Those Who Can, Do. Those Who Can't, Write

So I did this.

 And then I decided to do this.

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You would never know it from looking at this blog, but I like to write. I just don't like to rant or ramble, so as the title of this blog suggests, I write when I have something to say. So why not get paid for it?

Writers who advise other writers about how to pimp their books suggest that you start up a blog. I've got this one, but should I attract any significant number of readers, they probably don't want to come here. When I get another one set up just for book-pimping, I'll let you know.

In the meantime, buy one of my books, will you?  I get pretty much the same royalty for the dead tree version and the Kindle version, but if I should ever become famous, the paperback will be more valuable, especially if I sign it, and especially if I'm dead. Tell you what, if you lurk here and you decide to buy one of my books, I'll do that for just a few cents in postage. Leave me a comment and I'll make it happen. Signing the book, not getting dead. Just don't wait too long...
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Pain

I find myself in a dilemma here. I have something to talk about, but I can't talk about it to anybody. So what better place to do it than some public place that no one ever sees.

Let's get something up front here. I can't stand whiners. Whiners are people who complain to me about things they already know I can do nothing about. Got that? The thing is, I'm an engineer. I haven't worked in close to five years but an engineer is something you are, not something you do. Is there some aspect of the physical world that is bothering you? Car running rough? Lights flickering? Faucet dripping? Bicycle skipping gears? Especially: electronics (includes computers, A/V equipment, pop-up toasters, espresso machines, iPads, and cellular phones)? Hey, I'm your man, baby! Let's have a look, and you'll be up and running in five minutes.

But if you have a problem with people, which is where 99.99747% of the world's problems reside, there's not much I can do for you. People are fucking irrational. Even me. I can commiserate to a point, but if you are just unloading on me because I'm a nice guy, OK, enough is enough. I get it. Whatever it is, just suck it up, keep your head down, and find something else to think about. This is the only advice I can offer. If you are looking for somebody to share your pain, I have enough of it already. Enough. I have problems of my own. Stand on your own two feet. I can barely stand on mine.

All right, enough digressing out of the elliptical plane. Here is my dilemma: I am in pain. Pain in my body, centering on my lumbar spine but radiating out into my hips and my legs. I am 69 years old, so I can expect some pain, but this shit is affecting my mobility. I have an old wooden cane I take with me everywhere. It doesn't do squat for the pain, but it keeps me from falling when a muscle spasm in my back causes me to falter. Every time I do that, it's because of a sharp pain. Sometimes people see this, and they think maybe it's a structural thing, like weak muscles. Nope. Pain.

Most days, I am done in around 7:00 PM. My only relief is a heating pad that I keep in my bed. Going to bed is surrender. Defeat.

Getting sick of me yet? You should be. I'm whining. There is nothing you can do about it. You may have some advice that you think is helpful, but it will fill me with rage if you discuss yoga, supplements, or holistic medicine of any description. It. Does. Not. Fucking. Work. My back is fucking broken. Nothing can fix that.

In the spring of 2014, I had reconstructive surgery to relieve pressure on my sciatic nerves. A laminectomy, a spinal fusion, two rods, and a shitload of screws. The surgery took six hours, and I damn near died because I could not find my call button when I woke up and I was throwing up because of the morphine. My so-called recovery consisted of forced retirement from my job and ten months in bed on my back, ingesting opioid pain meds, trying and failing to resume something like a normal life. If some fucking doctor were to discuss further surgery with me - is there a term for killing a doctor? How about "iatrocide." Hmm. Maybe I just inserted a necessary word into the English language.

I had around a year of reasonable functioning. No cane needed, just the occasional spasm that would make me stumble. I even thought I was recovering, but the spasms became more frequent, and I was in danger of falling, so I got Stumpy - the name I gave to my old wooden cane - out of the garage and started taking it with me.

My intervertebral discs are collapsing because of old age. My vertebrae are collapsing because of spondylosis and osteoporosis. My back fucking hurts because all of this is impinging on nerves that work with my legs and just because it fucking hurts. They can't even see where the problem is on imaging because the crap they put in my body interferes with it. I have to go through a body scanner at the airport because I trip the metal detector every fucking time.

But I guess that's why I came here after two years of inactivity. I can't say anything more about Dumpy - our soon-to-be-impeached pretender to the throne, if you happened on this by accident - but I can say something about me.

I hurt. I fucking hurt. I just want somebody to care. Not to do anything for me, but just to care. There. I have a basic human need that I can neither fulfill nor tolerate. And time is running out for me.

Enough whining.

For Sarah Kendzior, Part 2: The Struggles Of My Ancestors

Mom

I spoke of my mother's struggle in my last post. I did not embellish it with much detail, but I owe it to her to say that she did her best to overcome her hardships and in some important respects, she succeeded. Neither my sister nor I would be the people we are today were it not for her sacrifices, and for her compassion that was always evident and passed on to us by example.

Mom always saw the good in people, but she often didn't allow that it might not have made them who they were. She didn't have the best judgment when it came to people who came into her life, and all too often, it resulted in her being taken advantage of. The details are incidental to the effect this had on me, but I'll say that I learned from this, too.  I just wish it didn't have to hurt so much. It left me bitter, and I have yet to overcome that.

I do try to see the good in people, and I try really hard to give the benefit of the doubt. My mother's troubles, however, have left me with a kind of radar that is sensitive to gimmicks and lies. I cannot deny that there may be some good in the gimmickers and liars, or that perhaps their own struggles have influenced their behavior in ways they might, on some level, be ashamed of. Knowing this, I will often give people a second chance, but there is a law of diminishing returns.

I'll have more to say about Mom when I get to my own biography. I'll bring up more about my colorful ancestry some other time.

Dad

My father had a great deal to overcome. He was one of four children born to a small-town couple in rural Indiana. He came of age at the time of the Great Depression. The Depression hit the rural Midwest especially hard. In the midst of this, his father, a grandfather I would never know, just picked up and left one day, never to return. The bitterness of this experience left him and his siblings literally speechless about their father. Dad never talked about him, save for one thing he told me that I will get to later. Neither did his brothers. My aunt on his side died when I was young, but I presume she never talked about it either.

A few years ago, one of my cousins did some research on him, and was able to piece together a history and some of the details of his life before and after he abandoned his family. Thanks to her efforts, I was finally able to understand a little about him. He was himself abandoned by his single mother, who left him in the care of his grandparents, to pursue a life with another man, and to have a family with him. She never came back for my grandfather. I cannot fathom the scars this must have left him with, but it does lend some understanding of why he left his own family - even if I cannot forgive him.

My grandmother was as tough and enduring as iron. She had enough of an education to work as a schoolteacher in the small Indiana town where she lived. Playing piano at a local church brought in a little more money. Dad and his brothers would do what they could to help out, working in the fields at harvest time, taking whatever odd jobs they could get. They were able to keep food on the table and a roof over their heads until WWII came along and the economy picked up. 

At the onset of the war, Dad and his older brother enlisted in the Navy. This brings me to the point where I can talk about the only conversation Dad ever had with his father that he shared with me. My grandfather told him, "Look, if there's ever a war, do whatever you can to stay out of it. You can make money in a war."

Dad used to tell me a story about how he joined the Navy because he didn't want to get drafted. I believed him, and I was OK with it, but I discovered after his death that the story was bunk. I obtained his service records from the VA, intending to see if I could get him some kind of memorial. The records included his enlistment date: January, 1942, a little less than 4 weeks following the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Dad told me another story of how he was rejected at his first attempt at enlistment because of his asthma. A trainer at his gym helped him to get the rattle out of his chest long enough to pass the physical on his second try. This explains the brief delay between December 7 and his enlistment date. It was true that he didn't want to wait to get drafted. He wanted to get into the fight as soon as he could.

Dad met my mother while he was stationed at a Navy training center in Toledo. They married and conceived my sister before he shipped out to the Pacific. There, he participated in the Battle of Leyte Gulf, a successful campaign that allowed the Americans to retake the Philippines. Dad was stationed there for the duration of the war. He would tell me stories of his war years over and over again, and I hung on every word, every time. At the war's end, he had attained the rank of Chief Petty Officer, which he retained through several years in the reserves after the war.

So much for my grandfather's advice. Like everyone who accepted the call of duty in that terrible war, Dad was a hero. I am immensely proud of his service to this country, and it is as much for his sake as for mine and my daughter's that I'm not about to let this country be destroyed from within.

Dad's hardships, the bitterness of his abandonment, and the terrors of war made him strong, but it also led him to seek refuge in a bottle of gin. This ultimately led to the unraveling of my family and my own abandonment after the divorce. Dad always paid his child support on time, but he didn't visit my sister and me more than 2 or 3 times in the 4 years until my mother's death. I was in my teens then, and very much in need of a father. His absence from my life left me with some scars of my own.

When Mom died midway through my senior year in high school, I moved in with him. He always saw to it that I had a good dinner, money for lunch, and that my other material needs were met, but he couldn't bring himself to stop drinking. Many evenings, he left me alone to go to the bar down the street. As a small businessman, he worked almost every day, so I still didn't get to see him very much in the short time I lived with him. The summer following my high school graduation, I went off to college on a small scholarship I'd been awarded. I would return home from time to time after that, but it was the end of my life with him. 

By and by, my own life became very tangled - more on that in a future post - and I had to hit him up for money once in a while, but I was living in another city then, and I only went home at Christmas and a few other times. I had failed at college and was living hand to mouth, taking a succession of shitty jobs just to get by. This would continue for several years. By my mid-20s, I came to realize that my life was going nowhere, so I enrolled in a local community college to pursue an associate degree in electronics. I worked in a small factory by day and attended classes at night. After 2 years of this, I was faced with a terrible dilemma. In order to keep my tuition support from the state, I had to take at least 3 classes per term, and I had run out of options for night school. I would have to quit my job or limit my classes. This was not really an option, as I would lose my tuition support and it would take me another 2½ years to graduate.

I went to my father, hat in hand, to ask him for help. By then, we were completely estranged, and he did not know what I had been doing the past two years. I brought him my transcripts - nearly all A's - and explained my situation to him. Years before, I had failed him by flunking out of college on his dime, so asking him for help was one of the hardest things I ever had to do.

He did not hesitate. He asked me for an estimate of my living expenses, and he carried me through my final year of school, which allowed me to graduate and take a good job afterward. For all the disappointments, and despite his flaws, he had never given up on me. He was my father.

It was through adversity that I learned perseverance. But it was from Dad that I learned about giving second chances. The second chances we each gave to the other.

For Sarah Kendzior, Part I: My Values and My Dreams

This is my 13th blog entry in 4½ years. As the title says, I have nothing much to say. This is about to change.

A few days ago, I read an article by Sarah Kendzior, a writer and anthropologist who studies autocratic regimes in Central Asia. It's a short read; I invite you to read it in its entirety before moving on to the grumbles that comprise the remainder of this post. For more of her work, read her book and follow her on Twitter:

Follow @SarahKendzior

What are my values? What are my dreams?

It's hard to answer these questions without covering some of the other things Kendzior talks about in her article. I need to say a bit about myself, my family of origin, and my roots. I was born and raised in Toledo, Ohio, USA, in the heart of what is now known as the Rust Belt. Toledo had not yet rusted during my formative years, and I can talk about the way life was then.

I was born to a middle-class family. My father had a small business which supplied enough income for us to have a modest house, a good car, and even a small summer place in Michigan. I have a sister 5 years my senior who now lives in Florida. My mother stayed home with us until I was old enough to come home from school with a latchkey, then she took a job as a legal secretary.

Our house, our car, and our other chattels were very like those belonging to the other families in our neighborhood. Most of my neighbors worked in the auto plants, the glass factories, and other industrial workplaces that were the heart of Toledo's economy. Life was good. This was the 1950s, a period of relative calm and prosperity for most of the country. This was a time when you could take a job in an auto plant or a glass factory and bring home enough money to own a modest home, drive a good car, and have enough left over to save a little and take vacations with your family.

Like many Americans, I long for such times again. This is a common sentiment echoed throughout our country as a whole, and the Midwest in particular, among those of us old enough to remember them. We will never see these times again. Most of the factories are shuttered or just plain gone. Gone, too, are the social institutions and structures that made that idyllic life possible. We had strong unions then, giving common people the collective clout to bargain for a good life in the face of rising corporations that made enough profit to expand despite having to pay their workers a decent wage.

We had an equitable tax code that compelled the wealthy to pay for the privilege of living in a country with vast resources and an efficient infrastructure built by the common people. All work was valued and rewarded. Almost anyone who wanted to make a living was entitled to respect. Almost.

There was an ugly side to 50s America. Throughout the country, and particularly in the southern states, African Americans and other people of color were denied even the chance to make a living, to earn respect. As the decade came to a close, these people were fighting a pitched battle for the rights all of us white folk took for granted - a good school for our children, a chance at a good job, respect. Those Americans who preferred the status quo fought back hard. The struggle was turbulent, often violent, often bloody. The status quo was wrong, evil. It had to change, and change it did. I changed with it.

When I was a child, I would hear others talking about African Americans in ways that are now considered deplorable, yet were perfectly acceptable in conversation then. I don't want to repeat the slurs I heard, but I can tell you how I came to disbelieve them. Our comfortable middle-class income provided us enough money to hire an African American woman named Beulah - I never knew her last name - to help my mother with the housework a few days a month. Beulah was a sweet, kind person who always had a smile and something nice to say to me. She and my mother would work side by side cleaning the floors, vacuuming the drapes, putting out the laundry. They would speak to one another in pleasant conversational tones. Mom never talked down to her. Mom treated her with respect.

Mom and Beulah taught me that all of the things I was hearing about African Americans was bullshit. I believed it as a child, as I do now. Although I yearn for the American Dream I lived as a child, I cannot live in a society where people are denied the respect they deserve because of the color of their skin, their gender, where they came from, or who they love. This is a core value, and it is one I fear I will not realize in the years remaining to me.

My mother was taken from me far too soon. My parents divorced when I was thirteen, and in the mere four years that ensued until her death, I watched her struggle, carrying the impossible weight of supporting her children in a society where women were expected to stay home and cook, clean, shop, and otherwise stay out of the way. The memories of her struggle are indelible. At the end, it became too much for her. She died reaching for the love and respect she deserved, only to discover she had been used.

I never talk about the circumstances of my mother's death except to people who become very close to me, but I can tell you that her death did not shape me in the way her life did. My mother once took in a fledgling sparrow that had fallen from its nest. She loved animals. She adored children. She was kind to everyone who had any presence in her life. She hated no one. In these things, I aspire to be like Mom. And I do not want to live in a society where any woman must struggle the way she did. I strive to be kind. I hope that I can in some way inspire kindness in others as she did in me. This is a core value, but it is one that is attainable if I can reach even one other person. If I can leave this world having brought a little kindness into it, I will not have lived in vain. This is the only dream remaining to me for my own sake.

The future of the world, to the extent that I will matter in the years to come, is in the hands of my 11-year-old daughter. She came to me very late in life, at a time when I had given up hope of ever having children and continuing my line. She is a miracle, and she is my blessing. She is also a lot of work, more work than I ever had at any job I ever held, but every day she gives me the will to carry on for as long as I can. I must do this for her. My dream for the future is that she will carry on for me. If I can teach her anything she will remember in a time of decision, in a time of crisis, my dream will be fulfilled.

Kendzior warns us that dark times are looming. I have no doubt that she is right, and I fear that I will not live to see the end of them. My daughter must. She must grow up in a place where she can have dreams of her own. My job now is to see that she has the values she will need to see her through to that place.

#ImWithHer. Sort Of

I did my patriotic duty this morning and voted in the Illinois primary election. I cast my ballot for Hillary Clinton.

7 days ago, I did not know how I would vote. As a political junkie, I am quite familiar with both Clinton and Sanders. I have followed them for quite some time.

Bernie Sanders is an intriguing individual. Although he is an independent, he has been a consistent voice for progressive values that the mainstream of the Democratic party have all but abandoned. When he entered the race, I was delighted. His fiery rhetoric would bring energy into the race, and he would force prospective voters to examine their values. He would run to Clinton's left on most issues, and left is the direction in which the Democrats need to go.

Sanders' position on the problems facing most of the people in this country - the 99%  - are closer to my own than Clinton's. The people, not only of this country, but of industrialized countries worldwide, have too long been at the mercy of a corrupt and indifferent financial oligarchy whose only purpose appears to be to funnel most of the wealth created by the common labor of humanity into the pockets of big corporations and a few wealthy individuals. I think this is the message that Sanders' supporters resonate with, and I think it's the reason he's been so successful so far in this primary.

However, as much as I love what Sanders has to say, I am not hearing enough about how he intends to implement the reforms we so desperately need in the face of an entrenched opposition who have gerrymandered themselves into an almost unbeatable position in the House of Representatives and in many statehouses across the country. A president needs executive ability, the ability to make deals, to stand firm when standing firm is called for, and the ability to outthink the opposition as President Obama has done so admirably. I don't think Sanders displays that ability.

Furthermore, his principal focus has been on domestic issues, but we live in an increasingly dangerous world that does not seem to be moving in the right direction. Who do I want sitting across the table from Vladimir Putin, making clear our position that he should not try to recreate the Soviet Union? Who do I want to continue the delicate negotiations with Iran on their nuclear program? For all her faults, Clinton has demonstrated one indisputable quality: she's tough as nails and can stand nose to nose with not only the domestic political opposition, but with world leaders, friend and foe alike, and fight for those interests which she does share with me. As such, she got my vote today, and will get it in November should she continue on her winning trajectory through the remainder of the primary.

I will, however, continue to listen to Senator Sanders, and I hope the dialog he has opened with Americans will continue long past this election. May he continue to inspire the next generation of American leaders, and may he succeed in thwarting the rightward lurch that too many Democrats have made since the Reagan era. This is my message to President Clinton (45): this primary will have shown you that a great many of your constituents do not want business as usual in the Democratic Party. Please stop listening to people like Rahm Emanuel and start listening to people like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.

Enough About Drones, Already

The nice thing about having a blog that nobody - and I do mean nobody - reads is that I can say anything I want here without arousing a cacophony of scolds from people I normally side with.

Case in point, Joan Walsh's diatribe on the Obama Administration's use of drones in targeted assassinations, and her disdain of liberals who aren't shocked by it. OK, it isn't just Walsh. Shannyn Moore is pissed off about them on Facebook. There was a lot of traffic from pissed-off liberals about the leaked DOJ memo on Twitter yesterday; I won't try to hunt all of those down; if you read this blog (though nobody does), you follow the same people I do. Well, sorry, pissed-off liberals. I'm liberal, but I'm just not as pissed off as you think I should be. Scold me.

No, Jill Stein, I don't side with you.

An online quiz that has been popping up with annoying frequency on social media is supposed to tell you which 2012 presidential candidate you side with. I already know where I stand, having voted for Barack Obama 3 times now, but I can't resist these things for their amusement value. Well, I took the quiz, and I'm not at all amused.

The quiz guides you through a series of questions about various national issues, a mix of social, economic, and foreign policy questions, asking you where you stand on them, and how strongly you feel about each of them. At the end of the quiz, there is a bit of hokum as you see the faces of the two candidates for president, together with candidates representing the fringe parties, shuffling in a motion reminiscent of Robby the Robot's mechanical brain chunking and whirring away at a problem.

Chunk...chunk...whirrr...chunk...