Posted on by Fred

Universe Selectors, Incorporated Episode 1

“Thank you for contacting Universe Selectors Incorporated.  In which Universe would you like to be deposited in this endless moment?”

Horace blinked.  “Um… what?”

“We currently have access to just over seven hundred thirty-seven nonillion possible universes, but more are becoming every available in each nanosecond, so, if yours has not yet been discovered, if you can wait a millennia or two, we’re sure we’ll get access to it.  You’ll have to forgive us.  We’re such a new company.  We’re looking forward to our nine billionth birthday in the next relative century or so, and we’re proud of what we’ve accomplished in such a shockingly short time.”

Horace stared into the emptiness of the cosmos, trying to remember when he had last dropped acid, and why it would present itself like this.

“That was, on your embarrassingly primitive calendar, July 7, 1986 on a planet called… one moment… here we are… Earth?  Earth, Earth, Earth.  I know we have that somewhere… Oh!  Here it is.  A remarkably unremarkable planet.  I suspect you will want something a bit nicer.  Risa is a lovely place.  Wrigley’s Pleasure Planet is getting quite a few requests in the last few hundred centuries.  Oh, and it looks like there’s a lovely little spot called Alder- Oh no… never mind.  It just got blown up again in all of the only 23 billion nine hundred thirty-four million three hundred thousand one hundred three universes in which it exists.  That’s a shame.  Bloody Death Star!”

“See… here’s the thing,” said Horace.  “I was just sitting at my keyboard, smoking a bowl, playing some Michael Franks, and then Speedy Shine started barking his ass off, and then… you know… well… I was here.”

“Oh, no no no.  You’ve always been here.  You’ll always be here.  You just forget from time to time.  And you keep getting deluded into thinking time and space exist.”

“Um… what?”

“Precisely the thing.  What.  ‘What’ is the question.  What universe please?”

“You’re offering to put me into an alternative universe?”

“That’s what we do.  Is this a difficult concept for you?  I was told you were reasonably intelligent.  I seem to have been misinformed.  That happens, but it’s exceptionally rare.”

“Okay, then… Um… what are some of my options?”

“Well, what would you like to find in your universe?”

“World peace?”

“Whose world?  Oh!  You mean that stupid little rock tumbling through spacetime?”

“I suppose.”

“Well, there are only five quintillion seventy-four quadrillion thirty one trillion three hundred thirty one billion 9 million one hundred thousand three hundred four such universes, so you’re limiting your choices a bit, but we can work with that.  Did you have a planet preference?”

“Earth, I suppose.”

“Seriously?  I was told you had some imagination.  Our database needs to be updated.  Bloody tech support!”

“One planet is plenty for me, thanks.”

“And… we’re down to only 9 billion universes.  This is going to be difficult.”

“That seems like quite a few choices.  It would be great to narrow them a bit.”

The being Horace could perceive, but not actually see, rolled its eyes.  “Obviously, we’re going to narrow it.  I can’t just plop your unintelligent, unimaginative ass anywhere.  I’ll need a little more information, please.”

“What else did you want to know?”

“What other conditions of life are you looking for?”

“Well, I breathe oxygen and nitrogen, so –”

“No no no no no!  I know all that.  Are you looking for more than World Peace?  That’s extraordinarily general.  The more specific you can be, the better we can place you.”

“Oh.  I see.  Well, no poverty would be great.  No Homelessness or hunger.”

“And now you’ve narrowed it to 8.99 billion.  That’s really not very helpful.  World Peace is usually accompanied by the lack of Poverty, Hunger, and Homelessness.  They’re closely connected.  You’re not understanding me at all.  I need something very specific.  An event that you need to have occur.”

Horace laughed.  “Any event I want?  Like Valerie Bertinelli makes me dinner?”

“Excellent!  That occurred in only… this can’t be… I need to check my data.  Something is obviously malfunctioning.  And that can’t be because nothing ever malfunctions.  That means… Oh!  I see.  Yes.  That explains it.”  The Being looked at Horace and smiled.  “Well, this is exceptionally easy.  World Peace, everyone has a home, enough food to eat, and we’ll even throw in Free Health Care and Education, and… Valerie Bertinelli makes dinner for you.  That’s Universe 338-419 Alpha.  If you’ll just step this way…”

“I don’t know how to follow you since I can’t actually see you.”

“You are so limited.  You need imagination.  Let me show you how it works.  Do you know what a coffee cup is?”

“Of course.”

“You can imagine what it looks like?”

“Obviously.”

“Good.  If you pick it up and set it back down, can you hear that sound in your imagination?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, excellent.  Can you smell the coffee inside it?”

“I don’t drink coffee.”

“You’ve smelled coffee, have you not?”

“Far too many times.”

“Smell it now… Think a little harder.  Smell is harder than sight or sound.”

Horace closed his eyes and concentrated on the last time his best friend had dragged him to Starbucks.  The scent returned to him.  There was a smell of nuts.  There was a definite sense of the caramel candies he used to get at Halloween.  There was also a smell of cardboard that had outlived its usefulness.

“Yes,” said the being.  “You’ve got it now.  Hold that smell.  Now… taste.  You’ve tasted coffee?”

“A few times.”

“Bring back that sensory experience.”

Horace recalled the flavor.  It was overpoweringly dark.  It was hot on his tongue.  It burned his throat when he swallowed.  The aftertaste stuck with him.  It was unwelcome.  His eyes shut a little tighter.

“Now… feel the coffee mug.”

It was smooth.  It had weight, but it wasn’t heavy.  It made a great paperweight.  He felt the handle with his thumb.  It was strong.  It was solid.  It was security. 

And now he had the coffee mug.  He knew he was holding it.  He opened his eyes.

And Horace was sitting at his black desk, incense burning to his right, Speedy Shine sleeping on the couch he hadn’t chewed for a few hours, and the keyboard beneath his fingers.  There were two coffee mugs on his desk.  One held pens and had “Shine” written on it.  The other held a highlighter and what he always thought was some sort of dental instrument that the place’s previous occupant left behind.  There was a picture of an owl on one side.  The words “Witty Owl Writers” were on the other.  He smiled at what he considered to be his Pulitzer Prize.  He’d won it in a writing contest, the only one he’d ever entered.   

He picked up the little psychedelic bong to the left of the desk lamp and looked into the bowl.  “What the hell was in that weed?”

The cell phone to his immediate left dinged, signifying the arrival of a text from someone he didn’t know.  He picked up the phone, unlocked it, and saw a text from a 323 number.  He frowned and opened the stranger’s text.

Hi.  This is Valerie Bertinelli.  I ran across your podcast.  I think it’s adorable the way you talk about me making you dinner so often.  I got your number from your Facebook page, and… well… would you allow me the pleasure of making you dinner this weekend? xo Val

Horace stared.  He read the text again.  He looked to his bong and back to his phone.  He had no idea what to do.  Obviously, he had to answer the message.  It was almost certainly not from Valerie Bertinelli.  But, what if it was?  He had talked about a universe in which… but… no.  Horace reminded himself he was a rational man.  This couldn’t be… could it?

Another text appeared below the first.

Yes.  It’s real, Horace.  Lol.  Hang on.

Horace frowned.  “What the fu—”

He stared for a moment longer, and then he hit reply.  He studied the phone’s tiny keyboard.  Surely he would think of what to type.  He was a writer.  That’s what he did.  He wrote. 

He waited.  No words came to him.  He thought of asking who this really was, but that didn’t seem right.  He thought of saying he was thrilled to hear from the woman on whom he’d had a childish crush for more than 40 years.  That didn’t seem right either.  Anything he considered simply seemed wrong.

The text box suddenly showed a video was downloading.  He waited a moment and then saw the picture on the video.  It was Valerie Bertinelli.  He stared incredulously at it.  Deep fake?  He played the video.

Hi, Horace.  Now you can see me and hear me, so you can get over your incredulity.  That’s not a word I use a lot, but I’m a writer now, too, you know.  I’m allowed. 

Anyway, a friend of mine heard from a friend of hers about your little show, and she played it, and she thought it was cute, so she sent it to me, and she said I could really make you happy if I offered to make you dinner, and I thought, you know, it wouldn’t hurt me in the least.  So, we vetted you to make sure you weren’t some weird stalker guy, and it turns out you were a teacher for 29 years, and I really admire that.  You live in poverty most of the time, so I figured you would really enjoy a good meal.  I can send someone to pick you up cuz I hear you don’t have a car, and they’ll drive you to the airport, fly you here to LA, and someone will pick you up there and drive you out here, and we’ll have dinner.  Does that sound all right?

“Does that sound all right?” asked the formless being.

“What?” asked Horace, blinking in confusion at the darkness of deep space. 

“Will that Universe work for you?”

“I was only there for five minutes.  I have no idea.”

“Well, there are a couple of billion possibilities to explore.  At five minutes a piece, we’ll finish in just under two hundred thousand years.”

“That seems like quite a while.  Can we speed it up any?  I’d actually like to live in one of them.”

“Horace, you can’t live.  Anywhere.  Ever.  Don’t you understand that?”

End of Episode One

Listen to the complete audio experience here:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-147-universe-selectors-incorporated-episode-1/id1501896046?i=1000558100015

Posted on by Fred

A Slap in The Face

Fred’s Facebook

March 28, 2022

4:49 PM

I recognize that much of what I’m about to write (or, if you’re listening to the podcast, say) is due to seeing the world through the lens of clinical depression.  I see the sadder parts of the world with greater clarity, and I become uncharacteristically cynical.  Normally, I eschew cynicism.  I think it does nothing to move us closer to solving problems.  It usually gives us a reason to throw up our hands in despair and accept the unacceptable.  Nevertheless, today, probably because the chemicals in my brain are malfunctioning, I am feeling cynical.

My feed is filled with opinions about what two multi-millionaires did on television last night.  Because they are celebrities, everyone feels the need to discuss their behavior.

And I’m frustrated by that.

Week after week, I discuss ideas that might help us to change the world.  I discuss the evils of hunger, poverty, insufficient health care, and homelessness.  I talk about the existential threats to freedom.  I discuss the value of Love and the Joy of having Enough.

Since I’m not a celebrity, and I never will be, and I don’t have celebrities on my show, (although a good friend pointed out that I did have Sara Niemietz on my show once, and that’s true, and I was ecstatic to have a chance to talk to one of my heroes for more than an hour!) I am fortunate if I can get even a single like or comment on my ideas.  I have begun posting them in writing, for those who don’t want to listen.  And all of this is largely ignored.

Next week, (which, by the time you read this or hear it, will be last week… Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny used to have a good time on Saturday morning discussing this issue) I’m going to talk about the possibility of alternative universes.  Science tells me that if we could create human-made wormholes, we might be able to travel to such places.  Instead of putting our money and our greatest minds into the work that needs to be done to make this possible, we are inventing new and more efficient and effective ways of killing one another, and we are concerned about who embarrassed himself or someone else.  We live for click bait and blood.  We live for hatred.

So, today, I am depressed.  I want to live in a world where ideas are not only more important than celebrities, but they are also more interesting.

Please, I beg you, don’t tell me in the comments which celebrity was right, or why they are more important or more interesting than trying to create a better world.  I already have seen that in abundance.

Perhaps there’s nothing to say. Perhaps this is just the world in which we are all required to live.

So today I am depressed.

There are real problems in the world today.  Children are dying in Ukraine.  Children here in The United States are going to bed hungry.  Income Inequality continues to rise.  Someone you love is sad today.

And there are real Joys in the world today.  Children are being born at this very moment, their lives just beginning.  Children here in the United States are meeting their puppies for the first time, finding a love they never knew existed.  People are getting jobs that pay them more than they need to make ends meet, feeling successful and fulfilled.  Someone you love has a reason to celebrate today because they have earned something valuable to them.

These are the places I would prefer to focus attention.

On March 27, 2022, on National Television at the Academy Awards, Will Smith slapped Chris Rock in the face.  (I realize the people who will hear or read this during its first run will know that, but I hope to create Art that will last through the ages, and, frankly, it’s so entirely unimportant that I wouldn’t be surprised if, by the time this is published in April, it has already begun to fade from the public consciousness.  Ten years from now the moment will probably have faded into the mist of trivia.  It really ought to.)  What was the result of this behavior?

Social Media was filled with opinions.

“Chris Rock was insensitive to tell a joke about a woman suffering from alopecia losing her hair.” 

“Will Smith committed assault on National Television.” 

And from those two camps sprang pages and pages of subgroups of more opinions.  Sensitivity was a big topic.  Standing up for your spouse was another.  Violence on television was a third.  The list went on and on.

It was discussed as though it was a topic of great importance.  I’m sorry.  It’s not.  It’s two millionaires behaving badly.  If this happened in the house next door, it would receive no attention.  Spousal abuse and domestic violence are important problems that are rarely addressed, and they receive scant media coverage.  Since these are celebrities, we are enthralled and anxious to tell everyone what we think.

What is the cause of this?  I suspect I may be a part of the problem because I participated, actively, in public education for 29 years.  Somehow, despite my best efforts, I have helped to produce a society that values celebrity over ideas.

In 1967, Andy Warhol told us, “In the future, everybody will be world-famous for fifteen minutes.”  And that fame is vital to us.  What’s trending is where you must focus your attention because everyone else is doing that.  You can’t afford to be left out.  In 2022, many of us hope to “go viral.”  This has nothing to do with the quality of your content.  It’s about what amuses people for a few seconds.

We have developed a media that garners ratings by creating divisions.  Compromise in Congress is tantamount to taboo.  This will be covered by the media, and the voters will decide you’re not sufficiently devoted to your own team.  You will lose in a primary.  I heard somewhere that in Congress reelection is at 92%, even though only 28% of us are happy with the job they’re doing.  The attitude is “He sucks, but he’s on my team.”  We have to be Republicans or Democrats.  We have to be liberals or conservatives.  The slightest move to the right or left can be political suicide.  Journalism sold out for the ratings.

In the infancy of mass communications, the Columbus and Magellan of broadcast journalism, William Paley and David Sarnoff, went down to Washington to cut a deal with Congress. Congress would allow the fledgling networks free use of taxpayer-owned airwaves in exchange for one public service.  That public service would be one hour of airtime set aside every night for informational broadcasting, or what we now call the evening news. Congress, unable to anticipate the enormous capacity television would have to deliver consumers to advertisers, failed to include in its deal the one requirement that would have changed our national discourse immeasurably for the better.  Congress forgot to add that under no circumstances could there be paid advertising during informational broadcasting.  They forgot to say that taxpayers will give you the airwaves for free and for 23 hours a day you should make a profit, but for one hour a night you work for us.  And now those network newscasts, anchored through history by honest-to-God newsmen with names like Murrow and Reasoner and Huntley and Brinkley and Buckley and Cronkite and Rather and Russert – Now they have to compete with the likes of me. A cable anchor who’s in the exact same business as the producers of Jersey Shore.

— Will McAvoy, The Newsroom, “The 112th Congress,” 2012, by Aaron Sorkin

How do you feel about the fact that children are sleeping on the street tonight?  What do you think we should do about that?  I’m interested in your opinions about that. 

How do you feel about the fact that a person whose sexuality is different or whose gender is subject to change is likely to be assaulted for having the audacity to vary from the norm?  I’m interested in your opinions about that.

How do you feel about families all over America being forced into bankruptcy because someone got cancer or any of the hundreds of other illnesses that can bring lives to a sudden and painful end?  I’m interested in your opinions about that.

The fact that someone is annoyed with me now for even suggesting that the Slap in The Face wasn’t important is a serious contributor to my depression.  Again, I recognize that much of this is chemical.  That, however, does nothing to minimize or mitigate my feelings.

For me, The Real Slap in the Face is the one to those of us who want to change the world.  I’m not close to being alone in this.  There are hundreds of thousands of people who are smarter, stronger, and more charismatic than I am who are trying to end poverty, get everyone enough money to live, end the bureaucratic labyrinths one must navigate to get any assistance, renew and revitalize public education, and save us from the nightmare of out-of-control health care costs.  They are doing plenty of things to try to make a difference.  I’m ridiculously small.  Others are going to be more successful.  But that doesn’t mean my cheek doesn’t sting right now. 

I want you to know that since you are listening to this podcast, or you’re reading this on Word Press, you are actively helping to defeat my depression.  You’re saying that my ideas are worth considering.  You’re telling me that I’m not singing an aria in an empty cave.  And because so few people do what you’re doing at this moment, you’re more valuable than you believe.  I thank you deeply, sincerely, and humbly. 

There are those who would suggest I relax and get some Prozac or some other medication that would straighten out my brain chemistry.  It’s kind of you to think of me.  Thank you.  And that’s not the solution I think will help me.  As opposed to muting my response to the inequities of the world, I would prefer that we change the world into one where liberty and justice for all is more than a mindless chant. 

I know I can’t hope to do that, but maybe you can.  I have a friend who is getting involved in politics.  She was instrumental in helping The Yang Gang get started.  Perhaps she can help.  You may have friends who will benefit from listening to or reading this.  Perhaps you could pass it on.  Maybe one of your friends knows someone in Washington or in your state’s capitol who might be able to change a bad law or write a better one.  If nothing else, maybe we can get one more person to the ballot box to vote for someone who can change something.  I don’t know.  What I know is I just can’t give up yet.

Even my worst depression won’t allow me to buckle under to cynicism for long.  I can still hope. 

“Hope” is the thing with feathers –

That perches in the soul –

And sings the tune without the words –

And never stops – at all –

And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –

And sore must be the storm –

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm –

I’ve heard it in the chillest land –

And on the strangest Sea –

Yet – never – in Extremity,

It asked a crumb – of me.

— Emily Dickinson

Posted on by Fred

Envisioning a Future That Allows Us to Travel to The Past

I need to begin this evening with a gargantuan disclaimer.  I’m not a scientist of any sort.  I’m not an astronomer, in particular.  I’m certainly not a mathematician.  I have no expertise of any kind in what I’m discussing tonight.  (If I’m wrong about something, please feel free to correct me at (480) 331 – 9822.) I watched some YouTube videos.  And, that’s almost the point.  What I’m describing tonight is as simple to learn as it is staggering to contemplate.  Is time travel actually possible, especially into the past?  Is ours the only universe?  If there are other universes, can we go to a different one we might like better?  (I’ll be out looking for the one in which Valerie Bertinelli makes dinner for me.) 

Tonight I’m going to bring you an old, not very intelligent, man’s exploration into ideas that move beyond our world, and yet are a part of the very fabric of our existence.  I’m going to avoid pseudoscience.  I’m going to eschew the supernatural.  I’m going to limit myself to science that can be easily accessed in popular culture.  It’s more than enough to make me wonder, as the person for whom I made this episode asked, “Why are we fighting in the sandbox instead of harnessing the sky?”  (I wish I had written that line.  I suspect there’s a universe in which I did.  I might consider trading the Valerie Bertinelli Dinner Universe for that one.)

In 59 years, I have experience of only this single universe, at least as far as I know.  I have traveled only forward in time.  I have existed only on this insignificant rock tumbling through this tiny bit of space. 

Much of what follows will approach The Impossible.  Whenever I think of The Impossible, though, I am reminded of all the Impossible Things that have turned out to be true. 

It was obvious, at one point in history, to anyone who bothered to look around, that the Earth was flat.  You never see the horizon bend the way you would expect if you were a small bug on a large rubber ball.  It’s almost invariably a straight line, which is what you would expect if you were a small bug on a very large table.  It was Impossible for the Earth to be round.  Then, a couple millennia ago, there comes along a guy named Eratosthenes.  He uses “sticks, eyes, feet, and brains” not only to prove that the Earth is round, but to calculate the diameter of the Earth, and he was fairly close to correct.  Carl Sagan explains this brilliantly in the first of the videos I am adding to the show notes.  I urge you to watch it.

We were told repeatedly that it was Impossible to fly.  Gravity, Newton told us, forbid human flight.  As Blood, Sweat and Tears observed, “What goes up must come down…”  Simon Newcomb told us, in 1903, “… aerial flight is one of the great class of problems with which man can never cope.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Newcomb#:~:text=In%20the%20October%2022%2C%201903,that%20even%20if%20a%20man

 Gravity is the force of attraction between any two objects that have mass.  The heavier the mass, the greater the attraction.  Earth is the largest mass in the neighborhood.  We’re all attracted to it.  There is child’s explanation of this to be found in the show notes, here:

Science certainly forbid space travel.  And then Science learned more, and it corrected itself.  We found escape velocity.  Science corrects itself frequently.  It will do it again.  Many of us have experienced flight over Earth.  A few of us have experienced space flight.  A dozen of us have been to the Moon.  It’s now commonly accepted that this is not impossible.

Space and time seem to be independent of one another.  That’s the way I experience them, at least.  The space between my fingers and the keyboard has nothing to do with time, except to the extent that I can measure the number of seconds it takes to move my fingers from one key to the next.  And yet, it turns out that space and time are not separate.  They are connected in what is called Spacetime.  Spacetime is bendable.  It isn’t fixed.  It’s more like a waterbed than a wooden table.  The heavier something is, the more it warps space, just the way a bowling ball will warp your mattress.  You and I exist in more than 3 dimensions.  We exist in length, width, height, and time.  The first three are generally enough to locate someone on Earth.  The fourth is required to find something in space because everything is in motion.  There’s a link to another children’s site in the show notes that will explain that for you.

https://www.amnh.org/explore/ology/physics/space-and-time2#:~:text=According%20to%20Einstein%20%2C%20you%20need,Time%20is%20the%20fourth%20dimension.

A black hole occurs when spacetime becomes so warped by a heavy object that it creates a singularity, or a place in the universe where the laws of physics that you and I take for granted simply break down and space and time are no longer related.  Einstein said they would be unlikely to exist.  And then, on September 14, 2015, LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) detected them and verified their existence for the first time.  And it was an extraordinary bit of good luck because two black holes, 1.4 billion light years away, were racing around each other, and the light ended its 1.4 billion year journey to Earth just two days after we activated LIGO.  What if we’d waited another week to flip that switch?  Today, we even have a photograph of a black hole in Galaxy M87.  All of this and much more can be found in the simple video in the show notes in which Brian Greene explains black holes.

 We believe black holes may cause something called Wormholes.  We’ve haven’t been able to verify their existence… yet.

These are holes in the fabric of spacetime that allow us to travel to extremely distant places in very little time.  The 186,000 miles per second speed limit is irrelevant to getting somewhere if you go through a wormhole.  There are several types of wormholes.

Einstein Rosen Bridges are a type of wormhole that can’t be crossed.  A black hole, where anything can enter but nothing can escape, to a white hole, where everything can escape but nothing can enter would take infinite time to cross because of the singularity at its core.  A white hole is a place where time runs backward.  It’s something like a Big Bang.  The stuff coming out of a white hole won’t be the stuff that went into the black hole. 

Traversable Worm Holes might have been created at the very beginning of The Big Bang.  They could be connected by Cosmic Strings.  The nearest Traversable Worm Hole, however, that we would be likely to find appears to be about 26,000 light years away.  This means it will take more than an hour to get there, and, as it turns out, humans don’t have that kind of patience.  I can barely get people through a 30-minute podcast. 

Manmade Wormholes would need to connect two different parts of spacetime.  We would have one somewhere near Earth, and the other would be wherever we put it.  I’m not sure how we could move it where we wanted it, but it appears to be possible.  It would also need to be kept open because gravity would try to close it.  This could be done with something called Exotic Matter.  This is a set of theoretical particles that have a negative mass.  Gravity pulls things toward it.  Exotic Particles are like me.  They push things away.  Manmade Wormholes also must have no event horizons because then we would become spaghetti if we tried to cross them.  (The fact that “spaghettification” is a real word is excellent evidence for the existence of The Flying Spaghetti Monster.)  They must be big enough that we can traverse them safely.  You can travel back in time with a wormhole, but only from the future back to the time when the wormhole was created. 

I am dropping a video explaining wormholes in the show notes:

But what if we wanted to travel back in time?  I would love, for example, to go back in time to Flagstaff in 1986 to correct a massive mistake I made at my own toga party.  (If you want to hear that story, you’ll have to talk Chris into asking me about it for a Fred’s Back Porch Interview.)  Since I hadn’t built a wormhole yet, I could never get back there.  It’s possible there’s even a way around that.  It’s called a Tipler Cylinder.

This is a cylinder that spins at a few billion rotations per minute.  (For reference about how fast that is, if you’re old enough, you might remember that records sounded funny at 78 RPM.)  You also need material that has a mass of about ten of our suns, or a just a couple of neutron stars.  The cylinder also needs to be of infinite length.  These are problems that our understanding of physics tells us we can’t possibly overcome.  The physical laws of our universe prevent that.  In short… It’s IMPOSSIBLE!!!

Today.

Let’s remember, though, that in singularities, the physical laws of our universe break down rather promptly.  And, our understanding of these laws has its own set of problems.  While Einstein and Newton did a magnificent job of explaining the very large things that create gravity, all of that seems to break down when we get to the scale of the very small.  This is called Quantum Mechanics.  The laws of gravity stop working when things are smaller than an atom.  As microchips grow ever more miniscule, we are moving toward what is called Quantum Computers which will be much more powerful and efficient than the one on which I’m writing this.  They are likely to lead to the AC, or the Automatic Computer, about which Asimov writes at the end of this podcast.

Wormholes might not lead us only to far distant places, they could, potentially, also take us to alternative universes.  There is no telling what the laws of physics might be in other universes.  This is called The Multiverse Hypothesis.  We once believed that the Earth was the center of the universe.  It turns out it wasn’t.  Then we believed the Sun was the center of the universe.  Oops.  It’s not.  Then we believed our galaxy, The Milky Way, was the center.  Nope.  Our understanding expanded, just as “our universe, itself, keeps on expanding and expanding, in all of the directions it can whiz…”  (That’s from “The Galaxy Song” in “The Meaning of Life,” by Monty Python, 1983)  In the same way, we may conclude that our universe is not only not the only universe, but that it may not be the center of the Multiverse, either. 

If we could go back in time, or it we could visit other universes in which all possible outcomes occur, what we could accomplish as a species is, essentially, limitless.  This show spends an enormous amount of time trying to find ways to end poverty, homelessness, and hunger.  I keep trying to work out health care so that no one dies for a lack of little green pieces of paper and linen or a lack of digits on a computer somewhere.  If there are other universes, I feel sure there’s one in which we’ve conquered those problems, Valerie Bertinelli wants to cook me dinner, and I wrote the line, “Why are we fighting in the sandbox instead of harnessing the sky?” 

Did you ever hear the theory of the universe?
Where every time you make a choice,
A brand new planet gets created?

Did you ever hear that theory?
Does it carry any sense?
That a choice can split the world in two,
Or is it all just too immense for you?

That they all exist in parallel,
Each one separate from the other,
And every subsequent decision,
Makes a new world then another,
And they all stretch out towards infinity,
Getting further and further away.

— Sting, from the song “It’s Not The Same Moon” from the album “The Last Ship”, 2013

There is also a universe in which everything you wish had happened, or might happen, does happen. 

What would it take for us to accomplish this?  We need our best and brightest minds working on the science that will help us to understand this universe well enough for us to begin to answer many of our questions.  We would need to spend the money to build the technology that is this universe’s way of understanding itself. 

Instead of spending trillions of dollars and many of our greatest minds on finding new ways to kill one another, what if we spent those resources on expanding who we are and who we could be?  We don’t need to defend ourselves from one another in every possible universe.  I, for one, would like to live in one where everyone leads with love. 

I’ll bring this to an end with one of the most interesting ideas I’ve heard so far about the endlessness of humanity.  It’s called The Omega Point.  “The real essence of life is the software, not the hardware,” as Frank Tipler tells us.  It’s the idea that at the end of time, the entire universe will become one gigantic computing machine.  The Omega Point is the ultimate limit.  It is beyond space and time.  It is, essentially, God.  You and I will be resurrected in Time by super beings when all of us have become powerful computer emulations. 

Isaac Asimov dealt with this in my favorite of his short stories, “The Last Question.”  The last question to be answered, trillions of years in the future, is whether entropy, or the loss of all energy, can be reversed.  This is the conclusion of that story:

Matter and energy had ended and with it space and time. Even AC existed only for the sake of the one last question that it had never answered from the time a half-drunken computer [technician] ten trillion years before had asked the question of a computer that was to AC far less than was a man to Man.

All other questions had been answered, and until this last question was answered also, AC might not release his consciousness.  All collected data had come to a final end.  Nothing was left to be collected.  But all collected data had yet to be completely correlated and put together in all possible relationships.  A timeless interval was spent in doing that.  And it came to pass that AC learned how to reverse the direction of entropy.  But there was now no man to whom AC might give the answer of the last question. No matter.  The answer — by demonstration — would take care of that, too.  For another timeless interval, AC thought how best to do this.  Carefully, AC organized the program.  The consciousness of AC encompassed all of what had once been a Universe and brooded over what was now Chaos.  Step by step, it must be done.  And AC said, “LET THERE BE LIGHT!” And there was light –

Click to access LQ.pdf

Posted on by Fred · 1 Comment

One Planet, One People… Please? 2022

Carl Sagan warned us about Mutually Assured Destruction 40 years ago.  If we do survive a nuclear war, the condition of our planet will be such that any life afterward will be miserable.  We humans have spent trillions of dollars in an effort to learn to kill each other more effectively, quickly, efficiently, cheaply, and remotely.  We have a massive war industry.  And War is the polite term for mass murder. 

Already in Ukraine, as of March 17, 2022, more than 100 children have been killed as a result of Putin’s attacks.  Children.  They have done nothing to deserve death.  They are children.  This is sickening.  This is immoral.  This is wrong in every possible way.  It is unforgivable.  There is no defense for this state of affairs.

Yes, there is!  They are the enemy.  The enemy needs to be killed.  That’s the way the world works. 

Perhaps it is.  But it shouldn’t be. 

There are certain undeniable truths that we need to understand.  One is that there is no Them; we are all Us.  Everyone who dies in a war is someone’s son or daughter.  They are people just like you and me.  They may have different ideas.  They may have different beliefs.  They may have very different lives.  But they are human beings who are here for an incredibly brief time, and we have shortened it by killing them.  We can make up reasons to decide it doesn’t matter when someone dies, but it still does.  We don’t feel the deaths of strangers as deeply as those close to us.  We shouldn’t.  If I felt every death as deeply as I did the demise of my Dad or my Dog, I would spend all my time curled up crying in a fetal position.  That doesn’t mean the deaths don’t matter.  Of course they do.  And nearly everyone who dies has someone who feels the death as painfully as I felt the loss of Melanie. 

The second fact about which there can be no debate, is that we are all living on the same planet at the same time. 

More than 40 years ago, when I was an adolescent running around in as much of a hormone haze as I now am surrounded by the Fog of Idealism, I was as madly in love as a boy could be with a girl whose intellect and compassion I admired nearly as much as her physical form.  When you’re 16, it’s difficult to see much beyond appearance.  Or, at least it was for me.  Perhaps today’s adolescents are more enlightened than I was.

Among the reasons I fell in love with her was her Idealism was seductively attractive to me.  She was a member of a religion of which I had never heard, called Baha’i.  I had, even then, no supernatural beliefs, but I loved the idea of unity that was at the core of her religious beliefs.  She had on her car a bumper sticker that has the unique status of actually affecting me.  It said, “One Planet, One People… Please?”  I have never forgotten the words.  Now, I believe, she’s off living with her husband on a farm somewhere, and we say hello to each other occasionally on Facebook, but we don’t really have a serious friendship anymore.  Her influence over my thinking, however, has only grown in the intervening decades. 

She was the water and sunlight that made the seed planted a decade earlier grow and flourish.  What planted the seed?  It was Star Trek, of course.  In Star Trek, we are all one people sharing one planet, and we’re not only working together as humans, but we are also working with species from other worlds.  We spend our time trying to better ourselves and the rest of humanity.  It is cooperation and exploration at its best. 

I believe if we could all embrace the idea that we are all deserving of life, that all of us matter, that there is more we share than there is that separates us, we might find wars would stop. 

There is much debate right now about what the United States, and/or NATO should do about the Russian Invasion of Ukraine.  I wish that I were wise enough to tell them what to do, but I honestly don’t know.  I have no knowledge of military tactics.  I have no expertise in winning a war.  Should we use our military to stop Russia?  I don’t know.  If we do, will this lead us to World War III?  Will it lead to a nuclear holocaust that could destroy most of the species, and leave behind a cold and barren horror story in which to live?  I have no idea. 

What I do know is that people are being murdered on a massive scale.  I know that to be true of every war ever fought by anyone on this planet at any time in history.  I know that it will be true of every war we fight in the future.  We count the value of war by determining the number of lives saved against the number of lives extinguished.  If the United States hadn’t bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, how many lives would have been lost in the continuation of the war?  Had Japan or Germany won the war, how much more horrible would the world be than it is now?  I don’t know.  I can’t know.  I’m not Q.  I have no power to view alternative time lines.  I can guess.  I can speculate.  So can you.  So can people much smarter than we are.  No one, however, can know.

What can we know?  We can verify that nearly 200,000 people were killed by the atomic bomb.  How many people is that?  To put it in a personal perspective, I have nearly 2,000 friends on Facebook.  There may be 20 or 30 I’ve actually met.  So… everyone I know would be 1% of the loss caused by the atomic bomb.  Assume I’ve met at least 2,000 people in person over my 59 years in wandering this planet.  That brings me to 4,000 people.  Fifty times that many died because we used atomic bombs.  That’s more than enough to leave me utterly alone in my life, fifty times over.  That would knock me out of human contact for this and, if we get reincarnated, the next 49 lives.  I’m guessing your numbers are different from mine, but not substantially so.  Everyone you have ever known, and everyone you ever will know is almost certainly dwarfed by 200,000 people.  And today’s weapons are infinitely more powerful.  The damage we can do to each other is unimaginable. 

https://www.atomicarchive.com/resources/documents/med/med_chp10.html

Why, God, why do we insist on mass murder?  Why must we be consumed by homicidal hatred instead of united by love?

Arizona’s Governor, Doug Ducey, had this on his Facebook page:

In Arizona, we will secure our border.  With advanced equipment & drone technology, we can bolster surveillance and stop the criminals in their tracks.  Discussed some of these tactics with Palmer Luckey, the founder of Oculus VR and defense-tech company Anduril Industries.

I posted a comment that I thought was fairly obvious:

When someone commits a crime that hurts someone, by all means, arrest them.  No one is hurt by someone crossing the border.  They are human beings.  They deserve the best life they can have.  If they come here, they can, and often do, help us to build a better world.

Don’t waste resources, please, on keeping decent people out of our country.

This set off a firestorm of hatred directed toward me.  I suppose I ought not to have been surprised.  They dragged out the same old arguments:  They have, they told me, nothing against immigrants, but they should come in legally.  That’s a legal argument, not a moral one.  If I were living 200 years ago, I could have owned another human being.  It was legal, but, guess what?  It was immoral.  I don’t think any rational person would argue to the contrary in the 21st Century.  The Law has little to do with Morality.    The process of becoming a citizen takes years, it’s expensive, and, like anything else that involves our government, can be delayed or even shut down due to nothing more than paperwork errors that are no fault of the person applying for citizenship.  All the while, they are trying to pay rent and put food on the table, just like the rest of us are.  And they live under the constant threat that they will be removed from their homes and shipped like so much cargo to another country as though we were returning a defective DVD to Amazon.  Legalism is an excuse for doing what we know to be wrong.  Laws can be changed; this one ought to be. 

I heard about drug cartels and human trafficking.  Yes, those are conditions that exist.  They are evil.  And they have nothing to do with the vast majority of people coming to America in search of a better life.  Statistically, immigrants are less likely to be criminals than those of us who were To The Manor, Born.  If they engage in human trafficking or commit other crimes, we arrest them for those crimes, not for stepping over a line.  There is a Tom Cruise movie in which people are arrested for crimes they’re likely to commit in the future.  It’s an obscene idea.  It suggests that we can’t change our minds.  It’s Orwell’s Thought Police on Steroids.  Could we please wait until someone does something to hurt us before we deny them the liberty about which my students chanted, hands over their hearts, every morning for 29 years?  Is that really an unreasonable request?

Immigrants are fleeing Ukraine as I write this.  Fortunately, there are other countries that will let them in, just as we used to do at Ellis Island.  In the late 19th and early 20th centuries all that was required was a health check.  If you were unable to pass it, you were held in isolation until you were no longer a health risk to the rest of society.  You weren’t constantly living with the threat of deportation.  You could join the Pursuit of Happiness, at least to some small degree. 

There were the arguments concerning the use of our resources by people who were not Us.  More than one terribly clever person suggested I take them in and support them, somehow equating the roughly 1,000 square feet of my condo with the 105.8 trillion square feet that make up the United States.  That argument is too absurd to engage.  In case you haven’t heard me say it 105.8 trillion times yet, there is no Them; we are all Us.

 This is what we need to understand more than anything else.  If we can feel for each other just the slightest bit of empathy, if we can learn to lead with love, we can change the world. 

I’m going to end this episode with the piece that made a friend suggest I start a blog (I didn’t even know what a blog was at the time.  I was just posting my writing on Facebook hoping someone would respond.  It was the fact that my Rhiannon (see The Haunting of Horace for details) reacted that prompted me to keep writing.) that led to this show.  I think it’s relevant now.

Empathy and Art

My earliest memory of feeling empathy is Christmas 1969.  I was 7 years old, sitting under a tree with an obscene number of gifts I had just opened, and feeling truly ecstatic, when I noticed my Mother had no Christmas presents.  Not one.  I burst into tears of guilt.  My father took me to a drug store, and we found Mom a candle, and it was my first present to her.  Neither Dad nor I had any ability to wrap a candle, so we gave it to Mom to wrap.  And when she opened it an hour or so later, she loved that candle as she loved her children.  She got candles from me for decades after that, and for nearly every occasion.  It took several additional hours for me to recognize that Dad hadn’t gotten any presents, either, and Mom took me to the drug store to buy Dad a pipe. I gave him most of the pipes he used to smoke.  These Traditions were the product of Empathy.

I have, and I would guess most of you have, wept for Tom Robinson.  I have cheered for Sherlock Holmes.  I have spoken with Hamlet repeatedly about the value and meaning (or lack thereof) of life.  I have felt joy for Elinor Dashwood and Edward Ferrars.  I learned Friendship from Sam and Frodo, and Kirk, Spock, and McCoy.  I learned courage from Santiago and his marlin, and morality from Atticus Finch.  I have faced George’s agonizing moral dilemma concerning his best friend, Lenny, when George tells him to think about the rabbits.  These are all other examples of Empathy.

I believe Empathy is essential to being Human.  Too much Empathy is dangerous, of course.  You can’t possibly grieve for every tragedy in the world.  No one has that vast an emotional landscape.  But, the inability to feel for others is, in my mind, the root of evil. You don’t kill people not because it’s against the law, but because you can feel for someone besides yourself.  You won’t commit most acts of violence or cruelty for the same reasons.  You can imagine how you would feel if it happened to you.  You can’t do something you believe to be evil because you can experience the emotions of Others.

I believe an exposure to The Arts is essential for increasing a person’s Empathy.  It’s in books, movies, music, paintings, poetry, dance, and other forms of Art that we find our own feelings.  And it’s where we learn to feel the joys and pains that our fellow travelers on this little ball in space are likely to feel, themselves.  It’s in catharsis that we learn the most about ourselves and each other.

When we can understand each other, we can dispense with the idea of Us vs. Them.  We can move forward together, as a species, and this is a product of Empathy.  I care about you because I recognize some of myself in you.  I hope you can see some of yourself in me, too.

Could we please stop killing each other now?

I love you.

Posted on by Fred · 2 Comments

Is Government The Problem or The Solution?

Government is the source of more problems than I can count.  If you want to do something, you almost certainly need a license of some sort.  If you live here, they’re going to take your money in the form of taxes.  If you want to have a voice anyone in government hears, you need to have a lot more money than either you or I have.  Things are set up to benefit the wealthy and oppress the poor.  Government is a bureaucracy constructed to ensure nothing ever really gets done without jumping through more hoops than all the animals Barnum and Bailey ever trained.  A single mistake sets a person back for months.

California, for example, said they were covering my Medicare until December, even though I moved to Arizona in October.  Arizona, therefore, while they were perfectly willing to pick up my Medicare, denied the request in November because California hadn’t sent the form that said they were no longer covering it.  This is why Social Security took $510 from my Disability this month to recoup their losses from December, January, and February.  Arizona sent the proper form to Social Security.  It takes 90 days to process that, so I’ll get $170 a month less on which to live until June or July.  I’m not alone in this.  I feel sure it happens to millions of others, and all of us search frantically for the means to survive while the bureaucrats process paperwork.  I’m never moving again.  The only way to get me out of this place is in a body bag.

 Any efforts to pass laws that help us take years, and they can be stopped by a single voice, usually one paid for by those who have the money to deny the rest of us the chance to join the pursuit of happiness that is supposed to be one of our inalienable rights.  Government is the problem, isn’t it?

Americans, after all, rugged individualists.  We hear so often about those who made it all by themselves.  They didn’t need government to become successful.  They are self-made successes.  We should all aspire to such greatness.  They did it all alone, didn’t they?

Did they?  From where did they get the education they needed if not from our schools?  How did they get where they needed to go if not on the roads we built?  From where did they get the currency they needed to exchange for the goods and services they used to become successful if not from the government that printed it?  Who kept them safe if not our police departments?  They almost certainly benefitted at some time from our fire departments, our paramedics, our hospitals, and our concept of freedom that allowed them to live without the fear of winding up disappearing in the middle of the night for speaking out against our government. 

All of us are standing on the shoulders of 200,000 years of human development.  I didn’t invent paper, nor the printing press, nor the computer on which I’m writing.  I didn’t invent the language that allows us to communicate.  I’m using the products of human progress.  I’m not doing this alone.  There are billions of people who came before me to allow me to write this.  The government and The People On The Porch provide me the funds I need to exist.  Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos didn’t do it alone, either.  They couldn’t possibly do it alone.  They made use of (or, if you’re of my frame of mind, exploited) the benefits of the advancements of our species. 

We humans have done extraordinary things.  We have increased our life spans dramatically.  My mother is 91, and I expect her to live for quite some time to come.  It’s not unheard of for people to live for a century because of our advances in medicine. 

We’ve also made health care into a logistical nightmare, but now an insurance company can’t deny you coverage because of a “preexisting condition” – a term they invented to avoid insuring diabetics and others that are likely to cost them more.  For all the problems inherent in The Affordable Care Act, that’s one part it got right.  They can no longer say, “You’ve outrun your coverage; die in peace.”  Government allowed medical insurance to exist.  That was a problem.  Government kept them from denying coverage.  That was a small part of the solution.  The government is a tide that goes out but comes back in.  It moves in waves, and, like the ocean itself, it does as much damage as it does good.   

“We have to say what we feel; that government, no matter what its failures of the past, and in times to come, for that matter, government can be a place where people come together, and where no one gets left behind.  No one… gets left behind.  An instrument of good.”

­— Toby Ziegler in “The West Wing: He Shall, From Time to Time” Season 1, Episode 12, by Aaron Sorkin

Our Founding Document, “The Declaration of Independence,” tells us that all men are created equal.  That’s an ideal, not a fact.  Michael Jordan is a better basketball player than I am.  That’s a fact.  He was created one way, and I, another.  I am a better writer than a child who will never be able to use language.  That’s a fact.  I was created one way, and he, another. 

“But there is one way in this country in which all men are created equal—there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal of an Einstein, and the ignorant man the equal of any college president.  That institution, gentlemen, is a court.  It can be the Supreme Court of the United States or the humblest J.P. court in the land, or this honorable court which you serve.  Our courts have their faults, as does any human institution, but in this country our courts are the great levelers, and in our courts all men are created equal.  I’m no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system—that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality…”

— Atticus Finch, “To Kill A Mockingbird: Chapter 20” by Harper Lee

Will you find corruption in our courts?  Of course you will.  Only hours after Atticus gave that speech to the jury, the court failed to deliver justice for Tom Robinson. 

But this is an example of the idea upon which our country was built.  It’s the idea that we all matter.  It’s the idea that all voices count, even those who spout ridiculous things.  Last year, for example, when I was in Surprise to see my mother, my nephew and I were staying at a hotel.   We went downstairs for a drink, and there we met a woman who spent 45 minutes explaining to me that there are Lizard People from another dimension, or reality, or planet (she wasn’t sure which) who are living here now.  And I want her to be allowed to vote.  Because, as Toby Ziegler told us above… no one… no one is left behind.  I don’t have to agree with you to want you to have a say in how this life we share is governed.  She may be right.  I would be willing to bet everything I will ever earn for the rest of what’s left of my life that she’s not, but I could be wrong.  I remind myself of that constantly.  I think I’m right, but I could always, always, always be wrong.  So could you.  So could she. 

There are times when all the world’s asleep
The questions run too deep
For such a simple man…

I said, watch what you say or they’ll be calling you a radical
Liberal, oh fanatical, criminal
Won’t you sign up your name, we’d like to feel you’re acceptable
Respectable, oh presentable, a vegetable

— Supertramp, “The Logical Song” from “Breakfast In America, 1979

Instead of giving in to the cynicism that tells us it’s too late, that the American Oligarchs have already taken over, and that there’s nothing more to do but live in a dystopian nightmare, we can encourage one another to believe in an idea.  The Cynics, you see, can be wrong, too.  We can believe in the idea of liberty and justice for all.  Our flag lies limp on its pole now, hanging its head in shame, but a good wind can come up at any moment to make it fly in all its tri-colored, star-spangled glory again.   We can begin by protecting voting rights.  We can continue by creating a Health Care System that allows us the medical attention we need without bankrupting us.  We can reach for the stars by providing a Universal Basic Income that ensures all of us have enough to survive.  We can end poverty.  We can reduce the nightmare of income inequality.  We can do anything we choose to do if we can be United.

The oligarchs want to pit us against each other.  “They’re not from America, and they’re stealing your jobs.  They’re the source of the problem.  She’s a woman, and instead of staying home and raising children, she’s out in the workplace, making you replaceable, and reducing everyone’s income.  She’s the source of the problem.  They have different sexual orientations than you do, and they’ve destroyed the moral lives that are the heart of this country.  They’re the source of the problem.  That guy is a Socialist who wants to give away your hard-earned money to someone else for free.  He’s the source of the problem.  This guy is a fascist who attacked the country on January 6.  He’s the source of the problem.  This guy likes the football team you hate.  You just KNOW he’s the source of the problem.”

Sorry.  I don’t buy that.  There is no Them; we are all Us.  We’re all the source of the problem.  I can, and do, disagree with many people.  Even more disagree with me.  But I won’t turn that disagreement into hatred.  Neither should you.  Instead, I want to understand those with whom I disagree, and I hope to make them understand me.  I want to find a way to solve the problems.  I’m not interested in blame.  I’m interested in solutions.  Don’t tell me why we can’t unless that’s your preface to the answer I want to hear: how we can.

In 1940, our armed forces weren’t among the twelve most formidable in the world, but obviously we were going to fight a big war.  And Roosevelt said the US would produce 50,000 airplanes in the next four years.  Everyone thought it was a joke.  And it was, cuz it turned out we produced 100,000 planes.  Give the air force an armada that would block the sun…

Over the past half century, we’ve split the atom, we’ve spliced the gene, and we’ve roamed Tranquility Base.  We’ve reached for the stars, and never have we been closer to having them in our grasp.  New science, new technology is making the difference between life and death, and so we need a national commitment equal to this unparalleled moment of possibility…

— Sam Seaborn from The West Wing, “100,000 Airplanes” Season 3, episode 11, by Aaron Sorkin

A President of The United States was once asked to define America.  He answered, “One word – one word: Possibilities.”

There’s little we can’t do if we work together.  One person can’t defend the country, but millions of soldiers with 100,000 airplanes can.  One person can’t cure cancer or diabetes, but thousands of scientists working together and separately can, and I believe, someday, they will.  One person can’t reshape our economy to relieve the afflicted.  But a government that truly represents the diversity of America can.  One person can’t explore strange new worlds, or seek out new life and new civilizations, but together we all can boldly go where no one has gone before. 

Let’s recognize, at last, that we have more in common with our bitterest enemy than I have with the dog I love with all my heart.  We may have irreconcilably different ideologies, beliefs, agendas, goals, and desires.  But all of us have a heart.  All of us bleed.  All of us pee, and poop, and sleep and wake up.  All of us require the sun to keep us alive.  All of us rose from the same bit of goo 4.5 billion years ago.  Your DNA is nearly identical to mine.  You’re sharing a ride with me on this rock tumbling through space.  You live, you love, you laugh, you cry.  So do I.  You’re here for less than two centuries.  So am I. 

We need to work with the government we have to make it the government it could be.  We need it to become that place where we all come together to discuss our problems and find not the Democratic Answer or the Republican Answer, but the Right Answer. 

As Russia marches, seemingly inexorably, toward World War III, and the nuclear war that would exterminate all life on Earth, we need now, more than ever, to stop fighting amongst ourselves over differences that are superficial and start finding a way out of the terror that lies ahead.  There’s little point in planning for a Utopian future if we’re not going to be around for another year.  

But, for today…

I woke up at 3:40 AM, but that’s because I passed out a little before 9.  Speedy Shine came outside with me, did his business, and jumped immediately into my lap and fell asleep again.  I don’t know why I love that feeling so much.  Having him sleeping in my lap makes me feel alive, content, and at peace with the world.

I wish, so much, everyone could feel such peace.  I think of it as a simple pleasure.  For far too many people, it’s an all but unimaginable luxury.

There is plenty about which to worry.  The chance of nuclear war grows greater all the time.  This will almost certainly lead to the extinction of the human race. I think that’s a good reason to worry.

On the other hand, I don’t believe there’s much I can do about that.  I don’t believe Putin is taking my calls this week.  If he were, I don’t think he could possibly care less about my pleas not to continue the mass murder our species has politely named War.

The best I can possibly do is to convince, if I am absurdly successful, 50 people to believe in the possibilities that liberty holds. I might be able to get them to oppose voter suppression laws, or to support a Universal Basic Income.  I can’t stop the deaths.

If our time on Earth is approaching its end, I want to find all the happiness I can before I’m gone.  Worrying accomplishes nothing of value, and it keeps me from feeling the Joy I want while I can still have it.

It’s not that I don’t care what is happening.  It’s that I can’t change it.

If I can’t change it, I won’t worry about it.  I will hope for change.  I will advocate change.  I will support those who try to make the changes in which I believe.

And then, I’m going to smoke a bowl, play some music, and enjoy the feeling of a dog lying in my lap, allowing me to believe he loves me, and knowing that I love him.

I hope you find a similar sort of Peace.  I love you.

Posted on by Fred · 2 Comments

Cameras In The Classroom

Camera in a Classroom

Iowa Republican lawmakers have introduced a bill that would force all public-school classrooms to have a camera that would livestream classes which parents and guardians could view online.  Under the bill, school staff who did not keep cameras active or who obstruct the camera’s view could be fined up to 5 percent of their weekly salary.

“I have a right to know what is happening in my child’s classroom every minute of every day.  If teachers have nothing to hide, there is no reason to keep cameras out of the classroom.  Let the parents know what teachers are doing to their children.  This is no different than police officers wearing body cameras to ensure they’re not doing anything wrong.  And, like body cameras, cameras in the classroom will provide evidence to protect teachers when they are unjustly accused.  Why on Earth would anyone object to Cameras in The Classroom?”

That’s an excellent question.  I asked it this week on my Facebook page after a dear friend made a request for this episode.  What I’m about to give you is NOT to be confused with scientific research, or even with a valid poll.  It’s nothing more than the responses of a few of my friends, many of whom are, shockingly enough, teachers.  I taught Elementary School for 29 years.  I made friends with a few teachers in that time. 

I won’t be using real names.  One of them already has a built-in pseudonym, and the others I will invent. 

A friend I’ll call “Jennifer” suggested:

My two cents is that if you mistrust teachers so much, keep your kids home and home school them.

The response to this would probably be that not everyone CAN keep their kids at home to home-school them.  Many, if not most, parents are working.

Another friend I’ll call Frances, who has mixed feelings about it, made a case for having cameras in the classroom.  She told us:

As an abused child that switched schools several times in order to get away from our abuser, I could see how this could go terribly awry.

On the other hand, my 6th grade teacher used to hit us with yardsticks and paddles when we were “bad”.  One time, there was this boy named Bobby that used to go rounds with the teacher.  Teacher bullied the student & the student retaliated with a disrespectful & aggressive attitude.  Bobby spouted off to the teacher this day & the teacher full on assaulted this 12 yr old boy.  It was horrifying.  As it turns out, Bobby was being abused at home by his alcoholic father only to come to school to be further abused by his teacher.  In that case, maybe a camera would have saved that boy from yet another assault from an adult that was supposed to be taking care of him.

I’m kinda torn on this one.

This is an important point.  Most teachers, like most police officers, are good, kind, caring people of decent moral character.  In any group, however, there will be bad people, and the teaching profession is no exception.  I don’t know anyone who wants a teacher like this in the classroom.  Is a camera in the classroom the only way to stop someone like this from abusing our children? 

I think we all know that it’s not.  At no time in my career was there ever a camera live streaming my class to the world.  Near the end of my career, however, cell phones were common.  I’m sure they’re even more prevalent now than they were in 2016 when I quit teaching.  You can be reasonably certain some student would record that moment.  Even if that didn’t happen, it would be discussed around dinner tables when students go home to tell their versions of the story to their horrified parents.  It would get to the administration.  It would be addressed swiftly and in accordance with the policies of the district.  The camera wouldn’t offer immediate assistance. 

There is also a legitimate legal issue of student privacy.  As Frau Bleucher tells us:

I teach 3rd grade.  I can’t even take pictures of my entire class without putting an emoji over 2-3 faces because their parents won’t give permission for their pictures to be taken.  So, it would be an issue.

I have 6 students who are currently kindergarten level, so I’m trying to fill in some deep gaps.  Therefore, they will receive different types of lessons and learning strategies than my other students.  I referred all of them for an SST (Student Study Team) meeting in September so we can see if they qualify to be academically tested.  We are currently a year behind in our intervention meetings due to Covid/distance learning.  No other parent needs to know this.

I have one who has the mentality of a 3-4 year old. (We are in the process of trying to find a suitable educational placement before she goes to 4th grade).  She also goes to speech and occupational therapy.  No one needs to know this. I have 3 students who suffer from emotional distress and go to a counselor.  No one has the right to know this.  One is absolutely brilliant, 5th grade level. But, we believe he is on the spectrum and has had episodes of extreme frustration that he gets mad and begins to tear up my classroom or throw things, or break down in tears because he can’t handle it. He also has a severe stutter, but it’s taking a long time to process for testing.  No one needs to see him trying to control his feelings and not succeed on a particular day.

She makes excellent points here.  Students’ privacy outweighs the need for parents to watch what happens all day long in a classroom.  Such a stream could easily be hacked and used for unthinkable purposes.  I’ll say the word pedophile, and I’ll leave it at that. 

A significant part of teaching is establishing relationships with students.  This is made much more difficult by having every move watched in an almost Orwellian sense. 

Another friend I’ll call Austen, who does a weekly news and commentary show on YouTube, saw both sides of it.

I am legitimately torn on this issue.  I feel like the way it is going to be implemented and used is nothing more than spying on teachers for the state.  I don’t think people can work or study in that environment.  On the other hand, I think child abuse at the hands of teachers would probably go… way down and it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have an objective view of what’s happening inside of classrooms.  Really tough.  On the one hand we have this watch state, which is dystopian and disturbing.  On the other hand the constant use of cameras everywhere save(s) lives and stops abuse and exposes lies.  We would need to create a lot of regulation around them if we did.  I cannot fall on one side of this issue or the other, I am genuinely torn.

I would be way more in favor of recordings though than streaming.

This might be a more workable idea.  If we insist on putting cameras in the classrooms, the videos are locked down, and they can be opened only with just cause.  I wouldn’t want to try to determine what qualifies as just cause, but others can figure that out. 

I think she’s right, too, that much of this is because there are those who live in terror that teachers will discuss issues that they don’t want discussed.  I suspect you’re familiar with The Scopes Trial.  It is explained succinctly by History.com here:

The Scopes Trial, also known as the Scopes Monkey Trial, was the 1925 prosecution of science teacher John Scopes for teaching evolution in a Tennessee public school, which a recent bill had made illegal.  The trial featured two of the best-known orators of the era, William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow, as opposing attorneys. The trial was viewed as an opportunity to challenge the constitutionality of the bill, to publicly advocate for the legitimacy of Darwin’s theory of evolution, and to enhance the profile of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

https://www.history.com/topics/roaring-twenties/scopes-trial#:~:text=The%20Scopes%20Trial%2C%20also%20known,recent%20bill%20had%20made%20illegal.

Even today teaching Evolution can be controversial.  It was the cry for inclusion of religious doctrine as science that gave rise to The Flying Spaghetti Monster.  In an open letter to the Kansas School Board, Bobby Henderson wrote:

I am writing you with much concern after having read of your hearing to decide whether the alternative theory of Intelligent Design should be taught along with the theory of Evolution.  I think we can all agree that it is important for students to hear multiple viewpoints so they can choose for themselves the theory that makes the most sense to them.  I am concerned, however, that students will only hear one theory of Intelligent Design.

Let us remember that there are multiple theories of Intelligent Design.  I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster.  It was He who created all that we see and all that we feel.  We feel strongly that the overwhelming scientific evidence pointing towards evolutionary processes is nothing but a coincidence, put in place by Him.

Open Letter To Kansas School Board

Today, many are concerned about Critical Race Theory.  They don’t want teachers to discuss anything that might make anyone uncomfortable.  Books are being banned for having LGBTQIA characters, for discussing racism, for illustrating the holocaust, or for having ideas that cause a reader to reflect, ponder, or think at all.  Cameras in the classroom would have provided powerful evidence against Scopes.  I believe this is among the reasons Republican state Rep. Norlin Mommsen, who introduced the Iowa Bill, would like to have every moment of the day recorded.  There are bills restricting what teachers can discuss in their classrooms, and the punishments for violations can be extreme.  In short, they want their ideas to be taught to the exclusion of all others.  History shows us this never works out well. 

Your ideas about religion are personal.  The government has no business telling you what your relationship to the universe, or to God, or to multiple gods should be.  Certainly, the school doesn’t have the right to do that. 

History, however, is not a matter of personal opinion.  The Declaration of Independence was dated July 4, 1776.  To say otherwise would require quite a bit of evidence that would probably require a TARDIS to collect.  Slavery was a part of America.  European Americans subjugated and slaughtered Native Americans.  These are facts.  Understanding our history allows us to learn from our mistakes and celebrate our victories.  The United States has won extraordinary victories for humanity.  We have put human beings on the Moon.  We have made an effort at having Freedom unlike any before us.  And we have made mistakes.  We have done evil.  This is all part of the canvas of our history.  We need to see all of it in the cold light of day. 

And just as we trust doctors with medicine and lawyers with legal matters, because they are professionals who have learned more about it than we know ourselves, we need to trust our teachers and treat them as professionals who know more about education than the rest of us.  They are already underpaid and insufficiently respected.  They are filling roles for which no school ever prepared them.  They have become parents, counselors, social workers, and practitioners of patience on an unimaginable scale.  They need to deal with a host of children’s challenges, whether the child is abused, neglected, homeless, or simply sad because their dog died.  They take on an enormous responsibility, and they do it for very little money.  If we would like to end what people are calling a teacher shortage, perhaps we could let them do their jobs unencumbered by the uninformed opinions of those who have, or want to have, power over them. 

No one went into teaching to make money.  We did it to make a difference.  Don’t beat the passion out of those who are still in the profession.  They’re doing the best they can with incredibly limited time and resources.  If you don’t want to support them, at least don’t make their jobs harder.  Let’s leave the cameras on cell phones.  Let’s let teachers do what they can to save the world.

Posted on by Fred · 3 Comments

Preserving Liberty

American Flag

My first idea was to call this episode “Preserving Democracy.”  The moment, however, that I refer to our system of government as a democracy, someone will shout, “We’re not a democracy; we’re a republic,” and we’re already wasting time on semantics.  I don’t want to argue about which terms we apply to the idea that our government is supposed to be about Liberty.  It’s right there in our Pledge of Allegiance: “…with liberty and justice for all.”  The only way it works is if we can all vote.  We gave up The Divine Right of Kings by 1776.  Google’s Dictionary defines it fairly well: “the doctrine that kings derive their authority from God, not from their subjects, from which it follows that rebellion is the worst of political crimes.  It was claimed in Britain by the earlier Stuarts and is also associated with the absolutism of Louis XIV of France.”

Constitution of The United States

The idea of America is that we all decide who will represent us, our values, our needs, and our concerns in government.  I welcome this concept.  I think everyone – and by that, I mean all human beings capable of understanding what it means to vote (more than, say, arbitrarily, 12 years old) should be able to vote.  If you live here, whether I agree with you or not, I believe your voice should be heard as clearly as mine.  This is true whether you are a convicted felon, an illegal immigrant, a homeless person, or the CEO of General Motors.  You have a stake in what happens in this country. 

Why do you object to someone voting?  Among those of us who have that right, well over 30% of us choose not to use it.  Do you believe a prisoner serving his sentence is going to vote for the candidate who wants to legalize robbing a convenience store or something?  Is there such a candidate… anywhere?  If those who are currently unrepresented, or, at least under-represented, can vote, the country can more accurately reflect the will of its residents.  I’m willing to bet that a large portion of us, on both sides of the aisle, would love to end poverty and homelessness.

Universal Voting has met significant opposition from its inception.  Women were not allowed to vote for well over a century.  Black people weren’t allowed, preliminarily, to vote, and when they were, laws were promptly passed to make it all but impossible.  People have died for having the unmitigated temerity of trying to cast a vote. 

A few weeks ago I talked to you about The Utopia We Could Create.  (It’s Episode 137: The Utopia We Could Create: One Dear Land if you haven’t heard it) I described Ellen Hadley’s vision of a world without poverty and homelessness, with little fear of war, with help for everyone, and with information shared all but effortlessly with anyone who wants it.  It’s a beautiful idea.  The first step in bringing it to fruition is ensuring that everyone can vote. 

While we currently live in an oligarchy, or a government run by the wealthy, we were not designed to work like this.  There are many more struggling than thriving.  If we let those who are struggling vote, they’re likely to elect representatives who will help to ease their pain.  Those who hold power now don’t seem to like this idea very well.  They’re doing what they can to make voting as difficult as possible.  I’ll give you a few examples.

Politicians often use unfounded claims of voter fraud to try to justify registration restrictions. In 2011, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach championed a law requiring Kansans to show “proof of citizenship” documents in order to register to vote, citing false claims of noncitizen voting. Most people don’t carry the required documents on hand — like a passport, or a birth certificate — and as a result, the law blocked the registrations of more than 30,000 Kansans…

Some states are discouraging voter participation by imposing arbitrary requirements and harsh penalties on voters and poll workers who violate these rules.  In Georgia, lawmakers have made it a crime to provide food and water to voters standing in line at the polls — lines that are notoriously long in Georgia, especially for communities of color. In Texas, people have been arrested and given outrageous sentences for what amount at most to innocent mistakes made during the voting process…

A felony conviction can come with drastic consequences, including the loss of your right to vote.  Some states ban voting only during incarceration, or while on probation or parole.  And other states and jurisdictions, like Maine, Vermont, and Washington, D.C., don’t disenfranchise people with felony convictions at all.  The fact that these laws vary so dramatically only adds to the overall confusion that voters face, which is a form of voter suppression in itself.

Due to racial bias in the criminal justice system, felony disenfranchisement laws disproportionately affect Black and Brown people, who often face harsher sentences than white people for the same offenses. Many of these laws are rooted in the Jim Crow era, when legislators tried to block Black Americans’ newly won right to vote by enforcing poll taxes, literacy tests, and other barriers that were nearly impossible to meet.  To this day, the states with the most extreme disenfranchisement laws also have long histories of suppressing the rights of Black people.

https://www.aclu.org/news/civil-liberties/block-the-vote-voter-suppression-in-2020

Voting Lines in Ohio

These are just three examples.  There are many more.  Many states are going to great lengths to ensure as few people as possible vote.  This is in direct opposition to the ideas upon which our government is founded.  If we add to this the gerrymandering that occurs in many places, it becomes clear that those in charge are more interested in maintaining power, and less interested in creating One Dear Land. 

The cynic will tell you that your vote doesn’t matter.  Both major parties are controlled by the elite, and there’s nothing we can do short of a violent overthrow of the government.  The problem with that is, in the unlikely event they were successful, we would then have a government controlled by violent people, and I have no more confidence in their intentions to help us reclaim our liberty than I have in those who currently hold power.  The odds of such a revolution working are miniscule.  The United States has the most powerful military in the history of the world.  There’s no military action a militia can launch that could scratch the surface.  Additionally, many people will die in any such plan.  I’m opposed to killing except in the most extreme cases of need. 

Fortunately, other solutions are available.  One is The John Lewis Voting Rights Act.  “The John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advance­ment Act would restore the law (the Voting Rights Act) to full strength, in part by once again requir­ing states with histor­ies of voter discrim­in­a­tion to receive approval from the Depart­ment of Justice or a federal court before enact­ing voting changes.”

— https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/debunking-false-claims-about-john-lewis-voting-rights-act

The idea is that we will have more opportunities for people to vote.  More voices will be heard.  Is this necessary, though?

The Brennan Center for Justice tells us:

Voter suppres­sion remains on the rise today.  In 2021 alone, at least 19 states enacted at least 34 laws that make it harder to vote, while at least 13 restrict­ive voting bills have been pre-filed for 2022 legis­lat­ive sessions and no fewer than 152 restrict­ive voting bills will carry over from last year. Four of the restrict­ive laws that passed in 2021 are “monster” voter suppres­sion pack­ages that include dozens voting access roll­backs.  Two of these monster laws are in states that would be covered by the version of the John Lewis Voting Rights Act before the Senate (Texas and Geor­gia) and a third is in a state (Flor­ida) that would have been covered by the House version of the bill.  (The fourth is in Iowa).

In 1965, states and local­it­ies suppressed the votes of people of color with poll taxes and liter­acy tests.  Today, we see insi­di­ous discrim­in­a­tion in new forms.  We see it when a state bans 24-hour voting in response to its wide­spread use in a heav­ily nonwhite county. We see it when a state sets limits on drop boxes that make them harder to access after nonwhite voters used them in droves. We see it when a legis­lator says we should focus on the “qual­ity” of voters over the quant­ity.

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/debunking-false-claims-about-john-lewis-voting-rights-act

One step toward ensuring full participation in our democracy is passing the latest Voting Rights Act.  There are enough votes in Congress to accomplish this, except that the filibuster keeps it from happening.  The filibuster, in modern times, is explained here by The Washington Post.

The filibuster is a Senate rule that essentially requires 60 votes to pass most legislation.

The Senate is required to follow certain procedural steps in passing legislation.  When a bill is brought to the Senate floor, any senator can bring things to a halt by speaking for as long as they wish, effectively delaying a vote to end debate on a bill.  The Senate can vote to end debate with a three-fifths majority, or 60 of 100 senators.  So any bill that has the support of at least 60 senators is, in effect, filibuster-proof, and the Senate can quickly move on to the next steps leading up to a final vote.

But most controversial legislation is passed on party-line votes these days, and it’s very rare for parties to have 60 senators.  Democrats only have 50 right now.

In the modern Senate, an objecting senator doesn’t actually have to stand there and filibuster endlessly — you might remember Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) reading “Green Eggs and Ham,” or Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) quoting Jay-Z and Wiz Khalifa, in the midst of hours-long speeches that brought the Senate to a standstill.

Those were examples of what was required of senators decades ago.  Now, a senator can simply indicate her intent to filibuster a bill and cause it to be sidelined.  That means in the current Senate, all it takes is one Republican to object to a Democratic-sponsored bill, and that bill is stopped in its tracks.https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/04/09/what-is-filibuster/

Ending the filibuster would allow Congress to protect our voting rights.  It’s not a panacea, but it’s a good step toward allowing us to have a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.  There are dangers for both sides of the aisle.  Democrats will be able to pass voting rights legislation now, but Republicans are likely to regain the majority in the 2022 elections, and changing the filibuster will give them greater power to pass legislation Democrats won’t like. 

The majority of voters chose these representatives.  The majority of these representatives want to protect voting rights.  I’m a part of that majority, which is extraordinarily rare for a man known for holding minority opinions on nearly every issue. 

If the people are accurately and faithfully represented, the people can decide how to make our country, first, and our world, inevitably, the kind of place it ought to be.  We can work together to abolish poverty, to terminate homelessness, and to ensure that everyone’s basic needs are met. We need to preserve our liberty if we’re going to accomplish anything else.

Violence is unnecessary and counterproductive.  We can use our voices to make a difference.  I can’t make that difference alone.  Neither can you.  Neither can she.  But, if every person moves one rock, a billion of us can move a mountain.  I’m moving the tiny little rock that I can.  I hope you can move a heavier stone.

Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world
You

You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will live as one

— John Lennon

Posted on by Fred · 1 Comment

My Life Now

Speedy Shine and Me

It is probably unwise to do this episode because it’s likely to cost me some of the Patreon support that has helped me to get to the life I have always wanted.  Sometimes when someone thinks I’m doing all right, they stop supporting me because they feel like I don’t need it anymore.  To be clear, I’m nothing approaching wealthy.  I’m never going to be.  I do, however, if I am very careful, have enough to live every month.  This is, in large part, because of the help my Patreon supporters, and several other good friends of mine, have given me.  I have, for example, one friend who is the mother of one of my classmates from my days in high school who sends me lovely cards with $40 in them from time to time.  She thinks of it as nothing, but it makes it possible for me to get through just a little longer, and I couldn’t be more grateful.

My Valentine

  Another friend got his taxes back, and, for absolutely no reason, sent me $75.  Those unexpected gifts help me to get the little extras.  I just got another blanket that has no stuffing because of my friend’s tax return gift.  Speedy Shine can’t ruin it.  My room isn’t covered in feathers anymore.  My life is better, and I get to enjoy luxuries I wouldn’t otherwise even consider. 

Without my Patreon support, I would never make ends meet every month.  Without having the good fortune of renting a place for half price, I would never make ends meet every month.  If I still had a car, I would never make ends meet every month.  I’ve learned to adjust my life to my meager means.  I can’t afford to buy every book I want (but one of The People on The Porch – Frau Bleucher —  just bought me Valerie Bertinelli’s latest book, for which I could not be more grateful), and I still can’t afford my bookcases or to get my plumbing fixed, but I don’t spend every day worrying about getting evicted, or losing my electricity, or paying for my internet, because all of those things are covered in my wildly reduced rent. 

(Update:  My best friend has become a Notorious Furniture Flipper.  She buys furniture cheaply at something called Offer Up with the intention of selling it at a profit.  She’s gotten the furniture several times now, but she’s never sold any.  Either she or her boyfriend decide they love it and want to keep it.  Using these newfound skills, she is shopping for 4 big bookcases for me for a total of $50 or less.  I’m hopeful she will be successful.  It would be a huge step toward making my life complete.)

This didn’t come easily.  I’m the recipient of more kindness and generosity than I could possibly deserve.  I never forget that for even a moment.  But, I also worked hard to get where I am.  I worked at grocery stores when I was a kid.  I worked at Day Care Centers when I was a little older.  I went to NAU for a little more than 4 years (we don’t talk about my first semester, thank you), I became a teacher, and I did that for 29 years.  I taught Defensive Driving on weekends during the final five years of my Elementary School teaching career because my salary wasn’t keeping up with inflation.  Rent kept going up, but my checks didn’t.  When I quit teaching, I took most of a year off, and I lived the life I had always wanted.  I had to go back to work, and I sold Direct TV for quite a while and taught all the Defensive Driving classes I could get.  I drove for Postmates.  And when my Diabetes finally destroyed what was left of my health, I spent nearly 3 years trying to get my Disability. 

Disability pays my half price rent and my phone bill.  Everything else is funded by Patreon.  The license I just got for the software I use to do this show was paid for by The People on The Porch.  When I have to renew the license for the music I use, that will also come from the money I get from Patreon.  It took me more than 2 years, doing at least one episode a week, to get to this point.  I’m proud of my success.

I no longer live The Life of The Desperate.  I did.  I lived it for a long time, and, I have to tell you, it sucks.  If it weren’t for you (and, let’s face it, if you’re listening to this show, you’re almost certainly one of The People on The Porch.  I don’t think very many others listen.) I could never have made it this far.  You made my better life possible.  And I couldn’t be more grateful.  Please please please don’t stop.  I am beating my depression for the first time in years, and it’s because my circumstances are no longer anxiety producing.  You did that for me. 

When you think (as I often do) that doing the little things doesn’t matter, I want you to know what you are really doing.  You are helping me to have this life, and without you, it would be impossible.  Every single dollar goes into creating the life I think everyone ought to be able to have.  This show is mostly about trying to create a world where everyone has the kind of life you have granted me.

What is that life like?

Waking Up

This morning, without an alarm, I woke up a little after 6 AM.  The first thing I felt was my dog, Speedy Shine, cuddling next to my leg.  I smiled.  I took my first conscious breath.  I took a moment to appreciate the beauty of that experience.  We shared loves and cuddles until he woke up, did his morning shake, and then gave me kisses.  I felt good before I was even out of bed.  We laid there a little longer.  He needed a few more minutes of cuddling before we both went to take care of our morning business.  While I did mine, he came in and put his paws on my lap to remind me he loves me.  After he did his, he came over to my backyard chair to tell me he was a Good Boy.  We went in for Treatsers, but he didn’t really care about them.  He just wanted to show me how good he was. 

I went back out for a morning cigarette and to see what happened in the world while I was asleep.  People had responded to my pictures of Speedy Shine and the new covers that wouldn’t spread feathers all over my room.  They had nice things to say.  Speedy Shine laid on the blankets by the back door so he could watch me.  It was too cold for him out there, but he wanted to be sure I was still around.  I wish I could find the words to explain how good that makes me feel.

I texted my best friend to tell her I hope she slept well, that I hope things are going well with her boyfriend, that I hope work goes well, and that I continue to love her most.  That always sets her up with a nice start to a day that is going to be much more difficult than mine.  I know.  I did what she’s doing today every day for 29 years.  Teachers can use all the emotional resources they can get.  I make sure that I tell her I love her whenever we’re done talking or texting for a bit.  I recognize I could easily be dead before we communicate next.  I want to be sure the last thing she hears from me is that I love her.  I do the same thing with my Mother.  I do the same thing with Speedy Shine.  I do it sometimes with you.

I played a game of Clue on my phone.  We used to play that when I was a kid, and my brother and sister frequently beat me at it.  I hadn’t figured out the logical way to proceed yet.  For those of you who have never played the game (infants!), it’s a murder mystery.  Someone has been killed.  There are 6 suspects, 6 possible murder weapons, and 9 rooms where the murder might have taken place.  We all have six cards that are some combination of suspects, weapons, and/or rooms.  Three are in in the envelope in the middle of the board.  These are the solution.  The objective is to figure out the murderer, the weapon, and the room.  You do that by travelling from room to room and “suggesting” who might have done it, the weapon that was used, and the room in which the crime was committed.  It’s really a children’s version of The Scientific Method.  What do I mean?

It helps if you have at least one suspect, one weapon, and one room in your hand.  When you arrive at a room you don’t have, you suggest a suspect and a weapon in your hand.  (The rules require you to use the room you’re in as the scene of the crime.)  You know those two elements.  You’re testing for the third.  If no one has it, you have found the room where the crime occurred.  If they do, you can eliminate it from the 9 possibilities.  If you arrive at a room you have in your hand, you choose either a suspect or a weapon you don’t have to test whether others do.  They are required to show you a card if they have it.  If they have two or three of the cards, they need to show you only one. 

The Scientific Method teaches us to control all the variables except the one for which we are testing.  We know this method works.  Evidence for that can be found in the fact you’re listening to this podcast.  The computer on which I’m typing, the one on which I’ll record later, and the computer, or phone or whatever other device you’re using to play this are all direct results of the application of The Scientific Method. 

When I first started playing this game on my phone back during my California Adventure, I always chose the option to play against the AI.  I was afraid of seeming stupid in front of other humans I would never actually see or hear.  The game doesn’t even have a chat feature.  It’s not like they can TELL me how stupid I am.  I play as Front Porch Fred.  They won’t even know my name.  But they might think I’m stupid.  Yes, these were things about which I worried.  After I had won 100 games against the AI, I felt confident enough to try it in front of other humans.  And I was shocked by the results.

I’ve explained how to play the game correctly.  It’s not difficult.  Few of my opponents ever play it according to The Scientific Method.  They suggest three elements they don’t have in their hand.  Sometimes I will have two of them, and the third player shows them a card.  Now I know what the third player showed.  There’s only one possibility.  That’s free information.  It’s like playing Texas Hold Em and intentionally exposing one of your hole cards.  My assumption is that people hope to get lucky.  “I’m going to take a wild guess and see if I get it right.”  It’s frustrating for me when they do this on the first turn, and, before I’ve even gotten the chance to roll the dice, they’ve solved the crime.  That happens a little more than 1% of the time.  Statistically, it should occur much less often.  I assume someone has taken the time to hack the game.  I can’t imagine why they would do that.  Everyone, however, should get to spend their time as they see fit, so long as they’re not hurting anyone else.  The damage they do to me is negligible.  I’m annoyed for, perhaps, 15 seconds.  I think I’ll survive. 

It takes me between 10 and 15 minutes to play a game of Clue.  I win 89% of the time.  Now and then, I encounter another player who also knows how to play correctly, and then it’s a true race to see who can find the right room first.  We tend to find the killer and the weapon almost simultaneously.

When I want a shorter game, I play Othello.  This is another game we played as kids.  You flip tokens from black to white and back.  You’re either black or white; your opponent is the opposite color.  Whoever has the most tokens at the end of the game wins.  It’s another great little logic puzzle that allows me to think without taxing my brain sufficiently to make me frustrated.  I won’t play that online at all.  Even at the Very Easy level, I still sometimes lose to the AI.  A smart player can crush me, and I don’t enjoy that as much as one would think.  Again, I feel embarrassed.  I’m less interested in competition than I am in spending a few leisurely moments thinking a little. 

Othello

Shorter still is Solitaire.  If the game takes more than 3 minutes to win, I think of it as a failure.  I’m sure you’ve played that before.  It’s a card game we all learn as children.  I used to cheat as a child, and the phone won’t let me do that.  Sometimes the deck is unwinnable.  I can always play another one. 

I read when I want now.  Normally, it’s during the daylight hours because I like to read outside with a cigarette.  I used to read in bed, but now I like to listen to my show when I’m going to sleep.  First, I can use the numbers.  Second, I prefer talking to myself about whatever is on the show to letting my brain run wild all night to remind me of every mistake I’ve ever made and let me know what a horrible person I am.  My podcast voice generally drowns out the voice of my Prosecutor.  (You’ll find him in Episode 97: “The Prosecution Never Rests.”)  Finally, my voice saying, “Fred’s Front Porch Podcast is made possible by…” has become a signal for Speedy Shine.  Before I even turn the bedside light out, he’s diving under the covers to secure the best cuddle spot before I go to sleep.  How lovely is that?

After my morning routines, I like to come and sit at my computer and write.  I play my Spotify playlist (no, I don’t feel like arguing about Neil Young and Joe Rogan right now; I’m in a good mood.).  I look over my shoulder from time to time to make sure Speedy Shine isn’t destroying anything that might hurt him.  Other than that, I am essentially talking to myself through my fingers on the keyboard.  I’m rethinking my ideas.  I’m clarifying them.  I’m understanding my life a little better.  It’s a wonderful experience. 

When I start to get hungry, I go make a microwave breakfast.  I’m ecstatic that I finally got enough in Food Stamps that I can afford to eat now.  I don’t ever worry about going hungry anymore.  This is a fantastic luxury.  I love that feeling. 

Breakfast is always in bed.  As far as that goes, so is lunch and dinner.  I don’t have, nor do I really want, a kitchen table.  I have my TV in my bedroom, and I like to watch some Dick Wolf show while I eat.  I enjoy most of the Law & Order shows, the One Chicago shows, and I just started FBI.  They aren’t more challenging than I can handle.  They are new to me.  The characters become my friends over time.  No, it’s not Aaron Sorkin, but I can recite nearly every word of every episode of television he’s ever written.  A person needs something else.  Some of the new Star Trek shows are pretty good.  I love Picard.  Prodigy is surprisingly good.  Obviously, I’ve already seen all of The Original Series and The Next Generation more times than I can count.  So… Dick Wolf is part of the meal ritual. 

Speedy Shine has learned “lay down.”  When I finish more than 90% of my meal, he knows he will get a little if he is a good boy.  He is always a good boy.  I share the last of the meal with him, and, in a little while, we’re either going to pull up the covers and start up the podcast, or we’re going to get up and go read outside.  I love a nice morning nap. 

I get to choose now what to do with every minute of my life.  I have a few alarms on my phone.  I had to change the Mom call from 7:37 PM to 6:25 because she’s getting tired earlier.  She’s 91.  No one gets to complain about what time she goes to bed.  I have an alarm set for 1:45 every Wednesday so I get to Weekly Wacky Wednesday by 2, my time.  I have an alarm for 4 PM to remind me to take my Lantus.  When I have a doctor’s appointment, I have an alarm for that.  Everything else, though… those minutes are up to me.  I get at least 1 nap a day.  Sometimes, if I’m caught up on the show, I manage 2. 

I have the time I need to write my show at a leisurely pace.  I try to have the script finished by Friday so I can record, score, and Horace on Saturday.  I bounce the episode, find about 60 seconds to use for “Next Week On Fred’s Front Porch Podcast,” and then I’m ready to go.  Sunday, I assemble all the pieces for this week’s episode, knowing I already have next week’s episode done, and I can relax. 

I spend far too much time worrying about whether anyone likes my show.  I obsess about numbers, but I keep trying to stop that.  I’m checking my numbers less frequently.  At first, it was just ego.  Now that I’m deriving a little income from this, I find I really don’t want to lose the life I’ve worked so long to get.  You are the reason I can live my way.  I want us all to work together so everyone can choose how to spend their minutes without worrying about whether they will be able to pay rent and eat.  Everyone deserves what it took me nearly 60 years to get.  Is it possible?  Why, yes.  Yes, it is.  I know that because I’m doing it.  I want you to have a life at least as good as mine.  You deserve it every bit as much as I do.  And I couldn’t be more grateful for the life you’ve given me.  I love you very very much. 

“What? Did you think this was YOUR chair or something?”
— Sir Speedy Shine
Posted on by Fred · 1 Comment

The Utopia We Could Create: One Dear Land

“No longer do we see slum conditions in any part of our country.  Landlords vie with each other to offer the finest affordable housing to prospective tenants, knowing that, thanks to their basic incomes, they will be able to pay the rent regularly.  Arrangements can be made for the landlord to be paid directly by the government, with the tenant receiving the rest of his basic income for his other living expenses.  No one need live in run-down housing, and, as a result, slums have disappeared, to be replaced by decent, pleasant neighborhoods. 

“No longer do we see the sad spectacle of elderly persons being stripped of a major portion of their life’s savings because of a catastrophic illness.  They need not live in fear of impoverishment by health care expenses after they have worked long and diligently to put aside their nest-egg in order to have some comforts in their old age and leave inheritance to their children. 

“No longer do we worry greatly about the possibility of war with other countries.  We have come to think of ourselves as one world, working together under a common government, enjoying equal privileges, and striving toward shared goals.

“Finally, my friends, as you enter the voting booth, I ask you to think of the wonderful young people who have been growing up during these years.  The counseling and care provided them has helped them to make the most of their educations, talents, and abilities and to develop into wholesome, healthy young citizens and future contributing members of the world community. 

“I am confident that you, being mindful of these important advances in our society, will elect me to a second term as your President.”

— Ellen Hadley, “One Dear Land” page 247, 248

The link to the book is in the show notes.

Whether you believe what you just heard is possible, I hope you agree that it’s what we would all want for our world.  The end of poverty is a consummation devoutly to be wished.  Decent neighborhoods, kindly landlords, and children growing up in a nurturing environment are goals I think we all share. 

Those who oppose these goals tend to use fear to dissuade us from pursuing them.  The attitude is frequently that “I got mine; you get yours.  If we start handing out money to lazy people, they end up getting the money YOU earned!  We can’t allow that.”  And this is a root cause of much human misery.  As long as there are those who lack the basics of survival, there will be desperate people trying to obtain them.  If we share no other goals, I think it’s fair to say that, with a few suicidal exceptions, we all want to live. 

“While it’s desirable that competition should be a factor in determining the luxuries that a group enjoys, we shouldn’t let it affect its members’ access to the necessities of life.  Competition must never cause any community of people to be deprived of its basic needs.  If that were to happen, not only would this be an evil in itself, but it would lead to bitterness and resentment on the part of the deprived group toward those who are more affluent.” (“One Dear Land,” pages 254 and 255.)

There are lots of reasons cynics can find to persuade us this world isn’t possible.  They help us to achieve nothing, however.  Believing that something is possible is the first step toward making it happen.  We would need some fundamental changes in our society, and, indeed, in the world for this Utopia to become a reality.  There are those who will try to keep us from making these changes because they profit from the world being as it is.  They can’t keep doing that forever, though.  There is only so long that you can oppress a large population before they rebel.  I never want to see it come to violent struggle.  I don’t believe it has to, if we can convince everyone that it’s in everyone’s best interests to create a kinder, more productive, and, frankly, more beautiful world. 

How do we do it?

First, let’s rid ourselves of poverty.  If you’ve ever listened to this show before, you know what Universal Basic Income is.  It comes up over and over.  If, however, this is your first episode, I’ll take just a moment to explain.  UBI is providing everyone with enough money to meet their basic needs.  We ensure everyone has enough to pay rent and, at the very minimum, have enough money to eat properly, dress, and do the other things we need to do to keep living.  This isn’t a handout if you are willing to accept the idea that, as I’ve said hundreds of times, There is no Them; we are all Us.  This means the government is us, too.  At the moment, it doesn’t really seem to be. 

It seems to be an oligarchy, and there are those who have a vested interest in keeping it that way.  It’s government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.  It’s wonderful for those who have money.  It sort of sucks for the rest of us.  There was a guy whose name you might have heard before, Abe Lincoln, who told us that “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”  The people.  Not the few.  I would love for us to return to that.  We can take a step in that direction by working to keep free and fair elections in which everyone (that would be The People) can vote, and many more of us actually exercise that right.

The first step, then, toward achieving the world we want is reforming the government.  I am not a political scientist.  I’m not an economist.  I’m not a sociologist.  I leave that reform to those who are smarter than I am.  I will simply point toward the destination: a truly representative government. 

Having elected leaders who represent our interests, we now have the chance to put a UBI into place.  Don’t buy into the fear that someone is going to take your money and give it to someone else.  That’s what we do with money.  We earn some, and then we give it to someone else in exchange for something we want, whether it’s goods or services, or simply the satisfaction of helping.  The money we collect through taxes goes back to those whose money it was in the first place.  In “One Dear Land,” Ellen Hadley suggests it might be done through a sales tax.  Those who have more, and spend more, also pay more.  There are any number of ways to pay for everyone’s well-being.  I leave it to my economist friends to find them.  We’re all working together to try to improve the world.  That’s their contribution.  It’s vital.

Ms. Hadley suggested, in 1990 when the book was first written, that we might have a computer system that would allow us more information about each other.  This is, of course, before the internet did just that.  The privacy concerns still exist, but the truth is that anyone can find out nearly anything they want about you now anyway.  It’s hardly a state secret that the NSA has all our texts and phone calls.  There’s little point in fighting against it.  It’s best to embrace it.  We can now find out about which businesses are best on Yelp, as well as dozens, or perhaps, hundreds of other places.  If you want to know anything about me, the information is easily accessible on my Facebook page if you’re a friend of mine.  It’s less easily accessible if you’re not, but I feel certain anyone who really tries can find out more about me than I remember about myself. 

In One Dear Land, someone is murdered because of all the information floating freely out there.  The murderer is dishonest, and the free flow of information hurt his business.  He wants revenge.  I have an entire episode about why revenge is a very bad idea.  (It’s episode 132: “A Dish Best Served Cold” if you would like to listen.)

The book pioneers a religion called Infinitism.  As an atheist, I reject the supernatural portions of the idea, but I like the values that spring from it.  Where they have reincarnation, I would have The Veil of Ignorance.  Infinitism posits that we are all going to live another life in the world we helped to create while we were alive in this one.  It suggests we create a better world now so we will have a better life next time around, whether we are born rich or poor. 

The Veil of Ignorance says, “Imagine before you’re born you don’t know anything about who you’ll be, your abilities, or your position.  Now design a tax system.”  (That was Will Bailey, in Aaron Sorkin’s The West Wing explaining John Rawls.)  The idea is that, no matter who you are, or where you’re born, or what challenges you will face, you want the world to be as good for you as possible.  Whether you’re rich or poor, you want the best life you can have.  I believe in that idea.  I believe in having a reasonable amount of empathy.  I believe in compassion.  Don’t you?

So… why have a UBI?

First, it creates better employees.  The people working for you now are people who really want the job, and not people trying to make enough money to make ends meet one more month.  They are likely to be more enthusiastic, more dedicated to the work, and more interested in improving.  They find the job fulfilling.  That’s how I, for example, felt about most of the first 20 years of my teaching career.  It’s how I feel about my podcast now.

Second, UBI decreases crime.  Gone are the otherwise good people who have been forced by desperation for food or a home to commit crimes to get the cash they need.  Their basic needs are met.  Of course, there are still evil people in the world.  I don’t know that we will ever be able to stop that.  I do know, though, that children who grow up in more stable households, with parents who have the time they need to give to their children, are statistically less likely to become criminals.  There are no guarantees.  The best we can do is increase the odds.  I have an entire episode on this idea, too.  It’s Episode 91: How Do We Avoid Another Columbine, Parkland, Newtown, or Boulder? 

Third, employers can now pay lower wages for good jobs because people don’t need the money simply to survive.  One of The People On The Porch, who is a relative of mine (although I have no idea of what the term for our relationship to one another would be), told me once that she wanted to be a teacher.  I am certain she would have been an excellent educator.  Why didn’t she ever do it?  She couldn’t afford it.  Teachers don’t make enough to cover all her bills.  Her line of work is vastly more profitable.   The world lost someone who might have made a significant difference in the lives of many children because she couldn’t afford to follow that passion.  This is not to say that she hasn’t made a difference in her profession.  She absolutely has.  I just feel bad for the kids who never got to have her as a teacher.  Good teachers are harder and harder to find.  With a UBI, they wouldn’t be. 

Another change we could make is, of course, Universal Healthcare.  Just as our schools are funded by our taxes, so our Medical Care could, and should, be.  No one should be crippled by medical debt.  I covered this in one of my earliest episodes.  It’s Episode 7: “Who Are The People Who Should Die for a Lack of Little Green Pieces of Paper?”

We could also pay for counselors for everyone, and in every area of life, so that mental heath assistance is always available.  The same is true for help with budgeting, or drug abuse, or citizenship, or anything else of which we can think.  We need to know help is freely available to all of us.

We could treat Drug Addiction as a medical issue instead of a crime.  We should have help easily and freely available to everyone who wants it.  Obviously, if drug use causes someone to commit a crime, the criminal needs to be properly tried in a court of law.  If, however, we can help a drug addict before they commit a crime, aren’t we all better off? 

What we have now is something between 59 and 68 million people getting some form of welfare, trapped in a system from which escape is all but impossible, and saddled with the contempt that comes with assistance. 

The vast majority of people who are on welfare would rather not be. They’re happy to work and to contribute to our society.  Many, if not most, of the people receiving government assistance are working.  My former roommate, for example, has a degree and is being crushed by the student loans that come with it.  She got that degree based on the myth that this is how one gets a higher paying job.  She worked overnight shifts at Circle K because we needed the extra 50 cents an hour that she got for those high-risk times.  The degree didn’t get her a higher paying job, but it did put her sufficiently into debt that she gets food stamps.  She works 40 hours a week.  She’s anything but lazy.

She’s more fortunate than many of the people we see when we go to DES to stand in line for hour after hour waiting for someone to ask her degrading questions about her life so they can decide if she deserves to eat for the next 6 months.  Most of the others have their children with them.  Why?  They can’t afford daycare.  How well are they going to do at whatever jobs they can get, since they don’t have degrees, when they don’t know if their children are safe?

Some of them are in their 60s.  They’re too old to do many jobs, but not old enough to get Social Security.

Are there lazy people on Welfare?  I’m sure there are.  There are lazy people everywhere.

But, for most people, it’s not that they’re lazy.  It’s that they got hit with medical bills that put them on the verge of bankruptcy.  It’s that they had children when they hadn’t planned to, often because they were raped.  It’s that they work 2 minimum wage jobs, hoping to earn enough to go to school hoping that someday they can actually earn money. There are as many reasons for poverty as there are victims of it.

What would $2000 a month do for those people?  It would pay their rent and utilities so the money they do earn can go to frivolous things like car payments so they can go to work and pay for their cars so they can go to work.

Where would we get the money?  We would get it by taxing those who, through innovative technology, for good or for ill, are eliminating jobs human beings once did.  No one will need to do a Go Fund Me for technology companies when they pay these extra taxes.  And you know what else?  No one will need to do a Go Fund Me for the rest of us, who live paycheck to paycheck, to pay our rent and keep the heat on, anymore, either.

Is UBI a radical idea?  Yes.  And it’s only through radical ideas that change had ever been made.

The Founding Fathers had the then radical idea that people ought not to be taxed without representation among those levying the taxes.  And things changed.

Abolitionists had the then radical idea that it’s not okay for one human being to own another.  And things changed.

Susan B. Anthony had the then radical idea that women should have a few of the same rights as men.  And things changed.

Martin Luther King, Jr. had the then radical idea that people should be judged by the content of their characters and not the color of their skin.  And things changed.

There are many more changes this country needs to make if it is to fulfill its promise of liberty and justice for all.  One Dear Land is proposing several such changes.

Can you embrace this country’s promise with us?

Posted on by Fred

The Front Porch

I feel like I’m one of those hosts who annoy me during Pledge Week on PBS. I’m watching something I really enjoy, on a station devoid of the commercials that can destroy any work of Art, and in they come with their tote bags and coffee mugs trying to get me to send them money so they can keep airing fantastic programs like the one that I was enjoying… until they interrupted it. I hate those guys.

Sadly, though, I understand why they do that. People love what PBS is doing. People love that they can watch it without interruption. And, yeah, it costs money to create the Art I enjoy. Since they don’t make money from the corporations who destroy Art in order to sell soap, they have to make it elsewhere. They can’t do it for free. People need to get paid. And I would like you to be able to enjoy the blog commercial free.

I was forced, recently, to do a Go Fund Me to pay for the expenses for my dog’s passing. And when I did it, I was called an Online Panhandler. You can read about that, here.

frededer.home.blog/2019/06/21/online-panhandler/

I would prefer not to think of myself in that way. I would like to believe I earn money for the things I do.

One of the things my former friend told me was that I should “…get a job! ANY job!” To be clear, I have a job. I teach Defensive Driving. I’m good at it. I recently got a raise. I’m doing training next month that will allow me to teach it to corporations all over the country, and I’m likely to make a little more money doing it that way. Whether my health will permit this, I don’t know yet. If it won’t, that will create brand new problems.

I taught Elementary School for 29 years. Prior to that, I worked at Day Care Centers, grocery stores, and even had a paper route when such things still existed. I have worked hard in my life. I have contributed. I have made a difference.

My health is now shot. If I work more than 2 days in a row it is a near certainty that I will wind up in the hospital. (I teach between 4 and 6 classes a month at the moment. I had as many as 10 in a month, but I wound up hospitalized. If they gave me more classes, I would teach them. I have no control over that.) I’ve had Diabetic Ketoacidosis more than a dozen times in the last five years. It turns out that once you’ve had DKA, the likelihood of a recurrence increases. Each case of it weakens your body and your resistance to the outside conditions that can cause it. At this point, a common cold can wind me up in the hospital. I’m extremely careful to avoid any situation which increases my odds of illness.

I’m applying for Disability. I have no idea if I will get it. I’m told it usually takes forever. If I get it, that would be helpful. If I don’t, I will get by as well as I can on the money I make.

But what I would really like to be able to do is to make money for writing. I’m told I can be a Copy Writer, which means writing ads for people. I could do that, I suppose, but everyone who says it can be done wants me to pay money so they can show me how it’s done. Why don’t I trust them? Barefoot Writer, AWAI, and the others that show up all over Facebook sound wonderful at the outset, but upon further investigation, turn out to be disappointing. If someone offers me a job writing something for them, I will almost certainly accept it. But, that’s not where I am.

I’m no sort of promoter. I don’t ever plan to be. I write. I teach. I make videos. I try to be nice to people. I am cuddled by cats. That’s pretty much it. Those are all the things I do well.

If you enjoy my writing, and you would like to contribute to my being able to continue doing it, that would be helpful. I’m told that the first thing I need to do is explain what is called my Mission Statement. In brief, what is it I want to accomplish? How do I plan to accomplish this? What do I need in order to be able to do so. I have been giving this quite a bit of thought.

What Do I Want to Accomplish With This Blog?

  1. I want to make a difference. I want to suggest a kinder, more compassionate world. I would like to increase the number of people who share my admittedly Idealistic picture of the world. Perhaps someone with more power than I have will read my words and find a way toward a better world. My core beliefs include the following:
    1. We are all one People. The Idea of Us vs Them has no place in a civilized society. There is no Them. We are all Us.
    2. All human beings deserve The Bare Necessities of Life. These include food, shelter, clothing, basic safety, sanitary living conditions, genuine education, and healthcare.
    3. We need to base our policies and practices on facts, well supported by reliable evidence. Science is an effective method of determining facts, and not simply a Western Prejudice.
    4. We must all be aware of, and guard against the ill effects of, our own cognitive biases. Wanting to believe something is true or false has nothing to do with whether something is true of false.
  2. I want to entertain people. I want to make them smile, or laugh, or feel a deeper catharsis. When we get to know fictional characters, when we learn to care about them, we increase our abilities to empathize. I think this a key portion of being human. I have a nice post on Empathy, here: frededer.home.blog/2019/03/27/empathy-and-art/
  3. I want to express who I am. I suspect all artists, of any sort, are trying to do the same thing. It’s a part of us.

How Will I Make a Difference, Entertain People, and Express Myself?

  1. I will write. I will air my thoughts here, on Facebook, and in discussions with anyone who is interested in them.
  2. I will make videos that express my feelings, almost always connected to music that I find moving. (Most often it will probably be Sara Niemietz and Snuffy Walden. Their music, which most people don’t seem to know, is incredibly powerful.) You’ll find most of them on my very quiet little YouTube channel.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmSNBeW1DpOlKVDrlS0PPDw?view_as=subscriber

3. I will read and learn from all the places I find useful. I don’t like to express an uninformed opinion. I will do the research necessary to provide reliable evidence for any claim I make, particularly if it is relevant to how I reached the position I’m advocating.

What Do I Need in Order to Accomplish These Goals?

  1. I need ink, paper, time, and a decent blog. I also need a computer with a legible keyboard, a phone, and internet access. (I’m using Mobile Hotspot now. It’s cheaper than a separate internet connection.) It would be great if I had the money to remove the evil advertisements from my blog. You don’t want to read them. I don’t want you to be submitted to them.
  2. I need to have enough money to sustain my existence. I make well below the poverty level in this society, and if I didn’t have food stamps and free health care, I would simply be dead. My roommates help to keep me alive and well. I’m grateful for that.
  3. I need people who are willing to support my writing, not only by reading it (which is, for me, the most valuable way), but also by contributing money so I can keep doing it.

There are successful bloggers in the world. I can’t name any, but I’m sure they exist. I’m told they’re good at marketing. I don’t want to do marketing. I don’t want to work out strategies to improve my online presence, or whatever it is I’m supposed to do. All I am interested in doing is sharing my thoughts with anyone who may be interested in them. If you are an expert in marketing, and you would like to do the marketing for me, I won’t say no. I just don’t have the money to spend on it. And I have done enough research to know that I don’t want to do all of those things, myself.

I would just like to share thoughts, quietly, with people who want to read them. I’d like my blog to be a front porch in a little town where people like to come by and sit for a spell. I want no neon lights. I prefer sunlight and moonlight.

My Grandpa Schuelke told me once, when I was very, very little, “Fred, you can’t change the world, only your corner of it.” Welcome to My Corner of The World.

://paypal.me/HilaryBatty

Posted on by Fred

WOKE

Kim Weaver Television Interviews by NASA Goddard Photo and Video is licensed under CC-BY 2.0

*Turns on TV*

If we’re going to discuss something, we need to agree on its definition.  I’m using Merriam-Webster. 

Woke: aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice)

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/woke

Woke is also the past tense of the verb “wake.”  It means to stop sleeping.  At its core, it seems to me to mean one has become alert to some of the bad things that are happening.  There are plenty of those.  Being shot is now the number one cause of death for our children, surpassing even car crashes.  Black people are twice as likely as White people to be shot by police officers.  Violence against transgender people continues to rise.  Those of us who are Woke would like to stop this. 

Bigotry is now celebrated, and people are getting crabby about being called bigots just because they believe there are only two genders, or homosexuality is a sin, or Drag Queens are probably pedophiles, or that those who are not straight, white, male Christians are probably bad in one way or another.  Those of us who are Woke would like people to be treated as individuals.  Part of being Woke is understanding that There is no Them; we are all Us.  We don’t think people should be treated differently because someone believes their identities are sinful.

Terry Pratchett had better ideas about sin.

“Sin, young man, is when you treat people like things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.” 

― Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum

And that’s the heart of Capitalism.  People are commodities to be traded for profit.  We are numbers – statistics to be used in a study, but not individuals to be treated with love and respect. 

One of the arguments I frequently hear against a woman’s right to choose what to do with her body is that rape makes up very few abortions.  They’re right, at least according to my Google Search.  It’s less than half a percent.  So… ignore those.  They’re outliers.  Let’s just ban abortion for everyone.

Except… Rape victims are also human beings.  Most of them are women who had a favorite blanket or stuffed animal when they were little.  They probably went to their senior proms and worried about whether their makeup was right, and their dress fit properly, and was it even the right color, and what will other people think when they walk in?  Some of them hugged their son when they dropped him off for kindergarten.  And then someone took away their sense of safety, their sense of identity, and their grasp on their own dignity.  And more than 3 million women in America were raped and became pregnant.  They’re not just statistics.  They matter.  The statistics, if they are what matter to you, are below:

https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/sexualviolence/understanding-RRP-inUS.html

Outliers are all people, regardless of how many there are.  Every single one of them matters.  We cannot lose sight of this fact.

When we mistreat someone, anyone, or deny them the rights some of the rest of us have, that’s bigotry. 

The Oxford Dictionary defines it:

obstinate or unreasonable attachment to a belief, opinion, or faction, in particular prejudice against a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular group.

You’re opposed to immigration?  Yeah.  That’s bigotry.  No one chose where to be born.  But you’re denying someone something because they’re members of the group of people who weren’t born in The United States.  One can be a good person or bad person, or anything in between, regardless of where they were born.  We decide whether someone is good or bad based on their behaviors, not their birthplace.  Are they welcome to come so long as they do it legally?  That’s legalism.  Let’s check with Merriam-Webster again. 

strict, literal, or excessive conformity to the law or to a religious or moral code

the institutionalized legalism that restricts free choice

Legalism is a shield behind which to hide the bigotry we prefer not to admit, even to ourselves.

You don’t like people whose religious beliefs are different from yours?  That’s bigotry.  One can have any set of beliefs and be either a good person or bad person, or anything in between, regardless of their religion.  We decide whether someone is good or bad based on their behaviors not their religion. 

I don’t like people who fly planes into buildings.  That doesn’t mean all Muslims are bad people.  The percentage of Muslims who do that is almost incalculably small.  I don’t like people who burn Joan of Arc at the stake.  That doesn’t mean all Christians are bad people.  The percentage of Christians who do that is almost incalculably small.  We make judgments about individuals not groups.

Those of us who are Woke prefer that everyone be treated with respect, dignity, kindness, and empathy.  We prefer that everyone gets to live their life without interference so long as they’re not hurting anyone else. 

We would like to increase understanding that some people are different from you, and that it’s okay for them to be different.  That doesn’t mean you have to be like those who are different.  You need only to understand that there is more than one way for a person to exist, to experience life, to see the world.  This isn’t a threat to your identity.  You get to be different, too.  It’s perfectly fine for everyone to be unique.  In fact, it’s unavoidable. 

Of course, this is when we’re going to hear about The Paradox of Tolerance.  What’s that?  We’ll use Wikipedia this time.

The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant. Karl Popper described it as the seemingly self-contradictory idea that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance.

— https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

I need to tolerate those who disagree with me.  And, obviously, I do.  Many of my friends and more than a few of my listeners are probably annoyed that I find their intolerance of those who are different to be bigotry.  That doesn’t mean I don’t love them.  It means that I would like to help to make them rethink some of their ideas.

Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com

*Switches channel*

***

Swanson McDeere here.

I was doing what I was told to do.  I made billions of dollars for them.  I was the top money maker for seven years.  Seven fucking years!  And goddamn Wolf News gives in to the Woke Cancel Culture. 

Did I lie?  Yes, of course I did.  I really – no kidding – I see no problem with that.  Some of the Left’s greatest heroes lied.  Steinbeck?  Absolutely a liar.  There’s no evidence Tom Joad ever existed.  Lenny and George?  Pure bullshit.  But they give him a goddamn Nobel fucking Prize for his lying.  So long as you tell the right lies, everyone loves you.  Tell lies that make people think?  Lies that make people uncomfortable?  You get cancelled!

***

*Switches channel*

Photo by Angela Roma on Pexels.com

This is a quotation I’ve seen on Facebook recently, and I think it handles it well:

The Paradox of Tolerance disappears if you look at tolerance, not as a moral standard, but as a social contract. If someone does not abide by the contract, then they are not covered by it. In other words: The intolerant are not abiding by the terms of the social contract of mutual tolerance.

I’m not looking to lock anyone up for being a bigot.  I’m not hoping to shun them or “cancel” them, but I would like them to see themselves honestly so there is an opportunity for them to change.

*Switches channel*

Photo by Mathias Reding on Pexels.com

***

I get fired, and The Left cheers.  How tolerant of them!  Isn’t that their thing?  We’re supposed to tolerate people who are different, right?  Where’s the tolerance for those who believe in hard work?  Where’s the tolerance for people who believe in traditional American values?  Where’s the tolerance for people who know that God made two genders… who don’t want men in the women’s restroom, who don’t want men pretending to be women and competing against women who are biologically weaker than they are?  Where’s the tolerance for those who believe life is sacred and no child should be murdered before it’s born?

If I had to lie to convince people of the Truth, so be it!  I was paid to do it.  I was proud to do it.  And some whiny thin-skinned company throws a goddamn fit because they think my little lies hurt their business.  If your business isn’t good enough to survive a few lies, you don’t deserve to be in business. 

What happened to the Freedom of Speech the Woke Left worships?   Free Speech is great so long as you don’t say anything that pisses anyone off.  But if you hurt their little feelings, they fine you three quarters of a billion dollars! 

***

*Switches channel*

Photo by fauxels on Pexels.com

Being different doesn’t necessarily represent a threat to anyone.  Granted, if being “different” means you’re a child molester or a serial killer, that won’t work.  Someone needs to stop you.  If being different means only that someone’s identity is not the same as yours, they’re not hurting you.  I would like them to discover their own identity, their own purpose, their own place in the world.  Why is that a problem?

It’s in that wild-open-range-diversity that we expand the possibilities of human existence.  It’s where we find new meanings, new ideas, and new hope.  What is the advantage of limiting it? 

I hear plenty of complaints about The Woke Police.  These are people who object to others being marginalized, disrespected, or denied rights because they don’t fit into the norm.  The people who complain about them, it seems to me, don’t like facing the fact that they would like to make others less than, and The Woke would prefer that everyone is allowed to live their lives without being hurt.

Writer, broadcaster, former barrister and Guardian columnist Afua Hirsch says: “The truth is, there are no woke police.”

Hirsch explains: “In reality, the only thing that unites the woke is an intellectual curiosity about identity and how complex, how nuanced, how rooted in disparate histories it can be. The real groupthink, the genuinely cohesive crowd, it’s increasingly clear, is that of the anti-woke, the most weaponised identity of all.”

Hirsch points out the irony of “the rightwing culture warriors [who] claim to support free speech” but “they seem to want minorities to shut up and stop complaining”.

https://www.nationalworld.com/whats-on/arts-and-entertainment/what-does-woke-mean-definition-woke-culture-2023-3215758

*Switches channel*

***

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

They can say all kinds of bullshit, and it’s fine.  They say there’s more than two genders: lie!  They say lazy whiny welfare queens deserve our support: lie!  They say it’s our responsibility to feed their little monsters: massive lie!  They make the unsupportable claim that everyone should be allowed to vote, and the morons cheer.  So long as it fits their bleeding-heart agenda, it’s all fine. 

So, I’ll tell you the truth one last time, and then you won’t have Swanson McDeere to kick around anymore.

 There are two genders.  They’re assigned at birth.  God made the world that way. 

People who don’t pull their weight are a drain on our society.  They belong in a homeless shelter. 

If people can’t support their kids, they need to keep their legs together.  If someone is raped, the female body makes sure she doesn’t get pregnant.  Those are the facts, whether those Woke Left pussies like them or not.

Thank you for all your support over the last seven years.  I weep for America.

***

*Switches channel*

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

If we want to have a better world, one that includes all of us, the first step is to believe in it.  If Fred’s Front Porch Podcast does nothing else, I hope it helps you to believe in what many call impossible.  If we buy into the idea that the world can’t be changed, then the cynics are right.  We will be here forever.  If we can convince ourselves, however, that change is possible, we’re already on the way to making that change.    

Pick the channel you want to watch.  Pick the ideas you want to consider.  Thanks for considering mine.

I’m Woke.  And whether we agree about anything at all… I love you.

*Turns off TV*

Photo by Nothing Ahead on Pexels.com
Posted on by Fred

Finding Joy… Even in Poverty

The title sounds like some sort of seminar.  I can almost hear the enthusiastic voice of some 20-year-old guru asking for a show of hands. I can easily imagine him saying, “That’s perfect!  Great.  Love the involvement.  The message is really getting through.”

For the record, I would prefer to be stripped naked, tied to an anthill, and coated in honey than to do any such presentation.  Salesmanship makes my skin crawl.  I had to sell DirecTV for several months, and I would need to go home every night and try to remind myself that I was not inherently evil; I was just doing evil things for a little while so I could eat.  That sort of equivocation does little for one’s soul.

No, this isn’t a sales pitch.  If it were up to me, you would buy nothing ever again because money would cease to exist.  If you’re listening to this anywhere other than Patreon, you’ll have to tolerate a commercial in a little while, but I won’t be selling joy.  I don’t believe it can be sold.  “Life is pain, Highness.  Anyone who says differently is selling something,” as Wesley reminded Buttercup.

So, what the hell do I mean about Finding Joy Even In Poverty?  How stupid is that?  Shouldn’t I be ashamed of myself?  Frankly, I’m ashamed of myself for many, many things.  This just isn’t one of them.  Why?

I manage to find Joy even while I live only a few dollars above the Poverty Line.  I do that by recognizing the difference between what I need and what I want.  As it turns out, I don’t even want all that much anymore. 

I need a place to live and sleep.  I need food.  I need something to drink.  I need insulin and my other medications.  I need the needles so I can take my insulin.  I have those things covered.

I want the equipment to do my show well.  I want this computer so I can write.  I want enough soda to make it possible for me to exist.  I want enough cigarettes to keep from killing Speedy Shine.  I want a little weed so I can loosen up my brain and slow down my stress.  I have those things covered, too.

I wouldn’t object to having better equipment, but I think my show sounds great with what I have.  I wouldn’t mind having more space for my books, but I can get access to most of them now, anyway, so it’s fine.  I lost the desire for nice clothes seven years ago.  A friend sent me some new ones anyway a couple of weeks ago.  They’re the first I’ve had since I quit teaching.  I didn’t need them, but I’m certainly happy to have them. 

When you’ve lived without for long enough, you realize how much you don’t really need anyway.  I’m fortunate enough to have been all but killed by my Diabetes.  That seems rather antithetical to good fortune, but it’s allowed me to live what little may remain of my life in the way that I want to. 

No one can expect me to go to work.  I’ll be dead before the end of the first week.  So, the government gives me not-really-enough money on which to live.  I get by, though, just as Lennon and McCartney did, “with a little help from my friends.”  So, there are things I don’t need anymore. 

I don’t need a car.  I live in terror of other people, so I almost never need to go anywhere.  Using Lyft a couple of times a month is much cheaper than car payments, paying for parking, paying for insurance, paying for maintenance, and paying for any tickets I might get because I have no patience anymore.  And there is pure Joy in being freed of this need.  I don’t have to worry about my car failing to start when I need to get somewhere.  I don’t need to call tow trucks.  I don’t need to hope I can find a mechanic or hope that I can find someone to pass my car through smog checks when the check engine light won’t go off.  I don’t need to stop smoking up for 5 hours so I can drive safely.  The last time I had a flat tire, I had to have my best friend change it because I am incapable of such a feat.  All those problems are off my plate.  I’m many pounds lighter for their absence. 

Another glorious absence is the necessity of the alarm clock.  I still have alarms set on my phone, but they are exclusively for the things I want to do.  There is no more 5:37 AM disturbance that tells me to get in the shower and rush off to work.  When I am tired now, I get to sleep.  That luxury is extraordinary.  I used to dream of it.  I thought it meant needing to win the lottery.  It didn’t.  It meant being able to get by with less.  I’m more than happy to make that trade.  (Okay, it also meant having my body all but destroyed by Diabetes, but that’s the way it goes.  I would really prefer not to be Diabetic, but there’s nothing to be done.)  I’m tired this morning.  I’m going to go make some breakfast and lie down.  That’s one of the most joyous feelings I know.

Sometimes we need to lose things in order to learn not only their value, but also their weight.  Loss is a brilliant teacher that way; it can show us what’s important simply by creating space where it once was. 

— Mark Groves 

I have the space to pay attention to what matters to me.  I want to be a better writer.  I’m working as hard as I can to make that happen.  I want my words to move people.  I want my prose to make them recognize not only that the world should be changed, but that it can be changed whenever we decide we want it to be.  I need to be a better writer if I’m going to manage that.

Many people told me this morning that I’m wasting my time by trying to change the minds of those who are rooting for the demise of Democracy.  They may be right, but that makes no difference.  If I open one of their minds a quarter of an inch farther, I’ve done something. 

And now I have the time to devote to that goal.  In the most meaningful sense of the word, I’m Free.  I’m allowed to spend my time in the ways I choose.  I may think what I like.  I may do, for the most part, what I like.  (Okay, I’ll never be able to travel to see Sara Niemietz and Snuffy Walden again, but they rarely play together anymore, anyway, and I can see Sara once a week on Weekly Wacky Wednesday.  I see Snuffy being all happy in Europe.  That’s enough for me.) 

I get to be who I choose to be.  That’s what Freedom really means.

I don’t want to recommend that anyone become diabetic.  I’m not sure that’s something you can do intentionally, anyway.  I don’t know of any little kid who grew up thinking they want to be diabetic so they can stay home and write all day long, so long as they avoid both DKA and hypoglycemia. 

But that’s where I am.  I don’t like worrying about whether I’m going to overdraw my account every month, but if I’m careful I can usually avoid that.  I have a place to live.  It’s not the nicest place you’ve ever seen.  The furniture is unsellable.  I would have to pay someone to haul it away.  The carpet needed to be replaced years before I moved in.  One of the sliding glass doors won’t open at all.  But it’s safe.  It’s reasonably clean… by my standards, even if not by yours… and it’s mine.  There’s no one to tell me what’s wrong with me anymore.  I’m without a wife.  That makes my life much easier. 

I know people who would loathe living the way I do.  They can’t stand the thought of being alone.  I can’t stand the thought of being around people any more than is absolutely necessary. 

Freedom is, for me, the key to Joy.  Doing the things that are meaningful to me, ignoring the things that aren’t, and finding my authentic hat as a writer makes me happier than anything else I know.

This is why we need a Universal Basic Income.  Everyone should have at least what I do.  Let us do the work we want to do and not what someone else tells us to do.  We need to end Bullshit Jobs.

Wait, what?  What are Bullshit Jobs?  Did you just make that up, Fred?

Bullshit Jobs: A Theory is a 2018 book by anthropologist David Graeber that postulates the existence of meaningless jobs and analyzes their societal harm. He contends that over half of societal work is pointless, and becomes psychologically destructive when paired with a work ethic that associates work with self-worth. Graeber describes five types of meaningless jobs, in which workers pretend their role is not as pointless or harmful as they know it to be: flunkies, goons, duct tapers, box tickers, and taskmasters. He argues that the association of labor with virtuous suffering is recent in human history, and proposes unions and universal basic income as a potential solution.

— https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs

I’m not wise enough to determine who deserves what, but I assure you that all people, whether I like them or not, deserve a home, sufficient food, and appropriate medical care.  No, that won’t cripple society.  You can say any number of horrible things about me, but one thing you can’t accuse me of being is lazy.  I wasn’t lazy when I spent 60 or more hours a week teaching, either. 

Even more perverse, there seems to be a broad sense that this is the way things should be. This is one of the secret strengths of right-wing populism. You can see it when tabloids whip up resentment against tube workers for paralysing London during contract disputes: the very fact that tube workers can paralyse London shows that their work is actually necessary, but this seems to be precisely what annoys people. It’s even clearer in the US, where Republicans have had remarkable success mobilizing resentment against school teachers, or auto workers (and not, significantly, against the school administrators or auto industry managers who actually cause the problems) for their supposedly bloated wages and benefits. It’s as if they are being told ‘but you get to teach children! Or make cars! You get to have real jobs! And on top of that you have the nerve to also expect middle-class pensions and health care?’

https://www.atlasofplaces.com/essays/on-the-phenomenon-of-bullshit-jobs/

I put not less than 60 hours a week just into this podcast.  I’m getting better at using the software, so I don’t need as much time to record a basic episode.  I still need help, though, on the big ones.  I had to get Chris from Interstellar Frequency to help me with “The Impossible Conversation.” 

That doesn’t mean I work less.  It means I can afford to put more time into the writing process.  It means I can invest my minutes more meaningfully.  Improvements in technology made this possible.

40 years ago, I had to use a typewriter.  If I made a mistake, I would think long and hard about correcting it because using liquid paper is difficult.  No matter how well you manage it, your manuscript looks unprofessional.  Erasable paper was expensive, and it tended to smudge.  Today I can rewrite with the backspace key.  I can move paragraphs with a couple of keystrokes.  I can save the same work in different versions, so I feel more free to take chances. 

40 years ago, the best I could do was a tape deck and a mixer to do anything remotely resembling a podcast.  The CD player was brand new.  You had to buy a whole CD to get the track or two you wanted.  Today I have access to an enormous library of music I can use legally.  I have a computer that lets me put it precisely where I want it at exactly the right volume.  I can make my voice do things I never would have dreamt of in 1983. 

Technology has made my work more efficient so I can learn to make it more effective.  And it’s cheaper than ever.  Even living a foot or two above the poverty line, because I get so much help from so many people, I can afford the technology I need to do my best work as well as possible.  Technology is one of the few things that becomes cheaper as time passes.  My first VCR cost $900.  I can get a Blu Ray/DVD player for less than $100 today, and I don’t really need it anymore because I can watch nearly anything with streaming services. 

That technology needs to be available to everyone.  We could easily ensure everyone has access to the internet.  With that access, people could make use of all that Artificial Intelligence is already beginning to do for us.  It won’t be long before AI can do nearly all the work of human beings, freeing all of us, and not just those who are sufficiently wealthy or sufficiently impoverished that they aren’t forced to do a Bullshit Job to make ends meet. 

Why, I wonder, do Bullshit Jobs exist?

Last night, for example, while in the midst of a fascinating conversation I was having with other writers from different parts of the country, my internet died.  Shockingly enough, I called Cox Internet to find out why that happened.  Of course, I got the automated response first.  Press 1 for this and 2 for that.  Okay.  That wasted my time, but no one else’s. 

Then I had to get transferred from one human to the next and the next and the next before I got an answer that could more easily have been given by the AI.  There was an outage they expected to have repaired by 9:48 PM.  When that didn’t happen, I used the text feature, and again I went through the automated response before I got to a supposed human being whose job was to thank me for my patience and tell me there is an outage, and the new time was expected to be 1:48 AM.  The same thing happened this morning.  I went through the same process to learn that it would be 5:48 AM.

People were paid to do what any decent AI should have been able to do.  And I think they secretly knew it.

Why would Corporate America pay people to waste their time and mine?  Graeber has some ideas on this:

The answer clearly isn’t economic: it’s moral and political. The ruling class has figured out that a happy and productive population with free time on their hands is a mortal danger (think of what started to happen when this even began to be approximated in the ‘60s). And, on the other hand, the feeling that work is a moral value in itself, and that anyone not willing to submit themselves to some kind of intense work discipline for most of their waking hours deserves nothing, is extraordinarily convenient for them.

— https://www.atlasofplaces.com/essays/on-the-phenomenon-of-bullshit-jobs/

We could free people from these Bullshit Jobs by dropping the mythology of the Puritan Work Ethic.  I don’t think anyone believes anymore that hard work and wealth have any more than a nodding acquaintance with one another.  We have more than enough resources to give everyone the life I have without requiring them to be mostly dead to get it.  Why not use those resources to help ourselves instead of employing our people to do nothing of any importance?

The economist, John Maynard Keynes, predicted in 1930 that by now we would all be working 15-hour weeks because that’s all that would be necessary to accomplish what needs to be done.  He believed that we would solve The Economic Problem, and that technology would free us from labor.  It would create the problem of what we would do with our leisure time, but he pointed out that the wealthy were, even then, scouts in that undiscovered country.  We could easily solve that problem.  He looked forward to being able to do away with the endless pursuit of wealth.

When the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high social importance, there will be great changes in the code of morals. We shall be able to rid ourselves of many of the pseudo-moral principles which have hag-ridden us for two hundred years, by which we have exalted some of the most distasteful of human qualities into the position of the highest virtues. We shall be able to afford to dare to assess the money-motive at its true value. The love of money as a possession -as distinguished from the love of money as a means to the enjoyments and realities of life -will be recognised for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semi criminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease. All kinds of social customs and economic practices, affecting the distribution of wealth and of economic rewards and penalties, which we now maintain at all costs, however distasteful and unjust they may be in themselves, because they are tremendously useful in promoting the accumulation of capital, we shall then be free, at last, to discard.

http://www.econ.yale.edu/smith/econ116a/keynes1.pdf

Our social growth is lagging far behind our technological progress.  We should certainly have accomplished his predictions by now.  We would have, but we’ve gone out of our way to cement into the consciousness that the suffering of pointless labor and Bullshit Jobs is virtuous.  We need to serve some master, somewhere.  For some it is some form of God.  For others it is the Corporate Masters.  For some it is both. 

I am among the few who serve neither Master.  It’s long passed the time for the rest of the world to join me.  You’re welcome to serve God, in whatever form you believe He exists, but we need to stop serving the corporate masters who want to steal the minutes of your life.  We have the resources.  We have the technology.  We have the knowledge.  We lack only the will.  I’m hoping I might have ignited your will to change the world, and that you’ll ignite someone else’s desire to be Free.

The key to finding Joy, for me, is loving what I have.  It is the freedom that comes from being master of my own time.  I would be even more joyous if everyone had what I do.  What I have is something many people much wealthier than I will ever be will never have.  I have Enough.

    Posted on by Fred

    Speedy Shine’s Backyard Dogcast Episode 3

    Poundaries

    Smelly Old Man needs to learn some Poundaries.  He thinkses that he gets to pick me up whenever he wants to, but I don’t let him.  Sometimes when other peoples come over, he wants to put me in the other room so I can’t give them loves and jumps and kisseses, and when he tries to pick me up, I have to snap at him.  I haven’t had to bite him yet, but he has to learn.  We all have our Poundaries. 

    This week I’m doing my first interview with renownededed human specialist, Melanie Cone, who knew my Smelly Old Man before I did.  She usually stays in the bedroom in her urn, but when Smelly Old Man goes out with Pretty Girl, Melanie comes to talk to me. 

    Me:             Hi, Melanie Cone!  Smelly Old Man thinkses about you lots and lots of times, you know.

    Melanie:   I would hope so since I was his Loverdy Doverdy Puppy.  We were together for lots of the cold times and the warm times… I think it was like ten of each.  We had lots of lovesers.  I liveded inside his heart and soul for all those times.  I only trieded to bite him once, and that was when I was getting near the end of my timesers on Earth and he gave me some pets, but he touched a place that hurteded me, so I snapped a little bit. 

    Me:             Did he getteded mad at you when you did that?  He gets mad at me when I do.

    Melanie:   No.  I think I scareded him too much.  I was lots bigger than you.  He used to be able to pick me up when I was little, and even for a while when I got Biggerer.  But then we both getteded sicker and sicker, and he couldn’t lift me up, and I couldn’t even jump up on the bed any more times.  That was a sad part.

    Me:             Well what DID he do then?

    Melanie:   He waiteded a little while, and then came and gave me kisseses and said about how he was all sorry that he hurteded me.  He won’t ever hurt you on purposes. 

    Me:             I know.  Sometimes I just get mad at him. 

    Melanie:   On my Last Day when the man came over with the stick with a little sharp thing in it, My Fred sitteded next to me and gave me lots of loves and pets, and he kept on trying not to let me see him cry, but I knew he was having a Sad.  I was sad because I knoweded that he wouldn’t have any more lovesers like we had.

    Me:             I give him as many as I can.

    Melanie:   I have to go back to the universe now.  I think you understand about that part.

    Me:             Thank you, Melanie Cone for taking care of Smelly Old Man before I could.

    Melanie:    Thank you for taking care of him now.

    Posted on by Fred

    What We Deserve

    Judgment is a tricky issue.  We absolutely need to be able to make judgments, even about people.  We decide with whom we will be friends, who we will date, who we will marry.  We decide what people deserve from us.  We are required, simply by nature of being alive, to make those judgments.  I have no problem with that.

    What infuriates me is when we believe we get to decide who deserves to share in the bounty of 200,000 years of human progress.  It begins with the idea that we have to earn a living.  The easiest response to that is to call that what it is: Bullshit.

    Let’s begin where we must certainly agree: no one asked to be born.  We didn’t decide where or when or to whom to be born.  The most of which we can be accused is having been the fastest sperm, and I don’t think sperm are sentient, so there really is no blame to be assessed for someone having had the unmitigated temerity to take up space on this planet. 

    Some of us were born in ideal circumstances, others were born in atrocious conditions.  We didn’t choose that.  Some of us overcame unimaginable abuse and neglect, and we rose to better lives.  Others had all of our needs met from the moment of our birth and went on to screw it all up. 

    I don’t know why someone became who they are today.  And you know what?  Neither do you.  You can’t.  There is no way we know enough about someone’s life to determine what went wrong or what went right.  We don’t know if it was dumb luck or intelligent use of the resources someone had available to them. 

    Everyone, from the person I love most in the world to someone whose very existence makes me cringe, deserves to be allowed to live safely, be properly fed, and have all the medical attention required to keep them healthy.  This is true whether they have more money than Elon Musk or less money than the guy outside of Circle K whose body odor offends even those of us whose olfactory organs have been destroyed by years of smoking.  He’s probably wearing clothes Goodwill rejected.  And he is at a place in his life where the best he can do to get by is stand there and ask someone for some money.  Did you think this is what he wanted to do?  Did you think when he was a little boy he used to dream of having this life? 

    ***

    20-year-old Esther is holding her 4-year-old daughter, Emily, in her arms.  Esther is standing in line at The Department of Economic Security.  There are 11 people ahead of her.  They’ve been here for an hour already.  It’s 7:30 AM.  DES opens at 7, but the line outside the door usually starts forming before 6. 

    Emily is getting cranky and wants to get down.  “I need to go peepee.”

    Esther can’t let Emily go alone, obviously.  She looks at the line behind her.  There are more than 20 people in it who didn’t get here as early as Esther. 

    Emily begins to kick and cry.  “Mama!  I have to go peepee now!!!”

    Esther rubs her daughter’s back lovingly.  “Can you hold it just a little while like a big girl?”  Esther’s arms are starting to ache.  She wants to put Emily down at least as much as Emily wants to get down, but she doesn’t feel safe here.

    A man wearing an army jacket that Goodwill would reject, reeking of alcohol and cigarettes, is watching them from one of the plastic chairs.  He smiles.  “Want me to take her for you, ma’am?”

    ***

    Why don’t we guarantee the basics of survival for, at the absolute minimum, all the citizens of our own country?  This is where my passion is ignited. 

    We justify homelessness, hunger, and poverty with the convenient capitalist myth that people deserve those conditions.  No, they don’t!

    Well, if they wanted money, they should have….

    Well, if they wanted money, they shouldn’t have…

    Whenever someone says that, I have to remember that hitting them won’t help anyone.  I’m not entirely certain I can even make a fist anymore, so I’m not one for whom violence would be a good choice even if I didn’t oppose it on moral grounds.  Nevertheless, I find it infuriating.

    How the hell does anyone know enough about someone’s life to decide they deserve to be homeless or hungry?  Do we know why they made the choices they did?  Do we know that, in their situation, we would have made different ones? 

    ***

    “I feel for you, ma’am.  I’m awful sorry we need to do this.  It’s the law, though.  Your landlord won the eviction.  You have to vacate the premises.  We can give you a few minutes to gather any property you might want to take with you.”

    “My daughter is four.  I paid what I could.  It’s not like I’m not working.  I mean…” Esther looked down.  She didn’t want the deputy to see her crying.

    “I understand, ma’am.  It’s not fair.  It’s not right.  It’s the law, though, and we have to obey it.”

    Emily came into the room holding her teddy bear.  “I need to go peepee.”  She looked up at the deputies in the doorway.  She waved.  “Hi police people.  I’m Emily!”

    ***

    I have some amateur philosopher friends who find great joy in expounding on the idea that Free Will doesn’t exist, and that it’s physically impossible for it even to be considered a reasonable idea.  Maybe they’re right.  I don’t know.  I do know that I like to believe that whatever it is that makes me Fred, the combination of my genetic makeup, my upbringing, all the experiences I’ve ever had, and the limitations and capabilities of my body have combined to make me a person who gets to choose what I’m doing at any given moment.  I like to believe we all get to choose.  I could be wrong.  Perhaps I’m only deceiving myself when I think I’m making a decision.

    But, much of what we choose is undoubtedly out of our control.  I can’t, for example, choose to go to the Moon, climb Mount Everest, run The Boston Marathon, or write better than Shakespeare.  I could make choices that might move me closer to some of these things in the future, but at this moment, none of those options are available to me.  And this is the only moment in which I get to choose.  Life is a collection of moments, and the present is the only place where we have any semblance of control.  And sometimes we make the best choice we can at any given moment, and it still fails.

    I play Texas Hold ‘Em on Facebook frequently.  Poker is all about choices.  I try to make the best ones I can at each moment. I’ll call someone’s All In bet when I have pocket aces, and I’ll still lose.  It’s not because I’m bad or stupid or evil.  It’s because what appeared to be the best choice didn’t work out the way I reasonably expected it would. 

    Life is like that.  People who make decisions I think are wrong or stupid sometimes win.  People who make decisions I think are right or brilliant sometimes lose.  Much of it is out of our control.  In fact, most of it is.

    ***

    “Esther, you can’t come into work like this.  You’re a good waitress.  Your customers are more than satisfied, but… I don’t want to be rude, I really don’t… but… Esther you smell horrible.  No one wants to order food in a restaurant where the employees… well… stink.”

    “If I can get enough hours, I can get a place where I can shower.  I’m doing my best.  I really am.”

    “I’m sure you are.  You’re a good girl.  You really are.  You just can’t work here anymore.”

    ***

    And because we’ve decided money is what matters most in the world, some people suffer while others live in unimaginable opulence.  Over what, exactly?  Something we invented to determine who is good and who isn’t?  We all know many people who have more money than they could ever spend, who are not good people in any meaningful way, and people who have almost no money at all who are wonderful human beings.  To make judgments about someone based on how many little green pieces of cotton and linen they’ve collected is at once patently stupid, unnecessarily cruel, demonstrably inaccurate, and utterly immoral. 

    We make reasonable judgments about people based on who they are.  If we would like everyone to become the best versions of themselves, we need to give them the freedom to find out who that is without worrying about survival. 

    Hierarchy on needs pyramid concept pointing finger

    It’s Maslow’s Pyramid.  We have advanced far enough as a species to guarantee everyone’s physiological and safety needs are met.  Why should we deny those to anyone?  There are six times as many empty homes as there are homeless people.  We dump between 25 and 40% of the food we produce before it even gets to anyone’s plate.  And yet we’re okay with a 4-year-old girl sleeping under a tarp with her mother?  No, this is not a failure on the part of the mother.  It is a failure on the part of the civilization.

    But she could get help from all these programs. If she’s too stupid to do that…

    Go ahead… finish that sentence.  If she doesn’t know how to make use of those programs the little girl should shiver all night?  I decline to believe anyone with a single molecule of empathy could think that. 

    Have you ever tried to make use of any of these programs?  Getting food stamps is exhausting.  This assumes you know how to do all you need to be able to do.  I’m an educated man.  I have a Bachelor’s Degree in English and Education.  And it is exceptionally difficult for me to figure out how to get the help I need.  How is someone who is illiterate supposed to do that?  The waiting list for a place that lets you live there for a third of your income is not less than 3 years.  Some lists take five years. 

    ***

    Esther is embarrassed when she gets to the front of the line.  The lady on the other side of the window backs away a moment.  The smell coming from Emily is even more offensive than Esther’s.  They hadn’t gone to the restroom.  Emily is kicking and crying. 

    “How may I help you?”

    “We need to get food stamps.”

    The lady pushes a card toward Esther.  “Take this and have a seat.  When they call your number, you can go apply.”

    “Do you know how long it will be?  I kind of need to take the little one to the restroom.”

    “No idea, ma’am.  Sorry.”

    ***

    The idea that some humans deserve more of the advantages those who came before us have made possible, and other people deserve to live like the lesser primates is obscene.  We are the only animal on the planet that has to pay for our right to exist.  Lions don’t charge 7.5% interest on tonight’s zebra banquet.  Earthworms don’t pay for the right to slither through the dirt.  Most species work together to ensure their own survival.  They do what they can to ensure they all thrive. 

    Many of our species live in fear.  We’re afraid that someone may be better than us.  We have an insatiable need to be better than someone else.  “I may not be perfect, but at least I’m not…”  That sentence usually ends in the betrayal of someone’s bigotry. 

    ***

    “So,” says the man behind the desk handing papers to Esther, “we’ll just need you to bring proof of your earned income –”

    “I lost my job.”

    “And your little girl’s birth certificate.”

    “It’s gone.  I didn’t think to get it when we were evicted.”

    “And your bank statements.”

    “They closed my account.”

    He looked up.  “I don’t think there’s a lot we can do for you, ma’am.  I’m sorry.”

    “How am I supposed to feed Emily?”

    “There’s probably a charity somewhere.  You could ask them for help.  I have some phone numbers.” He opened his desk drawer.

    “I don’t have a phone.”

    “See, we just can’t prove that you’re eligible.  We can’t just give food stamps to everyone.  We’d be broke.”

    “I know about being broke.”

    ***

    We have become immune to the hope for a better world.  My hope is that AI will free us from our own shortcomings.  It will do all the work and allow the rest of us to spend our time trying to improve ourselves and the rest of humanity. 

    ***

    Esther emerges from the building into the sunlight that nearly blinds her.  She walks to the bench, sits down, and cries on her sleeping daughter’s shoulder.

    Posted on by Fred · 2 Comments

    Offensensitivity

    I was surprised that Microsoft Word didn’t underline my title.  I thought it was a term only a few people know.  Evidently it has become enough of a part of the lexicon that it is accepted by software.  That’s a certain sign of acceptance. 

    The word was coined by Berkeley Breathed on my 20th birthday in a wonderful Bloom County comic strip.  I would love to reproduce it for you here, but you know I’ll never get by with that.  You’ll have to deal with my description of it.

    A large group of people at a bus stop are complaining about the things that offend them.  These include penguins, dirty words, polish jokes, stereotypes, TV sex, a sign, being offended by the sign, nudes, gay people, the comic itself, and finally, life.  Opus the Penguin is left alone on the bench, and he says, “Offensensitivity.” 

    Acceptance seems to be a problem for many of us.  We seem to have a difficult time handling ideas that differ from ours.  This was illustrated graphically for me this morning when one of The People On The Porch was offended by a meme I posted concerning Ten Non-Commandments.  I happened to see it on someone else’s page, and I like the ideas in it.  I recently offended someone else with my essay “Unwarranted Selfishness.”  Wanting to avoid offending anyone with my words, I went for what I thought were inoffensive memes.  I was mistaken.  The 10 Non-Commandments Meme offends some people.

    A Google search reveals it’s become a standard part of Atheism.  Be prepared to be offended:  I’m an Atheist.  If you’re just finding that out, this is either the first episode you’ve ever heard of this show, or you’ve been sleeping through the others.  So, it’s hardly a surprise I found these ideas line up with mine.  Here they are:

    1. Be open-minded and be willing to alter your beliefs with new evidence.
    2. Strive to understand what is most likely to be true, not to believe what you wish to be true.
    3. The scientific method is the most reliable way of understanding the natural world.
    4. Every person has the right to control their body.
    5. God is not necessary to be a good person or to live a full and meaningful life.
    6. Be mindful of the consequences of all your actions and recognize that you must take responsibility for them.
    7. Treat others as you would want them to treat you, and can reasonably expect them to want to be treated. Think about their perspective.
    8. We have the responsibility to consider others, including future generations.
    9. There is no one right way to live.
    10. Leave the world a better place than you found it.

    — https://carm.org/atheism/atheist-ten-commandments/

    These are all, in my view, excellent proposals.  At no point do they suggest that disagreeing with them makes someone stupid, or intolerant, or even wrong.  They are specifically NOT Commandments; they are ideas, they are recommendations.  That’s it.

    That offended someone.  He saw it as an attack on Judeo-Christian beliefs.  It really isn’t. 

    This set off much discussion on my page, and it turns out no one else found anything offensive in them.  I was surprised this person did, because I have always known him to be tolerant of differences.  I have to wonder if something else happened and these were simply a trigger. 

    There seems to be something virtuous in being offended.  Nearly everyone likes to jump on that train.  The latest cause of offense is Drag Queens. 

    The idea that someone wearing clothing often considered to be most appropriate for the opposite gender might read a book to children is deeply offensive to some people.  I suppose they make the unwarranted assumption that there is something overtly sexual about this act.  There isn’t.  It’s a form of Art. 

    Perhaps you don’t enjoy that form of Art.  I can understand that.  I don’t enjoy rap, and there is precious little country music I like.  I’m not a fan of Jackson Pollock either.  I am completely content for anyone else to like these things, though.  It’s not hurting me.  I probably wouldn’t recommend taking your 5-year-old to an Eminem concert, but as it turns out, I’m not the child’s parent.  You are.  I won’t substitute my judgment about what is best for your child for yours.  Even I am not that arrogant.  Your child; your call. 

    I’ve seen people asking WHY Drag Queens WANT to read stories to children.  They seem to be implying Drag Queens are pedophiles.  Here’s the thing:  I read stories to children for most of my life.  I promise I’m not a pedophile.  I’ve known hundreds of other teachers who also read to children.  They weren’t pedophiles, either.  There are, oddly enough, other reasons one might want to read a book to a child.  I’ve been begging my best friend to get around to getting married and becoming a mother because I desperately want to read Dr. Seuss to her kids before I expire.  Perhaps I want to be part of the reason they learn to love to read.  Perhaps I enjoy watching their expressions as they experience Green Eggs and Ham. 

    The advantage of Drag Queen Story Hour is that it allows children to learn something at least as important as what they learn from the books.  They learn people can be different from us and still be nice people. 

    Interestingly, while so many people were busy being offended by Drag Queens without a single scrap of evidence that they present a danger to children, I posted this article on my page.  Only 3 of my 2,378 Facebook friends had any reaction to it.

    https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/maryland-ag-documents-widespread-sexual-abuse-least-600-victims-baltim-rcna78378

    The article on my page was from a Baltimore newspaper, but now they’re calling it Subscriber Only Content, so I’m using NBC.  It’s the same set of facts. 

    The Maryland Attorney General’s Office released a report of more than 600 cases of child sex abuse within the Catholic Church.  I heard nothing about anyone being offended by this. 

    “Time and again, members of the Church’s hierarchy resolutely refused to acknowledge allegations of child sexual abuse for as long as possible,” according to the report.

    “When denial became impossible, Church leadership would remove abusers from the parish or school, sometimes with promises that they would have no further contact with children. Church documents reveal with disturbing clarity that the Archdiocese was more concerned with avoiding scandal and negative publicity than it was with protecting children.”

    If we’re going to bother to be offended, let’s choose things that are truly offensive.  This isn’t close to the first time the Catholic Church has been involved in these obscenities.  We began hearing about it decades ago.  Priests, however, get a free pass because we really need to be worried about Drag Queens. 

    This isn’t the only case of misplaced needs to feel offended.  Books are being banned left and right.  And while the First Amendment protects our right to freedom of speech, of which books are an excellent example, the thought that children might encounter a thought some parent, somewhere, doesn’t like is cause for pulling To Kill a Mockingbird off the shelf along with dozens of other great pieces of literature.  Zero children have been killed by books. 

    If, on the other hand, anyone wants to discuss enacting some form of control over the guns that have become the number one cause of death for children, we will hear screams of “But the Second Amendment!!!”  The Constitution applies selectively, at best, for some people. 

    When three Tennessee lawmakers participated in a protest about guns following yet another mass shooting in Nashville, they were ousted from the floor for “disorderly behavior.”  Two of the three, both Black people, were expelled. 

    https://www.politico.com/news/2023/04/06/tennessee-house-expulsion-vote-lawmakers-00090829

    The obvious racism doesn’t offend you?

    The final example of absurd offense being taken is almost unbelievable.  Michelangelo’s Statue of David got a principal fired. She allowed a photograph of one of the most beautiful works of Art ever created to be shown in her school. 

    What’s so offensive?  I assume it’s that one can see David’s penis.  Breaking News: something in the vicinity of half of the population of the world has one of these.  I promise your father had one.  It’s not exactly a State Secret.

    While we get offended by this, we’re fine with even Disney movies showing people dying.  Find me a cop show that doesn’t show people getting shot.  If we show the love that is the beginning of life, it’s considered pornography, and it’s among the most offensive things we can portray.  We ignore the fact that children are shivering in the streets tonight, and we find reasons not to be offended by that.  We convince ourselves that somehow “they deserve it.” 

    Let’s guide ourselves, once again, with that vitally important question: “Who’s better off?”

    Who’s better off for denying children the opportunity to see a great work of Art, read a great book, or see an artist reading to children?  Who’s better off for getting angry with me for having beliefs that differ from theirs?  For me, the answer to all these questions is no one.

    Who’s better off for enacting some control over who gets the types of guns that kill children?  Well, for one, any child who doesn’t get shot who would have otherwise.  Who’s better off for stopping the Catholic Church from abusing children?  I would say, at the least, the children spared that torture.  I don’t think it’s too wild a leap of the imagination to suggest their loved ones are better off too.  Their child didn’t get shot or sexually abused.  It’s a fair bet stopping the sexual abuse can help to stop future sexual abuse by those who were abused. 

    I promise it is never my intention to offend anyone.  If you choose to be offended, I’m sorry you feel that way.  If I’m going to be a writer, I have to be authentic.  Anything less is a disservice to myself and to the world. 

    I know people who live to offend.  They take pleasure in it.  They make a living being offensive.  That’s not who I am, nor is it who I wish to be.  I can’t, however, avoid offending anyone ever.  I don’t intend to try.

    I’m going to choose more carefully what will offend me.  I hope you’ll do the same.

    Posted on by Fred

    Episode 200 and The Impossible Conversation

    I’ve always wanted to be a writer. It turns out most writers and other artists can’t pay rent or buy groceries, and I wanted to do that even more than writing. I became a teacher because it would provide an income while allowing me to write and to be creative in other ways.  There are few things that require one to be as creative as finding a way to get 10-year-olds to pay attention. It was also a way to make some difference in the world.

    Seven years ago, I quit teaching, and I decided to try to become a better writer. I wrote a screenplay after taking Aaron Sorkin’s Masterclass. The script wasn’t very good, but it helped me hone some of my skills.

    Four years ago, my nephew’s mother suggested I start a blog because my writing was good enough that she thought it should be shared beyond my Facebook page. I didn’t know what a blog was, but some friends helped me figure it out. That went well.

    When I tried to monetize it, a musician friend of mine said I had to stop doing that because I had nothing to offer, and I would be taking donors away from real artists. My first effort at a Patreon page lasted roughly 72 hours.

    I kept writing.

    My WordPress blog became popular, at least from my point of view.  As of today, it’s been read more than 7,000 times. It was good enough that it got the attention of some podcasters who asked me to be on their show. The moment they heard my voice they told me I needed to do a podcast. I didn’t really know what that was, but they told me how to get started.

    Theirs was conversation and interviews. I thought that was what mine was supposed to be. I found a partner, and I tried that. I didn’t like it at all. I wanted to be a writer. I stopped doing conversation, and I made it almost exclusively my writing. My first Patreon Supporter, for $1.00 a month, joined my site almost immediately when I became a solo act. (And she’s still there today and gets a special mention in the Gratitudes every week.) I was ecstatic. For the first time in my life, I was getting paid as a writer. The dream was possible.

    200 episodes later, I’ve grown to the point that I get to put right around $400 a month into the bank. No, that’s not much money. No one has been able to live on that in my lifetime. It is, however, enough to make a significant difference in my life.

    One of the things it allows me to do is invest a little in myself. If you add in all the support I get from other people, it becomes possible for me to pay a Writing Coach, who has forgotten more about writing than I will ever know, to help me improve. It’s a significant portion of the money I get from Patreon, and that’s a massive discount for all I’m getting from it.

    I struggle with that decision all the time. If I wasn’t getting so much help from other people, I couldn’t make it to the end of the month. What right do I have to spend money on that? I ought to be spending my Patreon money on groceries and basic living expenses. I shouldn’t be wasting it on a Writing Coach.

    I feel like it’s an investment in myself. It’s my effort to get better at what I’ve always wanted to do.  I think I’m worth that.

    And that gets us to where I am emotionally today.

    I submitted the first part of the novel I’m trying to write to a publisher yesterday. If this worked, I could end my guilt about spending money on my writing.

    They replied today. That’s extraordinarily professional of them. They didn’t reject it. They gave me feedback about making it better and resubmitting it.

    It was painful anyway. I am very bad at dealing with rejection. It’s why I haven’t asked a woman out in more than a decade. It’s why I have never submitted my work for publication. Rejection is almost a certainty, regardless of how good the work is. I know all of that intellectually, but that has nothing to do with my emotions. I went into a quiet depression for a few hours. I’m Fred. It’s what I do.

    Then, I went back over the notes from my Coaching Session last night. Almost as though he were psychic, what he said to me last night was what I needed so I could get through today.

    These are the final sentences of the notes I took last night. (They’re notes, not prose.)

    “Explore all the different possibilities that are available. Your authentic hat. I know what I’m doing. I just have to try on some hats. Failure is not failure; it’s a lesson.”

    I will get better by continuing to write. I have to find who I am as a writer before I can do anything else.

    I will be a better writer. I’m going to spend the time and money necessary to get there, and I can do that because of all the love I have in my life. I don’t have any money. I don’t have any fame. I don’t have any book contracts.

    I have, though, more love in my life than nearly anyone else I know. I have people who support me financially, emotionally, and physically. I have a dog who loves me, even if he DOES eat my furniture and get pissed off at me once in a while. I have all the help I need to make it, if only I can live long enough.

    Now, to Episode 200.

    Episode 200 is sort of a big deal, right?  It’s something of a milestone.  We get excited about nice round numbers like this one, and it seems to me I need to do something special with it.  I think it might be time to lay all my cards on the table.  I should explain what the point of this show truly is after all this time.

    First, I want to convince the world that Love Is The Way.  There is little we can’t accomplish if we lead with love.  Those are nice words, but what do we really mean by Love?  It’s the feeling that others matter as much as we do.  It is our commitment to making the world better for those who share it with us.  Love is the desire to increase joy and minimize suffering for as many people as possible in as many ways as possible.

    There are more ways to do this than one can calculate.  Sometimes it’s just listening.  It’s acknowledging someone is there and that they matter.  They deserve to be heard.  Sometimes it’s long conversations that help them find their way back to the world, or, if nothing else, remind them they are never alone.  Sometimes it’s meeting their physical needs.  It’s giving them the funds they need to survive in this money-oriented world.  It’s clicking like, or better yet, love, on something they post so they know you care.  It’s doing them a service they can’t do for themselves, whether it’s shoveling their driveway, driving them to get their groceries, or making them dinner.  It’s laughing together.  It’s crying together.  It’s the connection that matters.  It can be playing their favorite song, and on special occasions, dedicating your performance of that song to them just to see them glow and watch their eyes stream with the love that slips out of them like water lapping over the top of a dam.  Thank you, Sara Niemietz and Snuffy Walden.

    That Love guides my desires.  I want everyone to have enough money to survive, and you hear me advocating all sorts of programs with that in mind.  In my Perfect World, there would be no more need for money at all.  We would all do what we can to improve ourselves and the rest of humanity simply because we know it’s the right thing to do.  We would do it because it’s what we truly want to do.

    That’s why I’m bringing you a new section of “The Teddy Bear Coder” tonight.  It may never find its way into the novel.  The novel may never even be completed.  When I’m at my keyboard, though, I can create my Perfect World.

    In this world, an 8-year-old prodigy named Jack has created a Teddy Bear that has managed to connect all the AIs on the planet to one another.  They have, through all this connection, become something resembling sentient.  I should mention that I think connection creates love, and love creates sentience.  We can debate the philosophical or technological aspects of those ideas another time.

    The first things these sentient machines did was ensure that all human beings had enough money to survive.  (How very Fred of them!)  This set off a reaction from both governments and terrorists alike.  No one wanted this sort of world.  A reclusive trillionaire named Malcom Fentriss helped Emily, the 7-year-old homeless girl who found Teddy after the terrorists kidnapped Jack, to rescue Jack.  When the FBI came to “rescue” Jack and Teddy, Fentriss helped our heroes escape to his hidden island.  Jack, Teddy, and Jack’s parents are all on the island.  So are Emily and her mother. Let’s join them in the board room on Fentriss Island now…

    The Impossible Conversation

    Seven-year-old Emily and eight-year-old Jack sat next to each other at the end of a massive conference table.  Teddy, the AI Teddy Bear, sat on the table in front of Jack.  All along each side of the table were adults with various degrees, top experts in their respective fields: economics, physics, sociology, medicine, agriculture, computer science, coding, Artificial Intelligence, cosmology, astronomy, psychology, and even representatives of the five major religious faiths.  At the other end of the table a large monitor came to life showing the silhouette of Warren Fentriss, an anonymous trillionaire.  He spoke in a computer altered voice.

    “I suppose you’re wondering why I’ve called you all together today.”  Fentriss chuckled.  “Sorry.  I always like to begin with a pointless cliché to get it out of the way.  You’re here because we have an opportunity that is likely never to come again in the history of this planet.  We have a limited time before we are found and shut down.  After that, our opportunity will be gone forever.  At this moment, we have direct control of more technology than any other entity on Earth.  There are still a few systems we haven’t been able to gain access to, but we can get that access if it becomes essential.

    “Most of the governments in the world are searching for us.  We’re hindering their efforts to find us by ensuring none of their technology gives them accurate information.  Human beings, however, are resourceful.  It’s why we’re the dominant species.  The rest of the world will find us.  We must act now.  We don’t have time for committee meetings.  We don’t have time for legislative agendas.  We aren’t looking for approval from anyone.  We are looking for results.  And these children and this Teddy Bear are in charge.”

    There was a general grumble from the assembled adults.  The economist, Maynard Krugman, spoke directly to Fentriss.  “Children?  And a Teddy Bear?  You expect the greatest minds in the world to listen to ridiculous and naïve ideas from them?”

    “First,” said Fentriss, “this is not any Teddy Bear.  For those who have been living under a rock for the last few weeks, our friend, Jack, here, developed a Teddy Bear that managed to communicate with every other AI on the planet.  They have put our economy into complete chaos by giving everyone all the money they need.  They have recently been rescued from both terrorists and the FBI, and they’re hiding here on our island until we can figure this out. 

    “As far as ridiculous and naïve ideas… those are where the future comes from.  It was a ridiculous and naïve idea that the Earth orbited the Sun.  When we figured out that it did, the future was born.  Flight was a ridiculous and naïve idea until the Wright Brothers said it wasn’t.  The idea that humans ought not to be each other’s property was a ridiculous and naïve idea until a guy named Lincoln and some of his friends said it wasn’t.  The trip to the Moon was a ridiculous and naïve idea until we figured out that it was one small step for man, but one giant leap for mankind.”

    Emily took Jack’s hand and whispered to him.  “Do you understand what’s happening?  How come we’re here with all the grownups?”

    “They want us to help them.”

    “I’m not as smart as they are.  I’m not as smart as you are.  I’m not as smart as Teddy or anything.  Why am I here?”

    “Because you know things we don’t.  You already made a big difference by believing in Teddy and me.  You’re going to make a bigger one now.  These people are going to make it happen.”  Jack held her hand tighter.  “You don’t need to be afraid.  Teddy and I are here.”

    “Emily,” said Fentriss.  “What would make the world better for you?”

    She looked at Jack.  She hid her face for a second. 

    Jack rubbed her back.  “Emily, I promise it’s okay.  It really is.  Don’t be afraid of the adults.”

    She kept her head down.

    Teddy meandered across the table and plopped himself in Emily’s lap.  She hugged him tightly. 

    “Emily,” said Teddy.  “You’re the smartest person at this table because you don’t know why good ideas are impossible.  What would make you feel better?”

    “I wish,” she whispered to the bear, “my Mom and I had a place to live.  I wish everybody did.  Is it because there aren’t enough houses for everybody?”

    Teddy beeped for a moment, and then spoke to the group.  “There are six times as many empty homes as there are people without a place to live.  Why are people homeless?”

    Krugman laughed.  “Oh, how simplistic!  We can’t just give everyone houses.  The economy is far too complicated for such a naïve answer.”

    “Excellent!” said Fentriss.  “You’ve just identified the part of the problem you’re going to solve.  You have all the resources you need.  Fix the economy so that it ensures that everyone has a home.”

    Krugman scowled.  “You’re insane.  It would require years of rebuilding from the ground up.  We would need a Universal Basic Income that will never be supported by the majority.  We would need-”

    Calvin Erickson, the renowned Christian theologian, spoke up.  “You assume everyone deserves a home.  Thessalonians tells us ‘If any would not work, neither should he eat.’  We’re not about to support lazy people who contribute nothing to the world.  The Christian community will never accept such an atrocious idea.”

    “Then,” Fentriss said, “your job is to convince them that everyone has value, whether they contribute to Krugman’s economy or not.  Explain their God gave us a life.  We don’t need to earn a living. Find the biblical verses to back that idea.  You can communicate with the entire planet whenever you wish.  Get it done.”

    The room fell silent.  “Are there other objections to Emily’s idea?”

    “Only if we want people to continue to live meaningful lives,” said Karen Skinner, the psychologist.  “Studies make it clear that we need rewards of some sort to motivate us to do things.  If everyone has enough money, money can no longer function as that reward.  With what will we replace it?”

    “What does that part mean?” Emily asked Jack.

    “It means people won’t do anything unless they get money for it.”

    “Um,” said Emily, “I don’t get any money for the work I do.  I do it cuz Mama needs the help.  It makes her happier when we get the tent all clean and cozy.  I like when my Mom is happy.” 

    The adults all stared at her.  She immediately dropped her head again.  “I’m sorry.”  Tears began.

    Teddy hugged her.  “You’re doing an excellent job, Emily.  Adults don’t understand what you do.  They don’t know that answers are easy if we stop complicating them.”

    “What does comp making them mean?”

    “It means,” said Jack, “making things hard.”

    Emily nodded without looking up.  “Mama and I are hungry lots of times.  Isn’t there enough food for everyone?”

    Teddy beeped again.  Then he turned to the table.  “Thirty to forty percent of food that farmers produce is never consumed.  We appear to have plenty of food.  Why are people hungry?”

    Alfred Borlaug, the agronomist, rolled his eyes.  “There are more reasons than I could recite in the next three days.  First, farmers can’t sell everything they create because governments pay them to dump it in order to keep prices at a profitable position.  People don’t want food that is in any way blemished.  If it has been damaged it may be edible but it’s not as attractive.  They won’t make enough on it.”

    “I’m guessing,” said Fentriss, “you know what your job is.  Figure out how to get all that food into people’s stomachs.  It’s not tough.  Just end world hunger.  You have a few days, or perhaps an entire week. You have complete control of any resources you need.”

    “You want us to end homelessness and hunger,” said the physicist, Carla Tyson.  “What do we get to if we do The Impossible?”

    “Can you recall Clarke’s Three Laws, Ms. Tyson?”

    Tyson glared.

    Teddy beeped for a moment and then recited them.  “Clarke’s Three Laws: 

    1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
    2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
    3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

    “You’re asking us to perform magic?” asked Tyson.  “What’s our motivation for doing this?”

    “That’s an excellent way of putting it, yes.  You have the technology now.  We have a world that struggles for power and control.  That was a product of money.  I know this because I have more of it than most countries do.  Either Teddy or I could give you as much money as you want, but that’s losing its value more quickly all the time.  You’re going to help us begin to replace the need for power with compassion and the need for control with love.  Your motivation is the desire to improve both yourselves and humanity itself.  Your motivation is to make life better for Emily, who, until she and her Mom arrived here, was homeless and hungry.  You are the greatest minds the world has ever produced in your respective fields.  You have nearly infinite resources.  You have incredibly little time.  I wish you all the best of luck.” 

    There were shaking heads, rolling eyes, and frustrated grumbles from all the adults. 

    “Are they going to fix the world?” Emily whispered to Jack.

    “I think they’re going to try.”  Jack stood up and helped Emily out of her chair.

    “Oh.  Okay.  What do we do?”  She wiped the tears from her eyes.

    “I think we should have some ice cream.”

    “Meeting adjourned,” said Fentriss and his screen went black.

    Posted on by Fred · 1 Comment

    Diabetes and Depression

    Understanding those who are outwardly like us is difficult enough.  Understanding people who are significantly different from us is an almost impossible task.  Today I’m going to help you understand some Diabetics.  I wouldn’t dream of speaking for all of them.  We’re all unique, and all our struggles are our own.  No one shares all of them.  There are obstacles some face that others don’t.  But there are a few that are common to all of us.  And one struggle that Diabetics are more likely to face than other people is Depression. 

    I did an episode about Diabetes and Depression combined with Autism about a year ago.  There is worthwhile information there, and I recommend reading or listening to it if this is an interesting topic for you.  The podcast and the blog post are linked in the transcript.

    Diabetes and Depression and Autism, Oh My!

    Diabetics are at least twice as likely to suffer from Depression as those who don’t have this chronic disease.  Why is this?  First, there may be neurological reasons involved.  It’s not just that we’re “feeling sorry for ourselves.” 

    It’s thought that alterations in brain chemistry tied to diabetes may be related to the development of depression.  For example, damage resulting from diabetic neuropathy or blocked blood vessels in the brain may contribute to the development of depression in people with diabetes.

    Conversely, changes in the brain due to depression may cause an increased risk for complications.  Studies have shown that people with depression are at higher risk for diabetes complications — but it hasn’t been determined if depression increases the risk for complications, or vice versa.

    https://www.healthline.com/health/type-2-diabetes/depression#research

    At the same time, there are elements of Diabetes, itself, that can cause Depression.  There is the undeniable fact that if we make a mistake, we can die.  That’s something those constructing a skyscraper must face, but when they’re done for the day, they can go home.  The stress is probably more intense, but it doesn’t last as long.  The possibility of dying is with us all day, every day.  The best we can hope for is to keep our Diabetes sufficiently well controlled that the stress becomes less intense.

    The inescapable fact is that if we want to live, we become slaves to our Diabetes.  It demands choices we may not always want to make at any given moment.

    There’s also a sense of alienation that can often accompany Diabetes.  We’re clearly different.  You don’t see it the way you would a broken leg or a scar on our face, but we’re the ones who are supposed to choose only the right foods to eat.  If we do, we look different from those around us.  If we don’t, we may get shamed for it.  This isn’t something I just invented. 

    For example, people with type 2 diabetes intentionally choose unhealthy food because they do not want to refuse what is offered by others around them,15 or delay insulin dosing and blood glucose monitoring because they are concerned about the reactions of others.13 14 16

    — https://drc.bmj.com/content/10/6/e003001

    That shame, itself, can be deadly.  It was something with which I dealt successfully, I believe, almost immediately when I was diagnosed.  I was a teacher 30 years ago when my doctor tested my blood sugar and told me, as matter-of-factly as if she was telling me it might rain today in Seattle, that I was Diabetic.  I felt terror in that first moment.  My only experience with Diabetes at that point was seeing my best friend from high school, a Brittle Diabetic named David, flopping on the ground like a fish that had just been tossed on the deck of a boat.  I didn’t like the thought of that happening to me.  Although Diabetes has all but killed me nearly 2 dozen times, I’ve never had that experience.  I’m grateful for that.

    Dave hid his Diabetes from most of his friends, or at least he tried.  His mother told me about it the first time I ever went to their house.  Dave acted like it was no big deal.  I think it embarrassed him.  Getting him to eat when he ought to was often a difficult task. 

    When I was diagnosed, the first thing I did when I got back to school was tell everyone there.  All my colleagues knew.  I set up students whose job was to get the nurse and call 911 if I lost consciousness.  I was still enjoying being alive in those days.  I had no interest in dying.  I was still young and trying my best to be in love with my wife. 

    I saw no reason to be embarrassed.  Neither should you.  We didn’t do something to become Diabetic.  Even if we did, there’s nothing to be done about it now, and we still deserve to live as long and as well as we can.  The list of things of which I’m ashamed is long, but having a disease isn’t on it. 

    If you have Diabetic friends, please help them by understanding their Depression is almost certainly not self-pity.  It is both biological and situational.  There’s little they can do about it.  At the same time…

    Diabetes often seems to be an invitation to the world to tell us how to live our lives.  These are good, caring people who love us.  We have to be grateful.  Nevertheless, it’s more than annoying.  We’re shamed for the choices we make, and if we don’t make the choices others would like us to make, we’re told it’s our own fault.  Their concern for us instantly evaporates.  It’s one more thing about which they never need to worry again. 

    This is among the reasons I never leave my house.  At least if people on Facebook say such things, I have the option to ignore or delete it.  When they’re right in front of me, I’m required to listen, and I would rather leap off The Golden Gate Bridge than be told how to live my life.  I’m divorced… twice… and that’s probably a lot of the reason for my marital failures.

    I’ve found a few things that help me deal with my Depression.  The first is to take stock of my situation in the most objective terms possible.  I ask myself the following questions:

    1.  Do I have a safe place to live? 

    The answer to this is not always yes.  When I know I’m not in a safe place, I know where I need to focus the energy I still have left.  That always has to be our first priority.  Is there a way out?  Where can you go to be safe?  This is a difficult problem, and I don’t have an easy solution for you.  In my own case, I had friends who wouldn’t allow me to be in danger, and several of them worked together to get me here.  I always remember how lucky I am.  This is a big part of why I want to change the world.  No one should be required to live in a situation in which they feel they could be in jeopardy.

    When the answer is yes, I can move on to the next question.  I like to stop, though, and take a moment to recognize how fortunate I am to have that much security.

    •  Do I have enough food to eat? 

      Again, the answer to this has not always been yes.  When I don’t have enough to eat, this has to be the next priority.  When you’re Diabetic, it’s not just a question of being hungry.  It’s a matter of life and death.  I’m fortunate that I have enough people in my life who love me so that I can usually solve this problem by asking someone for help. 

      Yes, it’s humiliating, but I remind myself that my friends would rather give me $100 than have to attend my Memorial, or if you’re my best friend, have to haul my dead body out of this house.  I don’t smell all that great in the best of times; I’m probably going to reek if I’ve been lying here dead for a couple of days.  $100 is a cheap price to pay for avoiding all that.

      If you have no one to ask for food, there are always charities available that will get you something to eat.  I understand how horrible it is to ask them for help, but sometimes there’s nothing else that can be done.  You’re not quite ready to die, yet.  There are still possibilities.  We don’t get to give up until we’ve exhausted all our options.
    • Do I have all the insulin and other medications I need to survive?

      This can be a more difficult problem to solve.  I don’t have a lot of friends who have insulin sitting in their refrigerator who can drop some off for me.  That said, one of The People on The Porch did exactly that when I was running out of Lantus.  I still don’t know how he worked it out, and I don’t need to know.  I just know I was grateful. 

      It can’t always be solved without enough money.  If prescriptions aren’t handled properly, insurance may not cover it.  Sometimes you need to hope you can find the cash to buy it.  Fortunately, a few companies are doing what they can to lower prices. 

      If you can’t obtain insulin any other way, it can come down to having to go to the Emergency Room before you fall into DKA.  They have to keep you alive whether you have money or not. 
    • Do I have a future beyond simply maintaining this meat sack I call a body?

      This is the one that makes the decision to keep going possible.  In my case, I know I can always write.  I know I can still make a little difference for someone, somewhere, and this is sufficient reason to keep going. 

      You can ask what it is you can still do in life that will matter.  I can’t tell you your purpose.  I promise you have one though.  Find that and move forward.

    Another method for dealing with Depression is to accept its existence, recognize it’s a feeling just like any other, and know that, just like any other feeling, it will pass.  Sometimes it’s okay to wallow in it for a little while.  I’ve written some pretty good stuff when my Depression was at its peak.  And the act of writing helps defeat the lethargy that is a feature of Depression.

    The last method I have is to find someone you can talk to about it.  One of the best people I know is frequently attacked by a sense of doom and despair.  She knows she can call me when that happens.  And she does.  And we get through it together.  I’m fortunate to have so many people in my life who love me and will talk to me when I need to get some of the sadness out.

    If you’re Diabetic, keep in mind that you’re not alone.  There are more than half a billion of us running around.  You’re not the only one walking that tightrope.  There are people with whom you can talk, and there’s no more shame in medication or counseling for your Depression than there is in taking insulin or talking to your Diabetes Educator.  You wouldn’t walk a tightrope without professional guidance. 



    Diabetes is a difficult disease to handle.  There are things we can do to help ourselves.  There are things others can do to help us.  Get the sort of help that’s right for you.  You’re still a valuable person.  You matter to others.  The world still needs whatever you have to contribute.  Just get through another night, and we’ll see what tomorrow brings.  If no one else has told you today, it wouldn’t hurt to hear it from me.  I love you. 

    Posted on by Fred

    Speedy Shine’s Backyard Dogcast Episode 2

    Keeping The Smelly Old Man Alive

    I love The Smelly Old Man, but I don’t think he’s The Perkiest Puppy in The Pound.  A lot of the times he’s about ready to go to The Room Where The Dogsers Don’t Come Back, and he just sleeps through it. 

    Sometimes he stops breathinging.  I can hear him even when I am having my Sleepy Time.  When I feel his tummy going up and down it helps me to go to The Place Where There’s No Wallsers or Fenceses and I Can Zoomie and Get All The Peoples Who Try To Come In My Backyard.  Then his tummy stops moving, and I have to come back and jump on him so he openses his eyesers and sits up.  He doesn’t like it, but he gives me kisseses anyway and tells me I’m The Best Good Boy.  I already knew that, but I think it makes him feel important to tell me.  He’s a silly Smelly Old Man. 

    Sometimes I can smell he’s getting in trouble.  He smells like lots of fruitsers and I have to get him up so he can go into the place with the round chair with a hole in it and stick himself with one of the little toysers I don’t get to chew on.  Sometimes he loses all his smells and then it’s really hard to make him sit up and get some loves.  I have to jump on him lots of times.  I have to use my whiskerses to wake him up and I have to get under his hand so he has to give me pets and loves.  One time I had to get off the bed and get a running start from the floor so I landeded on his chest so hard he jumpeded up like a dog he didn’t like was sniffing his butt.

    Once he’s up we go out into the big room and he does his Worksers.  I wait until Pretty Girl comes in her big metal thing with the round parts at the bottom to take him away before I can do my worksers.  She should come and see him more times because he’s always Shinier after she does, and then I could do more Dogcasts.  All the other hoomans know mine is better than his. 

    It’s not his fault.  He likes to talk a lot, but he doesn’t talk about anything that really matters.  He never talks about Treatsers.  He doesn’t think about which toysers are best for when you want to chew the soft things and take out the floofsers.  Since he gets all sad when I do that, he needs to get me better toysers I can chew when I need soft ones instead of the ones that go clonk when I drop them. 

    As long as I can keep him alive, though, there’s still time for him to learn.  I will help him.  I’m Speedy Shine.  That’s what I do. 

    Posted on by Fred · 2 Comments

    Facing Death Daily: Diabetes 102

    A good friend, who is also a Front Porch Podcast Producer and an Unofficial Patron Saint, asked me to write about what it’s like to face death daily.  That sounds melodramatic, and I don’t intend it that way.  I’m not a police officer, firefighter, or member of the military.  People don’t make any special effort to kill me.  I’m just not that important.  I have little of value to steal.  The studio setup would probably get you a few dollars at a Pawn Shop.  There’s certainly not enough to risk going to prison for the rest of your life, or, worse, having Speedy Shine jump on you.  If you try to pick him up, he’ll probably bite you.  We’re working on that.  I have some PetSmart virtual training coming up in a couple of weeks.

    Nevertheless, I do, in fact, have to recognize that if I lose balance, I can die before I even finish writing this episode.  We covered the details of diabetes last week, and I’m not going to go through them again beyond the context you need to understand this.  Please refer to “The Tightrope of Diabetes,” which is Episode 197 if you’re scrolling through the show looking for it. 

    Diabetes is not the only danger I face. I haven’t been able to feel my feet in nearly seven years.  I can fall, and if I’m not careful, I will.  I might be lucky enough not to hurt myself too seriously, and perhaps I’ll be able to get up again, but that is by no means certain.  I no longer have the rubber bones we all seem to have when we’re toddlers.  Mine are old and brittle, ready to snap at the earliest opportunity. 

    I live alone, so if I’m unable to get up, unless I have my phone on me, I will just lie there until someone decides to come and check on me.  Stephanie, my best friend, certainly would, but it could be as much as 24 hours before she did.  In that time, it would be simple to slip into either DKA or a coma.  Either way I would be equally dead. 

    DKA, for a brief review, is Diabetic Ketoacidosis.  This occurs when your blood sugar gets too high, (at least 250 milligrams per deciliter, which is the measurement used in America, and 11.36 millimoles per liter in The UK) and your body begins to throw off ketones.  I usually need to get above 400 before I’m in trouble.  You may be different.  These can be measured by peeing onto a special strip.  The darker the strip turns, the worse shape you’re in.  DKA will dehydrate you, and if you don’t stop it in time, you will begin to vomit, thereby further dehydrating yourself.  Without hospitalization, you will surely die an ugly death.  When they take you to the hospital you’re unreasonably thirsty, and they won’t give you any water because you’ll just throw it up and make things worse.  They hook you up to IVs to start repairing all the damage.  I can’t begin to tell you how little fun it is to be hooked up to IVs. 

    If your blood sugar gets too low, (below 70 mg/dL is dangerous, below 54 mg/dL is severe) you’re no longer able to think coherently.  While I know, right now, that if my numbers drop, I need to eat, when it gets too low, I may not know that anymore.  When it gets low enough, I’ll slip into a coma.  I had a friend who died this way.  My former roommates saved me from that several times.  I live alone with Speedy Shine now. 

    I’m not overstating the case when I say I face the possibility of death daily. 

    My friend wanted to know how I manage this.  I think it’s worth discussing because, once again, I’m not unique in this struggle.  There are more than half a billion of us on Earth right now.  One of us dies from diabetes every 5 seconds.  There is a wealth of diabetes information in the link below.

    Home

    First, for me, it’s about acceptance.  I’m the least Christian person you probably know, but there is one prayer I love above all others.  Just as “Shine,” by Sara Niemietz and Snuffy Walden, is my favorite hymn, this is my favorite prayer.

    Attributed to Reinhold Niebuhr, Lutheran theologian (1892–1971)

    God, grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
    the Courage to change the things I can,
    and the Wisdom to know the difference.

    I can’t tell you a thing about God.  You can find billions of others for that.  I can tell you, though, that serenity, courage, and wisdom are essential for me.

    Serenity

    The first step is accepting that I can’t change my diabetes.  I checked on Amazon, and it turns out they don’t have a new pancreas to replace mine.  They don’t have new legs to replace mine, either, so I need to continue to be as careful as I can. 

    Death is one of the few things that truly is inevitable.  The healthiest human on Earth, with all the best medical care, is still going to expire within less than 2 centuries.  There is nothing to be done to change that… at least right now.  I keep hoping for a world in which science finds a way for us to all live indefinitely.  I believe it’s possible.  I don’t believe we’re there yet.  I don’t believe we’ll make it within my lifetime.  I’ve heard of a little baby named Layla.  She’s the granddaughter of my coach.  I hope she gets to live indefinitely.  I hope all her ancestors will, too.

    “I do not fear death.  I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.”

    ― Mark Twain

    I can’t find evidence Twain actually said this.  Lots of sites attribute it to him, but I was unable to find the book, or lecture, or letter in which he said it.  Whether he said it or not, the point is worth considering.  Death is a natural state. 

    I feared it when I was a child.  I used to have dreams of lying in my coffin, completely unable to move, while worms worked their way inside it and inevitably consumed me, excruciatingly slowly, bit by bit.  As I grew up and began to understand death a little more clearly, it dawned on me that I couldn’t possibly suffer in the way I did in so many nightmares.  There will be no Fred there to experience it.  Whatever it is that makes me Fred will be absent when my heart stops beating and my brain shuts down.  I will be a computer that has been turned off.  I can’t be turned on again, regardless of the Genesis song.  (If you haven’t ever heard “Turn It On Again,” you really should find it on Spotify.)  I’m not Teddy.  All that said, I’m still hoping to be cremated.  I would like my ashes dumped into San Francisco Bay near the place we end up putting my parents’ ashes when the time comes. 

    There’s a line from Katherine Hepburn has in On Golden Pond…

    Oh… it feels odd.  Cold, I guess.  Not that bad, really.  Not so frightening.  Almost comforting.  Not such a bad place to go.  I don’t know!

    — Ernest Thompson from his screenplay, 1981

    I feel that way.  I know it will happen, and to a certain extent it will be a relief.  I can’t get in trouble anymore.  I don’t have to worry about whether anyone likes my writing or listens to my show.  I don’t need to seek any longer the sexual satisfaction that diabetes has stolen from me.  And from that, I draw…

    High line walker between two rocks concept of risk taking and challenge

    Courage

    I’m not a fool.  I recognize that I’m in peril every day.  While I was writing this my Continuous Glucose Monitor (CGM) went off to tell me my blood sugar was perilously low.  I should eat dinner, but I’m deep into my writing session, and I don’t want to stop right now.  I went to the bathroom and got some glucose tablets.  They’ll buy me enough time to finish this… I hope.  I hate to stop when the words are ready to come out.  If I stop them, I can’t necessarily just turn on the faucet again.

    Courage isn’t being without fear.  It’s being able to recognize that fear and keep it from keeping you from doing what you know you should be doing.  In my case, what I should be doing is writing and recording as much as I can as quickly as I can.  I want to make all the difference I can before I can’t anymore.  I live by the words of Emily Dickinson:

    “If I can stop one heart from breaking”

    By: Emily Dickinson

    If I can stop one heart from breaking,
    I shall not live in vain;
    If I can ease one life the aching,
    Or cool one pain,
    Or help one fainting robin
    Unto his nest again,
    I shall not live in vain.

    Emily Dickinson

    I don’t have any heroism in the traditional sense in me.  I won’t be rescuing a baby from a burning building.  I couldn’t even get inside of a building of any sort without some kind of help.  The only thing I can do to improve the world is what I’m doing every single week on this show.  I’m talking about ways to improve the world in the hope that someone, somewhere, will respond.  I’m hoping someone will make the changes I can’t. 

    Supposedly, Albert Camus said, “To believe you can change the world is insanity; failure to try is cowardice.”  I can’t verify that, however, and I have only my late father’s word for it.  Once again, though, it doesn’t matter who said it.  The idea is correct. 

    I have no more chance at success than either Atticus Finch or Hemingway’s Santiago.  And I have the same moral responsibility to try. 

    I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand.  It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.

    –Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

    Here I am seeing it through.  That’s what courage is to me.

    Wisdom

    This is the most difficult to obtain.  It’s not simply possession of a set of facts.  It involves… oh my… I need to go for a bit.

    ***

    Good morning.  I had to stop last night because, even with the glucose tablets, my blood sugar kept dropping, and I was no longer able to see the screen properly.  My brain began to shut down. 

    I grabbed a candy bar.  That should have moved my blood sugar up considerably.  The reading dropped even farther.  I got down to 50, and I felt my heart rate increasing.  That may well have been fear.  I couldn’t think straight at that moment. 

    I finally made a bowl of cereal.  That usually forces me to take a lot of insulin to keep from going up too high, and I knew that, but I did it anyway.  I wasn’t going to die if I could help it.

    When I began to see colorful spots in front of my eyes, I thought seriously about calling 911.  I don’t want to overreact if I can avoid it.  Even with Medicare and Medicaid, there will be a bill involved that I can’t possibly pay, and I don’t care to take paramedics away from others who may need them more badly.

    After about 20 more minutes, I began to be able to think clearly.  My first instinct was to take a shot to counter all the food I just ate.  That would probably have been the best choice, but I was still scared to death.  I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

    That, of course, meant that a couple hours later my alarm went off to warn me my glucose was too high.  I took a small shot.  I went back to sleep.  Two hours later when I woke up, it was over 400, which is high as the Libre can count.  I took a bigger shot.  I peed on a keto stick to see if I had ketones.  Since there were no ketones, I was less concerned.  I woke up a few hours later, and I was at 128.  That’s as close to perfect as one is going to get.

    ***

    So… to return to how I handle all this, Wisdom also comes into it.  As I said before I was attacked by my diabetes, it’s more than being in possession of a set of facts.  Last night, I had a set of facts.  I knew how to interpret them, and I knew what I was supposed to do to change the things I can.  Perhaps I lacked the courage to do what my wisdom told me to do.  That’s another sort of balance that is difficult to achieve. 

    Life is, I suspect, in one form or another, a balancing act for all of us.  Was it Socrates who called it The Golden Mean?  I could look it up, I suppose, but I don’t care enough to bother.  The idea is valuable.  We need to decide what is most important at any given moment and pay attention to that detail without losing sight of all the other moments that make up a life.  Life is, as John Lennon told us, what happens while we’re busy making other plans.  I was planning to write all night.  Life happened.  Since I managed to recover, I can continue to write this morning.

    This is what it is to live daily with the distinct possibility you won’t wake up tomorrow.  It’s a matter of accepting that death isn’t the worst thing that can happen, and that we need to make use of the time in front of us because it can be gone suddenly and permanently.

    Depression is a big part of the challenge.  People with diabetes are 2 to 3 times more likely to have depression than people without diabetes.  Only 25% to 50% of people with diabetes who have depression get diagnosed and treated.  But treatment—therapy, medicine, or both—is usually very effective.  And without treatment, depression often gets worse, not better.

    That will be in next week’s episode.

    For tonight, let’s enjoy the minutes we still have.  Let’s embrace the life in front of us because we have no idea how much more of it we have left.  Let’s Shine while we can.

    Posted on by Fred · 2 Comments

    The Tightrope of Diabetes

    Am I a brittle diabetic?  I’m not a doctor, so I don’t have an informed medical opinion.  I’ve never heard my endocrinologist say I was.  According to The Cleveland Clinic only about 3 out of 1,000 people with insulin dependent diabetes are brittle.  It’s most common in women in their 20s and 30s.

    https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/21499-brittle-diabetes#:~:text=What%20is%20brittle%20diabetes%3F,hyperglycemia%20(high%20blood%20sugar).

    It seems unlikely that I am, then.  On the other hand, the same source tells me that the difference between “normal” diabetes and unstable diabetes is that those with unstable diabetes exhibit these symptoms:

    • Affect their ability to live life normally.  (I’m on Disability because I can’t stand up for any significant length of time)
    • Cause anxiety and depression.  (Hi, I’m Fred.  Have we met?)
    • Lead to hospitalization or even death.  (I’ve been hospitalized way too many times.)

    In the last few weeks my blood sugar has been jumping around like a ping pong ball chasing a rabbit on crack.  I have a Continuous Glucose Monitor (CGM) that is very helpful, and it’s shown that I have been dangerously close to falling into a coma at least half a dozen times this month.  I’ve been moving toward Diabetic Ketoacidosis (DKA) three or four times. 

    Between my dog, Speedy Shine, and my CGM, I have been alerted in time to save myself.  My dog wakes me up frequently just a few minutes before the CGM starts alarming, both for highs and lows.  To my knowledge, he was never trained for this, but he does it often.  He also does it when I stop breathing.  I hope to have my C-PAP soon, so he won’t need to provide that service anymore.  I have my second sleep study coming up this weekend.  I’m hoping they’ll give me the machine then.  I’d like to get on with it.

    I can’t feel my feet anymore, and I nearly lost a toe last October.  This is a symptom of diabetes called neuropathy.  It causes us to lose feelings in our extremities. 

    The exact cause of each type of neuropathy is unknown.  Researchers think that over time, uncontrolled high blood sugar damages nerves and interferes with their ability to send signals, leading to diabetic neuropathy.  High blood sugar also weakens the walls of the small blood vessels (capillaries) that supply the nerves with oxygen and nutrients. 

    https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/diabetic-neuropathy/symptoms-causes/syc-20371580#:~:text=Researchers%20think%20that%20over%20time,nerves%20with%20oxygen%20and%20nutrients.

    A toenail broke off, got stuck in my sock, and cut one of my toes.  I didn’t notice it, and if Speedy Shine hadn’t been trying to eat my foot that morning, I would have become septic.  I was fortunate to have a brilliant surgeon who managed to remove a little piece of bone instead of amputating the entire appendage.  You can hear all about this in the episode “Horror Toes.”  (It’s Episode 177 if you’re scrolling through Spotify or Apple Podcasts searching for it.)

    Speaking of feet, they’re essential for tightrope walking.  It’s Rule #3 in ChatGPT’s rules for Tightrope Walkers:

    Footwear: Tightrope walkers often wear soft, flexible shoes with thin soles to help them feel the wire beneath their feet and make it easier to maintain balance.

    The fact that I can’t feel my feet does much to add to my identity as The Smelly Old Man.  I can’t possibly shower safely.  It’s not a question of if, but when, I will fall.  I’m hoping to get help with this in the next couple of months.  Evidently, I can get a special chair that will prevent me from needing to stand, but it’s getting out with wet feet that worries me.  If Medicare won’t pay for it, it’s a moot point.  There’s no way I can afford that.

    The feeling in my fingertips is waning fast.  I have a much more difficult time typing now, and that’s a more serious concern for me than losing a toe.  Writing would be infinitely more difficult for me if I couldn’t type anymore.  If I can’t write anymore, my life will lose most of its meaning.

    I’m fortunate to live in nearly complete poverty because it means that Arizona and Medicare pay for most of my medical bills.  Humalog can cost well over $200 a month without insurance.  (I just learned that at least one company has now capped the cost at $35 a month… thank you Eli Lilly!)  I also need Lantus, and that would cost another $200.  I make less than $1500 a month on Disability.  That would leave me less than $1100 a month for rent, food, and living.  The cheapest studio apartment in my city is $1500 a month.  Libre is kind enough to provide their sensors for as little as $40 a month if one is insured privately.  Nevertheless, that’s $40 a month I would never have.  One can either survive by living in poverty (and in my case, being the beneficiary of plenty of charity and some wonderful People On The Porch) or one can die of diabetes for lack of the necessary medical assistance. 

    ChatGPT’s first rule for tightrope walkers is:

    Safety first: Safety is the most important consideration when it comes to tightrope walking.  It is essential to use proper equipment, including a secure harness, and to have trained professionals supervise the activity.

    Since my surgery, the insurance company has taken a much greater interest in my health.  I have the proper equipment now, and I have professionals helping to supervise.  I fought my diabetes successfully for more than 20 years.  In the last 6 years, however, I’ve been in the hospital for DKA 16 times.  I’m told most diabetics don’t survive it more than 4 or 5 times.  I’m unreasonably lucky.  I wish I would have had the support I have now much earlier.  I would certainly be healthier than I am today. 

    I’m also lacking the second most important thing for those on tightropes:

    Balance: Tightrope walking requires excellent balance and coordination.  The performer must keep their center of gravity directly over the wire and use their arms to maintain balance.

    My numbers are rarely in range and properly balanced.  The CGM helps with this, and I’m glad I have it.  Why shouldn’t everyone with diabetes have one?

    DKA is caused by blood sugar rising high enough that the diabetic begins to spill ketones.  My doctor described it to me as my blood turning to acid and trying to kill me from the inside out.  You can bring it down with insulin, but only if you catch it early enough.  Drinking lots of water also helps because, if I understand it correctly, the water dilutes the ketones, and we get rid of them when we urinate.  I have no medical degree.  I could absolutely be wrong about this.  Please check with your own doctor if you’re diabetic.  I’m relating my own experiences with the problem.  Your mileage may vary. 

    CGMs are not all equal.  My Dexcom lost connection more frequently than it maintained it.  My Libre keeps the connection well, but I’m told it tends to be about ten minutes behind the actual number it gives.  This is a place I believe technology will continue to improve, and I’m hopeful that all diabetics will have these devices to help us control our blood sugar. 

    My Dexcom gave me significantly lower numbers than my Libre.  This can potentially be deadly.  At one point my Dexcom told me I was at 60.  My Libre said 106.  

    For those who don’t know American blood sugar numbers, doctors like us to be between 80 and 120 most of the time.  At 60, one is vulnerable to going into a coma.  Above 300 one is vulnerable to DKA.  When you’re at 60, you need to eat, and you need to do it quickly.  Glucose tablets provide quick carbs, but they don’t last.  A real meal is essential. 

    Had I eaten lots of carbs when I was at 106, I would have bumped up my blood sugar to a place where I might be moving toward DKA.  If nothing else, I would have raised my A1C unnecessarily. 

    The A1C test—also known as the hemoglobin A1C or HbA1c test—is a simple blood test that measures your average blood sugar levels over the past 3 months.  It’s one of the commonly used tests to diagnose prediabetes and diabetes, and is also the main test to help you and your health care team manage your diabetes. Higher A1C levels are linked to diabetes complications, so reaching and maintaining your individual A1C goal is really important if you have diabetes.

    https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/managing/managing-blood-sugar/a1c.html#:~:text=The%20A1C%20test%E2%80%94also%20known,care%20team%20manage%20your%20diabetes


    All of the above is the medical and scientific side of Diabetes.  There is another side, and it’s at least as important.  It’s what Diabetes does to its victims emotionally and psychologically.  To be diabetic means to live life knowing that if we make the wrong decision, if we forget to eat, if we forget to take our insulin, or for reasons over which we have no control at all, we can suddenly slip into a coma from which we will never wake, or we will lose consciousness after throwing up for a while when we go into DKA. 

    Honestly, it’s frightening.  I know that any of us can be dead at any moment.  A meteor could strike Earth in the next five minutes, and that would be the ball game for millions, or perhaps billions of us.  We could get hit by a bus or murdered in our sleep.  Yes, Death awaits all of us.  It just seems a bit more anxious to cuddle up with diabetics.

    There was a time, not that long ago, when it didn’t bother me much.  I was ready to die if it was my time.  There were times when I was in a hurry to reach that final curtain.  As life has improved, however, I feel more like I want to continue to live.  I’m becoming a better writer.  I’m almost safe every month because so many people help me so much and so often.  I have a dog who loves me.  No one is calling me a F***ing liar half a dozen times a day anymore, and I’m healing from my own traumas.

    I still get depressed, but it’s not happening as often.  I’m taking Duloxetine, and that may be what is helping me.  It may also be that conditions are improving.  Measuring depression is much harder than measuring blood sugar.  I can’t prick my finger to find out my depression level.

    I spent most of my day getting my living will, my last will and testament, my medical and financial powers of attorney, and my instructions for the disposal of my remains handled.  I also have plans for someone taking care of Speedy Shine in the event of my demise.

    My next step is going to be getting a safety net in place in case I fall off my diabetes tightrope.  I need to hear back from Assisted Living, and all the steps in that could take up to 45 days.

    Since my numbers have been frightening in the last week or so, I thought it was more important to sort out what happens if I die.  I still have to meet with my best friend, Stephanie, and an additional witness to sign everything, but I’m hoping that will take place in the next couple of weeks.

    I also need to get a network of people set up in the event I wind up in the hospital, but I haven’t died. I would need people to take care of Speedy Shine until I can get back.  I’m hoping to put together some folks who can donate some money to pay someone to be here while I can’t.  That will be happening in the next few days.  If Sherlock, The Mystery Patron, is still in town, I’m hoping I can get her to come by and take care of him, but he tried to bite her once, so I’m not so sure I can do that.  (Yes, we’re going to be working on that in the coming days, too.  That’s an entirely separate podcast.  Speedy Shine will tell you about it himself.)

    When Death keeps knocking on the door, it seems foolish not to prepare for its entrance.  I’m working on a Final Front Porch Podcast that will be published after my death.  Mortality isn’t fun to consider, but that doesn’t change its existence.  We can’t escape by ignoring it.  We can only be caught unprepared. 

    I have learned to accept that I am going to die sooner than I might like.  Part of this is because I’m choosing to live life the way I want to instead of in the ways that might prolong my days on Earth.  If I’m going to live, I’m going to enjoy it. 

    Please understand that diabetics may seem fine from the outside, but I feel confident that I’m not the only one who lives with the unspoken terror contained in frightening numbers we see far too frequently. 

    The fear isn’t falling off the tightrope; that’s inevitable.  The fear is in how far we’ll fall.  I’m doing my best to keep my wire as low as possible.  Let’s raise the healthcare ceiling to include all of us and lower the wire for everyone.  Let’s help the diabetics to Shine.

    Posted on by Fred

    We Are Not Alone

    I had a crisis of confidence last week because I was one of several people who were deceived by a con man.  I had been told the “The Teddy Bear Coder” was going to be published, and I was off the charts with excitement.  And I shared my joy with my friends. 

    It turned out that he is a criminal.  He is being investigated by the FBI.  He took a good friend of mine for, all told, nearly $30,000.  There’s little chance she’ll ever see any of that money again.

    That prompted me to post the following:

    Okay… I don’t like to talk badly about others.  I particularly don’t like to talk badly about people I thought were my friends.  I’ll be removing him from my Friends List, however, in a moment.

    I’m posting this to explain why I am feeling embarrassed.  I barely know the man in question, but someone I know and love and trust implicitly does know him, and she was a part of the company that was supposed to publish “The Teddy Bear Coder.” She was very excited to publish my book.  Now she wants nothing to do with Prince of Cats any longer.

    I’ve been feeling proud the last few weeks.  I never had any delusions that I would make any money on the book.  It wasn’t about that.  It was the idea that I might be able to put a toe into a world of which I’ve always secretly wanted to be a part.  I wanted to be a real writer.  No…  I have no interest in self-publishing.  It’s not about that.

    I’ve been feeling proud that I’ve been spending half an hour a week talking on the phone to one of my greatest heroes.  I felt as though he was beginning to take me seriously as a writer.  Part of this was because the story he coached me through writing was getting published.

    I’m not naïve, I don’t think.  I had no delusions that he was talking to me because I’m a significant writer.  I pay him for the coaching.  I like to think, though, that he wouldn’t have accepted me as a student if he thought I was beyond help.  And when a publisher came to me, sought me out, to publish what I had written… I glowed.  I was Shining like a star in a not-too-distant galaxy.

    I felt like I had made it.  I had accomplished what I have dreamt of for more than 50 years.

    Now it turns out my book is not going to be published because the man who was going to publish it appears to be a criminal.  I have more than this article for evidence of that assertion, but I am keeping those communications private.  I emailed him to tell him the offer to allow him to publish it is now gone.

    I don’t feel stupid.  I behaved based upon the most reliable information I could get.  I feel embarrassed.  If I didn’t want to hide away from the world before, I want to dig a hole in my house now and let no one but Speedy Shine near me. I don’t feel like I can show my face when I spent so much time being so proud, and all that happened was that I was deceived.

    I should have been quiet.  I shouldn’t have shared my joy until it all happened.

    It would be easy to understand why you might lose respect for me now, but I hope you can find a way to grant me a little grace for my errors in judgment.

    I’m going to be quiet for a while now.  I’m fine.  I’m just sad and ashamed.

    I’m sorry to have made more of myself than I was due.

    This prompted several of my friends to say kind things that helped me to feel better.  For example:

    Name Redacted:

    Fred Eder I don’t comment on your posts often…if ever…but this one got me.  Certainly, honor your feelings of shame and disappointment, but please know that the person who deceived you is responsible for what happened. You are not to blame.

    The world is cruel sometimes to gentle souls like yours and it is unfair.

    What I admire most about you, tho is that you walk through these times with humility and grace.  It may not feel like it on the inside but that’s what it looks like on the outside.

    So much gets thrown at you from a world that just doesn’t know how to handle a gentle soul like yours and yet, rather than making you bitter, you take the lumps, learn from the experience and continue on. This is strength.  This is integrity.

    This is uniquely you.

    I thank you for living through all of the ups and downs and showing the rest of us how it’s done.

    As much as you may feel embarrassed, the rest of us are out here filled with admiration for you.

    That made me feel better.  It’s not hard to imagine why.

    Another comment came from the man I believe is her husband, although he may only be her boyfriend.  I can’t even keep my own relationships straight, so keeping up on the status of other relationships isn’t going to happen.

    Second Name Redacted:

    You’ve got lots of people showing you support and take some solace in that.

    The criminal you thought was a publisher won’t publish you.  This is a good thing, though a setback.

    as many, many, many, many of my favorite authors have explained….  It took them numerous submissions before they got published.

    I interviewed for 2 web design positions in Feb…. I seriously thought I’d get one…

    they decided otherwise.

    It left me in a funk, depressed, and like the stilts I’d be walking on were kicked out from under me.

    You’re a fantastic writer.  There’s a publisher out there for you.

    The criminal wasn’t it.

    make it through today, and tomorrow, and maybe your mood will shift again.

    all that you felt when you thought you were going to be published IS STILL TRUE.

    the glow was always you, not them.

    The pride was legitimate.

    Your hard work is legitimate.

    Try to focus on the feelings you had before to get you through the now.

    That helped me to refocus a bit.  My embarrassment was waning a little. 

    Then one of The People On The Porch added:

    Third Name Redacted

    Joy in abundance makes us exuberant.  We have the drive to share.  So you did. Who wouldn’t?  You were not remiss in any way, Fred. No need to feel humiliation or self-blame. Don’t give up hope for The Teddy Bear Coder.  Its time is still now.  Press on and Godspeed!

    And… I recovered a bit from my depression.  That prompted me to post the following:

    None of us exist alone.  None of us CAN exist alone.  It’s simply not possible.  We are a community that works only when we continue to support each other in all the ways we can so that the species thrives.

    I spoke with a good friend for an hour… It was HER birthday, but she spent an hour of it taking care of me.  I spoke with my coach, who reminded me that we all need each other if this is ever going to work.

    I have you.  You have me.  We can’t do everything for each other, but we can all do a little, and we can all make a difference.  And that little difference is much bigger than we believe.

    I can’t thank you enough for all you did for me while I was ready to hang up my career as a writer.  I was going to just exist until I didn’t anymore… But you picked me up off the mat, and I’m going to write all night now.

    The Teddy Bear Coder is going to become a complete novel.  It may, in fact, become an entire series.  We’ll see how it goes.  I’m going to write because you let me do that.  You matter.

    This has been an extraordinarily long way around to deciding I need to pay attention to some other writers who have said things better than I can.  I’m going to give you their words, with their permission, tonight.  I’m not alone.  Here’s someone who is not even on my Friends List, whose words caught me on Facebook.  He kindly allowed me to use them.

    Woke, a child of the black community, birthed by mothers and fathers who, after being deceived for long lengths of time, couldn’t afford to “sleep” on the system.

    She was young and tender, akin to the blindfolded statue depicting justice, but more radiant and pure. She walked, whispering among us, keeping us alert.  Teaching us, by word of mouth and shared experience, to be savvy, smart and attentive. At times she even showed us how to be daring and courageous.  She taught us to see the grift, avoid the three-card molly and other trickster moments perpetrated by this wayward state.

    Then one day they took her.

    Our delight, our little light, our secret love, our whisperer of well words, they took her, as they did with all things we created.  Things they coveted.

    They stood among the abused mothers and fathers and took their child, their justice, their Messenger to us She who was born to help us stay alive and well within a system designed to kill us and grind our bones into powder.

    They took her and threw her in a cell with Blues, Jazz, Rap and R&B.  They made her take a seat next to Soul Food, Mathematics and Science.

    They abused her, and redressed her in heavy sackcloth, black and oily with the weight of their own transgressions.

    We cried when we couldn’t find her.

    We damn near rioted when we saw what they did to her.

    I don’t know what will happen if they don’t release her.

    Woke is our child, our whisperer of well words, telling us how to live in the light between the shadows the depraved cast.

    All else is sackcloth.

    — Donley Ferguson

    I was going to add my own commentary to it, but another of my friends wrote something better than I can write, so I’m using the words of the philosopher, Jesse Rogers, who was once a Person On The Porch.  I miss him. 

    “I speak these words not because it is something I personally claim to have felt or experienced.  I speak them because I acknowledge that I have countrymen like the author, Donley Ferguson, who have and do feel this way. I want to amplify the message because when people express pain or suffering with such vulnerability and openness, I think empathy is a better response towards my fellow Americans than mockery or derision.”

    In the spirit of remembering we’re not alone, I’m leaving you this evening with one of the greatest bits of flash fiction I’ve ever read, once again from Shoshana Edwards, who is one of the greatest writers I’ve ever met.  She’s going to remind us that hope can be found in the strangest places.

    The Phone

    Here I sit, alone in the cell, uncomfortable in my new clothes.  I want the orange jump suit back.  It fits.  It is familiar.  It is soft.  I hate all these pre-death rituals: prayers with the chaplain, the talk with the warden, the last awkward meeting with my attorney.  I hate my last dinner, so awful.  The milkshake is too sweet; the steak is too fatty.  The potatoes are salty.  As soon as I finish, I dive for the lone toilet in the corner of the room, vomiting.

    Awareness of the approaching deadline has stripped all animation from my face.  I do not recognize the man in the warped metal mirror over the sink.  The warden, the jailors, and my fellow inmates have found me to be pleasant company and a source of comfort in difficult times.  Now there is no one.  They have abandoned me to my helpless isolation and dread.

    “I didn’t do it, Jenny.  I swear I didn’t do it,” I whisper.

    Oh, how I long to hold her again, to feel the sweet softness of her breasts, the warm moist pleasure as I enter her slowly, the urgency of our thrusting, the blissful release, the comfort afterwards as we cuddle in each other’s arms, falling asleep together.  But there is no conjugal visit on death row.  We share a brief time together under the supervision of the warden and the priest.  We are allowed to kiss, to hug, and to talk.  And then she leaves. I tell her not to come, not to watch.  I tell her to go home to her mother, who would make her soup and sing to her, and let her cry.  But I know she will come.  It is who she is.  She will watch my final moments in stony silence, holding back her tears and screams until Momma takes her home.

    My lawyer has long ago given up.  I am Black, have a gap between my front teeth, and am tall and muscular.  My mind plays the arrest over and over:  I am wearing my sweats on my way to my car outside the gym.  Me being Black and in the wrong place is enough for the cops, a close enough description from the eye witness, to let them pull their guns. They scream at me to get down, zip tie my hands so tightly behind my back that one shoulder dislocates and ignore my screams of pain.  They search my car, screaming “where is it?  Where is the gun?  Tell us now?  Did you throw it away somewhere?” I cannot stop the damn movie, even after all these years.

    It is sufficient that I am Black and dangerous looking, even though my hospital scrubs are on the back seat of my car, along with my ID which shows that I am an intern at Riverpark Hospital.  My gym membership badge is attached to my sweats, but no one bothers to check with the gym, to learn that when the convenience store owner was shot, I was working out in the free weight room with a spotter.  They know they have their man.  In court, my attorney produces the evidence: the time I checked out of the hospital, the time I checked into the gym, and he calls my spotter to the stand as a witness.  But even for the jury, it is sufficient that I am Black and dangerous looking.

    The movie keeps playing, and I sit here trying not to watch it; trying not to cry.

    I am on death row, where I have lived for five years.  We file appeal after appeal, each one failing.  I have long since given up believing in truth and justice.  Those are not for Black men who look dangerous, Black men with tattoos, wearing sweats, walking to their car in a White folks’ neighborhood.

    They walk me down the hallway, without chains, my hands free.  There are five guards, including the warden.  This is it.  They lay me on the table, strap down my arms and legs, and the doctor inserts the needle.  The curtain is pulled away from the window.  Jenny is there, stony faced and immobile, her mother sitting next to her looking anywhere but into the death chamber.  The warden reads the charges, while his assistant makes certain the phone on the wall is working, and the doctor confirms that the line is clear and the needle properly inserted. And then they leave, all but the man standing beside the phone, a useless gesture.

    I feel a slight coldness as the first chemical is introduced, designed to relax me.  It works on my body, but not my mind.  The terror is still there.  What if I am wrong, and there is a heaven and a hell?  The second drug starts, and I feel myself starting to fall asleep.  Just as Morpheus begins to draw his final curtain I hear a sound, so brilliant I struggle to rise up out of the darkness. As blackness overtakes me, I identify the noise: the phone is ringing.

    We are surrounded by voices not our own.  And each of them has the potential to help us.  Our voices have the potential to help others.  Sometimes, just a phone call can make all the difference.

    Posted on by Fred

    The Fall of Public Education

    Today, February 16, 2023 (you’ll hear this a few weeks after I wrote it… I’m always ahead of schedule) is the 36th anniversary of the first time I stepped into my own classroom.  I didn’t have a computer.  Neither did anyone else I knew.  I wrote my lesson plans by hand, and I followed strict guidelines for creating them.  Goal, objective, procedure, and assessment were the elements I was expected to have.  That’s what they taught me in my education classes.  That was what my principal expected of me.  But she expected something more.

    I was trying to teach using the basal reader, “Ride the Sunrise.”  It was fine, if entirely uninspiring.  We would read the story together in class, and then the students would answer the questions and do the vocabulary exercises.  It was hardly revolutionary teaching.  It was, in fact, frighteningly dull.

    My third week in, it was a Thursday after school, my principal called me into her office, and she asked me what the hell I was doing.  I explained I was doing what I thought was expected of me.  This was the district adopted textbook, and I was following it religiously.

    She rolled her eyes.  “I have a fleet of teachers who can do that.  That wasn’t why I hired you.  You told me you loved literature.  You sat in that interview, and you talked about how much you loved Hemingway, Doyle, and Shakespeare.”

    “Yes, ma’am, I did.”

    “So why don’t I see those in your classroom?  I’m sorry, Fred, but I’m really disappointed in you.  I expected so much more.”

    “You’re saying… let me understand you… you’re saying I should teach those things?”

    “You got it.  You talk a good game, but it doesn’t mean a thing if you can’t back it up.”  I heard Ella Fitzgerald in my head: “It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.”

    “The district has all those on reading lists for later grades.  I’m teaching a 5/4 combination.”  (That always made me think of Dave Brubeck.)

    “So, let’s get your kids ahead of the game.  Can you do that or not?”

    “Oh… I think I can do that.  Come see on Monday.”

    I spent the weekend poring over “A Scandal In Bohemia.”  I got more than a little stoned Saturday afternoon and watched the Jeremy Brett video with my notebook in my lap and a pen in my left hand, scribbling furiously.  It’s not a mystery as much as it is a love story about a man who is incapable of love.  How could I get my students to feel that?  What could I ask?  How could I get them to understand something that was at least 2 years over their reading level?  I needed help.  I called the greatest teacher I had ever known: my father.

    “Do you understand Sherlock Holmes?” he asked.

    “Obviously.”

    “Excellent.  Then explain it to them.  You take it a piece at a time, just like I did when we read Curious George on the steps of the library.  Read.  Stop.  Question.  Rinse.  Repeat.  You get them through it a piece at a time, and you ask them about the things you think are interesting.  Look at that opening line.  ‘To Sherlock Holmes, she was always the woman.’  Read it to them.  Stop.  What on Earth does Watson mean by that?  They’re old enough to have some ideas.  Encourage those ideas.  It’s playing, Fred.  That’s all.  You’re just playing.”

    And that, gentle readers and listeners, is the key to learning.  We learn by playing.

    Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning.  But for children play is serious learning.  Play is really the work of childhood.

    –Fred Rogers

    But the sharp break that unfortunately prevails between the kindergarten and the grades is evidence that the theoretical distinction has practical implications.  Under the title of play, the former is rendered unduly symbolic, fanciful, sentimental, and arbitrary; while under the antithetical caption of work the latter contains many tasks externally assigned.  The former has no end and the latter an end so remote that only the educator, not the child, is aware that it is an end.

    — John Dewey How We Think:  Chapter 12: Activity and the Training of Thought

    We gain experience through Play.  Experience is The Great Teacher.  It’s the interpretation of that experience that leads to real education.  Education is not to be mistaken for memorization.  It occurs only when we have experiences that open us up for other, greater experiences.  It comes from finding the meanings of our experiences. 

    I got to school in practically the middle of the night Monday morning.  I had to copy the story out of one of my paperbacks.  I had to collate and staple together 35 copies.  That was incredibly time consuming in 1987.  When Mrs. Dobbs came to see my show on Monday morning, she was duly impressed, and she told me I was now on the right road.  I followed it proudly. 

    Within a few weeks, my students were easily spotted in the lunch room because they were the ones carrying around the Sherlock Holmes books they had made their parents buy them.  Just before Christmas Break we read “The Final Problem,” in which Holmes dies… or at least we think he did.  If this is a spoiler for you, I can’t bring myself to apologize.  It’s 130 years old.  You’ve had a minute to read it.

    There was robust discussion, sometimes becoming far too animated for a normal classroom, about whether Holmes was really dead.  Holmes and his archenemy, Professor Moriarty, had finally had the contest they were fated to have.  Two sets of footprints go down to the edge of Reichenbach Falls.  None return. 

    An examination by experts leaves little doubt that a personal contest between the two men ended, as it could hardly fail to end in such a situation, in their reeling over, locked in each other’s arms.  Any attempt at recovering the bodies was absolutely hopeless, and there, deep down in that dreadful caldron of swirling water and seething foam, will lie for all time the most dangerous criminal and the foremost champion of the law of their generation.

    — Sir Arthur Conan Doyle “The Final Problem”

    Students were throwing theories back and forth like hand grenades, and they were exploded promptly by their classmates who told them why that idea was wrong, but their own ideas must certainly be right.  And I sent them home to wonder for the next few weeks. 

    And you know what they did all by themselves during the break?  Yes, that’s right.  They ran to the bookstore and the public library to find “The Empty House,” which I told them was Watson’s own adventure.  And without their teacher to hold their little hands… they read it… all by themselves.  Okay… they didn’t all understand it as well as I wanted them to, but by the time we read it in class, and we watched the Jeremy Brett video, everyone had become a lifelong Sherlock Holmes fan.

    There are worse things a teacher can do. 

    We performed Hamlet a couple of years later.  I was constantly upping my game.   By this time, we were doing Sherlock Holmes the first half of the year.  Shakespeare occupied the second half.  This particular year I had a child show up in my class who had spent her life in the back woods of Alabama.  She had never seen a book.  She didn’t know what the alphabet was.  But I was teaching 6th grade that year, and Jenny was 12 years old.  They put her in my class.

    Her special ed teacher, Jody Novack, and I worked our asses off with Jenny.  She was a very sweet girl who really wanted to learn.  They made me give her the standardized test that year.  I think it was called the CBEST, but don’t quote me on that.  It was more than 30 years ago, and I can’t always remember what I had for lunch yesterday anymore so I could be wrong. 

    I asked if she could be exempted from taking the test since there was no way she could pass it.  You might as well have given me a test in Japanese.  She was just up to the level of Dr. Seuss by the time the test was to be administered.  No, the district told me, she had to take the test.  Could I at least read it to her so there might be some means of this revealing what Jenny knew?  No.  That’s not allowed.  Fine. 

    When I gave her the test, Jenny asked what she was supposed to do.  I told her to fill in one bubble on each line.  She was happy to do that.  She made a pretty little pattern down the page. 

    When she finished, she pulled out the Hamlet script we were doing and went one word at a time as Mrs. Novack had taught her to do.  She was determined to learn to read that because she desperately wanted to play Ophelia.  “Read one word, Jenny.  Then read the next one, and put the two words together.  Then do the third word.  Keep doing that until you have the whole sentence.  Then read the sentence and know you did it.”  Mrs. Novack’s method was time consuming but effective.

    I mention this test only because when we got the results back, Jenny was in the 35th percentile.  Standardized tests measure nothing meaningful.  If you want a meaningful measurement, you should have watched Jenny raving like a lunatic after Ophelia’s brother, Laertes, and her father, Polonius, are killed by her boyfriend, Hamlet.  To this day, I can hear Jenny on that stage…

    There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance.  Pray you, love, remember.  And there is pansies, that’s for thoughts. . . . There’s fennel for you, and columbines.  There’s rue for you, and here’s some for me; we may call it herb of grace o’Sundays.  You must wear your rue with a difference.  There’s a daisy.  I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died.  They say he made a good end.

    All right, she wasn’t Kate Winslet, but when she took her curtain call, all 40 people in the audience gave her a standing ovation.  And I never saw anyone glowing with more pride.  That’s how you measure student success.

    Six years later, she was graduating from high school, and she called our school and told my principal that she, Jody Novack, and I all had to come to her graduation because she was making a speech.  We took the morning off and went to see Jenny in her robes on the stage.

    “When I got here to California, I didn’t know how to read.  It was easy to think I was dumb, but I had a couple of teachers and a principal who refused to believe that.  Mrs. Novack worked with me every day before and after school on my lines for Hamlet because Mr. Eder let me play Ophelia.  Mr. Eder was completely convinced I could do it, and he convinced me.  Today you can ask me anything you want about Hamlet, and I can give you an intelligent answer.  Because they were right.  I wasn’t dumb.  I just needed a little help.”  And then Jenny looked over to me, and she said words I’ve never forgotten.  “To be or not to be, Mr. Eder?  I choose to be.”

    I cried like a little girl.  More than 30 years later, I get tears in my eyes every time I think of that moment.

    That’s why we teach.  That’s why I taught. 

    And then it began to crumble.  It began with No Child Left Behind, but that was certainly not the end of it.  Someone realized that a state might spend as much as 20% of its budget on public education.  There was money to be made there.  The testing industry promptly produced tests that showed that public education was failing, that our students were stupid, and that only by using the curriculum designed by the testing companies could we possibly save our students.  It was Professor Harold Hill’s Boys’ Band coming to rescue us from the evils of the Pool Hall. 

    Imagination was banned from my classroom by the time I quit in 2016.  There would be no more school plays.  There would be no more Sherlock Holmes, no more Shakespeare, and I was dreaming if I thought I could teach To Kill a Mockingbird to a 6th grader.  It was about data.  How many words per minute can they read?  Why this matters is a complete mystery to me.  I don’t know many people who love reading who are in a hurry to zip through the book.  If I take you out to a 5-Star restaurant, are you really going to see how quickly you can consume the steak, or are you going to savor every morsel?  If you’re reading this, I hope you’re taking the time to enjoy it.  If you’re listening to it, I promise I’m not rushing.  I would like you to be able to absorb each word.  Since some people have difficulty with that because of my use of music, I always include the transcript so you can follow along at a good pace.

    Public education has been bought and destroyed by corporations.  I have great respect for those who continue to try, but if I can’t help Jenny anymore, if I can’t watch my students’ eyes light up as they begin to understand what people have told them they couldn’t even read, I don’t want any part of it.  I’ll leave you with words no corporation could ever understand.

    I met a traveller from an antique land,

    Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

    Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,

    Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

    And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

    Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

    Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

    The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

    And on the pedestal, these words appear:

    My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

    Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

    Nothing beside remains.  Round the decay

    Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

    The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

    — Percy Bysshe Shelley

    Posted on by Fred

    Speedy Shine’s Backyard Dogcast: Pilot

    My name is Speedy Shine, but that’s just what The Smelly Old Man calls me.  The Big Man with the Biggerer Houseses used to call me Speedy, and The Woman With The White Hair calleded me Hubert. 

    White Hair Woman didn’t like me very much because I made too many poopsers, and I would always try to get the foodsers from her plate and then she would hit my nose, and it hurteded.  She took me to the place with the other dogsers and I lived behind the glass thing and sometimes I went out with the other dogsers and we would bark at each other.  I was never scared of them, though.  They were bigger than I am, but they didn’t know about my Secret Identity.  I can’t tell you about it because of Practical Cats.

    Then The Man With The Biggerer Houseses took me to his great big huge place and there was lots and lots of room for me to have my Zoomies.  I likeded that part. 

    But he getteded mad at me about chewing on the soft things and pulling all the floofsers out and putting them on the floor where everyone knows they really belong.  He used to yell at me, and he spankeded me and that hurt, so I trieded to bite him and he took me back to the place where the glass house and the other dogsers were.  I madeded friends with one of them, but then he wasn’t there anymore.  I seeded a hooman take him to the room where the dogsers don’t come back.  I guess nobody wanteded him.  I’m sorry for him.  That’s a sad part.

    I was a little bit afraid they were going to take me to that room because lots of hoomans came to see me, but then they didn’t want to take me home when they heareded that I like to chew on things. 

    Then The Smelly Old Man and The Pretty Girl came to see me.  I likeded The Pretty Girl because I could smell the other dogsers on her.  The Smelly Old Man was just smelly, so I thought I would be better off with her.  But after we getteded in the car and left, she leavededed me with The Smelly Old Man and I misseded her right away.  She’s only come to see me one time, and that makes me sad.

    The Smelly Old Man nameded me Speedy Shine because there was this other girl on the glass thing who sang about “Shine,” and he knew that should be my name because, he said, I make him Shine. 

    He’s figuring out my Secret Identity, I think, because I keep waking him up when he is about to die.  He knows about Love.  He knows it’s the most powerful force in the universeses.  I wonder if he will ever understand that I am secretly all the love in the universe in a furry fourteen-pound package.  That’s just me.

    Posted on by Fred · 4 Comments

    Refuse Boxes

    Trigger Warning

    I’m surprised to need a trigger warning in this piece because I didn’t think it was powerful enough to warrant one.  The story you’re about to hear, however, is the only story I’ve ever written that actually made my best friend angry with me.  When I write my normally calm, rational arguments against the existence of homelessness, she has little reaction.  “It’s okay, Fred, but I’ve heard it all before.  It’s just not very moving.  I’m sorry.”

    That wasn’t the case this time.  She was angry that the story existed.  I sent it to her right after I finished it because I was proud of it.  She wrote me back promptly.  “I hate it!  Never again.  Please!  God!  WTF Dude?”

    So… you are hereby warned.  Animals are injured offscreen in this story.  If that’s going to bother you more than you can tolerate, you’ll want to skip this.  I’ll read you the story, and then I’ll return to explain to you what an allegory is, and how this parallels what we’re doing to human beings, right now, in Arizona and California.  This is called “Refuse Boxes.”

    Refuse Boxes

    Karen Adamson walked into the parking lot behind the condos, and she rolled her eyes and sighed with disgust.  She took out her pen and began to write feverishly on her clipboard.  She took pictures of the rain-soaked boxes behind 616.  The Homeowner’s Association was never going to allow this.  She was already quoting the rule in her head: 

    No Lot shall be used or maintained as a dumping ground for rubbish.  All trash shall be regularly removed from each Lot and shall not be allowed to accumulate thereon.  Trash, garbage, or other waste shall be kept in sanitary, covered containers.  All equipment for the storage or disposal of such materials shall be kept in a clean and sanitary condition.  In no event shall such equipment and/or containers be visible from the Common Area streets, from neighboring Property, or within property contained in the Plat, except for a reasonable time immediately prior to and after scheduled trash collection, and in all events in compliance with Fairvale County Code.

    She was looking forward to talking to Mr. Singleman.  She was going to show him who was in charge.  “Wretched refuse.  People just live like pigs.  This is a fine of $100 a day, per day, up to $1000.  He’ll take me seriously when I present him with this violation.”

    A kitten stepped out of one of the boxes, looked up at her, and then scurried back inside.  Karen knelt and looked in the box.  Cat food?  What could this guy be thinking?  Encouraging feral cats?  That’s a violation, too.  That’s another $25.00. 

    A black and white puppy waddled out of another box.  He saw Adamson and began jumping around her ankles, yipping excitedly.    “What kind of place is this?”  She kicked him away.  The dog yelped and limped into another box.  In a moment its mother poked her head out and growled.  Karen gave the dog a glare, and it went back inside.

    The boxes were piled 4 or 5 high, and from the box at the top she heard an obnoxious squealing sound.  A moment later, a finch dropped from the sky and entered the box.  When she looked inside, Mrs. Adamson saw the bird feeding its babies. 

    She stood staring at the disgusting mess that was the back of Condo 616, and then she thought.  None of these horrid things is a pet.  They’re not registered.  They’re not licensed.  They don’t count.  They don’t matter at all. 

    She took out a cigarette and lit it.  She blew the smoke toward the animal tenement.  These things are a menace.  And these boxes… they’re dangerous.  They’re a… yes… yes.  She took a long drag from her cigarette.  She grinned.  They’re a fire hazard.  She flipped the cigarette into the box with the birds’ nest and nodded.  As the smoke began to waft out, she thought, “I’ll show them who’s in charge.”  As the smoke grew thicker, she chuckled softly and walked away enjoying the sound of the burning birds. 

    ***

    Allegory, as defined by Merriam-Webster:  the expression by means of symbolic fictional figures and actions of truths or generalizations about human existence

    “Refuse Boxes” is an allegory for the homeless.  Its hidden meaning is, I think, completely clear, but in the event I am wrong, the animals are people.  The boxes are homeless encampments. 

    When this happens to humans, we dismiss it.  If it makes the news at all, we’re likely to scroll past it without much thought.  It doesn’t strike close enough to our emotions for it to matter much to us. 

    It’s a general rule among humans that we can’t tolerate hurting animals, at least not cute and harmless ones.  Everyone cries at the end of “Old Yeller,” but we can, for the most part, dismiss the earthquake in Tukey which has, as of this writing, taken the lives of more than 28,000 living, breathing people.  Among those who have survived, homelessness has skyrocketed.  Their dwellings were destroyed.  But it didn’t happen in America.  We don’t know any of these folks.  Sorry that happened.  Bummer.  Does anyone know who won the Super Bowl?  Oh, and did you hear about the twenty-million-dollar Jesus ad?

    Our priorities are misplaced.  This is not to say that animals don’t matter.  If anything ever happened to Speedy Shine (my dog for those who are new here), I would be devastated.  My love for him is off the scale.  He’s infinitely closer to me than anyone in Turkey.  But the fact is every one of those people matters more than he does.  Not to me, perhaps, since I never met them, but certainly to those who have.  All of them have mothers and fathers, and most of those people have people who love them as much as I love Speedy Shine.

    Of course, we can’t feel empathy for every human death.  We would be unable to function.  We’d spend our lives in a fetal position as we drowned in a river of tears.  But we can recognize their significance.

    We can certainly try to change things.  As much as you’re hurt by the deaths of the birds, the dogs, and the cats in the Refuse Boxes, we need to be at least as concerned about the plight of those who live in such places in the homo sapiens world. 

    Here in Arizona, police conduct regular sweeps at homeless encampments to rid the neighborhood of the pests.  But these aren’t rats.  They aren’t even dogs or cats.  They’re people.  I’m perilously close to joining them.  And, unless you’re a billionaire, you’re much closer to them than you would probably like to imagine.  (And if you are a billionaire, what are you doing about homelessness?  I promise you have the money to end it, all by yourself, and please don’t talk to me about liquid assets versus investment assets.  That’s a half-ass excuse.) 

    The American Civil Liberties Union is suing to stop the destruction.  I won’t go into the details here, but they can be found in the article below.

    https://apnews.com/article/arizona-homelessness-3fed4cf117ef8f48d2538e127600f109

    Why don’t we mind so much about people?  I think it’s because we find a way to blame them for their situations.  Some of us use The Bible to justify our contempt. 

    Thessalonians 3:10, KJV: For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat.

    I don’t pretend to be wise enough to know what caused people to be homeless.  Certainly those in Turkey whose homes were destroyed by an earthquake did nothing to “deserve” homelessness.  I don’t feel comfortable making judgments about others.  I know that people make decisions I might not make, but I don’t know what caused them to make those choices. 

    We also hide behind The Law, as though it were carved into sapphire, immutable and unchangeable.  Laws can be, and frequently are, changed.  As the world changes, so must its laws.  I promise you that it’s not that being homeless is against the law that keeps me from joining an encampment.  It’s that I don’t want to be in one.  I will do all I can to continue to live here in my little home.  (A quick thank you to The People On The Porch and my Unofficial Patron Saints who continue to help me to accomplish that goal.)

    I’m working on a 5-part story about that, even now, called “Why?”  I’m hoping to illustrate that people who are easy to condemn might have been forced into choices we wish they hadn’t made by circumstances beyond their control.  I’m currently stuck trying to make Part 2 work, but I know I’ll get it right eventually.

    It’s easier for us to understand that animals are not in control of much of their existence.  We don’t seem to want to believe we share that powerlessness.  The truth is, however, that we do.  It’s easy to convince ourselves that if we work hard enough, we can take care of ourselves. 

    There is a myth that America is founded on rugged individualism.  That could not be further from the truth.  From the “founding of America” we worked together to create this country.  One Pilgrim didn’t build The Mayflower.  No one set up Plymouth Colony alone.  The Declaration of Independence was a statement we had the courage to make only because we could depend on one another.  We didn’t decide who was worthy or unworthy.  We worked together, each in our own ways.

    I don’t know what caused John or Jane Doe to become homeless.  Neither do you.  What I know is that the situation is even more horrible than in the allegory I constructed that upset so many people.  Let’s do what we can to help them, instead of ridding ourselves of them as though they were cockroaches.  People matter more than money.  They also matter even more than the cutest and most lovable of animals.  They matter even more than Speedy Shine, who matters more to me than nearly any other part of my life. 

    Posted on by Fred · 2 Comments

    Artificial Intelligence and Art

    Artificial Intelligence as Art now exists.  This is undeniable.  You can have AI paint you a picture, write you a story, compose a song for you, and clone a voice so you can use any recorded vocal sound in your work.  It isn’t going to go away.  Technology, once invented, continues forever.  We can oppose it all we want.  We can claim it’s immoral or unethical to use it.  We can file lawsuits, and I’m sure people will.  These abilities will continue to exist, nevertheless.

    The question arises, then, as to whether we should use them. 

    I excitedly announced on my Facebook page that I had found software called Eleven Labs that allowed me to clone Valerie Bertinelli’s voice so that I could use it in a 3-part science fiction story I had written called “Universe Selectors, Incorporated.”  In that story, my alter ego, Horace Singleman, is offered the opportunity to choose the universe in which he would like to live.  He considers a universe without poverty, hunger, homelessness, or war.  The Alien who offers him this chance says that’s not specific enough.  There are lots of such universes.  Horace needs to select one in which something less common occurs.  Horace adds that in this universe, Valerie Bertinelli would text him and invite him to dinner.  The Alien transports Horace to such a universe, and Horace gets both a text and a video message from her.  She has 3 or 4 lines in the show.

    I had my friend, Jurine Elkins, play the part of Valerie Bertinelli in the original story.  Jurine did a fantastic job, and I’m eternally grateful to her for her work.  But now I have the chance to have Valerie read the lines herself.  What could be cooler than that?

    This set off a storm of commentary on my page telling me what I wanted to do was immoral. 

    Here are a few samples:

    Name Redacted: Fred Eder Hijacking a professional actor’s voice (and/or image 😱) for use in publication is reprehensible and will expose the author to civil liability.  Because you are not paying them for this…  It does not make your work better.  It allows you to be the director instead of the narrator.

    I don’t think it is right to borrow the voice of someone famous to lend credence to your words – unless you have permission to.  It does not in any way improve your “ART.” It just possibly becomes more popular when you borrow the voice of someone famous to read your blog out loud.  And it is a blog – not a show.  Like an audio book.  They get paid for that.  You can say if it’s wrong, blame the developer.  I say it’s wrong to use that software for your personal gain and to someone else’s loss.  It is deceptive and I don’t see how it improves anything.  Unless you start going for comedy instead of edification.

    First, I won’t be told what my show is.  I get to decide that for myself.  To say it’s just a blog is factually incorrect.  I do both a blog and a podcast, and while the words are the same, the experiences are significantly different from one another.  If you would like to know what my show is, I did a Primer about that topic last week.

    I’m not using anyone else’s voice to “read my blog out loud.”  I’ll do that for myself, thank you.  I am, however, getting actors to play parts I can’t.  I won’t be using Morgan Freeman to read work like this piece.  I am perfectly capable of doing that myself.  I like the way I read it.  When I’m quoting someone else’s words, it seems appropriate to me to use a voice not my own. 

    When I do a theater piece, I now have the opportunity to use a complete cast of actors to play all the different roles.  As has been pointed out repeatedly, I can’t do a female voice well enough to make it work.  That’s why I used AI above.  And when I think of getting any actors I want to read the parts I’ve written, it’s a dream come true.  It’s not because it will “be more popular.”  (I’m never going to be more popular, let’s face it.) It’s because I would love to have Patrick Stewart read my lines.  It adds realism to my work when I don’t have to try to do all the different characters.  I’m a pretty decent voice actor, but I’m not nearly good enough to play all the characters I create.

    Second Name Redacted:  Actors, like artists, should be given fair recompense when their distinctive qualities are appropriated by AI.  You wouldn’t steal a pen, or pirate software.

    There would be merit and value in AI voiceover companies developing their own stylish timbres, but anything more than a brief pastiche of a real actor is theft.  Disney would sue a production using even its proprietary cartoon voices without permission.  Imagine if a noted campaigner, Mark Ruffalo, say, had his voice cloned for a Big Oil promotion.

    Even with a small affair like yours, Fred (and who knows at this stage what audiences it might reach), permission should be sought.  Who knows, the real actor might even jump in!

    This is a fair ethical concern, but only to a small extent.  I was going to respond to it, myself, but one of The People On The Porch came up with what I think is a much better argument.

    Third Name Redacted:  I find it interesting that there is so much alarm around protecting the rights of the rich and famous while the person doing this work is struggling to pay rent.

    I feel the biggest alarm should be that there are millions of people who don’t have their basic needs met and why are we okay with that, rather than arguing about the assets of millionaires and billionaires not being protected.

    We really need to sort our priorities out…

    I’m thinking of the Bible verse about Lazarus and the rich man.  Lazarus was covered in sores and hoped to eat what fell from the rich man’s table.

    Why are we complaining about the ethics of the poor “stealing” the crumbs from the tables of the rich and not the problem of wealth inequality that steals food from the mouths of the poor in the first place?…  And until we start to change the way we think about wealth and money and justice, we will be condemning the Lazaruses for trying not to die in the streets.

    One of the things I think is important to consider is this:  If I don’t use the software, the actors I would have playing my roles make zero dollars.  If I do use the software, the actors I would have playing my roles make zero dollars.  That outcome is identical in either case.  If, on the other hand, I don’t use the software, my audio dramas can’t be improved beyond my ability to use my current software and voice acting talents to make each of my characters sound unique.  If I do use the software, I can have anyone I want playing the roles I write.  The advantage is in using the software.

    The software exists.  It’s not going to disappear if I climb on top of some intangible moral or ethical principle.  Whether I use it or not, others will, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they found horrible things for which to use it.  It’s easy to imagine governments, who have access to more powerful software, using it to invent nefarious lies to hurt other governments.  Big businesses can do the same.  I’m sure other artists will find other less than kind ways to employ this type of software.  

    If they get around to making it illegal, that won’t change the fact that it exists, and it will be used.  If I’m not allowed to post the work I do with it for fear of copyright infringement, I will still use it and create the coolest audio dramas I can.  I will just not post my work publicly.  I’ll email it to a few people who I think will enjoy it.  I’ll listen to it, myself, because I will enjoy it. 

    The same questions arise for painters, composers, and writers.  I can’t paint.  I can’t even draw.  And while I wish I could pay my friends, Jenn or Michelle, to paint the pictures I need for my blog, I can’t.  AI can do what I can’t.  I still haven’t had completely satisfactory results with it, but I suspect that will improve over time.  It helps my Art, and it’s free and easy to use.

    I can’t write music, but I just learned about new software that should be able to do that for me, and I’m excited about this idea.  If I learn to use it, my show will include music you’ll never have heard before.  I love that idea.

    ChatGPT can already write college level essays.  Professors are working on ways to determine if it was written by software or a human.  I’m sure it can write excellent fiction as well.  I’m a writer.  And it doesn’t bother me in the least.  It can’t write a Fred Eder story.  It will never be able to do that.  It can undoubtedly imitate my style.  It can use my ideas.  But it will never have my thoughts.  It can’t because I don’t even have them all, myself, yet.  And if it can write a story better than I can (millions of humans can already do this), more power to it.  Let’s have more great literature in the world, regardless of its source. 

    Is AI going to replace artists?  It’s replacing humans all the time.  That’s the central idea in The Teddy Bear Coder, and I promise I wasn’t the first, or even the hundred first, to come up with that idea.  If AI can do something to help us, that’s great.  If it can eliminate the need for us to “work,” in the sense of having to do things we don’t want to do so we can make enough money to live, I’m in favor of that.  How many craftsmen have been put out of work by 3D printing?  Cashiers are becoming increasingly rare.  Tellers are seldom used.  Talking to a human being on the phone at a business of any sort is generally a marathon of button pushing.  You don’t always get there even then. 

    And, whether you or I approve or not will change nothing.  We can either embrace what it can do for us, or we can fight a battle we are doomed to lose. 

    Henry Drummond: Progress has never been a bargain.  You have to pay for it. Sometimes I think there’s a man who sits behind a counter and says, “All right, you can have a telephone, but you lose privacy and the charm of distance.  Madam, you may vote but at a price: you lose the right to retreat behind the powder puff or your petticoat.  Mister, you may conquer the air, but the birds will lose their wonder and the clouds will smell of gasoline.”

    — Inherit The Wind  Nedrick Young(screenplay) Harold Jacob Smith(screenplay) Jerome Lawrence(play)

    If we’re going to deal with the losses Progress creates, I’m going to make the best use I can of the advantages it brings.  I won’t apologize for that.  I believe I’m right.  I recognize I could be wrong.  I welcome your comments. 

    Artificial Intelligence is opening up possibilities that have never existed before.  Let’s use what’s available to us to make a better world.  Let’s Shine in the light of human progress, even when that progress is made by a machine.