Birthday Love

Birthday Love

May 14th was Annie’s birthday, and for the umpteenth year in a row, I did not spend a penny on her. Had I chosen, I could have trekked to CostCo and purchased her, I don’t know, say a new set of gardening shears, the ones with bucket seats and four-on-the-floor.

Or maybe she would have appreciated a new boom box for her sewing arena, one with 808 Speakers so that when she is listening to her favorite sound tracks, so is the entire neighborhood. Or maybe not. It might be hard to hear the finches over the sound of Mumford and Sons. 

Finches on the feeder on the front deck

The reality of farm living is that money constantly battles time for our attention. Oh, it’s the same for you? Who’d have thunk?

There is no wriggle room when it comes to Triple-A or U.S. Cellular, or buying organic layer crumble for the girls, but when it comes to matters of the heart, the back will win out over the buck, every day of the week, and twice on Sundays.

I’m not criticizing folks for buying birthday gifts, for Buddha’s sake, only clarifying that when a guy is retired, and can budget his time as he sees fit, it’s a no-brainer. Just being able to say that, after an adult lifetime of having to be somewhere that was determined by someone else, is a gift.

I spend as much time trying to do work designed for those half my age, as is physically possible. That’s why schedules and time constraints simply do not work. I do what I can and those around are pleased as punch not to have to do that which has already been done.

No one goes on to complain that it would have been nice if I had also been able to prep the south-forty, as well as the north. It’s one of the perks of being a gray-beard. Because there are so many, they tend to blend together. Perks, I mean.

Therefore, in trying to prepare properly for Annie’s big day, I inevitably spend time looking for something in her world that I can do, that will either make her life easier, or make it more aesthetically pleasing. Or both.

This used to be a slightly sloping lawn.

One year ago, while in the throes of coping with the jettisoning of our little apartment in Willits, I spent the bulk of April and May, converting an area that had been a lawn for the previous twenty-five years, into a set of flower boxes.

When I began the project, I just knew that I would have to do a bodacious amount of digging, but that if I did, the shape and form of what I was trying to create, would assert itself. 

Sure enough, after scouring my twenty acres for every available piece of split-rail fencing that was used on the property, I began assembling. The right side of the brain may remain on hold for long periods of time, but when it busts loose in my world, the results can be quite rewarding.

There are four levels of boxes for Annie to make use of, currently housing chives, sweet-peas, black-eyed Susan vines, several rose bushes, lavender, mint and other garden favorites. Ironically, the original lawn itself was a birthday effort all those years ago.

In typical Mark-fashion, I trundled approximately one hundred and twenty-five wheelbarrows filled with topsoil from under the manzanitas, a football field away, to the present site. The idea was to build up one side of the sloping area, so as to not only provide a more level surface, but to enhance the clayish soil with a better mix.

Mama Annie's herbs

So one year ago, I was simply rearranging all of that soil that I had imported in the original effort.

What about this year? I tackled the front deck and did the annual spring cleaning of oak leaves, sweeping, gathering and disposing of the leaves that have swirled and danced since they dropped last November. If that were all I did, it would constitute nothing more than normal maintenance, so there has to be more.

I gathered up an assortment of little deck accoutrements, scrubbed the winter glaze off of them and centrally located them in a discarded cassette tape shelving unit. I had to tighten it up a bit but a few screws and the impact drill were all I needed.

I then affixed it to the north exterior wall of the kitchen. This is the part of the deck where the table and chairs are situated for outdoor, summer dining. Casey and Amber will stroll down the driveway to join us for dinner, as we hash over the events of the day.

Yesterday, I made sure the emitters were in place in each of the flower pots and functioning properly, even as the mizzle gently enveloped me in a May mist. I ensured that the knick-knacks, many of which came to Annie when her mom Beverly passed more than ten years ago, were properly arranged. 

This spot on the front deck is one of three or four that Annie has set up, where she can take a cup of coffee or a glass of water, and sit for a few minutes to just breathe in the beauty that surrounds us.

Make no mistake; there is an abundance of beauty.

And that’s what it boils down to: I can’t find anything as beautiful or more meaningful at CostCo, than I can right here outside my front door. And it invariably involves a strong back and a weak brain. 

I qualify for both though the back is not far behind the brain. I’m just lucky that I have a country girl who prefers flowers over diamonds.

Those are the best kind.

Lucky Number Thirty-three

Lucky Number Thirty-three

I live in the moment. 

What happened yesterday is in the books, and what will be, will be. In my entire life I only actually “planned” and carried out one specific “big picture” action, and although the purchase of twenty acres of land and subsequent move to Bell Springs Road was a biggee, I did it in conjunction with several siblings. 

Having been raised in the cloistered setting of a big family, much of my early progress was dictated by family norms, my three older brothers smoothing out some of the rough parts of my path, while creating potholes at the same time.

Summer, 1996: Back row Eric, JT, Mark, Laura, Tom, Brian
Front row: Kevin, Matt, Pauline, Robert, Noel

On the one hand, by the time I hit high school and started extending boundaries, my older bros had WD-40ed Mama’s iron grip on her supervision, so I that got away with more than they did. On the other, there were those pesky high expectations that the good priests at Bishop Amat Memorial High School had, after having experienced my two oldest brothers before me.

I inherited more than my share of my mother’s 161 IQ, and excelled at anything centered around the written word. However, when it came to mathematics and the sciences, I was an abject failure, incapable of maintaining anything but the most marginal of passing grades. 

I was to find out at age 58 that it was all tied up in my mood spectrum disorder, and that one of the symptoms was an inability to process information when it is presented orally.

Did I agonize over higher education? Not so’s you’d notice it. My father had not completed high school but it was made clear from my earliest recollection, that we kids-all nine of us-would further our education after high school graduation.

Two of us ended up with doctorates, four with masters and three with degrees: that adds up to nine.

My father envisioned a different life for each of his kids, than that of a welder laboring in a steel factory, making an annual salary of $7,000. So thus it was that I ended up applying to Cal Poly, Pomona, no more than twenty minutes away, although I waited until April of my senior year to do so.

No problem, Admissions responded, as long as you’re good with being an ag major, which was big at Cal Poly. I have a vague remembrance of being on-site at the university’s dairy facility, and of having this feeling of being carried down a meandering country brook. 

Whatever came floating by was fine with me, as long as I continued playing Spades in the cafeteria any time I wanted. We also played sandlot football games on the expansive college grounds, and attended weekend keggers, where the suds flowed like the sunshine in SoCal, abundantly.

Who in the hell is this grinning fool?

Out of the blue one fine November day in 1971, I got a notice in the mail which read, in part, “Having submitted yourself to a Local Board composed of your neighbors for the purpose of determining your availability for training and services in the armed forces of the United States, you are hereby notified that you have now been selected for training and service in the _______ [Army].”

This was the result of winning the one and only lottery that really mattered, and having been assigned lucky number 33 in the upcoming draft. Since they made it to just over a hundred in 1971, I was a shoo-in.

Aside from being terrified beyond comprehension at the thought of leaving my eight brothers and sisters and going “out into the world,” there was that insignificant police business going on over there in Vietnam. 

Country Joe and the Fish sang all about it, “…Be the first one on your block, to have your boy come home in a box…”

I got lucky, I guess you could say, as a result of being sent overseas to the Republic of South Korea instead. And seeing the ease with which my fellow army brethren were bringing over their wives/kids to join them off-post, I proposed to my girl friend of slightly more than a year, Nancy. We [she and her mom] planned a January 1972 wedding, while I was home on a thirty-day leave.

Would we have married if I had not been in the military? Who knows? My point is that circumstances propelled me into making a hasty decision, one that I may not have chosen had I not had the overwhelming loneliness of being 7,000 miles away from home.

While overseas, I also engaged in incessant correspondence with my siblings, as we planned a “commune” together, which entailed purchasing land in NorCal, going to school and then moving to our property to establish homesteads.

Left to my own devices, I would/could never have made these plans solo. It was not my style; I was not an independent individual. Smack in the middle of seven brothers, with three older and three younger, I was a model of dependency.

But in conjunction with others, I was a locomotive, and made those life-changing goals with unity in mind and a community in the works. Indeed, making those checks out for $68.00 a month on twenty acres, for a total of thirteen years, was the easiest part of the whole deal. 

$400.00 an acre, maybe what a weekend up in Eureka might run these days, is what I paid. 

Would I have remained married, had either one of the two children Nancy and I conceived, come to full term? I don’t have to even ponder that one except to admit that the ramifications are immense.

Nancy and I took a trial separation in 1979, during which she hooked up with another dude and ended up pregnant. Any thoughts I had about a reconciliation were gently laid aside by Nancy, who told me she thought the baby would be better off in the long run, if he was with his father. 

It took me until January of 1981, before I broke my self-imposed solitary lifestyle and asked out the first person I had since my breakup, and that was Annie. We were deliciously happy and when we found out we were expecting our own bundle of joy, it brought my friend Ken’s words to mind, “The first one comes any time-the rest take nine months.”

Casey, Lito and Benny, Christmas, 1986

We got hitched a couple of months after Casey Tomas was hatched, so it was not as though there were any pressure for a shotgun wedding. We got married when we did because we woke up one day and decided the time had arrived, not because we had a baby.

When it comes to ultimate career choices, my entry into the field of education was initiated by a desire to repay my community for their support when I got “camped” on in 1985. The crime was the dastardly deed of helping my dad grow his thirty-three cannabis plants. 

Even my entry into the world of growing this miracle plant, was prompted by the existence of an already-flourishing family opportunity. On my own I would never have had the wherewithal to pull it off. I would have been too worried about, well, being camped on.

Lucky thirty-three, you know.

Luck was not a factor when I hired Ron Sinnoway, however, and paid the $17,500 1985 dollars to get my twenty acres and home out of the hands of the federal government, which had seized it. That was pure desperation mode and I have appreciated what Mr. Sinnoway did for me all these years ago, ever since. I am painfully silent when the subject of lawyer-bashing comes up.

I wanted to show my supporters that I did not take their help lightly, so when the little school up on the mountain was threatened because the current liaison at the school district was leaving her station, I stepped up. 

I borrowed the bling to attend Dominican College, out of Talmadge, and we starved as a family for several years until I did my student teaching and established tenure in the Laytonville Unified School District. For the first time I had medical insurance for my family.

Anxiety issues forced me into early retirement, and I have been on this mountain since. Major life decisions these days include whether to include beefsteak tomatoes this year (yes) in addition to the heirlooms, aces and cherry tomatoes that we normally produce.

I find it hard to envision any major life decisions I will have to make in the immediate future, but that may be a matter of self-delusion.  

After all, if I wake up to rain tomorrow morning, the first thing I will have to decide is whether or not to let the chickens out into the orchard or not.

Arrrrrrrrrgh.

You know you just might live in the country if...

You know you just might live in the country if...

You know you just might live in the country if:

…you leave the keys to your truck in the ignition at all times because you never know when your neighbor might need to borrow it…

…there is a chicken spending the night in your living room, because it needs some TLC…

…you are chased by a wild boar on Thanksgiving morning, while walking your bulldog down by the pond…

He may be hard to see in this pic, but he was
not hard to see in real life, and he was scary...

…you have to jockey for position with the grader on Bell Springs Road…

…your idea of a fantasy getaway, is a weekend up in Eureka, shopping for groceries…

…your ears are assaulted all day long by a rooster, who thinks it is a hen…

…you are greeted on the driveway leading past the farm, by a three or four dogs, all doing their best Mick Jagger impressions…and succeeding….

…you leave the tap water on at night to prevent freezing, and it freezes anyway because you did not leave the spigot open far enough…

…when the power goes out, you just go out and gas up the generator…

…you don’t wig out when the house gets buffeted around by 55MPH winds…

…everything you eat at breakfast, lunch and dinner is produced on-farm…

…the folks around you keep an eye on your spot when you are off the mountain, because they know you will do the same for them when they are away…

…you look up from your front porch to see a red-tailed hawk perched on the dead snag across the crick…

…you happen to see a bobcat swoop down on a fawn, and then see two of the farm dogs rescue the fawn by chasing the cat away…

…you own only two sets of footwear (sandals and steel-toed boots), and you haven’t worn the boots in a year…

…you have internet reception, but only on its terms…

…you have to go out and knock the snow off of the DISH antenna every so often, so as to be able to continue watching television…

Christmas, 2015

…the smell of wood smoke in August alarms you to distraction…

…the hardest chore you have to do all day, is hang out waiting for the *%$&#*& chickens to come in at night, so you can lock the little such-and-suches up and go to bed…

…the first sound you hear every morning is the rooster, doing his thing like a normal rooster…

…you can identify tanagers, nut-hutches, red-tails, stellar jays, wood-peckers, ravens, ducks (on the pond), doves, screech owls, plovers, meadowlarks, titmouses, pileated woodpeckers, and turkeys by sight and by sound…

…you are constantly awakened and serenaded by coyotes, early in the wee hours…

…you have to plan for at least five cords of oak/madrone to make it through the winter…

…the last time you had trick-or-treaters was Halloween, 1989…

...you see chickens roosting in an oak tree...

…you have to park your truck a quarter-mile away, at the top of your driveway, to help ensure you can get off the mountain in the snow…

…when you cook, you never know how many farmhands will show up to eat, or when they will storm in…

…you can pick a bouquet of different wildflowers every time you walk outside…

…you are followed around on-farm, by any one of a half-dozen cats…

...you constantly find scorpions inside your house, without a clue as to how they got in...

…you routinely cook twice as much for the big midday meal as is needed, because you know as sure as sugar that they WILL. BE. BACK…

…you keep a black widow spider in a jar in the kitchen for two years as a pet; we loved that Molly like she was a dog….

…you do not own a dishwasher, microwave, clothes dryer, or toaster...

…you can just get so fed up with the summer heat, that you are forced to go take a dip in the pond…

Paradise with an ocean view...

...your house does not have air conditioning or central heating…

…you have a little patch of plants in your backyard that produce “happy smoke”…

…you fight to stay up and watch the Giants on CSNBA, which begins at 7:10 PM, and fail miserably, repeatedly…

…you take care of your neighbor’s light-dep when he is gone away because he will take care of yours when you are gone…

…your idea of a good time is fire up the burn pile so that you can watch the dogs chase the ground squirrels around…

…you look up at the Sunday community baseball game and see nothing but dust as the players suddenly had to leave to go fight a wildfire…

…every day is another day in paradise…

Full-Circle

HappyDay Farms does not pay to advertise; we don't have to.

Full-Circle

You are watching television, and a commercial comes up on the screen; what do you do?

a) Watch closely; take notes, if necessary.

b) Check it out while also glancing at the sporting green.

c) Get up and use the facilities or perform some other critically important task.

d) Mute the volume.

e) Hit the forward button on your DVR, four times for a Giants game, as many as eighteen if you are watching a film.

There are three equally correct answers in my world: c, d and e. Because they are essentially the same thing, it doesn’t matter which you choose; the idea is simply to refuse to acknowledge that the commercials exist.

I abhor ads with a passion that borders on unhealthy, except for the fact that it is so easy to avoid them. As far as I am concerned, that is why God invented DVR. I don’t even know what the letters stand for, but I know how to use it.

By allowing the viewer to pause the action, thus accruing time that can be then applied to skipping the ads, the manufacturer of the device recognized a need, and acted upon it. In doing so, it allows consumers to collectively thumb their noses at a multi-billion dollar industry.

Let's go for a spin around the block, why don't we? Full-circle.

An industry was created to convince consumers to purchase specific commodities. The actors get paid to act out skits which portray products in a favorable light, and we are supposed to rush out and buy said product.

The public knows the actors don’t represent reality, but it is supposed to believe that the product does what the actors say it does. And we get to see the commercial daily for the rest of the season. The commercials during the Super Bowl now cost five million dollars for a thirty second ad. 

That’s a lot of loot to pay for a crock of baloney.

I despise hypocrisy and the advertising industry smacks of it. Hammering McDonald’s ads into the minds of our youth, helps nail the lid of the coffin securely in place, for those who make unhealthy life choices as far as food consumption goes. Kids are more impressionable than adults, so let's get to them early. That way the kids can apply pressure to Mom and Dad.

Research indicates (!) that advertising pays off. McDonald’s spends millions in commercials to get people to flock to its establishments, even though McDonald’s is not a new enterprise and nothing changes, not even that which is served, long after it has been left sitting on the counter.

The reality is that if a burger and fries are left to their own devices, they will not change in appearance. They will not mold; they will not shrivel up and turn nasty. They will not attract ants. They will not do what food has always done since the beginning of time because they are not really food-they are simply substance.

How does McDonald’s get around this? It doesn’t have to because the public has bought into the concept. Let’s face the fact that it’s easier to pack the kids off for McDonald’s, than it is to whip up a batch of home-made macaroni and cheese.

In all fairness, much of the time both mom and dad are working at low-paying jobs and don’t have time to prepare home-cooked, healthy meals for their kids. Besides, these folks are never going to be able afford organic food anyway.

Just imagine if the billions spent on making commercials, and the billions spent on advertising, were applied to the simple act of feeding everyone, healthy, organic food. I know it sounds ridiculously naive and Pollyanna-like, and there’s no money to be made off of fresh produce, except that earned by the farmer, so it will never fly.

I still wonder why.

Dancing Ears

Dancing Ears

Attempting to convey the senses through words poses the biggest challenge for me as a writer. I can describe in minute detail the wild iris I photographed yesterday over at the coast, its purple hues meshing and flowing together in an iridescent stream of undulating loveliness, but I can never bring to the mind anything remotely paralleling the actual photo.

Add caption

I can reflect back to the aromas wafting through the air, as Annie roasts a tray of fresh, organic vegetables, just harvested from the farm and drizzled with olive oil and balsamic vinegar in preparation for a gluten-free  pizza. The fragrance of the just-sauteed onions and garlic mingles with that of the thickened tomato sauce, gently bubbling on the stove.

The scent of oregano from the brilliant red sauce is readily apparent, battling for control of your nostrils with that of the basil, picked at the last minute from the bed right outside the back door. I take one last bodacious sniff of the cork from the bottle of merlot we selected to accompany our feast. Its bouquet brings memories to my mind, of other bottles of merlot and the happy circumstances surrounding its consumption.

All of this I can do but it will never live up to one tantalizing bite from the pizza pie that is so hot, you must be cautious not to burn the roof of your mouth. The tangy mozzarella cheese transports me right back to Pompeii Pizza in La Puente, with Augie buying the crew from Sunrise Market lunch.

And please, don't get me started on the Holidays, with all of the pent-up emotion that steaming pumpkin pie, fresh out of the wood-stove, drums up.

Pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving...with
whipped cream

So if I can’t come close when it comes to vision and taste, how am I ever going to accomplish any semblance of what I’d like, when it comes to music? 

Music evokes emotion and passion in me. I never looked at an exquisite flower, and broke down crying, nor have I ever savored something fresh from the oven, and felt tears streaming down my face in thanks. It does not work that way for me.

No, what activates the tears spigot full blast for me is music. I wrote last summer about being at Reggae on the River and experiencing that overwhelming welling up of emotion, when Stick Figure broke into “Rocky Road,” or later in weekend when Stephen Marley played, “No Cigarette Smoking in My Room.” Anyone who may have noticed my tears, kept it to himself.

What’s ironic to me about my ears being my most intense sense, is that in day-to-day functioning, they provide my greatest challenge, in that I do not process information well when it comes to me verbally. It is a symptom of bipolarism that resonates with me.

It explains why I struggled all the way through high school with math and science, because so much of the direction, is given orally. I was always trying to catch up with everyone else, because in order to access information, I had to see it on paper or on the chalkboard. 

It was only when I started to teach that I discovered this connection between the learning modalities and my own limitations, but it also helped me to provide a more balanced learning environment.

I made sure that all students could hear what was being discussed and that they could see it either on the overhead projector, or by some other means. I also ensured that they could do something with their hands to help bind the knowledge together more efficiently with that of sight and sound, to be velcroed to the inside of their craniums, metaphorically speaking.

You may have noticed that others respond to music with emotion also. How about when “Auld Lang Syne” comes on and you start thinking of those who are no longer here to sing along with it?

How about when that love song comes on that ties you to a broken relationship, and it doesn’t matter who is in the room when you bust out? Or when that special song comes on that used to make your mom start dancing with anyone who happened to be present?

I was present in Windsor, two Marches ago, when Laura and Isabel came over from Redding to perform live Celtic music for everyone who dwelt in the same group-home as Pauline, on St. Patrick's Day. Doug faithfully and efficiently wrestled the equipment into place, and the music began, transforming the room filled to capacity with revelers, into a venue fit for queens and kings. 

The list is endless; what invades the psyche through the ears is most likely to bring emotion with it. The cry of a newborn, when its mother is within earshot? Her breasts will start to leak milk as if they have minds of their own.

God Bless America, favorite childhood Christmas hymns sung around the piano with immediate family, or even something silly like the theme song from “Sesame Street,” long after your kids have moved on to hip-hop, will elicit emotion.

Sound can also grate on my ears and irritate me to distraction. The hens creating a cacophony of racket, is made worse when the rooster is leading the charge. The repetitive, discordant notes would be unbearable, if it weren’t for the fact that I invested two hundred dollars in a set of quality headphones.

For two hundred bones you can buy a lot of insulation from the peanut gallery.

Music provides a motivation for me to go to work, especially if it is outside, and I am doing physical labor. It is as though I have a mental pitch fork, gently prodding me to greater heights. I respond accordingly, preferring the prod to come via my ears, rather than my rear.

My current rage(s) is techno, or maybe reggae, contemporary adult,  indie, pop, hip-hop, folk, or whatever music is blowing air up my skirt at any given time.

Prior to meeting and being swooped away by Pandora, the most seductive of all music sources, I was a lost soul. I tried buying an old-fashioned CD player, but it was so fragile that I found it impractical to both farm, and listen to the jumpy quality that was produced.

I practically wrecked Terra Jean, my old computer, by perching her up on a stepladder so as to access I-Tunes. Watching in horror, I also remember seeing her tumble in slo-mo, head over sandaled heels, mousepad-first down on a basketball-sized chunk of rock, never to be the same again.

Weird, I know.

In this case it was not music that brought on the flood of tears.

In prepping the terraces for HappyDay Farms these past two months, I have relied predominantly on my music to motivate me. I need it especially when I first get out there in the early morning hours, and the temperature is hovering around thirty-six with a twenty-seven-mile-per-hour, Arctic wind.  

The music does not warm my feet, so much as the cockles of my heart. I bob, I weave, I zig and I zag and as long as I remain focused on the need for the pitchfork and my left foot to continue avoiding a clandestine tryst, there just beneath the surface of the rich soil, I am good to dance.

So far, so good.

Music belongs in the schools because like the food of life, it is fuel for the soul. A soul without music would be like the Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens, without flowers. Music lends passion to an ordinary day, for no other reason than the ears like to dance too. And if your ears decide to dance, you’d better go along with the program. 

After all, you’d look pretty goofy if your ears danced off without you.

The URL to Rocky Road:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJsp9I4q7oE 

Share a Little Love

Share a Little Love

I will begin by saying I have no clue where this post is going. Unlike the vast majority of my pieces, I have not prewritten this one in my head because the subject just came up on social media. I know because I introduced it.

People post on face/book for the most diverse reasons imaginable because it is an open forum, and I respect that. The golden rule is that anything goes, so if you don’t like what you see, just move along. 

My goal is single-minded in purpose: I keep it upbeat and positive, even when I am on the brink of despair.

A good case in point would be the recent trials and tribulations I encountered while transitioning over from Terra Jean to Suzy Puente, my old computer to my new one. As some of you may have gleaned by now, I struggle with technology.

Instead of a bi/Polar rant, I think I will/Share a little love.

I know. I know. It’s hard to believe but the cat done escaped the bag. That being said, while at the height of my despair and feeling a rant hovering, I combatted it by posting a mural of a heart, and spewing out something generic about love. 

Think of it as going on automatic pilot.

I won’t say I am in the minority when it comes to keeping it upbeat, because there are others who feel the same as I do, and their posts mirror mine when it comes to beauty and positivism. I feel there are more of these individuals on face/book than there were five years ago, when I got on board. 

On the other hand, there are those who use face/book because they need the security and support of their friends to make it through their day. I get that and I respect it. There was a time when an at-home mom-or dad-was trapped in an existence which by definition, excluded the outer world. 

It was just Mom and the kid(s). 

Now when the baby goes down for a nap, there is some recourse other than reminiscing back to when you were not bound-and gagged-and trapped in your own isolated existence. Even if it only to bemoan your child’s diaper rash, at least you have escaped your repetitive jail for long enough to touch base with the outside world, and blow off a little steam.

So as I am scrolling along, and I see this plaintive attempt to free oneself from a temporary insanity, I can gallop past (“…better her than me” or just as likely, “…been there-done that.”), I can click like or I can comment. No fuss-no muss. 

The reality is that the individual in question isn’t posting for my benefit, but has instead a small circle of friends in similar circumstances, and they commiserate. All good in the ’hood. 

I have also found to be accurate, the old saying about avoiding religion and politics if you want to remain friends with others. Just remember that if you want to spray gasoline on an open fire, you’d best have an aloe vera plant available.

I once read a post where someone complained that all she saw were pics of babies, dogs and plates of food, and someone else asked, "What's wrong with that?" That's where I'm coming from. The more babies, dogs and plates of food there are, the happier these folks are, so what could be bad about that?

Early on in my social media career, it took a bit of getting used to seeing people post pictures of say, religious figures, or of their personal spiritual beliefs. Like I cared? No, actually, not because I cared-or didn’t-because this person’s post was not about me. Just move along, partner, nothing to see here. The post was there for others who did care.

It’s the same as me posting constantly about the Giants. If you are not a sports person, I may as well be posting about the health benefits of eating banana slugs, for all the relevance it has to you. No harm-no foul, to sneak one quick cliche in here.  

Speaking for myself/Small minds, small
 pleasures make the/World spin 'round
and 'round..

And let’s not even get into politics, especially these days. The only thing I will say is that it’s possible to be like Judy and me. We met as blogging buddies, way back in the beginning of Mark’s Work, probably just as much because neither one of us was necessarily political on our blogs.

We found that though we had little in common, we still grew to be friends. So much so that when the election of 2012 rolled around, we found ourselves in opposite camps. I was pretty amazed that she would even consider voting for the Republican candidate, but recognized that from the vantage point of our on-line friendship, it did not makes a bit of difference. 

We had not become friends in the first place because of our political affiliations, so why care all of the sudden?

Now on face/book there is a dear friend who is a Hilary supporter, and my take is, great success! More power to you. I happen to feel the Bern. However, she is so militant about her support, that she takes any criticism of Hilary to great heights.

What could be greater heights on social media than to unfriend someone? Oh, the ignominy of it all! Yet it happens… Not to me, of course, because I have learned how to tip-toe on the key boards of Terra Jean, and will continue to do so on Ms. Puente.

Or how about the guy you have met casually in person and seems like the most even-keeled individual, until it comes to our President, when he transforms a racist jerk? It’s not enough to criticize our nation’s leader for not attending the funerals of every officer ever gunned down in the line of duty, he is also an avid supporter of gun laws that protect his Second Amendment rights. Sigh.

But that is his prerogative and I respect that.

Folks seek comfort on face/book and there’s nothing wrong with that. Kindness is cheap-spread that stuff around.

Here is-yet-another pic of a rose...

I suspect that some people find my affinity for haiku, to be a little eccentric, and you know what? It is. I just find it more interesting to write in haiku form because it beats intoning, each time I post, “And this is picture of a rose I took yesterday…And this is a pic of a bird that I took yesterday…And this is a pic…you get the drift.

“So like it or lump it-take it to City Hall, and dump it,” as my father used to say.

Face/book exists for everyone-you just have to recognize that everyone is not the same, and we can all be grateful for that. After all, what if we were all the same and wanted to vote for the Donald?

Oops, I just offended a whole bunch of you and for that I am abjectly sorry.

Not.

Greed Bleeds [All Over the Poor]

Greed Bleeds [All Over the Poor]

If you are  not voting for Donald Trump, then your overwhelming reaction is undoubtedly, “Why would anyone vote for this epitome of American greed and ugliness?” 

The answer is simple because it is deeply ingrained in our nation’s history: Millions of good, honest, law-abiding citizens will line up at the polling booths to cast their vote for this reality TV star, because they believe with all their hearts, the Horatio Alger myth.

This is the belief that only in America, the land of capitalism, could a person raise himself up by his bootstraps and become anything he (and eventually, she) wanted. 

Alger advocated that hard work, determination, courage and honesty, were all that was needed for a person to get rich. His novels were popular after the Civil War, painting a rosy picture of individuals striving to achieve middle class security, and making heroes out of those who were the best at it.

No one envisioned that greed would win out over lofty principles like freedom and equality and take over control of the soul of this country. 

45 million Americans now live below the poverty level despite dwelling in the richest country in the world. How many people, both kids and adults, go to sleep either hungry, or with stomachs filled with substance that solves their hunger but creates serious health issues down the line?

Believe me, to these people, greed bleeds.

I love my country but I have grown to hate my country’s government. The principles of those who fought to free the Thirteen Colonies from British tyranny, never envisioned a time when 1% of the population, would control 90% of the nation’s wealth.

This country's government has abandoned the precept that the existing government is “of the people, for the people and by the people.” No, that was the original idea and conceptually, it served as a beacon for the rest of the world for close to two hundred years.

Conflicting with this ray of hope, however, after the Industrial Revolution hit the New World, was another notion that reared its ugly head, that wealth was the new freedom and granted even more equality.

Names like John D. Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie, and Joe Pierpont Morgan became common in American household. These were men who were admired because they were able to achieve the “American Dream,” and they became heroes in our culture.

So much so, that instead of admiring the idea that if everyone had some loot we would all be good, Americans began to admire those who acquired enough loot to ratchet their lifestyle up another notch or two. 

After all, this is America.

But hoarding is a compulsive and ugly characteristic, invariably portrayed by old women with seventy-something cats living inside their homes, or old men with newspapers and plastic cartons piled up to the [non-existent] wainscot. 

Hoarding has been linked with mental afflictions such as bipolar disorder, social anxiety and depression, so why is it that people who hoard money are looked up to? Why does Forbes Magazine exist? 

I would ask, since when is it acceptable to worship greed, but I have already provided the answer: since that time in the nineteenth century, when excess wealth became a virtue, not a vice.

And, of course, the natural extension of individual wealth, to corporate wealth, is to have been expected. Nameless, faceless corporations still have CEO’s receiving exorbitant wages and bonuses. Exorbitant?

Perverted is more like it.

Do you realize how little of each billionaire’s pocketbook it would require, to remove the concept of poverty from our culture?

Try one percent. One percent of the $76 billion that Bill Gates earns annually is (simply remove two zeroes: 76,000,000,000 divided by .01 =  760,000,000) seven hundred and sixty million clams. You can feed a lot of hungry people if you infuse seven hundred and seventy million dollars into the economy.

And that is only one: one man and one percent of someone so wealthy that he could single-handedly put a dent in the hunger problem in this country. But no, Bill needs that money. All of it. Besides, don’t you think his tax lawyers insist that a certain amount be donated to “charity,” whatever that looks like?

It’s disgusting; my country’s government is disgusting and greed is the reason. I hate talking about politics because people get so angry and take it personally.

That being said, the chances are that if you are voting for Donald Trump, it is because you envision him as a modern-day Horatio Alger. I understand it but it still makes me sick.

Perversion has a tendency to create that reaction in me.