Tag: the future

Fridaz Wandering Political Thoughts

Trump has announced that every street named “Main Street” in the United States is going to be called “Trump Street” by popular acclaim, beginning on Jan 1, 2026.

No, that’s not true. Far as I know. That’s how it feels, though. A golfer, he wants a NFL football stadium named after him. Tasteless, he wants the Kennedy Center renamed after him. He wants to name everything after himself for doing nothing but lying, cheating, stealing, and destroying. I’m not in favor it. Only thing I’d like to rename in Trump’s honor is toilet paper. Call it Trump paper. Then I can use Trump paper to wipe my ass.

Other than that, let’s name poor houses after him. And the homeless. He deserves that. “Look at those poor Trumps, standing out there in the cold rain.”

It’s wild how the nation is spiralling downward. Let’s cut off immigration, except for H1B visas for business. Let’s cut education and help for children but encourage families to have more children. And how will these families pay for them with healthcare, food, and energy prices increasing? We’re building AI facilities and robots to take over jobs. More companies are laying people off to use robots and AI instead of people. In Trump’s rage against Democrats, he’s attacking blue cities and states. Yet blue cities and states provide a large portion of the nation’s economic drive. So he’s gutting the nation of its economic power while trying to attract and encourage manufacturing. But who will have money to buy anything with employment falling?

Trump’s policies are already killing our local economy in southern Oregon. We depend on tourism, education, some beer and winemaking, and healthcare. Those are our largest revenue streams.

Last year, the Trump Regime cut funding for public transportation. Just like that, bus service fell to severely cut levels, affecting students, the poor, elderly, and remote.

SNAP and food assistance programs were cut, affecting the food-insecure, lower incomes, and homeless.

As costs rise for running a city and repairing things, the city is levying more fees on its citizens. That strains people’s spending and savings and cuts into discretionary spending. That results in less people spending on the local economy, with less tax money flowing to the city. See how that works? The city doesn’t.

Meanwhile, parks and rec want to open more parks. This is even though the city’s structural debt is blowing up. Parks and rec already cut their headcount, resulting less park maintenance, and its shows. Their solution is to build more parks. Build more bike trails. That’ll bring in people, they think.

Really, man, they are not paying attention.

Our local college is Southern Oregon University. SOU. They’ve responded to a continuing and growing cash flow problem by cutting programs, raising tuition, and reducing staff, including professors. With funding assistance from the Trump Regime falling, they’re facing a dire future.

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival is our big annual draw. They’ve seen reduced attendance for the last ten years. First, drought, hot temperatures, wildfires, and wildfire smoke pushed tourism down. Then COVID pushed tourism down. Now the Trump regime, with its open hostility towards foreigners, is pushing tourism down. A festival and region dependent on tourism will fall as tourism falls.

Finally, the local hospital announced cutbacks. This used to be the Ashland Community Hospital, but then it was bought by Asante. It has announced it’s closing its beds and surgical center. Just going to be some limited services. We’ll need to trek down the road to another hospital for assistance. But bus services have been cut. How are the poor and needy going to get there?

We’re being gouged and hollowed out in so many ways. This is just my state, my region. How much of this is being repeated across the United States? We know from news reports of growing corporate layoffs and flat employment growth. News reports inform us of meat packing facilities shutting down. Trump cuts through DOGE gutted research funding for universities, including cancer and other medical research. His policies also reduced foreign student enrollment.

As this downward spiral continues, the delta between haves and have nots in the United States will grow with the population of the have nots increasing. We’re leaning toward being a nation of underemployed, uneducated, unmotivated individuals. Our robot-run factories will pump out goods destined for foreign buyers on foreign shores.

Yes, I’m pessimistic about our nation’s future under Trump and the GOP but I’m not the only one. Meanwhile, a Yougov poll shows that while 40% of respondents think Trump will be judged as a “poor” president, 18% believe that he’ll be remembered as “outstanding”.

I guess those 18% are the haves, or perhaps have-nots who have not met their FAFO moment.

3

A Hybrid Dream

I called this one a hybrid dream. My ‘anxiety dreams’ often circle around my long-ago military career. Now my psyche has folded some of my civilian occupations into the mix.

This one began with me working with programmers. While they were busy on the daily stuff required for the present, I was focused on a transition planned for several years down the road. We were installing a new ‘smart’ support system. I was creating test scenarios. At one point, I stopped for a break and overheard someone say that the implementation date would be 2032.

2032. My spirit sagged. I’m going to be forced to wait that long for results?

The dream shifted. Now I’m at work in a military command post as I did for years. I’m working alone in the facility, monitoring different systems. While going back to get supplies, I notice a light blue telephone frame room door ajar. After another second, gathering someone is in there, I head back to the console area to call the security police.

The console is a mess. Phones aren’t where I expected them to be. I can’t find a hotline to the SPs. What the hell, there aren’t any hotlines to anywhere. What kind of command post is this? A dream twist causes me to get distracted. I begin cleaning and organizing the command post, cursing it as I do. What the hell is wrong with this organization that they let it get like this?

Going past the blue frame room door, I realized that I’d forgotten about the person in there. Now I see a woman leave that room. Past her is a cot, chair, clothing, and a small camping table. She’s living in there! Now, using a radio, I notify the security police.

They immediately arrive and take her into custody. Then I realize, I’m out of the console area, and I’m locked out. The console area is never supposed to be unmanned. What is wrong with me?

I hasten to get myself back inside. A person who works for me, a female, is just entering, so she let’s me in I hurry to the console. She accompanies me. We’re chatting, and then I remember and tell her, “I’m behind. I didn’t do my shift checklist, inventory the communications security gear, update the log.”

She says, “Wow, you are behind.”

I begin doing those things. Unlocking and opening the communications security safe, house to all the code books and crypto, I find food inside. “What the hell?”

Taking the food out, I stack it neatly. It comes to me that someone else stored the food there but I don’t know their intention. It looks like candy for Halloween, Valentine’s Day, Christmas, Easter. I organize it and start giving it away.

Dream end.

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Friday’s Theme Music

Mood: Rainflective

Today is May 10, 2024. Sis’s 70 bday is tomorrow.

It’s spring with a wintry flush in Pennhillia, PA. The air is cold and wet. Last night’s rain lowered the temperatures, and clouds keep them down. I don’t know where this front came from but it feels like it was overnighting with winter somewhere.

Light rain is dripping down on us. Temperature is 53 F, which is about our day’s high.

Mother’s Day Cookout planning is ongoing. How many people? How many and what desserts? What about side-dishes, meats, buns and breads and salads, oh my.

Good weather isn’t a call we can make. Sunday is expected to be rainy and chilly, rising into the low 60s F by the mid afternoon. Little sister Gina is hosting us. Besides her husband, children and grandchildren, two other sisters with their husbands, children and grandchildren will be there, along with Mom, me, and Mom’s beau. Fingers crossed and knock on wood that we’ll have a good time.

Today’s music is Avril Lavigne’s “My Happy Ending” out of 2004. The Neurons parked it into my morning mental music stream (Trademark drifting) after my early AM cogitations. Besides dream surveying, I was out on the porch, tasting the cold air, listening to the rain, sucking down coffee and reviewing our family history. Highlights and lowlights came like breaking waves. I remembered this and then that.

2004 became mired in my mind. Mom was my current age in that year. I was but 48. So young, so young. Only two of the many the grands were born. Mom’s beau was justing coming into the picture. She was a healthy, energetic 68 year-old. No evidence of what was to come with all of us, but then how often do the harbingers of what’s to be appear to present a head’s up?

Anyway, from that came the 2004 song, “My Happy Ending”, a succinct song about what was tried and how it failed.

Stay positive, be strong, and Vote Blue in 2024. I have coffee, thanks, and I’m sucking it down like it’s the elixir of the gods. Here’s the music video. Cheers

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

This is it, May’s last day. It will not be extended.

Yes, welcome to Tuesday, May 31, 2022. Back to work if you were off for the Memorial Day in the U.S.

We’ve returned to cloudy and warm weather today. Woke up to 59 F after the sun kicked in its light at 5:38 AM. The flip end of the sun’s presence comes at 8:40 PM today. Before then, we expect to see temperatures of 77 F. Yardwork has kept us busy as the rains encouraged everything to “grow, grow, grow”, leaving us with an unkempt landscape. Great seeing the bees abuzzing around the backyard’s weeds. It’s a weed zone, where we let weeds proliferate. The bees love it.

Today’s song emerged from conversations with friends and relatives about the state of the world and the state of the nation, and where we’re going. Thinking about that and change and direction, the neurons pulled up Roxy Music from 1982 and a song called “More Than This”.

I could feel at the time
There was no way of knowing
Fallen leaves in the night
Who can say where they’re blowing
As free as the wind
And hopefully learning
Why the sea on the tide
Has no way of turning
More than this – there is nothing
More than this – tell me one thing
More than this – there is nothing
It was fun for a while
There was no way of knowing
Like a dream in the night
Who can say where we’re going

h/t to AZLyrics.com

Yes, who can say where we’re going? There’s always some indications but then shifts arrive. Something dramatic is pulled off. A galvanizing speech is made. A moderating influence is found, a new hope delivered. Who can say? History is full of downs and ups. Fingers crossed that we find something that pulls us from the brink and takes us into a new direction.

Stay positive, test negative, etc. I know, it’s a difficult challenge in the current news cycle. Still…try. And now, I will drink the magic elixir, coffee, and draw new hope and energy from it. Here’s the music. Cheers

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Unforgotten

Memories,

I make them now,

so far my brain hasn’t forgotten how.

Time shoots by in a quickening blast

and I recall with fondness a nebulous past.

Starry-eyed and glittery mind, I used to look ahead.

Now, sometimes, it’s wearying getting out of bed.

My oceans of thoughts seem dark but calm,

a prelude, or harbinger, of a once-remembered song.

I seek comfort, I seek reminders, I seek the past,

even though I know, like the future,

it never lasts.

 

 

2

The Future Dream

I’ve endured a surfeit of dreams this past week. Many stayed with me. I can’t say they all did. I don’t know if that’s true.

One particularly striking dream dominated. The dream setting was simple. Basically, um, me. Not the whole me, either, but head, neck, a bit of torso, and shoulders, the traditional bust sculptor. I knew I was sitting, and dressed in a light blue Oxford shirt, like the sort I favor. I don’t know where I was. The background was a favoring blue sky rich with sunshine over a calm ocean. Green hills sloped down to the ocean. Some of this strikes me as Mediterranean in retrospect.

Others were there, never seen, but sometimes heard, males and females. They could have been one of each, or more. I never saw them. They were commentators, commenting on me, and my activities. On my part, I was looking into the future. In the first stages of this, it troubled me, because I wasn’t correctly seeing the future. The commentators, in their dry, pithy way, said, “Okay, that’s fine, you’re just starting. Take your time. Try again.” Sometimes they spoke of me in the third person, “He’s fine, let him try again.”

Arms crossed against that background, all I did was sat, look, and listen. A soft breeze tousled my hair as the future was fed to me. As that happened, I assimilated it and explained what I saw. Part of this, my dream-self knew, was to make it my own, but I was also explaining to gain feedback and improve my comprehension.

It went thus for a while, with the commentators speaking more often as my visions clarified and my confidence waxed. Like teachers, they would sometimes say, “That’s right.” A female more often told me that. The dream ended with me happy, with a male commentator saying, “Okay, he’s got it. He knows how to see the future.”

Naturally, awakening, the dream pleased me. But I was also dissatisfied, because I couldn’t remember any of the future I was purported to see. That fits better with my personal philosophy; I think the future is wholly malleable. There’s probably more than one future in my future. I may skate between them, but chances are, I’ll mostly travel through one.

Even if I’m wrong, it was such a pleasant, powerful, and affirming dream.

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Monday’s Theme Music

A crazy dream finished my night. I’d been driving in a borrowed vehicle. It was in good shape, nothing special. Rain was falling. Traffic was dense. I was going a long distance.

We entered a wide tunnel lit with diffused dull yellow lights. More lanes were available. Veering into one, I accelerated, and caught a glimpse of a Chevy pick-up behind me. He’d apparently wanted into the space I’d taken. Now, filled with rage, he was coming up on my bumper.

Still in the tunnel, the road curved. We were going up a hill. I floored the accelerator pedal, keeping it down as engine, road noise, and speed built. Terrified by the speed, and barely in control, I was pulling away from him, and everyone else, when I rounded a corner and almost hit a van crashed on its side. There wasn’t time to stop but I managed to swerve around it. As I thought about stopping for the van and warning the other traffic, I discovered that boulders and rocks were strewn across the tunnel road past teh van. I drove around them, trying to grasp what was happening, and left the tunnel.

Rain was pouring. The day was fading. I reached my destination and pulled in, weary to the bone. It was Monday. I knew I needed to be somewhere else by Tuesday. More travel was ahead. I was with my father’s wife, and her family. Talking to others, she was planning a get-together, and I was there for it. But in flashbacks, I remembered that I’d left some things at my previous location that I needed. I grew conflicted over going back to get them – it had been such a long distance, and an exhausting drive – staying for the event being planned, or foregoing continuing on to my next location. Regarding the last point, I was attempting to understand, where was I going, and was there a need for me to go?

I awoke with this part of the song, “The World I Know,” by Collective Soul, playing in my mind:

So I walk up on high
And I step to the edge
To see my world below.
And I laugh at myself
While the tears roll down.
‘Cause it’s the world I know.
It’s the world I know.

3

Future Uncertainty

Steve Bannon faces some future uncertainty. Comments by the POTUS caused the uncertainty.

I feel for Mr. Bannon. His dire situation prompts me to confess: I, too, face an uncertain future.

I’ve been uncertain about whether to go public with my future uncertainty, but my uncertainty has been mounting. I’m so uncertain about my future, I’m not certain what I’ll have for lunch, or whether I’ll have a beer tonight. I’m also uncertain about the source of pain in my head. I’m uncertain about whether the current W.H. occupant will start a nuclear war or another American Civil War.

I know that I’m not alone in my future uncertainties. People are uncertain if they can find something to eat today or a safe place to sleep. They’re uncertain that they can survive another day of pain. Black Americans are often uncertain whether they’ll survive a traffic stop. Police officers are often uncertain what people are reaching for, and whether toy guns are real. Some Americans are uncertain about whether their drinking water is safe, or if they’ll be employed at the end of the day, tomorrow, next week, or next month. Others are uncertain about where they’ll get the funds to pay for the medications they need. More are uncertain about their symptoms, and whether these symptoms are the first signs of a disease progressing in them, aging, or a minor, or temporary, ailment. Others are uncertain about what’s going to happen on “Game of Thrones,” who will win the World Series, and if the Patriots will win the Superbowl again. Apple’s new products cause many people great uncertainty. People flying on United Airlines are uncertain about the status of their flights, and why United can deny them a seat of they bought a ticket and were issued a boarding pass.

Uncertainty isn’t exclusive to America. Many people in the world are uncertain about the impact of pollution, what America will do next, or if America’s President is insane. Others are uncertain about the effects of Brexit, what to do about multiple wars and refugees, terrorism, and climate change.

So, I feel for Mr. Bannon. His future in the White House is uncertain.

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