I Am Back

I went offline for a few days because I was angry and didn't want to inflict that on friends.   I am very political in some ways, but it is more personal views than organized politics.  I am not a member of any political organization.  Well, OK, I am registered as a Democrat.  Maryland US is a very definite Democratic State, and I want to vote in the Primaries.  

I have strong political/social views.  Always have.  When I was 10, I was allowed to stay up late to watch the Nixon/Kennedy debates in 1960.  Then in 1964, I supported Goldwater because the Democrats were just dithering about Vietnam and Goldwater said he would settle it.  I was 14, what did I know?  

In 1968, I went off to college (safe from the draft) but demonstrated against the increasing warfare (to no purpose as I saw it).  The body bags were coming home...

And I hated Nixon.  He lied and cheated.  I didn't know worse was to come with Reagan and Trump.  Today, I would take Nixon over Trump any day.  But you never know what the future will be when you are in the present in the past.

I screamed and yelled when Gore was denied the Presidency for reasons I considered cheating.  Probably slightly the same as Trump supporters do now.  But Gore conceded after the courts decided against him.  Trump did and does not.  So there are differences in accepting "the rule of law".

Which brings me to today.  I had "anger issues" in the past.  I spent my time on yelling and screaming sites into the early 2000s.  I punched a few holes is those cheap Luan doors I have (had them replaced later).  

I left those sites and I left the anger.  I started following a few calmer sites.  Max The PsychoKitty, a book discussion site (Clan Of The CaveBear) which focussed on the story and facts about 20,000 BCE.  A site that discussed religions factually (which was surprisingly calming, as it forced rational replies).

Last week, the US Supreme Court approved anyone carrying concealed guns.  I have concerns about guns.  I can argue about what a "well-regulated militia" means regarding the 2nd amendment.  But I did not "lose it then".

I "lost it" Friday morning upon hearing the the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade.  After the leaked draft opinion a couple months ago, I thought it would have to alter the opinion because of what I (personally) thought were serious errors and was in opposition to the know general will of the population.

I really just didn't think they would do it!

I threw the radio across the room, scattering backup batteries everywhere.  Talk about "blaming the messenger" (sigh)...  I wanted to yell and shout here.  I stopped myself...  I decided to go offline for a few days to not say anything to upset friends.  It took several days to calm down.

I am no less angry, but I am back in control of it.  Being angry won't change the Supreme Court decision.  I will focus on future political actions.

I was wrong.  And I shouldn't have been surprised.  We have a very conservative Supreme Court now.  But I am not going to argue about it here.  I don't want Cavebear's Lair to be a political debate venue.

So while my first instinct was to yell and scream about the decision, I decided to avoid doing that.  You are all too important to me as long-standing friends.

I apologize for upsetting you all with the too-brief post saying I would be gone for an undetermined time.  I wasn't sure how long it would take.  But it was all I could say at the time.  Best to stay offline a few days than to post something I might regret for months or years.  

Bad Day

I'm not sure if I sure mention this, lest you all think I'm a crazy person.  But I'll type it out and decide whether to post it afterwards.

I get frustrated sometimes by inanimate objects.  The computer develops a problem that takes time to solve, the car doesn't want to start, old equipment doesn't want to work,  doors suddenly stick, etc.  I'm tenacious about solving problems, but that doesn't mean I don't get angry about them sometimes.

Recently, I'm been trying to download software that claims to let you play old games on modern computers.  By which, I mean that some old games programmed to work on old computers don't work on new ones.  Its usually that old games are in 16 bit processors and new ones work at 64 bit so the old ones just can't can't work fast enough.

My favorite game of all time is Civilization 2.  I understand the game.  There are versions up to Civ6 now that work on new computers.  I don't like them.  Why I don't like them doesn't really matter.

I would just like to play Civ2 again.  There are sites that claim to "upspeed" the old program to 64 bit compatibility.  I can follow instructions, but I have never been able to make those work.  There are some that claim to make it work on a Mac.  I can't get those to work.  And there are sites that discuss how to partion a part of a modern Windows computer to operate in older Windows versions to play old games like Civ2.  I can't get those to work.  Some of the suggestions involved connecting a Windows computer to my Mac (or vice versa) and those didn't work either. 

And apparently, I'm not alone.  While some posters at thge sites claimed to have made the changes work, most said they couldn't in spite of having a decent level on computer experience.

But I made a 2 day try at following the various instructions this past weekend.  I discovered that the options mentioned in the instructions didn't exist or that the options did exist and had no affect or that the downloads (loaded into partition files) were not accessible, etc.

The people who write the instructions might actually be correct, but leave out steps that they consider "obvious".  Or they might be just making stuff up to look smart on a site and never visit there again.  Who knows?

The best suggestion was from a Gen Xer who said he just bought a cheap old Windows laptop that matched the Civ 2 requirements and his Dad was successfully and happily playing Civ2 every few nights.  I'm the age of that guy's Dad...

After several years of fighting about this with the modern computers (because I would really rather not have more computers), I think I will visit the local Windows computer store and see if they have an old one that will play Civ2.  I thought of that a year ago and never followed up on that.

So what does all of this have to do with my anger?  Well, with all the rewiring I had to do connecting and changing connections between my Mac and Windows computers and an old Windows (but not old "enough"), I had this telephone cable that kept getting in the way.

Given the level of frustration I was feeling at the time, I suddenly started yanking on it to get it loose.

It eventually came loose and I lost my telephone signal!  I didn't realize that immediately, of course.  It was only 2 days later when I tried to place a call that I discovered a problem.  I tried to track it down another day.  Then I looked at the end of the ripped-out wire and saw a dozen small frayed wires all tangled.

I was getting ready to email my ISP and request a service visit.  But then a took a pair of scissors and snipped the cord clean.  My telephone service worked again immediately.

It was SO EMBARRASSING!  I'd shorted my wires...

A New Year Indeed!

I won't hide it.  I'm pleased the Democrats got a good grip on the House.  Trump had his 2 years with the Republicans in charge of every part of Govt and got nothing done except corruption and waste by his Secrataries and roolbacks of agency rules designed to protect the environment and consumer protections, etc.

I know some won't agree.  Tough...  I hated most everything Trump and his people did. 

Its not politics, I don't care which party is in power.  I just care what they do.

The tax cut was just a gift to the rich.  The environmental pullbacks were harsh.  We are practically drowning in energy, do we need to kill the last salmon spawning or caribou mating ground to get more? 

We just learned a few months ago that dragonflies migrate in great numbers like birds, just hard to notice.  Who cares?  I do.  You know what eats most mosquitos?  Dragonflies.  So I learned that dragonflies don't just live in local ponds and emerge every year to eat mosquitos.

No, They migrate South for a generation, stay there a 2nd, and then move North again to eat the mosquitoes.  Every one notices butterflies (and they have pollination value) but no one notices drafgonflies.  A trained observer was shocked to see dragonflies coming over a sand dune once, and said it was a half-mile wide and lasted hours. 

So what eats at me is that Trump not only appoints people to jobs to understand about wildlife like dragonflies, he MAY NOT EVEN KNOW WHAT THEY ARE!

He sure doesn't know much about anything.  He knows how to make money by pretending to make money.  He cheats.  He steals.  He dinishes everything he touches.  He is not even good at business. 

If he had just taken the money his dad gave him by the time he was an adult and put it into simple index funds, he would be richer than he is today.

He is a fake and a phony.  He is worse than The Wizard Of Oz.  At least THAT GUY admitted he was a fake.

Madame Speaker Pelosi is going to take Trump by the scruff of his orange neck and shake him flat like a bear rug. 

He corrupt of his administration will be revealed and brought to account for their personal and official greed.  His family will be next like the Bourbons of French infamy who drempt that they deserved titles and great wealth just for being born as they were. 

And we will equally (and quite legally) cast out the new wannabe Trump dynasty in the 2020 election.

We have never been so close to a dictatorship as we are now with the Trump Family.  The family is running the Govt as a profit center unlike anything the 1900 Robber Barons dreamed of doing.  And that is why they must all be removed...

They are a challenge to our whole system of Govt.  They obey no rules or customs.  They will break any law, thinking they are free of them.  The whole family must go, and for once in our nation's history, we need to bring them to the courts for actual punishment.

We need to see that done so that we can be assured that we are NOT a banana republic.  I apologise for the phrase, but it applies.

9-11

Never forgive, never forget. 

I remember the images of people leaping to certain death to escape the flames.  The swan dive of one woman.  Another women pushing her hands against a building wall as she fell to avoid having her skin ripped off by contact.  I remember the buildings falling in seeming slow motion.

I remember seeing the 2nd one start to fall and my co-workers thinking at first that it was a news repeat of the 1st and me shouting that it was the 2nd too.

I remember the "thud" under my feet when the plane hit the Pentagon.

I remember everyone crowding the street with their cars to get away and thinking the last place I wanted to be was in a traffic jam like a sitting duck.

I remember standing on the roof of the building, a block away from the White House, watching the skies for the 4th plane.  And relieved to hear the passengers had attacked and overpowered the hijackers over Pennsylvannia.  And then so sad to learn they had all died forcing the plane out of control of the hijackers to save others.

I will not forget this event just as my parents did not ever forget Pearl Harbor.  I will not forgive this event just as others will never forgive WWII atrocities. 

And I expect that history will reveal that some of our Middle East "allies" knew about this.

While I Was Gone

I moped around the house for a couple days and stayed in bed a lot.  Then I got up and did some hard angry work.

I took out the 10" electric tiller that I bought a few months ago for work in small spaces and attacked the area where I want to plant 200 daffofdl bulbs.  That didn't work out too well.  The tall grass wrapped around the tiller blades.  So I spent 15 minutes cutting and pulling them loose.  Then took out my weed whacker and cut all the grass to ground level.  Then went after the soil again.

That didn't work out any better.  The ROOTS just wrapped around the tiller blades.  So I removed THEM.  It was rather therapeutic.  Burned off some anger.  I attacked them with a ground digger knife and pliers and by hand.

But the small electric tiller is obviously only designed for bare ground and flowers.  So I pulled out the big gas one.  Which wouldn't start.  Old dried gas I suspect.  I'll try it again tomorrow after some new gas has a chance to dissolve the old gas.  And if that doesn't work, I can take apart the carburator.  I learned a trick from a repairman about shooting spray carburator cleaner into the system that often works.  Failing that, it goes to a local repair shop for real repair and tune up, and it has been a few years so it needs it.

I did get a lot of angry energy used up pulling on the starter rope.

The manual rotary mower wouldn't start either and I read online that that usually means the blade disengagement bar on the handle is stuck.  I couldn't find anything wrong with it, so that has to go for professional work too.

I better check the snowblower too.  When you need it is NOT the time to go looking for fast repairs.

I have a small cast iron Lodge grill good for cooking a couple of steaks at a time.   I didn't use it for a couple of years.  I stayed under my covered smoker grill, and with a cover of it's own.  I pulled it out a few weeks ago and it was COMPLETELY rusted under 2 covers!

Perfect "angry energy" project!  I wirebrushed that sucker for 3 hours.  THAT got a lot of anger out.  Still wasn't good enough.  It will never be free of rust again.  But I have a 1,000F temperature wood stove Rust-Oleum paint I can use on most of it.

According to online advice, the cooking surface will have to be soaking in 50% white vinegar and water for 4 hours, rubbed dry with a clean cloth, and then oiled and seasoned in a 300F oven like any new cast iron skillet.  If that all works, I will buy a tightly sealed plastic bin to keep it in afterwards.  If it doesn't, I'll buy a new one.  Maybe I can just buy a cooking rack replacement.

I had a nice little steel one decades ago.  Just the right size for 6 charcoal briquets and one steak.   I wish I still had that.  I can't find one like it.  Some stuff just seems to disappear over the years.  Maybe it burned through the bottom.  I can't recall.

Still need some projects to burn off "angry energy".   Maybe it is time to bring out the steel spade and start scraping under the roots of weedy grass in the flower garden.  I still can't kneel well, but if I sit on the ground and push on the back of the spade with my feet, that should work. 

Been Gone

But for reasons.  Being on the computer makes me smoke, and I have been fighting that by restricting my computer time.  The Mark's Mews blog is primary, so I manage to do that.  Emails came second, and that has been difficult.  I've had to write them in increments.  This blog seems least important...

Not that I don't enjoy writing on it.  Just that my non-smoking willpower gets worn out fast and by the time I get to THIS blog, I need a cig.

WELL...  The computer crashed.  Sort of.  More accurately, an upgrade to Mac Yosemite (OSX 10.10.2) crashed my iPhoto.  Don't know why, but some internet search showed a LOT of unhappy upgraders.  I spent a couple of hours a day for a week trying to get at my photos with no success.  Tried un-upgrading, and other stuff too.  No luck. 

Apple doesn't LIKE un-upgrading!!!  It offends them that you don't like the new stuff.  

I could have lived with the new "Yosemite" operating system if it allowed me access to the old photograghs, but there was an endless loop of "fixes" with no end.  I finally had to do the serious thing.

Thank goodness for "Time Machine".  It stores my previous versions of the hard drive.  You would think that makes it easy to just copy back the previous old version.  You would be right.  And you would be wrong.

Its possible.  But not easy, they say.  I know because I read all kinds of internet searches about doing it (and some said it worked and some said it failed.  I knew it COULD work, because I had done it once before.  It took the help of a Verizon IT tech (2 years ago I think).  Not his job, but he helped me.  And I wrote down the steps on some scrap paper.  A foot-high stack of which is always on the corner of my computer desk

I went through the stack and actually found the scrap! 

It worked.  Two hours for restoring the older OSX version, 30 minutes for "repairing" the iPhotos Library, 30 minutes for repairing my emails (and I had to endure 15 minutes of re-receiving 200 emails and deleting them as they were all duplicates).

But everything seems to be working last lat month again, and I am greatly relieved.

All that sitting around and watching the s-l-o-w progress made me get more cigs.  Damn!  Well, one night in 3 weeks isn't too bad.

I've been busy.  But that's the next posts...

Thanks for visiting after 6 weeks of no posts...

Why I hate Microsoft

I play Civilization 2 on the old PC.  Its not connected to anything but it does run.  After playing a game scenario twice, I discovered that I couldn't overwrite the previous games of the same dates and was slipping into the previous game versions on the same months (the game progresses by months). I was playing the exact same game as previously.  The third trip around the game. I caught on.

That kind of thing pisses my off royally.   And I really wasn't calm about it. 

So I just spent 4 HOURS  digging into the PC and deleting most of its functions until it finally stopped fighting me.  You wouldn't believe what it was doing.  I found where it saved all the previous games.  But that wasn't enough.  Microsoft insists on protecting you from losing old games. 

It kept COPIES of all the previous games!  Every *&#$*@g time I tried to replay the designed scenario (designed to be replayed you understand),  good old Microsoft insisted on reloading the original version of the first game I played by month of the scenario.  It took me a few tries to figure THAT out.  Sort of a "Wait, I didn't do THAT this time".   But the computer did.  Everytime I hit a month file, it loaded the old one.  I was going crazy trying to change my strategy and it wouldn't let me.

I had to dig into the actual files and drag them to the death realm.  And I'm angry because I spent 5 hours playing a WWII game scenario only to have Microsoft overlay OLD games of the same WWII months over the new one AND I had to spend 4 hours killing the old files it hid very carefully. 

I'm going to repeat this so that it is clear.  Microsoft not only kept, say,"March 1942" so that it loaded that old file when I started again in Feb 1941 and gradually played to March 1942.  It kept a COPY of the old file (really copy.filename) so just finding and deleting the original version on the scenario wasn't ENOUGH to clear the game for a new start. 

They are either evil or abominably stupid,  I don't know which and I don't care...   And this is on a computer I deliberately disconnected from the internet for safety's sake.

There are times when I can barely express my "despicification" of Microsoft's controls.

A Cautionary Tale of Sad Computer News

A long post, and I won't blame you for not reading it to the end.  But there are some lessons that may be worth reading...

No, I haven't gotten a diagnostic call from the computer repair shop I mentioned in the last post.  Instead, I messed up my own working Mac Mini computer.

Over the past few years, I have tried out several anti-virus/disk management programs for the Mac, and not been really happy with them.  Viruses aren't really a problem for Macs, but they are good about detecting viruses that could go on to infect PCs that I communicate with, so I want to keep the anti-virus protection up to date.  Mostly, I want the programs for hard drive management and they are S-L-O-W.   Several hours to read all the files looking for viruses, and a lot of one-at-a-time decisions about most programs.

I like Macs, but it seems there are a couple of weaknesses.  They don't "hold" your name/passwords to some websites as well as PCs do.  So when I actually have to shut down the computer, I have to sign in again.  A minor annoyance in the grand scheme of things, but it does get tedious when you have several program updates the same night and have to restart the computer after each one.

That wouldn't be too bad, except that I play computer games that use adobe flash a lot.  For some reason, Macs accumulate some files than clog the system.  Even THAT's not too bad; on my older PC, I would simply crash in mid-game.  One the Mac, things afterwards slow down and it locks up while searching something on Firefox or writing a letter and I have to restart the computer (meaning all those sign-ins again afterwards).

So I found a program called MacKeeper that promised to do all that better and great hacking protection (and had good reviews).  And since I had just run into a person who I thought intended to do me ill (old story, I won't go into that now except to say never blow up at a former friend whose past malicious behavior shows they know a LOT about computers).

I used the program and it seemed to work well.  Fast scanning of all files, etc.  No problems with hack attempts.  A couple of nights ago, I noticed some additional features.  The were sub-routines to identify and delete unused apps, find and delete "leftovers" (orphaned files related to deleted programs),  etc.  It wouldn't just do it automatically, I had to check each file to be deleted.

After tediously checking boxes carefully for an hour, I got a bit casual and just started taking its advice.  You can guess that was a BAD move...  It was in the applications part of my directory, and just after I clicked OK for the latest batch, I saw Firefox was on the list.  It was too late to stop it!

I have to admit the program is thorough.  When I could control the computer again, I found I had deleted Firefox.  OK, no real problem, I have TWO backup systems.  One is an external drive called FreeAgent, the other is a built-in Mac backup called Time Machine.  Both save your hard drive initially and changes to it thereafter.

Well, FreeAgent had told me last week that it was full and I should delete some older backups, and I had just done that, saving backups from Jan of the previous several years and a quarterly one for this year.  I didn't examine The Time Machine (I find it a little confusing to use).

So I examined my computer dock (graphic sidebar of active applications) and Firefox was gone.  So was the Mac word and spreadsheet suite called iWorks.  So was the MS Office Word and Excel.  I have NO word-processing or spreadsheet programs, and the only browser I had was Safari  (which seems to fight me all the time).

After spending a good part of yesterday and this morning trying to find the lost programs in the two backups, I gave up.  I downloaded Firefox (at least its free), but there were no bookmarks.  I had about 13 years of some useful and unusual bookmarks saved.  Well, at least I knew that I had seen a boormarks.html file in the backup list.

Yeah, it was from 2008!  Both backup programs had faithfully saved one old bookmark file for 5 years.  I checked both backups programs "every way from Sunday" (as my Dad used to say) for 2 hours before I gave up.  There was just that old one.  So I imported it.  The first thing I did was open every single bookmark.  Most were no longer working and I deleted them.  Some were still working but were "repurposed" and I deleted them.  Some I could not imagine why I bookmarked them and I deleted THEM!

It didn't leave me with very many bookmarks, but at least I still had the organization of the folders (blogs, reference, hobbies, garden, pets, etc).  The first additions were my blogs.  And you know, it was hard to get those.  It was easy to SEE my blog, but it took some thought to find how to get to my dashboard (my blog has "blogspot" in the url, but the dashboard has "blogger").

I slowly used Safari to get the urls of some other sites (like cat blogosphere) and bookmark them into Firefox.

I've lost a lot of bookmarks, but I had too many old unused ones anyway.  Old ones I want, I can find again easily enough and bookmark them.  And my Feedly bloglist RSS is safe because I set it up as my home page on Safari (open up Safari, and there it is).

I had the Mac iWorks and MS Office word and spreadsheet programs downloaded rather than owning the reloadable CDs, so I think I would have to buy them again.  Fortunately, I don't need the MS suite programs with their advanced features anymore.  The simpler Mac Page and Numbers apps will work fine.  And it seems they are only about $20 each.  MS Office for Mac costs $140. (and I'd rather not have any MS crossover programs on the Mac for security purposes).  And I used to make CD backups of some programs, I might find them.

But not tonight!  I'm worn out and (as calm as I may seem), very angry and frustrated.

Those backup programs (as I understood them) were SUPPOSED to allow me to completely restore my hard drive in case of failure.  I HOPE it was just my fault in not setting them up properly, but my recollection is that I was pretty darn careful about doing it right.  But I'm going to really triple-check it when I dig into them both tomorrow!

If you have a backup system, I suggest you really examine it carefully.  Make sure that what you think is a saved program isn't just the sidebar graphic or the desktop shortcut.  Look at "properties" or "info" or whatever gives you file size amounting to MBs.  You may not actually have the actual program saved.

I got fooled because my older computers had a full-sized 2nd drive and when I copied the main drive to the 2nd drive it WAS a real copy of the whole drive, applications and all.  I was used to that.

It seems to me that, not matter how careful you try to be, a train wreck will occur on your computer every few years.  And something you assumed worked, won't work the way you think it will...

Some Evil Squirrels

Some evil squirrels are about to die.  I do not find pleasure in this.  I admire squirrels in many ways; they are clever, agile, and adaptive and I generally respect that.  I even think they are "cute".  I set up two squirrel baffles on the bird-feeder and I thought we had reached an understanding.  They couldn't reach the birdfeeder, but they were welcome to the seeds that fell.

But one one small group of them in a particular community learn to survive by eating every unripe apple, pull up every pole bean seedling, dig up every corn seedling, and pull off every heirloom tomato fruit , I have to put a stop to it.

I had squirrels around for the first 24 years here and never had a problem.  2 years ago , they suddenly learned to eat my tomatoes.  Last year, they started to eat my bean seedling.  This year, they are tearing up any plant I plant.

I wasn't sure it was really squirrels until yesterday when I caught them in the act.  There were 3 squirrels in the garden at the places where I am losing plants that I am growing for my food!  I know the direction they come from. 

I seriously think it is just one group of squirrels.  I intend to kill them as serious varmints.

I have several Hav-A-Hart live traps and one is sized for squirrels.  But I must mention that I am only using Hav-A-Hart traps so that I won't catch innocent animals like my cats or other cats.  Any squirrel I catch in the direction of the cadre that destroys my garden will die.

They have pulled up all my corn seedlings 3 times, my beans 3 times and half my cucumbers up twice.  I admire squirrels a lot, but when it comes to MY food, they are going to lose.  Its not ALL the squirrels; its only the ones that come from one direction and I'm going to get THOSE!

The most humane way I know to kill varmints is drowning.  I tried stabbing them with arrows through the cage screen, but it didn't work fast.  So I just drown them.  Its not as bad as you think.  They move around confused for a minute, then blurp an exhalation.  Then they are gone.

I expect some complaints, but I've tried different ways and that is the fastest I've found.

But if it is a contest between my growing veggies for my own food and allowing the squirrels to stop me from growing my own food, the squirrels are going to lose gradually and eventually.

Farewell Google Reader...

I use Google Reader, and Google is gong to shut it down July 1st.

I deliberately use different services from various providers because I don't want ANY of them to learn TOOO much about me.  I will suffer poorer quality service at the start to avoid control.  In the same way I left Microsoft to go to Apple, and Google Search for Bing, I will leave Google for some other reader service.

Google thinks it is too grand to leave.  They don't know me.  I will accept 2 star service in return for being CHERISHED by some new startup service provider.  And they are out there just waiting for those like me to give them a try.  I'll try them...

I always will.

What companies like Google DON'T realize is that there will always be competitor services, small start-ups that will someday become the IBMs/Microsofts/Googles of the future.

Google has decided that I am not worth their continued support.  If I owned stock in Google, I would sell it tomorrow.  (Disclaimer, I own index stocks and some may involve Google, but I don't know that).

I sometimes wonder how much some internet service providers understand about their users.  Do they really think they have a monopoly on any service?  Do they really think that their users can't move to other providers?

There IS such a thing as thinking you are "too big to fail".  That's exactly the point where a company SHOULD be broken up into constituent parts that compete.

Let's see how much better the parts of Google serve us, the users, when they get broken up into smaller competing units...

And back up your Google blog immediately.  I just did.  See instructions HERE.  Its tricky, but I did it and I'm no genius.  It did take some effort though.

Dementia?

I thought I knew what dementia meant.  I thought it was about forgetting things.  I thought if someone had it REAL bad they tended to wander away or forget who you were and that was Alzheimer's. 

Well I was wrong.  I didn't realize the degree of unreasonable self-orientation involved in dementia! 

I've gotten used to Dad breaking in with a trivial question involving past or future events while I am trying to get dinner on the table.  I am used to him bugging me about having lunch ready promptly at noon and dinner at 6 pm.  He was ALWAYS fussy about schedules.

I am used to him complaining unsensibly.  If the TV shows a poor news video, he complains that my (Big Screen HD Plasma 1080) TV is poor quality.  If there isn't anything he wants to watch, he complains I have a poor cable system (1,000 and "57 channels and nothings on"...).  The sink water doesn't get hot immediately. 

My favorite last week was that he needed a calendar because he couldn't tell what day it was.  He couldn't figure out why looking at a calendar wouldn't tell him what day it was.

But today was a new low.  I don't mean that he said he had another family for a decade or that I wasn't his son.  Not THAT level.

But...  I have people here putting new siding on the house.  Its noisy work, and they have a job to do.  Dad is normally happy watching Fox News and listening to the talking heads.  I've been mostly staying outside watching them work (its fascinating), and I make sure to ask Dad how things are going every hour or so. 

Well, apparently Fox News was replaying a speech by Paul Ryan and all the hammering annoyed him.  When I came in, Dad was ANGRY.  "They should have stopped all the hammering during his speaking (sic), out of respect"!

Me:  "What?!?

Dad:  "They should have stopped when someone important was speaking"!

Me:  "Dad, they have a job to do.  They have a schedule".

Dad:  "It was disrespectful"!

Me:  "Dad, you're being unreasonable.  They didn't know someone was speaking and they wouldn't stop working if they did.  I don't care if a politician is speaking.  Most of the world wouldn't care.  People have to keep doing their jobs.

Dad:  "YOU'RE NOT UNDERSTANDING ME!  THIS WAS IMPORTANT"!

US:  (Some repetitive back-and-forth angry/calming words)

Me:  "Dad, please sit down, watch your political TV.  I'm busy!"  (leaves house)

I was completely surprised by the whole event.  I accept the daily forgetfulness, I accept his confusion about bills, etc (and I can deal with that); but I hadn't seen the irrationality involving a real-time event on such a personal level before.  And it wasn't at sundown...

Mom became physically unable while still mentally competent.  Dad is losing his mind first (though physical incompetence is catching up rapidly).  

More about all that next time.  

This Day

No terrible act is remembered forever in history.  But I will remember THIS day 11 years ago all MY life.

December 7, 1941 is etched in my memory, though I was not alive them.  I know it from history, but what was recent history to me when I aged enough.

November 22, 1963 is part of my childhood memory as a day of great sadness.  I remember looking up at the public address system of the school when it was announced that the President had been killed.  The PA box was blonde wood, rounded square shaped,  slightly wider at the top than the bottom, with brown cloth covering the speaker.  You remember the strangest things sometimes.

I was older of course on 9-11.  The day started with an announcement on the radio about a small plane crashing into a World Trade Center Building.  I mentioned it in passing to my supervisor.  The next few reports made it seem worse.

Then I felt a THUMP under my feet at 9:37.  I didn't know that the Pentagon had been struck.  But I realized after that, that I had felt the strike. I happened to look at my watch.  Seared in memory.

My govt office had some Emergency Management functions, so there was a special TV in a conference room.  Most of us ended up in there.  I was out on the roof at the time the first Tower went down, so I didn't see it in real time.

I saw the 2nd Tower go down though.  Most thought it a replay of the 1st Tower, but I saw the difference and called attention to it.  We all stared in horror.

There are evil vicious cruel acts occurring all over the world on a daily basis.  Victims have their lives shattered every day.  No one is free of them.  I will not make guesses on "worst".

There are reasons given for all destructive killing acts.  Most of them are pathetically weak.  But some are more unsensible and evil than others.

I have a background in history.  Phenomenally and nearly innumerable horrible acts abound through the ages.  Pol Pot, Nazis, Colonialism, Inquisitions, Witch-Burnings, European Christian Crusades, Islamist invasions, Mongol and Hun attacks, Viking slaughters, and back on through the lost times of history.  No age is free of vicious and pointless deaths.

But I will remember 9-11 all my life with a line I read in the book 'Dune'.  "Never forgive, never forget".

But I should.  When I read about some cultural group angry about something that happened 500 years ago, I have to wonder about the "never forgetting" part.  There was the December 7th attack, but we think of Japan as an ally now.  As Germany is a democracy now, as is Italy.  Forgiveness is possible.

There may be a day when I will forgive the Islamists for the 9-11 attack.

But today is not that day.