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In The Back of My Mind
No matter what country you live in, top of the heap or low on the scales of cash, eventually the human mind will discover several untidy things about their birthplace. It is not as idyllic as is was when you were 5 or 17. At 25-60 y.o.a. you begin to put words together that equal wisdom, trounce what ya mama and dad told ya, and makes the grands look like idiots. Some wisdom, but not the good stuff, gets transmitted to the wide eyed 15 year old. And it sticks. For a long time. Throwing off "another time" is hard. I still remember growing vegetables and think I could do it again if the world closes down due to no more fossil fuels, but I'd rather not. Especially if it means survival and has to be done. I can not imagine a world without personal computers, but my descendents may look back at "us" nostalgically and say what were they thinking using all that oil and polluting the air for centuries causing us to have to wear oxygen wherever we go now. My great great great grandchildren will not heed the wisdom of my time and even the good stuff will be viewed with suspicion. Their brains will think differently, own different priorities. The technology will go with them as an implant and their eyes will become the screen.
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With air at a premium, spaces will be smaller, houses the size of you bedroom, air for sale from devices on the street, like our public telephones (that are fading due to cell phones) or ice cream or hot dogs or newspapers from stands. Get your life saving air at half price. Air sale. Oxygen for better breathing. The entire "sales slogans" will change. Billboards will declare: Save air, insulate, seal, and live in miniscule spaces. Sleep more: conserve oxygen consumption. Stay home tonight: moving around burns more air. Plant a forest, store more carbon. In short, what we know we should be doing now, we squander.
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Wealth and power and control are items for contemplation when the constitution is being or has been rewritten, re-explained and expanded to put the poor, people of the wrong "look" in prisons for small offenses, and no trials or judgements against those who squander billions. In the back of my head I keep thinking the government had discovered that the world is scheduled to end soon and has adopted a "what the heck" attitude toward old values like justice, fairness, redistribution of wealth, fair elections, a stop to gerrymandering, end exclusionary practices at the poles, giving a citizen a break! Also at the rear of my thoughts are ideas: Does my doctor prescribe me medicines to boost his stock dividends? Is the news totally written by government entities editing out the war realities and missteps, as in if so many helicopters are literally falling out of the sky, why buy more from the same companies? Back yard and underground thinking goes like this: Why was Spring sooooo late and why are we "reforesting" and promoting huge square acreages of wild fires? If pesticides are causing skewered DNA and mutation and cancer, why is it legal? What is lactose intolerant - an allergy to bad chems? What catalyst really reactivated the measles VACCINE and created Shingles?
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Check this: Why do we wait until forty years after a President dies to learn what an (insert your own expletive here) he was? They curse like sailors, drink like sturgeons, and are not permitted to smoke during tv promotions (campaign speeches). What will a female president do that is sooooooo different from her predecessors? My I live to see her reform the Executive Branch. Who decided that Supreme Court judges should have life terms? And, lastly, why is the news always the same inside the U.S. and more comprehensive and less propaganda oriented outside the States than the watered down version we get?
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Answer to all of the back brain thinking and questions is control. Laws, conditioning from ads everywhere, powerful people wanting and having far more than their share. Rebuilding our "lasting" and "historical" institutions from scratch might (may merely may) truly restore core values like truth, happy pursuits for all, absence of inequity and substandards, real competition (aka if your investment bank goes belly up, you go out of business and taxpapers do not pick up your sorry butt's tab). Stacking the deck against the consumer has to be fixed too. I buy a computer to type on it and do research. How do you get to put ads on my space that I purchased? When do we go to war with China for trademark violations? When does the consumers of the world stop buying from child labor and no safety for worker nations and watch their neighbors be able to find work for a decent wage?
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And so that is what itches just below the scalp under the skull this week. Come May 2014, I will have a whole new list.
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Lady A
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