Esoteric Meandering Shouting Into the Void

Lyle Northey (Silent/Boomer)

In the arena for getting away from the use of fossil fuel we could use natural geothermal power from areas around YellowStone to produce power without interfering with the park. The same is true of the ring of fire as well as that burning coal mine in Penn State. Why no one has not taken advantage of that opportunity is just nuts. That town had to have water mains and sewer systems in place and those would make great beginnings to a power system.

   Another issue that is major at present is homelessness. We have places that are sitting empty that could be used to house people on sections of military installations across this nation. It would take some effort to make those places be separated from the rest of the post if that is the way the installation is set up. Other places are open and it would not require that sort of rearrangement. Many of the buildings have dining facilities in them that would need to be manned to feed the people living there, and that could provide work for some of the residents. There are positive means to solve problems. We just need to look for them and then put the effort into doing something about it..

  There are over a million homeless children in this country and the question has to be why? Is this the result of separating children from their parents at the border when they tried to enter and gain asylum or some other cause? Regardless the reason the answer is not sitting on our hands and wondering what someone else is going to do about it.

  Gun violence, drug problems, racial issues, fights and tension over life style differences Each problem is solvable or resolvable with the use of common sense and some common compassion for our fellow humans. There is a contingent of our citizens that use the Constitution to move negative agendas forward. Gun violence is at an all time high because ownership of guns and poor regulation and no training are really primary causes for the problems. Correct interpretation of the order would limit the type and number of weapons that could be on the streets, as it stands a corrupt Supreme Court has been allowed to be bribed to allow the gun lobby to place weapons in the hands of any fool that wants one or more and shoot up whatever venu they see fit.

  Drugs are a big issue as well. People are ill, or in pain or believe themselves to be in pain, and because normal medications cost more than illegal ones guess which one they prefer to take. Of course they tend to take far more than is needed, it makes them feel so good, and they have a little booze with it, even better, and well the entire thing is just a bucket of crap. To keep it all in perspective you have to remember the little rhyme, “Candy’s dandy, but liquor’s quicker, and sex won’t rot your teeth.” Unlike meth of course.

  The wonderful Mr. Trump has promised to become a dictator if re-elected. If he does then is he going to have the same policy as the man from the Philippines, kill the drug dealers, all of them. Allow murder in open places, get rid of those with the odd life styles as well and carry the practice over to all that upset him in any way whatsoever.

Would love any thoughts on any of these topics.

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

It is December 2023 and I have been reminiscing about my youth namely the 1980’s, those were the years that I was in Middle School, High School, College, and the Military, pretty formative years. I have also been listening to a lot of 80’s music and rewatching movies from those years… we have come a long way, but have we gotten better?

The 1980’s were pre-internet, which meant that term papers required library time and handwriting those papers, no google or cut and past back then. It also was a time that as children and teenagers we had to go outside, we were not tethered to a game system or cell phone 24/7. In those ways I feel that my childhood was better than my son’s, but he has had many advantages that I did not have at his age.

On the world stage there was still the threat of nuclear annihilation because the Cold War was still going on. My Dad was in the military so that ominous reality was never too far from the surface although as teenagers we tended not to dwell on it other than when movies like War Games broached the topic. It was an era of looking at a possible dystopian future with movies like Mad Max and Red Dawn but there were also movies that completely defined Generation X, The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

Arcade video games came out; Pac Man, Centipede, Donkey Kong and the like but we actually had to go to an arcade and interact with our peers we could sequester ourselves in our rooms and play video games like the current generation.  

This current generation has been subjected to a 24-hour news cycle and 100’s of channels of around the clock entertainment, we had 3 to 4 channels unless our parents decided to buy cable and those few stations went off the air at midnight. If you were lucky enough to have cable, we got to see the launch of MTV when they actually played music videos…do they even play music videos anymore?

Life without cellphones was nice, not having to be in continuous contact let our minds dwell on other things, work could not contact you in an instant wanting us to come in. I miss the days of trepidation answering the phone because you didn’t know who was on the other end, those were the childish days of prank phone calls, something today’s kids will never understand.

We were afraid the George Orwells 1984 would become a reality little did we know that in 2023 it has come pretty damn close. I don’t even know that todays school kids have to read those books, 1984, Animal Farm, Lord of the Flies, The Great Gatsby.

The one thing that I wish my son had in school that I had was never having to go to school and worry that someone might come into the school with a gun and start killing indiscriminately. I wished for that every day for every kid and now that my son is in college, I am even more troubled by that thought.

40 years has past since those days, technology has made great advances but socially the sense of community has regressed… that’s what I miss about the 1980’s.

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

This was a line solemnly stated by Frankin Deleno Roosevelt on Dec 8^th, 1941, one day after the Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii Dec 7^th, 1941, a date that will live in infamy.

The is and was a seminal date in history and the event the finally pulled the United States into WWII.  December 8^th, 1941, was the day we entered the war declaring war against Japan it wasn’t until December 11^th that congress formally declared war against Germany.

This monumental date has few survivors that actually witness or heard FDR’s famous speech and now the events are relegated to History Books and all-day programs on the History Channel. I recently realized that my Father and my Son both missed a world changing days in history by 4 years, my father was born in 1945 so he wasn’t born to witness the events of Dec 7^th, my son was born in 2005 so he wasn’t present for 9/11. Both have had to hear accounts of those days from their respective parents and read about them in history books.

I don’t that we still retain the lessons learned for WWII because the institutional memory of those events is rapidly passing from this plain of existence. This past week Henry Kissinger passed, although he was a horrible person, he had memories of WWII and a former President that actually served as a submarine officer in WWII, Jimmy Carter is 99 years old and will be shedding this mortal coil and joining his belove wife Roselin soon after a life that can only be celebrated as one that we can only hope to emulate.

Will we forget the lessons on 9/11/2001 eighty years from now when most of us the bore witness that terrible day. Did we learn any lessons from that day? That is the bigger question.

President George W. Bush’s comments after 9/11 don’t ring with the clarion call FDR’s words after Pearl Harbor, “Today, our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts.” Bush could have united the world after 9/11 as FDR solidified the Allies in WWII but we all know how that turned out.

I hope the institutional memory of the horrors of war stays with us so that we don’t repeat the same mistakes.