Well, it’s done. Moderna 1 is in my arm and I am now counting down till number two. I sat there and watched Missus get her jab, and then complain that she felt it a little. Then it was my turn, and I got it, and never felt it but in the very slightest. I mean, it was not even a light pinch. I expected one, but never got it. I did not even get the anticipation or nervousness I used to get as a kid.
Now I speculate that since I never really felt this at all, when it comes time for number two, I am going to be one of those lucky ones who gets sick, has a high fever, and feels poorly for a full two days. Of course! What else could it do? Be as easy as this first shot? No way! Life is too full of a false sense of security. I am not going to fall for it!
Either way, I look forward to getting the second shot. I really look forward to seeing if I am magnetic, or if Bill Gates starts tracking me with his microchip in the shot rather than just using my cell phone or tablet, which I carry around and which I have paid for myself.
The world is strange. Well, not really. But the people are pretty damn messed up!
Today is the day we take our first injections of the Moderna vaccination against Covid-19. It is a long anticipated day, and one I am glad we get, considering that once there was a time when a pandemic could run rampant till it ran a course and killed whomever it did, using up all potential hosts. While it is so that Covid-19 will be with us for years and years to come, maybe forever, We are lucky to be able to get a shot back at a normal life once more.
But, about that. We have had a fairly normal life despite the pandemic, just because we live a rural life, and don’t have a lot of neighbors who visit, or friends who stop by. We are fairly isolated and accustomed to it. This has been one point in life when that has really paid off.
Some states are announcing up to 70 and 80 percent of their population are vaccinated. I am not sure where our state stands, but considering the number of tin hat conspiracy theorists that live in Idaho, I suspect we are a bit lower than that. Still, we have the ability to live in isolation and do a fair bit to protect ourselves, and have avoided getting in line for the vaccine too soon in order to keep the queue down for those who have to work in public and who have greater need due to health reasons. Maybe it only makes us feel better to do so, and I am sure that we will find out later today when we are in for the vaccine and can talk to the healthcare workers about it.
We are among the few now who continue to wear masks when in public. Is that because Southeast Idaho and Northern Utah are so efficient with their vaccine roll out? I have severe doubts. I think it comes down to the proclivity of the local population to demand their freedoms at any cost, in a kind of “Give me Liberty or give me death,” fashion. There is a line when that needs to be reworded as “Give me stupidity or give me death.” But to each their own. We are no scientists, but we will take sound science over piss poor politics when it comes to health and safety.
The last year and change has been astounding. It has been a collision of science, politics, and ignorance, that has cost 600,000 people in the US alone their lives. If it has been an act of terrorism, it would have elicited a completely different response, but as it was not, then just like the virus itself, it has been an enemy from within. It has been more destructive than it has needed to be because of it. Getting back to normal is probably just sweeping this all under the rug and getting back to pretending that the crazy uncle is not related to us when we see him on the street.
As for what the future holds, we have learned that we never know. I don’t know of anyone who saw 2020 and 2021 coming quite as it did. There was a toilette paper shortage? Really? And this with a pandemic which kills a relatively small number of those infected. Some viruses remain in nature still that can kill as high as 60% of those humans who could get infected with them. That is ‘kill’! That is not even mentioning the illness and the bankruptcy or lack of treatment altogether of those who don’t die from it. What happens to them? Do they die of starvation or dehydration because there is nobody well enough to look after them? We were overwhelmed in our healthcare capacities with a sort of 1% to 2% mortality rate!
What can anyone do within reason to prepare for the future? How do we plan for something worse than what this has brought us?
Now, I look outside and the skies are hazy with smoke from nearby fires. The humidity has been down to single digit percentages, and the breeze has been steadily blowing, gently, but enough to spread flames across a tinderbox landscape. The temperatures have been in the high 90’s. It is only June, and the hottest months don’t hold much promise for anything good. There is a drought in the Western United States, and populations from places like California have been displacing here already. What happens if sparks fly loose here?
The world is changing. Humans seem to be running their course, having devoured their host. What previous generations gave little to no thought too, we now worry about. We owe our kids a better world, and we cannot even agree on how to make it that. I can only hope that their generation is smart enough to look at the science, and agree to follow it, rather than the money. But that would put this as the height of human civilization, or the low point, depending on how you look at it.
As for me, I am going to go and take care of a few animals in my care, and try to better our little plot of ground in some way so that it is better prepared to take care of us. I am going to go find a way to better cooperate with my neighbors, and be there to help them so that whenever the pushing comes to it, they will know I am someone they can trust. And I am going to go, this afternoon, and get my vaccine. No tin hats. Masks as required till the second shot is complete, and the antibodies have a chance to build up. Be a proponent of science and step forward, cautiously, and with sound judgement based on good understanding, not on misinformation and paranoia.
Summer is off to a hot, dry start here in southeast Idaho. It is worrying, because I have been expecting this based on the scientific community’s anticipation of global warming or climate change. They have said they anticipate ‘X,’ and me being optimistic as I am, I have expected ‘Z.’ Hopefully this hot start is just a heat wave. As for the dry bit, that has also been anticipated, and it looks to be historic and out of place. I am upgrading our waterers so we are making better use of the water we do use, and we are also already practiced in not watering a grassy lawn, and holding that silly expectation. I don’t really know why Americans are so persistent on keeping expansive green lawns at great cost to the water supply, but give little thought to changing to something more native and natural. Sure, keep a small spot for a picnic or whatnot, but lawns in this country are generally huge, and then we walk so close to the delicate balance of maintaining the water supply, which we need to drink far more than we need to make our house look pretty. The piper is coming home to roost. It’s time to pay the chickens.
Between this and now ransomware and the effects of Covid on supply chains, we are already starting to lose our balance on supply security. It is a good time to live on a homestead! Now we just need to produce food!
I tested the lantern last night that I had bought at the antique store for a mere $20. It is an 1973 Coleman that was in pretty much mint condition, and it worked perfectly with a new set of mantles. It is bright enough to work outside at night with for a pretty good portion of the garden, so I think we will be good to work after dark when it is cool out. I’d like to set up a watering trough that is kept back for us to fill up with water and sit in when it is too hot, or whenever someone is on the verge of a heat stroke. I can cover it with a tarp or make some boards for it, as it does not have to be too big. I think with ideas like this, we can mitigate the heat, and our lack of air conditioning.
I am updating things on the farm such as gates this year, and will probably be rearranging some of the pens for other uses, as we don’t need them to be quite as big as they are on the front quarter of the house lot. I want the damned gates put in on the canal access and the paddocks properly divided and gate, too. Rotational grazing is not something that just gets done once in a while. It needs to be done consistently, and on a long term basis.
Well, just a few thoughts before I get started on my chores for the morning, but it is past time for me to pick up my arse, and get at it!
I opened Microsoft Edge, because Chrome won’t work on this new computer. Sound like some sort of conspiracy to you? Well, get your tin hat off, I think there is a setting that is blocking it, and it is to undo my relationship with Chrome, but I don’t think it goes beyond corporate greed. Anyway, I just wanted to look something up, and in the upper right hand corner, there was a bell icon, and a notification. I clicked on it, and it told me that Ford Motor Company was up some percentage point.
“Who gives a shi…?!”
I get notifications on my phone, on my tablet, on my computer, in my e-mail… I am now getting notifications from Facebook about things, though I have been off it for the better part of two and a half years, and have had the notifications turned off. I get news notifications, weather notifications, stock notifications, account notifications, and I even get junk mail in my physical mailbox in front of my house. It seems like everything is clamoring for my attention! And as it does, it is constantly distracting me from the people and things I actually care about. It is tiresome!
I have been trying to shut down the notifications on everything but it seems like as I do, something new pops up in its place. Gee wiz! If I want to hear from you, I probably know your middle name, and why you have it. My eyes can see for about 20 miles, and if i need to know about you, you are in that range. If I want to know about someone farther, I will be talking to them, or in place of a notification, I will get a real message.
It is not satisfying to get notifications all the time as though I were important, especially from these machines. You know what would be satisfying? A hand written letter explaining the value to me of a credit card, and the terms, and even an opportunity for me to counter offer them, and negotiate a better rate. Instead, a machine kicks a letter into my mailbox so I can apply for the good graces of the company that sent me it, only to be denied and told I am not good enough. How nice would it be if instead of reading the news that my Congressman is a complete idiot and says he is representing his constituents, I would get a note in the mail asking me to write back and tell him or her the values I want represented in Washington, even though I voted for the other person? This kind of thing does not happen. Instead, it is all about impersonal notifications. Each asks me to notice them, but does any really notice me? I still get mail for dead relatives. I think that is where my answer lies.
Posted inPhilosophical|Comments Off on You Have One Notification
Reviewing old photos lately has been like seeing the shifting of the sands in the desert where we lived in Nevada for a while. The changes are subtle but when coming back to the same place, there is such differences that they are deniable. What’s also been amazing is seeing the changes in our own lives. We lived in Nevada, but also in England, and in Idaho in the last 18 years or so. The landscapes have changed as much as the faces. Some of the people we used to be with have died, too. Most difficult is seeing my poor mother bury her father in a grave next to the one she would occupy only two years later.
It has not just been people lost, but also animals that were more than just pets, but also friends. Patches was the first horse I have had to have shot because of cancer in his most sensitive of places. He was part cob of some sort, possibly Gypsy Vanner, and he was so big and strong, and to have such a magnificent animal put down was surreal, and obviously so sad.
It was not too long after that his daughter suffered the same fate. She was an average size horse, and even in the photo above, she can be seen to be quite a lot smaller than Patches was. She was a difficult horse, but her father was amazing. She took after her mother, also a difficult horse, unless I was chasing cows on the BLM with her, then she found me to be a difficult rider. She probably always found me a difficult rider.
No matter the disposition or magnitude of the animal, without exception, losing mom a few years back has been the hardest thing to happen since coming back to America. There is nothing that can make of for her loss and nothing that could replace her. She was that lady I could send off to Home Depot to get a part, and no matter what it was meant to be, she would come back with it without problem. She had her troubles. Lots of people have troubles of some sort. While some might be inclined to say that her death put her at ease, I refute that. Her death put her to an end, and what she really needed was competent help. I seldom cry over it anymore though. It’s not that I don’t hurt for her loss or miss her. It’s simply not the only pain I have had, and I cannot cry over everything I have felt sore for. I am sure I will think of her one last time as I myself die one day. People do that.
There is so much in these old photos, from the magnificent to the humorous, but nothing compares in my heart to my wife and kids. Those treasures are mine, and I will not share them here.
Sometimes I feel like people judge me. People take one look and make their own assessment and then decide to be a part of my life, or more often, leave me alone. I would bet a lot of people feel just the same. They are lonely and want people they can share company with, and be friends with, and never feel betrayed by. It is harder than ever since the cross-pollination of Social Media and Politics leading up to, and including the national death of our decency. Hell, it pushed me off Social Media once and for all. I have not been back for more than to gather birthday wishes and have a peek to see what a few people have been up to in more than two years. I am not inclined to return, and while I have had an Instagram account too, I am now feeling like jumping that ship too. There are lots of things to look at, sure, and also on YouTube, but I am concerned about the amount of time I have left, and what I am doing with it. If there is one thing I am sure of, it is that arguing about things no one person could ever change on Social Media is NOT living. In fact, it is more like dying inside.
Not living will consume most of the time of the Universe. There is more than plenty of that. The dust that is my being will be consumed in the fire of the sun in an amount of time I cannot even properly conceive of. Humanity will have evolved out of existence by then. What will be here? Nobody can possibly know. That is a couple of billion years from now, and only 65 millions years ago, there were massive dinosaurs all over the place. They were around for something like three times the amount of time since they have gone. They changed a lot over that time, and I imagine we will too.
When we die, everything we are, and everything we have been born into loses all meaning to us. The living hold on to titles and dreams and nobilities. The dead are the same. When I met this guy, I realized though that the living are really all the same in many ways, too. The dead have no memory, and the living build everything they are upon the collective one.
Imagine if the next generation were born without any memory of what a King is, or a nation, or a border? Imagine if there were no recollection of tribes and skin colors? I am not saying that everything should be swept under the rug and forgotten. It is a dream only that it could even be. But where would we be if we could?
It’s thanks to file naming conventions and the number of pictures I have taken with my camera that I have now got a folder on my computer with photos of eight years spent in England interspersed with photos of the desert in Nevada, and the snowy landscapes of winters in Idaho.
I have seen a lot. It is enough to make me not want to cry…
Because, always, things just change. It never asks for my permission. Sometimes I am the agent of that change. But a lot of it just goes on, with or without me.
So it has been good to review the photos of these last two decades or so. I have not shared the best here. The ones I count as the best are the ones I would not share online. They are the ones of the best people I know.
P.S.: I am feeling philosophical right now. Part of that is the trip through some memories. Some of it is knowing that one day I will lose everything I have. Part of it is just being acutely aware that the most of what I do have is shared with only a very few people, because I have been learning the hard way lately that there are not many I should be sharing much with. I have a mild feeling of betrayal coming from a couple of different angles, and I feel more like recoiling myself than putting more of me out to get shit on.
This week I will be submitting my report for our youngest daughter for her homeschool academy, and it will be the last one I do as a fulltime home educator. This week will complete fifteen years of me teaching our kids at home. It is fifteen years gone that we went in to talk to a teacher who had supposedly been concerned with our oldest, and she ambushed us with her reasons for not believing in his abilities. It was clear she had a personal dislike, and we made the decision right then to pull him from the state school in England. I taught him for four years there, and have spent every year since either caring fulltime for my grandparents, or homeschooling one or more of our children.
Apart from my wife, I don’t think there is a person who fully understands this as a sort of retirement for me. And now, at 50, I need to figure out the move forward. I expect to handle some of the kid’s elective course next year, and beyond. There will always be things to each them at home, and on the homestead. And where we have made the choice to school them at home, I kind of owe it to them to be there for them till they are able to build up a social circle of their own. I am sat where I can see my eight year old now, and she does really well with the friendship we have together. She is always asking me questions, and I am always doing my best to answer them, and help her to grow up to be a compassionate and thoughtful person.
They say kids need to go to school to learn to socialize. That is the worst place for it. Nobody they go to school with is going to teach them how to behave in polite society.
I have been able to raise four amazing kids. I am still doing so. I just get to step back as teacher, and constant caregiver. Youngest will join her sister in the academy’s virtual bridge program next year, and she will sign into Zoom meeting and learn with other students and a teacher.
My greatest temptation is to really move our little homestead forward. Missus and I would both like to make a living on it, and it would fall to me to get a great deal of the work done to do that. I am happy to keep cooking and doing things that help the others out. But I would like to finish up the place and fix up the things we have already built that could have been done better. Then there are the things we could make, and sell. So much has to get done first. So much.
I expect to finish Language Arts tomorrow, complete the lesson reports, and turn them in. That done; fifteen years.
The anticipated high for tomorrow is 74 degrees, with the low bottoming out at 48, skies partly cloudy. That’s the weather. Also forecast for tomorrow is about a cord of firewood. We will be heading down to pick up some wood from the Logan City Landfill’s Green Waste section, where the wood can be picked up for free. I take the girls with me, and they help where they can with loading the wood up. They are a bit small still, but the older one is able to do a fair bit of work. The younger one always serves as entertainment value, anyhow.
We will likely load the trailer then drive home and call that enough hard work for the day. I have two weeks till I can go out to get more wood again, so there is time to unload it and split it. Most of the time the wood needs a little adjustment on size, so they are heavy to load. But we have a ramp on the trailer and a dolly truck to roll them up with. That usually make loading large rounds easier.
As I have said since we got it, the pickup truck sire does make the whole job a lot easier! It has no troubles hauling the wood home, and if I were determined enough, I could probably load it up with wood too. But there is only so much I can handle, and it is good for carrying the tools down the the jobsite, anyhow.
As for the news and politics today, my mom always said, if you can’t say anything nice, then shut the fuck up. And that is why I have talked about something else.
Being a homeschooling parent has a lot of challenges. Chief among them is being sure that the things I teach are accurate, and fulfilling, and that the child is learning what she should in order to stay close enough to her age group that she could easily matriculate with her age group if she should for some reason need to enter the mainstream at any point in the future. But when one of the kids homeschools with a regular teacher over Zoom, it can also be challenging! Specifically when the teacher says something that is complete nonsense!
Today gave a perfect example of that, when my 12 year old’s teacher was teaching her class about the US Census, and in the topic about the question of citizenship she said that one of the reasons that citizenship status would be asked is because non-citizens don’t pay any taxes. My immediate thought is that she has just contributed to making a group of Nationalists, and possibly racists with that one statement.
The reason I think that is because I have several non-citizens in my own immediate family. To be accurate, one got his citizenship late last year, but he has worked and even bought a house here in the US for a few years prior, and the other two are still not citizens at this time. All pay or have paid payroll tax, all who own property pay property taxes, and the one who does not own, pays rent to an owner who pays property taxes on the place he lives in, and not one of them is exempt somehow from sales taxes. So, every single one of them pays a plethora of taxes just like any US Citizen does. There are no free rides among them.
I understand that there may be people who are in the US illegally, who have to take pay off the books, and stay under the radar. But a blanket statement that non-citizens don’t pay taxes is completely inaccurate. I realize that in the rush of teaching that a statement like that can come out mistakenly, and that a person saying it might do so on accident, and without meaning to.
What is hard is not wanting to jump in as an adult and correct the situation. After all, why should a whole class of kids carry the kind of biases that something like that can create away from the class? But then, when the kids are in a classroom, parents never hear things like that in the first place unless their child happens to mention it.
I guess the real advantage is that I have the opportunity to mention it to my own child, and correct the potential bias, and do it in a way that hopefully does not undermine the teacher, and gives them a way out by mentioning that it may have been an oversight on their part. I think it is also important to raise a kid who knows how to get along socially with people she does not agree with, so she has to know how to live with the statements that she does not have to confront, and know when to confront them, when she is old enough and knowledgeable enough to do it.
At any rate, it is probably a little thing, but it is aggravating, just as it is when the teacher’s religious biases come across in the class. But considering those biases do come across and they do hint at their particular beliefs, I have to credit them for still teaching proper science on evolution and such, though the dominant religion in this area, and the ones the teacher hints at is creationist.
So, there are pluses and minuses to it, and like anything, there is finding a proper balance to it. It is just one of the challenges to being a homeschool parent, and at the same time, in the modern ‘woke’ culture, there is the challenge that teachers must face with all the parents who are improperly or partially woke, and the ones who are not woke at all. It has got to be hard. And then there is the unnecessary hair splitting over things like which non-citizens pay taxes or not.
What do you do when you are the last person up on a Thursday night? I watched a video on YouTube explaining thoroughly Q-Anon from it’s origin, to it’s ideologies, to where it is at now and where it is headed in the future, as well as how to talk to people who believe in it. It was an interesting video put on by a younger YouTube creator who has clear thoughts, and presents in a sensible order, and is obviously good at her research. Basically, she gives me hope for the future.
I don’t think though that from watching her video, I would be prepared to deal first hand with someone entrenched in the conspiracies espoused by Q-Anon. Hell, I can hardly deal with the modern political party that has assumed the identity of the Republican Party. It is certainly NOT what it was when I was a kid. While it owes its assumption of the party to some of the crap that the party believed in then, it cannot pretend it is the same as it was. I think a lot of that is owed to Rush Limbaugh, Tucker Carlson, and Info Wars and the likes. Guys, your Art Bell politics has highjacked the mentally frail in this country and turned it into a voting block so you can have hat you want at the hands of those who fall for the BS veneer you put on it.
Apart from that, there was a comment read during the video I watched, which was from one of the channel creator’s subscribers, and I could have sworn by some of the words used, and from the situation described, and the propensity of those described to fall for crap like Q, that the author of the comment was talking about Mormons. That reminded me of something…
I don’t know how to write a large piece. I could write and write about a topic, but to make it coherent and tell the story of my own personal experiences in Mormonism, well, I need to take the time to really do it, and do it right, if I am to give this story some life. I want to write about it. I am just intimidated by the scope of that project. I also want to figure out how to best describe the religion and the people without equating them. That’s hard. People are their ideologies, and this particular ideology is nuts. But the people who hold the ideas are not all nuts. So, in short, I’ll get to it, but it is going to be a challenge.
Invariably the previous President is still coming up constantly in national discourse; in the news, and on late-night television. Many in this country seem to still be traumatized by that Presidency. For many, it was like thinking that we were on a bus across town to whereever it is we need to be, but then suddenly realizing that we are in a speeding clown car, heading through a ring of fire, and noticing that the clown driving is absolutely drunk off his ass, and asleep on the accelerator towards the post holding the tent up. Oh, and we are terrified of clowns.
I wish I could say it is a topic that should be dropped and never brought up again, but if that man runs for President again, then he must be defeated again. And if he is to be defeated again, then so must his lies, and his shot on the fan conspiracies which satisfy him with the ability to see what sticks and gets him what he wants. People believe the election was stolen? He has convinced him that he won? How the Hell did the government transition in the first place, then? He was President! He should have had the power to stop it if he had legitimately won the election. But somehow, the man he called Sleepy Joe managed to overpower him, and gain access to the White House? The story stinks.
The story also stinks because I do occasionally peak in at Facebook, and look at some comments. Today I read a woman responding to her own brother to tell him that he had fallen for Democrat lies, and that she just did not want that kind of negativity in her life. Families are being divided. Yes, that DOES remind me of the stories of the Civil War. While there are no slaves in the balance, people are. Mostly, the same people as were then. And that is heartbreaking. It is clearly a country that has changed little.
So, this is a little random, but it is a Thursday Night, and I am feeling pretty random. I need to get rested and get to work on my story in a clear form, and tell what it is I need to tell. I need to tell it, in the way an author needs to tell his story. I cannot breath with it inside me anymore. So I need to unblock it, and let it go. But I need it to be organized, make some sense, and hopefully, be relatable so those who probably need to hear it, can understand how I found safety in the chaos of the world beyond religion.
I’ll leave it for now. But I will go and start making my notes.
It was not supposed to be rainy today, but it was. I had plans for outside, but the rain delayed them. I was happy to get some cardboard burned, the lawn mowed, and the animals fed during an hour this afternoon. I sure wish I felt this up to doing things all the time!
Rain on our windshield at Family Dollar.
We went to the gas station today and topped up the car, and went to Family Dollar so Missus could run in. I am not a fan, so I wait in the car with the kids and that at least makes it easier for her to go in and get what she needs or wants, without us bothering her.
The view of the mountains from Family Dollar.
I am also testing out my new computer, my camera, and a file method to see if I can shoot from my DSLR and put it up on this site without the silly pictures not uploading like they were doing on the old computer. I figured that if I shoot a small JPEG and the RAW file from the camera, I will have a good sized copy of any pictures that come out really good, rather than only having a tiny JPEG to work with. So this post is in part a test to see everything is working. And it is! But you can bet that in a few minutes it will stop, as it usually does, and everything will go back to normal; not working!
I’ll need to get a can of gas for the mower before I do the roadside mowing and the neighbor’s lawn. He paid me to do it (already), so I want to get it done soon. I am no fan of being a mess about on doing things I have told someone I am going to do for them.
Posted inJournal Entry|Comments Off on Rainy Days and Family Dollar Always Get Me Down
