To summarize:
From my limited perspective, I feel that 2016 was a rough time for me, the United States and the world.
My near family did fairly well. I received a fifth grand child in this year, a girl and she is doing just fine. I saw her over the holiday season. The whole grandchild process is a reminder of how time not only flies but lurches over huge blocks of dark matter. When you do not see a new born for a few months it is no longer a new born and there is the palpable realization of how fast we age. My mom is doing well in spite of her aging process, she is so sweet, still. Mom is amazing, that is all I can say. My children continue to surprise me. As they age, I see them make decision I did not have to address. They are dealing with those issues satisfactorily. I generally feel I should have prepared them more completely for life's challenges and yet, there they are creating solutions with optimism and hope. I felt very empty this year as it zoomed past. My lazy habits got the best of me and my "take the easy way" attitude for life is constantly catching up on me. I keep hope that the world will not see the hapless, fraud of a human being standing in front of them. I remember the childhood game played in the dark streets of Akron and continuously keep "kicking the can" down the road. There is some joy in that I am becoming a pretty fine kicker. I feel that I am balancing on a fence rail between insolvency and high cotton. I will ultimately be given my due and paid handsomely for it. My due may be eternal damnation (which you do not hear about any more) or it may be creating master works of art like Mount Rushmore. Although I find it easier to love, I find fewer people I want to love. I know that sounds a bit sinful but there you go. Dilemmas like that are the bane of my existence. Fortunately for people that encounter me, whom I love is not really a choice but is a mandate from God.
The United States is getting a new president this year and also is embracing hatred and violence. Usually a new president is just that, a new president. We need new ones ever once in a while, they wear thin after a while. A new president is like a new tennis racket. I am playing tennis now and even though I have tried several different old rackets lately, I still need to obtain a new one and have no idea how to pick one. You cannot really try out a racket or a president and return it to the 5 and 10 if you do not like it. You pick the best one you can based on the parameters and your needs and just jump in with a selection. I had my old tennis racket and the strings broke, kind of like Bush invading Iraq. What a disaster. When the strings popped, the fragile frame cracked and could not be restrung effectively because it was cracked, like Bush. Our country has broken its catgut, its inner fiber that strings the whole mess together and gives the entire framework of the Constitution incredible strength. I had to go with my second choice, a racket my son left at the house when he moved out. Now, my son only buys nice stuff so it is a sweet racket and I liked it. It was forceful and solid. A presidential trait for sure. The results of my tennis game were almost instantaneously optimistic. Unfortunately, this racket caused massive damage to the tendons in my elbow and eventually I could no longer even grip the bastard. This fine, expensive racket was no longer helping but was hurting the entire game, like a president possibly could. With my third racket choice, I have had to "settle" for a clearly inferior racket with some surprising and unrealized attributes. Some days it seems like the racket has the right stuff but other days it sucks and so I lose ground on my overall game. I still need a better racket to build a better offensive and defensive game. Settling for a lesser racket or a lesser president is not sound plan for success.
In 2016, the world has embraced hatred and marginalization. I do not know how the world had time to embrace any other moronic ideologies else but they did. There must have not been enough people hating other people because the Hate-o-Meter has gone far into the red. The Europeans hate each other. The Irish hate each other again. South African hate everybody and everybody hates South Africa again. The steady Aussies hate Indonesian and now they even hate women. Everywhere, people feel it is OK to hate and degrade women, gays, transgenders and anyone who looks like these groups. The Scandinavians, the Canadians and the Kiwis seem to be holding their own but hate mongers are on the edges. We were fortunate this year to see a gay, homophobic Muslim terrorist kill people in Orlando. It is a shame he was not black and from Syria and also follows Falun gong as to encompass all the persecuted stereotypes so that every one of those ignorant MF's could get on a soap box and give credence to watch lists and first strike mentality. As inflamed as my elbow had become, my country is also having an inflammatory response of hate and intolerance. It is the result of systemic infrastructure decay, the racket has a crack in it. I am a thousand times more afraid of my neighbors than I am of any religious or foreign entity. Partly because of proximity but mostly because of the pervasive ignorance which bubbles up hate and intolerance. Twenty years ago it was well known and accepted that bigotry, hate and intolerance were wrong and should not be tolerated in society or ourselves for that matter. We as a people were the police. We did not pass on prejudices and hate to our children. We said something in public if we saw abuses. Our Congress gleefully passed laws promoting morality and fair treatment to all. There has always been hate and that cannot be legislated or eliminated, but now it is acceptable to insult and assault verbally or physically those that are different from us, want to do us harm or that just pissed us off. I blame the tennis racket for my painful tendon but I did not beat it to a pulp or turn to social media to razz, stalk, threaten legal action or belittle the makers and designers of the racket. People I work with "hate" other people and share that information openly with me. People I consider reasonably normal have let fear mongering and gossip derail and injure their lives. Repairing those live will take years and possibly generations. The year 2016 was the year of the Syrians. Their entire country and population was blown to hell by all the major powers of the world, some new and some old. Most if not all of the people should be extremely pissed off at the Turks, the Russians, the Americans and their own government. The death and destruction was not of their choice or making. It was political and foreign. The Syrian people do not hate everyone, they just want to go to sleep and wake up safe from bombs, ideologies, imperialism and mostly death.
Next year, we will have to get back to blaming the Africans, not just black Africans but Muslim blacks, "they are cannibals you know". I actually heard this said a few years ago. It is this kind of ignorant hatred our country has maintained underneath the acceptable fabric of society. Next our society will return to harassing lepers and any "confused" people that are just trying to get through the day. These are the types of attitudes that in the past, most people tried not to pass on to their children, the kind we ALL knew was not acceptable. The Klan wore hoods for a reason. Our governments and our society has continued to nurture these attitudes. If ideologies are not fed and nurtured, they will starve and die. I know that I will be exposed personally and locally to ignorant, bigoted hatred and many of its cousins, violence, fear and fascism in the year 2017. World fears of terrorism are only symptoms of poor economic and social problems that cannot be calmed with fanatical police states and walls, real or imagined. I suspect it will be a tougher go for 2017 and with a ton of surprises. Sound economics, social responsibility and better detective work is a practical approach to problem solving. The key words are "practical" and "problem solving." I do not see many people in positions of power looking for practical solutions and I only see fear in faces of the rest of us. So I will skip ringing in the new year.
From my limited perspective, I feel that 2016 was a rough time for me, the United States and the world.
My near family did fairly well. I received a fifth grand child in this year, a girl and she is doing just fine. I saw her over the holiday season. The whole grandchild process is a reminder of how time not only flies but lurches over huge blocks of dark matter. When you do not see a new born for a few months it is no longer a new born and there is the palpable realization of how fast we age. My mom is doing well in spite of her aging process, she is so sweet, still. Mom is amazing, that is all I can say. My children continue to surprise me. As they age, I see them make decision I did not have to address. They are dealing with those issues satisfactorily. I generally feel I should have prepared them more completely for life's challenges and yet, there they are creating solutions with optimism and hope. I felt very empty this year as it zoomed past. My lazy habits got the best of me and my "take the easy way" attitude for life is constantly catching up on me. I keep hope that the world will not see the hapless, fraud of a human being standing in front of them. I remember the childhood game played in the dark streets of Akron and continuously keep "kicking the can" down the road. There is some joy in that I am becoming a pretty fine kicker. I feel that I am balancing on a fence rail between insolvency and high cotton. I will ultimately be given my due and paid handsomely for it. My due may be eternal damnation (which you do not hear about any more) or it may be creating master works of art like Mount Rushmore. Although I find it easier to love, I find fewer people I want to love. I know that sounds a bit sinful but there you go. Dilemmas like that are the bane of my existence. Fortunately for people that encounter me, whom I love is not really a choice but is a mandate from God.
The United States is getting a new president this year and also is embracing hatred and violence. Usually a new president is just that, a new president. We need new ones ever once in a while, they wear thin after a while. A new president is like a new tennis racket. I am playing tennis now and even though I have tried several different old rackets lately, I still need to obtain a new one and have no idea how to pick one. You cannot really try out a racket or a president and return it to the 5 and 10 if you do not like it. You pick the best one you can based on the parameters and your needs and just jump in with a selection. I had my old tennis racket and the strings broke, kind of like Bush invading Iraq. What a disaster. When the strings popped, the fragile frame cracked and could not be restrung effectively because it was cracked, like Bush. Our country has broken its catgut, its inner fiber that strings the whole mess together and gives the entire framework of the Constitution incredible strength. I had to go with my second choice, a racket my son left at the house when he moved out. Now, my son only buys nice stuff so it is a sweet racket and I liked it. It was forceful and solid. A presidential trait for sure. The results of my tennis game were almost instantaneously optimistic. Unfortunately, this racket caused massive damage to the tendons in my elbow and eventually I could no longer even grip the bastard. This fine, expensive racket was no longer helping but was hurting the entire game, like a president possibly could. With my third racket choice, I have had to "settle" for a clearly inferior racket with some surprising and unrealized attributes. Some days it seems like the racket has the right stuff but other days it sucks and so I lose ground on my overall game. I still need a better racket to build a better offensive and defensive game. Settling for a lesser racket or a lesser president is not sound plan for success.
In 2016, the world has embraced hatred and marginalization. I do not know how the world had time to embrace any other moronic ideologies else but they did. There must have not been enough people hating other people because the Hate-o-Meter has gone far into the red. The Europeans hate each other. The Irish hate each other again. South African hate everybody and everybody hates South Africa again. The steady Aussies hate Indonesian and now they even hate women. Everywhere, people feel it is OK to hate and degrade women, gays, transgenders and anyone who looks like these groups. The Scandinavians, the Canadians and the Kiwis seem to be holding their own but hate mongers are on the edges. We were fortunate this year to see a gay, homophobic Muslim terrorist kill people in Orlando. It is a shame he was not black and from Syria and also follows Falun gong as to encompass all the persecuted stereotypes so that every one of those ignorant MF's could get on a soap box and give credence to watch lists and first strike mentality. As inflamed as my elbow had become, my country is also having an inflammatory response of hate and intolerance. It is the result of systemic infrastructure decay, the racket has a crack in it. I am a thousand times more afraid of my neighbors than I am of any religious or foreign entity. Partly because of proximity but mostly because of the pervasive ignorance which bubbles up hate and intolerance. Twenty years ago it was well known and accepted that bigotry, hate and intolerance were wrong and should not be tolerated in society or ourselves for that matter. We as a people were the police. We did not pass on prejudices and hate to our children. We said something in public if we saw abuses. Our Congress gleefully passed laws promoting morality and fair treatment to all. There has always been hate and that cannot be legislated or eliminated, but now it is acceptable to insult and assault verbally or physically those that are different from us, want to do us harm or that just pissed us off. I blame the tennis racket for my painful tendon but I did not beat it to a pulp or turn to social media to razz, stalk, threaten legal action or belittle the makers and designers of the racket. People I work with "hate" other people and share that information openly with me. People I consider reasonably normal have let fear mongering and gossip derail and injure their lives. Repairing those live will take years and possibly generations. The year 2016 was the year of the Syrians. Their entire country and population was blown to hell by all the major powers of the world, some new and some old. Most if not all of the people should be extremely pissed off at the Turks, the Russians, the Americans and their own government. The death and destruction was not of their choice or making. It was political and foreign. The Syrian people do not hate everyone, they just want to go to sleep and wake up safe from bombs, ideologies, imperialism and mostly death.
Next year, we will have to get back to blaming the Africans, not just black Africans but Muslim blacks, "they are cannibals you know". I actually heard this said a few years ago. It is this kind of ignorant hatred our country has maintained underneath the acceptable fabric of society. Next our society will return to harassing lepers and any "confused" people that are just trying to get through the day. These are the types of attitudes that in the past, most people tried not to pass on to their children, the kind we ALL knew was not acceptable. The Klan wore hoods for a reason. Our governments and our society has continued to nurture these attitudes. If ideologies are not fed and nurtured, they will starve and die. I know that I will be exposed personally and locally to ignorant, bigoted hatred and many of its cousins, violence, fear and fascism in the year 2017. World fears of terrorism are only symptoms of poor economic and social problems that cannot be calmed with fanatical police states and walls, real or imagined. I suspect it will be a tougher go for 2017 and with a ton of surprises. Sound economics, social responsibility and better detective work is a practical approach to problem solving. The key words are "practical" and "problem solving." I do not see many people in positions of power looking for practical solutions and I only see fear in faces of the rest of us. So I will skip ringing in the new year.
