetic alphabet which allows me to sit at this computer and put down my thoughts.
Now if you've read the above, the question just cries out what happened to them to make them the way they are today? I believe it's religious fervor that caused them
not to continue on with their great science and inventions and just become immersed in their supernatural religion. Religion has always been a hindrance to scientific progress and the present day Arabs are victims of it.
Islam incorporates the First Testament of the Bible, but Mohammed came along and added a new book to it just like Jesus added anew book to the Old Testament. Fundamentalism , whether Islam, Christianity or Judaism is antithetical to human knowledge and progress. I forget who was quoted as saying the science has done more for mankind in the last 100 years than religions have done for thousands of years.
I'm writing this brief overview of history just to inform those who care to be informed about the huge contribution that the Arabs have given to mankind. But, their
contribution of religion to us has been detrimental resulting in intolerance, perpetuation of ignorance, blood shed and strife.
I wrote a long paper on this subject about 15 years ago and I'm largely going on my memory of what I've written tonight.
I just think Americans should understand the historical underpinnings of our civilization and our religions.
I will later write on the Greek contribution to our civilization which cannot be overstated in the field of philosophy and democratic governance.
I've written this with the help of 3/4ths of a bottle of red wine which increases my IQ and memory recall at least 10% and perhaps more.
Bob
PS Last , but not least to beer lovers, you can give thanks to the Arabs for inventing beer from grain as far back as 3,000 BC in Iran and other parts
of Arabia.
When human kind made the leap from hunter and gatherers it began probably during the Sumerian era which goes back as far a 5,000BC. They had the first written language using the Cuneiform script in about 4,000BC. It was made up of pictographs inscribed on clay tablets. Note that humans inscribed on rocks, cave walls, wood, stone tablets and clay tablets before paper was invented. The first language that we know of is Sumerian and it sprang up in Iraq.
The cuneiform alphabet and Sumerian language was last used in about 50AD because it had been supplanted by Aramaic which gradually supplanted the cuneiform alphabet and Sumrian language. Aramaic began about 3.000BC with it's beginnings in what is now called Syria. It was the language of Jesus and of many of the Biblical scribes. It is the language of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the first religious books of the Hebrews and the Bible.
But, I digressed, paper was invented about 2,700BC from Papyrus reeds growing along rivers such as the Nile. It was perfected by the Chinese in 105AD.
Our modern alphabet is composed of the ancient Arabic symbols with an infusion later of Greek and Latin symbols.
The ancient Arabs invented the three Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
The Western world is Christian because the Roman Emperor Constantine declared that the Roman Empire would be Christian in his edict of Milan in 313AD. He did it because his two cousins were planning to overthrow him and he asked that the Arab Christian tribes in the middle east help him defend himself. They agreed to do it on the condition that he name Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire which was from Ireland down through Spain. Hundreds of thousands of Europeans were killed enforcing this edict. Constantine with the help of the Arab Christian tribes were successful in the battle against his two cousins and keeping him in office.
That is why the western world has it's predominate religion Christianity. If you're a Christian,you can thank Constantine or the Arab tribes. You decide.
Incidently, Constantine liked the Christian Arab tribes so much that he set up his headquarter of the Roman empire in Turkey and called it Constantinople.
So far we've seen that the Arabs gave us our alphabet and religion. Just to list a few, here are some contributions to civilization besides a written language
with an alphabet and our religions.
In food, they gave us oranges, lemons, sugar, peach, plums, olives, rice, ginger, cloves, melons, shallots, pepper, dates, figs, and coffee
In numbers and math they invented the concept of zero, algebra, trigonometry and established longitude and latitude measurements.They invented first adding machine called the Abacus and the compass. Their use of the arch and pillars influenced architecture in Europe.
For the ladies, they invented lipstick, eye shadow, perfume, nail polish, hair dyes and body lotions.
They invented the water wheel, cisterns, systems of irrigation and the water clock. They wrote about and studied and invented optical instruments paving the way for telescopes and microscopes, etc. They invented tiles and glazing.They perfected the art of making leather soft for clothing and using
dyes to change the color.
They developed the art of crucible steel forging. They hardened the steel and etched elaborate drawings on them. We've all heard of the Damascus sword.
In music they invented the harp, lyre, zither, drum, tambourine, flute, oboe, and all the reed instruments that are played today. They also invented the bagpipe which
was introduced into Europe by the early Crusaders. The earliest examples of a stringed necked instrument date back to Syria in about 3,000 BC. It was the forerunner of the modern guitar.
They gave the world the first codes of law. What law student hasn't heard of Hammurabi's Code. This code spelled out Tort law, family relations, etc
The first university in the world was founded in Damascus, Syria.
There are so many other contributions to civilization that are too numerous to list such as the common fork. They didn't eat with their hands as Europeans did.
But, personally, I believe the greatest contribution they gave the world was the phonetic alphabet which allows me to sit at this computer and put down my thoughts.
Now if you've read the above, the question just cries out what happened to them to make them the way they are today? I believe it's religious fervor that caused them
not to continue on with their great science and inventions and just become immersed in their supernatural religion. Religion has always been a hindrance to scientific progress and the present day Arabs are victims of it.
Islam incorporates the First Testament of the Bible, but Mohammed came along and added a new book to it just like Jesus added anew book to the Old Testament. Fundamentalism , whether Islam, Christianity or Judaism is antithetical to human knowledge and progress. I forget who was quoted as saying the science has done more for mankind in the last 100 years than religions have done for thousands of years.
I'm writing this brief overview of history just to inform those who care to be informed about the huge contribution that the Arabs have given to mankind. But, their
contribution of religion to us has been detrimental resulting in intolerance, perpetuation of ignorance, blood shed and strife.
I wrote a long paper on this subject about 15 years ago and I'm largely going on my memory of what I've written tonight.
I just think Americans should understand the historical underpinnings of our civilization and our religions.
I will later write on the Greek contribution to our civilization which cannot be overstated in the field of philosophy and democratic governance.
I've written this with the help of 3/4ths of a bottle of red wine which increases my IQ and memory recall at least 10% and perhaps more.
Bob
PS Last , but not least to beer lovers, you can give thanks to the Arabs for inventing beer from grain as far back as 3,000 BC in Iran and other parts
of Arabia.
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