Category: Thinking, thinking

Are You Outraged?

Someone else wrote a blog titled, “Are You Outraged?” And I thought, am I outraged?

Let’s see. I was born in 1956, eleven years after WW II, but while the conflict in Korea was happening, and as the U.S. was getting drawn into Vietnam.

The Cold War was going strong. The U.S. and U.S.S.R. were ready to launch nukes and drop nukes at the slightest provocation.

1960 began strong, with John F. Kennedy getting elected. He promised to put a man on the moon. Meanwhile, protests and riots began. The 1960s were full of blood and smoke. Kennedy was assassinated; so was his brother. And Martin Luther King, Jr. Many blacks were lynched and murdered. Battles were fought over segregation, “Separate but equal”, and desegregation.

As races fought for equality, so did women, but the Equal Rights Amendment stalled.

The arms race sucked up resources and attention. Korean and Vietnam were ‘ended’ as conflicts, but more conflicts sprang up. War has not ceased in my lifetime, despite the fall of the U.S.S.R. Instead, it’s intensified.

As has the battle for equal rights and the ideal that skin color, sexual orientation, religious preferences, and genders should not matter, that we, as a nation, are only as strong as the weakest among us, so we must protect them.

The battle for the environment has intensified, too, and with it, the understanding that this is one world, and once again, in order to survive, we must survive together, and protect our planet, or we may all suffer, and many of us will perish, bringing our civilization to our knees.

These seem like self-evident truths, but instead, another war has arisen, this one about what constitutes truths, facts, science, and evidence. The way that numbers and words are spun to create division and distraction spins my head.

Am I outraged? Fucking yes. After a lifetime of this, I thought we’d be further advanced. But as I watch the police brutality and government response to the murders and protests, echoes of history reverberate. I’m reminded of the tanks in Hungary in 1956 as the Soviet Union crushed an uprising.

I’m reminded of the Watts riots.

I’m reminded of Tienanmen Square in 1989.

I’m reminded of the Berlin Wall.

I’m reminded of Selma and Montgomery, Alabama, and Detroit, Michigan.

I’m reminded of the American Civil War.

I’m reminded of the rise of Solidarity in Poland.

I’m reminded of Ferguson.

I’m reminded of the Democratic National Convention in 1968.

I’m reminded of Kent State in 1970.

I’m reminded of countless sit-ins and marches against war and for peace, against injustice and for equality.

I’m reminded of so many events that I’ve seen and read of in the narrow focus of my short life, and I’m reminded of so many who live in fear and suffer at the hands of those who are supposed to serve and protect.

Am I outraged?

I watch the news, play the viral videos, and read the articles this week and wonder why so many fight against others’ equality. I wonder how so many can be so cruel to fellow humans. The outright cruelty and disregard demonstrated as police officers spray, beat, shoot, and mistreat their fellow citizens, their fellow humans, horrifies me.

Am I outraged?

I am sickened. I am saddened. I am furious.

Yes, I am outraged.

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Friday’s Theme Music

Yeah, Trump retweeted the sentiment, “The only good Democrat is a dead Democrat.”

No matter what political party you are, learning that the nation’s President promotes such unreasoning violence and ideals contrary to the nation’s principles is, well, sickening. Is this how the country is united? Is that really the best course to promote as riots break out in cities over another black man’s death as he begged the police officer holding him down, as our nation passes one hundred six thousand deaths from the coronavirus, a time when we should be pulling together, where everyone insists, “We’re in this together?”

While I often hear screams from those on the right about how Democrats are not civil and should respect the President and treat him with courtesy, how can I — why would I? — when he’s encouraging murder against the political opposition?

So, the song by Badfinger, “No Matter What” (1970), arrives in my brain. No matter what is fused directly to getting Trump out of office; no matter what Biden does, I will vote for him, a position that I hate to take. Biden isn’t my first, second, or third choice. I grimace thinking about it, having my thought processes and principles reduced to that single point: vote Trump out. Sickening and infuriating. Biden, if elected, will probably do a decent job, but I really want to advance the nation and world past the status quo where we muddle from crises to crises, issue to issue, putting bandages on problems while rot spreads.

No matter what also comes up as I write my way through this pandemic. No matter what, I’ll write. No matter what, I’ll pursue my dreams.

No matter what, I’ll go on.

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Sunday’s Theme Music

Time for slide back Sunday.

With time slipping away (fewer markers out there to force me to pay attention), I often find that another day has fled. Muddering about it, I thought about how day flows into night and night flows into day, distinguished by weather and light changes, sleep cycles, eating, and clothing changes.

Out of that came a 1965 song by the Kinks, “All Day and All of the Night”, which amused me. (Easily amused? That’s me. Check.) Trawling the Youtube uncovered a 1965 television appearance where they played it. Seeing that black and white footage, hearing that sound quality, admiring their haircuts definitely slides me back to a more relaxed time (primarily because I was just a wee shithead at that point).

Here we go.

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Paper

White petals blushing with pink had drifted into piles. Snowflake sized, you wouldn’t think they’d do much, but like snow (and rain), pour enough into a place or a moment, and you start to have something. Add precipitation and time; let sit.

The rain had finally ceased. I’m not one to do yard work in the rain unless it’s critical (what could possibly be critical enough for me to do it in the rain?) so here I was, laboring against a chilly wind. Milky sunshine, lacking any sunshine, made sunglasses a necessity.

I’d had a vision: get out my blower/mulcher and rid my yard of the browning petals, part of the general cleanup. The petals had decided they liked it there. Bunching together and flattening out to endure the rain, they’d developed thick, communal layers. As I pried them off the driveway along the lawn, I found they’d turned into paper.

Nature’s paper. Dizzy implications struck. Something like this had probably been a prompt to paper’s invention. With time, heating, and more pressing, something like the petal paper could be done on a large scale. I gazed back into my imaginary past where people gathered to consider this petal paper and began thinking about what to do with this new stuff. Why, they could write on it with some berry juice.

The petals only come around once a year. What else could be used? I imagined them foraging and collecting new materials, processing and testing them, scaling up their new invention.

Temptations arose: I could treat these petals and try to develop paper. It could be an interesting experience.

Laziness prevailed. I returned to the yard work. After all, paper had already been invented.

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Thursday’s Theme Music

An old familiar song entered my head yesterday as I did yard work. Written by John Fogerty, the Status Quo cover of “Rockin’ All Over the World” (1977?) kept me coming.

The mind introduced the song toward the yard work’s beginning. Addressing an issue that I had to do, I told myself, “Here we go.” That invited the song’s refrain, “Here we go, here we go,” in. Once invited in, like a vampire, it can do whatever it was; I’d let it in.

It’s a simple rock song, upbeat and happy, a throwback to simpler times. Your impression of simpler times will vary according to your mileage and mindset, but it works for me.

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The Beer Group

The weekly beer group would’ve met last night under ordinary circumstances. These being ordinary circumstances, they did not.

As a group, we range in size from six to sixteen attendees on most week. Volunteerism and traveling to visit family are the usual culprits pruning our numbers. We range in age from sixty to eighty-eight. Several college professors, computer programmers and coders, a physicist, doctor, and wildlife management people and biologists make up our group. Death has taken two since I joined it, an eon ago.

Businesses are re-opening in Ashland, Oregon. Technically, we could’ve met last night, wearing masks and social-distancing. These limitations made me laugh, right? We’re already on a group that struggles to hear one another. Imagine us now six feet apart trying to do that. Add the mask. Then, let us drink the beer.

You’d think with all this intelligence in the group, someone would devise a solution, something akin to the shower curtains being deployed in some restaurants, or the little greenhouses in Amsterdam, but no. We didn’t meet.

Think it’ll be a while before we do.

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

I often wish that I was more ignorant of the world, that I lacked the capacity to see the big picture, understand the science, recall history, and remember the lies.

Not a genius nor overly bright or educated, I recall matters and critically examine almost everything that crosses my mind and my eyes. Doesn’t help that I’m married to a similar person; we feed off one another. Nor does it help that throughout my military and civilian positions and work, others saw these traits in me and honed them. I become overly critical and analytical; any skill that becomes too dominant can be a liability.

I’d like to live in a ‘just-pretend’ world where things are better, which is probably why I write. I’m attracted to writing detective stories where the main character is deeply flawed and struggles with seeing the good in others over his insights into the wrongs that they do, no matter how small the wrongs. Always on the top of that list is his own wrongs.

Likewise, dystopian fiction, where governments, corporations, religions, and individuals have misled others so they can advance themselves or keep themselves in power, always attracts me. It’s a dark world for my characters.

No surprise, then, my thoughts on the novel coronavirus pandemic of 2020 is that civilizations are poor learning organizations, not infrequently out of step with one another. It’s a messy dance floor where different music is heard by almost everyone. It’s the nature of trying to meld political weld out of individual agendas. We advance by degrees. I always think we could advance more quickly. Yet, too, disagreement and debate are required and healthy for relationships, including governments, societies, and civilizations. It’s when facts become distorted that it gets unhealthy.

Into this mess of morning thinking, prompted by a restless night of writing in my head and chasing dreams, is Jackson Brown’s first hit, “Doctor, My Eyes”, from 1972. His lyrics about seeing too much, looking too long, and how it has influenced his life view, has always been a favorite.

It’s worthy theme music for a rona Wednesday.

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