Big River.....

I used to sit ‘n daydream a lot back in my way back when time....I did a lot of it staring at the Ohio River....the River was a big deal in my life back then....well, I think it was a big deal in the lives of most of the people I knew back then....It was a ‘BIG’ River, prob’ly a half-mile wide tho’ ever’body use’ta say it was a mile wide ‘n something of a rite of passage for the boys of the village....well, swimming across it was a big deal anyway...’n mostly it was a challenge for thirteen year olds....at least, it was for me ‘n I was thirteen when I swam it....the problem came when I realized that if I tried to swim back, I would prob’ly drown...I walked upriver, searching for a log or piece of driftwood that I could hang on to kick my way back but I didn’t find one that I thought was good enuff....I walked all the way to the U.S. Grant bridge which was pretty near a mile upriver from where I had landed....I was a skinny thirteen year old in a bathing suit on the wrong side of a big river. The U.S. Grant bridge was a toll bridge....a quarter for a vehicle, a nickel for a pedestrian and I didn’t have a nickel...Heck! I didn’t even have a pocket. I had all sorts of plans for evading the toll but I don’t remember any of them now. I think I just begged my way past the toll station but the mem’ry of that is lost in time....I did, however, get back to Kentucky ‘n walked the mile down the narrow blacktop t’get back home.
I recall it was a while before I ever swam the Ohio River again but swim it I did ‘n that time I swam back as well. I only swam it the two times but that was enuff.

The circles that you find......

I got a look at infinity t'other dayi....not that I really understand it, of course...it's just that I'm getting older 'n I'm realizing that I don't understand much at all, that I haven't understood much of anything throughout my whole life....I tho't I did, of course...after all, like most Americans, I've been to school. I knew my ABC's 'n that 1 + 1 =2 before I ever got started in our public education system but I learned lots of things in school.....I learned facts....or what I was told was facts...what most people believe are facts..
I learned facts 'n figures 'n dates....I learned a history that had been constructed by people not much different from me who had been taught the same kind of facts 'n figures 'n dates from people not much different from themselves....'cause people are like a river, y'see.....flowing to the sea 'n returning to the mountains to flow to the sea again 'n again....'n I learned the eternal question, "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?"
I was raised a Christian, so I went to Sunday School 'n I learned the Bible....that in the beginning, there was a void...high school science taught me that Nature abhors a vacuum so I assumed that God felt the same....
I read recently that Science was the only true God because Science is based on fact 'n I remarked that if you accepted that statement as fact, you were in reality accepting it on faith which meant that Science was just another faith-based religion....
but I'm meandering again.....I was talking about infinity and how a picture from the Hubble helped me to what I think is a greater understanding of death.....Y'see, the Hubble showed multiple universes that seemingly go on without end....and in our little world, we're taught that everything must have a beginning and an end....we're born and we die. Rivers start out as a raindrop in the mountains and end as an ocean. All living things have a beginning and an end. Except they don't. We talk about the circle of life without understanding. The interesting thing about a simple circle is that it has no beginning and therefore no ending. It is infinity. Which means, to my simple mind, that birth and death do not exist. They are an illusion.
Ain't that a gas?

ah the simple life......

I've been reading about Roman Polanski....all the famous people that think he should skate 'cuz it was so long ago 'n besides the girl he raped has forgiven him 'n in most of the world thirteen year old girls are perfectly legal sexual toys....'course, most of the world views the 'decadent west' as morally backasswards....on that proverbial other hand however, Polanski (with evidently the concurrence of the girls mother) pled guilty to sodomizing a thirteen year old child anally and orally....'n then he paid them off but the amount he paid had to remain secret...I wonder what the going price for sodomizing a child was anyway....
'course, there are people who think he should go to jail f'rever....not so much for what he did to the child but for thumbing his nose at American authorities...
I wonder if all those famous people would come to his defense if he was a simple Catholic priest.....uh, prob'ly not....he should'a had that Oklahoma judge that O'Reilly 'n Geraldo went after (and got)....

Idles tho'ts.......

“When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains,
And go to your Gawd like a soldier.” R. Kipling

Afghanistan is a hard country firmly rooted in the past...well, the past to much of the world but obviously the here ‘n now to the Afghani’s....People been trying to conquer Afghanistan for thousands of years, even before Alexander who durn near got himself killed while he was there.......’n it don’t seem to matter how strong your army is or how long you stay, in the end Afghanistan wins out....not so much the Afghan people, y’understand...
like people everywhere, they live ‘n die ‘n get on with their lives as best as they can regardless of what goes on around them......well, I’m just saying that it ain’t gonna matter too much to the Afghani’s what we Americans do...anymore than it mattered what the Russians before us did...’n the Brits ‘n Alexander ‘n all the other warriors of the world.....
Y’know, too much thinking, like most things, if done to excess is bad for your health....I was talking with my buddy, Doug, t’other day (he’s a great believer in the Democratic way of doing things ‘n thinks that sharing the wealth is a good thing but he ain’t a socialist, nosirreebob!.) Anyways, he was talking about Iran ‘n the possibility of going to war over their hidden nuclear efforts ‘n how all the information was that Iran was building THE BOMB!.....I pointed out that when Prez Bush said that all the intelligence agencies said that Iraq had WMD ‘n wasn’t afraid to use ‘em that he claimed that Bush ‘n Cheney lied just to get us into a war so that Little George could show his old man how to really win a war ‘n besides it was all about the oil ‘cuz ever’one knew that Bush/Cheney were oil men ‘n wanted to go to war to make all their friends richer....or words to that effect.....ah well, the wheel turns as the ubiquitous ‘they’ say.....or is it, the worm turns.....I dunno or I forget but then I’m three years older’n dirt......

Faith 'n the question of faith....

“Science is the only true God!” Or so say the enlightened progressives among us. Of course, that belief requires a certain ‘leap of faith’ which science then must share with all the other religions and, as it is the leap of faith that makes most religions suspect, it must also be applied to science.
S’funny how scientific fact is applied so readily as substantiation for that which we assume we know when, in point of fact, we not only know so very little, the passage of time exposes new and unknown facets that then require us to adjust the facts so as to fit our assumptions.
So very much like the old parable of the blind men and the elephant.

Universal health care.....

Okay! Here’s the deal. One of the things we were s’pozed to have learnt in grade school: Keep your eyes on the prize. You c’n run as hard ‘n fast as y’can but if you wander offtrack, you’ll never win any races....
We already have universal health care. Uninsured people get treated and they don’t pay for it. Hospitals are required by law to treat everyone whether or not they can pay.
The problem is not that the uninsured don’t get treated; the problem is how it’s paid for.
And right now, everybody who has insurance pays for the uninsured in higher premiums and higher prices for drugs, treatment and hospital stays.
And guess what? If an uninsured person doesn’t receive treatment, a hungry trial lawyer will file a lawsuit on their behalf and the jury will force an insurance company to pay not only for the treatment but the lawyers fees.
Which results in higher medical costs for everybody who pays for insurance.
Round Robin is just one of the names for this operation. Insanity should be another.

I'm ag'in it.....

So, I was talking with my friend, Big Andy or, as I like to call him these days, Cap’n Hook which he wears where his right hand use’ta be....’n I said I agreed with George Will that we should cut a chogie from Afghanistan ‘cause there was no way that we were gonna come out ahead in that country ‘n Andy jumped up ‘n said, “you were for the Iraq war when Bush was President ‘n now you’re against Afghanistan ‘cause Obama’s President...”
When I politely demurred, he reminded me that I had argued vehemently for our involvement in Iraq....so I explained:
I was ag’in it afore I was for it, ‘n then I was for it for awhile afore I changed my mind ‘n was ag’in it ag’in.....but that was then ‘n this’s now...
Now we’re in Afghanistan ‘n I’m ag’in it same as I was ag’in Vietnam which don’t mean that I didn’t root for our side...what the heck, we won ev’ry battle we were in over there, sort’a like during our own revolution when England won just about ev’ry battle but lost the war....which is pretty much what we did in ‘Nam. I pointed out to Cap’n Hook that ‘Nam was a bi-partisan effort that started out under a Republican administration, escalated under a Democrat administration ‘n finally floundered under a Republican administration. ‘N now it appears that we’re on the same kind of course...
General McArthur warned ‘Ol I like Ike’ about getting into a land war in southeast Asia but Presidents don’t have to take advice from people they don’t like ‘n after all, the USA was the biggest, baddest bullyboy in the whole world ‘n it didn’t matter that the Vietnamese had just kicked the butt of the French Foreign Legion, the US of A would show ‘em...
Anyways, it’s my belief (‘n I’m about as nobody as y’can get) I think that Afghanistan is like a high-desert southeast Asia in the respect that it’s impossible to mount a concerted attack ag’in people that ain’t there...Afghanistan, like Vietnam, is an internecine conflict (civil war) among multiple tribes that have been struggling for supremacy for several thousand years and they didn’t listen to the Brits or the Russians ‘n they ain’t gonna listen to us.
Best we park ourselves outside ‘n watch what happens ‘n deal with whatver results as best we can. After all, it ain’t our country.