Sad Stories

Posted on 10/02/2023 by Grumpa Joe

It has been too long since I last posted. I am determined to write something interesting today, at least interesting to me. I have so many subjects to write about that now I am confused about which to select. The China balloon, or the last book I read about human trafficking, or about Joe Biden’s lame State of the Union address, the earthquake in Turkey, or my last Lions meeting.

The one excitement within our Lions club is that we are re-starting our vision screening program for kids. We first began in 2016 and were gaining momentum when COVID-19 hit and we had to stop. Up to that fatal time, we had screened 2100 kids ages 2-5 and found 75 that needed a visit to an eye doctor. It is like looking for a needle in a haystack, but the goal is to find the needles. Lions believe that all kids should have the same starting point in school. If one or more kids have vision problems they will be at a disadvantage among their peers. To level the playing field it is our goal to find the disadvantaged and to urge them to get help. Thankfully, most of them do. There are some parents who will rush to the eye doctor after getting our results, and then there are others who are skeptical, and choose to wait for the child to grow out of the problem. We even learned about an Optometrist who sent a child home declaring that he was too young and that his eyes were still changing. We can only do so much.

Lions KidSight Vision Screening

The latest book I read is “The Great Escape, A True Story of Forced Labor and Immigrant Dreams in America,” by Saket Soni. All I will say is that this story made me ashamed that I am an American. The treatment that was extended to these men from India was unbelievably atrocious. All they wanted was to use their skills as welders. The agents who recruited them used the lure of getting a Green Card. The Green Card is the ticket to migrate into the country. I know it doesn’t come easy nor quickly, nor cheaply. I have been working with US Immigration to get a green card for Lovely. To date it has been two years, a bushel basket full of money, and too many forms all of which end with one’s signature and fine print that says lying on these forms is a federal offense punishable with jail. Yet these recruiters dangled the carrot of the Green Card in front of hundreds of welders to get them to come to the USA. The charge for this service was twenty thousand US dollars. The author tells of the personal hardships they went through to get that much money together. Most times the family sold their home to sponsor a son. Other families put the condition of marriage on the son before they would allow him to go.

Human Trafficking

The saddest thing about this scam was that the perpetrators didn’t give a damn about the workers. They lived in primitive cramped barracks, fed rotten food, worked long hours without breaks and were not allowed to leave the guarded compound in which they were trapped. An even sadder story began when the men, led by a Community Organizer, escaped the compound as a group to protest their enslavement, and the US Government treated them just as badly. Once I began reading this story, I could not put the book down. I had to know the final outcome.

I rushed home from the Lions Board meeting just so I could hear President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address. He didn’t disappoint me he merely blamed all problems of the Republicans and promised to spend trillions of dollars more on nothing projects. I have listened to politicians proclaim that money is needed for rebuilding our infrastructure, and then the money is spent but not a single road or bridge is rebuilt. Same-old, same-old bullshit is fed to the masses who eat the lines with relish.

I thought for sure President Joe would take a shot at the balloon to make some points with the voters, but he procrastinated long enough to let the spyloon pass over the entire country before he shot it down. The reason he gave for not doing it while it passed over Montana, Wyoming, and the Dakotas was that the debris would be harmful to us on the ground. Evidently none of our military advisors or the president have ever been to that part of the country before or they would know that it is the safest place for debris to fall because the populations of those states is near zero. Instead he waited until the balloon got pictures of every military base in states all across the continent. I guess these same people who never saw these states don’t believe that the pictures could be downloaded to China before he finally wasted a missile on it.

The Real Reason Joe Shot Down the Chi-balloon

Finally, the Lions Clubs International Foundation is asking the one hundred and fifty million Lions from all over the world to send money to their disaster relief fund to help the people of Turkey and Syria who have been killed in and displaced by the massive earthquake that collapsed their cities. That is even sadder than the story about the hundreds of welders from India who were enslaved within the one country in the world that believes in freedom and liberty.

Turkey, a Five Story Pile of Rubble

Filed under: Book Review, family, Government, Immigration, politics | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a comment »

The Grapes of Wrath-2023

Posted on 03/02/2023 by Grumpa Joe

There aren’t too many books that I have re-read in my lifetime, but today I finished reading The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck. By far he is my favorite author. He makes me see the characters, and the places he writes about with amazing clarity. His writing style is what made me read this book a second time. It has probably been forty years in between, but I still remember the story, and yet I enjoyed it more this time than I did the first. I doubly enjoyed his descriptions of the time and the sadness of the tale.

The Grapes of Wrath has so many messages such as: the effect of weather forcing a mass migration, the desperation of poor people, the strength of family, the will to live, the shame of accepting government help in extreme poverty, the effect of starvation on health, the rejection by the communities that were affected by the influx. The list goes on. Steinbeck tells the history of the era in great detail. He was born in an agricultural valley in central California and most likely witnessed the people streaming into the region looking for work. He understood the attitudes of agricultural workers forming unions, and the land owners fighting to protect their properties. It is a scary time and a sad time because the differences between the people could be likened to the differences between North and South in the Civil War. In this case the land owners against those who don’t own land.

Most of the migrants came from Nebraska, South Dakota, Kansas, and Oklahoma. Most were share croppers. They didn’t own land but rented the land and the rent payment was a share of the crop they produced. When the global warming of the nineteen thirties hit the plains and water dried up the land turned to dust. The winds blew the dust away from the farms and destroyed them. Crops were lost, lives went bankrupt. Bankers foreclosed on the sharecroppers and the landowners sold to corporate farms. The tiny farms of twenty and forty acres that once provided sustenance for families became massive company farms tilled by modern tractors on thousands of acres to provide a return on investment. People be damned, it was up to them to move on, and to provide for themselves. Had the migration moved slower, and the people who left to find jobs did so in a trickle things might have been different. The combination of weather killing crops and corporations buying the land to make money fast caused the migration to happen rather suddenly. It is estimated that two hundred and fifty thousand people were displaced from their farms in one summer, and the majority moved to California to find jobs as pickers. They moved in old junky cars and trucks bought from charlatan dealers who raided junk yards for inventory and sold the vehicles to desperate people who needed to find work.

The current situation in the United States is not much different, except the migrants aren’t coming across the state line, but across the border from starving Central America, or they are refugees displaced by war. They come by the thousands because they have seen the promise of the United States. What hasn’t changed much is our attitude toward the intruders. In modern America, those coming in are not coming in junky jalopies that barely run, they walk in, and our government uses buses or airplanes to transport them all across the country to unsuspecting cities where they are let loose to fend for themselves. In some cases the receiving city puts them into unoccupied hotels, until more suitable housing can be found.

This book was first published in 1939 and the story closely relates to the current conditions in the USA. Does this mean that we have not solved a single worldwide social problem since then? Why are we paying all the exorbitant taxes? Where does the money go? One place it goes is to fuel the salaries of all the degreed people working for all the bureaucracies invented to deal with social problems like homelessness, starvation, etc.. Then there are those people who work diligently to expand those services. I often wonder how many staff people we employ to handle a single poor person.

Hooverville

In the new emigration the people’s wants are similar to those of the thirties. Most seek only employment so they can better themselves. They aren’t really coming here to go on welfare, they want to make their own way by working. The people who do go on welfare are those who are born here, and are too lazy to take the low paying jobs that immigrants are willing to do. What the impact will be on the USA is that the influx of immigrants will lower the standard of living for everyone.

I didn’t expect this book report to turn into my ranting about society and the ills of big government, but it did, and I am sorry for that, but now that it is in type I must post my thoughts and opinions.

Filed under: Book Review, family, Fiction | Tagged: , , , , | 1 Comment »

Lighter than Air

Posted on 19/01/2023 by Grumpa Joe

Every year I set a goal to read one book a week. I missed the goal in 2022 by one book. Convinced that this year will be different I am reading voraciously. The latest novel is by author Ariel Lawhon and titled “Flight of Dreams.” Although it is fiction it has a historical theme. The fiction aspect contains two separate love stories, a mystery, and much social dialog. The history part comes from the fact that the entire story takes place aboard the last flight of the Hindenburg. Only a few references are made about these huge, lighter than air, ships being used in World War 1, in moving mail, and passengers.

The early part of the story reminded me of a cross country train trip I took on a train. Descriptions of the life in a restricted environment, and the ensuing boredom mixing with the excitement of a adventurous journey stirred my recollections. The author used a tactic that made the reading easier for me. She broke the story up by writing from the point of view of the characters. She begins new segments about a character with the title of the character, such as Cabin Boy, Navigator, Stewardess, Chef, Journalist, American, etc. Since I have trouble remembering characters in any story I read, this tactic helped me establish a connection sooner, and it was more burned into my brain.

The flight from Germany to New Jersey lasted three days and eight hours. This gave the author lots of time to tell the story of over ninety passengers and crew. Of course, she concentrated the narrative on only a select few passengers in order to get the reader into the story. Throughout the tale we know all along how this story ends, the Hindenburg blows up as it is landing. The author periodically gives us a check-point by reminding us how many hours and minutes remain until the “explosion.” What this did for me was to establish a giant curiosity about how the story ends. Would my favorite character be one of those who perish? Would the love interests perish together? Would the American accomplish his goal to revenge his brother’s death in WW I?

I felt that Ariel Lawhon did an amazing job of story telling by turning her story from a slow beginning into a frantically paced thriller in the final pages. Her story left me sad, and happy as I learned which characters survived, and which perished. I learned just enough history in this read to make me want to know more about this form of airship travel.

Filed under: Book Review, Education, Fiction | Tagged: , | 2 Comments »

Coincidence???

Posted on 12/01/2023 by Grumpa Joe

This week I finished reading a book titled “Ransomeware Hunting Team.” As I read I began to realize why passwords are so important, and necessary. Each time I write about passwords it is negative. I hate passwords with a passion. My favorite saying is that the only one that a password protects me from is me. Fortunately, I have only encountered a ransomeware attack once in my lifetime, and I was smart enough to ignore it, and also wise enough to restart my computer in Safe mode, I got lucky. The thought of my computer being invaded by a complete stranger who then sends a nasty-gram asking for money to get rid of him makes the hair on my arms stand at attention. The only thing scarier is encountering that same man on the street who sticks a gun in your face and demands your wallet.

In the book “Ransomeware Hunting Team” the authors tell a story of the heroic effort expended by a few people in the world who take the opposite stance as the thieves. The main characters are hackers who specialize in, and get delight from being able to unlock the thief’s key, and to save the victim from paying the ransom. At first, these brave hackers were the only ones fighting the hundreds (or maybe thousands) of evil-hackers who everyday hold unsuspecting victims hostage. It took decades of cooperation between the good-hackers and the FBI to finally develop enough clout to fight back effectively. In the mean time, evil-hackers had bilked billions of dollars from individuals and corporations.

I still believe that better computer designs, and more secure software can be developed to squash the ransomeware developers. But will anyone be able to force computer and software companies to do that?This is such a big problem that it will take a concerted effort by our government to enact regulations and controls that will make it impossible for evil-hackers to function.

To my surprise, yesterday I read headlines that airlines had been shut down nationally due to an unknown computer outage. My mind immediately jumped to suspect ransomeware, and Russian hackers looking to get rich by imposing such a grand scheme as shutting down the major transportation system in the country. It is a documented fact that the USA has imposed sanctions on Russia, and the sanctions are working. It is also known that the USA is assisting Ukraine in the war with Russia. This is not just a coincidence. The shutdown of the USA air transport system is most likely Vladimir Putin getting revenge on the United States for waging war against Russia by using Ukraine as a proxy.

Of course the airlines have denied that the problem is not due to ransomeware. It would be too embarrassing for them to admit such a thing, and it would be even more embarrassing to admit that the FAA has sent Russia tons of money to get the system back up and running. It would be even more damaging to learn that the FAA system was so out of date that it was susceptible to crash just like Southwest Airlines. We spend trillions of dollars every year to run our country, but I’d be willing to bet that there isn’t one nickel in the budget for upgrading crucial computer systems.

My prediction is the Department of Transportation, run by a weakling rookie, will spend more money trying to find the root cause than they would spend on a system upgrade.

Filed under: Book Review, Government, Revenge | Tagged: , , , | 1 Comment »

Absolute Power

Posted on 23/12/2022 by Grumpa Joe

My goal to read four books a month this year is nearing completion. I just finished reading Absolute Power by Daniel Baldacci as number 46. With two more to go It’ll be close. The weather here just turned nasty, and the daytime temperature is minus four degrees Farhrenheit with wind chills below -20 degrees. Not that that means I stop moving, but the world seems to slow down when it is cold. Our library closed because of yesterday’s snowstorm, and the upcoming Christmas holiday. Getting something to read is going to be difficult. Additionally, the weather has caused my internet service to slow down to zero. The only thing I can still watch is Youtube. My e-mail, news, and WordPress are all down, and I can’t even go online to ask them for help. Anyway, let me tell you about Absolute Power.

For sure, the best mystery story I read this year. Baldacci crafted a fiction that kept me, the reader, on the edge of my seat from page one through page 469. There was never a dull moment in this story. The characters were real, believable, and likeable, well, that is except for the two protagonists who were despicable. The fact that the plot revolves around a crooked President made it even better for me. I hate politicians and love conspiracy theories. This story is loaded with both. Many stories begin to finalize twenty pages from the end, Baldacci chose instead to take the mystery into the final pages, and I couldn’t tell how the culprits were going to be dealt with until the very last sentences.

I recommend this book to anyone who loves mystery stories, or to anyone who just loves a good story.  

Filed under: Biography, Book Review | Tagged: , , , | 1 Comment »

« Previous Page — Next Page »