License Plates and Racism…

Racism is one of those words that can be defined in any number of different ways. No matter how we always decide that we are not a racist. Everyone else is. Even if you are not you might want to read on. Not being trivial or insensitive, but I thought I would take TTG Airlines up to 30,000 feet for a look.

The crazy part is that this little thorn in our side has been around for millennia. Man(and woman to a lesser degree) have always tried to compartmentalize things and people. As the world has grown, those silos have become larger in size and more numerous. In Biblical times there were the real Jews and the fakes. Pharisees, gentiles, goyems, you name it. And they despised each other looking around the temple square in disgust at the unwashed masses and shrugging their prayer shawls in contempt.

We have always strove to make ourselves the higher caste in wealth and intelligence. Enter the Dark Ages when monarchies and the Catholic Church vied to be king of the hill. While the bishops and Popes were claiming to be anointed by God, the royalty was establishing bloodlines to make sure there was no spoiling of the family tree with illegitimates. Muslims had the Shiites who claimed a pure birthright and the Sunnis who were the unworthies.

The Baltic states thought less of the Mediterraneans and the Iberian peninsula was beyond inferior.Hitler proved that the concept of the super race was still alive and well and killed six million Jews to make sure things stayed intact. I am not being frivolous or disrespectful but left to his own designs man has always come up with some conflated theory on why he or his own are superior.

We have continually labeled people white, yellow, red and brown but the one that really sticks out literally is a black person.Now when we picked sides there was little if any doubt who the bad guys were.Blacks won every time. We even go so far as to ascribe blackness to evil,satanic rituals, the underworld and the beta noire in filmdom. We have developed a culture of blackness that encompasses slavery, brute force, criminals and diminished mental capacity. All because they are black and that is wrong. I am not saying we are all not guilty to some extent but it still doesn’t make it right.

When a child is born it does not know color. Racism is not inherent. It is a learned habit from one’s environment and most of all from our parents and family. We hear appellations and attitudes. We look up to kin folk for guidance. We idolize them and look for attribution. If they say it is so, it has to be the truth. And we continue this through life because we want to be accepted and thought well of.We are followers not free thinkers. Sooner or later it makes perfect sense no matter what and please don’t confuse my beliefs with facts.

We keep score. We rank things and people as inferior or superior. The Catholic Church and many others are racist because the hierarchy are holy and chosen by God and you are the lowly. If you are in my group I love you and if you are counter then I hate you. It is as simple as that. It is said if you lived with the enemy for 30 days you might get to like him and understand his or her point of view. That enemy could be a black or a transgender or a Muslim or a Jew from New York City. God forbid we might learn something or render one of our long held tenets fallacious or at least on shaky ground.

We have a lot of foreigners here in Colorado. You can tell by their license plates. Arkansas has to be the land of Rubes and hicks. Texans are obnoxious because all they do is brag. California? Got to be a weirdo of some sort. Isn’t it the land of fruits and nuts? Florida guarantees you are old. New York or New Jersey? Need I say more. Just listen to me with my stereotypes, prejudices and discrimination. And I consider myself a thinking man. My hair shirt is still in the closet but I am starting to feel uncomfortable in my ivory tower.

There was a PBS special, America in Black and Blue. It portrayed an eloquent young black man who said he didn’t choose to be black. He was born that way. He said right from the get go he was held to a different standard. He had to be twice as smart to just get in the door.He didn’t feel it was fair and I think he is right. He was not shaking his fist in rage but pleading his case in incredible poignancy. It really slapped me in the face. Not unlike hearing from a cop who comes upon a crime scene and is scared shitless because he does not know what he is up against. Man, do I have to rethink this.

Going back to that baby thing we should look at our fellow inhabitants of the world with a bit of childlike innocence. Don’t pick someone out with preconceived notions but with a sense of who are you and what do we have in common? Racism like so many other things is not inherited trait but a learned behavior. As such it can be unlearned or are we so stubborn as to not even give it a chance? Like alcoholism or drug abuse it takes a depth of despair and a long look in the mirror to finally admit we have a problem. Are we there yet?

As always
Ted The Great.

Factoids:

Crime statistics are really baffling. Of cop killings 50% of the victims are white and 26% are black. Black and Hispanic officers are are three times more likely to shoot a perp than white officers are. The rate of violent crime in black areas is much higher than in black areas so one would think the opposite would be true.

Since the War on Drugs has zeroed in on use, the stats show black and white usage of all sorts to be equal at around 28% combining all types of drugs. Yet the blacks are arrested at three times the rate of whites and represent 59% of those in prison on drug offenses. One must wonder if every man or woman were stopped on a given evening if those arrest rates might be skewed entirely differently?

In my research I stumbled upon some quotes by Edward R Murrow. Somehow they just seemed appropriate.

“Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices–just recognize them.”

“A great many people think they are thinking when they are really rearranging their prejudices.”

“A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.”

“When the politicians complain that TV turns the proceedings into a circus, it should be made clear that the circus was already there, and that TV has merely demonstrated that not all the performers are well trained.”

PAX until next time.

We all know the intelligence quotient,IQ of a person assesses their intellectual capacities. In a perfect world it tells your ability to reason, solve problems, retain facts and correlate them. You can take the test online for free if you dare. But the Lord knows we don’t want to quantify ourselves as stupid. Let people form opinions on their own.

Emotional intelligence, EQ, is the ability to recognize, understand, and manage emotions. Some might say it is more important than IQ and can detect the success or failure of achieving one’s goals. You not only know what is going on in your psyche but you can tell pretty much tell how someone else is receiving your message at any given time. You sense the mood of the crowd and act accordingly.

This is all very key to cognitive psychology which relies on your ability to look at your thoughts and decipher which ones are appropriate and which are the result of you distorting reality. I have been playing this game lately as that little thing in me called depression has reared its ugly head. Nothing drastic but the beginnings I know so well. Hopefully I am smart enough to nip it in the bud. Been there. Done that.

If you haven’t been there it is hard to understand. People will have pity as in feeling sorry at another’s plight but then they move on. It is the least amount of feeling you can have towards your fellow man or woman but at least it is a start. Once you have turned a caring eye you may feel sympathy for a person. Now we are getting below the surface of both you and the victim which is a good stopping off point.

A victim is a person harmed, injured, or killed as a result of a crime, accident, or other event or action. I would add this can be actual or perceived. Some people have been hit between the eyes with injury or tragedy. Take this week. There are victims on all sides of the equation. But some are quick to take on the mantle of strife in the hope of getting benefits which may or may not deserved. Sometimes whole sections of a population or interest group describe themselves as victims. Seeing if they warrant the appellation makes grist for the mill of lawsuits and firebrands. But I digress.

The next step is compassion. You not only see a hurt but you want to do anything you can to help that person alleviate the problem. Whether financial or emotional you are willing to give of yourself and your time. Sooner or later that closeness gives way to empathy which is the highest form of connection. I really do feel your pain as I walk in your shoes and understand the consequences of your dire straits.

I was hit over the head this morning by an email from an old friend in Arizona. It seems a former golfing buddy of ours was shot and killed in an incident in western Arkansas on Saturday. He was going to the aid of his relative and was mowed down as she had been. A kind and gentle man is now gone. What do I feel? Shock and sadness but most of all sympathy for his lovely wife and their kids. They had worked hard and built a beautiful home in Desert Mountain. I had never heard of Horatio, Arkansas before but I have now. In a very strange way I now have a connection with violence in America. I didn’t think that would happen.

As I watched events unfold this week I really didn’t think I could see anything worse but I did the next day. And then the next. And the next. In an off the wall way you can almost understand the rage of a jilted lover or fired employee. But to fire point blank into a car or pick off cops one by one requires a certain type of callousness that is hard to comprehend. It is a detachment from any semblance of human emotion or feeling that hopefully we all should have in our hearts. Again I wonder if that is the case?

I received other emails this morning from here and there. Some were screaming that black lives matter and others were touting that all blacks were culpable for the problems of America. I guess in all the rubble I was looking for some voice of sanity and reason that could help me make sense of so much. You see the emotional quotient EQ of the best leaders in business and politics are defined by their compassion. It is the one who can appeal to all sides and truly feel people’s pain. They are in a word empathetic.

We see very little if any empathy amongst our politicians.Obama could have had it but he became professorial. The Donald is too egotistical. Hilary is too cold and scripted. The Pope has got it and that is why people love him.He touches you right in your gut. He makes you want to be a better person. You don’t have to live in a poor neighborhood but at least understand what it means. Some of us have never seen the tough side of life. Many today have never worked with their hands.We have to engage in more than a patronizing or perfunctory way.

I can’t help but feel we have to take the gloves off. We have to meet the problem of discrimination head on. We have to understand what it is like to be an honest black person who is painted with the same brush as thugs and gang members. We can’t look with pity but with empathy. We have to roll up our sleeves and roll down our rancor and one mindedness. We have to sit in a squad car and feel what it is like to not know whether you are going to live or die on the next 911 call. It is just not enough to send condolences. I don’t quite know how but in some way have to look inside our hearts and know we have not done even close to enough. We just can’t go on this way. What is our national emotional quotient,our EQ? You tell me.

As always
Ted The Great

Factoids

My golfing buddy was a black man who was killed by another black man. Don had been a very successful businessman with Coors and Kraft Foods. He was visiting family in Arkansas for the summer.

A black Dallas police lieutenant was on the news tonight. He spoke of his being stopped almost a dozen times over a 4 year period for either a minor infraction or a traffic check. His blackness transcended his unfailing duty as a policeman.

On TV I was watching the forest fires running rampant through the west. It seemed an apt metaphor for what is happening in our country today.

I played golf with a friend the other day. As we sat having a drink after our game I stated the I thought this was the worst week for our country since 9/11. He looked at me with a bewildered frown. He’s good guy but incredibly I don’t he had any idea of what was going on in the world.

I have just returned from Saratoga, Wyoming for the weekend. For those who are geographically challenged it is about 70 miles southwest of Laramie which surprisingly to many of you is in the United States of America. We played golf and stayed at the Old Baldy Club which we shall deem appropriate. The accommodations were dated but more than adequate and the food was plentiful. Other than that, you chill which I did with the Future of Everything supplement to the WSJ. And of course a glass of red and a cigar.

It seems somewhat incongruous to be reading of such futuristic things in Wyoming. On the way I had passed huge ranches and grimy little towns, spiffed up for the summer. As one espied a double wide on the horizon you couldn’t help but linger on what life might be like in those confines on a cold winter’s night. Do these people even know, much less care about ISIS, Brexit and the His Hairness? After these last few weeks’ fiascoes I hope the Donald is not the Future of Anything. But I digress.

The future is a bit crazy in many ways. It seems the genius millennials flock to a thing called The Burning Man in the desert outside of Las Vegas. As I understand it is sort of like a Woodstock for geeks. They drink, party and dance to rock bands literally until the sun rises. Then they speak of techno crafts and futuristic stuff, catch some well need zzz’s and do it all over again. Startups and dreamers mingle with the billionaires. Then when they leave it is with no sign they were ever there. Such is our times.

Upon return my good buddy in the now Chosen City of Cleveland in between victory parties sent me a website for a speech by the chairman of the FCC on the future 5G. It seems we are grasping at any amount of bandwidth today and they are created the true superhighway of data. Larger and faster than ever before. This really go my attention because the implications are startling.

Much of what we would like to do today is hampered by both speed and breadth. With 5G technology it would be possible for a world renowned surgeon to sit at a console at Johns Hopkins and perform intricate brain surgery robotically at the Cleveland Clinic. Then move to another and do the same at the Mayo Clinic. Ditto New York, San Fran etc. The speed required is a millisecond or 100 times faster than our speeds now. The conclusion was that there are things to be developed that have not even been imagined. Some of us might fear this capacity. I find it beyond intriguing for the hope of putting more of our brain power to good use. The talent is not in the machine but the human designing it. Fantastico.

Parsing thorough the unread newspapers I was hit by my usual overdose of our world. Startling was the time and space devoted to our election cycle, Orlando and Brexit. Page after page after page. Not that these are not news of a sort but how caught up in detail and slants can we get? Looking for that one story line or insightful bit of writing to captivate our already overly sated readerships. As the bungling and fighting and cheating and fraud unfolded in all parts of our world I couldn’t help but think that we have success in spite of ourself. We find more and more ways to get in our own way but somehow make this mess work.

Okay, this probably seems a far cry from Saratoga. I am constantly amazed by our potential and frustrated by our actuation. Before I left I had one of those truly hopeful and encouraging encounters.I was asked to be part of a volunteer program at one our local prep schools. They are in the midst of two week program for high school juniors from underprivileged families. They covered everything from picking a college to writing an essay to doing interviews. That latter is where yours truly came into play.

I had four students who were all young women. I interviewed them for fifteen minutes each but had sat in on their class prior to our meeting. People, I was simply blown away. The one young lady was from a broken home. Her mom had gone to NYU and was a translator at a local hotel and her dad lived in Texas. She wanted to go to Amherst and study political science. After that she wanted to go to law school and become an advocate for underprivileged people. Wow!

The next was born of biracial parents. She told me of the isolation that a kid like her endures. She wasn’t complaining or indignant. She was just relating to a fact of life she had to deal with. Her openness was incredible. She had two sibling brothers and the operative word was HAD. One had drowned two summers ago. She wanted to study psychology at the University of Denver and become a counselor to troubled kids. Wow again!

The other two were no less impressive. It called to mind my niece who lives in Vail. As part of a fellowship program she just returned from Morocco where they were helping out in schools. She and her cohorts had also been to Nicaragua on a similar trek. They all wrote blogs and they were nothing short of incredible. They put this writer to shame. They were open and listening and understanding. There were no prejudices to derail their altruistic thoughts. The Wows keep coming!

I guess where I come from on all this is that we tend to sensationalize and amp up the bad volume when there is so much good out there. People and especially kids have dreams that may be well beyond their reach but we can’t shoot them down. Hopefully the gains we have made in technology make this just a little more possible. The future of everything? It is right here in our minds if we decide to expand our horizons. Just like those broad vistas I saw in Wyoming. Not a bad thought

As always.
Ted The Great

Factoids:
Wyoming: 10 largest state land wise in the US. Main Industry: Energy 2015 resident population est.: 586,107 Largest cities (2010): Cheyenne, 59,011; Casper, 55,316; Laramie, 30,816;
Natives:Curt Gowdy, Harrison Ford,Jackson Pollock, Dick Cheney,Jim Savory, Alan Simson.

Mobile Generations
1G Voice 1982
2G Voice and Text 1992
3G 1998 Married Wireless and Digital
4G 2008 Completed the migration including video

Robotic surgery is best used in minimally invasive procedures. The cost of the machine is approximately $1.25 million. It is said to be more precise, less painful, quicker recovery and the doctor does not have to be on his feet for several hours. The technology is there to do remote surgery but the transmission speeds are not quick enough.

Colleges are less and less inclined to accept underprivileged kids. They have lower GPA and SAT scores thereby lowering the school’s ranking by US News and World Report. If financial aid is given it is to higher income students because the school is more assured they will stay the full four years. The situation becomes somewhat exacerbated by the malaise in the middle income bracket. More and more qualify because of low wages and that means there is less aid money to go around.

Our hardy brand of volunteers did a fabulous job cleaning the Creek about ten days ago Our timing was good because soon thereafter weather moved in with a vengeance. Our area of attack spanned a little over a mile on either side of the stream. There was one area where I could not let the troops venture. There were two or three active homeless encampments to be dealt with. I had done this once before with one of the park rangers and it ain’t fun.

These are not your average bedroll over a steam grate domiciles. They have tents and even makeshift cooking and refrigeration arrangements. In one two man tent last year four heads popped out when the gendarmes came a calling. This particular one today had two woebegone souls as tenants. We had a Denver policemen, case worker and a park ranger to handle the formalities. They were incredibly patient and courteous. But the interlopers had to go.

The campsites are borderline disgusting when one looks at the sanitation. The area is littered with beer cans and cheap booze bottles. Needles of every sort are very much in evidence and used toilet paper designates inhabitants within.Waste of every sort finds its way into the creek and therein lies the problem. People say how can you be so cruel but the sheer reality of an unhealthy and dangerous situation hits you smack in the face.

As we wait and watch, a woman probably in her thirties makes several treks up the hill to a shopping cart with all of her and her housemate’s earthly possessions. There is a look of sad resignation on her sallow face as she knows she will have to find another place to survive. The snow is beginning to fall and you have to feel horrible if you have anything in your soul. Thoughts of them have lingered for several days. How did they get here? Where will they go?

There are about 15,000 homeless here in Denver at last count. About 25% want to get out of their rut, another 50% are addicts or psychologically unstable and 25% just prefer being homeless. These numbers are somewhat unscientific but if you check in your own home town I think you will find them pretty close to true. At best you have a different floorpan every night and you learn a lot about meteorology. A beautiful day in Denver takes on a whole new meaning for them.

On a rainy and snowy Saturday we visited our nearby Costco. Bad move. There were a lot of people who had the same idea. Doesn’t take us long. Always buy a fresh roasted chicken which are huge and delicious. My daughters tell me they inject them with brine and of course that can’t be good for me. What a way to go!

Even at top speed you can’t avoid the long lines for free samples. There was one family with parents, four kids and a grandmother who were queuing up for what had to be a late lunch or early dinner in the free sample line. That poor octogenarian with the hairnet that was doling out whatever into cups or onto crackers was having a hard time keeping up. Your eye went from one group to another. You noted their dress, their mannerisms and their foreign language. These also are my city and country mates and I don’t have a clue as to what they are all about.

Back at home I picked up Friday’s Wall Street Journal that I hadn’t finished.I love going to the “Mansions” section. My well heeled buddy who lives in one of those houses decries the paper as inciting an Arab Spring in Palm Beach or La Jolla by the unwashed masses if they ever read it. I told him he had a point but I didn’t think there was a danger unless a copy was left at the local Arby’s or KFC. Still it got me thinking.

Since my highly upscale friends are far away,I looked up luxury magazines. Straight to the Robb Report(robbreport.com) which has to rank as the most ostentatious of all. Look it up. It really is a hoot. You will be privy to what the super swells consider to be appropriate for everything from, jewelry, fitness, cars, planes, houses and yachts. Dream along with me. You can rent a yacht for one week with 6 spacious state rooms for $300,000 a week. That is not a misprint. Of course there are less expensive alternatives but if you are going to do it, go big.

Now stop and think for a moment where my physical and mental travels have taken me as far as economic diversity. And every one of my encounters has been with as LBJ used to say, “My fellow Americans.” Now you can poo poo and dismiss all you want. We in some manner are all in this together. People go nuts about the Donald or Hilary but do you think either one is capable of changing our demographics? This is the hand we are dealt and the sooner we realize it and least try to work with it, the better off we and future generations are going to be.

Hissy fits and wrenching of hands might make your gut feel better but they are not going to solve our problems of infrastructure, education, medicine, the deficit and entitlements. I am not saying you put on a hair shirt and go quietly in the night. But at least have the tiniest inkling what the guy or gal across the street or the country is going through. Waiters,bus drivers, business moguls, cops, soldiers,tech titans are all cut from the same cloth….USA. Come out of your cocoon whether it is a gated community or a ghetto. I am pretty sure those two words have a different meaning but who knows?

I get it. All these halves total a lot more than one but somehow we have to have room for all. Maybe you are 1% or 47%. Maybe your percentage changes by color, religion and part of the country. Point being it really doesn’t matter. Sooner or later we are all going to figure out how to pull on the oars at the same time. We are in it together.

As always
Ted The Great

Factoids:
There are 323,000,000 inhabitants of the US. Even if the Donald deports 11,000,000 there are still 312,000,000 individual human beings of every origin and sort.We are 63% white, 16% Hispanic and 12% black.

It is projected our population in 2050 will be 402 million.
There were about 125.9 million adult women in the United States in 2014. The number of men was 119.4 million. Life expectancy for men is 77 and for woman 82.

There are 22 million veterans meaning less than 10% of our populace has served in the military.

There are around 100 different religions practice with 83% of the people claiming to being one of them. 17% saying they are atheists or have no specific religion

The median income for Asians is $57,000,whites $49,000, hispanics $34,000 and blacks $30,000.

In 2010, the average man weighed 194.7 pounds the average woman 164.7 pounds The height of an American man was 5 feet 9 inches and woman 5 feet 3.8 inches .

British Humor:
My 12 year old grandson,Aiden who is living with his family in London sent me the following in a birthday card He thought they were hilarious. So do I

Warning: Random fits of laughter may occur as per my man.

A bald guy get gets a comb for his birthday He says,”Thanks I will never part with it.

Jesus says “Want an ark? I Noah guy”

Why did the scarecrow get promoted? He was outstanding in his field.

A llama says,“Want to go on a picnic? Alpaca lunch”

What does the green grape say to a purple grape? “Will you breathe please?”

.

We all at some time in our high school careers, no matter how long ago, remember that part of our day that fell under the heading of study hall. To some it was the only time we even looked at a textbook and for others it was a chance to get a head start on the evening’s homework. Then again it was an even better time to socialize and lob the occasional eraser or spitball. In our lives today maybe somethings never change.

My South African high still has not abated and the sheer volume of things to dwell upon envelop my psyche. Don’t even come near me as I expound upon the geographical, cultural and political issues that I look into with great regard. I studied my National Geographic Guide with a vengeance and felt I had at least a decent handle on what is going on there. Upon further reflection I asked myself if I had the same intellectual curiosity for the issues facing our great country?

I don’t go to an encyclopedic volume to study the US of A, but find myself at the whim of this channel or that, replete with their so called experts. The mantra of today is I am too busy and so jammed that I have to get my knowledge in snippets or sound bytes. Fair enough until I think about how I spend my free time. Over the weekend I spent the better part of nine hours or so watching football. I devoured the college games between The Fighting Irish and Ohio State. Sunday I ensconced myself in my beloved Broncos hoping they would come through and then Monday night praying the Patriots and those arch villains of Brady and Belichek would finally get their comeuppance. Such is life.

But then this morning I was brought back to reality by ISIS and a incredible interesting article in the Wall Street Journal on of all things, demography. I found myself debating my own leanings and was struck by my lack of in depth study of so many things. If knowledge is power I am the 100 pound weakling. Now some may say my admission of guilt is quaint but I had to think to myself, “What the hell could be more important?”

The ISIS thing has so many tentacles it defies understanding. I can have a visceral reaction and curse everything Muslim but hopefully reason will prevail. Bomb the crap out of them seems reasonable until I am faced head on with the reality that I will kill a lot of civilians.Tough call.  I can get pissed at Obama and his professorial detachment or meandering foreign policy but I have to ask myself what are the alternatives? Should I just say I am too busy or it is too complex to understand or I can get to work and in some way, shape or fashion forge my own solution. I have to keep at it. The Donald? Sorry, not my style.

The article on demographics tried to lay out a scenario that the world in its very being has taken some serious turns. Let’s assume for the moment that the world is indeed getting older. Two outcomes are striking. First is that if the populations are getting older they save more. Wonderful you say until you realize we are a consumer oriented world wide economy. Everything we do is based on people buying “stuff”. I have long held that we are running out of stuff and gadgets to buy. We just have too much. The lesser off want to buy stuff but now they are having bills to pay and at least for some eating is more important than a flat screen TV. We want things as cheaply as possible but that means we have to pay as little as we can in wages. Catch my drift?

The second logical outcome is that older people want more services from healthcare to recreation and that does not exactly entail hard goods. The services are expensive and are reliant more and more on government sponsored programs and high priced drugs. Now one of the ways to lower the average age is to have more young people. But the cost of having kids and educating them is soaring. The trend is to urbanize and that means less children as we look to two wage earners instead of the old one provider. There is one solution and that is to attract immigrants but I think you already know the way we look at that. What a kill joy you are TTG and right before Thanksgiving.
This does not portend disaster in the next few years but it is something we have to consider and especially among our millennials and next generations. We have taken our best and brightest and put them in professions while although lucrative are not especially long on innovation. The end result is our planners and administrators are thinking up new ways to merge and acquire or come up with some whippy new algorithm to trade faster. That’s not a shot at their livelihoods but the result is a bureaucratic mediocrity. If we get ticked at the lack of leadership and boldness in our elected officials they are creatures of our own design.

To make a long story short I think we need some serious thinking to go on and the government as well as the electorate has to get up to speed. We can’t say we are too busy or a problem is too complex to contemplate. Leave it to the professionals has left us bereft of understanding long term implications. We have to get out of our quarterly mindsets and look at it as OUR problem not someone else’s.

We have challenges in every aspect of our lives from immigration to foreign policy to infrastructure. We have got some fabulous minds to attack these opportunities. Fantasy Football? What about Fantasy Government where we put together our dream team and then win or lose on how we did our picks. Research their stats and pick the all stars. Me? I gotta hit the books. There is so much to learn.Watch out for spitballs.

As always and Happy Thanksgiving
Ted The Great

Factoids:

Since 9/11 we have spent over $7 TRILLION on defense. We have mismanaged Afghanistan and Iraq from the get go. Up until four years ago we did not know ISIS existed. We have been bombing them for a year but France, pissed off about the Paris bombing, took out the ISIS Command Headquarters on their first bombing runs ??????

The Boston Marathon bombers numbering 2 shut down and held one of our greatest and largest cities hostage for 3 days. Paris is frozen in place by 6 terrorists. Brussels where I only think of Belgian chocolates has been in lockdown and will continue to do so through next week. All because of a handful of terrorists. Kathy and I are going to London for Christmas to visit my son and his family….no matter what. And that is a factoid.

Lastly….Google “Perpetuum Jazzily  Africa”  and just sit back and listen. Very cool. Happy T Day All.

Ted’s Head was fried last week. After a 22 hour plane ride from South Africa and a bunch of time zone changes my fragile brain needed awhile to get back into equilibrium. I had hoped to revel you all with tales of wild animals and deep philosophical insights I had gleaned from the African continent. I was incredibly moved by so many things but my local Trader Joe’s was fresh out of locusts and honey and Brooks Brothers no longer sells loin cloths….and also a thing called Paris occurred.

One of my title’s for this week’s missive was going to be “Reality Sucks”….and sometimes it does. We all have our cave of some sort. We may roam our estates, find a niche at that perfect little cafe or just curl up and veg out in front of the TV for about nine straight hours of football. We have gotten good at avoiding conflict or bad news. We live in a fantasy world. I am not trying to burst bubbles but we have developed this great facility to explain away things.

The Irish have a great saying about Uncle Joe who arrives shit faced for the family celebration of one sort or another. He slurs his words, becomes argumentative at the table and then either falls over a chair or hurls on the brand new living room rug. The mother or wife looks on forlornly at the debacle and announces in a soft voice,”You know, he has the weakness.” Code words for we know there is a problem but we are not going to address it.
ISIL’s massacre was as wanton and heartless as you can get. I found myself agreeing with Hollande for a change as he put his French savoir faire aside and declared war with righteous indignation. Although I hate war it was appropriate. I found myself cursing out Obama for saying hours earlier how we had the zealots contained. Just like when he had called them the Junior Varsity and Bush had proclaimed triumphantly, “Mission Accomplished”so many years earlier. Arrogance or ignorance? Name your poison. Just SHUT UP!

We live in Fantasyland whether we shop on Rodeo Drive or Walmart.We buy stuff for the sake of stuff. Our kids are spoiled rotten. We dream of more and more wealth and riches when what we have already goes beyond the pale. I am not trying to talk down the commonweal but man couldn’t we be a little more tasteful about it?

In South Africa I watched people dealing with life straight on. Funny how 25% unemployment, HIV/AIDS and living in a cardboard container in a township can do that to you. Walk 5 miles each way to school and sometimes you can’t study because there is no electricity. Just a ride means so much. Forget about whether or not it is an ox cart or truck. BMW, Mercedes? Are you kidding? My first Monday back I opened the Wall Street Journal to an ad about privately leased jets. They were going to redo all their fleet by some famous designer to give you the ultimate in luxury. As if the non hassled ride was not enough?
Look at where we are today. As a country we have to address illegal immigration, tax reform, the deficit, entitlements and foreign policy. We have to meet end of life head on and realize that we can’t afford to give people an extra three months of lousy quality of life for $250,000. We have to address our addictions for food, booze and or drugs and not rely on some sort of rehab or pill to bail us out. We always think it is the other guy to blame but if we are honest we see it in our own lives every day.
In days gone by we used to identify in our cities by a neighborhood or a parish. Then we went beyond to a state or region. Soon it was by country and then a hemisphere. Sorry kids but today we are a world. Jet travel and the internet have made us one. You may not think Syria affects you but it does. Warfare begets refugees that wind up somewhere. I can play it cool and say not in my backyard but that creates a whole new set of problems. Globally there are vast numbers of unemployed 16-25 year olds. They have no jobs and no hope. All of a sudden 5 seconds of recognition as a suicide bomber doesn’t look so bad. You think it is an exaggeration to say it involves all of us. Think again.

I don’t want to spoil the party or rain on the parade but yes, reality does suck. I want to have as much fun as the next person but this horrible thing called pragmatism keeps jumping in the way. The crazy thing is I am not campaigning for total withdrawal nor absolute sobriety. I am talking about a sense of propriety and yes civility. We are going to have terrorists. They are fact of life and we are easy prey because of our shallowness in understanding and dealing with today’s problems. Dunno doesn’t cut it anymore.

In these presidential debates, however laborious they are, there are answers. Not from one side or the other but both.It is not an either or but all of us collaborating and yes giving up some our treasured goals and sacred cows. We all have the weakness. We better get working on getting rid of it…before it is too late.

As always,
Ted The Great

Factoids:

The number of followers of ISIS range between 30-100,000. They are trying to hold the 7 billion or so inhabitants of the world hostage and doing a fair job of it. That’s about one creep for every 700,000 of us. Terror thrives on fear. How comfortable do you feel today? This is the only factoid we need.

Posted from St Ives,Cornwall, UK

I am sitting in an alcove with huge windows overlooking the Atlantic Ocean below. Our hotel is a Victorian built in 18 0r 19 something and I see why people seek respite here. It is early morning and I can espy small craft bobbing on their tethers and the plaintiff cry of the gulls provides a gentle wake up to the day.

We have been visiting my son and his family in Wimbledon which beyond grass courts is a suburb of London so to speak. They have made quite a transition since moving there nine months ago. Scott has business trips to Amsterdam and Copenhagen this week and the boys speak of the Czech Republic, Germany and France as if they were neighboring states and not sovereign nations. Dionne is trying to figure out how to make the sun shine more than a few days a week. All is well.

As they say about fish and family they begin to smell after three days so we made a side trip to Cornwall. We survived my driving from the right side and found our way out of London. We made a wrong turn right out of the rental agency and after wandering about we passed the same enterprise we had just pulled out of. Kathy told me she hated me and let out a raft of expletives as I begged for directions. I told her if it suited here she could reside in the trunk for the duration. The view wouldn’t be quite so expansive but she could be spared my driving idiosyncrasies. After 44 years of marriage we have been through worse.

Driving along the A3 you want to compare the terrain to ones you know better. We noted at various points we could have been in New Hampshire, Long Island, Ireland and France. We made our way through dual carriageways, roundabouts and narrow country lanes to reach our haven. It really is a little bit of heaven. We had travelled about 250 miles and you can see why people make the trek.

Dinner was lovely as they say but the couple next to us found solace in their cell phones rather than each other’s company. It was quite startling form both a technological as well as personal view. Has it really come to this? Kathy and I talked for who knows how long in front of the fire after dinner. About kids, us, life et al. Nice way to spend a day especially since she was talking to me once again.

I was up early as is my want. French pressed coffee was served by a wonderful chap named Mark. I finally found somebody else I the world who was as wound up at 6:00 AM as yours truly. He spoke and as he tested the waters with each sentence he unraveled more and more of his life. A bit of a vagabond he loved the hotel business. He knew it was low pay and long hours but it was his calling.

He was divorced with a six year old son who lived with his mum just across the bay. He had decent relationship with his former spouse and he got his son every other weekend. They camped on the beach and fell asleep in arctic sleeping bags listening to the rolling surf. He said he had found tranquility in the simple life by the sea and you knew he was speaking from the heart. It was the way he should be and I wished I could bottle what he had and give it to the world.

We signed up for a walking tour of this seaside hamlet and Tony Farrell appeared in front of the Guild Hall at 11:00 AM sharp.
A retired professor of archaeology, his family had settled here over 150 years ago. He was a wealth of knowledge as well as perspective. It was just Kathy and I and he quickly departed from script and went into far more detail than the average excursion. This was not only his home but his heritage. We went to a fish lodge with aged and curling photographs that showed the tranquil bay in all its fury. As we passed the volunteer lifeboat rescue group he told of friends who had been lost trying to save a drowning sailor. They had sung in the choir next to him and now they were gone. It wasn’t a sadness but an acceptance of life as it is. Wow.

We drifted to politics which was appropriate in that the Brits are electing a new Parliament in ten days. He was as liberal as can be but not because of academia. For centuries this area had been a center for mining tin and fishing. These were people who worked with their hands and not necessarily their heads. They had given their lives to support family in a basic way in their small homes by the sea. Everyone supported each other and it was community in every sense of the word. He was a Labourite.

As time marched on, the trip from London took a few hours and not the several days of old. The wealthy had come and seen a chance for profit in the land. They bought up the structures that housed the help and made them grand. Prices shot up and the next generation of miners and seafarers were locked out. He rued the fact that his kids couldn’t afford to live here. He was put out that the mining and fishing had long gone and hospitality with its low wages was all that was left. He seemed to bristle at the fact these second homes were inhabited only three or four weeks of the year. He dreamed of a new Cornwall that could attract R and D or technology but he and I knew that probably could never be.

Now I do not deny my capitalist roots but it does give one pause. I am sitting here peering out at the land across the bay which is verdant and simple. I know someday it will be dotted with condos of all sorts of modernistic interpretation. Perhaps the wonderful Victorians that occupy the palisade behind me will be too dated for salvation. It cost a lot less to scrape and build anew you know. For now I will revel in finding this wonderful place and meeting the Marks and Tony’s of the world. I need that grounding. I hope they can stay.

As always
Ted The Great.

Factoids:

Wimbeldon started in the late 1800’s as a croquet club. There are 375 full time members and the only way you get in is to be invited. Of course someone has to die to move up on the list.

You get a ticket by lottery. All tickets cost the same and you could get a courtside seat or one up in nose bleed country. It is the luck of the draw. The winner of the Gentlemen’s singles at The Championships receives a gold trophy inscribed with the words: “The All England Lawn Tennis Club Single Handed Champion of the World”.

Off the Cornwall coast there are some of the busiest shipping lanes in the world. During WWII, U Boat#48 sank over forty ships in these waters. Incredibly it was sunk by its own designs. After torpedoing a freighter there were steam engines being transported on the deck of the prey. One blew into the air and landing on the conning tower sending the sub to the bottom of the sea with all hands aboard being lost. At least that is how the story goes according to local lore.