Category: Uncategorized

“Ridin’ high, I got tears in my eyes

You know you got to go through hell

Before you get to heaven.”

–       Jet Airliner, by the Steve Miller Band

You may remember that two months ago, I was desperate to find a new apartment, and escape the madness of where I was living.  My prospects weren’t that good.  At a semi-annual health checkup at the V.A. clinic, I mentioned that I was concerned that I might not be able to find a new place before I had to vacate the old place.  The nurse, who was taking down this information, got on the phone and called a social worker to help me.

A small army of social workers moved mountains to get me into an apartment within the week.  Then another small army of friends, neighbors, and relatives helped me move another mountain, the stuff that I had. I was grateful to all of them, and when the last box of stuff was lugged up the stairs, I thought it was over. I expected the social workers to disappear.

Nothing could be further from the truth.  Before I was even unpacked, the phone rang.  John-Michael, who had been very instrumental in getting me into the apartment quickly, wanted to know what kind of food I liked.  It seemed like an odd question until a delivery truck pulled up the next day, with boxes of all the things I said I liked.  The lone box of wine in my refrigerator had to make room for a refrigerator full of real food.

Social workers called me up and asked me questions.  They were trying to find out if I qualified for any programs.  It turns out I did.  They e-mailed me forms to fill out and the next thing I knew, I was approved for $234 a month in food stamps.  Not just one month, but $234 a month, every month, until I was making a lot more money.

Then John-Michael called me back.  The V.A. would pay my rent for July.

Then I got an e-mail from Julie at Tenfold.  Did I want to sign two Thank You cards?  Sure.  I thought that they would go to Jen in Housing and the other people who had helped me get the apartment.  No.  There were more people behind the scenes who had helped me.  Julie came over and I found out who they were.

I have to admit, I was curious about the back-story on my apartment.  Since Tenfold is the owner of the building, I was sure that Julie knew the story.  There are 6 apartments in the building and they were all empty and the whole place had been completely renovated.  I was the first and only tenant back in the building.  Why did all the old tenants leave?  Was there a murder in the building?

Julie told me that the building had been owned by an elderly couple and was rundown and falling apart.  Everyone just moved out.  Tenfold, a not-profit charitable organization, acquired the property and a generous man name Frank offered to pay for renovating the building on the condition that Tenfold would use it to provide affordable housing for low-income families.  So, I signed the Thank You card to Frank.

Ames Construction did the renovating, so I signed a card to them too.

I told Julie that was all very touching, but not much of a story for my blog.  I had been hoping for a murder mystery, or something spicy like that.  I told her that in my blog I would stretch the truth a tiny bit and say that everyone moved out because the building was haunted, and now, even though the building had been completely renovated with all new appliances, they still couldn’t get anyone to move in because everyone in the neighborhood knew it was haunted.  Then, I moved in, desperate for housing and not knowing it was haunted.  She liked that story. I guess it reminded her of Beetlejuice.  Certainly, she wasn’t old enough to know about Cosmo Topper, and his TV ghost friends, George and Marion Kerby.  So, forget what I said earlier about Frank and Ames Construction.  As far as this blog is concerned, I’m going with the story that this was a haunted house, and the ghost still lives here, and he’s the reason why the apartment is always so messy.

Now, back to the social workers.  John-Michael called and made an appointment to see me yesterday.  He called a few minutes before he got here to let me know that he had “goodies.”  I interpreted that to mean donuts or cookies.  That’s not what he meant.

John-Michael (that’s his real first name) is a big strong young man, and it still took him 3 trips up the stairs to bring in all the goodies.  It seems that Frank isn’t the only Lancastrian interested in helping low-income people get affordable housing in Lancaster.  A whole slew of people had contributed to provide house-warming gifts for Veterans moving into new apartments.  I’m talking a Hampton Bay tower fan, a Mr. Coffee machine, a toaster, and just about everything else that a person with absolutely nothing would need to move into an apartment, including pillows, blankets, and dozens of other items, right down to toothpaste and a toothbrush.  Plus, in case I needed anything else, inside a card that all the donors signed, thanking me for my service, there was a Walmart gift card.  It was like Christmas in July, and it got even better.

John-Michael told me that I qualified for a “shallow subsidy.”  Naturally, I had no idea what that was, so he told me that the V.A. would pay half my rent for the next two years.  Yikes, if that’s shallow, what’s going on in the deep end of the pool?

I’m settling into my new apartment, and I realize that I need to thank the dozens of local people who contributed their time, effort, and money to make this a wonderful experience for me.  I need to thank all the people who helped me move. I also need to thank the Veterans’ Administration for the great steps they are taking to improve the lives of veterans, especially this one.

It all started when, during a routine examination, a nurse asked me if anything was bothering me.  The question was meant to find out if I had any medical problems, but it wound up going far beyond that.  I was bothered by the thought that I might wind up either homeless or mooching off relatives.  Today, there are a lot of people who have problems that are way bigger than mine were.  Maybe they believe that their problems are unsolvable and that nobody cares to help them find a solution.  The one thing that I have learned in the past two months is that there are plenty of people out there who will move mountains to help others. 

Whether you’re a veteran or a civilian, there are people and agencies who will listen to your problems, and work with you to solve them.  They are reaching out for people who they can help, and you just need to grab that hand, which is extended towards you.  There are numerous hotlines to help steer you to those people.  Call them.  Many problems are, indeed, too big to solve by yourself, but there are people everywhere who will be glad to help you, and they are legion.

Thank you to all the people who helped me in the last two months to make my life so much better.  Your kindness, hard work, and generosity is certainly appreciated. I started this with lyrics from a song by the Steve Miller Band. I’ll close with lyrics from a song by Jimmy Cliff.

I can see clearly now the rain is gone
I can see all obstacles in my way
Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind

It’s gonna be a bright (bright)
Bright (bright) sunshiny day

Peace & Love, and all of the above,

Earl

In 1897, Felix Hoffmann, a German chemist working for the Bayer company, was able to modify salicylic acid to create acetylsalicylic acid, which was named aspirin.

I don’t know how far back I need to go to tell this story, but I think I have to go back to my early days at Cyber Medical Company.  My paychecks from Cyber were written on an HSBC account, so I opened an account there, so I could have direct deposit of my paycheck.

Years later, after I retired, I was having a problem making my credit card payments and I hired a firm to renegotiate my credit card bills.  Most of my credit card companies took the deal, and I wound up paying about 50% of the outstanding balances, which they accepted as payment in full, and cancelled my credit card with them.  As I said, this worked with most, but not all of my credit card companies.  One of them demanded that I immediately pay the full balance.  Naturally, since I had just paid all the other companies 50% of what I owed them, I didn’t have any money left.

So, this company took me to small claims court and got a judgement against me.  They went to HSBC and put a lien on my account there.  HSBC told them that the money in my account came from Social Security direct deposits, and that it was untouchable.  So, instead of getting 50% like everyone else they got nothing from me and an invitation to go screw themselves from HSBC Bank.

Needless to say, this made me the most loyal customer that HSBC ever had, and even when I moved to Pennsylvania and opened an account at the Fulton Bank, I kept HSBC as my primary bank.

Then, a year or two ago HSBC decided to stick exclusively with Business customers and not handle personal accounts anymore.  They switched me over to Citizens Bank.  I was not happy with Citizens Bank, so I closed the account.  That left me with one bank account and only 1 debit card.

So, at the end of May I moved here to East King Street, and in the course of filling out all the change of address forms, I mistakenly sent my information to a scammer.  I noticed the error immediately and called the Fulton Bank, “Don’t make that payment.  It was fraudulent.”

Immediately, they cancelled my card, and told me they would send me a new card via Federal Express.  This left me with a problem.  Most of my accounts nowadays are autopay.  When it’s time for me to pay, they access the credit card on file and use that to make the payment.  Now, the credit card on file, my only credit card, was useless.

I was able to go online and notify all but one of the companies I deal with that the credit card was not to be used and that I would supply a new credit card number in the next few days.

The only one I couldn’t notify was Boost Mobile, who handles my Internet Mobile hotspot.  Those of you who know me, know that I can’t live without the Internet.  So this was a big problem.  It seems that Boost had “migrated” my account to a new web page, but had forgotten to put my log-in information into that site.  So, I couldn’t log on.  I tried unsuccessfully over the course of 10 days to make the change by phone, but nobody could help me because my number had been “migrated” to a new system.  Once my monthly 50 gigabytes ran out, they would try to charge the old credit card, and when that failed, I would lose my Internet service.

When this finally happened, I was furious at Boost Mobile and decided to switch companies to Xfinity.  I called them and got an appointment for a technician to install my new line on Sunday June 11^th at noon.

I think that’s enough background.  Now, here’s the story.  I’ve had an arthritic hip for the past 12 years, but it’s only mildly painful, so I just use a cane.  Then, last Thursday, it became very painful, not just the left hip, but the entire upper left leg.  The only way I was comfortable was sitting in my recliner or lying in bed.  Everything else hurt like hell.  If I put any weight at all on the leg, it hurt.

That’s when I should have gone to the emergency room, but I didn’t want to miss my Sunday appointment with Xfinity.  (I told you that I can’t live without Internet service.)

I searched through all my medical supplies and found 8 leftover Ibuprofen tablets from a dental visit in 2019.  They were supposed to have been tossed in 2020, but you know me.  I found 7 leftover Acetaminophen capsules that should have been tossed in December of 2016.  By now the pain was getting worse.  Even when I sat in a chair or laid down, it still hurt.  So, on Saturday at noon I took the first Ibuprofen tablet.  According to the old label it should relieve pain for 6 hours.  In 3 hours my pain came back and I took another.  I did this every 3 hours until noon on Sunday when my pills ran out and the Xfinity technician showed up.

Well, the building where I now live was completely renovated, and when they did that, they tore out the old cable connections.  So, he was unsure as to what the building owner would let him do.  He would come back on Monday, speak with the property managers and follow their guidance.

My plan had been to go to the Emergency Room on Sunday after the Internet Service was restored.  Now, I would have to wait 24 more hours, and the pain was increasing through the whole leg.  So, I started in with the expired Acetaminophen capsules, and found that they brought me some relief for almost 3 hours.  I couldn’t walk around, but I could sit in a chair or lay down.  I took the last one at 1 a.m. and woke up in severe pain at 3 a.m.  I had to last 10 more hours to make the Xfinity appointment before I went to the Emergency Room.  I take a baby aspirin every day for my heart, and I know that they are about 1/4^th the strength of regular aspirin tablets.  So, at 3 a.m. I took 8 baby aspirins.  I woke up in pain at 5 a.m and took 8 more.  I woke up in pain at 7 a.m. and took 8 more.

Then a noise woke me.  I live on a very busy street and it seems to be the favorite path for everyone who owns a motorcycle in Lancaster.  I woke up to the sound of a roaring machine, and I got out of bed to see if it was time for my next 8 baby aspirins.  To my surprise, there was no pain when I got out of bed.  No hip pain.  No leg pain.  None, at all.  I went back to bed to see how long it would take for the pain to return.  Another motorcycle woke me up at 11 a.m. and I was still pain free.

My theory is that I wasn’t having a problem with my arthritic hip at all.  I probably had a blood clot in my leg, and the 24 baby aspirins I took must have dissolved it.

It’s now almost 1 p.m., and I’ve been walking around my apartment pain free without even using my cane.  So, that’s why this long story is dedicated to Felix Hoffmann, the inventor of aspirin.  He just might have saved my life.

P.S.  The Xfinity appointment was rescheduled for this coming Thursday, but Boost managed to use my new Debit Card over the phone to give me another month’s service.  I’ll wait until the Xfinity service is working before I cancel the Boost service.  I can’t live without Internet service.

Peace and Love, and all of the above.

Earl

“New beginnings are often disguised as painful endings.”

-Lao Tzu

One thing I learned from the last 7 months was that Debbie cannot stand for anyone to be sleeping while she’s awake.  She will make as much noise as it takes to wake you up.  I should have known this.  Over the last 9 years, I’ve collected anecdotes of her crazy life for a possible book titled Just Plain Deb, and I noticed that frequently in these stories she would wake her mother up, whenever she slept while Debbie was awake.

I have hundreds of stories about bizarre things Debbie did, but I could never figure out how to string them all together into one story.  Last night, as I was drifting off to sleep, I thought about one of the incidents and it triggered the idea for a short story about her.  As a writer, I usually make things up, but this story is true.

Debbie and her mother shared a house.  Debbie lived downstairs, and her Mom lived upstairs, in the apartment I would later occupy after her mother went to a nursing home.  The story starts one morning a year or two earlier, when Debbie walked into her mother’s bedroom and woke her up.

“What are you doing in my room?” her Mom demanded.

“You were having a nightmare, so I woke you up.”

“I wasn’t having a nightmare.  As a matter of fact, I was having a terrific dream, the best dream of my life.”

“What was it about?”

“I dreamed that you ran a red light, and got broadsided by an 18-wheeler.  Your car just kept rolling over and over, and over again without stopping, until you woke me up. Why’d you have to wake me up?”

“That’s a horrible dream.”

“Not for me it wasn’t.  It was funny.”

Maybe you don’t believe that a mother would think such a dream about her daughter was funny, but you never lived in the same house as Debbie, and had to put up with all her antics.  I swear that story is true, and I know for a fact that Debbie’s Mom, Marilyn, once told her, “My life has been a living hell, since the day you were born.”  Marilyn was not using hyperbole.  She meant it.  Debbie was a rotten kid, who turned into a teenage junkie.  She pulled all the stunts that you might expect and drove her entire family crazy.  Her siblings hate her to this very day.  At Marilyn’s funeral somebody slashed Debbie’s tire in the funeral parlor parking lot.  She says it was her brother Kenneth, but I suspect that she slashed her own tire, so that she could blame it on her siblings.  That’s the kind of stuff she pulled.

When the new owner of the building where I lived on Queen Street, let the tenants know that he would not be renewing the lease, Debbie offered to rent the top floor of her house to me, because her mother was now in a nursing home, and was never coming home.  Plans were being made for Marilyn to go into hospice care.

I thought twice about renting the apartment.  Actually, I thought three, four, five or more times about it.  When I was unable to find another apartment and the expiration of my lease was only a week away, I agreed to renting the apartment.  I would have the top floor, but we would share the kitchen, because she didn’t have any electricity in her kitchen – some problem with the circuit breakers, that she never bothered to have fixed, because she liked going upstairs to have breakfast with her Mom.  Marilyn wasn’t as enthusiastic about being awakened for breakfast, five minutes after Debbie got up each morning, especially since Debbie was an early riser, but, even though she knew that her daughter was a total pain in the ass, she was still her daughter, and Marilyn endured it.

Debbie had no electricity in her kitchen, but she made no effort to correct the problem.  A red flag should have been waving furiously in my face.  Bells and whistles should have been triggered, and maybe they were, but I only had two choices – take my landlord to court or move into Marilyn’s apartment.  I made a bad choice.  I figured that Debbie would stay downstairs, and except for mealtimes, I would be on my own.  My bad.  What was I thinking? Was I even thinking?

She came up to my apartment whenever she felt like it, and she would wake me up, if I was sleeping.

“What are you doing up here?” I would ask her.

“It’s my house, and I’ll go wherever I want to go.”

“But, I’m renting out the upstairs.”

“So what?  It’s still my house, and I’ll go wherever I want to go.”

I started to stay up later and later, so that I could have a little privacy while she slept.  It was winter, and I wasn’t going anywhere, but I knew that in Spring I would start looking for another place.

Another thing that annoyed me was that her mother’s stuff was still all over the apartment.  The living room and dining room were unusable because they were piled high with her mother’s clothes, and the entire apartment was filled with Marilyn’s two obsessions, owls and Jesus.  I am not exaggerating when I say that there were at least 100 owl objets d’art in the house, and Jesus was only a tiny bit behind.  But if you add up the pictures of angels, maybe Jesus was in the lead.  In addition to a huge portrait of the Last Supper, there was even a 4-foot-high statue of an angel, and another huge statue of an angel sitting in the living room.  I once dated a girl who had hundreds of strawberry ornaments, and her mother had an equal number of frog knickknacks, so I didn’t really mind all the owls, except that they took up a lot of space.  Even though I’m an Atheist, all the Jesus pictures didn’t really bother me either.  The two giant angel statues were a bit much though.  I asked her if maybe she could put them in the backyard.

You can guess the answer I got.  “It’s my house and I’ll put them where I want to put them.”

After that, the topic of my “stupid Atheism” and how I should turn to Jesus became almost a daily ritual.  She considered me a nut job because I didn’t believe in God. I considered her a nut job, because she was a nut job.

Then, after Marilyn died, and Debbie inherited the house, she told me that she wanted to sell it.  I was actually a bit relieved.  This was the push I needed to finally go find another place.  No “For Sale” signs went up, though, so I didn’t think she was serious.  She had a habit of changing her mind and personality frequently. (Her deceased ex-husband, Kevin, nicknamed her Switch Bitch, because she changed into multiple personalities and very few, if any of them, were nice.) So, suddenly in May, she announced that she was selling the house, and that the closing would probably be July 1^st.  The roofer, who had replaced her roof a year earlier, offered her a cash deal.

I started looking for a place and purging myself of the things that weren’t worth moving.  I had some trouble, though.  All the Real Estate companies wanted you to have a monthly income at least 3 times the rent.  My monthly income from Social Security was little more than the monthly rent most places were asking.  Plus, I had more junk than I would be able to sift through in six weeks. I was in trouble.  Then my troubles increased.  Forget July 1^st.  She wanted to close on June 1^st.  So, I had one month less to look for a place.  Then, I caught a break.  I had a doctor’s appointment at the V. A. and the nurse, who conducts the preliminaries before the doctor walks in, asked me if anything was bothering me.  I mentioned that I had to find a new apartment in a hurry, and I wasn’t able to find one because I didn’t earn 3 times the rent for any place on the market.

The V.A. takes a lot of flak, because many veterans, especially those suffering the effects of Agent Orange and war, did not get the extensive care they needed.  This has benefited me, though.  Because they are now being so closely scrutinized, and because of recent changes in the law, I, who got out of the Navy over fifty years ago, am now receiving excellent health care there, absolutely free.  The V.A. itself still has problems, but the people working there are dedicated to providing the best service they can.  This nurse went above and beyond the call of duty to hook me up almost instantly with a social worker, Lucy, a housing specialist, Jen, and a lawyer, Brenda.

So, Debbie moved up the date of the sale to May 26^th.  Now, she wanted me out by noon on the 26^th.  “Maybe if you believed in God, you would find another place to live.”  She told me that she already had a new place.  She bought a two-bedroom home in Conway, South Carolina, and she showed me a bunch of pictures of the house.  She actually asked me if I wanted to go to South Carolina with her.  I told her that there was no way I would do that.  Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice shame on me.  I told her that living with her made every day seem like an episode of I Love Lucy, if Lucy was on crack.  She like that idea, went downstairs, and reappeared an instant later.

Then, when I turned her down, she decided that I should be out by noon on the 25^th, instead.  “You wouldn’t have this problem if you believed in Jesus.”

I told her that she was being unreasonable, moving the date closer and closer, and her reply was simply, “We don’t have a contract.  I can do whatever I want to do.”

Brenda, my lawyer, didn’t agree, but I told her that I didn’t want to fight to stay there.  I wanted to get out as quickly as possible.  I just needed to find a place.  I was fortunate again that Lucy, the social worker, had hooked me up with some great people.  Jen found a real estate agent, Wanda, who would waive the 3 times the rent rule, if I got good references from previous landlords, and showed that I paid my rent on time.  I would also have to pass a background check.  Then John-Michael in Jen’s office swung into action and went all out to get me into a new apartment.  He came to where I was living to help me with the paperwork, and he checked out apartments.

Finally, on Monday at 1:30 p.m. it all came together, and I signed a lease agreement on my new apartment.  Thanks to the help of my friend and retired furniture salesman, Joe Becker and the 4 people he rounded up to help me, a friend, Nelson, his truck, my old upstairs neighbor Shawn, his friend JR, and my Scrabble nemesis, Cat with her truck, and JR again, I managed to get most of my stuff out of Debbie’s house by Wednesday evening.  I still left a bunch of stuff that I wish I could have taken, and stuff that I should have thrown out years ago – T-shirts, books I’ll never read, and an assortment of other junk.  As I was leaving, I handed Debbie the key, and started walking out the door.

“You can’t leave all that stuff behind.  I’m going to closing tomorrow and the house has to be completely empty and clean.”

“Well,” I said, “it’s your house, so it’s your problem.  We don’t have a contract.”  She was still screaming at me and Cat as we drove away.

So, I’m now settling down in my new apartment, and I finally got a full night’s sleep with nobody waking me up.  Then, last night, in addition to a full night’s sleep, I also had a wonderful dream.  I dreamed that while Debbie was driving to South Carolina, she ran a red light and got broadsided by an 18 wheeler.  Her car rolled over and over and over again.  It was still rolling over as I woke up.  I smiled and thought, “Maybe there is a God.”

Peace & Love, and all of the above,

Earl

…And it’s not King Charles.

As a writer, I try to be grammatically correct most of the time.  Sometimes, I take a good bit of poetic license with the language, but I still try to stick fairly close-by to the rules.  Lately, I’ve been noticing that one of the rules of grammar is being almost completely ignored, by almost everyone.

I noticed it, because it is one of my grammatical pet peeves, but it is becoming so ubiquitous that I’m afraid it’s going to wind up in the dictionary as acceptable slang soon.  At first, I just heard a few people on TV use it, but now, it’s even popping up in commercials, news broadcasts, and I even heard an eminent scientist use it in a YouTube short video.

What’s the problem.  The problem is the use of the contraction, “There’s.”  As you all know, it stands for “There is” so it should be followed by a singular noun, as in There’s a problem in English usage.  Nowadays, however, it’s being used no matter if the noun is singular or plural.

When it refers to something that is plural, it should be “there are,” as in There are problems.  Nobody would say There is problems, but it seems that a lot of people are saying things like “There’s problems.”  It is especially glaring to me when it appears in commercials, because they are written by professional writers, and the copy is scrutinized over and over before it’s approved.  Yet, in two different online commercials for Thriftbooks.com they said things like, “There’s millions of reviews…or…There’s over 5 million of them.  I point out Thriftbooks, because they cater to people who read, so I would think that they, if anybody, would use proper English.  However, they are not alone.  Many commercials make the same mistake, and now that I’ve pointed it out, I’m sure you’ll hear it quite frequently.

I knew it was time to say something about this sad trending, when I watched a YouTube video short in which Neil deGras Tyson, a science educator, said, “There’s tens of millions of stars…”  This incorrect usage of the contraction is spreading too far, so I’m trying to do my part to convince people to stop using there’s when there are should be used.

While I’m at it.  I’d like to also talk about another problem and a word that is not spreading, though with all the pronoun talk we’re having nowadays, it should be.  Decades ago, while writing a short story.  I didn’t want to give away the identity of the person I was writing about until the very end, so to hide even their gender from the reader, I coined the word hirm to mean either him or her, a gender unknown pronoun to replace the awkward “he/she.”  It amazed me at the time that we have a gender-neutral plural pronoun, them, but, to the best of my knowledge, the singular case gender-neutral pronoun was yet to be invented.  So, I invented one.  It turned out to be useful for me in that story, but “hirm” never caught on with anyone else.

Nowadays with so much debate about which personal pronouns to use to refer to a person, I would like to submit to dictionaries everywhere my word hirm as a useful gender-neutral pronoun.

Peace & Love, and all of the above.

Earl

Tomorrow will be President James Buchanan’s 232^nd birthday.  In his honor, around 100 people showed up to lay a wreath on his grave and make a few speeches.

I got there early before the crowd arrived.

Then, out of the early morning mist, walked six apparitions from the past in military uniforms from his times.  James was a private in the Pennsylvania Militia, which has now become the National Guard and many Guardsmen and Guardswomen were there to join the ranks.

Then the color guard marched out and the speeches soon began.  One of the speakers referred to his nickname as “Old Buck,” but that wasn’t his nickname until very late in his life.  Most of the time he was referred to as “The Old Public Functionary,” not a nickname that trips lightly off the tongue, but it did honor the 50 years he spent in service to his country as Representative, Congressman, Senator, Secretary of State, Ambassador to Russia and England, and of course, 15^th President of the United States.  To me, it also represented the 160 years he has spent as scapegoat for the Civil War, even though he, actually, did more than anyone to try to prevent that war.

Buchanan served during the War of 1812, and his outfit was detailed on a secret mission to help the Maryland Militia.  Fortunately, by the time they got there, the battle was already won, and so, he returned home to civilian life.  He is the only President who joined the military as an enlisted man and wasn’t made an officer.  The Head of the Pennsylvania National Guard used that fact as an opportunity to thank all the enlisted men, who protect our Country.

The festivities ended with a 15 musket salute by the group I now knew weren’t apparitions, but Civil War reenactors, who probably travelled here from a little town across the river named Gettysburg.  I was amazed at how quickly they were able to fire and reload their muskets for the next volley.

In total, fifteen shots were fired, but I was only quick enough with my camera to captured 10.  If you look carefully at their feet you can see the tubes of gunpowder they tore open with their teeth to fill the barrel for the next round.

It was a fine tribute to a very under-rated President, and I definitely hope to go again next year.

Peace & Love, and all of the above,

Earl

“Just remember this my girl, when you look up in the sky.  You can see the stars, but still not see the light…”

• The Eagles

I watched a YouTube video, Everything You Believe Is Based on What You’ve Been Told.  That, in a nutshell, was the theme of the video.  Unless you have really studied a field, and even if you have studied a field intensely, the ideas you hold in your advanced human brain were probably just planted there by things you were told in the past.  Some thoughts might have been planted by brilliant professors, but, it is more likely, that many of your thoughts were originally planted there by your drinking buddies.

Then, I watched an episode of John Oliver’s show, Last Week, Tonight.  The episode was about possible things that could go wrong with AI, Artificial Intelligence.

The problem that John foresaw with AI was that it learned rapidly, but it also could develop false thinking if the input it absorbed wasn’t accurate.  It was something I learned about computers a half century ago, Garbage In/Garbage Out, as expressed by the catch phrase GIGO.

To be reasonably accurate, both artificial intelligence and human intelligence require plenty of accurate input.  Humans learn mostly from what they are told, but they also absorb what they see in movies, TV, and books.  This might explain why so many people are concerned about a zombie apocalypse.

Computers learn by accessing the Internet.  This is the big reason why everyone is so worried about Artificial Intelligence.  We realize that while AI can gather intelligent information almost at the speed of light, unfortunately, based upon the current content of the Internet, it will also be acquiring and absorbing tons of absolute nonsense just as quickly.  There are plenty of websites out there in cyberspace that dare to “prove” that the Earth is flat.

Too bad that before AI accesses the Internet, we can’t limit the websites for it to search to the websites where the information is accurate.  However, who is to say what is accurate?  Who even knows what really is accurate anymore?  We believe what we’ve been told, and we haven’t always been fed the truth, nor did we always seek it. Most of us live in the information bubble of our own choice.  So, carefully filtered AI would probably just result in a computer conclusion that mirrors our own biases.

That’s exactly what is already happening.  AI programs are working in Human Resources.  They are currently scanning thousands of job resumes and selecting only applicants who closely match the programmer’s idea of desired employees. Ultimately, these might not be the best employees and discrimination of some sort is probably inevitable.  GIGO.

AI will eventually partner with humans, much like the way that humans now partner with computers.  Hopefully, humans will still be needed to feed the AI computers the information that they will need to make better decisions for us.

So, what do we do?  Well like Ken Jennings wrote when he and Brad Rutter lost at Jeopardy to the IBM computer, Watson,

“I for one, welcome our new computer overlords.”

Personally, I believe that the future computer overlords will treat humans well, probably even better than we currently treat ourselves, but, to insure this, we must stock the Internet with much better information for the AI computers than we are currently feeding ourselves.

Peace & Love, and all of the above,

Earl

But before we get to Sports, let’s go to the News…

From Mar A Lago, Florida, Donald Trump claimed that he will be arrested very soon by New York County District Attorney Alvin Leonard Bragg, Jr.  Trump advised the District Attorney to call off the investigation of hush-money payments made to Adult film star Stormy Daniels, because he was worried that some people might get upset and cause Death and Destruction.

I guess Trump was thinking about those crazy Antifa people who “toured” the Capital on January 6^th 2021 posing as insurgent MAGA Maniacs.

The Special Counsel, Jack Smith, subpoenaed former Vice President Michael Pence in the investigation of the January 6^th attempt by then President Trump to try to pull off a coup for him to retain power.

Former President Trump told his ex Vice President to be sure to remember all the happy times they had together, while he was President, and forget all about that little misunderstanding they had about stretching his neck, because that was only a suggestion so that his starched shirt collars wouldn’t feel so tight.  (Oh and maybe he might want to take the 5^th Amendment, when he’s on the stand.  You know, just to prevent some crazies from causing Death and Destruction.)

Fulton County Investigators are examining evidence of Donald Trump possibly tampering with the Presidential Election in Georgia.  They have a recorded conversation of Trump asking Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes.”

Donald Trump explained that he wasn’t asking for a landslide victory, just to win by one measly vote.  What’s wrong with that?

Before they make their jury selections, the prosecutors all pointed out their suggestions for what the Jury members might want to be wearing at all of Trump’s future trials.

In other news, a shooter opened fire at yet another school, bringing the total of school gun incidents in the U.S. this year to 90, which is about 1 a day.  This time it was in Nashville, Tennessee, where a gunman killed three children and three adults before being fatally shot by the police.

US Representative Andrew Ogles of Tennessee, who represents the Nashville district said that he was “utterly heartbroken” by the tragedy, but Congress is “not gonna fix it.”

“Damn straight,” yelled Congressional goofballs Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert.

People, of course, protested, but just like in the 2-year investigations into the crimes committed by Donald Trump, nothing, so far, has been done about it.

So, let’s go to sports.

Peace & Love, and all of the above.

Earl

Picture of Turkey Tail Mushrooms.

Last night I was reading about stem butt inoculation. Sounds kinky, but it’s just one way to grow mushrooms.

I’m not growing mushrooms myself, but I have started taking mushroom extracts to see if they have any positive effect on me. I’m also reading Mycelium Running – How Mushrooms can help save the Earth. Many mushrooms eat wood and leaves that are on the forest floor and turn it into fertile soil, but I’ve learned that some mushrooms can actually eat rocks and digest their minerals.  Some mushrooms can even munch away at minerals that are poisonous to humans, stuff like lead, mercury, and radioactive Cesium.  So, at places like Chernobyl there are mushrooms growing today that are eating up the leftover radioactive Cesium that was spilled in the catastrophe back there in 1986.  You can’t eat these mushrooms, simply because they have consumed so much poison.  However, we can pick them.  Since they have absorbed radioactive material, when we pick them, we are, in effect, removing a little bit of the radioactivity from the area.  More mushrooms will grow.  Then, we can pick them and clean up even more of the radioactivity.

Then we can take the truckloads of these poison-munching mushrooms to a place that manufactures or uses whatever heavy metal they were eating. They can extract those heavy metals from the mushrooms.  The result is that the area where the mushrooms got picked gets cleaned up and the poisons that were in the ground are safely recycled.

Some mushrooms eat cow shit and are still edible.  (You’d probably want to wash them first, of course).  There must be a mushroom growing someplace that likes human waste. Mushrooms can help us to clean up the planet.  That’s just one of the amazing things that they do.

So, my point, which I got from a statement by Neil De Grasse Tyson is, we know how to “terraform” planets like Mars to make them more habitable to Earthlings.  Wouldn’t it make more sense, he said, to invest the time and resources into just making Earth more habitable, first? That makes way more sense than just trashing this planet, like we’re doing, discarding it, and moving on to the next one.

Instead of tossing tons and tons of plastic into the ocean, maybe we can find a mushroom that eats plastic.  Plastic is a petroleum product, and there are mushrooms that eat petroleum and can be used to clean up oil spills.

Last night during his State of the Union address, President Biden outlined many of the problems we face in the days ahead. Solving the problems won’t be easy, but it reminded me of something Henry J. Kaiser said, “Problems are only opportunities wearing work clothes.” We have the technology and the opportunity to use nature to help us greatly improve the habitability and health of our own planet. Our planet has been around for billions of years and it’s not right that our generation is just trashing it with no consideration for future generations.

Like the Joni Mitchell song that the late David Crosby sang at Woodstock:

… We are stardust, we are golden
We are billion-year-old carbon
And we’ve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden.

We’ve got to get back to the garden, and using mushrooms can be one way to help us become better gardeners.

Peace & Love, and all of the above,

Earl

“The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft a-gley.”

“To a Mouse,” by Robert Burns

I moved from downtown Lancaster to a house about 4 miles south of town, and one mile straight up.  Well, it might not actually be a mile high like Denver, but it sure feels like it.

I live near the top of a great big hill.  The bus stop is at the bottom of the hill.  My best time down the hill is 13 minutes.  My best time up the hill is 22 minutes.  The unfortunate part is that since I only go out to shop, my knapsack is usually empty on the way downhill and full on the way uphill.  So, the uphill hike, when my pack is full, is way more than 22 minutes.

Once, I tried it with a full pack and a 5-liter box of wine.  Halfway up the hill I got chest pain and had to put a nitroglycerin pill under my tongue, and wait a few minutes, so that I wouldn’t have a heart attack.

I haven’t carried any wine up the hill, since then, but that doesn’t make me want to give up drinking wine.  So, I needed to devise a Plan B.  I came up with a plan that would have brought old Robbie Burns to tears.  It was, I thought, the absolutely best laid plan of mice or men.

I didn’t just want to get wine.  I wanted to get a lot of wine, plus there was a veritable bucket list of things I wanted to do on the same journey.  I also wanted to make a trip to the bank, find a good local place to have pizza, and have a beer.  (I drink wine at home, beer when I’m out.)

The first problem to overcome was that the bus only runs every two hours, except for the last 4 runs of the day, when it runs every hour: leaving the depot at 2:20, 3:20, 4:20, and 5:20 p.m.  I worked out a plan that would have even impressed the D-Day planners.

I left my house at 2:10 p.m.  I got down the hill at 2:23.  The bus that left the depot at 2:20 arrived at my bus stop at 2:35, right on schedule.  I got to the bank around 3 p.m., so a quick calculation told me that the 3:20 bus would probably arrive at the bank around 4 p.m.

I took care of my business at the bank and had 50 minutes before my next bus would come.  I walked to a pizza restaurant that was just two or three bus stops down the road, Two Cousins Pizza Restaurant.  I took my time savoring the two delicious slices of pepperoni pizza with a nice bottle of Juengling beer.  I was checking things off my To-Do list rapidly.  I went outside and only had a few minutes to wait for the bus that arrived in front of the restaurant at 4:05.  That bus took me to the liquor store in Kendig Square, a big shopping center about 5 miles south of downtown Lancaster.

At this point, I’m congratulating myself on how well my plan is going, and I wasn’t worried about a thing.  I only had two easy steps to go to complete my plan:

1. Buy a lot of wine.
2. Take a taxi home from there.

I bought 15 liters of wine, and a bottle of Bourbon.  I dragged my purchase to the curb and dialed the number of the taxi I used to take whenever I went to the Roller Derby Games.

A recorded voice told me, “The number you dialed is no longer in service.”

I didn’t panic.  I Googled the number or another taxi service.  It picked up on the first ring.  “Thank you for calling Lancaster Cab.  Please hold on and I will try to connect you with a dispatcher.”  Bad background music started to play.

“Try?” I said to myself.  Did that answering machine say “try to connect?”  I listened to the same 30 second loop of bad music for 10 minutes, when I realized that yes, the machine must have said “try.”  So I hung up and went back to Googling another company.

“We’re sorry, but the number you dialed is no longer in service.”  Covid seems to have wiped out all the cab companies in the Lancaster area.

By now the bus that left the depot at 4:20 is arriving at the Kendig Square bus stop, and leaving without me.  I know that there is only one more bus, which leaves the depot at 5:20, but I can’t get on that bus and lug 16 liters of booze up the hill.  I have maybe a dozen nitroglycerin pills in my pocket, but I fear that even that might not get me up the hill with 16 liters of booze weighing me down.  So, I called another cab service.

“We can’t come to the phone right now.  Leave a message and we’ll get back to you.”

I left a message, and checked Google again.  There weren’t any other cab companies within miles, so I called the “trying” one again.  Again, it picked up on the first ring.

“Thank you for calling Lancaster Cab.  Please hold on and I will try to connect you with a dispatcher.”

It did say “try.”  The musical loop played for 10 minutes before a dispatcher came on the line.

“Hello,” I said, “I’m at Kendig Square and I would like a taxi, please.”

“What is the address?”

I don’t know the address.  It’s a shopping center.  I’m outside of the liquor store in the Kendig Square Shopping Center.”

“You don’t have an address?”

“I have an address of where I want to go to, but I don’t know the address here.  It’s the Kendig Square shopping center.

“Kendig Square?”

“Yes Kendig Square.”

“I don’t know where that is.  Do you have an address I can put into the G.P.S.?”

“I don’t know the address.  It’s the Kendig Shopping Center, about 5 miles south of downtown Lancaster.  There’s a movie theatre the Kendig Movie Theater.”

“Okay, we’ll pick you up in one hour.”

“Wait!  I’m not by the movie theater.  I’m outside the liquor store.”

“Okay, can you wait an hour?”

“Yes, I can wait an hour.”

“Okay, we’ll be there in an hour.”

So, now I have to kill an hour.  This wasn’t in my plan, but I dragged the booze into a nearby Chinese Restaurant.  I had just finished eating pizza, but Chinese food isn’t filling, right?  So, I ordered a quart of Beef and Broccoli.  I was prepared to wait.  I wasn’t hungry or in any hurry, but I’m telling you honestly.  The cashier handed me my change and instantly produced a bag containing a steaming hot quart of Beef and Broccoli, with a pint of white rice.

Somebody else must have called in an order of Beef and Broccoli and she figured she would give me their order, which was ready, and they can eat the order I just put in, and that way everyone gets hot food, instead of this quart of Beef and Broccoli getting cold while she waited for them to show up.

I’m only guessing, but that must be what happened.  So, I took the order to a table and sat down to slowly savor it.  I even threw in a couple trips to the bathroom.

Then I went outside and watched as the last bus of the day left the bus stop.  I was committed to the taxi now.  It had been more than an hour, so I called them back.

“Thank you for calling Lancaster Cab.  Please hold on and I will try to connect you with a dispatcher.”

“Oh boy!  Here we go again.”  To my surprise, though, a dispatcher came on within a minute.”

“It’s been over an hour and I’m still waiting for a taxi.”

“You want a taxi?”

Then we repeated the Abbott and Costello routine about the address of Kendig Square, as if we had never spoken before.

“Kendig Square?”

“Yes, Kendig Square.”

“Pennsylvania?”

I wanted to say, “Yes, of course, Pennsylvania, you freakin’ moron.  Why would I call a Pennsylvanian taxi company, if I wasn’t in Pennsylvania?”

I wanted to say that (and a few expletives), but the last bus had just left, and the other cab company that took my message an hour and a half ago, still hadn’t called me back, so my only other alternative was to call Crazy Debbie for a ride, and I knew that she would be hammered by this point in the day.  Whatever “Gang aft a-gley” meant. My plans were sure doing it. So, I was instead, polite, extremely polite to this dispatcher.

“Okay, 20 minutes.”

“Okay.

To my astonishment, 20 minutes later a cab showed up, and 10 minutes after that I was home with my 16 liters of booze.  Of course, since I’ve been home, I’ve already consumed 2 of the liters, because I figured that it was worth celebrating that I made it back from Kendig Square without needing a single nitroglycerin tablet.  To me, that was a Christmas miracle.

Happy Holidays, everyone.

Peace & Love, and all of the above.

Earl

It’s almost election day.  One week and one day after Halloween, we’re all either going to be tricked or treated.

I used to get really worked up about elections, because I felt that the results could affect my life for decades.  Now, I don’t have decades left.  My Dad lived into his 90s, but he was always an outlier.  At 74, I take 14 different pills a day just to keep me going, a few for the heart, a bunch for my hip, and some just for the head.  I don’t have decades to go.  So, I don’t get as worked up about elections, anymore.

I still care.  The results may not affect me for decades, but, realistically, they will probably affect me for the rest of my life.

In Pennsylvania, I’m voting for John Fedderman.  I first heard of his campaign back in April, when I got an e-mail just before National Pot Day (April 20th) asking me to contribute $4.20 on 4-20-2022 to support the senate campaign of John Fedderman, who wanted to legalize pot.  So, I got out my credit card.

That’s the only political contribution I made this year.  I think that Money has taken over politics, and the only way to curb the problem is to defund politicians.  So, I don’t usually contribute to political campaigns.  However, I’m a Democrat.  John’s a Democrat.  He wants to legalize weed.  I’ve been arguing for the legalization of pot for more than 50 years.  It was worth $4.20.

Five months ago, though, John had a stroke.  He is steadily recovering, but still has some problems with words.  His opponent is the Famous TV Doctor, Dr. Oz.  They met in a TV debate.

The balance of power in both houses of Congress is so tenuous, that both sides are fighting tooth and nail in every swing state to see that their candidate gets elected, no matter who the candidate is or what their problems are.

The Republicans clamor that John Fedderman is not mentally competent for the Senate, because he had a stroke 5 months ago, while they circle the red wagons around Georgian Senate candidate Herschel Walker, who Democrats claim has had more concussions than I’ve had girlfriends, and, quite obviously, more girlfriends than I had, too, as they keep showing up with Morey Povitch type stories about abortions they had for him.

Isn’t it weird that we can forgive the mental problems of our own candidates, while so viciously attacking the mental problems of the other party’s candidates?

Me, I think the mental condition of the voters is actually way more important than the mental condition of the candidate, and, right now, I honestly believe that the knowledge level and intelligence of today’s average voter is at an all-time low.  We live in an age when instant information is available at our fingertips, but most of us only ever listen to one side of the story, the side we’re on.  Our decisions are made strictly by Party loyalty, not by any great reasoning process.

That finally gets me to my point.  The worst case of decisions being made by Party loyalty, not by any great reasoning process is in the Supreme Court, where every decision does truly affect many of us for the rest of our lives.  How can we the people make sure that Supreme Court Judges, judge fairly?  We can’t.  Ginni Thomas is working feverishly to overthrow the last election, and her Supreme Court husband Clarence just says he knows nothing about it because they don’t discuss politics at home.  I don’t think I can trust him, but there’s nothing I can do about it.  He has a job for life.  He doesn’t care what I think.

I think this is wrong.  Even the President is limited to just two four-year terms.  The Supreme Court Judges should also be subject to term limits, ten years, or twenty years at the most, not forever.  Amend the Constitution.  Only Dictators want to rule for life.

Peace & Love, and all of the above,

Earl