Messenger From the North

I watch a lot of movies, and I am particular about the themes. I prefer stories about real people and not those of Hollywood gangsters and shoot em ups. Some of that stuff might be going on in the real world, but not to the extent to which writers and movie makers lead us to believe. Maybe I am living in a bubble here on the edge of the mid-west near one of the largest cities in North America. Yes, we have crime, and yes, we have murders, but why make movies about them? Isn’t that reinforcing the bad behavior, i.e. by glorifying it in film?

A few days ago, I came across a movie titled Chloe and Theo. This story had all th elements of a great movie, it was funny, it was sad, it was tragic, and it had a message. The premise of the story is that a tribe of Inuit Indians living on the ice fields of the arctic circle have seen a trend of warming that is shrinking their ice, and forcing the animals inland, and away from their habitat which is the ice and the frigid waters of the arctic. They decide to send a messenger from their tribe to speak to the elders, and to give them a message of pending doom. They pick a single man named Theo not because he is a smart guy, or a diplomat, or a scientist, but because he is the only one in their village who can speak english. The village elders give him a pouch filled with cash to make the trip.

Theo lands in New York and is amazed at the tall buildings the hordes of people, and the noise. He often laments that where he is from there is a simple beauty to the empty, whiteness, and silence of the ice. He checks into a low cost flop-house and goes looking for the elders. Along the way he meets a young woman who is homeless after she recognizes him as an eskimo. She befriends him only because she thinks he is different, and she wants to know all about him. Theo asks her to help him find the elders. She takes him to her tented area in a dilapidated building where many homeless sleep. She introduces him to what she considers to be an elder. He is in reality a informal leader of the homeless group to which she belongs. Theo is not satisfied, so the group begins a brain storming session as to who they should try to get him to see. At first it was the President of the USA, but the idea falls apart when the FBI gets involved and asks too many dumb questions. Eventually, they break from the FBI and return to brainstorming. The elder in the group has a brainstorm, why not take Theo to the United Nations, and the story goes in that direction, but again proves to be fruitless.

Another plot is to introduce him to the producers of a big TV show, and they succeed in getting a meeting with them. The homeless group and Theo enter the building and are getting into an elevator when Theo balks, he wants to walk up the 62 stories to reduce his contribution to the carbon footprint left by the elevator. He walks while the homeless group is waiting for him to arrive. Nerves take over and the producers insist of leaving, but the homeless are persistent and make Theo’s pitch for him. The scene ends with all of them leaving the conference room as Theo finally arrives.

To make this long story shorter I will only say that these characters all made the story believable. Before the end of the film they are successful in finding a way to get Theo’s story to the Elders. They celebrate and give Theo a gift of a pair of shoes to replace the heavy boots he has worn since he left his Northern Village, and as he has always done throughout the story he takes a walk to try his new shoes, and to clear his head. Then something unbelievable happens and the story ends.

This is what I rate a five star film * * * * *

Are There More Stars Or Viruses?

For Every Star in the Universe There Are 100 million Viruses

This morning I had scheduled myself to attend a pancake breakfast with the Bradley Lions Club. The money generated was to support the families of two Bradley police officers who were shot in the line of duty, one died the other in serious condition. I did not attend. Why? I will try to explain my paranoyia as I go on.

Two days ago my wife’s 28 year old single grandson called to tell his grandma that he has COVID. Grandma nearly fainted and went into hysterics. He is her only family in this country, and she relies on him for way too much. He is more than happy to help her because she also is his only family here in America. She lost her only child, a son, last march in an accident that snuffed him out within an instant. The shock was overwhelming and she is still not over it.

My wife and her grandson being from Europe and living poor believe in practicing naturally healthy lives. Eat right, eat only chemically free food, drink only pure water, and breathe lots of clean fresh air, preferably forest generated. No one in her family believes in polluting the body with nasty things like vaccines. So when she heard her only grandson had COVID she was picturing him in a grave. From what I have heard about Omicron, the COVID variant, it is only a matter of time before everyone in the world has it, even double vaccinated me. One of my greatest fears is that I will bring it home to her and our moderately happy marriage will end. That is why I decided to skip the pancake breakfast this morning.

I shoveled the drive and walkways this afternoon, fed the birds and came in to rest. While resting I felt driven to post something, but what? For reasons unknown I decided to check the responses I get, and one of them was not checked off. I always address responses within a day at the latest. I searched for the response and couldn’t find it after perusing seven pages of posts. Then the brain finally kicked in and told me to work smarter. I looked at my dashboard and found a comment was in moderation. Why, That is another story, but I also learned how to search for the responses. While looking for it I came across the one I am posting to share with you. It is a very intelligently written and thoughtful piece that makes a lot of sense the writer obviously has a gift we call common sense

Her response showed me that I have fallen prey to the hysteria being touted over the airwaves. I have forgotten my own common sense attitude for avoiding COVID. When the thing first began to kill, I chose not to hunker down, but to rather lead a life which would avoid opportunities to catch the thing without becoming an inbound, stagnant-air breathing recluse. So far it is working, knock on wood, but I also believe in vaccinations as part of the protection scheme. Then I reread the comment from dolphin write of the understandingbloghome.wordpress.com, and it all makes sense again.

Remember, there are 340,000,000 million people in the USA, to this point there have been 66,317,293 cases of COVID. That means there are 273, 683,000. people who do not have COVID. True 66 million is a lot of sick people, but 273 million is a four times as many healthy people walking around.

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The following essay is a reply I received to my own Blog-piece titled

A Nation of Too Many Laws

response attributed to:
dolphinwrite
Nov 18, 2020·understandingbloghome.wordpress.com

Controlled by what we can’t see:
When will people get it? A virus is a very tiny organism, in the trillions all around. There are billions of different virus. This one is one amid trillions of germs, bugs, viruses, and like many, is airborne.
If you wear one of those face shields (those clear plastic face guards), airborne viruses are entering you’re lungs as if you didn’t have one. If you’re wearing a face mask, right through the fabric, and certainly any side openings. Pull the mask from your face for a few seconds, no or very little help. And when you go to stores or anywhere else, touch anything, even just by being there, you’re covered with viruses and germs. Wear gloves and touch things, whatever you touched is on the gloves and whatever the gloves then touch transfers (i.e. door knobs, the steering wheel, your face, your shirt, your wallet, your shoe laces, and everything else). The only way to be “safer” is staying indoors, never going out, and using a ventilator. Okay, there might be some reduction, but we heard, from a doctor, they get more sick people coming in who wear masks and stay indoors than by those who don’t worry. Something like 65% with masks versus 35% without.
Why? We have immune systems. Even if a virus is knew, our body fights them. That’s how immune systems work. But we suppose the very real reason most of the people wearing masks and staying home are most of the sick patients is because they don’t go out, exercise, breathe the fresh air, and socialize. They’re often sick with worry. So, by worrying all the time about germs, wearing masks and gloves, washing everything, spraying everything, and stressing out, their immune systems are further compromised. Stress does that. Depression does that. Fear does that.
Which is why I shared a time when a friend and I worked at a zoo, clearing up after the animals, cleaning their cages, raking and shoveling the droppings, washing some animals, caring for sick animals, feeding them, bringing in supplies, chasing rats (or catching) away, cleaning the shops and storage rooms, butchering road kills for the big cats, cleaning up after those big cats ate, and so much more. And never getting sick. We really believe, being around all that strengthened our immune systems. Never, during those years, did we ever take any “sick” pills. Just being outdoors, breathing the fresh air, moving around working, and life was good. It is good. We are not designed to live in fear and worry.
And now we see “they” are going to close up everything. We wonder if it’s even constitutional or legal. More and more people will have to stay home, not socialize, and live in worry and fear, unable to go out and relax. That, in and of itself will lead to more stress and worry, causing increased sickness, and we believe more mob mentality, people frustrated and acting out. Just wait and see if all this continues. It happened before and is still happening.
Everybody, should the elections go one way, will find out what losing all your freedoms is about. When people choose for others to do what they can do on their own, where businesses makes decisions that best fit their company, but instead, rely on government for all their protections, we get socialism leading to communism. Unfortunately, people may need to find out the hard way. But making that decision for outer control and “good feelings” means anarchy then dictatorship right here, but also terrible consequences across the globe. In such a future, millions will die: people in democratic countries, innocent people, and the unborn who we wish have all the opportunities for life we have. But if we allow ourselves to be blinded by rhetoric, propaganda, and cutesy language, then we get what we get. I hope people never have to find out the hard way.

Scary Shit

Twice today I came across a discussion on something called the Great Reset. Not to mention that I have heard Hillary Clinton use the term. In my opinion anything Hillary promotes is scary. I searched and found this article while I was searching for Glen Beck’s new book by a similar name. What scare’s me is that all along I have had this inner feeling that the COVID-19 pandemic is part of a global conspiracy to take over the world. It is even greater than that, it is a conspiracy by the global bajillionaires to control the entire population of Earth. If it happens we will become closer to the world depicted in Star Wars and Star Trek where planet Earth rules the universe. The website I found is ammo.com, and the article below is cut from that site.

Let me know if you have nightmares after reading this piece.

The Great Reset:The Global Elite’s Plan to Radically Remake Our Economic and Social Lives

You’re free to republish or share any of our articles (either in part or in full), which are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Our only requirement is that you give Ammo.com appropriate credit by linking to the original article. Spread the word; knowledge is power!

what is the great resetThe Great Reset is upon us…or at least the powers that be are trying to bring it out. What was once a fringe “conspiracy theory” is now on display plain as day for everyone to see. The economic, political, academic, and media elites around the world are leveraging the chaos, confusion, and restrictions on liberty from the COVID-19 lockdowns and using them to radically alter society around the world.

What will this change look like? The global elites want to create a society of renters who own nothing, while also pushing a social agenda that would be unpopular with the unwashed masses and difficult to implement in a society with a broad, ownership-based middle class. What this means is that you would rent not just your home, but also your phone, computer, car (though you probably will “carshare,” the term for renting a car when you need one for an extended period and summoning one when you need it for a ride), and even the pots and pans you cook with.

The flip side of this will be a radical transformation of the world economy. No longer will you have a job in the sense that it has traditionally been understood. Instead, you will work various and sundry “gigs,” all of which place you in a precarious position at any given time. You will receive a fee for services performed, with no benefits, paid time off, healthcare, or anything else that the middle class in the West has become accustomed to.

https://html5-player.libsyn.com/embed/episode/id/21475493/height/90/theme/custom/thumbnail/Yes/direction/forward/render-playlist/no/custom-color/313131/

Or listen on your favorite app:

To facilitate the Great Reset, rural populations will have to be coerced into more concentrated population centers since dispersed populations have too high a “carbon footprint.” The suburbs will be a thing of the past as suburbs and exurbs become more like cities. Mixed-use housing, where you and 500 other people live in a mid-rise condo hive with shops and “workshare” spaces (the new version of an office – on your dime, not your employer’s) in the same area.

The short version is that it’s a total end to the American way of life, specifically the way of life of most of the Western middle class. The specifics, including the why, are a longer story that you’re going to want to read if you want to be ready to fight against the Great Reset.

What is the Great Reset?

Knowing what the Great Reset is can be difficult because official sources on the matter – World Economic Forum, the primary mover behind the Great Reset, and its affiliated organizations and individuals – cloak their aims in vague euphemisms like the main slogan for the Great Reset, “build back better.”

We have discussed in our articles on Cultural MarxismCritical Race Theory in public schools, and, George Soros how the enemies of freedom often use vague, non-specifically positive language for their projects. These are generally words that, when taken at face value, no one could possibly disagree with. Who would be against building back better?

These words mean something else and one should not accept at face value the idea that the Great Reset is simply “building back better” any more than one should accept at face value the claim that four out of five doctors smoke Camels.

So what is the Great Reset?

At its core, the Great Reset is an attempt to enforce socialism through private companies rather than only through the government. Think of it as “socialism with Amazon Prime characteristics.” That being said, the government will certainly play a role in the Great Reset by angling for higher taxes, which the wealthy will be able to avoid using armies of lawyers and accountants; adding additional bureaucratic red tape, which the wealthy will avoid using the same armies of lawyers, connections, and special carveouts; and growing big government social programs a la the New Deal, which will disproportionately benefit the wealthy and preferred underclass who will be weaponized against the broad middle class. An excellent example of a Great Reset program in the United States is the proposed Green New Deal, which we will discuss in greater detail later.

move to cities

Here is a glimpses of how the Great Reset will look:

  • “Sharing Economy:” everything is rented and nothing is owned
  • Digital media: it will be easier to ban and suppress books and videos that run contrary to prevailing narratives
  • Social Media Restrictions: the de facto public square, will be restricted to those who tout the latest version of elite narratives.
  • de facto social credit system: those who deviate from the narrative will be financially blacklisted, including loss of their dubious “benefits” which will increasingly become necessary for ordinary life and even survival
  • Centralization of Housing and Land: fewer and fewer Americans will own the property they live in and on
  • “Racial Equity”: some races will be more equal than others, with preferred groups becoming the recipients of generous benefit programs funded by the less preferred groups, who increasingly become tax slaves
  • Climate Change: protection of the environment will be used as an excuse to reduce the standard of living for the middle class, increase restrictions on freedom of movement, and even access to food
  • Ground-level goons will operate with impunity to attack enemies of the system in coordinated outbreaks of violence and intimidation
  • Concentrated Wealth: wealth will be concentrated in the hands of the regime and its allies which will be used as economic leverage to control political discourse and personal freedom

Is The Great Reset Real?

This might all sound a little far-fetched; however, unlike other alleged “conspiracy theories” which require a great amount of research to prove are true, the Great Reset is right out there in the open for everyone to see. The people pushing it brag about it, speak of it openly, craft propaganda campaigns around it, refer to it explicitly by name, and get publicly frustrated and angry when the “dog isn’t going to eat the dog food.”

A video of Klaus Schwab, Founder and Chairman of the World Economic Forum, the primary global elite institution pushing for the Great Reset, went viral. It is only about 40 seconds and well worth the time it takes to watch. You’ll see the Great Reset logo right behind Schwab in the same font as the World Economic Forum logo. Additionally, Schwab explicitly speaks of the Great Reset and his frustration with the COVID-19 pandemic in that it has not been as effective as he would like in pushing the Great Reset.

Klaus Schwab isn’t some random guy on Twitter or a blogger with a couple dozen readers, he is an extremely powerful man and head of one of the most important elite globalist organization in the world, the World Economic Forum.

The Great Reset is larger than a single 40-second viral clip. There’s an entire page about it on the World Economic Forum’s website, including a lot of vague language that doesn’t tell you much of what it actually. Time‘s website includes a rather massive cache of articles pushing the subject as unassailably good and beyond question or reproach. A video on the World Economic Forum’s YouTube channel is effectively a five-minute PSA of talking points on the subject.

Alarmingly, the BBC and others are running articles encouraging you not to believe your own lying eyes, insisting that this is a conspiracy theory not rooted in fact. Additionally, Wikipedia includes an entire section assuring you that the “conspiracy theory” of the Great Reset bears no relation to the pure, noble intentions of people like Klaus Schwab, Bill Gates and Tony Blair.

The Great Reset is clearly real, but how do the powers that be intend to force it on the world?

Grooming for a Police State

Whether one thinks that the COVID-19 lockdowns and restrictions were a good faith response to a public health emergency or not is irrelevant. The fact of the matter is that it accustomed Americans and Westerners to significant restrictions on their freedoms, including freedom of movement. More than that, it showed those in power that people that if you created enough fear, Americans would tolerate the restrictions.

move to cities

Thus, consciously or not, global elites were grooming the world population for a police state. Fortunately, there has been some pushback and vaccine passports are encountering stiff resistance from both elected officials and the general population at large. For most of 2020 and 2021, the most freedom loving people on earth – Americans – were walking around with dirty, useless masks on to comply with a government mandate. A mandate that after further scrutiny, made no sense. Americans even allowed their children to be subjected to this as a condition of attending school.

The COVID-19 lockdowns were not the first time that Americans were groomed for police state – TSA is the biggest example of this, however, we also see examples of this in our public schools with metal detectors and warrantless searches.

If nothing else, the elites learned that there is just about nothing that America and the world will not tolerate provided that you scare them enough.  The burning question now is how will Americans be scared into further erosions of their liberties?

The Sky Is Falling: Climate Austerity and the Great Reset

The most likely answer is through climate austerity. There have already been musings among the COVID-19 lockdown warriors that one of the best things about the lockdowns is that they significantly reduced carbon emissions, thus saving the planet during the period when people were locked down. The natural conclusion is that climate lockdowns are a viable solution to climate change.

Whether or not one believes that climate change exists and is caused by humans is irrelevant. What is relevant is whether or not the burden of fixing the planet – if such a thing is necessary and possible – ought to be borne by individual consumers and the common man. Perhaps not surprisingly, billionaire plutocrats like Bill Gates (a big booster of COVID-19 lockdowns and the Great Reset) think that it ought to be.

This is the real meaning of “we’re all in this together.” Does anyone honestly believe that Davos attendees like Bill Gates will be living in dense, mixed-use communities or eating cricket patties as their primary source of protein? Of course not. They will continue to live the affluent lifestyles that they currently live in while the rest of us suffer.

move to cities

The idea that you and I ought to bear the burden of climate change is called “climate austerity.” It is the belief that the average man must tighten his belt and lower his standard of living in what might well be a totally Quixotic attempt to save the planet. It is a concept closely tied to the Great Reset and an example of how something other than another pandemic might be used to get Americans and the rest of the world to radically change their notion of what they’re “allowed” to do.

We should all recall back that poorly aged phrase “14 days to stop the spread.” How many times did the goalposts move? Where are we with that as you read this? First we were told that we needed to “flatten the curve.” Then there needed to be a vaccine. Then the vaccine wasn’t enough. The point is, that COVID-19 became a perpetual excuse for the elites to enact whatever “emergency” measures they wanted – all for your own safety, of course.

An integral part of climate austerity is the war on private transportationcommercial flights, and freedom of travel. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg floated a mileage tax and many measures advanced by the Green New Deal that would effectively ban private transportation, due to the high cost – again, you will be impacted by this but the elites will not. It seems that there is almost a weekly outrage against pickup trucks on Twitter.

The real reason for this is to control the free movement of people. The agenda here has nothing to do with stated goals and everything to do with locking you down, reducing your standard of living, abolishing your way of life, and subjecting every aspect of your life to control by powerful elites.

The Great Reset in Action: Blackrock Creates a Nation of Renters

BlackRock is a private equity firm that has been offering absurd prices for residential homes in the suburbs. They don’t plan to flip them and turn a profit. Rather, the plan is to buy homes at 50 percent above asking with the purpose of transforming these homes into rental properties. BlackRock’s acquisition of the suburbs is part of a larger issue that grew out of COVID-19, but is closely related to the Great Reset – the increased centralization of the American economy.

switch to renter society

While isolated conservatives such as Ben Shapiro took to Twitter to defend the “free market” principles of venture capital speculating on the market using free money from the Federal Reserve (with full knowledge that they will be bailed out if things go south), most recognized BlackRock’s attempt to corner the housing market for what it is. It was a transparent move to transform America into a society of modern serfs. Renters who own nothing can be moved around at the whims of Big Money or financially blacklisted if they step out of line.

BlackRock is certainly villainous, but they represent a broader trend not just limited to the housing market, the concentration of wealth as a weapon. The Bernie Sanders left focuses on “wealth inequality,” which is simply a fact of life that cannot be done away with. “The poor,” Christ told us, “you will always have with you.” People having more than other people isn’t a social problem, but a few people owning everything is, because it is simply socialism (centralized control) by other means. It also dramatically reduces the number of people with skin in the game making the economic and social atmosphere extremely volatile.

One company, or a handful of them, who dominate the housing market are dangerous for a variety of reasons. Chief among these reasons is the ability to weaponize this control over housing against critics of the regime. Who needs the government to enact a social credit system when the national landlord has one? Of course, the usual dummies will defend this because it’s being done by a private corporation.

It is worth briefly noting that the eviction moratorium favors large landlords who can go months or years without an income over smaller ones, who cannot. The moratorium was enacted by the CDC, which apparently now has the authority to control rental properties in the United States.

The Great Reset in Action: Social Credit

The Great Reset is all in on “racial equity,” a term that appeared almost out of nowhere around the 2020 election and has been used unrelentingly since in the mainstream press as if it were a word everyone always used. Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.

“Equity” effectively means, not to lean quite too heavily on Orwell, that all races are equal but some races are more equal than others. This is a key goal of the Great Reset. The argument basically goes that the only way to address racial disparities in the United States is by extended special benefits and privileges to allegedly “oppressed” groups.

Because government benefit programs are a zero-sum game, these assistance programs, and special privileges will have to be paid for by someone else. For every dollar of benefit money doled out, a dollar of income is lost by someone else. For every job or university position reserved for a protected class, something is lost by someone else.

A key part of the push for “equity” is attacks on people who oppose it. Equity as an ideology is tied up with a bundle of other ideas pushed by Cultural Marxists and the extremely similar but unrelated phenomenon of George Soros “Open Society” types.

The important part, as far as we are concerned, is that concentrated wealth is better able to enforce the prevailing diktats of ideology. When small business evaporates, it is easier to enforce social programs using the private sector. Similarly, when ownership becomes increasingly concentrated, it is easier to enforce a de facto social credit system. The value system of corporate elites is well known.

Conservatives are already being denied bank accounts because of their beliefs, and the beliefs that warrant financial blacklisting are increasingly expanded. It is not too much to imagine that in the very near future, financial blacklisting and social ostracism, enforced by Big Tech and Big Finance, will come to include any critics of so-called racial equity or any other aspect of regime ideology.

In general, what you’re looking at is a system where there are far fewer poles of financial and social attraction, and that these few remaining poles are increasingly inseparable from the state. This is the essence of fascism in its definition not as anyone’s set of ideological or political principles, but as the system of governance where there is little to no daylight between the corporate sector and the administrative state.

Why the Great Reset?

We cannot speculate as to the internal motives of any man. What we can do is talk about the tangible effects that policies have here in the real world. The primary tangible effect of the Great Reset is an increased amount of power and wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer people, all of whom are hostile toward you, your values, and your way of life.

It might have been a happy accident that the greatest wealth transfer in human history happened during the COVID-19 lockdowns, or it might have been by design. Regardless, the upward wealth transfer happened. Success rarely satiates, rather it fuels a hunger for more success. We should see this wealth transfer as a prelude to an even larger wealth transfer that is forthcoming.

Additionally, the Western middle class sits on an enormous reserve of wealth in the form of homeownership and retirement funds. These are the white whales of the global elite. One would be a fool, given all of the evidence, to believe that they would stop at anything to acquire this massive reserve of wealth.

To the extent that it is possible, we must make ourselves more resilient. This means owning land, having your own well, a supply of food to weather the storm, adequate supplies of ammunition, useful skills, and close community bonds. It also means sounding the alarm bells about elite propaganda campaigns, legislative maneuvers, and bureaucratic fiats designed to destroy you.

Prepare to dig in for a long winter.Sam JacobsWritten bySam Jacobs

Sacrilegious For Sure

My cousin Rick sent me this and titled it “Belly laugh coming up. . . ” I thought not a chance there is very little that would make me laugh out loud. I mention his name because if I’m going to hell with this one I want him holding my hand on the way down.

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SIPPING VODKA
A new Priest at his first mass was so nervous he could hardly speak. After mass he asked the Monsignor how he had done. The Monsignor replied, “When I am worried about getting nervous on the pulpit, I put a glass of vodka next to the water glass. If I start to get nervous, I take a sip.” So next Sunday he took the Monsignor’s advice. At the beginning of the sermon, he got nervous and took a drink. He proceeded to talk up a storm. Upon his return to his office after the mass, he found the following note on the door:
1) Sip the vodka, don’t gulp.
2) There are 10 commandments, not 12.
3) There are 12 disciples, not 10…
4) Jesus was consecrated, not constipated.
5) Jacob wagered his donkey, he did not bet his ass.
6) We do not refer to Jesus Christ as the late J.C..
7) The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are not referred to as Daddy, Junior and the Spook.
8) David slew Goliath; he did not kick the shit out of him..
9) When David was hit by a rock and was knocked off his donkey, don’t say he was stoned off his ass.
10) We do not refer to the cross as the ‘Big T.’
11) When Jesus broke the bread at the last supper he said,“Take this and eat it for this is my body..” He did not say,“Eat me.”
12) The Virgin Mary is not called ‘Mary with the Cherry’.
13) The recommended grace before a meal is not: Rub-A-Dub-Dub thanks for the grub, Yeah God.
14) Next Sunday there will be a taffy pulling contest at St. Peter’s not a peter pulling contest at St. Taffy’s.
I am still laughing out loud.

Narcissistic Old Man

With the weather being nasty the past week I have not gotten to the library to pick new books. I was so desperate for something to read I began a search of my book shelves. There in my secretariat, on the lower shelf, I spotted the familiar white cover booklet that I made. It’s been fifteen years since I wrote and bound my vignettes into books. It was time to open the covers and to relive the moments of my childhood that I cherished enough to spend considerable time to record them. I titled the work “Jun-e-or, Recollections of Life in the Nineteen Forties and Fifties.” The title is also part of me. My parents who were very European spoke very broken English until the day they died. I also had an older brother named Joe after our father. Brother Joe tragically died at age seven from scarlet fever. My Dad didn’t have a middle name and neither did my brother. To differentiate which Joe was being addressed in conversation Dad was Senior and brother was Junior. Yep, you got it, they didn’t pronounce junior as junior they pronounced it as jun-e-or. A few years after Joe Jun-e-or died I was born, and named after my father. My parents called me Jun-e-or for the remainder of their lives. Everyone in the neighborhood knew me as Jun-e-or. I wasn’t just plain Joe until I left for college.

There are three volumes to this story. Each is a collection of vignettes about my earliest recollections up until college. I suppose I could have continued with additional volumes to cover the years in between volume three and today, but frankly I don’t have that many memorable memories from that period of sixty-seven years. Sad, isn’t it? Finishing the story about those years is a good project for my bucket list.

The book I picked up to re-read was volume three which describes life as a pre-teen, my toys, my hobbies, school, and neighborhood activities. I actually enjoyed reading these short stories again. I kept looking for ways I would improve the writing if I had to, but honestly, except for one story, I wouldn’t change a thing. Because it was all about me and my interests it kept me awake, I’m not sure what you or my friends would say. Except I do know what a few of them have said. I have on occasion loaned a single volume out to friends, and they have commented that they enjoyed the nostalgia of reliving in the old neighborhood. They saw the old places and saw themselves in some of the stores and places I described.

I’ll finish reading the remaining two volumes in reverse order. The second book is about my time on the farm with my mother’s father. The strange thing about this work is that I totally left out anything that happened with my brother and sister. It is as though they didn’t exist. That worries me because it implies that I am self centered and narcissistic, and I hate that in other people.

If you are at all interested in reading one of these volumes it is available on Amazon for free. Click on the book icon on the right side of my blog and it will take you right to it.