Round Number Birthday Under Ground

 

The above ground entrance to the Salt Cellar, a classic "old Scottsdale" standby we have long wanted to visit. Reservations absolutely necessary

Over the course of the last month, the odometer of my years rolled over to a zero-ending year. My Fifties are over and have Sixties have begun.

Birthdays are typically a time of melancholy reflection for me. I think part of it is the time of year I was born. The first week of October is typically the last embers of summer--the last days that can be considered hot. This was true in the Midwest and Colorado, where I grew up, but strangely as well in Arizona. It is the cusp when warm nights give way to chilly ones, and I move indoors during my morning prayers, even turning on the heater. It is part of my character to feel as if I was born into a world of things that are passing away right as I arrive---things being whisked away just as my eyes notice them.  I have felt this way from childhood.

During the years I traveled alone as a nomad, when my birthday arrived, I felt a need to distract myself by doing something out of the ordinary, to avoid brooding about people and things from the past. I particularly remember my 48th birthday, visiting Sequoia National Park as a remarkable day.  I have noticed the joy I get in recollecting what I did on previous birthdays, going back to childhood. As such I strive to do this. It creates a narrative upon which I can hang other events in my life, and help me recall the passage of time.

This year I felt a greater burden in this regard because of it was a round-zero age. I don't remember much what my 10th birtday, but can reconstruct what I probably did that day (I do remember birthdays 3, 4, 5, 6, ad 7, but not 10).

On my 20th birthday, I walked over to the mall with my mother and we had lunch and she bought me a pair of shoes. On birthday 30, my then-girlfriend Laura arranged a surprise party of my friends in Fort Collins event though we lived in Austin. She blind folded me as she drove me to the old Austin airport. She was sure the machine that dispensed parking tickets would give it away, but I was totally suprised. My friends Cara and Torger hosted in the event in the host they used ot own, across the street from the old library. My Colorado friends where there, the ones from one I have been estranged. I didn't know about the party. I suggested we stop and say hello as we were driving by, and got taken by surprise when we walked in the door. That was 30 years ago. 

Twenty years ago I was driving across the country after leaving Laura, whom I had married. I was on my way to Oregon, following the Oregon Trail. I woke up in Wyoming at a campround with a nascent tooth abcess and and detoured down to Fort Collins to see my mother and father, and also some of my friends. We were all excited about John Kerry in the election. When I got to Oregon, I watched Kerry lose in the Melody Ballroom in east Portland. It foreshadowed some tough times ahead, as my old self died.

Ten years ago, Jessica and I were in Stockholm. We went to the ABBA museum and had a wonderful luxurious dinner.

This year there was nothing I particularly wanted to do, but I didn't want the day to pass without doing something to mark the day in my memory. So I went over the swimming pool of our complex and took a dip and then sat in the cabana, reading a book about Joe Kennedy, enjoying the lingering heat of an Arizona autumn. We watched Trump and Elon Musk at a rally in the same place where he had recently been shot by a would-be assassin. 

Then we went out to dinner at a well-known seafood place in south Scottsdale, the Salt Cellar, that is located completely underground. Afrer entering one goes down a winding ramp that reminded me of Casa Bonita in Denver.  The Salt Cellar is a well-known "birthday" location, we learned. The waiter asked us "whose birthday is it?" without us even telling him. 

Sixty was good, the most relaxed round number since 20. But my thoughts have evolved. Across the street from the restaurant is a cemetery. I wondered about the coincidence, and if I'll make it to another round number. If I don't, I don't. I've had a good run. 

Trump in Person

 

The gentleman who wrote the original post is a journalist has inspired a rather profane entry in the urban dictionary, largely thanks to the cartoonist and podcaster Scott Adams. Of course his statement here is hyperbole, but one recognizes that it is uttered with contempt. As for me, telling people "I love being White" is one of my favorite things to tell people, whenever the subject of race comes up. I always say it cheerfully, just as I would say, "I'm proud of my German-American background. I'm proud of my Trump ancestors who were pioneers, two of who were the first white couple married in the Iowa Territory. 

It was Jessica who got tickets to the Tucker Carlson Live event that was held at the Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale on Thursday evening. Going to public events with crowds is usually not something I seek out. But if anything, Jesssica is more enthusiastic about voting for Trump this year than I am. She loathes Harris.

It was fun to attend, although it was in the evening, and anything past 9 PM is usually well past my bedtime.

It was the first time we had visited this. part of the metro area, where many of major arenas are located. Until recently, the local pro hockey team played here (and practiced on the facility near us on Bell Road), but the only sporting events we have attended are spring training baseball games.  

After parking in the large adjacent ot, and paying via QR code,  we walked towards the buildings, which include not only the arena, but a casino, and a large outdoor plaza with multiple floors of restaurants and loud music. It reminded me of downtown San Diego--the kind of contemporary "entertainment" districts that cluster around sports complexes. It's a slice of the modern American urban landscape that usually appeals to me not at all, but in this case I felt a joy at experiencing it under these circumstances.

Since this was a paid event for charity (Hurricane relief in Appalachia) we had assigned seats and there was no line to get inside, as there would be in a normal Trump rally, which is free and is general admission. 

Our seats were on the arena floor, about fifteen rows in, on narrow chairs. packed together. Somehow I managed to avoid being severely uncomfortable while sitting in place for seven hours.  

The lights and sound were what one would expect for an arena show---overwhelming, but I enjoyed it very much once it started.  When the show stared, Trump himself was still in Nevada, at a normal Trump rally in Henderson outside of Las Vegas.  The Glendale appearance would be his third event of the day.

After a little live music and a g-rated Trump friend Vegas comedian,  the first speaker was Nicole Shanahan, who had been RFK Jr's running mate before he dropped out and endorsed Trump. I didn't know at the time it was first time speaking in support of Trump in public. She broke down in tears several times apologizing for having once been a Democrat. The crowd loved and went wild for her. Everyone knows that a Trump rally is a great place to feel love. She concluded her speech by filling out her own California mail-in ballot, voting Republican for the first time,  and bypassing her own name, which is still on the ballot (because California, like other "blue" states", wouldn't take it off after she and RFK dropped out, hoping to sabotage Trump). 

RFK jr. soon followed, and of course he got a massive reception of love and applause from the packed arena. Watching him I couldn't help wonder what my late mother, who passed away seven years ago today, and who adored his uncle and his father, would think about this. Her JFK autograph, signed directly to "Maureen", who her prize possession, which she misplaced shortly before she died, but which my sister recently found, wedged into the pages of a book.

I think she would find all this confusing. I don't she ever hated Trump. She's not the type. But she knew she was supposed to hate him, and would gone along with my sisters in expressing it. But it was never an issue between her and me. She would tell me she understood my point of view somewhat. Back then it was dangerous to express any support for him at all. Now none of us give a fuck about what anyone thinks. 

Sometimes I think it is a mercy that my parents passed away when they did. My father spent his final days in the hospital in Fort Collins, leading up to the 2016 Iowa Caucus, telling the cancer ward nurses that he was not related to the "awful" guy running for president. To my late father, Trump's manifest "meanness" was disqualifying. In his mind, Trump represented everything he had spent his life fighting against---hatred, bigotry, bullying, etc. 

As it happens, we are related to President Trump. We have a common ancestor from the same little town in the Rhine-Palatinate in German. My sisters actually knew this, I think, but concealed it. Someone else researched it out of curiosity and discovered it.  I forgive them.

Trump himself came on stage at the climax of the event, after Tucker Carlson, who is very entertaining, speaking about how he left mainstream news. Of course the crowd went wild. Trump did not give a normal "MAGA" address to the crowd like at his rallies, but instead did a sit-down interview in lounge chairs with Tucker. It was during this moments that he said the lines about Liz Cheney that the media would pounce on. It was clear at the time that he referred to her being in a war zone, not that he wanted her to be executed.

But I will tell you there are many on our side who think many on the Left have committed high reason and deserve to be executed. We all know the Leftists would kill us if they could. We know what is at stake. 

Civil War Brewing

 The mood of X turned very dark today. A widespread realization that they want us dead, sooner rather than later. They are closing on the last of America before they finish us off. Let us pray that the peace is continued as long as possible.

When Garden of the Gods Was Divine

I found this online via Google image search just now. I happen to own a specimen of this card in my collection. Almost all my postcards from long ago, however, are postmarked and have real messages, from one family member to another, nearly always in beautiful cursive hand. During my travels from 2004-2013, when I wandered the country in my Bimmer, I obsessively bought and sent postcards to people, especially to my nieces, but also to old high school and college friends. I refused for several years to join Facebook, and told people that sending postcards was my version of Facebook. Finally I caved and joined Facebook and it was an absolutely disaster, as I've mentioned. I called myself "The Last Postcard Writer". I felt great connection to the unknown people, now long dead, who wrote and received the postcards in my collection. I stopped sending postcards because I became convinced people didn't care anymore, or thought it was weird, especially the frequency at which I sent them.  I know my sister saved the many dozens of cards I sent during the height of my postcard sending mania, from 2008-2011. I love my old collection, although I don't collect anymore cards from estate sales, etc.  But I am super appreciative of those who conserve this parts of our past. One day, perhaps in a future generation, young people will wander through them, marveling at the treasures of "real artifacts" from the past. It's a scene almost straight out of The Hunger Games first movie, when Katniss is walking through the flea market.  I hope all the postcards currently in existence surive until then, although I know that is not possible. The weirdest thing is knowing that in the future, they will see how the frequency of cards being sent dropped of a cliff at the Millennium and never came back, and that a nontrivial portion of the ones written and sent in the current epoch will have been sent by yours truly. If that is the only contribution I make to humanity, a postcard writer named "Uncle Matt" whose identity is mostly unknown, then I think I will be happy over it. In fact, I am beginning to think it's not a bad thing after all. 

 Last weekend we flew up to Colorado Springs to spend three nights in Colorado. The trip was copletely arranged by Jessica. Thanks to her, I mostly went along for the ride. It was a very nice weekend, although it difficult for me to let go of the stress of job. 

Colorado Springs has a nice accessible airport. The rental car desk was painfully slow, but finding the car was easy once we had our eyes. The drive from the airport into downtown reveals what a "small town" the city is, which is a definite plus.

We stayed the night in a hotel that was created recently by renovating a century old mining exchange building. At checkin, they gave us a a free dinner in the hotel restaurant for no reason whatsoever.  The next morning we walked through downtown to have breakfast at place that had homemade biscuits.

Then we drove up to Garden of the Gods, which Jessica had never seen. It was pleasant to drive through. I warned her that it might not be as overwhelming as one would think. It was a tourist attraction that had its peak in the middle Twentieth Century. I used to collect historic postcards from estate sales when I was kid (I still have collection), and there is no shortage of postcards of the Garden of the Gods. It was rather iconic. But it has long since been eclipsed by destinations deeper in the mountains. This is due to the improvement and expansion of highways, and by air travel, which let people access mountain destinations immediately. In the old days, Colorado Springs was a destination unto itself.  This made a relatively easy destination for Midwesterners in the days when Americans took their children on road trip vacations. 

Afterwards we drove through downtown Manitou Springs, which similarly had a heyday as a family tourist destination that began declining in the 1960s as people sought more authentic experiences in the high country. Now it has a distinctive nostalgia appeal because of the quaint buildings that survive, which delight young children to see. 

Not surpisingly, because everyplace has been "rediscovered" and will never be "undiscovered" again, the real estate prices in Manitou Springs are no doubt very high. People seek out anything remotely unique in order to harvest its uniqueness, either to sell as a commodity by developing property there, or by living there in order to associate with other folks who are seeking such unique communities. Of course they inevitable change what they come to find.

I don't know the situation in Manitou Springs, but judging by the smattering of rainbow flags being displayed along the main route through town, it would seem this process is well underway. All this is a metro area that is supposedly "conservative." In some ways, it is the same thing that has happened across the entire state of Colorado. 

Seeing the remnants of the mid 20th century family roadtrip era made me happy. It reminded me of good times with my grandparents long ago, and the kind of society they built and lived in. It is all going away. Mostly it is gone already. Never again will American highways be teaming with the family road trippers. Almost every aspect of that culture has already been dismantled to the point where only superficial representations of it still exist. I can't say I much like it. 

We Went to Flagstaff

 Spent Labor Day weekend at a B and B. It was glorious. Air was fresh and cool. In the evenings after dinner we sat outside on the lounge chairs and watched the poplars swaying against the dark night sky after twilight.

On Thursday night it rained. We saw the storm clouds come down off the mountains. On Friday I worked from the hotel. Ginger took the take off from her job. On Saturday we drove out to Sunset Crater and visited Wukoki again---the ancient settlement on the fissure in the earth. The last time we were there it was blazing hot and sunny, and Ginger melts in that, so it was less than enjoyable. This time was overcast and cool. A much different experience. On Sunday we went to the Meteor Crater (will have to do a post just on that).

Today we drove home via Sedona, descending the canyon on the state highway instead of going by the Interstate, where you come to the edge of the Rim like a cliff.  We were lucky to catch the traffic going the other way through Sedona. Probably lots of folks still coming down now as I write this. 

Now we are back in the hot Valley and tomorrow is a normal work day. Thank God for Labor Day.

Coping With Victory

 I spent three hours this morning on X, formerly Twitter, both reading posts and making ones of my own. Never has it been so much fun. It reminds me, in some vague way, of what it was like to be a child, and to voraciously gobble up the news from the newspapers and television, because I wanted to know as much as possible about the world out there. It also reminds me of being in New York City back in the 1990s, and walking amidst the crowds pouring out of the ferry terminal in the Battery, the warm bath anonymity, that one is a small nobody, but that's ok because everyone is on the same level of nobody-ness. 

Except we aren't a nobody to God. That's the piece of the puzzle I have now, that I didn't back then.

In any case, it is great fun rejoicing in the impending massive victory of our side. I pray our great victory will be put to good use.

Area Code 503

 Overnight I got a text message from an old friend. I almost didn't see it because I thoought it was Spam. I get maybe thirty a day, most of them because of previous political donations.  I thought the text was one of those. I didn't recognize the number and I almost deleted it from the notification on the screen

The area code was 503--Oregon, but that meant nothing because that is still my area code from the phone I bought in the mall in Beaverton ten years ago when I got first i-Phone Then I saw the name at the end of the message and I knew who it was. 

I have gone many years now without conversing with him. But we did not see each other many years after college as well, and once you have a long gap with someone, followed by a time of reacquaintance, one knows that at some point time doesn't matter. Both of us have a bearing on each other's characters that stretches of time, in a temporal triangulation over decades, such that, especially after a certain age, we can never be strangers to each other.

He still lives in the small small town outside of Portland where he and his wife have operated their law practice for many decades. Since I last talked with him, they sold the law practice, and the building it was located in, and are now retired. 

He asked if I was still in Oregon. I haven't lived there for eight years. I told him I lived in Arizona now. He asked me if I liked Scottsdale. I said it had great medical care---best specialists in the world---which is something that can be plus especially as you get past a certain age in life. That's all I said about it.

I explained how we wound up here, and how we moved here for Jessica's job, and later for her practice, but now she is completely remote, whereas I am the one with the hybrid office job. Also it is quite enjoyable that Jessica's parents live in the Valley now, in a 55+ RV and trailer-house park in Mesa, which is like a non-stop Boomer party and summer camp eight months out of the year. The community of it is amazing. I tell them I don't think Generation X can pull off a continuation of it. Starting with my cohort, youth lost its communalness of youth culture, until it came back with a vengeance with the current rootless  identity tribalism of today's young folk.

I told him I'd love to come back to Oregon sometime, and to visit the suburbs of Portland. 

My Favorite Creekbeds

 Woke up in the darknesss last night as I regained consciousness I noticed that a rainstorm had started. A more beats of consciousness brought to me the awareness that it was a ferocious storm of heavy hand and strong winds, the kind found at the front of the storm as it comes in. My instinctual reaction to panic slightly that something might be getting rained on, that I would prefer not to get rained on, kicked in, and it was confirmed in my conscious mind by the remembrance that I had used the rice-paper folding screen on the porch the previous day but had not put it away the night before, but left it out by the edge of the patio. Even in mild winds it is prone to tipping over, and then of impaling itself (yet again) on the posts of the bamboo folding fence, which is sturdy in all winds, but not high enough to provide the necessary shade for the sun in the morning hours. The rice paper folding screen is higher, and serves that purpose well in the morning despite multiple punctures from my negligence.

The rain was hard and I sat outside savoring it in the pitch darkness, on the rustic rocking chair that belongs technically to her mother, as it sat on their porch in their log cabin in Ohio before they moved to Arizona.

The peak of the ferociousness of the wind passed and gave way to mild gusts amidst a heavy steady downpour, which splashed onto the tilied roofs of the building and the asphalt and concrete below. Such a rain here is rare. "A monsoon rain at last," I said. We had gonie long into the summer without one, even as storms hit other parts of the Valley. We had seen dense dark clouds over the mountains, and rain had come to the far side but not to us. Finally we got some relief. 

I imagined out in the darkness the stream beds gathering up into a laminar sheets of water in the depressions, and then elongated into longer sheets until they connect and like a train, begin rolling downhills on the soaked ground, held above by the surface tension of the water. My favorite creek beds would begin flowing, even they have been re-engineered by the landscaping needs of development.

Gen X Work Pride in the Days of the Remote Longhouse

The lobby lounge at the Element Reno

 

Yesterday on our last day in Reno,  I was in the lobby of the hotel waiting for Jessica to come back from her last session of her drawing class, for which she had flown to Reno to attend, and which the official point of our trip. Jessica had called our hotel "Millennial hipster", and the description seemed perfect. It was a brand new modern place, with Deep Elm style furniture, located amidst similar new apartment complexes, in a mini-walkable neighborhood on land in the center of the city that I recognized as having once been an old shopping center. I have enough of a history in Reno, going back 40 years as of this year, that I know places by what used to be there.

In the lobby, with its deep backed couches that force one to use pillows are to recline back, I had been working on my laptop for my dayjob, as if I were in the office. I have enough freedom that I can take off for a couple days and tell my boss "I'm working from Reno for a couple days", and everything is cool. Part of it is that I am very good at what I do, and provide tremendous manifest value to my company.

I have believed nothing about recent Millennial and Gen Z work trends about having all sorts of privileges. "You guys have no idea what it will be like when the pendulum swings back." My strategy is as it always has been---pure Generation X---I am as valuable on my job as what I provide day to day. So I will so fucking valuable that my leash gets longer and longer, by earning it. "How would we get along without him?" I want them to ask. Of course they would get along without me. I'm not indispensable, so that keeps me humble and focussed on work. I am survivor of multiple rounds of layoffs in a tiny company down to a skeleton staff putting out and supporting a complex platform of sensitive data transmitted over the Internet.

The last time I was in Reno almost three years ago for Dick's funeral, I worked for a horrible company (Satan Inc.) of 1000 employees where almost everyone was remote. That meant the Longhouse controllers (the young women in HR) also worked remotely and this ruined remote work for everyone. Now remote work is as bad as the prison of the office, but the young women of HR know only slavery. They are born slaves, and in the Longhouse everything trends to towards the feminine values of accepting slavery and submission and being happy about it, and in turn getting be the enforcers of all the rules. (see "What is the Longhouse?" here)

I remember working from the airport and getting scolded by my boss for it, for no reason at all. All they could do was scold me. I was made to feel awful. They tried to put me on a performance improvement plan to get to me to quit, so I did just that. Within an hour of my resignation, the laptop they had supplied me via registered mail when I began working restarted itself and "bricked" itself, removing all my accerss from everything company related immediately.

The company was a billion-dollar startup. Within six months of my leaving, the company laid off three quarters of its staff and all but shuttered its doors.

In reality I'm convinced it was a CIA-funded spook operation designed to hook into the data of all the hospital systems in the country and gather all the patient data from their databases. It was a Deep State scam. Good riddance to it. The low point of my recent career.

My new job is demanding but much more rewarding than the billion-dollar operation I worked for in 2021. As much investment money my current company eats up, it can never be as big of a boondoggle as Satan Inc. 

(See https://x.com/shagbark_hick/status/1824818147381149858

Down to One City

 After having spent my life wanting to travel America to every state and city, and fulfilling that, to the sacrifice of many other things, I am down to one city in which I feel at home, and could at the moment, contemplating movin to--Reno.

I did not see that coming, but it makes sense. Reno and I have a long history together, good history going back to the 1980s. The last of my family I can be with, and be relaxed with, not on guard against things that might blow up the conversation, is there. This is despite my great-uncle Dick passing away.

I didn't get to see my second cousins this time, but I got to spend a lovely evening with my my mother's cousin (Dick's daughter), and her husband. I last saw them when visiting for Dick's funeral and memorial service (two different things) in 2021. It was a rough time for many reasons, not the least of which was a dreadful day job that felt like I was working for Satan Inc., but I soldiered through, wearing the leather jacket that Dick gave to me the last time I saw him. Right as I was walking out the door and knowing I would not see him again in this life. 

We talked about him, and about his parents. I knew his mother, my great-grandmother, but I never met his father, my great-grandfather, and the great-grandfather of my second cousins. One of them lives in town and turned Dick's old house into an AirBnB after renovating it. Dick's daughter showed me photos of it. It looks very nice and new. I recognized the shelves where the photo of his mother used to sit.

Jessica and I both loved the cool nights. Such a break from Phoenix, where neither of us feels truly at home, for various reasons. We moved there for her job in 2016, when I worked remotely. Now she works remotely and I have an office job here. Hybrid situation. I worked remotely from the hotel in Reno, while remembering all the good vibes I have felt here over the years.

My Latest Favorite X Account

 @shagbark_hick for the win.

How to Be Free

"I'm so disappointed in you, Matt. I thought you were smarter than that."

This is what one or more of my old acquaintances might say on Facebook post, if they saw it, and cared to reply to it. 

The feminization of men results in a men who are super-bitches. They know how to go for the jugular, like a woman, but with the strength of a man. It reminds of what my choral music director in college would say, about the castrati---they took the alto and soprano roles, including all the female roles in opera, because their voices were so much stronger, like a human coronet. The women simply couldn't match that. No we are making new castrati, by telling young boys to cut of their sexual origins. Perhaps taking female  hormones will keep them from become good singers in their prime, that can out-match the young women for the leading lady roles.

The modern feminist castrati of Facebook, which includes many men of my age who fancy themselves smarter than average, would know how to get to me, so the above comment at the top of this post would be a good play against me. 

For I am vain over my intellectual and prideful. Or least I have been, and I still have a tendency towards this. They would see my weakness, because it is close to my mine, and go right for the throat. A one-bullet kill shot, in front of the rest of everyone we know, taking me out of the game. 

No doubt they would indeed make mince meat of me. But I wouldn't care about that. I would confess to being stupid and slow. I would turn it into comedy.

Such fantasies come from ego, and pride. I must renounce such things.

The number reason I would not do that Facebook stunt is that it would probably drive one or both of my sisters back into the "red zone".  They just stared talking to me again, after two years silence. I wouldn't want to make them have to negotiate their Facebook reputation among their own crowd, and their "crazy brother".

I don't mind that at all. Like I have said, we will be ready, on the this side of the wall, with a mini net, like in the circus, where you will land and be caught in a soft landing, and for a moment, you will feel free.

The Frontier Ladies of Facebook

 Somewhere in the recesses of the settings of my web browser are the login credentials for my Facebook account. Ihave not used them, at least consciously, for almost eight years, after being active on Facebook from 2009 to 2016. Before I left I deactivated my account, jumping through all the hoops they make you do before you can leave. I made no announcement to my "friends" before I did. I did not want to. I wanted to make the Facebook version of the "Irish goodbye". I knew my avatar would then just be a grey featureless silhouette on people's friends list. I wonder if any remain. Sometimes I am curious to see who might still have me as a friend.

The temptation today was strong, as it sometimes is, to return to Facebook. I would reactivate my account and make a single post, and see if anyone notices. People might friend me again, as they did long ago, not because they are my friends, but because I am a member of their high school class, or maybe off by one. year. My high school class, which graduated in the perfect town in the perfect state and the perfect peak of civilization, is a cult. 

I compared Facebook to going to a high school reunion where they locks the doors of the gymnasium and they don't let anyone leave. 

In high school, most of my classmates did not care strongly about politics. I probably cared about politics the most of anyone I know. It was rare to meet anyone in my league, as far as awareness of current events, and my passion for America to follow a certain political course. Perhaps Molly, bur she only came to our high school in our senior year, a transfer from our cross-town rival, where all the "cowboys" went (Reagan was probably very popular there, but in the default sort of way). 

Most of the lukewarm ones, the smart college-bound kids, were liberals, like our history teaches, but only weakly so. Everyone "hated" Reagan, except the ones who explicitly liked him. 

It is ironic that the politicization of my cohort, the Class of 1983 resulted in so many of them becoming just the way I was in high school---an obnoxious clueless Democrat fanboys and fangirls. This was clear by the time I left Facebook. It included not only my close friends---the ones I kept in touch with, and stayed in contact with, until I was no longer invited to their get-togethers. The Facebook crowd included plenty of acquaintances with whom I had warm relations in high school.

I had warm relations with everyone in high school, or tried to. I had a very idealized vision of my high school class. It felt at the time like a little utopia. I suffered like any teenage, the usual heartbreaks, etc., but I knew it was all the consequence of my own actions. I loved all my classmates.

I left Facebook because I knew it would take heroic acts of charity on my part to continue loving them--to heroic for what I was capable.

Today I was fantasizing, as I sometimes do, about logging into Facebook using my old credentials buried in my web browser settings, reactivating my account, and making a post: "One thihg to say: Make America Great Again!" 

I would wait for the snarky replies to come in. Perhaps a message like this would from one of the effeminate feminist-truckling liberal men of my cohort, who are the bitchy enforcers of the opinions that everyone is supposed to have, the latter being guarded by the sturdy liberal women, who are the modern day counterparts of the frontier ladies who marched through downtowns smashing windows of saloons. Not much has changed, except in the old days it was done in the name of Christian principles and now it is done in the name of Anti-Christian principles. 

Let's Be Real

 Oh, I love politics. Rather, I love it again. Years I used to love it. Then for a long time I hated it. Now I love it again. I love watching the story of America play out in its politics. I spent a lot of my childhood fascinated by this, which I which I can speak about the mood of the American electorate, as observed from first hand experience, from about 1967 onward. The politics of that era is familiar to me, even though I was three years old. Except in the times I've tuned out politics (like during the mid 1990s, when I was distracted by the demands of graduate school and the decadence of Austin), I have a direct recollection of most of the story. 

The last couple years have felt like a holding pattern in the story of America and civilization, setting up the pieces for the next chapter. Many people have a strange sense of time since 2020, where everything seems to have happened very quickly. For older folks like me to experience this is nothing new, but the young are reporting the same sensation, ones of age who should have a very slow-moving sense of time during the years of childhood. Something has been wrong. I'm intrigued by theories of why this has happened.

The funess of politics, I believe, is completely synonymous with the joy of following the characters of the drama.  There have only been two interesting characters recently, for many years. One character is Donald Trump. The other character is everyone who hates him, who is a mob-lke entity where individuals take utter direction, like a swarm of insect, from the leaders. 

None of the Democrats has been interesting because they are all the same person, repeated over and over without deviation in any expressed opinion. Being a Democrat is about recognizing what you are supposed to believe and say at any given moment. Intelligence is measured by how quickly and deeply one adapts to whatever opinion has been introduced into the "program."

Most Republicans are secretly Democrats. To the rest of us, in the Real Resistance, the Republican-Democrats (not to be confused by the Democratic-Republicans of the era of Jefferson), are the worst of all because they pose as opposition, when in fact they simply want the same thing as Democrats (which is to be admired by other Democrats for their intelligence [see definition of intelligence in previous paragraph]) . Lukewarm. Republicans want to be applauded by Democrats (via the media) for their courage in going against the other Republicans.

Trump broke the paradigm because he was willing not be applauded but condemned by the Democrats.  Being condemned by the Democrats used to be political death sentence. Even Reagan gained their applause by the end of his term, which is why the nation elected his successor George Bush in a landslide, and after that we were thoroughly fucked as a nation. There was no return from his Presidency.

Bush was a dictator, the secret point man of the Global Elite that had reformed in a new internationalist coalition of the wealthy banking and aristocratic classes after the Second World War, during which many of the old Establishment were wiped out. It was great for America because our Elite moved in and took over. Americans led the global Establishment.  America built an Empire and we all lived its benefits.

Now it's coming apart. in part because the designers and creators of this order have long since left the scene, and only their watered down successors are left. They are watered down because they could not possibly duplicate the intellectual rigor and psychological discipline that curated among the first wave of Americans after World War II. Americans had to do this, to outcompete their rivals, especially the British, who were the top of the pyramid of the pre-war Establishment. Americans knew they needed classical training. You couldn't just fake it until you made it. You had to be, at least partially, real. Absent that you were liable to get your head blown off by someone who knows the true consequences of failure to be real.  

So why is politics interesting again? Because the Democrats, for the first time, are at each other's throats. It's the best thing for country. They are trying with all their might to remain "one person", with a common voice of opinion about say, whether Biden should stay or go, but the constant sloshing again is creating tidal frictions that result in permanent, acrimonious fissures in the party. These fissures will save American, and civilization. Once their unity is broken, they will scatter.

WAKE UP

 What is happening to America right now is very sad. I mean what is happening to Joe Biden.  No matter what he has done, he is one of the last standing members of the cohort of Americans born in the first half of the 1940s, that is during the Second World War. That this is how that cohort exits history is very sad.

For he must go down, and he will go down hard. As hard as those of us on the "right" have been with him, the Left will be ten times worse. They need to rip him to shreds, in part to justify the coup they will stage to replace both him and Kamala.

Kamala must go down hard in order to make way for another politician from the party among the group who are now vying to replace Biden. They will take down Kamala the same way they will take down the rest of the Bidenistas---on the grounds that they lied to America about Biden in the most disgusting way, "hiding his condition" from the public in the most self-serving of ways. 

But of course this is a delusion on their parts, because to most of the rest of us, Biden's condition has been publicly obvious for several years, since before the 2020 election in fact. They just chose to ignore it for political reasons, because Trump had to be stopped at all costs, even the point of self-hynosis into believing Biden was not advancing into dementia.

Maybe in the end, all of the power hungry part bigwigs, with the backing of the elite whom they serve, will keep Biden and Harris around in order that they lose to Trump, who is limited to a single term. If Biden goes down hard, it will be easier for the party to move on with a fresh face. Kamala can be taken out of contention for 2028 if the loss is bad enough. Like Geraldine Ferraro. Nobody talked about her 1988. The stink of the 1984 blowout was too strong.

Democratic politicians are to an individual, utterly self-serving in their political motives, all of them gifted with the ability to know what issues to dangle like carrots in front of liberals. Their gift is knowing what those things are, and presenting an image of someone who can bring that to them. When they fail to bring it, at least in the way people want, they can always blamed it on the "right", which is simply a term for anyone who is standing in their way. 

Democrats like being fooled that way. It's a junkie fix to believe an election result is going to bring happiness and justice to the world. Those things are possibly only by the GRACE OF GOD. Anyone saying anything else is acting in the spirit of Anti-Christ. 

Men and women cannot bring you that world of justice. Only God can, as much as He allows, responding to our pleas.

Wake up. It's not too late. Don't be the last in the bunker. The vast majority of those of us on this side are willing to help you make it across the bridge to safety, while you still have your wits about. Many, if not most of us, were fooled a long time too.

Pine Therapy

 Tonight is our fourth and last night up here in Summerhaven, the little community up at at 8200 feet in the Catalina Mountains outside Tucson.  The location are quite remarkable. Along the twenty-five road up from Tucson, one goes from saguaros to pine forests, as if one is driving north over hundreds of miles. The change is dramatic and beautiful. 

Being up here is always a special treat, but it also reminds me of how much I hate the desert and wish we lived somewhere with more trees like this, especially pine trees. It will be poignant to leave tomorrow, and descend back down to the desert.

The relaxation has been especially nice considering the burdens of my job over the last couple months. I didn't even think I'd be be to get out of town on Wednesday. I was sure some emergency caused by too agressive pushing of new code releases to the production server would cause bugs that would be "company-threatening." In fact I was listening in on conference calls to frantically fix issues as we drove south of Phoenix. 

I would write more but the sun is beautiful on the mountain tops around me, and the air is cool.I am going to sit outside on our patio, where we watched the Fourth of July parade two days ago. The bells from the nearby Byzantine Catholic shrine of Mary Undoer of Knots just sounded.  I can see the Eastern Cross on the building out of the balcony amidst the trees. 

Tomorrow we must go down again. But tonight we have the pines and the cool air. 

I'm Here to Save Your Company

 Since returning from California, life has been filled with constant, unrelenting work, and stress over work. At the beginning of June, we were informed that investors had given thumbs down on giving any more money to the CEO to waste on the six-year experiment that the company is.  We were informed this by a notice that although the most recent paycheck had been sent to our accounts, the money was simply not in the bank to make the next payroll. Effectively it was over.

Dazed from the sundown shutdown, we prepared our resumes and promised to give each other recommendations on LinkedIn. Some of us were in positions to make the transition to unemployment gracefully. Others not so much, especially my direct boss, who has three kids. He had used up much of the family savings before finding this current job. 

I was among the few who kept coming into the office. It was actually a beautiful time because the terror-like grip that management had held over, making us always feel as if we are not doing our jobs properly, suddenly ceased. They needed to be gracious to us.

All this because the one clinic using our system had just "gone live" with our software. Keeping this tinder fire going was the only possibility to save the company. 

I took this as a challenge. I had nothing better to do during the day than go into the office and volunteer to save the company by continuing to do coding work, alongside the front end guy, all while being treated nicely and with the kind of respect of a professional I had not experienced in years.

It took giving up my slack lifestyle and re-entering the hell world of current corporate workplace to understand how bad things have gotten in the country.  The corporate workplace is the sum of dysfunctions of the social media era. LinkedIn is the kingdom of hell (and yet it's the only site where long lost friends have re-established contact by reaching out---something about the workplaceness of it makes it less threatening). 

I was not at all worried about income, because I know God will provide for my needs. It was a joyful duty, to throw my care about this onto the Lord.

Three days later the funding came back. My frontend coworker and I were informed directly the CEO coming into the huge empty backroom (it/' most huge and empty on a normal day). We looked at each other, disappointed that the great three-day adventure was over and things would be back to normal.

Except things were not back to normal. They got more intense, because the CEO was now promising the Moon to the clinic using our software. This is his style to do this, I have been told by ex-coworkers ormer employees--to scuttle a promising trial with a clinic by accelerating the new features, instead of stabilizing the current software, and making it perfect. We are dealing with medical data--of people's kids.

But we have funding "for the foreseeable future" we were told. So I will continue to do my work as if the fate of the company depends on it. I'm very good at what I do. "When they hired me, they didn't know they were hiring the guy that would save the company," I told an ex-coworker at an unoffical happy hour with company alumni.

Bit Player at a California Wedding

 

Seeing my old friends in the pew of the church after so many years brought up a quick of series of strong emotions in various directions, not all of them of the character I would have wanted to experience in the holy setting of the Divine Liturgy. I had anticipated that these turmoil would arise in me upon seeing them, but the Lord arranged for all my preliminary rehearsals of the event to be thwarted by the sacred ritual going on around us. It was a new twist of humility, one that I welcome in retrospect. 

Fortunately this initial encounter with the old familiar crowd I had once been part of was the most challenging aspect of the rest of the weekend, save for a few twinges of pain of sadness. 

The wedding, in the same church two hours later, was lovely to experience---including the ritual exchanging of crowns above the head of the bride and groom.

 After the ceremony we followed the instructions to find the home of the bride's grandparents, where the reception and dinner was to be held. It was an opulent property on the north edge of Modesto, where the land begins sloping down to the valley of the Stanislaus River. It was the kind of property that seemed to be characteristic of the "grandfathered" wealth of California---breathtaking in the garden-like property amidst tall cedars that I called "bonsai versions of Sequoias".

It would have been easy to feel jealously, or worse envy, at someone owning such a property, but I was only happy in a serene way that the bride could grow up experiencing such a place. I lacked for nothing in my own childhood, as far as sanctuaries provided by grandparents, ones that felt like opulent gardens. It felt like a victory.

For the dinner, Jessica and I were seated at the same table as all of the group of old high school friends. We were of marginal importance in the scheme of things, being unrelated old friends of the groom's father. It felt good to be marginal, to be a supporting character. I had not even met the bride, let alone any of her family, until I had seen them in church that morning.

My news clothes were very comfortable. There was much dancing on the tennis court from the D.J.. My cohort held it's own amidst the kids in the soc-hop that ensued.  

It was beautifully auspicious for the new couple, who were set to take a long honeymoon route back to New Mexico, where they are set to begin married life together while preparing for their third year of college. Rumors came to me that they were intending to have children  sooner rather than later. I hope they are true. Of course I didn't ask the groom about that, when he dropped by our table while making the rounds. He will be a great man, and great father, as his own father has been. 

Old School Family Starting Techniques

 

The old lodge of the Peter Strauss ranch in the Santa Monica Mountains, as it would have looked in 2003, when I attended a wedding there. The lodge was later destroyed in a forest fire.

As I stood at the end of the row ---the high school reunion, Class of 1983--my concentration on the Divine Liturgy going on in the sanctuary was interrupted by a pssst from across the aisle. I turned my head and saw my friend Randy, who had been the student body president of our class, looking at me with a grin, and next to him were his wife Heather, two years behind us in the class of 1985, as well as their two sons, one of whom was the groom, and beside him his bride, in her home parish church.

Because this was not the wedding yet, there were not in a special position, but were sitting back in the same rank as us. Now it was a full reunion, it seemed. Randy is the lynch pin of the group in fact, as everyone else is still a group who gets together for events and trips on a regular occasion, despite living on different continents, while I have been estranged from all of them during these years, except for Randy, who kept calling me. Heather and I are the outliers, politically and culturally---especially on a certain health freedom issue that was greatly divisive among us.  Heather is very vocal and unashamed in her opinions. I can speak frankly with her. She was my daughter in a high school play, when I was a senior and she was a sophomore. 

I was at her and Randy's wedding 21 years ago in the Santa Monica Mountains. They had not been high school sweethearts but had encountered each other by chance years later while living in Los Angeles. I as drafted to be part of their ceremony at the last minute. From the bag by the altar, I had picked the rock labeled "love"and read it aloud to the guests. Heather could not believe it, as I was the last to go, and there had been many rocks left in the bag. She had stooped in her wedding dress to pick up the rock I I had put down, to verify I had read it correctly, which I had. 

After that ceremony, as we played group frisbee among the trees of the National Park Service property, the new groom had announced in a whisper to his old high school friends that his wife was already with child. The boy would be born the next spring and was the young man standing next to them now in Modesto with his bride. He waved back at me in recognition to me. We have been corresponding for some time privately. We talk about classical studies and scientific issues.

"How young they are," must have been the words of so many who heard the news of the couple acrosss the aisle from me, set to become one flesh in the eyes of God later that day in the same church. 

"So young! Still in college. Two years to go." With dissuasions they did receive? Perhaps none?

I am greatly in favor of it, I would have said, had anyone asked, which no one did. It's very old school---everything they told our generation not to do. Yet it is how my parents made their family, which endured despite much financial turmoil and drama, with three children and grandchildren before they died. It is how most people did it.

Civilization depends on it, I believe.

Holy Orthodox Reunion

 

The next day, Sunday, was the wedding. The ceremony was to be in the afternoon at a local Orthodox parish church. Guests of all faiths were also invited to attend the Divine Liturgy at the same church in the morning.  No way were we going to miss that.

We left our hotel just in time to get to the start of the ceremony---which isn't strictly mandatory for Orthodox faithful, and people typically come in during the ceremony. Among to the rules are that to receive Holy Communion, one must be a charismated member of a recognized Orthodox Church denomination in communion with the others, and that one must fast of both food and water from midnight until one receives the sacraments. I knew that the bride and groom would be there, and that the groom, a recent convert, would take the fasting rules seriously, and I can only assume the bride did as well.

It was childhood parish church---her family being of Syrian background, having lived in Modesto for generations. There were multiple priests officiating at the liturgy. Later we learned that one was the brother of bride, and had a parish of his own in Portland, Oregon.

The best part was that as we enterred, and waited in line in the lobby to receive bulletins from the young woman at the table, I saw my old friend Charles, whom I had not seen in over decade. He came in right behind us in line. He didn't recognize me at first. I had to tap on his shoulder, and he turned around in shock and delight, and we gave each other a big hug.

Then we went into the main part of the church. I wasn't sure they would have pews. Some orthodox churches do not, but this is a fairly modern one, and there were aisles with rows of seats (but nothing to kneel on, as one would find in a Catholic church).  The church was almost full already. Charles immediately made for a row along the far wall, where he joined his wife, who waved to me, and I saw as well my friend Karin and her husband John, who are also dear friends. 

It was the most beautiful circumstance for a reunion as I could imagine. Here we were, me and my friends, whom I had not seen in so long, and whom I thought I might never see again, and never have meaningful speech with each other if we did so. We were all together, standing in a row, in a church in Central California, facing the holy altar and listening to the same holy words that have been said since Antiquity to turn the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ.

Coffeeshop Maid of Honor

 

We landed at Sacramento Airport in the mid afternoon, claimed the rental car (which is a big hassle at that particular airport),  and drove south towards the state capital itself, then on to Modesto, where we checked into the a brand new residence stay inn on the north edge of the city, just off highway 99, which is lined with flowers on the berm in that part of the state.

The next day we had to ourselves. We drove downtown in mid day and explored the old streets. We went to the historical museum, which was a delight. Then we drove the downtown streets along the route of the old cruisers circuit, which was made famous in the 1973 movie American Graffiti, which was written and directed by local native George Lucas, who would go on to make Star Wars. The movie takes place over the course of a night in 1962, following a group of high school classmates who have just graduated. Jessica hadn't seen it yet, I described it for her.

We parked and had lunch at a local restaurant that she chose. It was apparent it had stared in a food truck and moved indoors. After lunch walked across the street to a delightful tiny coffee ship. We almost didn't go in. As we ordered our drink to go, I chatted up the staff, a young man and a young woman, of college age, asking them if they were locals. Yes, they said. 

They asked about us. Scottsdale, we said. What brings you to town? A wedding. 

Who, they asked? I said the son of one of my high school friends. 

Jessica interruped me. She knew they were asking about the local angle, and she supplied the name of the bride. They recognized it. Oh yes, we know her. Her maid of honor works here.

It was a delightful moment. I felt we'd been rewarded by the city for our earnestness in learning about its past.

The Importance of Nice Clothes

 In the midst of all this Godlessness, tomorrow I fly to Northern California to attend a wedding. It has been very stressful at work---multiple rounds of layoffs leaving a skeleton crew, and tomorrow will be as such, but I am to board a plane at noon and from when we arrive at the hotel, I will not have the luxury of being in a bad mood, or being tired. I will be all smiles. I will call no attention to myself that is undue.

I wlll see multiple old friends, some of whom I have not seen in many years, from before I left Facebook, and stopped being aware of their personal opinions, and let them forget about me. 

At least I have new clothes, nice ones. The best way to feel comfortable in public is to wear nice clothes.

You have to pack them though, in a suitcase that you must shepherd through a crowded public place, wearing normal clothes because your nice ones are packed in the suitcase, as you are saving them for when you need to be social among friends.