Once There was a Spot

 

Richard Harris as Arthur in the final scene of the 1967 motion picture version of Camelot. The boy is Tom of Warwick, a stowaway. Although it is not explicitly stated, he might be intended to be Thomas Malory, author of Le Morte d'Arthur. 

Tonight on my show I broke down crying--twice, in fact, over the same thing. (link)

It was not over the fact that technically it was my most problematic broadcast to date, out of the 95 episodes I have done during the last two years. First off, I had barely finished preparations before showtime, one of my closest scrapes yet in that regard. I had just finished uploading this week's intro video--about eight minutes long, made in the two hours leading up to broadcast, and had just put the finishing touches on my Keynote slides (my notes without which I am lost), when I looked up and saw by my laptop clock that was bang 5:30 exactly. So I pressed the "Go Live" button on Streamyard and waited to hear the intro background music on the live feed from my desktop. 

Usually that is how I tell if my audience can hear me, by my desktop computer, by earbuds connected to my desktop computer, which passively receives the broadcast as if I am a live viewer of my own show. This week, however, I had been vexed by the web browser on my desktop---I had to restart twicee and it was stubborning refusing to load up Rumble. The page was freezing.

So wasting a minute, I had booted up Rumble on my iPhone browser, to accomplish the same goal. Right at the last minute, literally, the desktop browser began working and so I put the iPhone aside on my desk, with my show playing on it as well the desktop. I have never done this step before, using my iPhone but it saved the show this week.

I played this week's intro video as usual. The right after I came on the air, I realized my Yeti standalone microphone was not working.  The quick fix didn't work, so even though the audience could see me, I was dead in the water as far as audio (which is always more important than video). Then, an even bigger disaster struck. Our home Internet went out. Jessica yelled it from the next room. She saw our router had gone down and was rebooting. There was nothing to do but wait. 

Viewers saw a frozen image of me and no sound. I was helpless, I thought. Then I remembered, I had booted up Rumble on my iPhone and I could see the live chat scrolling there. This was because my iPhone was using the phone network, which was working fine. I jumped into chat and told my audience about my wi-fi  being out, hoping at least a few of them would stick around while I overcame my technical difficulties.

I was off the air for ten minutes at least. To my surprise people who were in the chat hung in there and most seemed to be still listening when the router finished rebooting and the wifi came back. I reloaded the Streamyard page and things resumed again.  A great lesson in coping with live disasters on air.

I had figured that losing wi-fi during a live broadcast would happen to me one day. I almost had to cancel a broadcast last spring because our Internet was out for almost an entire morning and afternoon leading up to the show. But it came back just in time before I had to send the final cancellation message to the Badlands tech people, and more importantly the ad folks, who would have to be notified about the fact that sponsors should not be charged for the ads that didn't run (it's always top priority to get the sponsors into the show). One must be a professional.

When I came back on air this week I was giddy with laughter. All seemed to be well again for the moment. One of my longtime viewers even commented that it was "your best opening ever." Several folks even sent me money via "Rumble rants" during the time I was off the air! 

I was expecting the wi-fi to fail again at any moment, and dreaded what I would have to do at that point, but the network held fast for the rest of the show.  Because of the delay the broadcast wound up running a little bit longer than I wanted, almost to eighty-five minutes out of the ninety I have available to me. But I got through all the material I wanted to cover.

So why did I break down in tears live on the air, two separate times? 

Perhaps all this disaster recovery had me a little euphoric. The topic of the show was that Camelot is back. By that I mean the feeling of the era of the Kennedy Administration, and the 1960s at least up to the assassination of Bobby Kennedy in June 1968. My opening video this week was about that, in facct, and used clips of the Kennedys including Jackie giving a White House tour, interspersed with footage from the Broadway show Camelot, and of Richard Burton, Julie Andrews, and Robert Goulet performing numbers on  the Ed Sulllivan show in 1961, and then clips from the 1967 motion picture starring Richard Harris, and Vanessa Redgrave. 

The original Broadway show ran from just before Kennedy's inauguration in Jan 1961 until about ten months before he was assassinated in 1963. The movie came out right before Robert Kennedy began running for president (which led to his assassination in the spring).

Today everyone associated the stage production and movie, and the concept of Camelot in Arthurian legends, with the Kennedy Era, I told my audience I was not alive for Jack's presidency but that "Camelot" as an era lasted from Jan 1961 until Bobby's death in June 1968. I remember it, I told my audience. "I remember how it felt...and I'm telling you this now, today, feels like Camelot again. It feels like we have gotten back there at last."

I read to my a report of the origins of how the Broadway show became identified with Kennedy. I found it online and seemed credible. It happened only after Jack's death and it was entirely due to Jackie. Two weeks after Jack's death, Life magazine published a special edition covering the funeral, and the Kennedy presidency. The last article in the magazine was by the historian Theodore H. White, who had won the Pulitzer Prize for his book The Making of the President 1960, which he wrote covering the entire election, including Kennedy's campaign. Now he was writing the "epilogue" to that presidency for Life magazine. He interviewed Jackie, who told him that Jack had a copy of the Broadway cast recording of Camelot, as did many Americans. By the way, Theodore H. White is no relation to T. H. White who wrote The Once and Future King, upon which the Lerner and Loewe Broadway show was based.

from the article by (Theodore H.) White.

In the December 9th, 1963 issue of Life Magazine, published just a matter of days after President Kennedy's assassination, Theodore H. White wrote one of several articles about the event and all that immediately followed. The final piece in the issue was titled "For President Kennedy, An Epilogue", and in it came the roots of the "Camelot" myth.

Mrs. Kennedy was quoted as saying:

"When Jack quoted something, it was usually classical, but I'm so ashamed of myself, all I keep thinking of is this line from a musical comedy. At night, before we'd go to sleep, Jack liked to play some records; and the song he loved most came at the very end of this record. The lines he loved to hear were: Don't let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment, that was known as Camelot."

She went on: "Once, the more I read of history, the more bitter I got. For a while, I thought history was something that bitter old men wrote. But then I realized history made Jack what he was. You must think of him as this little boy, sick so much of the time, reading in bed, reading history, reading the Knights of the Round Table, reading Marlborough. For Jack, history was full of heroes. And if it made him this way -- if it made him see the heroes -- maybe other little boys will see. Men are such a combination of good and bad. Jack had this hero idea of history, the idealistic view."

She returned to quote the musical again: "Don't let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment, that was known as Camelot -- and it will never be that way again."

Reading that lyric Jackie quoted, my voice broke and my eyes got visibly misty. It was too much. 

I also broke down when telling my audience he significance of the clip from the movie, in the final scene, which Richard Harris as Arthur, on the eve of the battle in which knows he will perish, telling a young stowaway that despite his desire to join the Knights of the Round Table, he cannot be warrior in battle the next day. Instead he must survive, and live out his life, and tell people in the future what Camelot truly meant. 

I know the older members of my audience knew what it all meant, the tears. How long have waited for the return of what we once had. And now, for the moment at least, it feels like Camelot is in sight. The Knights of the Round Table are gathering again. There is heroism in the air, like there hasn't been in a long time. What seemed impossible now feels possible.

I'm taking next week off from the show, because we'll be traveling for Thanksgiving. After tonight, I truly feel like I deserve it.

This was our Destiny

 

The 1984 movie Red Dawn, now considered a cult classic, was about a group of small-town Colorado high school students who become guerrilla fighters against a Communist invasion of America. The letter jackets in the photo look almost the same as the ones of my old school. Even I got awarded a gold "C". Back then, all of us would have asserted that we would have been among the ones who fought back. A couple years ago I jokingly told Heather that she and I, and presumably her husband, would be among the only ones among our friends in the resistance.  Her grandfather, I think, was a master sniper in the Finnish Army who fought the Russians in World War II when they invaded Finland.

Among the few people I know among my old friends who shares my political views is Heather. She is also among those who were more resolute than four years ago, and spoke about the this election the way I spoke about 2020. 

No doubt this was partly due to Trump's embrace of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, in particular because of RFK's stance regarding childhood vaccines.  Fighting against mandatory vaccine laws for her children has long personal crusade, long before COVID. It caused our mutual group of friends to shun her,.  Unlike me, she is still in regular contact with them. because of her husband Randy, whom I consider to be like a brother, and who serves as a point of universal neutral contact among all of us. It is from Randy I still get my news of the people I once considered almost like family members. 

I last saw many of them in May for the wedding of Randy and Heather's eldest son. Even then a few were missing---not invited because they have said hateful things to Heather on Facebook regarding her politics. One declined the invitation because of bad feelings regarding COVID. Another of them lived only a hour away from the wedding in the Bay Area but was purposefully excluded from the invitation list because of hateful comments of Facebook. This is exactly why I left Facebook---I saw it coming, and I didn't want to see old friends saying the things I knew they were going to say, wishing death and violence on others, all in the name of (ugh) "love is love". Some things cannot be unsaid.

I have long since realized that this separation was my choice and preference, but it is too late to go back, even if I wanted.

 It is probable I'll see Randy and Heather again, but as for the others, I thought in May that maybe it could be the last time I would see them all. It is hard to see such an occasion arising. They were cordial and friendly to me, but I know they do not think of me anymore and my name does not come up when planing mutual get-togethers. I am not invited to any of their personal events, and have not been so for years. I will not be invited the weddings of their children. I will hear of them only through Heather. Lately she communicates to me mostly through the Telegram app. Now her grown (and married) son communicates with me using Telegram as well.

After Jessica and I went to see RFK and Trump in Glendale right before the election, I was excited to tell her about it via Telegram. I was happy to tell her the biggest applause line of the night was when RFK said he hoped the new Trump administration would prohibit pharmaceutical ads. Everyone in the audience knows that the mainstream media basically lives off Big Pharma money.

The morning after the election she sent me a follow-up message: "It was a glorious day, thank God!"

I replied that my favorite factoid of the night was that the only age cohort to vote for Trump was not Gen Z, or Millennials, or Boomers, but Generation X. They did so with such a margin as to offset Harris's victory among all the other age groups. She gave me a "heart" on that comment and I immediately followed up with: This was our destiny.

Her: "Agreed. Interesting that so many of our friends did not join us."

Me "It is a source of great sadness to me"

Her: "Agreed".

Hamlet's Question

 

Years ago in college, I took an English literature course about adaptations of Shakespeare. In a sense every production even on stage is an adaptation, but often we focus on movie adaptations. I recently watched a video by one of my favorite cinema Youtubers arguing that the greatest movie of all time is Kenneth Brannagh's 1996 adaptation of Hamlet. I saw the movie when it first came out and like it, but have generally prefer the 1948 version with Lawrence Olivier. The video may be consider watching the 1996 version again. "Don't worry that's just the murdered prime minister's daughter hitting the walls of her room." genius.

How quiet things seem compared to four years ago, at least in my soul. The election mattered much to me. I found myself asking why it should matter so much? I spent much of the year convinced Trump would win, but all the while knowing that as Election Day approached, I would lose that confidence because the reality of it would, well, trump any of my expectations and desires.

God will take care of things, I told myself, as far as the outcome. The Spirit would move people in the right way. Worrying was pointless. Anxiety nothing but a distraction.

But what about voting? What advocacy? What about telling other people who I was voting for? I have been politically aware, and active in expressing political opinions, since I was a young child. What was the point? Do such worldly things matter?

I recognized this as the same question every man must confront at various times in his life. It is, in essence, the same question that Hamlet famously asks himself in Act II Scene 2 of the Shakespeare play, the most famous words of English literature.  There are as many versions of it as there are human beings, and an infinity times that, because it can be asked in an infinite number of circumstances in one's life.

To this day, whenever I watch a movie, I will call out Hamlet's Question when it appears in the story, at the point the hero is confronted by the type of choice found in Shakespeare.

Of course Hamlet is speaking about his particular circumstances within the story, and refers to a literal "death" but as great literature it evokes a universe of possible meanings. Should one go to war as a soldier, and possibly kill to defend one's homeland, or refuse to participate in it? Christian tradition has endorsed the idea that at times it is necessary to do so---with humility and prayer (see Our Lady of Victory, funny how the date of that has been now usurped by commemoration of a more recent war, one that I care to steer very clear of).,

My resolution before Election Day this year was that no matter what happened, I would not let it wreck me up, as it did four years ago. Even if it was blatantly stolen again (and certain races were almost certainly stolen), I would not let it disturb my inner peace. 

Ironically I noticed that people I know were much more into the outcome than four years ago, expressing the sentiment that this was a Flight 93 Election, that if we did not prevail this time, we would lose America as we know it forever. We would never get another chance. I believed that. I believed that four years ago too, and then watched the nightmare unfold. We felt like outlaws, pariahs. We had to build from scratch. We got another chance, and we won.

I love to watch old broadcasts of election night coverage on Youtube, both from lifetime and before I was born. I have been doing this frequently for my weekly podcast with my audience, because being a time machine traveler seems to be what I do well, and the audience likes it. I did a series of shows about the 1968 election, which is slightly before my awakening to the world of current events, but I remember being the most recent American election. 

In the old news coverage, there was much less punditry and more factual reporting of the myriad results. But every news room during an election cycle had the "old guy" they would trot out to give opinion based on their decades of experience. For example in 1980 on NBC, John Chancellor and Tom Brokaw were the younger "blow by blow" anchors of the coverage. The "old man" was played by David Brinkley, who had once been an anchor, but who now came out several times in the evening to give his "veteran perspective" from a more detached historical slant. I delight in noticing such things about the past and telling my audience about them. 

I think if I posed Hamlet's Question to my audience in regard to the election, even the ones older than me (I don't know if any young folks ever watch my show), I would get a solid answer of "take arms against a sea of trouble." Otherwise they probably wouldn't be watching my show. It's the gist of the "network" on which I broadcast, and I am ever conscious of the show business aspect of what I do, to the point of being a comical throwback at times.

As a note about Shakespeare is that Hamlet never answers his own question. He seems to do so,  by his actions in the rest of the story, but ask yourself: how does the story end? What was the answer after all?  Such is life on the Earthly plain, both on a personal level, and in the history of nations. Give me that man who is not passion's slave.

I have an affection for the old Signet Classic paperback editions of Shakespeare's well, and first read Shakespeare using these. They first appeared din 1963 and used to be plentiful on the shelves of  used book stores for less than a dollar. They had the splendid typography and design of that era, and later editions show the decline of such quality in our civilization. As such it is harder to find the older Signet Classics editions and whenever I find one, they are more expensive than the original cover price. I snapped up my copy of Hamlet during a trip to New Mexico last year, in a little general store next to the Albuquerque museum, which had a shelf of "free books."

One Day an Armistice

Four years ago today I declared* it to be D-Day, the day of the counterattack against the attempt to overthrow the constitutional republic, by the fraudulent theft of a national election. As of today we have taken back that beach head. We are now picking up where we left off, but in accelerated fashion. It had to be this way. Some astute people knew at the time, that it would have to be that way. Thomas Wictor told us years ago: "Trump is a showman. He produced Broadway plays and wanted to go into Hollywood. Later on he had the number one show on prime time television. He knows the heroes journey. He knows all must seem lost, and that people root for the comeback in the third act." He mapped it out this way, his future, in his book The Art of the Deal. Most people have no idea who he really is. They are going off a character he plays, that he invented, or maybe a series of characters. He is a Postmodern as they get. They never same him coming because they believed themselves to be the masters of the Postmodern. They known tehy own the stage, the theater, the players, and the rights to the script. It was beautiful. Wictor was right. Now it involves bare knuckles politics. Or it will seem to. Those who think they know Trump will tell you that most likely he has already won the current battles involving setting up the new government, that folks are talking about on Twitter, and frettng over, as if haven't seen a whole thing of miracles happen. Does that mean he purposefull "threw" the 2020 election? That is, did he let them steal it, and did he even encourage the backlash that made him an "outcast from decent society" for a season (like Batman). That's an interesting question to consider. He knew it would take having a losing hand in 2020, being overwhelmed by the mail-in avalanche, and making himself look bad, then invoking certain continuity of government operations (the socalled PEADs) that had been put in place by Eisenhower (in secret at the time) to preserve the constitution in case of nuclear attack. Trump saw what happened in 2020 to be a foreign attack (he said so explicitly in public), and invoked those measures, as would be his right to do so, and arguably his duty as he wore in his oath of inauguration. It was attempt by the globalist government (let's just admit such a thing exist already and be done with it) against the "conquered province" called the United States, which was trying to revolt. Certainly it was a gamble. We had to come through, and actually vote for him. In the end, that's how we want things to happen in America. It has to be real. We can use theater as a weapon, a strategy agaist them (what are the so-called "color revolutions' of recent years than a form of theater coupled with covert kinetic action to seize governments?). We thought we were immune from it in America because we are more sophisticated. But they underestimated us. They thought the energy and genius of America was spent. It was time for America to come home to the old world, and be ruled from afar again, with the participation of American voices but not under its own destiny anymore. We know who we are, the ones who oppose them. We call ourselves patriots in honor of the ones from two and half centuries ago, who established our current form of government. We recognize authenticity in each other. We look at Trump and see he is one of us. He is a mortal man. He seems to have some kind of mission from God. I'm proud to be a distant cousin to him. Pride in the sense of admiration of someone else, and the assertion of obligation to uphold a tradition, a legacy, or a human bond. The blackpillers think Trump will sell us out in the end, sell us back to their hegemony. "He will never let you down" --Melania, in 2016, speaking at the RNC.

*Sounds pompous. I know none of what happened that I just described is due to my "declaration" for four years ago. That was an observation of an onlooker. I was a a journalist, merely tagging along with the troops. I deserve no wartime honor from this, only the satisfaction from direct experience that sometimes an Appeal to Heaven works, when the people humble themselves before God.

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.