HELLO OUT THERE!

I’m at the Mon Ami and making this entry from here. This is my first ever internet connection by means of WiFi. Ain’t it exciting? And it caused me a lot of trouble to do it. Every time I tried to copy and paste, my connection was killed and the text appeared outside the text box. What's up with that?

We’re expecting very unseasonable weather in the Portland/Vancouver area. 100 degrees. So I took an early walk down by the Columbia River and was full of depression about America, about the failing quality of its products (built in foreign lands) and its customer service work as exemplified by phone representatives from foreign countries. I recall the days when American products led the world in their quality and when American industry and retailers stood behind their products.

I was so depressed by my contact with phone representatives that I called American corporate headquarters of Hewlett-Packard and Sear’s and spoke to consumer relations representatives. The Sears lady listened and responded well, but the Hewlett-Packard woman (both women?) told me that we are living in a new world and that it will never be the same.

I know... I’m antiquated. An old fart. Obsolete. But... damn it? Where’s America gone to? And so quickly! It did not help to sit down, here at the Mon Ami, to read that by 2050 us Caucasions will be less than half of the American population. Look, I’m not prejudiced but only worried that the high number of children many of these Latins have will sink America even deeper into poverty. Many immigrated from countries where population increases are the primary reason for their poverty. So they come here, having learned nothing, and create the same conditions in America that they suffered from in their countries of origin. For goodness sakes, folks, learn something! Open your eyes and close your zippers. Or at least use contraceptives. Does anyone else get the connection between countries of origin, large families and religious affiliations?

I’m not proud of that last entry. Let me assure you that I’m not so fiercely antagonistic as all that, and I welcome newcomers as being the bravest of their country’s citizens, willing to go to a new country to further their lives. That means that they have much to offer us. But may I also remind them to keep in mind the poverty of where they came from and its causes, and to alter their past beliefs just a little so as to not recreate those conditions here.

What follows is some stuff I wrote in my new word processing program yesterday to enter when this Mon Ami internet connection was created for the first time:

This entry will be, when I get around to it, my first blog entry begun on my new MacBook, using its new software called iWork. I will probably wait until my next visit to Mon Ami, the espresso joint down on Main Street, to make this entry at Blogspot using, this Macbook’s WiFi capacity. This also marks a changing method for the peripatetic journaling I’ve been doing since around 1966. Soon I will discontinue my handwritten journal and this Internet and Computer journal will become my only entries.

Will I put down some boring thoughts in an online journal like I do in my penned journal? I’m not sure. Who could be interested in the daily wanderings and wonderings of an old man nearly ready to enter into the age of 71? I’m at an awkward age, still imaging that I’ll write some large work of literature that will see publication while, on the other hand, my fearful mind tells me that all the effort will prove fruitless so why try. Also there’s another voice in my head that wants me to slow down, take it easy, read and write at liesure, be a real retired person after all with nothing more to do than cook meals for my wife who is still in the work force making her living and her way in the career world she’s chosen. It’s she who encourages me to try once more to write a publishable longer work, reminding me that I enjoy the process of writing, that I have always been writing something, whether a haiku, a letter to an editor, a letter to a friend, a short story.... Yes, I write something almost every day so why not just keep at it out of force of habit? Damn the publication torpedo; full speed ahead.

DOWN AND DOWN WE GO, ROUND AND ROUND WE GO...

Headlines on “Money & Investing” section of Wall Street Journal (8/13/08) read “Skies Darken For Retailing As Spree Fades” and “Bank Selloff Halts Rally As Dow Falls 139.88 Points”. Yep... and it’s going to get hot in Vancouver, next three days with temps nearing 100. Us old folks are supposed to get out of that sort of temps pretty quick!

POISONOUS

“In the natural world, beautiful usually means deadly. Beautiful plus casual demeanor always means deadly.” —Edward Wilson, p.150, Naturalist

Does Edward realize the implications of his words when we also add that humankind is also part of the natural world?