You have a father?

There is an old joke about two boys sittin' around one Saturday afternoon trying to outdo one another in describing the deprivations and hardships of their respective lives. It goes something like this:

First boy: I have to get up at 4 o'clock in the morning just to be the last one in line for my breakfast.
Second boy: Well, I don't even get no breakfast until supper time.
First boy: My clothes are all hand-me-downs, and I never get nothin' new.
Second boy: All my clothes are hand-me-downs from my stupid sister.
First boy: My father lost his job, and we are gonna be homeless by next Tuesday.
Second boy: You have a father?

I'm just making an observation and not actually feeling sorry for myself.

I often wonder what it would have been like for me to grow up with a father and grandparents. I did have two sets of GINO (grandparents in name only), but I didn't know them, and they certainly didn't know me. My maternal grandfather, allegedly a musically talented and intelligent man, was victimized by a stroke at a fairly early age. I only knew him as a wheelchair-bound, aphasic male entity with a lopsided, paralyzed face, a weird eye that roamed and scared me as a child, and a breathing organism that did not communicate except to drool and mumble. As a child, I did not understand any of that. I just knew that when my parents and I visited, he was always seated in a large wooden wheelchair beside a kitchen window, and he was scary because he didn't "look right" to me. I don't think he knew who I was. If he did, he couldn't indicate that he cared. My grandmother, his wife, was so busy cooking, baking, cleaning, and taking care of her husband that she didn't have time to "see" me. She and grampa lived on their homesteaded farm along with her youngest son, his wife (my aunt and uncle), and their seemingly dozens of children. Those children were well known to my gramma, and she always seemed like a friendly, heavy-set, kindly gramma, but she never said my name or held me or acknowledged me as a child. I blended in with the wallpaper. I ate her food and played in her yard, but there was never any individual attention. It made me wish back then that I had grandparents, so it was a lonely thing to see my gramma but not to be able to interact with her.

My paternal grandparents lived in North Dakota and I in Minnesota. I only saw my paternal grandmother once, and I was very young, and it didn't mean anything to me. I saw my paternal grandfather twice, but he was a standoffish, stern, and somewhat mean-spirited man who came to check up on my father on our farm. I had the sense that my father was afraid of his father. As it turned out, it was for good reason. When I looked at pictures of my paternal grandparents, it was an emotionally vacant experience. I didn't know them. They didn't know me.

My father and mother lived on a 160-acre farm in central Minnesota that my paternal grandfather had homesteaded. They had 3 living children long before I was born and one infant son who apparently died of SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome or "crib death" as it was known then) at one month of age. I came along almost 10 years after my nearest sister. I have no idea what my father was like when the 3 older siblings were at home. By the time I arrived, he was largely uncommunicative. I don't believe he and I exchanged more than 2,000 words in the 17 years I lived at home on the farm. He was there but not there. There was no positive interaction that I can remember. He took no interest in my school work or music activities other than to make me worry about how I would get to band practice in the summer when there was no school bus running. We lived 6 miles from the town where I went to school, and I often had to ask neighbors if I could catch a ride with them. My mother talked to my dad, but there wasn't much of a response. He kept things down to as few words as possible. Asking him for money or the car keys, which he always kept in his pocket, was torture because you never knew if it was going to be yes or no or an "I don't know" or "maybe" that could keep you in anxious suspense for hours and even days at a time. It was a feeling of utter powerlessness and a good deal of humiliation and embarrassment. My mother did the best she could by me, but her life was one of constant worry and anxiety for these and other reasons. Essentially, I was raised by a single parent, my mother, even though we were a "traditional" two-parent, church-going household.

There is much more to the story, but the point is that I now often wonder what it would have been like for me to grow up with a fully functioning set of parents and at least one set of supportive grandparents. I think I would have felt more loved, more confident, less fearful, less anxious, and less self-conscious. I know I have the chance now to re-parent myself, but I frankly don't know how, and it is a little late in the game. This isn't about self-pity. It's just a yearning to dream about what might have been.

A Friend's Rant

Below is a commentary submitted to me by a good friend. In my life, I have never seen a political atmosphere such as the one we are experiencing today. Never before have I seen intelligent people, trying to live an ordinary life, spend so much time and energy on being upset with our politicians and fellow citizens. This is just a sample of the frustration that exists in this political climate. It can't be good for our immune systems, but I also think these feelings need to be expressed. And I am happy to provide a forum for this expression.

"It is a sad thing and very disturbing on every level that there are so many people in this country who want to blame President Barack Obama for everything that goes wrong in the country and the world. There's plenty of blame to go around, but where was that rage when, from 2001 to 2008, government spending climbed higher than any other time in our country's history and not just due to funding two wars? What makes it even more difficult is that everything is so complex and interrelated. Even a professional researcher has difficulty exploring and documenting every bill, topic, senator, representative, judge, cabinet member, intern, legislator, state official, clerk, spokesperson, floor sweeper, and lobbyist to get the correct facts. Even if one would choose a single topic to research, such as healthcare, there are so many subcategories of subcategories (and on and on) to follow and document, it would be a 24/7 task for all eternity. No wonder some folks would just as soon take someone else's word for the facts and not bother to look anything up. What is even sadder is that things have gotten so out of control, there is no one individual, political party, or other group with the foggiest idea of the question, let alone the answer, because THERE IS NO ONE ANSWER! I tired myself out on this rant. Next, Obamacare!"

The Black-Robed Regiment

One of the truly frightening things would be the materialization of the The Black-Robed Regiment as described and espoused by Glenn Beck, the newly self-created televangelist. As I (probably) wasted part of my life listening to his speeches at his "divine rally" in Washington, DC, last Saturday, as captured by CSPAN, and as I watched him call forth similar lunatics who practice "religion" of all kinds (Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, Protestant, etc.) and who stood arm in arm on the stage in the solidarity of an awe-inspiring shared delusion of grandeur, I was momentarily stunned by the prospect of his success as a megalomaniac wishing to impact politics (and, thus, all of life as we know it) in this country by constructing a right-wing, exclusionary theocracy.

From the wrong-headed fundamentalist belief that this constitutional democracy (republic) was founded as a Christian nation all the way to the unwavering desire to absolutely control women's reproductive freedom, the mission of these Beckheads has not only become one of disbanding government (except when it suits them) but instituting political mechanisms that deny the nonbeliever an equal stake in determining one's own life path. Only white, conservative, right-wing, exclusionary christianity is acceptable. All of the rest of us are infidels. And they talk about fearing totalitarianism derived from social justice and "socialism." The mind boggles.

Here is a quote from a Web site called "Truth in History-where the word of God is not bound," an evangelistic outreach of Kingdom Treasure Ministries.

"The black-robed regiment of the Revolutionary Period were men of God who spoke out concerning the issues of the day. The name was given to a name of pastors, especially in colonial America, that were very instrumental in America winning their independence. The reason why they were called Black-Robed regiment is because every Sunday they would mount their pulpits wearing their long black clerical robes; that’s how preachers would preach in that day. They would get in their pulpits wearing these long black robes, and they would preach the Word of God without fear or favor. These men of God would get in their pulpits and they would basically tell people what or who they should and should not vote for because they understood that in order to have a great government then you must have great citizens. The way that you have great citizens is by having great people that are rooted in the foundation of the Word of God. Week after week after week, they expounded upon the principles of the proper role of government, the proper role of individuals, all underneath the kingship of the Lord Jesus Christ."

Just the above paragraph should scare the bejeebers out of anyone with a functioning brain. Beck, a convert to Mormonism from Catholicism, is attempting to knit together the Tea Party, a "libertarian" bunch since they claim to want little or no government (to which I say "Move to Somalia...there is no government there."), the right-wing lunatic fringe, the conservative Republicans, and the evangelicals. He has about 2,000 so-called evangelical "leaders" in his corner right now. These "leaders" range from Jerry Falwell, Jr., to John Hagee. There are millions of sheep who follow Glenn Beck, Jerry Falwell, Jr., John Hagee, and every other nutjob evangelical.

Russell Moore, dean of the School of Theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, wrote on his blog the day after the Beck "Restoring Honor" rally: “It’s sad to see so many Christians confusing Mormon politics or American nationalism with the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

It's not only sad; it's freakin' scary.

What do they want? Duh. Most of the sheep can't even articulate what they want. They are loosely in agreement that they want low/no taxes, a big military (and thus a big expenditure), teeny-tiny government, all abortions made illegal (even when pregnancies result from rape and incest), anti-gay legislation, no socialism of any kind (except for their own Social Security and Medicare), no gun regulations, and a return to the yesterday of "honor" (slavery, no voting rights for women, no civil rights, plus the ability to secede from the union, etc.).

When do they want it? NOW! They are hysterical because their agenda and their "leaders" are currently out of power, and they can't stand it. This is a godless nation that needs SAVING and RESTORING. They want to "take our country back." Yes. Back to the Dark Ages.

When you see (estimates vary) anywhere from 100,000 to 500,000 people (Michele Bachmann says it was over a million, and we know we can believe Michele about everything) gather in WDC on a hot day, you can also believe these people, and many more like them, will vote in the upcoming midterm election and in 2012. They are slobbering for a Beck-Palin ticket.

Michele Bachmann, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Mark Levine, Michael Savage, Michael Steele, and "Fraud News" are filling up the vacuum caused in this country by Everyman's Ignorance. Glenn Beck is the self-promoting (oh, he is getting rich off this Elmer Gantry scheme, for sure) guru, the Savior, the huckster that makes it all seem possible now. The Republican Party is fractured. In order to win in the upcoming election and in 2012, they need Glenn and his Coalition of Sheep to make the change.

It's all about Power and Money. Theirs. Not yours. Never yours. Kiss your ass goodbye if these lunatics regain the Presidency and control of Congress. Your freedoms will disappear. If you thought Bush was craptacular, you ain't seen nothing until the "religious right" assume the throne.

I have always said, since I was a little kid, that I feared religion more than communism. I'm stickin' to that story. It doesn't take much reading of history to see how dangerous "religion" is. What would Jesus say to all this? I am waiting for the day when Jesus returns and tells all the "Christians" to Shut the Fuck Up.

Old People Get Paranoid

I swear that the older people get, the more paranoid they become. I'm not sure if this is simply a matter of brain chemistry gone bugfuck, medication overload, faulty nutrition, spiritual bankruptcy, fear of death, contrariness, just desserts, revenge, or some other factors that I am too unimaginative to categorize. A case in point is my elderly neighbor. She used to be very friendly and chatty, but for the past two months she has stopped talking to me and snubs me whenever we are both in the same outdoor space. This morning, she left a voicemail for me accusing me of putting my trash bag on her property. Of course, I had done no such thing, but she thought I did. Why she thought that I cannot fathom. It's paranoia, I think.

I have a friend whose mother is in her mid-90s, and the stories I hear also lead me to believe that this elderly woman is becoming more paranoid the longer she lives. I'm not saying there isn't enough to be paranoid about in this world. As the saying goes, just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get me.

My dad was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and I think that was a misdiagnosis, but it's instructive all the same. His paranoid delusion that someone was going to sue him and take away his farm and all he had worked for because he was involved in an accident on the county road that ran past our homestead was the tipping point for him. He was on the road at dusk with two horses pulling a seeder, and a car going much too fast ran into the back of the seeder because my dad apparently didn't have a reflective triangle on the back of the machinery. That part was his fault, of course, but the driver of the car was also to blame for not having his automobile under control. After that accident, my dad went into a whirlwind of paranoia, and all he could think about or obsess about was the fact that this man was going to sue him and render him penniless and homeless. That never happened, of course, because no real damage was done in the accident, except to my father's sanity. He spent several years after that in a state-owned mental hospital, underwent 50 electroshock "treatments," and never recovered his equanimity.

As I said before, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you. Whatever was out to get him, got him. I am only sorry that it was all inside the walls of his skull. If he could have just let go of the paranoid thought, he might have lived and been happy.

I hope my crazy neighbor can get help for her paranoia before it kills her too.

Time is a River

What's the difference between UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) and GMT (Greenwich Mean Time), you ask? Maybe you don't ask, but it's a story worth telling anyway. It never hurts to know these things, does it? Curiosity is good for the human soul. One of the criticisms leveled against George W. Bush is that he is incurious. I believe that incuriosity leads to ignorance. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but I think the cat had a hot time poking into everything just the same. That's why cats are so, like, unable to be coerced into anything. They are too smart to be coerced and/or co-opted.

Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) is a term originally referring to mean solar time at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London. Strictly speaking, UTC is an atomic time scale which only approximates GMT with a tolerance of 0.9 second. It is also used to refer to Universal Time (UT) which is a standard astronomical concept used in many technical fields and is referred to as Zulu time.

Why do we observe these precise time methodologies? Because without precise time, a whole bunch of stuff in this world (that we take for granted and never think about) would not work, and that would make us crazy. Or lost. Or dead. Or all three. Or worse.

UTC is the time system used for many Internet and World Wide Web standards. In particular, the Network Time Protocol is designed to synchronize the clocks of many computers over the Internet (usually to that of a known accurate atomic clock) and, thus, uses UTC.

Those who transmit on the amateur radio bands often log the time of their radio contacts in UTC, as transmissions can go worldwide on some frequencies. In the past, the FCC required all amateur radio operators in the United States to log their radio conversations. International broadcasters such as the BBC World Service also use UTC when publishing their schedules and announcing times during broadcasts.

UTC is also the time system used in aviation. Weather forecastings, flight plans, air-traffic control clearances, and maps all use UTC (colloquially referred to as "Zulu Time") to avoid confusion about time zones and daylight saving time.

If we didn't have precise time, how would we know when to turn on the next football game? Case closed.

World Clock

This clock shows UTC time (Coordinated Universal Time). The time in South Africa is UTC+2. Hence, add 2 hours to UTC (shown on this clock) to get the time in South Africa---in case you are watching the World Cup (which, if you're not, you otter bee).

Bambi lives

These little angels were seen on Seabrook Island, South Carolina, one evening in late June 2010.