Thanks for Your Time

 

You could have been making out,

making love, scoring the big one.

You could have gotten some cleaning done,

or gone to the grocery store to stock up,

you could have called your mom,

your dad, your aunt or uncle.

You could have read up on Coronavirus,

gone to the Web MD’s and educated yourself.

You could have just sat and read a book,

your favorite sci-fi, mystery, or romance novel…

You could have browsed Facebook, Twitter,

even checked out some new jobs on LinkedIn.

You could have polished up your resume,

made phone calls, located contacts…

You could have done so many things,

but instead here you are, reading these lines.

A big waste of your time?

A colossal blunder of time management?

Perhaps not.

Because I’m here to tell you you are special,

you are a unique human being,

with cognitive powers above all others in the animal kingdom.

You have many innate abilities,

unique, special qualities to

touch other people’s lives.

Who knows, you may have said just the right word,

made just the right gesture,

performed just the right act,

to set in motion a chain of events that led

humanity to achieve greater heights than would have

been possible without your one act,

your link in the chain of humanity that elevated us all.

And if you did not know that,

or perhaps forgot,

then today you got reminded of just how

wonderful, special, and unique you are.

With that “heads-up” then just maybe,

reading this was not such a waste of time after all.

Thanks for reading it in any case,

and warmest regards to you, fellow human!

Unleashing the Tech Tornado

 

Can words even describe the awesomeness of

figuring out a relatively new technology,

and taming it for one’s own personal pleasure?

Time was, when you bought a cassette playing boombox,

two speakers and one or two cassette players,

you were really living it up.

Those decades are long past.

Now for a relatively small sum,

you can get a player for your CD’s

and MP3s and internet streaming too.

Just pair it via Bluetooth with a smartphone,

and presto, you have virtually unlimited music.

Not eight or twelve or sixteen tracks,

not even a few gigabytes of MP3s,

No-sir-ree.

Now you have massive amounts,

any kind of musical genre you want.

Just have to hunt it down online,

and link it up with your device.

You see, nowadays we have to think,

interact with our devices,

know what we are doing more than

jamming in a cassette or CD.

We have to work, but are rewarded commensurately…

How do stoned teenagers even manage nowadays???

Sure feels good to pair a phone with a boombox,

when you have never done such a thing before!

Time to go to bed, and dream about 1’s and 0’s

turning into fabulous Bitcoin wealth.

Anything is possible, after all.

Happy computing everyone.

Totalitarianism lost

      All of this voter restriction taking place is just wrong.  Limiting the times people can vote, making it harder and harder for the poor, disabled, disadvantaged to vote is the antithesis of democracy.    If we look back to the countries that existed before WW II, and how they embraced authoritarianism, it is enlightening.  dictators in Germany and Italy, and Japan, all assasinated opponents, lied to their populations about how they lacked resources and living spaces, and took away democratic rights of assembly and free speech.  They burned books, and attacked marginalized groups.   Then they unleashed a war that was hell on earth, a war that killed millions upon millions of innocent people.   But in the end, the forces of democracy prevailed, and won the war.  Oh, and all of those authoritarian politicians?  Teh ones that took over by lies, deceits, and the taking away of liberty and democracy?  They all ended up dead or imprisoned, or hanged.  

     Totalitarianism, authoritarianism, the stealing of democracy with fancy words results in untold death and misery.  It does not work.  No matter who or what political party unleashes it, even now to this very day.  Take note, Republicans who would rob so many people of the right to vote.  It is on your heads, and it will harm you too.  

Oregon Outlier

Familiar yellow and blue,

large “block” letters shout

family movies, browsing heaven, and fun.

Enter and smell popcorn, glimpse new arrivals.

See the shelves laying out enticing new movies.

Once a common weekend experience,

now vanished forever – or almost.

There is one left, surviving on nostalgia.

News has spread far and wide about this

“Last video rental store standing.”

In days of streaming convenience and the

world at ones smartphone fingertips,

it is fun to look back at our entertainment 

options a couple decades ago.

Perhaps Netflix should buy the last

Blockbuster and keep it as a museum?

The Pandemic has ended so much public

interaction, turning us into 'streamers.'

Will browsing anything in person return?

Hope so – people need to be around each other.

But the old video rental stores are gone –

Now watch the nascent nostalgia industry explode.

Gun Smoke to Rocket Smoke

 

Rusted window frames in a collapsing wall,

Shows the same view Billy the Kid saw back when;

his memories are scattered all around Lincoln County.

Further down the highway a piece lies White Sands –

An alien landscape backdrops missile launches and

spaceport activities. Over yonder remains a

piece of the Old West, but over there lies a

gateway to the stars for humanity.

Silver darts pierce the sky, always reaching.

On the car radio some huckster is preaching,

In Alamagordo those museum people are teaching;

Through walls of belief and conviction, truth is leaking.

When will we make that hop from here to Mars, to Jupiter,

to Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto and the Kuiper belt?

Proxima Centauri, Sirius, Aldebaran, the Pleadies?

Probably not as long as those wagon trains took,

wending through trails of hope across someone else’s property;

Or so it might have seemed to some swaying, sickened settlers.

We will just have to make sure the property we do plant stakes in

does not belong to someone else, or we might be the ones planted,

dying on alien soils, expiring life and hope in some vain attempt.

Humanity become extraterrestrial fertilizer? Perhaps,

if we don’t improve our ability to get along with not only each other,

but also with the greater whole out there in the universe.

The galaxy, just like the Old West, may best be settled not

just with a fast gun, but a sensible mind and calm approach.

Hope we can make it out there among the nebula,

before they come in stealthy approach to our homesteads.

multi-disciplinary gropes

 

So many brilliant scientists in various fields,

reach for new heights of knowledge.

They map the human brain,

scan the galaxy for dark matter

with enormous telescopes,

visit deep-sea vents to study those

methane-munching microbes,

ones that feed a whole tree of life.

Knowledge so vast it fills many volumes,

hard drives, libraries of science data.

But every one of those scientists will tell you,

if they are being honest,

that there is more they do not know than they do.

One mentions a potential 35 trillion microbe species,

another talks about the mass of the universe,

and oh, by the way, most if it is dark matter -

stuff we do not really understand (yet).

Smarter than the average person by multiples,

they still do not know more than they do know.

They are still primates, reaching up and groping,

finding and discovering, quantifying and studying.

Yesterday seemed so shiny when it was all there was;

today it is a yellowing, fading memory, eclipsed,

subsumed by a greater, louder, noisier more colorful now.

What will tomorrow bring?

Just wait and see - 

I'm sure it will be interesting!