DoctorD's Observations

The Great Obstructionist Party (GOP)

For an easier to read copy of the full text, click here.

Stuff

Stuff on a porch

I got a kick from this messy porch.  I have a lot of stuff, too, but it doesn't look as bad as this!

The photo was taken in a small town in the Virginia "hunt country" to the west of Washington, DC.  Probably we were near US 50, but I think we had gotten off that road, looking for the Appalachian Trail's crossing.

Extremes

Boy, have we had some heavy rainstorms here.  There were considerable segments of major expressways closed down because the water was too deep to pass through.  Much damage to homes, business, and belongings.  There had been nothing similar, it was said for at least 50 or 100 years.

Up around the Wisconsin line, apparently, there were quite a few tornados.

Back east, in Virginia, where we were a couple weeks ago, there was extremely hot weather (I imagine the rain will pass through in a couple days).  On our road trip we experienced a high of 104°.  Today, it got up to 105°, a record.

NASA has indicated that this is on track to be the hottest summer for as long as there have been reliable records, which is back to 1880.

I hope some members of Congress were around the Capitol area to take note.  It is amazing that quite a few "responsible" officials are totally indifferent to a threat to themselves, their constituents, their children, and grandchildren.

I can understand the desire to "deny."  For example, I would like to deny that I am getting weak and sicker as I get old; that I have conditions which are potentially fatal, and that for sure my isn't likely to last more than a few years more.  There are the possibility of great discomforts and indignities; there is the possibility of being lonely, broke, inept and forgotten.

But--that is what is in the cards.  For me, and ultimately at least one day for you, too.  (Sorry to bring that up).  

Republicans seem very adept at believing things that aren't true, and at dreaming up things for others to believe that aren't true.  Ideas like cutting taxes increases federal revenues and balances the budget, and that members of Congress were writing legislation providing for "death circles" to save expenditures on the health care of the elderly.  That Obama wasn't born in the U.S. and that our "mission was accomplished" in Iraq quite a few years ago.  The list goes on and one.

I haven't yet determined if they post different temperature readings on Fox News than on all the other channels.  Lower ones.  Less dire.

But I look around, pay attention, try to understand what the experts think, and then make up my own mind (temporarily, provisionally).   That's because I was once a journalist, once an official policy analysis, once a college teacher, and am a Democrat.

Ignorance

I just watched a show on the Travel Channel about Liberia.  It makes me very aware of how little I know.

What an awful history that place has had!  And yet, they showed some children smiling.  Along with Christian church services and voo-doo cults.

They had a terrible civil war.  Horrifying.  Drugged up child-soldiers, out to kill, and doing so very effectively..

Duster

We saw a crop-dusting airplane today, zooming low over the fields--so low you couldn't see it at the bottom--and barely clearing the phone lines.  And, we ended up breathing in some of the insecticide or whatever it was spraying.  Probably that isn't good.  But it sure was dramatic to see, though!  

Our own private air show.

I realize I am feeling...

I realize I am feeling sad about all the difficult, painful, some of them terrible things in the world.

Not only the big ones, like the earthquake in Haiti or the fouling of the Gulf.  The attack on Pearl Harbor.  The Nazi death camps.  9/11.  The great many people (Americans) who have lost their jobs, houses, pensions, vacations, and health care in the Great Recession.

But the little ones, too.  The things that hurt people's feelings.  The mistakes, the oversights, the slights.

There are so many!

I am not going to deny that there are good things in the world as well.  Nobody is arguing that.  Perhaps Mother Theresa?  Perhaps a clear, sunny day with a little breeze and green grass growing, maybe some flowers nearby?  A hamburger for dinner, grilled appropriately, from good meat with a soft bun with sliced onions, sliced tomatoes, a bit of lettuce and a bit of pickle relish and mustard?

I am not going to argue that.

But what I am feeling now, quite intensely, is sadness about all of the difficult, painful, terrible things in the world.  There are so many!  And many of them are our own (collectively) fault.

We could do better.  

We have religion, philosophy, etiquette, aesthetics, laws, and government to teach us how.

We have morality; we have at least a certain degree of intelligence and sensitivity.

But we don't.  But we won't.

A spiritual suggestion

Make your own Bible!

Select & Collect all those words & sentences that in all your reading have been to you like the blast of trumpet out of Shakspear, Seneca, Moses, John, & Paul. 

     

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals, July 1836

Old_book_open_T

Along the Lincoln highway in Ohio

Lincoln hwy

Beaches

While the poor gulf beaches are threatened with sticky oil globs, there are of course other beaches along our east and west coasts, on the great lakes, and elsewhere.

Surf Lessons

Our travels took us through a number of such beach resorts.  We had a very positive impressive of Rehobeth Beach DE, and not so much so of Ocean City, Maryland.  The honky-tonk level at the latter is so great that my wife just couldn't wait to get away from it--a feeling she also has about Atlantic City.

I don't really have a favorite beach or beach town, but high on the list would be Spring Green, NJ, and Jupiter FL.  Really, though, I am not all that much of a beach person.  But the cool breezes are nice!