For the past week or so, this pic has been my wallpaper — and a pretty pic is is, too.
However, only a day ago my eye was drawn to this little detail in the bottom-right corner:
I mean, if you’re going to do that camping thing, there are far uglier places to do it e.g. Newark NJ or Bradford Yorks. Still, it niggles me for reasons I can’t explain.
Your suggestions in Comments.
Reader Mike L. sends me this little tale of bullshit:
Less than a week before Massachusetts observes Columbus Day, lawmakers and Native American advocates, some wearing traditional headdresses, asked a legislative committee to replace the holiday with Indigenous Peoples Day.
I’m getting so heartily sick of this nonsense, these attempts to rewrite history (at the expense of settled history, of course), and this glorification of what was essentially a bunch of savages.
Simply put: what did these glorious “indigenous” people ever do for us, for civilization and for the land which would become the United States? Where are their laws, their buildings and monuments, their written (as opposed to oral — i.e. invented) histories?
I’ll tell you where they are: nowhere, because they don’t exist.
So what’s to “honor”, other than to acknowledge that they once existed? Do we have “Neanderthal Day”? Of course we don’t — and do not for one minute think that I’m comparing “indigenous” American peoples to Neanderthals; although now that I think of it, I’m not exactly sure that the comparison isn’t apt, considering that the latter too left no laws, buildings, monuments or history pretty much for the same reasons. We don’t even know that the cave paintings scattered all over Europe and Asia were created by Neanderthals. Cave paintings weren’t much of a legacy, but they were something.
We commemorate achievements and actions precisely because what was done was (duh) memorable and had an effect on the world that followed. I have for example far less issue (in fact, no issue) with, say, Martin Luther King Day than President’s Day (which simply mashed all those wonderful presidents’ individual achievements into some amorphous reason for retail promotions and sales).
We don’t have to commemorate simple existence, we simply have to acknowledge it — for example, in written history (which they didn’t have) — and get on with life.
In terms of world history, what Christopher Columbus achieved was greater than anything achieved by all the Indigenous Peoples’ leaders and chiefs combined, ever. It is an absolute travesty to substitute his day of memory with some (once again) amorphous glorification of a group who collectively were nothing but inhabitants of this continent, whose originality was simply of greater vintage than people like Columbus, and whose legacy was… minimal, to be charitable.
Glorification of that is no more than a participation trophy, another artifact so beloved of the people who want to effect so insidious a change.
Fuck ’em. Fuck ’em all.
Not the 1960s, this time, but the time when you enter your sixth decade of life. This article talks about it, somewhat superficially, but number of items had me nodding along. Here are a few examples:
By age 60, you should have acquired almost everything you need, or learned to live without it. Possessions start to feel like an albatross, so you don’t blow as much money on dumb stuff like clothes, makeup, new phones, and cars.
Very true in my case. Just about every thing I own is old and still works. I don’t remember the last time I bought a new shirt, for instance — even though I take considerable pride in my appearance and always make sure I look presentable. New Wife has almost given up on making me wear short pants in public, and thank gawd that fall and winter are coming so that this clothing choice becomes less viable. I have too many pairs of shoes, certainly “dress” shoes (a hangover from my time as a corporate executive / business consultant) and considering that I have only one suit left, I can’t see any reason for owning more than one pair of my old black Johnston & Murphy toecaps. I practically live in Minnetonka moccasins — I own three pairs in moosehide tan, dark brown and black, and just replace them as they start wearing out, about every three years or so. I hardly ever wore denim jeans after my twenties because I found denim less comfortable than gaberdine or even linen trousers. New Wife has prevailed on me to start wearing them again because she says I look good in them. I discovered Target’s stretch jeans and now have a pair each of “washed out” (light blue) and normal dark blue, so these are my “go to the supermarket” choice nowadays. Also, the belt loops are wider than my “dress” trousers, which is a Good Thing because it accommodates my 1911’s holster better. I never wear T-shirts except around the house — that habit, like wearing denim, disappeared once I left my teens, and I have (too many) short- and long-sleeved cotton and linen shirts. Even those… sheesh, some of them are close to twenty years old, although they don’t look it because when I find a shirt I really like, I buy three or four of them, in different colors if available, and rotate them so that they don’t wear out.
Sorry, that’s all TMI and getting boring so let me get on with some of the other stuff.
You get smart about people. I can now tell far more easily whom to trust versus who is trying to take advantage of me. These were things I was oblivious to when I was younger, but now I see things a lot clearer.
When I was younger, I pretty much always took people at face value and trusted them to be decent. This was reflected in my circle of friends, which was vast. Now? I’m a lot more suspicious — sometimes incorrectly — of people and their motives, and this is reflected in a much-smaller number of people whom I can truthfully call friends. I don’t care about that, especially; I have about a dozen people (scattered all over the globe) whom I consider good friends, but even among them, only half or so are people whom I would allow to show up at my front door without warning and be welcomed into my house.
There’s a certain, almost dangerous, level of personal liberation. Kind of like, “I’m only gonna live for a few more years, so what could anyone possibly do to me?” This liberation in me, at least, has manifested in almost extreme levels of mouthiness. I say what I am feeling and thinking, I am NOT sensitive to anyone’s attempts to hurt my feelings, and I don’t really care if I hurt their feelings, either.
I will admit that this didn’t come to me in my sixties: it’s been my attitude pretty much my whole life. I have absolutely no concern about other people’s opinions of me, to the point where I literally don’t care if I offend someone and they never want to talk to me again. Frankly, the only people whose opinions I care about are those of my family and very close friends. Interestingly enough, my friends know this about me and indulge my occasionally-thoughtless outbursts. Strangers, I don’t care about and never have.
Knowing that you are fully formed. You don’t have to take on any more self-improvement projects, even though you surely can if you really want to. But I don’t need to improve my posture, my vocabulary, or my attitude; I can do whatever I want now.
By 60, I felt as if I had my life figured out. It wasn’t perfect, and it wasn’t exactly what I wanted, but I no longer had the feeling that I had missed the ‘life manual’ everyone else seemed to have.
I came to terms with myself at about age thirty: my character, my flaws, my strengths and so on. I also made the decision that I could live with my flaws, which is a little dangerous. I can be very cold-hearted or indifferent at times, for example, and that I do try to temper but without much success. Frankly, it’s one of the reasons I don’t do well living by myself: I need what’s been called the “gentling effect” of a woman in my life, and fortunately I have been blessed by having two of them for the past couple of decades. As a single guy, I tend very close to the psychopathic, but as a married man I’m not too bad a guy.
Anxiety. At least for me, I’ve gotten quite better at managing the anxiety of the unknown and keeping it in its rightful place.
In his wonderful TV series After Life, Ricky Gervais’s character and actions are shaped by the fact that he literally does not care if he lives or dies after the death of his beloved wife. As I’ve lived my sixties, I’ve become accustomed to that fact — not because of loss of a partner, but because I know that my time on Earth is going to end at some point in the foreseeable future. I have little fear of that, so should catastrophe come calling — say, in the form of an incurable illness — I know that I’ll always have the option of popping a few tabs to relax me, and climbing into a hot bath with a bottle of gin and a razor blade. The only thing that gives me any pause is that unlike Gervais’s character, I have kids who would miss me and might even be horribly saddened by my passing. So I do want to spare them that, but at the same time, if things really got bad and my life truly turned into total shit, I’d hope they understood my situation — especially my absolute resolve never to be a burden on them. I should point out that New Wife shares my attitude completely.
I’ve had a full, satisfying and very exciting life, and I have few if any regrets about it. Stuff that other people only dream about doing or experiencing, well, I’ve done most of it myself and other than a few things I’ve missed out on and wouldn’t have minded trying (e.g. skydiving), my life has been pretty complete. I’ve never been competitive, and always had a lazy streak to where “good enough” has never been the enemy of “perfect”; I simply lack the drive to be “the best” at anything, and to be honest, I’m not sure that my capabilities would have been sufficient anyway. And that’s one of the things that came to me much earlier than my sixties: understanding that “nothing is impossible” is total bullshit. Often, striving to reach the impossible involves making compromises that to me at any rate are not only unsupportable but insufferable. As the saying goes: nobody ever lay on their deathbed thinking: “If only I’d spent more time at the office.”
I was a competent (occasionally more than) as a businessman, ditto a bassist, ditto a writer and ditto just about anything I’ve ever done. My goal in life has always been “as long as I don’t make a fool of myself, that’s good enough.”
And that’s enough about me.
Here’s a little something that can absolutely be laid at the door of the “let ’em all in” (a.k.a. the Biden border policy) phenomenon:
A sheriff in Michigan is sounding the alarm over a rise in gangs of illegal aliens getting into the United States for the sole purpose of burglarizing Americans.
Oakland County, Michigan Sheriff Michael Bouchard, as well as other law enforcement agencies across the U.S., is warning that illegal aliens from the southern border are burglarizing members of their communities at an increasing rate.
“These are transnational gangs that are involved in this that come from South America, looking to do burglaries and violate our communities, not just in Oakland County but across America,” Bouchard said.
The Brits have been experiencing this for well over a decade, as well-organized criminal gangs (especially from Eastern Europe) have not only been expanding drug- and prostitute-related activities, but creating gangs of smash-and-grab thieves and burglary rings. Of course, this was facilitated by the EU policy of open borders and the reluctance of Brit politicians to do anything meaningful about it — which has been mirrored most recently in the U.S.A. by feckless politicians like Biden and his lickspittle accomplices in Homeland Security, INS and even our alleged “law enforcement” officials like prosecutors and the Fibbies.
Of course, the thieving activities of organized gangs has also been facilitated by crime groups such as Black Lives Matter — a local criminal organization given free rein by both state- and local governments — so it’s not just furriners.
This has been especially true in urban areas where a gang of say twenty thugs can crash a retail establishment and loot the place utterly without too much fear of arrest, let alone incarceration. So far, the response has just been that the affected retailer groups have shut their inner-city stores, which is fine for chains like Target or Wal-Mart, but not so fine for single-store owners who have three options: change the format from self-service to counter-service operation; close the store and lose their livelihood, or (in some memorable cases) employ armed guards to ensure that such raids will be met with force.
Of course, where the last of those three courses has been adopted, theft has dropped precipitously or disappeared altogether. Which brings me back to burglary.
Most lower-middle or working-class houses offer poor pickings to any organized crime gangs simply because there’s not much to steal and the game isn’t worth the candle. Likewise, ultra-wealthy households are often protected by good alarm systems or even armed guards because those homeowners can afford such measures.
What’s left is the vulnerable middle- and upper-middle classes who may have some stuff that justifies an armed invasion, and not the means to protect it adequately.
Expect therefore that this kind of larcenous activity is going to grow in more affluent suburbs (like, maybe, Plano TX).
And you all know what I’m going to say about that:
…and:
…etc.
If enough of these assholes are killed trying to break into suburban homes, it may make them a little less keen to try it.
Just a thought.
However, if you live in an area where wasting a couple choirboys is going to get you arrested rather than congratulated by the local cops, you may need to reconsider your living arrangements.
Over the past year or so I’ve become increasingly concerned about some of you, O My Readers, most especially among the most ahem senior of you (chronologically speaking).
The fact is that we’re starting to drop like flies, and as much as I hate to admit it, just having someone disappear from one’s life is unsettling. Here’s an example.
Bobby Kushner (Bob K) was an old Chicago buddy; one of my earliest Readers, many was the time we shared war stories and opinions on guns, politics, life in Chicago and such. We only ever met in person on three occasions, mind: once over dinner at a lovely restaurant on Clark Street, once when he very graciously put me up overnight at his apartment in Lincoln Park, and once at a friend’s farm (belonging to Scott S, then and still a friend as well as a Longtime Reader). On that last occasion, Bob brought a couple of very large duffel bags, both filled to the brim with old handguns — good grief, some models I’d never even heard of, let alone fired — along with a plentiful supply of ammo for each, and that entire day was spent shooting all of them.
Of course, we kept in touch over the following years, sporadically as so often happens, and then… silence. Emails went into the pit, and I never heard from him again. Bob was of advanced years and in poor health, but I only learned about that from his wife (confusingly, also Bobby — Roberta). So when he went dark, I had to assume that he’d popped his clogs — he’d always responded promptly to my “LTNS” letters in the past. Worse still, I didn’t know how to get in touch with his wife, so I never did find out.
So, to all my Old Fart Readers — and you know who you are — please drop me an email occasionally so I know how things are going. It’s not an obligation, of course, but having lost Bobby so suddenly and unknowingly, I really don’t want to experience that again. I do have a bond with you guys — sorry, but there it is — so please keep in touch now and again.
