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Post by pooka on Dec 8, 2021 0:40:28 GMT -5
Before today is over, Least We Forget. This is a laminated one. If you can't read these, Here is the text exactly as it appears in the paper. The Union County AdvocateFifty Eighth Year Number 11, Morganfield, Kentucky, Thursday, July 9, 1942 County Youth Wounded During Pearl Harbor Raid -Advocate Photo Says Japs Would Wave When Hit Scored An eye witness to the Japanese sneak raid on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, said on a visit here last week that the Japanese bomber pilots "would turn around and wave when they scored a direct hit on a ship. * * * The Union County youth who was in the thick of the battle is H. J. "Jeff" Willett, 22, son of Mr. and Mrs. Owen Willett of Waverly. "They came so close to our ship the we could easily see their fea- tures," the soft-spoken Petty Of- ficer, 2nd class, recalled. Saw Buddies Killed The story told by the Union Countian coincided with hundreds of others related about the das- tardly attack on Pearl Harbor. Willett explained that his job was that of quartermaster, wear- ing phones and standing by to take control of the guns. "But when I saw my own bud- dies killed, I took charge of the gun and began firing at the Japs," he said. Asked if he was scared during the raid, which started at 7:55 a. m. and lasted until 11 o'clock, Wil- lett said he didn't have time to think about being frightened. Time Unimportant "To be honest" he recalled "I don't know exactly what hap- pened. At 8 o'clock that Sunday morning, I was supposed to take my post. When the first bombs fell at 7:55, I thought something had been dropped on the deck of the ship. Then a few minutes later the alarm was given that the Japs were staging an air raid. "Our men all fought gallantly," Willett stated. Veteran Of Battles Although only 22 years old, Willett is a navel veteran, and has ---------------------------------- (Please Turn To Page 8) ----------------------------------------- Says Japs Would Wave When Hit Scored (Continued From Page One) ---------------------------------- been involved in other action be- sides that he encountered at Pearl Harbor. His ship has been hit by both bombs and torpedoes, and he has participated in fights in two other sections of the Pacific. During the Pearl Harbor at- tack Willett was hit in the right knee by flying shrapnel, and sus- tained two minor injuries in other affrays. The tall be-specticaled youth doesn't appear to be anything but docile, but like other Americans in the service, his one thought now is to get back into the navy and to finish the job Uncle Sam has started. Willett is six feet two inches tall, weighs 172 pounds, and is modest about his part in various battles. He enlisted in the navy in May, 1938 at Louisville, and has been stationed in Pearl Har- bor since 1939. He returned to the States in the spring, and left Union County Friday after a visit since June 16 with his parents. ---------------- I don't think my father was ever whole again.
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Post by nana on Dec 8, 2021 19:03:00 GMT -5
They really were the greatest generation. I thank him for his service.
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Post by pooka on Dec 8, 2021 20:39:22 GMT -5
He didn't live long enough to retire really. He had twenty years in the Navy plus ten years in the reserves, & almost twenty years at the USPS. He was diagnosed with liver cancer when he went in for his yearly check up in October, & he died at fifty nine. He had just enough sick days & vacation time saved up to qualify for a twenty year pension from the Post Office. He died six months after his diagnoses. There was a blizzard the day of his funeral that February that shut the town down for a week, so he never had a proper funeral. The funeral home took him out to the cemetery & laid him to rest once the weather cleared with only the workmen in attendance.
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Post by nana on Dec 9, 2021 17:55:52 GMT -5
My husband’s brother and father both died at 57 before they ever got to enjoy a day of retirement. That’s why my husband retired early at 56. I don’t think he relaxed until his 58th birthday, though.
How old were you when your dad passed?
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Post by pooka on Dec 10, 2021 2:57:12 GMT -5
Twenty. It's kind of a blur. Like I said, he went in for his yearly check up around his birthday on October 19. I just turned twenty on the first. Mom & dad's twenty fifth anniversary was the eleventh. During his examination, the doctor felt something that didn't seem right, so he had him go to the hospital for some tests. It was confirmed as liver cancer. At that time, there wasn't much treatment that would do much. He went back to work as long as he could. In the mean time, he set up some investments, arranged for his own funeral & opened some bank accounts for all us kids at the Postal Credit Union, because once he died we wouldn't be able to. I've still got that account. In time he couldn't work any more because of the pain. I can still remember him getting up in the middle of the night & going to sit in the kitchen. He would cuss under his breath. It was the only time I ever heard him use foul language. He never cursed in front of us. He always taught us there were more than enough words in the English language to express ourselves without stooping to use cuss words. Eventually he had to go into the hospital, because we couldn't care for him at home. This was long before there was such a thing as hospice care. It became a death watch waiting for him to die. We had two epic winters in a row. The second one started the day of the funeral that never happened. We never had a chance for a last goodby at the burial.
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Post by nana on Dec 11, 2021 7:43:38 GMT -5
I am sorry for your loss. There is no good age to lose a parent, and it’s a club no one wants to join, but we all do unless we die first. I also know how miserable a death watch is. You want the person to stay as long as possible, and at the same time you pray that they can be released from their pain. One half of your heart is at war with the other. Very difficult.
It sounds like he was a fine man and a good father, who took care of his family as long as he could. May he rest in peace.
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Post by pooka on Dec 11, 2021 15:02:24 GMT -5
If you live in a large enough connected family, you learn about death early in some fashion. My dad had I think it was six or seven siblings. & we had a bunch of great aunts & uncles, so as time went by, there was always a birth, death or marriage happening pretty regularly. I didn't know my dad had an older brother until a funeral. Roy died in a car wreak when he was twenty, & is buried next to grandma & grandpa down in Waverly, KY. I think the first funeral was dad's dad. I was seven or eight. There was a guy I went to grade school & high school with who in my senior year was killed by a falling garage door at his job. I only found out at the funeral that we shared a great aunt & uncle. The aunt was blood to me, & the uncle was blood to him.
I've witness life's end first hand more than once. It's always too much, but it in the way of things. We're constantly in the process of becoming. We're born, we live, then die, but that which we're made of never goes away. It just becomes something else. We're all star stuff. Our atoms were born in ancient stars. We're finite & infinite at the same time. Our lives are finite, but our substance is infinite.
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Post by nana on Dec 12, 2021 9:50:04 GMT -5
Energy is also neither created nor destroyed. It just changes form. So whatever the energy is that animates the collection of star stuff that living things are made of, it goes somewhere when those things die. I find that incredibly comforting. Even an avowed atheist can’t change the laws of physics.
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Post by pooka on Dec 12, 2021 11:19:16 GMT -5
An apathiest here. It's a rather new term coined in 2001. Wikipedia says, One of the first recorded apatheists was arguably Denis Diderot (1713 - 1784), who wrote: "It is very important not to mistake hemlock for parsley, but to believe or not believe in God is not important at all." Only humans would make a fuss about something that doesn't exist. If it weren't for religion, we'd have our flying cars already. It's strange we call them laws of physics or nature, as if a bunch of scientists got together & voted these laws in. They're just observations of how things work.
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Post by nana on Dec 14, 2021 19:28:07 GMT -5
That’s the essence of the Tao. It translates as the Way, or sometimes the Path. The Tao te Ching is a series of astute observations about how things are. That’s the closest I come to religion, and it’s not a religion at all, although people always want to make it out to be one. Most of our problems and misery are cause by fighting against the way things are. It seems to be in our nature to go against nature. And there’s a point to ponder!!
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Post by pooka on Dec 15, 2021 11:14:11 GMT -5
Even as a child in first, second & third grade in catholic school, the whole religion thing seemed a load of nonsense. Not being receptive to the nuns ability to teach me, I failed all three years. After testing by a psychologist as above average in intelligence, I started the fourth grade in public school where I did fine. It seems I'm incompatible with religion beyond finding them fascinating studies of primarily balderdash. That's not to say they aren't sprinkled with a wise word here & there, but they're more hokum than substance meant to manipulate weak or lazy minds. The best lies are those that start with a kernel of truth, but then twist, manipulate & sugar coat it, then serve it on a silver platter to get you to swallow it whole.
On the whole, we atheist tend to be as honest & moral, if not more so than the average religious person, & it's been backed up by scientific study. Unfortunately many religious people find it inconceivable that you can be honest & moral without the fear of damnation, as if we would all be some sort of felonious murderous rapists without the fear of god or hellfire. Truthfully, anyone who thinks that way must have way more wrong with the way THEY think. I find there are plenty of pious monsters in this world, & the prisons are full the god fearing, but scant few unbelievers. I don't know why it's inconceivable to do good for goodness sake alone. It seems perfectly natural to do good to our fellow earth creatures, be they man or beast in hopes the favor is returned. I don't need a holy book to teach me that. I think that's written into our DNA. Some of us try real hard to unlearn it. There's a scene in the Bill Murry movie, The Razor's Edge where his character gets it. He's spent his life traveling the world in search of something like the meaning of life. He reads the great philosophers & all the wise writings he can lay his hand on. While working as a miner in France or England, I can't remember, He talks to a fellow coal miner about reading books, asked if he has ever read The Upanishads, he says "no", the other miner says "you can't learn it out of a book, you have to go there". I had to look up that it was a Sanskrit texts of Hindu philosophy. He ends up a cook for a Tibetan Lama who sends him off to a high mountain retreat. Just him & his books. When his fuel runs out, he's burning a page from a book, then another, then the whole book for warmth. It dawned on him that life was about just living, & not about any words in an ancient tome. It's an odd movie, but it has it's moments.
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Post by nana on Dec 16, 2021 6:34:25 GMT -5
It’s interesting that you mention it’s written in our DNA. I read an article recently about altruism in animals. There are so many examples. They explain helpful sacrifices animals make for members of their own species as kin selection, meaning they do it because there is enough shared DNA to make it worth their evolutionary while. But animals compete with members of their own species too. So what makes them choose to be selfless rather than selfish? And there are examples of animals helping other species as well. Much harder to explain that away as evolutionary instinct. Whales saving seals from killer whales, for instance. They tried to explain that as the seal’s small size triggering a whale’s protective instinct for their own calves, but I think a whale knows a seal from a calf, don’t you?
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Post by pooka on Dec 16, 2021 14:35:15 GMT -5
There's a long list of diverse animal that at the very least are being tolerant of each other, & some who seem to be friendly, & working together. It's hard to say how & why this happens. As the line from Hamlet goes, "There's more in heaven & earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy dear Horatio." Of course Hamlet & Horatio were speaking of the ghost of Hamlet's father, the king, but the sentiment is still the same. We may never fully understand these seemingly odd animal friendships. Evolution most surely plays some role. Millions of years of nature rolling the dice trillions & trillions of times. Take any question. If you know enough facts about it, you can deduce the right answer, but some things are so complex, with so many variables, you could never possibly know all the angles. Often you just have to make your best educated guess. So much of what goes on around us is instinctual or without thought. It's in our DNA. Our minds don't have the capacity to comprehend if fully. We can only look at tiny pieces of it at one time. In Isaac Asimov's Foundation Series, there's a character Named Hari Seldon, a mathematics professor who invents a new kind of math by which he can calculate or predict the future. The idea is valid, but there aren't enough computers, or fact gatherers to crunch all the variables. That's why the sciences are broken up into different disciplines. The big picture of the world & universe are too big to look at all at once. We have to break it up in tiny pieces to be able to attempt to understand it at all. No matter how smart we think we are, We will always fall short in fully understanding our reality. We're just tiny moving pieces in a vast interactive, ever changing puzzle. Our brains are big enough to take it all in. We do our best to muddle through it. It seems ill advised to be antagonizing to our fellow beings. We need all the friend we can get.
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Post by nana on Dec 18, 2021 5:58:36 GMT -5
The big problem with humanity and our big brains is that so often, although we can’t possibly know ALL the angles, we believe that we DO, and only come to realize that we don’t after the harm has been done. It’s happened time after time. Climate change, nuclear weapons, and now I read an article about robot soldiers. What could possibly go wrong with that?🙄 Didn’t anyone watch “The Terminator?”
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Post by pooka on Dec 18, 2021 13:15:13 GMT -5
Too often it's a case of what CAN we do. We don't bother with the question, should we do it. Science gives us a new tool, & it gets used in all the wrong ways. What's the saying, give a man a hammer, & everything looks like a nail. It's a clash of capabilities over ethics & ramifications. Tasers for police is a great example. They were never meant to be used as a method of compliance. Yet that seem to be how they're used most of the time. Sometimes they're used punitively, to torture unduly. We're also trigger happy. Other countries have violent crime too, but don't shoot anywhere near the number of people our cops do. I've heard it said that if the more guns that are out there, the safer we are were true, we'd be the safest country in the world, yet we aren't
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Post by nana on Dec 19, 2021 11:35:55 GMT -5
I think there are too many people, not that they are criminals or evil, who have seen too many movies and TV shows where all the problems are solved by the proverbial ”good guy with a gun.” Even if the movie shows someone operating outside the law, the story is told so we empathize with and root for them, because we have the background information that what is happening is necessary for “true” justice to be done. A lot of gun owners see themselves in that role. I know because I’ve spoken to them. They talk about the need to have a gun for self defense, because what if you’re alone in the house and an escaped convict is on the loose and looking for hostages, or a crazed rapist, or whatever scenario is the scariest to them. And very rarely those scenarios do happen, and you might be glad to have that gun in hand if it comes to pass, especially in a rural area where even if you call the police it may be quite a while until they get there.
But overwhelmingly, and sadly, most gun deaths are caused by carelessness, arrogance and stupidity. The victims are not bad guys getting their comeuppance, but innocents. Children playing with them. Angry people using them to settle scores and arguments. Psychopaths wanting who knows what, but willing to kill as many as they can to get it. And yes, well meaning and “law-abiding” people who mean well, but lack the training and discipline to really be responsible with a deadly weapon.
I am not against gun ownership outright, but in this country we can’t even have discussions at the political level about what constitutes reasonable regulation. The “well regulated” part of the Second Amendment should be just as important as the “shall not be infringed” part. There is so much low hanging regulatory fruit waiting to be picked that it is falling off and rotting on the ground, yet even something like universal background checks that a vast majority of gun owners support, can’t get the time of day from legislators. It’s crazy. I’ve never owned a gun, only ever fired one twice, (Someone else’s at tin cans) and know next to nothing about truly handling one safely, let alone using one. Yet I could just go out and buy one, and in many states now, openly carry it, even though obviously I would just be an accident waiting to happen. That alone should frighten people. I would never get one, but there are plenty of people just as ignorant as me who would and have.
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Post by pooka on Dec 20, 2021 4:49:31 GMT -5
The second amendment, "The Gays", abortion & others are all wedge issues to divide us into factions to distract us, & keep us a fractious mob. We're not able to force any change, but we make a lot of noise.
Most people have no clue what the second amendment even means. A lot don't know the first half that says "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State,". Note the comma at the end. This was in a time that we didn't envision having a standing army, so the Militia were in effect the army & only national defense against a foreign aggressors. Being "well regulated" just means you're well practiced, & know what you're doing. The last part of the amendment saying, "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." It simply mean we can't infringe on the ability of people who would be your Militia from having & keeping arms. It seems plain English to me. You need an army to protect the country, so make sure they're armed & know what to do. To shorten it further, you need an army, & they need weapons.
I don't think it was ever intended that any yahoo who can come up with the price of the firearm of his choice should be permitted to keep & carry the cannon of their choice unfettered on a public street. We've deluded ourselves by believing in the myth of the rugged individualist heroes of the old west were everybody wore a gun. Hollywood has done a lot to promote that fantasy too. It's gotten worse in the last few decades too. Rambo is just the kind of poison fantasy insecure Americans didn't need. The NRA used to be all about gun safety, training & good sportsmanship. Now it's more like a carnival barker for the gun industry.
I'll tell you a little story. In 1967, I had an older brother named Michael. He was a twin to my sister Michelle. They were miracle babies born three months premature in 1953. They were three pound & a few ounce. That was pretty much a death sentence back then. Against all the odds, they survived. Then came brother Christopher, then me. We all went to school at St. Joseph Catholic school till that fall. I had not thrived under the tutelage of the nuns, so I was starting the fourth grade at public school that fall. Christopher was in fifth grade & Michael & Michelle were in the eighth grade. It was the first few weeks of the school years. Around here, school starts the beginning of September after Labor Day. Michael's buddy lived a few blocks from school, so he & another pal went to his house for lunch one day. That was allowed back then. Well there had been some burglaries in that neighborhood in recent weeks, so the kids dad had bought a handgun & hidden it where fourteen year old hands had found it. Put three fourteen year olds together & a pistol unsupervised. You may have guessed. Michael was shot in the left eye, & later died at the hospital. Panicked friends cooked up a story of the expected boogie man of the time. An unknown black guy did it. A predictable fall guy. Of course the truth did come out that it was just three stupid kids playing, & did something dumb & one of them didn't walk away. First born son & brother gone at fourteen. My dad had two older brothers like me too. The eldest, Roy was killed in a car wreak at twenty, but Michael died because of the myth that a gun will make you safe.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not against gun ownership, but guns kill. There's no such thing as a safe gun. Guns are a lethal tool that need to be handled responsibly & with due care. They aren't toys to be brandished lightly. There are too many idiots with guns who are just accidents waiting to happen. From what I've seen & read even the police have a poor record of proper gun use & handling. Who knows whether that's because of poor training. Poor attitudes or plain meanness. In some environments, the police become just another gang, only they have badges. I have to believe that most cops are good guys stuck in a less than perfect system. Honestly, to me, the cops are not my friend. I don't trust them any more than any random guy off the street.
You would think having the ability to meet out deadly force should be required to have at least some minimum of safety training. And hold people responsible when they screw up. When I read a story about a Secret Service agent who left his gun in a toilet, or of regular cops doing the same & worse, how can I hope regular people would be any better. But for our politicians, gun regulations are like the third rail. Lethal if they touch it. Some think there should be unfettered access to guns for anyone, or no regulations period. I'm sorry, there are too many nuts out there to hand out guns like gumdrops. More guns just means more shootings, & too many needless deaths. This isn't the wild west or our warped idea of what it was. I can remember more than one western movie or TV show where there were no guns allowed in town. On the trail, out on the range, you could be armed to the teeth, but not in town. That was being civilized. I don't think I should have to be worried about getting caught in the middle of a shootout while I'm out doing the shopping or running errands. I don't feel safe with random people on the street carrying firearms, much less AK style rifles. Unlike the old westerns, good guys, white hats, bad guys, black hats rules don't apply. You can't tell who is who. If I see a gun, I'm going in the other direction.
I'm not a gun guy, although I've shot a number of guns years ago. I had a buddy who had a few who was a hunter, so his guns weren't immature cover for a sense of diminished masculinity. He had a WWI 9 mm Spandau Mauser that sounded like a cannon when fired. I shot it a few times. He didn't shoot it much, because the ammo was too expensive. He had a .357 Magnum pistol & rifle. A 22 & a couple of shotguns. I'd shot them all once or twice just to know what it's like. But honestly my only interest really is just their inventive mechanical ingenuity. It's the machine that fascinates me. To me guns are just tools that are often misused.
I hate to burden you with that story, but life is what it is. It's neither good or bad. It simply is. We live it. Enjoy it. We endure it. It's a never ceasing, unending continuum that we're latched to. All we can do hang on.
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Post by nana on Dec 22, 2021 7:48:19 GMT -5
Please accept my sympathy for that tragic loss. If only those in charge of making the laws could hear stories like yours and thousands of others like it, and open their hearts and minds to the true cost of pretending guns don’t kill…
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Post by pooka on Dec 22, 2021 16:00:47 GMT -5
It's a misty memory I barely recollect. It's a fact that that always looms in the background. It's the only time I saw my dad weep like a baby. He was a broad shouldered six foot three giant to me, but crumbed to a heaving & blubbering mass during the funeral. The death of a sibling casts a pall over the rest of your life. It's a shadow that never goes away, even on the brightest mid days. Even when you think you've forgotten about it, something brings it back to mind. The fact that it was due to a firearm is doubly stinging. If it were a disease or a freak accident of some kind, it would still be painful, but because it was due to ignorance, & the lie that guns are a panacea to anything but chaos. The prevalence of guns just shows we're lower than the most savage beast. We're an insult to the idea of civility if we think a gun in every hand makes anything but savage brutes.
Despite America's admirable ideas, we're known world wide for being loud obnoxious know it all jerks. We've got the the crazy idea that John Waynes portrayal of the old west is somehow an ideal to copy. The reality is having to read a story of a woman out shopping drops her gun, wounding herself in the foot. & that was just yesterday. For every one good outcome because of a gun, how many tragic outcomes must we endure. We need to give up & demonize this gun fetish we suffer from.
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Post by nana on Dec 24, 2021 8:08:31 GMT -5
As a country, we really need to be able to talk reasonably and frankly about guns. The people have been divided by the powers that be into to opposing camps, and anything one side proposes is automatically opposed by the other side which causes them to come up with an even more extreme reaction against it. You just have to follow the threads to their logical ends to see what madness it is. There are people who should never be allowed near a gun, and everyone knows it deep down, even the gun manufacturers themselves know it. And there are times when a trained and responsible person with a gun can use that tool to stop a tragedy. There ought to be a way to figure it out. But we live in a country where people can die of a disease that they, for political reasons, don’t even believe they have. Two sayings come to mind: None are so blind as those who will not see, and, It is hard to get someone to understand something when their paycheck depends on them not understanding it. Those two sayings, to me, explain why we cannot as a people come to some kind of agreement.
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Post by pooka on Dec 25, 2021 19:32:34 GMT -5
A saying that helps explain our predicament, "There's a sucker born every minute". P.T Barnum made a fortune selling people things they WANTED to believe in, regardless whether they were true on not. Many people knew a lot of what he was promoting was hokum, but it was fun going along with the gag. Then again, there's a segment of the population that are easily led astray by less than factual things. Con men have been making bank on it since the beginning of time. There are big moneyed forces out there who put their influences into manipulating opinions & issues toward their preferred world view, or what benefits their bottom line. Take the George Carlin bit where he says, "Imagine how dumb the average person is, then imagine half of them are dumber than that." Big advertising is all about molding opinions whether they're selling widgets, abortions or guns. It's like Hitler's big lie methodology. Tell a lie often enough, loud enough, & from as many sources as possible, & many will come to believe that lie. Sometimes the more outlandish the fib, the better. Now look at all the different forms of media we're subjected to every day. It's tough not to be influenced by it. We can get sucked into ever increasingly radical echo-chambers pushing the most farcical nonsense, & believing it. It's a kind of rabble rousing that can lead people to do stupid things. When I hear about some of the conspiracies, or nonsensical things people think & believe, I'm dumbfounded. I think how did we get so ignorant & gullible. But when you step back & think about it, we've always been that way. It's just that today, it's virtually impossible to escape the flickering screens, billboards or the voices in our ears via the net or talk radio. We're bombarded by a steady stream content to lead us down the garden path, & many go willingly. Weaker minds get sucked down the many rabbit holes. The sad truth is most of it is just to keep us distracted, divided & confused so bigger forces can have their way. Money & power will always work to hold onto more than their share. We're just pawn in the game. Personally, I've got a pretty well developed BS detector. I'm a natural born skeptic, but I could be fool too, but it's unlikely. The problem is too many are great sheep. They go where they're lead. I just ran across a reddit post about a commercial for a UK grocery chain. It features a recreation of the spontaneous WWI Christmas truce if you've ever heard of it. It spread all up & down the front. In the end, it couldn't last. Higher ups were furious men would stop killing out of good will toward one another. Men who participated were transferred elsewhere, & firing squads for treason where threatened if it happened again. Imagine the temerity of not wanting to murder one another en mass because you're told to. There are many telling comment.
Today we've got a chorus of voices spewing all manner of nonsense that all but drown out the truth. It's no wonder we're so fractured. There's no downside to telling a lie anymore. If you get called out on it, you just tell another bigger lie the next day, & there are those who will go along. I remember when Walter Cronkite said it, you knew it was the truth. Today if we have a "Walter Cronkite", there no way to pick him out of the roaring crowd of voices. I don't know a way out of this cat's game. It's like tic tack toe. There's no way to win.
For now I'm going to lay my pencil down & stop playing the game. It's like “Joshua” or WOPR the computer's comment near the end of the movie "War Games". “A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.”
How's the weather today. We broke a record of 68 with a high of 73. Last year it was 17. Normal is more like mid 40's.
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Post by nana on Dec 26, 2021 7:33:52 GMT -5
Merry Christmas! Our weather was freezing rain and sleet all day, but just warm enough so that it didn’t build up too much. I wish it had been snow. At least it was in the realm of normal, though. We had one of those 70 degree Christmases a few years ago. Everyone’s got pictures of them sitting around opening presents wearing shorts, like we lived in Florida!
I like that: The only winning move is not to play. Very Taoist. There is a line from the Tao: I do not contend with the world, therefore the world cannot contend with me. Basically the same end result.
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Post by pooka on Dec 26, 2021 13:33:49 GMT -5
The whole next week our daytime temperatures are forecast to range from 49 to 70 with rain for four of those days. By next Sunday, we're suppose to be back to our average with a high of 42 & a low of 23. This is crazy warm weather for us. That record high of 68 we broke on Christmas Day was only set two years ago. We frequently have mild winters around here. If we're going to have any cold & nasty weather, it usually shows up the end of January, or the beginning of February. I've lived here my whole life, but in recent years, the temperatures around Christmas have been extremely high. Last years 17 degree Christmas is the one out of sync. I don't know if it's global warming or what. I just know fifty years ago when I was a kid, we had a lot more cold weather with snow that we've had in recent decades.
Life is often a deadly game we are forced to play. Anymore, I do my best to ignore the world if I can. I go to work, do my thing & come home & watch old movies & old TV shows mostly. I lay down & nap when tired. In between I browse Reddit for odd tidbits of news & info from around the world. I try my best to not read about current events, but my old addiction to the news does come back on occasion. It's like driving past a car wreak. It's hard not to look. I'm completely out of touch with the way people live today. I don't shop like anyone else, & I ignore popular culture, music or movies. I haven't been to the theater in nearly twenty five years, & only shop regular stores if need something I can't find at the thrift stores, one of my few vices. I'm just a crazy old hermit who curses at the world, & wants no part of it. I'm at that point in life where I spend more time looking back than forward. The future looks so bleak to me. I don't want to see anymore. It's almost impossible to have hope. This pandemic where many people would rather die than admit being wrong is just indicative of how our poison news & politics is literally killing us. I don't want to watch anymore.
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Post by nana on Dec 27, 2021 8:25:24 GMT -5
I always seem to find hope, even when things look bleak. I think it’s just my nature. I described it to my husband once as how a cork must feel. It can be held down underwater, but as soon as whatever’s holding it loosens its grip even slightly, it bobs back up to the surface. It’s not a conscious decision on my part, it just happens. He tends to dwell on problems. More like a waterlogged old piece of driftwood than a cork. He has to haul himself up onto the beach to dry out so he can float again, and it’s difficult. Which isn’t to say that I don’t share in much of your dismay at the problems of this world. There are so many things wrong physically, environmentally and spiritually that the weight is staggering if you try to carry it, even for a short time. But then I’ll see a shaft of sunlight break through the clouds, or watch the way a flock of birds will all turn at the same moment and wheel through the sky, or even just get a friendly nudge from my kitty cat, and I can see the beauty again. My husband sometimes needs these things pointed out to him so he can see it too. There is always balance in the universe. It’s good to remember that.
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