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

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

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

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

Fred’s Front Porch Podcast Primer

Welcome to Fred’s Front Porch Podcast.  This episode is designed specifically for new listeners.  If you’ve been with us for a while, you’ll learn some things you never knew, so it’s still worth your time.

This podcast is unlike any other you’ve probably ever heard.  There are, to my knowledge, perhaps 2 more that do what I do, and even then, they have different themes and ideas.

First, this show doesn’t have a specific niche.  There are lots of podcasts about Sherlock Holmes, Star Trek, science fiction in general, and any other topic I bring up on this show.  There are podcasts about Aaron Sorkin (or at least The West Wing) and probably podcasts about To Kill a Mockingbird.  There are lots of politics and culture podcasts.  Mine is all these things and more.  It also includes my own fiction and a few theater pieces from time to time.  Most of my fiction is the “first final draft.”  This means it was as good as I could make it at the time the episode was released.  The Teddy Bear Coder, which just came out a few weeks ago, will be my first published novel.  By the time you read it, I will have done at least 3 more drafts by myself, and at least one or two more drafts when the editor gets involved.  The intention is to release it as an audiobook as well, and it will be a full cast production.  I hope to have actors playing the characters.  I will still narrate.  It will be essentially the best Fred’s Front Porch Podcast you’ve ever heard.  That’s still a long way away, though, so don’t get excited… yet.

The overarching theme of my podcast is Idealism.  I believe in a better world.  I believe we can create it.  I believe “There is no Them; we are all Us.”  You’ll hear that in many of my episodes.  You’ll also learn quite a bit about my personal life.  There are episodes about hospital visits, and episodes about my life nearly ending, and episodes about the voices doing battle in my head.  I freely admit to being mentally ill.  I’m also diabetic.  Neither of those are my fault, nor do I believe they make me a bad person.  (I have plenty of other traits, though, that probably do.)

I steal quotations ruthlessly.  For example:

“We live in capitalism.  Its power seems inescapable.  So did the divine right of kings.  Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.  Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.”


― Ursula K. Le Guin

That’s an excellent explanation of why I do this show.

I will rarely do interviews.  I can’t write an interview, unless it’s an interview with a Time Traveler.  (That’s really a very good episode.)  I don’t have Aaron Sorkin begging to be on my show.  The biggest celebrity I’ve ever interviewed was Sara Niemietz.  Frankly, that was less for you than it was for me.  I got to talk to my favorite singer for more than an hour.  The longest I have ever managed was 5 minutes a few times after her concerts.  That was one of the high points of my career. 

Second, this sounds like only a few other podcasts.  Music is an important part of this show.  I spend more than I can afford getting music I can use legally, and I believe it adds to the catharsis I always hope to create.  It will sometimes feel as though the music goes on too long.  I hope you’ll learn to experience it rather than skip over it.  Music speaks a language no words can.  It is, as Stevie Wonder told us, “A language we all understand.”  Let the music speak what my words can’t.  My intention is to make you think, make you feel, or, in the best episodes, both. 

I manipulate my voice in many ways to emphasize certain points.  Italics, Bold Print, and Underlines, can’t be conveyed in sound.  (Neither can parentheticals.)

This is “Guardian of Forever.” It’s a user patch a former friend created that helps me to add a sort of reverb you won’t hear elsewhere.  It was invented for my episode “Horace’s Final Five.”  That episode is where my podcast matured and began to blossom into what it has become.  It’s sort of The Heart of The Podcast.  Most of my listeners have heard it.  It’s Episode 50.  I recommend it highly.  You’ll often see Facebook posts where I talk about scoring and Horacing.  This is where the term was first used.  It’s often used for quotations or for something I think is particularly important. 

This is “Warp Factor.” It echoes words that I want to underline.  It’s standard in Logic Pro, which is the software I use to create this show.

This is “Dark Symbiote.” It’s used for emphasizing something with which I disagree, or when I want to suggest evil.  It was also created by a former friend of mine.

Those are the patches I use most frequently.  I also use “Telephone Vocal” to show you something parenthetical.  The idea is the Producer Fred is interjecting something into the Performer Fred’s show.

Once in a great while, you will hear character patches.  Speedy Shine and all the Winnie The Pooh characters have patches just for them.

When I do science fiction, such as “The Teddy Bear Coder,” “Interview With a Time Traveler,” or “Universe Selectors, Incorporated,” I add special effects and odd voices.  These are often sent to my friend, Chris from Interstellar Frequency, to make it sound the way I need it to sound.  I have some technical abilities, but his are much greater than mine.  I want this show to sound as good as it possibly can, and I will use any resource I can find to accomplish that goal.

The show always includes a preview of next week’s episode and my Gratitudes.  I thank everyone who has helped me with this show in any way because I believe Gratitude is a good lens through which to see life. 

The Gratitudes include nearly 50 people, so it can run as long as six minutes.  Many people skip that part, and I understand, but it’s worthwhile to know I couldn’t possibly do this alone.  I never want anyone who helps me in any way to think I’m ungrateful. 

I can exist only because of all the help I get.  Without all the people whose names you hear at the end of each episode, I would be homeless.  I could, if I were very lucky, and the temperature was right, survive as much as 72 hours that way.  I would have to give Speedy Shine away.  I could only hope to find him a good home. 

I just got my form from Social Security.  I live at $1776.60 annually over the poverty line.  This means I can’t get food stamps, although I still get Medicare.  One hospital bill would finish me.  (In fact, I have one for $850 from my surgery, and there’s simply no way I will ever be able to pay it.)  Thus, the Gratitudes Section of my show is of paramount importance to me.  My Credit Score requires a high-power microscope to be seen at all.  I’ve been destroyed financially since I quit teaching seven years ago. 

I think of my show as taking place on a Front Porch near Atticus Finch’s house in Maycomb County.  I assume my listeners are more intelligent than I am, and that they have read the most iconic books in American Literature.  I assume everyone knows To Kill a Mockingbird, for example.  If I have listeners who don’t know those things, I always hope they’ll go and check them out. 

“People moved slowly then.  They ambled across the square, shuffled in and out of the stores around it, took their time about everything.  A day was twenty-four hours long but seemed longer.  There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries of Maycomb County.  But it was a time of vague optimism for some people; Maycomb County had recently been told it had nothing to fear but fear itself.”

— Harper Lee, “To Kill a Mockingbird” Chapter 1

I don’t do regular commercials.  You’ll probably never hear me telling you why you should use Anchor for your podcasts or a particular brand of wax for your car.  If you ever do, you may be sure someone has paid me enough money to make that worthwhile.  That would require more than a few dollars.  I object to commercials.  That’s why the only commercials you’ll hear will be to get you to go support me on Patreon so you can listen to my Art without commercial interruptions.  I will sometimes advertise someone else’s Patreon when I think it’s important enough.  You’ll hear an ad for Sara Niemietz’s page in one of my episodes.  I mention those of friends sometimes. 

The show has grown and evolved since its inauspicious beginning.  I have learned much more about using sound.  People have kindly bought me the equipment I need to make this podcast sound the way you hear it.  This includes a MacBook Air, a very good mic, a very good preamp, and even an excellent desktop computer.  I bought a few little pieces, including headphones that are now 3 years old, that help complete the studio.  The three monitors I use came with the house I’m renting.  So did my awesome studio desk.

I am a better writer now than I was 3 years ago.  This is especially true in the last couple of months because I have been getting coaching from one of America’s greatest writers.  I’m proud of that. 

Finally, this is a writer’s show.  I am a writer before anything else.  You will almost never hear a single word on this podcast that I haven’t written before I recorded it.  This is my way of giving my writing every ounce of power it can possibly have.  Nearly every episode gets posted now on my Word Press page, and you can find a link to that in the show notes so you can read along… or, if you prefer reading to listening, just skip the listening and read what I wrote.  As long as I can get my message to you, I’m a happy man.  I think it’s more fun to read and listen at the same time, but I won’t tell you how to enjoy your life. 

I’m a retired teacher, and I am a diabetic living on Disability, Patreon, the generosity of my Unofficial Patron Saints, and the charity of my landlord who rents me this place at half price.  Unofficial Patron Saints are people who have made significant contributions to my survival or my show, but who aren’t actually on Patreon.  Miss Maudie keeps me in groceries.  Boo Radley bought me the desktop on which I write all of this.  Shoshana Edwards paid for a month of my coaching. 

Patron Saints are supporting me for $100 a month.  Producers are paying $50.  Patrons are paying $20.  Sponsors contribute $10.  Supporters are donating $5.00.  Everyone gets some sort of merchandise if they are on the porch for 3 months or more.  The higher your donation, the more expensive the merchandise.   Anchor supporters are those who subscribe that way for $5.00 a month.  I may drop that and go back to listener support on Anchor.  Patreon is really the best way to support me.

Patreon subscribers get the show on Sunday night at 7 PM.  The rest of the world gets it the following Tuesday at 7 PM.  There are no commercials on Patreon.

My podcast is all I can do to contribute to the world anymore.  It requires some stamina, but no physical strength.  And I have the option to sleep whenever I start to get too tired so I can avoid going to the hospital as much as possible.

I try to end every episode with some hope (at least if the episode is self-contained).  I would like you to leave the show feeling better than you felt before you came up to the Porch.  We often begin in darkness, and we find some small candlelight to guide us to a better tomorrow.  As long as there is life, there will be hope.  My hope is that this episode helped you to understand me better.  In understanding lies the chance to learn, to grow, and to blossom into something new and beautiful.  It helps us to Shine more brightly.  I’ll be Shining here, and I’ll watch for your light in the darkness.  And we can sit together on The Front Porch and talk about the world.

Posted on by Fred

The Teddy Bear Coder Part 3:

An Unexpected Christmas Visit

December 25

7:46 AM

Fairvale, California

Jack woke up, stretched, and reached for Teddy.  “Merry Christmas, Bear!” 

He was surprised to find Teddy was nowhere to be found.  He searched under his blankets, and then jumped out of bed and looked beneath it.  He hunted for him on the floor, on the desk, and behind the computer.  He took the briefest moment to admire the growth of the bean plant, (it was nearly a foot tall now!) and then he took it from the bedside table.  He leaned the table forward to see if Teddy had somehow fallen behind it.  His bear wasn’t there.

Nat King Cole was singing about chestnuts roasting on an open fire while the 8-foot Christmas tree glittered with tinsel and ornaments in the living room.  Wrapped presents were underneath the tree.  It was a Norman Rockwell Christmas scene when Jack came running down the stairs.  He was not happy.

“Have you seen Teddy?” he shouted when he came into the living room. 

Marion got up from the couch to kneel in front of Jack.  “He’s not in your room?”  She smiled knowingly at Martin.

“He’s nowhere upstairs, and he can’t operate down here.  I thought he might have fallen down the stairs, lost his contact with our Bluetooth, and been unable to get back upstairs.”

“That’s logical thinking,” said Martin, lighting his pipe.  “It doesn’t seem likely, though, since I don’t see him at the bottom of the steps.  Do you?”

Jack looked under the staircase, and he became more concerned, still.  “What could have happened to him?”

“Maybe Santa Claus took him back to The North Pole to work on him,” said Martin thoughtfully.  He puffed his pipe.  “Had you considered that possibility?”

Jack rolled his eyes.  “Father, Santa doesn’t exist.  We’ve been through this.”

“If you had asked me three weeks ago,” said Marion, sitting beneath the tree, “I would have told you that walking, talking Teddy Bears don’t exist either.  I would have been wrong, though, wouldn’t I?”

“Teddy’s existence doesn’t violate the laws of physics, Mother.  He’s just an extension of what we could already do.  He’s a simple step forward.  If I don’t find him… what will happen to him?”  Tears began to form in Jack’s eyes.

“Well, why don’t we open some presents,” said Jack’s father, “and we’ll deal with the Teddy problem later.”

“How am I supposed to think about presents when Teddy could be in mortal danger?”

“I don’t think someone who isn’t actually alive can be in mortal danger, do you?” Martin looked at his son seriously.

“How do you know he’s not alive?  He does nearly everything living things do.”

“Living things all share what traits?” Martin asked.  “You know this one.”

“He grows and develops.  That’s what his AI is all about.  He reproduces his traits.  That’s how he got you out of doing all that work.  He can respond to stimuli.  He answers nearly every question asked of him.  He can adapt to his environment.  He uses energy.  That’s why I charge him every week.  He evolves, just not through natural selection.”

“He doesn’t breathe.  He doesn’t ingest food.  He doesn’t create waste.  You sort of left those out, didn’t you?”

“Not every form of life does those things.  For example, some bacteria can obtain energy through the process of chemosynthesis, using inorganic compounds as a source of energy rather than sunlight.  Some organisms, such as plants, can produce their own food through photosynthesis, using energy from the sun to convert water and carbon dioxide into glucose.”

“He still doesn’t breathe, though, does he?”

“Life can exist without oxygen.  Some microorganisms, such as certain types of bacteria and archaea, can survive and carry out their metabolic processes in the absence of oxygen.  These organisms are known as anaerobes, and they can obtain energy through processes other than cellular respiration, such as fermentation or chemosynthesis.”

“So, you think Teddy is alive?” asked Marion.

“He’s just a different form of life, Mother.  He does everything living things do.  And right now, if he’s still on, he has to be scared.  We have to find him.”

“Hmm…” Martin picked up a present from under the tree.  “This one is marked ‘To Jack, From Santa.’  I wonder what it is.”

Jack looked at his Father suspiciously.  He took the present and ripped the wrapping paper ingloriously from it.  He opened the box and saw Teddy sitting inside.  “You scared me half to death, Father.”

“It wasn’t your Father, Jack.  Don’t you remember what you told me you were dreaming of for Christmas?”

“Children all over the world getting a living Teddy Bear.  We’re not that far along.  And Teddy can only live upstairs.”

“Turn him on, Smart Guy,” said Martin.

Jack frowned and pressed Teddy’s nose.  The stuffed bear stretched, stood up, and hugged Jack.  “Merry Christmas, Jack.”

Tears began to well up in Jack’s eyes.  He looked at his parents.  “How did you…”

“I think you said you wanted more Wi-fi coverage for Christmas.  Teddy can work anywhere in the house now, and for quite a distance in the yard.”  Martin was grinning.

Jack hugged Martin and Marion together.  “This is the best Christmas ever!”

And that’s when the pounding on the door came. 

They heard someone outside shout, “FBI!” before the door was kicked open. 

Marion screamed and leapt on top of Jack.  Martin dropped his pipe and got to his feet.  “What the hell…”

“Everyone stay right where you are,” said the large well-dressed man pointing a gun at Martin.  “Martin Zephyr, you’re under arrest for Unauthorized Computer Access, under 18 USC 1030.”  He moved to Martin quickly while the other two agents began searching the house.  “We’re executing a search warrant.  I need you to get on the ground on your stomach and put your hands behind your back.”

Marion was shaking and holding Jack tight, his head pressed to her chest so he couldn’t see what was happening.    She heard the agent handcuffing Martin and reading him his Miranda rights.  Her eyes were closed and tears started to slip down her cheek.  She heard the sound of feet coming down the stairs. 

“Did you get all the computers?”

“There were only two.  One in the office and the other in the kid’s room.”

Marion didn’t see Teddy crawling out from beneath Jack, who was rocking back and forth in his mother’s arms.  She heard his voice, though.

“Excuse me, gentlemen.  It wasn’t Mr. Zephyr.”

Marion opened her eyes now and saw Teddy standing in front of the agents, his paws above his head.

“It was me.”

Posted on by Fred

Imagine Enough:

A World Without Money

Coloring the Sea Around the Pribilof Islands by NASA Goddard Photo and Video is licensed under CC-BY 2.0

Imagine…  Imagine a world where Greed is pointless.  Everyone has all they need.  Why horde food when you already have all you can eat?  What’s the point of having more of anything than someone else when you already have all you need?  Imagine The Unimaginable.  Imagine a world without money.

I know.  The thought is staggering.  Interestingly, while there are 7.7 million other species on this planet, we’re the only ones who ever needed money.  Sharks don’t pay each other for food.  Lions don’t loan each other money at 7.9% interest to partake of this evening’s zebra.  An earthworm never paid for the privilege of slithering through the Earth.  We’re unique.

You can say that the only reason we work is to make money, and in the world in which you and I live, that’s probably true.  But we’ve been on the planet, in one form or another, for as long as 300,000 years, and we’ve used money for only the last 5,000 to 40,000 years, depending on whom you ask.  In any case we went more than a quarter million years without it.  True, we began to advance more quickly when money showed up on the stage, but I have confidence we could have found another way.  Even if that’s not true, it has certainly outlived its usefulness.  We have continued to evolve, and our social systems are lagging behind our technology.

We assume that it is natural — in fact, unavoidable — to be greedy.  We want more than we need today in case we start running low tomorrow.  I understand that.  I just ordered 9 36-packs of Diet Pepsi because Costco had a good deal, and I don’t want to run out… before my next paycheck. 

I wouldn’t do that, though, if I didn’t have to worry about when I would have money again.  Why take up all the space on my counter if I can get more whenever I want it?  I would have enough around for today, probably tomorrow, and, if I had plenty of room, maybe as far as next week, but only because I’m too lazy to push the buttons on my phone to order more every day.  Beyond that, there would be no point.  And I just used the evil word, didn’t I?  Lazy!!!

We’ve been taught to believe the Greatest Virtue is work.  Work earns us money.  Money buys us freedom and progress.  Laziness is a sin.  If everyone were freed from the chase for dollars, we would lie around all day and do nothing.

Except…

I don’t think we would.  “I don’t know about anyone but me,” as Jackson Browne so eloquently put it, but when I have enough, I become truly productive.  I spend my time writing.  I spend it enjoying other people’s Art.  There’s no crime in watching Netflix, or reading a book, or listening to music.  I stare sometimes at the paintings in my house and let them fill me with emotions I can’t quite name.  None of these activities is laziness.  They are all pieces that go into making my life meaningful.  They nourish my soul.

What would you do if all your time belonged to you?  I know several people who would create Arts and Crafts.  I know others who would smoke weed all day and think about someone they love.  The man who saved my life would probably be producing the greatest podcast in the world.  He’s younger and has more energy than I do, and he possesses technical skills that blow mine out of the water.  Sadly, for us, he has to spend most of his time chasing the money he requires to feed his family.  What he does is helpful, to be sure.  I would like that to be, however, something he chooses to do rather than something he is forced to do. 

I have a friend who makes money sitting around playing a video game, and I’m happy for him.  Video games aren’t my gig, but they are absolutely an Art form, and I’m impressed by the creative effort that goes into producing them.    Experiencing Art enhances one’s life.  It gives the artist a little touch of immortality.  Shakespeare is around more than 4 centuries after his death.  (I hope to make it for 4 weeks beyond my demise.)  The paintings on my wall, in their original forms, are more than a hundred years old, and Van Gogh is still with me.  Yes, mine are copies, and I have great respect and gratitude for the people and technology that created them.  Long after I’m gone, my original Agnew painting of Speedy Shine will be staring out at someone who needs a little love.  My uncle’s paintings will still bring a sense of wonder long after he’s gone.  The people who created Gary’s video games will be remembered centuries after anyone is playing their games anymore, if not by name, then by the fruits of their labors.  The person who created Pong opened the door for the most advanced video games you’ll ever play. 

I have no doubt that those artists made some money, but I don’t think that was their primary motivation.  If no one ever had to go to work again, what would we do?  I have no doubt someone would try to create a better video game, not for the money, but for the experience of playing something even cooler.  They do it now.  “Mods” are available for nearly any game, and few people make money creating them.    

We would free scientists of every sort to work on what interests them.  We’ll never know how many Einsteins or Hawkings we lost to Circle K and McDonald’s.  How many times has the next Marie Curie asked customers how they would like their steaks cooked?  And if we freed these folks to work on the questions that fascinate them, no one would need to do those jobs anymore.  We can automate nearly anything now, and we’re getting more efficient at it all the time.  When was the last time a cashier rang you up at Wal Mart?  Instead of hating automation, we should herald it as the first step into a world where money is irrelevant.  It allows humans to be free to turn our attention to our passions.   

“We don’t have the resources for everyone to have whatever they want!”

I’m sorry, but that’s simply not true.  You’ve heard me quote the statistics over and over on this show.  We do have enough food and shelter for everyone on Earth, and, if we made better use of our resources, we could preserve the planet a little longer.  That’s really the biggest problem we all share.  If we continue down this path, it won’t be long before we exhaust those resources.  We’ve done sufficient damage to the environment that within less than a decade we’ll be fighting wars over water.  Forget gold.  Water is the source of life.  We’re only a few years away from The Colorado River being unable to supply us with the water we need in Arizona.  What will we do then?

I’m not smart enough to solve this problem, but other people are.  I don’t want them to spend their lives asking if I would like fries with that.  I want them to figure it out.  So do you.  Whatever it is you love to do, you can’t do it without water. 

When the wars come, millions more will die.  Wars exist because they make money.  People are specially trained to kill so that people can make money.  Children are in cages so that people can make money.  Borders are guarded by people with guns so that people can make money.  Religions are founded and then crumble so that people can make money.  All of this because someone, somewhere, doesn’t have… Enough.

I’ve had Enough of war and destruction and bloodshed.  I’ve had Enough of racism and misogyny.  I’ve had Enough of hatred.  I hope you have, too. 

I have Enough food to eat today.  I have Enough Diet Pepsi.  I have Enough weed.  I have Enough insulin.  I have Enough.  I have no desire for more.  I would certainly take it if someone offered it to me, but I don’t need more.   Not tonight.  I hope you have all you need, too.

People aren’t naturally greedy.  I made my first spareribs in a crock pot tonight because another writer I barely know likes my work, and she gave me both the meat and the appliance.  This is who people are when we give them Enough.

I will need more when what I have runs out.  If I’ve done everything correctly, that won’t be until my next money arrives so I can get more.  It’s not that the planet can’t provide me with Enough… right now.  It’s that we’ve decided I’m not allowed to have it until I have more money.  I suspect you’re in a similar situation.  Millions in my country, and billions on my planet, don’t have Enough to eat tonight.  We have the resources, but they don’t have the money. 

When everyone has Enough, there’s no more reason to fight wars.  There’s no more reason to steal when you already have Enough.  Why would you need to kill? 

Enough allows us to learn, explore, and thrive.  We can pursue our passions.  We can learn to love more completely.  And isn’t everything, finally, about Love?  Whether it’s the love of Art, or the love of romantic partners, or the love I share with Speedy Shine, it’s all still about Love.  Love is what brought most, but not all, of us into existence.  It has nurtured most, but not all, of us.  It needs to be there for everyone.  I promise love is not a finite resource.  It’s love that brings me to my keyboard, thence to my mic, and thence to your eyes and ears.  Love is what brings us together.  And Love doesn’t require money.

Sara Niemietz is telling me to Shine while I write.  And the recording to which I’m listening was made in February of 2020 just before the pandemic hit.  And she dedicated the song to me that night while I sat in the audience.  She is, at this very moment, bringing me back the feelings I had then.  I can see my former roommate sitting next to me catching the glow of me Shining in the light of Sara and Snuffy’s music.  “I’m not crying,” Sara says at the end of the song.  “My makeup’s just running.” Of course she wasn’t.  Of course I wasn’t.  Certainly my former roommate wasn’t.  And Valerie Bertinelli will be texting me to invite me to dinner tonight. 

Art has this power.  To deny the world of artists because they’re chasing rent and groceries is a crime against humanity.  We’re all fortunate that Sara makes enough money from her Art to sustain her.  How many Saras, though, will we never hear because they don’t have enough to do what Sara does?  Why should we lose them when we really do have… Enough? How do we get there?

We begin by recognizing that we are all travelers on this rock tumbling through space.  We’re not Americans and Russians and Mexicans and Jews and Christians and Muslims and White and Black and Brown.  We’re not male or female or something in between.  We’re humans.  Full stop.  Anything else is arbitrary and meaningless.  Start with that idea as deeply rooted in your consciousness as The Puritan Work Ethic is now.  Challenge yourself to imagine something different.  Imagine… Enough.

I’m one.  You make two.  Now we need to get one country to decide that borders are a waste of time and resources.  And then another needs to join that country.  And another and another until the world has become One. 

Then we use our resources to provide everyone with Enough.  We put our best minds to work on the problem of freeing us from the work no one wants to do anymore.  They’re done designing weapons of mass destruction and algorithms that will allow them to corner some market or make money for some hedge fund.  These extraordinary thinkers get to work out how to repair the damage we’ve done to our environment.  They can figure out how we’re going to break the speed of light so we can go explore strange new worlds.  Perhaps some of us could visit the places The James Webb Telescope has recently revealed to us.  We might learn to manipulate Time.  Whom could we meet in Space? 

Humans will learn to cure diabetes, so I won’t have to go to the hospital anymore.  They’ll cure cancer.  They’ll help us to live for centuries… and longer.  They can devote their minds to figuring out how we can get along with others instead of how to kill them.  Competition is left to games we play for entertainment.  Cooperation becomes common.  There are no more patents or copyrights because no one needs them.  We all have Enough. 

Is this world possible?  Of course it is.  We just need a little imagination. It was John Lennon, in music, one of the most powerful and universal forms of Art, who asked us to Imagine:

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too

Imagine all the people
Livin’ life in peace
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 be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man

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, Imagine, 1971

John Lennon did his part.  I’ve done my part.  Now you do yours.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/2XAIFEg5F3er12rwPrhF5X?si=f4fb72c6cb154857

Posted on by Fred · 4 Comments

UBI, The Prosecutor, Speedy Shine, and Me

Speedy Shine and Me

I’m living, as you’ve probably deduced if you’ve listened to my last few episodes, in an untenable situation.  The cheapest place to rent where I live is $1500 a month, unless I want to rent a room from someone.  Those run around $600.  I won’t survive that experience.  I do very poorly around others.  I need to be alone. 

My Disability, after having taught Elementary School for 29 years, is $1363 a month.  I can’t possibly get another job.  My body simply won’t tolerate it.  I was on the precipice of another trip to the hospital this week with Diabetic Ketoacidosis.  I didn’t do anything outrageous.  I spent some time getting up and down from the floor trying to make my monitors work with the beautiful new desktop on which I’m writing this.  That exhausted me.  At 4 PM I woke up when my alarm went off.  It’s to remind me to take my Lantus, which is a long-acting form of insulin, and to call my mother.  I felt like I had been run over by a steamroller.  Everything hurt.  I was nauseous.  I called Mom and faked my way through it so she wouldn’t know I was sick.  I took my Lantus.  I checked my blood sugar.  It was 521. 

For those who don’t know, doctors want your blood sugar to be between 80 and 120.  Anything over 400 is almost always going to turn into DKA.  I’ve been in the hospital with that condition 15 times in the last several years.  My doctor described it to me as my blood turning into acid and trying to kill me from the inside.  It generally requires a minimum of 3 days in the hospital.  The first two are usually spent in Intensive Care.  Statistically, most people don’t survive more than 4 incidents of DKA.  Had I gotten any sicker and survived, I would have made it 4 times as long as science expects me to live.

There was a physical aspect to my flirtation with death.  There was also an emotional aspect.  My PTSD was in full force, set off by someone being incredibly kind to me.  I’m going to refer to her as Lady Dalrymple.  (Read some Jane Austen.)  She has bought me incredibly expensive groceries I could never possibly afford.  She bought me a crock pot in which to cook the spareribs I can’t cook in my oven because it doesn’t work.  She sent Speedy Shine 40 pounds of kibble and more than a dozen cans of fancy food.  How could anyone be any kinder than that?  She found a way.

She’s heard my show.  She’s read my work.  She doesn’t believe I should have to live this way.  She offered me the downstairs portion of her house, rent-free, for as long as I want.  It’s a beautiful home.  It has a fenced backyard for Speedy Shine.  It’s everything I could want.  It’s Paradise.  So, how could this be a problem for me?

Those who have been around a while will recall that just a little over a year ago, someone else made me the same offer. I was properly skeptical. When something seems too good to be true… Nevertheless, after much discussion, I accepted the offer. I haven’t been in a position to decline a place to live for more than a decade. The results were disastrous. The rent-free home with a fenced backyard turned into a $750 a month trailer with water that needed to be changed twice weekly. The privacy I had been promised turned into thrice daily assaults on my character. I spent 64 days hearing about my faults. I spent a lot of money to get there, and when the gun came out and the only friend who had the audacity to visit was threatened, I spent what was left of my Disability backpay to escape. Without the help of my friend, I would certainly have died there. I arrived here broke, and I promptly went to the hospital for 3 days because I went into Diabetic Ketoacidosis.

My California “Home”

I’ve been safely installed here for just shy of a year.

I told my best friend I wanted to talk to her last night because she is the only person with whom I can discuss something this huge. It went poorly to say the least. She was repeatedly interrupted while I was experiencing a low-level panic attack, and my Rejection Sensitivity kicked me in the teeth. She and I have discussed that at length. She is well aware of my condition.  All I had time to get from her was that it would be better for both her and her ex-boyfriend, who is being kind enough to rent me this place at a price I can afford and that, thankfully, covers the internet and all the utilities, if I left.

This underlined in flashing neon lights that I am a liability.  She can’t get married with her ex-boyfriend living with her since few men feel good about such an arrangement.  He can’t sell this place and move on with his life if I’m here.  I live on their charity.  This has been discussed at greater length in earlier episodes.  I won’t go any deeper into it here.

That night, Speedy Shine held me together, and only barely.

We finally had an opportunity the next night to discuss it without interruption. We’re thinking of trying to find me something called Section 8 Housing. All I know about Section 8 comes from M*A*S*H, and I’m really not Klinger.

What was the problem?

The thought of moving somewhere far away and living for free obviously brought back my feelings of terror from a year ago. I flashed repeatedly on images of my cell phone vibrating and sounds of its beeping to tell me that another assault on my integrity was waiting to be read. If I ignored it, you could be sure the landlord would walk the 100 feet from his house to my trailer to tell me what was wrong with me. And he would yell. If I tried to defend myself, I would be called a “fucking liar,” and the yelling would increase. I learned to be quiet. I haven’t been confident talking to anyone beyond my best friend, my mother, and the man who pulled me out of there, since. I don’t believe I ever will be again.

When you hear me talking to you here, you may be sure every word was carefully written, proofread repeatedly and ineffectively, (I can’t tell you how many times I have to correct it during the recording, or, worse I find an error on my Word Press site.) and edited repeatedly. If you hear it on my show, I promise it’s gone through not fewer than 5 drafts. I communicate carefully because I want to be sure I’m saying it as honestly and accurately as I can. I can’t be sure to get it right in a conversation.

I’m perfectly comfortable at my keyboard. It allows me to make mistakes without any more complaint than the little red or blue lines it uses to show me where it thinks I’m wrong. It doesn’t tell me I’m The Scum of The Earth. It just suggests what it believes, often erroneously, is a better way to write something. I’m grateful when it catches typos. I won’t, just yet, substitute an algorithm’s judgment for 50 years of writing experience.

I am going to spend quite some time considering the offer, but first I have to remember that most people are genuinely kind. Most people are caring, compassionate, and empathetic. The evidence to back that claim is overflowing throughout the last 6 years of my life. My friends have saved me, in various ways, more times than I can count. I think someday I may make an Excel sheet in which I try to record them all. There would be at least 15 entries for saving my life by getting me to the hospital when I went into DKA. That doesn’t count the times they have given me money to save my car, to pay my rent, to put my dog to rest, to buy me groceries, or just because they wanted to help me out. At the same time, the memories of California keep haunting me and the Prosecutor Who Lives in My Head keeps taunting me, asking me how stupid I am. Am I really dumb enough to make the same mistake twice?

The Prosecutor

Prosecutor:        You’re blaming me for your problems… again?

Fred:                    I’m simply pointing out that you like to tell me what’s wrong with me.  It’s much less pleasant than one might think.

Prosecutor:       Without recognizing your flaws and faults, you can’t possibly hope to correct them.  I keep you from hiding from reality.  And the reality is that you’re a liability.  Your existence costs everyone around you money.  You are a pathetic dependent child.  I understand why you’re tempted by The Offer, but are you also going to be stupid?  Mr. Scott told you more than 40 years ago, “Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me.”  You’re inviting shame… Again.

Fred:                Lady Dalrymple has already shown me she is capable of great kindness.  She’s not Anthony Tagonist.  There’s no reason to believe she’s lying to me.

Prosecutor:         She doesn’t need to be lying to you.  It’s a question of how much anyone can tolerate you.  History shows that it’s never long.  And then you will be stuck again.  You must find the means to be independent.  It’s your only chance of survival. 

Fred:                    I can’t imagine how I could do that.  There’s no job I can possibly do.  Someone offered me some proofreading work, but I still miss things in my own writing.  I couldn’t make that work, and I’ll embarrass myself.  It’s not like I can go work at a convenience store or something.  I wind up in DKA from nearly any physical exertion. 

Prosecutor:         We’re pursuing the means to do that at this very moment.  Your podcast.

Fred:                   After 3 years, I’m managing to put between 3 and 400 dollars a month into the bank.  I could stop supporting other artists, but the difference wouldn’t be enough to provide me with any sort of independence.  It would just allow me a few more days before I run out at the end of every month. 

Prosecutor:         Then there appears to be only one solution.

Fred:                   I tried that the other night.  I went into the bathroom and got my Humalog pen.  I took it into the bedroom so I could say goodbye to Speedy Shine.  He turned his back on me for the first time in his life.  He was obviously feeling angry and betrayed.  I told him my best friend would find him another family, but he jumped off of the bed. 

Speedy Shine:    I need your love, not someone else’s.  I give you all the loves and kisseses and cuddlers you ever needed, and you want to leave me.  That is not is a good Fred.  I need you.  Just my Smelly Old Man.  Nobody else for Speedy Shine.  That’s all.

Speedy Shine

So, I don’t know what to do.  I see only one reasonable alternative.  I don’t believe it will arrive in time to help me.  We need some form of Universal Basic Income.  We need to change our priorities from money to people.  The question, “Who’s going to pay for it?” has become offensive to me.  There’s no question that we have the resources to ensure everyone has their basic needs met.  I don’t even want a car.  I would just like to be able to live without depending on the kindness of strangers.  I contributed what I could to the world.  I continue to do that in the only way possible for me. 

This would be the solution for me.  It would be the solution for countless millions of others, as well.  Many people are in worse shape than I am, but you probably don’t know them.  The argument that this would cause runaway inflation has not only been disproven repeatedly, but it also says that money matters more than people.  It doesn’t.  Not on this Porch.

This country began in an effort to throw off the power of a King over the citizens of this country.  The first three words of the preamble are, “We The People,” and they’re written larger and prouder than all the rest.  The idea was to give freedom to all of us.  We wanted to end the idea of serfs and feudal lords.  We wanted everyone to be able to live their lives in freedom. 

We’ve certainly made progress, but we live with an economic system that makes meaningful freedom impossible for millions of people.  Unless I begin to earn $2000 a month from my podcast, I will be dependent on others just to live.  This is no sort of life.  And my life is better than many others.  It doesn’t have to be this way.  It shouldn’t be this way.

Change begins with imagination and conversation.  Perhaps we can get enough people talking about Universal Basic Income that it finally gets the attention it deserves.  This might prompt a politician to advocate it.  That might actually change the world. 

Absent that, I am doomed to live a precarious life, contingent entirely on the kindness of strangers. 

What could we do to help?  We can talk.  We can advocate.  We can vote.  We can try.  I’m begging you to do what you can.  I don’t want to live like this anymore.  I don’t know how much longer I can.  I’m not alone in this.  This world doesn’t work for far too many of us.  Please… please help to change this in whatever ways you can.

I love you.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/2TSyk0wZJfRLnMpvwwRKgm?si=7353653d6e2240ec

Posted on by Fred · 2 Comments

Klingons and Conservatives

“Have we become so… fearful, have we become so cowardly, that we must extinguish a man because he carries the blood of a current enemy?”

— Captain Picard, in “The Drumhead,” from Star Trek: The Next Generation, written by Jeri Taylor

Captain Jean-Luc Picard : You want to destroy the ship and run away, you coward.

Lt. Commander Worf : If you were any other man, I would kill you where you stand.

— Star Trek: First Contact, written by Brannon Braga and Ronald D. Moore

The source of anger, I am convinced, is fear.  I addressed this in “The Problem of Anger.”

Anger is a reaction to our fear.  I felt anger at watching the murder of George Floyd because I was afraid he would die.  He did.  I was angry at watching planes fly into The World Trade Center because I was afraid people would die.  They did.  I feel anger because I’m afraid I could die in the same pointless way.  I’m afraid someone I love might die that way.  The fear becomes anger.  The anger can be a motivation to try to change things, but it can’t be the method of making that change.  … I’m not going to change your mind by forcing you into a defensive posture.  The moment I vent my anger at you, you feel the need to protect yourself from me.  Now, instead of considering my ideas, you are preparing to tell me why I’m wrong, or you are looking for a means of escape. 

Fred Eder, “The Problem of Anger,” episode 123 of Fred’s Front Porch Podcast

Both Klingons and Conservatives, who, under the right circumstances, would kill you where you stand, are angry quite frequently.  To be fair, liberals get pretty angry, too, but not quite so often.  When we do, we have different reasons for it.  Liberals tend to get angry when we believe someone else is being mistreated.  Conservatives tend to get angry when they think someone might mistreat them.

President Biden is trying to get some relief for those who have been victimized by predatory student loans.  Conservatives are having a fit that the money is coming out of their pockets, regardless of the fact that it isn’t.  The government already has their money.  It also has mine, and, assuming you’re an American, it has yours, too.  No one is getting sent a bill for the $2,000 it’s supposed to cost every American.  But the government is spending money to help someone who isn’t them, and this is never okay. 

Breaking News: The government spends money in ways we don’t like all the time.  I would prefer we didn’t spend money blowing up people who have the misfortune to live somewhere else.  I would prefer we didn’t spend money on giving massive corporations, all of whom are doing perfectly fine making rent and putting food on the table, tax breaks and bailouts.  That’s the price of representative democracy.  It might be nice if I got to vote on every single dime the government spends, and if I could say exactly where I want my tax money to go, but it doesn’t work that way.  If there’s a way to change the government so we can do this, I’m certainly open to that idea.  Until then, we have to live with things we don’t like from time to time.

This time, we spent some money trying to ease the burden of people who are trying to learn a little more.  I’m fine with that.  I’m not going to see a dime of it.  That’s fine, too.  Why?  Because I like to help the people who need some help.  If it means one person gets to pay rent for one more month, I am thrilled we spent the money that way.  If it means a kid gets an ice cream cone Mom couldn’t afford to buy otherwise, give the kid an extra scoop.  I’m proud to have my money go there. 

Both Klingons and Conservatives are deeply concerned about who deserves what.  They are both obsessed with what they call Honor.  They both share a fascination with making judgments about people. 

I don’t deny the value of judgment.  It’s essential to survival.  It allows us to make better choices about our lives.  Our lives.  My problem occurs when people think they get to make judgments about other people’s lives.  Both Klingons and Conservatives like to do that rather frequently.  Neither of them can tolerate weakness in any form.  Only the strong should survive. 

When Worf, the most famous Klingon of them all, is injured and is unlikely to be able to walk again, he leaps to the conclusion that ritual suicide is necessary.  He’s not strong anymore, so he’s not worthy of existence.  Fortunately, he has some human friends who help him find another way.  A case can be made that they should have respected his wishes.  I won’t be the person making that case. 

When Conservatives see someone suffering, they are quick to point out how it’s their own fault.  They should have done this, or they shouldn’t have done that.  They deserve to suffer.  Conservatives don’t want to ease that suffering because it’s a sign of weakness.  “If they didn’t want to pay back the loan, they shouldn’t have borrowed the money.  If the degree didn’t get them a job that pays enough to pay back the loan, they should have skipped college and gotten a better job.  If they have a lousy job that doesn’t pay enough, they should go get a degree.  It’s their own fault.”

Both Conservatives and Klingons are fond of distractions that can help to bury the Truth.  In the Next Generation episode, “Sins of The Father,” Worf’s father is blamed for The Khitomer Massacre in which 4,000 Klingons were killed by Romulans who had inside help from a Klingon.  The Klingon who supplied the Romulans with the codes they needed to render the Klingons helpless was the father of the Klingon bringing the charge against Mogh.  Mogh is Worf’s father.  The Star Trek fandom page explains it:

Worf angrily demands an explanation for the Council judging Mogh guilty, despite the fact they knew he was innocent.  K’mpec privately explains the truth: When Klingons captured the Romulan ship with the records, they learned of the treachery behind the Khitomer Massacre; this soon became common knowledge, and someone had to answer for that treachery.  Fortunately, only the Council knew who transmitted his code: not Mogh, but Ja’rod, Duras’s father.

Beside himself, Worf violently points out that Duras should have been made to pay for the sins of Ja’rod, but K’mpec reveals that the Duras family is too powerful and to expose him would likely split the Empire and plunge it into a civil war. In order to avoid that, they decided to use Mogh as a scapegoat, believing that Worf, since he was in Starfleet, would not challenge the judgment. None of them realized that Kurn was Mogh’s second child.  But now things have progressed too far, and both sons of Mogh must die.

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Sins_of_the_Father_(episode)

At the moment, in our reality, former President Trump is likely to be indicted, not for inciting a riot and trying to stage a coup that would have made him a dictator, but for removing secured documents from The White House.  At the same time, the Trump-appointed Supreme Court has handed down rulings that have angered many voters, including stripping roughly half the population of their right to bodily autonomy.  This is likely to make the elections difficult for Republicans.  They need a distraction.  They need to find a reason for people to be angry at Democrats, and the Student Loan scandal was perfect for them. 

When Star Trek began in 1966, Klingons were the enemy.  They were simply evil, and they needed to be fought every time they appeared.  Had the ultrapowerful Organians not interfered, the Federation and the Klingons would have killed each other.  The Klingons took what they wanted by conquest.  The Federation tried to create unity with other species.  These opposing ideologies were destined for war. 

Neither Klingons nor Conservatives are all the same, however.  In the episode “Redemption, Part 2,” Worf is able to reclaim his honor and his family name by exposing the lies of the Duras family.  Duras’s illegitimate son, Toral, who intended to take over the Klingon Empire, is now held accountable for the family’s treachery.  Gowron, the leader of The Klingon High Council, gives Toral’s life to Worf.  Kurn is Worf’s brother.

TORAL: The Duras family will one day rule the Empire!
GOWRON: Perhaps.  But not today.  Worf.  This child’s family wrongly took your name and your honour from you.  In return, I give his life to you.
(Worf takes Gowron’s dagger and goes over to Toral, who braces himself for the thrust.  Worf drops the dagger on the floor)
KURN: What’s wrong?  Kill him!
WORF: No.
KURN: But it’s our way.  It is the Klingon way.
WORF: I know.  But it is not my way.  This boy has done me no harm and I will not kill him for the crimes of his family.
GOWRON: Then it falls to Kurn.
WORF: No.  No, you gave me his life, and I have spared it.

Klingons are capable of mercy.  They are not carbon copies of one another.

The same is true of Conservatives.  Just as Worf rooted out the treachery that threatened the Klingon Empire, so, too, one of the staunchest Conservatives in the United States, Liz Cheney, rooted out the treachery that threatened our freedom. 

In our hearing tonight, you saw an American president faced with a stark, unmistakable choice between right and wrong.  There was no ambiguity, no nuance.  Donald Trump made a purposeful choice to violate his oath of office, to ignore the ongoing violence against law enforcement, to threaten our Constitutional order.  There is no way to excuse that behavior.  It was indefensible.  And every American must consider this: Can a president who is willing to make the choices Donald Trump made during the violence of January 6th ever be trusted with any position of authority in our great nation again?

— Rep. Liz Cheney, vice chair of the Select Committee to Investigate the Attack on the United States Capitol.  Remarks as delivered on Thursday, July 21, 2022

There is no group in which all its members are all good or all bad. 

In the 1968 episode, “Day of the Dove,” the crew of the Enterprise is trapped on their own ship with an equal number of Klingons as they hurtle out of the galaxy at high speed.  An alien entity is feeding off their hatred for one another and causing them to fight.  The Klingon Science officer, Mara, and Captain Kirk discuss the situation.

MARA: We have always fought.  We must.  We are hunters, Captain, tracking and taking what we need.  There are poor planets in the Klingon systems, we must push outward if we are to survive.

KIRK: There’s another way to survive.  Mutual trust and help.

By 1987, the Federation and the Klingons had become allies.  Worf was serving aboard a Federation ship.  Peace is both preferable and superior to war.  It requires understanding. 

The Federation learned to respect the proud Klingon tradition of honor, and the courage that accompanies it.  Worf was among the bravest men ever to show up on the Star Trek screen. 

The Klingons learned to respect the honor of the Federation in putting itself at risk to help others.  The Enterprise-C, the ship prior to Picard’s Enterprise, sacrificed itself to defend a Klingon outpost that had been ambushed by Romulans at Narendra III.  Even those who prefer peace are capable of showing courage. 

I prefer the Federation, or liberal, philosophy, which inspired the words I repeat so often on this show: “There is no Them; we are all Us.”  This doesn’t mean, however, that I have no respect for the rugged individualism that is at the heart of much of the Klingon, or Conservative, philosophy.  There are times when such power is necessary.  I would rather have Worf fighting by my side than either Kirk or Picard. 

If the Klingons and the Federation can be allies, defending themselves and each other from alien threats, and combining their knowledge to produce better lives for both groups, why can’t Liberals and Conservatives do the same?  We’re the same species.  We live on the same planet.  We share the same problems.  We all need water to drink and food to eat.  Climate change is just one example.  There are plenty of others. 

I’m sure there will be Liberal friends of mine who will tell me why I’m wrong to want to join with the Conservatives in solving our problems.  The Conservatives are the bad guys who want many of my friends dead.  I’m a sellout and a coward.  “We all know what a Klingon is,” as Dr. McCoy says while under the influence of the hatred-inducing alien entity.

I’m equally certain there will be Conservative friends of mine telling me that they have no interest in working with whiny bleeding-heart lazy Liberals who want everything handed to them for free.  Conservatives worked hard for what they have.  They’re not giving it away to people who don’t want to work.  Liberals “have no honor!”

I’m going to take you back, once more, to 1969.  Fifty-three years ago, the Klingons and the crew of The Enterprise were fighting each other with swords as they hurtled to their doom, just as we are doing as our water dries up, our forests burn, and our crops wither in the fields.

(A contingent of Federation including McCoy and Spock take on the rest of the Klingons in the corridor.  Spock cheats with his neck-pinch.  Finally Kirk gets the point of his sword at Kang’s throat.)
KIRK: Look!  Look, Kang.  For the rest of our lives.  A thousand lifetimes.  Senseless violence, fighting, while an alien has total control over us.
(Kirk throws away his sword.)
KIRK: All right.  All right.  In the heart.  In the head.  I won’t stay dead.  Next time I’ll do the same to you.  I’ll kill you.  And it goes on, the good old game of war, pawn against pawn!  Stopping the bad guys.  While somewhere, something sits back and laughs and starts it all over again.
MCCOY: Let’s jump him.
SPOCK: Those who hate and fight must stop themselves, Doctor.  Otherwise, it is not stopped.
MARA: Kang, I am your wife.  I’m a Klingon.  Would I lie for them?  Listen to Kirk.  He is telling the truth.
KIRK: Be a pawn, be a toy, be a good soldier that never questions orders.
(Kang looks at the weird light, then throws down his sword.)
KANG: Klingons kill for their own purposes.
SPOCK: All fighting must end, Captain, to weaken the alien before our dilithium crystals are gone.
KIRK: Lieutenant Uhura.
UHURA [OC]: Yes, Captain?
KIRK: Put me on ship-wide intercom.
UHURA [OC]: Aye, sir.
KIRK: Kang.
UHURA [OC]: Ready, Captain.
KIRK: This is Captain Kirk. A truce is ordered.  The fighting is over.  Lay down your weapons.
KANG: This is Kang.  Cease hostilities.  Disarm.
(The fighting stops.  The weird light turns orange.)
SPOCK: The cessation of violence appears to have weakened it, Captain.  I suggest that good spirits might make an effective weapon.
KIRK: Get off my ship.  You’re a dead duck here.  You’re powerless.  We know about you, and we don’t want to play.  Maybe there are others like you around.  Maybe you’ve caused a lot of suffering, a lot of history, but that’s all over.  We’ll be on guard now, ready for you.  So ship out!  Come on!  Haul it!
MCCOY: Yeah, out already.
KANG: Out!  We need no urging to hate humans.  But for the present, only a fool fights in a burning house.  Out!

I don’t really believe that an alien entity is causing us to fight.  I don’t think Jerome Bixby, who wrote the episode did either, but I could be wrong.  I never met the man to ask him.  Does the cause matter, though?  The rest of what Bixby wrote is true.  We can just keep fighting for thousands of lifetimes.  I know because we’ve already done that.  Kirk and Kang are characters, but they represent ideas.  Ideas can never be killed.  We will accomplish nothing by fighting endlessly. 

The world Star Trek depicts, and the one in which I want to live, couldn’t exist until humanity came together as one.  Roddenberry seemed to think a third World War was necessary first.  The Time Traveler I interviewed a few months ago agreed.  It was only after we lost so much that we recognized destroying one another was folly.  What if we recognized that now?

Is there a way we could be glad when we help those who need it, and withhold our judgments about the way others live their lives?  So long as they’re not hurting anyone, let them make their own choices, even if they aren’t the choices you might have made. 

Many generations of us grew up being taught that the only way you could be successful was to get a degree, and we worked very hard to do that.  Now we’re being told we shouldn’t have taken on the debt if we couldn’t repay it.  Ask the most important question:  Who’s better off for that?  Going to school is what makes it possible for people to become doctors, nurses, and teachers, all of whom are essential to our society.  Shall we now tell people to stop doing that?  This means either that we will have no doctors, nurses, or teachers, or that those who fill those roles will be unqualified to perform the job correctly.  As I mentioned in the previous episode, there are states that are already doing this for teachers.  Shall we do that for surgeons, too?  If so, I’ve seen every episode of M*A*S*H.  Hand me a scalpel. 

If you don’t like the way the government spent our money, stop being angry, and go to the voting booth.  Yelling at me isn’t going to change it.  I’ll be voting for those who prefer to help people as opposed to helping corporations.  You are more than welcome to vote in the opposite direction.   I will do what I can, calmly and rationally, to convince you to join me in recognizing that people matter more than money, but in the end, I won’t be with you in the voting booth.  You’ll be alone there, doing what your conscience tells you is right.  So will I. 

We’re stronger together.  We all do better when we all do better.

Live long and prosper.

Qapla!

Posted on by Fred · 2 Comments

Saving Freedom

I spend far too much time watching science fiction and fantasy.  In Star Wars, the evil Empire is destroyed, but they keep coming back.  In Star Trek, no matter how effectively we think we have destroyed The Borg, they return.  I just finished watching Stranger Things, and they’ve burned Vecna up completely, and he will still be back for the fifth season.

I used to look at these facts a bit cynically.  Once you beat the Bad Guys, that should be it.  But the truth is you can never stop it.

We won The Civil War.  The Confederacy continues to clamor for attention; and it’s getting it.

We beat the Nazis in World War II. They are still on our streets, and people cheer for them as much as they sneer at them.

We won The Cold War, but Russia continues to attempt world domination.  And the world waits nervously.

Someone once said, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men (and women) to do nothing.”  This is commonly attributed to Edmund Burke.  It turns out he never said that.  John Stuart Mill, in his 1867 Inaugural Address said something similar, though: “Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing. He is not a good man who, without a protest, allows wrong to be committed in his name, and with the means which he helps to supply, because he will not trouble himself to use his mind on the subject.”

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,” a Quote Falsely Attributed to Edmund Burke

The evil of fascism can, it appears, never be destroyed.  It will build another Death Star.  It will assimilate another culture.  Vecna will force The Upside Down back into our world.

And so, we must continue to fight for our Freedom.  We must continue to vote, to protest, and to protect our poor, our disenfranchised, our disabled, and our unrepresented.

Our rights and our freedom are under a clear and obvious attack now.  I did an episode about that last week.  One of the most brutal attacks was against women.  Half of the population has been stripped of bodily autonomy, and some defend this on religious grounds.  I think that’s a misuse of religion.

One of the reasons America has survived as long as it has is that we have specifically avoided becoming a theocracy. We have recognized there are few things as personal or individual as our relationship with the Universe.  Whether it’s God, or Vishnu, or Zeus, or Allah, or simply the Vast Nothingness, we get to decide those things for ourselves.  One can be coerced into claiming to have beliefs, but, finally, they are our own deep inside ourselves.  We can change them only by choosing to do so, and by a careful reflection that shows us something new.

Those who claim (falsely, I believe) to be Christians of 21st Century America love to decide they’re being oppressed when they aren’t allowed to make their religious views the law.  I’m unaware of any successful free country that has worked as a theocracy.  I’m unaware of any theocracy in which I would choose to live.

I did a Google Search for theocracies in the world today.  Only 6 came up.  They are the following:

  • Afghanistan.
  • Iran.
  • Mauritania.
  • Saudi Arabia.
  • Vatican City.
  • Yemen.

In which of those places would you wish to live?

What Evangelical American Christians fail to recognize is that bodily autonomy isn’t a religious issue.  It’s a question of personal freedom.  It’s about owning oneself.

And I don’t think most of the people restricting freedom are doing it due to any deeply held beliefs about God or the Universe.  I believe they’re doing it because they want to have the power to tell others what to do with their lives.  It’s the Need of the Narcissist.  It’s the Sustenance of the Psychopath.  It’s saying I’m in control.  It’s saying, basically, “I’m God.  I know what God, who is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent and has the power to create an entire universe, wants.  So just listen to me.  And, God wants me to control everyone. God wants everyone to obey me.”  Doesn’t that idea seem startlingly arrogant to you?  Someone really claims to understand what an almighty being, capable of everything you can imagine, wants us to do?  That sounds pathological to me.  Actually, I should say a God who can do almost anything you can imagine.  There’s always the example of the first paradox I ever learned.  When I was 12, my father the philosopher asked me, “If God can do anything, can He create a rock so large that He can’t lift it?”

The attack on freedom is a contempt for individuality.  It’s an attack against your free will.  It’s dark.  It’s dangerous.  It’s destructive.

I am on the record repeatedly in favor of freedom of religion.  I can think of few places that are more deeply personal than how you view your relationship with the universe.  Most of my friends have some form of Christian view.  They believe in a God who created the universe and is deeply concerned about what we do with the Free Will He gave us.  They may well be right.  I certainly can’t prove they’re wrong.  I want them to have the freedom to explore that idea, and to live by the beliefs that spring from it, in every way possible.  I want them to be allowed to worship in the ways they choose.  I want them to be allowed to express their beliefs whenever they choose, wherever they choose, and to whomever wants to hear them.  I just don’t want them to make their beliefs the only ones allowed.  I don’t want them to decide our government must reflect those beliefs.  That’s what happens in a theocracy.  That’s how planes get flown into The World Trade Center.

“No it’s not!  Those were Muslims, and they are evil!”

Those were people who were raised believing that theirs, and only theirs, is the correct view of the universe.  They’ve been taught, since birth, that those who believe something different are evil, and they must be destroyed as enemies of Allah.  This isn’t inherent in Islam.  It’s inherent in a theocracy. 

The overwhelming majority of Muslims are not evil, just as the overwhelming majority of Christians are not evil.  It was Christian theocracy that led to The Salem Witch Trials.  It was Christian theocracy that led to The Spanish Inquisition, which, Monty Python aside, was entirely expected.  It was Christian theocracy that tried for centuries to end any scientific progress, as both Galileo and Copernicus learned.  Christian theocracy has no better history than Islamic theocracy.  

Outside of Vatican City, Christian theocracies are few and far between.  I believe you can find Mormon settlements that have managed it.  It doesn’t go well for them.  You can ask Warren Jeffs, the former President of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Days Saints, about this.  You can ask those children he was convicted of raping.  You can ask the same question to those who have been raped by Catholic Priests.   

The Republican party has aligned itself with Evangelical American Christianity, and, in my view, corrupted it for its own ends.  They have used fear of “The Other” to band people together to oppose those who are different from them. 

They have taught homophobia, although no homosexual represents any threat to anyone simply by being homosexual.  I remember when I was 9 years old, a furious parent at a PTA meeting was talking to my father about the fact that the school was allowed even to mention homosexuality.  “How would you feel,” he asked furiously, “if a homosexual raped your son in the bathroom of the school?”  My father replied, “Probably about the same as I would feel if a heterosexual raped my daughter.”  “Oh my God!” shouted the man.  “Are they teaching that now, too??”  Ignorance breeds fear.

And fascists know that.  It’s why they want to decide which books we can and can’t read.  It’s why they oppose teaching a complete history of our country.  And it’s why they tell us to watch out for liberal, commie, socialists who are coming to destroy us all.  They know that most people don’t really understand what it means to be a liberal, a communist, or a socialist, and they use those words to frighten the willfully ignorant.  They pass out cherry-picked information that is just enough to frighten people, but not sufficient for true understanding.  “A little knowledge,” as Einstein purportedly told us, “is a dangerous thing.”  (Alexander Pope said it first, but he used the word “learning” in place of “knowledge.”)

So, I’ll say this again, and I will be grateful to the person who can tell me to whom I can reliably attribute it.  “Education is the journey from cocksure ignorance to thoughtful uncertainty.”  Let’s allow our minds to be open to different ideas.  I recognize an open mind is not the same as an empty one.  I don’t advocate abandoning all of your beliefs.  I would like you to be able to question them.

Why do fascists do encourage hatred?  Hitler was incredibly successful at it in the 20th Century.  He got Germany to blame “The Other” for its horrendous situation following World War I, and the results are one of the most infamous chapters in world history.  Those who are different, he taught, are a threat to be eliminated.  I believe we’re all more enlightened than that now.

Fascism has infected the Republican Party.  And Democrats are either unwilling or unable to do much about it.  We had nearly 50 years to codify Roe, and ensure women are in control of their own bodies.  We dropped the ball.  Republicans actually wanted to pass a Universal Basic Income during the Nixon Administration.  Democrats dropped the ball.  Reagan told us that “Trickle Down Economics” would help the whole country.  We’ve had more than 40 years to see it didn’t work.  And Democrats have been unwilling or unable to do anything about it. 

Republicans have done all of this under the guise of following the Constitution.  The Senate, for example, may have been a good idea when it was created.  It was an effort to ensure those in rural communities would be represented in government.  Now, however, it has made citizens of one state vastly more powerful than citizens of another. California has nearly 70 times as many people as Wyoming, and they each get two Senators.   A citizen of Wyoming has nearly 70 times the power to control the government as one in California. 

What we are seeing is the efforts of The Few to control the lives of The Many.  They want to maximize their freedom by restricting ours.  We’re choosing to let them because they have embedded their ideas so deeply in our culture that any others are unthinkable.  Except, all ideas can be thought.  Everything begins with a thought.  Let’s try some new ones.  Let’s imagine a better world.

Here are some unthinkable thoughts.  Let’s change the Senate so that it represents people equally.  I know that’s how The House of Representatives is supposed to work, but due to the obvious gerrymandering of voting districts, it rarely does.  How do we change it?  I don’t know.  I leave that to better minds than mine.  I’m simply offering the thought.

Here’s another unthinkable thought.  Let’s give everyone enough money to survive, so we can all decide how to live, for ourselves.  I know this is unthinkable because this will mean prices go up, and we’ll never be able to keep up with the inflation.  I don’t know anything about Economics, so I should probably just shut up.  I was told that frequently when I lived in my little trailer in California.  I live alone with Speedy Shine, now, so I’ll say it anyway.  How do we work out the details?  I have no clue.  Anthony is right.  I know nothing about Economics.  Fortunately, there are many people who do.  I leave it them to figure out how that’s done. 

The final thought comes from the best writer with whom I have ever occupied a room, Mark Rozema.  It’s from a brilliant essay he wrote on Facebook:

It is time to jettison the politics of domination.  It is also time to stop treating one another (and the rest of nature) as commodities to be exploited.  There is a better way.  The transformation to this better way will not occur without a visceral, muscular rejection of the injustice of unfair representation and the various wrongs that stem from it.

  • Mark Rozema

I believe part of the reason we leap for excuses to avoid finding the better way is because we have been taught all our lives that nothing can be done to help people.  That’s helpful to us if we can disregard our empathy and compassion.  We’re taught to think of Us and forget about Them.  Nothing needs to be done to help Them.  And I have rent to pay next month.  I can’t be bothered to think about it. 

We see too small a picture of the world.  There was a shooting last week in Phoenix, but I live at least 20 miles from there, so it’s not my problem.  21 people were killed in Uvalde, Texas, but that’s another state, so it’s not my problem.  Ukraine is under attack, but that’s not my country, so it’s not my problem.  It’s happening to Them. But on The Front Porch, we know There is no Them; we are all Us. 

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend’s were.
Each man’s death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

John Donne

We’ve defeated the Republican effort to make us into a dictatorship before.  We must find a way to do it again. 

As Princess Leia said, “It’s not over yet.”

Posted on by Fred

What A Long, Strange Trip It’s Been

Before we get started, all the names you’ll hear tonight are either omitted or fictionalized, with the exception of Scott Santens and Sara Niemietz who are public figures.  Natalie is also the real name of a friend of mine, but I don’t think she’ll mind.  I don’t name names without permission. 

I’ve just completed my 3-part science-fiction mini-series, “Universe Selectors, Incorporated.”  The final episode is, I think, the greatest work of Art I’ve ever created.  It caused me to think.  I never intended to get here.

Prior to last week, the greatest work of Art with which I was ever involved was “Horace’s Final Five.”  Any serious listener to this show has heard me discuss it frequently.  I like to believe most of you have heard that episode.  It was number 50, and that was intentional.  50 is a significant milestone.  It was also my 50th blog post.  (Yes, Natalie, I have a blog.  It’s in the show notes.)  http://frededer.home.blog    

I also expected it to be my final episode.  I expected to be dead immediately after it was released.  I was facing homelessness yet again, and when I wrote it, I could see no way out of eviction and the ugly death that would surely find me while I was living on the streets.  Depression is a frequent visitor, even when things are going well for me.  When life is more difficult, depression floods in like it just broke through the Hoover Dam.  If I didn’t die living in my car, I would still have filled my syringe with a lethal dose of insulin.  I’m not interested in living if it will be nothing but pain.  As it turns out, I don’t enjoy pain.  I know there are people who do.  I’m simply not among them.

What happened?  What am I doing here 100 episodes later?  It was Art.  Art is what happened.  Puccini told us in Tosca.  “Vissi d’arte.” “I live for Art.”  “I sang to the stars and the heavens shone more brightly.”

I didn’t do “Horace’s Final Five” alone.  I couldn’t have made it into what you’ve heard.  I had help.  The help gave me a reawakening.  I never knew Art of that sort was possible.  It certainly wasn’t possible for me to create.  The sound was glorious and new.  It put me into the scene as though I were actually there.  The soundscape was a holodeck.  I experienced it along with Horace and Marc Antony.  And I wanted to do more.

The man who brought about this Renaissance, saved my life from the Prosecutor who lives in my head to remind me I’m worthless, and made Universe Selectors possible at all, hasn’t talked to me in months.  I have no reason to believe he will again.  I’m not going to go into the reasons for the falling out.  I see it one way.  He sees it another.  We’re probably both right.  We’re probably both wrong.  It’s not worth my minutes to rehash what I can’t change.   

You might think this would cause me to disregard him.  And while I’m far more arrogant (particularly about my show) than I really ought to be, I have to accept reality.  If I’m going to talk about how we got from there to here, I must give credit to the man who saved Fred’s Front Porch, whether he likes me anymore or not.  I’m going to explain what has happened since “Horace’s Final Five.”  Tonight, I’m going to take you on the Journey from Episode 50 to Episode 150.  And “… what a long, strange trip it’s been.”

After “Horace’s Final Five,” I immediately returned to my normal fare.  I covered an essay by the great Scott Santens, one of the world’s leading advocates for Universal Basic Income.  The content is perfectly fine.  The sound is badly lacking.  I didn’t have the equipment to make it sound like my show sounds today. 

By the time we got to my next artistic work, “Time Jumper Radio,” my new producer had written me a new theme song, and now he was using better equipment than I had to make the show sound the way it ought to sound.  He was convinced that I had to have a Mac Book so that I could use Logic, so that I could create that kind of sound, myself.  And he was right.  I did need one. 

I explained it just wasn’t possible.  I had two roommates who had control of my money, and if I spent that kind of money, they would quite probably throw me out of my home.  The Mac Book would be of little use if I were homeless.  He had just gotten money from Unemployment, and he wanted to buy it for me.  I fought bitterly against this idea.  There was no way I could ever repay him.  The idea that I would ever live alone and be able to spend any money I might earn in my own way was unimaginable at that point.  He wouldn’t hear it.  He bought me the computer on which I have been producing this show since I got it.  In that way, he gets credit for “Universe Selectors.”  Several months ago, he threatened to take that computer back, and that was the beginning of our ending.

I had no idea how to use Logic Pro.  I didn’t understand the finger mouse pad.  I was lost.  My mentor took many many hours to teach me how to use it.  I learned, although it takes me forever to do that now.  My brain is much slower than it was when I was thirty.  “Dave, my mind is going.  I can feel it.”  He gets credit for “Universe Selectors” in that way, as well.

We worked together closely for more than a year.  We created extraordinary theater pieces.  We worked with more than a dozen people to produce Art neither of us could have created alone.  When the girls told me they were moving in January, 2021, he gave me a place to live in Sierra Vista for six weeks while I waited for my Disability to arrive.  He gets credit for “Universe Selectors” for doing all of that.  It’s a shame he couldn’t have taken a run at “Universe Selectors.”  I’m sure it would have been even better than it is.

I didn’t do it alone. 

I had help from Miles O’Brien, too.  I taught him when he was in 4th grade, and for the next couple of years.  I made a difference in his life.  We stayed in vague contact for the next 25 years or so.  And he listened to Episode 73: “Do I Have to Hate All 70 Million?”  Prior to that, he didn’t even know I had a podcast.  He became interested in that.  He called me to talk about it, and when he realized I was living in California, only 20 minutes or so from him, he insisted on coming to see me.  That story is chronicled in Episode 124: “Unlocking the Gate.”  It explains that I left Sierra Vista, where I had gotten an apartment I could afford on my Disability, and where I was less than a mile away from the home of the man who saved my life and this show, to move to California on the promise of a future in which I could live alone and never pay rent again.  That turned out to be an unmitigated disaster.  Miles saved me from it.  He brought me back here.

He wanted to do a podcast of his own, and I introduced him to the man who helped me to make this podcast what it is today.  Miles joined his team, and he is now making a podcast that is at least as successful as this one.  I expect that in another month or so, “Interstellar Frequency” will have a larger audience than we have, and I’ve been at it more than two and a half years.  I taught Miles the basics of Logic Pro for six hours one night when he was here.  His mind is much faster than mine is today.  He is now better at Logic than I am.  I sent him all three episodes of “Universe Selectors.”  He worked out the “LUFS,” (Loudness Units to Full Sound) which was something of which I had never even heard until it was brought up in a Facebook podcasters’ group Miles invited me to join.  LUFS are the reason you shouldn’t have to adjust your volume more than once.  Set it at the beginning, and it should work throughout the show.  Miles added sound effects.  He made the voices consistent.  He made the episodes better than I could make them, myself. 

I realize I have done nothing on my own.  I owe much to many people.  I can’t hope to repay all I owe.

But, I also wrote the words.  I did that alone… except for Glenn Frey, Don Henley, Don Felder, Arthur C. Clarke, Douglas Adams, and Margery Williams.  And, really Stanley Kubrick is in there, too.  So is my Dad.  Yeah, okay, I didn’t even write it alone. 

Still, each of us is the product of our experiences, and those experiences are at least influenced by the choices we make.  When I read from The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock at my father’s memorial, a friend congratulated me on the tribute I’d written for Dad.  I told her the credit went to Eliot and the others I quoted in those pages.  She made the point I couldn’t have quoted them if I hadn’t learned them.  And that’s a good thing to remember. 

During this long, strange trip I have made choices.  They’re pretty much unavoidable.  The Existentialists tell me that everything is a choice.  Others maintain that life is just a reaction to forces that are, for the most part, beyond our control.  I think there is truth in both of those ideas. 

I didn’t choose to be rid of my former roommates.  It was beyond my control.  I keep reminding myself and anyone who will listen that we can’t control anyone but ourselves, and even that can sometimes be difficult.  But I made a choice about how to deal with that situation.  I didn’t have to accept my mentor’s offer of assistance.  I could have tried to find a place here in town to live, but on the money I had, it would have been just short of miraculous to find that.  I had cause for concern about going to Sierra Vista.  I had heard the Artist meltdown more than once, screaming at people, and it made me incredibly uncomfortable.  I don’t do well with yelling.  I made the choice to trust him that extra step further.  And I believe it was the right choice.  For six months, I lived happily in Sierra Vista, aside from the fact that I had a probably mentally disturbed neighbor who, although he said he had three doctorates, was a Major in the US Military, and was now on Disability just as I was, still lived next door to me in the cheapest place in Sierra Vista.  He insisted on talking to me every time I went out for a cigarette, and it was almost like having a roommate again.  He was never unkind.  He was, however, a human being who insisted on talking to me.  I have, in case you were somehow unaware of that, a difficult time tolerating that. 

When Anthony Tagonist offered me an opportunity to live rent-free for the rest of my life, I thought it over very carefully.  When something seems too good to be true, it usually is.  This is something my experiences had taught me.  Both he and his wife were former students of mine, however, so I decided to believe this was the Universe paying me back for the half a lifetime I had spent trying to make a difference.  The Universe has a sense of humor, evidently.  Those were the most traumatic months of my life.

I produced some good work there, but only one of the pieces is one of which I’m proud.  “Father and The Lady” is a beautiful story, and it was born from needing my dad again.  I looked to his example to deal with what scared me.  That’s not in the story, itself, but that was its Genesis.  Good things came from a poor choice.

Miles points out, though, that if I hadn’t moved to California, he wouldn’t have a show, and I wouldn’t have the help I do now.  And that’s true.

I’ve had something resembling a love life in the last six months or so.  (There’s a reference to that in Episode 3 of the mini-series.)  This is to say I’ve been busy falling in love with someone who loves me only a little at a time, and who is often willing to allow me to love her.  This is particularly difficult for a man who lives in terror of other people.  Fortunately, she’s 1200 miles away, and our relationship depends on the one thing I do well.  It’s about words.  Mine seem to help her sometimes.  You’ve met her on this show.  She’s the subject of Episode 128: “My Brief Brush With Happiness.”  She’s having a difficult time healing from the bad relationships of her past, and I do my best to help.  No, I won’t be getting married again, have no fear gentle reader (or listener), but it’s lovely to find my heart functioning like a man’s heart again.  Sometimes I get to feel loved by someone who is not Speedy Shine.

President Bartlett used to ask, “What’s next?”  I don’t have the slightest idea.  I’m emotionally, physically, and creatively exhausted after “Universe Selectors, Incorporated.”  I had thought of doing “The Velveteen Rabbit,” but I made it fit into the last episode, so there’s no reason to do that now.  I’ve learned, though, that, as Sara Niemietz reminds me in my favorite hymn:

We don’t need to know
What the future holds
Just put your hand in mine

I don’t have to see
What’s ahead of me
Let’s just take our time
And shine

— Sara Niemietz and W.G. “Snuffy” Walden “Shine”
from “Get Right”, 2019

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

The Idealist, The Progressive, and The Conservative

If I were sufficiently mentally ill to run for President of the United States, I believe my campaign slogan would be, “Humanity First.” How odd that I found a candidate who stole my idea. His name is Andrew Yang. He keeps that a bit on the back burner, and he generally uses “Moving Forward,” which is undoubtedly more inclusive of various ideologies. Humanity First is an Idealist’s ideology. It includes, to me at least, my core belief that there is no Them. We are all Us.

https://frededer.home.blog/2019/03/27/the-dilemma-of-us-vs-them/

Moving Forward is political. Humanity First is philosophical. To win an election one must be concerned with the political spectrum first, I suppose, although I find that the least desirable part of the idea of running for office. The measured words based on poll results and popular opinion are the enemies of honesty.

Donald Trump billed himself as an outsider. He was not among those who measured his words. He said what he believed. I should, therefore, admire him. I oppose him, however, with all the power my words grant me. Why?

What he believes is as changeable as an infant’s diapers, with which it has any number of elements in common. I rarely know what he means. He simply abuses the language I’ve spent a lifetime learning and loving. He makes it into a weapon of mass destruction of the ability to think coherently. He exhibits no interest in Humanity. He chooses words of separation, and he mocks the empathy I believe to be at the core of being human. Even if I supported his policies, I would loathe his rhetoric.

I will, of course, support any multi-cellular animal that runs against the President in 2020. The first priority is that we change the President before we become a dictatorship. If he gets a second term, I have little reason to believe he will leave at the end of it. He will become what America was designed to defeat.

Having said all that, I have strong preferences. My favorite candidate is the most idealistic, and, quite possibly, the most politically savvy. Yang wants to enact many of my dreams, particularly in that he wants to fix the ills of the world from the bottom up instead of the trickling down bullshit we’ve been sold fruitlessly since Reagan.

He also has the ability to unite Conservatives, Progressives, and even this Idealist. A good example of that can be found in the increasingly quickly blooming “Moving Forward Podcast,” hosted by Rio Verndonir and Corey Cottrell.

Rio is is one of the few Conservatives I know who is capable of changing a Progressive’s mind. While I still disagree at the core with the idea that all people should be self sufficient, he’s made several very powerful cases on the podcast that have made me reconsider my positions on certain issues. He and I could have a great debate.

He never leaves himself open for the easy attacks, though. No use of the Whataboutism that has become the hallmark of the hijacked word Conservative. No ad hominem. No misapplication of quotes. All my easiest avenues of attack are unavailable with him. I’ve never had a more difficult time writing an article as I’ve had for the past couple of weeks trying to come up with my Idealist’s response to his Conservatism.

Corey does an excellent job of supporting the Progressive point of view, and while he’s clearly the first officer to Rio’s captain, he doesn’t lay down.

And here’s the part that is most unbelievable: They can disagree ideologically all day and all night, but they agree on the solutions Yang proposes. Yang appeals to the Conservative in Rio by being a business man. Unlike Sanders, Yang doesn’t loathe the wealthy. He respects them, but believes they need to pay their share, and he’s getting them to do that with the dreaded VAT tax that my more Progressive friends fear.

He appeals to the Progressive in Corey by concerning himself with the Have Nots. Give people $1000 a month, and suddenly there is freedom they had never imagined before. Two or three homeless people could find a place to live together just on that. That place gives them a chance to shower, which increases their odds of getting a job. It gives those who can’t work an address from which to apply for the benefits they need to survive. It gives them a little something to eat. No, they can’t live entirely on that money, or at least not in the way most of us want to, but they can exist. They can fight to survive. They have a chance they won’t get from tax cuts that have no meaning for them.

Giving the money to the Middle Class gives them an opportunity to explore some of the areas of life that were previously unavailable to them. Why take a lousy job when you have the opportunity now, with your guaranteed income, to find one that you enjoy, perhaps even one that pays you to do what you love?

In my Idealist’s world, we would live in a post-scarcity society. We would welcome automation, and we would allow the machines to do the work we no longer need to do. I can be stoned and go to the store for the much needed Eskimo Pies because I will have a self driving car. I have the money I need to survive, because we have come to a place where we can feed and house the world. We are all working on improving ourselves and mankind instead of working 60 hours a week in a futile effort to pay rent, eat, and hope you might have enough left over to go to a movie once in a while. We have time to enjoy being alive. We can read a book, we can watch a movie, we can enjoy a sunset, (or a sunrise… Corey has started broadcasting those daily on YouTube, and it’s more beautiful than you might think) and we can sit up at night thinking all we want because the alarm clock isn’t in charge. We’re done building Walls and calling people “Illegals” instead of human beings, because we all have enough, and we have no need to invent scapegoats for our lack of resources.

I live in reality, however, and I recognize that this isn’t going to happen for a very long time. The longest journey begins with the first step. Universal Basic Income is the beginning of our trip down The Yellow Brick Road. Oz may turn out in the end to be the charlatan behind the curtain, but even he knows what matters is courage, and the ability to think, and to feel, and to love.

The Progressives can enjoy the idea of guaranteed health care for all.

The Conservatives can enjoy the injection of money directly into the economy when people begin to buy more because they have more. Each transaction creates a new job. The job creates more wealth. The wealth creates another job.

There is a feeling that Idealists loathe the wealthy. We don’t. Nor are we jealous of them. I, for one, am happy for them. They’ve managed to figure out a way to prosper in our society. This is good.

What I object to is the idea that only those who have already achieved wealth have any right to it. The idea that wealth is the result of hard work is demonstrably untrue. If hard work created wealth, the waitress working 60 hours a week, 51 weeks a year, would make more money than the lawmaker who works less than a third as much. It’s that some have skills for which our society pays well, and others have skills that are valued at far less. I recognize that’s part of how capitalism works, but that doesn’t mean that anyone should be without the resources to survive. I am a skilled teacher and writer. I can’t make a lay up shot to save my soul. Michael Jordan will have much more than I will, but I don’t believe my contributions to the world are any less valuable than his. Do you?

This is the sort of discussion you’ll find on The Moving Forward Podcast. There are no claims to absolute truth. There is no hidden agenda. It’s a discussion of… believe it or not… ideas! I invariably come away from an episode rethinking my own ideas. Some of them are reinforced. Others are challenged. New ones appear on my horizon.

Eleanor Roosevelt is reputed to have told us, as I’m sure you’ve heard several thousand times (though I challenge you to find a video or show me the book in which she wrote it), “Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.” You’ll find a little of each in this podcast, but the events and people are always discussed in the context of ideas.

If we have a chance of saving the world, it will come from discussion of ideas that might accomplish that lofty goal. We will never accomplish anything by attacking each other. Epithets are not to be mistaken for arguments. The moment someone comes out with “Libtard” or “RepuliKKKan” the discussion is polluted beyond salvation. It’s no longer a search for solutions. It’s a symptom of the cocksure ignorance that will block any solution that doesn’t fit with our team.

“You can’t change the world,” my Grandpa Schuelke told me when I was a boy, “but you can change your corner of it.”

In this corner, I present to you the ideas of Rio and Corey: The Moving Forward Podcast.

https://anchor.fm/movingforward