Thanks

OK, let's see, what am I thankful for?  Not a hard question, really.  I live in a place that is not regularly bombed.  I have a loving wife, healthy kids and grandkids, and pretty much my own health.  I have the president I voted for in office and still fighting.  My financial status is not plush, but it's adequate and pretty stable.  Though I lost my first wife, we spent thirty-two wonderful years together.  Though my sons and grandsons are distant, I see them a couple of times a year.  I have a good deal of my hearing left and have music, as Billy Joel would say, in my hands (and everywhere else).  Though I peer though floaters, I see pretty well and can read (words just fine, notes not so much, but that's another problem). 

Now, who receives the thanks is another question.  After being pretty much a spiritual drifter (or agnostic, whatever) for nearly 40 years, I joined a church several years ago.  But it's the kind of place that lets one believe whatever one wants to believe, which suits me.  I am not keen about religion or the religious (who tend to hurt people who don't agree with them), and, if pushed, will only admit to believing that there is a spark of something (ok, call it the divine) in all of us, in living things. 

A mystic -- Meister Eckhardt, perhaps -- said, "If you are going to pray one prayer, let it be 'Thank you.' " 

So thank you.  Thank you very much.

Think Obama Has Done a Poor Job?

Read this:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/220013

A Thought for Young People

According to a recent piece in the New Yorker, 45 million fewer voters voted for congressional candidates in 2010 than in 2008.  Forty-five MILLION.  According to the same piece, the 2010 electorate was overwhelmingly elderly.  Folks like me.  Well, not like me, I suppose, because I supported Obama in 2008 (and before!) and I support him now.  And I voted a nearly straight Democratic ballot this year (nearly because we have our assholes too).  So what this looks like to me is that the young folks who supported Obama in 2008 just didn't come out.

Well, young folks who didn't come out, I hope you're not thinking about complaining about the job he's doing.  Repeatedly in the campaign and during his presidency, Mr. Obama has said that he can't do it alone, that it's up to us, that we need to help.  Repeatedly.  And forty-five million people decided it was too much trouble to get out and help this time.  If things go badly for the next two years (and they will, they surely will), it won't be Mr. O's fault.  It'll be yours.

Thanks a lot, kids.

Next time get your youthful bottoms off the couch and vote these idiots out!

Angry

This is the kind of thing that makes me angry.  It makes me even angrier that the Tea Party folks and their ilk don't understand this.  Why don't they get it?  I suppose one of them might answer that all taxes are evil, all government is bad.  Well, no.  Taxes are dues.  You belong to the club, you pay your dues.  You get the armed forces and all kinds of other stuff for your dues.  Most of it you would really hate to lose.  And you should think about that.  And the dues might be fairer if those hedge fund managers and their ilk paid their fair share.

Barbershop

I went for a haircut this morning.  I love traditional barbershops and avoid unisex hair salons absolutely.  The place I go in town has the spiraling poll next to the door, three chairs (two of which are manned by barbers in their sixties, well, one of them is probably in his 70's).  They greet you by name.  A lady walking her large dog enters and lets the customers pet Honey the dog.  As I was getting my haircut the other barber started teasing his customer, an octogenarian named Carl with just an efflorescence of white on either side of his dome, about his allegiance to Northwestern Football.  "Carl," says the barber, "when you pass they ought to put a statue of you in front of Ryan Field."  "That would be nice," croaks Carl, laughing.  My barber says, "No, no, what we ought to do is get a taxidermist to stuff him and put him there, maybe have the arm motorized so that it can wave to the fans."  "Yes, yes," says Carl, "and my nose would light up."

Immortality!

Incipit

I'm not sure why I'm starting this, but I think that I need a place to write some random thoughts.  I'm intrigued too by anonymity.  I've done a fair amount of blogging in the past, always using my real name, and I want to see how it feels to write as an unknown.

The title of this blog came to me because I think a lot now about aging.  I'm 67 (68 in three months) and in very good health, but I have a 99 year old mother who has not been in serious touch with present time in a couple of years.  Not surprisingly, I'm haunted by the idea of losing my own grasp on the present, although I seem to be losing the past more effectively.  But the "blues" in the title does not mean that this is going to be an interminable sob about getting old.  There are all kinds of blues.

So we'll see what happens here.