Fundamental Stupidity

Remember when Barack Obama said we were “five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America”?  The reaction of the crowd was appalling. People cheered. Why cheer the idea of fundamentally transforming the country which provides its citizens more freedom, more opportunity – socially, economically, politically – and more liberty than any other country in the entire history of the planet?  Why would the people cheer the transformation of a government that acknowledges its citizens have certain inalienable rights that it is bound to protect?

Let’s be clear. Even the best country has its faults. Even in the best of countries people fall on hard times. Even in the land of opportunity some people can’t catch a break. Tragedy is ubiquitous to being human. There is no system in the world that has eliminated human suffering, although many socialistic and communistic regimes claim this to be their end.  I’m not saying that the United States is perfect. It too can be improved. But there is a chasm as wide as the Grand Canyon in the difference between fundamental transformation and making improvement.

To fundamentally transform something is to say, “I don’t like the way it performs, functions, or acts.”   It is to address the forming or serving essential components of a system or structure.  Painting the living room may make the room brighter or update it with the latest trendy color, but it is not a fundamental transformation until a wall or two has been knocked down, a ceiling vaulted and the 22 year old Lay-Z Boy with the nappy fabric and broken spring has been hauled to the curb.  

The fundamental components of the United States lie in the principles of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.  To fundamentally transform America is to attack our founding principles and values: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.  It has been these two documents that have established the systems, opportunities and freedoms that have made America great, its economic engine prosper and protected each citizen’s natural right.

Why then would you cheer the transformation of a system that protects what is naturally yours?  For no other reason than it feels good to think you are suddenly morally superior to all other who don’t want to transform America.

We have seen the vast expansion of government morph into bureaucracies that has no boundaries, no limits, no accountable to any other branch of government. These bureaucracies are law maker, executor and judge over their domains.  We’ve seen the national debt grow to unfathomable numbers that can be neither justified nor sustained. And all we want to do is continue the same course of spending on programs that cripple the ambition of the nation’s citizen. We have seen a shift in values that have moved us from liberty to emphasizing material equality.  We’ve seen the individual attacked and the state elevated.   We’ve seen the focus placed on what feels good rather than what is honestly best for the whole. And as we have watched the socialistic European model fail, we have shifted more and more to the following that same path of destruction.

Why are we headed in a fundamentally different direction than our Founding Fathers intended? To say that the cheering crowds surrounding Obama were selfish would be kind as would be to call them ignorant.  Stupid is more appropriate. We have grown dumb and dumber neglecting our responsibility to know what our government is, why it was formed the way it was and what our responsibilities and obligations in self-government are.  It’s no accident that we were given a gift like no other in the course of history. We have failed to protect our inheritance by not educating ourselves about the very creature that we are now allowing to enslave us.  

If you are still following the "fundamentally transform" mantra maybe it is time you stepped away from the Kool-Aid and hit a text book or two. 

Tomorrow

I went through my blogs and found 23 unpublished. This one was written a month after my mother passed away in August 2006. I was about to continue down the road in the RV with Phoenix and Diablo and The Last Voyage of the Cosmic Muffin.

Tomorrow I leave home with mixed feelings. I'm not excited; yet, I'm looking forward to being alone. Road time. Time to contemplate in solitude on the events of the last month. To cry alone. Years ago, after Rusty, my mother's dog,  had been put down Mom said she had not had a good cry. She was waiting for Dad to go on a trip at the end of the month. Then she could grieve alone. I wondered how she could store away the emotion, as if it were a coat to be pulled out of a closet at the first chill. You can't tell the night air not to come because you're not ready. Can grief be pulled out when it is convenient to wrap it around your heart and soul?  I never knew if Mom had that a good cry. Dad did not go on his trip.

Now I have done the same thing. I have not burst into a long hard cry since Mom died. I  have caught myself aching for Mom’s presence, missing her dearly, feeling sad and lonely. I have been caught off guard when for no apparent rhyme or reason the emotion was triggered as if a spontaneous combustion of thoughts ignited in my heart to violently remind me that my mother died.

Oh, my eyes have shed their share of tears.  I have felt an ache fill the back of my throat and I have choked on a heart so tender that just one more thought of her would indeed break it and make it stop beating. But I have not sobbed. I have wanted to, but I want to be alone. I don't want to be consoled or have to explain why I just fell apart. I want to be at the ocean, sitting in the sand. I want to be at the place of the beginning. The place of the end. The place where something else lies beyond the horizon. Where Mom is.

Tomorrow…

If it had been any other month there were things I would have shared with Mom.  Ordinary things that nevertheless would have been of interest to her. I would have told her that the old barn on Rt9 is being relocated to Duchess County. Being restored instead of demolished. She would be delighted to know this. I would have told her that the patio and back porch on the Grey’s house is being redone. This would have pleased her too. I would have told her that I found old grape vines still growing behind the barn and Dr. Gabay’s wife offered fresh rhubarb for a pie.  She would have sent me down their way to pick enough for a pie and some for the freezer. I would have shown her the freshly minted Colorado quarter and put it in the cup on the top of the cherry cabinet where she saved every new state quarter.  But, it wasn't a month like any other. It was the first month since Mom died.

I lost my watch this month too. An $1800 Tag. It doesn’t seem to bother me too much.

The Incredible Egg

A couple of weeks ago I posted a photo of hard boiled eggs on Facebook. There wasn’t anything special about these eggs, except to boast that I can produce a hard boiled egg on par with any Food TV celeb. Yes, my great egg throw-down has been issued. However, what made me whip out my Droid and snap away was that the white eggs were sitting on my black flat stove top. The contrast made a nice shot.

Once the photo went up on Facebook I got a response from a Dorothy E Nolan elementary school classmate. She said she remembered my packed lunches and my hard boiled eggs. Yes, I toted a plaid lunch box to school everyday until Mr. Grey, on his way to work one morning, ran over the box I accidentally left at the end of his driveway. Then I carried a brown bag. Everyday Mom packed lunches for my father and my brothers and sisters. Well, unless the school served hotdogs and then Mom splurged on the wieners. I got milk money to purchase a carton of milk and when I was in elementary school it was a whopping 2 cents.

I was puzzled as to why after 50 years (gulp) my friend remembered what I ate for lunch. I remember bologna or ham sandwiches on white bread, carrot sticks, a piece of fruit (apple, orange or banana) and Mom’s homemade cookies (toll house or peanut butter). That was the norm, but I recalled the eggs too. We probably got them on sale from Stewart's: three dozen for a dollar. But why did my friend remember my eggs? She said because I got a whole egg. She got an egg salad sandwich. And she was pretty sure her portion of the egg was not a whole.

I was amazed. I thought I was impoverished because I toted a lunch to school everyday and here was this other kid envying my lunch. I suppose today we would have a bullying moment. She’d call me egg-head and I would get upset and cry and be in counseling the rest of my life. But back then, kids were kids and we kept our mouths shut unless we had something really, really mean to say and if we did we got smacked for it by the closest teacher. What I remember about my classmate was how smart she was. She knew how to spell weird. I was impressed. Weird wasn’t one of those “i”-before-“e”-except-after-“c”-and-sounding-like-“a”-in neighbor-or-weigh words. I could use all the help I could get in grade school and this kind of knowledge was a keeper.

Anyway, my youngest sister commented on the photo. She said Mom wrapped the eggs in waxed paper. I didn’t remember that. I assumed Mom must have peeled the egg for her and then wrapped it. I chided her. Why else wrap the egg in wax paper? She claimed Mom never peeled the egg.

This morning I was in my kitchen packing my lunch for work. A piece of waxed paper sat on the counter so I decided to wrap my egg, after I peeled it. As I began to wrap it, my brain was suddenly deluged with memories. I was seven or eight. I sat at the cafeteria table. I heard the rumble of all the other kids sitting around the room. I could smell goulash from the kitchen. I saw the waxed paper before me. On it were tiny bits of egg shells. I could see my friend across from me at the table. I almost cried.

 God, I love my brain.

The Test

My pool monitor job has to be the easiest way to make legal money in the world. Yeah, I have to keep myself busy so I don’t veg out in complete boredom, so occasionally I break up a Marco-Polo game in the pool, or strongly suggest that the alcoholic beverage in the spa area needs to completely disappear (I don’t mean guzzle it down and belch in my presence). For what I must do, the job is what we called in Tennessee a pie job. Everyone loves pie.

There are no commutes, no meetings, no reports, no paperwork, and no bosses to supervise my work (but I am sure that is done every morning when he opens the pool I closed). There isn’t much I can do that if not done would have dire consequences. The worst might be a high electric bill because I didn’t turn off a light, pump or heater. Costly yes, but not world crippling. As a condo owner I have some incentive to keep costs in check. This keeps my condo fees from going up. The fact that I get paid to look after my own interests seems too good to be true. I can even project that my fees pay my salary, so I get a little of that back.

The main draw back is that I don’t get a week crammed full of hours. Twenty hours a week would put me into the magic employment bonus round, for the state mandates an employer to provide health care to any employee who works more than 20 hours a week for four consecutive weeks. It hovers around 17 to 19 hours. With the shortage of pool monitors this month, I’ll get the 20, but not much more. Since I have this huge tiling project to do in one of my rental apartments I need a few bucks to cover my travels to Tennessee.

So as my employer and condo association embark on repainting the largest complex on the Island of Hawaii, I hinted that I can paint. Last night my boss told me to show up at quarter to eight the next morning. Yahoo, but after a little thought I got nervous. I’ve painted my first house back in the 80’s. I’ve painted my rental units numerous times. I’ve painted inside and outside. I’ve painted large and small projects. I’ve painted my father’s house (one major project for this summer will be to stain the siding). I’ve painted a couple historic buildings that were in rough shape. But what I have never done is paint with a crew of guys. I’ve always painted alone. That is what I love about painting. The solo work. Me and my radio.

Would my style, skill and speed be up to par? Before we got started, one guy asked if I ever painted before. When I said yes he asked, “With what company?” I laughed and told him I never worked for any company. Always individuals. He quickly ran down the process. Top to bottom and wet on wet. All to minimize ladder work. Get up and stay up until that area is done. Stupid to me, but these are the same guys who can’t go around the complex without a golf cart. I know I was being tested. To add to the pressure, they assigned me to the lanai area of the President of the Condo Board.

They gave me a ladder than was too high to clear the fan that hogged the enter ceiling. It was impossible to work around the fan. It didn’t take long for me to ask if they had a shorter ladder. They did. The ten by seven foot area is obviously not large. But with two windows, a sliding glass door, and a closet door there was plenty of trim and little siding. Nothing that gives lots of unbroken square footage. But by 11:45 I had every surfaced painted light cocoa brown with white trim. When the guys saw me standing back to look at my work they asked if I was okay. I said I was done.

Surprised they asked, “Everything?”

“Well, no. I left the two spots under the window that needed to be re-prepped. Remove the old screws, sand down the old paint ridge around the bracket and fill in the holes.” In other words, where the prep work sucked. I said nothing about all the gecko shit I painted over.

I asked about clean up, but they told me to leave my buckets and brushes. They would use them in the afternoon. I cringed. I had to scrub out my buckets this morning before I filled them with paint.

“Coming back tomorrow?”

“If I passed the test, I hope so.”