THE END IS NEAR!

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AN UNPOPULAR TRUTH TO CHEW ON.

BABBIES AS ENVIRONMENTAL POLLUTION,

or

SAVE THE WHALES BUT SHOOT THE HARP SEALS.

(Cheech and Chong)

You spend most of your life being careful not to offend other people. As an adult, you are concerned about your image. Above all, you don’t want to be seen as holding opinions that are not accepted by the main stream as politically correct.


I had a Kentucky grandmother who died in her nineties. She was brash, opinionated and often rude. Only now I realize that age conferred her that freedom; and that quite a bit of the volume of accepted mores of her day, she considered as fallacious. She spoke her mind, and she spoke the truth from her point of view.


In the Native villages in Alaska where I taught school, babies are celebrated. It doesn’t matter if the girl is thirteen and pregnant – the village will still celebrate the birth of the baby. Our society celebrates child birth and parents with large families. This is a politically correct more that needs to be addressed.

I could not have been a successful teacher and principal if I disliked kids. I don’t dislike kids – but I don’t like them either. Some individual children I like, but others I are a pain-in-the-ass to deal with.


To begin at the beginning, we are born - let’s start with babies. Young people want to have babies. It is part of our genetic code. A young man wants to prove he can make a baby and a young woman somehow feel fulfilled by producing a child. In both cases it is a passage to adulthood.


Everyone gets goo-goo eyes when they see a new baby. But let’s be real - babies aren’t cute. If you ran into a two hundred pound baby in a dark alley it would scare the hell out of you. The legs are too short and bowed, the body is too massive and the head is large beyond proportion. Add toothless and drooling with uncontrolled bowels to this and you'd have a monster.


It is only between the ages of three and five that children are appealing at all. They look human, they are potty trained and they are inquisitive and cute. But, I still prefer not to have them seated near me when I am at an expensive restaurant trying to enjoy a good meal – or at a play or a theater. Restaurants should have areas for adult seating – parents with squalling, bawling kids should be seated with other parents with squalling, bawling kids. That should be the consequence of parenthood.


You had them, you love them, but lets face it, teenagers can be a pain-in-the-ass. Why would anyone with a teenager in their house want to have another child? It is beyond me.


At any rate, having a child is the most environmentally polluting act that a couple will commit in their lifetime. The amount of energy the child will consume in its lifetime, the amount of waste the child will produce and the number of progenies the child will sire or birth impacts the earth like an environmental black hole.


Population control should be our number one environmental goal – but this concept is not viewed as politically correct. Celebrate the children. They are our future. Yes; and the future is doom if we don’t get control of the population growth.

Let’s look at some statistics:
The United States seems to be decreasing in the rate of population growth, but still increasing at an unsustainable rate.


http://www.census.gov/population/www/popclockus.html



U.S. Population 1790 – 2000


http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h980.html


In 1800 we had approximately 5 million people in the U.S.
• 1800 = 5 million


• 1900 = 76 million


• 1950 = 161 million


• 2000 = 291 million


• May 15, 2011 @ 8:24 a.m. = 311,357,047

Part of this growth is due to immigration – but we are all immigrants – basically our birth rate is exceeding our death rate.


What is more dramatic is the world population increase.


Check out these sites:
http://www.peterrussell.com/Odds/WorldClock.php

http://www.peterrussell.com/Odds/WorldClock.php

www.poodwaddle.com/worldclock.swf

www.poodwaddle.com/worldclock.swf



Population clocks vary, but the two above are, in my opinion, the best.



Around 1800 the world population topped one billion;


• 1940 = 2 billion


• 1960 = 3 billion


• 1975 = 4 billion


• 1990 = 5 billion


• 2000 = 6 billion


• May 15, 2011 @ 8:56 a.m. = 6,903,44,053


The rate of population growth is a startling reality.
Along with increased population comes increased energy consumption, a necessary increase in food production, an increase in water consumption, an increase in competition for natural resources, an increase in highway traffic, an increase in crime; an increase in prison population; and in general, more people packed into cities and towns – requiring more services.


At what point will the earth reach its population capacity: ten billion; fifteen billion; twenty billion? I think it is reasonable to assume that within the next one hundred years the earth will max-out in its capacity to support human life.

Attitudes must change. We need to teach environmental studies as a required subject in high school, and stress that responsible family planning is a two child family.

A VICTORY GARDEN

-V-

During the Second World War (and I am old enough to remember it) people were encouraged to grow a Victory Garden. The premise was that there was a need to divert food to the troops fighting in Europe, and patriotic civilians could augment the demand by growing a few vegetables for themselves in whatever space they had available.



Attitudes have changed. Earlier, PBS television had a program called Victory Garden that gave advice to home gardeners. Now the program has turned into a travel log of exotic gardens around the world.



I sincerely feel that our commercial food supplies are not wholesome; that the cancer rates and other mental and physical illnesses can be attributed to our food supply.



Fishermen catch shrimp off the coast of Maine, but at the supermarket our shrimp comes from Thailand. I have been to Thailand and seen the rivers – and I do not want to eat shrimp caught there and shipped to Maine. Our vegetables come from Mexico and Peru and Southeast Asia, or from mega-farms out west that use pesticides and genetically modified plants. Growth hormones in cattle, pigs and even chickens may account for the size of youth (when I was young a kid six feet tall was considered tall – now when I go the gym at the local college young men six-two, six-three and even six-four are not unusual – not to mention the obesity of many of our young.)



On a more somber note: the current world population at 6:48 p.m. on May 8, 2011 is 7,109,994,264 (seven billion, one hundred nine million, nine hundred ninety four thousand and two hundred and sixty four) and increasing at a rate of approximately three people per second (http://www.ibiblio.org/lunarbin/worldpop). It is estimated that the world population will be over twelve billion by the year 2050. At some point in the not to distant future we will exceed our ability to support and supply food and water for our human population.



Our technology has mutated us to a techno-dependent society. A disruption in our electric power would send our world in to chaos. We spend our days focused is on Bin Laden, wars, the economy and the president’s birth certificate – or the housewives of New Jersey...



Perhaps it is time for a reality check; a back to basics touchstone with mother earth. We can begin by focusing on the food we eat and our diet. Buying local and organic foods cost more, but we can know where and by whom our food is grown. We will be healthier by not consuming the unnaturally fat, plump chicken breast from Hannaford’s Super Market that are full of growth hormones and antibiotics, or the out of season vegetables grown in Peru, or the pre-packaged foods with the unpronounceable additives and food colors.



In the past – in Kentucky – my wife and I had a large garden that fed us for much of the year. Now, in Maine, we have a much smaller place and my wife and I buy as much local farm produce as possible, feeling that we are getting a safer food product and that we are supporting the local farmers. A farmers market is now open twice a week in our town and farm coops are springing up around the country.



Our house is small – on one half acre; but this year we intend to put in a small raised bed and also plant some herbs and vegetables among our flowers. Basically we plan to grow a salad garden with spinach, a couple of tomato plants, a couple of squash plants and a couple of bush cucumber plants. Our retirement income is meager, and to some extent the small extra food supply will be welcome – but even if we don’t harvest a lot of food – the effort will still feel good.



V for Victory Garden – a victory from the crazy status-quo.

OXYMORON

I dropped my bike (Honda) off at North Country Harley/Honda in Augusta.  While there my wife found a leather jacket on sell for 50% off.   A very nice jacket.  The tag said Harley Davidson an American Tradition.   The label in the collar read Made in China...

Bluerass In My Soul

BLUEGRASS MUSIC



I was raised in eastern Kentucky and bluegrass music is in my blood. I can remember, when I was young, the old men at the courthouse on Saturday night with guitars, fiddles and banjoes singing hill music.


I like classical, some country, most rock and roll; but can’t stand rap – that is until now.


There is a show on FX network called Justified that I look forward to each week – it’s about Harlan County Kentucky, in the western part of the state: but it’s a little bit of Kentucky I can identify with. Each week at the beginning of the episode they play a theme that caught my attention.

I researched it on the net and found Bluegrass Rap by a group called Gangstagrass – and I like it.



I'm including a clip: If you like bluegrass you may like this.

 
 
This one is about West Va. coal mines: same in Kentucky mines.
 
 

 
 
Blue Grass RAP - I'm sold!

BEWARE! THE CHRISTIANS ARE COMING

The Christians are coming and they are not very nice people.


Actually that’s a paraphrase of a George Carlin statement. And he was right.


The latest news is that a legislator in Louisiana proposed a law to criminalize abortion and would require a 15 year prison sentence for any woman undergoing the procedure or any doctor performing it.

Check out the article at Mother Jones: CLICK HERE

Let’s call it like it is. We tend to say the far right that is driving the Republican Party are the grass root conservatives seeking smaller government – This is not the case. These people are fundamentalist Christians and their agenda is to create an American Christian theocracy. They believe in a fundamental interpretation of the Bible – and they want a government that will enact and enforce their beliefs.

Here in Maine it was the Catholic Church of Portland that spearheaded a drive to defeat a Gay Marriage law that was offered to the people as a referendum. They actually took up collections in church to fund their campaign. They were joined by all the religious fanatics of other faiths, and with big money from outside were able to kill the bill.

Here in America we are being indoctrinated to fear Moslem fanatics; but, we should fear Christian fanatics – they are the biggest danger to our democracy.

The last time Christianity held sway in America
Witches were burned.

 

I AM SOME DISGUSTED!

YOU DON'T GET SMARTER WITH AGE. 

I’m a biker, not the Harley type, but a real biker; and have been all my life. I bought my first bike back in 1958 – a Triumph. Since then I have owned a slew of bikes – including one Harley that never ran right.

After I retired from the Navy my wife and I attended college. For the four years we lived in an old hunting camp with no water, no sewerage and no electricity: and our 650 Yamaha was our main source of transportation.

Three years ago, after returning from Alaska, I bought a Honda Shadow 750 – touted as my last bike:  It's a  sweet bike that gets 55 mph packing both my wife and me. It was due for a tune-up…set the valves and new plugs etc and I told my wife that I wasn’t about to pay $250 for someone else to do the work for me – I have always worked on my on ride.

So out I go and spend about $100.00 for metric tools including a special $40 special wrench that Honda said you need to do the job. Today was the day – a warm sunny day forecasted in Northwestern  Maine. I hit it at nine this morning – what I thought might be a two hour job turned into and all day marathon. Just in order to get to the valves I had to rip most of the bike down. Getting the cylinder heads out of the tight morass of hoses and wiring harnesses took me over two hours. Two trips down to VIP for an ultra thin spark plug socket they didn’t have, etc. and I'm getting pissed.   It's a pretty machine, but I won’t go into the lunacy of the placement of the bike motor parts and their inaccessibility.   I finally completed the job and started putting it back together.

Two screws left and I’m done; but the cylinder head bolt seemed to need one more turn.

Fuck it! The screw broke off. Now I’m screwed. Tomorrow I will rent a trailer and haul the bike to a repair shop. Best case scenario is they will be able to use and easy out and retrieve the broken screw – worst case scenario … $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

I use to have an old friend up in Rangeley that always commented “God damn I!” when he fucked up. Well God damn I!

There's coffee when the whiskeys gone
But there is whiskey for tonight
(song by Dave Mallet)