Obi's Sister

Big, heavy, dramatic sigh.

A little more than eleven years ago, I ventured out to the internetz and discovered an entire world of voices just as disgruntled as mine.  I thought if they can do it, so can I.  And one day I just started.

I didn’t pick Pi Day / Albert Einstein’s birthday on purpose.  It was just the day I loosed my inner pyromaniac.  Some days are bright, happy blazes, and others were full-blown five alarmers.  Regardless, it’s been a slow burn for a long time.

The years have expanded the web’s depth and reach.  And sharpened my resolve as I honed my voice.

In the last several year’s anniversary posts, I’ve hinted at my mother’s decline in health. She continues to live in her home, but no longer drives. A caregiver visits during the week.  Her weight has fallen and now she’s like a frail little bird.  She still remembers me, most of the time.  But daily tasks are becoming harder for her.   I understand why dementia is called “The Long Goodbye.”  Every time I see her, she is changed.  Just a tiny fraction.  But she is diminishing, slowly evaporating before my eyes.

So I spend as much time with her as I can.  The blog has suffered, along with other areas of my life.  But I’m still active on the web in discussions I care about and contributing to other sites.  I know the time will come when I sadly have too much time because my responsibilities to others have ended.  Hopefully, we will still have enough free speech left that I can speak my mind here.

Eleven years is longer than two of my career stops. Most cars/marriages/fruit cakes don’t last that long. Many other blogs (and friends) have fallen away. They are missed. Others, not so much.

If you’re new to this dark little asteroid, you can check out the one post that started it all, plus all nine of the previous anniversary posts – The First, Year One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine and Ten.

Many, many friends have been made along the way. Many prayers said. So much support offered. Special thanks go out to Fausta for her continued friendship, and as always to The Anchoress, Elizabeth Scalia, my blog-mother. It’s all her fault. She is now a full-fledged editor of an international faith site. She continues to amaze and inspire me.

This last year’s worth of campaign and election season has brought out the worst in all of us.  Let us pray as one for America’s future, safety and sovereignty.

A little more than ten years ago, I ventured out to the internetz and discovered an entire world of voices just as disgruntled as mine.  I thought if they can do it, so can I.  And one day I just started.

I didn’t pick Pi Day / Albert Einstein’s birthday on purpose.  It was just the day I loosed my inner pyromaniac.  Some days are bright, happy blazes, and others were full-blown five alarmers.  Regardless, it’s been a slow burn for a long time.

The years have expanded the web’s depth and reach.  And sharpened my resolve as I honed my voice.

In last year’s anniversary post, I hinted at my mother’s decline in health. She continues to live in her home, but no longer drives. A caregiver visits during the week.  Her weight has fallen and now she’s like a frail little bird.  Over last summer, she was hospitalized twice.  She still remembers me, most of the time.  But daily tasks are becoming harder for her.   I understand why dementia is called “The Long Goodbye.”  Every time I see her, she is changed.  Just a tiny fraction.  But she is diminishing, slowly evaporating before my eyes.

So I spend as much time with her as I can.  The blog has suffered, along with other areas of my life.  But I’m still active on the web in discussions and contributing to other sites.  I know the time will come when I sadly have too much time because my responsibilities to others have ended.  Hopefully, we will still have enough free speech left that I can speak my mind here.

Ten years is longer than two of my career stops. Most cars/marriages/fruit cakes don’t last that long. Many other blogs (and friends) have fallen away. They are missed. Others, not so much.

If you’re new to this dark little asteroid, you can check out the one post that started it all, plus all nine of the previous anniversary posts – The First, Year One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, and Nine.

Many, many friends have been made along the way. Many prayers said. So much support offered. Special thanks go out to Fausta for her continued friendship, and as always to The Anchoress, Elizabeth Scalia, my blog-mother. It’s all her fault. She continues to amaze and inspire me.

This election season has brought out the worst in all of us.  Let us pray as one for America’s future, safety and sovereignty.

Yesterday was the Georgia Presidential Primary. After a great deal of prayer and soul/google searching, I voted for Ted Cruz.

This campaign cycle has grated on my nerves to such a point I’m considering abandoning Facebook and Twitter until 2017, at least. Just because I disagree with your candidate du jour’s position/statement/hair style doesn’t mean you have to scream that I’m a hater/bigot/racist/closet Lutheran and you’re going to get me blocked from whatever social media platform you prefer. Just because I voted for one guy doesn’t mean I hate all the others. Get a grip, people.

I’m listening to my buddy on the radio today. He’s slowly unraveling a debrief of why Georgians voted the way they did. But the callers don’t want to hear facts; they want to bash him for saying he’d never vote for Trump.

Well, cranky callers, I won’t vote for Trump, either. Besides not putting out any coherent policy points, and making up words; he just flat gives me the creeps. Max Lucado said it best.  Be a decent human being. You want the President to be someone you can respect and teach your grandchildren to respect while you’re trying to sneak in a little citizenship lesson. Someone who will project strength to our enemies (who have multiplied greatly under the current regime) and trust with our allies. Not someone who threatens to sue everyone out of one side of their mouth and call the rest ugly names out of the other.  No art of the deal for me.

Somehow, instead of voting, it feels like a lousy participation trophy.  Bleh.

The astute Mr. Kevin Williamson says at NRO what we all know: we’re being governed by space monkeys.

I have spent a fair amount of time around elected officials, regulators, and the like, and when I see them, I think: space monkeys. The first monkey to make it into space was called Albert II, who went up on a V2 rocket. Albert II survived the space flight but not, unlucky little beast, the parachute failure that followed. We primates are in a sense one big family, and the first of us to see the majesty of our little corner of the universe from a vantage point beyond the surly bonds of Earth was a rhesus monkey, the stars laid out like a trail of diamonds before his uncomprehending eyes. The complexity of even the simplest markets is as far beyond the understanding of any politician or bureaucracy — or any single human mind — as astrophysics is beyond a rhesus monkey. Politicians steer the economy like Albert II steered that rocket. It isn’t just that they don’t know which levers to pull at what time — they’re clever enough — but that the thing itself is so incomprehensibly complex as to be effectively unknowable to them.

BFFs Chuck Schumer and Corey Booker hate Liberty sooooo much they want their Grand Enabler to sic the IRS on the Tea Party.

Wait, hasn’t he already done that?

I don’t particularly remember anything about that day. My mother says she yanked me out of my kindergarten class and kept me home for a whole week.

I remember the televised funeral. And little John-John, saluting the caisson carrying his father as it passed by the fragile, little family.

Not to trivialize anything about that day, but when Mad Men aired an episode on the day, I had much better feel for the shock and fear that rocked my parents and the entire nation.

The Dallas Morning News has a time line that is helpful for those of us too young then, or not born at all.