mermaidcamp
Keeping current in wellness, in and out of the water
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Fumigate Congress
December 2, 2012
— 5 Comments
Greek Senate
I watched an excellent program on the history channel about the use of drugs in history. During the discussion of ancient Greece they showed the Senate (from the same word as senility) being fumigated with herbs before they met to discuss matters. The Greeks hot boxed the lawmakers in the chamber with hallucinogenic herbs to make them cordial. How have we not thought of this? How did this practice ever disappear? These people invented classic. Why has the CIA not been given a mission to find the fumigation recipe they used?
We know they are all on a number of pharmaceuticals, mind and soul altering drugs with disastrous side effects. We know that they can not distinguish between health care and wellness. We know we do not trust them with our money, and they have our money. I say we dose them, gentle readers, and NOT with their own medicine. It is time for a major toga party on the hill.
Moses at the Mall, the One Commandment Diet
November 29, 2012
— 2 Comments
i have been reflecting a lot about the way the monotheists enjoy and spread their beliefs. There is such a giant conflict of interest inherent in pledging aligiance to one god then using that God as a marketing device. It appears that these worshipers do many diverse things to indicate how much they are into religion and their own sect. Sinning, confessing, decorating, blessing, baptizing, and tithing are slightly rediculous if they are performed to honor false gods.
Charleton Heston dressed in his Moses gear should be sent to the mall with the tablets and a buring bush. All the parents need to sit on his lap, very close to the bush, while the kids go to Santa’s workshop. Moses asks each parent if they have other gods before the one they take the kids to worship. Charleton will quiz them on their understanding and execution of the first commandment. The bush will then have some private time with each parent during which they will be still and know.
Would you be afraid to sit on Charleton’s lap? Did you have to look up the first commandment?
Boomers Consume. Congress Sucks. Future Foggy.
November 28, 2012
— 1 Comment
We are given feedback about our economic well being based on consumer behavior and optimism. By assigning value to monetary transactions, but no value to the original raw materials contributed by earth our generation has proclaimed that sucking down resources in mass quantities equals wealth. This is similar to the real estate value of the United States being liberated when Europeans brought property rights and money to America. If we stick to this program, identifying citizens of our nation as the entitled robber barons who have been chosen to use all the natural resources in the world, we will be the repository for a very large landfill of plastic while our currency becomes a joke. We will be able to lift up a middle class in China while we trash the one here that currently needs to buy all the plastic. Those Chinese people can count, and we need to learn to do it too.
In Europe there are countries in which the company is required to lease, not sell, a product like a vacuum cleaner. The company is responsible for the economic model of the value of the merchandise. The company must recycle or dispose of any excess or repair parts, rather than leave this to the customer. What the customer buys is the service of a working vacuum cleaner. This is the opposite of trying to sell as much junk as possible with no promise or expectation that it will work well or last. I do not know the details, but it is a direction that makes a lot of sense. Some value must be assigned to the raw materials pre discovery and pricing by humans. Some responsibility for filling landfills with poorly made garbage must be shifted to those who make and import it.
Boomers invented credit card living and mindless consumption as status symbols. Many have found themselves completely boomed out in middle age, and few have a plan or money for their own retirement. The most popular personal spending habits mirror the government model. Spend lavishly and skip the math. While American families take on deep debt to support Chinese prosperity we are still able to afford to support a congress in the fancy style to which they have become accustomed. Taxpayers will need to pay to fly them all home soon for the holiday reward vacation they will give themselves. They probably all need to fly first class. I wonder if we could swap them out for some Asian lawmakers who count.
Apathy, the Mother of All Crime
November 15, 2012
— 5 Comments
fledgling hawk at the condo village
We know there is fraud and corruption all around us. We are aware that we pay these highly disputed tax dollars to government employees less than interested in serving the public. We know laws are broken all the time because there is not even a tiny itsy bitsy effort to enforce them. I am not sure why we have so many (but that is another subject) if they are all just recorded somewhere in case lawyers need to use them. The public believes that somehow having cops is having law enforcement, but this highly simplistic notion is every criminal’s best friend. People allow bold and disgusting crime to happen before their very eyes without trying to stop it just because apathy is so strong that they are basically controlled by it. There is no expectation that our surroundings can be kept crime free, but rather a new normal of home security and paranoid, anti social collection of weaponry. Full disclosure, I live in Arizona, so I am speaking about my own ‘hood.
I live in a condo village that looks like a fake Taos Pueblo in central Tucson. There are only 30 homes, a pool, a jacuzzi and a small guest parking area. For the last 10 years the HOA board has had the same two members every year. They return to office, even though they are not even known to most residents or owners by keeping completely out of touch. They meet without any interaction with the other homeowners, send a paper newsletter with vague and meaningless report of the meeting in the mail, and continue to survive in this isolated way because they discovered apathy. When one of them celebrated the death of her father by stealing $50 from our dues money and making a donation to a hospice in her father’s name, I called to inform her stealing dues money is both disgusting and illegal. She hung up on me. I learned by asking for neighbors to help get them out of office that the most important element of life for them is denial and ignorance about what is happening in the real estate market and in their surroundings. I reported the theft of the $50 to the attorney general of AZ who responded that they did not handle such cases. I inquired at the city council office to locate the office that could handle this crime. The real estate department no longer helps HOAs with crime infested boards, and the fire department is now in some way attached, but there is no resolution other than to get the homeowners to get the stolen money returned. The homeowners’ prime goal was continued apathy, so that was not workable.
They continued in office and started running a charity scam in our public areas. They solicit food, money , and any kind of junk to their keep the homeless outside campaign. They do not believe in supporting the existing shelters and non profits that serve the homeless community. They believe in trashing the environment of their neighborhood, and some other neighborhood with a public park, in order to feed the homeless outside like animals. They think they are entitled to run a charity scam blocking our driveways and driving down the price of our real estate value because they know that apathy will protect them. They have run this operation for years in broad daylight begging on the internet for donations. I have reported the crime to the IRS, AZ revenue, the County Health Dept, the Ward 3 council office, and of course the TPD. None of these entities cares if we have a charity scam operating in our neighborhood. Neither do the owners of the homes that have lost more than half of their value while these board members made this special jurisdiction for themselves in our public areas. The neighborhood watch cop tells a story of neighbors watching a house be cleared out by thieves, but never report it because nobody knows their neighbors. Here, the homeowners sat silently inside their own homes while their very own property value and quality of life was willfully destroyed and decided that it must be fate. I own a lot across the street from the HOA property with a rising value, while these home values have sunk like rocks. Foreclosure has come and stayed.
I do not believe in competing unfairly with legitimate non profits that need all the help they can get today. It is easy to pitch in, volunteer, or donate to many worthy and wholesome programs that assist the homeless, rather than demean them ( and possibly give them food poisoning) in a public park. I would think that most people would be grossed out by this, but strangers drive through and donate junk without thinking, “What am I doing in a residential condo village blocking the fire lane to do my charity work ?” But then, those people are just dropping off a few old socks they no longer want. The homeowners have been willing to loose their socks just to stay apathetic.
British Bible Belt
November 11, 2012
— 8 Comments
William and Lucinda Jane
My great grandfather, William Ellison Taylor, was a farmer and a preacher in the Church of Christ in Texas after the Civil War. He had beautiful handwriting which I have in the form of his Confederate pension application. He was shot in the knee at Second Manassas, but still had to get back to Selma, Alabama. He survived to marry Lucinda Jane Armer, who ironically is a descendant of the Plantagenets. They moved to Texas along with Lucinda’s parents after the war.
The place and time Lucinda and William lived was an echo of the dramas of their ancestors who had Bible issues of biblical proportion back in their homeland of England. Lucinda’s family was playing music in the court of Henry VIII when he killed some wives and made himself the head of the new Church of England. Other members of her family were Plantagenets, being royal.
King of France Louis IX (1215 – 1270)
is your 21st great grandfather
Son of King of France
Son of Philip The
Daughter of Charles
Daughter of Jeanne
Son of Philippa
Daughter of John of Gaunt – Duke of
Daughter of Joan
Son of Duchess of York Lady Cecily
Son of Henry
Son of Henry
Son of John
Son of Francis Gabriell
Daughter of John
Son of Elizabeth
Son of Richard
Son of George
Son of George
Daughter of David
Daughter of Minerva Truly
Daughter of Sarah E
Mary Tudor disrupted the reign of the Plantagenets and made martyrs of William E Taylor’s ancestors. The big problem was the way everyone felt about the Bible and who should read it. William Taylor may have been named for his 8th great grand uncle, William Tyndale, who was burned at the stake for translating and publishing the Bible in English. His niece Margaret was married to Rev. Rowland Taylor, also burned at the stake for his religious convictions. The British Bible belt was worse that just burning crosses…..they actually burned the people they found to be heretical.
William Tyndale (1507 – )
his 8th great grand uncle
Father of William
Daughter of John
Son of Margaret
Son of Thomas
Son of Thomas
Son of Col James
Son of John
Son of John
Son of John
Son of John Nimrod
Son of John Samuel
Certainly William and Lucinda lived the Bible belt philosophy. I went to the Church of Christ a couple of times with my cousins when I was visiting in Houston as a kid. It was very foreign to my church experience, being fully stripped of all remnants of fancy dressing. No pipe organ, no choir, no stained glass, very austere, and they went there twice on Sunday and again on Wednesdays. I did not relate to the whole thing. I grew up in Pittsburgh in a post industrial country club culture with cocktails. I never understood the cousins and all that Bible stuff because my parents did not do it. I think I am starting to know why they still had that in the Taylor family. Once somebody dies for something, the least the family can do is go along with the belief for a few generations.
The border, the stoners, the Feds
November 7, 2012
— 2 Comments
Now that we can be relieved of the presidential politics for a minute, let us look ahead to the rapid change rolling into the future of the US. I live next to the border where incentive to smuggle is a traditional job creator in the region. Capital creation has historically been based on tax free labor and favorable agriculture laws that made ranching and farming possible in the state. We are now famous for SB1070, the state immigration law mostly banned by the Supremes. The political cartoon of our state is Barry Goldwater in drag flying a bomber over Phoenix to do the business of the people. His legacy lives, but it is demographically challenged and I believe will soon be destroyed by pure and simple economic reality. During Barry’s lifetime the border was a complete joke. All farming and ranching depended on Mexican undocumented labor. All hotels and restaurants in Arizona used the same standards. Tucson was the Mexican dirt weed capital of the great southwest, shipping untold tons to untold trillions of American pot smokers.
The only real change in the government that happened on election day was the legalization of marijuana by Colorado and Washington. Lester Holt cautioned the stoners not to break out the goldfish and Cheetos too soon, which lead to a comment that there is no Entenmann’s way out west. Yes, Brian , we do have Entenmann’s, and excellent medicinal kine bud grown right here in Arizona. Colorado, however, has an advanced business model in play that will be ready for Coca Cola as soon as either the Supremes or the dweebs in congress clear the active for Cannabis Coke. There has been much investment in Colorado into development of products ready to ship across the nation. These legally produced and consumed products replace some of the income lost by the attrition of traditional ( read tax free labor force) farming. Arizona agriculture has been decimated by draught, SB1070, and the same loss of interest in farming as a business experienced by the rest of the nation. We are out of water, but we still have plenty of sunshine. The new pharming is done indoors requiring intense electric lighting to achieve the pharmaceutical quality. Arizona can produce solar electricity, and we already have Dutch people here growing tomatoes in greenhouses.
Lawyers and lobbyists, come on down!!! Let us get real about laws that create liberty and justice for all, and laws that provide incentive for violent criminal smuggling. Arizona can be the crown jewell in the solar pharming phuture of cannabis. We can provide legal jobs and opportunity that will enrich our state tax revenues, or we can continue to play deadly tug of war with the Sinaloa cartel. Some profit from status quo. Incentives for smuggling must always include bribes, as is the nature of the beast. Some law enforcement individuals can and do become extra super wealthy from all this incentive, while the state becomes destitute. By eliminating the smuggling incentives we an make our tax dollars work for the public interest. Even if you are sure you never want to burn one the economic absurdity of pouring tax dollars into making sure nobody else does must be clear. The idea of securing the border is a good one. It is time to cut the cord for the Mexican cartels, and suck up to those cute Dutch people with all those greenhouses. You do not need to be high to see how this works.
Pilgrims, Puritans, and Politics
November 6, 2012
— 2 Comments
Alice Carpenter, Pilgrim
There is some gross generalization presented in the Thanksgiving spectacle/history lesson of the colonies. There was turkey, lots of lobster, and headgear similar to the hats and feathers in school pageants, but the Pilgrims and the Puritans are not the same group of people. If one traces carefully the two thought forms still exist in America, but they are distinct. Pilgrims came from Holland on the Mayflower to bring their biblical faith to another part of the earth. They believed they were sojourners on the earth destined for the holy city, and only subject to worldly law when it did not conflict with religious directives. The Puritans, as the name implies, had been working in reformation to purify religion through political action. Puritans arrived after the Pilgrims in the Boston area. They had a different attitude toward the native people, since they were not sharing a divine sojourn with them, but making a political state that they believed aligned with pure reformation ideals. Both groups shared biblical Christianity as their standard, but in practice Pilgrims sought peace while Puritans sought to dominate through harsh purifying authority (think Salem/witches). None of this would have ever been done if the Bible had not been printed, causing Europe to become politically violent about reforming, restoring, separating, and purifying. Before printing presses political power and religious power were so obviously entwined as to cause…the Reformation.
Thomas Southworth was born a Pilgrim in Holland. His father died there. His mother, Alice Carpenter , sailed from Leiden on the Mayflower with her second husband, Gov. William Bradford. After Plymouth was established as a Pilgrim colony Thomas joined his mother and stepfather. William Bradford was a shoe merchant, and many other Mayflower Pilgrims were also in clothing, hat, and fashion trades. They had spent years in Holland being influenced by the fancy colorful costuming of the Dutch. It was politically not cool to starch your ruffs (ruffles like QE I wore up around the neck). The large collar draped rather than stiff said you were so New World 1620. That explains the white scarf look we see in costumes. Almost no real Pilgrim clothing remains from the period, so the current stereotype is not accurate. Black and grey may have been worn, but were not standard. These Pilgrims were fashionable religious adventurers (with stylin’ footwear) bonding with the natives in the new commune/colony of Plymouth when the Puritans arrived. Thomas spent his career as a (well dressed, I am sure ) politician.
Thomas Southworth (1617 – 1669)
is my 10th great grandfather
Daughter of Thomas
Daughter of Elizabeth
Son of Elizabeth
Daughter of Eleazer
Daughter of Sarah
Daughter of Mercy
Son of Martha
Son of Abner
Son of Daniel Rowland
Son of Jason A
Son of Ernest Abner
is the daughter of Richard Arden
This year if you think about Pilgrims, or use little figures decoratively get something historically correct. There was no water on the Mayflower. Every man woman and child was issued beer each day of the trip. Imagine the hangover a child might get from a long sea voyage drinking nothing but beer. As sojourners of the earth they felt it was all part of the mission. Get over the concept that these people (Pilgrims) sailed across the sea to wear black and stuff turkeys. They came here to tune in, turn on, and drop out of the religious struggles in the old country. They were all about debunking the folly of corrupt authority posing as religion. Pilgrims were the big proponents of separation of church and state. They believed that they had a personal connection to providence that was more important and powerful than any civil institution. Puritans, on the other hand, had interest in reforming civil institutions. Can you link these beliefs to today’s political landscape?
Occupy Gucci Gulch
November 5, 2012
— 3 Comments
Grover
Warren Buffet made a statement that rings true to me. He said that to solve our deficit problems all we need to do is pass a law that states that if we,the taxpayers, are handed a bill for an unbalanced budget no standing member of congress can run for reelection. A certain percentage of GDP or an absolute number can be used. I am sure this would work. Congress creates deficits and therefore is the place to apply pressure and a tourniquet on the bleeding wound that is our national spending habit. All agree that loopholes of an unnamed sort are all to be closed, but the loophole of allowing congress to live in a fatal fantasy of fiduciary delusion is not tackled because of that very delusion.
When I learned that the K Street lobbyist lair is called Gucci Gulch, I became disgusted at a new and more visual level. I picture Grover Norquist ruling the country from a posh office setting wielding a big ugly man purse. I am all for rewarding risk and intelligent business practices, protecting one’s interest by knowing the law, and taking advantage of tax write-offs. Wall Street, specifically the NYSE, serves all investors large, small and institutional. Lobbies serve only special interests able to pay for access to power. K Street does not serve all investors, but exists for the purpose of gaining favor for certain segments of the society who pay dearly for it. The place to occupy and crush is this Gucci Gulch and the power it has been given. In essence, by allowing this inappropriate imbalance every taxpayer is footing the bill for the high fashion and fancy trimmings of the lobby lifestyle. By allowing our lawmakers to even go near this kind of overt corruption we limit our ability to revive American democracy. I do not want to pay for Grover’s man purse.
Bitter End
November 3, 2012
— 8 Comments
bitterness tree
What are the factors that leave the bitter and putrid taste we have in our mouths from the election year? Some feel the Supremes let all the dogs out when the allowed superpac money to influence us without disclosure. I believe we know which interests support which candidates, so the secrecy is not the issue exactly. What I notice this year is that wounds are the stars of the show. The festering rust belt unemployment wound is pitted against the draught stricken farmer wound, or the immigration wound, with the neediest winning temporary, meaningless attention. Like siblings in a poverty stricken family who must srcap for everything, childish whining leaders of the government constantly remind us of the undeserving nature of the other side of the aisle. We know never to believe the statements they make or the reason they employ. We know they are all in the pockets of the lobbyists. Nobody has any faith that the greedy, out of control people who spend our tax money have any principals that do not bend for funding. Our government is corrupt, which means that we pay for a lot of action that is destructive rather than productive.
The congress likes to tell the story that they make sausage. They throw all the requests together in order to make laws that will pass both houses. The lobbyist funding that influences every vote speaks much louder than the public interest. The public interest has no lobby, and therefore is not powerful enough to take a senator out to a fancy lunch or ball game to discuss the public’s point of view. The federal government has not had time to do it’s job for years because it is campaigning all the time. The need to feed the political machine to keep the candidate on the trail starts and ends with corporate and industry lobbies built for the purpose of creating legislation favorable to partisan causes. This is why the sausage is always full of disgusting unknown substances and crazy consequences. Nobody is the wiser, since the bills generally are almost impossible to read or comprehend. Nobody expects these laws to be enforced. That is what seems to me to be the big bitter joke.
The most important factor that creates that bitterness is lack of enforcement. The lawmakers put on some Kabuki theater of right and wrong through legislation wars. In the meantime, we maintain gigantic agencies with so little oversight and supervision that nothing works. All these laws on the books require offices full of civil servants, and buildings, vehicles, and infrastructure. None of them seems to require enforcement. The civil servants drive around in the civil vehicles ignoring fraud and corruption. They are concerned primarily with the benefits of their jobs, the continuation of their jobs, and doing as little work as possible. Enforcement is the least of their concern. Since the elected official who is in charge of the office is absent campaigning, waste is the word of the day.
Non Stop Bucks
October 10, 2012
— 4 Comments
I am not the only one wishing the political campaign dollars had been spent on the real problems instead of talking about those problems while blaming others. If you have children who must compete for attention, dollars, education, etc, picture a nation of these children. The soon to be elected leaders are trying to become head of our national household. They are advertising, traveling, and spending money like crazy to convince voters that they are the best for the job. The race it self is boring, but the budgets to bore are outrageous. Vast sums that can be traced to donors, and even bigger super pacs whose donations remain anonymous run the heavily negative ads.
Imagine how your life would be if the members of your household voted on the leadership who control the money spent in the household. What kind of ads would be run to woo the members of your family? Politics always chooses winners and losers by crafting legislation. This never ending cycle of winning/loosing/changing the laws is paid for by the people subject to those laws. Parents and monarchs can dispense with being elected or making a promise to anyone. We know what to expect from their performance after we observe them in action. Some are wise, some silly, egomaniacal, or weak. The good ones seem to get better with time and experience. They do not need to constantly campaign to stay in the monarchy or parenthood, so they can develop wisdom with all that spare time.
The country that allows all this wasteful expenditure on political campaigning is not in a position to afford to blow so much money. Part of the big argument is about the nation’s debt. I do not see any future in keeping the system that proclaims that we are too big to stop borrowing and too cranky to agree on how to spend money. The Swiss are famously cranky about how to spend money, but have solved this problem within their political system. They keep the tax revenues in the canton, working for the people who paid the taxes, as they see fit. They have, but do not go overboard, with the idea of a federal government. There is a beautiful building in Bern to house the congress, which has two chambers, similar to our own. There are no lobbyists, no free parties for the federal employees who serve in the Bundeshaus. In fact, congress is in session in Bern for only 25% of the year. The rest of the time these civil servants go live at home and make a living like other citizens. The salary to serve is not high, so they must want to do it for the service aspect. I wish the US congress could be treated like that. If they did not have that full time free lunch waiting for them every day from lobbyists, they might be able to work effectively for the people who paid all those taxes. Throwing new groups of bums out every 4 years does not seem to be leading to enlightened governance. It makes sense to throw out the system that creates all these bums.
