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Sun Tzu, who wrote The Art of War advised that is wise to keep your friends and enemies close, because these are people it is important to know and understand.  So, I watched the first Republican debate.

First of all, it was a bit awkward, that the combined poll popularity of the eight people on the stage didn’t equal the 52.2% polling numbers of the person who the moderator called, “The Elephant Not in the room,” the man who will be taking a perp walk at the Fulton County Jail sometime today, Donald Trump.

It was obvious when the crowd practically booed Chris Christie off the stage for anti-Trump remarks, that the audience reflected this strong hold that Donald Trump still has on the Republican Party despite the multiple indictments against him in both State and Federal Courts.  They think that the government’s case against their superstar is all politically motivated, with no evidence to back it up.  (This, despite the fact that Donald Trump’s lawyers want to postpone the trial until 2026, just so that they will have enough time to go over the mountain of evidence that the government will present in court.)

After the debaters were reminded that they had all taken a pledge to support whoever won the Republican nomination, they were asked, by a show of hands, if they would support Donald Trump if he was the nominee.  Most, quickly raised their hands in the affirmative.  Further proof of Trump’s firm grip on 52.2% of the Party.  Like the song says, it’s all about that Base, about that Base, about that Base.

So, why were the eight debaters there?  They know that despite his popularity with the Party, there is still a chance that Donald Trump, who faces a RICO charge with a minimum sentence of 5 years in jail, might not be legally allowed to run for the Presidency.  They all know that this is the only way that any one of them can get the nomination.  For one of them to win, Donald Trump must be out of the competition.  That’s why they were there?  They believe that might happen.

So, while they wait for the Elephant not in the room to stumble and fall, the best thing they can do is to elevate their standings in the polls.  They want to be the person who will inherit the win if the favorite is disqualified.  Currently, their race is for second place.

The position is currently held by Ron DeSantis, who is polling at 14.5%.  “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king,” so despite his low polling numbers he got center stage because his numbers were higher than everyone else there.  I don’t think he did anything to hurt or help himself, so I don’t expect his numbers to change significantly.

Vivek Ramaswamy, by virtue of his 8.9% polling numbers, was to his left.  To tell you the truth, this was the first time I ever saw this guy, so I was curious to see how he would perform.  He came out swinging, “I’m the only guy up here who isn’t bought and paid for by a Political Action committee.”  Or something like that.  I put it in quotes because it’s darn close to whatever he said.  So, immediately, the other 7 debaters attacked him, and he fought them all off.  The 38-year old businessman was quickly making himself known to the nation.  He won the first hour.

Former Vice-President Mike Pence with 4.2% was next.  Fortunately, no flies landed on him this time, but he was getting attacked by everyone else.  He held up well to the attacks and even landed a few good punches.  To me, he seemed like the most reasonable person there, until he announced Jesus as his running mate.

Tim Scott was next with 3.5% in the polls.  He’s a Black Republican Senator.  I don’t foresee the MAGA base getting behind him, and he didn’t really get in anything that would have swayed many people, either.  I don’t think his numbers will change much.

Next, was former U.N. Ambassador, former Governor of South Carolina, and the only woman candidate, Nikki Haley.  She started off evenly and the first hour of the debate did nothing to help or hurt herself, as she let the boys beat on each other for the hour in their own little Royal Rumble.  In the second hour, though, she came out with fresh legs.  (No Pants Suit intended.)  She went after Ramaswarmy, and had him on the ropes.  When he tried to fight back, she landed a volley of strong punches.  He wound up taking a standing eight count, and never got back into the fight.  I scored it a TKO for Nikki.

Next, with a meager 3.3% of the polling, was the elephant who was in the room, former Governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie.  He’s a big man with weight issues, so, I can empathize with him.  The crowd didn’t, though.  When he spoke ill of the “Elephant who’s not in the room,” the crowd almost booed him off the stage.  He didn’t flinch, though.  While he was being booed he said that they could boo him, but it didn’t make what he was saying not true.  He landed a few shots and took a few shots.  I think he did well, but was trying to work a very tough room.

Asa Hutchinson, with a paltry polling of 0.7% was next.  He took a strong stand against Donald Trump, and, while he earned my respect for that, he didn’t win any fans in the crowd.  So, I don’t see him lasting long in the race.  It’s all about the base, about the base, about the base.

The final debater was North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, who hobbled around with an injured foot.  He landed one joke.  He told the audience that the people back home wished him well and told him to break a leg.  He shouldn’t have taken that literally.

He’s from North Dakota, which has only 3 electoral votes, so, I don’t expect him to last long in the race, either.

Final score.  I think Ron Desantis held onto 2^nd place.  I think that Nikki Haley, Mike Pence and Chris Christie will move up slightly, while Ramaswamy, Scott, Hutchinson, and Burgum will lose ground.  They’re all just biding their time, though, just waiting for the circus to leave town and hoping that soon the elephant will go away.

It’s all about the base, about the base, about the base.

Peace & Love, and all of the above,

Earl

My brother Kevin writes a weekly column in the San Francisco Chronicle.  Then every couple years, he produces a compilation book containing some of his best articles.  He just published his third book, The Secrets of the Blue Bungalow.  I have only published one book, a children’s book called A Little Bit Better.

I am envious, but I’m not jealous.  I know that Kevin doesn’t really write his own stories.  His family does.  Kevin is a gay San Francisco cop, who with his husband Brian, adopted two young boys over a decade ago.  The now teenage boys actually write the columns for him.  All he has to do is observe them during the week and write down the good parts, or sometimes the bad parts, whichever makes for the best story.

Me, I’ve got to create my own bedlam.  That was easy when I was younger, but now that I’ve travelled around the sun 75 times, I can’t drink that much anymore. So, I simply can not compete with the antics of two teenage boys.  Kevin produces a column every Wednesday.  I’m lucky if I can come up with one a month, and sometimes I can’t even do that.  However, I don’t have the Damocles Sword of a deadline hanging over my head.  So, I don’t have to be so prolific.  I don’t have an editor breathing down my neck for a weekly fix of 750 words.  I just get a text message from one or two of my readers if I go a few months without a column, “What’s up?  You still alive?”

I don’t think I could produce a story every week, unless I, too, adopted a few teenage “ghostwriters,” like my brother did, but I’m not about to go through all that effort just to spice up my columns.  I am deeply devoted to the wonderful readers of this column, but let’s face it, there aren’t enough of them to field a softball team, maybe not even enough for a bowling team.  WordPress keeps track of those things, and they tell me that I have way over a hundred subscribers.  I only ever hear from a handful of them, though, so the rest must be in the witness protection program.

So, this column is not about me.  It’s for Kevin.  Go to Amazon and buy his book.  His kids worked hard to write it.

Secrets of the Blue Bungalow: More True Tales of Family Life in the Outer, Outer, Outer, Outer Excelsior: Fisher-Paulson, Kevin, Miller, D. Patrick: 9781732185074: Amazon.com: Books

Peace & Love, and all of the above,

Earl

My family came into town this weekend for an early celebration of my 75^th birthday.  I offered to take them on a tour of Wheatland, the home of James Buchanan, our 15^th President.  They weren’t interested.  They wanted to go ride the Strasburg Railroad, a 45-minute ride through Amish Country.  I’ve taken the Amtrak from Lancaster to New York, many dozens of times, so I had about as much interest in another train ride as they had in Wheatland, none.

We decided that they would go for the railroad ride on Saturday afternoon, and then we would all meet at Clipper Magazine Stadium for a Barnstormer game and the all-you-can-eat buffet.

They started with a little warm-up train, and Kevin quickly became Cooper’s favorite uncle…

I think I can.  I think I can.  I think I can.

So, they moved up to the real train…

When they got back from their choo choo ride, they had questions about the ballgame.  Who are they playing, they all wanted to know.  I told them that they were playing the newest team in the league, the Spire City Ghost Hounds.  That didn’t interest them, so I had to start listing all the food that was on the buffet menu to regain their interest.

The Spire City Ghost Hounds joined the Atlantic League this year and they didn’t even have a name until June 24^th.  They wore question marks on their uniforms.

“You know I’ve been to the ballpark on a team with no name…”

So, then they held a contest to name the team and The Spire City Ghost Hounds was the winning name. 

It might seem strange that The Spire City Ghost Hounds could possibly be the winning name, until you hear some of the losing suggestions:  Bone Shakers, Rail Frogs, Sawbones, and Screaming Alpacas

The first part of their name actually makes sense, though.  They’re from Frederick, Maryland, a city which was immortalized in the Civil War era poem Barbara Frietchie by The American Poet John Greenleaf Whittier.  It refers to the spires of the many churches in the downtown area of the city.  The most famous lines of the poem, which we all had to read back in high school was:

“Shoot, if you must, this old gray head,

But spare your country’s flag,” she said.

The Ghost Hounds part of their name, well, that’s from a local Frederick, Maryland urban legend about a grey-eyed dog that haunts the city, and it probably makes some sense to them, but not to anybody else in the world.  Woo.  Spooky Ghost Hounds.  What a joke.  I can’t wait for the Stormers to have a go at this new team.

So, we headed off to the field preparing to party, and party we did.

“I want to thank you all for coming out today to celebrate my 75th birthday.”

Then when my nephew DJ and my brother Kevin spotted the Barnstormers Mascot, Cylo, they raced all the way from the party pavilion in right field to where Cylo was entertaining the crowd on the left field side of the stadium.

Kevin made sure that he got in all the pictures.  He writes a weekly article in the San Francisco Chronicle, and he was determined to write a story about the weekend so that it could be written off as a business expense.  Maybe, contrary to what Brother X and I have been telling him for his 65 years, he might actually be the smart one in the family.

Now, all we needed was for the Barnstormers to kick a little Ghost Hound butt.

That was not to be, though, as the Hounds of Hell kept blasting homeruns at us into the pavilion where we were sitting.  They stomped the Stormers by a score of 14-4.

We still had a blast, but I guess the Stormers should not have taken the new team so lightly.

Maybe, they should have called Ghostbusters.

Peace & Love, and all of the above,

Earl

Barbara Frietchie

BY JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER

Up from the meadows rich with corn,

Clear in the cool September morn,

The clustered spires of Frederick stand

Green-walled by the hills of Maryland.

Round about them orchards sweep,

Apple- and peach-tree fruited deep,

Fair as a garden of the Lord

To the eyes of the famished rebel horde,

On that pleasant morn of the early fall

When Lee marched over the mountain wall,—

Over the mountains winding down,

Horse and foot, into Frederick town.

Forty flags with their silver stars,

Forty flags with their crimson bars,

Flapped in the morning wind: the sun

Of noon looked down, and saw not one.

Up rose old Barbara Frietchie then,

Bowed with her fourscore years and ten;

Bravest of all in Frederick town,

She took up the flag the men hauled down;

In her attic window the staff she set,

To show that one heart was loyal yet.

Up the street came the rebel tread,

Stonewall Jackson riding ahead.

Under his slouched hat left and right

He glanced: the old flag met his sight.

“Halt!”— the dust-brown ranks stood fast.

“Fire!”— out blazed the rifle-blast.

It shivered the window, pane and sash;

It rent the banner with seam and gash.

Quick, as it fell, from the broken staff

Dame Barbara snatched the silken scarf;

She leaned far out on the window-sill,

And shook it forth with a royal will.

“Shoot, if you must, this old gray head,

But spare your country’s flag,” she said.

A shade of sadness, a blush of shame,

Over the face of the leader came;

The nobler nature within him stirred

To life at that woman’s deed and word:

“Who touches a hair of yon gray head

Dies like a dog! March on!” he said.

All day long through Frederick street

Sounded the tread of marching feet:

All day long that free flag tost

Over the heads of the rebel host.

Ever its torn folds rose and fell

On the loyal winds that loved it well;

And through the hill-gaps sunset light

Shone over it with a warm good-night.

Barbara Frietchie’s work is o’er,

And the Rebel rides on his raids no more.

Honor to her! and let a tear

Fall, for her sake, on Stonewall’s bier.

Over Barbara Frietchie’s grave

Flag of Freedom and Union, wave!

Peace and order and beauty draw

Round thy symbol of light and law;

And ever the stars above look down

On thy stars below in Frederick town!

“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