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A Minor Miracle

It’s August 1st and we’re looking at some really lovely weather over the coming week.

Cautious Optimism

All human wisdom is summed up in two words; wait and hope. ~Alexandre Dumas

Perhaps this reprieve from the “Dog Days of Summer” is thanks to the approaching hurricane. Regardless, I’ll take low 80s over low 90s all summer long.

That’s one less pain to deal with in the short term. My costochondritis continues to be a nuisance as does my recurring ankle issue.

Another pain is having to wait for news of progress on the job front. Experience shows this to be a fruitless exercise, but one hopes that this one will be different. The opportunity is tailor-made for me and was literally dropped in my lap without looking for it. This might be the one I’ve been waiting for or it might be just another in a long stream of things that seem too good to be true.

My hearing seems to be adjusting to my hearing aids. Unfortunately, I still can’t hear most of what Kelly says. Perhaps when the temperatures drop to something passing for civilized, we won’t have a million fans running and I won’t be getting nearly as much interference. Perhaps she’ll just speak up so I can hear her.

Who knows? Anything is possible, I suppose…

The whole COVID19 situation continues to be a complete hassle. Dr Fauci is now recommending goggles. So, not only will we all soon be running around in paintball masks, all the Karens and other assorted maskholes will be screeching how evil you are to endanger them with your naked eyeballs.

The single sunbeam in this whole situation is that things should take a dramatic turn on November 4th. A lot of the idiocy of Democrat governors, mayors and Congressfolk is geared toward destroying the current President’s popularity and the progress he had made with the economy prior to the outbreak.

What they don’t seem to see is that all of their antics are not only ridiculously transparent but are actively driving people away from the reprehensible Democrat party. There’s bound to be a pretty shocking landslide in favor of the incumbent. This will be viewed as a mandate to continue and intensify efforts to Drain the Swamp and restore America’s confidence in itself.

A single sunbeam is enough to drive away many shadows. ~Francis of Assisi

Old School Tunes

Russian Folk Music & Slavic Music

I was listening to this collection of Russo-Slavic folk music while I wrote this today. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Write What You Know

All art is autobiographical. The pearl is the oyster’s autobiography. ~Federico Fellini

Ultimately, whatever you write is what you know of the topic. It is a part of you and ultimately inseparable from you.

That’s great because you can be said to be writing what you know. That’s not so great because maybe you don’t know anything about what you’re writing about. A lot of people do this.

People who have never solved a crossword puzzle try to write fiendish mysteries.

Folks who don’t leave their air-conditioned homes write epic fantasy novels about people living hard off the land and passing through medieval villages (without air conditioning) as if their characters were staying over at a modern hotel.

People who are of a certain demographic have the gall (*gasp*) to include people of another demographic in their works!

😲 Oh, the humanity!!! 😲

So what? Either they’re telling a good story or they’re not.

Hopefully, we can soon get past the need for “sensitivity editors” in our writing. Obviously, you don’t want to be a complete piece of 💩 but I think we can probably get to a point where a character can be a member of a specific demographic without it automatically being assumed that they’re a caricature or whatever group the story character belongs to.

Your story is yours. If your experience is that people of a certain group, nationality or geographic origin are good or bad, you’re naturally going to write it that way.

I’ve had the good fortune to travel a bit, met travelers from many lands and watched a fair amount of movies and TV from places other than the United States. It’s always interesting to see how people from other countries view themselves, their history and their folk heroes.

That, to me, is one of the best ways to overcome jingoism and racism. Seeing people through their own eyes is truly revealing. What they see as their core virtues and beliefs are expressed in their own dramas. What we see is that there is a lot of commonality because we’re all simply human.

We have basic human needs to live without being hassled, to love without being judged and to do whatever we were born to do.

There’s entirely too much finger-pointing these days. Maybe it’s really just okay for artsy people to be artsy and practical people to be practical. We all fill a need that someone else has. We all have a place.

Maybe we could all stop insisting that everyone be exactly alike and let people be who they are as long as it is not actively harmful to others. Maybe we could really be free to be you and me.