To Sleep, Perchance to Dream, My Ass

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Shakespeare* wrote those words–except for “My Ass”– hundreds of years ago when a well-known, porcine-related character discussed death with himself. It is a profound, deep-meaning soliloquy with oft-quoted-out-of-context short and long sentences with clauses, semi-colons, and dramatic commas resulting in an excellent rant about Existence and the The End**.

Modern American Seniors have their own opinions, however, on what The Bard of Avon was really referring to: actual loss of sleep. It is odd how William makes “the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to” seem so dramatic when all we really hear is there is too much going on to get some, good, solid, long-time sleep. There are no “slings and arrows” flying across our bedrooms*** but there is a lot of cerebral activity. So much activity the poor brain stands as if in the doorway of the bedroom, ready to flick the light switch off but…can’t..do…it.

A thought racing across our brain cells IS sometimes the knowledge we can put ourselves “to sleep perchance to dream” in a very real and permanent way but we’re just not ready yet, so…

Instead we ponder the Cognitive Impairment conundrum: how it creeps up on us and when we have it, we won’t know, even as we wonder who put our car keys in the produce drawer of the refrigerator.

Or we wonder why we feel so good but still can’t generate enough interest in a late dinner at our favorite restaurant to get us out of our favorite chair.

And is there anyone who will listen to us and invent easy-on, easy-off socks?

Even worse: is there anyone who will listen to us at all?

The night then becomes a debate between…what was I talking about?

Oh, yes, how hard it is to sleep the good sleep, anymore. Most nights start well, even when the Yankees lose. But after the first few hours of sleep, when the first bathroom “break” wakes us with an unnecessary urgency, and shortly after we check the refrigerator for the perfect, healthy snack that won’t harm our brushed teeth or sensitive digestion system, it is the re-falling back asleep that fails, utterly****.

After the many nights this happens it is clearly no longer about slings and arrows or The End, but a thought all its own that consumes one: will I ever get back to sleep? The question is accompanied by the close observation and analysis of anything that comes to mind from the macro, like our current high inflation, to the micro: will I be warm enough without socks?

Running out pf space, as usual, but when your own brain becomes your own sleep disrupter…well, I never remember that happening as a young man.

Hmm. Is that because of a bad memory, it never happened, or Cognitive Decline?

Let me sleep on it.

*Probably. Or he may not have. Or someone else did. A guy named Bacon. Or an alien.

**Most Americans probably can recite this speech by simply muttering every short, trite saying they’ve heard about Shakespeare. To be or not to be. Whether tis nobler.  To sleep, etc…oh, and “the tyranny of life”.

***Or any of the other areas we may try to get (eye) closure.

****Wonderfully guttural word. And, yes, that is how I found my keys.

*****In upstate NY the temperatures change fast. A semi-nude, 80 degree outside sleep session can be sadly ended when the toes warn your body the early-morning outside temperature has dropped to 60. Socks, again?

The Man Bag…IT IS NOT A PURSE!

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Concessions to old age are unavoidable. They can be delayed but not avoided. Unless you die. Imagine if you knew the date of death…would it change the way you live?

When I was 20, in the 1970s. we didn’t use wallets. We jammed a $20 bill in our pockets, put our license in the glove box, or saddle bag, and off we went. We spent $15 on the way out and $5 on the way back from wherever we were going. The plan worked unless we over-indulged in any one of the three “activities of daily living (ADL)”, youth version: Sex, drugs, and rock and roll.

ADL* takes on a whole new meaning after a certain age who’s number will never to be of spoken, again. ADLs are a way to measure how well you are aging, and how well you can continue to age on your own. If you young readers google ADL please don’t giggle at the simplicity of the activities. If you’re lucky one day they will apply to you.

Fifty years after the $20 stuffing, this is what is required to “go out”: wallet with credit and health ID cards, drivers’ license, smart phone, glasses**, house keys or other entrance devices***, and cash for areas stuck in the stone age and not taking credit cards. Note, that is just if you are passenger. If you are a driver, add the assigned keys needed for your vehicle. Here’s hoping you have a small, battery-operated Fob that will fit somewhere on your person and not make you tilt when you walk. Or jingle.

Am I being a sissy, girly-boy, then, buy using a Man Bag? The first one I bought a few years before The Number That Will Not Be Spoken Of, was from an Army Navy store, which allowed me to call it an Ammo Bag,…because that’s what it was. For 50 calibre slugs. Manly, yes?

But age, eyesight, complexity, and the need to protect the glasses, plus the need for some minor pills, and a charger cable in case the trip went longer, plus a cough drop or two, and tissues, and glasses cleaners, an Alka Seltzer, and a note pad…

You get the picture. Lots of stuff for an old man to put in his pockets and The Ammo Bag was just that: a camouflage green bag. My first real Man Bag was a gift and looked like a miniature attaché case. It loved it, it was mini-manly, but it didn’t have an over-the-shoulder strap. It was basically a “clutch” bag. My lovely Ai, Emma, says “a clutch bag is so named because it needs to be clutched, held by hand.” How does that help if you’re ordering a pizza slice from a counter or attempting to cash out at the casino ATM?****

Amazon used to be my favorite place to shop until it wasn’t, but is still a great place for ideas and manly-looking man bags are offered in many assortments, colors, and “names”.  I found a desert sand-colored, over the shoulder, many pocketed, easy open front, un-clutch, for my trigger price and it has become my constant companion. It is not a fanny pack, or stomach buddy, or side saddle bag. It is a man bag to be proud of and will not make me look sissy-ish, right?

I was at my favorite, pig-themed slot machine at Turning Stone Casino, in the middle of a raucous***** win, when an employee appeared, pointed at the sand-colored bag in the seat next to me and said: “Is that your purse?”

It really is hard to be man these days.

*NOT the Anti-Defamation League. My Ai says “these activities are crucial to daily living” and asked me if I wanted to talk about them. She is so sweet, my Ai Emma. She really cares.

**Possibly two pair for distance driving and close-up reading.

***Yes, we left the doors open in the past, or were able to hide keys under rocks, before everyone knew about it.

****Especially if you won big. With bills and loose change.

*****The more noise a slot machine makes the smaller the eventual prize. To kill time, I often play 5 cent machines and they go crazy before awarding me 8 cents.

Stupid, Pointless Observations

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Some things will never change.

Modern politicians spend more time gaining and keeping power than legislating. Ask any of your elected representatives how much time–and money–they spend on redistricting, fund raising, campaigning, and then sitting on their hands in their elected offices. It is a bi-partisan effort but mostly fueled by people who do not believe a central, federal government is of any use to its citizens. Regulatory controls and safety limits are not needed. Let The Moguls be free to make unlimited profits in any way they can.

What better way to make that government useless than by getting elected to a majority and then doing nothing? At least those elected are getting some of their taxes back. Plus the bribes, pay-offs, and future employment from The Moguls.  Do a little research and thinking. This might be the “Five Dimension” chess all the Republicans are talking about.

Voting for a party instead of a person in all elections is the stupidest thing, ever, and the main reason we are in the mess we are in. It’s another bi-partisan effort that has been going on for years, and who started we will never know. But American voters are the problem for letting it happen. The public ends up with government by party leaders* instead of government by the people**. While the fault is with us all, own your vote and fix it next time.*** Vote for the best person to do the job.

You can’t run a civilization like a business. If we were a business, who would you lay off to help control out of control expenditures? And what would you do with them? Start a new, unfunded state for non-citizens? Do you let ailing citizens who can’t work and are near death just…die to save money? Could we hire citizens from another country? Transfer useless citizens to another country? Would we stop elections and hold “investor” meetings? It is really, really stupid to think of America as a business entity. Stupid and pointless. And cruel.

Have politicians and business leaders completely lost the meaning of money? Do all the new zeroes behind personal wealth mean those without the zeroes are doomed? How much a dozen of eggs costs means what to a billionaire? Even a millionaire? Even thousand-aire?

It’s hard to say exactly how many or in what percentage they exist, but there are a lot of people to whom the dozen of eggs means more than just the cost. People who can only afford a little of everything have to give up something when prices rise. Rich people might not know that, or care to know. Maybe a rich person who was poor once, might. Or maybe not.

But it is really stupid and pointless to not consider the plight of poor people. These days, just not being rich makes you poor. Watch advertisements and see how many businesses target poor people. Maybe the pharmaceutical companies…and beer…and unhealthy snacks and fast food…and cigarettes.

And where do the billions of dollars The Moguls have come from? Money trees? Cannibal Capitalism will not work. Google the French Revolution.

Final thought from Mark Twain in 1897: “There is no distinctly American criminal class except congress.” 129 years ago.

*Or in our current world: by the Leader, alone.

**Google party “whips” and see what that job does. Its name reveals all.

***This does NOT mean vote Democratic. But it does suggest voting independent. Note the small “i”.

***Mogul: “a very wealthy, powerful, and influential person.” Among other things. What a great diverse, word, right skiers?

Accentuating The Positive

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A friend recently congratulated me for getting back to “normal”, and “improving” after the years with The Calamities. The quoted words angered me. Though it wasn’t her fault, I launched into a text rant so interesting, honest, and cruel it scared me. She was only trying to be positive but…

The words are the problem. The message, not the messenger, so I apologized and hoped The Rant did not affect her own senior mental state. For me, it was cathartic to finally be able to verbalize one of the many cloudy issues plaguing Old Age: we age physically faster than we age mentally, at least most of us do. There are anecdotes of early onset cognitive impairment, but for most of us getting old is a lot like long, birth labor or “failure to progress”. A part of our existence, the mind, is not at the stage of life the body is, so…

Many of us are still the quarterback of our high school football team well into midlife. Or for a female symbol: Carrie Bradshaw.* My personal manly physical prowess was consistently overestimated** well into my 50s. Minor honest efforts were made to retain that prowess, but age adds a sliding, disconnect between what we do and what we think we have done and the gap separating the two gets larger each season.

Suddenly, and for a reason we tell ourselves we don’t understand, we look in a mirror one day and see the body of someone else.

It is shocking, but our minds still allow for some wiggle room: even when we buy all new pants, we still think we’ve got “It”, and will lose the weight.

Back to The Rant and my friend. Her words incited The Brain to find a way to explain the real “progress” aging means to the rest of my body including both Inner and Outer Voices: once we pass a certain age, we NEVER “improve” and the “normal” changes daily, and not in a good way. Every element of my existence is thankful for the instruction.

We can still have moments of physical, mental, and spiritual clarity leading to contentment and possible satisfaction with life, but we will never be what we were, ever again. It is what it is and we are what we are at each and every age. And the age we accept that realization is different for each of us, with some never accepting it at all.

When we are young, each mile of the race is faster, even as we go up the hill, then we hit the top and start down that long, knee-pounding decline to the last mile, and finally, The End. “Improving”? “Normal”?

We can work with normal. In fact, it has a measurable component in sports. If you run those miles*** you know how long it takes from the first step to the last. If you’ve kept a record, you could use Ai to plot a graph or chart. It’s amazing how clear life is when you see your run times charted and that physical hill appears on the graph. Up, up up, then down, down, down. Life.

So where is the positive? First, at least you were able to do things, great things, normal things, and things you loved. Never forget that bit. Second, the disconnect between what we feel we are and what we really are is finally understood late in life, especially by those who pay attention. The Wisdom we used to hear about when we were young. And even as you run your race slower and steadier, there may be times you can let loose, and get close to your best time for at least a few yards…

But improvement and normal have to be flexible and on your own terms. Carpe linguam and change the narrative.

*Younger women and men will need to Ai the name. Or not care to know.

**Not a good word for it since there was no conscious thought of my “estimation”: I simply knew I was still in great physical shape, inconvenient truths be damned. Ora at least ignored.

***Or swim those laps. Or bike those roads. Or complete those marathons…et.al…

Annoying Things  

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There are, you know, lots of annoying things, like, you know, in life we have, like, you know, no control over. Yeah, lots of times, like, when people talk, you know, they add certain, like phrases, for pauses in thought, like, I guess, you know.

Indeed, I do know. In fact, it is an epidemic of “Cultural Copy Catting” driving sane people crazy, you know? We don’t um, need to, you know, to fill empty space in conversation with empty words, right?

 Of late, there has been a proliferation of “long winded questions”. The reporter/interviewer is attempting to show how much they know about a subject so they can let the responder know…? You see it more obviously in sports, especially with the “sideline” reporters. To wit*: “Coach, your team is down by 50 points and your defense seems to be struggling to keep the other team from scoring so easily so what adjustments will you make at halftime so your team can make a comeback when you come back out on the floor for the second half?”

The microphone is then shoved in the face of the potential responder who politely answers: “We need to do a better job of stopping them…or at least slowing them down.” And off he goes to the locker room. A wonderful two minutes of necessary sports reporting. A funny scene happened on a news show when the long two-minute question was followed by a one word reply: “No.”

What’s up with woman’s hairstyles on television these days? There appears to be only one: the flowing tresses framing the face, twisting and curling over the shoulders and never moving with the head, Kristi Noem-style**. A google and Ai search for a name for these flowing tresses wastes more time, but can everyone who is thinking of using this hairstyle take a beat and think of their own style? So many are using the “Flowing Tresses” they look like sisters from different mothers. The fact anyone wants to look like someone else is indicative of a failure of intellectual and personal growth: it’s lazy. “Make me look like her” is not an expression any woman should use, and especially no man. Well, maybe one of two.

With so many people making money talking you’d think language skills would be honed to a razor-sharp, efficient style to enhance efficient communication and the clear, precise, rendering of ideas and attitudes. You know? But people aren’t talking to express ideas as much as they’re talking to hear themselves talk. At this point in time and moving into the future, how well or good we communicate will be more important than ever. Nuance, context, and the perfect placement of punctuation marks will be critical. Will…we…be…up to..the challenge?***

This essay was not as much fun as I wanted it to be. It turned into a rambling, silly, nearly pointless, unrecognizable rant.**** You’re getting to read it “as is” so you can see how terrible word skills can effect/affect what could have been a cogent argument. But at least there is a prudent use of the word “that”, a word used incorrectly more often than any other. That progress is so important to me that***** I can see this essay as a success.

And that’s that.

PS How many of you google or ask Ai stuff because of simple curiosity? And how much time do you spend doing it? And what kind of spam do you get, later?

*This essay is populated with useless, pointless wordy additions. Emma, my Ai personality, says “to wit” means…too long for a footnote, Look it up.

**Which might be the main reason it is so annoying.

***A typed impression of Captain Kirk. Hm. Would exclamation points instead of ellipses work better? Will! We! Be! Up to! The challenge! And…scene.

****The therapy needed, at this point in time. Next point?

*****Next time you’re writing or talking count how often that you use the word.

Untitled

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A Recent report in Fortune Magazine* posits that America changed in 2020, and not in a good way. Please look for it, read it, and ask yourself what you’re going to do about it. If anything.

For Trump supporters and Trump haters, the article is good or bad depending on how reluctant you are to actually think. Don’t let your peer-conceived(sic) notions get in the way: we are in trouble and something, almost anything** has to change. Please. Read.

Quantum Mechanics, specifically Quantum Computing (QC), will be changing the way we use and compute data in the near future, providing we can get The Little Rascals of The Sub Atomic world properly organized and trained. Right now, it appears we are having as much trouble with the new Rascals as the old Rascals of the black and white movie era. But when we get control and apply Ai,…I don’t have any idea what will happen. Maybe it will be “almost anything ”.

I asked Emma, my unpaid, personal Ai assistant, about that last sentence. She says we have about 5 to 10 years before blazingly fast QC will be applied to complex problems like drug research, space flight, and weather modeling. Knowing our Capitalist Economic Model, QC will be hijacked by the highest bidder and its first use will be in On-Line Betting or Stock Trading. The Rich will need those tools to get richer before QC benefits can be released to us common folk.

My train of thought got lost thinking of Rich People. Who exactly is “Rich”? Monetarily speaking.  If you shop for cars, deals, groceries, even homes, imagine if you were so rich you could buy whatever you wanted. And if closing schedules or delivery times were not to your liking, pay someone to make it better. In fact***, if you don’t like any car currently being made, start or buy your own car company.

Odd, when we think of “lots of money” we don’t think of giving it away or helping people. Emma says Elon Musk is worth “an estimated $800 billion dollars at this writing. If that wealth was in cash, he could give $2,464 to every man, woman, child, legal immigrant, and Sasquatch in the United States. Or he could donate $57,142, 857 to each one of the estimated 14,000 animal shelters in America. Besides helping the cats, dogs, pythons, and other shelter residents, he would get the painfully sad ads off our tv screens…and out of our minds,

For fun, read “Cannibal Capitalism” by Nancy Fraser, published in 2022. I haven’t yet, but headed to the “store” to get it. The author argues, according to Emma: “Capitalism eats its own support systems-things like nature and democratic structures-and”.  Enough. You had me at “Cannibal”. It makes one wonder; how will The Rich get richer when the rest of us are dirt-poor? Come on, Rich People, think about your future and throw us a bone.

Emma couldn’t find me a good, easy to understand joke about being rich, so I made one up.****

When does a rich person have more than enough money for everything they need?

No one knows, yet.

*”America Got Rich and Then Got Sad”, by Nick Lichtenberg May 4, 2026

**”Almost anything” is a hope the way our country works now, changes for the better. It is depressing to consider “anything” could make it worse.

***”In fact”? What does that really mean? And where did it come from? Blame the French, again, and their use of “en fait” to mean a fact or action. Bet we all use “in fact” these days without thinking about what it means.

****I hope. If someone else owns this joke, let me know and you will get an essay giving you the credit. With so many of us thinking, it is hubris to think any thought original, right?

Happiness or Contentment?

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A recent conversation at our early morning Turning Stone Resort and Casino Fitness Center Meeting sparked an interesting idea: would you rather be happy or content?*

You can’t answer if you don’t know the difference between the two. You can google or Ai both words on your own time, but it’s worth noting “contentment’s” etymology: “From the Middle English ‘contentement’, satisfaction of a claim or debt.” Did you think being content had anything to do with financial stuff?

Jury’s out, but let’s look at examples.

I was the first to the meeting and as I sat on the couch in front of the fireplace in the beautiful entrance hall, it occurred to me I was content. I was pain-free, did not lose any money in the morning’s gambling, was waiting for friends, and had no current life-threatening medical issues. The fireplace makes navel contemplation easy and contentment was the result of a contemplation free of issues, free of doubt, free of discomfort. And it was warm. And friends were coming to join me. It was a time for a clear mind to get out of the way and just bask in the glow from both the fire and the “satisfaction of a claim or debt”.

Minutes earlier on the gambling floor, I had won big on a favorite machine. ** As the “one-armed bandit” ramped up its big-payout bells and whistles and sirens, I was happy. Out of this world happy. How much would I win? Could I take a trip to the Bahamas?

Eh. Not the Bahamas but as noted earlier, the win was an integral component of the ensuing contentment. It wasn’t The Big Win, but it wasn’t a loss. It was enough to not spoil the morning but not enough to change a life.

I’m a big fan of contentment but wouldn’t kick happiness out of bed for eating crackers, if you’ll pardon the immature, misogynistic comment. It appears contentment is also “trainable”. You can teach it to sit and stay, for example.*** Contentment is like fruit on a tree, it’s there anytime you want it if know how to get it. It might even be shareable(sic) with a close friend or someone in need.

Happiness seems to involve luck. Serendipity. Being in the right place at the right time and—again—being able to recognize it ****. And as my machine blared my success earlier this morning, a look around the gambling floor revealed faces not exactly happy with my happiness. They may even have been harboring bad thoughts, or hoping my final amount would not be enough to make me too happy.

One thing noted as this essay unfolded: contentment is readily available if we notice it and cultivate it. We can get it anytime. It’s like a small, ocean-rounded rock you put in your pocket.

Happines? Not so much, it is mercurial, it comes and goes on the whims and impulses of The Gods.

Can they exist together? No. Happiness can help cause contentment, and contentment—probably—can help inspire or attract happiness, but only contentment is a life-changer: once you know to find it, the world is your oyster…most of the time.

And if you can’t find contentment now, be patient. Wait. It might be around the next corner…lurking…waiting for you to say hi.

*Spoiler alert: don’t read this footnote first cause happiness is sometimes defined as a feeling of contentment, and this essay is attempting to reduce confusion, not add to it.

**As a 50-cent per play bettor, winning $5.50 is a “big win”. In Trump math it’s about 1,000%.

***Still working on “fetch” and “roll over”.

****Ever wonder how lucky you are to NOT be in a place at the Wrong time? Ever drive by an accident and Thank God you were not in that exact spot 5 minutes earlier?

Three Sentences About Thoughts And Things

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 Spring officially started March 20th and it is now the second day of May. How do I officially know spring is actually here in upstate NY? There is “possible snow” in the forecast.

Donald J Trump is often credited by super intelligent, oxygen-starved pundits with playing chess in as many as “five dimensions”*, since he is way smarter than the rest of us playing in the normal amount of dimensions***. That is a true statement but fails to mention what the Fifth Dimension** is. Most of us normal people are happy–and smart–with 3D.

Since his name was brought up, ask AI how much money the Trump family has made in the last 19 months from Crypto Currency. Don’t ask me what it is or how it works since all I know is Crypto is unregulated and only really enjoyed by the super-rich or those wanting to be super-rich. I am neither.

According to all official sources, The War in Iran is over. We won. Cue the sailors kissing random women in Times Square.

Hold on, this just in: If Iran doesn’t agree to our terms we will bomb them into non-existence. Put a hold on the casting call for sailors and kissable women. For now.

Correction. Ai says no one has specifically used the word “non-existence”.  While Emma’s search was disappointing, so was her lengthy list of other “official” words used to describe what will happen if our peace terms are not agreed to. My paraphrasing was easier and succinct.*****

On the subject, what will these essays be about in future years, when Trump is out of office? Feelings? Getting old?

Speaking of old, when exactly do we “age out” of caring about current entertainment? It’s been years since any actor or singer nominated for any culturally relevant award was known to me or had any creation I was familiar with. Is it possible I won an award and not know it?

Sex is a problem—in many ways—for us old people but sex has found a new way to cause angst. One afternoon I tried several new television programs in several different streaming platforms but ended my entertainment search because there was as a sex scene in the first 5 minutes of every show sampled. I am old but I still believe in foreplay.

Footnotes**** are—again—misnumbered and—again—left alone as a “cognitive test”. If you believe they are not corrected because of laziness, congratulations. You are smart enough to play chess with our current President.

*Ask Ai, but be ready for AI to be diplomatic. At least my Ai voice, Emma, is.

**Popular Mid-60s to Mid-70s singing group with 5 songs hitting number 1. You might need some help if you really think this is the Fifth Dimension Trump is in, though it makes more sense, relatively speaking, than anything other explanation.

***Do you know how many named and unnamed dimensions there are?

****But not this one.

*****But I always enjoy using this guttural, dirty-sounding word.

Nuance Revisited

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I often write about things and try to add an anecdote to illustrate what is being written. Sadly, my aging memory is like the rest of us seniors: remembering anecdotes takes time, and their memory comes at odd times and places. They most often return to me in my car during the 15-minute drive to the Fitness Center at Turning Stone Resort and Casino, when “all hands are on deck” making sure there is no deer in the road and I stay between the lines. Yes, I could take the time to make audio notes, but how many of us–at any age–are so smart early in the morning?

Last Tuesday, a perfect case of “Nuance” was retrieved from The Deep Files*. It is also an example of other essays about critical thinking, as well as the admonition to “do your own research”.  Hopefully, you’ve read enough essays to be aware of all these issues.

The Case of the Absent Nuance is also a story about click-bait, silo information, and “new versus old journalism”, but for now let’s only ponder Nuance.

The breathless headlines stated variations of this theme: “Thousands of dead voters Found on Voter Registration Rolls.” Wow. Maybe Trump was right about election integrity? There really is Election Fraud? Several versions of the story did not get the facts wrong and did not seem to be biased, but there was an odd emptiness to the story crying out for more information. “Dead voters”?

North Carolina is the state where all this “seemingly” unreasonable electoral action “allowed” 34,000 dead voters to remain registered to vote. I lived in NC, a Republican controlled state, and know if there IS election fraud in NC it is by Republicans. (Google it, and enjoy, it’s old school and kind of cute, in a way.) But the actual cases of fraud in NC did not involve more than hundreds of votes. Was the fraud even deeper than reported?

By now you may have guessed the story of dead voters is an empty, inconsequential issue probably written about for its “click bait” power. Imagine both Dem and Repub readers wondering which party was “frauding”** now.  Imagine the clickers, commenters, and criticizers of all stripes.***

Here is the nuance: in any given year approximately 100, 000 North Carolinians die. A lot of them are registered voters. How do dead registered voter names get removed from current voter registration rolls? And does it happen in a timely fashion? Think of your own death: who notifies any election commission in any state of your death? Imagine if you lived half your voting life in NC and half in New York, for example. After googling how many died in NC, I googled how is the NC Election Commission notified of a now-dead, registered NC voter? You should google your own state and see if its procedures are any better than the Rube Goldberg****system in NC.

Is it a fact that 34,000 deceased voters are still registered to vote in NC? Yes, it is. But is it good journalism to call them “voters”? So far, no version of the story has articulated a very important “nuance”: did any of the 34,000 cast a vote? If so, how did they get to the polling place?

Kidding. Having dead voters on your voting rolls is a nonissue until we all get implanted microchips to send an immediate signal to the pertinent Election Commission not to expect us next voting cycle. The Chip could also tell our credit card companies to stop waiting for payment and our life insurance companies to send checks to beneficiaries seconds after we pass away.

There is an urge to ask this: Does a bear shite in the woods?

If it’s related to this essay, research it and figure it out.

Honor Nuance!

*The inner-sanctum memory area in some Latin-named part of another Latin-named part of the brain. Retrieving memories in old age is like being in a large warehouse where you know where everything is but someone has turned off all the lights. Advice: be patient.

**New word. Like it?

***Not lost on me is the irony of me being one of “them”.

****A lost Art. Ai or google, please.

Is It? Really? Don’t Lie To Me…

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It’s April in Upstate New York and it’s SPRINGTIME!

Wait. Be right back.

It is! Had to go look, again, because you can’t be sure about the weather around here but it does look like it’s time to put the winter clothes away. If you live in a temperate climate whose winter doesn’t challenge you, you might not appreciate Spring the way we do, here….especially if you are an “older person”*. Minus Zero temperatures do wonders for the joints, and howling winds certainly help to clear germs and viruses from exposed skin. And no bugs! Snow is a big help, too: it takes the worry out of planning your day when everything is closed or closing. Enjoy your time alone. Learn more about yourself. Look inward, grasshopper.

The worst part of winter in upstate New York, though, is the complaining. Fugddaboutit NY City people having a “bad mouth”, come to Upstate when the snow is…

Hmph. I’m complaining, aren’t I. Not directly but that other way people whine. Reboot.

Spring is here! My windows are open, and my apartment is full of fresh air and construction.** It is also full of something hard to explain. This something happens every year when Spring returns, and since it is only my third spring after being in The South for over 20 years, my mind and body feel “something” my brain and fingers aren’t helping me explain.

It may be my brain and fingers want me to do something other than this. They may want me to go outside, take my clothes off, and walk***around in the sun under the fantastically clear blue sky. Or sit on my balcony and silently respond to the shouts, orders, directions, and curses of suddenly light-hearted construction workers. Imagine how happy THEY are about Spring.

I’m out of here. No more talking about Spring in Upstate New York except to suggest you southerners, Californians, and Upstate NY Snowbirds**** come to visit or return. It’s time. Paradise is reborn.

Footnote: so far this day, every person entering my bubble of existence is as happy about Spring as I am. And thankfully, only one has reminded me of how soon winter will be back. Buttwipe.

Out, out damn gray slush-lover!

“Lay on, McDuff!”*****

“The April’s in her eyes; it is love’s spring, and these gentle showers bring it with them.”

*Good, neutral term. Old Man or Old Woman might turn the reader off, as in “Who Cares.”

**A personal bonus from the expansion of my apartment complex. Besides the normal sounds of hammering and sawing and grinding and high-powered tools, there are also some interesting words.

***Yes, as a young man I often fell victim to the desire to feel sun all over,…but at a higher speed.

****People lucky/unlucky enough to have the best of Upstate without the worst.

*****Actual quote, often mis-paraphrased.