A Giant Can Of Worms

Posted on 14/06/2025 by Grumpa Joe

It feels strange not to be writing for my blog, and today, I feel guilty for attempting to spill my brain out in words. As always, I begin writing. Nonsense at first, like the sentence above. Eventually, after a few sentences, my brain finds its way to a subject out of the ether. There is so much going on in the world, and in my life, it is hard to choose a topical direction. There are times when I am in the middle of an art piece and I will show photos of the work in progress. Other times, the news gets to me and I pick a political topic to opine on. The big topic in the news is war. The battle between Ukraine and Russia and now the fight between Israel and Iran. The battle on the streets of America rapidly evolving into civil war. I predicted a civil war amongst Americans when Obama first began his transformation of a civilized country into one of division. Rapidly, our neighbors are turning on each other. Although I do not know a single neighbor whose politics different than mine who will ignite a civil war.

The differences between Conservatives and Liberals in our country is real, strong, and flammable. These differences are definitely not rooted in race, religion, language, or ethnicity. They are emanating from within people’s minds. The war in Ukraine seems to be based on a pissing contest between ego-maniacs. Russia wants more land; Specifically the land Ukranians live on. I guess that a country that spans five times zones is not large enough to be significant. There is always something a neighbor has that you don’t and wallah, let’s go to war for it.

The fight, I have the most trouble understanding involves Jews. Historically, the Jews have always been the underdog. Hatred for Jews goes back thousands of years and I don’t know if anybody has ever known why. The current dispute between Palestinians and Iranians and Jews is unfathomable. Only one reason comes to me that is a possibility for disharmony. Take for example the differences between Jews and Arabs. They all come from the same area of the world, they all look alike, they live in the same region, yet they are totally different. Some say, the Jews use their cunning for business to cheat others. I can’t believe that there is a gene that spells a difference between one tribe having a stronger business gene than the other. The only difference that is logically noticeable is religion. The Jews model their lives upon the ten commandments. A second difference is that Jews hold a belief that there is but one God, and have done so for thousands of years. Muslims have modeled their religion on the Life of Mohammad. Although, there are some similarities between the two religions I can only understand a few of the differences. All of Mohammad’s rules are written in the Koran, and the single biggest difference lies in the belief that Islam believes that one God rules all. Judaism also believes in one God, but also in a separation between the state and God. There can be ethical, and moral rules as defined by the ten commandments and those dictating earthly matters such as property ownership, speed limits, boundaries, taxes. etc.

What is more intriguing is the hatred of jews by non-muslims, like Hitler. What is it that incites people to hate each other?

Growing up, I never disliked anyone, but I did pick up racial hatred from my parents. When Mom and Dad arrived in America from Europe, they did not have an inborn dislike for black people. They didn’t have blacks in that part of the world. I believe that Dad learned to dislike blacks from his superiors and co-workers on the railroad he worked for. Mom learned from her girlfriends and Dad. They did bring an attitude about Jews from Europe. We never discussed the matter, but my opinion is that they disliked Jews because Jews were responsible for killing Jesus.

So, why are the Iranians and other Muslim countries so focused on killing jews? What did the Jews do to make their neighbors hate them so? You tell me.

One scenario for this hatred is this; athough Jews have been a community in the mid-east for several thousand years, they did not become a country until 1948. When Israel was founded the total area dedicated to them was rather small as compared to neighboring countries like Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, and Jordan all of which eclipse Israel in size. Palestine was also a large community that occupied the same area as Israel and declared itself a state in 1988. Therein lies the problem. Both populations, Israel with over nine million and Palestine at five million citizens live side by side in towns scattered throughout the same territory. Picture a map of towns both Israeli and Palestinian occupying side by side within the same territory. Both populations wanting to be in control. Each claiming sovereignty over the other. Imagine a Palestinian going to work in the morning and having to cross a border into an Israeli town only to pass into another Palestinian town to another Israeli border to enter an Israeli town where your job is located. Imagine having to live by all the rules of both countries multiple times a day while commuting.

The whole situation is giving me a headache.

The answer is that I don’t know and don’t care. We are too far apart to get into it. If the Palestinian lived in Frankfort and I became friends with him, things would be different, and we’d argue things out. In the meantime, I suffer from hearing all the opinions and news reports about Israel and Palestine.

If the Jews don’t wipe out all of the Palestinians, and the Jews don’t annihilate all the Iranians, this skirmish will last another thousand years.

See, I told you at the start that I don’t have anything to write about, but I did it again. I found a topic after I began pushing keys and opened a giant can of worms.

Filed under: Conservative, muslims, politics, religion | Tagged: , | Leave a comment »

Lost In Dusseldorf

Posted on 07/06/2025 by Grumpa Joe

Lately, my dreams have been centered on my work life. A week ago, it centered on a bicycle trip taken with an associate. This time, the story takes place in Düsseldorf, Germany. It all started with my reading a technical journal and seeing an ad for a plastics exhibition in Dusseldorf. Touted as the World’s largest plastics show, I thought I should go to see what they had. I placed the journal, open to the page in front of my boss Ross Rippinger and made my pitch. As a plastics manufacturer we should be on top of everything plastic.

At first, Ross commented that we also have the world’s largest show right here in Chicago. He was right, but I argued that many foreign companies don’t exhibit in the USA, and we may be missing ideas we could benefit from. He kept the article and told me he’d think about it. What that meant was he would need to get approval from the CEO-owner of the company.

A week later, Ross told me we were approved to go. Wow! I thought to myself, ‘This is amazing; the boss actually agrees with me, or at least he agrees with Ross.’

Ross had his secretary Joyce make all the arrangements. We flew United Airlines to Frankfurt and were met by Werner, our contact from the Bad Hamburg office. He was assigned to us during our mission. Werner set up several visits with customers who never gave him the time of day, but when he told them the VP from America wanted to visit, the door opened. We spent a week wining and dining with customers and sight seeing with Werner in the evenings.

Ross rented a car to use for the remaining week of our trip to the exhibit. Ross was the alpha male, and he drove everywhere we went; I navigated. Somewhere along the way, I made the sad mistake of telling him that I took German in high school. That made me the resident expert in all things German. The only thing I didn’t like about Germany was the traffic. Everything else, towns, malls, roads, people were distinctly different from the USA. I loved the autobahn, because it didn’t have speed limits except inside cities. All the autobahn roads were three lanes wide. The inner lane is for very slow moving vehicles, the center lane is for passing and moderately fast cars. The left most lane was for passing and traveling at the speed of light.

Our routine was to commute twenty miles from the hotel in Cologne (Köln) to the Messe (exhibition center) in Düsseldorf. The autobahn was solid, with three lanes of traffic for the entire time, and regularly took us over an hour to negotiate. The place was mobbed when we arrived. It seems the locals knew to get there early. Ross and I split the Messe, which is comprised of thirteen buildings, and agreed to meet for lunch. He was the expert on molding machines and controls. I specialized in mold making and molding which constitutes the conversion of solid pellets into fluid and delivering the fluid into the cavity. The one difference I spotted immediately was that most of the foreign molding systems were slow. They relied on heavy runners which take forever to solidify enough to eject, but at the same time they ejected parts onto a conveyor under the mold. Our systems used skinny runners and our cycle times were very fast. Instead of waiting for the shot to cool we used human operators to strip the hot shot from the mold and to position it into a degater. I didn’t see technology better than ours on that first trip. Several years later I began to notice technology that was more advanced than what we used.

Ross and I spent each day exploring and re-exploring technology until the show shut down at six. Then it was party time. Our routine was to head for old Dusseldorf and look for a fun place to eat. With an hour long drive ahead of us we didn’t drink much at all. One night we decided to take a different route back to Cologne and we followed a road along the Rhine river through the city. I could see the tower of the magnificent cathedral within one block from our hotel. Traffic was heavy and became slow, very slow, it was stop and go slow. After thirty minutes of this crawling line I began to figure out what was happening. We were in line to go to the hockey stadium and were only a few minutes from entering a garage parking lot. Luckily, we were able to make a u-turn out of there and back to the road to our hotel. On another night, we missed the exit leading into old Dusseldorf and wound up speeding into the darkness of the countryside. This time, I used the glow of the city lights to direct us back on track. We spent our sightseeing time driving in the darkness of November nights. Once we got into the outskirts of the city we decided to ask for directions and stopped at a gas station that is best described as two pumps in front of a darkly lit building. I had a map in hand and used my German to ask for directions, but got hung up on a single word. The man kept telling me with his hands to go toward a point on the map and then, using his hands to turn linx. It took me twenty minutes to remember that the word linx means left. Eventually we found our way out of the outskirts and into the city.

The dreams are so vivid and detailed, I feel I am there again.

Filed under: Aging, Biography, Memories | Tagged: , | 1 Comment »