America Day

A July 4^th cannot pass without me thinking about The Road Trip. Sixteen years ago this very holiday, a brother-in-arms and I hopped into a 1992 Chevy pickup truck and headed to Toronto for Independence Day weekend. This was partially due to the fact that we were not yet 21 years old and could not legally drink in the United States of America. And being the sorts of young men that never wanted to be on the wrong side of the law, we thought it best to go where it was legal to drink. We plugged a small Stars and Stripes into the back window of the truck and headed out down I-94, over the Ambassador Bridge, and down the QEW to Toronto, arriving just in time to sleep in the truck the rest of the night.

These years later and here I am, living in Toronto.

I worked today as I didn’t have the day off. I did have Monday off in observance of Canada Day. And I left early today to finalize the paperwork for an apartment just outside of the city. On my way back to my current basement room I’m renting, while idling in traffic in a different pickup truck, I got a little reflective of what these last 16 years have been.

Thirteen of them have seen a war fought all over Creation.

For eight of them, I’ve been a home owner.

I graduated college, started a career, and moved into the “middle professional years”, as the HR people call them.

The internet exploded and pretty much killed off phone books and porn you have to buy in a convenience store.

What else?

Sixteen years ago, I voted Republican. I hadn’t yet learned that the way adults see the world is on a thin, straight line between left and right. Learning that has made things easy. As someone that likes firearms, I’m on the right, but I really can’t stand most gun people. As someone that feels roads and other infrastructure is important (including healthcare) and should be paid for collectively, I’m on the left. But I know so many people on the left that cheat on taxes I find myself annoyed with them, too. So this right/left thing makes everything easier as I have realized that there are no quick fixes and just hope the next generation is stronger than I am. Not that I’m perfect. I do drink too much.

I don’t want to leave this where one could say I’m overly-simplifying both sides of the issue. Let me drone on…

The right wants freedom of religion and wants smaller government, but then uses government to enshrine specific beliefs as "the real ones" in the country.

The left wants access to shared services, but then doesn’t have the voice (read: backbone) to state that “shared” means we all have to pull our own weight.

The left states that as free citizens, we have the power to make our own choices, but then chills those choices by continuing and expanding surveillance into our everyday lives.

The right embodies the spirit of the individual being the thing that makes America great, then limits choice for so many by elevating a small few to an ultra-rich status, again, through law.

Having earned freedom, liberty and our own land after centuries of struggle in Europe, America now can’t seem to plan more than three or four months in the future. So our bridges crumble and we mine more coal.

But don’t let this lead you to believe that I am depressed or that I worry about America. I realize that there are no quick fixes. And I know that America is now only the latest branch that grew out of very early societies around the Mediterranean Sea and the Middle East. There have been dark days on the path from then to now and Enlightenment has always saved us. It brought us out of the Crusades. It brought us back after the first World War. It developed clean water delivery, sewers, farming, and just laws. We’ll get back there. Come to think of it, the Enlightenment created America in the first place.

I had hoped before that it would be my generation that brought Enlightenment, but maybe the next one will.

Or maybe we still can. After idling my way to this hole in the Canadian earth I call “the place I sleep”, I spent hours talking with David, the Iranian Coptic Christian that just moved in down the hall. He shared some wine with me and said “happy Independence Day… may I celebrate with you?” He worked for years in the US with Greyhound and has seen every highway I could name. He was shocked that I knew both Highway 1 and the Shenandoah Valley first hand, as it is his experience that Americans, though proud, know nothing about their own country. He went on and on about how he wishes more of the world was like the America that he knows. We became fast friends talking about the unspeakable grandeur that is a Midwestern diner breakfast.

There are a lot of good people in this world. There are a lot of good ideas. David is a good person. America is a good idea. Let’s love them both.

Happy Independence Day, everyone.

Please, Mom, Don’t Read This

From what I can tell, it seems that GM has recalled every car it has ever made at this point. The first recall story that I remember on this issue said something like “GM recalls multiple Chevrolet models due to ignition failure that has killed a driver.” I immediately thought, “that person shut the car off with his knee.” I thought this not because I am omniscient, but because I did it in my Chevy HHR. Twice.

The first time it happened, I was going down I-76 west in Ohio. I’d been driving for maybe seven hours and was shifting around in my seat instead of pulling off to stretch my legs. Suddenly something changed. It was hard to tell what exactly because in newer cars, the radio stays on even when the key is turned off. I was drifting toward the center line and the wheel wouldn’t turn. Or, it would, but it didn’t easily because the power steering was off.

This is when I said to myself, “oh, I turned the key off.” I reached over, put it into neutral (as it would need to be to restart), cranked it over, put it up into drive and floored it before the car behind me caught up.

How did I figure that out? I was your run-of-the-mill foolish boy. When there was nobody on the highway around me, back when I was 16, I’d speed up to 80mph, turn my old truck off, put it into neutral and see how far I could coast before I came to a rest.

And here’s why I haven’t said anything about this yet. There’s a joke that I heard recently from a stand-up comic that went like, “When your friend says ‘Now I’m not racist, but…’ get ready to hear something racist.” Here is where I say, “Now I’m not advocating any of this, but…”. I truly, deeply mean it when I say that nobody should just turn their car off on purpose when driving down the highway to just see what happens. But because I did (along with others I know), I didn’t panic and just turned it back on. I was irritated that the radio stayed on, though.

But then it happened again. This time the radio was off, I was on a country highway, and I wasn’t alone. The person riding shotgun did not grow up a foolish boy and went from zero to ape-shit-panic when my knee knocked the key a second time (this was probably two years before the recalls started). Once everything was back to the way it should be - engine running while car moving and what-not - she told me that there was something wrong with the car. Then, as I had the time before, I felt that it was my dumb fault for getting my knee way up there where it had no business being.

Is there a lesson in here? Certainly not. And regardless, it is only one side of the story.

A Citizen of Earth

Sitting here in the temporary housing I call home, I’ve been forced to grapple with a few things after having been working here for exactly one day. Here, in list form, and in no particular order, are my first observations…

1) When one reads of the history of the flintlock rifle, as I’ve been known to do, one reads about those few moments where the “entity” was North America, not only countries or states or territories. The Great Lakes Region extended to where I sit now, in Toronto. I suppose it still does, but in the textbooks of my youth, anything above St. Lawrence River and the Lakes was a pale blob on an otherwise colorful map of America. Anyway, I’ve become used to reading of that period and, as such, not paying too much attention to national borders. Borders mattered to the upper class warring over territory to own and I’m slogging through stories of beaver trappers probably first written down in a pub somewhere. It was those same godless schizophrenics that would rather be alone in the wilderness for months or years at a time, wearing animal pelts over a Michigan winter to stay “warm”, than to be anywhere near another human being, who settled both Canada’s and America’s first wild frontier.

As I drove around for the first day here, listening to the CBC, I heard a long story about the 100^th anniversary of a seal hunting disaster off of Newfoundland. There were terrible details that, if I tried to summarize them here, would only be an insult to those that endured, or tried to endure, that particular storm. Hearing the stories, I didn’t think “Those poor Canadians.” Instead, I heard a different version of the same stories passed down to me in my life, where Michigan families strived to take hold on this still new continent.

You may be asking…

2) Why was I driving around on my first day? I needed a bank account. TD Bank (the “T” stands for “Toronto”) is open on Sundays and, as I’ve heard it, has a good price for moving money back and forth over the border… legally. I had not yet worked my first day at my new employer, I was living in a hotel, and I did not have a Canadian cell phone. Still, they gave me an account without question. Lesson learned: banks will do anything to get your money.

3) Speaking to another former Michigan fellow that lives here, I stated that I purchased a few items at a small grocery store near my hotel. He said, “Have you heard of Canadian Tire?” Let me assure you, dear reader, that flash of confusion that just shot through your mind is the same sensation I felt when he said it. As I actually do need new tires on my car, I was also embarrassed that he noticed my balding tires. “Waaaait a minute,” my brain slowly said. “There’s no way he cares about the condition of my tires, let alone that he’d notice the shallow tread from here, inside this building, where I am totally NOT parked.” Probably recognizing the confusion contorting my face, he said “It’s like a Meijer.”

4) I am the one with the accent. During our “meet and greet,” the locals at work were having a grand old time having me say things like “about” and “I know” and asking me - by pointing at it - “what is in this can?” (pop, as opposed to soda).

5) I’m working on one last piece of documentation to be official here. I’d love to tell you the name of it, which would be expected of any authoritative author in this spot of the story, but I can’t remember it. It’s like a social security number, but I think, maybe, it’s called a “social insurance number.” Anyway, one moving into the country gets such a number at the Service Canada Center, which appears to be something like a one-stop shop for government-related stuff.

Not having this number is incredibly stressful. Not that I’m doing anything truly wrong, mind you, but that without it, I feel like I’m somehow “in the wrong.” I’m not sure that that subtle word difference makes my point, but me going on about the way I wrote that sentence here certainly won’t help… So, it’s stressful.

I imagine all of the people that were the “immigrants” in all of the news stories I heard back home. Thinking of them now, I imagine how stressful immigration must have been on them, where people and local governments can be, at times, openly hostile.

That reminds me of a cliché I heard in college: A Republican is just a Democrat that hasn’t gone to jail yet.

6) As one would say “Give me a Lager” in Philadelphia to get a Yeungling, here one says “I’ll have a Canadian, please” to get a Molson. Yeungling is far superior.

I’ve not been sufficiently self-aware over the years to notice myself growing or changing, but it seems that changes have been made. However, living as an expatriate, for all of two days, I can say confidently that I’ve noticed nothing that could be chalked up as a change in my behaviour. I’m still the same guy, from A to Zed.

A Seven Year Old Question

For those in the various industries that produce physical goods for consumption, the intro to this little story may be redundant.  For everyone else, there is this a thing called a “5 Why Analysis.”  It’s a tool that many people in “Industry” will recognize as something that was, at one time or another, jammed down his or her throat by someone called a “Master Black Belt.”  The Master Black Belt, or MBB, makes a lot more money than us. 

What this analysis is supposed to do is drive a team to the root cause of an issue by asking “why” something occurred five times.  Or it could be less, if the root cause was not too far from the surface.  Also, it could be more, if the problem is very complex.  So the name is at best misleading and more likely just stupid and probably has something to do with its Japanese root at Toyota, but I’m getting way off the rails here, driven by my seething animosity toward a system that is really nothing more than using the scientific method but in such a way that is far more limiting and has become a huge industry in and of itself with hundreds of books published a year but still is only a management tool though it’s treated like it is science itself even though it is only holding back science…

Anywho, recently, I had a long conversation with a friend that was there during my formative years throughout high school.  We lost touch before Social Media existed as it does today, so that was that, for a time.  Through a series of happy accidents, we were able to spend an afternoon together.  During that time, I realized that we hadn’t seen each other for about seven years.  That evening, I tried to square how I could still feel like I was relatively young, but also have a gap seven years long between meetings with someone I’d call one of my dearest friends.  That got me thinking about where I was seven years ago and a question that I first struggled with around that time: Is it better to buy locally-produced milk cold, or to buy Ultra-Pasteurized milk, which is shelf-stable?

For a short period of time, I worked full time jobs.  They spanned the traditional third and first shift.  The most difficult part of the situation was eating.  Two 8.5 hour jobs, plus two hours of commuting a day left little wiggle room for first breakfast, the middle meal between jobs, and supper.  I don’t know how I would have done it without dedicated help.  An item that was almost a must was my little box of Horizon Dairy Organic chocolate milk, fresh in its little juice box-type container.  I looked forward to it more than sleep most days. 

Having worked in a dairy previous to this, I was very familiar with what is commonly referred to as the “cold chain” storage and shipping required with traditional dairy products.  The small dairy I worked in received milk in unrefrigerated trucks.  The milk was put into the truck cold and, with such a large volume, it maintained temperature, so long as the turnpike wasn’t backed up too badly.  (Days the turnpike was backed up turned the milk into hog feed.)  The milk was then put into large refrigerated silos before processing.  After the homogenizing and traditional pasteurizing (retronym) it was stored in a huge warehouse that was as cold as your small refrigerator at home.  The warehouse had big bay doors (where the heat desperately tried to get in all the time).  There, refrigerated trucks backed in to be loaded.  The trucks went to grocery stores all over the area, where cooler cases (often left wide open to the store) kept the milk cold.  Finally, someone would buy the milk and take it home.  Even if it wasn’t opened for a day or two, the milk had to be kept in the refrigerator.

Ultra-Pasteurization, or Ultra High Temperature Pasteurization, rendered the milk shelf stable for a long time, provided it was in a well-sealed container and protected from light, preventing oxidation.  This cut the cold chain out, save the refrigerated silos prior to processing and the need to refrigerate after opening.  Green, huh?  At first blush, I thought so.

Seven years ago, the internet was still a young child.  Every once in awhile, earth-shattering revelations came out in some new-to-me media outlet (back then, though, they often contained citations to scientific literature, as young children are prone to being overly-honest).  One of those revelations was that the juice box, a tried-and-true staple of my childhood and the new container for my Ultra-Pasteurized milk, was filling up landfills and never breaking down.  The packaging revolution that had won every major award when it was developed was comprised of so many mixed materials that it couldn’t be recycled.

After some time, I stopped buying the shelf-stable milk. 

At the time, when I searched my soul for the right decision, I reasoned it like this:

1) Why do I need to decide between one or the other in the first place?  Because I am a consumer, and consumption impacts the world around us.
2) Why do I care about that?  Well, I’m in that world, so I’d like it to not be destroyed.  Also, if I ever have a family, I’d be pretty peeved if my kids got sick because of the decisions I made.
3) Ok, so what is it in my actions that cannot be undone?  This is the easy one.  It’s the use of petrochemicals.  Once you pull it out of the ground, it’s up here to stay.
4) Why?  The processes that turned dead vegetation into oil and coal don’t happen anymore.  Or, if you want to be way too pedantic about it for the purposes of the way you live your life day to day, not anywhere near fast enough to put carbon back into the earth. 

So there I settled that of paramount importance is the need to conserve finite resources, or, better yet, not use them at all, because no matter how much one limits pollution from something like petrochemical plastics, those petrochemicals are never going to be turned back into a natural oil deep in the earth.  That carbon will now always be up here on the surface, in the water, or in the air.

What about the alternative, then?  I’m no Luddite.  I totally love progress and convenience and the “Western” way of living.  It isn’t the case now (then… seven years ago… this is all a flashback, remember) that all the electricity used to cool that milk is renewable, but it is perfectly reasonable to assume that it can be.  Moreover, it is certainly possible that it can be.  All signs point to it (seven years ago)! Thus, support the local-as-possible, organic production methods as the primary goal.

And I still operate that way.  The only reason I’m bringing this up after so many years is exactly because so many years have passed.  Energy isn’t keeping up with my ideals.  Well, that’s not exactly true.  I see wind turbines and solar panels outside of the US all the time.  To be fair, I do see them in the US often as well.  I guess what I mean to say is that energy management is holding back the science.

My History with the Telephone

A few months back, as I noticed a little message on my smartphone screen that said something like “five missed calls,” I had a momentary flash of nostalgia for the way telephones (and telephone etiquette) used to be.  As the smartphone rang again, I ignored it and thought back to all of the changes…

My earliest recollection of a telephone was in the house I first lived in on Red Arrow Highway.  There was one phone in the house, I think.  It had a rotary dial and a heavy receiver and it sat on the desk next to the dining room table.  Quaint, huh? 

We moved to a new house in 1987.  At the time we toured the house, before my parents bought it, I remember seeing phone jacks in every single room.  This, to me, was amazing.  What was even more amazing our first cordless phone, which we got that Christmas, I believe.  I’m sure I don’t remember the absolute first time I used it, but I remember the pull out antenna, the channel selector button, and talking outside on a telephone at my house.  This, children of today, never happened before.  Not in the Midwest, anyway.  At least three people I knew had that exact same phone.  There wasn’t a whole lot of variety in the beginning.

Sometime in the next few years, I saw my very first “car phone.”  We also called it a “bag phone.”  This was because the phone was in a bag.  It would plug into the car lighter for power and, I think, had a battery that could last up to ten minutes or so if not plugged in.  That was the state of things for awhile.  Some cars, though, had built in car phones.  These were mostly Cadillac sedans. 

Middle School rolled around and I was on the Student Council.  Many of my friends were involved in after-school activities, as was I.  A lot of the activities, like Science Olympiad or scrounging around in the basement of the building for god-knows-what, didn’t really have a solid end-time, so getting rides set up was a pain.  I lobbied to get a payphone put into the school lobby so students could call home when needed.  It cost us, as I remember, $120 out of our budget to get the phone installed.  We had plenty of money then because we had also, the previous year, installed the first pop machine in the school and the Student Government took all the profits.

I recall this was the time when 1-800-COLLECT launched.  One could dial that code and, when the automated service asked for your name, you’d just say “Pick me up” and your parents would come and get you.  Brilliant.  Almost worth having to put up with Carrot Top…

High School started with the bag phone getting scaled down to a large handset that could be carried in the car.  The term “cellular” telephone started being used, but most folks I knew still called it a car phone, because why would you carry it anywhere else but in a car?

Once I could drive, I started working.  Once I started working, I fell in love.  She lived in a different town 12 miles away.  That, my friends, was a LONG DISTANCE phone call.  Services like TalkAmerica, providing free US Long Distance formed (along with a lot of pyramid schemes).  Soon, the “local long distance” charges disappeared and I was free to talk to my girlfriend from a landline telephone in my parents’ basement.

There’s this word I love: retronym.  It is when an advance in something makes you come up with a new name for the old type of that thing.  Until there was an electric guitar, all were just “guitars”, but the advance made the need for the term “acoustic guitar” to be coined.  The same is true for “landline telephone.”

All was stable through college.  We had one telephone in the house in Kalamazoo.  The phone number was 388-8193.  I used to remember lots of phone numbers.  Anyway, it was a cordless phone that lasted all four years.  When I needed to focus on studying, I could go in the basement of the house and read.  The phone stayed upstairs.  Nobody was too upset when we didn’t connect immediately.

I moved from Michigan to Pennsylvania in 2002.  That year, I got my first cell phone.  It was a good ol’ Nextel Brick.  I was driving for third shift work in a dairy out in what used to be the middle of nowhere, so the added security of a cell phone felt good.  I used it maybe ten times the first year.  The landline was still the way to go.  Though I would use the “direct connect” feature to say hello to my Dad once in awhile.

I have had five cell phones total.  The first two were Bricks.  Then a flip phone.  Those all lasted a long time.  Somewhere in that flip phone era, for me, I migrated away from having a landline.  In that same space, I started noticing a change in people.  Since my phone was not a landline, not a “car phone”, but could be carried on me at all times, it was pretty much expected that it be on me at all times.  Responses taking more than a few hours were an insult.  Then in more than an hour.  Then the expectation with some was the need for instantaneous responses. 

And here is where it was, as I sat with six missed calls on the screen of my smartphone from the same person.  There were also five text messages, but that’s another story.

"Dumbphone" is a retronym, too.

A Resolute New Year

Welcome to the end of 2013, dear Reader.  As I sit watching the snow fall gently on the City, I think back to all of the changes this year has brought.  I bought a new house, got married, but most importantly, I joined Facebook.  I mean that as sarcastically as possible.  That too, actually. 

Thanks to Facebook, one of the things that I saw, for the first time I can recall, is a whole lot of popular culture.  I’ve never been one to watch the hit Reality TV shows, listen to commercial talk radio or drive-time pop music stations.  Admittedly, I would learn about new cultural idioms and inside-jokes through satirical shows or thorough my friends (the latter, usually after something like “You can’t be serious that you haven’t seen that!”).  What I learned this year from Facebook is that at as soon as life isn’t perfect, it is popular to believe that you deserve better than whatever you have.

A friend of mine recently was having some relationship issues.  I’m a “he” and she is a “she”.  She asked me generally what I thought she should do, so I said to love him even more.  She appeared surprised.  But when I look at what I see tossed off on Facebook as self-help wisdom, I can see why my answer was surprising.  There are hundreds of items each week with short statements meaning “Don’t Look Back”, “If it didn’t work out the first time, it wasn’t meant to be”, and “Love yourself because you matter most.”  Also, it’s not like I haven’t dated over the past few years.  I know that when past relationships hit hard times, my friends told me “there are more fish in the sea” and her friends told her “you can do better than him.”  With that type of support, there is no chance to forge a stronger relationship, to grow, to learn, or to soften your edges. 

There were a few exceptions.  Those in the generation I’d call “Group A baby-boomers” (the oldest of the baby boomers) or those even older, were usually quick to say “stick it out and it will be even sweeter later on.”  But that is a too-quickly dwindling cohort. 

My fortunes were incredible this year.  Someone chose me.  I chose her, too. 

In 2014, should I get the opportunity, I choose to be resolute in my support of loved ones.  Don’t give up on each other.  Don’t let arguments, disagreements, even momentary pure hate take down long-term love and friendship.  If you are happy, be thankful for what you have.  If you’re not happy, look in yourself to see why not.  Chances are, you have a lot more to be thankful about than you think, and it’s your own fault you’re miserable. 

Peace.

I am not outraged

A little bit ago, the popularity of the IRS went down even more.  It was reported - widely and with vigor - that the agency that collects taxes targeted a particular group of potentially tax-exempt groups unfairly.  To boil that down some, that is Government singling out particular Americans.  That is one of the things that always gets my blood boiling, regardless of the target.  Government is a greater good organization, in my mind.  I don't believe that the government should be in the business of fixing my life personally, but I enjoy the fact that it functions to make all of our lives better by balancing the nature of other institutions, like business interests.  Blind justice and all that.  Anyway, this one made no sense to me and I have, until now, kept my mouth shut.

I've long understood the greater metro area of Cincinnati to be rather conservative.  And since the IRS is a professional organization and not a political one, I just kinda figured that the local hires would be Midwestern Conservatives.  At least a healthy portion of them would be, preventing the liberal subversives from hatching their master stroke.  So why would those Conservatives torpedo their own cause? 

Then, it was the silliness that got me.  TEA party groups cried about how they were singled out for something regarding taxes.  Again, the "Taxed Enough Already" party cried about taxes.  The stories in the news were little comedies.  The IRS had a rule - the 501(c)(3) - that allows groups to NOT pay taxes if they meet certain criteria.  Because it took too long to work, the TEA party cried out.  It sounded to my ears like this:
"Here child," said the parent, "here's exactly what you want, but you have to wait for it."
"NO," cried the brat, "I WANT IT NOW!" 

So it all smelled like the sort of thing that blows up and doesn't work out the way the brats intended.  I was on the right side of quiet.  Most of the "reputable" news outlets now seem to report that it wasn't that way at all.  And further, there appears room for inquiry into why the original inspection of the complaint was allowed to focus only on right-wing parties.  Regardless, I wasn't outraged.

Except, of course, everything else still existed.  Like the fact that we allow for 49% Political operations to be as tax-exempt as religious day-cares, veteran outreach groups, and homes for abused women.  Or that this story was pushed off of the front pages by a Southern woman that cooks and uses offensive language.  I'm no flat-taxer, but the "complexity" of the tax code starts right here with these groups - left and right alike.  Elections shouldn't be wars of attrition, anyway.  Let's just give PBS a few extra million dollars, let them host debates between all candidates for all elections, and leave it at that.  We'd free up all of that capital to create jobs! The billion dollars spent on the last presidential election alone would have been 20,000 jobs at $50,000 each.  Before taxes.  

I guess I was outraged... 

Zenith Radio

I don't know how it came to this.

I had a radio - a Zenith. For as long as i had it,
It was held together by electrical tape
And sounded tinny
And I was sure it would give out for good soon.
And I felt that way for years.

It did falter often. Sometimes no sound,
Sometimes the wrong sound,
And always right when I really wanted to hear
What it was playing.
I'd get frustrated.
I'd throw it away.

I'd get a different radio - there's always one around -
And listen to it. The clear sounds
And the sleek look
And the reliability I thought was there
Were great
But I wasn't used to them.

I'd race to the trash can and retrieve the Zenith
I felt honestly sorry
It did its best and the fault was mine -
Who was I to judge?
And we had seen so much together,
And I knew how to fix this radio.

This played out dozens of times. I should have known
After the first time I went back
That the radio was part of who I was
No matter what.
But I kept throwing it away in frustration
And the garbage man came early today.

Representation

I thought of something that, once it came into mind, seemed so incredibly obvious to me that I figure I must be stealing this from somewhere. There's been a lot of little stories about gerrymandering electoral districts and how some states want to divide electoral college votes in alignment with those gerrymandered districts. I was peacefully driving along the highway and wham-o! It hit me…


I remember back to my grade school days and our basic discussions about the three branches of the government, checks and balances, and the bicameral congress. The two chambers of congress were supposed to be different from one another. One was to be slower and moderating as each chunk of land (State) had the same strength of voice regardless of size, while the other was to be faster acting and more purely representative of the individual. The latter was to be the House of Representatives and, in my opinion, it doesn't represent us anymore. Or not all of us, anyway.

For one, on a simple average alone, each member of the House represents about 700,000 people. That's about the size of the City of Detroit. Also, it's about the size of the population of Alaska. It's slightly more than the population of Washington D.C. and around one-fifth of the population of Puerto Rico, but those two don't really matter since they don't get votes in our federal government…

If you want to continue with the simple average path, at the time of the Founding Fathers, representatives had about 30,000 people under them (excluding "Indians" and "other persons"). These representatives were to be apportioned among the several states. From that, no matter how metropolitan or rural areas actually functioned, Representatives were tied to state borders. This leads me to the real juicy center of the idea: State borders should not apply at all to the House of Representatives.

I live near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. If you look at traffic patterns into and out of the city each morning during the news, there is a lot of connectivity between Camden and Philadelphia. Further, the suburbs are, obviously, more closely tied to the city than to the rural areas to the north and west of Philly. However, the Philly Suburb districts (PA-6, 8 and 15) grab up a lot of open space, all of which was at one time farmland and some still remains as such. How does one person represent the needs of the districts like those? I'd suspect it's an easier job to represent PA-5 to the northwest, which is the beautiful Pennsylvania Wilds (and oil country). At least that area is somewhat economically coherent.

So I'm completely aware that no matter what, representative government is going to be messy. But one thing that it still needs to do is be representative. That's just in the name. If it isn't representative, then it isn't representative. The fact that a government is reflective of the will of the people is essence of what it means to live in something other than a dictatorship. But we seem to want to make ourselves a separate entity from our government. "Them jerks in Washington..."

But I can empathize with the narrow minorities in districts all across the country that have been stripped of representation by congressional borders alone. Just having a representative doesn't mean a person is represented. Everyone had a Feudal Lord at one point too, but that didn't mean representation in the King's court.

So what? Remove the arbitrary state line boundaries and bound congressional districts by activity / economy / etc. Then, without the need for being part of a state but only being part of an American economic or cultural region, territories and non-state districts could finally have a voice in their government. At the outset, states could work together regionally to set up the districts and then they would be approved every ten years (two years after each census) by both Federal and State legislatures and executive branches… or something else to keep them from being modified to meet a political goal at the expense of honest representation. The Senate will still have two representatives per state, so it will remain a body that slows everything down (I mean that in a good way). And while we're at it, change the way the president is elected to straight popular vote. With different parameters on each part of the elected government electoral process, everyone is assured at least some voice in the government. And I think that even when the minority loses out, if we can say out loud that we believe the government is truly representative of the will of the Nation's people, we will be happier and less polarized than we are today.

I base all of this on nothing, of course. Like I said, I was just driving along and it hit me.

Nothing that can make anyone happy

I think that there are probably two types of compromise: one of them compromises over a single issue; the other takes two or more unrelated issues and gives each side something as a win. The first one finds some sort of common ground. Let's not talk about that.

So, the other one might be our salvation. But I've been wrong before.

Dear reader, let's talk about gun control, illegal immigration, and a national ID card. But let's make it a short conversation as I've been too long winded recently.

There is no reason to change any gun control law today. There are already a bunch that we don't fund sufficiently to enforce, so the law does no good. The same is true with immigration. It's already illegal to be in this country without documentation, but we don't enforce it. Actually, our federal or state governments cannot enforce it. It's impossible to get 100% compliance with any "thou shalt not" law. So what do we do? Give up, of course.

No no. No giving up this time. Let's trade instead.

To the Left: You liberal shits want more big government and stuff, right? So we'll go the first step. Everything must be registered, but everything remains legal. And you need to give back something. Something related to immigration would be best.

To the Right: Look douches… You can't just block every single control on firearms when our leaders, our girlfriends, and our children are gunned down seemingly nonstop. (Did anyone get all three references???) You need to allow something, so let's start with a national registry. But while we're at it, we'll make that registry binding for all Americans whether they have a gun or not, via a national ID system.

So one ID system could be a big reform for gun control and immigration. Really, let's go ahead and roll the passport system and the IRS into this and shrink the overall bureaucracy while we're at it.  Maybe we'd be able to afford to enforce the laws we pass this way...
Anyone? Anyone?

When I was almost shot

I think of this line from one episode of The Simpsons, where Moe rushes into a mob gathering and he says something like "Wow, this is the second most number of guns I've ever had pointed at me." That's funny.

I'm 33 years old now and was just starting my senior year of college in September of 2001. At that time, I had been to Canada a handful of times and never flown commercially. I had never been to either coast, either, and maybe to Chicago, "the big city" to folks in Southwest Michigan, a dozen times. So when July of 2002 rolled around and I moved to the suburbs of Philadelphia, I felt very out of place when I saw, somewhat randomly, National Guard troops, armed with rifles, patrolling the public transit lines. This was a more regular occurrence when I got around to visiting New York City. Maybe a year later, I flew in a commercial airliner for the first time and saw quite a bit more of this militarization qua safety. A lot of people at that time said how terrifying it was, overall. This was, of course, in the long wake of the 9/11 attacks.

After spending the first 26 or so years of my life with exactly zero desire to travel internationally, I got a job that took me to Ireland every month. Ultimately, I moved to a job that took me all over the world, including all over Europe, India, and elsewhere. My first time to India is the place where I was almost shot.

Background for this… A few years back, before I ever went over any ocean, there was a Pakistani bombing in Mumbai. I can't claim to be an expert on any of these things, but from what I heard, this started a whole new world of security measures in India. This includes armed guards (heavily armed guards) in the airport, at the hotel, at the factories I'd visit…

So picture this: I'm standing at the line at the desk where they check your passport (this is after 18 hours of flying, so I look and feel my very best). An armed guard stands on either side of me. They appear to both be right handed as each is pointing his rifle to the left. Picture that? Two guards, each pointing their gun to the left, and I'm in the middle. That means one gun is pointed directly at my hips. The guard on the right keeps turning to talk to the guard on my left, each time poking me with the business end of his gun… high up on my right thigh, toward the front… Though I was absolutely certain this person had no malice in his heart and was also equally sure that he had nothing against me personally, I didn't feel comfortable. A few minutes of me dancing forward and backward in an attempt to clear the line of fire ensued, but ultimately, my passport was stamped and I just kinda gave myself up to the fact that I was in a world different than my own. In this world, security was driven by an obvious military presence. I just thought back to 2001 and figured it must be awful to have that kind of tension every day of your life. And I stayed in my hotel as much as possible.

The part about this that stuck with me is that I am not afraid of guns at all. I own some. I enjoy shooting. I try to hunt but find little time and less skill. And like I said, I was absolutely sure that the people charged with protecting us weren't going to shoot me for any reason. But having those loaded-for-bear assault rifles everywhere still made me feel like a different person than I did normally. This, in the face of the very obvious fact that every police officer, most guards, and lots of private citizens are armed with pistols in the U.S. It was just different when those pistols are replaced by AK-47s or other such assault weapons.

And I guess that's a point to be underlined. Americans are constantly surrounded by small arms and even these small arms can do a heck of a lot of damage. Something doesn't feel quite as militant about a 1911, or even a semi-automatic 9mm…

We have a hard time talking about tragedy. When we as a large nation begin to talk about the reasons for these tragedies, or compare those reasons to the reasons for other events, parts of our nation often feel that we're somehow condoning the actions of the criminal. The argument against trying to understand is often boiled down to a sound bite along the lines of, "he was insane and that's all there is to it." That is not the case. That cannot be the case. We need to contextualize and rationalize in order to prevent these tragedies in the future, but that does not mean we ever condone them.

Regardless, there are a lot of people out there talking about these events, so I my voice here doesn't really add anything. Maybe, though, I can talk about getting stuck in the hip with an assault rifle as being part of a normal life in other parts of the world.

There's this other issue in here, though. Our government (by extension, we the people) are dealing with a lot of big issues right now. We are also having trouble getting along. So add together big challenges, stubborn people, and an absolute timeline and often, you end up with tactical solutions. Just to be clear, I mean "tactical" as opposed to "strategic." Tactical solutions have a tendency to build up, one after the other. To make up an example, imagine your job is to pound one nail into one board. You do that on Monday, and your job is done. You come back Tuesday to do the same thing, but now, because of a new tax on nails or something, you need to fill out a form before you pound in the nail. That new form is in response to that tax and is a tactical solution to meeting that need. Wednesday rolls around and due to an injury suffered by another person using a hammer similar to yours, you need to first fill out the tax form, then fill out a check sheet examining your hammer (in response to a new safety regulation) and then start to pound in that nail. I’m not saying that the tax is wrong or that safety isn't important… far from it. But after a thousand days and a thousand more tasks to complete before you can pound that nail, the tactical solutions to real needs have made the work impossible to accomplish. Here, I'd like to say, is where a systemic change would be the thing needed to remove all of the "red tape" built up over time but would still meet all of the needs that drove the tactical solutions in the first place. But that probably won't ever happen…

I bring this up because we could start that same thing with guns soon. The NRA came out recently calling for a huge increase in a militarized presence in schools. This is a tactical solution to a challenge in the same way that the short-lived National Guard presence everywhere was a tactical solution. And these sorts of actions have a tendency to keep building on each other. I'm talking to you, TSA.

If our mindset is that only a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun, then we need really figure out what a good guy is. Police and military personnel are probably good guys in general. We entrust them with our safety in the most extreme of circumstances. However, we pay them to do it. So maybe they're not as "good" as they are just earning a living. This isn't to belittle them at all. It's only to make this next point: what if they volunteered? See, volunteers would be the best way to ensure that we only get the best of the good people out there with guns protecting us, right? This would be like a neighborhood watch system. Right? I'm sure that George Zimmerman thought of himself as a good guy. I'm sure that his neighbors thought that too. Then one day, he shot Trayvon Martin, killing an unarmed kid. Good guys with guns can make mistakes, too.

Living in America is effing awesome. The same is true with Europe and the "Western" world. When we go through customs, we don't get rifles poked into our baby-makers. We don't stop talking and laughing as we pass a security official with an assault rifle on the street corner in Cleveland, Ohio, just to be on the safe side. There are places on Earth where the death of innocent people in large numbers at once is not all that uncommon. This doesn't make it any less horrible there or make our loss in Connecticut any less painful.

So as usual, I have no suggestions and am far from having any answers. All I can be sure of is any answer that makes Americans less American is no answer at all.

A slow kind of death

Sometimes, one hears a phrase so goddamn terrifying that you freeze up, your mind reels imagining the sick consequences, and you fight the urge to drive your car into the bridge abutment coming at you at 82 miles per hour. Wouldn't it be funny if I didn't hear something like that at all and I just start talking about ice cream or something? Well, here's what I heard:


"The victims of Hurricane Sandy are starting to get back those necessities they did without for two weeks."

Now you, dear reader, might not have had the same reaction that I had so let me explain. Working as I do, I've been in a number of situations where some group that performed some specific function complained up the ladder that they didn't have the resources to do their job. This complaint kicked of a discussion that didn't try to find more resources, but tried to see if that job itself had to be done. Very often, it didn't. Now that's very often a good thing in business because that's how business delivers goods cheaper and the customer gets a better price. Consider the language that happens in that discussion, though, and you can see why I considered wrecking my car with me in it…

Person A: "I do this service that the company NEEDS and I don’t have the resources to do it."

Person B: "If you don't have the resources, you're not doing the job now, so we obviously don't NEED it."

Definitions can be very important. Often, very basic words like "need" are defined differently depending on ideology. In the admittedly vague workplace example, this thing probably wasn't a "need" as much as a way to make the overall goal easier at some certain cost. Or, alternately, maybe it was a redundant quality control check that 999,999 times turned up nothing, but caught that one in a million issue that would kill half a dozen consumers. Was that check "needed"?

I say no. Of course not. Here's what is needed: air, water, food, shelter. That's pretty much it. And that's totally okay because on the spectrum that runs between "need" and "hot tub full of champagne and hookers" right next to "need" is "wise". Wise is where it's at.

So back to the Hurricane Sandy quote. Did those people survive without those precious "necessities" that included, I'm sure, medicine, heat, electricity and personal security? Most did. Probably better than 999,999 out of a million did. But today, the whole government is starting to face the Fiscal-holy-god-almighty-Cliff that will bring down the Economy (remember, I'm terrified of the Economy… it's everywhere... watching…). When they start debating what the role of government is and what isn't, I'm sure every one of them will start talking about needs versus wants.

Let me digress to tell you about my upcoming failed novel that I haven't started to write yet. It's a post-apocalyptic story set at this impossible time where older people remember clearly the 1990's and younger people have known pretty much nothing but hard times. The ice caps have melted, raising sea levels to the point where NYC is no longer there. This also changed the currents in the ocean, which changed the wind patterns, so all of the weather good for growing crops is now over desert waste lands and the Canadian oil sands, where no crops can be grown. Or not enough, anyway. It hasn't rained in the middle of America in a decade. You'd think, "We can eat seafood! There's so much more sea now!" I thought of that too. The human-engineered kelp that one keeps in an aquarium (the bright green kind) is super robust and completely inedible. Thus, as it has been let loose into the oceans, it out-competed all the natural sea weed, starved the fish, and the oceans are now dead. Also, in a race to create corn and rice that would grow in the new harsh climates, a hybrid was created with a dominant gene that makes all fruit infertile, thus requiring farmers to buy new seed every year. Random cross pollination here and there and a few years into it, all corn and rice on earth is gone forever as any wild type has been pollinated by this hybrid, making infertile zygotes, and dooming us all. I tell you all of this for the kicker of an ending, which is all I really have…

Our hero that had some long story that I don't have yet and his drifter friend that turned up in the second chapter are at some sort of tent revival thing somewhere deep in the wasteland. A guy is selling miracle seed off to one side. He's quite old. Anyway, as he's selling, he says some key phrase that reminds someone in the crowd of an advertisement he heard as a young man. He says something and reminds someone else about something until it all comes out that this guy selling miracle seed was the CEO of the company that created the killer corn AND the killer kelp AND did so much to cause global warming. As hysteria begins to grow, he reasons with the crowd: "We're all still here! It wasn't the end of the world!"

Our hero, then, has a monologue (which is one of the many reasons this novel is already failed) where he says he dreams of parks, green grass, small bugs (in any post-apocalyptic world, insects get huge fast) and fresh food. He says that he watched his parents die trying to feed him and his sister and then watched his sister die in childbirth, the product of a brutal rape. Then he says something clever like "The earth didn't explode and people aren't extinct, but that world has ended damnit and it's us that let it happen." His rage ebbs to sorrow as he hadn't thought of his sister in a long time, and his drifter friend kills the seed salesman with a shovel, which has been his shtick throughout the story, and then it ends somehow.

We don't have doctors because we need them. We have them because we've chosen to put effort into making sure kids grow old and have kids of their own. We have doctors because once we have grandkids, thus completing one cycle, we don't just want to roll over and die. We have electricity and television and beer because they make life a hell of a lot more fun. Do we need them? Not like clean water and fresh air, but without these things, our world ends.

And we all come together

Generalizing across huge populations is always a bad idea. The reason it keeps happening is that it makes for good reading. Thus…
I was in Ireland last week. One thing you may not know about Ireland is that there are no street numbers. An address might read something like, "O'Beer's Pub, Street Name, Town Name, County." I suppose traditionally it would have been easy enough and if you live in the town, you probably know what's around, but it can be hell on visitors. But what's one more little challenge, right? I mean, I'm already driving on the other side of the road.
Anyway, I got general directions from the hotel I was staying in to the area of the town I needed to get to (the general neighborhood can also be part of the address, sometimes). When I got there, I pulled into a gas station and asked a guy for directions. He said, "I'm going right by there, so just follow me and I'll take you to the gate." And he did just that.
A few days later, I arrived back in Newark Airport, collected my checked baggage, and clamored onto the shuttle bus that leads to the economy parking lot. I'm not complaining when I say that I waited for 35 minutes for the bus, but I bring it up only to highlight the fact that this is not a fast moving operation. So after I get situated in a seat near the front of the bus, two young Asian girls flag down the driver. From just outside of the bus, one girls says, "excuse me…can you tell me…um…" and she quickly looked down onto a sheet she had. The bus driver said, "Uh uh!" and as the doors were swinging shut continued, "I don't got time for that!"
With that kind of friendly attitude, I'm sure we'll all be able to work together post-election to solve these little problems we face.

A CEO as President

Though I know there is an unemployment problem, but I’m sure I’m not the only one in America that works for a large publicly-traded company. After that debate - all of them, really - I want to say what I think we’re all thinking…

I feel very fortunate that I’ve worked under (way, way under) a few very impressive CEOs. I think that they’ve done as much right in their jobs as is humanly possible. But would that make any of them a good president? In my personal case maybe, because I work in a science-based industry. But let’s just say in general, Does being a CEO predispose you to be a good president?

Here’s the thing: there is no way to layoff someone from being an American Citizen. There is a permanence to that that cannot be overcome. The job of the President must act both for the Greater Good, but also on behalf of every single citizen. Though unfortunate, in a company, if times get tight or if there is a strategic advantage, people can get laid off. Research budgets can be cut, too. There are other things as well, such as not investing in growth (or even in maintenance, if you must) and even cutting production. When those things happen, the displaced workers are supported by the USA and the safety net.

So what happens when the thing you’re running is the very thing that is the safety net? As I said, you can’t layoff an American Citizen.

So can a CEO be a good president? Of course. This is America. Any one of us can grow up to be President. But do you have an indispensable skill having been a CEO that nobody else could ever have? No, I don’t think so.

The Method

As we sneak up on the last of the three presidential debates, I think of one horrible fact that has not yet soiled the high-minded speeches we’ve endured for the last two years: what happens when we all refuse to work together?

Let me get something out of the way right now: this little epistle is going to look like I’m attacking Republicans if you, dear reader, don’t make it all the way to the end. The fact that I feel compelled to say that is just one little proof of the situation we’re in. So let’s get to it.

Here are some very recent political memories of mine, in no particular order. I remember this thing called the Nuclear Option in the Senate. This is when the Republicans held the Senate and because they didn’t like the Democrats stopping some of their bills with filibuster, they proposed getting rid of the filibuster entirely, giving the majority ultimate control with a simple majority (the way the House works). It was clear that the Republicans, then in the majority, did not have any interest in working with Democrats. So fast forward to now, with the Republicans now in the minority, they’ve filibustered a lot of what the Democrats have tried to do. Further, the House, which is still Republican controlled, has done little. Period. So in a minority, the Republicans don’t seem to have any interest in working with the Democrats.

Is this a one party problem? I’ll say not right now. I think that any group of people could become sufficiently contrary, regardless of their ideals, to stop our government from doing anything well. And that’s a real heck of a problem if there isn’t any way to get beyond the moment in time when one group has reared up and decided to hold everyone else hostage. There’s a way, though. It’s rough, but it’s a path.

Here’s the deal: until we finally burn up all the oil in the ground, melt the ice caps, create a super virus that will kill us all, or get hit by a meteor, we can hope that we have time. So we take that time to have the government do nothing. But I mean do nothing on purpose. Regardless of what side of the spectrum you’re on today, you have to be able to see that the government is not solving the big problems. When we can see that, we all scream at the top of our lungs “STOP!” Every person in government is suspended for one year, no bills can be passed, and the military takes over ruling the country. As the military, they do only the basics, like defense and infrastructure. All social security and the like is also suspended for a year. Along with the mail. Then, after one year, everyone that was in office goes back for the remainder of their term and we keep going from there. During that time, all taxes that are collected (the IRS functions can be performed by the military) go directly to the national debt.

Or maybe we can do something else. Maybe as we go into this election, we vote for sensible people that are more concerned with having a functioning government than having a government that functions exactly the way his fundamental beliefs tells him it should. I’m sure there is at least one sensible person in most congressional races (though we lost some like Sen. Lugar to the primaries). And I think our current president has shown that he is, at least, practical.

Or we can do the military rule thing… either ours or the one that takes us over because we can’t be trusted with big decisions anymore.

Wants and Fears

Have you noticed that there are political campaigns everywhere these days? They tell me that there are a lot of things to be afraid of today. Like the economy. Man, that thing is scary. It seems that it is the most pervasive thing in existence. Seems to mean more to us than air, water and love. This thing can completely ruin my life if it's allowed to do so. It can do it whether or not I personally make it mad. However, even if I do everything I can for it, it may not reward me with riches, but merely a normal life. I'm afraid of the economy.
Then there are radicals. These people are terrifying. Get this: they base their lives off of beliefs that have no way to be proven right or wrong. They just believe something - maybe it's something they find comforting or maybe it's something they themselves are afraid of - and they let it drive everything in their lives. They protest, burn, marry, kill, and lie based on these beliefs. And I hear they have them outside of America, too. I'm afraid of radicals.

I want to be happy. To be happy, I first must just be. I can't be happy if I'm not alive. I want clean air, fresh water, a functioning sewer, and booze. Those things are all at risk. I'm not even saying I want progress. I don't want cleaner air and fresher water. I'm saying simply that we can't let any more slip away. But it slips further and further into disrepair as the economy and radicals make us more and more afraid. I'm afraid of being afraid any longer.

Our Language is Broken

At various times in my life, I was, or, maybe, I tried to call myself a conservative and other times I called myself a liberal. I've finally seen and heard enough to say conclusively that I have no idea why I wasted my time trying to understand which one of those things I am. I'll go a step further on this, dear anonymous reader, that what I have to say is the same for you, regardless of what you believe. Ready? Let's go…


The first thing we should realize is that our language must reflect what is real and what we feel instead of trying to make what is real and what we feel fit our language. So we need to start by at least allowing for the possibility that there isn't a magic line out there with the left hand side being liberal and the right hand side being conservative and people fall somewhere along on that line.

Ok, but let's start assuming that line exists. How do I know where I fall on that line? Principles? Let's try that. My principle is that we should protect life. Easy principle, right? So when I think we should protect life, that means that we should not kill people for crimes no matter how heinous. Neither should we celebrate abortion as a form of birth control. Rather, we should try to ensure no woman (or no family, really) finds itself in need of an abortion. But, of course, once someone is to the point of whether she should have an abortion or not, I have nothing to do with that decision. To me, that protects life. I like life. You could say I am certainly not Anti-Life and am thus Pro-Life. So my principle on the face falls to the conservative side of the line but the actual implementation of those principles look liberal. On that alone, I'll say the whole line idea is broken and there is no line.

What is there, then? Here again I need to interject an assumption: I assume we need government. I see government as, essentially, a union that all Americans are part of (taxes are dues???). It's the one entity that has no other goal than to look out for our well-being in every single aspect. Pharmaceutical companies look out for our well-being in the doctor's office, but what if the factories themselves pollute? Car companies look out for our well-being by allowing us to get up and move, but what if the cars aren't safe? Government looks at all aspects all the time and we elect experts from among us to do the looking out.

Ok, so the question again is since we don't have a line between liberal and conservative to judge how we vote for people, what do we have? I posit this: we vote based how folks will or won't do whatever it is they do. Using our most divisive topic again, one may vote for Candidate Smith because he protects life by expanding education and reach out so people have a better chance to never be in a position to consider an abortion. Candidate Jones protects life by working to make abortion itself illegal and some folks may vote for him for that reason. Here's another: Candidate Anderson protects health by taxing tobacco and limiting alcohol to people over 21 while Candidate McSmith (I'm bad at conjuring up common names…) protects health by making alcohol illegal (harkening back to the 18th amendment and the Volstead Act…those cursed goddamn things…).

It's clear, I think, that Candidates Smith, Jones, Anderson and McSmith all have good intentions. They all look to protect the lives and health of Americans. So how do we decide? Some people, I think, would look at strict prohibitions set down by the government as bad in some way. Either they're ineffective (the war on drugs is still raging), overly-costly (higher incarceration rates), or they are just not the sort of things government should be doing (it's the job of parents to push around their kids, after all). Others may think that government has no place in "education" practice and should only make distinct black-and-white laws. Regardless, people decide based on how the work gets done.

"But Mr. Blogger, nothing gets done in Washington, so why would we vote based on how work gets done?" Ah yes. Time to bring it all home.

Something unique has happened in 2012. Remember all of that talk a few weeks ago about "Party Platforms"? What those are supposed to be, as I understand it, is a nice, clear explanation of what political parties want to do and how they want to do it.

Here's the GOP Platform:
http://www.gop.com/2012-republican-platform_home/

And the Democratic Platform:
http://www.democrats.org/democratic-national-platform

So yes, we're left with to parties, but they're not polarized as Left or Right. They're different in the way they want to help America. Looking at it this way, I'm immediately hopeful that our political system is actually really, really good. See, if in 2016 America decides they like the party of Candidate Smith, they can vote for the entire party she's a part of because they all share the same methodology for solving issues, semi-regardless of what those issues are. If this happens, Candidate Smith may get the White House, and maybe the House of Representatives will be majority Smith's party (because every Rep is up for reelection every two years), but the Senate may not flip to that party because only one third of the Senate is voted on that year. This keeps progress moving but does hinder changing too much too fast so we don't spin out of control. If we really, really love Smith's party, then in 2018, America may re-elect all those House members and then add more Senators when the next third is up for election.

See? Platforms matter. I'm pulling the lever for Smith and Anderson.

Lament of Late Summer

The garden centers started shaking off the snow in February, putting out seeds, bags of special soils, and little biodegradable pots. It was serious in March. A week without dropping below 40F forced my hand into prepping the soil and putting some hardy plants in. By April, they were all in. Everything seemed slow to take off, but in May, volunteer tomato plants were popping up everywhere. Many were replanted into rows rounding out my number into 24. June and July was weeding, hoisting up heavy branches and tying them off, fighting off local groundhogs and watering during the long droughts. Those lasted into August, but the tomatoes started turning red nonetheless. Fresh tomato slices on bread toasted in oil was frequently on the table. Quickly, each week, sometimes twice, a bushel of tomatoes made its way into the kitchen to be blanched, peeled, cored, and cooked down to a very sweet base for spaghetti sauce or salsa. Then it was September. I pulled off another bushel one day and noticed that it was pretty easy to get them. All of the full, green growth that for so long dominated the yard was falling away limp and yellowing. There’s maybe another batch of sauce out there. Maybe not. I’ve run out of jars anyway.

Time to hunker down. Fall is here.

Labor Day Is Upon Us

Another summer gone.  Here's the tally thus far:
- enough tomatoes to bury a small car under
- along with a lot of peppers, made two batches of salsa and froze gallons of tomato juice (to be canned later)
- one camping trip only
- constant travel...

...this leads me to the following...

I'm updating the blog a little to include short tales from various global excursions.  I still anticipate making countless mistakes, so the name will stay the same.  I'm also now on twitter @FlintyScott.

All the best.  Be safe this holiday (to those in the US that know what I'm talking about...)

Samson

One reason for my absence from these pages is my dog, Samson.  In the end of July 2011, at a local Humane Society, I found this trainwreck of a beagle.  His tongue always hung out of his mouth because he didn't have a singe tooth to hold it in with.  One of his ears was mangled from being chewed on and he had a gigantic hernia on his butt cheek.  The thing was, his teeth didn't fall out.  They were all pulled out.  He as been used to teach little puppies how to dog fight.  He was made defensless and left to die.

He didn't, though.  Somehow that beagle got loose and found his way to the shelter.  He had been there for awhile when we found him.  It took me no time decide that old boy couldn't die in a shelter and we took him home immediately. 

There's a million small stories that describe what took him from being a human-shy dog to the beagle that often slept with his head on the pillow next to me - every one a classic.  But those days are over.  As I sit here in Mumbai, India for work, my girlfriend took Samson in for emergency surgery for a bleeding turmor.  He fought through the surgery, but gave in to heart fauilure in the end.

Samson, it's the wonderful animals like you that help make our human lives a little more bearable.  Once we got you away from your old life, everyone that ever met you loved you, loved to pet you, laugh at your tongue, and go "awwww" when they saw your old bright eyes.  I'm not sure if people deserve a heaven, but I know you do, my friend.  I'll never forget you.