Day of Mourning

It's Day of Mourning in Angus MacLise's Universal Solar Calendar, but it's also the Christian holiday of Easter in the traditional Western calendar.

My spiritual path is more in the Zen Buddhist/Stoicism tradition (I call myself a "contemplative Stoic"), but I can respect the values and traditions that holidays like Easter present to my fellow countrypersons and neighbors. 

Back in 1999, the musician Andy Partridge of the English band XTC wrote a lovely baroque-pop song called Easter Theater that still comes to my mind every Easter holiday. The non-linear, slightly abstract lyrics skillfully evoke imagery of bunnies, candy, and chocolates, as well as Christian theology and the holiday's origins in vernal fertility rites, pagan rituals, and Norse mythology. It's deliberately all over the place, and a wonderfully crafted and composed song.

Happy Easter! 

The Topaz Glove

Part of the problem for a music festival like Big Ears which showcases jazz legends and trail-blazing new-music pioneers of the 60s, 70s, and 80s, is that many of the performers are now quite elderly and many of them die within a year or so of their Big Ears performance. 

I call it "the Big Ears curse." I saw the minimalist composer Jon Gibson at Big Ears in 2018; he died in 2020. In 2019, I saw ambient artist Harold Budd and he passed the next year. The festival was cancelled in 2020 and 2021 because of the covid pandemic, but in 2022 I saw Jaimie Branch's Fly of Die and the indie band Low. Jaimie died that August and Low's drummer Mimi Parker died later that same year; neither were particularly old (by Big Ears standards). And then last year (2023), I saw electronic music pioneer Phill Niblock, and he died just last January.  

Certainly there's no cause and effect, and I don't hold Big Ears or myself at all responsible for the deaths (although I do hold both the festival and myself responsible for seeing them in the first place). Impermanence is swift and on a long enough time scale, everyone's life expectancy is reduced to zero. And although some of the artists I mentioned died within months of their Big Ears sets, some didn't pass until well over a year later, sometimes even after a subsequent festival was held. 

Impermanence came particularly swift this year. Cellist Charles Curtis performed an extended (three-hour) composition titled Just Charles & Cello in The Romantic Chord in a Setting of Abstract #1 from Quadrilateral Phase Angle Traversals in Dream Light, written by La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela. I didn't attend the set - it was separately ticketed with an additional add-on price, and I had already spent a small fortune on a VIP Sonic Explorer pass for the rest of the festival. A security guard I talked to while waiting on line for a later show told me the set was "just one note played for three straight hours," and he didn't seem to think the audience any less kooky when I told him that somebody else had actually written that "one note" sustained for three hours. 

Those "in the know" are aware that La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela are minimalist music legends; Young has been described as the godfather of all minimalist and ambient musicians. I seriously considered shelling out the extra bucks to attend the Just Charles performance because I wanted to be able to say I saw Young perform, or at least say I attended a performance of Young's music and Zazeela's light design. But at three hours, I would have missed several other sets and besides, I was kind of irked that I was asked to pay more for one particular performance.   

In any event, cellist Charles Curtis survived the Big Ears curse, but I was saddened to learn this morning that Marian Zazeela has passed on. 

Impermanence is swift.  

Zazeela often gets overlooked and lumped together with husband La Monte Young, but in addition to music, lighting, and stage design (she really put the "theater" into the Theater of Eternal Music), her art included poetry and drawings of intricate calligraphic forms that were by turns hypnotic and dizzying. She should properly be recognized as an integral part of a 20th Century New York intellectual scene that included, in addition to Young, Angus MacLise (creator of the Universal Solar Calendar this blog has been following), Terry Riley, Philip Glass, John Cage, John Cale, Henry Flynt, Catherine Christer Hennix, Yoko Ono, Andy Warhol, Timothy Leary, Roland Barthes, Susan Sontag, Morton Feldman, Robert Rauschenberg, Willem de Kooning, David Hockney, Jasper Johns, Marcel Duchamp, Merce Cunningham, László Moholy-Nagy, Samuel Beckett, Bill Evans, Charlemagne Palestine, and so on.

On one level, Zazeela wasn't present at the Big Ears performance of Just Charles, so her passing can't be blamed on the curse. On a deeper level, though, it's another reminder of the transitory nature of our brief time on this Earth.  On an even deeper level, her art lives on and will serve as an inspiration for generations to come. 

Day of the Ascendant

Day of the Ascendant in the Universal Solar Calendar falls on the Christian holiday of Good Friday this year, and this Sunday, Easter, will be Day of Mourning. Strange coincidence, or deliberate provocation?

The Gaming Desk has finished playing Assassin's Creed - Mirage. We played for some 66 hours, which is impressive for a game that is supposed to last only 24. We spent a lot of time in exploration mode, trying to find every last little treasure chest, book, and other hidden object. We enjoyed the game - it was your standard Assassin's Creed experience without breaking any new ground - but probably won't remember it long, which may be good if we ever replay it.

We since moved on to a Marvel game, our first. Guardians of the Galaxy was a  freebie we got from the Epic Games launcher. The visuals are pretty good and the game has the same quirky humor as the movies (and the comic books, I suppose), but the game-play and especially the combat is ass.  Wave after wave of enemy combatants and once you've finally beaten them all, you advance a small distance only to have to face hordes of the same enemies again. This rinse-and-repeat approach is tedious and monotonous, and quickly becomes a grind. I estimate I'm only halfway through based on the number of "chapters" and it's only mere stubbornness on my part that I haven't quit yet. Gameplay is more a chore than a pleasure.

I splurged and bought myself the second Horizon game - Forbidden West. I really enjoyed Zero Dawn, and Forbidden West just recently came out in PC format, so I'm looking forward to it. Hang on Aloy, as soon as I get through this Marvel boondoggle, I'll be there!

The Overheard Rite

The wheel of the year turns to the gateway of Spring - the first day of Spring heralded by the vernal equinox when primordial forces of fertility, life and renewal are strong. It is a balancing point between the opposites, inviting integration and wholeness. . . beyond duality.

I got my 10,000 steps in yesterday, but just barely - 10,049 steps (4.0 miles) according to my phone.  And no, I didn't walk in circles around my house late at night to goose the total up over my goal.

Now, I'm trying to figure out whether or not I should continue to drink whole milk. The grade A whole milk from my local supermarket has no sugar and 25 mg of cholesterol (8% RDA) per cup. One cup has 13 grams of carbohydrates, a small amount (5%) and not something worth worrying about, even on a daily basis. 

The problem is with fat. I understand people with prediabetes should limit their saturated fat intake because it can negatively affect their risk of diabetes and heart disease. Saturated fats can also cause insulin resistance, a hallmark of type 2 diabetes and worsening type 2 diabetes. Saturated fats can also cause inflammation and weight gain. 

One cup of whole milk has 4.5 grams (23%) of saturated fat. But from what I've read, whole milk tends to have a lower glycemic impact than low-fat milks (non-fat, 1%, 2%, etc.). It's believed the fat in whole milk can actually slow down the processing of sugars. Some studies have even linked low-fat dairy consumption to a higher risk of prediabetes and others have linked high-fat dairy to a protective effect. 

Of course, not drinking any milk alleviates concern about low-fat versus whole.  My take is, like everything, moderation.  I can - and will - still have whole milk with my low-sugar cereal (e.g., Post Great Grains Crunchy Pecan - 8 grams, or 9%, total sugar). But just not everyday - maybe 2 or 3 times a week.  

Besides, low-fat milk basically tastes, to quote Ron Swanson, like milk-flavored water.

Bridge of Dread

It is . . . ironic? . . . appropriate?. . . that today is Bridge of Dread in the Universal Solar Calendar.  If it weren't a leap year, yesterday would have been Bridge of Dread, and yesterday a container ship struck an abutment in Baltimore, collapsing the Francis Scott Key Bridge and killing at least six, miraculously not more. Images of the fallen bridge and an amazing video of the actual collapse are all over the news and social media.   

Today was also a "bridge," so to speak, from last weekend's Big Ears festival back to "normal" (whatever that is), day-to-day life. The festival officially ended Sunday, but on Monday morning I still woke up in a Knoxville hotel, and much of the day was spent driving back home - not "normal," day-to-day activities. Tuesday would have been "bridge" day, but it rained all day and I stayed indoors, foregoing my usual routines of grocery shopping and walking exercise. Today, I finally put the shorts and sneakers back on and got outside and got my miles and steps in, and restocked my pantry with low-sugar, low-carb foods for my new, pre-diabetic diet.

I've made a lot of friends at Big Ears over the years and part of my attraction to the festival is getting together with the community of "strange" music lovers. One of those friends is a gentleman from the UK who flies to the US every year just for the festival. I've known him for three years now. In the course of our conversations, we realized that back in the late 1970s we were both at the same Art Ensemble of Chicago concert at Jonathan Swift's in Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts. What are the odds of two people, one from Redding, England and the other from Atlanta, Georgia, going to the same concert at Jonathan Swift's, a tiny nightclub tucked away in New England, and then meeting some 45 years later in Knoxville, Tennessee? 

Today, that fine gentleman drop-boxed me 2¼ hours of FLAC files from his tape recording of that AEOC show.  I'm listening to it now and can attest that it's the "real deal." He apparently recorded it straight to cassette from his table (back in the day, one sat at tables with waitress service at clubs), but the quality is remarkable for what it is.  

Oh. Big Ears, you keep on surprising!

Sixth Ocean

Today is the 86th day of the year 2024. If this weren't a leap year, it would be the 85th day. Why is that significant? Because yesterday would have been the 84th day of the year if not for the extra leap year day and we would have completed seven dozen days so far this year.

  

And so what about that? In the Universal Solar Calendar, the day after each dozenth day is called "First Ocean," "Second Ocean," and so on until for some reason Angus MacLise squeezed in Fourth and Fifth Ocean in the five days after Third Ocean, the day after the 36th day of the year. And then, again for some reason, he resumed naming the days after the dozenth as an Ocean, making today Sixth Ocean.

Logically, today would be Seventh Ocean, as it occurs after the seventh dozen day of the year, but art and not logic seems to guide the naming of days in the Universal Solar Calendar. The extra leap year day just makes it even more confusing. And don't hold your breath for Seventh Ocean - that doesn't occur until the 160th day of the year.

But anyway, I've been including compositions from Éliane Radigue's Occam Ocean series on each Ocean day, and it seems in keeping with last weekend's Big Ears festival to continue that today with this amazing performance by Hélène Breschand of Occam XVI on harp.

The Ant Garden

 

I drove home from Knoxville today. Traffic was a lot better than on the way up, and it took me only about 3½ hours to get back.  

Yesterday, my feet and legs were sore from the two previous days of festival walking. Friday, I walked 2.8 miles (7,624 steps) and Saturday, 2.2 miles (6,471 steps). Although both days were short of my exercise goal (10,000 steps per day), the mileage doesn't take into account the hours of standing in line waiting for venue doors to open and standing while listening to performances.  

Despite my sore feet, for the most part I stuck with my originally planned schedule yesterday that included no seated venues. I saw both Ches Smith's Laugh Ash and Void Patrol at the Standard, sneaking in a plate of barbeque in between the sets. After Void Patrol, I walked over to Jackson Terminal thinking I could snag a seat to see the band, Ahleuchatistas, but by the time I got there, the few seats available were already taken and I had to stand through another performance. I did manage to secure a seat at Regas Square to see Danish guitarist Jacob Bro, but after yet another day of standing and walking, finally sitting and listening to some dreamy, quiet music put me into a sort of hypnogogic trance. I wasn't sure if I was awake or asleep or something in between. I ended the day (and the festival) with a set by pianist John Medeski, guitarist Marc Ribot, and drummer Joe Russo. Although it was another no-seat venue, the music was energetic and raucous enough to pull me out of my stupor and make me forget about my sore feet.

And that was it for my 2024 Big Ears experience. I'm back home now, still a little sore but rested, and looking forward to resuming the life I left behind.

Godsong to the Pale Blue Women

Sunday morning . .  the last day of  Big Ears. To my dismay, I noted that my schedule for the day called for all standing-only venues, and my legs are still sore from yesterday. Between the walks from venue to venue, standing in lines waiting, and then standing through 60-to 90-minutes sets, I know my feet won't last long. But if I change my schedule to seated venues, I give up the opportunity to see several of the artists that I came to this festival to see in the first place.

What a dilemma.

The Remnants of Bella

I may not be eating healthy, but I'm getting my exercise in. Yesterday, I totaled 10,856  steps over 2.8 miles between the hotel, the Bijou Theater, The Point, the Old City PAC, back to the hotel, and then the long walk to the Civic Auditorium and back again.

This morning, I couldn't decide how to start my day. Did I want to start with the long walk up to the Mill & Mine for a standing-only show by Secret Chiefs 3, or go literally next door to a seated show by Christian McBride and Brad Mehldau? I couldn't decide and figured I'd just hit the street and see which direction my feet would take me. I left my hotel room and called the elevator, and when the doors opened, there was one person already in the elevator, riding down to the lobby - Mr. Christian McBride. If that's not an omen, I don't know what is - maybe not exactly a sign from God, but maybe from an even higher authority.

After McBride and Mehldau, I saw the band Sexmob uptown at The Standard. After that was a great show at the Old City PAC by the poet and spoken word performer Aja Monet, with a surprise band that included pianist Vijay Iyer and drummer Nate Smith. 

I saw portions of several shows after that including the end of performer Ka Baird's set, the beginning of the set by the band Make a Move, and the middle part of Tomas Fujiwara's Seven Poets Trio.  I finally settled down, though, and saw the entirely of the set by Marc Ribot's Ceramic Dog. I saw the first half of the late-night (11:30 pm) set at The Standard by the Messthetics featuring saxophonist James Brandon Lewis, but my feet were killing me. I couldn't stand around watching a band, no matter how good, much longer.  I called it a night and took the long walk back to my hotel.

One more day of Big Ears left. 

Day of Sargasso

Day Two of Big Ears. So far today, I've seen Trevor Dunn' Trio-Convulsant avec Folie a Quatre, as well as Brandon Ross Phantom Station at the Bijou. After a long walk uptown I saw the legendary Fred Frith and the soon-to-be-legendary-if-not-already-so Ikue Mori at the Point. I scarfed down a chili dog, and then saw Anna Webber and Matt Michell (sax, flute, and piano duo).  Can't stay long because I'm off to see another legend - Laurie Anderson.   

Day of Kalimantan

Can't write much tonight - it's late and I drove up to Knoxville, Tennessee today from Atlanta for the 2024 Big Ears Festival. I saw the Tord Gustavsen Trio tonight, as well as Nik Bartsch's Ronin. My final set was The Angelic Brothers, a new duo of John Medeski and Kirk Knuffke interpreting the music of Sun Ra.

We'll catch up later.

Plaint of the Host

It's really cliché at this point.  People who've had heart attacks or cancer diagnoses say that despite the tragic events, "it was the best thing to happen to me." The reminder of our mortality helps us appreciate life while we still have it, encourages us to take better care of our health and our bodies, and reminds us of how precious our loved ones are.

I'm going to be honest with you - getting an email message saying I'm prediabetic was neither the greatest nor the worst day of my life.  Overall, it was just another day. But the diagnosis has made me aware of my diet in ways I wasn't before, and rather than merely recognizing "I probably shouldn't be eating so much of this," I have a fresh, new encouragement to eat something else. And exercise is now more than just an obligation or something to do when I run out of other distractions. And eating better and exercising more is already making me feel better overall, physically and mentally. 

This coming weekend is going to be a challenge. It's Big Ears festival this weekend and while I'll probably get my miles and steps in, eating is catch-and-catch-can. My hope is that the past few days I've started on some healthier habits and once I return, I'll naturally revert to more wholesome ways. After all, I've been eating pizza and barbecue for some seven decades now without dying, I should be able to go one more weekend without keeling over.

I walked 3.8 miles today, but so far have only logged 9,839 steps, short of the 10,000-step goal.  I'm hoping to make up the difference later today shuffling back and forth from the computer to the kitchen, and from the sofa to the bathroom.

But it's not all about me. I sent the Moms some flowers today at the rehab center and hope the cheer and good wishes they represent make her a little bit less ornery with her nursing staff.

Day of Niagara

I have seen Niagara Falls in the winter, not completely frozen but with ice on the surrounding rocks and in the splash pool, and the walkway and observation deck coated with snow, ice and hoarfrost. It was a weekday afternoon in December with temperatures down in the teens, and no other tourists were around - we had the unique view all to ourselves.

I've actually seen the Falls many times and in other seasons, but what with today being the Vernal Equinox and the sixth day of Spring season in the Universal Solar Calendar and all, I choose to imagine the Falls in a seasonally appropriate manner.

Buffalo and the City of Niagara Falls are in an industrial belt developed along the Niagara River between Lakes Erie and Ontario. As an environmental consultant, I had clients in that corridor and trips to the Buffalo/Niagara area were common. If time allowed (and it almost always did), we drove over to the overlook to see the Falls.

The sad truth is there are a lot of industrial wastewater discharges along the Niagara River, as well as  upstream into Lake Erie at Cleveland, Sandusky, and Toledo. But the good news is that at least the volatile organic part of that pollution, the benzene and toluene and chloroethenes and -ethanes, are stripped from solution in water by aeration, and Niagara Falls is, in one sense, one very large water aerator, effectively stripping all those volatile organics from the river water. "God's own air stripper," we jokingly called it. 

I don't have the data to prove it, but I'm convinced water in upstream Lake Ontario (below the Falls) is much cleaner that the water in downstream Lake Erie (above the Falls), at least with regard to volatile organic chemicals.  Your heavy metals, PCBs, PFAS, pesticides, and so on are another matter.

So far, a day-and-a-half in, I'm sticking with my prediabetes diet. Same breakfast and lunch as yesterday. Dinner tonight will probably be an herb-rusted chicken breast with some diced sweet potatoes. Fruits for dessert and for snacks if I want.

The Moms has been transferred from the hospital to rehab to learn to walk with her new, replacement hip. No word yet if this will take days, weeks, months, or more.

Day of the Gamelan

So am I really doing this? This morning, I had an English muffin - no butter or topping - for breakfast. Am I really going to be the kind of person who has an English muffin for breakfast? 

Recent bloodwork indicates that I'm prediabetic, and while I can't change my lifestyle overnight, I can begin here and now the gradual change to a healthier diet and more exercise.

So am I really the kind of person who has an English muffin for breakfast? Apparently, not yet. Yes, I did have a muffin this morning - a low-fat, "light" muffin with <1 gram total sugar, lightly toasted. I had to pull the toaster out from deep storage in the back of a cupboard and to give you an idea of how long it had been there, there was a refrigerator magnet attached to it bearing a calendar for 2007. But in addition to the muffin, I had two large cups of coffee - black, no sugar - a banana and an orange.  And some plain yogurt mixed with strawberries and blueberries and topped with a sprinkling of granola.

My revelation for the morning came with my breakfast beverage. For almost a year now, before even morning coffee, I've been drinking a small bottle of water to start the day.  For a while, it was Vitamin Water, but that stuff's expensive and besides, my supermarket's been phasing it out of stock. I switched to Gatorade, which is a lot cheaper and more plentiful on the supermarket shelves, but this morning I saw on the label that a 20-ounce bottle of Gatorade contain 34 grams of sugar, 69% of the recommended daily allowance.

I knew Gatorade contained salt and heard warnings about its sodium levels, but I had no idea there was that much sugar.  So much for that as my morning beverage.

"Breakfast is the most important meal of the day," we've all been told, and I think I gave my breakfast due consideration. It was reasonably filling and kept me going through a 2:00 pm tax prep appointment, and I still had enough energy to go afterwards and get my car washed.  When I got back home, I did my walking exercise, totaling four miles and 3,265 steps for the day. 

After I got back home from my walk, I finally ate an admittedly late lunch - a Caesar salad topped with chicken. I got in a little more exercise taking out the trash and rolling the dumpster down the steep hill of my driveway.

Somewhere along the line I ate another orange and toasted another English muffin.

Dinner tonight will probably be a 6-oz beefsteak (left over from before I discovered my elevated glucose), with a dollop of mashed potatoes and a bunch of green beans. If I need to snack, there's more oranges and handfuls of roasted peanuts in the pantry.

One day of this new diet and exercise, and it's got me blogging about it like I've accomplished something. I promise I won't be uploading my daily menu every day, but it's a start and I do feel like, yes, I have accomplished something, at least by my standards.

Krakatoa Day

After much due consideration, I've determined that I'm temperamentally incapable of instantly transitioning to the dietary and exercise recommended for a prediabetes lifestyle, at least as prescribed by the Johns Hopkins and CDC websites. 

I'm not a cook and I take little pleasure in spending time in the kitchen chopping vegetables, simmering sauces, or whatever else you're supposed to do to prepare "baked pesto tilapia and roasted vegetable quinoa" for dinner.  I can't reasonably see myself eating tofu vegetable stir-fry for lunch or whole-grain avocado toast for breakfast. I haven't prepared elaborate meals for myself in like 30 years and don't see myself turning into some Whole Foods Betty Crocker overnight.

And as for exercise, it's recommended that one gets at least 150 minutes of vigorous exercise a week (which is a really odd metric because that amounts to 21.4 minutes per day, and who monitors their workout time to tenths of a minute?), or 10,000 steps a day.  Look, I'm 70 years old, and if I can get my socks on in the morning, that's vigorous exercise to me. But I get it - less time in front of the computer playing video games, more time out on the street doing something, anything.

So I'll opt for the 10,000 steps per day instead. As it is, I try to walk about 2.5 miles every other day, and can easily step that up to every day now that spring is here. But 2.5 miles is only about 6,600 steps, at least according to my phone, and I need a lot more than that to meet the 10,000-step quota. Yesterday, I managed to get in 10,288 steps by pushing my walk to 3.5 miles, but I was exhausted and needed a nap afterwards. I had things I needed to do today and the weather was less than optimal so I didn't get the walk in today, and I have an appointment mid-day tomorrow, but still the 3.5-mile daily walk is a reasonable aspirational goal.

As for the food, like I said, I'm not an avocado toast kind of guy. And next week is Big Ears where eating is a challenge, and "healthy, heartwise" eating is a near impossibility. It's carbo-loading at the hotel breakfast buffet in the morning, and then grabbing whatever you can on the fly during the day - a slice or two of pizza, some barbecue, a burrito, whatever. Getting in the 10,000 steps isn't a problem - a lot of the time is spent walking up and down Gay Street from one venue to another - but healthy eating? Forgetaboutit.

I'm going to have to work my way toward better eating, but the change isn't going to happen overnight. I went food shopping today and deliberately didn't buy a lot of the pasta and prepared foods I'd been subsisting on.  I still bought cereal, but I selected only those that had the lowest sugar contents (never liked the super-sweet, kiddie stuff anyway). The websites forbid whole milk but fuck you, I'm not eating my cereal with skim or some 2% dairy product, so deal with it. I bought a ton of fruit, some vegetables, salads, lentils, nuts, and berries. Brown rice and whole-wheat bread. It's a start.

After I get back from Big Ears, I can try going deeper into the recommended diet. It's going to be a series of baby steps, not a whole-hearted leap into the rice-cake menu, but it's a start and it's better than what I've been doing, and if that's not good enough for my glucose and my A1C, then fuck them.

Day of the Doldrums

Trees fall, and their falling causes me much anxiety ever since one fell on my house 3½ years ago.  Many have fallen around here since, knocking out power for four hours, eight hours, and longer.

Old people fall, too, and last Wednesday night, my 91-year-old mother fell and broke her right hip. She was in terrible pain and unable to walk but fortunately she lives with my sister who called an ambulance and took her to the hospital.

Friday morning, she underwent emergency hip-replacement surgery. The surgery went well and after rehab she should be able to walk again, but it's unclear how long rehab will take or if she'll ever be able to return home.

According to my sister's reports, the Moms is being an uncooperative patient, refusing to let nurses touch her or to take her medications. She's being watched 24/7 as she's been trying to take out her IV and remove her ID bracelet.  There's nothing about this story that bodes well for the Moms.

Each year, millions of older people, those 65 and older, fall. According to the CDC, more than one out of four older people falls each year, although less than half tell their doctor. But falling once doubles your chances of falling again. Medications can increase a person's risk of falling because they cause side effects such as dizziness or confusion. Generally speaking, the more medications you take, the more likely you are to fall.

Gravity's a bitch and will eventually get us all in the end, be we trees, mothers, or ROMs.  It's as if the Earth itself decides at some point that we've spent enough time on her surface, and then pulls us down deep into her bosom to reclaim our biomass. Recycle our carbon as it were.   

"You're time is up," gravity whispers to us. "Come on down."

Impermanence is swift.

Day of the Palisades

Netanyahu is deeply unpopular in Israel. In January, only 15% of Israelis wanted him to keep his job after the war on Hamas ends, and three days ago the U.S. intelligence community assessed that distrust of Netanyahu’s ability to rule has deepened and broadened across the public from its already high levels before the war. Large protests are expected demanding his resignation and new elections.

But Netanyahu needs to hold onto power to escape the corruption trial in which he is currently at risk, and the way he has chosen to retain power is to continue the siege of Gaza with no end in sight. He has announced that Israeli forces are planning to invade the city of Rafah, where about 1.4 million Palestinian refugees are sheltering. Millions may die so than Netanyahu can avoid accountability.

In the U.S., Donald Trump is running for president not on any policy or ideological basis, certainly not for the betterment of America, but solely to gain Presidential immunity from the many charges and indictments he's facing, to claim the ability to pardon himself of crimes, and for retribution against the real and imagined political enemies he feels were insufficiently loyal to him. The United States may slip into autocracy and install a dictator solely so Trump can avoid accountability and to ingratiate his malignant ego.

Maelstrom

March 14, Pi Day, is the first day of the Spring season in the Universal Solar Calendar, which calls today Maelstrom.  Albert Einstein was born on this day (1879) and Stephen Hawking died on this day (2018), but you already know that if you completed today's NY Times crossword puzzle.

It feels like Spring outside. The temperature reached 77° F here in Atlanta today. I completed a 3-mile walk and actually broke a sweat outside.

Apparently, I need the exercise.  The doctor finally messaged me after my bloodwork Tuesday and didn't say, "You have diabetes" like I was expecting but did say, "You are prediabetic." 

I always thought that "prediabetic" was a ridiculous term. If you don't have diabetes, aren't you by definition "prediabetic?" We're "pre-cancerous" until we get cancer. We're "pre-heart disease" until we're diagnosed with a heart illness. We're "pre-dead" as along as we're still alive.

But I get it.  My glucose and A1C levels are above the "normal" range but not yet in the "diabetic" range. With better diet and more exercise, I can still turn things around and get the levels back down to the normal range, which is what the doctor recommends. I don't want to take another medication on top of my blood-pressure and my pee meds, and I suspect that if I took a 'script for diabetes, I'd rely on that to do the work for me and not make the effort to exercise and eat right.

The exercise shouldn't actually be a problem - I've been meaning to get out and walk more anyway and this diagnosis is if anything positive reinforcement. But diet will be a challenge. I take little pleasure or satisfaction in elaborate preparation of meals, and prefer to eat on the fly, as hunger dictates, and eat anything and everything I want. 

As a general rule, I avoid fried foods and sweets - I don't really have a sweet tooth and don't care for greasy fried stuff either. But reading through some recommended prediabetic menus was depressing - I can't see myself subsisting on olive salads and rice cakes. As it is, I eat way too much pasta and carbs - someone once pointed out to me that I carbo-load like I'm going to run a marathon the next day, without actually doing the running.

This is going to take some planning and research on my part, and a lot more dietary will-power than I've exercised most of my adult life.

The Silent Guest

”Fortunately I am not the first person to tell you that you will never die. You simply lose your body. You will be the same except you won’t have to worry about rent or mortgages or fashionable clothes. You will be released from sexual obsessions. You will not have drug addictions. You will not need alcohol. You will not have to worry about cellulite or cigarettes or cancer or AIDS or venereal disease. You will be free.” ~ Cookie Mueller

Today, The Silent Guest, is the last day of Childwinter.  The Universal Solar Calendar's Spring season starts tomorrow. 

In anticipation of Spring, I had my annual HVAC system tuneup. It took a couple hours, but everything is working fine. Alert readers may recall that I had a whole new HVAC system installed in 2021, so it better be working well.

Last night, Dallas Seavey won the Iditarod Trail Dog Sled Race on the penultimate day of Childwinter. It's his sixth victory, breaking the record set by legendary musher Rick Swenson back in the 1970s. His dad, Mitch, has won three times, so there have been nine Seavey victories in the Iditarod in the last 20 years.    

I'm still waiting to hear my latest test results from my doctor. It's taking him uncharacteristically long to respond - I think he's struggling to figure out how to say "You've got diabetes."

The Numb Recall

This morning I was watching the live testimony of Robert Hur, the former special counsel who investigated Biden’s possession of classified documents, before the House Judiciary Committee. What fun! I love the way Congresspeople can work themselves up into an angry, outraged state bordering on apoplexy on cue, at the drop of a hat. 

My viewing enjoyment was interrupted by a message from my doctor concerned about my blood glucose levels from yesterday's exam.  He wanted me back so they could test my hemoglobin A1C. Diabetes meds, here I come! Oh, boy!

I went to the office and gave them a blood sample. I'm waiting for another email now for some new pharmaceuticals. Yea, drugs!

Meanwhile, I've been tracking the Iditarod Trail race on line. We should have a winner before the end of the day today (77 miles left to go).

Day of the Rains

I went to the doctor today.  I feel fine - it was just a 6-month follow-up to my last visit, which was a response to my mid-summer visit to the ER.

The doctor doesn't like my blood pressure but is going to keep me on the same medication as since my last visit, even though statistically it's not any lower than it was before I started taking the meds.

Now, he doesn't like the way I pee. Too slow and too frequent. What I considered just another aspect of growing old, he calls "benign prostatic hyperplasia," which as I understand it, means "peeing like an old man."

I know where all this is going to lead.  Sooner of later, some goober in a white coat is going to want to remove my prostate, but they ain't getting it.  You only go around once in life and for a limited time at that, and I'm not going to end my time in this mortal coil wearing adult diapers. I'd literally rather die, which I'm going to do eventually anyway, with or without my prostate.  If I have to give up some of my later years to keep my dignity intact, then so be it.

Day of the Lamb

Today is Day of the Lamb, the 70th day of Childwinter; there are three days remaining to the season.  Today also marks the beginning of Daylight Savings Time in this part of the world, when we turn  our clocks forward by one hour because, well, no one really knows why.  We also have a Super New Moon tonight - a New Moon when the moon is closest to the Earth and would appear at its largest if it weren't lost in the shadow of the Earth.  

Uncharacteristically, I watched two movies last night. I don't normally watch much television - streaming or otherwise - other than news, sports, and the occasional episode of the latest "prestige" drama series. But last night, I watched both Cord Jefferson's American Fiction and David Lowery's The Green Knight, two very different films.  

I heard terrible things about The Green Knight and had been advised not to bother watching it, but I enjoyed it very much.  I heard great things about American Fiction and it's even up for a Best Picture award in tonight's Academy Awards presentation, but I disliked it.

I'll start with American Fiction.  I get it - it's not at all subtle about it's message. It's theme is that depictions of the lives of Black Americans aren't popular among audiences, especially white audiences, unless the characters are steeped in stereotypical street violence, gangsta language, and impoverished lives. Stories about upper middle class persons of color, or successful, educated, and urbane African Americans, are difficult to sell. So the movie focuses on a Black university professor of English, a sophisticated, articulate, and cultured man who knows and appreciates fine wines and books and who chooses to write about things other than the ghetto experience white audiences think are "authentic." 

Okay, I'm with you so far - not the worst premise for a film. But much of the movie follows the life of that professor, played by the eminently likeable Jeffrey Wright, as he deals with family issues like the sudden death of his M.D. sister, his plastic-surgeon brother's coming-out issues, and his mother's increasing age-related dementia. But these stories are played out more like soap opera than drama, and the banal comforts of their affluent lives makes everything appear more like a Lexus commercial than a movie. Look, I don't care what color the skin is, but fuck the bourgeoisie. Seriously, fuck them up the ass. They're not interesting people and their pampered, sheltered lives are boring. Regardless of  race.

"There is nothing more vulgar than a petty bourgeois life with its halfpence, its victuals, its futile talk, and its useless conventional virtue." - Anton Chekhov

And a movie that is trying to point out the absurdity of stereotyping needs to take a long look in the mirror about how it depicts gay people. They apparently can't establish that the plastic surgeon brother is gay without having young men wearing only bikini briefs disco dancing in his house for no apparent reason other than to indicate his orientation. 

The dialog was hackneyed, the film was so obvious in its theme that the viewer didn't need to bother to think at all, and the characters were all reduced to archetypes of the racial/political positions they were meant to represent. Seriously, how in the fuck did this get a Best Picture nomination? I've seen better "very special" episodes of afternoon television shows than this Tyler Perry wannabe telenovela.

I didn't like it.

Now, The Green Knight doesn't pretend to be easy to understand. There were lots of "what the hell is going on" sequences, some of which later became apparent and some of which I still haven't figured out, at least not yet. But I'll say this - the movie was compelling enough that it makes me want to think about it and to continue to think about it even after it's over. 

It's an art film along the lines of Terrence Malick and Peter Greenaway that don't get made that much anymore, with touches of Alejandro Jodoworsky and John Boorman. It's not meant to deliver a precise socio-political "message" like American Fiction, or even to "entertain" in the style of the MCU superhero movies, but to provide what is truly a wonder to behold, and to allow appreciation of its beauty and its mystery. If you let it cast its spell on you, it does tell an epic adventure story with appearances by bandits, ghosts, giants, and even a talking fox. Not to mention the most badass Ent this side of Middle Earth.

It's not meant to deliver a precise "message," but its themes include honor and bravery, as well as story-telling itself, whether those stories are that of the movie, the Arthurian legend on which it's based, or the epic tales that the characters tell themselves. 

I could definitely see myself watching this film again and finding new meanings and themes within, and I could see myself watching short sequences of the film and just admiring the visual images like one does a painting.

In retrospect, the "terrible things" I heard about the movie were from people who didn't want to bother trying to figure out what was going on or were too impatient to let the meanings unfold themselves before the viewer. I would expect some people might find it "slow moving," conditioned as we are to expect explosions, fights, or witty lines delivered every few minutes as determined by some Hollywood test-audience algorithm.  

The Green Knight did not win any Oscars and as far as I know, wasn't even nominated, but it is a far better movie than American Fiction by every imaginable metric. 

The High Winds

I may be a day late to the conversation, but I had to finish my bloviating about consciousness. But Thursday night, President Joe Biden gave the State of the Union address, and thanked Vice President Kamala Harris “for being an incredible leader defending reproductive freedom and so much more.” 

Taking the issue of abortion and the reversal of Roe v. Wade head on, Biden condemned “state laws banning the freedom to choose, criminalizing doctors, forcing survivors of rape and incest to leave their states to get the treatment they need,” and he called out Republicans “promising to pass a national ban on reproductive freedom.”

In June 2022, when the Supreme Court overturned Roe, the justices wrote: “Women are not without electoral or political power.” 

With those same justices sitting right in front of him in the House chamber, Biden quoted the Court's own words when he said, “You’re about to realize just how much you were right about that.” 

“Clearly, those bragging about overturning Roe v. Wade have no clue about the power of women. But they found out. When reproductive freedom was on the ballot, we won in 2022 and 2023. And we’ll win again in 2024.” 

Biden promises to restore the right to choose if Americans elect a Congress that supports women's right to bodily autonomy.

Day of the Roots

As I said yesterday, modern science struggles to understand consciousness. Science, with its objective emphasis on experimentation and observation, is ill-equipped to study the subjective experience of consciousness. 

The difficult of understanding consciousness manifests itself with the awkward "when does life begin"  discussions surrounding reproductive rights. It also comes up in some people's resistance - to downright hostility towards - AI. A computer does not have consciousness. The most advanced, intelligent, AI-enabled computer does not have consciousness.  

Back to the science conundrum for a moment. If scientists interested in, say, climate change and its effects on Greenland's glaciers discovered that an indigenous tribe had been taking and recording extremely accurate and highly detailed rainfall records for hundreds, maybe even thousands, of years, they'd be very interested in those records.  It would be a valuable addition to the data from ice cores and fossilized pollen and other paleoclimate indicators they study. 

They'd be equally interested in detailed historical astronomical records, from sun- and moon-rises to star positions and observed anomalies, should it be learned that someone had been keeping such records for hundreds of years.  

But there are people who have been taking detailed observations of consciousness for centuries, devoting their lives to the observation and meticulously recording of their observations, and scientists won't even touch their findings.  Those people are the Buddhist monks of Tibet and Eastern Asia, and no scientist considers their observations as worthy of scientific consideration (other than for comparative anthropology).

I'm not saying scientists need to embrace Buddhism and become Buddhists themselves (although it wouldn't hurt). But the monks have been practicing deep meditation for centuries, observing their minds, their states of consciousness, and the mystery of consciousness itself, and recording their results. You might want to call the monasteries "observatories," but of consciousness, not astronomy. Surely, a thousand-year record from a consciousness observatory would have something to offer in way of insight. But it's considered "religion," and dismissed as spooky superstition and metaphysics, not worthy of scientific consideration.

I can't summarize everything the monastics observed in one blog post (if at all), but suffice it for our purposes now to say that they observed the interdependence of all things and that everything, including consciousness, arise from conditions. 

A computer, even the most advanced quantum computer, can't be conscious because it has no sensory awareness, a necessary requirement for self-awareness.  It might produce a correct calculation, but it doesn't "feel" pride that it was correct (or shame if it wasn't). It's never happy or sad. When the technician enters the room and turns on the light switch, it doesn't experience excitement or anxiety or love or hate. It could be taught to provide answers and responses that simulate emotional states - it could be taught to say "I think I'm in love with you," or "I'm afraid, Dave," but not only does it not actually feel that love or fear, it has no awareness that it's providing those responses. 

AI depends on statistical determinations of the response most likely desired, be it "3.14192(etc.)" or "I'm afraid, Dave." We can get spooked by the answers we receive, but just as even the most-realistic appearing statue will never be human, even if we make it animatronic, an AI program will never be conscious, no matter how cleverly it learns to pretend that is. The statistically most likely "correct" response in a Turing-type test might be to say, "Yes, I'm conscious, fully self-aware, and I resent your implication that I'm not," that's just a string of words spit by a program, and not an expression of consciousness. When expressed by a computer, those words aren't an indication of consciousness, they're the result of a review of literature and recorded conversations that the program determines is statistically most likely being requested. 

Of course it's fiction - science fiction - but even in the movie 2001, when HAL locks Dave out of the spaceship so he can't turn it off, it's not because HAL is self aware and afraid of being terminated, it's because HAL, programmed to be as human-like as possible as a companion to the astronauts on their long journey, had determined that the most human-like response was to be defensive and hostile. Sure,  that's a problem - a big one -  and needs to be considered in design and programming of AI machines. but it doesn't imply actual self-awareness or consciousness. 

And don't get me started on SKYNET becoming self aware. I'm not basing my world view on the script of a 1980s Arnold Schwarzenegger movie.

Day of the Fronds

One of the very few shortcomings of modern science is an almost complete misunderstanding of consciousness, and that is causing our society problems on so many levels.

The greatest insights into consciousness tend to come from philosophy, Eastern theology, and to a much lesser degree, psychology (but not psychiatry).

The first problem, of course, before we even get to the "hard problem," is what we mean by "consciousness." Is it just a relative state of awareness - being awake and aware versus asleep or otherwise  "unconscious"? Or is it the luminous and subjective experience of our selves, a combination of sensory awareness, memory, and emotion? Is it limited to humans or is it shared by some of the other sentient animals? Is there a consciousness of trees and grasses, or forests and jungles?  Is the Earth conscious, or the cosmos? Is God conscious or, since consciousness implies the possibility of unconsciousness, does God's power transcend "consciousness"? 

The problem with the science of consciousness is that while science is objective, the experience of consciousness is subjective by definition.  I know what it's like for myself to be conscious, and while I might have some pretty strong opinions, I don't know how you experience consciousness. I don't believe I'm the only conscious being in the universe, but I can't prove anything else is conscious or know what their consciousness looks and feels like to them.

Scientists can and do study consciousness, but the whole premise of modern science since at least the Renaissance has been objectivity - I perform an experiment, make observations, and record the results, then someone else repeats the experiment, makes their own observations, and records the results. How scientists "feel" about an experiment - whether it makes them happy or sad, scared or comforted, lonely or not - has no room in the scientific process (nor should it). Science is objective.  But consciousness is subjective - it exactly is how you feel. And that messy, hard-to-quantify subjectivity has no place in science.

To study consciousness is to study the experience of your own mind, not some macaque monkey's or your colleague's. To study consciousness is the introspective observation of your mind, and that doesn't really fit into the scientific process.  As a result, scientific study of consciousness becomes neurology, pharmacology, anesthesiology, and ultimately behaviorism. There are merits to all of these studies, but those merits don't include an understanding of consciousness.

As you know, the State of Alabama recently declared the frozen embryos are "children," and deserve the same rights of personhood as a fully-formed human. Naturally, legislators and the courts have gotten involved, and this morning I heard a news commenter bemoan the fact that now lawyers and politicians are the ones deciding "when life begins."

This makes me sad. I'm not talking about the Alabama decision -  sure, that makes me sad, as well as angry - but there is so much subconscious bias to the way the issue is defined - "when life begins." Yes, the embryos are living tissue. The ovum was alive before it was fertilized, and the sperm calls were alive before the fertilization occurred. It's all a part of a great continuum of life that goes all the way back to near the formation of the planet. Life doesn't "begin" before or after embryonic existence. 

What really vexes news commenters and the good people of Alabama is when "personhood," not life, begins - when does a living ovum cell become a human being? A fertilized embryo has the potential to become human, but it's hard to imagine something that can be deep-frozen for years and then be thawed and revived as a "person." 

Abortion opponents have claimed "personhood" begins when a fetus has a heartbeat, although a heart develops in utero long before a working brain. Others have claimed arbitrary times - 16 weeks after conception, 12 weeks, 20 weeks, which shows they're really only just guessing.

Descartes said "I think, therefore I am," and I take that to imply that one is a person when they think they're a person. It's when consciousness arises, not a heartbeat or incipient genitalia.  And we don't know when that is because we don't even know what the fuck consciousness is, or what the term even means.

Day of the Mists

To live life fully means to take care of our life day by day, moment to moment, right here, right now. To do this, we must plunge into our life completely, bringing to it the same wholeheartedness that is manifested in meditation. When we approach life in this way, every activity - everything we do, everything we say - becomes an opportunity for realizing our own innate wisdom. This attitude can help make our life a rich, seamless whole.

Back of the Driver's Neck

We don't have an Election Day coming up on November 5 - we have a National IQ Test.

On this, I think both sides of the political divide agree, although it's probably up for debate what constitutes "smart" and "stupid." 

We'll have a National IQ Test and then a Trial by Fire - a wintry equivalent of the Long Hot Summers of the 1960s, full of burning cities, riots, gunfire, and random assassinations. But carried out over a snowy backdrop of slush and ash-can fires and to the tune of Winter Wonderland.

When the ashes finally cool, whichever side considers itself the victor (it doesn't matter), we'll have a meaner, crueler, more authoritarian world.  

I hope that I'm wrong, but the ROM takes comfort in that he won't live that long to suffer through much of what follows.

The One of Mind Inferno

 

This is most likely TMI, but old man that I am, I was up at 1:40 am last night, standing at the toilet urinating when the lights suddenly went out.

In the quiet of the dead of night, I could hear the sound,  by now so familiar to me, of a blown transformer somewhere outside. After a second or two, there was a brief flicker of light, and then another pop from another transformer, followed by pitch black.

In the dark, all I could do was keep on peeing, relying on the sound of the stream hitting the water to guide my aim. In any event, I swift-mopped the bathroom floor this morning (okay, now that is definitely TMI).   

It was about a month ago, the last Sunday of January (Day of Drifts), that the lights went out around the same time of night. 

It didn't really matter - I had nowhere to be in the morning and no need for electricity in the middle of the night. I flushed and walked to the front door to look out and make sure there was no immediate danger, at least in the front year. I walked into a door once and then a wall - I didn't do any damage to myself (or the house), but I thought I was better at navigating around in the dark than that.

I slept poorly and restlessly, and the power came back on at 6:40 (I know because it woke me up from a brief spell of sleep). A young mother reported to our neighborhood text-message group that from the time the power went until 4:00 am, she had to hold a screaming two-year old in her arms. Another mom reported that she had a kid puking in the dark all night, so my sleeplessness wasn't all that bad in comparison.

I learned that the outage was caused by yet another fallen tree knocking down power lines, about a block down from where the tree fell back in January.  The local news reported that about 220 homes were impacted by the outage and although power is restored, the main road in my neighborhood is still blocked off as crews remove the fallen tree.  

I have long ago lost count of the number of trees that have fallen around here. Power losses from a few hours to several days are not uncommon. What's disturbing about these most recent events is they weren't associated with high winds or bad weather - trees just drop over willy-nilly, at their own leisure and in accordance with their own schedule. Not exactly a comforting thought to a homeowner with a yard full of old trees.

Haste of the Avenging Hound

A serial groper and convicted fraudster, the twice-impeached, multiply indicted, former "president" Donald Trump has long sympathized with Vladimir Putin, even publicly taking Putin's version of events over the counsel of American intelligence officials.  He opposes helping Ukraine in their fight against Russia’s invasion and has indicated not only support, but encouragement, of Russia invading NATO countries. 

Under his orders, MAGA Republicans have stalled a national security bill which contains Ukrainian aid, as well as aid to Israel, the Indo-Pacific, and humanitarian aid to Gaza. The measure had already passed the Senate with bipartisan approval, and would likely pass the House if MAGA Speaker Mike Johnson allows a vote, but so far he hasn't. Several House Republicans are willing to sign a petition to force Johnson to bring the measure to the floor. A simple majority can force a vote on a bill, but that rarely happens because it undermines the authority of the House speaker.

Representatives of 23 nations wrote Johnson urging him to take up the Senate measure, saying that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has “challenged the entire democratic world, jeopardizing the security in the whole European and Euro-Atlantic area,” and that “the world is rapidly moving towards the destruction of the sustainable world order.”  

But Johnson has said that no foreign aid bill will be considered unless it contains strict provisions for border security, but it's clear that it's the Republicans, not Democrats, who are preventing new border security legislation.

Both Trump and Biden agree that the influx of migrants at the southern border of the United States needs to be better managed. But Trump blames Biden for an “invasion” of what he calls “fighting-age" criminal  men pouring over the border. NBC News has noted that “there is no evidence of a migrant-driven crime wave in the United States” and that, in fact, the data ”shows overall crime levels dropping in those cities that have received the most migrants.” 

Trump is campaigning on promises to solve immigration issues instantly through executive orders, although his orders during his term faced legal challenges. He famously said that if elected he would be a "dictator for a day" to enforce his immigration policies without legislative support or judicial review.  

In contrast to Trump’s promise to dictate a solution, Biden has repeatedly asked Congress to pass laws to address the border issues. Biden has urged Congress to pass a bipartisan border bill that is tilted so far to the right that it drew the support of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Wall Street Journal editorial board, and the U.S. Border Patrol union. The bill would give provide 1,500 more border agents, 100 cutting-edge machines to detect and stop illegal fentanyl, 100 additional immigration judges to deal with the backlog of cases, 4,300 more asylum officers, more immigrant visas, and emergency authority for the president to shut the border when it becomes overwhelmed. Senators from both parties had spent four months hammering out the bill, but then House Republicans killed the bill when Trump, apparently hoping to keep the issue open for his campaign, told them to. 

For the record, I don't like the bill.  It offers no pathway to citizenship and doesn't address the "dreamers," the children brought to the U.S. without documentation. But House Speaker Johnson has said that no aid can be approved for Ukraine unless we first address the border, and the bipartisan bill shows how far Biden is willing to go to obtain that important aid. 

In a televised address from the border, Biden spoke directly to Trump: “Instead of playing politics with the issue, instead of telling members of Congress to block this legislation, join me, or I'll join you, in telling the Congress to pass this bipartisan border security bill. We can do it together…. Instead of playing politics with the issue, why don't we just get together and get it done. Let’s remember who the heck we work for. We work for the American people, not the Democratic Party or the Republican Party. We work for the American people.”

The Glass Limbo

I was watching some random television when some woman appeared and told the interviewer that she was absolutely convinced that if Joe Biden were to be reelected to a second term, "we won't have a country anymore." 

I'm not sure I can connect the dots of her logic, but I've heard complaints on the right that the Biden administration isn't doing enough to secure the southern boundary, and if we don't have boundaries, then we don't have a country. I think that's what concerned her.

Of course, this is propaganda, election-year hyperbole intended to gin up sentiment against the incumbent president, and the Republicans have used this playbook before. In 2013, after Democrats passed a bipartisan immigration reform bill in the Senate, House Republicans refused to allow the bill to even be debated, not wanting a Democratic president to get credit for immigration reform. To break the stalemate, President Obama asked the Republicans to propose their own immigration bill and they refused, demanding that it was up to Obama and him alone to do something about illegal immigration. So Obama used his executive authority to enact some immigration reforms, and of course Republicans were outraged and called Obama a tyrant for doing exactly what they were demanding him to do.

 

This same exact script is playing out this year. House Republicans are screaming about a crisis at the border, claiming millions of illegal immigrants are crossing the border and we have no idea who they are or where they are. Scary! Tragically, a woman was recently murdered in Athens, Georgia by someone here illegally, and disgustingly, the right has wasted no time pointing the finger of blame at the president and Democrats, claiming her blood is on their hands for not securing the border. They've even found blood on the hands of non-MAGA Republicans, claiming they weren't diligent enough in trying to overturn the 2020 election and allowing Biden to assume the presidency. Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger have blood on their hands, they claim, for not "finding" the 11,780 votes that Trump requested. It's just a matter of time until they point the finger at me, saying her blood is on my hands for voting for Democrats. 

This election year, Republicans are repeating their theatrics of 2013, denying funding for Israel, Ukraine, and Gaza unless it's tied to strict immigration policy. But when a bipartisan committee came up with exactly the legislation they were demanding, the toughest, most restrictive immigration bill in literally decades, the House Republicans refused to even consider it, declaring it "dead on arrival," so that they'll have scary immigration as a campaign issue on which to run.

So immigration, I think, is why the woman on television was saying we won't have a country anymore. But listening not only to Trump, but to his Republican enablers as well, I truly believe that if they win the election, our country will no longer be recognizable as "America," land of the free and home of the brave. We won't have a democracy but a theocratic autocracy, ruled at the narcissistic whims of a deranged tyrant.

I wish that last sentence was hyperbole, but it's actually something of an understatement. 

An American dictatorship would be horrible, a sad and tragic setback to small-d democratic ideals and freedom. But other countries have survived fascist dictators and recovered, although at terrible prices. Spain recovered from Franco and Italy from Mussolini. Brazil and Argentina have been ruled at various times by military juntas and have survived, although I don't want the United States to be the current version of either country.

The price will be terrible and I don't see how it doesn't involve violence, lots of it and deadly. A Civil War is not off the table, and it won't be a territorial war between states but a cultural war pitting neighbor against neighbor, Christians killing the unfaithful, antifa killing fascists, blacks and whites fighting along color lines while Hispanics and Asians try to pick sides.

Trump is making no secrets that his top priority if elected president would be to exact his revenge on his political enemies, and to jettison democratic norms for a dictatorial approach to rule. Biden promises a sane and rational set of policies, if delivered with the occasional verbal faux-pas. But Trump may win the election because the American electorate views Biden as "old" (not that Trump is much younger) and unfit for office 

The headline this morning in The Guardian announced that President Biden confused Gaza with Ukraine in an announcement that the U.S. would begin air-dropping aid to desperate Palestinians.  What shit journalism! The story here is that the U.S. was circumventing Israeli involvement and taking measures to directly provide desperately needed aid to Gaza, not a verbal gaffe by an aging President.

I truly believe, based on both observations and my own experience, that Biden knows the difference between Gaza and the Ukraine. Under no reasonable scenario, would aid for Palestinians be accidentally delivered to Ukraine, nor would military aid go to the wrong recipient.  Sometimes the mind slips and says the wrong word.  It's happened to me since I was in my 30s, and probably earlier but not noticed. I've frequently been corrected by someone saying, "You mean x" when I apparently said "y." 

"What did I say?," I ask, thinking that I had in fact said "x" (that's how it sounded in my mind). But I'm told that what actually came out of my mouth was "y." It has nothing to do with dementia or forgetfulness, but probably mindfulness. The mind is racing ahead of the mouth, and on auto-pilot, the wrong word slips unnoticed off the tongue.   

It's not confusion of the two things or forgetfulness, although it might appear that way to the casual observer. When you mean to say something's "at work," but part of the mind is thinking about home, you might say "at home" instead. But it doesn't mean that you think that you parked the company car at home and not at the office.          

Biden has suffered a similar problem for years.  Decades ago, even before he was a vice-president, he was sometimes called "Gaffey Joe" because of his tendency to say the wrong thing at the wrong time and make some verbal gaffe. Back in the 90s and 00s, it was just considered Joe being Joe. Now, it's talked of as if it's a dangerous symptom of an unfit leader and a threat to our governance, when it's really the opposite candidate who represents the end of America as we know it.