Any man is liable to err, only a fool persists in error.
Cicero
Quote of the Day: Twain on Congress
I saw this quote recently and I could not believe how appropriate it is still today.
I thought I would share it with you. Enjoy, or not…
Anyone else tired of a Congress that does pretty much nothing but posture about it’s own ideology?
Yeah, me too.
Still Missing the Point
The house on the corner never fails to entertain.
However, I can’t help but wonder if, once again, people are missing the point when it comes to Easter. Do we really think it is about bunnies and chocolate?
Superstitious View
I visited Arizona a couple years ago, again, and we were near the Superstition Mountains. These mountains brought back fond memories of a college backpacking trip during Spring break of ’94. Anyway, here are a couple of pictures I took and edited on my iPhone. Enjoy!!
Do you have a favorite mountain or mountains? Do you visit them often or just admire them in a photo?
It’s time to go hiking again, I think. The weather is almost there…
Simply not acceptable
Photo by Miguel Á. Padriñán on Pexels.com
Invasion: Definition #2,
Invade: Definition #3a
Infringe: Definition #1
Illegal: definition #1 & #2
Flood: Definition #3
Whatever definition you want to use, it can’t be denied. Simply saying that it is something other than what it is, well, that’s just delusional. Unfortunately, a large portion of our elected officials are just delusional. Plain and simple. “No ifs, ands, or buts about it.”
Look, I have a heart. I can feel empathy. I understand that people are coming from places that are poor and there is suffering. I been there (Mexico) and I’ve seen it. I have been the drop in the bucket that brought light to someone’s world for a short time. So, I am not an ignorant soul spouting about something that I don’t know about.
However, there is a time and a place for the rule of law and my to my dismay (and many others) we have people amongst us that are actually inviting and encouraging the unlawfulness. They are sending a message that is directly counter to the foundations of our country – that we are a law-abiding people, who honor values and principles of law.
The border of our nation doesn’t get this way unless someone has invited and encouraged them. Our states don’t get this way unless someone has given them assurance that once they’re here they won’t be caught or charged with a crime. Our government doesn’t get this way unless someone has exploited the intentions of good laws for political purposes. Democrats, the fingers are pointed directly at you!
I don’t normally like to call out one single party (yes, I have done it in the past), as I try to look at both sides objectively, consider the factors, and understand decision aren’t always cut and dried. But, when a spade is a spade you have to call it that. When a duck walks and talks like a duck, you have to call it a duck. It’s time the Democrats be called on the carpet and held accountable for actually calling for the open violation of our nation’s laws. They say they are doing it for the “humanity” of it all, but that can’t actually be the case because the message they are sending people who aren’t coming to the nation legally is actually dangerous and unfair.
What is happening at the border just simply should even be a concern, if we were a nation that actually believed in law and order. If we were actually a nation that believed in sovereignty. If we were a nation that actually believed that we could do this better and still follow our law, protect our borders, and improve the lives of people where they are.
What’s a guy to do?
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com
I live in a state that makes illegal things legal and tries to make legal things illegal.
I have a national, two-party political system that is broken to its core and has become so partisan that neither can let go of anything, any time, anywhere. The work of the people doesn’t get done because they have to play tit-for-tat with everything.
I live in a country where insane people want to give everything away for free and do no work.
I live in a country where approximately 3200 people die in automobile collisions and about 3000 unborn babies are murdered every day; however, the former has government campaigns to stop it and the later the government funds to assist in it.
I live in a country that supposedly holds the ideal of Free Speech sacred but has a culture that silences people who speak freely and are counter to mainstream thought.
I am in a country with national sovereignty and borders, but has a political party that openly invites people to violate the sovereignty and break the law.
I live in a country that has no better political choice for representation (and president) than to choose between the lesser of two evils.
I live in a state where one major city wants to willingly give heroin injections freely and openly but won’t listen to its citizens when they show up at a city council meeting.
I have a national media that used to tell us the truth, the facts and no more, but now they tell us their opinions and speculations with no reliable sources or verification.
So what’s a guy to do?
It’s weird to think that we are living in the upside-down. What we used to say was wrong is now right and what we used to say was right is now wrong. There will be no reprieve if we don’t change directions soon. A 180 degree turn, turning the down right side up is the only way to make it happen.
So what’s a guy to do?
I wish I had answers. It’s an age-old question that obviously none of us has an answer to. We can’t rely on our politicians. We can’t rely on our education. We can’t rely on our government. We can’t rely our political parties. We can barely rely on each other. We are gonna have to find the answer, somewhere, deep down within ourselves. We are going to have to work together and find common ground.
Common Ground.
Not what is best for me. Not what is best for you. But what is best for both. Can we even do that anymore?
Blog mile markers
I don’t have much substance to today’s post. It is just really a review of things that have taken place in the last couple weeks with my blogs, and a chance to stop and smell the roses. Oh, and I should probably say thanks too.
First, let me say thanks to all who have stopped and read (an assumption) and “Liked” a post or two around here. I appreciate it very much! As such, you have helped me get Understanding, Optional to one of those blog mile markers:
I started this particular blog just because I wanted to have discussion on topics that mattered outside of the classroom. Now that I am outside of the classroom, I still want to have to conversations that matter but sometimes it seems harder and harder to engage and audience that is more voyeuristic than anything. I guess a “like” here and there is at least acknowledgement that someone is stopping by on occasion.
The other thing I wanted to acknowledge is that my other blog, Piss and Moan, has also hit some blog mile markers. Strangely, it has taken less time but I also publish nearly every weekday there. Obviously, the topics are less serious but they do seem to engage more people in conversation. Is it weird how we all have similar complaints, irritations, and struggles? Probably not, because we’re human but it is still nice to put a voice to the challenges and commiserate with like minded people.
So, the blog miles markers are similar and different at the same time:
While it was never meant to be a serious blog, it has seemed to resonate with some people. It also seems to resonate with those “blog spammers” who want to sell anything and everything…maybe I need to write another blog on that…another day, another topic. If you want to help Piss and Moan hit some other blog mile markers, go take a look at it and give it a follow. I would appreciate it!
Anyway, all that to celebrate the life of two blogs and to say THANKS! You keep looking and liking and I’ll keep writing!
Citizenship, the border, and the census
Photo by Jaymantri on Pexels.com
Are you a citizen of the United States of America?
Seems like a fair question. A questions that any country of the world should be able to ask of anyone residing within its borders (Are you a citizen of ___*current location in the world*___?). A country has a right to know whom resides within its borders, right? A country also has a right to know if those who reside within its borders are citizens or not. Otherwise, what’s the point of borders, or even visas for that matter? The citizenship question and whether it can be included on the next census will get answered by SCOTUS here in the near future.
It should be a relatively straight forward answer, especially if you are a citizen or in the country legally. It’s as simple as YES or NO. If you are a citizen, I would venture a guess that nearly everyone would admit that they are. If you are not a citizen, you’re either going to lie or refuse to answer that you’re not a citizen. If you’re in the country illegally and DO admit that you’re not a citizen, you should be afraid of deportation, because you have broken the law.
If I speed, am I afraid to get caught? Sure. I don’t want to pay the fine. If I am caught stealing, do I want to get caught? Nope. I don’t want to go to jail. If I were to murder someone, do I want to get caught? Definitely not. I don’t want the possibility of the death penalty (yes, I know, another debate for another day). So why would illegal immigration be any different? If you are in the country without permission to legally be there, then you have broken the law and there are consequences for breaking the law, or at least there used to be.
It was recently reported that the border of our country is in crisis. The media is working overtime to make people to believe that it isn’t. The Democrats would like Americans to believe that it isn’t. But the numbers for the year don’t lie. The NYT recently reported numbers from the US Border Patrol that most definitely show there is a crisis. It can’t be denied. When you have a record number of people crossing the border per month, at the rate of 19,000 per week (on average) or approximately 633 per day, there really can’t be any other conclusion. To deny that there isn’t a crisis is just plain fantasy…or, it plays into a political agenda.
Why were illegal crossings way down a year to a year and a half ago? Why have things changed so dramatically in the last 6 months? Because we have a segment of the our population who are actively encouraging illegal crossings and actively pushing for law enforcement to turn a blind eye to breaking the law. There isn’t another explanation for this and there can’t be a claim of “humanitarian crisis” if you have sent the message that you aren’t going to enforce the laws. If there is a crisis, it was created in order to serve a political agenda.
I am not talking about a “political crisis” to build a wall. That need has always been there, but our politicians have punted that ball from one Congress to the next hoping that someone will do the hard work and get it done, unless of course it fits your agenda to not get it done. Is it possible to build a physical wall on the entirety of the border? Not even remotely. Is it possible to stem illegal immigration in totality with a wall? Definitely not. But, the effect of a wall would surely act as a deterrent and it would definitely slow it down. That is really the ultimate goal, to get it to slow down and eventually stop.
Why is illegal immigration such a big deal? Because it hurts the country. This isn’t about legal immigration. That helps the country. There are positives and negatives, but the distinction between legal and illegal has to be kept clear. You can’t encourage illegal immigration and you can’t encourage the breaking of laws because there may be an economic gain, but more importantly you can’t encourage it because it will give you political leverage.
Illegal immigration doesn’t just strain the border enforcement resources. It has an impact on resources well inside the border as well. Our doctor’s offices and hospitals are full and illegal immigrants with no insurance strain the resources of those facilities while those who have insurance bear the cost of increased insurance rates to make up the difference. Our schools (in many areas of the country) are bursting at the seams with students who are not in the country legally, but schools are required to educate the students without asking if they’re legal or not. Who bears the cost of that? Those who pay the local taxes and, maybe in even worse, the students who wouldn’t have normally been in an overcrowded classroom. Illegal immigrants (in many places) can get driver’s licenses. By reasonable extension then, you can deduce that they are likely getting aid when in a car crash and in many cases they aren’t insured, so those drivers who are insured bear the cost of increased rates to make up for uninsured motorists. The list could go on and on.
My family were immigrants when they came to the country a really long time ago. They did it legally. I don’t think it is too much to ask that others follow the law and do it legally too. That is why we have a system that allows for it, and encourages people from all over the world to do it legally. We are stronger if we are a nation that follows its own laws, not if we are a nation that allows for some to break them and not face the consequences for it.
I’ll add that to my list
Photo by Natalie B on Pexels.com
Confession time: I am a list maker.
OK, not that I really need to confess that but what I have found is that I am perpetually making lists and sometimes I find that I am being held captive by my lists. Like, I look at a list and all I want to do is run away from it because it is overwhelming and though I have the list, I am not sure where I want to start.
I make lists at home.
I make lists at work.
I make lists on my phone. I make lists on little pieces of paper. I make lists in notebooks. I make lists in my head. I make lists on my computer. Grocery lists. Ideas to write about lists. Movies I want to see lists. Books I want to read lists. Places I want to go lists. Things I don’t really want to do but really should do lists. Things that need to get done ASAP and things that don’t need to get done ASAP.
I make lists.
Now, I might need to confess if I never really got anything done on my lists. I guess the real problem is the lists actually never end or go away. I get things done, but then add more things to the list – by creating a new list.
Example: I made of list of six things I wanted to get done over the weekend. I only get three of them done. So, I’ll add those three things to the list of things I want to get done next weekend. And the list goes on and on and on…it just grows!
Damn. I just realized as I was writing this blog that I have now created a list of my lists.
I am without a doubt – neurotic.
OK, I’ll just add that to my list of things that I am, and remove it from the list of things that I am not.
Sheesh.
So, how do you get through life? Are you a list maker? Do you feel overwhelmed by your lists or do you get freedom by making lists?
Tell me what you do in the comments below.
Something personal…
Photo by Jens Johnsson on Pexels.com
Two weeks ago I asked in a post if you were paying attention. Apparently, you aren’t, or at least most of you aren’t.
I had only one response in the comments to the “poll”. That one vote came from Bel at RoadsBelTravelled. Thanks for paying attention and playing along! So, since she was the only one to vote she wins the vote by default. She chose “something personal”…
Now the question is…what to share? How about I climb into the “way back machine”?
Desert Trek
Once upon a time I used to hike and backpack quite a bit. That is, until I got married and had a child. It slowly decreased after that and over the last few years I am lucky if I get in one hike. I actually did two last year, but they were fairly short. I am hoping to work back into more this summer! Anyway, on to the details of the desert trek.
It all started in college when I decided to go on a one week backpacking trek with some college friends and two professors from the college I was attending. I had never done this before, but I had a good friend who had done it a lot so it was fun to go to REI and purchase the essentials that I would use for years to come (I finally unloaded some of that old gear – though it was still good – two years ago).
We trained for the hike, during the winter months, in the nine story tower on campus. Up and down the stairs we went, walking, running, and at first maybe even crawling. Then with extra weight, in our hiking boots, etc. It was a good way to build stamina and leg strength. Most people don’t know, but going downhill and maintaining balance takes a different set of muscles than going uphill, so the walking down the stairs slowly and methodically was essential to the training too.
After months of preparing, we all piled into a 15 passenger van the professors borrowed from the school and we loaded up our gear. It was a little cramped in that van, but it was fun as we road-tripped it from Chicago to the Superstition Mountains of Arizona. There isn’t much I specifically remember about the road trip other than I do know that we realized we were going to be going through Winslow, Arizona, so we played a lot of The Eagles’ “Take It Easy” in the van and when it came time…yes, we jumped out of the van and took some moments “…standin’ on a corner in Winslow, Arizona” and “it was such a fine sight to see…”
It ended up being perfect weather in the desert. We hiking in the sun. We relaxed next to a brook. We swam in the brook (the water was really cold!). We played Rook sitting around a camp fire or in the sun on a giant boulder next to the brook. I can’t describe what it felt like to be out there, feeling like you were the only people on the Earth. It was glorious!
Again, I don’t remember the particulars except on experience did leave an impression on me. There were some lessons to be learned one particular day.
We used camp as a base and took different hikes from there each day. So, one day, we decided to take a hike. It was supposed to be about a 10 mile round-trip hike and it was going to go near some of the Anasazi ruins in the surrounding valleys. The day hike started out rather normal but as we got farther into it, the guide book that the research was done from didn’t appear to be as accurate as we though. We were on Mile 6 and we hadn’t gotten even half way to the destination. So, part of the group decided to turn around and head back and part of the group decided to continue on.
We found the ruins and they were SPECTACULAR! It was really cool to see that kind of history and imagine what life would have been like at the time. It was hard to imagine, quite frankly.
I should mention that the ruins were about Mile 12 of the hike that day. Now we are well past mid-day and we have to return back to base camp. There are five of us (our group was a total of 12) and we have to make a decision – return the way we came or find another way back to base. This decision was key because we know what we just went through to get to this location and returning the way we came would be difficult to say the least.
We gathered around the map and saw there was another route back to base and it appeared that if we kept going ahead, instead of turning around, it would only be about 8 miles back to base. Mind you, we haven’t been on the trail and the sun is well past the high point of the day. We are all in pretty good shape and there was definitely some hill climbing to be done as we left the valley we were in, but we thought we could do it if we kept up a good pace. We refilled out water bottles in the creek through our filters and off we went. Through the bottom of the valley for a while and then…uphill.
The uphill part was not as steep as the route we came down through. There were no switchbacks and the trail, at least at first, was pretty clear. Yeah, you read that right – “at first.”
In many places, the trail had markers or signs to help point you in the right direction instead of just using the map. Up to a certain point, it was pretty useful until we came up to a spot where the trail split from one to three. The signs had been pulled out of the ground and thrown in a pile slightly off the trail. Great! Let’s hope our map reading skills are better than we realize because now we are solely relying on a compass and a detailed map that didn’t show a 1-3 transition. Really great. We knew where we were, approximately, and the three options didn’t really offer any sure-fire sense of which was the correct trail to take.
So, after studying the map and looking at the different trails, we decided that we would take the one that looked the most traveled, and by that I mean that there were hoof marks on the trail so we knew a mule or a horse had followed the trail. We assumed they knew where they were going…yeah, not so much! We followed the trail for about 45 minutes until it just kind of petered out and there was no trail to be found, just cacti and scrub. Super awesome! Not only did we pick the wrong trail, but we just wasted at total of an hour and a half of light going the wrong way! It was now late afternoon and we knew we were not getting back to camp before dark.
This was not a good situation since we were not prepared to hunker down for an overnight and our supplies were limited since this was just supposed to be a day hike. It left us no choice but to power on and hope for better results this time. So, we chose a different trail and started up the hill.
Needless to say, as you are reading this blog, we survived. LOL Our legs were scratched from brushing against cacti we couldn’t see in the dark. Our flashlight and headlamp provided a little light, but only two of the five of us actually brought lights (not sure why we did for a “day hike”) and we discovered that the starlight provided better light as our eyes would get all whacked out when we used the bright lights, making it harder to see a small trail. We really only used the light to look at the map, which looking back was kind of dumb since we couldn’t see any landmarks, but once in a while we would come to a trail sign and we could reference the map to see where we were.
All in all, we made it back to the main trail we hiked to get into base camp and then followed it back to base that night. We ended up walking in the dark for four hours and we were back to camp well after dinner. We were all famished! And we were lucky.
Lesson learned: Be prepared for an overnight, even if it is just a day trip. Obviously, we were not prepared if something had really gone wrong. We weren’t prepared for a cold night in the desert and we weren’t prepared for injuries. Luckily, no one got hurt, and we didn’t end up having to huddle together for body heat. LOL But, it is better to be prepared than not to be. So, if you think you may be over packing, you probably are and that is OK.
I have never forgotten those lessons. So, even on those occasional day hikes I take now (and hope to do more of this summer) I may look a little funny with a bigger than normal pack, but I am ready for the end of the world! Wanna hit the trail with me?
Do you have any good hiking stories or lessons you want to share? Hit me up in the comments with your learned wisdom!
**Sorry I don’t have pictures to include with the post. That was back in the day when photos were taken with real film, had to be developed, and the printed. I haven’t had those pics digitized yet.**
Understanding, Optional 