I Am So Angry About Food Costs I Have Decided Groceries Must Undergo a Revolution.

the author, James in 2018

The executives of prominent food chain stores will hate me. Big agra and Big food will loathe me. I find good enemies!

Some new rules to consider;

All unfair pricing will be eliminated. One example is you can't be coerced by a sale price that requires a purchase of 2 or more of an item; unit pricing must remain. Because there can be no further economic discrimination based on a customer's likely available cash. The ability to buy more food value for the  money than the lower-income family because one has more money must end. There goes the business niche of the big box food stores. Enemies!

The most commonly sold items must be closest to the entrances of every food store.

Chips and chocolate bars are dominantly carbohydrates (food) and can not be treated differently than other foods.

No food production, transportation, or sales can be taxed.

There shall be bacon. No details necessary.

We must quickly begin to collect rapidly melting glacier water from our northern neighbor and pipeline it to hydrate the farming land of the central states, where a significant aquifer is about to run dry, which would cause food prices worldwide to soar.

The American people must be given millions of acres of currently owned private big-food farming land so that we Americans own that resource to stay alive.

TimeTravelWish .com has discovered the tool of change.

A gift to planet Earth from James and HQ

#ENDALLSUFFERING of food anxiety and starvation, malnutrition, and hunger.

Dammit. You Big Food assholes! Nobody can get rich selling food; I think was an obvious new rule, like my healthcare rule about profits.

Soon, housing gets a revamp, and those big rental and apartment assholes will create large posters of me to throw knives and darts at. I am sure.

Later.

#groceries, groceries
#foodcosts, food, costs
#inflation, inflation, 
#agriculture, agriculture
#farming farming

"Stop making people wrong!" Mother Would Say

Me, making George W. Bush wrong in NYC, in 2003.

Me, making people wrong and loving it.

While rocking out in 1999.

"Stop making people wrong!" Mother would say. But I was born a critic and further forged as a skeptic as the primary school years progressed. Then the MAGA's came along in 16, and I couldn't help myself and I now had the internet. So they've not budged in 2.5-yrs at 39% approval.

In the long view of a time my mother was right; in time the target of your criticism and blame will refuse your corrections, your solutions, and advice, because the delivery was casting wrongfulness on them. They plant themselves in whatever behavior, of any activity and stay.

The rest of you can heed these words, I'll keep trash talking Trump and any asshole lacking in brains who assisted him in taking our highest office with lies and deception on an audience of people too busy to find the real information.

~~~~

By the way, the sad truth is that a vicious cycle is in place. It has causality in Trump's voters' inability to have found the facts and then reason them. A half irony is that is the very factor that allowed him to bamboozle them. And because we've allowed two information universes in our news media, they'll never find the truth. Further, because we make them wrong, with our memes, commentary and generally hateful theme that runs on for years (because Trump is Trump, he keeps going), we are stuck with Trumpian reasoning (the void of) for at least two generations, and that’s about 90-yrs. 

In the late of the 2016 election, Bernie Sander's fans were firmly behind “free college for all.” And had that same call for that ethos been listened to in the 1960s and 1970s the MAGAs would not have been fooled by a lying Carnival Barker. A clown.


https://twitter.com/EndAllSuffering

https://endallsuffering.org

https://endallsuffering.blogspot.com

#politics
#essay
#democracy
#freepress #1A #FirstAmendment

Christmas Time is War on Christmas Time So Let's Call it the Former?

Of course, this short essay is 4 months late! It's objectively late.

#WaronChristmas a #hmm solution from End All Suffering (James, aka me):

“Christmas time.” Can be a habitual term that includes Christ’s name without objection. It can be objective and or have meaning in personal context to each who would use it.  

Because time knows no subject; it only reacts to object difference. Neutral to subject it can remain consistent as its river flows.

“Merry Christmas time Bob!”

Considering, to those who care about its meaning, the term should remain meaningful. 

Conversational references and signs of an announcement, or of pleasant greetings of Christmas (aka the Holiday Season (religious)), if only referred to in the context of #time allows Christ’s name to be used abundantly.

History and spirituality are important. Respect for these concepts is what we all want. This is a way for Christianity to feel less subject to “politically correct” offenses to modern (secular) culture.

If it could become a habit in culture, I think this could be a positive way to deal with our differences in practice and belief. And more so our commonality. 

@EndAllSuffering

https://EndAllSuffering.org

#Kwanzaa #Jesus #Christ #JesusChrist #Hanukkah #ChristmasTime #time 

#Sol3 #TimeTravelWish #JamesMason #JamesGrayMason #BlackFriday #USA #Consumer #FreeSpeech #1A 

Loving Your Land and Homesick from Spacetime

Early Snow on Hillside

Gray Jacobik

Do you feel a biologic attachment to the land you call home? Stay long enough and you likely will. If you know the new known state of time and the geology of what you call “My homeland,” you may be biologically subject to feeling more comfortable there - in that time and space.

It may not be the time away, or only a longing for others that draws you home. A factor in our experience is that our time on Earth is a different experience depending on where you live. Identifying this as practical theory (i.e. we see it work / prove its effect) is a tool soon within our grasp.

Hypothetically, your experience of time is affected by gravity density of mass in your environment and you are adapted to living at that location. You are certain that things just don’t seem as comfortable anywhere else. You’ve come back home before and have validated this is true.

At the macro this difference is measurable now. Here on Earth we only can feel the micro gravitational differences we have been living with, sometimes fighting over, that are yet to be distinguished as different experiences to our minds.

Time will tell because measurements across it that are long (to us) give us more true data and the river is long and it flows to the see.

Go live on any other world and within years your homesickness will manifest as physical and you’ll get your most likely cancer and die. In the long term of being away from our adopted land, we may notice this illness, this difference of an adapted biologically translated experience of the nature of time.

For many of us, missing the faces and sounds and feelings of the company of others and loved ones is necessary for some extended time, to realize the strong force of human company and of love, but that unforgettable longing may only be a factor. You may be certain that that love holds you home, and may  cause you to associate the geology and atmosphere, the trees and all the land with that human bond to others. Unless a person accustomed to a consciousness that has adapted to being alone.

That person would be a choice in an astronaut program of long term space flight. And of ambassadorship, even if accompanied by many humans, to another species’ homeworld. But even he may experience displacement in time and space so far by linear measurement that he will feel more than a bit more uncomfortable the more different his time and space becomes from home.

James out!

"Protect my homeland forever. . " As written in the Sound of Music, as the Nazis were taking over, occupying a peace, displacing those opposed:

ARR James Gray Mason, 2017. End All Suffering, 2017. Time Travel Wish - forever.

Edelweiss, from Sound of Music: Ahhh . . . home . . .

https://youtu.be/mMuTDdWXbNo

Image: commons, Austria view of the Alps.
#gravity #time #spacetime #matter #home #homesick #timetravelwish #SoundofMusic #endallsuffering #timetravelwish #esssays #amwriter #amwriters #sol3 #emissary #plenipotentiary #JamesGrayMason #JamesMason

The Whirlpool of Socio Economic Despair and the Average Donald Trump Supporter

This image portrays a well documented social concept in metaphor, as a constantly churning cycle that feeds a liquid spiral of our population down into a dark pit at the bottom of an unstoppable whirlpool of socio-economic despair that continues as if a function of nature. I made this image more than 15 years ago and this cycle remains today and it must be broken. But few in our busy society have taken the time to understand it is representing a causality in reason that can be addressed.

The graphic metaphor in summary: In a wealthy society that has resources enough but does not recognize the best use of those resources, if large numbers of children receive a poor education they will very likely live a life of poverty and be unable to earn enough in any given year to escape the many facets of life that lead to a feeling of desperation as the ever constant emotion of despair. In their despair, many will turn to dishonesty as crime to cheat the life they are disgusted with living and cannot see a reasonable and viable methodology of escaping.  Impulsively, society will then spend a great deal of money locking them up. That spending becomes the liquid that pulls by gravity with equal force as the momentum of crime behind it pushes it along. That money is lost and can not be used to address the causality of that crime that is the inevitable result of poor education. Poor education continues. They spiral persists. Poverty follows.

It was a lack of formal and public education that in 1787 was not seen by our supposedly brilliant “founders,” as being necessary for the security of a free state of free people. It was decades before the first cities in the new United States chose to publicly fund a school system. It was longer than a century before we recognized that African Americans must have a legally enforced right to that education as well. We still suffer because of this lack of foresight by privileged landowners, and slave owners who had very economic reasons for wanting us to be free.

In this graphic there are two metaphors of two entwined concepts: it is only our perspective from a distance (a stand-off position) that causes the center of the spiral to appear to be smaller. That small size is the size of the issue to the general population. That small size is also a cause of our segregation of those caught in the spiral away from our better functioning members of society. If a society were a person it might say:

“If it appears small we won’t have to face it. We won’t feel constantly guilty for our inability to share the opportunity of education with all as equals.”

A liberal in the United States of America knows of this whirlpool. A liberal knows that it begins with a poor educational system that does not favor equality of opportunity for every single citizen child in our country. Too many of the wealthy deny it exists.

If we want to see a good example of the demographic of who those people are, then we not look any further than at the audience of angry people who feel they should support the empty rhetorical campaign for president of the United States of America of billionaire real estate mogul Donald J. Trump.

There are millions of Donald Trump supporters who, if locked inside of a room with a well informed  liberal activist and so forced to listen to the explanations of this metaphor  would eventually understand this well-documented concept. They won’t like that they are listening to bleeding heart liberal but they would eventually agree that this spiral begins with education.

Donald J. Trump got a great education even though for most of the years of his primary education he treated those years as if that education could be forsaken as if it were a natural part of life.

But it was a natural part of life for the spoiled brats of the greedy land owners and landlords living in white male metropolis privilege clicks, as was the environment that Donald Trump’s father was living in while he became a millionaire in the 1950’s.

In this context, it is no coincidence that the majority of Trump supporters do not have higher education. It fits the pattern of this metaphor and it fits that Donald Trump would deny this causality as one of the privileged participants of a forsaken as an expectation of life,  higher educational system.

What is Donald Trump’s answer to stopping this whirlpool? It does not exist. He would deny that this very liberal metaphor is a causality of the very anger that the minions who are enthused by his reasonless campaign for president of the United States express with shouts and yelling of vitriol at the many public campaign events he has held.

Readers: If you know a Trump supporter try to get them into that room and lock the door behind you. Appeal to their anger. Let them know you understand how they feel before explaining your opinion of why they feel the way they do. They are hard working people. They each know someone who is either vastly underemployed or still unemployed from the near depression we suffered beginning in the Bush year of 2007. Empathize with them first. Maintain that empathy during the expression of your opinion as to why they have that anger. Let them know some facts like the fact that immigration into the United States has turned around. That the rich have been getting richer for decades while people like they are have continued to grow poorer. If you have read this far into this essay, you know what to say because you were already an informed liberal with empathy and understanding of causality of our whirlpool of despair.

By James Gray Mason for End All Suffering.

All Rights Reserved: James Gray Mason / End All Suffering, 2016.

#DonaldTrump2016 #Economy #Education #PublicEducation #Kids #Society #essays #amwriters #endallsuffering #stopallsuffering #JamesGMason

Change Democracy in the United States Don't Bash It

The youth are disenfranchised with American democracy. Emphasis should be on “American” democracy. Many systems using democracy around the world are very different.

Here’s bullet points that I feel should be the points of change to make American democracy fair and productive and far more participatory:

• Genuine and complete Public Campaign Financing: No elected office in our democracy should be without full public campaign financing. That means the dog catcher’s office to the city council to the mayor’s office, the judges, the sheriffs and so forth. Signatures raised manually should be the kicker to allow anyone access to public campaign money. That kicker to receive an escalation of public campaign funding should be more signatures. No elected official should have to spend 2 out of 8 hours per day calling and shaking hands with donors. No more PACs or super PACs for any candidate. Money is speech and so corrupting and that influence must end.
  
  See this online essay I wrote several years ago: http://Public-Campaign-Financing.Org It is very unnecessary to get behind a movement to repeal the Citizens United supreme court case if we only support and pass one single constitutional amendment called Public Campaign Financing. There does not need to be one word in that amendment that speaks to business or corporate influence in that funding, just simply “Only public campaign financing shall be used.”
  
  Within the new amendment for public campaign financing we can time restrict all political campaigning. That does not mean clamp down on free speech and restrict the press and any political opinion. It means the actual campaigns. It means that funds for advertising a political candidate must come from the Federal Elections Commission and locally from the Secretary of State’s office, in a time period prior to election day. 120 days prior to election day would allow the public to fully understand when it is election season and only then should our airwaves and internet be inundated with paid political propaganda.
  

• Electoral districts need to be population based only and not gerrymandered by type of people that differentiate neighborhoods by social and political divisions as we have allowed to happen in the United States. Only the Federal Elections Commission should be allowed to draw electoral districts and then only by scientific data of population centers. Those centers of populations are always developed by urban or rural needs of industry and commerce and population density.

• End the party dynamic. The parties are creations of political culture. They are clubs and have no place in our constitution. They literally are not in the articles of confederation or the bill of rights. They are creations and must be taken out of all representation. The labels Republican and Democrat should be what they really are in current language: ideological labels based upon an evolving cultural norm. Republicans used to be the liberals in American politics - for instance, but that changed as culture changed and it will likely change again. They are clubs.  
  
  That means no more primary elections and no more conventions of parties. No more whittling down the choice of candidates to two with perhaps one write-in candidate. That needs to end. An interested person should have to ask or be told by a political pundit in the news whether or not a representative or a candidate is conservative or liberal or a little bit of both (a moderate) or an independent (ambiguous swing voter) representative.  Parties were cultural evolvements to help the public categorize and should have no bearing on how we vote or when we vote. Take them out.

• Bring back civics in all educational institutions public and private. Make children understand how full representation works as if it were learning how to read and write and perform mathematics. It is fundamental and should be taught as so. We have dropped that ball. We can pick it up and become more engaged again.

• Make voting very easy not more restricted. Time for online voting and telephone voting. We are modern now. Additionally, we need to extend the time period to several days, Friday through Monday. An over the weekend ballot casting nationwide. We need the time and we need freedom to cast our votes. We have the technology. That technology can be controlled. There is no more excuse for a single day’s voting period where a human has to show up personally. In this manner, everyone has no excuse to not vote.

All Rights Reserved: End All Suffering / James Gray Mason

#voting #USAElections #Democracy #Election2016 #endallsuffering #stopallsuffering #essays #opinion #publiccampaignfinancing #publiccampaign #FEC #SOSoffice

It is Consistent to Use What We Have to Get to Where We Need to Be

“It’s hypocritical!” No, it’s consistent to use the apparent antithesis of the problem to solve the problem until we no longer need to when there is not a viable alternative to reach the desired outcome:  

Diesel fueled trucks and trains and ships must be used to transport the parts and large equipment for renewable energy solutions until a day when they do not have to. When we have long-haul transportation alternatives that are using a renewable energy sources we will not need to transport renewable energy parts using fossil fuels. Consistent with our basic immediate needs to get to where we need to be. 

Through the infrastructure and cost of our recycling efforts we see again, we have to use what we have to get to where we need to be. When electric vehicles can carry tons of weight and operate for several hours we are not only recycling but we will be positively productive. Our waste products become almost a natural resource. Eventually the use of fossil fuels, even for plastics and vehicles will be unnecessary. The costs of that infrastructure and those jobs made available using them should be a not for profit department that belongs to the people. When that day comes that positively productive behavior will cost us all far less.   

In a nation filled with gun toting citizens any police officer must carry a gun in almost any dangerous circumstance until a day when they do not have to. When there is real gun control in barbaric nations like the United States our police can carry non lethal weapons with the expectation that they will not have to fire a ballistic slug into another human being in order to live another day. Consistent with our basic immediate needs to get to where we need to be.

In a democracy a candidate can have full intent of changing a campaign financing system and also have full knowledge that he or she cannot do so unless they win the election first. If winning requires a great amount of funding in order to win a campaign to then be able to effect that change in campaigning, then that is consistent and not hypocritical. Consistent with our basic immediate needs to get to where we need to be.

Examples could fill this weblog but the point is made. We must acknowledge that our lives are filled with these apparent inconsistent behaviors. We must make use of what we have and not give-up on that goal of change toward where we need to get to.

 All Rights Reserved: End All Suffering / James Gray Mason, 2016

#essays #opinion #change #hypocracy #consistency #inconsistant #recycling #climatechange #fosillfuels #emmisions #endallsuffering #stopallsuffering #JamesGMason #sol3
All Rights Reserved: End All Suffering / James Gray Mason, 2016

Happy Valentine’s Day to All Who Are In Love

Happy Valentine’s Day to all who are in love and to all who are still grateful for having been in love.

I am 53 years old now and I am certain I have never been in love as an adult. Sure, I have pretended that I had that wonderful emotion. But it was always false. I even got married to a beautiful young woman whom I thought that I was in love with. That marriage ended 5 years later.

When I was just 11 years old I had been in love. It was a boyhood romance in which I pretended that I was a grown adult. It lasted about 4 months and was wonderful. But I became cursed by myself because of the anguish of loss after that romance ended. I remember laying in my bedroom after I learned that I had lost her due to my own boyish foolishness of kissing another girl at a party. I had realized too late that I was feeling love. I was crying for a couple of hours. But when the crying was nearly over I became angry at myself. I swore to myself I would never feel that again and so the psychological imprint of my resolve became cemented into my life, perhaps permanently.

The rock n roll band Nazereth put it well to agree with my resolve in those very youthful years:

“Love hurts. Love scars. Love wounds and mars any heart not tough or strong enough to take a lot of pain, take a lot of pain. Love is like a cloud - holds a lot of rain. Love hurts. Love hurts.”

“They’re right!” I told myself. “If this great rock n roll band says it, then it must be true! So why would anyone want that?” That childhood resolve lasted a lifetime. Is that a sad story? Maybe not.

Don’t feel sorry for me because there is a trade-off. I have been very introspective through all these years. I have not been jealous or wounded and I have not hated anyone because of love. I have not wanted to hurt anyone due to love. I have not attempted to jump off a bridge. I have not lost all my finances to a lover. I have not had a nasty divorce that entangled children in the throes and trauma of family separation. All this and more I have dodged.   

But that love in those many songs, that love that a human feels that is so strong they would do anything for the one they love has never been my own.

But I still listen intently to love songs. I still have that disappointment. But it fades very fast and I mostly feel happy for the songwriter and grateful to be able to imagine what they must have been feeling.

Of all the love songs I have heard I have decided upon one in particular that I think best defines being truly in love - that biologic bonding of two people. I don’t know if the genius musician and composer Prince wrote its lyrics but he sure did put it to music ingeniously. To me it best defines the extremity of what that feeling must be with fantastic melody and rhythm. I am sorry but I have searched the internet for a live demonstration of this performance and it is not readily available. But perhaps that is best for this post. Those of you alive in 1984 and enjoying pop music know it; The song is difficult to forget.

1984, Prince: I Would Die For You . . . the lyrics:

I'm not a woman

I'm not a man

I am something that you'll never understand

I'll never beat you

I'll never lie

And if you're evil I'll forgive you by and by

'Cause you, I would die for you, yeah

Darling if you want me to

You, I would die for you

I'm not your lover

I'm not your friend

I am something that you'll never comprehend

No need to worry

No need to cry

I'm your messiah and you're the reason why

'Cause you, I would die for you, yeah

Darling if you want me to

You, I would die for you

You're just a sinner I am told

Be your fire when you're cold

Make you happy when you're sad

Make you good when you are bad

I'm not a human

I am a dove

I'm your conscious

I am love

All I really need is to know that

You believe

Yeah, I would die for you, yeah

Darling if you want me to

You, I would die for you

Yeah, say one more time

You, I would die for you

Darling if you want me to

You, I would die for you

Two, three, four you

I would die for you

I would die for you

You, I would die for you

You, I would die for you

"Melisa and Joey" 1980. Ormond Beach, Florida. James Gray Mason.

All rights reserved: James Gray Mason / End All Suffering, Feburary 14th, 2016.

#love #valentinesday #Prince #theRevolution #music #1984 #Childreninlove #romance #endallsuffering #stopallsuffering #JamesGMason #sol3 #timetravelwish

How to Best Secure Our Ports and Our Nation from Terrorism at Home

Stop all shipping at a safe distance for full inspection.
First written July 25th, 2006. By James Gray Mason.

If a weapon of mass destruction of a size of a suitcase or a trunk or larger is introduced into the United States by those who would harm us it will likely be through our shipping ports. Consider, if a terrorist gets his nuclear bomb or bio chemical weapon shipped in a crate and that crate is tucked into the rear corner of a container the size of a tractor trailer shipping container, and that container is sitting in a parking lot waiting to be inspected or passed over that is the optimal time of detonation, at the port and almost as soon as it arrives. Since all American shipping ports are within sight of major cities then just getting to the port is adequate for the terrorists. Our current loose and barely accountable and barely efficient inspection arrangement at all of our ports will not save us.

“Foolish” is what we’ll be called after the detonation and it will be ourselves doing the name-calling as well as our enemies. The problem is not how to protect our ports so the ports won’t be a route for harming us, the problem is where we locate the ports for inspection purposes. This solution requires that we locate inspection ports at sea. Far out at sea where no detonation will harm the populaces of our cities.

Three or perhaps five large wet-docks each the size of a sports complex manned by the United States Coast Guard and the Department of Homeland Security can inspect by order and force all shipping that crosses oceans with intent to dock in the United States. Ships that are routing themselves around the inspection docks should be chased and apprehended. One inspection dock should be located in the Gulf of Mexico. Perhaps two each in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans that are centrally located and their distances between ports divided by traffic use at those ports. Each inspection dock should be at least one hundred miles from coasts.

Very few private contractors should get their sticky fingers on this. We the people can handle this because the security while under construction will have to detailed. The U.S. Coast Guard are the best personnel for this job. An unquestionable degree of training and professionalism combined with sacrosanct mission ideology and the discipline of that branch of our military make them the best suited for this important task of our safety and future well being. Well armed and well equipped with inspection technology and nothing harmful should get by them. The Coast Guard will be equipped to quickly sink a vessel should it be needed.

An appropriately measured tariff increase to imports sent by sea to the U.S. would compensate the entire program. For the shipping industry the cost of this inconvenience will be negligible and easily retrieved. This is not a gargantuan task like our building the Panama Canal, or the Interstate Highway System or rebuilding San Francisco, or winning World Wars I and II. It is just a technological challenge of a reasonably large endeavour.

For the American citizen a tremendous bonus. A a level of trust in one large aspect of our security not seen since decades past when we feared a Japanese invasion force landing in California.

This project could employ tens of thousands and both revitalize the Coast Guard and revitalize our sense of security. Many builders of the project will have only temporary work but the pay will be worth while and their paychecks will boost our consumer driven economy. There could be as many as one thousand Coast Guard assigned to each inspection dock at any given time. With determination of America’s politicians this project could be finished in five years. Much like the oil industry’s offshore rigs, the Coast Guard will function in much the same way while at sea, taking eight weeks off and then on time to come and go stateside. The wet docks would be at least five times the size of an offshore oil rig. But their function and capacity to house, entertain and feed a thousand personnel while performing the task of U.S. safety at its front line will be an invaluable function. Yes, McDonald’s can take a big bite and Whole Foods too.

All Rights Reserved: James Gray Mason / End All Suffering, 2006, 2016.

#homelandsecurity #TSA #Terrorism #UnitedStates #USCongress #POTUS #StoppingTerrorism #endallsuffering #stopallsuffering

A Couple of Clinton Stories of Mine

James in Deep River, Connecticut. Now living in la la land. 

Hillary and Chelsea on I-395 . .

My only story of being close to Hillary and Chelsea being this is Moms' day (is it?).  I think it was 2001 or 2002: I had been living in Connecticut since Spring of 2001. I had been driving my girlfriend to the New London train station for her singing engagements in New York City. In my defense; I would have been glad to drive her and screw around in the city, eat bagels, talk to cops, go to the GWP dog park with the fellas and try to find Joan Jet or maybe Pat Benatar (maybe have sex with), or maybe find Janeane Garafalo and make her laugh very hard until she emesis her fluid through her nasal passages and perhaps all over the sidewalk and then snap a quick shot of that - I would have given it to her to keep. But, other celebrities would show up there and satisfy that celebrity closeness quick thrill (like ol Lou Reed, I mean, just seeing that he could walk was kind of amazing in itself), but she loved the train. So, I had dropped her off and saw her train leave - as all gentlemen should do! [they are trying to get rid of the explanation mark; more on this conspiracy at my weblog. Backup: At the train station there are ferry terminals/docks nearby. Two of them are very popular. One line makes the Martha's Vineyard run. Locally, this is known as the most pleasant way to get there and come back at night all happy and rested. On a weekday or a Sunday for instance, at this time of the year of this story the ferry had very light traffic from Martha's Vineyard.  Okay; So, I returned to the interstate from New London and was driving north on I-395, happily back home to pretend I was a REAL bachelor, don't ask about this activity, please.  Umm. . Where was I?  I was in the left lane passing some traffic and I came upon a commonly seen but uniquely governmental protection activity in the right lane. I once had to wait for almost 1.5 hours at an exit ramp in New Orleans for g-dammed Dan Quayle who was happily running late and did not inform the NOPD! Jeez! If you are a politician and you DO NOT want a whole community to vote for you, this is how it is done. All your great decisions in office may be overlooked by this emotion invoking activity - we Americans have no time for this shit. :-] So, I am too familiar with these fine security officers and the clear patterns which pretty much give them away even at a great distance. So, it was two well heavy black suburban assault vehicles or SAVs and they were sandwiching a light blue economy class rental car, a four-passenger vehicle. I was passing at a consistent rate of speed and so was likely not seen as any threat. However, I was high up seated in a white Toyota pick-up. I realized quickly it was probably somebody important and I should drive by respectfully (in case I meet them one day and they have a lot of money), not drawing any attention at all to the fine California marijuana in the hubcaps [Okay Grammarly: I know this is wordiness it's me.] I grew out of it soon after; actually smoked it all. The driving, with the wheels, was all wobbly and variably shaky for a while until it was all gone. I guess I should have just removed each stash from each wheel all at once. Hindsight. :-(   So, as I passed the blue car and in my typical American fascination with celebrity phenom I was compelled to glance at the driver and passenger. Two floppy straw hats from that Martha's Vineyard gift shop near the terminal did not quite conceal them. As trained and reminded prior to their trip, they did pull down the left brim of their hats as a high vehicle was approaching on the left - great safety measure. Great learned habit. I now have one and do the same thing. Except mine has a price tag hanging on it like what's her name, from Hee Haw and I have fruit like that other lady who dances really well to Latin music with really good balance. Age revealed. :-(  

Hillary and Chelsea's unique hair stylings were known to me, avid politics observer, and so I quickly presumed I was seeing them. Hillary's jaw line is also familiar and that was the giveaway as I passed. There was some emotional conversation going on. Chelsea was only occasionally glancing to Hillary, but she turned her head quickly to the right a couple of times as if not wanting to engage. I had wondered why they were going to drive so far, to New York state, up through half of Connecticut to Massachusetts, west on the Mass Pike for hours, then hours north to their new home. Hmmm . . . . I type here sometimes.  Recognizing a communication difficulty was in an occurrence I attempted to speculate what may have been going on in that small rental car. .  .hmm again. 

So, the Clintons; Many turbulent years had passed and the years in the White House were over. The inter family adaptation to having been in that busy spotlight, with all that very personalized controversy must have taken a toll on the ability to communicate in that special family. For a daughter at Chelsea's age this is a sensitive time between some mothers and daughters. Never mind that that Chelsea had lived in an extreme circumstance (comparative to the rest of us, unless you have lived with me), she had to adapt to rumor and innuendo at school, whispers, gossip - we can all imagine. Yes G wordie, stop this. Communication after a time like this needs to be reestablished. It had been enough time past since leaving Washington D.C. for the families' thoughts to come to understanding, conceptually. It was time for mother and daughter to spend some long hours trapped together in a small car learning of that new communication that will be needed. Assume this and assume it with some accuracy: Hillary was being an active and engaging and courageous mother for her daughter at just the right time. She took initiative. She was sensitive enough to know that that long car ride was a damn good idea.  I have no doubt that after that car ride a new kind of relationship was formed. A past president relationship, more like the mother and daughter relationship that Chelsea needed at that exact time. If we could all have mothers like this. Advocates. Sensitive and aware. Observant of feelings. Creative enough to find a way to break through that new post-pubescent wall of fresh judgments that so many teenagers become stuck in. Bravo Hillary.

Hills: You can be my mom if you like. I know you miss it. That grandchild won't be enough, you'll need someone cute to pet and to be concerned for right there in the Oval Office. I offer my free labor of pretending to be your child for about four years. I can pull it off. For the security of our nation, I have some earplugs and you can control what I hear. :-)

By the way Chelsea, you remember that white truck if you think about it, because you noticed that bright green radio flash symbol that kind of looked like a marijuana leaf, above the words Radio Free Monterey, didn't you? You were looking for distractions, it was uncomfortable, I know. 

Previously CLASSIFIED: James (Mr. Jimmy) exploring the depths of the Monterey Bay.

Don't send me email there!

I should say here: The black SAVs were almost perfectly spaced in proper Secret Service professional etiquette and I could actually feel the very observant and judging awareness of their minds as I approached in the left lane. A favor guys, maybe for this one compliment - how often do you get them? Hell, I may need you one day. :-) Red haired kid at Lafayette Park every fourth of July with the huge bong who kept waving  it at the White House. Remember? Those days are gone. :-(

Next; the story about the 13-year-old bored hyperactive kid who rode his white Raleigh ten-speed bicycle all the way through the United States Capitol building.  :-)  he he he he he.  Oh D.C. is a blast!

When We Shook Hands . .

I just remembered another Clinton story of mine. This one may be important here. It relates to Hillary's choice of men and her choice of William Jefferson Clinton as her lifetime partner.

 

I think it was 1995 or 1996. It was Spring. Bill had been on a whirl-wind tour of California, heading south to LA. <-- is that a lyric? Hmmm .. .  So he was due to stop in Salinas, California. I had the time and so decided to go to hear him. I was at this time very concerned about assault weapons. I wore my favorite black baseball cap in which I could pretend I was a submarine captain - a kind submarine captain. It was hot out, not very hot but Bill had to sit on the top of the steps of the Salinas City Hall and wait in the sun for the local speakers to finish. He was double tasking, working on his notes and listening to everyone speak - at the same exact time.

I was about five bodies back in from the rope line. He did not talk guns although that city would have been the perfect place for that discussion, to my disappointment.  As the procession of Secret Service and he began to walk the handshaking line I managed to put myself at the front of the rope line (sorry old lady, some people are more important). So my turn was approaching to shake the hand of a great man and he was almost to me. But for some reason I turned my head to my left and saw that a father was trying to get his son ahead of the crowd to shake his hand. So without thought I reached for the man's son. I raised him and brought him to Bill so they could touch, I spun the boy around (he was smiling huge) and his father was grateful and thanked me. I thought that I had just missed a chance to shake his big puffy (inflamed from hand shaking) hands. But no. Bill saw that kind action. He waited for me. We shook hands.  :-)  Aware, sensitive, watching for kindness, ready to repay that kindness. Wow. A good choice Hills. :-)

Salinas TV station has this footage. Black cap can be seen. Act can be verified. :-)

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