The Vanishing Blue Baskets

Though experiencing temporary technical difficulties, The Truthless Reconciler plows intrepedly on! THE WAL MART where i shop is small, sparse, quick, and easy, a good place to pick up a few groceries. The hand held blue baskets were a convenient alternative to push carts, which can become a problem in a congested isle. One day the blue hand held baskets were not there. They had disappeared, vanished. I walked around for a few minutes, gathered some groceries in my arms,then went to pay for them. I asked the cashier about the blue baskets, and she said she had no idea. A few days later i did the same thing, encountered the same associate, and asked the same question. This time she suggested the possibility that they had all been stolen. In retrospect, that seems perfectly sensible. A basket here, a basket there... but wouldn't somebody see someone walking out the door with one? I mean, they're not huge, but neither are they too small, and there is no reason for them to leave the store, and anyone carrying one out the door would be immediately suspect. Hearing this explanation, my irritation rose, and i began to smell a conspiracy, a cover up of some sort. I began to think that maybe some corporate decision had been made, for some reason, doubtless profit oriented. Get rid of the small baskets, make 'em use full sized carts, they'll buy more. Something like that. the tought alwo entered my mind that alien entities from other dimension might be involved, and i articulated this to the cashier. She seemed skeptical, or confused. But, in america, the more unlikely and incredible the story, the bettter it sells. For now, I'm sticking with the corporate boardroom intrigue, augmented perhaps by a good healthy dose of aliens and conspiracies.

Freedom to Choose

IT WAS ONE OF THE  most stupid, surrealistic arguments i have ever been involved in, which is mainly whi i avoid arguing; the opponent always seems like an idiot, and i don't like that feeling.

This time it was about the american flag, and once again, i strongly felt i was right, surprisingly., my roommate, there in the singel wide trailor just outside aspen, fancied himself a staunch patriot, as do conservatives generally, and vehemently and vociferously maintained that there ought to be a law against burning the american flag, which at the time there wasn't, and still isn't.

I explained to him that the flag stands for freedom, which he was trying to limit, and that the moment somebody burns a flag, he can simply make a new one, and that property rights required the right to burn whatever one owns, and so forth.

all perfectly good, conservative arguments.but to no avail.

our legalistic, propietary society already has enough laws; let's avoid, to whatever extent possible, creating more.

let's get rid of some that we already have. such as laws pertaining to sex. may we someday abandon the insane notion that morality can be legislated.

you can legislate minimum, maximum wage, you can legislate all kinds of economic laws, if you want to. to maintain a sensible economy, but not to hurt people, or "steal" their wealth.

but if you try to legislate morality, as we often do in america, you're only asking for trouble. you simply cannot do it. may future americans have the freedom to burn the flag, and the freedom to put drugs or whatever else they want to inside their bodies.
we can always hope that they choose not to.

The Birds

JAPANESE MAPLE TREES are lovely, and my friend has one in his backyard, surrounded by a rock patio, only about fifteen feet from the back door. The tree is about ten or twelve feet tall, bushy, healthy and growing rapidly.

A few weeks ago a couple of robins built a nest in the tree about five feet off the ground, and laid three blue eggs. My friend took an immediate interest and began photographing the nest and eggs, and, whenever he could, mom and dad.

Trouble started when he started becoming bolder in his quest for photos of the parents. One gets greedy, you know. Inching  closer and closer to the nest, pushing the envelope, fortified by his presumed ownership of the property, he finally started crossing some imaginary line.

As if some bird's eye boundary had been crossed, as if response had been automatically, unavoidably triggered, the robins commenced dive bombing operations against my friend who, alarmed, initially retreated to the interior of his house.

Ensconced therein, he tried to regroup, cast off his sense of humiliation and defeat, and prepare for a suddenly uncertain future. My friend is a brave man, and he resolved to not, under any circumstances, ever again be driven in defeat from his own back yard.

When next he marched intrepedly out the back door with camera in hand, he had in his other hand - a fly swatter. And he wasn't afraid to use it. Weilding it menacingly, he perceived that this seemed to instill within the birds some degree of hesitation, as if being a bit wary about resuming hostilities.

But alas, at length, the two adults decided than my friend was more bluster than bite, and resumed attacking. My friend waved the fly swatter fiercely, never came close to either bird, didn't really want to, but alas, again was eventually forced to withdraw from the field of battle. First and second bull run, if you will.

The thought corssed my mind of suggesting to my friend that he take however many pictures were required to satisfy him, then quietly refrain from further approaches of the robin's nest, in order to spare his personal pride and, avert further conflict.

But why bother. A man's going to do what he's going to do, especially my persistant stubborn friend. Life hath no greater motivator than a human's wounded pride. I even suggested that he call the police for tactical support, or at least cover, but we decided that they would only advise him to leave the birds alone, which was not an option.

they hatched, and the little ones flew away to begin their lives with amazing quickness, perhaps having heard stories about the mad human with the weapon, and knowing what's good for them. They'll probably never again face as great a threat.

Darla

Make as many friends as you can in high school, because, never again will you have such an opportunity to spend as much time with as many people your own age, with whom you have a lot in common, high school, if nothing else, and the opportunity to form friendships with the potential to endure for decades.

When you come to the end of your life, if you have one good friend left, you are fortunate, said my father, and he might have had a point. The advent of the internet gave us all a second chance, as it were, to form friendships by the bushel. Facebook seems to have replaced chat rooms as the social venue of choice, which is understandable, since chatrooms were always so full of acrimony and goofiness; but chatrooms had their positive value, and i for one, rather miss them.

I got my first computer in 2000, and got on aol, which at the time had seventeen million members, and grew to 34 million by 2005. On aol, in the chatrooms, i met many people, all over the country, and in particular, i met darla.

Instant messaging - has it been replaced by twitter? Is twitter nothing other than instant messaging by another name, with a limit placed on number of letters?

In 2000, and on into 2001, darla and i had quite an online romance. We became online friends, but alas, i was more interested in her than she was in me. To quote Jagger, "it tells the tale of men".

She signed on to aol less and less, she drifted away from me, and i heart brokenly moved on. Finally i too lost interest in aol, drifted away from social media, and never did regain my momentum in the facebook twitter era.

A couple of times, ten yeras or so into the new millenium, i googled darla, and saw her name, but little else. then, just the other day, whimsically, i googled her again, and i came up with - her obituary.

after twelve years of wondering about her, i found out. she never married or had children, but moved to another part of the country, and presumably, like everyone else, replaced aol with facebook. In december of 2012 she died, at a relatively young age.

this brought about all sorts of emotions in me, including self pity. So you preferred death to me, huh darla. That sort of thing. What would your fate had been had you been as interested in me as i was in you? What might you and i have been together?

At least i got to sign and leave a message in the online memory book, and i saw pictures of darla, for the first time. I had never really known what she looked like. Now I know. The feelings of nostalgia and grief welled up in me, and have yet to abate. Well then, I'll see her in heaven, if she wants me to.

Only In America

THE MOST AMAZING THING about the trevon martin zimmerman trial is how wildly popular it became. In the united states of advertising one expects to be forever awash in some form of sordid scandal, via the media, but this is truly extraordinary, even by our standards.

We are spoon fied, of course, one delicious seductive sensational shocking scandal at a time, just to keep us mollified, docile, placid, controllable. This one was a corporate marketing division's dream, since it lasted forever, touched on some deeply american issues, exciting and impossible to predict all the way to the shocking end.

What will be our next bill o faire? What will be be fed next by our corporate masters, acting through their media mind mass mind mold? It must already be on the horizon, somewhere out there, if we look hard enough. It had better be good; zimmerman will be a tough act to follow.

Not to worry, say our corporate masters. They lap up whatever we feed them, like the good little obedient servants that they for the most part are.

Amazing, that a random, momentary, brutal encounter between two young men with too much anger and arrogance should have become such an enormous industry, but, as they say, only in america.

Alternate Outcomes

STILL AND ALL, by, say, september 17, 1787, certain facts should have, it would seem, been obvious to the framers. Among them, that the new nation would grow, and would spread european-american culture across the continent. Therefore, something would have "to be done" about the natives along the way. The problems and limits of merely forever marching them westward were easily foreseeable.

A comprehensive game plan should have been in place early on in our nation's history, which could have spared us over a hundred years of chaos and agony. What if, for instance, the land that is now georgia were dividedinto two states, georgia, and...cherokee....a state established by the five civilized tribes, administered in their chosen way, within the U.S. constitution, like all other states?

The way things turned out, the way thigns are now, bear in mind, the indians are shoved off into the far corners of the country on reservations, with high levels of unemployment and poverty and alcoholism, and a lot of legalized gambling, and reliance on government welfare.

almost anything would be better than that, wouldn't it?

Do we really need a north dakota and a south dakota? One of them could have been an indian run state.

Other Battles

THE FOOD STAMP program has been around awhile, since the great society of president johnson. Just the other day the increasingly conservative and uncooperative U.S. House of reps voted, by a very slim margin, the food stamp program out of existence. Pretty shocking stuff, even for republicans.

It'll be put back in though. The Senate and the president won't allow food stamps to perish; i would cause a national uproar, maybe even provide the spark to trigger what seems almost inevitable in america; a war between the rich and the poor.

Gore Vidal said he could remember riding in the back of his grandfather's limo as a very young child, his grandfather being senator gore from Oklahoma. As they made their way through the streets of washington D.C. the car was pelted by objects thrown by bonus army protestors, and vidal said that from that time forward, he was acutely aware of the simple fact that in the united states of america, a war between the rich and the poor is possible.

One possible scenario would be for the tea party to come to power, and eliminate every government program that provides economic assistance to people, including disability and unemployment. That right htere might be enough to start the fighting. And if they ever came to power, heaven forbid, don't doubt that the tea party would push a very  social darwinistic agenda.

But for now, look for food stamps to get reinstated, and the tea party republicans to sneer disdainfully, and move on to another battle.

Living Wages

WAL MART HAS NEVER, unless i miss my guess, had much of a presence in washington D.C., other than the usual corporate purchasing of politicians and political power. No retail stores to speak of. This seems strange, because where could one find a larger low wage labor force and millions of bargain hungry poor customers than in a huge city full of poor people like washington D.C.?

Recently, however, they planned to open three new stores in the district. However, the city council of the nation's capitol passed an ordinance that if wal mart stores open for business in the district, it must pay what the council calls "a living wage", which they interpret to be twelve and a half per hour, minimum.

Wal Mart refuses to be so coerced, and has filed cvomplaints and lawsuits, threatening to cancel altogether their three store construction plan.


Officially, wal mart says the living wage requirement is "discrimminatory", whatever that means. We all know that isn't what wal mart means. What wal mart means is that the minimum wage requirement is expensive, for wal mart, and deprives the corporation of the valuable opportunity of exploiting its own employees, like it does everywhere else.

Who knows how it will all end. Wal mart usually finds a way to insinuate itself wherever it wishes, and certainly the poor people of our nation's capital could use a good dose of wal martian love.

maybe a compromise can be reached, wherein wal martis not required to pay a living wage, but, at least, a momentarily survivable one.

Painting Pretty Privacy

LONG AGO this site published an article concerning privacy fences, generally disdainful in tone. I have wanted to write another privacy fence rant ever since, but lacked a new slant.

Then we kicked off the summer partly painting a friend's house, which included a separate building, a white cinder block tool shed. We painted it dark green because our friend wanted the shed to blend in better with the natural surroundings around here, which are green.

And it worked. The dark green tool shed looks better than the dirty white one did. Which brings us back to privacy fences. No matter where i go in america, they all look the same, same height, same light brown color, same wood, as if a single company built them all across the country.

Few people, surprisingly, who go to the trouble to purchase and install a privacy fence, ever do anything, like staining and sealing, to protect it. Thus, within a couple of years, they usually begin to warp and fade to gray.

Old privacy fences can stand and last for a long time, and from all current indications, will. One by one their boards will warp out of shape and turn gray, and will begin to resemble skeletal remains, but will stand still, in the united states of apathy.

Perhaps if they were painted dark green now, they would wear better, last longer, and blend in better with nature's true colors. Down with our culture of drab gray boxes dividing us, keeping us apart!

At least let us spruce up our dividers a bit. Even better to tear down the fences, and replace them with rows of tightly packed trees and bushes. If we must have privacy, let us have pretty privacy.

Pampering the Disabled

FOR WELL OVER  a decade now i have been giving care to people with disabilities, long enough to have figured out that everyone has disabilities, of one form or another, to one degree or another. One becomes impressed by the sheer variety of human mental and physical disabilities.

But there is one disability which every client with whom i have ever worked shares in common. And it may be that this disability doesn't really exist, that i am merely making it up, that it exists only in my creative imagination.

But its good enough for me, and i call it "the disability of being an american". Over a period of months and years I encounter and work with several different disabled people, mostly children. Like everybody else, they come and go in your life, and a care giver and a client often have an opportunity to get to know each other rather well.

And in every example i can think back on, in every client i have worked with, the greatest, most damaging disability they have, in my humble O, is that they are americans.

Americans, as in, its all about me, and nothing else, and not only is my purpose in life to keep me happy, it is the purpose of the greater world in general. Self centered, self absorbed, i don't give a damn about anybody who aint me arogance. I see it eveywhere i look.

maybe i am just looking too hard. In most cases, i can, or think i can, trace the origins of this attitude by early life parental care. parents discover that their young child has a disability, they feel a sense of guilt and obligation, and they (parent) proceeds to "spoil" kid rotten, by serving as servants rather than parents. I see it happening all the time.

I keep wondering if there is anything inherent in the nature of this or that disability which requires a person to be arrogant, self serving, and selfish, and i keep coming up with the same answer; probably not.

It may be that people with cognitive disability are indeed more inclined to remain in a formative, e.g. self absorbed frame of mind rather than evolving personally to higher levesl of understanding and empathy, but surely this is not written in stone.

We need to learn to treat everyone with the same level of respect, and stop pampering the rich, the famou,s the disabled. It would do us all a world of good.

A New Way to Pay

WHEN I WAS a kid, back in the nineteen sixties and seventies, i collected 331/3 LP vinyl records, for those of you old enough to remember. Then, along came eight tracks in the early to mid seventies, and they replaced records. You kept seeing fewer and fewer records for sale, more and more eight track tapes.

So, i started collecting eight tracks.  Just when I felt i was starting to amass a collection which amounted to something, eight tracks were replaced by cassettes. As eight tracks faded away with the nineteen seventies i decided to never again collectmusic, in any way, shpae, form, fashion, or format. It just wasn't worth it.

And that brings us up to date. That's where I'm at today, not collecting music, no way, no how. So, as an umimpassioned outside observer, i have for about twenty five years now been fascinated by the effect of technology on the music industry.

A friend of mine started giving me cassettes full of great songs which he had recorded off other cassettes, making uniwue greatest hits collections. I never said no to him when he gave me one, and i thoroughly enjoyed them all, notwithstanding my non collectionism.

notiwhtstanding my non collectionsim, i ended up with quited a collection of free greatest rock and pop hits on cassette greates hits tapes. Thus, technically, i was receiving stolen goods. But it was over twenty five years ago.

Nowadays, with computers, anybocy acn have as much music, any particulare music they want, almost free of charge, correct? The big question is how to stop musical intellectual property theft, which seems impossible.

Perhaps people whose books are often checked out of libraries wish they could somehow tap into that potential source of revenue, but, alas...perhaps picasso's heirs wish his estate could profit each time a visitor to a museum gazes upon one of his works...and perhaps, just perhaps, people ought to have access to music, the music of their own choice...for free.

That's the main reason recording artist amanda palmer has decided to stup trying to make people pay for music, and start letting them pay for it, to stop trying to make them pay for music, and start asking them to pay for it. They end up paying whatever they can afford, which , sometimes, is nothing. but she's cool with that. It will come around later, she feels.

It seems to work for her. She makes a good living with her music, and she doesn't charge anything for it that isn't voluntarily paid by the consumer. And, that, dear friends, might just be the role model for the future, in a world in which it is, for all practical purposes, impossible to prevent intellectual property theft. Who can possibly stop the masses from sharing recordings on their own computers? No one.

You wonder if this might level the playing field a bit; give local musicians a chance to make a decent living, and bring the huge paydays of top contract recording astists down to size. That would not be an altogether negative side effects of voluntary payment for music.

The Greatest Drug

OF ALL THE POWERFUL, mind altering drugs (and there are many) available to humans, perhaps the most powerful and mind altering, and the best, is the world's most popular drug; coffee. Caffeine just might be the "best" recreational drug on the planet, with alcohol and marijuana ranked right behind.

The urge for recreational mind altering drugs is so great that in our modern age all kinds of chemical compounds are being thrown together and consumed, including cable TV, but the coffee bean, the cannibas plant, and the fermente grape stand the test of time.

Cocaine can at least lay claim to being "natural", and for that reason peyote might be the hallucinogen of choice over LSD or crystal meth.

And of course they all have a healthy purpose, a healthy reason for being here, used properly. And what better way to use coffee than to wake up in the morning, make it, and drink it? S single cup, and a day that began i don't wanna get up i don't wanna go to work  now becomes let me attack this day!

Its a shame we for some reason need to turn drug use into legal and moral issues, rather than a health issue. All that does is needlessly complicate and diminish our lives. If coffee were discovered today it would be illegal.

It isn't illegal now because so many people like it that society lacks the support to criminalize it. Meanwhile, we turn peple into criminals and send them to prison for dealing with other drugs, such as marijuana and cocaine.

Coffee is every bit as mind altering, and indirectly dangerous, as marijuana. We should thank our lucky stars that there aren't any extreme wacko groups wanting to criminalize coffee. hell, most of us would be in jail.

The New Declaration of Independence

WHEN I FOUND OUT that this year the fourth of july was on a thursday, i had no idea that it would become a four day weekend holiday, for for millions of americans, it became exactly that, as the country decided to extend the concept of the three day holiday.

More power to the american people, i say!  What an absolutely fantastic choice. Independence Day in the united states is a tremendously important holiday, and should be given a multi day celebration. Strange, to celebrate as a great holiday the day that a group of people signed their names to a letter to the king; for indeed, that's all that happened that day; more was to come, later, of course.

in europe the average worker gets something like six weeks of paid vacation time a year, and has a thirty five to thirty seven hour work week. Thus we can see that the united states lags a bit behind other industrialized countries in working conditions for workers.

Independence Day was more than the mere signing of the declaration of independence, of course. it was everything that led up to the meeting which wrote, agreed on, and signed the declaration, which was quite a bit.

And, also, of course, it was everything that happened afterward, as a result of the declaration, and its reception by the english government. Namely, they decided to oppose it, by whatever means necessary. That resulted in a bloody war.

In retrospect, it would have been much easier for everyone concerned if the english government had decided to merely accept the declaration of independence without opposition, and welcome the newly independent nation into the famly of nations. Fat chance of that.

Humans are by nature not always far seeing and magnanimous and logical. You would think that somebody in england would have pointed out that american independence, at some point or other, was inevitable.

The sudden advent of the multiple day independence day celebration is our newest  declaration of independence.

Mere Formalities

REPUBLICAN TEXAS SENATOR cruz is one of those gems the republican party loves to proudly display; a young, attractive, conservative minority politician. Most hispanics are liberal democrats, but most texans are conservative republicans, so, mister cruz seems to have a winning formula. at least, for now.

most of the hispanics in texas support the immigration bill now in congreess, in which a "pathway to citizenship" is offered to all the illegal immigrants in amerca, eleven million or whatever. Cruz, however, opposes the bill, using the strange logic that it isn't fair to legal hispanic immigrant citizens who got their citizenship the right way.

It isn't fair to the ones who did it the right way to give amnensty to those who didn't. But, exactly why not? Most of the hispanics who became american citizens the legal way are in favor of a pathway to citizenship for the illegals, and providing it doesn't seem to do any harm to anyone.

Just as common sense dictates a ne approach to illegal immigrants, it also dicates a new approach to mexico, by the united states. The united states is deeply involved in mexico, whether it wants to be or not. So, why not accept that fact, and try to make it work for the betterment of everyone?

Mexico can be made into a place far fewer people want to leave, and more people want to visit and invest in. Just like the united states, mexico needs more opportunity for the poor, and less sucking of the wealth out of the pockets of the poor by the wealthy. The word is "minimum wage".

May the day come when all the people of the earth are citizens of the earth, and borders are mere formalities.

To sign Your Name

BY NOW WE ALL KNOW that it could have been july second, or first.jefferson, under great duress, finished and gave them the document in late june, only a few days after he had begun writing it, under great duress. The last man signed it on the fourth, and so be it.

He did not want to be the author of the declaration. He thought he was too young and unknown, lacked social standing, the kind of universal respect given to john adams and benjamin franklin. But adams and franklin basically made him do it.

adams and franklin knew that the dreamy kid jefferson was the most brilliant intellect in the bunch, and he had a magical way with words. jefferson might have been the right man at the right time. He was mad, about something. maybe being away from his wife, maybe at the king. after 1774, for whatever reason, jefferson was a revolutionary.

 Tell them three things, franklin said to dreamy tom. tell them that we are hereby independent of their rule, tell them why, and remind them that we mean it, every word.

there was no need to go over the reasons, again. all that had been done, over and over, unto sickness. and everybody was in agreement; there was nly one thing to do, only one choice, nightmarishly impossible as that choice seemed.

They had no chance of pulling it off, and they damned well knew it. The odds were overwhelming, heavily stacked against them. It would take a miracle. And yet, what else, at this point, could they do?

The document that jefferson came up with was, is, outstanding, even with all the changes they made to it. It accomplished all three requirements, sensationally. adams and franklin and others had many opinions about jefferswon's choice of words here and there, a picky complaint here, a picky complaint there, and they changed many words, while jefferson rolled his eyes.

but they did not alter the basic idea behind it, the substance of it, the statement of intent, the logical listing of grievances, the reasons, the separating words, the reaffirmation. Almost like a religious liturgy, which, in america, in a sense, it is.

catch a break or two, get a little help, and who knows. you sure as hell have to believe in the rightness of what you're doing. That keeps you motivated. If you believe in something enough, you are willing to die for it, and you sign your name with your brothers, big and bold.

What's Lacking:Investing to Help

THE OBAMA VISIT to africa is really a big deal, something your grandchildren may read about in history books, or on history kindles, or maybe even on the history portion of the microchip embedded in their temples. whatever works.

Obama's brief visit to south africa was really dramatic; while nelson mandela lies on his death bed in south africa, an african american president gives a speech at the location where mandela was imprisoned for decades. nelson mandela will be on your grandchildren's history chip, as one of the most important leaders of the late twentieth century.

Obama made some good comments about home grown african prosperity being preferrable to foreign aid, and you could almost hear yourself going "duh, why didn't we think of that decads ago, and do it right in the first place?"

if an american company builds an infrastructure for, say, electrical power in some african community, runs it, makes a profit, and those profits go to amrican owners, then, well, african community might well be better off to have electrical power, but I'm sure we can all imagine an even greater benefit to african community which owns, operates, and keeps profits for electrical infrastructure in african community.

it may be, that over the past several decades, the foreign aid from the western world to africa has consisted mainly in the form of investment and grants, and the foreign investment has been structured towards foreign profits and the grants have been unstructured, and that little good has thereby been done.

what africa needs is foreign investment in africa made for the primary purpose of helping africa. That's what's been lacking for the last few decades.