Category Archives: Current Issues

I Can’t Stop Illegal Aliens, But I Can Slow You Down, Old Timer

Posted on August 10, 2011 by | 14 comments

In 1961, I joined the US Army for three years with the intention of killing young Russian men to keep this from happening in the US:

On a regular basis,  I join the throngs of US senior citizens crossing the International Boundary to trek a couple of blocks into Mexico to buy prescription medications.  The reason we  all brave the hot, the skyrocketing gas prices, the long drive and the short walk?

A block south of the border prescription meds cost a tiny fraction of their cost a block north of the International Boundary. Plus, you don’t need a prescription.

But that’s another issue for another time.

Coming back waiting on the US side behind a line of oldsters in the US Border patrol station the fun begins.

Guy with a gun, a uniform and a Hitler mustache:  “Do you have anything to declare?”

Elderly lady pushes through the turnstile to stand in front of his table.  “I have this.”  She holds up a bulging plastic bag.

Guy with a gun, a uniform and a Hitler mustache:  “I didn’t tell you you could come through the turnstile.  Go back to the other side.”

She goes back to wherever a person is when on the other side of the turnstile.

Guy with a gun, a uniform and a Hitler mustache:  “OK.  Now you can come through.”

She goes back through the turnstile, stands in front of him.  “Do you have anything to declare?  Medications, anything?”

She holds up the bag again, but before she can speak, elderly hubby, the other side of the turnstile, holds up a bag.  “I’ve got the medications here.”  Pushes part way through the turnstile holding up the bag.

“DO NOT COME THROUGH THAT TURNSTILE UNTIL I SAY YOU CAN!”

Old man, startled, backs into never-never-land, turnstile clicking.

Hitler mustache to woman:  “Do you have anything to declare?  Medications?  Anything?”

Hubby across the turnstile to wife:  “God damn it!  I told him I have the medications over here.”

And so, ad infinitum.

Mr. Uniformed Mustache with a gun never came out and said,

“I am one stupid son of a bitch here to give elderly US citizens a hard time after they have to walk into another country to get their medications at a reasonable price.”

He didn’t need to.

Old Jules

Tom Russell– Who’s Going to Build Your Wall?
http://youtu.be/LZkAoosVLkA

Note:  I wrote this after my last trip to Mexico.  Afterward I curtailed my trips and started buying my blood pressure and other med off the Internet from Canada and India.  But I decided to post it after reading this yesterday:

Border Patrol Antics or (I got searched), Tire
http://terlinguabound.blogspot.com/2011/08/border-patrol-antics-or-i-got-searched.html

7:30 AM musings over coffee:

Maybe it’s just me, or maybe it’s a piece of a paradigm shift [whatever the hell that is] but one of the corner-of-the-eye changes I believe has happened in my lifetime within the US is a morbid fascination and indulgence in, patience with and capitulation to fears.  Maybe it’s a replacement for anger, maybe just boredom needing to speed up the heartbeat.

Back when every day was a brink-of-war crisis with the USSR the attitude was duck and cover, build a bomb shelter and bomb the bejesus out of them.  A conspicuous absence of fear.    Contrasted half-century later with a citizenry frightened so badly by a microscopic possibility a terrorist will harm them, they hire a few new layers of police, agree to be searched, and humiliated for their own protection, and indulge in a series of self-bankrupting foreign adventures with the stated intention of finding an outlaw gang hidden in fantasyville, Asia.

Hiring thugs to protect us from other thugs has probably been around for a longish while.  But never worked all that well.


14 Comments

Posted in 2011, Current Issues, Human Behavior, Mexico, Senior Citizens

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Civility and Civilization

Posted on August 2, 2011 by | 12 comments

Hi blogsters:

Taking a breather here and got to thinking about something that happened a few years ago that might be worth relating.

During the post-Y2K financial challenges I substitute taught in the public schools for a while.

Those situations often leave the sub in front of a bunch of kids without any obvious means of spending the time. The regular teach, say, didn’t know he was going to get into a car wreck or have a terrible hangover, so there was sometimes no agenda.

One week I found myself in front of several days of classes of high school seniors. Rather than let them use it for a study hall, I decided to get them talking about what they believe in. Try to get them into a mode of defining it and possibly thinking in ways they hadn’t done so before.

One of the days was spent talking about civilization. What it is. What are the characteristics of a civilization, as opposed to merely a complex society or culture with traditional, defined behavioral norms?

From the beginning, every classroom full of kids believed a society couldn’t call itself a civilization if it condoned slavery within it. They continued believing that (after some discussion) even after I pointed out the fact the US allowed slavery until a century and a half ago. Almost every group of humans we dub ‘civilized’ in history had slaves.

Watching those kids absorb, then adopt the realization that by their own definitions the US couldn’t possibly have been a civilization until the end of the Civil War was fascinating. But they were universally adamant about it, even after thinking about it. When I pointed out further that slavery existed almost all over the world in one form or another until fairly recently in history….REALLY recently they gradually decided most of their recent ancestors weren’t civilized..

Once they’d decided there couldn’t be civilization without civility defined as a respect for some degree of freedom of the individual, they hung tight on it. Those kids decided human beings weren’t civilized anywhere until ‘way after a lot of civilizations (by other definitions) had risen and fallen.

Those were smarter kids than I figured on them being. And perfectly willing to stick by their guns on something they believed in.

Over the course of a few days these kids decided they absolutely believed, following a lot of debate, that due process is the foundation of civilization. They believed wars without due process were criminal, that they were the antithesis of civilization because they failed to respect human life enough to follow their own prescriptions and procedures. They believed killing, mayhem are serious matters worthy of reflection, debate, and a profound respect for doing things thoughtfully and exactly according to law. They believed failure to do so is a symptom of a society withdrawing from the condition we call ‘civilization’.

Toward the end some of them must have ratted me out to their parents. I didn’t get many sub-teaching jobs after that.

Old Jules

12 Comments

Posted in Current Issues, Education, History, Human Behavior, Senior Citizens

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Black Hole Sucks in 140 Trillion Times the World’s Oceans

Posted on August 1, 2011 by | 6 comments

It’s no doggoned wonder we’re suffering drought.  This news piece lets the cat out of the bag.
Black hole sucks in 140 trillion times the world’s oceans:
http://news.yahoo.com/black-hole-sucks-140-trillion-times-worlds-oceans-163503124.html

Seems there’s a moon of Saturn spewing water out into space faster than Saturn Moonians can catch it to make proper use of it.  That whole Saturn ring fiasco is mainly chunks of ice out cluttering up what would otherwise be a nice, clean see-through piece of real estate with nothing in it to offend drought-stricken city people who have grass needs watering, golf courses needing to be kept green, swimming pools and hot-tubs to frolic in, and other important uses.

But that’s not the worst of it.  A growing body of evidence argues Mars used to have plenty of water for golf courses and whatnot, but it got ripped off and wasted by parties unknown.

Investigators among the astronomical community recently discovered a black hole off a few hundred million light years away is doing something similar there.

They’ve been bragging for some while about creating ‘baby black holes’ in the super-colliders and at Sandia National Laboratory.

Another dramatic climb toward fusion conditions for Sandia Z accelerator:
http://www.sandia.gov/media/z290.htm

Probably no connection to this little drought we’re suffering though.

Old Jules
Creedence Clearwater Revival– Have You Ever Seen the Rain:
http://youtu.be/TS9_ipu9GKw

6 Comments

Posted in 2011, Astronomy, Current Issues

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

New Chinatown for Idaho

Posted on August 1, 2011 by | 2 comments
I’ve read somewhere that Chicago sold off their City Parking Meters and Towing Services to Arabs, maybe other public services, as well.  Evidently some other cities are looking into similar measures, maybe already doing it.  Haven’t heard of any National Parks, National Forests or other federal holdings being handed over to the Chinese to allay the servicing of our debt to them, or our trade deficit.
However, maybe that’s also coming down the pike.

“We’re getting calls from investors from all across Asia who are interested in Idaho,” she said.

Idaho’s location, only another 45 minutes farther by air than Seattle from Asia, will open many opportunities, state and local officials said.
The state’s low cost for doing business will help, too.Fact is, the government debt is owned by every US citizen.  When the nation is mortgaged the people who hold the note loaned it with some assurance they’d either get the money back, get paid back in kind, or they’d get concessions to their advantage to make the loaning of it worth doing.
There’s no indication that industrial zone in Idaho would put any US citizens back to work, but it might do a lot to put Chinese to work on US soil, so’s they don’t have to ship their products so far to US consumers who can’t manufacture their own products such as toasters, television sets, kids toys and shoes.
Old Jules

Kingston Trio–Merry Minuet
http://youtu.be/bp6dsKleGpU

2 Comments

Posted in 2011, Current Issues, Human Behavior

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Riding the Bread Line

Posted on July 13, 2011 by | 3 comments


Someone sent me an email forward the other day explaining to me how illegal aliens, welfare recipients, other low-lifes and me, retired and living off Social Security,  is what’s causing this great country to go down the tube.  I swan.

I don’t have a TV, don’t listen to radio, don’t read newspapers or magazines, but I do get email forwards and see sidebar news flashes at Internet sites.  So knowing the country is down the tube didn’t come as a complete shock to me.  Every couple of weeks I go to town for groceries, chicken feed and other necessaries, and the fact gasoline prices are a mite high, bread, milk and produce are worth more than they used to be, and people are older, all had me wondering if things hadn’t slipped downhill.

But knowing all those old people in the grocery lines and I are causing it surely gave me pause.

Made me realize life is harder for people with ball-caps turned sideways, studs in their nostrils, belly buttons and lips, tattoo-tears running down off their faces, and attitude have it tougher than I did all those years I was younger than I am now, because I wasn’t up here then.

I mostly try to mind my own business and tend my own affairs.  I don’t want to be a part of a problem someone else has.  If people living down in the trailer parks sitting in the backs of their pickups drinking beer Saturday afternoons are suffering harder than they would if I was out living under a bridge somewhere dumpster-diving for a living I wouldn’t be half the man I think I am if I didn’t consider it a viable alternative.

I paid money every paycheck for about 50 years into Social Security, but I never figured I’d come to depend on it for a living.  When it happened I never stopped to consider that expecting some of it back was different from people living off their military retirement, Federal Employment Retirement, or Congressional Retirement systems.

If I need to go dumpster-diving and live under a bridge to clear my conscience I figure I can do it.  Lots of people are already doing it.  Just looking at them I hadn’t thought about the moral high ground they’re holding.

Old Jules

King of the Road- Roger Miller


3 Comments

Posted in 2011, America, Communication, Current Issues, Free, Homesteading, Human Behavior, Internet, Politics, Senior Citizens, Social Security, Solitude, Survival, Welfare

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

A Question for the Brave New World

Posted on July 13, 2011 by | Leave a comment



When I went back to my hometown as a young soldier on leave, Christmas, 1961, it was enough of an event to bring my granddad in from his hardscrabble farm.

We sat around the living room, my mom and step-dad, sisters, and granddad, mulling over the war we were certain to have with the Soviet Union soon.

At that point I was as well-educated (by usual standards) as any of the people in the room and all our ancestors by virtue of having completed high school prior to entering the Army.

In talking about the (then current) brink-of-war crisis my granddad muttered something in Latin.  My mother and step-dad cocked an ear.

“Cicero’s probably not the best place to gain any wisdom about America today,”  My step-dad frowned and adjusted his dentures, followed by another Latin quote.

“Neither is Pliny.”  My mom shook her head at both of them.

Young man who knew everything worth knowing, I was.

I didn’t know any Latin, didn’t know who Pliny was, nor Cicero.  I was as ‘well educated’ as anyone in the room and considered my knowledge sufficient to have a wealth of valuable opinion on the issues of the day.  I felt a vague discomfort with them spouting Latin back and forth at one another and naming people I knew nothing about.

I had reason to recall that conversation in 1976, the US Bicentennial year, when the state of America and the state of education was being examined and bandied about.  Thoughtful minds were concerning themselves that Americans were becoming illiterate and ill-educated.

The thinkers of 1976, asked Americans to ask themselves whether they were better educated than their parents and grandparents, despite many more years spent in formal educational institutions.

The general answer in polls was that Americans considered themselves more canny, better informed than their parents, though weaker in most areas of knowledge once considered essential for a person to be ‘educated’.

The moving finger writes and then moves on.

Are you better educated than your parents and grandparents?

Better educated?
Less well-educated?
Know more about everything but less well-educated?
Less well-educated, less well-informed than parents?
Smarter and with more common-sense without Latin, history, philosophy, and other useless studies?

Sam Cooke- Wonderful World


Leave a comment

Posted in 1960's, America, Books, Country Life, Current Issues, Education, Human Behavior, NM, Parents, Reading

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,