The Etymology of the Word “Fall” Refers to Falling Leaves
Prior to the terms “fall” and “autumn” making their way into the common lexicon, the months of September, October, and November were generally referred to as the harvest season, a time of year for gathering ripened crops. Some of the first recorded uses of the word “fall” date back to 1500s England, when the term was a shortened version of “fall of the year” or “fall of the leaf.” The 1600s saw the arrival of the word “autumn,” which came from the French word automne and was popular among writers such as Chaucer and Shakespeare. By the 18th century, “autumn” became the predominant name for the season in England, though over the following century, the word “fall” would grow in popularity across the Atlantic. But while some proper British English linguists consider fall to be an Americanism, the term actually originated in England, and both “autumn” and “fall” are used interchangeably today.
President John F. Kennedy assumed office during a tumultuous time in America’s history. But right from his inaugural address, he conveyed a spirit of hope and idealism in a resonant quote that went on to define his presidency. “Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country,” he famously said.
JFK’s inauguration, the first to be broadcast in color, was watched by some 38 million people. The speech, although credited principally to Kennedy, was also written by Kennedy’s longtime aide (and later, principal speechwriter) Ted Sorensen. Kennedy wanted a speech that would “set a tone for the era about to begin,” and he got just that. America was on the precipice of great social change, and the inaugural address encapsulated the country’s need for unity and the civic engagement the moment would call for.
It is hard to imagine that almost 50% of our populus is willing to take their futures, and the futures of the rest of us, and flush them down the toilet. How are they going to do that? Simply by putting a mark beside Trump’s name on the ballot. These people have not listened to his rants about deportations, imprisonments, and not having to worry about voting ever again. He wants to be seen as one of his contemporaries and those are the dictators of this world. His focus is to become more wealthy than anyone else, and if put into office he will take what he wants from whomever he wants. There are no states in this nation that have not supplied troops to a war or conflict and he has called all those that served losers. They have gone off to protect the freedom that everyone enjoys even those that have never served, like Trump. So does the rest of the people in the states that are so solidly behind him also think of you as losers. If you vote for him then you most certainly are losers. We already know that this is going to be a contested election because if he loses we can expect to see the same crap as in 2020, his day of love as he described it. His transition team is supposed to have made arrangements with the White House staff in the event he wins and they have not done that. The reason is because they must stop taking money from outside sources when they sign, they don’t want to stop taking money. The main point is that rules are for others to obey, not Trump. So what are the reasons to vote for him? If you believe that he is religious you would be mistaken, and yet his line of nonsense seems to attract the religious. Mostly the ones that are convinced that skin color makes a difference. History tells us that that attitude is as old as the first humans. It is claimed that Neanderthal and Homosapien peoples were totally different and yet they must have been able to interbreed as there are people today with both genes in their DNA. The inability to reproduce with one another is the point of difference. When it comes to his having plans for the nation he has yet to express a positive idea. Do away with all social support, social security, medicare etc and ask yourselves can you really manage without these programs? How about the older members of your families, can they manage or are they all going to come live with you? His focus is get rid of immigrants, lock up opponents and drill baby drill. The need to extract more riches from the earth for personal gain is his real focus. What he leaves behind for your children and the future matters not, he will die with his name on as many things as he can put it on and he will be in the books as being the wealthiest and most powerful and that is all that counts.
Cooler weather, shorter days, and changing leaves are small harbingers of one undeniable truth: Oktoberfest is at hand. Most years (except 2020 and 2021) since 1810, the German town of Munich has erected massive beer tents (some capable of seating 6,000 people), tapped kegs filled with liquid masterpieces such as helles, Pilsner, and hefeweizen, and held the world-renowned beer celebration called Oktoberfest — the largest beer festival in the world. Although Germany will likely never relinquish their beer-guzzling crown, a few towns around the world hold similar Bavarian bashes that rival the original. One of the biggest is the Kitchener-Waterloo Oktoberfest, held about 75 miles west of Toronto. Established with only $200 back in 1969, the festival has exploded in popularity in the ensuing decades, and regularly attracts more than 700,000 people — including Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who opened the 2016festival by tapping its first keg.
While the event in Kitchener-Waterloo is a leading candidate for the world’s largest beer festival outside Germany, it does have some competitors. Its biggest rival comes from a country intimately familiar with throwing big parties: Brazil. Today, the town of Blumenau in southern Brazil is known as “Little Germany” because it was founded by German pharmacist Hermann Bruno Otto Blumenau in 1850 alongside 17 other German immigrants. Around 30% of the town is now of German descent, so it makes sense that Blumenau holds a 19-day-long Oktoberfest against the backdrop of the town’s German-style architecture.
The conservatives in the heart of the nation seem to be leaning in the direction of putting Trump back in office. Many in this area of the country depend on farming for a living as we depend on them to keep doing that task and keep us fed. That area of the country has been found to contain deposits of oil and one of Trump’s comments was that if he is back in office it will be “drill baby drill”.
Along with the drilling comes the maintenance of those wells which oftentimes includes fracking and that endangers the water table which is already low. So tell me again why this is a good idea. We can use oil for a lot of stuff, but we can not eat it and the production of oil does not exceed the life of our citizens. All this production creates is more money in the pockets of men like Trump that do not give a crap about anything but getting rich.
The drilling is to take place in public grounds, what were national parks and national forest, anywhere there may be mineral wealth to be gained. The reason to take mercury off the dangerous chemical list is because it is a quick and cheap test for gold. Everyone needs to pay attention to everything. The sleight of hand tricks to distract are nothing more than a way to keep everyone watching one thing while another thing is taking place.
If the predictions of a 100 year drought are real then we need to protect the water we have and learn to use it sparingly. A lot has been said about global warming and since this is halfway through Oct and the Phoenix area still has temperatures above 100 there could be some truth in the theory.
The idea that we need fossil fuel to produce electric power is not true. We have spots in the country that have lots of natural geothermal heat and we can use that for power production along with solar and wind. Tapping into that heat source may help us regulate the potential destructive power that is there, like YellowStone. That heat is present outside the park so we need not detract from that, but there is very little reason to not utilize the natural power that is there. If places like Iceland have managed to live with and prosper from having active volcanoes under foot we can do the same.
Considering most fruits have a spherical or ovate shape, the average banana’s long, curved appearance is something of an anomaly. This unique curvature is due to a scientific concept called negative geotropism, where the stem flexes upward as the plant grows, rather than being pulled straight down by the forces of gravity. While most fruits simply absorb sunlight and grow downward toward or into the earth, bananas begin to curve as they strive to find sufficient sunlight to fuel their growth. This has to do with the unique presence of photosensitive hormones called auxins, which influence how bananas react to light.
Some bananas grow in lush rainforests with dense canopies, which can obscure the fruit from getting enough light. In these cases, bananas will grow toward the sky to break through the light-blocking canopy. But negative geotropism still occurs even in other environments where there’s plenty of direct sunlight. The auxins are distributed unevenly along the side of the banana facing the sun, triggering accelerated growth on that side and causing the fruit to curve away from the earth’s gravitational pull.
In the very early stages of development, bananas actually grow at a straight downward angle, only developing their signature shape later on. As the fruit matures, it will begin to flex upward in search of additional sustenance. But even as this happens, gravitational forces will continue to pull the banana down toward the ground and away from the sun. This combination is what ultimately gives bananas their distinct curve.
There is an incongruency with our system that is blaring to me but is ignored or accepted as part of capitalism. The problem I see is that as a consumer based, capital driven system why have been putting processes in place to consolidate wealth, i.e. capital, in the hands of a very few privileged people or families. The system only survives if the consumer base meets or exceeds the demand of products and services offered in a marketplace. That to me is Econ 101.
Warren Buffet one of the wealthiest men on the planet has made an argument for this inequity when it comes to taxation, “Why should someone of great wealth have a significantly lower tax burden by percentage than a middle or lower wage earner?” That is a great question and the answer, as always, comes down to greed and those with unlimited resources have the means to manipulate the systems so that they get to keep what they have while still taking advantage of the infrastructure, usually on a greater scale, that all our taxes provide.
The tax issues are off topic from what I am attempting to address… When the group that are the primary consumers do not have the available income to purchase goods and services the monolithic capitalism system collapse. Warren Buffet has made the comparison that he only owns a few pairs of jeans, a few pairs of shoes, a couple suits, just like most everyone and the fact that he has more money does not increase his need for those items. The point being that he and other like him are not actively putting money back into the marketplace and their collective hording of capital does not help the economy at large.
Notoriously ignored fact for example, SNAP is good for local economies – each dollar in federally funded SNAP benefits generates $1.79 in economic activity. Census Bureau data also show the crucial importance of federal nutrition programs and other supports for low-income families. Every dollar that a multi-millionaire put into the bank or into stock only benefits themselves. The government COVID relief kept our economy alive, most individuals saw the money from the stimulus check as replacement of this lost income, and thus, used it to pay for expenses, such as food, that would typically be bought using their regular income. That meant that most of the relief money went right back into the economy, wealthy individuals that received those funds just looked at it as another boon to their personal wealth.
So, I will pose the question again; How can we maintain a consumer based economy if the vast majority of the consumers do not have the expendable income to consume?
Thinking back over the last turbulent years certain things keep popping up with the politics of the want to be king. He has made statements and accusations about people especially those that are not falling all over the place to please Trump. He accused his competition of being pedifiles and human traffickers and all sorts of other things. Experience tells me that the more things you accuse others of are generally the things you are guilty of, who was pals with Epstein? All the berating, name calling and just slanderous talk should sicken the average person, or at least rethink their opinion of the person making all the remarks. Then the question is who is propping him up in all this? Well, all the people buying his trash, the $60 bibles with his name on them, tennis shoes, coins and $100,000 watches. Then there are the very rich that are hoping they will get richer by him being in office. With the program that is being planned this could be a very slim hope. Are all these people going to lose their voices and do as they are told by Dictator Trump? His ego tells him he should be the richest person, the most powerful person, and the most loved person, so does anyone truly believe that he is going to let anyone have more than he does. As a dictator he can take whatever he feels like taking, in theory anyway, and get away with it. The rich won’t be quite so rich and all the power will be in his hands. Keep dreaming and scheming and watch your backs. His hope to use the military for control of the populace has big holes in it. He does not have the support of the top ranking military and without that he has nothing. The MAGA mob does not stand a chance of winning over those forces. In order to take over the government you need to have lots of help in a lot of places and control of all key elements. Offices full of yes men may be very gratifying but not controlling the military will cost your plans significantly. Even with the fact that the senior officers are going to be picked by him it is hard to believe that we have that many traitors in the senior ranks. The laws that have allowed for the arming of the public means that many people now have guns that did not before. The fracturing of society by the Trump tactic of pitting us against one another is not likely to pay dividends for control. It may be war in the streets and neighbor killing neighbor. How did we get to this point? Are we all so bone headed that we will fight among ourselves or will we unite and kill the cancer that has caused the sickness? That solution is probably the only solution that moves us forward. Either way it goes, many will not see it through. What will life be like on the other end of the carnage? We will still have a country or will some other power move against us during our time of terminal stupidity? Lots of questions, what are your answers?
Esoteric Meandering Shouting Into the Void 
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