Are There More Stars Or Viruses?

Posted on 15/01/2022 by Grumpa Joe

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.

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COVID-19 vs Electric Cars

Posted on 09/01/2022 by Grumpa Joe

The current flash trend to love electric cars is very close to the unfortunate trend of catching COVID-19. Will they both fizz out soon? If so, I’d rather the virus lose the race. Electric cars will eat themselves with time. Although they make a lot of sense they are still a bit too far ahead of their time. The ability to generate power is far behind the world’s capacity to make electric cars. Most likely we will see millions of EV’s sitting in garages waiting for the grid to catch up.

We have actually seen electric cars in the US since 1954. They cruise the golf courses and senior communities daily. They began life as electric and now most are gas powered. These handy little autos are populous as all hell in places like Arizona and some cities in California. By now the boom has extended to Nevada and Utah as well.

Last week I saw a story from California that electric car owners should charge their cars at specified times of the day to keep from over loading the grid during the peak load times of day. There is no doubt in my mind that the capitalist system will address the need for more power as it occurs. The cost of expanding power plants to get the energy cars will need to run them will most likely be hydro-carbon in nature. The bottom line is that the carbon load we save by going to electric vehicles will be exchanged with coal or natural gas. Both of these sources are readily available in abundance whereas the green alternative of solar and wind are only figments of the imagination. By law California must provide ten percent of its power from wind and solar. During my last trip to the sunny state I saw way too many wind mills blocking my view of the natural landscape. To get from ten to twenty percent they will have to double the number of windmills and that will ruin the scenery every where. Most likely they will legislate that all home owners will have to use solar and windmills to power their homes. A later Tesla model will feature a solar arrayed body with a huge fan atop the roof.

The automotive world is rushing toward electric car production once again, this time by converting their entire line of vehicles to electric within five years. The only gas cars available will be used. It seems they didn’t learn from their escapades in 2008 when Obama talked them into having electric cars. They all had at least one electric model available. By 2019 all of the companies who had offered the electrics quit making them, the demand was not there, how many Chevy Volts have you seen on the road?

Then comes Elon Musk with the Tesla car. Since he introduced his car he has become a billionaire. I see more and more Tesla’s on the interstate roads everyday doing sixty and higher. Each time I wonder if I will pass them alongside the road with their batteries smoking and out of energy. No such luck, I have not seen one broken down yet. That doesn’t mean they don’t break down, it just means I haven’t seen any. Last week I read an article about a Finnish Tesla owner who was told his car needed a new battery. The replacement cost was $22,000. He chose to blow the car up rather buy a new battery. He obviously was not a satisfied owner.

One of my posts was written about electric cars of old. It dealt with battery problems of the early nineteen hundreds. At the time, I was not aware of the battery developments that have allowed Tesla to succeed. I concede that I was wrong about batteries not being capable, but I am still right that they will never be able to replace the convenience of adding gas to a car. Eventually, batteries will succeed and we need this current experiment with electrics to take us another baby step closer to a complete turnover. When I begin to see electric ports at gasoline stations ready to recharge electrics I will begin to believe the era of electrics is here. Right now all I see is the under used electric power charging station in the parking lot near the restaurant district of Frankfort. This power station is six feet away from another station used for airing up bicycle tires. The airing station is used 100 times more than the electric power charger.

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210502-Never Mind!

Posted on 02/05/2021 by Grumpa Joe

Today I experienced an example of how when I rely on the Internet for information it can lead me into a dead end. A few weeks ago, I married for the third time. The lady I chose for Mrs. Grumpajoe the third(GJ-3)is six years younger than Grumpajoe himself. The first Mrs. Grumpajoe-1 and I were the same age while Mrs. Grumpajoe-2 was five years older than he so the experiment here is to see if the younger Mrs. GJ-3 can out live him. Surely, I don’t want to see her fail and die a miserable death as 1 and 2 did, but I digress. 

Mrs. GJ-3 loves old stuff. With the great COVID close down of 2020 lasting into 2021 she has been shut out of one of her favorite past-times i.e. flea-marketing. Last Thursday she sprung a surprise on me by announcing that we were going to visit her grandson who lives in a town seventy miles from here. She had the days mapped out and this morning we were to go flea marketing. Generally, there are some very large markets that are open on the first weekend of the month. Today was the first weekend. Guess where we were going?

I had to search the internet to locate Gurney, IL which I remember having a huge market. They are also known for their large Outlet market place. My search didn’t find the Gurnee flea-market. Evidently, it was a victim of COVID. The nearest market was shown to be in the town of Grayslake. There was something odd about the way they listed the hours, and dates. Today’s activities were shown in a light blue text, while at the bottom of the listing were two more dates shown in bold-black in November, and December. Hymmm.

Mrs. GJ-3 and I got up early and hurriedly drove to the Lake County Fairgrounds home of said flea market. The parking lot was crowded and people were streaming forward in controlled lines, one-way in and others coming out in another lane. What was really strange was when we entered the building a nice young masked lady asked if we had an appointment. “Appointment for a flea market?” She laughed and said we should proceed and to tell them that we were walk-ins. We passed through the next door into this huge open space, and all I saw were people in orderly lines heading toward tables where other people were asking them to roll up their sleeves.  There were lines of unoccupied wheelchairs parked all around the lines. Then it dawned on me, we were in a COVID Vaccination site.    

We quietly backed out, but not before being given a hard sell to get a free vaccination while we were there. My argument was the CDC doesn’t recommend getting a third shot so soon after the first two. 

The ride home was much longer than the ride out. Our disappointment was showing on our faces and attitudes. Mrs. GJ-3 continued to search the net for information about Gurney only to learn first-hand that there was nothing, she found the same for Grayslake. That seemed to calm her down a little.

Burning gas is one of my least favorite things to do unless it is for a purpose. On the return, we passed through Mundelein and I turned into Grand Dominion a Del Webb development which has haunted me for twenty years. When I wintered in Arizona I stayed in Del Webb communities. Sun City, Sun City West, and Sun City Grand are all magnificently planned to support active life styles for old geezers like me. When I heard they have a community in Illinois north of Chicago I’ve always wanted to see what it was like. This morning I got to realize that idea. I can’t call it a dream, because it is nowhere close to a dream. The impression I got was it reminded me of Gateway an over fifty-five manufactured home community in Frankfort. Except the homes don’t arrive on wheels. They are nice size homes with what looks like PVC siding, and are spaced close to each other. The back yard is a postage stamp. The side facing the street is mostly a concrete drive way. In Arizona the homes are a few feet further apart, but the back yards are much larger to space people away from each other. At this location, the premium lots are on a small lake affording a lake view. In Sun City, the nice lots face an emerald green golf course. 

There is a large clubhouse near the entrance which I didn’t visit. It most likely houses the sales staff, swimming pool, some club rooms and a restaurant. The Old Dominion website lists all the amenities they provide. In the Arizona locations they have several community centers located throughout. These sites have sport and craft-activity rooms to house the more than three hundred hobby clubs that residents can amuse themselves in.  Overall, I was not impressed with the Illinois community. The homes didn’t impress me nor did the community layout. At least I saved a dead-end adventure and satisfied a long-time desire. Mrs. GJ-3 was not impressed at all, and dozed during my tour. Her dream is to live on a five acre lot with a large garden and a small forest separating neighbors.  

 

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No Words Needed

Posted on 28/04/2021 by Grumpa Joe

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