Hi,
Well first of all, Happy Memorial Day. Take a moment this weekend to think of all the courageous men and women who gave the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom and remember what our freedom means.
With all the negative discourse in our society, particularly with our Commander in Tweet, I get severely depressed. Possibly the quote from him that resonates with me the most is pre-election when he said “Trust me, I know more about ISIS and the our generals do.” He really scared me with that one. As many things in life, I understand things are going ways I’m not used to and trying to cope with it To me communication is vocal between to respectful human beings. There are other means of communication that I like like emails, even texts have their place in life. “Sorry, I’m running late and will be there in 10 minutes”. But to have a conversation in texting, I find it absurd. Why would you text something like my husband had surgery, my wife is leaving me, my dog got hit by a car. To me, communicating is talking to someone across a table from you, there is so much richness added by seeing someone’s facial expressions as they are talking. And if they say something you don’t understand, you can politely stop them and ask for clarification. Instead of responding to an email or text with a question on something you don’t understand and when they respond, they get distracted and go off on another tangent never answering your question. An even lower form of communication is Tweeting, it’s like a bully that doesn’t want to hear an opposing opinion and they are always talking over you. Again, I admit, this is something I am not used to and maybe am missing something?
Reading the newspaper is so much quicker these day because of all the articles I won’t read. And listening to news is much quicker these days for me, because when it gets too depressing I just turn it off. if I even had turned it on in the first place. I listen to a lot more music these days. The tax cut was not for the masses, it was for the richest individuals and companies. Companies are not investing their already high profits into something like R & D or their employees. They are just buying other companies with these obscene profits.
I get so depressed watching the less fortunate having more and more of their lives hardened by reduced spending on aid programs for the seniors, children and adults to balance the budget. I like it when I see rays of hope like a recent article by Max Boot, Democracy is Alive and Kicking. The news keeps highlighting the strongmen ruling today like in Russia, Egypt, Turkey and America (and I don’t mean strongmen in a good way). Freedom is reaching all across the world. Big and small steps. Like the nightmare that’s been Iraq just held and election that was not marred by violence and seems to have been legitimate. One of the big winners was Moqtada al-Sadr, a firebrand that hated American (and who can blame him?). Maybe it’s time these people figure out what they want and how they want to get it. Malaysia, Armenia has recently held a peaceful change of power from a long time dictators and Nicaragua also having a ground swell of citizens coming out opposing the oppressive Sandinista government.
Busy here the next two weekends in particular. This weekend is Memorial Day weekend. The place looks great. Usually I weed and area and then tend another. I did the entire place the last couple of days, everything looks great. Last year, the banana tree next to the wall where the Aztec calendar is was out of control. So I dug it up and separated it into four roots and transplanted it to either side of the calendar so even it it gets out of control again, it wont’ block the calendar again. And the other two cuttings I put where the arborvitae trees were next to the mansion that the snow took out last year. All four a coming up and I’m so excited, I’ve never done this before.
And smaller ones
Those friends of mine from State College were in for the jazz event last week. Tony’s built all the furniture in their house and started a new project. They have well water and the pipe has to extend out of the ground and it irritated him so he decided to build a structure over it. He couldn’t figure out the angles so he found a program in Google for building pyramids and he plugged his numbers in (length he wanted everything to be) and came up with the correct angles and lengths and build the 8th wonder of the world (or is it the 9th?). Here’s the 8th wonder of the world the Pyramid of State College (actually Bellefonte):
Well kids, it’s summer (almost) and I’m getting busier and busier. I don’t know how often I will get to posting blogs for a bit. Enjoy and we’ll talk later,
ed
