Some beat poet, maybe Ginsberg, maybe Ferlinghetti said he’s caged the world away from himself. “I’m an old eagle smoking this fine Italian cigar.”
Down at physical therapy we’re a flock or covey of old eagles who’ve forsworn too late those fine cigars running in place as we’ve done all our lives without noticing, caged the world away from ourselves. But still able to gaze out the window for an eagle-view of the parking lots roads and city around us.
33 degrees F last week one day and it snowed in western Kansas. Today it’s bundling up in jackets time all the old eagles will be walking walking walking to Missouri in sweatsuits and warmups.
Because we’re probably mostly man-made climate change deniers. We’re able to adapt the way modern women have adapted to the wants and needs of modern men by having bigger breasts than their peasant and aboriginal ancestors.
And we men have been able to adapt by having smaller brains, a lot smaller brains, than our Heidelberg Man ancestors 250 – 650 thousand years ago. Brains as big or bigger then Daniel Webster, Albert wossname, Einstein, and Mangus Colorado. Brains so big that during their 400,000 years of time hanging around they didn’t need Heidelberg Man-made climate change, nor breast enhancements, nor Mexican food.
Maybe we old eagles can figure out why by walking, walking walking to Missouri today.
Seems to me that’s asking for it. I did manage to resist the temptation, but it was difficult.
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When FEDEX delivered this package I examined it with considerable awe. Here’s a device with no instructions, nothing to indicate what it is, nor why the VA had St. Judes send it to me.
It’s evidently intended to be plugged into an electric Coleman camp stove. The camp stove wasn’t included in the package.
However, I eventually got replies from my enquiries to the KCVA about why it was sent. Seems the camp stove should be arriving sometime soon, and that on May 27 I should take it along with me to an appointment with a VA cardiologist specialist and all will be explained.
Until then I’m still doing all my cooking on Jeanne’s electric range.
For the past while my physical prowess has been challenged enough to force me to find alternatives to just reading and meditating, while Jeanne’s pointed out my brain might be failing me from lack of oxygen. So, she introduced me to Mahjong online to exercise my brain cells. Which she has no confidence will help.
But I’ve been enjoying it. Online Mahjong makes for a middling good way to pass some time so long as you make it clear you’re not going to put up with any BS from it. Just hitting the reset button when it tries to throw near-impossible tiles onto that right side and top will keep it towing the line.
Similarly, computerized chess will throw a lot of BS at you, but there’s no easy way of escaping it. Conceding the games early, immediately after it takes your queen, does cut down of the time wasted, but even that finds a traction point eventually.
And all work and no play leads me to movies. A place I haven’t been in decades. Jeanne’s son, Andrew, subscribes to Netflix and allows me to use unlimited streaming video [cheeze I love that phrase] access to their movies.
Watched out movies I haven’t seen except as a kid or teenager, watched movies I loved as a young adult, movies filmed in times a lot different from these. And sated myself out. Huk, starring George Mongomery during the early 1950s is an example. Movie about a ‘native’ Filipino uprising after WWII against the US plantation owners. If we allow the moviemakers to tell us whom to root for we’ll be cheering for the plantation owners every time a little brown brother gets himself shot.
What I’ve learned is there are one hell of a lot of independently made low-budget movies out there capable of providing a type of entertainment I don’t believe movies and television have ever before quite managed. Maybe the funniest I’ve seen yet was an independent titled, “A Fork in the Road“. I’d never have had the pleasure of it if I’d not been blessed by a failing vehicle.
Another hilarious one was “Unidentified“. And a number of Russian ones, Pakistani, Chinese and Korean made movies have offered themselves up for my admiration and piddling around waiting to die or whatever it is I’m doing.
As for good reading material, I’m getting more of it than I can absorb. Jeanne’s library jobs are fine that way. Catching up on Terry Pratchett novels, a nice history, Quantrill at Lawrence, The Untold Story, by Paul R. Peterson, One Summer, America 1927, by Bill Bryson, Prescriptions for Herbal Healing, by Phyllis A Balch, CNC, and Trials of the Diaspora – A History of Anti-Semitism in England, by Anthony Julius.
To name the ones I’m in the process of reading right now.
Saw Harry and Tontowith Art Carney a couple of weeks ago on Netflix. Reminded me of how differently I viewed it when I saw it sometime in the early 1980s. And I resonated far too much with it, Hydrox and myself, to watch it through without dropping a few tears.
Hydrox is hanging in there day by day, for those interested. Who will outlive whom is up for grabs.
All over the US VA Hospitals/Medical Centers are under investigation for incompetence, waste, negligence, malfeasance and misfeasance, brutality and being a cruel farce. Turns out the San Antonio VA Medical Center is under investigation for precisely the same [failure to treat patients in a timely manner] reasons I entered a private hospital in Kerrville, Texas in January after several weeks of non-treatment and non-diagnosis at the VA Odessa and Big Spring VA Medical facilities during November and December, 2013
I’ve said before I don’t believe the US government owes veterans good health care for the remainder of our lives as an ethical matter. Merely a legal one.
We don’t particularly deserve it any more than Native Americans deserve cradle to grave health, dental and eye care because they happen to be descendants of aboriginals. Merely something required by law. Same as the VA. They’re no more deserving than veterans, Wall Street bankers, CEOs of Multi-National Corporations, Congressmen and US Senators, or people living down in the war zones of slums getting their asses shot off in driveby shootings and their kids getting HIV from dirty needles.
Fact is, the US used to have wars people could understand and they needed to be able to draft young men to fight in them. Forcing the Confederate States to come back into the Union and offer up their sons to fight in Cuba and Puerto Rico [Spanish American War], the various Indian Wars acquiring Arizona, the Dakotas, Wyoming, Idaho, Nevada, Washington and Oregon, and WWI [the BIG Mystery], along with WWII and various Asian Police Action debacles required incentives and salesmanship.
Out of the need for incentives for young guys to be discommoded in foreign lands for the benefit of big business and old men who liked parades grew the VA hospitals. And when military conscription went away at the end of the Vietnam War and the US began using a force volunteers, the need for the huge infrastructure gradually aged along with draft era vets.
Today we’d probably be better off moving the entire Indian Health Care System [run by the US Public Health Service] into those VA facilities so they wouldn’t be getting any better care than Veterans. That would take up the slack for a while, until this whole health care issue in the US gets sorted out.
It ain’t that anyone deserves any better health care than anyone else, no matter how much money they make, don’t make, or what they’ve done with their lives. It’s whether whatever health care anyone gets is what it claimed to be out where these claims are made when people are deciding what they want to do about their health issues.
Today the VA appears to be a cruel farce. I’m glad I’m eligible to make use of it, but a nice disclaimer on the front above the door might be appropriate:
This thing’s going to need some repairs before anyone can use it again. Trying to get it airtight enough to do any good in outer space ought to be a full time job for someone.
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This area abounds with covered wagons, plows, cultivators, the occasional intercontinental missiles and a few of the people who used them, coveted them, wore them down to a small frazzle, or just sneaked around admiring them when they were shiny and new. The automobiles get pretty fair physical therapy, but a lot of it just sits rusting in decorative positions in parks, front yards and displayed in unlikely places.
VA Medical Center surprised me by deciding I ought to get some physical therapy they’re too far away to provide. They’re paying for a few weeks of me going to the Olathe Medical Center for it. Had my first run at it last week on the day I wasn’t having something done to my goozle. It was a surprising display of a lot of really old bastards walking around panting and generally being a lot more friendly to one another than they’d probably spent their lives being to other people.
Most appeared to be the sort I smile and speak to when I meet their eyes in a grocery store or on the street, and they turn their heads away as an alternative to acknowledging I exist. I sometimes carry the conversation further with, “Don’t you dare say hi to me! No telling what I’d do back.”
But down there at physical therapy you’re more likely to meet again soon, him on the electric walking machine next to my stationary bicycle. Snobbing a person off who’s there for a stay in close proximity could lead to all manner of long time discomfort.
So I smiles perlightly and says hi, [first to do it mostly] and while we each try to make something inside us perform better, we discuss weighty matters involving. That’s right. Involving.
Involving things our opinions don’t have anymore influence on than they ever did on anything else. Mostly the weather.
All but two of these guys were 2 year draftees or single enlistment 3 year recruits. Those would have all come home before the end of 1964, ETS [expiration term of service]. Just in time to miss the Vietnam debacle. Those returning to the US for reassignment went to 11th Air Assault Group, Fort Gordon, GA, training to jump out of helicopters. Then the Army moved the 1st Cavalry Division to Vietnam, dissolved the 11th Air Assault Group, and sent everyone in it to Vietnam. I’m betting these guys had better sense than to reenlist.
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Camp Howze, Korea, 1963, 1964. I was standing in a chow line almost certainly with one of the guys in this picture waiting for breakfast. A twelve-year-old Korean lad came down the line selling Stars and Stripesnewspapers, yelling, “Lots of Japs killed! Hurrah! Lots of Japs killed!”
Koreans still savored a deep hatred for Japanese in those days. Having your mamas and grandmamas raped more-or-less whenever the mood hit for a few decades probably does that. At least when the rapers are of a particular nationality. [I’ve wondered whether East Germans don’t feel some of that toward the Rooskies because of their grannies during the retreat from the Eastern Front].
Anyway, it was a ferry disaster of some sort carrying Japanese passengers. The first time I recall ever paying any mind to ferries and the associated dangers.
But over the decades I’ve certainly heard about a lot of them. I suspect a risk assessment involving frequent use of ferries would reveal it to be more dangerous than airliners, trains or busses. Not to say I haven’t ridden on a lot of them.
But on a ferry going between [I think] Newport News, RI, and Long Island, a nuclear attack submarine surfaced next to our ferry almost close enough to touch. We assumed at the time the submarine commander was perfectly aware of the ferry. By hindsight, though, I’m brought to wonder whether he had to go change his shorts when our presence and proximity came to his attention.
A person used to be able to pay once to get on the Statin Island Ferry and ride it back and forth all night, which I did a good many times. Near misses with smaller craft were relatively common and a source of amusement for the ferry passengers.
I was on a ferry to one of the outer banks islands of Georgia, or North Carolina once when it hit something hard enough to jangle the eye-teeth of everyone aboard. Never heard what it was, but none of the passengers were laughing.
Which is to say, life’s full of surprises and ferries have the potential for providing new ones.
I don’t recall when I began carrying a couple of hundred feet of small diameter 200 pound test rope with me in my luggage when I travelled. But I do recall it was a decision I made watching people diving out of the windows of burning multi-story buildings on the news. A bit of rope, I observed, would have saved a lot of them by allowing them to get off the upper floors and beneath the fires.
If I had to ride a ferry every day I’d probably decide an inflatable camp pillow would provide a nice place to sit on those hard ferry benches. One person aboard protected by one inflatable pillow would remove the temptation those vessels wave around in front of the Coincidence Coordinators inviting disaster.
Hell they just want to be like us. You can’t blame them. Who in the world doesn’t want a piece of the best sociology, culture, society, music, attitude, behavior, the US has to offer. The centerpiece for the cultural best has to be exported for the advancement of humanity.
But there’s not room for two.
People in conquered lands always want to imitate the conquerers. That’s why British all try so hard to behave as though they’re Normans. And [East] Indians try so hard to be good Christians.
Same as the whatchallem, Native Americans who aren’t whites, Mexicans, Blacks, Asians, and such. Aboriginals, they’ll likely want to be called sometime. Tribal Americans, some other time.
The Rooskies have always been good at gangsta, but they always felt something was missing over there in the KGB, GRU, and up in the Gulag.
We haven’t gotten around to conquering Pakistan yet, but maybe dropping a few cruise missiles and drones down their smokestacks was enough. Bound to be an explanation and drones might be it.
Africans adapt surprisingly well to modern US culture.
New York Jewish gangsta rap would be difficult to top by Israeli gangsta rap I’m betting.
Australian aboriginals get into the swing about as well as a person can wish. Hard to find fault with that.
All in all I’d say this fits the 21st Century better than Christianity fit the earlier ones.
Jeanne’s uncle Dr. Philip Carlson patented this thing back in the 1960s. Got himself and it all written up in Popular Mechanics. So you’d figure when they put it together to serve a need of civilization, quid pro quo, wouldn’t you?
Well, there ain’t. They’re building it though, and someone’s going to get rich off it in a timely manner.
Brings to mind the story of my ex-wife, Carolyn’s uncle Arthur, who invented the forklift while serving in the Army during WWII. General Eisenhower visited his mom and dad in Comfort, Texas when he died, but they never saw a penny for the forklift.
This week, a small town near the U.S.-Mexico border gave an unusual company the right to build a 2,250-foot-tower, destined to become the tallest structure in the U.S. The company, Solar Wind Energy Tower Inc, is only three years old. But the idea it’s hocking dates all the way back to the 1960s.
It’s called an “energy tower,” or in the words of Forbes, an “energy skyscraper:” A massively tall hollow concrete structure situated in a warm, arid climate. The sun’s rays super-heat the top of the tower, and a cool mist gets sprayed across. The water evaporates and the cool, heavy air is then sucked down into the base at speeds of up to 50 miles per hour. At the bottom, the whooshing gusts of air push through a circle of wind turbines—producing energy.
Solar Wind, which is based in Maryland, wants to start construction on the first major energy tower in the country, in San Luis, Arizona, by 2018. The town of 26,000 has also agreed to sell the company the water it needs to continually spray a fine mist over the 1,200-foot wide top of the tower. This mega-structure will sit on a 600-acre piece of desert near the Mexican border where the temperatures regularly reach 106 degrees—perfect for the technology, which relies on hot, dry climates.
So, where does this fairly incredible-sounding idea come from? It turns out that the energy tower dates back to the 1960s, when an engineer names Dr. Philip Carlson floated the idea. In a December 1981 issue of Popular Mechanics, Carlson, then an engineer at Lockheed, describes how the idea came to him while working on a desalinization plant in the 1960s:
We ran some calculations and found that, theoretically, we’d get out eight times the energy we put in to pump the water to the top of the chimney. But, in 1965, there didn’t seem to be any need for new energy sources.
Carlson did patent the concept in 1975, but it seems the idea was tabled. Since then, two engineers named Professor Dan Zaslavsky and Dr. Rami Guetta from Technion-Israel Institute of Technology have resurrected the idea, studying it extensively and publishing a number of papers on the topic.
So, why isn’t the American Southwest dotted with 2,000-foot-high energy towers? First of all, there are considerable challenges involved in actually building them—including not only funding the construction of such a huge tower, but also the cost of pumping water up to the top at a constant rate. Building Solar Wind’s tower, in Arizona, will require $1.5 billion in capital, according to Businessweek.
It’s also easy to imagine that communities aren’t excited to welcome huge, industrial-looking towers that would loom over their homes. But as a San Luis city official told Forbes, it’s also an economic driver and an opportunity for smaller, struggling cities:
In Arizona you do get a lot of dreamers who say, ‘You could really do something with this.’ With (Solar Wind Energy), they have already gotten permission and concurrence from federal agencies in Washington. They weren’t starting with the Air Force, they weren’t starting with BLM. They were starting at the top. It isn’t a guarantee of success, but it is a lot more feasible than a lot of the other things I’ve seen.
The deal with San Luis no doubt hinges on the fact that the construction and upkeep of the tower would bring thousands of jobs to the area—not to mention producing 1,200 megawatt-hours of power in the hotted, driest months.
Still, there are plenty of questions about how their plan would work—starting with who’s going to put up the $1.5 billion to build it. But Solar Wind doesn’t seem to be letting that slow it down: Beyond putting up a tower in San Luis, the company reportedly wants to license its technology to developers all over the world. For now, winning approval from the small town is a huge step forward. [SMH; Businessweek; Forbes; Solar Wind Energy Tower]
As you see in the photo the nearby dumpster provides easy diving as well as convenient disposal of garbage accumulations for community volunteers policing the area. Note also the ‘donation’ bin located middle right. Nearby residents are thereby able to voluntarily dispose of items of their own choosing rather than having things stolen willy-nilly from their vehicles and homes. A pad located at the donation bin informs residents of the high-rise of who is contributing, and who is not carrying part of the load voluntarily.
Opaque windows on all four sides at all levels to allow both privacy and lights are only one of the imaginary, unique, compassionate features.
Riding by one of these the other evening with Jeanne the inside was actually lit. Couldn’t tell whether there were any homeless in there, but it was clear I’m correct about what these things are all about. Despite the skepticism communicated in secret smiles every time I tell someone what they are.
Good they’ve got those opaque windows so those hobos can have some privacy doing whatever it is they’re doing in there all lit up at night. Comforting to know. I’d love to see the inside of one, find out which floor the bathroom’s on, whether they’ve got a basement in case of tornado threats.
Nice little parking area there for shopping carts, but it’s vacant in this pic.
Okay, then there’s the other thing.
Had to take Mr. Hydrox to the vet last week. First time he’s visited a physician this century. Because of the fact he couldn’t pee. Cost ‘way up there pushing the borderline of $100, but I got him pissing again, got some green pills to give him in hopes they’ll kill whatever germs were corrupting his urinary tract making little grains of sandlike abrasive to foul his works.
For a while there I thought I was going to outlive the last damned feline I have a contract with. That would feel truly weird. Free at last, Great God Almighty Free at Last sort of thing.
It’s parents do this sort of thing. Trying to twist the minds of their offspring into something that makes them feel better about themselves. The selves of the parents, not the damned selves of the trees. Someone a couple of blocks away must have known that fact back when parents were parents and offspring were glad of it. The offspring who did the tree are mostly dead by now, but they’re twisted inside their damned coffins. Had a hell of a time getting them nailed down inside something 3 feet wide and six feet long.
Hi Readers. Thanks for coming by for a read.
People my age have already worked most of a century trying to untwist themselves from the twisting their parents did to them. Meanwhile, they’ve occupied their own idle hours twisting a few more generations beginning with their own children and grandchildren, so’s to give them something to do with themselves.
Guy down the road a few miles in Overland Park killed some people a few days ago because he thought they were Jews. Over in Kansas City, MO, in the neighborhood around the VA Medical Center I’m assured a white person’s got a good bet for being shot for being white if he gets caught there after dark. But being black or Hispanic’s no cakewalk. It ain’t enough they’re the darlings of affirmative action. They’re odds-on favorites for going to prison or getting killed in drive-by shootings by people similarly ethnic in origin. In large part for being Hispanics and blacks.
So really, despite the fact the Overland Park guy targeted Jews because he thought that’s what they are, being a Jew is still a lot better than being a black, Mexican, or even a white under the right circumstances.
Nobody assumes Jews are trailer trash, or rednecks, or welfare cases, drug pushers, gangsters. Even though a lot of them probably are each of these stereotypes. Guy tells you he’s a Jew you’re going to assume he’s got a college degree, lives in a good neighborhood. He’s an accountant, physician, attorney, banker, politician, stock broker, CEO of something, engineer, musician, actor, photographer. Drives a BMW or Porche or Volvo. White collar criminal who’ll never spend a day in jail. Jews just don’t go to jail. Period.
Not like white people, or Mexicans or blacks. Jews don’t need shooting, nor putting into the slammer.
The good news is this tree is no worse for the wear. It wouldn’t have been a damned bit better off if it hadn’t been twisted in its formative years. All’s well that ends well. If it had been Nuns, or teachers, or science fiction test tube baby creche families twisting it the threads might have run the other direction, but twisting is twisting. Nobody gets a free ride.
Jews are as twisted as the rest of us, but saying so is a hate crime. I’m going to apply to be one next lifetime.
74 years old, a resident of Leavenworth, KS, in an apartment located on the VA campus. Partnered with a black shorthaired cat named Mister Midnight. (1943-2020)
Since April, 2020, this blog is maintained by Jeanne Kasten (See "About" page for further information).
https://sofarfromheaven.com/2020/04/21/au-revoir-old-jules-jack-purcell/
I’m sharing it with you because there’s almost no likelihood you’ll believe it. This lunatic asylum I call my life has so many unexpected twists and turns I won’t even try to guess where it’s going. I’d suggest you try to find some laughs here. You won’t find wisdom. Good luck.
![All over the US VA Hospitals/Medical Centers are under investigation for incompetence, waste, negligence, malfeasance and misfeasance, brutality and being a cruel farce. Turns out the San Antonio VA Medical Center is under investigation for precisely the same [failure to treat patients in a timely manner] reasons I entered a private hospital in Kerrville, Texas in January after several weeks of non-treatment and non-diagnosis at the VA Odessa and Big Spring VA Medical facilities during November and December, 2013](https://sofarfromheaven.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/kc-va-med-ctr.jpg)
![All but two of these guys were 2 year draftees or single enlistment 3 year recruits. Those would have all come home before the end of 1964, ETS [expiration term of service]. Just in time to miss the Vietnam debacle. Those returning to the US for reassignment went to 11th Air Assault Group, Fort Gordon, GA, training to jump out of helicopters. Then the Army moved the 1st Cavalry Division to Vietnam, dissolved the 11th Air Assault Group, and sent everyone in it to Vietnam. I'm betting these guys had better sense than to reinlist.](https://sofarfromheaven.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/1stcav2.jpg)
So Far From Heaven 