Bee balm at prairie area

Wanted: Ethics; When: NOW!

When we go to a grocery store, we show our trust in them to price their items fairly, for the most part. They run ads, and specials, posting them clearly. We can shop around and compare prices. But we trust our system that the quantities, labels and ingredients are accurate. If all of a sudden, the stores and food companies started jiggling their ingredients and amounts, and concealing this fact, people would be very upset.

But in our financial system, there seems to be a lot of jiggling going on. Rates are different, and fees are different, from company to company. Triple X points and perks are offered, with a lot of fine print underneath. Much is concealed in lengthy legal documents – documents that many know are there to tilt the playing field in favor of whoever is “disclosing” them.

Online companies can harvest masses of data and archive them many different ways. The old East German Stazi, or secret police, would salivate at the huge data collection apparatus extant in US Internet companies today. Is it ethical? Does it even matter anymore? Do we have any kind of choice? No, no, no. What a big privacy nightmare our need for online convenience has created.

Just wish this new generation would have an appreciation for ethical dealings among each other, in business or politics. When everyone lies, when everyone cheats or bends the rules, then no one can feel reasonably secure. Our system needs trust to succeed, and every time we get a liar, cheat, scam artist making the rules, we lose that trust – and will all suffer the consequences. Out with the liars and cheaters, and in with a system we can all use with faith that it will work for the benefit of all concerned. Thanks for reading.

Interrupted Dreams II

Awoke last night to a thump and cat's yowl,
time to to get up and tamp down any fright.

I went into the kitchen, turned on the light;

She was eyeing a wastebasket, emitting a growl.

The basket fell on its side, with her staring inside.

So I righted it up, heard some rustling sounds.

There was a mouse in there, jumping all around!

Kitty was watching, wanting to taste rodent pie.

Time to decide what to do here and now;

I hitched up my jamas, grabbed the basket

with bouncing creature inside: time to trash it!

Tipped the basket outside, encouraged by meows.

Little gray shape with tiny tail darted out into the night.

I quickly shut the door, and locked for good measure.

Set the basket back down, and thanked my happy feline.

Good catch, ol girl. You are a mouser all right!

One last thanks and then back to sleep's pleasure;

No more noises from the kitchen, my dreams were sublime.

Numbers and the Space Age

I was born in 1957, at the dawn of the space age,
could not know what a whirlwind we were in for.

Twelve years later, in 1969, the US was landing on the Moon.

From 1958, the first US sat launch, to 1969 is only eleven -

An 11 year sprint to the Apollo Eagle landing in the Sea of Tranquility.

From Kennedy's "We will go to the Moon in this decade..."
speech in 1962, to Apollo 8's reaching the Moon was 6 years and change.

In 1975 I graduated from high school – only eighteen,

still a young person, two years distant from 2 decades.

Yet by then NASA had landed on the Moon six times,

lofted the Pioneer probes to the outer Solar system,

sent the Viking on its way to land on Mars,

and put up a Skylab space station. Not bad.

In 1977 I was 20, and we sent the Voyager probes

out to explore the distant Gas Planets and beyond.

In 2019 I am 62, and one is still communicating back.

(42 years of operation is pretty darned impressive. )

When I turned 21, the age of legality for many things,

it was 1978. the Shuttle was still in development,

the Russians were lofting Salyut stations,

And the US space program seemed stalled.

But the L-5 society flourished.

Citizen interest remained out there, and Sci-Fi films fueled it.

Better late than never, the Space Shuttle rolled out of a hangar,

finally took off in 1981, just in time for Tom Wolfe’s book

The Right Stuff: fresh excitement was generated.

From 1981 to 2011, thirty years:

We lofted the Space Shuttle over 120 times;

two of them disintegrated,  and killed 14 people.

We orbited many satellites, and some lengthy experiments;

a spectacular space telescope, and finally a permanent (ISS) Station.

But all of these merely orbit the Earth, and it just doesn’t seem

as dramatic as sending people into outer space proper, to

land on some other world.

Watching old footage from 1971 we can see multiple rocket burns,

rendezvous and dockings, landings and takeoffs from the Moon’s surface.

This was in the days of leaded gas, primitive calculators, and

NO smartphones of any kind whatsoever.

But we still cavorted on another world.

So now we are working on new things. And they are all facing

delays, cost overruns, problems, snafus. I’m just

getting too old to keep waiting for more Moon-play.

Where is that speed of progress that we had from 1957 to 1969?

But at least we have sent robots to the edges of the Solar System,

we have a Tele-presence stretching out, focused on the stars.

There is always that…

In any case,

Congrats to NASA and the USA on Apollo 11 plus Fifty.

Botanical Order

The divine exists in nature,

I feel sure about that.

Looking around the backyard at the exploding daylilies,

being penetrated by groundcherries even as they swallow

the last remnants of my zinnias and columbine.

Said columbine is canted on its side, in death throes still spreading seeds.

Nature’s war is such an elegant expression of beauty and symmetry.

A portion of my backyard has been given leave to enjoy life!

Everything grows wild and reveals lush beauty.

Vines crawl along and push pentacle leaves up at the sky;

Tall weeds bristling with fine hairs sheen and sway in the sun.

Shorter ones sprout flowers and pull attention downward.

Everywhere tiny flying things dance and cavort, or just

dodge those flailing spiderwebs,

everything trying to eat everything else,

no one quite succeeding at anything besides

providing a visual feast for the human overseer,

himself a temporary occupant of this amazing

sliver of land on the East Side of Des Moines. Iowa.