Category Archives: 2018

2018 Influenza epidemic seems somehow appropriate

Posted on January 25, 2018 by | 5 comments

1918 influenza pandemic

Over coffee this morning Johnny, across the hall, described the 2018 flue that is evidently stalking around scaring innocent people.   Johnny tells me it’s killing people like flies.   He said 1200 people died of it somewhere he couldn’t remember, either in a day or a week.   Or during the passage of some other length of time.

But the downside of not being able to believe anything the news media tells you is that you can’t believe anything the news media tells you.    And by extension, even though Johnny is my main source of news, he gets it off the television.   So I can’t trust the news he gives me.

But he did tell me some horror stories about entire families showing up at hospitals with this stuff and croaking right there under the noses of whole tribes of medicos.  Which, if true, might mean we actually are going to experience something more in tune with the 1918 pandemic than most of the later scares.   Cemeteries all over the US have lines of graves of people who were offed by that bull goose 1918 flu.

If you’re like me, you aren’t all that interested in coming down with the damned stuff.   Whether it’s just a little bitty pissant flu, or a great big Alpha-Male gorilla flu that expresses itself more forcefully.

Johnny also said they were telling people to avoid gatherings of people and think twice before sitting around a waiting room in a hospital or doctors office.

Well gee whiz.    I have appointments at the KC VA tomorrow over at Kansas City, MO.   I’ll bet there won’t be any people over there blowing flu virus around all over the rest of us, though.   I’ll bet everyone going over to that vet hospital will be suffering from broken legs and poor vision is the only reason they’re hanging around.

Yeah.     Bound to be no flu sneezers and coughers  over there in the halls, or in the cafeteria, or waiting rooms.

medical masks

Usually I don’t bother with those mask dispensers by the entryways and scattered here and there by the elevators and halls at VA medical centers.    But I’m thinking tomorrow I’ll just snag one of those as I come through the door, and step back outside to put it on.

Or better yet I’ll just trip over to the Leavenworth Emergency room a couple of blocks from here, snag a mask or two, and have it in my pocket tomorrow morning when I arrive.

Not that those things are going to filter out an influenza virus.    They won’t.   But they might confuse it enough so’s it goes and finds someone else to hex.

I’ve donealready had the required minimum of flu for this lifetime.

Thanks for the read.

Old Jules

5 Comments

Posted in 2018, America, Human Behavior, ks, Leavenworth, VA campus, Veterans

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Why Napoleon’s troops shooting the nose off the Sphinx with artillery in 1799 was a good thing

Posted on January 25, 2018 by | 2 comments

I’ve been doing a lot of reading about the British Empire the past few months, and considering the implications of its almost spontaneous collapse during the decades after WWII. This was written November, 2013, but I find it’s still worth a chuckle today. Old Jules

This reblog is only a portion of the original piece.   If you want to read the entire blog entry you can read it here: Why shooting the nose off the Sphinx was a good thing

So Far From Heaven

Hi readers.

A lot of you probably think the world would have been just as good a place if Napoleon’s troops hadn’t shot the nose off the Sphinx practicing with artillery in 1799.  You might even think if they’d just stayed home in France and shot the noses off every Frenchman they could catch the world would be better off?

In the interest of science, Napoleon's troops couldn't know what would happen up there without shooting some artillery at it to find out. Same as Hiroshima and Nagasaki later on. Theories are worthless unless they're tested. In the interest of science, Napoleon’s troops couldn’t know what would happen up there without shooting some artillery at it to find out. Same as Hiroshima and Nagasaki later on. Theories are worthless unless they’re tested.

Well, you’d be wrong.  Napoleon’s troops did just the right thing blowing off the nose of Sphinx.

Keep in mind, these were Frenchmen. All they knew how to do at that point was try to take the heads off whatever got in the way. But they saved the Sphinx. If they'd left it alone until the British took over in 1802 the Sphinx would be in London. Housed in a wonder-of-the-world-sized British Museum. Same as everything else the British could haul off from every country they ever conquered. Keep in mind, these were Frenchmen. All they knew how to do at that point was try to take the heads off whatever got in the way. But they saved the Sphinx. If they’d left it alone…

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Posted in 2018, Art, History

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What the heck is a ‘domiciliary?

Posted on January 24, 2018 by | 13 comments

These were the Domiciliary Buildings…. they we used from the 1880s until after the Vietnam War.    One of the guys I play chess with lived in one of them a few times back in the late 1970s    They were full back then.

There was a time when the Doms had residents from the Mexican War, the Civil War, the Spanish American War and World War 1.   They kept them separated by wards because they all thought their war was the ‘Big One’ and tended to try to injure one another over it.

Back then they fed everyone in a single building, had formations most days with everyone required to wear a uniform and turn out on the streets.   And they were kept busy repairing, landscaping, even digging clay for the bricks to build and repair the buildings on the campus.

The old house I live in was built in 1896 by these old guys, and it’s easy to see they weren’t carpenters.

Beginning January 1, 2018, they began some renovation on the old ‘dom’ buildings.    Some entrepreneur was given a 99 year lease on the buildings and they’ll have the interiors, currently death traps, torn out so’s the buildings can be rented out as apartments.

They’ve already done that to a few others not shown here, and the campus has around 200 residents living in the four buildings.  Maybe more.     When they’ve done the other thirteen old ‘dom’ buildings this place is going to be jam-packed again, but with all sorts of people I imagine.

Time hurries on.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2018, History, ks, Leavenworth, VA campus, Veterans

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Photos VA Chapel and Weston, MO house courtesy of Jeanne

Posted on January 24, 2018 by | 8 comments

These are photos posted after the first time I ever saw this place back in early 2014. Jeanne took most of the pictures and I just walked around amazed at the place. But back then I was still in the process of dying on her couch and didn’t have a lot of energy.

All in all it hasn’t changed much.    Just a bit more run down and crumbling.

Anyway, I sure as heck never dreamed a few years later I’d be living here. Old Jules

So Far From Heaven

IMG_2234 Possumly Jesse James, or a Younger or Dalton or someone else lived here, or visited here, or rode a horse by the place and gazed at it as he/she went by.

IMG_2237 !895 Chapel for VA Center at Fort Leavenworth in seriously bad repair. Protestant downstairs, Catholic further downstairs though the signs are somewhat misleading. No harm in a protestant attending Mass or a Catholic racking up some fire and brimstone occasionally, I reckons.

IMG_2245 Interesting stained glass work. Dunno whether it’s Catholic or the other one.

IMG_2238 Gargoyles are shared equally by Catholics and Protestants.

IMG_2239 The VA hospital environment surrounding this seems obliquely appropriate.

IMG_2240 The metalwork on those doors is probably symbolic of something, but everyone who once knew what it was is dead.

IMG_2243 This end of the building is in bad repair threatening collapse in places, but ain’t likely to get any better.

IMG_2249 Directly across the street from the chapel. It’s…

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Posted in 2014, 2018, Jeanne Kasten, ks, Leavenworth, Senior Citizens, VA campus, Veterans

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How’s that empire thing working?

Posted on January 23, 2018 by | 9 comments

Maybe most of us don’t care for the idea of empires because we think of them as being something other countries have, but we don’t.    Despite what’s before our eyes ever time we look at a map or watch a news program.  And of course, empires haven’t been faring too well lately.

US expansion 1867 1914

Heck, the British Empire folded up more-or-less spontaneously during the decades after WWII.    Around the same time as the French were getting their deserving asses kicked out of Indo-China to them, Vietnam to us.   Indo-China, Algeria, and pretty much everything else they called their empire.

colonial empires 1910

But around a century ago everyone was still doing it.   Grabbing real estate outside their boundaries and making a fight to keep it.

Here’s a short video demonstrating how empires worked worldwide until around 1945:

https://youtu.be/1csr0dxalpI

That’s how it was done mostly, except when the imperial powers fought one another.   Which wasn’t something anyone liked to do if they could help it because it tended to get a lot of white people killed.

But I’ve digressed.   What I intended to talk about was a remark I made this morning during coffee with Johnny, across the hall.   In some context or other involving the government shut-down and Puerto Rico, I casually mentioned the American empire.

“American empire?   Haw haw haw!   What the hell are you talking about?”

“Heck Johnny, do you think we aren’t an empire.”

“Haw haw haw!   Where do you come up with this stuff?”

I tried a while longer, but the discussion just couldn’t move forward on that tack.   Johnny doesn’t believe the US is an empire and the concept is so foreign to him he refuses even to think about it.

I’m a bit awed by this entire concept.    Are there really people in the world who don’t think the US is an empire?  Well, yes, there are.

Same as there are people who think the moon landings were faked by NASA and that the world is flat.

People believe all sorts of things.

I wonder if there used to be people who didn’t think the British, the French, even the Romans weren’t an empire.

Damn I love this life for the surprises.   The constant surprises.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2018, America, Education, Government, Human Behavior, Politics, Senior Citizens, VA campus, Veterans

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What is this thing called ‘we’?

Posted on January 22, 2018 by | 6 comments

mob

Hi readers.    Thanks for coming by.

If you’re like me you probably figure you know an awfully lot about how this country and this world ought to be run.   All sorts of opinions about some composite of human being  bagged into the word, ‘who’ ought to get fed, get rich, or get killed.   Most of that ‘who’ can be distinguished from ‘we’ in various ways.

For instance, people who need killing are usually located outside the boundaries of our country.   And they tend to be inside the boundaries of a country our politicians and wealthy people dislike for one reason or another.   And usually people who need killing get around to being killed if they don’t see the error of their ways.

People who ought to get fed, on the other hand, and those who shouldn’t is a lot more complicated.  Of course, right at the top of what people ought to have full bellies are those blessed with wealth, either by coming from a wealthy family, by being really good at selling something, or by stealing it and getting by with it [or having ancestors who did].

Next, the people who ought to get to keep their tummies full ought to be people as much like ‘us’ and possible.   People who go to jobs everyday that pay enough so’s there’s plenty of money for food and other things.   Naturally those should be fed because they’re like US.

And then of course there are those people who definitely shouldn’t be fed.   Snot nosed kids who are born in bad neighborhoods, who have parents who use drugs, drink too much, and the fathers don’t take responsibility for them.    Those little bastards need to be deprived of food so they can be persuaded to earn an ‘honest’ living.    As prostitutes, say, or selling drugs on schoolgrounds.   If they wanted a better life they should have been born to wealthy parents.

But that’s just me, and you, if you happen to be like me.    A lot of other soft hearted people think EVERYONE ought to be fed and NOBODY ought to go hungry, or suffer cold because he or she can’t afford a warm place to stay.

Yeah, and those commie snowflakes ought to be killed.    They definitely aren’t a piece of ‘we’.

Thanks for the visit.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2018, America, Welfare

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How cave men caused the Late Glacial Maximum [most recent ice age]

Posted on January 21, 2018 by | 8 comments

wooly mammoth

A lot of people don’t know that cave men were responsible for all this climate change thing that has everyone upset.    You want climate change?    By golly those old cave men did some climate change the likes of which nobody has ever seen since.

That’s right.    About 13,000 years ago everything was going along just fine until the cave men didn’t have a big enough carbon footprint to start global warming and keep the ice age from coming.     And so began what is called, the Late Glacial Maximum.  [Don’t be mistaking this for the Last Glacial Maximum, which was 22,000 years ago.   We don’t know what cave men did to cause that one.]

But by 11,700 years ago the cave men finally woke up and started having a bigger carbon footprint.    And that started the beginning of the Holocene Glacial Retreat.  Which is sort of where we are now.

For a long time we were lucky as hell to have such a big carbon footprint, driving those glaciers back up north and down south where they were a few times in the distant past.     But everyone had gotten so used to having glaciers scattered hither-thither-and-yon that it seemed kind of scary to a lot of people

Over a few decades people found it necessary to run around in increasingly smaller circles telling one another about those glaciers going away.   As they’d done a few times during the last 110,000 thousand years or so.    And nobody could recall whether those times without much in the way of glaciers were good times, or maybe bad times.  Nor what man had done to cause it to happen.

So the safe position to take is to assume it’s going to be bad.   Really really really bad.  And sign some petitions to try to make the glaciers come back.  Or at least tell one another about how bad it’s going to be.

But look on the bright side.   At least we won’t be in an ice age.

As I overheard someone say in a restaurant a while back, “Having human beings on this planet is not an unmixed blessing.”

Old Jules

8 Comments

Posted in 2018, climate change, global warming

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Does the United States still exist when the government shuts down?

Posted on January 21, 2018 by | 4 comments

communication

What is the United States, anyway?  It’s a government that exists by virtue of an agreement between the various ‘states’.    It’s the only thing keeping Hawaii, Guam and Samoa from going off on their own and bombing the bejesus out of Japan.

The US Government is the only thing keeping Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands from attacking Spain and taking away all its possessions.

And the US Government is the only thing keeping the secular state of Israel afloat year after year with its foreign aid.

I’m only pointing this out so you understand the gravity of the situation.   When the US Government shuts down people all over the world will have to tend their own affairs, learn to get along with their neighbors or end up in endless wars the US isn’t even involved in.

So why, exactly, did the government shut down?   We have to ask ourselves this.    And the answer is obvious.    The government shut down because not everyone was standing up for the National Anthem.    Not everyone put their hands over their hearts to say the Pledge of Allegiance.    And not everyone gazed at the US flag and gulped in veneration and awe.

So here we are living in the geography once occupied by the United States.   What the hell should we do next?

I’m thinking if we’re going to start it all again, we need to begin with a new flag:

jolly roger

And a new National Anthem:

Never mind the Pledge of Allegiance.   If you’ve got the money you can buy loyalty, votes, and every elected official.

Old Jules

4 Comments

Posted in 2018, America, Government, immigration, Music, Politics, Veterans

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A most motley crew – or a band of real-world ‘brothers’

Posted on January 20, 2018 by | 2 comments

The dugout 1

Comment: “Sounds like you live with a most motley crew.”

Old Jules | January 20, 2018 at 8:27 AM
I wouldn’t say that….. there are some lowlifes, as there are in every community in the world. And there are some good folks. We’re just a community of a few hundred men and women who span the extremes of human failures and flaws, and probably have as many virtues as you are likely to find in your own community. The main difference is that the people living here are on the absolute bottom of the socio-economic scale, and we are almost universally veterans. And the road to the bottom of the socio-economic scale naturally includes the spectrum of human behaviors that can carry a person there. Vehicles. Higher on the economic ladder people tend to hide their flaws and human failures better because they haven’t started the downward spiral yet. But here, alcoholics and druggies and thieves can all find their brothers in failure.

You have been following this blog a long time. You can easily go back on the pages, or your memory of my road getting here and see it was fairly innocent, probably also inevitable. I was a man who wasn’t doing what everyone else does to avoid getting where I am now. And when the heart attacks hit, I was either going to die on the street, or move closer to where I am now by accepting Jeanne’s offer to die on her couch.

And when I didn’t die I became officially, a ‘homeless vet’. Here I am surrounded by other ‘homeless veterans’. They’ve all got their own stories. And I’m going to tell some of them. But don’t get the idea they are all as you probably categorize people because they aren’t.

The guy across the hall from me has two bronze stars from Vietnam, 75 percent service connected disability, and spent 13 years in prison for drugs before he got out on appeal. And he’s a good man, a worthy person, and someone I’m glad I have for a neighbor. Guy upstairs has been to prison too, white collar crime, and is struggling to stay alive and pay the rent. Good neighbor, too. Life isn’t as simple as we tend to wish it were.

We’re just you, here, and everyone you know in your secret selves, or some other time of your lives.

1stcav2

Because our flaws, weaknesses and lousy choices are the only things we humans share voluntarily.    They’re the magnets, the star around which every ‘brotherhood’ of humans circle.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2018, America, Current Issues, ks, Leavenworth, Liars, Military, Police, Relationships

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Beat me daddy eight to the bar

Posted on January 19, 2018 by | 2 comments

I don’t know what to think.    Rebecka’s back.

[ If you don’t know what this entry is about see:  A little excitement here, Posted on January 17, 2018 by Old Jules]

This morning the maintenance man came to work on my central heat.    He knows everything that goes on around here, so I followed him to the basement to kibitz and find out the latest dirt for Eisenhower Ridge apartments.

Thought I’d prime the pump by  telling him about the deputies picking up Rebecka.   He didn’t let me finish.    “She’s back!”

I thought he meant from some earlier beating, so I told him about the deputies.   “Yeah, I know, but she’s back.”   He rolled his eyes.   “I just saw her over there before I came to your place.   My daughter was going to do something over there but when I saw Rebecka I sent her home.”   [Donny has a college age daughter who helps him on some of the maintenance jobs when she can].

Soooooo.    That’s what I get for expecting things of people.

 

What can I say?     I’ve got to quit having expectations.

Rebecka is back.

Old Jules

2 Comments

Posted in 1940's, 2018, Human Behavior, Music, Police, VA campus, Veterans

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