Question on the previous post

The question: is this modesty? Or breathtaking hubris?

On Being A Diarist

Still attempting to be diarist in my blog, which is to say that I am attempting to be as honest as possible. I am attempting to write only what is true.

This is not wise. This is not easy.

For one thing, you cannot record the whole truth. Much of what is true is not interesting. Worse, some of what is true cannot be shared without endangering yourself or others. If I were to faithfully report certain of my darker secrets, I would lose most of my friends and gain many enemies. Truth may be beauty and beauty truth, but not all of it is equally appealing.

Also, there is a practical issue. To anoint one's self a diarist is to abandon all hope of ever being published. The diary has no commercial appeal. It is too personal and my life too mundane. You, the reader, have no need of me. Your own journal (if you keep one), your own memories (if you do not) are every bit as thrilling. Probably more so.

So, why do I do it? Answer: because I can only hope that my writings, while not dramatic, still provide some value. They are the musings of an early twenty-first Everyman. They reflect our common mindset, the concerns of the age.

Thus, the paradox: I elect to write the most personal of all genres in hopes that it is the least unique. The least individual. That it states instead the mentalité of the mass.

Of us all.

Read this article by Sarah Kendzior. It explains a lot...

Surviving the post-employment economy 

I need a Jeeves...

I started Belfort and Bastion as a publishing company. But, come, let us confess. I am the last person on earth who should have begun a business. I have none of the characteristics required. I am not detail oriented, have few people skills, possess no games theory expertise, show little capacity for forethought or strategic thinking, and demonstrate almost no understanding of what customers actually want.

In fact, I became an "entrepreneur" only because I had no choice in the matter. I was unemployed, nearly a 1000 miles from any of the publications or schools which might have hired me, couldn't make a living as a freelance writer, and so…well B&B was born.

Sad, really. My talents are being unexploited. What I should have been, of course, was a creature rather like something out of a P.G. Wodehouse novel—an amiable idiot with a trust fund and a helpful Jeeves to get me out of the various pickles into which I blunder on a predictable (if maddening) basis.

Alas, things that might have been. Saddest words and all that rot.

another glitch

Once more I may be in tax trouble. The IRS has not yet said that it has processed our return, nor sent us the refund that our accountant said we would be getting. Don't know what that means. Hopefully nothing.

But, there is another issue. I am not quite sure what I am legally. I formed the company as an LLC because I was told it was safer. Then someone else (someone who was supposed to know such things) advised me to file as if I were a single proprietor. But now I'm not sure whether I've done the right thing. When I was filling out forms for Amazon.com, I came to suspect that I may have been required to file as company rather than as a person.

Let's cross our fingers that I get it all worked out.

Bluntly, I'm not the best the person in the world to have started a business. But for more on that, see the next entry.

My father is no longer optimistic...

Had a long conversation with my father the other day. At 85, he remains one of the most intelligent men I know, and the only one whose predictions about the future are consistently on the money. This is unfortunate because he is (for the first time since I've known him) no longer optimistic about the short-term future of the nation.

In particular, it concerns him that the Baby Boom generation (i.e., mine) is now cranking slowly into old age. As a result of the financial crisis of a few years back, very few of them have anything like the savings required to provide for them, or to pay for their medical care.

This means, he says, that society is effectively passing the bill for that care to the younger generation. Now, in prosperous times, that would not matter. If we knew something like the wealth of the 1960s or 1950s, then young people could afford to pay the tab without suffering themselves.

The problem is that we are not prosperous. We are in a Depression, even if we call it a Recession. Further, after decades of offshoring, downsizing, and "right-sizing" that Recession is simply not going to go away in a hurry.

Ah, but there is more. There were a great many Baby Boomers (that's why we were called the "boom"), but we tended to have relatively small families. Our children and grandchildren, in turn, had smaller families still—often one child or none. This means that a large and aging population has to be supported by a smaller and (in fact) dwindling one.

Alas, we are not finished yet. That smaller population of young people is in the midst of a vast social-economic-industrial transformation. For the first time ever, white-collar jobs are being automated. Machines are taking the place of "brain workers." Quite simply, as a nation we are not going to have many of the well-paying professional jobs that once guaranteed the existence of the Middle Class.

Then, finally, there are our wealthy. If the last few years have proved anything, it is that our economic leadership is incapable of seeing beyond its own bank accounts. Our wealthy will do anything to save themselves a few pence, even if that means the total impoverishment of the rest of the nation. (Yes, I know what Libertarians will say in response to that. But it is true all the same. Greed is not always good. Free markets do not inevitably lead to prosperity. Someday, travel through New England or visit Detroit and look at the abandoned mills, the shuttered buildings, and the shattered lives…the fruit of Neo-Liberal economies.)

All of this together makes my father …unhappy. He worries about the world his son and grandson will inhabit.

Which troubles me no end. I am used to being a bit despairing myself. But not him.

When a man of his vast spirit is daunted, I am afraid.

conclusion?

Later. I am, in theory, square with the insurance company. I say "in theory" because you can never tell. Some error might yet creep into the equation.

Rather a metaphor for life, don't you think?

Still on hold...

Still on hold with the insurance company. Actually, on hold again. I waited for 45 minutes the first time. Spoke to a representative who said she'd take care of the billing and address problem but had to switch me to someone else to restore my coverage. I have now waited another 45 minutes for the second representative.

Will I go mad or merely have a conniption fit? Stay tuned and find out.

taxes and now health insurance (oh, God)

One problem arises. Another eases, if it does not vanish.

The new problem. Blue Cross Blue Shield has just canceled my coverage. Apparently when I changed addresses, the change didn't get made with them. Now they (I think) have dis-enrolled me for non-payment of my bills.

As I write this, I am on hold trying to get through to them. They are saying I can expect a 45 minute wait.

Dear God. I hope I can take care of this quickly and easily.

The problem that is a little less pressing is my taxes. I finally heard from my accountant this morning. Apparently the error was theirs. They failed to tick the box on the return which said I was full-time resident of New Mexico.

The good news is that they should be able to correct the situation by simply refilling.

We'll see.

Meanwhile, cross your fingers for me on the insurance.

I am read by robots

Made an unnerving discovery today.

You remember I said that no one may be reading my blog? Well, I went back to the blog's dashboard and checked to see if it had any "comments." That is, I looked to see if anyone who had read the page had left remarks.

I was startled to find that there were far more comments than I'd thought. Several of my entries appeared to have been quite popular. It was amazing and I was delighted.

But, then I went and looked at the comments themselves. Some were real. I mean, some had been clearly left by real people who had really read the pieces and had some remark to make.

However, the vast majority were no such things. They were left by marketing software designed to search the web for any blog, post a canned comment to one or more of the entries ("Great Blog!") and then conclude with a link to some commercial site. ("Oh, and visit my webpage, 'IncreaseTheSizeOfYourPenis.blognot.XXX).

Thus I find that I may be read, but mostly by spambots.

Ah well. Maybe it is fitting. We see reports of how more and more news and non-fiction is being written by robots.

Maybe it is only fair that the audience, too, should be synthetic.

A letter from Hobbes

My small concern with the New Mexico Department of Revenue worries me for no good reason. I am simply a person who, well, worries.

But the other issue is that this comes on the heels of the death of my mother. Among the many things that astonished me was the vast number of forms that had to be filled out afterwards…and the amount of misinformation that comes from seemingly knowledgeable sources. We were told, for instance, that we had to phone the happy folks at Social Security to tell them my mother had passed and to find out where we should mail a copy of her death certificate.

Forty-five minutes waiting on hold later, I learned that there is no such requirement so long as the funeral home staff has notified the agency by electronic means. Which they had done. Which meant I had wasted my 45 minutes.

So it is that the letter from the tax people looms particularly large for me. It is a symbol for the System…

Not exactly Hobbes' Leviathan, but dreadfully near, and rumbling on…all seeing yet not seeing…

Perceiving everyone. Believing all to be in error or in sin. Crushing the unrighteous beneath its armored treads.

When, in fact, it alone is unrelieved in its ignorance.

Minor things...death and taxes

Small things have troubled me for the past few days. I've got tax troubles. The state of New Mexico is refusing to process my return. On what grounds I cannot understand. As near as I can make out from the (somewhat ominous) letter they've sent me, I think they think I am no longer a resident of the state.

But why? My correct address is on the return.

I fear it may be because I use a New England-based accountant and they assume that if he is in New Hampshire, I must be too.

Ironic. One of New Mexicans' fondest complaints is that ignorant Easterners don't realize that we are part of the United States of America.

Now we have the reverse. I am here. But the New Mexican government declines to believe it is so.

I have sent a copy of the letter to my accountant. I will let you know what we learn in due time.

Letters to the Wind

I consider beginning Xcargo the Blog again. I am not quite sure why. It has very little readership…nothing like the following Explosive-Cargo the ezine had…and I wonder sometimes if the whole blog scene isn't on the way out. There was a time when it was the means of self-publishing. But, now, so much of the web has been co-oped by the Great and the Powerful, and smaller voices (like mine) tend to be drowned out.

Yet I begin again. Partly that's simply because I (for once) have the time to do so. The past two years have been busy to say the least. The move here, the days watching my mother in various stages of unconsciousness, dealing with my father's smaller but real health problems, trying to start "the business," these and other things have consumed most of my waking hours.

Now I have a little space to breathe and to write.

But also I begin Xcargo because I wonder if it isn't what I'm made to do. If it isn't what my talent is…assuming I have any talents at all. I wonder if I am the sort of writer known as a "diarist."

Perhaps this is what I am meant to write. Perhaps I am destined to pen these small things, these moments in my life, half remembered, uncertainly told, offered up to a reader who may not exist. Who may never exist.

Well, there are worse callings. There is even something romantic in it. Like the poet who wrote letters to his vanished beloved and cast them to the winds.

To be received… by whom? By no one. By the world. Either one. It makes no difference.

Quick notice

To all my FB friends, B&B contributors, Xcargo readers, etc. Thanks so much for your support these last few weeks.

My mother passed away peacefully this morning at about 6 a.m. local time.

It is hard, of course, but we console ourselves in knowing that she had a long, full life that included some remarkable adventures. She grew up in the Depression-era south, married my father and came to New Mexico, got her Ph.D. in middle age, traveled the world, and, as a hobby, repaired homes and office buildings with my father as part of their real estate business.

Rather amazing woman. I am proud to be her son.

To the doctors we go (hi ho, hi ho)

We woke this morning with all the aches you expect post-car crash. Martha was actually in serious pain and when I suggested that she make an appointment to see her doctor, she did not object.

I then drove over to check on my Dad. He, too, hurt badly. I asked him if he would let me take him to the Doctor and to my amazement he actually agreed. (He must be really uncomfortable.) A short time later I had the two of them at Urgent Care. Much prodding and poking followed and finally they reappeared with the news that nothing was broken (cheer) but that Martha had bruised ribs and a sprained foot while my father had strained and bruised muscles in his chest (not so cheer).

I then took Dad to the Home where he could visit Mom while Martha and I went to make arrangements to have the car towed from a temporary lot to the place where it will be repaired (we hope).

After that, I took Martha back to the apartment where she has been sleeping most of the day. Around three, I picked up Dad and took him home. I suspect he will sleep rather well too.

As for me, I'm the least damaged of the three of us. I was farthest from the impact. I do have a bit of pain in the left arm, but I trust that will past soon enough.

Have you noticed? Life is just too damn complicated.

My day so far

The important thing first: we are all fine. A little bruised and battered, and we've all got muscle aches, but we're fine. And given what could have happened, that's significant.

Okay, now, before I get to what happened today, I have to give you some background. You know my mother was in a nursing home after she had her stroke. Well, we just finished moving her to another …and much better … facility after the administration of the first one announced that it did not want my father and mother being seen in the front end of the building (where there is a retirement community) because they might "disturb" the residents. I'm still thinking of suing them.

But, anyway, we got my mom moved to this other facility and things seemed to be working out fine. Then, my father needed to go to South Padre Island, TX, where he has some property that needed to be looked after. So, he and I head off and do several days of work but then he catches a vicious cold that soon turns into pneumonia. I end up taking him to the only clinic in the area and waiting for what felt like days and finally we got enough antibiotics to stagger a moose.

He feels better. We fly home. (This time, heaven be praised, he even lets me push him around the airport in a wheel chair so we don't miss any connections.)

But, then he gets worse again. He gets so bad, in fact, that I'm thinking of taking him to the hospital. But, after still more antibiotics, and enough codeine cough syrup to not only stagger the aforesaid moose but put him into a coma, my dad gets better. (Whew.)

But, about this time my mom takes a turn for the worse. She goes back into hospice care (still at the same facility, just a different program). Everyone is very concerned.

About the same time, my Dad says that he thinks maybe it is time for him to give up driving. Again, heaven be praised. We were spared having "the" talk with him. (Whew #2)

So, I'm driving him to and from the facility. He goes in every morning about 8:30 and stays until around 2:00 pm (that 1400 hours for those outside the US of A). He sits with my mom all that period, talking to her, holding her hand, and so on.

And she begins to rally. She's opened her eyes again and is eating well. (That's Whew #3).

Okay, now, today, Martha and I drive over to pick him up again about 1:45. We have plans to grab lunch with him and then do some shopping. We've just bought a house and he enjoys helping us find things to go in it.

Everyone is happy…

We leave the facility. Martha is driving and we are in her car. We come to stoplight. The light turns green. Martha moves into the intersection and…

Crunch.

A woman who tells later that she was "looking at the scenery" and didn't notice the red light, or the other traffic stopped at it, whizzes through the intersection and impacts us HARD broadsides.

Long story short: EMTs, fire truck, ambulance, police, etc., etc. and, of course, etc.

You see the irony. My father had given up driving to avoid accidents. Then we get creamed by a fully functioning adult who is just barely in middle age.

Amazingly, we are all in good shape. I was terrified …if the impact had been 12 inches a little further on, Martha could have been very seriously hurt. And my 85-year-old father is pretty frail. He was having a hard time breathing after the impact.

But, somehow, everyone came out okay. Dad's all right, Martha's fine, and I'm only a little more warped than usual.  (Whew #4, and last for the evening.)

That's my day so far.

As I say, I could complain, but since we're all walking and talking, I guess I won't. We could have been far less fortunate.

Still, if I don't complain, I may grumble a little. Under my breath.

Just pretend you don't hear me.

It begins...sorta

Well, maybe I'll back to blogging again. And, sigh, maybe I won't.

It has been an insane period in my life. Over the last few months we have had to move my mother from one facility to another, my father and I traveled to South Padre Island to check on his duplex there, he caught a serious cold which turned into pneumonia, then we came back here...

Oh, the good news, we bought a house. Closed on it yesterday.

Like I say, I will try to relate all my adventures. Sometime. Soon.

cheers
mjt

Haven't posted in forever

Like it says, I haven't posted in ages.

Lots of stories...

I will try to tell them over the next few weeks.

Weather

Things which have changed (2)

The Weather.

I had not originally planned to post the following entry this week. But, then, there were the tornados in the middle west…

One would think that the weather is, in its variable way, a constant.

And Albuquerque's weather is really rather nice. It is far warmer here than it is in the East—though, keep in mind, it is not tropical. The number of Easterners and Europeans who come here expecting it to be a kind of States-side Sahara—only to end freezing their tails off—is remarkably large. You see, the city is in a desert, but it is high desert…a mountain desert. It is dry, but it can get very, very cold. If you come here in winter, don't come in Hawaiian shirts and Bermuda shorts.

Still, winter here is better than in Boston if only because there is so very little snow. Most of the time, if simply doesn't appear, or it does, then it comes as dusting and is gone by mid-morning.

Hard on children, of course, and I can remember spending many a depressing morning trudging off to school when everyone in every neighboring state had the day off because of some happy blizzard or another. But, for me, after thirty years on post at Ice Station Zebra (a.k.a., the Northeast), it is quite welcome.

If I never see another snow shovel again, I'll be perfectly happy.


*

Actually, Albuquerque gets even less snow that surrounding areas in the state. The mountains on the eastside, and the volcanoes on the west, act like walls against the weather. Storm clouds tend to lose their punch on the way over them.

Locals call Albuquerque "the snow hole," because it will be dry when everywhere else in the state is under three feet of drift. Just this winter, for instance, the highway that leads east of the city was blocked by a massive storm. The police set up roadblocks and kept cars and trucks from going any further.

But, here, on this side of the Sandias, it was warm and sunny. We were walking about in shirtsleeves, or, at most, with a sweater.

Unfortunately, this can lead to problems. People believe the evidence of their eyes, not official reports. And so, every once in a while you hear tales of someone or many someones who come the road block and simply don't believe that things could possibly be so bad on the other side of the mountains. They will assume the authorities are being overcautious. They will proclaim to that those who listen to such warnings are cowards.

And so they've figure a way around the block. Maybe they'll even go back into the city, up the River on route 25, and then attempt the "unimproved" road that leads from the tiny village of Placitas through the National Forest and finally back down to the Valley.

And sometimes, they are not heard from again.


*

But I was saying the weather has changed In spite of what I've already written, I think it has. In small ways, yes, but changed.

Things seem minutely drier. The sage and the brush is ever slightly more brown…becomes brown sooner in the year, stays so into the spring. The "fire danger" level in the National Forests and campgrounds is now always "high," where thirty yers ago you might occasionally see a "moderate" or even a "low." Weather seems ever slightly more extreme.

I can only assume that I'm seeing the effects of global warming. And, by the way, I don't think anyone can pretend any longer that it isn't happening. The data are just too overwhelming.

Oh, perhaps, it isn't entirely 100% proven that climate change is the result of human activity—that I'll grant you. But to say that it is not underway is be an idiot or a liar. And, alas, we have so many both sorts among us, as well as various combinations of the two.

The latter point, the presence of fools and frauds, is the one I want to make. There is, you see, a danger here. To deny the obvious, to refuse to see it, to not prepare for what may be coming, is to court disaster.


*

I don't know what will genuinely happen. Prophecy is beyond me. And I don't think that climate science is now sufficiently advanced to offer any real predictions on climate change. The world may grow hotter, as the anti-CO2 crowd never tires of telling us. Or it may be grow colder. I've heard it suggested that, by releasing tons of super-chill water into the oceans, the melting of the ice caps might actually return us to a new period of world glaciations.

But change of some sort is coming. That is the one thing that history teaches about climate—the one thing of which we may be ABSOLUTELY certain—is that climate is variable. It changes.

And when it changes, it inevitably means that someone is adversely affected. It means that crops do not grow in places where they grew before. It means that rain does not fall where it was once plentiful. It means that some people in some place become hungry and desperate. It means those desperate hordes must go elsewhere to survive…regardless of the cost to themselves.

Don't believe it? Look at East Africa, which has known drought and famine for decades now.

Look at Somalia and Ethiopia, whose leaders saw the handwriting on the wall…knew what was happening as early as the 1970s…yet did nothing to prepare.

Consider the consequences.


*

I'll end with a personal experience. Or rather, one of my wife's.

I had warned her that during Spring, New Mexico is windy place. Fifty-six years ago, when my father interviewed at Sandia Labs, they told him, "In Spring, most of our scenery is mobile."

It was a joke but it was true. Wind and sand and dust are norm here in the space between winter's cold and summer's heat. If you wear contacts, you learn to also wear sunglasses even at dusk. If you have allergies, you resign yourself to sneezing.

But this year…my first Spring back…

We had gone out for lunch. We were at a little Italian restaurant on the North side of town. It was nothing special, but nice enough. And the place had huge glass windows that looked out into the street and the mountains.

Our meals had just come when I heard someone say, Look.

I turned. Martha turned. The window glass was shaking now. There was the sound of a million grains of hard sand striking the metal skins of the cars in the parking lot. Where before it had been bright and sunny, now the sky was brown with dirt, and boiling…

We watched. Everyone in the restaurant watched, speechless. Outside, the suddenly, inexplicable wind raged…

Later, Martha said to me, in a voice a little tinged with fear, "You didn't me it would be like that."

How could I tell her that no? No, I didn't. Hadn't.

Because I did not know.

And that my fear was every bit as real as hers.

Mother's Day 2013

I went across the street to see her. That is, to the Home. She was there in her chair. Her head was down. Her eyes were open. Staring. What was she thinking?

Does she think?

*

My father was there. He is always there. Always present for her. Never losing hope.

I spoke to her. She did not answer. I kissed her head. For a moment she raised her face. Her arm stirred. Her hand took mine. She held it. I could feel her fingers open and close.

Did she know what she was doing? Was there intent? Or was it only the spasm of muscle and nerve?

*


I sat on the bed. She raised her eyes to mine. What did she see? What did she perceive? How did she interpret her vision?

I visit her once a day. Usually for an hour. Sometimes, particularly on special occasions (as today) I am there a little longer.

She has good days. She has bad. On the good days, she speaks. She smiles. She will laugh. She seems to have no doubt who I am.

This is not one of the good days.

*

Today, I sat beside her. I stroked her arm. I spoke to her. She did not reply. But her gaze did not leave mine.

I have asked this before. I will ask it again. How much of her remains? How much is in there, behind those sad and beautiful eyes?

My father, in his infinite faith and immeasurable patience, assumes that all of her is there …somewhere… and that if we work hard enough and wait long enough, she will stir, awaken…speak and be as she was before.

Is this the case?

I do not know.

*

I have not my father's power. I do not have his steel and wisdom. But I will do my best to emulate him.

I will believe (I will force myself to believe) that she endures. I will believe that she is somewhere. That she exists. Maybe not in the form that sits in the chair. But someplace.

And that someday…somehow…


*

I will thus elect my reality. I will choose among the many options. I will select one rather than the others. I will operate on faith. Not facts.

I will believe.

I will believe that, eventually, she will return. Or, failing that… that her voyage and ours will once more…intersect.

*

I will believe that even in the worst possible case…

That, in some distant time, on that great bridge…that arch of white stone that spans the infinite distance…that she will hear…

That she will hear the footsteps behind her…the sound of running…the sound of those who hasten to join her.

She will hear. She will pause. She will turn.

She will greet us.

And smile.