When I Went to Nova Scotia

 Getting away from work was less painful than I thought. I was able to make a soft landing with the current project I'm working on. Ideally it will just stay on pause until I get back, and I can come back in two weeks and pick up exactly where I left off. I will write notes to myself, this evening, for what I should do on the Monday of my return. I will open them like secret instructions.

I have lived my life that way---looking for the secret instructions to one thing or another. One of my favorite things about traveling in the past was simply the logistics challenge of getting from point A to point B. Do this, then this, this. Since 1990 I have "scripted" my travels that way. Getting from home to aiport. How and when. Through the terminal, etc. Upon arrival, do this, and...here the fun begins. Take this bus heading to this direction.

In the old days it was very hard to choreograph the logistics of a trip like that, especially for foreign countries. How did one find out the information? One relied on Guidebooks, discovered in physical form at bookstores. There was a great one next to the UT campus for that.After the world wide web came along and make it a lott easier. The first great trip I took with web research beforehand was in May 1996, when I used the occassion of my sister's wedding outside Boston to make a land voyage up through the Canadian Maritimes, and then loop through Quebec and down to New York City, where I was going to stay with a friend in Manhattan.

I was blown away tht I could fesearch the ferry schedules in Nova Scotia, and the VIA Canada rail timetables.

Of course during every great trip, one departs utterly from the logistical plan and goes rogue. One enters a space of graceful freelancing. I leave room in my schedule for these soft times, when one should travel without time constraints, at least for a couple days, and make decisions on the fly, and see where it takes you.

Dress Rehersal for PTO

 The night before the night before leaving on a trip. Dryer just finished a load. Rolling bag is on the floor, lying flat and the panel zipped open. A few items are already tossed inside, but much space remains.  

Strange to say, this a literal old school "vacation" using earned paid-time-off from work. It's pleasing to take a break in this manner. I feel like a throwback. I'm blad to experience the corporate world one more time, because  it is my chance to achieve certain goals in that regard, mostly spirwith ititual, but a few earthly professsional ones.

Also it is the world so many must live in for their entire adult lives, and I wanted to empathy for them. Many young people are discouraged about the apparent meaningless of life lately, believing that they will never have certain things that were common in previous generations (such as a family, etc.).

People try to derive meaning out of a corporate job, and sometimes they get it, it often seems pathetic, even if is noble somehow to do it. How are we all putting up it?

Lately I just try to follow the rules, the ones from my Creator, and also the corporate handbook, which is not the word of God.

Ferris Wheel Season

 "The feris wheel is back," said Jessica, a couple nights ago, while standing at the kitchen sink and looking out the window into the darnkess of late November evening. 

I knew at once what she meant. We had seen it years back, before COVID, before the holiday. It is quite a distance away. From where our window sits, on the third floor, we can see far across the lowland flats.before the freeway, and then across the populated part s of North Scottsdale, and then onto the mountains on the west side of the Phoenix Valley.

The lights were a pleasant and festiv, every oto notice when finding oneself looking out the window into the darkness. 

The lights puzzled us. What are they?

We guessed ferris wheel immediately, but if so, where was it? Surelyd we would have noticed it's presence somehow while driving around that part of Scottsdal on the elevated 101 freeway. But by daylight we could see nothing that might be a ferris wheel.

It was a mystery. I consulted street maps, both digital and paper. We had guesses, based on a single bearing. If only we could see it somewhere else, I thought, we could triangulate it's location.

Then in the spring it went away. We figured as such. After April, no one wants to do anything outside here, even after dark.

The lights came and went a few more years, always appearing in the autumn and disappearing around Easter.

In 2020 it went away early. Everything was shut down, even our lights.

Later we read an article in the free community monthly newspaper that gets mailed to all local addresses, IT mentioned the seasonal ferris wheel at the a well-known resort we knew, and which was original guess. The ferris wheel was coming back at some point, when the pandemic allowed it, the article said. 

We had it lucky here in Arizona during the pandemic. The governor never attempted a statewide shutdown. He knew people here wouldn't put up with that

We'd been to the hotel, the Fairmount Princess, to dine at the high-end steakhouse for my birthday (of course at Jessica's suggestion, as she researches such things). It was an excellent steak, one of the best I have ever had. We didn't see a ferris whee, but e weren't looking for yet, and it was too early in the season.

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.