Tag Archives: society

The Illusion of Urgency

Posted on July 25, 2012 by | 16 comments

Lying in bed last night distracted from sleep by gallons of sweat pouring off my body I found myself wondering just why the hell the Coincidence Coordinators seem to be throwing so many obstacles in front of me and the cats getting the hell out of here, one way or another.  It just oughtn’t be this difficult if I’m not chasing a wrong path, or am avoiding one I ought to be chasing.

I take this stuff seriously [and honestly don’t give a damn whether anyone else believes it’s insane for me to do so].  Seems clear to me in moments of insight the function the cats serve in my life is that of an anchor.  The weight of my contracts with them keep me from taking the easy way out and living in a tent, a cave, somewhere I’d rather be.  Somewhere the humidity’s not so high and the heat’s more bearable.

On the other hand, I’m not certain I’d find life worth living at all without these damned cats.  That’s another feature of my life a lot of people might find insane, and another feature of it I don’t need to explain, even to myself.  It’s good enough just riding the satisfaction I get sharing my life with them without demanding sanity out of it.

I think I’d do just fine without them if they exited my life without my having violated my contracts with them.  But violating the contracts as a means to drive my life somewhere I’d rather be would cut just about everything I value in myself off at the knees.

Of course, there’s this damned project over there dancing around in the wings waving its arms around demanding a particular uncertainty principle be dismantled, provided the Coincidence Coordinators continue providing the means to pursue it.  Which, thus far, they’ve continued to do.

So where’s the urgency in it all, thinks I?  Where’s the source of the fire I’m building under myself to provide a driving ‘need’ to be in a tent or under a bridge?

Physical discomfort, thinks I, must be a big piece of it.  Cripes, I think of myself as immune to allowing that to influence my life, but there it is. 

And of course, I allowed a number of expectations to creep into my mind, demands on a future I’ve no reason at all to believe will come to pass.  Things involving smelling pinon burning beside a stream, looking at rocks through a magnifier.

Enough of all that was still lingering in my mind this morning to get me asking the I Ching about it.  He ain’t always all that helpful, but “any port in a storm,” eh?

Consultation on Wednesday, July 25, 2012 at 8:04 AM.

Present: Hexagram 61 Centering in Truth

Question:  What about just blowing it off and going to live in a cave or under a bridge somewhere?

Truth involves establishing an aware relationship between your inner core and the circumstances in your life.  Centering in truth involves the ability to perceive a fundamental wisdom, reflected within yourself – and also in others.

Truth is transformed into power when you disperse all prejudice and make yourself receptive to the world as it really is.  This power can be a remarkable force indeed – yet is rarer than generally imagined.  It can be maintained only by cultivating a genuine openness to things as they are – a willingness to see, rather than merely look.

Whenever your inner life is clouded, your influence in the world is under a shadow.  If you are fearful, you will be attacked; if you cloak genuine mysteries in dogma, opportunities for new insight will be lost.  If you vacillate in upholding your principles, you will be tested.  Yet, when you are firm and strong, the power of truth can break through even the most stubborn minds.

In any debate, the power to perceive the truth in the other side’s argument is essential to achieving success.  It is possible to influence even the most difficult people, or improve the most difficult circumstance, through the power of universal truth – for truth is something to which all things naturally respond.  Get in touch with that part of yourself that is aware of this universal force of truth.  Cultivate this inner resource, and you will become adept at using it to bind others to a common purpose.

The condition of things in the present is fairly stable. There are no specific changes indicated right now.

———————-

Guess I’d better dig out John Richard Lynn and read the judgements on Hexagram 61.  Otherwise I might get thinking it matters whether I’m crazy.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2012, Adventure, Animals, Country Life, Free, Human Behavior, New Mexico, NM, Outdoors, Survival, Texas

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Pieces of the Past

Posted on July 24, 2012 by | 3 comments

When Keith and I were in the fifth grade one of our classmates at Central Grade School , a girl named Ruth Durett, came to school with an ornate, silver-handled dagger she’d dug up in her back yard.  It was known that Coronado had camped a while in the vicinity of Portales, and in those days Portales people had a lot of interest in Spaniards and conquistadors. 

Ruth’s dagger became an object of envy, conjecture and debate.  Billy ‘the kid’ Bonney had also hidden from the law and raised cattle for a while at Portales Springs.  Some thought the dagger might have belonged to him.

Eastern New Mexico University was right there on the edge of town.  Ruth’s parents evidently thought someone out there might be helpful identifying the age, at least, of the artifact.  Took it out there and left it for examination.  Vanished into thin air, that dagger.

The people who came here a while, lived their daily adventures and died couldn’t resist scattering their belongings all over the countryside.  Nobody paid a lot of attention to them for a longish while, but sometime during the 19th Century a fascination became an obsession with many.  Acquiring them by any means whatever became the rule of thumb, on the one hand, preserving them if they couldn’t be conveniently stolen, on the other.  The British Museum’s an example of stolen ones that eventually made their way into preservation.  Same with other museums.

And naturally there are legions of academians, anthropologists, who’ve developed protocols and rituals of method for stealing them in approved ways, vilifying anyone who loots the sites without the proper credentials.  Nowadays they have the law on their side.  Probably today, ENMU would have found a light-of-day legitimate means of stealing Ruth’s dagger.

Even so, it’s not always easy to resist picking off pieces of the past.  I described in an earlier entry how Mel inadvertently tried to carry Oola’s skull home with him.  Exploring Alley Oop’s Home Circa 1947 and how something similar got Squirelly Armijo into all manner of difficulties.  ‘Squirrelly’ Armijo Survives his own Funeral

Maybe something in all that explains the popularity of Gale’s ‘Hanging Tree’ belt buckles.  A number of years ago Gale managed to acquire a mesquite tree they’d cut down somewhere with a history of having criminals hanged from the branches.  Naturally he brought it home and over the years made belt buckles, all manner of jewelry items from it to sell at art and craft shows.

Not everyone wants a hanging tree belt buckle, but a lot of people do.  I’ve never been able to quite wrap my mind around why.  For me, having my belly button rubbing against a piece of wood that was part of a long series of dangling partici-whatchallits just doesn’t have a lot of appeal.  But I hold my pants up with galluses, anyway.  Rarely wear a belt.

As for artifacts, I was never attracted to run off with Oola’s skull, either.  Though I do wear this arrow head I figure offed my old prospector on the mountain hanging on a thong around my neck.  [Recapping the Lost Gold Mine Search]

Old Jules

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Posted in 2012, America, Education, History, Human Behavior, Native American, Native Americans, Outdoors, Portales, Texas

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The Sophomore Scientist – Philosophy by Limerick

Posted on July 23, 2012 by | 3 comments

Absent-mindedly played his Nintendo
While debunking by innuendo.
Everything his gut feel
Said thereby wasn’t real
He denounced in constant crescendo.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2012, Relationships, Science

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Waldo – Robert A. Heinlein – Book Review

Posted on July 23, 2012 by | 19 comments

My first introduction to science fiction came in the Portales Junior High School Library around 1958.  One of the first of the hundreds of Sci-Fi books read over the course of a lifetime was Red Planet, by Robert A. Heinlein.  Probably Keith, one of the readers of this blog, stood beside me in PJHS Library and argued over who’d get to check it out first. 

The library didn’t include a lot to select from and we pored over them all.  Thunder and Roses, by Theodore Sturgeon.  City, by Clifford D. Simak.  The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury.  The Stars are Ours, and Star Born, by Andre Norton. And anything by Robert Heinlein.

Written in 1940, Waldo must have been one of Heinlein’s earliest novels.  By the late 1950s it was still too early to be profound.  Most of the setting, plot, concepts Heinlein visualized in 1940 hadn’t yet come to pass.  Hadn’t made their way into human reality in a form more concrete than a pleasurable indulgence in imagination set to words.  My memories of reading it were vague compared to hundreds of other works by Heinlein and other visionaries who hammered and blasted the new genre into mainstream readership. 

So when Waldo showed up in a box of books in the Saint Vincent de Paul Thrift Store in Kerrville for a dime each and I bought them all, noticing Waldo among them, I was only mildly interested.  Another couple of hours of something to read before dropping off to sleep, I figured.

I was wrong and discovered how wrong I was roughly 20 pages into the book.  Squinted, read and re-read it far past my normal sleep time.  Read it again the next day.  Twice.

Aside from a goodly other phenomena Heinlein described in 1940 that eventually came to pass decades later, he discusses others that haven’t yet made it into mainstream thinking.  One of which includes something I’ve been examining with insane intensity during the past several years, began experimenting with during the late 1990s.  Dropped, partly because of Y2K, partly because the Internet and home computer RAM didn’t yet allow the accumulation and examination of sufficient evidence to arrive anywhere beyond conjecture and assertion.

Thankee, Saint Vincent de Paul Thrift Store.  And thankee Robert Heinlein, particularly for this one.

I keep Waldo close at hand, thumb through it when I’m pondering where things are going as I go through my daily downloading rituals, working my way through the maze to the center. 

You mightn’t, probably won’t be as impressed with this tome as I am.  But I’m betting if you can find it you’ll be more than mildly surprised.  Find yourself asking, “How the hell did Heinlein figure all that out in 1940?”

If not, you’ll at least enjoy a fun plot, good characters, a couple of hours of science fiction back when that’s what it was.

Old Jules

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Posted in 1940's, 1950's, 2012, Book Reviews, Books, History, Reading, Science

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Philosophy by Limerick – Big News of the Day

Posted on July 23, 2012 by | Leave a comment

They read their stock pages and rant
“Juan, down at the sewer plant
Got a five percent raise
From the taxes I pays
On my TVs and Pizzas and grants!”

Old Jules

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Posted in 2012, Current Issues, Politics

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Khe Sanh – Two Worthy Reads – Book Reviews

Posted on July 22, 2012 by | 5 comments

The Hill Fights – The First Battle of Khe Sanh, Edward F. Murphy

Considering he also authored Semper Fi, – Vietnam, and is/was probably a fairly gung-ho man, Murphy does a surprisingly workmanlike job depicting what actually led up to the Khe Sanh bloodbath, why became a bloodbath, and where the responsibility for it having become a bloodbath clearly rested.  All without pointing fingers of blame.  He just describes events as reported by the people involved in them.  For instance:

“Fourteen of the eighteen patrols Wilder sent out early in July found NVA, several within mere minutes of being inserted into their patrol areas.  He learned from other intelligence sources that the North Vietnamese 324B Division had moved south of the Ben Hai River with the mission of conquering Qang Tri Province.  When Wilder dutifully reported this to higher headquarters, he unwittingly stepped into the fray raging between General Westmoreland and General Walt.

“Within days General Walt, General Kyle, and Major General Louis B. Robertshaw, commander of the 1st Marine Air Wing, arrived at Wilder’s headquarters at dong Ha for a personal briefing from Wilder.  As soon as Wilder mentioned the presence of the NVA 324B Divbision, Robertshaw rudely interrupted him.  “You’re a liar,” Robertshaw accused Wilder.

If any single incident could sum up what happened to the unfortunate grunts getting themselves blown apart at Khe Sanh over the next couple of years, that probably does it.  What happened to the US lower-grade officers and enlisted men throughout the Vietnam experience, for that matter.

It echoes and it rhymes.  The M16, newly issued and fired for familiarization before being taken into combat.  Jams.  Jams.  Jams.  So the cover story becomes, “You’ve got to keep it CLEAN!  If you don’t keep it clean, it jams.  Your own fault, marine!”

A few weeks later squads, platoons were being slaughtered by the NVA at Khe Sanh.  Found afterward with jammed M16s, unable to return fire against the enemy.  Marines complained, the high command accused them of lying.  Of not cleaning their weapons.  The slaughter continued until a letter home from a dead marine ended up being read on the floor of the US Congress and an investigation began.

The M16 was designed around a cartridge containing a particular propellent.  But a major military contractor with the right connections offered a cheaper cartridge because it contained a different, more inexpensive powder.  Millions of rounds purchased, all defective.  Probably hundreds, maybe thousands of US servicemen lost their lives because they were provided weapons incapable of returning fire without jamming.

Friendly fire?  Khe Sanh began with a US air strike dropping napalm several miles off target on the friendly village of Khe Sanh, killing 250 villagers and injuring hundreds more.  Following that it was helicopter gunships, fighter aircraft and artillery strikes opening up on ground troops by mistake. 

Air forces all over the world from early during WWII provided their planes with IFF [Identify Friend/Foe] radio transponders.  Somehow the concept never seeped down to include ground troops being protected from friendly fire.  As late as Gulf War 1 it continued to happen.  And at Khe Sanh it happened a lot.

Then there were the commanders who just made lousy choices for whatever reasons other than the well-being of the troops they commanded.  “You guys aren’t likely to find anything up there.  Take off your flak jackets and leave them down here.”  Twice.  Two separate occasions.  Two bloodbaths.

There was no overall strategy for US troop involvement in Vietnam.  The curse of the undeclared, presidential wars from WWII onward.  The US high command couldn’t agree among themselves what the roles of the troops under their commands should be and how they should perform those roles.

Despite all this, The Hill Fights – The First Battle of Khe Sanh, Edward F. Murphy doesn’t dwell on this side of things.  He simply provides a detailed history, day-to-day of one of the countless debacles of the 20th Century quickly forgotten when another president needed some other injection of excitement to keep the voters going to the poles, the flags waving, and the patriots pounding their fists on their chests.

[Incidently, there’s a good photo section in the book.  I was surprised to see my old friend,  Mel King as a young marine standing unidentified next to a Company Commander who’d just gotten a few of his men out alive and unhurt.  Mel must have gotten his injuries later.]

—————————————————

A Marine at Khe Sanh, by John Corbett.  A young marine just out of basic training arrives in country at Khe Sanh and spends the next 77 days living in a foxhole, almost constantly under mortar, artillery and rocket attack.  This is his diary. 

Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon never got around to hanging their heads in shame for the young men the dead and crippled as by-products their Vietnam presidential military adventures.  But then, I don’t suppose any of the other, later ones have, either, for theirs.

After all, a lot of the right people made one hell of a lot of money from those wars.  You can’t make an omlette without breaking some eggs.

Old Jules

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Posted in 1960's, 1970's, Adventure, Government, Politics, US Army

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The Occasional Crisis of Values – Philosophy by Limerick

Posted on July 21, 2012 by | 24 comments

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.

Eavesdropping on a conversation between young adults at a nearby table in a restaurant Thursday led me into a lot of pondering afterward.  All these rosy-cheeked youngsters believed they had long lives ahead of them, believed a human life can be lived performing occupations and activities to give it value and meaning.   They wanted this for themselves and were searching the databases of wisdom available among the young for answers to where it might be found.

They didn’t want to waste their lives, as they believed their parents, other older folks they observed, were doing and have done.  They examined and discarded dozens of avenues of human endeavor as meaningless, having no worth. 

Buying and selling almost anything from automobiles to insurance to consumer products found no home with them.  Lawyering, law enforcement, engineering, health care, drew closer examination, but were found wanting.  They’d had been damned by close observation of these fields as manifested in their own homes and the homes of acquaintances.  

They’d seen the inside of the lives of people who spent their days doing these things, experienced their interactions with their children and other family members.  Judged the professions to be worthless as a way of passing time because the dysfunctional home lives of so many served as a testimony no relationship existed between earning an affluent lifestyle and anything admirable in personal behavior outside work environments. 

But underlying the entire conversation was the assumption some profession, some job, some means of earning a living, could provide value to their lives in ways they’d be able to recognize afterward.  The unspoken determination that when they reached, say, the age of that old cowboy-looking guy over there reading a book, they’d be able to look backward with confidence and satisfaction their lives had been worth the effort of living.

A few years from now they won’t be thinking of those things anymore, most likely.  They’ll become involved in trying to scratch out a living, satisfy a mate’s desire for a new car, trips to Europe, big house.  Keep kids in new clothing and whatever else people buy for their kids these days.  There’ll be no place left, no niche of yearning they’ll be able to allow.  The value of the lives they’re living will be manifested in the cars they drive.  The homes they sleep and entertain themselves inside.

By the time they arrive at the age of that old cowboy-looking guy over there they’ll be so far removed from concepts of life being worth living the default position will be a habit of thinking assigning it intrinsic value.  Worth prolonging at any cost, no matter how it’s been spent, how it’s currently being spent.

They’ll mercifully be spared asking themselves whether they’ve wasted their lives doing things that didn’t need doing, might well have left the world a better place if they hadn’t been done.

What’s important in life is official
Sign-painters declare, and initial,
“Portfolio sums
When we die, keep the bums
From the ponderous and superficial.”

Old Jules

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Posted in 2012, Adventure, Communication, Current Issues, Human Behavior, Parents

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Boom-Towning the US – Economic One-Upsmanship by Texasizing

Posted on July 18, 2012 by | 11 comments

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.

When the neighbor from up the hill described a business boom going on around Edinburg, Texas, [his previous home] the other evening it got me wondering why.  According to him, the entire Texas coastline is a beehive of manufacturing concerns, either operating, or under construction.  Even a Chinese owned gigantic steel plant.

After considering why this might be for a couple of days I concluded there’s a middling chance the Texas tax structure’s probably a major piece of it.  Texas doesn’t have a State Income Tax.  It relies almost entirely on sales taxes and property taxes for revenues.

That mightn’t sound too important at first notice.  But consider the implications more closely. 

  • First, workers employed in Texas can enjoy a higher take-home pay than those employed in states where income taxes are the revenue source.  This allows employers to pay the employees less than they’d have to do elsewhere.  Workers pay more when they spend their checks on consumer goods, but it doesn’t come out on profit and loss statements of the companies paying them.
  • Secondly,  CEOs, plant managers, high-ranking professionals living within the State, but who enjoy salaries high enough for investments of their incomes pay taxes only on their property holdings and consumer purchases.  Same as the legion of minimum-wage workers they employ.
  • Thirdly, all the nearby suppliers of raw materials, parts and labor for the industries enjoy the same tax-free status and are almost certainly able to offer their products and services more cheaply than they could do located in areas where State Income Tax exists.

For states with stagnant economies, especially those with coastal port facilities, but not limited to those, seems to me the answer might be to take a page from the Texas book.  The most immediate and obvious answer would be eliminating state income taxes and making it up in sales and property taxes.  But that would take a while.  Meanwhile, Texas booms and everyone else continues to lose jobs.

Naturally each situation would require site-specific solutions for immediate competition with Texas for new industries.  But several options come to mind:

  • Locate your port facilities here and we’ll do whatever’s needed to make absolutely certain your construction costs are lower than they’d be in Texas.  Whatever corners Texan regulators would allow you to cut in construction, environmental and safety standards, our regulators will allow more.
  • We’ll reduce our spending on our State vehicle fleets by putting a moratorium on buying any new vehicles for five years.  That money will be delivered in suitcases full of un-marked $100 bills to the people charged with the decision for your location.
  • We’ll make special interim provisions in our income-tax laws exempting dividends to stockholders, CEO and other high ranking professional employees from our State Income Tax.
  • We’ll lower our minimum wage to lower-level employees to the Texas minimum wage, minus the amount of the State Income Tax.  That will allow you to hire minimum wage-earning workers at the same rate it would cost you if you’d located in Texas.
  • We’ll overlook any hiring of illegal aliens you might do involving jobs good Americans don’t want.  Outdoors, heavy-lifting, that sort of thing.
  • We’ll provide lists of the names and families of all your high-ranking employees to all law enforcement agencies and prosecutors and provide a GET OUT OF JAIL FREE card for each family member.  If you, or family members are busted for illegal drug possession we’ll make certain the arresting officers are suspended or otherwise punished.  Your executive employees will enjoy the same privileges in that regard as any State, local, or Federal politician.
  • If your executives are non-white, non-Anglo, non-protestant they’ll never overhear themselves referred to at the country club as Chinks, slopeheads, zipperheads, Mescins, mackeral-snappers, ragheads, camel jockeys, or sand niggers, as they certainly would in Texas.

Naturally they’d have to develop other business-friendly encouragements over time, but those would, at least open the door for a beginning.

Old Jules

 

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Posted in 2012, Current Issues, Government, Human Behavior, Politics, Texas

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Damned Environmentalists vs It’s All About Money

Posted on July 17, 2012 by | 22 comments

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.

The neighbor up the hill drove down to sit awhile yesterday evening.  We discovered once again, as we have before, there are areas where we’re rigid enough in our certainties so’s there’s no room for civil discourse.  We found two of those more quickly than it takes to tell it.  One involved multi-national corporations.

Neighbor:  Sure.  They’re shipping jobs and industry overseas because labor, costs of production are cheaper.

Me:  That’s what I’m saying.  They’re indifferent to the well being of US workers, the US economy. 

Neighbor:  It’s still jobs.  Still people working, making a living.  Africa, South America.  They’re all people.

Me:  Yeah, they’re people.  But why should a guy in Minnesota trying to scratch out a living favor losing it so’s someone in Asia can have a job?

Neighbor:  He can buy products cheaper.

Me:  He can’t buy products at any price if he doesn’t have a job.  Part of the job of his government is to make sure his job stays inside the country.

Neighbor, clamping jaw:  We aren’t going to talk about this.  You and I see it differently.

Then, a few minutes later:

Neighbor:  They want to build a pipeline to bring oil from Canada to the Texas coast.  Damned environmentalists are protesting, keeping them from it.

Me:  So why don’t they refine it up there.  Canada, northern US?

Neighbor:  No shipping ports.

Me:  What they need shipping ports for?  Nobody in Canada, Minnesota needs gasoline?  Cities don’t need hydrocarbons to produce electricity?

Neighbor:  They need to sell it overseas.   It’s all about money.  They can get better prices selling it to China or somewhere.

 Me:  Who needs to sell it overseas?  The people living on the land they’d take by government mandate to  put in a pipeline?  The people in the US who’d be heating their houses and running their cars on the gasoline if it’s refined close to where it comes out of the ground?  Who?

Neighbor, getting up:  Sorry I brought it up.

Luckily, neither the neighbor, nor I, depend on any sort of agreement between ourselves.  Neither has anything invested in the opinion of the other.  And whatever we might think about it, that oil’s going to arrive where the people who burn it pay the highest price.  The Canadian sands producing oil belong to people who might be anywhere, but who own stock in a company who bought the mineral rights.  They want the most dividends so they can buy more stock and get more dividends.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2012, Current Issues, Government, Human Behavior, Nature, Relationships, Senior Citizens, Solitude, Texas, Transportation

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Advice and Consent

Posted on July 16, 2012 by | 10 comments

Good morning readers. Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.

Ring

Me:  Wassat?  The damned telephone?  Where the hell is it?  Ahh!  Under that.  Get off there, cat!

Ring. 

Me:  [scowling.  Into the phone.] This better be good.

Telephone:  Old Jules?

Me:  Who’s asking?

Telephone:  This is George Armstrong Custer MacGruder.  I’m calling for the president.

Me:  President of what?

Telephone:  President of the United States.

Me:  What?  The black guy?  Tell him I don’t vote.

Telephone:  He knows you don’t vote.

Me:  Then why the hell are you calling?

Telephone:  He reads your blog.  Hopes you’ll answer some questions.

Me:  I don’t want some president nosing around in my affairs.  I don’t stick my nose into his business.  He needs take care of whatever it is he does up there.

Telephone:  Nothing he’s tried so far is working.  He’s casting around for ideas.  desperate.

Me:  That’s laudable, anyway.  You’ve got the wrong number.  I don’t have any ideas.  Tell him to take up Zen.  Learn to use the I Ching.

Telephone:  I Ching?

Me:  Yeah.  The Book of Changes.  Chinese.  Divination.  Confucius.  All that.  The John Richard Lynn translation of Wang Bi’s the best one I’ve found.  Yarrow stick method.  Damned coins will throw you off.    Tell him to pay close attention to the changing lines.  You still there?

Telephone:  I’m taking notes.  Sorry.

Me:  Anything else you need?  I’ve got things to do here.

Telephone:  So you’re saying the President needs to consult an oracle?

Me:  You said nothing else is working didn’t you?

Telephone:  Can you think of any other advice you’d like to give the President?

Me:  I don’t give advice.  Except I advise you not to call me again.  I get pissed off sometimes when people bother me.

Telephone:  Could he send you an email?

Me:  As long as he’s not trying to sell anything, persuade me to vote, or ask my advice.

Telephone:  Thanks.

Me:  Sure.  Anytime.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2012, America, Books, Communication, Government, Human Behavior, Politics, Reading, Solitude

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