Happy New Year 2026

 

Maybe this is the year that Peace will break out,

that humans will stop the killing,

and start to take better care of each other.

Maybe this will be the year leaders wake up,

and see that almost everything they do leads

to more senseless killing of human beings.

Maybe this will be the year more people get housed,

more enlightened social policies take hold,

people are better cared for in every respect.

Maybe reasoned, rational thinking will take hold,

and religious fanaticism will mercifully recede.

The only think that is known for sure is that

there will be more meteorites in the sky,

more babies born into squalor and warfare,

more foolishness and greed in political circles.

There will be way too many more humans

fouling up the earth in so many ways.

But when that date rolls over it gives rise to

hope that somehow, we can clean up our

hopeless mess.

Good luck with that.

Happy New Year anyway!

Extraterrestrial love songs

 Here are a couple of sonnets and a villanelle about romance beyond the boundary of Earth.  (With a lot of help from Gemini, thank you G.)

Love Affair in Space

In deep blackness where stars like diamonds shine,

We drift in silence, held by gravity's bond,

No earthly clock can rule this love of thine,

Past moons and rings, in realms that lie beyond.

Your silhouette against the nebula's light,

Outshines the sun in my confined sphere,

In zero G, our souls ascend the height,

A future together beyond the stratosphere.

Our vessel hums a constant, low refrain,

A lullaby beneath the glass dome's curve,

You are the airlock shielding me from pain,

The sustenance for which my feelings serve.

Forgetting the divides that used to be,

My universe is now centered in thee.

Young Lovers on the Moon

The dust of ages settles on our dome,

Where we have made a garden, strange and new,

Beneath the pale, bright curve of Earth, our home

Is marked by footprints only we walked through.

No whisper here of judgment's shadowed voice,

No narrow gaze to tell our hearts we err,

We chose this quiet crater, by free choice,

To build our solace in the thin, cold air.

Your hand in mine, we watch the azure rise,

A distant marble, beautiful and whole,

Reflecting secrets in your knowing eyes,

The shared, wild longing of a youthful soul.

Let all the miles of space between us lie,

You are my Moon, my purpose, and my sky.

Lovers Living in Space.

The silver ship spins slow in silent night,

Our two hearts beat in rhythm, free of earth,

We hold each other close within the light.

Beyond the glass, the cosmos takes its flight,

No need for words to prove our human worth,

The silver ship spins slow in silent night.

No gravity can claim this pure delight,

To drift with you past where the planets girth,

We hold each other close within the light.

The distant blue globe fades from mortal sight,

A memory of the place that gave us birth,

The silver ship spins slow in silent night.

In weightless bonds, our future is set right,

No rules constrain the love that we unearth,

We hold each other close within the light.

Until the journey ends, our solemn plight

Is simply to confirm our life's true hearth,

The silver ship spins slow in silent night,

We hold each other close within the light.

Hit pause on the AI rush

 

So nowadays all you hear is media noise about the wonders of AI. How it will supposedly replace workers by the hundreds of thousands, and transform our lives in a myriad of ways. But I remain unimpressed. After billions of dollars, and hundreds of data-centers built, what do we really have to show for it? Some chatbots that may seem more human? Texting aids and auto-completes on our phones, or email? Perhaps some typing assists. Businesses get some productivity assists.

Self-driving cars are always right around the corner, but never quite seem to arrive.

In the meantime, we are seeing more and more homeless people, and folks showing up at food banks in droves. Our rusty cities get dressed up in the middle, but are ringed with silent, crumbling factories and decaying neighborhoods. Not much really changes when we look away from our screens, (all made in some other country).

It seems to me that somehow, the leadership that is in place across government and academia, and business, needs to step back and take another look at things. What if, instead of dumping uncounted billions into huge data centers, we would instead invest in new transportation systems for our cities? And more housing complexes? What if we revisited the 1890's idea of building a modern, progressive, healthy nation from what lies before us? New transport systems, electrified rail or whatever. New housing projects, incorporating green energy concepts. Things that will actually benefit all of the people? And put people to work building these. We should focus on re-building America, instead of losing Americans in a bunch of AI generated crap, while watching our infrastructure crumble.

Sure, some investment into robotic technologies can be a good thing. Robots can do some of the dangerous jobs. But throwing billions of dollars into AI crap that benefits almost no one is really silly. Housing, transportation, better ways of producing food, even building a base on the Moon if that's desired. Things that are physical, that matter, rather than endless virtual dead ends that simply drive people mad. Something to think about, before we bury the landscapes with data centers that suck up resources and give us nothing in return. People need real, physical infrastructure to survive, not just phosphors on a screen. Thanks for reading.

Riverside Rondeau

 

Sunlit paths with golden grass,

shine and glitter as I pass,

Sand glows tan and river serene

completes a calm and peaceful scene.

I hike through summer to reach fall at last.

The river winds and shines like glass,

Tadpoles dart about, and catfish mass;

Shadows obscure refuse, water looks clean.

Sunlit paths.

Civilizations detritus cannot be masked,

old hooks and line, cans and other trash;

wooded dumping grounds still look mean;

time to leave the environment of the unclean...

Sunlit paths.

Teeth through Time

 

One counts the passage of years in many ways.

Birthday parties and gifts,

lines drawn along a wall, measuring heights.

School grades passed up and breezed by. All those

demarcations of adolescence and young adulthood.

But another way is right here in my mouth.

At one time I had nearly all 32 teeth,

but not for long, unfortunately...

Through the 1980s and 90s, extractions occurred!

Infections, bad cavities, abscesses.

Sure I brushed them, daily;

But not enough, apparently.

One by one, they “disappeared”

getting yanked out over the long march of years.

Expensive porcelain crowns getting discarded,

a steel bridge that worked for 30-plus years,

unceremoniously cut in half and thrown away.

Nothing lasts forever, especially your teeth.

No wonder people used to say

“Smile for the camera!”

Record those teeth while they still

gleam within your mouth.

All these years later, and I only have seven left.

Seven that made it all the way to the 2020's.

They are the tough survivors, carrying

scars and fillings and bravely chewing on.

Time will tell whether they accompany me

to the grave, but at this point?

I have my doubts.

Happy chewing, everyone -

enjoy it while you have

your natural chompers!

One Invention, Two Revolutions

 

In 1892, an Iowa blacksmith was working on a solution for mechanized combining of crops. The steam engines of the day were huge, very heavy, and took a lot of coal and water to operate. They made threshing work easier, but only when they didn't break down, or explode and kill workers, etc. This inventor figured out an effective way to mount a gasoline engine on a tractor chassis. He used heavy-duty wheels and components, and had water cooling for the engine, with the first liquid cooling radiator. This revolutionized combining and harvesting. The gas powered vehicle was lighter, and could operate in a wide variety of environments, hot, cold, dusty, etc. It was so effective, that news of it spread around the midwestern US.

This prompted a visit by Henry Ford, who studied it thoroughly for days. Ford then took the inspirations back to his headquarters, and decided to build gasoline cars instead of steam cars. And thus another revolution was started.

The elements were all there: Parts from other engines, metal wheels and pipes, etc. Froelich the blacksmith just put them all together. Gas engines, thought to be inefficient, only good for stationary jobs, were re-purposed. Disparate elements were brought together to create something unique and revolutionary. Now, tractors became smaller, more lightweight, and far more effective.

Along these same lines, another young and daring person, Steve Jobs, took a tour of Xerox Parc research center in the late 1970's. He studied the new computer input device that became known as the “mouse”. He went back to his Apple HQ, and set engineers about designing the Lisa, and later the Macintosh. Both used the new input and pointing device, along with windowing software. And these revolutionized computers. A slogan from back then was something like, 'making computers people-friendly.' Jobs took disparate elements that were already out there, put them together, and created something novel. Later on, he did the same thing again, with handheld devices that had a camera and a phone embedded inside. Another smash hit that changed the world.

Sometimes all it takes is the right person at the right time, creating the right product. And Ka-Boom!

So what kind of disparate elements are laying around out there today, waiting for someone to put together in a novel way, and come up with a product of the century? You never know. And perhaps you, dear reader, will be the one to put it all together, and then push it through to completion. You never know if you don't try. Thanks for reading.

Household Warfare

 

There is always something attacking a house:

Ants, mice, birds all try to get in,

they know there is food in there;

Tinier things invade, too.

Bacteria and mold in hidden areas;

the slightest drop of moisture

leaves one open to barrages -

A homeowner is always at war.

At war with the multitudes of creatures

trying to gain entry and purchase into

your seemingly impenetrable homestead.

Just put down some sticky traps...

The crickets, centipedes, ants will show up

captured in there, in a matter of days.

What does a Centipede or Box-elder bug

need with a boring indoor environment?

They seem perfectly adapted to the outdoors,

flying or crawling around munching on plants.

Why do they all try to get in and bother me?

But that black mold is the most insidious of all,

hiding so well and spreading so fast. Maybe if

I douse the entire house in bleach, gallons and gallons of it.

Then the stuff would probably become immune!

No general in a war was as active as the typical

homeowner in the midwestern US,

fighting off every manner of invaders,

dousing spaces with caustic chemicals,

hoping to gain a few more days of rest.

There are days when summoning a bulldozer to

knock it all down, and admit defeat, seems appealing.

Not quite to that point yet. Not quite...