Monthly Archives: April 2014

Pies

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It’s 3:03AM. I am awakened because my bladder decides it has to go like a horse in the field. I roll over to put my feet on the floor. The hip pain builds to intolerable levels as I try to stand. The pain is greater than childbirth and kidney stones combined. I march to the bathroom as stiffly as possible to avoid swinging the biting hip. I finally reach the bathroom and the bladder decides it doesn’t want to go any more. I refuse to go through this much pain again in the morning. I spend the rest of the night sleeping in a chair on a heating pad.

The next morning the volunteer fire department asks me to bake a pie. In the afternoon, I bend over to pick up the rake in an awkward manner to appease the hip. I end up in a half shoulder roll spread out on the ground making grass angels. That’s when my bladder decides to pull all the stops. Excuse me for five minutes while I get back on my feet and another ten to shower and change. Damned hip.

Two days later, I’m back at the clinic because my mammogram showed “something.” Coming out, I meet Clara who tenderly touches my arm and asks me to bake a pie for the Ladies Auxiliary. Shit. What am I made of, pie?

The other day, I took off my long-sleeved shirt to discover a large red and blue bruise on my forearm. Not swollen. Doesn’t hurt. Looked it up on the internet. Nothing but ads for psoriasis and liver pills. We’ll see how it goes.

A day later, the regional church ministry calls and asks me to bake a pie. Jesus, where are you when I need you? Doesn’t the blue-haired crowd know no one else makes pies anymore? They are all busy with those expensive gadgets that run up the phone bill. Capitalism sure knows how to make a buck.

Used to be, I’d call Margaret the telephone operator to get so-and-so on the phone. Could be a neighbor or some store. Didn’t have to dial a single number. And the NSA didn‘t know, Google didn’t know, every retailer in the United States didn’t know. Of course, Margaret knew. At least the news was local. The VFW called today asking for another goddamned pie.

What younger folks do today is go to fun beer parties looking for sex where there are always very attractive people. That’s what television says, anyway. Doesn’t matter, anyone who can still have sex doesn’t ask. But the beer party – that’s another matter. The spots where beer and smoke blended for a wonderful smell of fun and good times has marijuana beat from the start. That reminds me to put marijuana in the pies; I’ll be able to come home before the varicose veins become unbearable.

I know the end is coming. I’ve outlived the actuary statistics. I’m going out with my boots on, though. I have two six-shooters. Twelve bullets have a name on them: one for each person that asks me to bake a pie, one for the life insurance guy, one for the property insurance guy, two for my incompetent, greedy Congressman, and one for the neighbor two houses down. The town will give me a send off to prison for that one.

I guess you’ve figured out two things by now. One, do not ask me to bake pie. Two, it’s 3:10AM and I’m sitting on a heating pad.

Ancient Mariner

About Edwardian Victorian

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The mariner owns an Edwardian Victorian home in Colorado. It was built in 1901 and in its time must have been the queen of Old Colorado City. His advice to everyone is never to own an Edwardian Victorian home built in 1901. Long ago, before most construction regulations were created, the grand house was converted to apartments.

The mariner has owned the home for six years. To this day, house wiring wanders uncharted through the huge home. Eight circuit breakers, four outside and four inside on the third floor control current flow. Like most older homes, the building was grandfathered in and is legal unless the function of the building (apartments) changes. The gas lines are equally obscured from logic or direction. He has never seen two water heaters joined together side by side with at least a dozen elbow joints.

The gas furnace in the basement distributes heat to the entire building via ducts two feet in diameter – delivered to original, ornate iron wall registers.

My son and I have rebuilt a significant portion of the plumbing and must deal with broken septic tile that runs not to the street but under another home built on top of the tiles that run to an alley on the other side. Constant rotor rooter service is critical unless one want a septic backup in the basement.

Together with my son and wife – and contractors, we have patched, plugged, refurbished, and otherwise sustained the life of the building. We have hung doors, rebuilt cabinets, rehung ancient windows with broken weight ropes, replaced broken glass, light fixtures and carpet. The whole building, inside and out has been newly painted.

But the mariner will tell you the worst job of all is replacing venetian blinds. Yes, it seems like a simple and effortless job. But you are fooled. It is a combination of circumstances. First, the windows are very high under a ten foot ceiling; the corners of the lintel look like the building was hit by gunfire regularly since the First World War. Where does one make the next holes to hang the blinds? Some corners are made mostly of wood putty, leaving no firmness that wood provides.

The next circumstance is the step ladder. It is never convenient and requires dangerous leaning over furniture with a large sheet of old window glass inches away. Try leveling the mounting hardware with one hand stretched to its utmost while marking the spots with the other hand somehow reaching over the arm holding the level. Then try to drill holes and mounting screws. By now your legs and arms are growing fatigued, the ladder sways under you and you drop the last two screws to the floor.

The final circumstance is the mariner: mid seventies, palsey that makes using a screwdriver a long, struggling experience to join driver and screw. What should have been a morning’s work lingered toward suppertime. His aching back spoke of the strain of imbalance and the shoulders whimpered with soreness.

Fortunately, tomorrow’s chores are hanging a laundry room door, and repairing cabinets in the bathroom. Simple stuff anyone can do. Building porch decks and properly fitted stairs and rails is easy; the square does all the work.

If you have to hang all new blinds, sell the house!

Our last chore is to pack for the return to Iowa. Our truck was full on the way here. We are returning with a bit more. An inversion table, a lawn mower and perhaps a grill have been added to a truckload that was full on the way out.

Anyone want to buy a Edwardian Victorian home built in 1901? The venetian blinds ar new.

Ancient Mariner

 

The Wealth Gap is a Growing Topic of Interest

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The mariner has reviewed a number of books published recently that openly attack the wealth gap in the United States. One book by Matt Taibbi, The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap, addresses not only the inequities of wealth but also the inequities of social justice in the legal system. In an interview with Jon Stewart, he gives the true example of the young man caught smoking marijuana who spent 41 days in Rikers Prison while the banks stole millions of dollars from “old ladies” selling fake mortgages and walked away without one fine or one prosecution.

Michael Lewis has a popular book called “Flash Boys” that uncovers a stock exchange game where every stock buy by an individual is interrupted, bought by another broker then sold to the original buyer at a higher price. The scheme was hard to uncover because it took advantage of computer speed and shorter distance to the exchange  computer. In other words, in the milliseconds immediately after a trade was launched in, for example, Des Moines, the intercepting computer beat the transaction to the exchange, bought the stock and sold it back to the slower network – all in milliseconds! This trade interruption happens tens of thousands times a day and yields millions of dollars to the intercepting brokers.

The most interesting source is a lecture by Professor Alexander Stoner (Salisbury University, Maryland) at the University of Kansas called, “Social Thought and Research.”  Stoner says “economic growth is the new secular religion, meaning it is a cultural norm that many are afraid to challenge.”

His position is that economic growth is flawed for three reasons: it measures the progress of our society in dollars, not quality of life; it has not eliminated high unemployment and poverty in the U.S. and it threatens the habitability of the earth and the lives of all its inhabitants.

The direction the United States must take is to lessen the pursuit of highest profit. Rather, the economic policy should be one that pursues what is best for the United States as a country peopled by citizens who stabilize the economy. Right now, the economy is weak and corporations and business in general, are not trying to stabilize the national economy. The only game in town is profit for profit’s sake. The national government is a co-conspirator.

The corporate lock on government prevents intelligent analysis of the economy from a national perspective. Many politically significant corporations are international and are not contained by a nation’s economic interests. Further, corporations create a shadow diplomacy with other nations regardless of that nation’s relationship with the United States.

In the last twenty years, trade agreements have undermined nation-to-nation agreements, turning the process into corporate license to avoid regulations, laws and taxes. Trade agreements are not based on national benefit.

Finally, because profit and profit alone is the motivation of business, large and small, the nation’s environment is deteriorating. Recently, deep minor earthquakes, which occur frequently, are linked to the failure of fracking, allowing wastewater and even natural gas to leech to areas that are damaging to citizens and even the deep rock layers.

Septic and chemical abuse, performed only for convenience and cost saving measures, destroys wildlife and fish dependent on good water. In many cases, some of the life is human beings. But landfills for new homes in sensitive areas, unregulated commercial dumping, and ignoring the laws related to easement around streams and rivers rapidly reduces the quality of the nation’s ecological health.

At the bottom, the pressure to increase profits leads the citizenry to purchase products manufactured in harmful ways. Products, food and their processes are not monitored closely to assure that manufacturing is ecologically neutral. Even farming is subject to the secular religion of larger and larger profit, costing many small farmers and many small towns to disappear. More and more farms are owned by corporations as part of a vertical organization that controls cost from hoof to plate. Environmental responsibility is not a goal.

In the recent past, citizens were sensitive to taxation, infrastructure and jobs. These concerns affected their vote. This attitude must change today. True, those issues are still important but they can no longer be resolved in and of themselves. What is causing greater impact is less easily defined but will in the medium run, damage the traditional concern of citizens.

Carbon emissions are very important right now, but the individual citizen, especially in a weak economy, will not vote for environmental security if there is even the remotest threat to a job. The same is true of politicians. Because of manipulations in election processes, the Congress is chock full of older politicians insensitive to the needs of national quality, environmental stability and national identity among nations. The United States is not a corporation, it is a Federalist Republic run by citizens. The US needs a new breed of politicians. Maybe it needs a new breed of voters.

Ancient Mariner

 

The Future According to Michio Kaku

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The mariner drove to Colorado to visit family and attend to an apartment complex he owns. The trip is lengthy at 12 hours. It can be accomplished in one day but now the mariner takes two days to cover the distance – two six-hour drives is plenty.

While driving he listened to Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Michio KakuHuman Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100 by Michio Kaku. A photograph of Michio Kaku is included in case you have not placed name with face.

The first part of the book describes how fast technology advances. In the last one hundred years, educated scientists predicted technological achievement at a much slower pace than how technology actually advanced. The automobile and aircraft existed around one hundred years ago and both were considered novelties that generally were not useful. One insightful scientist suggested that air balloons will be the main form of personal transportation – as common as the automobile today. No one believed high-speed trains were possible within the next one hundred years.

By 2100, Kaku predicts a full integration of every aspect of our lives. The Internet will enable the following:

Each piece of clothing you wear will have a chip that tracks wear and tear and will order a replacement automatically with a design approved by you. You may choose to select another design by scrolling through a specialized catalog based on your past selections. There is no mention of credit cards. The same is true for every object in your life. In a conversation with someone about the book, they asked, “Does that include spouses?”

The desktop, laptop, and handheld devices will disappear within a decade and slowly be replaced by contact lenses with a microchip embedded that performs all the automated functions you perform today on current devices.

There is a rule called Moore’s Law that says computer speed doubles every 18 months. It has held true since the invention of the first computer. Kaku says there is a limit where changes in technology will end Moore’s law. At that point, all information everywhere in the world will be simultaneous and available to anyone. Interestingly, Kaku says that as we implement the new technology, it will reduce the effectiveness of capitalism, which depends on exclusive information and time advantage. But everyone will already know everything and everyone world-wide will be introducing new information at the same time, sort of like Facebook except the input will be useful.

The walls of rooms in your house will be covered with wallpaper that is also a computer screen. Change the color and pattern with your contact lens computer. The walls are interactive with your movement. Further, you can place yourself anywhere in the world in a true three dimensional interactive way. For example, in your room, you can walk the streets of Rome in real time interacting with real people in Rome who will need contact lenses. Do not worry about language differences. As you speak with an Italian, the Internet will automatically make it sound as if you are speaking Italian and vice versa. Remember you are in Italy real time via the Internet. You will be able even to feel the loose stones on the street. The mariner can imagine that this capability will eliminate public transportation. Just blink your eye and click your heels!

You will have access to all knowledge instantly. Kaku predicts that soon, perhaps much less than 100 years, as you walk the streets and focus on a person coming toward you, that person’s name and biographical information pops up on your contact lens. Not just certain familiar persons, every person will be identified by face recognition. Every person! The mariner likes this part because remembering names, among many other things, is increasingly difficult.

A new form of x-ray will give you Superman’s power to see through walls and other objects. The mariner began to wonder about all these powers. He has been around the world a bit. He knows that some men wear women’s panties because they are more comfortable and, perhaps, there are Freudian perceptions at play. If a man walks into a room where others wait for his presentation, what effect will there be if everyone knows the man is wearing panties?

Using the seemingly transportable power of being anywhere in the world, places like Manhattan will be overrun with people from everywhere – or maybe if someone transported themselves to Times Square, it would appear empty because everyone in Manhattan transported themselves somewhere else – or everyone in Times Square is from everywhere but Manhattan. The imagination runs wild.

Kaku says that the combination of speed of light communications with universal awareness will enable a global culture. Nationalism, radical and reactionary movements, insider power and financial moves will diminish if not disappear altogether. Everyone will know everyone in context and everyone will have absolute knowledge.

Finally, Michio Kaku says we will have the power of the gods to create life in any form – even new types of life like a short-necked Giraffe who will viciously bite your toes off. We will heal with hand-held devices seen on Startrek, track viruses at the viral level and destroy them before you even know you may be getting a cold. Any cellular irregularity will be destroyed by a special injection using your own DNA. Your doctor, insurance company, boss and mother-in-law will know these things as they happen. Thank goodness for the Internet.

The mariner is overwhelmed, entertained and feels exposed. It may be the beginning of a technical version of transcendentalism. Emerson wrote in his 1837 speech “The American Scholar“:

“So shall we come to look at the world with new eyes. It shall answer the endless inquiry of the intellect, — What is truth? and of the affections, — What is good? by yielding itself passive to the educated Will. …Build, therefore, your own world. As fast as you conform your life to the pure idea in your mind, that will unfold its great proportions. A correspondent revolution in things will attend the influx of the spirit.”

Indeed. The Internet will allow us to conform our life to the pure idea in our individual minds while in our living room. Shades of The Matrix – at least we don’t have to conform our life in a casket! Will we all transcend the evils of human institutions and social class disparity? Will we have enlightenment? Will everyone know that we don’t have enlightenment?

Ancient Mariner

 

Retirees are Valuable

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As the mariner grows older, ancillary skills fade. It is harder to build good woodwork. It is more tiresome to manage gardens. Ailments slow him physically. Boat repair is at a crawl. What remains in retirement and encroaching old age is a set of skills that are second nature and were honed, practiced and studied across a lifetime. Writers remain writers, researchers remain researchers, administrators and bookkeepers remain the same. It is what they know; it is what they have trained their brains to do for entire careers.

The same is true of a hundred jobs, whether in the home, or at the factory, or driving big rigs. They are expert at these lifelong skills.

The question, then, is why aren’t these expert skills still of value in the marketplace? We are healthier in old age; mental acuity extends further and further as science finds answers to longevity.

The answer of course, is prejudice against people past 55 unless they have power or money and even then, it’s the power and money that is the real value. If many could, they would take the power and money and put the old person out to pasture.

The mariner sees in himself a waste of extensive training in management methodologies. He sees a waste of the skills that managed $300,000,000 contracts and hundreds of people. Today he is in a Podunk town that has no projects (and no paid staff – a critical component).

What do older folk do? How do they carry their pride into old age? How do they leverage the wisdom of decades of experience and tested skills?

The more forceful and detail oriented administrators impose themselves on the body politic – involved in as much as they can possibly handle. But for planners, organizers, sophisticated leaders and planning folk, there is little use for them.

The mariner tried to teach team management to a group that was generally retired for a number of years. It was a useless exercise. By retirement age, there is little that can sway the lifetime of experiences that a person has used to shape a lifelong career.

The mariner has considered new career directions: elected office, county planning, joining a local firm in development, but none seems to congeal to his life pattern.

The mariner is destined, at some point, to seek the solitude and challenge of the sea. It is a dream.

Still, the issue remains: are older folk being shortsheeted in the public workplace? Maybe salaried jobs await us if we pursue the needs of our society.

Ancient Mariner