Student Body President is Not the President

Last night's debate was an exercise in "gas lighting" by former President and convicted felon Donald Trump.  It was watching a mob boss tell you how he was going to protect your turf if you paid him off.  "Everybody will be happy."  There is some truth to his approach.  The most startling realization inferred from his comments was that if and when he was President Hamas would not attack.  Clearly the connection was made that Hamas simply is a terrorist cell of the Trump Organization.  We know this.  We know he is smitten with Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un, communist dictators with shades of fascist behavior.  Openly and repeatedly Donald Trump said he wanted to eliminate burdens on America's government entitlements killing our seniors, immigrants, and poverty-stricken.  This was his plan.  Murder.  Covid 19.  Stolen confidential national security documents sat at Mar-a-lago about which also he bragged.  Not long later Hamas, a terror cell controlling Gaza, brutally breached the border of Israel and raped, pillaged, murdered and took hostage innocent citizens.  It was clear Donald Trump's connection to Hamas, and he told you.  The rest of what he said was untruth.  "Biden ruined Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.  The troops hate Biden and loved him.  (Suckers and losers)  He said he never had sex with Stormy Daniels.  What is necessary in this election is to think.  Electing the American President has superseded personality.  No longer is it important if the President looks presidential.  A figure head is not what we need.  What is important it to understand what these mean believe and stand for.  Donald Trump seemed more literate, but only because his verbal ability was more fluid than Joe Biden.  That is what he is and has been.  Donald Trump is a smooth-talking, persuasive, charismatic salesman with love of himself.  He does not care about you.  That everything he said on national television was a lie is an atrocity.  Joe Biden repeatedly said it.  "You don't know what you are talking about," and he was right.  To trust the leadership of the free world to a deranged, semi-homocidal, delusional narcissist will be fatal to American democracy.  President Biden did not present well.  His speech was forced and sometimes awkward, but he spoke truths.  Truth is what America needs, not coercion.  Perhaps Biden is rough, but the soft-bellied hand job is not enough to save America. 

The Tet

 Several disparate topics are floating around in my brain, and I may try to touch on all of them.  Firstly a musician is unlikely to develop  true authenticity unless he learns swing music first.  Why?  The reason is you can feign to be a musician in this day and age, because real American popular music is dead.  What suffices today, computer-generated tracks, posing, and attitude do not make a true musician.  The building blocks to becoming a musician have not changed, although America has.  The change in America has not been for the better.  We are living in the delusion of the smartphone, which does most things for us.  The entire process and experience of having to indulge in something to learn it is being lost.  You can shoot a movie on a smartphone.  You can control your health (so they say).  You can check your sugar level.  You can file an insurance claim.  You can do most anything including having sex in cyberspace.  The tech industry wants this, because they make money fulfilling your needs.  Once in America people and brick and mortar businesses had to satisfy your needs.  It took more leg work.  This applies to our educational system, which has been stunted.  The educational system used to be the place where we cut our teeth.  It could be hard knocks, but you learned from it because you had to work at it.  The ease, convenience, and portability of a smartphone has stunted the cognitive and physical ability of the human race.  There is no such shortcut training to be a musician.  A smartphone is a useful digital music player, and more so if you exploit its true audio capabilities by using WAV or aiff files.   Play the recorded music through a hi fidelity audio system and you could experience the true nature of the music.  Most don't do this.  To be a musician you must be able to actualize time.  Music requires an understanding of time, the articulation of time, and the feeling of time.  You must be able to count and keep time at a variety of differing tempos.  There is no substitute for this requirement.  If you can't keep and feel a steady time pulse, then you are not a true musician.  Likewise it helps to possess talent.  Some people work on this their entire lives.  Establishing the building blocks of good musicianship are a good place to start.  Talent can come later with knowledge, experience, and listening.  How does one learn time?  The easiest method is to understand that a feeling can be created, a feeling different than what is bouncing around in the world.  With steady time at a chosen tempo and a specific rhythmic feel articulated by specific metric patterns, feelings can be achieved.  This is a highly controversial statement, and many may disagree with it.  Stravinsky and many others have said that the ascribing of feelings to music is pointless.  Coming from such a intellectual mind, this is shocking and discounts almost in its entirety why much music exists.  It is to voice the soul of the human being, and usually that is laden with burdensome emotion.  Why else would we be inclined to indulge in music?  To learn time there is no better way than to learn to articulate quarter notes.  This could be Beethoven.  This could be in a march, or this could be in the swing style of music.  As I have been studying the Blues, it became apparent that many musician who feel the blues and play the blues are not successful expressing their blues.  It is because they are not playing in good time.  It is easy to fake it.  Only a steady pulse of quarter notes can actualize an authentic human feeling.  Many forms of American popular music don't do this.  The main vocal artist my possess this feeling of time, but often the accompanying recorded tracks are nothing but fodder laid down to a click track.  Some rock bands such as AC/DC feign angst, anger, and aggression while performing, but upon closer scrutiny their instrumental tracks lack rhythmic vitality and groove.  It takes training and skill to play in time, but you can learn.  Teaching your muscles and body to articulate time is a major component of musical training.  As veteran bassist musician Carol Kaye often states, playing in the big bands is crucial training for this express reason.  It readily is evident in Blues performances, when the performers can feel the pulse.  Unfortunately the recent Bob Dylan concert was not an example.  If there is no discernible pulse, then really there is no music.  It could be a pleasant experience, but it will fail to transcend anything.  Secondly the dire consequences of our democracy are are not being understood.  Like music democracy must be supported.  It will fail to actualize unless it is understood, practiced, and reinforced.  Four years of a Trump Presidency has unseated our democracy on many levels, but no one seems to understand.  Corporate malfeasance is the methodology.  Without a capable government to express and reinforce the ideals of our Constitution, our freedoms will be lost.  In so many ways the freedoms of Americans upon have been encroached.  The majority of America have become livestock grazing in the field.  There interest in their own freedom is the same as a cow's.  They don't care, as long as there is hay in the field.  After the Covid subsidies stopped and our spending bubble popped, reality should set in.  There has never been another time in American history (or at least in our lifetimes) that corporate America ruled the roost.  Whether it is telecom, television, streaming, or social media, we are not in control of our own lives.  Big Brother has emerged, and he is all of this.  Corporate America has grown so quickly in the vacuum of post Covid and after four years of Donald Trump's handouts, it will be a miracle if American democracy survives.  They are telling use we will be happy with the new system of communism.  Perhaps the man will own all of our housing and food supply, but we will be provided for.  Believe this!  It is a lie.  Covid is the evidence.  On the contrary they are trying to kill us and thin out the population.  The Big Lie isn't just that Trump won.  It is that anyone cares about the well being of the American people.  The medical establishment has been bought and sold out by Big Pharma, and a handful of elite rich own most everything else.  Certainly they don't need a bunch of refugees roaming the earth.  It is far easier to kill us with a heat dome, famine, plague, or war.  When we realize this we will have a better chance of surviving.  This assault on humanity feels inhuman.  Because the value of human life has changed to cyberspace, it is like an alien species has invaded Earth.  Our familiar former human values and habits are extinct and seem frivolous.  Music?  Art?  Romance?  It is like the Tet is in control. 

When Your Own Property Can Kill You

"Remembering Our Lost Friends" is a Facebook group.  It focuses on Fayetteville, North Carolina residents who die too early, specifically many who attended Fayetteville Terry Sanford High School and the Fayetteville Academy.  I have had friends on this list.  Abstractly we  have known the challenges of Cumberland County.  Because there is substance abuse, and I feel this abuse directly correlates with the challenges of happiness living here, people are reluctant to speak out on the these ills.  Not that long ago a notable family who lived in historic Hamount succumbed to these forces.  The father filled his family and then himself.  He was martyred at his funeral as a pinnacle of the community, and yet he killed his children and his wife in cold blood for no apparent reason.  There is no such thing.  Always there is a reason, and the powers at be choose to sweep it under the rug.  Drug distribution has escalated with the emergence of tobacco/vape shops, and many of these rogue stores are run by outsiders.  The indigenous population of Fayetteville has been infiltrated with foreigners, and there is reason for concern.  It was not until Donald Trump became President that a negative impact began to surface.  He sought to separate America and instigate warring among native tribes.  Foreign operatives have become the henchmen in Trump's scenario.  Always I have been open and fair minded about American immigration until now.  Always have sought to trust my friends and neighbors until now. When you realize these people have begun attacking you and are trying to push you out, it becomes a different story.  You must fight.  Neighbors are one thing, but the forces greater than the individual are more difficult to mitigate.  The most daunting would be the United States military, because they can use the ruse of normal training to do whatever they please including transporting illegal narcotics.  There is a defense mechanism connected to this activity, and hence there is paranoia.  Fentanyl is not a good drug, and it has killed hundreds of thousands of American.  We must understand that is its purpose.  It is not being distributed to make life easier for Americans.  It means to kill us.  Why else could or would anyone need a drug so much more powerful than tradition narcotics?  American industry must be transporting Fentanyl, and containers were found on CSX freight trains.  Deregulation has caused this problem.  If anyone would take the time to remember two decades ago,  commercial airlines were how lower Saudi royalty attacked the World Trade Center twin towers.  These were friends of the George Bush clan, and it concerned petroleum.  Osama Bin Laden offered his assistance to Saudi Arabia, and they refused him as an infidel.  He became angered, and began his campaign against the United States.  If the Bush's had made peace with this man, we would not have had this problem with Middle Eastern terrorism.  George W. Bush created ISIS by leaving American military equipment in Iraq.  There has not been a President with integrity in my lifetime.  Only John F. Kennedy, and they murdered him and his brother.  They murdered Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.  No matter how much we would try as a nation to forget, racism has been rampant.   It is best to remember it clearly.  I have spent much of my life as an adult abroad.  I have lived in Columbia, South Carolina (which was racist) and Columbus, Ohio (which was surprisingly liberal and fair minded).  I spent ten years in the cruise industry traveling all over the world being exposed to different cultures.  Most of them were more advanced then current America, but most would agree America has regressed in recent years.  Perhaps my sensitivity to historical world strife has been augmented by my own personal health struggles as a result of Covid 19.  It may not have happened without the Covid molecule, because it was engineered to do what it does.  It finds your smallest weaknesses and exaggerates them into full blown disease.  It has a nerve agent, and it stays in your body a long time.  My journey of ill health was a long and rocky one.  Before Covid I blew out my lowest disc lifting a heavy oak trunk.  I heard it pop, but I didn't know what it was.  I had a back ache for two years, and eventually my lowest vertebra fused to my pelvis.  I found this out a few years later reading the radiologist's report from a CT scan.  All of my discs had diminished by this time, and that was a result of another pathogen instigated by the emergence of Covid.  Pelvic infections are common, but a blown disc becomes a weak spot for future infection.  Unfortunately it is difficult to diagnose, and ultimately surgery to debride an abscess in the spine is when they harvest a deep culture and find the culprit.  Various antibiotics were tried and did keep me alive and active, but the referred arthritis never stopped.  It became painful to walk.  Secondly working in the yard in the same place, I developed a tooth ache.  I had a resorbtion cavity in a back molar caused by an impacted incoming horizontal wisdom tooth.  It destroyed the molar from the inside out, and for months I was swallowing this bad bacteria.  The first time I had this happen on the ship, it caused H. pylori in my gut.  Two weeks of the appropriate antibiotics, Amoxicillin plus one other, treated that for the most part.  An oral surgeon extracted the molar and the impacted wisdom tooth with no problems, but shortly thereafter an abscess appeared on my shoulder.  I thought it was from an Orb Weaver's bite, because they spun huge webs in our back yard, and often I would walk right through them going to turn off the pump.  There was no pain, which was an indicator of actinomycosis.  Over time unbeknownst to me on my back below the abscess, a hive-like area appeared on my skin with black spots that began to itch.  I was gardening at the time, had fungus on my feet from the ship, poison sumac on my legs, and open wounds on my fingertips from chopping garlic.  Open wounds of any kind are easy access for more bacteria or fungus, and digging in the dirt, planting, and spreading cow manure were the wrong things for me to be doing.  Also I dug a new garden patch and acutely remember breathing in a huge waft of foul soil.  That was the beginning of a lung infection that lasted several years.  My skin became pallid, my contact lenses became infected, and I developed a fiery rash on my forearm that spread to my first two fingers and joint in my thumb.  Inadvertently this got spread to the penis, up the urethra, and to my right kidney.  This bacteria was Enterococcus faecalis, and it comes from your poo.  It also not surprisingly lives in the soil.  Thus began peripheral neuropathy on my right side, that began behind my right eye and ear and ran the length of my right side.  My feet became infected, and each night I had to peel the rotting skin off my my little toes caused by its exotoxins.  Psoriasis developed consequently, and these plaques began to crawl up my shins.  When I had been at the dentist, the hygienist commented on the condition of the roof of my mouth.  After several years of piecing together gratuitous health care with no insurance, and later receiving Medicaid with Obama's expansion money, I was able to take the disparate words of the test results and comments of the various providers and formulate a diagnosis with the help of GOOGLE.  The facts were very specific and fit my symptoms to a tee.  A bacteria that does not effect the bladder but only the kidney.  Recurring sinus infections.  Systemic skin infection.  Referred arthritis.  Raw wounds on the feet.  Difficult to culture.  Existing  as commensal and faculative.  Needing another bacteria as a trigger.  Recurring pelvic infection.  Actinomycosis was the culprit, a bacteria that masquerades as a fungus and lives in the oral cavity.  It needs another bacteria to activate it.  The operative lessons learned are, our world has become infinitely more dirty.  Spewing micro-dust (blacks soot) from low flying commercial jets allows bacteria and fungus  to create a biofilm  often that can become fatal.  This soot is the medium to which the pathogens attach.  This exact phenomenon happened at the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC.  Its shiny stone dome became black and slimy covered with a dangerous biofilm created by low flying commercial jets.  They spent millions on laser treatments.  What is the homeowner supposed to do?  We retreat indoors.  

A Probable Armageddon?

Not only is the United States under the auspices of a "Heat Dome," also we are in a vacuum of accurate, factual, relevant information.  No one says it, and the media is almost in complete denial of reality because of corporate pressure, but the causes of most of America's problems (and the world) are simple.  They are being spun, hidden, ignored, and brandished for greed and global power.  The "outbreak" of Covid 19 was the same.  It was manufactured in the Wuhan Lab in China with United States government subsidized money hidden by the shell entities of the Center for Disease Control, National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Disease, and the Army's Combat Capabilities Development Command Chemical Biological Center.  Luckily Rand Paul's Royalty Transparancy Act of 2024 unanimously passed in the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committees.  The severity of the Covid outbreak was effective masking more dire and consequential problems in global health and life.  All indicator's seem to be pointing to a "Logan's Run" scenario, where humanity almost destroys the earth and chooses to live in a self-created biodome.  Elon Musk wants to desert Earth for Mars.  We have been growing food in artificial greenhouses for years.  Only pure evil could champion such a concept, destroying the Earth or rather attempting to eradicate the human population, so Greek God's will have full reign to frolic in God's paradise.  A Heat Dome is caused by an absence of oxygen, causing us to try to live in a vacuum.  It is an effective weapon of destruction, since life on Earth cannot subsist without oxygen.  Progress continues to raze much needed forestry, rain forest, and local foliage.  The illness of the Earth is what promulgated Covid, and this illness is being disguised on a massive scale.  Media, in sickening displays of sycophantic obedience (to Trump in his puppeteers), report the weather directly from the sources of its industrial disruption.  A "Heat Dome" has a tangible cause, and often it is the United States military.  America's military is nothing more than another shell entity being instructed by the same evil that is controlling the rest of the world.  Its' members simply are indoctrinated to conform, be silent, and take their pay.  If they are lucky they get a "shelter at home" order, before hell breaks loose in their local environment.  So many things are contributing to this assault on the Earth's health, it is difficult to discern their roots.  Private and publicly traded companies are to blame, and share holders are pacified with dividend checks.  This assault on the world is as complex as Hamas' attack on Israel in October.  The Washington Post printed an excellent and telling front page article explaining the depth of this attack.  It was several years in the making and relied upon confidential and secretive national security information that sat in Donald Trump's bathroom at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida.  Openly to guests he bragged about their value (stolen documents), and his dire financial recession necessitated their sale to the highest bidder.  The attack on Israel by Hamas was a convenient diversion from Trump's legal matters, and the case charging him with possession of these stolen documents has been stalled by his newly appointed minions in the courts.  That Environmentalism would be the salvation of the world seems silly.  "Save the whales!  Save the rain forests!  We need clean water!  We need clean air."  The proponents of these issues, often people with earthy, Hippie, native cultural perspectives easily of are made sport.  They have been an easy dupe for the Evil.  A simple campaign of misinformation and gas lighting has sufficed, but it began with the deconstruction of religion, public education, and and the polluting of media with propaganda.  This VACUUM is the world's most dire, threatening, and extreme antagonist.  Eradicate oxygen and fill the atmosphere with toxins including electromagnetic radiation, biofilms of algae, bacterial, and fungus, then try to breathe a breath of life.  Add a deadly man-made pathogen to the mix, and you have a formula for mass annihilation.  Anthony's Fauci's response was counter-intuitive to the majority of the established medical community.  Someone, probably Big Pharma, created their crisis and would offer a partial solution for their own gain.  The DuPont and Sackler families have been killing Americans for years, and no living human being on this earth does not have forever chemicals in their blood.  That American government never has been able to eradicate this threat shows the power of these family units that control the world.  DuPont chooses to litigate murder and disease on a case by case basis, and PFAS still is in the American watershed.  They change the name of the chemical, and stunted and underfunded Washington agencies struggle to keep up.  Only recently has North Carolinian Michael S Regan, as Administrator of the EPA, been able to change the status of C8 to a carcinogen.  I would rather not have had to fight these battles in my last chapters of life, but other generations of Americans have had it worse.  Slavery it would seem, no matter how much you ignore Critical Race Theory, is the soul of America.  With its far reaching negative connotations for all  Americans, the effects and results of the human struggle to survive this heinous ill bred spirituality, invention, innovation, culture, and art.  These are the will of the human being to survive and be human, and grievous odds were overcome.  If Facebook has a groups page called "Remembering Our Lost Friends" specifically devoted to residents of Fayetteville, North Carolina, then there are tangible reasons why people die more often here.  These reasons escalated with the Covid outbreak, and now the underlying assault on our and the Earth's health is being disguised for corporate and military greed.  To build a new historically black high school beside a rail yard at Fort Liberty, so the base can get federal dollars from the Pentagon is the most callow, selfish, irresponsible misstep a local government could make.  It would be the metaphor for the Evil that has attempted to overtake the world.  About who are we thinking?  Our children?  The future leaders of the world?  We are thinking of none of this, because the Earth and the human race now is seen as expendable.  It is prophesied in the Bible that Jesus will return to the Earth a second time, and those who are saved with be transported to a new planet of His making.  Those who refuse the salvation of God and His Son will be left in Armageddon to perish in hell flames as fire rains down from the sky and up from the oceans.  Is this to what we have to look forward in our lifetimes? 

The Probable Last Chapter of Reinvention

 Reinventing myself musically is new to me.  Openly I have grown bored with my traditional musical pursuits, especially the piano.  I am not tired of the piano, but having been a professional pianist on ships for a decade, having to approach music from the note specifics of the piano is not rewarding.  It is a job.  Learn and play the exact notes.  I decided to let that go when I left the ship industry in 2014.  I began a partnership with a local musician, and only did it make sense to try new things.  Easily we could have adhered to my historical repertoire of gig material.  It was much more fun and rewarding to just chuck all of that protocol and start from scratch.  No arrangements.  No set list.  No nothing.  We just let the creativity flow, and flow it did.  In the throes of trying to rediscover my musical soul again, I am remembering how successful this partnership became.  We have produced at least six, full length, all original CD's of music.  The music we have created and produced is more sonorous and satisfying than most American commercial music being made today.  The reason is because both of us are seasoned professional musicians with years of listening and playing experience.  We play a variety of instruments, and we have open minds.  Making music is facile to us, and with a bit of logistical guidance from my audio recording days at The Ohio State University, we were able to create an intimate recording environment that produced good sound.  This is key.  We had a small space, and we filled this space with live music, which we recorded.  We did not produce tracks.  We did not exchange projects.  We created live music like a band and recorded it for posterity's sake.  Quality live sound was our goal, and it was accomplished with a vintage drum kit and live amplifiers.  The keyboards were mixed through Ross Typhoon 18" three way PA cabinets, which also were recorded live through microphones.  Overdubs were recorded direct into the computer, but only after we have a live rhythm section sound that breathed like a real band.  This concept of recording was the same as most successful studios in American popular music history.  They were Motown (three live tracks in a dirt-floored garage), Muscle Shoals, and STAX Records.  The Wrecking Crew in LA cranked out most of America's commercial hits, but there was a lot or production in that studio.  When you band can play, sounds good, and has a nice little room, a competent engineer can make hits.  My own personal music projects, about a dozen CD's worth of material (mostly original), we accomplished with a MIDI studio.  Live sound was not the goal or the apparatus.  I used keyboard bass from a variety of sources and drum sounds from a variety of drum machines and tone modules.  My goal was to make them listenable and to groove.  As such I find myself at a juncture.  After five years of this live collaboration with Edmond Truman in his Man Cave recording studio, and after my mother's move to assisted living, I am trying to find my musical center again.  What I have realized is that live sound really is a product of a band, not an individual.  Bass and drums is the foundation of American popular music, and if and when you have that you have the foundation for musical creativity.  Playing with a drum machine is something unto itself, and I am wrestling with this limitation.  I know how to program drums and create a good groove and feel, but it is not fun like playing in a live rhythm section.  Also it does not sound the same.  I get close playing Fender bass with a good drum pattern, and I know how to record electric bass into Digital Performer.  My set up for this though has been in constant flux.  Recently after refurbishing our garage, I began reassembling a multi-keyboard set up to play live.  I don't know if I ever will use or play it commercially again in my lifetime, but I wanted to design it for my own satisfaction and intellectual prowess.  This set up has expanded into three planes, and for the first time I have keyboards on three sides of a square.  Finally I have developed a sound concept, and most of them are in a respectable place to offer their own unique sonic pallet.  (It took a while to decided whether the Rhodes or the acoustic piano would go on the right or left)  As it turns out my stumbling block was a transition of drum sounds.  My EMU Procussion module became noisy because of a leaky  power supply, so I decided to move own.  Into the trash bin it went.  I kept my Yamaha RX-17 drum machines, and they still suffice for Latin Percussion in the studio.  I even bought a dedicated Latin Percussion sound card for the Yamaha S90 digital piano.  It's sounds are realistic, but you have to set up a multi performance for every sound you will use it with.  I chose rather to use the great quality keyboard sounds of the piano itself, rather than sacrificing it for drums.  The choice of transitioning to a Roland Boss DR-880 drum machine was the right choice, but it meant learning a new machine.  I wanted a stand alone drum machine that you can program individual patterns and change their tempo on the fly for a live gig.  No studio set up.  No MIDI merge.  No outboard mixer for the drums.  The DR-880 hands down is the right choice, and only now am I finally inching toward a new musical goal.  I have been programming it slowly in my lap with headphones late at night.  It has been decades since I have had to program patterns into a machine.  Usually I just play the drum parts with my fingers on a MIDI keyboard into the sequencer.  Tonight I was able to figure out how to take an existing pattern in the DR-880, augment it, overdub additional parts, mix the kit, and create an interesting playing experience with which to play live on the new rig in the garage.  I know how to do this, but it has been a long time.  I created a four bar pattern, copied it five times, and overdubbed different percussion instruments for each pattern changing the flavor sightly for each sequence.  You then can switch them on the fly as you play live.  The result was a Jerry Goldsmith cue for his film, "The Russian House."  A percussion groove is the key, but it took sheer willpower to push it out. 

Nature Versus Nurture

 It could be easy to succumb to your immediate environment.  If we were reduced to survival mode living moment to moment fraught with ADD, neurosis, and anxiety, finding the concentration to overcome these odds could be difficult.  Over stimulation is a core component of American life.  It was conceived and implemented just like false healthcare.  When the human body needs solace, sleep, and proper health care, Americans now are antagonized.  Never would I have believed it, but it is ethnic cleansing and genocide on a grand scale.  My instincts told me when Donald Trump became President, we would be subject to some grievous heinous ill not unlike the Holocaust.  I was correct.  Perhaps it was Covid 19, or perhaps it was 2012 ten years later.  If many disparate cultures all predicted an apocalyptic event in one particular year, then there is credence in that intuition.  We have lived it, and one only has to pay attention.  Follow the money.  In the first few weeks of newly legalized sports betting in North Carolina, naive citizens lost half a billion dollars.  Five hundred million dollars was stolen from average North Carolinians, because we are not smart enough not to fall for their ploy.  We are being entertained by losing our money.  We deserve a better entertainment product than Kevin Hart making TV commercials.  We should get more from our gamble.  Instead of gambling we could be investing in tools, infrastructure, or personnel.  It is a visceral, underhanded, despicable addiction offering fake solace rather than support.  America has become an evil empire, and they all are after the tax payers money.  Now it is easier to scoop it out of Washington, DC than to earn it honestly with a product or service.  It's kind of like a dividend check.  Whether it is kick backs from foreign aid, lucrative government contracts, or embezzlement, American tax payers are being raped and pillaged.  Taxes, fees, and utilities, things controlled by the government are escalating.  This is a problem.  Washington is a swamp, and it is bogged down with evil.  The most stark and disturbing reminder of this modern American Holocaust is the new "Covid Wealth."  Americans won't notice when the all-ready billionaires' wealth pushes toward a trillion dollars.  What we will notice is the new wealth that is emerging post-Covid.  Huge hedge funds have begun to buy up housing, because they have the deep pockets and thus the new housing monopoly.  They are the only ones who have this capability, because the rest of America has gotten poorer in the midst of Covid.  The disparity between the extremely rich and the poor continues to grow, and the poor now have been targeted for extermination.  Not only do they want to take your money, they want to kill you first.  The sacrifice of America's health care system is evidence of this overt attempt to kill Americans.  I have experienced this personally in the last few years, and it is a difficult pill to swallow.  When you discover your doctor is a fascist, who has no interested in helping you, it is a shock.  When you discover his real goal is to kill you and take your money, then I understand that my instincts were right.  We have endured a covert war in America, and that war was meant to kill us.  It is not the first time.  Why would America send its young soldiers around the world to fight Communism in Viet Nam for the French?  A virus that appears out of nowhere and targets intravenous drug users and homosexuals was no accident.  It was created by the same evil that created Covid 19 in a lab.  It becomes more understandable why survivalists insist on owning AR-15 assault rifles.  A well-armed militia is the last line of defense against an advancing turned-fascist nation.  What is difficult is discerning the enemy, because they are embedded in our everyday ordinary lives.  They are in the government and in our military.  There are traitors, spies, and assassins, and they are no joke.  It would be wise to hold those accountable for the emergence of Covid 19, and to isolate its presence.  If it still is around, it is not magically appearing in the mist.  It is much more likely in historical context to be being expelled from rail tank cars or airborne strato tankers.  I never will see a C-130 Super Hercules the same way.  There is just too much leeway in the vast red tape of the military to rule out foul play.  When your Secretary of Defense is suffering from prostate cancer, he is not providing enough oversight to a vast network of probable illicit drug trafficking, weapons distribution, and imperialism. The attack on Israel by Hamas was made possible by Trump's stolen documents.  Openly he bragged about them.  The Washington Post published a front page article detailing the complex planning and intelligence needed to launch this attack on Israel.  It came at a convenient time to divert America's attention from Trump's woes, and Trump's son candidly said how his family wanted the Gaza beach front property.  All you have to do is listen.  Thus far the court system has hedged keeping this information from coming to light.  The lawsuit purposely has been stalled protecting traitor Number One, and insultingly he continues to run for the Presidency of the United States.  It is easier to stomach when you know the depth of the stench. 

Actinomycsis

 Enterococcus Faecalis is a gram-positive bacterium that can cause a variety of nosocomial infections, and urinary tract infections are the most common. These infections can be exceptionally difficult to treat, because of drug resistance.  Despite their troublesome nature, little is known about the host or bacterial factors necessary for E. faecalis to cause disease in the urinary tract.

Enterococcus faecalis is a tenacious species of bacteria that is growing increasingly resistant to antibiotics. The bacterium is capable of forming "microbial communities," in which it attaches to other microbial cells to form what's known as a biofilm. These biofilms are especially resistant to antibiotic therapy.2

 The ability of Enterococcus Faecalis  to cause disease in the kidney is well established by its tropism. The diagnosis of upper versus lower urinary tract infection caused by enterococci, as with gram-negative bacilli, is generally based on signs and symptoms. Thus the presence of fever and flank pain, with or without lower tract symptoms of dysuria, frequency, and urgency suggest upper tract infection.

Histologic examination of bladder and kidney tissues demonstrated that E. faecalis induced an inflammatory response in the kidney but not in the bladder. 

E. faecalis-mediated urinary tract infection appears to occur via a strikingly different mechanism than E. coli-mediated urinary tract infection.  In a typical E. coli urinary tract infection, the bacteria invade the superficial umbrella cells and replicate to high levels, forming intracellular biofilms, a process that induces a TLR4-mediated cytokine response that recruits neutrophils to the site of infection. In enterococcal urinary tract infection, there is little to no inflammation in the bladder 
Furthermore, neutrophils represented only a minority of the inflammatory cells targeted to the site of infection, which typically is in the kidney. We found that TLR2, which is hypothesized to play a similar role in the innate response to gram-positives as TLR4 does for gram-negative pathogens,  does not play a substantial role in the innate response to E. faecalis in the urinary tract

Since facultative anaerobes are able to grow in both the presence and absence of oxygen, they can survive in many different environments, adapt easily to changing conditions, and have a selective advantage over other bacteria.  As a result most life-threatening pathogens are facultative anaerobes^.

The ability of facultative anaerobic pathogens to survive without oxygen is important, since their infection is shown to reduce oxygen levels in their host's gut tissue. Moreover the ability of facultative anaerobes to limit oxygen levels at infection sites is beneficial to them and other bacteria, as dioxygen can form reactive oxygen species (ROS). These species are toxic to bacteria and can damage their DNA among other constituents.

Actinomycosis is an infrequent invasive bacterial disease, that has been recognized for over a century. Actinomyces spp. are filamentous Gram-positive bacilli mainly belonging to the human commensal flora of the oropharynx, gastrointestinal tract, and urogenital tract. To date multiple different clinical features of actinomycosis have been described as various anatomical sites, such as face, bone and joint, respiratory tract, genitourinary tract, digestive tract, central nervous system, skin, and soft tissue structures. 

Actinomyces are often isolated with other normal commensals such as Aggregatibacter Actinomycetemcomitans, Eikenella Corrodens, Capnocytophaga, Fusobacteria, Bacteroides, Staphylococci, Streptococci, or Enterobacteriaceae depending on the site of infection.

It is difficult to discriminate colonization of mucosa-contaminating samples and infection due to Actinomyces, except when the culture is pure and associated with the presence of polynuclear neutrophils.

Actinomyces infections could be polymicrobial and associated with other bacteria named “companion microbes,” which contribute to initiation and development of infection by inhibiting host defenses or reducing oxygen tension.

The multimicrobial nature of infection is well described in animal models and in human cervicofacial actinomycosis.

Isolation and identification of these causative bacteria occur in only a minority of cases; the failure rate of culture is high because of previous antibiotic therapy, inhibition of Actinomyces growth by concomitant and/or contaminant microorganisms, inadequate culture conditions, or inadequate short-term incubation.

Because of the microaerophilic or strict anaerobic character of Actinomyces, strict anaerobic processing (rapid transport to the laboratory and/or transport in an anaerobic transport medium) and anaerobic growth conditions should be used for primary isolation.

The most appropriate clinical specimens are tissue from surgical biopsy or pus; swabs must be avoided.

The identification of Actinomyces in mucosa, where these bacteria are normal inhabitants, is of little significance in the absence of sulfur granules.

A Gram stain of the specimen is usually more sensitive than culture, especially if the patient had received antibiotics. Actinomyces are non-spore-forming Gram-positive rods. Except for A. meyeri, which is small and non-branching, all the other species are branching filamentous rods.

 Growth of Actinomyces is slow; it appears within at least 5 days and may take up to 15–20 days. Thus incubation of at least 10 days is required before conclusion of a negative culture. Most Actinomyces spp. are facultative anaerobes, but some relevant species (such as A. meyeri) are strictly anaerobic. Cultures must be incubated in an anaerobic atmosphere.

 Penicillin G or amoxicillin are considered drugs of choice for the treatment of actinomycosis.  Third-generation cephalosporins are less frequently used even if they are considered to be active on A. israelii; It is important to note that some species are resistant to ceftriaxone (Actinomyces europaeus and Actinomyces graevenitzii).  Piperacillin–tazobactam, imipenem, and meropenem are considered to be active, but the use of these broad-spectrum antibiotics should be limited to avoid acquisition of resistant flora. Oxacillin, cloxacillin, and cephalexin, a first-generation cephalosporin, are not considered to be active. Metronidazole and aminoglycosides have no in vitro activity against Actinomyces. Fluoroquinolones (Ciprofloxacin and Moxifloxacin) are usually considered to be inactive, but data is limited and controversial.  Doxycycline is considered to have a poor activity on Actinomyces spp., but clinical successes have been reported with this drug.  Macrolides and Clindamycin have been used successfully as alternatives.  As Actinomyces spp. do not produce beta-lactamases, it is not useful to combine amoxicillin with beta-lactam inhibitors such as clavulanic acid, except if co-pathogens such as Enterobacteriaceae are involved in the disease

 

Enterococcus faecalis  formerly classified as part of the group D Streptococcus system, is a Gram-positive commensal bacterium inhabiting the gastrointestinal tracts of humans^]. Like other species in the genus Enterococcus,  E. faecalis is found in healthy humans and can be used as a probiotic.  As an opportunistic pathogen E. faecalis can cause life-threatening infections especially in the nosocomial (hospital) environment, where naturally high levels of antibiotic resistance found in E. faecalis contribute to its pathogenicity.  E. faecalis has been frequently found in reinfected root canal-treated teeth in prevalence values ranging from 30% to 90% of cases Re-infected root canal-treated teeth are nine times more likely to harbor E. faecalis than cases of primary infections.

Physiopathological pathways of cervicofacial actinomycosis explain that predisposing conditions include poor oral hygiene and oral mucosa trauma by dental extraction,  Other predisposing factors include male sex, immunosuppression, alcoholism, and malnutrition. 

Although cervicofacial actinomycosis is the most frequent form of actinomycosis with bone involvement, Actinomyces spp. could also be involved in extra-facial bone and joint infection. Various clinical forms of extra-facial bone and joint actinomycosis have been described: hematogenous spread of localized actinomycosis; contiguous spread of pulmonary actinomycosis to the spine; and polymicrobial bone and joint infection following bone exposition.

Concerning hematogenous spread of localized actinomycosis, Brown  reported a case of hematogenous infection of total hip arthroplasty 9 months after a noninvasive dental procedure with Actinomyces spp. in intraoperative specimen cultures.   Zaman  reported a case of chronic hematogenous infection due to Actinomyces spp. of prosthetic joint in an intravenous drug user.  Concerning the contiguous spread of pulmonary actinomycosis to the spine, case 2  had contiguous spread to the spine with thoracic spondylitis of the T3 vertebral body associated with anterior paravertebral abscess).

Genitourinary tract actinomycosis is the second most frequent clinical form of actinomycosis. The main clinical feature of genitourinary tract actinomycosis is pelvic actinomycosis in women using an intrauterine device (IUD).  Other clinical presentations have been described, such as primary bladder actinomycosis and testicular actinomycosis.

Primary bladder actinomycosis can mimic bladder carcinoma, with macroscopic hematuria associated with thickening of the bladder wall.

Symptoms are unspecific, and patients frequently experience focal weakness, sensory losses, and seizures.

Primary skin and soft-tissue actinomycosis is poorly described. Skin disruption may facilitate invasion of Actinomyces spp.

A granuloma is a focal aggregate of immune cells which forms in response to a persistent inflammatory stimulus. It characteristically demonstrates the compact organization of mature macrophages which may or may not be associated with other inflammatory cell types. Granulomas are evolutionarily ancient structures found throughout both vertebrate and invertebrate species and are likely to have evolved as a protective mechanism to destroy or encapsulate foreign material.  They were first identified and described as "tubercules" in the lungs of tuberculosis sufferers as early as 1679. 

Granuloma formation begins with an inflammatory trigger, such as an infectious pathogen or a foreign body. Macrophages are recruited to the site of inflammation and activated as part of the innate immune response. If the recruited and activated macrophage is unable to remove the inflammatory stimulus efficiently, a further immune response may be triggered, orchestrated by dendritic cells and major histocompatibility complex II. Additional macrophages are recruited to the site, and a chronic inflammatory reaction develops. The macrophages form a tight aggregate around the inflammatory stimulus and may become surrounded by a peripheral cuff of lymphocytes. This inflammatory focus is known as a granuloma.

 

 

 

 

Rail Monopolies

It was not good news how SCOTUS ruled on gerrymandered voting districts in South Carolina.  North Carolina is stuck with gerrymandered voting districts after several appeals and a ruling by SCOTUS.  The Supreme Court is moving to the right, and while they are hedging on a decision about Donald Trump's candidacy, you can feel the ball rolling into his court.  I have given up.  I will not see America turn around in my lifetime, so I have stopped diligently reading the news.  It is all inflammatory, bad, or propaganda.  It makes life that much more difficult living inside your own self-created bubble of morality.  So many things are against us it seems unbearable at times.  I don't think commercial jets should be able to fly so low over urban areas where people reside, and that includes Skibo Road, Cross Creek Mall, and downtown Fayetteville.  It is obvious the airlines' opinions of the Fayetteville citizenry.  They could care less.  The homeless, indigent, drug-addicted folks roaming the streets don't take the Red Eye to Charlotte demanding fast WiFi.  The elite few get the good treatment.  The poor struggling people further are persecuted.  They kick you when you are down.  Commercial aircraft never flew this route before, and Piedmont's new direct to Charlotte set the precedent.  Who will notice if they strafe your neighborhood at five in the morning?  Then six, then seven, and then eight.  By that time all the air has been sucked out and turned into carbon emission.  That is to what we wake up, the refuse of the important.  They shit on us.  No one shits on us more than Wabtec.  One only has to watch their professional promotional video about Locotrol to understand.  The only thing they care about is moving more freight faster to increase revenue.  Finally I have discovered that the communication platforms on these freight locomotives are what are so disruptive to everyday life.  They have WiFi.  They have Cell.  They have every imaginable kind of radio transmission available on a locomotive.  Why does a train engine need to be communication central?  There is an uplink.  There are engine diagnostics.  There is distributed power.  What they don't realize is that all of this freight operates in the back yards of America's citizens.  It would seem we are not important.  Their example is hauling long trains through winding passes, not the Eastern Seaboard from Florida to new Jersey.  The protocol is the same.  Twenty thousand locomotives equipped with remote control.  They can put a 4400 horsepower locomotive anywhere in the train with no engineer.  Less employees, more profit.  There is no mention of radiation, emissions, or adverse consequences to human health.  Finally I realized why my television reception falters and my WiFi is intermittent.  It is because these locomotives have all of these capabilities to control their trains, and they switch from one to another at liberty.  Their IGBTs and high voltage electrical processing could power a small city, and no one bats an eye that amount of power rumbling down the tracks.  North of Washington they use electric.  We, the South, are the rust belt where diesel is king.  There is no oversight, no government regulation, and no holds barred.  Freight rail is a nemesis. 

New Leadership in Fayetteville

It's time to talk about the reality of Fayettenam.  The war dynamic always has been a part of Fayetteville fabric.  Although surreal in certain ways considering the preparation for killing only is a few miles away in the field, never did it overtake mainstream Fayetteville.  Always there was an elite social class who frequented Highland Country Club, filled the prestigious historical churches, and demanded a higher quality of life than war.  As this generation of older money began to die out, and BRAC brought Ground Forces Command to Fort Bragg, things changed.  9/11 ushered in a new American dynamic of domestic terrorism.  The Patriot Act was born, the NSA began monitoring our communication, and slowly we have succumbed to the military industrial complex.  The southern Eastern seaboard, Virginia to Florida, has become the military industrial complex.  It is not just North Carolina anymore.  (although probably it never was)  Norfolk, Charleston, Jacksonville, and much of Florida are hosts of the military.  The booming artillery of the Marines firing their guns at Fort Liberty only is a small part.  The breadth of aerial training is massive, and one only has to look at one of several free websites that monitor air traffic.  The most surprising (and it may be Robin Sage) is when four low-flying C-17's followed by four C-130 Hercules fly in circles around North Carolina.  An aerial brigade did deploy recently, so they must get their training.  The onslaught of Apache attack helicopters that flew four at a time through the night has waned.  None of this seems to be related to what has happened to Fayetteville.  Separately what is left of the city of Fayetteville is not dissimilar to the south side of Chicago, Watts, or any other barrio in a large city that has succumbed to poverty and crime.  If there are no trained workers who will work for less than minimum wage, then that faction lives on the street.  Covid dealt a stark blow to brick and mortar retail stores and restaurants.  The GOP does not champion small businesses.  Large corporate monopolies often owned by wealthy hedge funds have consumed America.  Now we are a big money entity, but most people can't survive.  There are the elite rich, and there are the poor, and a once active middle class has deteriorated.  Teachers once were a crucial part of the middle class.  It is simple and easy to understand this devolution.  We no longer champion public education.  Poor people are forced to live on the streets.  Shopping for groceries and home items has been invaded by indigent people.  They are using commercial real estate for their homes.  Private businesses are hosts for parasites, and the businesses are suffering.  This is wrong for many reasons, but laws are vague and indigents often wander free.  Fayetteville has not solved its homeless problem even with a brand new day center downtown.  The soup kitchens have closed.  What are these people supposed to do?  They create their own society, and it is recreational drug use, panhandling, and prostitution.  They are grifters, and it is a huge bumpy rash on the streets of Fayetteville.  I have not been threatened,  and I understand this subculture.  There are times when reason and sanity disappear, and chaotic mayhem ensues.  I was at McDonald's recently and ordered a No. 7, Medium.  (There used to be two choices)  I was charged for seven medium fries at a cost of $23.00.  I could not through their intercom explain I wanted a fish sandwich meal.  The line in the drive through was long, and I did not have the energy to engage.  I drove off in disgust and patroned Burger King.  Insanity it would seem has infiltrated mainstream America.  It is in politics.  There are no police.  With no cruisers,  street people push the envelope of decent living.  Leadership in Fayetteville is the problem; there are examples.  There is a lack of police.  We have a mostly unused minor league baseball stadium, and it is a view for expensive condos.  They are proposing a one hundred and fifty million dollar performing arts center in the middle of downtown, homeless central.  There is an unfinished professional tennis compound.  The paving work on Bragg Boulevard is a joke.  Streets in Fayetteville need attention, and there are pot holes and patches.  The Joe Biden infrastructure money is sitting in the bank, and it is being used for the wrong things.  The city and its patrons are being ignored, and a clandestine group of Fayetteville insiders are raiding the coffers.  It is time for new leadership. 

Real Estate or Gentrification?

 I should write a novel, because the reality of America today is too bizarre to believe.  It's not, but it has been a long time since this kind of personal strife has beset America.  At sixty-one I am lucky to have lived a mostly peaceful life.  When I am forced to look back (which I don't do often), it is a mine field littered with my suffering.  As an adult we find ways through, continue to grow, and discard negativity.  Our personal happiness (as is often said), mostly is our choice.  "You're about as happy as you choose to be."  Sometimes, like now, your community or environment won't allow you to be  happy.  Their misery is to intense and widespread.  To stay abreast of reality one must be open to this dynamic, experience it, try to understand it, and then formulate a plan to move forward.  This last week has been exactly that, and it took me most of that time to figure out it was not me.  It is the people around you.  As a Christian I am empathetic, but to survive one cannot be pulled into the abyss.  You must resist.  Last week (in a novel) should be called, "The Stealth Assault of Robin Sage."  Last Sunday was Mother's Day, and we enjoyed an afternoon tea at The Carolina Inn.  Come Monday a post-holiday depression ensued, and it must be associated with the Robin Sage exercise at Fort Liberty.  I now will call it, "Trying to increase your pay by getting the Green Beret."  Because we do not have boots on the ground, I have mixed feelings about the American fighting force.  I did not support a war in Afghanistan, because the ultimate goal was minerals in their mountains and a lucrative poppy crop.  (Poppy Cock!)  America is over thirty trillions dollars in debt, we have no grass roots economy, because we outsourced our manufacturing, agriculture, and everything else to cheaper foreign labor markets, and we became addicted to wireless technology.  This shift, streaming music and video, managing our homes, families, and businesses online, and receiving acquiring medical care has proven a pitfall.  Over the long term America's existing and fastidiously-created systems were more efficient and reliable.  The "wired" network of communication is superior.  You cannot harvest all electrical signals from their insulated conduits and release them into the air.  It is ludicrous and belies the laws of physics.  That campaign, the campaign of a wireless economy based upon previously prohibited microwave frequencies, has proven detrimental to America.  Its "green" campaign continues, but Americans are starting to understand.  We are unhealthy, and there are reasons.  It's called the "time card." The time card is weaker people forgetting or not paying attention over time.  The Monday after Mother's Day a bleak vacuum emerged.  In stark contrast to normal Fort Liberty training (noisy aircraft, booming artillery, and rumbling fright trains), last week was the most challenging.  I call it "Major Suckage," major suckage because of the huge enveloping vacuum, and Major Suckage, the Army officer who oversees freight operations at the Honeycutt Marshalling Yard.  When they assemble military trains at Fort Liberty and CSX pulls them into Fort Junction, life in Fayettenam is a pittance.  The telltale sign of this military activity is a common moniker of Fayettenam.  The heat and humidity of Fayetteville, North Carolina (which has receded somewhat in recent years), is caused by Military Ocean Terminal Sunny Point.  A deep water military port sitting at the mouth of the Cape Fear River south of Wilmington, when trains are loaded at Fort Liberty, traverse the CSX tracks through Pembroke to the large sorting yard at Leeland, here they are shunted to Sunny Point to be loaded onto waiting cargo ships.  A huge vacuum envelopes the entire Carolina coast.  Why does this happen?  Weak people will object, because we now live in a culture of fantasy in cyber space.  There is no pollution here, and because of the neglect of our mother Earth, the human population has become endangered.  Internal combustion engines burn air and fuel.  They breathe air from the environment for free and replace it with carbon.  To say comtrails are not harmful to people is lunacy.  While the white ribbons in the sky may contain water vapor, what comes out of a jet or diesel engine is not copacetic to human health.  It is harmful.  What happens to me in the wee hours of the morning when a freight train passes or a jet strafes our house covers the Cape Fear River Valley.  The breathable naturally-created oxygen humans need to survive is sucked out, burned for propulsion, and replaced with carbon emissions, heat, vibration, electricity, magnetism, and intense barometric pressure.  This is not a formula for survival, and this is one reason why we sick  When the core necessities of human survival are compromised for transit, then we are in crisis.  If we kill off humans, who will use these commodities?  Who will travel?  Who will consume energy?  I don't think AI ever will replace human beings, but I am beginning to think a small group of sociopaths are using it to thin down the population.  The proliferation of wireless airborne technology has reached an uncontrolled state of seeming domestic terrorism.  This operation seems to be cooperating punishing and controlling specific undesirable cross sections of the population.  The NSA via the Patriot Act has gone rogue and assumed the identity of an American Schutzstaffel.  We are being surveilled and manipulated by wireless technology, because this technology makes it easier, the same way living in cyber space is easier and more idyllic than living in Earth's reality.  No one has thought to question the Star Link satellite network, a low orbit band of snooping transmitters.  What I am describing is dystopian, but it is real.  Maybe we are on the cusp of this trend.  With AI in the forefront it would be easy to imagine a surveillance network which would influence your life with subtle changes to your daily challenges.  It could make things easier, or it could make things harder.  It could provide positive reinforcement or provide negative reinforcement.  If you think to much or outside the box of prescribed American life, it could make your life hell.  In most likelihood always this has been the case, but it occurred within human society through social class.  Say and do the right things, you move up the ladder.  Say or do the wrong things, and you get blacklisted.  Not that long ago it was Communist activity which elicited this ire, and it was correct for America to be proactive about this treasonous behavior.  Perhaps it became a snipe hunt and went off the rails like this onslaught of wireless technology.  I know for real that someone is watching and listening to every single thing I do.  When a home is supposed to provide you financial security and mental refuge, this mechanism can be put into play to force you out.  Selectively they can target you, a chosen malcontent, and push you out.  It's called Real Estate. 

Transparancy of the Military

This is a historic time in America, and it is not good.  Politicians actively suggesting and condoning insurrection as strategy to win political office is extreme.  It should be illegal.  Freedom of Speech, like many other tenets of the U.S. Constitution, should be debated.  Traditionally this occurred in institutions of higher learning, perhaps even in junior and high school.  I remember debating scenarios in The Governor's School of North Carolina that were similar.  They made you think through certain situations and decide if it was a favorable or unfavorable outcome.  The freedom to challenge other constitutional tenets vocally as intimidation or antagonism in an upcoming election is objectionable.  A party announcing they will not accept election results in 2024 is a thesis perspectus of anarchy.  While it is just talk at the moment, the powers at be should take note.  This leads us to the United States military.  I live in close proximity to the world's largest military base.  In the past there was a clear delineation between military life and civilian life.  The city had not become militarized.  With a newer less educated generation suffering from obstacles not encountered in decades, this line becomes gray.  With Donald Trump's gaslighting, campaign of false information, and utter deviance truth and liberty have become challenged.  I no longer trust the United States military.  General Mark Milley retired as the Chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff.  He had a clear grasp of Trump's wrongdoing and upheld the ideals of freedom and democracy.  Never would he allow the United States military to be turned upon the people.  If you look at other dictatorships worldwide, you see their military as a core component of authoritarianism.  Eventually the established national military is turned upon the people.  The once open borders of Fort Bragg have been replaced with check points, tighter security, and a sense of separation.  What caused this change?  The answer is 9/11.  So many things that have been bad for the country came about in response to 9/11.  The Patriot Act.  The Department of Homeland Security.  The buttoning up of Fort Bragg.  With an ailing Secretary of Defense not capable of overseeing the Pentagon, and a new Chairman of the Joints Chief, and promotions hanging in limbo from one senator, the United States military no longer is transparent.  We need able capable leaders in Washington, and we have old men, stooges, and extremists.  It is so disturbing and overwhelming, most Americans choose to tune out.  We see no favorable end to our plight.  I see nothing but the loss of democracy to bully Confederates.  How serious should we take the threats of the GOP?  The gun lobby will not relent on the sale of assault weapons, although they have murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent citizens.  Some suggest this mass murder is the result of mental illness or criminal behavior.  Finally I realize the reason why we won't outlaw assault weapons again, is because we are afraid of being attacked by our own military.  If an able and prepared military have this potential and capability, and they are led astray by a zealot leader like Donald Trump, how could a population protect their freedoms?  The influence of the military is insurmountable for many reasons.  When a force actively is training for war in the name of national security, we must trust the leaders of the military to instill in their charges allegiance to the American people.  It is for the populace they are fighting.  It is not themselves.  I see a blurring of this line and a reverence to their own cause, as military members are brainwashed into submission.  They are tempted with expensive homes, vehicles, and benefits, just like average Americans.  No one is candid to say their salaries are provided by the tax payers.  They work for the tax payers.  I'm not sure that one guy at Fort Liberty sees clearly.  

Dr. Scarymelagos

 Sitting in that little room waiting for the doctor is the litmus test for sanity.  Many doctors leverage that scenario into their financial favor.  Like any sideshow snake oil salesman, the bad doctors have no moral code.  The medical establishment has succumbed.  Enter Dr. Scarymelagos with no medical license in North Carolina.  A professed urologist, he is not a neurologist or any other type of specialist.  He told me so in his opening prologue.  When he asked me, and I told him about my symptoms, I should have realized I had the wrong doctor.  Peripheral neuropathy, mucous in the urine, and high blood pressure, all tell tale signs of a kidney infection.  He was not interested.  He denied I had blood in my urine before the test results arrived.  Profusely he patronized me.  With his digit fully inserted in my anus he said, "No cancer."  Why did he suggest a prostate biopsy?  Why did he want to look inside my bladder?  The answer is simple.  While touted as surgically superior urologists like to practice, whether you need the procedure or not.  He did not order a urine culture.  He did not check my blood for infection.  He did not prescribe pain medication for a kidney stone.  He did nothing to help me, except order an eight thousand dollar MRI, of which Lasthealth charged me without a blink of the eye.  A year later I am suffering from the same undiagnosed illness, but we are going to get to the bottom of it.  After I tried to file a complaint about Dr. Scarymelagos, I discovered he had no active license in North Carolina.  He had dropped the ball in almost every conceivable way.  It verged on malpractice.  I good place to start is a hundred urologists at the bottom of the ocean. 

A Fraught Liquid

 It is time to write again; I can't feel my soul.  I am depressed, and it is Sunday.  When I can't discern my soul, I struggle.  Motivation is my daily routine.  I am motivated to produce.  When I feel bad, I sit down and reflect and engage the affective.  Lack of feeling causes depression.  If your brain does not release, you don't feel.  If you create physical pleasure, you feel hedonistic.  Enlightened medical circles teach masturbation for older men for the prostate.  This is unspoken, and with woke society it will be a miracle if humanity survives.  The meek may inherit the earth, but the meek shouldn't be confused with the inability to understand or make decisions.  Not discerning one's own gender is the beginning of this tirade.  The adage, "Jazz is anything," is appropriate.  Jazz isn't "anything," and a connotation that suggests this gaslights its significance in American history.  It is counterculture (a cop out), and an excuse for refusing to learn and grow.  Those who expect to be given to, because they deserve it, will not inherit the earth.  The meek will not be confused with those who can't understand.  We seek to be educated and enlightened and eat a slice of daily humble pie.  Pride is not a sin.  The human race wouldn't  have evolved.  Accomplishment creates serenity.  If you completed your work, you rest and enjoy.  Sitting back and doing nothing should not be confused with the meek.  Meek is manners and a recognized ability to keep stay silent.  My brain will not provide a list of things to do.  It is awash in the rubbish of the neighborhood; I spend time trying to figure out why I am inhibited.  I browse to the the Washington Post, and their front page stark.  Totalitarian Autocracy.  Militarization.  Limited Cultural Rights.  Vladimir Putin's ideals are anti-Jazz.  Jazz, the real jazz, the empowerment of the human mind and soul, and its emotional expression through music is Putin's enemy.  My chosen vocation, expressive musical language and identity, are the enemy of the second most powerful man.  It is crucial for the most powerful nation to take a stand.  Is it possible the nation that created Jazz doesn't understand?  Is it racism?  I have lost touch with America.  For the first time in my life I feel the perspective of an ex-patriot.  It would not be better abroad.  Like a home in a neighborhood that doesn't swing, I am trapped in a selfabsorbant, ignorant, and antagonistic nation.  My depression is oppression.  I feel no support with my involvement in jazz music.  I feel resistance.  When I play, abruptly I feel the cold deaf ears of those who do not understand.  You do not have to understand, but you have to feel.  You must feel, and in America it is perilous.  You are vulnerable.  You are exposed, and your are weak.  To be human you must feel.  My ninety-two year old mother does not like it when I feel, because my feelings are different than hers.  When she is happy,  I am malcontent.  If I am happy, she is not.  Family blood is a fraught liquid. 

Taking a Hit!

The American people have taken a hit, and it wasn't marijuana.  When people say to me, "We should be happy to be walking around alive."  WTF?  So many people have died.  What happened to America?  People are fat, because they rely upon fast food.  Fast food has become poison.  Groceries we buy at the store seem not much better.  It is hit and miss.  Is this supply chain problems?  My gut tells me it is labor.  We took such a hit from Covid, sheltering in place, not attending school, and ordering meals online, we have lost track of the traditional work regime.  For America's labor force to return, things must change.  Labor cannot be the enemy.  It is.  Companies are downsizing, retooling to AI, and eliminating jobs.  People no longer are valued.  War is upon the people.  This is not America.  No longer are we America.  We are stunted step children of the super rich, and they forsook us.  The people were America.  Like Trump we no longer favor the people of America.  Too many foreigners.  Too many uneducated peasants.  The unfair white soul of America is no longer.  There are Mexicans.  There are Asians.  There are Arabs.  This disparity cannot create a mainstream or Main Street.  The exploitation of the internet, of television, and of radio, and their control by a few has stunted America.  Corporate monopolies seek to control everything.  Hedge Funds are buying homes.  I am watching a Pearl Jam video, and it is a glimpse into the extinct.  Hundreds of thousands of healthy, active, energetic American youth are engaged in fellowship.  Is it rebellion?  Whatever it is, it no longer exists, because America took a hit!  Too bad it was not the right kind.  

The Arduous Task of the Family Home

 The transition of a family home is not easy.  Perhaps the easiest method is the most common.  Children have moved on and established lives of their own often with a family.  They have no interest in the childhood home.  It was painful for me to watch the Thorp residence transition.  Because the home often is a metaphor for the family, the entire family, it may cause more grief than just the passing of one family member.  You abstractly are burying a family history, and this is difficult.  There is no way around it except to hide.  You can ignore the family bereavement, or you can acknowledge it.  The easiest way is to let others handle the transition of the estate no matter how large or how small.  Estate companies exist for this reason, because it is exceedingly difficult to sort through decades of personal belongings and attempt to give them adequate closure.  Family money is beneficial in most cases, and wealth is accrued through families.  There are a handful of families in the world that hold most of the wealth.  They know the benefits of estate planning and inheritance and how to avoid excessive taxation.  The GOP is an expert, and bounden duty of Republicans use every loophole in the book to amass and save their fortunes.  To discard a family home because of potential emotional strife is wasteful.  Real property or real estate is one of the most valuable commodities, and it should be respected.  The grift is the grief of the absence or passing of a family member.  The family home is a reminder, not a commemoration.  It is possible to transform the home into a healthy future living environment but not without considerable reflection, remembrance, bereavement, and toil.  I can't say there is any pleasure in the loss of a loved one.  There may be an inheritance, and down the road that should be an asset.  It is a scenario relying upon patience.  There is little immediate gratification, and often you may regress in mental adjustment.  You will experience more loss trying to resurrect a family home.  For this reason most families chose to move on.  They leave the difficult tasks to others, mainly an estate company who will bear the burden of finding and organizing family belongings.  I know from first hand experience I have learned more about my mother's life sorting through her belongings than having been reared by her.  Perhaps this is natural.  The parental relationship exists for a reason, and while children can be friends with their parents, the priority for parents is to rear healthy and productive children.  This means discipline, structure, and boundaries.  While I lived with my mother the last ten years, it was more difficult than my childhood.  An adult child living with an aging parent requires an extremely strong will.  My mother was more demanding than I remember, but looking back I saw it was her teaching methodology.  It forced me to excel in my decisions and finding solutions to problems.  It was easy enough, because her lack of knowledge and experience in certain areas made it easy for me to find successful remedies.  She challenged me with her shortcomings, and with thirty years of experience and knowledge I was able to solve most problems.  Now that is no longer is present in our home, it is a different ballgame.  Things have become much more difficult, because the senior voice is absent.  With its head strong will, holding of power, and authority gone, there is nothing against which to rebel.  Your mind becomes awash in doubt, uncertainty, and weakness.  You are on your own, and your neighbors are not your family.  They are not blood.  They are not kin.  You are competing with the Jones's.  There is ZERO support.  If you succumb to your emotions, then you will suffer.  You must use your mind.  The home by nature and design is intended to support you.  That could include a family.  Perhaps not.  How does and can a home support a human being?  It must provide the things one needs to survive.  Above that requirement if a home is to be happy and nurturing, it must do more.  It must do more today, because the concepts of community, fellowship, communion, and solidarity have come into question from a Trump presidency.  Donald Trump effectively divided the American people and cast them against each other for the first time since the Civil War.  A large faction of Hippies protested the War in Viet Nam, and the Civil Rights Movement recognized and fought against discrimination.  Domestic terrorism, mass public slaughter, and hate crimes were not the norm.  Radicalization has made life in America more difficult.  Your home is all you have, whether it is a trailer, a van, a tent, a bunk, or a luxury condominium.  You need for it to support your physical, mental, and emotional needs, because the minute you step outside into the urban battle field you will be tested.  The home with its support is meant to revive you from battle.  Uncluttering decades of family belongings may be the first step, because these things while sentimental, will not help you in your daily routine of survival.  Determining what can remain to remind you of your roots, and what must go because it has become a deterrent is an arduous task. 

Whining and Dhining (about Piedmont)

 By nature I am not a whiner.  Cumberland County is in the 80th percentile for not having access to appropriate medical care including primary care doctors.  Robeson County is higher.  North Carolina used to 50th for the highest teacher pay in the country.  Now we are about 47th.  You can bet on sports via "Sports Book," and loose your money over your smart phone.  You don't have to be present.  If I need to shop for groceries, I can frequent the local Harris Teeter and battle the Nazi lesbians who hate men.  (I think they must hate everyone except for their prey, some other lesbian who potentially may submit to be their lover)  It is a brutal shopping experience.  If you want to experience discrimination, try being a 60 year old single man in professional clothes.  Charlie Rose.  Harvey Weinstein.  Jeffrey Epstein and the rest of the sexual harassers who have ruined the reputation of most white men.  The White Devil.  "Kill de white mon."  This is what I utter under my breath when I shop, and it relieves the tension.  The most depressing thing is being surveilled, walking around my house and knowing the army is listening.  (Perhaps it is the NSA)  The only time I can sleep peacefully and restfully at night, is when there is a short lapse of an active freight train on the CSX tracks less than a mile from our neighborhood.  They run constantly 24/7, and they use sundown as a ruse to disguise their rampant activity.  Fayetteville is the only city that gets hotter after the sun goes down.  What could have been considered normal train activity now is radical like many things in the United States.  It begins at 5:00 a.m. every day.  Who goes to work at five o'clock in the morning?  They have to pay shareholders.  When the direct to Charlotte Red Eye flight offered by the new Piedmont flies over our neighborhood at 5:15 a.m., I am jarred from slumber.  The pilot does not climb to a traditional altitude to spare citizens below.  Because they think we are sleeping, and because they want to get to Charlotte as speedily as possible, they fly just above the treeline.  I wake up to a vacuum of absent air sucked into jet turbine engines replaced with heat, vibration, and toxic micro-particles that penetrate the walls of our homes.  It happened this morning.  I was sleeping peacefully in a cool temperature with a short lapse of traveling freight, and suddenly my body begins to ache.  First my shoulder and arm and then my hips and legs.  The air is sucked out of my bedroom, and I wake up in a vacuum of excessive heat and vibration.  The plane sucks the air out of my bedroom and replaces it with lethal pathogens.  Who needs a foreign terrorist when we have Piedmont?  Ask Johnny Carson. 

Sour Grapes/Strange Fruit

To continue to harp on the past ills of a nation seems futile, but without an astute understanding of those possible crimes against humanity, again we may be susceptible to such assaults.  It was suspect that a virus emerged that targeted a specific undesirable sub culture of American life.  Homosexuals and intravenous drug users?  Could nature be so specific to target a group and accelerates its evolution hundreds of thousands of years to attack only them?  With the concrete knowledge of biological and chemical warfare within national governments besides our own, it is logical viruses have emerged.  Whether they escaped or were released will be the seeming eternal question.  With the emergence of a Donald Trump presidency, illicit white collar crime has escalated.  It is easy to extrapolate that covert agencies, of which the FBI, CIA, and NSA are a part, easily could sanction and utilize such weapons.  Nefarious spy planes cloaked by a myriad of shell companies roam the American skies looking for terrorists.  The Patriot Act after 9/11 easily provided the means for such surveillance.  It has not changed, but the prevalence of domestic terrorism has shifted to overt public slaughter.  The availability of assault weapons to the general public has fueled this practice.  In an uncanny resistance to the desires of almost all American citizens, Washington continues to fuel anarchy in abstract ways under the guise of Capitalism.  These irresponsible decisions discarding common sense and favoring every tenable but questionable industry suggest that anarchy is a favorable for Capitalism.  Warfare is positive for the economy whether in blatant, violent, murderous attacks on civilians or more subtle pandemics disguised as natural occurrences.  Rather than shoring up America's traditional historical economy such as textiles, agriculture, and manufacturing, we have chosen to undermine these native middle class industries and outsource them to cheaper foreign markets.  We have forsaken the American people and sold them out creating a chasm between the elite rich and the poor.  We have become a Third World country, and with the continued insistence of Donald Trump may transition into an autocracy.  It would seems there is a large contingency of American citizens who no longer ascribe to the freedoms of the United States Constitution.  Government has become a place for these traitors to rally, and we have seen this with the January 6th insurrection and the stymieing of regulatory agencies.  With these overt and public assaults on Americans, it is not difficult to discern that foreign agents may have infiltrated our state and federal government.  Currently there are sitting members of Congress, many within the GOP, who continue to stone wall needed legislation to get America moving again.  If we are to become woke to something, it is the subversive activity of these individuals.  For a subcommittee to suggest the origins of Covid 19 are not important, further is to deny tangible and subversive white collar crime seeded in our government.  It becomes a game of, "He said, she said," to save face and cover ones accrued assets.  Who specifically prospered from Covid 19?  Who prospers from war?  Who continues to undermine more grassroots lifestyles and an economy favorable to something more than global dominance and warfare?  Harping against the rich could be cast as sour grapes, but when Billie Holiday sang about "Strange Fruit," it became necessary for America to confront her demons whether they were Yankee or Confederate.  Lynching freed slaves never was right, and pathological genocide whether against homosexuals, drug users, or everyone is a crime and a sin.  It will be left to God to judge, and He will.  

Surveillance and Public Health

 Trying to come to grips with the Military Industrial Complex being a major influence on your life has proven difficult.  I have no grudge against the military.  The military is a core part of the Fayetteville community, but with BRAC's induction of Ground Forces Command at what is now Fort Liberty, civilian life in Fayetteville has waned.  Most everything revolves around the military lifestyle, and civilians necessarily do not have to fall in, report for duty, or follow orders.  The disparity between the freedom of civilian life and the stringency of military life is substantial.  When I play quiet jazz on my piano at one o'clock in the morning in my garage, my playing is met with a barrage of artillery fire.  If I have carnal thoughts or desires, no matter how innocuous and contained, my immediate environment is inundated with surveillance.  Is it may imagination that the frame of our house pops from the immense pressure of infrasound?  My ears begin to ring with annoying tinnitus from the Frey Effect?  Fort Liberty trains soldiers, and a large part of their focus is ISR, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance.  Every method of surveillance is in use at Fort Liberty.  Cavalier gung-ho recruits push the envelope of respect for civilians in close proximity to their training areas.  It is easy to justify any training activity in the name of national security, but there is overreach.  For two years we listened to Department of Homeland Security surveillance planes circle above our neighborhood.  They were testing and training on Sierra Nevada produced sensor pods mounted on the planes, but the children at Vanstory Hills Elementary School did not benefit from that nuisance.  Surveillance relies upon electrical energy in many forms, and most of it is invasive to human anatomy.  The new Cold War is electronic warfare, and much of it is wireless.  We have dug ourselves into a hole with the mass proliferation of microwaves used in surveillance.  That the United States would allow a network of low altitude satellites to surround the Earth is unconscionable.  Once the internet was desirable, and now it has become exploited.  A "Stooge" government has proven to be the source.  Two faced foreign operatives feign American sentiment and integrity, but behind their public activity they are working against America.  Scott Pruitt was the prime example of this.  Donald Trump appointed a host of stooges who have no interest in representing the interests of the American people.  If public opinion of health has diminished, and still we are a democracy, then all of the politicians in Washington cannot exonerate Anthony Fauci from his actions during the Covid 19 pandemic.  If you work for government, and you are paid by the taxpayers dollars, and if we are a democracy, then the peoples' opinion is relevant.  If they see Fauci as a menace, then it is substantial.  While his position at the CDC or NIH may not be elected, it is not immune from public opinion.  It is us who were dying. 

Up or Down?

Often when one is doing "ship" work, the refrain of, "I'm back in high school," resonates through the cavernous metal corridors.  The "I-95" is the longest corridor on ground zero of a cruise ship.  It is where most of the business takes place running a floating hotel.  The crew traverse this corridor most of the day, because like Disney World, employees are not allowed to use guest spaces.  There are two mess halls, a store, a bar, and offices for personnel.  All of the provisions that are needed for a cruise are loaded into a marshaling area on the I-95.  All of that is beside the point, because being back in high school sometimes is how it feels for a college educated adult to accept work in the cruise industry.  That applies to musicians.  There is truth to this sentiment, and consequently there is political maneurvering in the ranks of entertainers.  I didn't have time to think about it, but when I was dumped into the caldron of boiling water, my jazz skills kept me afloat.  My ability to play jazz sets allowed me to survive.  Ironically these sets did not benefit the guests.  I was used as fodder to amuse other senior musicians.  My jazz sets on one particular ship existed, because the guitarist liked to play drums.  The sole purpose of the sets never was to entertain guests.  It was to provide practice time (at a high level) for a guitarist learning to play drums.  This was not the only hypocrisy.  Several bands on several ships had their material sequenced and recorded, and they just lip-synced.  As I toiled with the most difficult piano music on a ship, show after show of "Fly On" entertainers, which required practice and rehearsal, incumbent bands would just coast through their gigs doing little.  There were two bands on one specific ship, where they faked playing.  It was infuriating to me.  I penciled a little note on the scheduling board about how few hours one band played, and the wrath of the Cruise Director descended upon me.  He demanded that the chief of security sit for hours and watch security video until they found who had written the note.  I wrote, "Foster Trio, seven days, four hours work."  I became a terrorist for such an inane comment written in the wee hours of the morning under the influence of alcohol returning from the Crew Bar.  The reality of the situation was, the response would have not been so savage, if it had not been true.  It was, and I hit a nerve.  They went to the extent of falsifying a schedule to try to prove the Foster Trio had  worked a normal load.  Ship politics, but this was not the case overall.  This was my second least favorite ship, the first being a non-smoking ship to which I was transferred abruptly for being cast a homophobe by the interim Cruise Director.  He was homosexual, and they were intimidated by my musical prowess and masculine spirit.  The new bass player wanted to sleep with me, and I was not interested.  With two days notice they transferred me to another ship, where I had to stop smoking cold turkey.  Again I played jazz set after jazz set for no guests.  It was just proving my worth and value to the incumbent musicians.  What does all of this mean?  What does it mean to kowtow to the popular trends, uneducated tastes, and popularity?  That is American pop music today.  Instead of expressing a viewpoint or opinion, a feeling, or a reaction to life, pop music caters to the lowest common denominator of immediate gratification like social media.  Some social media has value and significance, and Youtube is one platform that has become indispensable for the archiving of classic music footage.  With that massive catalog of information comes the same petty jockeying for position.  Those who are incapable of understanding and appreciating your work are those who are unhappy and unrequited.  They may be jealous and vindictive, and it is best to go around them quickly.  Life is too short to argue with those who love Donald Trump.  The majority of my cruise life I spent trying to survive.  Never was I comfortable or secure in my job performance, and perhaps that is a good thing.  It keeps you working.  It is a recurring refrain in life that the dues you have paid expire, and you must start anew.  Paying dues.  Abandoning your confidence and accomplishment and feigning being a peasant again.  Was this the message of Jesus?  The perfect metaphor for the high school mentality of cruise ship work is, "What is jazz?"  The answer from there is, "Jazz is anything.  It's what you want it to be."  That is not a traditional or historical definition of jazz music.  The reality is jazz is a highly evolved, complex, spiritual, and artistic musical language that could be considered the voice of freed slaves trying to survive in a predominantly white world.  "Holy shite, Batman!"  Should we change the definition?  How could anyone ever conceive of such a thing?  They can't, because they don't have the knowledge, experience, or wisdom to understand.  Does it mean they are not capable of learning or appreciating?  No.  The beauty of jazz is that it can communicate at a visceral level with gut level intent.  If you can feel, then you can understand it.  This is what art can do.  Life is a delicate balancing act of cognitive study and understanding with a hefty dose of raw emotion.  Art will not be art without the affective component.  As jazz evolved over the decades the Avant Garde slowly took over.  Like Abstract Expressionism in visual art, direct, raw, and sometimes brutal gestures were used to illicit an immediate emotional response abandoning some of the more sophisticated styled and techniques.  Rock 'n' Roll took the place of crooning Swing-based music.  African culture can be seen as an example of this aesthetic often cast as primitive or barbaric by those from the West.  Upon closer scrutiny most of the values in Western culture are present in African culture.  It is more dire and immediate, because there is no time for sophistication.  You are trying to survive.  The luxury of time, leisure, and amusement can breed sophistication.  Human beings it would seem intrinsically feel the need to create, progress, and evolve.  Until now.  If you take away the security of human compassion and empathy, and pollute the environment with inciting rhetoric and noise, we have no choice but to devolve to survival.  There is virtue in the finer things, but there can be a balance.  Without them and without art, man has no where to go but down.