Tag Archives: current-events

W E Patterson's avatar

Thoughts on December 21, 2012

. The End . , , , , . Leave a comment

I don’t know about you, o’reader, but I take great comfort in the fact that the world did not end on December 21st of last year. In spite of the fact that the rendering of our tiny planet into a puff of cosmic dust would certainly solve, with great finality, the problems of all mankind, most of us rather enjoy our ride around the sun. With a few exceptions, we are a diverse lot of complacent and happy souls here on Planet Earth, and if our lives are not perfect, we still enjoy living them, and if our days become ‘hum-drum’, measured, and even mundane, so be it.

Not that we are a planet of bores here on Earth, but seldom (thankfully) are we confronted with a disaster over which we have no absolutely no control. The kind of event that would really shake the mundane out of your day – such a day as (some) predicted would occur on December 21st. Most of us, however, do not wish to be thrust into jaw dropping disaster.

Not that we are oblivious to the world around us. We fear natural events such as hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes, floods, fires and mudslides, and perhaps fear more, man made events such as terrorist attacks, random shootings, plane crashes and freeway pileups. We are well aware of the fact that we could be poisoned by Anthrax, attacked by killer bees, eaten by errant microbes, strangled by jealous lovers, gunned down by deranged co-workers or run down by feeble elderly drivers (cut me a break on last one, I live in South Florida and I know what I’m talking about).

But even the most disastrous of the aforementioned disasters involve only a small portion of Earth’s population, while only one disaster, the mega-disaster: The End of The World As We Know It (TEOTWAWKI) involves, well, all of us. Maybe that is the allure of TEOTWAWKI. Is our attraction to end time theories a result of there being safety in numbers? It is true that when it comes to TEOTWAWKI we are all in the same cosmic boat – whether you reside in Somolia, or Burbank, TEOTWAWKI is taking us all out.

So ask yourself…

…are things just a bit slow right now since the countdown clock that used to appear on the right hand pane of my blog has been taken down, and the date December 21, 2012 is simply a circled date on last year’s calendar – the one that is now residing in your recycling bin alongside the Christmas cards and crumpled hunks of wrapping paper. Has life become just a tiny bit more…boring…than usual? Maybe you sort of miss the rush of knowing it ALL ‘could’ end on a particular day. Well then, look no further than Ed’s End of the Planet Books…here we go…

Please mark Thursday, September 11, 2020 on your collective calendars, o’ readers. Yes, according to some experts and researchers this is a date of interest. The planetary alignments are an astronomical certainty. On this date, the planets Mars, Saturn, Jupiter, Mercury, and Venus all align with the Sun and the Moon! Yikes. Is this a recipe for disaster or what? Some doomsayers are predicting that the combined gravitational pull of these celestial objects could pull the earth off of its axis causing continent-drowning mega-tsunamis, hundreds if not thousands of feet tall. Earthquakes and volcanoes follow – a real mess. Still other experts predict a more subtle TEOTWAWKI. In their scenario, the earth is simply pulled away from its orbit around the sun causing the planet to become increasingly icy and cold, until we all freeze – so there…so much for global warming. Al Gore didn’t know what he was talking about after all did he!

Anyway, more on this event in another blog – I can’t wait.

Mahalo,

Trop

W E Patterson's avatar

Countdown to the END on December 21?

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The other morning, I watched with great interest a news report on the upcoming, much hyped, “End of the World”. Of course, I have played into the hype in my own miniscule way – note the countdown clock on the right hand side of your screen. The date in question, December 21st, 2012, is the end of the Mayan Long Count Calendar. Some say the world will end that day in some sort of global cataclysm. According to the news report, NASA is besieged with inquiries. People want the down-low on the END, and who best to answer that question than the space guys themselves. Assuming the END will come from out of the sky with our little planet taking it head-on with an asteroid or comet, then the NASA guys are the ones who ought to know. The Near Earth Asteroid Tracking (NEAT) team, under the auspices of the U.S. Air Force has been tracking nearby asteroids and comets for years. The last time I checked, the only civilization altering object in our neighborhood, an asteroid scheduled for a flyby in 2028, has now been re-categorized by NEAT, and now poses no danger at all to us.

According to the news reports though, some folks are not convinced. They’re stocking up on provisions – food, medical supplies, and most importantly ammunition. Some people don’t want to be caught under a five hundred foot tidal-wave unless they are well armed.

Besides creating a group of paranoid adults, the December 21st date is causing countless school-children (much more understandably), to lie awake nights worrying about the END, instead of focusing on Christmas 4 days later.

Perhaps the children would feel better about things if they were told that the Mayan Long Count Calendar consists of a timekeeping system started (roughly) around 3114 B.C.E. Since we know that it is impossible that the earth was formed at this early date we must ask ourselves if these Mayans are all that reliable in the first place. They seem to know when it all ends, but they have no idea when it started – no creditability I say.

The Mayan Calendar is divided into 394 year periods called baktuns. On, or around, December 21st of this year, the calendar will have completed its 13th baktun. While the number 13 held special significance to the Mayans, there is still little evidence that the calendar ends on December 21st  because after that time we shall have no more need for calendars!

Listen to the Mayans themselves. Present day Mayan priest, Miguel Angel Vergara, says the December 21st date is not to be feared. Instead he says, we should welcome the end of the Mayan calendar. According to Mr. Vergara, on or somewhere around, December 21st, we will be entering a time of great spiritual transition as mankind throws off the shackles of “greed and darkness”. Ah…so that’s what all this hokey-pokey is all about.

So you see…it may not be that bad.

Personally, I’m not so sure that I buy into the fact that shaking the shackles of greed and darkness is any more likely than getting struck by an errant comet.

Still, you never know. On November 26, New York City reported, for the first time in as long as police can recall, no one was murdered, shot, or stabbed during a 24 hour period. There was, as I understand, some sporadic gunfire but apparently nobody was hit.

It is a start.

W E Patterson's avatar

My final post before Election Day 2012; Rita texts me from Thief River Falls

. Politics . , , , , , . 1 Comment

I am promising myself that this will be my final blog regarding the U.S. Presidential election of 2012. My words here will serve little purpose, beyond being an outlet for my own frustration and confusion.  As I listen to the pundits, and the poll takers, and the lovely television anchor ladies, and to all of the great talkers of our day, describe an election as “too close to predict”, I can only shake my head in disbelief. Can it be, I say to myself almost daily, that this many people are going to get it wrong – and if they do, I fear the surprise that may await them.

I have noted the date of August 14, 2012 as the day that my misunderstanding of Presidential politics became apparent, leaving me only with dogged misgivings and doubts about our future as a nation – these feelings too would wane, leaving me with a state of mind I can only call: Chronic Confusion (or, in current text messaging parlance, “wtf”). For it was on this day that I witnessed (via television), U.S. Republican candidate Mitt Romney, standing shoulder to shoulder with a lineup of worshipping Ohio coal miners. My first reaction was that it must be a comedy skit, staged by some clever Obama operative out to show the world just how out of touch the Republican candidate is with the working man.

After all, didn’t the mine owners of years past fight tooth and toenail against any federal regulations that would impose health and safety regulations (and thus cut profits) on their mines? Certainly these miners must know that CEOs like Mr. Romney, a man whose own taste for corporate profits leaves little to the imagination, could have any empathy or understanding of workers who toil beneath the surface of Ohio, drilling and blasting and shoveling and bringing to the surface great heaps of carbonized carbon. It is not work for the faint of heart.

How could it be then, I asked myself on August 14, 2012, that this group of miners could take the stage with such a man – they, dressed for work in a mine, and Mr. Romney in shirtsleeves with the same slick-CEO look in his eyes that I’ve seen in the eyes of other slick CEOs as they’ve taken to other stages to distribute awards and commendations to unwitting employees, while at the same time, office space was being readied in India and China for their replacements.

“The Federal Government has sold you a bill of goods with those expensive gas monitors,” I could almost hear Mr. Romeny say. “Your grandfathers’ used canaries. And they were hardworking men who didn’t need some slack-jawed Beltway bureaucrat coming out here to Ohio to tell you guys how to run a mine. The money saved on those expensive gadgets can go right into your pockets.”

Or something like that.

My friend Rita, who is at this moment living up in Thief River Falls, Minnesota, poised to make a run for the Canadian border with her husband and unborn child feels that a Romney/Ryan victory would be eclipsed only by a polar shift, or asteroid strike in terms of creating global disaster. I am not so sure about that. But I do hear the drumbeats of war. Not since the late GWB have I felt so uneasy about a presidency leading us into another conflict – this time, perhaps Iran?

Rita sent me a text the other night, from the Thief River Falls Wal Mart where she was busy stocking up on disposable diapers for the trip North:

“j L sas Rmny vic in the bag now”

Rita has trouble texting, but I know it meant that her husband J.L. thinks that Romney has it locked up.

“would n’t B 2 sure” I replied.

We shall all see on Tuesday.

W E Patterson's avatar

Farewell to George McGovern

. Politics . , , , . 2 Comments

“I’m fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.”

–George McGovern

Occasionally, out of the blue, something happens that causes the ground beneath your feet to shift just a little – not much, not like an earthquake or anything, but you feel it nonetheless. When that happens, it shocks you and in a moment of extreme and very profound clarity, you realize that time is speeding past you like a stoned 16 year old in his old man’s Corvette.

I had such a moment of extreme and very profound clarity couple of years ago, when I suddenly realized that I was older than the current President of the United States. I know, age is just a number, but even the young presidents that I remember, like JFK, were much older than I was, and it seemed like it stayed that way for a long time…then things suddenly shifted. Maybe it was because I was born during the Eisenhower administration, and Ike was an old guy back when I was very young. The ones that came after him, like JFK and LBJ and Nixon and Ford and Carter and Reagan were all – well – old. All of a sudden, when I realized that the Leader of the Free World was younger than I am I felt as if that aforementioned Corvette was speeding head-on toward me as I tottered across Santa Monica Boulevard on my cane.

I had another moment of extreme and profound clarity earlier this week, when I heard the news that George McGovern had passed away in South Dakota at age 90. McGovern was the very first public official that I ever voted for, having just turned 18 only a few  months before the 1972 election. Thanks to the 26th amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which was ratified in July of 1971, I was of legal voting age.

For those of you who do not remember, or for those of you who do not care to remember the election of 1972 – it was a Democratic massacre as Richard “I-am-not-a-Crook” Nixon ran away with 60.7% of the popular vote, receiving almost 18 million more votes than McGovern. Could that many people have been wrong? The answer is of course: “well yeah”. How history would have turned out had McGovern been elected we will never know, but we do know that things went to hell pretty fast after Nixon was re-elected.

Thinking back on my own vote for McGovern, I can’t think of being especially moved by any particular speech, or public appearance he made, or any book, or magazine article he wrote. In fact, I don’t think I knew that much about him, although I read newspapers regularly and watched the evening news daily. My respect for George McGovern would come later as I read interviews and heard about his work in fighting hunger around the world and of his founding an organization to help alcoholics.

Back in 1972, I knew only that he was against the war in Vietnam, and he was running against Nixon, a man for whom I  had nothing but disdain and contempt. That was enough for me – me and only 37.5% of my fellow American voters. In the end the Electoral College favored Nixon 520 to 17 and with McGovern winning only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia.

In today’s information age, I don’t believe a President will ever again be elected in such a landslide. Those days are over. 1972 was well before talk radio, 24 hour  news and the internet – all giant equalizers able to mobilize and marginalize voters in great enough numbers to ensure that we are all at each others’ throats in nearly equal numbers – great enough numbers to ensure that the election will come down to an all night slug-fest in which a half dozen votes cast in a remote precinct in Cairo, Illinois, or Evansville, Indiana will change the course of history.

Or so it seems.

The quote by George McGovern at the beginning of the blog is so simple, it’s elegant. It belongs on the wall of every elected official in Washington.