Night of the Living Dead

 While Facebook has lost face (so to speak) in recent years, because Z. widely sold personal information and profited, many still use the website as a go to social media hub.  Tik Tok is not a viable substitute, because like most things (now including Facebook), it is a platform for propaganda.  With the emergency (emergence "C") of Artificial Intelligence, and it is an emergency, AI is being used as a more convenient platform that the Steve Jobs' created "Renderman."  Once you needed a tower of computer processing, a film studio, and talented cinematographers to create realistic computer-generated images.  AI, like all things smart phone, is the easy consumer-oriented product marketed to the gullible buyer.  More alarmingly instead of coercing you to buy products, it is influencing your thoughts and opinions.  Almost everything media-related is doing the same.  There is little honesty left.  Once we had a print media that was bound by some degree of honesty and fairness.  Because Congress largely has become corrupt, any regulation or oversight of misinformation is scant.  This is what has allowed the Trump machine to operate.  In previous decades in America the FCC would not allow this display of criminal behavior.  We only can wonder who is attacking America and why?  Because the assault is coming from within, and half of the nation still may reelect the traitor emeritus, true Americans must be cognizant that our own nation all ready is under siege.  While vestiges of the radical right always existed, they came to fruition with the Trump Presidency.  Trump's machine single handedly fueled civil insurrection in America.  They want us to fight each other.  Why am I seeing disturbing AI generated "reels" in my Facebook feed?  I just tell myself that is Renderman in the hands of malcontent foreigners.  Reasons abound why other nations and cultures dislike America.  Once the torch of freedom for many with passage across the Atlantic Ocean, America has become the butt of modern society.  School shootings.  Church shootings.  Mass shootings.  We have proven America no longer is capable of virtue.  Instead we enjoy lynching Negroes as a method of self entertainment and stoking of our own fragile egos.  Since Covid, the majority of American induced disciplines that have made our country great dramatically have declined.  Most of the disparate components of American culture have been hobbled in one way or another.  Namely film, television, and music are on the chopping block, and it is easy to visualize a post communist regime salivating at the loss of these integral educational processes.  The Nazi party did the same thing.  The expression of personal and national ideals through art is quintessential, but the smart phone, streaming services, and immediate gratification from the internet through an iPhone have undermined the American artistic process.  The techniques of television, film, and music largely have been lost with sound being the most notable.  What we see, hear, and feel each day is a shadow of our American post.  We are tasked with self-gratification with the aid of an iPhone.  The large scale process of the creation of art through these mediums, which bolsters the economy, has been sacrificed.  Why pay talent?  You pay talent, because most don't have it.  You pay technicians and artists, because they offer more than a layperson.  Consequently we are left surveilling the common man's everyday struggle for survival.  That has become our daily example, and it is dejecting.  The challenge of living in a vacuum is upon us, and it is not wise to lose sight of one's neighbors.  The standard at which America is operating never has been lower, and almost all steadfast American postulates are being smeared with misinformation.  How can Donald Trump make America great again, when he has waged a campaign savagely against us?  It could not be clearer.  To reelect Donald Trump President is ascribing to the same campaign used in other communist soon-to-become Fascist countries.  "I tell you this, but I lie."  Don't believe him.  If never before Americans had to exercise critical thinking and decision making, this is the time.  You are your own best friend, and it is pretty unAmerican.  Trump's supporters are supporting themselves.  We better start doing the same. 

Dictatorial Decisions

 In the home stretch of the American Presidential election it becomes simple.  It is a matter of WHO votes.  Necessarily it is not for whom you vote.  The outcome of the election is determined by WHO votes.  If on the first day of early voting Trump supporters fervently swamp polling places and cast their votes, it is likely Trump will have an advantage.  If instead it was a racially diverse congregation of indigent, poor, or unemployed voters, but they made their ways to the polls and voted for Kamala Harris, she would have an advantage.  In North Carolina the General Assembly has exploited race and economic  status to manipulate the vote for the Republican Party and thus Donald Trump.  They gerrymandered voting districts in many ways making it more difficult for Democrats to vote.  Just voting, just making an effort to get to the polls and cast your vote is paramount.  It is one group against the other, and the more empowered constituency who dominates the voting process will win.  You have to fight, but unfortunately those who may vote for Kamala Harris could be the minority.  She is a black woman, and that is an unprecedented occurrence in American politics.  We have had strong, rich, talented women in power, but her name was Oprah Winfrey.  I do not feel there is anyone more capable of becoming the President of the United States considering the available field of candidates.  The bipolar metaphor of Harris versus Trump is stark and should be frightening.  Trump's last few weeks on the campaign trail have become nothing more than pep rally's, but these rallies serve a specific purpose.  They are motivating to vote.  It is momentum.  They are pep rallies, nothing more.  Surprisingly Trump has turned 180 degrees and is groveling below his chosen social status.  He has been told if he wants to win, he must appeal to the American people.  They have resorted to traditional stump methodology, and it is Grass Roots.  The problem is, it all is a lie like the rest of his campaign and policies.  It is for show, and he and his minions are hypocrites trying to collect votes.  It is pure manipulation, and tired people are likely to bite on his hook.  I think the American people know who should be the next President, but it comes down to voting.  You have to go out of your house, get to the polls, and cast your vote.  The most people that do this elect the next President.  Fortunately we have time left and an authentic voting day.  There is still time.  An aggressive team who swarms the field before play with enthusiasm won't necessarily win the game.  When you have the world's richest man pulling the strings, it becomes television.  This is with which the Trump Dynasty is familiar.  Real American life escapes them, but every American should know the results of having Trump reelected are brutal and consequential for the middle and lower classes.  All ready they took away a woman's right to have an abortion, if she doesn't want the child.  They made that decision for you.  These dictatorial decisions will continue and work against us if Trump wins. 

Donny and Elon

Harmful propaganda seems to arrive in waves, and it is no different with the Washington Post.  It has been weeks since the Ukrainian war has been in the news being usurped necessarily by Israel's escalated attacks on Hamas.  An expanding war in the Middle East including Lebanon and eventually Iran politically is important to the Presidential election in America.  There have been other diversions.  Two hurricanes effecting battleground states has put Putin on the sideline.  The front page of the Post is a potpourri of news mixed with pro Trump propaganda.  The Trump fodder seems to be purchased with little regard for truth.  It has an agenda, and it is meant to scare the American people.  Perhaps by publicizing Trump's radical future agenda the newsroom thinks it will discourage his being reelected.  It does not play out that way.  When a reader seeks a current synopsis of the daily news, Donald Trump's fascist agenda is not appropriate.  It would be better not to publicize it, because it is doing harm as unneeded and unwanted intimidation.  I can thing of nothing less appropriate to offer the American people than a deluded man's dream.  His entire campaign should be nipped in the bud.  The Associated Press or more broadly "the media" are attempting to be solvent publishing whatever may be commoditized.  It is incumbent for a news organization to remain neutral, but that has become impossible.  The four years of a Trump presidency largely dismantled honest governance.  Everyone is on the take.  Because Trump's organization bribed electors in 2016 and 2020, they will do the same in 2024.  There is coverage of the election process and its agencies, but in swing states where the General Assembly does not accept the popular vote, scrutiny sorely is needed.  This is where the shenanigans will happen.  This is how Trump won in 2016.  It could happen again, if the Electoral College is not held responsible for honesty.  Most are corrupt.  With sixty percent of the American electorate desiring a revision of the Constitution to require state legislators to take the popular vote, the war is between them and the people.  This has not changed.  Ideally a Presidential election might change his, but if the model of North Carolina sets the precedent, the bulk of the power in America lies in the state houses.  This is how Trump is planning to win, a tried and true scheme only that was thwarted by changes in voting as a result of the Covid outbreak.  Sixty-five percent of Americans now vote early or by mail.  I am not convinced that Joe Biden won legally in 2020, but it was the correct outcome of the election.  Unseen forces usually make the right decision, but will that happen in 2024?  If so, the news coverage of the three weeks prior to the election are just raking in dollars with paid propaganda.  Maybe they are going into the hole, but billionaire enablers like Elon Musk have it to spare.  They are investing in themselves, not the American people.  The best thing for this country in any scenario is to eliminate Donald Trump.  For America to return to any greatness, which is a functioning and fruitful economy based upon the middle class, the influence of the ultra rich must be dissolved.  They must pay their own fair share of taxes, workers must be paid a living wage, and the oppressive communist construct of slave like work empowering the rich must be quelled.  All men are created equal until the rich deal their hand.  It has become more and more difficult to circumvent the constraints and power of the wealthy and revive a free American market.  That is because it has become all about big money from corporate monopolies.  They are not interested in enabling the common man.  They want to kill us.  

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

 Fayetteville, North Carolina is a metaphor for hypocrisy.  It is one of many examples of a red state run awry.  PBS finally has returned to her old prowess airing relevant social and political documentaries and local music.  Covid sucked the wind out of everything, and PBS was no different.  Even without it far right extreme republicans like Donald Trump prefer a cultural and intellectual void.  It is far easier for old money to maintain its status quo when people are ignorant.  Why is Fayetteville such a metaphor for hypocrisy?  Considering American freedom and democracy, rule by the people for the people, there are few examples of Fayetteville sheltering her citizens from environmental harm.  There is an unfinished fire house on Bragg Boulevard.  There is an unfinished tennis complex on Filter Plant Drive.  Whence did this come?  Roads are crumbling and rough, and travel is difficult.  Where is all of that Biden infrastructure money?  I will be brazen and risking the usual reciprocation from the parties I offend, people should know who are the plantation owners and who are the slaves.  Because the state of the planet Earth has become so volatile, the environment in which we attempt to live is paramount in our everyday lives.  How can a community provide their own clean air and water?  They can't, and in Fayetteville it is more difficult than most places.  Who are the culprits that forsake average Fayetteville residents and make their own corporate profit paramount?  If corporate, industrial, or military activity didn't effect the Fayetteville citizenry it would be different.  It does.  It does in a powerful way, which also makes Fayettevillians the most depressed people in the nation.  Yes, Fayetteville, North Carolina.  Why is this?  Why must we be depressed?  We are depressed because of the continued polluting of our small city.  Throughout my childhood, although Fayetteville always has been plagued with humidity coming up the Cape Fear River basin from the Atlantic Ocean, we never had a big problem with air quality.  That has changed, and it has changed on multiple fronts.  Johnny Carson would agree that the local population did not grieve too much when Piedmont Airlines disappeared.  Often he joked they would just fly low over the city and open the cabin door for you to jump out.  The resurrection of Piedmont with a hub in Charlotte providing direct to Fayetteville routes may be beneficial to some.  Who needs to get to Charlotte at six o'clock a.m. on weekday?  Piedmont's new activity is problematic for Fayetteville residents, because they no longer adhere to the traditional flight patterns established when Ed Grannis was living.  (Grannis Field is named after him)  In their haste to get early risers to Charlotte by six o'clock a.m., Piedmont Embraer 145 aircraft strafe downtown Fayetteville and historical neighborhoods with black soot.  No longer do they climb to a safe distance before making their turn.  They take off north from the Fayetteville Regional Airport and immediately turn left and fly directly over the tree line evidently giving their passengers a show of the Fayetteville freak show.  Because the homelessness problem has not been solved, most of the people that inhabit downtown are poor and/or indigent.  Yes, there are legitimate businesses here too, but the people on the street largely have become indigent.  What's the difference if you burn their oxygen and replace it with deadly cancer-causing carbon emissions?  Why is Piedmont doing this?  The answer is it is easier and cheaper for those buying tickets on a Piedmont flight.  Likewise almost all commercial aircraft have high powered phased array radars in their nose radomes.  Their priority, Piedmont and other carriers, is to provide fast, error free, streaming internet to their passengers in flight.  This necessitates the usage of extremely high powered microwave transmitters that must be turned off before landing on the tarmac.  When these jets fly over our neighborhood at inconvenient times, their electromagnetic refuse is palpable.  It took me several years to figure out whence this radiation was coming.  If black soot and harmful carbon emissions aren't enough, now we have heat-producing, magnetized, vibrating electricity beaming into our homes.  It is so rife most of the time, that my vintage musical gear struggles to operate.  A standing wave from multiple radar isn't not a good match for any kind of electronic equipment.  Piedmont prioritizes their own business over that of the citizens they fly over.  The law provides not safety buffer for this airborne activity.  All of Washington's governmental regulatory agencies are a shell of what they once were.  This was a direct result of the Trump presidency.  Screw the common man.  We will do what we want.  Likewise a local short line railroad has continued to expand it freight activity in the heart of Fayetteville's business district on Skibo Road.  They have replaced rail suited to much heavier and more powerful locomotives, and they have purchased a rebuilt N&S GP-38 which exhibits the same characteristics as commercial jet radomes.  Most of the freight railroads have begun to tout Tier 4 EPA emission standards, but with no oversight they do what they want.  GE developed the GEVO line of reduced emission fright locomotives, but returned to using the 7FDL prime mover instead all but abandoning the cleaner burning GEVO.  This is because its power and might serve them better, and the railroads, like Piedmont, care not about the people living in the midst of their trackage.  These two industries, rail and the airlines, have free reign to do as the please with no regard to local people.  Users of small local airstrips tout the revenue earned by these entities, but in fact they serve the same minute few championed by Phil Berger, Tim Moore, and Donald Trump.  To find any example that the Aberdeen and Rockfish, Piedmont, DAK Americas, Chemours, or CSX help the local populace in any way would be impossible.  They don't.  Contrarily their activity creates severe and palatable obstacles to public health.  They are ignored because of red state politics.  North Carolina still is a hypocritical red state adhering to the same sentiments of Jim Crow.  They care not about the working slaves, and wages are about the same.  People no longer are even breaking even.  We are going into debt.  The fight to stay alive in Fayetteville in the line of fire of this corporate might is daunting, and many have lost the battle.  Federal and state regulatory agencies are the only salvation, and they are not being supported.  Instead the North Carolina republican super majority capable of overriding a governor's veto continues to champion itself and shit on the people.  What I have begun to love about Kamala Harris is she is tough.  We have reached a juncture in America where the meek must stand up for themselves.  The good, the honest, and the righteous are not guaranteed any influence in North Carolina at all.  It is a gerrymandered disgrace.  There are anodynes.  PBS continues to exhibit the cultural gems of a former North Carolina, but the reality is the Carolinas are nothing more than a military industrial complex.  An Apache helicopter firing range?  This is all politics.  Much of the military activity at the Charleston Naval Station was moved to Fort Liberty, because that is what the few wanted.  A general wanted to look out his window in the morning and see a sea of soldiers.  "Let's move it all to Fort Liberty and forsake its host city."  Fayetteville has become a sewer for the former Fort Bragg.  In real estate the effort to dislodge local residents, flip their homes, and sell them at a profit to young officers is rampant.  It is not just gentrification.  Some great strides have been made in Fayetteville in the housing market.  If crime ridden ghettos can be transformed into modern housing for working people, then it should advance.  The efforts in Haymount should be applauded.  Contrarily 1 Jura Drive, a new sub division under construction between Murray Hills and Vanstory Hills. completely decimated acres of trees needed for both oxygen and as a noise buffer for surrounding homes.  Likewise  new development on North Edgewater Drive in Vanstory did the same.  All of the decades old trees simply were wiped off the planet without a thought about conservation.  The corner of Glensford Ave. and Cliffdale once was a mighty pine forest providing a buffer for middle and upper class homes.  Now it is a field of weeds.  This raping and pillaging of Fayetteville's land should stop.  More is required of industrial, corporate, and military commerce.  The North Carolina legislature has become nothing more than an evil oasis for criminal activity.  Vape shops, sports betting, and the like are ruthlessly devouring the local population without oversight.  When a community does need ample and clean electricity, politics is allowing bit coin mining overtaxing America's power grid.  The malfeasance in Washington after the Trump Presidency is grievous.  They don't even try to cover it up anymore.  Those who will vote for Donald Trump have similar attitudes.  They merely take for themselves, because it has to go to somebody.  Why not me?  How cares if we break the law, destroy people, or harm the earth?  Even with the now common knowledge that Trump is evil, the meek must begin to stand up and fight for themselves.  Kamala Harris is an example of such a person.  She is a seasoned fighter for good.  She looks Donald Trump straight in the eye and says, "No!"  Sometimes we have to fight for good, and I mean fight tough.  Kamala is a hardliner, and it is appealing to know your stance and to defend it.  I can think of no other person more qualified to be elected the American President. 

Kama Kama Kama Khameleon.

Today's American truths are as heinous as the Holocaust.  They are not as obvious.  Lynching freed slaves in a geographical region isolated from national scrutiny was a way of operating under the radar.  It was a potent and tangible reason for a Civil War.  Choosing to do such a thing rationalized by nepotism isn't immune from judicial and spiritual judgement.  The practice of slavery and further the non acceptance of the equality of men and women of all races is a plight of American history.  It is this with which America is attempting to mitigate.  How much of this should we choose to remember?  In North Carolina it would be difficult to forget, because the State Legislature continues to govern with extreme racial and social bias.  They favor the "haves," what often has been called the "Good Old Boy" network.  Legislation enacted by a now extreme right leaning state house defies logic, sense, or good will.  It favors a distinct and particular group of North Carolinians, those who devised and implemented a strange super majority with power enough to override most of the Governor's power.  What example is this, legislation that defies Constitutional initiatives and favors a chosen group?  It can be said that the North Carolina state house is complicit with Donald Trump's chosen agenda.  It seeks to dismantle democracy, rule by the people, and regress back to slavery forcing Americans to work for less than a livable wage.  Many are there now, because wages are stagnant, and these chosen few continue to raise the prices of everything forcing citizens into poverty.  They are creating poverty for a large percentage of the population.  Isn't this the antithesis of the American Way or Dream?  Creating opportunity, social and economic mobility, and hope for Americans is the enemy.  Donald Trump openly has repeated his desire to lessen the financial burden on America's government by eliminating people including minorities, the elderly, and the sick.  How can one not draw a parallel to the outbreak of Covid 19?  North Carolina has been operating incognito in this anachronistic governance, and someone is driving the truck.  Who are the people that are running Donald Trump?  He has lost the ability to discern any reality including one he may endorse, so we must conclude that Tim Moore and Phil Berger are part of his enablers.  Consequently North Carolina is a red state, and honest, hard-working, intelligent people must realize that over half of the inhabitants of our state still ascribe to the atrocities of Jim Crow.  Thus PFAS is in most of our water shed and in our air, put there by a Chinese-owned company.  Similarly a Mexican conglomerate-owned industry likely is trafficking drugs disguised by ordinary manufacturing logistics.  The host county of Fort Liberty has the worst water in the state.  This covert plan easily is hidden in the daily training and operation of the military.  Yes, they train in Fayetteville, but without an active, effective, savvy Secretary of Defense like Leon Panetta to oversee a sprawling and right-leaning faction, easily the military becomes cover for nefarious and revenue earning malfeasance.  They smuggled drugs in dead soldiers coffins during the Viet Nam War.  Often the Intelligence community is cited as flooding the ghetto with drugs.  Often I ask who possibly could be supplying the millions of dollars to purchase drugs from the Medellin Cartel smuggled into the United States by Barry Seal?  If one watches "American Made," the Tom Cruise film, one only can wonder, "Whence is the money coming?"  This question never has been answered, but often it is thought to be America's own Deep State, the civil service or Intelligence community.  Ronald Reagan may have been one of America's greatest deceptions, bought and paid for and rehearsed like the actor he was.  With the most illiterate American population in decades having devolved into tribal warring, it has become easy and commonplace to hurt the American people.  Most would not deny it has been a full fledged assault but from within.  It is a smorgasbord of white collar corporate and political deception, and Covid was its disguise.  Now with climate change, America's fight for survival has reached epic proportions.  No one is helping.  Vote for Kamala Harris.  

Rule By the People

 Purposely I have not blogged for a while.  When I write honest but disparaging opinion, often I am punished.  (No good deed goes unpunished)  Having lived abroad for a decade traveling on ships around the world, I lost touch with American reality.  Things were better before I left.  Having been back on native soil for another decade and having experienced the Trump presidency, America's reality vastly is different.  While the Biden presidency has produced some positive change, including a huge infrastructure bill, the social dynamic of America has not improved.  Inflation has continued, and the nation still starkly is divided and partisan.  I feel the majority of this is not the result of the new democratic leadership.  The onslaught of January 6th has continued the four years of the Biden presidency.  The Republican Party's refusal to accept the results of the 2020 election have resulted in a covert second civil war.  This is what is created the unrest in America.  The divisive agenda of Donald Trump's borderline fascist regime has dug in their heals and refocused their efforts on the 2024 presidential election.  They have used every possible political, social, and legal tactic to gerrymander the entire election.  Voter suppression, intimidation, and covert unconventional psychological warfare have plagued America since January 6th.  The Biden administration has done an admirable job thwarting this widespread obstacle, but until Trump's influence is eradicated America cannot heal.  The North Carolina legislature is complicit in this assault.  All North Carolinians feel this lack of support of state governance, and simply it feels like a recurrence of the post-war Jim Crow ideology.  The rich have, and they oppress, take from, and kill the rest.  The covert operation easily is disguised within the military's daily action.  When Trump's minions blindly ascribe to and carry out his will exercising no independent thought, reflection, or moral judgement, easily their targets can change from hypothetical enemies to real people.  The National Security Administration has not been helpful.  Openly spying on all Americans because of 9/11 no longer is justified, yet they continue in a more staunch method expanding their surveillance within the multitude of wireless networks.  Corporate America is complicit openly trying to sell you dangerous and even lethal products.  It only took a few doctors' visits for me to discern the current American medical establishment has gone awry at the behest of corrupt pharmaceutical companies.  They have become no different than the local drug dealers trying to turn a profit.  This vacuum in American consciousness has become a fight for survival with little prospect of enlightened thinking or a more fruitful and rewarding economy.  This covert civil war is what is and has been impeding American recovery from the Trump and Covid debacles.  It is crucial that Americans vote for Kamala Harris for President, because it is America's only hope for the continuance of rule by the people. 

The Latest Chapter

 The familiar adage always has been, "You can't go home."  I never understood what this meant.  Most importantly if you go back to your childhood family, then this family only knows you as a child.  Consequently if you return as an adult, I am not sure your parents ever are able to accept you as an adult.  The rearing process, those formative years that require soul, are too strong.  They are a part of you.  "You can't teach an old dog new tricks."  I am not sure if this is true either.  It would seem most people adhere to this advice.  I didn't make a conscious decision to return home, but my mother needed help with my father.  After his stroke never was he the same.  We weren't wise enough then to understand this process, but at times it was a living hell for my mother.  Incontinence.  Losing is memory.  Finally she found a place for him, and it was nominal.  She had to go everyday to ensure he got the proper care.  After he died in 2017 my mother and I were in the house together for the first time.  I am proud to say she was able to stay at home until the ripe age of ninety.  Mostly it was inconsequential, but she began to have small accidents that presented challenges.  She broke her wrist falling over a gutter pipe.  She fractured her shoulder falling on the hard brick patio.  Ultimately the vertebra in her back began to give way.  I had to find things to do at home that were meaningful other than cooking for her.  I became a handy man.  Most importantly it was necessary to find shared experiences.  I took her life long interests in gardening, sewing, and cooking and developed my own skills.  I transformed our yard into a blissful garden.  I potted plants, planted a vegetable garden, and maintained the property.  The focus of my life changed, but because it was my childhood home it was not unfamiliar.  It seemed appropriate.  We forged a life together, and for me music was a small part of it.  Now that she necessarily has moved into assisted living, I am faced with forging yet a new life at the age of sixty-one.  For the first year I just continued with our pattern.  I planted another garden and I cleaned the yard.  The second year I became ill, and suddenly working in the yard began to make me sick.  I had allergic reactions to either pollen, bacteria, or fungi in the environment.  I never had this problem before.  Always I used to play in the woods as a child, and even up to this time I maintained the woods behind our house as motorcycle trails.  The emergence of poison in the woods seemed to coincide with overall strife.  Never had there been poison anywhere in these woods, but Climate Change, high humidity, and hurricanes brought about a change in the foliage.  All three kinds of poison emerged and became a menace.  I got it a few times.  Eventually I stopped working in the woods and focused on our own yard, which incidentally is one of the largest in the neighborhood.  This past winter when the oak leaves began to fall, I began my ritual blowing process.  I have a heavy duty expensive Stihl backpack blower, and it is the only possible way to gather the amount of leaves that fall over three months.  A blower.  Then you have to scoop the leaves in cans so the city will empty them.  Often it is ten or more large cans of dead oak leaves.  I have learned to enjoy this task and use it as exercise.  This year it made me ill.  Never have I felt such pain in my arm and shoulder with an angry accompanying rash.  My back hurts.  I have a bladder infection.  I get arthritis.  It is and was a world of hurt.  I had to figure out why the outdoor environment was contributing to his scenario.  Multiple doctors later, who never really tried to figure it out, I was able to piece together the diagnosis.  Bits and pieces of information from the CT scans, consultations, and lab work.  Eventually after seeing an oral surgeon and hearing his comments on my remaining wisdom tooth, it came together.  The disease is Actinomycosis, an anaerobic bacteria that behaves like a fungus.  It must be triggered by another bacteria.  All of pieces fell together, and each definition of the characteristics of the pathogen perfectly described my series of events.  It is serious, complicated, and can be deadly.  Instinctively I knew if I didn't figure it out, I would end up in the hospital without insurance.  What would follow was not acceptable.  I found insurance and partly it helped me figure it out.  Previously I talked about loss.  Suddenly I am faced with the prospect of never being able to work in the woods or yard again.  I think Covid has something to do with it.  (as the Boeing C-17A Globemaster lll glides over our house)  My mother is being evaluated for Hospice care.  Suddenly I cannot maintain our yard.  Music is difficult because of the constant low frequency rumble from low flying aircraft.  The need to relocated is emerging.  All of the things you were doing previously no longer seems possible.  Your life must change, again.  Luckily we have prepared, but living in limbo is not fun.  If a man is what he fights for (or what he does), what if he no longer can do the things he did? 

Different Chapters

 I have experienced loss before.  It came early, and I was not prepared for it.  I tell myself I am prepared for it now one, from experience, two from maturity, and three because of financial support.  Money or lack of it didn't have much to do with it.  The depression that results from loss is the challenge, because loss is tangible, real, and undeniable.  I feel most often loss is a result of people.  We are capable of losing a job, a friend, or a pet, but losing a loved one is the most challenging.  It is the most challenging not because of the loss of emotional fulfillment, but because your life in most cases revolves around the other person.  Certainly in a marriage this is true, but perhaps not as much as in the past.  Today I see examples of much looser marriages, and with the rise of the LGBT movement bisexuality has become common.  I have couples in close proximity to me who feign a marriage, although one or both members of the marriage is gay.  The phrase, "His wife is his beard" was new to me.  Gay men married to women to satisfy the requirements of society.  Leonard Bernstein was an example of such a situation as was Cole Porter.  I believe it is possible to love more than one person, but deception is not healthy in any situation.  It is devastating.  I can't support such a choice, because it is untruthful.  Conversely if the marriage is the heart of the existence, then the loss of either partner will be challenging.  My wisdom tells me a more liberal concept of relationship functions better.  I have met couples who "Swing," allowing sex with outside partners.  It takes a particular kind of maturity to engage in this practice, and not everyone can do it.  My loss was an acute combination of several things.  It was like "falling from grace."  I had a run of notoriety, when I was a Graduate Teaching Associate in South Carolina.  My band was a semi-finalist in the Hennessy Cognac Jazz Search, and we got to travel to Los Angeles to compete.  While this accomplishment was important as an entry in your VITAE file, it in actuality was the beginning of the end for me.  I always wanted to have good fusion band, but that was not the focus of my musical study.  I have an education degree, and teaching was what was important to me then.  I got three years of college teaching experience while working on the Master of Music.  When the Coordinator of Jazz Studies died of a brain tumor shortly before the fall semester, they hired me as an adjunct to cover his duties for a year while they did a national search.  Somehow, and it was easy and not my fault, I began to believe I may get the full time professorship.  Of course a fresh Masters degree isn't enough academic criteria to obtain this kind of position.  I began to believe it anyway.  I was crushed when it didn't happen.  What I didn't expect was the severing of this academic tie devastated my life.  Everything I had been doing was in the academic circle.  More importantly your entire social and personal life had become this group of people.  I was ejected from this fulfilling scenario, but I handled it.  For several years I made the best of this lack of employment and continued to play paying jazz gigs.  There were periods in my life, including living in Columbus, Ohio, where I earned a living as a jazz pianist and commercial keyboardist.  I studied the history of jazz through the recordings of Miles Davis, and this lasted two years.  At some particular time when the stars aligned reality hit.  I had lost my respectable academic job which came with respect, and now my career was a lowly bar band musician.  The disparity between academia, the smartest and most achieving people in the world, and real life was stark and bleak.  It smells like stale beer and second hand cigarette smoke.  It was brutal, because as a musician and a composer, your soul is in your music.  When it is taken from you, the void is substantial.  That is the way I feel now.  Society around me, this neighborhood, rejects music as a vocation.  More astutely, they are not educated enough to understand and appreciate the music that I do.  That is a bold and callous statement, but the example is the difference between black and white church.  If white people are not comfortable in a Pentecostal or praise worship environment, there is a reason.  The depth of emotion expressed in this music is too much for some people.  They prefer a more conservative tone, like most white church.  Hymns and a message.  I'm not sure how our neighborhood ended up being square, but it may be because of the early toll of the bugler.  Military life is not about artistic spirituality, or at least it doesn't seem like it.  Instead they reject cumbersome emotional sensitivity for toughness.  They are taught to kill the enemy.  Everything I had and had achieved  was eliminated.  The "Jazz Life," which still is in existence in Columbia, South Carolina and of which I was a part in the late 1980's, isn't reality unless you are involved with academia.  Academia is the foundation of society.  It sets the examples, it nurtures the players, and it provides the opportunities.  The alternative for jazz smells like stale beer and second hand cigarette smoke.  Reflecting on that it seems amazing to me.  It is called the "College Town."  It is Athens, Georgia.  Once it was Chapel Hill, North Carolina.  It has become Asheville, North Carolina.  These college towns are unto themselves  rife with hipness, creativity, and opportunity.  I learned quickly this is not the other American reality.  The other American reality is what we have now.  It is a mud slinging contest trying to get Donald Trump reelected.   A sitting President who incited a riot and led a gang of domestic terrorists to attack the United States Capital?  Even if he did hand corporate America a thirteen percent tax cut, withdraw from the Iran Nuclear Deal, and allow a pandemic, anyone that votes for Donald Trump is condoning criminal and communistic behavior.  We are all ready there, because SCOTUS and his other appointed judges confirmed what we feared.  They threw the sovereignty of the American people into the trash can proving the highest court in the land can be bought.  It has become good against evil, and that is why the tension is high in our everyday lives.  It will remain that way until the Presidential election in November.  It is embarrassing to know that North Carolina has become evil.  Because of the gerrymandered voting districts favoring Republicans, Donald Trump will probably win North Carolina.  It is distasteful and infuriating.  The problem is, the Republican-led corporate machine largely controls everything.  If you dissent or disagree with their money-making industry, they can make your life hell.  The military must be included, because they are a large part of the economy.  Think about it.  The war machine, which practices and prepares for war, easily can intimidate us, the American people.  Why does their presence not make us feel secure and protected?  The reason why the NRA demands guns in America, is because they feel at some point the people my be actually fighting our own military.  This is not absurd.  It is common in other countries.  Do we trust the leadership of our military?  The Commander in Chief is the United States President.  My loss and depression today is a combination of many things hitting at one time, and this scenario of uncertainty isn't helping.  Big Pharma and illicit drug manufacturers are not trying to cure us or provide pleasure.  They have been trying to kill us stunting America from within.  The population that is left are poor uneducated immigrants.  We don't know what an American looks like today.  Is this healthy?  Irish American?  German American?  When immigrants migrated here they were happy to begin a new life.  Now foreign cultures are trying to invade, and it has been for the worse.  If we can't rear healthy children and educate them well as the future new leaders of America, we should put down the baton.  We are all ready in the toilet.