Much is said about symmetry, but little about the divide between symmetry and satisfaction. We need a little chaos in our lives to appreciate perfect circles and dodecahedrons.
That having been said, I was mesmerized yesterday when I stumbled across an assertion that a tetrated dodecahedron is a near-miss Johnson solid—one with full tetrahedral symmetry—that has 28 vertices, 28 faces, and 54 edges. That explanation provided all the chaos my mind needed.
Camber Morton’s head rested on a cushioned metal circle, exposing the back side through the circle. He fidgeted while the anesthesiologist adjusted the gadget affixed high up on the back side of his shaved head. A nurse had taped his eyes shut a few moments before the anesthesiologist entered the surgical theater, so he didn’t know what she looked like. He thought she sounded young, though.
She called it an ‘intrusive deep delivery appliance.’ “Once we turn it on, you’ll feel a cold sensation as it sprays a topical anesthetic on your skin. Next, it will make a small, shallow incision in the numbed scalp.”
Camber already knew the steps that would be undertaken in the procedure. The surgeon, Dr. Shalafondra Gomez, had explained it to him in detail. But it was different, hearing the abstract explanation from Dr. Gomez; today, he felt the device strapped to his head, anticipating the incisions in his head and chest.
“After a pause,” the anesthesiologist continued, “it will inject more of the anesthetic into the incision and pause again. As it progresses, it will spray a biological glue, which seals the tissue surrounding the device to prevent bleeding. It will continue that process until it reaches your brain’s occipital lobe. At that point, Dr. Gomez will insert the fiber-optic transmitter. You will see flashes, maybe some colored bursts like fireworks, while she adjusts the transmitter. Once she has it firmly affixed, you’ll see through the lens of her head-band cameras.”
It seemed to Camber that it took an hour for the device to work its way to his occipital lobe, though it actually took around five minutes. He had expected at least a little pin prick of pain, but he felt nothing but that one burst of cold. Dr. Gomez said “Good morning,” when she entered, but he couldn’t make out what else she said. It seemed she was talking to other people in the room; it was medical talk he didn’t quite understand.
Despite knowing the fireworks were coming, the first flashes surprised him. It was like viewing a full-on fireworks finale, the sort of explosive displays that erupted from the garnitures he once created for Fourth of July celebrations.
Suddenly, the flashes stopped. In their place was a clear view of his own face.
“Wow! This is remarkable. I can see myself. I can see the equipment behind me and the operating table.” He saw the anesthesiologist. She looked to be all of eighteen years old.
“Good,” came the reply from Dr. Gomez. “That’s what we were after. I want you to see what we’re doing; it will help you get a better sense of how to use the prosthetic when it’s fully integrated with your muscles and tendons.”
Camber’s left arm had been blown off just below the elbow when a fireworks mortar exploded prematurely while he was preparing it for launch. The blast shredded the lower part of his arm. Somehow, it left him able to move his arm and bend his elbow, but all sensation was gone from his shoulder on down; he couldn’t feel pain, heat, cold. Nothing. It was that fact that had prompted Dr. Gomez to decide to do the prosthetic surgery without general anesthesia, though the anesthesiologist would stay at the ready, “just in case sensation returns at the most inopportune time,” she said.
Camber thought the prosthetic device looked fragile. It consisted of a brown plastic cylinder at the top, where the electronics and computer circuits were housed, with two stainless steel rods emerging from the cylinder. The rods connected to a maze of metal that looked like mesh, and then to another series of smaller, thinner rods that would be Camber’s new fingers. Almost the entire length of the ‘fingers’ were encased in tan rubber that looked to Camber a little too much like condoms in use.
Camber watched as Dr. Gomez made precise incisions into the stump of his arm. The second she made a cut, it began to bleed slightly, but the hands of an assistant wiped away the blood and, using a device that looked like an air-gun, sprayed something on the cut, stopping the bleeding.
“We’re using biological glue to stop the bleeding,” Dr. Gomez explained. “Internally, it will be absorbed into your system when the wounds heal. Externally, it will peel off when it’s completely dry.”
An hour and fifteen minutes later, Camber’s view of the surgery changed to a view of the operating room as Dr. Gomez raised her head and stood upright.
“All right,” Dr. Gomez said, “I’ve attached extensor tendons to the prosthesis, see?” She lowered her head to just above the spot where his arm joined the device. Camber could see what looked like a stainless steel hose clamp, connecting tissue to one of the rods.
“Yes, I see.”
“Okay, now, I want to see if you can move your new arm, but just a tiny bit; don’t try to lift it, just move it very slightly.” Dr. Gomez raised her head so Camber could see the full extension of both parts of his left arm.
The arm moved slightly.
“Good! Now, you may not be able to control the hands yet, but let’s give it a try. See if you can make a fist.”
She leaned down again so Camber could get a close-up view of the clot of condoms.
He made a fist.
“Great! You’re ahead of the game! We’ll finish this up and then we’ll talk about the processes you’ll need to follow to get this to heal.”
The teenage anesthesiologist spoke. “We’ll retrieve the optical fiber and remove this intrusive deep delivery appliance, now.”
Camber felt a slight tug at the back of his head, then his vision went black.
“The fiber is resisting. I can’t seem to get it to detach from…oh my god!”
He heard a flurry of movement and then lost consciousness.
WHERE DOES THIS GO? I HAVE NO IDEA. PROBABLY NOWHERE.
When the decision is reached, heads bow and children whimper. “This is the end times, my friends,” the old man proclaims, “the end of days as prophesied in the Bible.”
Granger, the multi-lingual bullfrog, watches it play out with a grin on his ugly gullet. “Doesn’t that geezer know I wrote the book, that instructive book of moral fiction, that tome of morality designed to quash bad tempers and calm tantrums? Hmmm. I guess not.”
One would think writing about hate an easy task, given the abundance of hate on display online, in newspaper articles, in parades, and flowing from the pens of state supreme courts. But it is not easy, because to write about it is to feel it course through my veins. It’s one thing to use emotions to inform writing. It’s another thing, entirely, to watch emotions shred the flimsy fabric of civility into a combustible gauze, subject to explosive conflagration at any second.
Watching and reading about the hatred, though, can generate more of it, inside, turning one’s own body into a fulminant vehicle of rage.
Better, far better, to reduce the heat and let the rage settle, then write—with reason—about the mechanisms for starting, and putting out, a fire.
Some words you spoke to someone who found themselves in a dark, painful place erased the worst of the pain and made bearable that person’s next moments. You may not remember what those words were, nor to whom they were spoken. But that really doesn’t matter, does it?
Hearing the door rattle, Little Darby Tiptoe lifted his head and sat perfectly still. When it rattled again and he heard the groan of the hook and eye latch, straining to hold the door shut, he sprang to his feet and raced to the door to see who was there.
An unfamiliar face looked down on him from the other side of the wood-framed screen.
“Hey, boy,” the man whispered, “is anybody home? Are you a nice boy?” The man stood still, his eyes fixed on the dog. Little Darby Tiptoe, his head cocked slightly to the side, stood silently, looking up at the man. The man’s eyes shifted from Darby to the room behind, then back to the dog.
“If you were a mean dog, you’d be growling by now. How ’bout I come in and give you a treat?” With that, the man slid an ice pick through the screen and popped the hook up and out of the eye. He pulled the screen door slowly, as if he were testing to see if the dog would come at him. Little Darby Tiptoe stood motionless.
With the door opened wide enough for him to enter, the man inched his way in, his eyes on the dog. “Be a good boy, now, don’t be afraid of me. Don’t bark at me, boy.”
He reached around behind him with his left hand, closing the door so it wouldn’t make a noise. Darby took two steps back from the man.
“Don’t be scared, boy. Here, you want a treat?” The man knew how to behave around unfamiliar dogs. His movements, slow and deliberate, were textbook ‘how to approach a strange dog.’ He pulled a biscuit from his pocket and reached down to give it to the dog.
Little Darby Tiptoe’s lips curled, revealing menacing canine teeth, but he didn’t growl. “Whoa, boy,” the man whispered as he pulled back, “don’t go rogue on me. I just want to give you a treat.” The dog’s lips loosened when the man backed off.
“Okay, boy, you don’t want a treat. Just let me get by you, all right?”
The man leaned toward the wide opening into the living room. Little Darby Tiptoe watched him, but did not get in his way as the intruder stepped around him.
Darby followed the man from room to room at a distance of about ten feet. When the man reached for the knob on Marissa’s bedroom door, Little Darby Tiptoe raced toward him, lunging at his right foot. Darby’s mouth opened wide, then clamped shut on the man’s Achilles tendon.
The man screamed and at the same moment thrust his right hand, the one holding the ice pick, down and backward toward the dog. Darby released his grip on the man’s leg and ran toward the front door. The injured man hesitated for just a moment, then followed the dog. Little Darby Tiptoe scurried to the kitchen, beyond the screen door, and turned around to watch the man swing the screen door open and rush out, limping down the sidewalk, leaving a trail of blood behind him.
Darby’s eyes remained fixed on the man as he disappeared into the driver’s side of a car parked a block away. When the car pulled away, Darby turned. He followed the drops of blood on the wood floor, dutifully licking them up, erasing the unsightly evidence of a break-in gone bad.
Distant thunder is a secretive sound. It hides its location, but warns me with its powerful growl, like a protective dog baring its teeth if I get too close.
With David’s foot tucked back safely in his flip-flop, it was Lisa’s turn to misbehave. She slipped the sandal off her right foot, reached under the table with her leg toward David’s leg, and brushed her foot lightly against the side of his knee.
Gloria did not see any of this inappropriate behavior beneath the table. But a woman sitting at a nearby table did. She watched David’s foot reach under the table and touch Lisa’s ankle. She saw Lisa’s response a few seconds later, as she looked up after signing the credit card receipt for her meal. That woman, Dr. Cari Smithers, had the day before prescribed a cortisone cream to treat a rash behind Gloria’s knees.
A tall blond woman in her early forties, Smithers literally stumbled into Gloria at Ranger’s Gym six months earlier. As Gloria stepped off the elliptical machine, Cari rounded the track behind the machine, bumping into her. After an exchange of apologies, the two of them began chatting. In the weeks that followed, they began to develop a friendship.
Cari’s training in medical school and the dermatology internship that followed taught her to keep her emotions hidden when dealing with patients. That training served her well outside her practice, too. Nothing in her face betrayed surprise at what she had seen. She first met David when he picked Gloria up at the gym, then later at a dinner party hosted by Lisa Benther, another of her patients.
Cari placed her napkin on the table, stood, and walked to the table where Gloria, David, and Lisa were sitting.
“Hi there! Looks like all the best people come to Kangaroo, doesn’t it? I just had their crab louie and I can recommend it highly!” She turned to Lisa. “I’ve been admiring your black strap sandals, dear, they’re just darling!”
Lisa’s face flushed. “Oh, thank you! They’re one of my favorite pairs.”
Cari’s eyes turned to David, then quickly to Gloria. “See you tomorrow at the gym? Boy, do I have some stories to tell! Enjoy your lunch.”
If you wake up each day and require yourself to express appreciation for people you don’t know, it won’t be long before you start actually appreciating them. And it can go on from there.
David’s habit of inelegant dress annoyed Lisa Benther. Shorts, a t-shirt, and flip-flops were fine for the beach but were entirely unsuitable for wearing to lunch. Yet, there he was, sitting across the table from her at Kangaroo, one of the hottest new restaurants in Little Rock. Fortunately, their table was in a corner so she could claim a seat that put her back to the remainder of the restaurant. David’s wife, and Lisa’s friend, Gloria, was dressed more appropriately for the meal, in Lisa’s opinion. Gloria’s bright print blouse, capri pants, and brown leather sandals were casual, but not sloppy-casual like David’s attire. Lisa, of course, was dressed to the nines: a white sheath dress, gold chain necklace, triple gold bracelets, and black strap sandals.
“Lisa, I feel downright slovenly in your presence! Maybe I should be the one with my back to the room!”
Gloria kicked David’s foot under the table.
“Don’t be silly, David, I always say people should wear what makes them feel comfortable. Obviously, you’re comfortable in beachwear. Pay no attention to the other people staring at you.”
“All right, you two, let’s talk about something other than your competing fashion choices.” Gloria’s right hand slid across David’s knee, her palm clenched and ready for a painful squeeze.
“Well,” Lisa responded, “what do you think of the menu at this place? Isn’t it just amazing? I’ve heard the Chilean sea bass is out of this world!”
“If restaurants and fishmongers keep marketing it the way they have been,” David said, “it will be out of this world soon due to overexploitation. It’s not really a bass, it’s a type of cod. It was called Patagonian toothfish until 1977 and very few people ate it until the early 1990s, when marketers seized on a way to turn it into money machine.”
Lisa’s cheery smile had turned to a glare by the time David finished. “Oh, I forgot you think everything we eat is on the endangered list. Do you see anything on the menu that I won’t feel guilty about eating?”
Gloria’s hand squeezed David’s knee hard enough to elicit an “ouch!”
“I’ll be good. I just rather enjoy getting under Lisa’s skin.” David smiled at Gloria, then gave Lisa a wink.
“Well, the farm-raised tilapia shouldn’t make my guilt-meter spike too high, and the ‘locally-sourced goat cheese crostini with grilled vegetables’ sounds good, too. I’m in the mood for an appetizer. Maybe I’ll want something else a little later in the day to satisfy my hunger.” David’s right foot slipped out of his flip-flop and he stretched his leg across under the table, touching Lisa’s ankle. She smiled.
Sharing the person you are, way down deep, is fraught with danger. Once you reveal that hidden man with all his flaws, you cannot undo the revelation. So, be careful. Flaws can sharpen claws and give justification to the unjustified.
I left the house at 4:30 a.m., slipping into the dark garage as quietly as I could so as not to wake my daughter’s dog, Winchester. When Winchester is awakened before his natural time to shake off the night’s sleep, he tends to drift off at inopportune times during the remainder of the day, like when he’s eating or relieving himself.
Seeming to have successfully left Winchester asleep in the den, I tapped the button on the garage door opener and watched the big white door rise to reveal the blackness of morning. I turned right out of the driveway, climbing the hill slowly to avoid slamming into armadillos and squirrels and raccoons. When I reached the top of the hill, the car did not follow the road down the other side but, instead, just kept going up at the same speed. I took my foot off the accelerator almost immediately when the wheels left the ground because, with the tires having no traction, the engine began to race.
I should have been surprised—shocked—at finding myself rising into the sky in my car, but for some reason it seemed perfectly natural to me. Looking through the windshield into the dark sky above, I felt calm and utterly at peace. When I looked out the side window to the ground below, I saw only a few dim street lights; but above me, the stars became brighter and brighter as I climbed higher.
“Dad?” I was startled to hear my daughter’s voice. “Dad, what are you doing?”
“Denise, where are you?” Her voice sounded as if she were right next to me, but I was alone in the car.
“I’m right here.”
“Where?”
“In the radio. I mean, I’m not IN the radio, I’m talking to you THROUGH the radio. I’m sitting next to Winchester in the den. He told me you left a few minutes ago. Where are you going? And why is the car five thousand feet in the air?”
“How do you know that, Denise? And how are you able to talk to me through the radio?”
“C’mon! Think about it, Dad.”
“Okay, you’re saying I’m having one of my weird dreams, right?”
“Bingo!”
And that’s where it ended. I don’t know where I was going, but it was obvious Denise didn’t want me to go there.
Today is a good day. It’s my wife’s birthday, a day to celebrate! And we shall.
It seems one of my favorite phrases, “slogging through the porridge,” belongs only to me. I have used it only once in my blog (that I can find), but it escapes my lips in conversation not infrequently and it has found its way into my fiction on more than one occasion. This morning, for reasons too convoluted to explain here, I searched Google for the phrase, typing the words between quotation marks. The search yielded only two results, both from my blog; I expected to find many more, inasmuch as I assumed I must have borrowed it from someone else. Maybe. Maybe not.
To me, the phrase makes perfectly good sense. It means “coping with the day-to-day struggles of life with resigned determination.” I wonder whether it would make sense to readers who encounter it in my fiction. I suspect readers would be able to figure it out from context, but perhaps it would require a diversion from the reader’s attention to the story, which could break the rhythm of reading. I suppose I should leave it to a good editor to make that determination.
And on other matters, I spent quite a while earlier this morning looking at photos of women welders and the products off their efforts. I have a Pinterest board dedicated to welding (I took a course once and loved it; would like to take another one some day). A woman who goes by “Big Mamma” repinned my “more welding basics” pin. I looked at her welding-related pins, almost all of which were of women welding, women who are welders, and/or their work. I am easily distracted.
Speaking of butterflies…
Solving problems generally requires acknowledging their existence. That’s why many problems never seem to go away. For example, I refuse to acknowledge the existence of Ted Cruz. Perhaps if I did, he would.
We assume creatures like crustaceans and caterpillars have no consciousness of that “thing:” we call emotion. How could they, after all? They are not human so how could they possibly possess a human characteristic like emotion? Yet we do not hesitate to ascribe to dogs the capacity not only to feel emotional ups and downs like humans, but to influence our emotions. Where, then, is the dividing line between consciousness, in the human sense, and simple existence?
Perhaps we believe only mammals are capable of emotion. But we tend to think of cats as cold and emotionless (at least I do), self-absorbed creatures capable of caring only for and about themselves. And what about goats and raccoons and anteaters?
Quite some time ago, I wrote a few comments about an experiment that suggested the possibility of plants responding to external stimuli (in the form of temperature or wounds) in a way akin to the way animal respond to pain. I had always assumed, as I think do most people, plants lack the physical structures necessary to feel pain. But that assumption is based on so many other assumptions that have no basis in known facts; our assumptions rely on our incredibly limited experience. The experiment gave me pause; just how myopic is my view of the world?
Our experience is based solely on our experience; we cannot experience the world around us as anything but ourselves. We cannot realistically hope to know how a dog or an otter or a dragonfly experiences the world. But, often, we behave as if we know how they see the world. Most of them, we believe, are automatons who experience the world entirely in instinctual reactions to both internal and external stimuli. Ants behave in biochemically predictive ways. Cardinals and pigeons fly through life in similarly reactive states; not thinking, but simply being. Or so we assume.
Why is it we have no compunction about killing a spider or a cockroach, yet we respond in horror when we hear about someone killing a kitten or a seal?
Somewhere in this confused jumble of thoughts on the consciousness of living things is a theory of life, but it’s just an embryonic idea that needs time to grow before attempting to crawl out of my head. I think an article by Micheal Gerson, sent to me by a friend, reviewing Yuval Noah Harari’s book “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind,” may have nourished that seed of an idea.
Frequently, I will allow someone whose perspectives differ radically from mine—even when I believe their perspectives are biased and immoral and fundamentally wrong—to make their case without allowing myself to automatically reject their arguments. Usually, I find their arguments weak and unpersuasive. Occasionally, though, my mind will not be changed about the position on the issue, but about the immorality and bias I assigned to the person making the case.
So it was today, when I read an impassioned argument that the Confederate flag should not be “thrown into the wastebin of history.” Though I still believe the Confederate flag is a symbol of hatred, I believe it is not always a symbol of hatred. For some, it really is a symbol of heritage. That notwithstanding, I have not changed my position on the flag; it should be preserved in museums and not in homes or in public buildings. But we should not ban it, any more than we should ban books. We should feel free to condemn it and the hatred associated with it. But we should take in account those who want and need a symbol of their heritage and help them identify other symbols that do not carry with them the pain that flag inflicts on others.
Too many smiles.
Too many smiles in a time of sadness.
What are they thinking?
Don’t they see what’s
happening all around them?
Aren’t they aware of
the ugliness on
every street corner?
I don’t understand
how they can ignore
the unraveling of
humankind.
Yet they just go on smiling.
Singing as they brush the dust
from their shoulders,
they pick up bricks from
the bomb-shattered wall,
and stack them in neat piles.
They must be blind
to the hopelessness
buried in the rubble.
They must be deaf to
the cries of pain.
They must be crazy.
Only the insane would
smile when all hope is
lost. Only the insane
would sing in the
face of death.
I watch them smile,
day after day,
wondering what will become
of them when all the rubble
is cleared, neatly stacked.
I watch as new walls emerge
from their salvaged brick,
new homes arise from the dust.
I, too, have been made crazy
in this time
of sadness,
this time of
hopelessness,
this time of
impossibility.
I smile as I
dust off a
brick from
a newly
wounded
wall.
As I was driving to Little Rock yesterday morning to take my wife in for a “pre-colonoscopy consult,” I listened to a fascinating program on the Diane Rehm show on NPR. Diane and her guests were discussing a book, Everything I Never Told You, by Celeste Ng. In spite of repeated suggestions that people who had not yet read the book should turn down the volume, I listened. I’ve not read the book. But now, I must!
As I listened to the plot and the intricate paths the author took with the story line, I became more and more enchanted with the writer and her writing. I decided I have to read the book. Part of that enchantment and desire to read it emanates from a storyline I have contemplated for months: a young black man, an adoptee to a progressive young white couple, confronts the reality of race and bigotry, just as does his sister, an Hispanic child only a couple of years older. There are other characters. They may be unnecessary. But I cannot let the book die just because another one with a backwards plot might be in the running.
I may have finally outlined the basics of a novel I may one day write. Or maybe not. I cannot be trusted to finish things I start.
Honestly, now. Wouldn’t your life be a lot calmer and your time on this earth more serene if you ‘d just stop blaming people, including yourself, for the state of affairs? Wouldn’t it be easier just to change the world? You know it would. Start with yourself.
This morning, I could write about a thousand ideas, but none of them seem sufficiently relevant to me to warrant the expenditure of enough energy to bring those thoughts to life. I start writing about something that’s mildly interesting to me, then stop when I realize the requisite fire is just not there.
This is nothing new. Looking at my “drafts” folder for this blog, I see that I have started, but not finished, fifty-five posts. A few of those drafts contain the seeds of ideas that, with nourishment, have the potential of growing into essays or stories or even chapters of a novel. Some others, of course, I will eventually delete because they were dull or stupid from the start, wastes of the energy required to tap letters onto the keyboard; their deserved malnourishment will, ultimately, lead to their demise.
Today, the obstacle to writing something that matters is a combination of anger and the inability to properly articulate complex thoughts. I am angry this morning because I made the mistake of reading drivel complaining about immigrants and immigration posted by people whose words show clearly how willfully ignorant of the facts they are. Yet I cannot write clear sentences exposing those words for the bias and hatred that launched them. I am in a dangerous mood, the kind of mood that makes sharp machetes look like better tools than keyboards—precisely the kind of mood that launched the idiotic diatribes that led me to allow myself to respond the way I am responding.
Knowledge is such a precious thing. It can, when married to experience, lead to flashes of insight that have the capacity to solve staggering problems and make lives richer and more complete. Anger, though, can burn through knowledge like a hot piece of steel can burn through wax, leaving nothing but a useless puddle in its wake. I dare not, in this state of mind, attempt to turn one of those fifty-five drafts into something meaningful, because I might risk turning one with potential into a puddle.
So, I will attempt to douse the flames in my brain with coffee. And maybe I’ll imaging myself sitting in a chair on a desolate beach on a cool, cloudy day, the odor of the ocean filling my nostrils and a beautiful puppy sitting comfortably in my lap. I’ll listen to the sounds of the waves lapping against the beach and watch the shore birds skim the surface of the water. Maybe that will do it.
You approach me, your eyes fiercely blue and focused, as a friend. But you leave me as a lover. Is this something you dreamed or something you experienced? Or both? And, for me, what can I say but I am simply an active observer of what might be, or could have been. Imagination is stronger than steel, yet more malleable than clay.
I wish, sincerely, Second Amendment advocates and “strict constructionists” of the Constitution would do their effing homework. Just for the record, here’ s a brief synopsis of the real world:
It has only been much more recent that the Supreme Court has broadened and radically expanded the applicability of the Second Amendment to permit such nonsensical bullshit as gun lobbyists and the sheep they groom in the form of NRA members, and their ilk, are promoting today.
The “strict constructionists” need only examine the real records of our democracy to discover that our forefathers were not the same sort of right-wing gun-nuts we have in Congress today. If they want to, truly, live by the words and deeds of our founders, they would ignore the Bill of Rights altogether, wouldn’t they? Or, at the very least, they would read history and would educate themselves about the principles enumerated at the outset. But of course they will not do that, because that does not serve their present purpose, i.e., the total consolidation of power by the monied class, who wish for nothing but absolute control.
Don’t these fanatics realize that it wasn’t until 2008 that a deeply politicized and conservative Supreme Court ruled expressly that the amendment protects an individual’s right to possess and carry firearms. That, my friends, was seven years ago. Yet we’re told the Constitution has “always” guaranteed our rights to climax while holding assault weapons close to our bodies in public parks and churches and public schools. The imbeciles, and I use that term charitably, who claim the Second Amendment has “always” guaranteed individuals’ right to own and brandish dangerous and stupidly ugly weapons are stupid in the extreme, or they simply choose to rewrite history to suit their twisted political perspective.
Does this issue piss me off? Oh, $&##!#*@#$$$ yes!
The twenty-first amendment to the Constitution repealed the eighteenth amendment, thus ending prohibition. The second amendment is not sacred; it, too, can be repealed. Do I advocate that? No. I do, though, advocate for a clarification of the second amendment, along with a variety of other clarifications and laws, if need be, to make and keep access to guns difficult.
I’d also be in favor of mandatory education for everyone, whether they want to learn or not. Make it a requirement until at least age…twenty-seven.
Tents spring up all around Hot Springs and Hot Springs Village, beginning June 20; a few weeks before Independence Day. Inside, vast quantities of fireworks are offered for sale. Signs promote 500 firecrackers for $1.99. Curious as to the genesis of these tents, I did a bit of research and found some interesting information.
A company called A-1 Arkansas Fireworks, the top of whose website proclaims “Bondservants of our Lord Jesus Christ,” offers up the positives and negatives of operating a tent for the company. Among the positives, the site claims, is the potential for “tremendous monetary benefits.” Some operators, the site says, earn $20,000 for the season (June 20-July 5); many earn $10,000. Among the negatives: the tent must operate from 10:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. and the operator (or someone) must be in the tent twenty-four hours a day during the season; a cot must be provided and the operator must sleep in the tent.
There may be other distributors; I suspect there are. But I didn’t bother looking. The topic doesn’t hold enough interest to warrant more than a cursory exploration.
None of the up to $20,000 an operator might earn for the season will come from me. Well, maybe indirectly, if an A-1 operator sells the fireworks that will be used for the Hot Springs Village fireworks extravaganza over Lake Balboa. Our neighbors have invited us to watch the show from their boat. I suspect it will be quite a shindig and I’m looking forward to it.
You can’t see the stars unless you go outside on clear, dark nights.
