The Wolf Never Listens When Sheep Bleat

Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

That is what I was taught and what I have learned as I go about the world is that no truer words were ever spoken. Power and corruption go hand in glove, one often inextricable from the other. We see it all around us as the police who are paid to protect us against criminals are often as criminal as the men and women who transgress the bounds of laws. The government that pays the police to protect us are often busy locking arms to prevent the abused from getting justice and the adjudicators paid to serve as advocates for Lady Justice have locked arms with the government and the police to deny the victims access to justice and will wrap their refusal to serve Lady Justice, that blind-folded lady holding the sword and the scales in double-speak and soothing disinformation in order to provide cover for the abusers of our rights and freedoms while proclaiming their innocence. Once again I return to the time will Bill Clinton lied about his sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky and defended his lie by saying that truth depends on the definition of what IS is. Typical lawyer speak for yet another lawyer who has used his training in the law to deny justice and truth.

In watching The Keepers, a video series available on Netflix about who killed Sister Cathy Cesnik and the priest who went from parish to parish bringing his power and his sexual abuse with him, the story about Sister Cathy Cesnik takes on a whole new meaning -- and a much broader scope. Didn't a pope recently step down because of his involvement in protecting the Roman Catholic Church in cases where priests were sexually abusing children? There is that sexual abuse angle in Sister Cathy Cesnik's murder and the priest, Father Joseph Maskell, who was involved in sexual abuse in the Archbishop Keough (pronounced kee-oh) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Father Maskell, in his position at Keough High School as guidance counselor and priest, used his power and position to systematically female students in his charge. Sister Cathy Cesnik was the English and Drama teacher who became involved in helping her students fight back against this pedophile priest and ended up dead for her efforts, though no one knows who killed her. Father Maskell took one student to where Sister Cathy's body had been dumped to illustrate the lesson that people who talk about who, what, where, and when they are being abused end up dead. Father Maskell blamed the student for confiding in Sister Cathy for killing the 26-year-old nun and, he warned the student, if she continued to talk about what happened to her, he assured the girl she would follow Sister Cathy Cesnik and end up another dead body on a secluded hill.

Sister Cathy Cesnik's life up to the point of the series, The Keepers, is not the focus of the abuse or the power Father Maskell corrupted, but brings me back to the presidential election last year when Hillary Clinton ran and all the secrets and scandals that swirled around the Clintons and the powerful company they kept that ensured that Hillary would never have to face prosecution or even a grand jury as long as she continued to abuse her power as Secretary of State and ex-First Lady when her husband Bill was president. Hillary's crimes would never pass muster with the Justice Department not as long as Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, was in charge (as James Comey clearly demonstrated) or Obama was still present exerting his power behind the scenes while claiming ignorance until he hears about yet another scandal in the news. Loretta Lynch would prove to be just as ineffectual as her predecessor, Eric Holder, had been in dealing with scandals swirling about the powerful center of Obama's administration.

Even with thousands of classified emails turning up on Anthony Weiner's laptop, courtesy of his wife, Huma Abedin, close confidante of Hillary Clinton, and destroyed subpoenaed evidence from her server in the basement bathroom of her home and 14 iphones and similar communication devices with BleachBit and hammers, and even losing a laptop in the mail when it was being sent to the FBI for investigation, the power surrounding Hillary and Bill Clinton locked arms and protected them from Lady Justice. Comey said as much in answering questions before a Senate committee looking into the FBI's investigation of Hillary, though Comey did not go into detail since he could not/would not be specific about investigations ongoing or currently under scrutiny. Comey's comments during his July press conference informing the public of what had been discovered about Hillary's use of a private and unsecured server handling classified material walked the razor's edge between listing Hillary's extremely careless handling of classified material as Secretary of State and her well known destruction of evidence did not, in his opinion, stand up to scrutiny legally as no prosecutor would try a case that could not win beyond a reasonable doubt. Government, how reluctantly, will lock arms with the privileged and powerful to deny Lady Justice the opportunity weigh the case in her scales or deliver justice with her upraised sword. It is probably a very good thing Lady Justice is blind-folded since she cannot criticize what she is never allowed to see.

Hillary continues to quip at commencement speeches and in 6-figure speeches about how she was denied the presidency because the Russians interfered in out democratic elections (no evidence at this point), James Comey's investigation into her handling of classified government material on her 1 device (there were 14 at the last count) using her private server in her home's basement bathroom (no one told her it was illegal, not even the times that the State Department's IT staff told her she must use the government servers and a government-issued device) to access her state department emails and classified material because that way the government could protect the information in-house. Of course WikiLeaks is also one of the excuses Hillary gives for her loss, after Russian interference and James Comey's investigation, and never mentions that she never showed up to campaign hard in most of the states in which Trump won victories after huge rallies. Hillary counted on dogged Democrats doing what Democrats have done since LBJ and vote for Hillary even after Hillary and the DNC colluded to deny Bernie Sanders voters could even cast votes when the election was rigged, even when WikiLeaks published emails from John Podesta, Hillary's campaign manager, surfaced laying out how Bernie Sanders would be brought to heel with Russian hackers leaking the information to WikiLeaks and its Russian hacking cadre were unmasked (yet another Russian conspiracy with no teeth and no evidence).

The fact is that Hillary is ill and cannot handle the crowds (or evidently the rallies since none were scheduled) any more, but Hillary is well served with handlers armed with injectable medications ready at a moment's notice and with access to a get-away car as we saw when Hillary left the 9/11 celebration in September in New York City when she stumbled and was thrown into the van unconscious or at least unable to manage on her own and driven to Chelsea's apartment from where she emerged moments later having fully recovered from her heat stroke.  Hillary even hugged a small girl when she emerged fit as a fiddle from Chelsea's building sans Secret Service or her protection brigade and handler even though she was reported to have a serious lung infection that laid poor put upon Hillary low so she could fabricate a new story about having to run hunched over to safety in Chechnya or possibly some YouTube angered Muslims upset about a cartoon making fun of the prophet Mohammed that ended in 4 dead Americans while she ran guns to the Islamic State fighters or some other spontaneously triggered Muslim rebels in Benghazi or possibly New Jersey.

Power corrupts and, like welfare recipients, the more the power (or food stamps) the more corrupt and corruptible the powerful become.

It seems like Hillary and Sister Cathy Cesnik have nothing in common outside of powerful individuals reaping the benefits of their hard won corruption, but think again. The power that protected Father Joseph Maskell from justice is the same powerful height from which a pope fell to be replaced by a new pope who urges the world to erase the boundaries and embrace the New World Order of togetherness and friendship like the European Union which is crumbling before our very eyes. Britain was the first to flee the EU, but is being rapidly followed by other nations either marginalized by EU policies or strangling under the weight of Syrian refugees, many of whom have come from Africa in the wake of Qaddafy's death, to flood the social welfare that once was a shining light beckoning all in Muslim countries fleeing before the Islamic State's fighters or the devastation of climate change, according to Obama, for the wealth and generosity of Chancellor Angela Merkel's open arms in Germany. Meanwhile, France narrowly escaped being corraled with US President Trump and his refusal to bow to Muslim sheikhs or cover Melania with a hijab in deference to fragile Muslim sensibilities, thus hopefully avoiding the need to apologize for poor Muslim men faced with beauty in a woman who is not advertising her willingness to be bombed or mounted by Muslim men starved of beauty openly and brazenly shared.

I do wonder if Father Maskell was also dazzled by the beauty and wantonness of girls barely pubescent and uncovered with their Catholic school uniforms not buttoned up to the neck and with their bobby sox not completely covering the lower calf. It seems, from testimony, that Father Maskell exercised his power over male and female pre-pubescent and pubescent children equally, more of a 'leave no child behind' attitude while exercising his abuses.

Power corrupts without equal even among Muslims. The Muslim belief is that women are for breeding and men are for pleasure in spite of their anti-homosexual attitudes. Smacks of have fun, but don't get too comfortable -- or familiar -- while having your fun with men when there are so many women around to take advantage of. Women are hidden and not given voices to complain. Then again, who knows what is underneath the head-to-toe covering of a veiled and carefully hidden form? Dress in an old-fashioned nun's habit and even a man sporting a full black mustache can appear to casual glances as a woman.

There is no lack of powerful men and women all too willing to abuse the innocent when there is no one to complain except the sheep. When the wolf is listening a sheep bleating, or a hundred sheep bleating, makes no difference. The wolf wins. Father Maskell was a wolf and so is Hillary Clinton. Anyone else is just another sheep bleating into the wind and the sheep bleating after another Muslim attack that turned children into body parts and blood after a concert in Manchester is more loud bleating in a herd of sheep no one is really listening to except for the usual virtue signaling and publicly praying for the fallen.  Don't worry. Lamb will be served following a concert near you soon.

That is all. Disperse.

Kicked Out of Eden

In fantasies and dreams we think of Eden as the perfect place to live: peaceful, without war or strife, where bountiful food grows and drops into our laps. We won't have to struggle to exist and we will fight no more forever.

On a cloud not far away is the dream of Paradise where all our desires are fulfilled and we live in bliss plucking harp strings and singing praises to our god. Some are taught that Paradise is inhabited by virgins ready and waiting to be plundered, taken, and then what? Virginity is fragile. Once the virgin has submitted to the pleasures of sex, the virgin is used and no longer the epitome of innocence. Once a virgin has given up virginity, all that is left is life among the rest of the mortals, child birth if the virgin is fertile, raising up children, breast feeding, diaper changing, eventually adulthood and then death. That is where Paradise begins to look like the rest of the world full of noisy people where virgins are virgins only once and then become one of the noisy rabble of humankind.

In short, Paradise has a very short shelf life. Maybe that is why Paradise is only a dream, a fantasy of immortality and perfection that last as long as a Hershey's Kiss in the hands of a hungry child. And that may be part of the problem -- children.

How long will Paradise last once children are born? Once children grow up and decide they have destinies of their own, they are no longer children and will have to face the unknown country of adulthood and children of their own -- and on and on and on...

Unless Paradise is made up of immortal children who never grow up and want to take charge of their own destinies, Paradise is doomed.

Let's face it. God didn't set Adam and Eve free or post cherubim with flaming swords at the entrance to Eden because he wanted Adam and Eve to come back and visit once they got settled out in the wilderness. God drove Adam and Eve out of Paradise perhaps in hopes that they would perish in the wilderness and Paradise would remain unsullied by Adam and Eve's offspring or the generations that would follow. Paradise would once again be peaceful and quiet and messy humanity would take their chances, slim as they were, in the wilderness where wild beasts and marauding tribes would kill and destroy them. It was unthinkable that Adam and Eve would live to have children of their own that would grow up, marry, and have children of their own and so on and so on and so on...

And yet here we are, the 9 billion offspring of Adam and Eve -- if you believe the story about Eden and Adam and Eve and all that. The point is that Paradise was never meant for adults because adults get together with other adults, virgins give up their virginity, and children are eventually born, grow up, become adults, and carry on meeting, getting together, having children who have children who have children and so on. That's how we got from 2 people in Eden to 9 billion people as the result of Adam and Even being driven into the wilderness where they survived and thrived and created generations of children who grew up and so on and so on and so on....

Did you get it yet? Paradise is a dream humanity was never meant to make into a home. Paradise, or Eden, or Utopia, is a fantasy of peace and tranquility that will suit only the dead -- or children.  Only immortal children can exist in such a paradise because children are content to be led, guided, and willing to play forever . . . as long as the children are immortal and never grow up. It is not children that can live happily and comfortably in an unchanging landscape without struggle and without advancement beyond the next hill, the next corner, the next mountain. Children are content (for the most part) to play and never think about tomorrow because tomorrow is the same as yesterday and today. The thing is that a human child grows up and struggles to take the next step, pull away from the parents, and decide what's next. Without the natural growth of the child into a teenager willing to face down the parents -- or guardians -- and demand to take their lives into his/her own hands, to take the next step -- or the next bicycle ride without training wheels -- into adulthood and self determination and the future that can be molded, chosen, and mastered (after a fashion), humanity stagnates and eventually dies.

I don't think Adam and Eve would have been driven out of Eden if it had not become apparent that they were no longer biddable children. Adam and Eve had taken the next step. They had chosen to become adults and as adults they could no longer live in Eden. There were rivers to cross, paths to travel, mountains to clime, and a future full of uncertainty and possibility to conquer.

Once the fantasy and dream of Paradise and the unchanging landscape of virgins and innocent play palls, there is only the future: adulthood and self determination that results in another generation that will begin as children and struggle against the restraints of rules to take the reins of their own lives in their own hands and venture out into the undiscovered country of possibility and the future.

Children don't want to remain children forever. They want to grow up and be adults, to grasp the reins of their own lives and take their first steps into the future where anything can happen.

God may have driven Adam and Eve out when they were no longer biddable children, but no doubt Adam and Eve would have walked away once they became aware that life meant struggle and self determination even though it also meant children of their own who would travel the same path from innocence to knowledge and finally into whatever lies ahead. Humanity is driven to evolve, to succeed, to fail, to lose, to gain, and to stretch the boundaries of complacency and innocence even if it means pain and struggle along the way.

That is all. Disperse.

A Day in the Life

Every day there is something new that drip, drip, drips through the mainstream media blinders that cover the eyes of most people turning to the newspapers and TV set to get their news. This drip, drip, drip is full of poisons, chemicals, and lies, the propaganda of the elite, like Oprah, intent on selling the last ditch attempt by the global elite to destroy at least 95% of the world's population. It should surprise no one that widely recognized icons, like Hillary, Oprah, and Obama, funded by George Soros are dazzling us all with free cars, houses, and gifts while surreptitiously lining us up for the death chamber, smiling and patting us on the shoulder while shuffling us off to the Grim Reaper.

Do you think I believe in their glad handing, smiling faces as they stun is with beautiful rhetoric or promises of the peace and wonder that is the Eternal Hereafter? Puhleeze. I was not born this morning.

The MSM have narcotized humanity with narcotics in our city water while stunning us with endless loops of circular logic and faux science guys like Bill Nye to cudgel our brains with what seems like truth and logic and has no resemblance to either.  The global elite strive to rewrite history by tearing down statues to heroes of our troubled past as though destroying the idols commemorating our mistakes and errors will erase it from our collective minds. While that may work for millennials, Generation X-ers, and children of the 21st century, it will not work against those who have spent their lives watching, studying, researching, and remembering the past so the rest of humanity won't make the same mistakes this time around.

We have failed.

Those few, like you it seems since you're reading this, are not enough to spread the word and speak out about what is being done in the name of progress and liberalism while continuing to dumb down the current population while inflaming the terrorist arm of the global elite as they have done since the armies of darkness descended on this planet in the 7th century beheading and taxing all nonbelievers in the name of the moon. At least the army of terror chose a god we could look up to every night as it spins in its monthly orbit as hollow and false as the civilization that created it to send the survivors of their galactic wars to this green and fertile world where their offspring could renew themselves and spread out across the globe building new cities and tending the crops that would sustain us, and ultimately poison us, as they sought domination over the races they created in their own image and taught to pray to a god they created -- also in their own image. The fallen angels have been destroyed and their culture and history erased to make room for the hatred and horror of war as the marauding mindless hordes sweep all before them and chosen Judas goats lead the tagged races to death while their hatred for civil dialogue, facts, and truth are lost in the rising clamor of gunfire and screams. No single voice of logic and reason will be allowed to remain and their only hope is ascension -- or at least death when they can become once again a part of the universal zeitgeist for their chance to reincarnate in a brighter, better, and more peaceful world where the din from murdering hordes can no longer be heard, seen, or felt. What then the hopeful people that remained?

They will be absorbed by the chaotic body until it's their turn in the death chamber when their turn comes to die for this cleansed world where memories of them will be lost and forgotten until some time in the future when an enterprising group of archaeologists will unearth what remains -- if anything remains to mark their passage -- and their surgeries, drugs, and physical enhancements are little more than social anomalies left to the Ages.

As for me, I will continue fighting, speaking, and praying for the global elite to be rooted out and saved from their masters' destructive plans to ascend with the rest or be buried in a world of their own creation when the solar winds come to free the faithful and sweep away the master that had us all bound in their deftly woven web of lies and deceit.

That is all. Disperse.

Scrooge, Before or After?

No, it is not Christmas; it's Mothers Day, the day we celebrate all the mothers: good, bad, and indifferent. On Mothers Day we haul out our good memories (if there are any) and triumphantly hand over cards, gifts, flowers, and chocolate to say Thank you for being our mother. It doesn't matter if your mother was less than loving and kind or if she was sometimes abusive or thoughtless, we change our hearts for one day and celebrate mothers who have had a difficult job to do, take a small child and mold that child into an adult. For this one day, we put aside grievances and petty differences and choose to be happy and thankful we were not raised by wolves.

Okay, stop that! No giggling when I'm making a point. Yes, I know wolves would be far superior to some of our mothers. That's not the point. The point is that on Mothers Day we offer those mothers who, for whatever reason, had a rougher time of being a good and kind mother the chance to change her heart and live up to being the best mother she can be.

Think of it as though it is Christmas Eve and the ghosts are giving Scrooge his last chance to give up his miserly and unfriendly ways, embrace the spirit of Christmas, and be a better man with holly in his heart celebrating the spirit of Christmas every day.

Not long ago, millennials demanded that the Minimum Wage Law be changed so that employees in low paying jobs would get $15 an hour instead of the current $7.25 an hour, which is more than double what the law requires. The problem is not changing the law. The problem is changing employers' hearts much like Scrooge's heart was changed.

The CEO of Sam's Club pays $8.89-$11.40 an hour for new employees on the bottom rung of the hiring ladder, which is higher than minimum wage. One could say that Sam's Club is not a fast food restaurant chain and the work requires a bit more of the employee, but that would be missing the point. The minimum wage law is to set a limit on how little employers can get away with paying their employees. The law does not limit how much an employer can pay an employee because the sky -- and the employer's assets -- will determine that.

And that is the point.

Think of raising the minimum wage in terms of Ebenezer Scrooge and Bob Cratchit.  Scrooge is a miser and prefers to get the most from his measly coins. Since he concentrates on how many coins he has and how best to increase those coins, Scrooge skimps on coals to keep the office as cold as he can stand it just as he skimps on how much he pays his clerk.  Scrooge's mind is on keeping his wealth to himself and grudging every request and duty to spend what he has. Scrooge's heart is as cold as his Christmas Eve office and Bob Cratchit's hands. No doubt Scrooge believes that if his office is as cold as the winter streets visitors will think twice about stopping by and won't stay long if they do stop.

Until the spirits of Christmas visit Scrooge Christmas Eve night to remind him of old Fezziwig, Scrooge's boss at his first position, and shows him what could be at his nephew's home where Scrooge has been invited, and where his nephew, Fred, stands up to his friends to speak kindly of his miserly uncle, and the impoverished home where the Cratchits put together a meager Christmas Day feast from what they can afford, Mother Cratchit refusing to drink Scrooge's health until Bob reminds her that his miserly boss employs Bob and has paid for the feast. This Christmas story is not one that should remain only a holiday treat and a Christmas seasons lesson, but should be read every day and the lesson kept close to our hearts especially when people are rioting and demonstrating for a change in the minimum wage law without understanding what it is they are really doing.

The minimum wage law prohibits employers from refusing to pay their employees a living wage. The law was enacted in order to keep employers on the straight and narrow as long as they do the least possible for their employees. Employers get around the law by hiring illegal immigrants to work as cheaply as possible, subverting the law and effectively placing desperate and hungry people in a no-win situation. As the immigrants are illegal, they have no recourse to the law to protect them because they are illegally in the United States. By banding together with other illegal immigrants, they pool their resources, cramming into cheap apartments where the landlords only care about being paid and not about how many people are living, eating, and sleeping in one room as long as the rent is paid on time and in full. There is no law to protect the immigrants who flaunted the law after leaving their homes, fleeing grinding poverty, -- often little better than plywood packing crates -- without running water and with safe sewage/trash disposal to travel north to the United States where at least they will have a job even if it means living two, three, and four families to a one-bedroom apartment in a tenement with running water, toilets, and a kitchen where there is heat in the winter and air conditioning in the summer.

The thing about the law is that the law only works when everyone follows it. There are always ways for the greedy to ignore the law to take advantage of others who have also ignored the law.

That's the thing about minimum wage. The law protects the greedy misers from cheating lawful American citizens and paying them less than the minimum wage.

There is no law that prohibits employers from paying higher wages. All that keeps employers from paying a living wage is selfish greed. Like Sam's Club's CEO who pays his entry level workers a better starting wage, there are many employers who choose to pay their workers more than the minimum wage. Those employers also supply good and affordable premium health care plans and offer generous vacations and sick leave policies. The trick is finding these generous men and women and being hired.

That is what fast food chains were supposed to be, a place for young workers to get their feet wet and where older workers could supplement their retirement income. Minimum wage jobs were a place to begin, and often unfortunately to end, but such jobs were never meant to be a place to grow, evolve, and climb to better and more lucrative positions.

I worked at McDonald's for a few months as a teenager, earning less than minimum wage, which was $1.65 an hour, when I was 16 years old. I didn't work there long because I had my sights set on something else. The something else was a job making $2.50 an hour as a keypunch operator, what would be called now a data entry operator. The technology has changed and I have changed along with it, advancing from a low level clerical worker to a trained and experienced medical transcriptionist with more than 30 years of experience, knowledge, and education. The sad fact is that I make less now than I did when I started in medical records 33 years ago, a third less than my starting wage.

That's the thing about employers. The employer wants to make money and to do that s/he must take a cut from employees' salaries in order to make enough money to pay the bills, buy and maintain equipment, expand facilities, and still have enough money left over to afford their own car, house, vacations, and retirement. If the employer keeps salaries down, s/he will end up with a nice bank account that pays the bills and leaves enough to buy their house, car, insurance, utilities, vacations, and still pay for their children's education so they can find a better job than their parents offer to people without a master's or PhD in education. Their plans are for themselves and their children and their children's children and not for their employees who must manage for themselves. After all, one must think of oneself before thinking of others. They do what the law allows and that is enough. Their fellow men and women must think, plan, and work for themselves. It's a dog-eat-dog world and there is always another dog hungrier and more desperate willing to take advantage and take the food and money right out of your mouth. And then there are the illegal immigrants willing to work for slave wages and live in tenements with other families who have illegally entered the country so they can pool their wages so their families can live better lives that is better than what they had in their home countries.

Jobs in food service are allowed to pay less than minimum wage because they earn tips every day or because they get part of their wages in food. After all, they work in a restaurant or fast food establishment and should be paid in free food. Tips are supposed to be declared and taxed (they usually aren't) and will also provide a steady stream of daily income that will even out the rough spots (it doesn't, especially if you work in a restaurant or bar where the patrons stiff you or believe a dime or quarter is sufficient tip for serving a family of 10 for two hours). No matter where you turn, someone is willing to cheat you in order to keep more of their money for themselves.

Fast food chains are franchises and, if the corporation will not change their policies on how much money an owner/manager may earn, it is unlikely the pay will be much beyond the corporate set pay scales. The only way to earn a good living in a fast food franchise restaurant is to own the corporation and set the prices. If minimum wage is raised, the prices for their products must also be raised to offset the cost. After all, what owner/manager will willingly take a cut in their pay and what corporation would opt to take a cut in profits to pay their workers more than the minimum wage the federal government has set?

What is needed is a change of heart. Corporate CEOs and boards need to choose accept lower returns on their investment, which would mean less profits, which would mean spending profits on premium health care coverage that would not take most of a worker's salary to afford, which would mean higher wagers for all workers, which would mean more money for the worker to spend on housing, food and gas allowances, and savings for the worker's children to get a quality college/university education that would make them fit for better jobs and a better future. Of course this plan would only work as long as the focus in on the future of the worker and their children and not on buying another home in Gstad or a month-long vacation in Bali or they Seychelles or even buying an engagement ring for one's fiancee that costs six months' wages for the owner/manager and paying for a 500 guest wedding with a sit-down catered dinner and a $50,000 wedding dress. It all comes down to priorities.

Are the priorities yourself and your lavish comfort or making the world a better place for those less fortunate, and that does not include spending $20,000 on a ticket to a masquerade ball where you dance fore Dyslexia or Polka to prevent Alzheimer's. Let your heart make the choice.

We can live in lavish luxury in a mansion so big you and your spouse and 1.1 children reside alone or you can live in a two- or three-bedroom home in a good neighborhood and host parties for your employees on the big holidays while making sure every one of your workers has a substantial Christmas and annual bonus with top wages and a health care and benefit package that provides for all their families' needs.

Do you want to live your life as Scrooge before or after the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future have visited? Let your heart be the judge. The law of minimum wage or the generosity of what the market will bear?

That is all. Disperse.

Ethics In Your Face!

I read an article this morning about how a government worker was embarrassed as she explained the US policy of governmental ethics while instructing foreign governmental officials how the US holds its leaders to a high standard of ethics and how the ethics standards are checked and double checked. Instead of sitting awe struck and attentive, one of the government officials basically asked how their policies are going with Trump as president. I can imagine how the class broke up as the educator was laughed into embarrassed silence. I'll bet she would have handled open disdain better if they had taken off their shoes and thrown them at her as once happened with George W. Bush when he was president. I remember the outrage of the Right and the braying of the Left when that aired on the news.

I doubt if the blank-eyed stares of previous foreign students was due to awe at how well ordered the ethics policies, checks, and balance were in the past. The dumb-founded foreign officials were because the foreign officials didn't understand that the oh-so-helpful US government educator really had no idea that ethics in the USA were about as useful as tits on a boar hog and about as airtight as Hillary's excuses for why she lost the election last year.

People's hackles will become fully erect at the hint that the USA is not the epitome of ethics and that no government official at any level has ever engaged in anything that hints at conflicts of interest. How dare they?

Moreover, how dare we?

What gives the United States the right to tell other countries how to run their own countries? One might quip, "The CIA," since the CIA has been actively involved in meddling in who is elected as a country's leader for decades. There are lists of budgets and documents that detail exactly how the election of leaders in South American countries have been handled and who was chosen to win and to lose.

And here comes the conspiracy theorist name-calling.

If you don't already know about it, George W. Bush had a list of which Middle Eastern country leaders and governments were to be removed from office. Cheney knew about it of course since George W. delegated most presidential tasks to Cheney so George W. could practice his painting and vacation on his ranch in Texas. Bill Clinton was more hands on than hands off when it came to meddling in other countries' democratic elections and took no small pleasure in toppling leaders left and right. Slick Willy has changed his tune since he is too busy -- or at least was until Hillary lost the election -- soliciting funds for his and Hillary's retirement funds and private island resort where all the world's leaders can bask in the sun while pledging and paying millions to the Clinton Foundation to combat hunger in Africa and cure AIDS around the world in the form of private clubs like the facility in Haiti while the people continue to live in squalor in shanty towns around the island. And all those jobs, the Clintons promised the Haitians when they promised to help clean up the hurricane damage from 2013 are about as illusory as the clean water and 21st century sewer treatment facilities that were built by the Clinton Foundation.

The Clinton are really too easy a target when it comes to ethics since neither Bill nor Hillary know the first thing about ethics since they are still demanding to know what the definition of IS is.

Obama, masquerading as a Christian while still practicing Islam in a private room in the White House, was busy buying American hostages from Iran to seal the deal while urging the world to give up sanctions against Iran and chip in with some enriched uranium so the Iranians could build nuclear power plants to ease the burden on the average Iranian citizen. After all, don't Iranians deserve to have lights and electricity for their illegal satellite dishes when the Ayatollah cuts off their Internet?

Seriously? The US has no business teaching the world about ethics or complaining about how Trump turns his back on ethics and continues his conflicts of interest. We do not really want to get into the conflicts of interest that are rife in politics in the US or this post will be so long no one will take the time to read it.

Amidst calls for Trump's impeachment, the ethics committee is having a hard time keeping a straight face while they educate foreign governments how to keep their own governments ethical and conflict of interest free. Okay, so foreign officials are laughing boldly in our faces. Isn't that better than sniggering behind the country's back?

Ethics is a word college students learn in a class and thumb their noses at while they dive into the swamp of politics stroking hard for the filthiest spot in the pool.

The US has no business teaching the world about anything except how to keep its nose out of the world's business. Point to World War I and World War II if you like, but the United States didn't get into those world wars until the wars were almost over and the hard work done. The US should have stayed out of Vietnam and Korea as well. We have not done the world a bit of good and the good that those wars did the United States has long been bankrupted.

Trump is doing for $1 a year what presidents before him did for hundreds of millions of dollars and he does it in the clear light of day. Trump is rude, crude, and socially unacceptable, but that is who the people elected instead of some speechifying hypocrite whose only aim was to destroy the USA and bring it to its knees. Job done!

Keep your spy hats firmly on your heads and the blinders blacked out because Trump is not going to change and for once the abuses of power are done in the full light of day instead of covertly while claiming to be aghast at the scandals he found out when it broke in the news on CNN. Welcome to a really transparent government at last. Sorry if it looks a little dirty, but at least now you know.

That is all. Disperse.

Balancing on a Razor's Edge

Whatever you think of FBI director James Comey, it seems he is still a political football. I'm sure he was not surprised when President Trump called him on the Oval Office carpet and fired him. I am surprised Trump didn't fire him sooner. Then again, I am surprised by much of what Trump does. Trump seems unfocused and far too often emotional, acting out rather than acting from a stable emotional base, but then he's Trump and his emotions seem set to a hair trigger attached to his mouth and his tweeting fingers. Neither a good or stable position from which to act. If Trump was a warrior with decades of scars and battle experience to his credit, I'd guess he was a berserker.

I've heard and read comments from Democrat and Republican views that Comey is a nefarious master mind, that he is a dirty cop, that he is an honest dupe, that he was colluding with Hillary, that he is now colluding with Trump or at least has been backed into a corner where he has been forced to dance to Trump's since last spring, and on and on and on. The Democrats and Republicans and yanking on Comey from both sides, blaming him, challenging him, lauding him, applauding and demonizing him. My views are far less quixotic and less changeable.

From the beginning when Comey laid out the results of the investigation into Hillary's server, I believed he was honest and doing his best to stand up in a hurricane clinging to the nearest upright and stable anchor doing what he could. I was outraged that Comey gave Hillary a pass especially after stating that the Secretary of State had been extremely careless with classified documentation but that no prosecutor could prove she had the intent to commit an illegal act.

What?!

Hillary installed a server in her home and ran all of her emails through it. Hillary, when subpoenaed by Congress to answer questions and produce all devices had her server treated with Bleach Bit to erase all traces of her communication from the server, lost devices, and destroyed devices even with a hammer. I guess Hillary had been watching too many movies where junkies tossed their stash in the toilet and flushed it all way. No evidence, no crime.

There remained evidence on Anthony Weiner's laptop in his home for instance and in thousands of emails sent to people all around the world, including emails to Obama who was president at the time, and many of the emails still had evidence of classified markings on them. She was seen in photo and video tap, tap, tapping away at her Blackberry here and abroad and it was public knowledge that her communications were not secret even when sending and receiving secret information and that Hillary had been hacked by operatives from governments, allies and enemies. How does none of that provide enough proof of intent that a prosecutor wouldn't give his pension and eye teeth to prosecute? Such evidence is a game changer, a career maker, a lock. And it wasn't enough to prove intent? Was Comey high on crack? Was he insane or in the early stages of Alzheimer's who no longer recognized friend, foe, or family? How do you state publicly that the Secretary of the State of the United States of America under President Obama, a woman who has served in high office, and who was married to the president of the USA and was First Lady for 8 years, didn't know what a classified document looked like and lied about sending and receiving classified information was extremely careless when handling classified documents is not guilty of a crime? American citizens who were attached to the military services are still serving jail sentences for less and one general at least in recent memory was destroyed by being extremely careless with his pillow talk to his mistress when divulging classified information. How does Hillary get a pass?

Well, Hillary's husband, ex-president Bill Clinton, flew down to Phoenix and entered Loretta Lynch's plane where Mrs. Lynch dismissed her aides, companions, and guards and spent 30 minutes in the plane on the tarmac in Phoenix purportedly discussing grandkids and golf while Hillary was still under investigation. That had to have given Comey pause that the head of the Department of Justice (DOJ), his boss, was carrying on a private conversation with the husband of a woman under investigation by the FBI and the DOJ that none of her entourage were allowed to hear. Loretta Lynch, instead of recusing herself and allowing someone else to take the lead on the investigation, said in a press conference a few days later that she did indeed meet with her old friend, Bill Clinton, wife of Hillary who was under investigation, and that they talked about their grandkids and golf for 30 minutes and that she would accept whatever the FBI and the DOJ teams suggested. I knew then, if I hadn't figured it out before, that the fix was in. Hillary was going to get away with her extremely careless handling of confidential information.

Hillary was also going to get away with her extensive attempts to get rid of the evidence of her carelessness. Obama had covered for her and covered for Hillary still. Lynch was obviously in the bag and Lynch was the only person who could convene a grand jury to indict Hillary so she would stand trial before a jury. James Comey was obviously caught in a no-win situation no matter what he did, which is why he outlined Hillary's actions and summarized his findings by saying that no prosecutor would touch the case given the fact pattern he found because Hillary was not guilty beyond the shadow of a doubt. Huh?!  Isn't that something the prosecutor has to determine? Did Comey talk to a prosecutor, see a prosecutor, hear a prosecutor say there was insufficient evidence or cause to get a clear verdict on Hillary's guilt? Did Comey have a secret meeting with a grand jury and prosecutor to claim Hillary's case had insufficient evidence to prosecute and indict? What was going on? I was back to Comey must be high on crack again because nothing else made sense.

I watched Comey give evidence in congressional hearing after congressional hearing and he seemed lucid and honest, but I've been fooled by pathologic liars before. Was Comey another such sociopath?

No, Comey's background and family were involved and "...being paid millions of dollars that Comey accepted from a Clinton Foundation defense contractor, Comey’s former membership on a Clinton Foundation corporate partner’s board, and his surprising financial relationship with his brother Peter Comey, who works at the law firm that does the Clinton Foundation’s taxes."  Seems Comey isn't so honest after all. 

Stories that follow the money dog Comey and the people that read such stories question Comey's integrity and his honesty.  No one has mentioned whether or not Comey was a Hillary or Trump supporter that I've seen, but how Comey votes isn't supposed to matter; he's a cop, and agent and director of the FBI, he doesn't have a political voice in all of this -- or does he? 

Hillary claims that FBI director James Comey was the reason she lost the election. Hillary also claims the Russians were the reason she lost the election and then further claims that she lost because of . . . well, there's a long list of reasons, including Anthony Weiner’s cellphone, Fox News, WikiLeaks, and the fake news of the alt-right. I'm sure as the days go on and Hillary continues her many $250,000 speeches the reasons will accumulate as fast as the donations to the Clinton Foundation from foreign governments that only want to do good. 

Oh, wait, those foreign government payments ended before Hillary lost the election to Trump and have failed to begin again when the Electoral College certified Trump's win. That must be a big blow to the poor and needy the world over who were being helped by the Clinton Foundation. I'm certain the hurricane victims in Haiti will continue to send their regrets for the loss of their share of the charitable donations from the Clinton Foundation.

I prefer to think of James Comey as a good and honest cop who was caught between Obama and Hillary on one side and Loretta Lynch on the other side and doing the best he could to keep his head above water even though it no longer matters because Comey was fired as director of the FBI this week. Congress has found no evidence so far that Russia hacked the elections or were in any way involved in hacking documents and emails from John Podesta, the DNC, and Hillary and her team. Those documents and emails, none of which Podesta, the DNC, or Hillary and her team have been refuted, were leaked by people within the Hillary camp and/or working for the DNC and John Podesta who wanted the American people to see the real Hillary when the cameras are off and the reporters have gone home. The American people saw and chose Trump over Hillary and James Comey, with all of his double talk, will fade with time or end up covering the bird cages around the country for his trouble. I would imagine Comey will heave a sigh of relief once he is finally out of the crosshairs and off the public's mind.

I do believe Comey was an honest cop caught in an impossible situation and unable to do his job, relying on someone -- anyone -- to figure out what was going on and realize that Hillary would get away with her actions as she has so many times in the past, not because of her lame excuses or her paranoid scapegoating, but because the powers protecting her were more powerful than the truth. James Comey will have to rely on short term memory loss amidst the inundation of persistent data dumps and media howling that shift with the constantly changing mainstream currents. Maybe now Comey can relax since he is no longer balancing on a razor's edge.

That is all. Disperse.

The Price Has Changed

For decades we have been told that magic comes with a price, and not just magic but power. The message has been central to every book, movie, and TV series. The supernatural genre has touted the formula for over half a century and even longer: magic/power comes with a price.

The most recent TV series to focus on the price of power was the innovative Buffy, the Vampire Slayer. Vampire slayers were a special breed of demon, though the slayers never knew they were demons battling demons until it was made clear in the final season that slayers, young women, were imbued with the power of a demon, a very powerful demon, turning the slayer into a killing machine who didn't live very long, dying young and violently by the hand or through the power of some demon stronger and more powerful. That is until Buffy, the Valley Girl who died and kept coming back to fight again, even when she died the last time and had gone to her reward (it was suggested Buffy went to Heaven).  All she knew was that she had been pulled out of a place of eternal peace and dragged back to Earth to continue fighting, a point brought out during their only all musical episode, Once More With Feeling.  Well, Buffy and her friends, and all of Sunnydale, were under a demon's spell that force everyone to sing their lines and their lives until the spell was broken -- or in this case, the demon discovers that it wasn't Dawn who had cast the spell with a wish, but Xander and he wasn't the demon's type. Spell Broken. Song Ended. Price paid.

Look at any supernatural book, movie, and TV series (and there are a lot) and you will find the central theme is the price of magic/power. That is until Teen Wolf comes along. Scott McCall, asthmatic klutz and freshman at Beacon Hills High School.  Scott is determined to make the Lacrosse team. Well, Scott made the team the year before, but he spent the whole season riding the bench. Another year and another tryout for the asthmatic freshman determined to make the team even though it means coughing up a lung and lying dead on the field while both teams run over his played out body, likely near death, as long as he scores a goal. Stiles, Scott's best friend and son of the local sheriff, also wants to get off the bench and score a goal or two before he finishes high school, although death will likely come from Stiles's penchant for solving crimes and getting in law enforcement's way with his theories, often astute and just as often dismissed because Stiles is just a kid.

Following a scanner call about a dead body in the woods, Scott and Stiles get separated and Scott is bitten. What's worse, Scott has to hide the injury since his mother, a nurse at the Beacon Hills Memorial Hospital, would kill him if he doesn't die from the bite. A bigger problem is that the wound heals by itself and leaves no scar. The biggest problem of all is Scott not only making the Lacrosse team, but playing better than the star and captain of the team, rich boy heart throb and all around athlete, Jackson, who is determined to find out how Scott suddenly got so good. Well, of course Scott is now a star athlete with power and precision. The bite he received was from a werewolf and now Scott is also a werewolf and, it turns out in subsequent seasons, so much more.

At any rate, Scott is driven by a desire not only not to hurt innocent people but in controlling  the change, what Derek Hale, a born werewolf, son of a family of werewolves who have been protecting Beacon Hills for a very long time, as have the druids also living in Beacon Hills and allied with the wolf packs as guides, teachers if you will, a role druids have played for centuries. Scott is different. He doesn't want to be part of a pack, especially not Derek's pack when he finds out Derek's uncle bit him and made him a vampire. Scott ends up forming his own pack of friends like Stiles, his best friend, Allison, the daughter of a family of hunters who for over 400 years have hunted supernatural creatures like Scott, Lydia, the most popular girl in school and also a bean-sidhe (banshee) who was bitten by Peter Hale, Derek's uncle, and other friends and acquaintances of Scott's, misfits and losers bitten by Derek to increase his pack. Scott's pack is not only unusual since it is not comprised of other werewolves, but Scott is also unusual because he advocates not killing innocent people when he is under the moon's spell.

The difference with Teen Wolf is not only that as a supernatural series the focus changes from the price of magic/power, but to the ultimate gift of power and how it can be used to do good. Buffy did good with her vampire slayer powers and she saved "the world a lot" as was engraved on her tombstone when she died taking down a god. The X-men, people changed by supernatural means into vampires, werewolves, and the like, and increasingly shows like Teen Wolf have begun to sing another tune, not that magic/power exact a price, but that magic/power can be redeemed by helping others. With the focus off the price and on the good that can be done, what shows is a reversal of the paradigm that being special, supernatural, and powerful for whatever reason is no longer about what it costs but what such special abilities, talents, power, magic even can do for those around the gifted one.

There have always been those who have used their gifts to harm others, and that is also demonstrated in Teen Wolf, but the overriding theme, the central point is that whatever befalls us to change us, no matter how bad it seems, does not have to destroy our basic humanity or the need to help those around us. No more angst over being forced out of a normal life into a life of supernatural abilities. Instead, the monsters have decided that they do not have to be monstrous or killers, except for Jackson who had a bad reaction to being bitten by a werewolf and became a kanima, a slithering monster with a paralytic sting in its tail, bent on vengeance and destruction. There are some instances when a werewolf bite kills and others when the bite is rejected and the bitten shifts to a shape that is more akin to who the person is on the inside, in Jackson's case a Kanima.

I like the new paradigm shift from magic always comes with a price to the price of magic can be used to help others and defeat evil. I like that a lot because it signals a shift in the creative zeitgeist that focuses on saving/helping our fellow beings. No longer are the monsters out to destroy us or add to their evil numbers, although there are those who do and are defeated because humans, even humans who have been supernaturally changed, are complex beings with loads of baggage and their fair share of Jekylls as well as Hydes.

Even as the political scene is in upheaval with the opposition looking more like lynch mobs determined to deny their opponents their rights and freedoms as the discourse shifts from civil debate to riots, looting, burning, and calls for death to the opposition, it is heartening to see that there are some groups focused on helping their enemies rather than destroying their enemies. That is a positive shift that will resonate throughout the world. We do not need war to change people's minds. We need to show our enemies there is another way, another path that will benefit us all. When magic is used, we don't need to weigh the price, we need to accept the change and help our fellow humans triumph over their own worst natures by showing them a safer path.

That is all. Disperse.

Intervention

It's Saturday night and I wanted to watch something so I chose Intervention, a movie written and directed by Clea Duvall where she actually gets to play a lesbian in an increasingly constricted relationship and chooses to tell her sister and her husband to stop hurting each other and get a divorce. Clea is not alone in her desire to set up the intervention; she has her brother Jack who has chucked everything to travel the country towing a trailer with a barely 20-something girl still dressing like a teenager hanging out for the summer between school years and Annie, who set up the intervention because she says she is tired of watching her best friend Ruby and husband Peter slashing at each other. Meanwhile Annie drinks her way through most of the movie while organizing the intervention because she is not ready to marry her fiance and knows she cannot postpone her wedding a 5th time.

Like all those movies where nearly 30-somethings are working out their issues during a wedding weekend, bachelor/ette party weekend, or intervention, it is clear from the outset that the relationships will end up on their ears and the happy ending will not include the instigators.

The thing about interventions, especially when they fail to involve people who really do need help and don't have court-ordered interventions, the point is that the couple in the crosshairs aren't really the ones who need help and everyone else is going to have to examine their navels closely. The fact is that people who set up couples' interventions, and the people who express their concerns at the outset and refuse to go along, are really the ones who need help. Their friends were either too polite or embarrassed to stage an intervention, or even talk to them about it, or weren't aware that was an option. In short, the movie is another chance to get together, get drunk, and air out the emotional linen among friends and family.

Isn't that always the way? Our thoughts are on someone else's problems while we avoid our own problems and issues entirely.  After all, they need help and we love them enough to help them. That's the thing about interventions and offering help to someone else, it's easier to focus on someone else's problems than to admit there are things we need to work on.

While watching these almost middle-aged couples sort out their lives, I was immediately reminded of Meathead and Gloria's disintegrating marriage. Meathead was predictably clueless and Gloria was needlessly dismissive and cruel. Gloria was bored, showing signs that if she had to spend one more minute in Mike's company she'd take his head off and castrate him with the rough and sharp side of her tongue. Luckily, Gloria had Edith Bunker to talk to.

Gloria asked her dingbat mother if she had ever gotten to the point where she just could not stand Archie -- and Edith said yes. She gave Gloria the best advice I'd ever heard.

There comes a time in marriage where even the sound of your spouse's breathing is enough to send you running to the kitchen to find the sharpest knife in the drawer to plunge into your once beloved spouse's throat. I would imagine the modern day parlance would be a throat punch. Your spouse's existence is beyond tolerance and you cannot stand it any more. This is the point where most marriages and relationships end up on the dump or out with the trash. You have fallen out of love with your spouse. You could, as most lawyers advise, get a divorce or you could wait to fall back in love with your soul mate. That is what Edith urged Gloria to do -- wait until you fall in love all over again.

As I watched Ruby and Peter I remembered that point in my own marriage when my ex-husband and I publicly cut each other to pieces over cards or during parties. On some level it was witty and funny, but on a personal level it was painful. I considered the knife, but now see I would have happily opted for a throat punch wearing brass knuckles if the choice had been offered. I hadn't seen the episode with Edith told Gloria what to do, and I'm not sure it would have mattered. We would still have divorced because I never actually wanted to be married to him after all. I got pregnant the night we got engaged and marriage seemed the best solution at the time. Mom told me the day we got married I didn't have to marry him and that we could work it all out. I'd have the baby and she and my father would adopt the child. Unlike Edith Bunker's calm dingbat wisdom, my mother could've said nothing that would have hurried me to the altar faster. The thought that she would raise my innocent child turned my blood to ice and all my protective instincts and hormones rushed to surround my unborn child. No child of mine would end up being raised by the woman who spent my entire formative years torturing me as she would undoubtedly torture and abuse my child, especially if it was a girl. I got married that day and have regretted it most of the rest of my life as I struggled with marriage, adulthood, and responsibility and longed for the life I had planned: going to college, getting a degree, and writing a breakthrough novel -- or becoming the first woman judge on the Supreme Court of the United States -- or the first woman driver to qualify for and win the Indianapolis 500. I was 18 and, though I felt I was ready for responsibility, I was nowhere close.

There was no one to do an intervention for me and I doubt I would have sat still for it. There was no Edith Bunker to help me over the hurdles and listening to my mother was akin to praying mantis courting rituals.

There is the fairy tale fantasy of happily ever after and the reality that comes with children and marriage and life as you know it ending while clinging to a past where you remember you thought you were happy and the future lay before you like a brand new Yellow Brick Road stretching along a glittering path where the Emerald City of Oz beckoned on the horizon. The Wicked Witch waited with fireballs and flying monkeys to bar the path, but you're wearing rose-colored glasses and only the good things are visible.

As I have said before, we are creatures who live mostly in the past where the grass was greener, children behaved, and people were civil and kind, socially duplicitous but at least everyone got along. Instead we live in a society populated by people ready and willing to trample your rights to speak while insisting that the only speech that matters is their own as they bully dissenters with libel and slander and name calling fit for a prison school yard and we have only ourselves to blame. While we gave out prizes to children showing up and soothed their hurt feelings by putting ourselves in their places, we forgot -- or failed to remember -- that helping a butterfly out of its cocoon denies the butterfly the struggle that gives it the strength and power to emerge and become a beautiful butterfly able to spread its wings and flit from flower to flower to feed itself and help pollinate the crops so there will be food and flowers for future generations.

Few people learn that it takes persistence and patience to get through the bored "I hate you" stage so you can fall in love again and remember what it was that brought you together. It could be the crooked quirky smile or the way he makes you laugh when you're in the midst of a pointless fight or it could be that her feet are cold on the hottest day of the year or how comforting his arms feel when he steals the covers so he can spoon you. The point is that sometimes you have to wait for the heart to catch up with the brain and few people take the time or feel they have the time to wait. There's always something more important than now and you and us. Sometimes patience is all you need but you have to wait and listen carefully for patience.

That is all. Disperse.

Colonize the Undiscovered Country

There is an underlying theme in Only Begotten Daughter by James Morrow and set in New Jersey in Atlantic City that riveted me. We are all -- the people of this planet -- focused on the past. We are looking for the brier forest surrounding Sleeping Beauty's castle caught sleeping in an angry fairy's spell for more than a century. We dream of being the one to break the spell, free the sleeping court and live happily ever after. Conversely, we would be happy to stumble over a hidden crypt within a mountain where the riches of the earth lay waiting or happen upon a tarnished lamp in a junk shop that is the Aladdin's lamp that when rubbed clean would appear from the smoke to grant our every wish and unravel the riddles of the ages. We are focused on the wrong view.

We should understand the past in order to create a better future, but the focus should be on the future not the past. How can we survive if we don't look to the Undiscovered Country of the Future to set ourselves free of the slavery of the past?

Everywhere we look we see TV series about the Old West glorifying the good old days of Jesse James and the splendors of the courts of Louis XIV or Henry VIII. We relive the exploits of King Arthur's court and fashion stories about the bloody Borgias and recreate the struggle between King Xerxes and the Spartans who died defending the pass at Thermopolyae or the plains of Marathon where a Greek runner sped 40 km (about 26 miles), the distance from Marathon to Athens, to let the Athenians know they had won. The Persians had been defeated and turned away from their invasion of Greece. We run the modern marathon to honor that feat.

Historians, scientists, and archaeologists endlessly sift through the detritus of past ages to make some sense of the ancient past when they know little of what actually happened less than 200 years ago, making up stories and spinning fanciful dreams about what they think happened while destroying what they find and do not understand, hiding the general idea that our ancestors were less technologically and socially advanced than we are in our glass and marble cities piercing the clouds with their sun splashed windows that appear to be gold from the distance.

Men, women, and children recreate old battles, fight mock engagements, and annually put on Renaissance Faires where everyone plays at reliving fantasies and dreams. Daily we reach back into the past to complain about sins and mistakes our forefathers made without ever understanding the world they lived in or the struggles they mastered to make it possible for modern rebels without a cause to complain when few of the middle or lower classes ever saw the inside of a college or university or could have climbed out of the misery of their lives where their children and mothers died in childbirth or lived long enough to succumb to any number of diseases easily cured today. Blacks demand reparations from the promise of 40 acres and a mule and imagine the government will or could make good on a special field order made and revoked in 1865, still dreaming of untold wealth and riches from a country that enslaved their ancestors. They might as well petition for citizenship and the governor's mansion in Monrovia or face the indigenous African people dispossessed by freed slaves settling in African lands and imposing their rule and religion over the African people who were born and had hunted and settled the lands from time out of mind.

We look to the past to dig up whatever history we can find or refashion to support our beliefs and positions without regard for the facts -- if the facts are indeed known. If the facts are sparse, it won't take long to use the bits of broken pottery and a good imagination to fashion new facts to fit the bill.

Romance authors reimagine the past to fit a new paradigm that suits them better, turning the past into a tapestry of lies, half truths, and dreams that raise the structures that will hold whatever the author thinks should have happened or fills the gaps where mysteries are born, mysteries that take forms that change from writer to writer. We fill the past with zombies and monsters where cartographers imagined there be dragons.  Whirlpools became devouring demons that rose from the depths to swallow ships and treacherous shoals provided seats for beautiful demons sang to passing sailors and lured them and their ships to their doom.

Adventurers and seamen crossed desserts and oceans to plant colonies and discover lands and peoples with fabulous legends of cities of gold and lost treasures or civilizations that disappear beneath the oceans in a night or are devoured by a sandstorm that lasts a whole year. Riches and fables pepper the globe if only we had the map or a journal describing the route.

We are all children wide-eyed and breathless getting ready to go to bed wrapped in Morpheus's arms to enter a dream world where we fly and travel the distant stars or the depths of the oceans to realize our fondest wishes and live out magical dreams that disappear when the sun rises. Fairy silver turns to dust in the morning sun and dreams hover at the edge of consciousness until night sets them free to accompany us on the wild hunt.

We are all dreamers born of smoke and mirrors in Scheherazade's 1001 Arabian Nights to beguile a vengeful prince to allow us another day of life and to fall in love all over again. With hearts and minds mired in the past, we will never enter or colonize the Undiscovered Country nor will we stop complaining that reality is less substantial than we dreamed.

That is all. Disperse.

I Win, You Lose

Just in case you haven't been paying attention or didn't catch the meaning of the words, everything is rigged so that They win and We lose. It is like the first two or three times you choose heads or tales before the meaning of the words sinks in. No matter which you choose, heads or tales, you can't win. It's like the Kobayashi Maru that only Captain James T. Kirk passed, that no-win situation where the captain faces that reality that no matter what he does he cannot save the passengers of the Kobayashi Maru even if he doesn't cross into the Romulan Neutral Zone because the test is rigged. Winning is not an option. Facing failure and your fears is the point. The same can be said of the Muslim ban, the continued struggle between black and white, and the repercussions of calling out a rapist or sexual predator. They are all no-win situations. They are all our Kobayashi Maru test.

Pick a side, any side, head or tails, but the result remains the same: They win, you lose. That is the point. Ban Muslims, Black Lives Matter, Woman Power, Black Power, White Supremacy, White Privilege, Economic Fairness, Equal Opportunity, No Child Left Behind, The Wage Gap, The Privilege Gap, Hillary or Trump. All the games are rigged. It even goes as far down as organic versus GMOs, processed food versus natural foods. Kobayashi Maru, the no-win situation.

I read an article this morning about how a young black man had "the talk" with his parents about how to behave when stopped by the police. I look white and I had the same talk with my parents. Don't make eye contact, keep your head down and your answers short (yes, sir and no, sir) and no backtalk. The daily no-win situation when dealing with the police is the same no-win situation when dealing with a boss, a co-worker, or a staying in a motel. Don't make eye contact. Keep your head down and your answers short (yes, sir and no, sir) and no backtalk. It is the same talk that crops up between races and genders: head down, no eye contact, short answers, and no backtalk. The point is to escape the situation intact and unharmed -- or at least as unbruised or unbloodied as possible.

We live in a dangerous world and we, humanity, have made this world dangerous. People with money help make the world dangerous. People with power help make the world dangerous. People with knowledge rigging the system make this world dangerous. Those who have make the world dangerous for those who have not. The top ices the slopes or turns the roads to ice and pours cold water down the hill.

One of my sisters, a feisty little girl who fears no one faced her own Kobayashi Maru. She was dating a cop, a man she attended church with, and one night she refused his polite advances. This 6+ foot cop picked her 5-foot 2-inch petite body and took what she refused, drove her home after he was finished and walked her to the door. She kept the incident to herself and didn't tell our parents. I have told no one since she told me over 30 years ago. The same man also had a shoe box full of drivers licenses belonging to women he had pulled over, the same women he stalked for years.

There are good cops and bad cops and all the training in the world won't change that. Cops are people too, struggling with the same demons as everyone else. Some cops are good people and some cops are criminals. The same men and women work in every office in every city in every country around the world. Some are wealthy and some are poor and they use their power to harm as well as heal. They are people like you, like me, like everyone else. My aunt says that all men are dogs and I counter with some women are dogs too. Religion hasn't made a difference nor has sensitivity training or team building at some resort for a weekend or a week. Ethics be damned. Sensitivity be damned. Religion be damned. The only way to change the game is to change the players at the soul level. Sometimes the only way to change is to have a near death experience and to face the Universe where there are no ifs, ands, or buts. You and the Universe face to face (if the universe or the soul have faces) with no place to hide or bargain or loopholes to exploit. When you come back -- if you come back -- you will understand the reality of your place in the grand cosmic scheme of things and you will be changed forever. Eternity and your place in it is the ultimate reality and the ultimate no-win situation. Your choice has been made and you can accept reality or return to the Universe as a data point in the Cosmic Scheme of Things.

Before that happens, look around you at the world and the other beings that share this existence with you and choose . . . kindness, life, and the value of existence. It may be the only chance you will ever have.

That is all. Disperse.

Interconnected Lives

Neat long rows of vegetables and fruit thriving in the sunshine, that is what I remember. The more I get into gardening for myself, the more I realize I need to let go of the gardens of my youth and our back yard and think of the soil and the harvest. 

I don't need two acres or half a back yard of neat rows of corn, beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, and so on. I need to think out of the ordered rows and plan for next year and years to come as well as this year. I need more flowers mixed in with the hopscotch of gardening. This is called polyculture, putting different plants together to make the best use of harvesting times and placement for shade or full sun.

Plant flowers with the vegetables and forget planting all of one kind of vegetable or fruit together. That is the way insects, pests, and wild animals are kept under control. I'm sure I'll get to the point where I can go out into the tomato patch and pull fat hornworms off the leaves and tomatoes, but not yet. Marigolds in with the tomatoes keep vermins and insects out of the tomatoes. I'll have hanging planters with strawberries and grape tomatoes from the pergola mixed in with a hanging pot of marigolds just in case.  

I will also plant for butterflies and bees. I'm allergic to bees, but if I don't antagonize them they will not sting me and send me running for the Epi-Pen.  Planting flowers to attract butterflies and bees serves two purposes: keeping out pests and attracting pollinators to help the garden grow. Nothing better. To get my natural insect predators there is the added bonus of beauty among the food. I can handle that.  

No need to worry about the other garden pests -- weeds. They have their beneficial side too, especially when you take note of their roots and the kind of weeds that grow. Dandelions have long roots that break up the soil and are necessary for aerating the garden and pointing to areas that need to be watered more. Dandelions seek iron and are full of calcium, potassium, and magnesium. Long tap roots also mean water and necessary minerals are deep underground and being drawn up through the tap roots. Same applies for garden plants. If the roots are thick and deep, drip irritation or watering more often is the answer. Roots that are fine and hair-like also mean the soil is loose and the roots are holding the soil together, compacting it so the water won't run through as if it were sand. 

Thistles are an entirely different problem indicating the soil is too dry. Thistles can also be invasive. Paying attention to where and when thistles grow will give you clues as to what your soil, and hence your garden, need from you. In this case, more water and nitrogen will benefit your plants and eventually you. 

Such intercropping (planting flowers and vegetables together) is beneficial for the yield of the harvest and for the land itself. Some plants grow better together: 

• Onions with leafy vegetables, followed by green beans and Chinese cabbage or spinach
• Potatoes with leafy vegetables, followed by green beans and Chinese cabbage or spinach
• Spring kale with radishes, followed by celery and tomatoes
• Spring spinach, followed by lima beans and tomatoes
• Double rows of corn alternated with single rows of peppers
• A double row of garlic with spinach down the center
• Strawberries with watermelon

Sunflowers attract birds that feed on cabbage worms, grasshoppers and other small insects, including flea beetles feeding the birds with sunflower seeds and providing perches for the birds to see and attack from the stems to root out their favorite food. Good for you and good for the birds. 

Plant crops together to support each other and to help trap insects and attract beneficial insects and birds. Broccoli, cauliflower, and tomatoes grow well together while lettuce, radicchio, and sorrel. Crowder peas, green beans and peppers are all popular crops to sandwich between rows of corn, providing shade for the smaller plants and filling the space between corn which takes longer to grow. In many hot climates, corn grown along the south side of potatoes provides shade in hot weather, which helps keep the soil cool and moist while the potatoes are making their crop. For instance, corn, pole beans, and squash support each other. The corn supports the bean vines, the squash shades out weeds, and the roots of the different plants get along nicely below ground. 

Like the human body, the plants support each other and feed us. Healthier plants also provide good green manure when dug into the ground at the end of the season and also set up healthier soil for next year, providing higher yields.  Plant salad greens in the spaces between. Rabbits and other small foragers will eat some, but we can afford to share. 

Gardening is not just about food for the table. It lets you know what you need -- more fertilizer, more water, more earthworms, etc. -- and tells you about the health of the soil. Healthier soil means healthier plants and a healthier you. It is all connected just like the mind, body, and soul are all connected in me and you. The land is just as connected as we are to the land. The health of one is crucial to the health of the other and to the world around us. We are all connected and nowhere does that connection show more effectively than in the garden and the land. 

Read books and talk to gardeners from different cultures to find out what works for them and what they have learned. Share your experiences and as for guidance. As you get closer to the land you will find you are getting closer to yourself and to other gardeners. Share the wealth and the knowledge. 

That is all. Disperse. 

Growing Pains

Does a butterfly know that as a caterpillar it will spin a cocoon and emerge as a beautiful butterfly? Probably not. We don't realize as babies struggling with unsteady legs and immature eyes and tongue that we will emerge in command of our legs, eyes, and tongue and become adults, at least not when we open our eyes on this bright and painful place far from the warmth in our floating womb. Even as we struggle through puberty beset with longings and rebellious determination to fly free into a world without restraint and rules do we begin to realize the struggle is not over, merely just beginning as we fumble and strain to find our place in the grand design, constantly struggling to figure out where we belong and where we go from here. Then it all ends without ever having known what it all was for. We are born. We live. We die. We are gone. In between each phase, we struggle with growing pains, stretching for more, for beyond, for the purpose to our struggle and to our lives.

Throughout history it seems others have it all figured out. They eventually die -- or so we believe -- and it is too late to ask them what they saw we did not. These magnificent butterflies may leave stories or words, parables or truths we did not experience through our senses and so we are told to believe and have faith. We will understand some day, but do we? Do we truly understand or are we still wobbly-legged toddlers taking our first steps or babies kicking the air and eventually rolling over onto our bellies to wriggle our way across the ground? We are all caterpillars struggling to spin cocoons from which we emerge butterflies after great pains into the light of the next phase of our lives.

Is this what Francisco of Assisi learned when he emerged from his fever to spend days in the fields and eventually cast off his finery to walk naked through the streets to the ruin of San Damiano to rebuild as one by one his young friends cast off their families and possession to join him as humble beggars living as the poor, walking barefoot from place to place to spread the message that peace and hope were not to be found among the distractions of the accepted way of life? It was not the perfect understanding of an ascended master like Yeshua bar Joseph, merely a glimpse of the change that awaits us all as we struggle for understanding in a world gone mad where hate, greed, and entertainment divert us all from what is right in front of us. We have not even the glimpse that Francis saw before following what he saw as the way to take in his grasp and to follow what he knew of the enlightenment of the Holy Roman Church. That path is still open for those who choose to believe, but it is not the final destination merely a way station on the road.

I've begun to see reports and videos of followers of Islam who find peace and a better way than obedience or death in a set of beliefs that run counter to the peace and limited enlightenment of Christianity or even Judaism. Those systems of belief were forged during a time when mankind was ignorant of other beliefs, other methods of finding enlightenment -- at least in the Western world. The Eastern world follow Buddhism toward enlightenment for the same message offered in those teachings echo Christianity and Judaism, both of which sprang from a different well. Though nearly extinct, the New World followed the path of the Incas, Maya, and Aztec, among others and what remains after the conquerors from Europe raped and pillaged a way into and among the First Nations of the northern territories of the New World also held a seed of enlightenment eventually shared with the newcomers and their descendants where seekers found a spark or a glimpse of enlightenment. Nowhere on this planet, not even in the vast reaches of Australia, have seeds of enlightenment not been spread, some codified in organized religions and the rest as whispers in the dark promising the light.

Though it seems impossible that light is visible in the turmoil and darkness of our modern times, we all struggle, weakly or with increasing power, toward the light, moths to the brightness that flares in the darkness drawing us forward, ever onward to the promise of enlightenment. Maybe that is why at this time we find everything changing and a man like Trump at the helm promising a return to better times, more profitable and peaceful times, but we will not find it by following another flawed demagogue for truth and the path ahead does not go where Trump or Obama or Clinton or leaders around the world are going. The light that fills our minds and brings peace to our hearts is all around us, visible when we cast aside the distractions that make it oh so difficult to see. Enlightenment fills the planet, the trees, the animals, and everywhere we look when we refuse to be distracted.

We need not be beggars or follow the paths carved out before us. Some few may glimpse the light, but not enough of us until we shed all that hampers us from embracing what has always been freely given. We are racked with the aches and pains of turning away from the distractions that beset us, the bright, shiny objects that pull our focus on what matters most -- the light. Flashes of brilliance blind us temporarily and yet through the blinding glare the clear pulse of true light remains.

We are no longer children, but teenagers tortured as we fight free of our cocoons. Like the butterfly, we must free ourselves of the confines of our cocoons, the fight for freedom strengthening sinew, sending blood pumping to new wings that change as the wrinkles of confinement disappear while the blood forced by the effort to escape the confines of our previous existence, raise blood-filled wings, test the air, and finally leap into the sparkling air into the existence that has always been right there in front of us. With each beat of our wings, we move closer to the light and closer to the real change we could not see or even glimpse while distracted by sparkly bits and bright flashes that obscured what lay before us. The growing pains will subside with each beat of our wings. As we move forward into the light we will shed the rest of the shreds and patches of the cocoon, leaving a drying husk to mark our metamorphosis and to point the way for the butterflies and moths to mark the path for all willing to test their wings and accept enlightenment and realization that we were and are meant for more. In our wake we lead the way into a brighter and more peaceful reality where we can exercise the wings carrying us to the phase of existence where we will no longer be hampered by earthly constraints. That is our destination the future, growing pains and horrors, hate and aggression behind us, as we move into the light.

That is all. Disperse.