Kenny Thrives

;-                After a difficult month of September-for personal reasons-Kenny has settled into an inspirational life of music at Edinboro University...The music department has been downsized and future cuts have been threatened, but for now Kenny says that he is loving his life there, and we can observe the positive impact that his professors are having on him. This picture is from a chorus concert on November 10th, which to my ears was a professional presentation that brought tears to my eyes. As he has been challenged by the fresh new talent around him he has responded by producing the best music we have ever heard him do. In that sense of using and developing his God given talents he is exactly where he should be...If Edinboro can no longer provide musical education he will transfer to another school and is already dreaming of the prestigious universities to the east.
-As for the snow...we woke up to three inches that gave the woods the look and feel of January...Too soon for my tastes but Warren weather can go from short sleeves to icicles in the span of a week, so that's the nature of the town.                                                         

Human Insanity

Readers of this blog know that I occasionally get on my soapbox regarding issues about which people have differing opinions, but I hope that any rational being can agree that the following is absolute lunacy: "The Titan 2 missile carried a a 9 megaton warhead, which is about three times the explosive force of all the bombs dropped during World War 2, including both atomic bombs". Read that sentence again...that is One missile in one silo in 1980, and the devil knows what weapons are out there in 2013. I admit that I am ignorant about the destructive power of our arsenals; such information is not bandied about any more than photos of the wounded in our wars. But I do know that these are choices someone is making to produce and maintain this stuff, and now there are crazies-in the name of God- doing everything they can to acquire them. In 1945 Oppenheimer remarked about the bomb that it brought to mind words from the Bhagavad Gita, "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." -so he knew that potential future the moment it occurred. I understand the threat of Nazi Germany that precipitated the development of nuclear weapons, but that same evil may one day have those weapons at it's disposal, and unfortunately, human nature being what it is, a simple accident or unintended consequence could unleash the power when we least expect it. POSTSCRIPT: The United States continues to spend 2 billion dollars a week on the war in Afghanistan, while one billion a year could theoretically educate the five million children there who do not go to school.(..for a little Truth about that war watch the documentary "Dirty Wars" and other work by journalist Jeremy Scahill, currently on Netflix and other places) I guess Americans have grown extremely complacent regarding such obscene, immoral uses of their tax dollars, and sometimes I wonder why...Have we grown so fat and comfortable and self absorbed that we would rather give a guy like Dick Cheney a heart transplant ( $658,000 in 2007 dollars, plus about $21,000 annually in follow up costs) rather than help the uninsured children anywhere to get basic care? Has the lack of a military draft and the censure of the media so detached the average person from the realities of what is going on in our wars that nobody but those directly involved cares? Meanwhile, despite the lowest violent crime rate in 40 years many Americans seem to the think our society is crumbling... There really is so much misinformation and sheer ignorance despite the proliferation of the internet-or perhaps because of it-that I suspect we are so inundated with disposable information that nobody really investigates anything anymore- and if Truth-with a capital T- is discovered, there is so much suspicion and mistrust that even facts are discarded as mere opinion. Our government seems to be run by emotional children backed by self serving money, and we as a nation sit and bitch rather than vote Everyone out and try something new...Does it...will it...has it always taken a crisis to get human beings to change and find different ways to live?...and if so, do we have that the time to procrastinate anymore? Personally, I have written far too many words in my life not to have learned of their ineffectiveness compared to action, yet I keep noticing that even the so called 'poor' have cell phones and fake nails and beer, so what exactly are the priorities this nation is obsessed with?

Self Explanatory

"The gulf between the richest 1% of the USA and the rest of the country got to its widest level in history last year.
The top 1% of earners in the U.S. pulled in 19.3% of total household income in 2012, which is their biggest slice of total income in more than 100 years, according to a an analysis by economists at the University of California, Berkeley and the Paris School of Economics at Oxford University.
The richest Americans haven't claimed this large of a slice of total wealth since 1927, when the group claimed 18.7%. The analysis is based on data from Internal Revenue Service data.
One of the economists behind the research, Emmanuel Saez of the University of California, Berkeley, is a top researcher in the topic of wealth and income inequality. He won the John Bates Clark medal last year. The Clark medal is awarded to the most promising economists under the age of 40. Past winners have includes Paul Krugman of Princeton University, Lawrence Summers and Steve Levitt, co-author of "Freakonomics."
In a separate analysis, Saez found the top 1% of earnings posted 86% real income growth between 1993 and 2000. Meanwhile, the real income growth of the bottom 99% of earnings rose 6.6%."
.............so...still think the game isn't rigged? The system is corrupt and broken and you can't do a damn thing about it...Not to be melodramatic, but I keep wondering if the military-which is mostly lower and working class-will side with the people if and when it all collapses. Meanwhile, according to today's paper 6,000 of Warren County's 41,000 people are living at or below the poverty level ($23,550 for a family of four) yet the EOC (Economic Opportunities Council) has a mere $10,000! to help them pay the rent. The spokeswoman says she receives 10 calls a day asking for assistance. So,while bridges are falling down, people are living in poverty and we waste trillions of dollars on war, it remains unconscionable that this nation should find itself in such dire straits.

Beth and I rode our bikes in a local race called the Kinzua Tango, which begins with a 13.5 mile run that transitions into a 20 mile bike ride that transitions into a 2.5 mile swim in the lake, then a 6-7 mile orienteering section through the woods, then another 4.5 mile run, finishing with an approximately 12 mile canoe race down the Allegheny. Athletes can do the entire race as individuals or in teams of up to six people who each do one or more sections. As the official team member of a Northwest bank team, Beth rode the bike section and I provided company. We had ridden her section several times beforehand, which consists of macadam and dirt roads rambling up and down the mountains near the Allegheny Reservoir, and finished in a respectable 2 hours. No doubt elite athletes who train regularly do it in less time-the best finishing in an hour to an hour and a half- yet a twenty year old college kid who runs and bikes regularly only beat our time by 5 minutes, so with serious training we could likely cut 20-30 minutes off our average. The race began at 7am and our canoe team touched shore at 8:08 pm, which put us last overall but better than that in individual sections, and in the end everyone had a great time. The team ( most of them are under 30 years old...)are already strategizing for next year, for this was their first race and they feel they can easily improve their showing.

Read two interesting books lately, as shown, the first exposing the sadistic, manipulative nature of L. Ron Hubbard, the founder or the cult/religion known as Scientology. Let's summarize it this way: The guy abused his wives and forced his followers to do such things as push peanuts around the wooden deck of his boat as punishment for insubordination. Of course this was under the guise of helping them to become "clear"- a Scientology term for psychologically healthy. Hardly the stuff of a genuinely loving, compassionate human being, spiritually speaking or otherwise. No doubt a few people were helped by his methods, for the path to peace of mind is as diverse as the mind itself, but let's not idolize this person, people. I read Hubbard's book years ago and recognized some truths in it, but so too do Islam and Christianity and other religions have elements of truth that can be beneficial...but not when they are corrupted by the same old failures of human nature.
The second book deals with the abject poverty in Africa that no amount of foreign aid will cure. Mr. Theroux travels from Capetown into Angola by car and bus and train, mingling among the native population, and gives an insightful, sobering assessment that Angelina and Bono have never experienced. After decades of war, Namibia and Angola for the moment are in comparative peace, but millions of people live in slums while the governments and complicit foreigners siphon off literally billions of dollars in oil revenues for their own corrupted pleasures. With so many unemployed young people watching this, it is only a matter of time before the place blows up again-and justifiably so. Yes, there are some good people trying to make positive changes, but the systemic breakdown in so many African cities and countries seems intractable....Both books offer information you likely won't find on the evening news, and both make you appreciate the controlled, civilized corruption and incompetence that forge the socioeconomic decisions in the U.S.A., where the majority of us remain fat enough so as not to conceive of rebelling.

Two Milestones

....and both were momentous occasions for different reasons. First, Kenny graduated from Warren high school on June 7th, and around the same time the 17 year cicadas emerged from the ground to begin their adult phase. Kenny was born the year before this brood of insects was hatched, but when one considers the immensely varied life he has led in those 18 years versus the life underground sucking on tree roots that the cicadas have led, one can appreciate the vast differences between our species. The biological clock that allowed the insects to emerge together is still a mystery, while Kenny, like his classmates, has followed a culturally programed clock all his life and only now has obtained the legal adulthood to decide what he wants to do with his future -which is to play music. The cicadas? They will follow their instincts to mate and then die, and their children will burrow underground to begin the cycle all over again. Whether Kenny will eventually marry and have children who repeat his cultural cycle is a measure of his free will, which no doubt is what truly separates us for the insects.

What's Wrong With Russia?

Just when we thought Russia might actually be entering the 21st century the government has started this crap...persecuting people for opinions and lifestyles that ultimately threaten only ignorant, weak willed and generally middle age white males...God I had hoped humanity was progressing beyond such fearful, hateful thoughts and closer to tolerant, loving ones, but I have always been a dreamer believing in what humanity Could be rather than what it is. Such lost, immature minds perpetuating such unenlightened perversions...