Walkabout Thoughts #44

My thoughts, Stream of consciousness, rough and ready, while walking off long Covid and listening to podcasts…June 26, 2023 Monday

Weather for the day…yes

Podcast for the day “Deja News” by Rachel Maddow and Davy Aronson, "Episode 3: "The Meanest, Dirtiest, Low-Down Stuff""

Considering Rachel Maddow’s podcast of Deja news for this week about Republican voter suppression (when will America get tired by their exhausting antics??) do we have and why don’t we have, a whole section of intimidation laws to literally put these people in prison when they pull their crap? Laws in such a way that would stop their bullshit. I don’t mean capital punishment for voter suppression, I would reserve that for former presidents like Donald Trump, for things he did and is still doing.

What should LBJ have and the Democratic Party done to neutralize Republican illiberal newspaper voter suppression attack ads in 1964 regarding a fake, non-existent, "Negro Protective Group", who told blacks not to vote or you could end up in jail? This is America. We ARE a liberal democracy, still, and regardless what the Right keeps trying to do.

Also, you can take much or most of what Republicans claim about Democrats and dig into what they’re saying to find it’s really indicative about Republicans projecting onto any or all others to distract and obstruct the view of what they’re actually doing and what they really believe in. Autocracy, apparently.

Regarding pro-Putinist propaganda by Putin apologists claiming there are Nazis in Ukraine, forgetting their Russian war criminal president's invasion of another country. For the record, there are zero Nazis in Ukraine. However, their are those of neo-Nazi mindsets who have invaded Ukraine from Russia (and some of those type living IN Ukriane, as in any country). When Russia leaves Ukraine, the neo-Nazis will have for the most part, left. Attacking another country and committing war crimes is not an excuse for perceived, or potential neo-Nazis in another country made up from a mostly democratic majority (again, as in many countries)… As there seem to be in every country around the world. Every country has right wing autocratic extremists, some of whom find titillation in political fetishism in absorbing and presenting the neo Nazi’s nonsense. In our country, they tend to be Republicans and conservatives. All of them have been misled, but also cherry pick, as the religious do, in selectively ignoring reality, and chosing to be a patently as stupid as possible in the face of reality and thoroughly against the facts. Everyone's facts, not just "alternative facts", a term promoted by Kelly Anne Conway (divorced now from her more liberal Republican husband) deep in the MAGA slurry of Donald Trump's wake.

Regarding Rachel’s podcast this week and JFK winning over Nixon in 1960...It begs the question, if Nixon had won rather than JFK would he have turned into what he later did when he finally became president? I suspect he would have. Because that’s what happens with people of weak ego and poor character. Not to mention, with a conservative orientation and a Republican to boot. Which we’ve seen again and again. George W. Bush. Obviously and ultimately in Donald J Trump, criminal FPOTUS45.

As a political party, when you realize not enough people are going to vote for your candidate, and your response to that is, "how do we keep the other parties voters from voting against us", and you then fall on an answer such as, "we will suppress their votes," or worse, "...in anyways possible", yes… your party has "jumped that shark." You have then stepped out of an illiberal democracy into an autocratic party and one inevitably of sedition. And when you're in that GOP and Trump MAGA today, you’re moving into stochastic terrorism and your are then, you have then, fully left this country, the great American experiment and democracy itself. You're an Autocrat. At some point they are, and you have become, criminals. Where the only question of the rest of us at hand will be... how to prove it with evidence in court, and execute justice?

I should contact Eagle Harbor books and the book seller downtown and see if they would take maybe two of my books for free, welcome to sell them and keep the money, and if they want more... let me know?

Why isn’t there a law that says every state must have enough polling places, free and protected, where if you’re standing in line for longer than an hour, then the state should lose money and if they don't have money to have enough polling places, then federal money would be supplied giving states and their illiberal conservative leadership (who are the ones pulling this crap) will absolutely have no reason for THEIR voter suppression actions. And so on and so forth… remember 1964 presidential election's Republican operation, which Hubert Humphrey said should be called "Operation Evil Lie", which was pure and simple, voter suppression by the conservative party.

1964 presidential election was lopsided with Barry Goldwater losing on the Republican side and winning only later in 1968 with the eventual nightmare Nixon with an actual criminal VPOTUS (GOP took decades to advance to nominating an actual criminal for POTUS in Donald Trump). One being his home state of Arizona, with another five being States where the black vote had already long been suppressed. "Operation Eagle Eye" by Republicans wasn’t even needed in those five states because of Jim Crow laws already suppressing the black vote and the black community in general, and in so many other ways.

As we now know, if voter suppression by the right had never been utilized there would’ve been very few Republican presidents in the past 50 years.

I do realize that the 60s and 70s Republican voter suppression efforts and their "Operation Eagle Eye" did set the foundation and building blocks up for today’s illiberal “democratic free“ elections so subverted by subversive and seditious Republicans. At times, aided by America’s foreign enemies, via social media, or whatever they could come up with. With other issues such as dark money, toxic conservative, a stacked SCOTUS and federal courts, and illiberal Gerrymandering. None of that is news.

Here’s something else to consider… We hear a lot from the right about how bad the left is. We hear how the Democratic Party ruins our economy. Regardless of the fact that Republican presidents take us into wars, leave us with seriously depleted budgets and massive debt, and Democrats always seem to be the ones cleaning it up every time. But if Republicans would stop this nonsense and act as liberal democrats (lower "d"), which this country is... a liberal democratic republic… IF they would work with the other side, does it matter if they never win, if they get things done that they really do want (for the country), and not just what they want, for their always winning in their sadly toxic, anti-American, "corporate thought" agendas? If what they want is actually useful to America and Americans, and not just to their wealthy and corporate? If they would work FOR the American good and not just for Themselves? The GOP has degenerated into a party of actors who play out roles for pure power and notoriety and greed. They're propaganda is disinformed and autocratically subverted, their electorate in chaos and confusion, so now they feel like Russians who don’t know what the hell they’re voting, for. Don't we really just want to be left alone and reclaim what it is to be patriotic? Until finally they end up voting against themselves. And then Russia’s case strengthens up and we find ourselves again invading other countries (Remember "W" and Iraq?). how many of Americans mistakes in other countries are from toxic capitalism? From the greedy and conservative and the Republican? Oh surely, there were some Democrats and independents involved. But that doesn’t resolve the Right from there fundamentals and foundation in toxic conservatism. 

It has a little to do with Conservatism anymore.
Republicans: "Be very good at selling bad ideas."
Democrats: "Be very bad at selling good ideas, political effort, democratic spin"
Republicans: Fraud, Republican lies & disinformation.
Democrats: Truth and facts.
Republicans: Decency for corporations and the wealthy.
Democrats: Decency for all American citizens, especially those who are people and not business or industry while maintaining a healthy business and industry.
Republicans: Enhance faith in God and religion and autocracy. God’s autocratic by the way. The pursuit of happiness of their orientation or their beliefs or their institutions... against all others.
Democrats Enhance faith in democracy to allow a country mixed with many cultures and religions and non-religions. The pursuit of happiness, not just the conservative pursuit of their own happiness.

"Operation Eagle Eye" slogan: "To restore confidence in America’s elections"...but basically, just spew disingenuous disinformation.

Rachel Maddow's Deja News podcast should be required listening in every high school and every junior high, every college and every Congress. on TV and forced onto Fox News and all conservative media.

Attorney Jim Brosnahan, who testified against William Rehnquist in that attorneys active voter suppression action in 1964, said today on the podcast that, “Anyone's vote taken away is a democratic sin. “ restricting any citizens vote is committing a serious concern and should be dealt with." Citizens lose their vote when they going to prison. Unless it is under conditions of treason, no one should ever lose their vote. No one's vote should ever be suppressed, the more votes, the better.

Next podcast "Axios today"-
Prigozhin is not a hero, he’s a "Blackwater" type mercenary group type leader, although Betsy DeVos's brother, Eric Prince is no angel either… But basically a mob boss as some claim as a Putin capo. Putin, after all, being the mob boss. In America, we have something similar with a more cowardly, less, intelligent just as media savvy, maybe more media savvy than Putin, mob boss in Donald Trump. Both countries have the delusionally propagandized and disinformed who follow those cretins over the cliff to enjoy a plummet of their country into death and despair. Chaos and despair and apathy being the rule of the day for both those leader's followers. And remember, Putin’s capo and leader of the Wagner group, started a 10 hour march to Moscow to the capital and stopped 4/5 of the way there. There’s very much speculation about what Putin will do to his capo for this sedition. What does a mafia boss do to an ill acting capo? Well? That depends on how integral he is to his wealth and power acquisition and retention model that a mafia boss has in place. Unless that model, as in Putin‘s model, as in the failure of the Ukrainian war so far, according to his 'three days to overtake Ukraine" model, he now has in its place.

Finishing up my 4th mile, then starting on my fifth and final mile for the day. My long Covid "walkabout thought" for the day being solidly executed. If I keep this up at three or four days out of every week, while the weather hasn’t been helping, although it does get better heading into summer, That would mean every week I am alternately doing 15 or 20 mile walks total. Which my much younger, VA health doctor said is way better than anything he’s doing. But, such are the joys of retirement... and long Covid.

55 million people in the south east west to Mississippi are under a heat warning as of today. Texas is in some southern locations in the triple digits and so far doing well because they’ve applied some renewable energy sources and batteries which so far are functioning nominally. Even against all the bullshit and nonsense that crippled state's governor has been putting out since the storm, two years ago. Republicans are good at one thing. Ignoring reality and not being proactive. Being worried about this moment and this moment, alone but not about their citizens, long-term.

These temperatures in the south are as far north as Oklahoma and Kansas, have been proven to be at least five times more related to human induced climate change, and denial of this at this point really is criminal, because people are dying.

Gay and Black minorities and LGBTQ+ people are here. They always have been. To deny that is to deny America and democracy. So if you’re against all that or whining about how you won’t "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps", a typical Republican comment towards those who are incapable of doing that, then it’s not about those you hate or those you speak out against, it's yourself and your group of whiners, who refuse to go out and succeed, as any American would, regardless of what obstacles are against them. Because that’s American. And whining and abusing others or denigrate any others to make it look better, well that’s autocracy and that kind of makes you a rat bastard.

Next podcast, “Cork Today“, a podcast from Cork, Ireland, where I spent a few days and a lovely time back in 2015. I so wanna go back to Ireland. Sadly, my Irish roots are too well established for a dual passport. So, thanks for that Ireland.

The podcast is talking with somebody about a herbal remedy to help you sleep. It’s got so much stuff in it. How do you want to think about taking it. I’ve tried to keep my stress levels down since high school when I went in the hospital for it. When the doctors (3 neurosurgeons) said…(and this would’ve been winter spring 1973)… "Here’s a script for Valium 5 mg, now goodbye. We would suggest you move out of your parent's house from what your mother told us." Weeks later I graduated at 17 and moved out with a job into an apartment. Then life was good. The headaches stopped. My stress levels dropped. Now today in retirement at 67, 68 end of August, I do my best to get exposure to sunlight. 15 minutes today, even five help with sleeping at night in regenerating one's melatonin. Yesterday, I had spaghetti and meatballs for lunch with two glasses of wine, testing out my long Covid healing. I did well. But I woke up at 12:30 a.m. and thought what the hell… So I took half of a 5 mg melatonin...just enough to put me to sleep and keep me there, until  at7:30 AM I woke up. I feel pretty good today. Getting the exercise definitely is helping. I think the thing that helped me most in healing from long Covid was getting exercise, and sunlight. Although both can work against you, until you hit a certain degree of healing with that insidious condition.

I’d have to say as far as difficulty sleeping, all my life, especially in high school, I think it was more about ADHD and my mind running at hyper speed on multiple levels. As well as working nights through HS. As a snack bar drive-in theater worker and then snack bar manager. How long after work, late at night it took me to get to sleep, to get up early to go back to school, or after graduating, to work? I think my sleep was better after graduating HS, not having to go to school at day and then work nights. I figured I usually got a few hours sleep in HS. I would come home after work at maybe midnight, go to bed and have to be at school by 8:30 AM. I can remember many times looking at the clock before I fall asleep at 5 AM. I would just lay there in bed with my mind racing and thoughts spinning about everything... not all bad, just a mind that wanted to work 24 hours a day. My mother liked staying up all night. My older brother, who has said he thinks he got all the worst of our mom from her, well? I think maybe I left most of that out and get most of the best from her. Anyway, he felt he was a night person too. But we are day people as a race and require Vitamin D and sunlight and our schedules are ruled by that. I have to say really in much of my earlier my life, I did prefer being up at night. But life and having children has a way of rectifying that. Though, bending you to it, will wear on you to make you feel a little crazy at times.

The Cork podcast is talking about how hot it is there and how hard it is to sleep when you’re hot. People don’t have air conditioners there or some do bu no money for electricity. Cork's not a highly prosperous town, but it is a very lovely town. So they suggest curtains closed during the day to keep the place cool, windows open at and night sleep with a sheet only. Poor People's air conditioning. I remember those days.

Now they’re talking about a listener question about artichokes lowering cholesterol, and if there may be something involved there. The person is on a Staten who asked the question, and so am I. I’ve added eating two avocados a week. I don’t know if it’s helped or not, but they are tasty. Maybe I'll add artichokes, I do like them too. 

I'm editing this today, Wednesday, July 5, 2023 and it's my little brother's birthday... who died of liver cancer in 1975, two weeks before today, back then, He just missed making it to 15. His doctor in Manhattan said then, that maybe in 5 years, they will be able to do a liver transplant. Five years to the week, they did their first successful one. Happy birthday, little bro...

And with that...

Cheers! Sláinte!

Deny Nationalist Separatism - In America, or in Ireland

America...is a mess. Ireland, Scotland, and England are in one now, too. And so this blog this week will also be a bit messy. That's how I got to here, to now. It's how we all got here. We see now an example in other nations, like in Ireland, and in England. But first here in our own country.

What the hell happened? What the hell is happening?

This was all made to be this way by extremists and with the help of both Republican and Russian intervention. A similar situation is happening in the UK. Here, leaders in our GOP like Mitch McConnell, who has been a bane upon this country for years now, has deluded half our nation, and angered the other half.

And for good reason. They have forced us into separatism and now isolationism from the world, removing us as much as they can, especially Pres. Trump, from our leadership role. As if trying to hand it to Vladimir Putin and Pres. Xi in China. Two other leaders who need to be removed from the world, and their own nation's, stages.

McConnell's predecessor, the travesty known as Newt Gingrich, first dragged us into this new age using new media in the early 90s when video cameras were first allowed into Congress and he utilized and abused that format late into the night, kickstarting if not all that we see today in American politics, so very much of the bad of it.

This is no longer about the best ideas and people rising to the top. To the point of Republicans now conflating what socialism, democratic socialism are, or what the difference is between that and Nazis Germany.

It is now all about the people desired to be at the top by a few, being forced there by illiberal means and through underhanded means, at times bordering on the criminal.

It has given us a polarized nation. And that, is never a good thing. Except for those who are doing it and for all those issues used to obscure the truly important issues being back tabled by divisive issues used and abused for merely political purposes. Just as we're seeing today.

We have other examples of this being done around the world and throughout history. Brexit is another example in the UK. France just had its tussle and won over the right-wing nationalist. They, were lucky.

I am myself part Irish. I have felt Irish since I began high school when in 10th grade I saw a documentary about "The Troubles" going on in Ireland back then. I began to learn more about the Loyalists and the Separatists, the Catholics and the Protestants, the British and the Irish.

I was fifteen when my consciousness became raised about The Troubles, in that land of my ancestors so very far away.

The Miami Showband in the 1970s - from Irish Central 

There is a Netflix documentary coming out about the forty-year-old massacre of a band: "Remastered - The Miami Showband Massacre". I had not heard of it until now. I saw and read about, and researched many of the things that happened in Ireland during The Troubles. But this one I missed.

I had been paying attention to Ireland throughout the 70s. But the summer of the year this happened in 1975, my younger brother was dying of liver cancer. He didn't make it to his 15th birthday on July 5th. Then not long after the Miami Showband Massacre on July 31st, I was in basic training in the Air Force and had other things on my mind, and no access to media.

I kind of lost the world for a bit that year. Learning of all this now just makes that year hang even heavier in my mind.

A survivor of that massacre, Stephen Travers, warns that this Brexit issue, could bring up old issues long laid to rest now. Brexit, as I understand it, is an ill-planned, pie in the sky belief pushed along by Russian interventions and mostly a divisive British conservative right wing run amock. Reminds me of the GOP here in the States.

It is as much a mess there as we have now in America with our own elections. Could the mess in the UK and Ireland restart, The Troubles? It has much to do with border issues. And feelings that have been long buried. We have ridiculous border issues here in America because a devisive president in Donald Trump and his insane posse the GOP, have blown up a situation into a fake "crisis". Much as had been done with Brexit.

Feelings no one wants to see surface again are being called up. While a younger group of Irish citizens do not fear the return of those Troubles. Those, who either no longer remember The Troubles because they were too young to know what was going on back then, or because they weren't even alive at the time.

Much of what both countries have been in and are seeing an echo of now, are born from abuse and a lack of care or understanding for those being abused. People trying to be together and yet, are being separated upon ideological lines for reasons having nothing to do with the cohesion of a nation.

For me, this all began during a time when I was young. A time in America of the Vietnam War. Of civil unrest in America because of a war no one understood and an awakening of America's youth. Of my orientation in having grown up so close to an Air Force base that I could play outside and watch planes taxi for takeoffs at the end of our road.

That had to have had an effect on me. And it did. In junior high, I joined an auxiliary of the USAF, the Civil Air Patrol where we were trained in military forms related to aerospace and search and rescue of small downed aircraft. This after my years in martial arts and fighting in tournaments. It was during a period of my being on a youth pistol and rifle team (I later got my letters in high school being on our school rifle team for three years). Eventually, perhaps it was inevitable, I went into the Air Force. All those things affected me growing up.

Much of all that is detailed in my true crime biopic screenplay titled, The Teenage Bodyguard. In the hands now of a major management agency in Hollywood, it details my history and a week I lived in 1974 and a bit of 1975. Hopefully, we can all see all this on screen one day. It is a fascinating story, even if I do say so myself. And I'm not the only one saying so as industry insiders who have read it also liked it very much.

Vietnam. I saw my brother's friends come home from that war. Mostly messed up in one way or another. One of my brothers is seven years older than me. None of those people we knew who experienced Vietnam are alive now. Those whom I knew growing up.

My brother was lucky. He wasn't taken for the war and is alive today. I was ready to go to the Vietnam war for my country. I was young, foolish, lots of hormones, lots of experience in practicing things and not using them. Raised Catholic, I had reasons to stand for the abused. As head altar boy at our church, I was used to being in charge. Both then and in the CAP where I was a young "Flight Commander" leading others.

Eventually, I joined the real military during that war in Vietnam, right at the end of it. Though, I never got to go over there. I was lucky. I spent my military years in peacetime.

After a lifetime of confusion and frustration in my home life, in our moving so often up until fifth grade, my parents splitting up in Spain when I was three and we were living there. Growing up bicoastal, in living in Tacoma, WA and visiting our main family back on the east coast in summers. Our mother remarrying when I was five to a man whom I did not like much at all. Our home life growing up was a confused situation between a loving mother and a step-father who had his own emotional problems and who did not much care for me.

I'm not complaining here, I'm just trying to explain how an orientation developed and how it can lead to taking sides, to wanting to lash out at perceived, if not real, abuses and abusers. An orientation that even today comes out in my standing against an excessively foolish right-wing GOP.

It was in tenth grade at fifteen when I first began to desire to learn about my Irish heritage and really delve into it. And I was horrified by what I discovered.

Like about, The Troubles, recently starting up at that time, exposing long-buried scars from the 1916 Easter Uprising and before. In learning of all that, I wanted to go fight for the freedom of Ireland.

I grew up loving the Brits, to be sure. I loved their old films. Their history. Winston Churchill still to this day is one of my heroes. More for his intellect than anything else. I loved British humor. Month Python for one and so many others.

It was confusing to me how the British I had loved as much, as much as my own America, turned quite suddenly for me into the abusers of the Irish. A country so very close to their homeland. Then I learned about other issues through the history of India, Africa, the Boer War, and colonialism overall.

Still, I was ready and willing to go fight for the IRA. I began to learn about the history of the Irish in America, in Ireland and how the British ruled over them. About the Potato Famine and so much more.

I took all those confused feelings and the bitterness from my childhood and channeled it into my desire to push the British out of Ireland. But I was only fifteen and I had no money. I had worked at a job since ninth grade. I worked nights all through high school. But I never had money for a plane ticket.

I tried to convince my friends to join me. Maybe together a few of us could gather the funds and go fight. But I didn't know any other Irish kids. Or perhaps some I knew didn't know or care that they were Irish. Or what it meant. No one seemed to care what was happening in 1970 in Ireland. Perhaps rightly so, as we were Americans. And everyone thought I was nuts anyway. Maybe I was.

In 2015 I finally got to travel Ireland. Walking mostly, also bus, train, and car. I saw Dublin, Galway, Cork, Belfast. I got to share most of the trip with my daughter. From the moment I stepped off the plane until I felt the pain of having to leave at the end. I hope to return.

This all affected me to the point that years ago I began and half finished a manuscript of a fiction novel that began in Ireland and ended here in America. It was a kind of horror story involving abuses by a splinter group of the IRA in using four college friends on vacation for their own purposes. I never finished it.

Perhaps it's time? If I get my screenplay produced, maybe then I can afford to return. My first ever short story which I wrote during a period of illness over a week when I was fifteen was about a youth abused by those in power for political and imperialistic purposes.

There is a thread of this all through my life and many of my writings. How the people are so often abused by those in power. How we are sometimes driven by things we don't even understand and could, if we just stood back for a moment and took a look around us.

We are now experiencing it again here in America, openly and I'm stunned it is happening. And Ireland is going through some of it, hopefully not all of it, again also.

I am now much older. I see our country here in America being so polarized, so unnecessarily divided.

A situation brought on by small minded people for personal greed and power. And a foreign government for purposes of disrupting our nation and western democracy overall. As we're seeing in the UK, in Ireland. Even in Scotland. Where a petty little man in Vladimir Putin and his connections to organized crime has helped to damage so much for his own personal reasons.

Perhaps just like our own President Trump. And an extremist right wing and their dying political party aiding them whether knowingly or otherwise.

We need to learn from Ireland's past. The UK. Ireland, both south and north, need to learn from their histories. I am not the only one who sees it that way as I mentioned above. One article by Clarin Tierney, British Bullying on Brexit border issue may reignite The Troubles, points this out clearly.

My point in all this? History, and what we grew up with, predisposes us to manipulation. By those who love us and those who hate us, as well as those who can use and abuse us. We have to be aware of it. We have to be careful. We have to fight for us, not them. Because they are fighting us, for them.

I grew up with an orientation as have others. Ireland has lived what it is like to be a nation divided and a country at odds with itself. We, especially they, both Ireland proper, Northern Ireland, and the UK, need to not return to a period of time when people, their own people, died over issues both political and polarized, used and abused for the purposes of a few over that of the many.

We need to see behind these curtains at what is really going on and put a stop to it. Before The Troubles begin anew in Ireland. Before they begin again in America. For we had our own Civil War and it wasn't very civil. It nearly destroyed us. And now we are seeing people pushing us in that direction, not for the good of America or our citizens, but for their own political, monetary and power.

This planet, all of us, have been infected by a right-wing agenda, based in a desire for power and control, money and riches. That cannot be what we are about as a human race. Not based in corporate thinking, in political gain, in greed, but in truly humane thinking.

Long term planning, not just short term gain. We need to see ourselves, each other, outside of those above us making our decisions. We need to see the forest and the trees. Not just the trees in getting so specific we are lost. We have to see the big and the small and realize, we are the small. It is and can be confusing. But we have to remember we are one, not many separate, but separate together.

Yes. It can be counter-intuitive and I know that is something most conservatives struggle with as it goes against their mindset. The mindset of many today in being overwhelmed and wishing for easy answers, quick choices, and binary, black and white reasoning. But that is not life. What is life is, we are all of one nation. Nationism is not the solution. Togetherness is.

Small, as one wise man once put it, is beautiful. With one foot before the other, we need to walk together into the future and remember who is in charge.

We are. Unless, we allow others to tell us what to do, who to be and to distrust our neighbors. Be they next door, in another county, in the next state to us, or on another coast entirely.

We need to draw the line at killing one another. And a line against those who would pit us against one another.

A Nation Once Again (Wolfe Tones) (The Dubliners)

When boyhood's fire was in my blood 
I read of ancient freemen, 
For Greece and Rome who bravely stood, 
Three hundred men and three men; 
And then I prayed I yet might see 
Our fetters rent in twain, 
And Ireland, long a province, be. 
A Nation once again!

A Nation once again, 
A Nation once again, 
And lreland, long a province, be 
A Nation once again!

And from that time, through wildest woe, 
That hope has shone a far light, 
Nor could love's brightest summer glow 
Outshine that solemn starlight; 
It seemed to watch above my head 
In forum, field and fane, 
Its angel voice sang round my bed, 
A Nation once again!

It whisper'd too, that freedom's ark 
And service high and holy, 
Would be profaned by feelings dark 
And passions vain or lowly; 
For, Freedom comes from God's right hand, 
And needs a Godly train; 
And righteous men must make our land 
A Nation once again!

So, as I grew from boy to man, 
I bent me to that bidding 
My spirit of each selfish plan 
And cruel passion ridding; 
For, thus I hoped some day to aid, 
Oh, can such hope be vain ? 
When my dear country shall be made 
A Nation once again!

Songwriters: Sean O'riada

A Nation Once Again lyrics © EMI Music Publishing, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Bardis Music, Usa Attn: Peter Bardon

Our Terrorist Cell

I'm sitting here in the evening, it's raining outside in Bremerton, Washington. I'm watching Netflix, a show called, Peaky Blinders. Great show. About 19th century England. Gangs. Reminiscent of  The Wind in That Shakes the Barley, Perhaps, especially because of actor Cillian Murphy and his being Irish and all, being born in County Cork (I rather liked visiting Cork). and all that.

It's no secret I'm rather partial to the Irish. Being half myself, all on my dad's side of the family. Having had a rather, albeit confused, understanding as a youth of my ethnic responsibilities and well... I do understand enjoying a good conspiracy. Especially for a good reason and all. A good... guerilla fight against greater odds, can be inspiring. Even, addicting. Especially to the disaffected and those who have little control over their lives, or who simply feel that way.

Early in high school I had learned about the troubles from a documentary. I'd long known I was half Irish, that my dad was Irish. I grew up with my mother, after they divorced when I was three. She always celebrated St. Patrick's Day. I remember a banner of cut out, green, "Erin Go Bragh" (or, Éirinn go Brách, Meaning "Ireland forever" in Gaelic) every year hanging in the house.

I hardly ever saw my dad after that and never did after I was sixteen, until he died in 1988. I doubt he ever had a thought himself about Ireland. But I did. I even tried to talk friends, fellow students in tenth grade into going with me to Ireland to fight in the Troubles. Well, it didn't happen. I had no money to get there. I doubt they'd have even wanted me. But that, is a story for another time. Or not.

Anyway, that's how I was at that time. I even wrote a screenplay about what I was like back then. The Teenage Bodyguard, is about a situation I got myself into just after graduating high school. Over the course of a week in 1974, I protected a murder witness from the local mafia.

Great story and a screenplay that is being liked every time it's seen or evaluated. "So why isn't it on the screen already somewhere", one reviewer asked in their review from BlueCat screenplay contest. Another from The Blacklist coverage said it was "a viable project that should be pursued". And so I am.

I kept finding myself in interesting situation back then. I don't know why. Mainly, because people kept asking me to act as a bodyguard for them. First was that frightened woman who asked me to protect her for a week when I was eighteen from some murderers she had worked with at Tacoma's first topless bar, The Tiki, run by the Carbone crime family.

A year later at nineteen, my own mother asked me to be my little brother's bodyguard in Manhattan. She was afraid if he got roughed up during a robbery, he could die inbeing so thin and fragile with liver cancer at the time. There had also been a rash of apartment break ins at that time. So I slept in our small studio apartment on the floor, with my .357 magnum next to me just in case someone tried to break in at 2AM or something.

I had also protected a variety of others off and on over the years. Gamblers wit cash coming to town, a big construction magnate's horse farm at the end of a road where I lived for a while, and so on.

My point being, I do get it. This whole, desire to go to battle, take on great odds, test yourself and live the life of excitement and adventure. it's kind of dumb for most, but I get the attraction.

As I watch this great show (Peaky Blinders), and sip some red wine (yes, there's Guinness in the fridge, but it's wine tonight, forgive me St. Guinness), I understand the feeling that there is no downtown here to go to, to meet locally with other frustrated or angry conspirators in some shady bar, to have talks, to sneak to covert meetings, to talk about how the government is abusing us unfairly and unjustly. How our enemies really have to go. At all costs. Or any. All of that. Not unlike our Founding Fathers did in local Freemason lodges, mostly held at or above local public (drinking) houses (pubs?).

I do get all of that. I understand that feeling. That focus. The mystery. The excitement. The addictive fear. The call to a cause greater than oneself. The ability to be something, right now, immediately. To evoke change when nothing else is happening in one's life. To achieve something now with power when no one else will give you that kind of responsibility or command over other human beings. Even to the point of taking their lives. Even if they are innocent.

I get all that.Well, not so much the taking of innocent lives. I really don't get that. Especially when they are your own. But I get it for a young testosterone filled young man, or woman. Or for one whose family and loved ones are indeed being abused if not murdered by the state as others in other countries have had to suffer through. I get that. I really do.

I doubt it's much different for terrorists in other countries, even in our own country in how some can misguidedly perceive our own reality in America as deserving of terrorism..The home of their ancestry. Maybe. But then, not a lot of Native Americans are terrorists. Some who are not even of that abused ancestry but who understand, empathize, with them. Who feel compassion for their seemingly just cause. Like non Muslims who go to fight with them.

I get all that.

The trouble is... it's nonsense. Mostly. For the most part. 99% of it anyway.

Those are the rumblings of a young man high on testosterone so much of the time. Give them a call to arms... oh my God. They will be there!

But there is another side. There will be those they harm. The innocent. Those they blind themselves about but who do matter, and greatly so. They become blinded by the fog of war and idealism. But not of conscience. And so innocents die. For no good reason.

Not until their hacked minds, hacked by disingenuous ones who put not themselves into danger but those of a younger cohort. Where justice turns into criminal actions and heroes become terrorists. There is brainwashing going on. Media is part of the problem. those manipulating it are more so. Be they Russian hackers joyriding or actually paid by Putin. Or Islamic terrorist leaders or simply... Facebook.

I'm glad I lived through those cold war years. I'm also glad I didn't have to grow up in Belfast or an Ireland under British rule where my ancestors were so abused and genocide wasn't a ridiculous word to banter about. When some Irish tried to eat grass due to starvation during the potato famine, where the dead and emaciated were found in fields with mouths stained green.

My terrorist cell is based in words, not guns, in political actions, not bombs.

 It is civilized, not barbaric. I'll kill no innocents. My terrorist cell, does not exist. Because I do not believe in terrorizing human beings. Or anyone. Or anything. It's a bully behavior, that of an immature mind, or mindset.

There is a time for violence. To be sure. But it is far less often than many would like to admit.

And that includes our American born terrorists. Those Christian misguided fools who have killed too many in our country already and should never again. And then there is simply mental illness, and social illness.

Do Act. But at some point we have to see as a race of intelligent beings that death simply isn't always the answer. While in some countries it may be necessary, at certain times, in ours it simply is not.

We have a disease in this country. It is conservatism. It is binary thinking. It is in authoritarian attitudes, having them, or adoring them. It is poor priorities. It is extremists. It is the far right politically motivated. It is the ignorant, the poorly educated, the incorrectly educated, those who believe in alternate facts, alternate realities, alternate morality, alternator mental health.

We need instead to seek out our best nature in life, not our worst.

We need to bring down our worst, and simply refuse to be a part of it.


#terrorism #peace #isis #racism

Ireland Trip 2015 and Vacations

My birthday was August 30th and it's a banner year for me so I thought I should do something special. When I was four, we moved to Spain from Tacoma, Washington. Things didn't go well for us and my grandfather, my mom's dad, threw my dad out of the country. Long story end of marriage.

We ended up moving to Philadelphia to live with and around family. Grandpa had moved his family to Tacoma back in the 40s from Brooklyn. Mom picked up a new husband in Philly whom I never liked.

One day when she broke the news to us that she was going to marry him, we would have a new dad. I was still wondering what happened to the old dad and I don't know what my slightly older sister was thinking. Our mom was putting a happy spin on this marriage but at five years of age I begged her not to marry him. Something that proved to be prescient in time and she would grow to agree with. I had seen a side to him she hadn't yet seen although of her four husbands, he ended up lasting the longest. They remained married even after they mostly and permanently separated about thirteen years ago.

Suddenly we had a new baby and along with my older sister and new dad we moved back to the dreaded Tacoma with these new parts of the family. I wasn't happy. I had lost my dad, got a new one I didn't like, and a baby who was sucking up all the attention that used to be mine.

It wasn't long before my apprehensions about the new guy started to make themself clear. Still after having married my older brother's dad (who lived with his dad after a contentious divorce) and divorced him, then my older sister's dad and divorcing him, then my dad, then the new guy (in 1960), whom she divorced briefly for a year then remarried not once more but several times throughout their stormy relationship until he died about a year ago.

Mom always loved Liz and Richard Burton. Dick and Liz, my parents were not though there were some similarities.

In my lifetime I've been to Hawaii twice. First in 1978 with my first wife,  then again in 1988 with my second wife. In 1998 I mentioned going there to my third wife yet for some reason she would have nothing to do with it.

I grew up with my family visiting Canada a lot as Tacoma is so close to Vancouver, British Columbia, though mostly we took the ferry to Victoria, B.C. on Vancouver Island located in the Strait of Juan De Fuca.

Our Grandfather whom I mentioned before was my mother's father. He had traveled the world and after he retired would take the family on short day trips sometimes. We would take the ferry Princess Marguerite from Seattle to Victoria, and would get a cabin for the older folks to rest in. I have fond memories of those trips and visiting around Victoria and the world famous Empress Hotel which had hosted royalty and presidents.

In high school, I used to drive with friends up to Vancouver, BC to party. The pubs in Gas Town were the desired locations to try and get into even though I was around seventeen. I once got into the Gas Town Pub. My friend and I walked up to the counter and got very odd looks from the bartender. The guy on the door had stepped away and so we stepped in. I asked the bartender where the restroom was. He said that it's next door in the Gas Town Hotel.

I was incredulous but he convinced us it was true and I really had to go. So we went. When we got next door an old guy sitting at the desk was reading a paper. I said I needed to use their restroom and that the bartender had said they used theirs but he gave me a look similar to the bartender's and kicked us out. We went back to the pub but couldn't get back in. End of that party. However, we then discovered Third Beach at Stanley Park by just stopping people on the street and asking where the party was. But that's a story for another time and I suspect I've already told that story.

After I got married the last time we would travel sometimes because of her work training horses. Many interesting times back in the 1990s until we divorced in 2002.

Earlier this year my twenty-three year old daughter convinced me I should do something special for this birthday. My birthday is August 30th. My mother was born on that birthday of mine. I'd joked with her many times that God had planned for me, she was an accident. When in reality I think I was actually the accident.

My daughter had travelled Europe with a back pack several times. I along with her friend's parents had sent them for a high school graduation gift to Paris. I think she had got bitten by the travel bug. But then she had grown up with her mother and I travelling with her to horse shows for her mom's work. It was in her blood.

She backpacked with her accordion and hoola hoop, busking around Europe, making money to pay her way. She ended up in Iceland and loving it. Greece during the riots several years ago. Living in caves in Spain. But always returning to Iceland

When she first mentioned the Ireland trip, I was hesitant, but I wanted to go. See, I've been to Mexico a few times, Canada more times that I remember and Hawaii twice, all over the United States. But only one trip out of country and off the continent, to Spain as a child.

And that didn't go well for me at all. In fact when we were living in country the local cantina owner in Roda, Spain was always yelling, "Malo Nino!" (bad boy) at me for some reason. Reasons I'm sure I deserved. I'd deserved them in America, there was really no reason I would not deserve them in another country.

We have 8mm film of our life in Spain and later in Philadelphia. There is one of a banner of shamrocks hanging from our ceiling. My new dad was in that footage. The banner said "Erin Go Bragh!" Roughly, Ireland forever! He didn't much care for it. He always said he was English by ancestry and my dad was Irish. So you could see how it could be annoying to a new guy.

Now I'm getting to the Irish stuff.

So I grew up with that banner and the situation, always in the back of my mind. I would ask my mother about it growing up and she would just say that my dad's family was Irish. I was Irish. Though my mother's family was Czechoslovakian, I got tired of that part of my ancestry and the Irish side was just more flamboyant to me I'm sure.

In the late 1960s I heard a lot about the Irish "Troubles". By high school I started paying close attention to the news about Ireland. I was quite against what was going on there. People were dying. It seemed to me that England should mind its own business. If Ireland wanted them out, it should leave.

Of course there were other issues but the Protestant and Catholic ones were at the forefront. Reasonably many Loyalists wanted to remain a part of England, of the UK.

Benefits of Life - Memories of Ireland and Van Morrison....

Life is difficult enough for us all. We do not need to be adding to it. Or then perhaps, we do. We do need to pay attention, to experience, to see what is there. To see what can be there. That is what IS there for us to see, if only we can see it. Things that we may not perhaps notice, and should, could, if only we would, "see".

All the photos used in this blog today were shot by myself.

I have had an experience of that recently. It involved a recent trip, memories, and allowing myself to have "seen", then to have indulged, and finally to have appreciated.

There was a time when I may not have done all those things, to allow all those things, to feel those things. Being like that so diminishes the life we have to live though. When all we need to do is to allow ourselves to see what all is there, and not only what we choose to see that isn't all there truly can be, to see.

Relax, Breathe, Be....

Belfast graffiti

For years I've listened to Irish music both old and new, and thought about Ireland (my being part Irish and all).

Pavilion Pub Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK

One day when I was in Belfast in Northern Ireland's UK region in September 2015, I was sitting in the Pavilion Pub on Ormeau Road. While I was drinking a pint the bartender and I got to talking. He told me that the week before the musician Van Morrison had been found by locals to be anonymously playing on a nearby street corner in a big hat.

I had missed him by just a week! Damn! Just like (but different) how I had just missed Marc Maron in Dublin the day after I had left there the week before on the train to Galway.

How cool that would have been to have been tooling around Belfast as I had been doing and just happened upon, to stumble into (and stumbling I was at times) upon the great Van Morrison, just playing there on a street corner.

You might feel like scoffing and say "sure, but you'd probably not have even noticed it was Van Morrison."

No, my friend. I think you'd be wrong there.

I pay attention to things like that. I notice quality. Sometimes in the of oddest places, the most unbelievable places. Even when I commuted to and from Seattle, a daily trip that used up four hours of my time each day in my car, on a bus, on a ferry and upon my feet, I would still stop at something wonderful and pay attention, toss some well deserved money, and share a smile.

I'd have noticed Van fucking Morrison my friends. I'd have noticed.

This goes back to many years ago. When I was quite miserable in my life. Someone, some friend told me that I needed to appreciate the small things in life. There is so much beauty and magic that surrounds us at all times, it is unbelieveable. Once you start to pay attention your day lightens.

There was something I once heard from horror F/X expert and actor Tom Savini about his reentry to the world after his experiences in Vietnam. During that war he was shooting photos of things for the Army. He shot everything, good and bad. One day after he was back home and the war was over for him he was driving along and saw a sunrise or a sunset, I don't quite remember. It was a year after he had returned home and he suddenly realized just how beautiful it was. It was then that his life turned around and he realized finally, that he was home once again.

We have to "see" the beautiful around us. It doesn't just walk up to us and say, "Hey, pay attention to me!" We have to notice it on our own warrant.

Our life lightens at those moments. A daily commute is a daily grind, or a continual experience of the amazing. It's up to us. At times when I was most miserable in my commute I would click a switch inside me and think about that. I would look around and never cease to find something fascinating, something beautiful, something wonderful or miraculous in some way.

In Dublin there is a poster in the Temple Bar district along the Icon Walk that says, "Van - Everyone agrees that you are THE MAN". But I didn't see that until I had returned to Dublin from Belfast. So I had to stop there, take a photo and remember my moment at the Pavilion Pub in Belfast.

Belfast graffiti

While I walked all over Belfast one day I purchased a new set of headphones at St. George's Market.

St. George's Market Belfast

My old pair had been disintegrating on my head.

Inside St. George's Market, Belfast

I walked all over town that day. Down alleys, around shopping districts, listening to music. I remember playing a Van Morrison album. So that now when I hear it I think of Belfast and Dublin.

Belfast alley

Just now I came downstairs after work in my home office to my TV room and I heard Moondance by Van Morrison playing. I was immediately taken back to Ireland and I had to smile. It was the first time since I got back that I felt that feeling. That feeling of hearing Van's music and not only feeling Ireland but being mentally and emotionally projected back into those lovely streets to feel the emotions I felt while walking alone there by myself, with something new to me at every turn.

White's Tavern bar

I found White's Tavern and walked up to the front door, entering and sitting at the bar. I had long waited to do that, long before I flew to Ireland. The oldest pub in Belfast.

I sat and had a Jamesons and a pint of Guinness in that ancient pub.

It reminded me of walking along the Lagan River and seeing the big fish sculpture for the first time at the Lagan Weir replacement footbridge.

Ten pence piece

My lucky ten pence piece I found middle of the street near Writer's Square.

steps at the Writers Square

It was one amazing thing after another.

My foot on that railing facing Writer's Square.

And behind me.

And closer.

I had an amazing time in Ireland and up north in the Belfast. I have to accept that Belfast is the UK I suppose. Since 1922. Regardless what Pádraic Pearse and friends did. And so it is. I find it sad that Ireland isn't whole, but then, it's all still a pretty wonderful place.

I just found it interesting to hear a song, after a usual day in my life back at home, and to be suddenly taken back so far away, so near in time, to such an amazing experience. To feel the feelings that made had me smile, had warmed me and given me such a complete sense of being.

River Liffy, Dublin, Ireland

Should that we all have the ability at some point in our lives to feel such feelings.

It can happen to any of us, anywhere, if we just let it. If you simply appreciate what it is we see around us all the time. We don't have to travel as far as Ireland, though I highly recommend it. If not Ireland, then somewhere you have always wanted to experience. Take the time, make the effort. The is more to life than simply what we do every day, day in and day out.

These things exist in our on home town, along our own daily paths, if we simply take the time to experience them.

Have a happy holiday season! Have a very Merry Christmas! This from an atheist. Have a happy whatever holiday you may be celebrating this time of year.

I wish you and yours well. I wish you all fond experiences and lovely memories. As long as you are doing things to add to the beauty of the our world and not the other.

Sláinte!