Expectations and Reality

 

I never imagined it would be like this.

Is that what my parents thought? That the future would be so oddly familiar, and yet so different?

I didn’t see any discontinuous jump. No sudden rocket packs or tourist jaunts to Mars. I just experienced a day-by-day humdrum grind, or the daily push to go make a living, to get the grocery shopping and oil changes and laundry loads done, and done, and done again. Then one day it is 2021, and I’m wondering WTF happened to all of the years. Sure, some of them were spent enjoying myself. And people with kids, families, etc must have really seen time rush by, like a waterfall sped up triple-time.

A recent documentary about the Vogue magazine writer Joan Diedre (sp?) really brought it home in a way. She interviewed or wrote articles on many of the leading luminaries of the 1960s. She and her husband, also a successful writer, had dinner parties with some of the rich and famous. She seemed to live a glamorous life, almost dreamlike. But eventually it was all done, lived, used up. 

 I count myself as having many blessings, a good childhood, good experiences, lots of things. And yet perhaps I’m a bit unhappy with the fact that ‘where did that time go, and why did it go so fast, and how did I get so much older?’ But hey, I got my turn around the wheel, now it is time for someone else, or elses, to enjoy their turn. I just want a couple or three more decades to write about everything (maybe I’m greedy, but there it is.)

But back to the future. It is never what we expect. I never expected a pandemic. But my father never expected a world war to take a dump on his dreams during his first year in college. Life always has some curve balls to throw at us – never fails. Still, some wonderful things are also occurring. In the medical front, Mrna technologies and the like are being put to use in the battle against Covid-19, and necessity is driving advancement. Cars are being electrified all over the place, potentially reducing pollution and dependence on fossil fuels. Space exploration is plodding forward, and new companies are springing up to meet an increasing demand for satellites of all kinds. The Moon is in play, and a lot of entities are planning trips or bases or something there. As gloomy as things seem at times, wonders are still birthing, amazing new vistas unfolding.

The future is always a mixed bag of tricks and treats. We reach for the treats, and sometimes our hands get bitten by the tricks. Like air travel exploding in the 1930s’ and bringing about the long-range bombers that wreaked havoc in the 1940s. Like rocketry technologies now, and nuclear missiles lurking right around the corner.

Smartwatches, autonomous vehicles, and suborbital airline flights are here or nearby. But we still will need our masks, and still need to go through fine scrutiny by TSA to make sure we don’t blow anything up. The future is not what I expected. But sure is still filled with surprises. I guess that is the best one could hope for. At lest we won’t die of boredom! Stay safe everyone.

A new day's challenges

 

Restoration of dignity and reason;

Rollbacks in turn rolled back,

progress begins anew!

The old days are gone,

Our supremacy is now in question?

Every day we need to struggle forward,

“move the ball downfield,”

even if just a yard or two.

Fierce international opponents lurk,

also serious problems here at home.

Sometimes our co-workers or bosses

may be difficult problems to cope with.

Back in the early 1960s,

the Soviets were the “Big Bad Wolf.”

But we met the threat, and coped.

Look how far we have come since!

We can and will deal with present devils

of all sizes and shapes, and come out okay.

We still have what it takes to win, or

at least co-exist and prosper in peace.

Healing

 

Pandemic –

riots,

dislocations,

unemployment,

poverty,

conflicts.

A new President,

A new administration,

A new day.

Hope blossoms.

Can it be?

Will it be?

In a hundred days,

we shall see…

A new year in

this new century.

A nation healed?

We shall see!

Bleak Days Counting

 

Try to put up a good front,

keep that stiff upper lip,

everything is fine,

Life is just a peach.

But all is not well inside;

Runny nose for, like, a year,

aching joints all over the place,

wrinkles pile up like crooked twigs.

One tries to be optimistic,

we have a new administration,

good things are happening,

new changes taking place.

The old problems just won’t go away,

and some new ones join them.

This raft of battles isn’t letting up,

even if the sky is a different color.

Others are fighting battles too,

most of us have impossible obstacles.

Slim comfort is taken by the fact

that I am not unique or alone.

Like those adventurers in the

Lord of the Rings trilogy,

what will the next turn in the trail bring?

Hoping there won’t be dragons or Black Riders –

we have had enough pestilence and

disaster in this past year!

Just a little while longer,

keep the masks on just a few months or a year

longer, and we’ll beat back the Covid-19 baddies.

Time to crawl back in the “hobbit hole,”

Over and out for another 24.

Keep Artemis on track

 

Joe Biden is going to have to decide whether he wants the NASA Artemis program to proceed, going to the Moon, or to completely outsource it to SpaceX and Blue Origin, or just cede the Moon to the Russians and Chinese, in some faint hope that we can perhaps send people to Mars. I hope that the new administration will keep the Artemis program on track, even if it means outsourcing more of the rocket technology. After all, one rocket with four scavenged Shuttle engines is not enough, on its own, to get us back to the Moon “for good.” We will have to build several more boosters at least, and solid rockets to attach, and crew capsules, etc etc. A lot of money and a long-term effort will be required. In short, a lot of national will is needed to commit to a new Moon effort.

Will it be worth it? The question to me is, can the US afford to be left behind as China, Russia and the EU pursue their own Moon ambitions? Countries like the U.A.E. and Britain also harbor space ambitions. But, of course, there are so many other demands on our budgets and wallets here in the US. Even if we have to scale back our plans, and rely mostly on robotic assistants, we should still stay in the space exploration game with humans if and when possible. The payoffs are big, and the consequences of being left behind include being relegated to a second-class nation, no longer a destination for young scientists and engineers to study. We need to do space for the long term.

Let’s go back to the Moon, Joe and Kamala. We need to, we should, and we must.

Thanks for reading.

What bright future

 

Once upon a time, I thought the future held promise. The future is supposed to be brighter, happier. Problems will get solved, new ideas and inventions will spring up. Life will get easier, more convenient, and in general, better. But past history should have taught me that sometimes, things get worse. Worse not just for one or a few people, but worse for all of us. The year 2020 was definitely one of those years.

No matter how much I tried to dismiss the bad things, they just kept popping up. A pandemic, economic upheavals, rioting. And suffusing everything, a cloud of misinformation that drifted everywhere there was an Internet connection. So many fabrications and falsehoods. One does not know who to trust anymore for news. And these virtual fabrications finally manifested themselves in an ugly physical sense, like the shooting in a pizza parlor that resulted from Qanon propaganda about some child sex ring being run out of pizza joints. Or rioters storming the US capitol building. Internet garbage is manifesting itself in real violence, and real deaths.

But the most damaging seems to be that somehow a fair vote in the election got characterized as the “big steal” and unfair. Over and over, challenges were brought against vote counts, even though many precautions were taken, and the voting was clean. The challenges were thrown out time and time again by judges and courts as frivolous, misleading and inaccurate. But our grand No. 45 kept saying it was rigged, unfair, stolen, etc. and the kook brigades ate up every word. So the culmination was a mob storming the capitol building, waving Trump signs and even confederate flags. Violence, and deaths resulted – most of them protesters, apparently. Live by the sword, die by the sword.

One can hope that the nation learns from this disaster. A big lesson is that unfettered Internet conspiracy-spewing leads to real, deadly trouble. Facebook and all the other social media giants have to police their platforms now, and remove the incendiary posts. This is a big job, considering the millions, billions of postings. But the alternative is the collapse of civilized behaviors in general, and a degradation of our society. Aaaaand that is my rant today on the Internet. Peace and out.

New Years, Old Years

 

It has been a very long slog,

through this chaotic maelstrom.

But we made it at last, at last.

In misery, time flows like molasses.

The days begin to lengthen now,

sun brighter by degrees, wow.

Resolutions take shape and guide

our directions, before we back-slide.

Did it all really happen?

Pandemic, economic crash, riots?

Did anything get solved, or just

the wealthy getting more super-rich?

A lot of people died, more are dying,

so it was definitely not business as usual.

Young and old alike crowded most hospitals;

testing and vaccines overshadowed any new fads.

Mother Nature weighed in heavy and hard,

murderous forest fires, hurricanes, a Derecho too.

Our nation took too many hard hits to count,

other nations were not immune to disasters.

As we hobble into this new year, lick our wounds,

gradually recover from all the serious grievances

visited on our bodies and minds and economies,

let us hope we have learned some things along the way.

Useful things, whatever they may be.

We’ll need every ounce of competence and perseverance

to pull ourselves out of all the past disasters,

as well as any new ones that pop up along the way.

Never count out the human race...

We are tough survivors,

history has shown us that.

Be well everyone.