Bill Bonner, "Time to Chop Wood"

"Time to Chop Wood"

The only way to Make America Great Again is to shrink the thing that

has made it not-so-great.The American people are no worse

than they used to be.They still work hard. They still want to make money.

by Bill Bonner

Baltimore, Maryland - "People choose whom they work with. They choose whom they marry and live with. They choose their dentists, doctors and decorators. They choose their president and Congressional representatives. They choose their food, their clothes, their autos, their videos and house plants. But they don’t choose their families. And when the genetic cards are shuffled and dealt, you never know what you’ll get.

And if you have a large family, you’re likely to get a full house... full of kings, queens, jacks and jokers. And adorable grandchildren. One is a reader. He plants himself down with a book, in front of the fire…and stays there until interrupted. Another is an outdoor boy, ready to hop on the tractor with Granddad. One little girl is smiles and kisses. Another is up to mischief. And one teenager is a philosopher. We had spent the day before Thanksgiving splitting firewood. All day, we loaded the logs - oak, locust, cherry, and poplar - onto the splitter. Once split, the fire logs were stacked in the barn, where they will rest until next year.

In the evening, we joined the ‘lesenteufel’ in front of the fire. “Grandad, do you believe in God?” asked a 16-year-old grandson. “It would be vain and foolish not to believe in God,” we replied. That answer didn’t satisfy him. “Does that mean you do believe in God?” “God doesn’t need me to believe. Or not believe. I’m just a tiny minnow caught in God’s great net, waiting for Him to haul me up."

“Ask me something easier.” “Okay... can you show me how to make a fire?” Our grandson lives in Florida. Floridians, apparently, have yet to discover fire. “You start by getting some firewood. We’ll go out tomorrow and cut down those two beeches in the front yard.” “But Granddad, don’t we need more trees to absorb carbon dioxide, so the planet doesn’t overheat?”

“Nah... here in Maryland, the trees grow fast. And they grow everywhere. You leave a field for a few years and it will be covered in trees. They now have a scammy program, where developers will pay you to plant trees to make up for the trees they cut down. But trees grow on their own. They don’t need us to plant them. You cut down a tree; it just makes it easier for other trees to grow.” “Granddad, but if you cut down all the trees, that couldn’t be good for the climate, could it?” “Probably not. But I’m not cutting them all down. Just two of them.”

That subject temporarily on pause, we moved on to others. Experts tell us that the recent presidential election triggered thousands of divorces. Couples became embittered with one another when they couldn’t resolve their political differences. Come the election and one was triumphant, the other downcast. Neither could ever forgive the other.

We were advised not to discuss politics at our Thanksgiving gathering. But the 16-year-old didn’t get the message. “Grandad, what do you think will happen, I mean now that Trump is back in the White House?” We hesitated. “The only way to Make America Great Again is to shrink the thing that has made it not-so-great. The American people are no worse than they used to be. They still work hard. They still want to make money. They are still just as dumb…or just as smart…as ever.

“What is different is that the government is much bigger, and more intrusive. Non-defense outlays were barely 5% of GDP until after WWII. Now they are around 20%. But that’s just the annual charge. Regulation and debt are cumulative. And they’ve been building up for decades. They now cause so much delay and useless expense that much of Americans’ output is squandered... or never produced at all.

The interest payments on federal debt are now more than $1 trillion per year. That’s approaching 4% of output now consumed just to pay for long-dead programs, forgotten wars, and ‘investments’ that didn’t pay off. And the National Association of Manufacturers tells us that federal regulations cost the economy an additional $3 trillion per year. Between the two, that’s about 15% of America’s entire GDP. No wonder most people have made very little real economic progress in the last half a century. There’s the real challenge, getting the feds under control; stopping the elites from ripping everyone off. Everything else is detail... or noise.”

Our grandson had gone silent. Politics - or at least our version of it - may have bored him. It was time to chop wood. More to come."

- https://www.bonnerprivateresearch.com/

"Babson’s Warning"

"Babson’s Warning"

by Jeff Thomas

"'A' crash is coming, and it may be terrific. …. The vicious circle will get in full swing and the result will be a serious business depression. There may be a stampede for selling which will exceed anything that the Stock Exchange has ever witnessed. Wise are those investors who now get out of debt.'

The above words could easily have been stated by me or another of the (very) few others who currently predict the coming of crashes in the markets. But they were not. The statements above were made by investor Roger Babson at a speech at the Annual Business Conference in Massachusetts on 5th September, 1929. Mr. Babson’s prediction was not a sudden one. In fact, he had been making the same prediction for the previous two years, although he, in September of 1929, felt the crash was much closer.

News of his speech reached Wall Street by mid-afternoon, causing the market to retreat about 3%. The sudden decline was named the “Babson Break.” The reaction from business insiders was immediate. Rather than respond by saying, “Thanks for the warning - we’ll proceed cautiously,” Wall Street vilified him. The Chicago Tribune published numerous rebuffs from a host of economists and Wall Street leaders. Even Mr. Babson’s patriotism was taken into question for making so rash a projection. 

Noted economist Professor Irving Fisher stated emphatically, “There may be a recession in stock prices, but not anything in the nature of a crash.” He and many others repeatedly soothed investors, advising them that a resumption in the boom was imminent. Financier Bernard Baruch famously cabled Winston Churchill, “Financial storm definitely passed.” Even President Herbert Hoover assured Americans that the market was sound. But, 55 days after Mr. Babson’s speech, on 29th October, 1929, the market suddenly went into a free-fall, dropping 12% in its first day.

Today, most people have the general impression that on Black Friday, the market crashed and almost immediately, there were breadlines. Not so. In the Great Depression, as in any depression, the market collapsed in stages. The market did not reach its bottom of 89% losses until July of 1932. Along the way, thousands of banks and lending institutions went belly-up. Thirteen million jobs disappeared. And of course, the political leaders of the day did their bit. They implemented knee-jerk “solutions” that actually worsened the situation. Restrictive tariffs, gold confiscation, and a more dominant government were employed, just as they will be this time around.

So, as the market tumbled, we would imagine that Babson came to be praised by Wall Street for his insight, but in fact, the opposite occurred. Having accused him of being utterly incorrect in September, they later accused him of having caused the depression.

So, was Babson’s prediction a lucky guess? Did he simply observe the bull market and arbitrarily predict the opposite of the trend of the day to see what would happen? Not at all. Such predictions are not guesswork, nor are they attributable to a vision seen in some crystal ball. Such crashes are entirely predictable. When any major bull market becomes overbought; when too many investors begin buying on margin because they can’t come up with the purchase price for stocks; when they then become even more obsessive and borrow money to buy on margin, the market has become a house of cards, waiting for the slightest breeze to come along.

So what do we take away from this? First, we can be certain that as the present-day house of cards begins to shake, there will be no warnings from Wall Street. In fact, quite the opposite. Their bread gets buttered by buyers. They will be adamant (and even, in many cases, truly believe) that the sky is the limit and investors should buy, buy, buy, as there are fortunes to be made by doing so. And investors, watching the rise, will fall all over each other, just as in 1929, buying with both hands.

This time around, the crash and its byproducts will be more extreme than in 1929, as the bubble itself is more extreme. And Wall Street can count on television and a media that has a vested interest in keeping the charade going as long as possible. It will also be more extreme, as the governments of much of the world are now broke and can only worsen their respective economies through the customary “solutions” that governments always employ—tariffs, confiscations, greater government control, etc.

Finally, the aftermath will be more extreme, as - unlike in 1929, when most people actually believed in the government - this time around, there will be dramatic unrest. Just as in 1929, those who are declaring that “the Emperor has no clothes” are few in number, and their viewpoint is most certainly not put forth in the conventional media. For this reason, it’s understandable that the great majority of people invariably ignore the Babsons of the world as Chicken Littles and blithely charge toward the cliff like lemmings.

Those who do think independently and become convinced that history is repeating itself are focusing their attention on finding a way out of being a casualty in the train wreck that’s coming. This is difficult to do, as invariably, the closer the event becomes, the more difficult it is to swim against the tide. For this reason, even many who conclude that the end is near often fail to act to save themselves and their families.

Internationalization is both time-consuming and costly. Additionally, it’s lonely, as it’s considered foolish and unnecessary by more than 99% of the population. The great temptation is to decide, “Maybe it won’t be so bad. Maybe I can live with it.” And in fact, for most people, this will be the prevailing view - that although their personal situation will be diminished in many ways, the crashes will be tolerable.

The question is whether we wish to make the pre-emptive effort to create a life that is far better than tolerable, and possibly even improved, whist the opportunity for doing so still exists. It’s clear there are some ominous social, political, cultural, and economic trends playing out right now. Many of which seem to point to an unfortunate decline of the West."

- https://internationalman.com/

"Economic Market Snapshot 12/2/24"

"Economic Market Snapshot 12/2/24"

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Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...

Only the consequences are real - to you!

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"It's a Big Club, and you ain't in it. 

You and I are not in the Big Club."

- George Carlin

o

Market Data Center, Live Updates:

- https://www.marketwatch.com/market-data 

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- https://www.asktraders.com/analysis/

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Comprehensive, essential truth.

- http://www.shadowstats.com/

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Financial Stress Index

"The OFR Financial Stress Index (OFR FSI) is a daily market-based snapshot of stress in global financial markets. It is constructed from 33 financial market variables, such as yield spreads, valuation measures, and interest rates. The OFR FSI is positive when stress levels are above average, and negative when stress levels are below average. The OFR FSI incorporates five categories of indicators: credit, equity valuation, funding, safe assets and volatility. The FSI shows stress contributions by three regions: United States, other advanced economies, and emerging markets."

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- https://www.dailyjobcuts.com/

Job cuts and much more.

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- https://www.zerohedge.com/

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- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/

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- https://wallstreetonparade.com/

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- https://www.whatreallyhappened.com/

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- https://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/

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Commentary, highly recommended:

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

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"The more I see of the monied classes,

the better I understand the guillotine."

- George Bernard Shaw

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Oh yeah... beyond words. Any I know anyway...

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And now... The End Game...

o

Adventures With Danno, "My Unbelievably Shocking Trip To Meijer!"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures With Danno, AM 12/2/24

"My Unbelievably Shocking Trip To Meijer!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Alert! 'Nuclear Testing Site Is Ready; Ukraine Plans Major Invasion Into Russia; New WW3 Front!"

Canadian Prepper, 12/2/24

"Alert! 'Nuclear Testing Site Is Ready;

 Ukraine Plans Major Invasion Into Russia; New WW3 Front!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Jim Kunstler, "The Blob Has a Migraine"

"The Blob Has a Migraine"

By Jim Kunstler

"It's a beautiful thing to watch the Biden family destroy the Democrat Party." 

- @Mazemoore on "X"

"You can be sure the blobists have seen this coming from years away. The boys and girls in the agencies have behaved more than just a little badly, and they know it. They committed serious crimes against our country and its citizens under color-of-law since 2015, ranging from seditious conspiracy clear up to treason (say, just for instance, the case of Col. Alexander Vindman using his Ukraine connections to lever Mr. Trump out of the Oval Office in the 2019 impeachment scam.)

You have whole C-suites of agencies teed-up on RussiaGate for felonies, misprision of felonies, abuse of power, deprivation of rights, lying under oath, conspiracy to commit fraud, and much more. You have Judge James Boasberg playing games in the FISA Court he presided over; Robert Mueller and Andrew Weissmann running a two-and-a-half-year Chinese fire drill to cover-up years preceding of FBI/DOJ misconduct; John Brennan, James Clapper, and Gina Haspel abusing the “Five Eyes” intel arrangements to turn the CIA on innocent citizens at home; the fifty-one current and former intel agents colluding to bury Hunter’s Laptop to sway the 2020 election; the antics of Judge Emmet Sullivan in the Flynn case...

And then on to a whole new round of frolics under “Joe Biden” including the malicious prosecutions of J-6 protesters; the pipe-bomb caper at the DNC; the use of several agencies to censor speech and manage the news media; the treasonous negligence of Alejandro Mayorkas on the nation’s borders; the DOJ-coordinated lawfare hounding of Mr. Trump and his adjacent lawyers; the Ukraine War project ginned up by the State Department’s Victoria Nuland and cohorts; and the sinkhole of greed, malice, and medical homicide that was the Covid-19 operation, millions killed and disabled, and likely more of that yet to come from the vaccines, trillions in wealth purloined or just plain lost, and businesses destroyed in lockdowns. It’s not a mere “swamp,” it’s a whole forbidden planet of turpitude.

Then there are the floaters and freelancers who move from one blob venue to the next, like lawfare artists Mary McCord, Norm Eisen, Marc Elias, David J. Kramer, or the girl-band of Lisa Monaco, Fiona Hill, Kathryn Ruemmler, Susan Rice, Samantha Power, Nellie Ohr. And finally, there are the real big fishes: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Bill Gates, Anthony Fauci, Chris Wray, Merrick Garland, General Milley, and “Joe Biden.”

Add William Barr to that list for failing to reveal that he was in possession of Hunter’s laptop as early as the fall of 2019. Of course, it was crammed with exculpatory evidence that could have ended impeachment No. 1 on day one of the initial hearings, yet he never alerted President’s lawyers to its existence. Weird, a little bit. And also, for the effrontery of allowing Jeffrey Epstein to be killed in his Manhattan jail, and never offering the public a coherent account of how the cameras on the cellblock failed, or why the guards who fell asleep on-duty were disciplined with only 100 hours of “community service.”

My Gawd, they must be eating Xanax like tic-tacs in their drawing rooms and boudoirs as the name Kash Patel floats across their social media screens. Kash Patel, a real-live exterminating angel, will finally step in to the FBI Director’s office and turn the investigative powers of the FBI on...the FBI! And its parent, the DOJ. The poetic justice is sublime. You must wonder: how does Mr. Patel get through the RINO-infested Senate confirmation process? Start with: what have they got him? Answer: probably not a goshdarn thing, not a hair out of place. More to the point: what has Mr. Patel got on them? (Especially Messers Thune, Barrasso, Cornyn, and let’s just throw in the Democrat Mark Warner, VA, who was up to his eyeballs in RussiaGate as chair of the Senate Intel Committee.)

And were Mr. Patel to land in the FBI Director’s office 49 days from now, what additional info might he uncover about years of weaponized government with assistance from John Ratcliffe at the CIA and Tulsi Gabbard as DNI - who will access a pipeline to the vast national security server farm out in Bluffdale, Utah. So, in case you think that the document-shredding party currently underway in DC will conceal all that criminality, consider what lives forever in the alternate universe of cyberspace. There are additional NSA intel server farms in Fort Meade, MD, Augusta, GA, and San Antonio, TX, all with troves of agency emails and cell phone texts. Not to mention what whistleblowers-to-come might have saved on their thumb drives. And you may be sure that the whistles will be blowing, even while the culpable rat each other out. Remember too: there is the document dossier of FBI crimes that Mr. Trump had in his personal possession after leaving office - the reason for the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago, August, 2022, and Jack Smith’s bullshit court case to justify it.

In a new wrinkle to things transitional, you have the news late Sunday that “Joe Biden” issued a blanket pardon to “the smartest person I know,” Hunter Biden, that covers every last criminal act he committed from January 1, 2014, to present, including bribery, wire fraud, money-laundering, trafficking minors for sex, handgun violations, tax evasion, crack-cocaine parties, and probably more.

“JB” assured America more than once that he would never pardon Hunter. Turned out to be the joke that all his utterances were supposedly not. But, really, did you expect anything else? Do you see now, also, why Hunter pled guilty to those tax charges in the LA federal court? I’ll tell you why: because in a trial all the mechanisms of the money transfers through a myriad of bank accounts would have been disclosed. And the money trail leads from the multiple accounts of Hunter’s Rosemont Seneca operation to the personal bank accounts of Biden family members, brother Jim and wife Sara, possibly Hunter’s half-sister Ashley, and, of course, “the Big Guy.” Where are their pardons? And where is “Joe Biden’s” pardon for Joe Biden?

It is unfortunate that the way forward (to a national government different in scale, scope, and disposition toward its citizens) will require so much consorting with what is past. But it must be if consequence is to be restored as a basic element in our constitutional arrangements. You can’t just have people doing stuff outside the law because they feel like it."

- https://jameshowardkunstler.substack.com/

"Urgent Alert: The World's Largest Caldera Faces Imminent Eruption"

Full screen recommended.

Elon Musk Evolution, 12/1/2

"Urgent Alert: The World's Largest 

Caldera Faces Imminent Eruption"

"Hidden beneath the surface of our planet lies a ticking time bomb: the world’s largest caldera. For centuries, it has lain dormant, but now, new evidence suggests this sleeping giant could be waking up. Scientists are reporting disturbing signals - swarms of earthquakes, rapid ground deformation, and unusual gas emissions - that indicate an imminent eruption. If this colossal caldera blows, the impact could be catastrophic, reshaping continents, disrupting global climates, and affecting millions of lives. What exactly is happening beneath the surface, and how prepared are we for such a disaster? Don’t miss this critical breakdown of what could be the most significant eruption in human history."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

Mastering Knowledge, 12/1/24

"What Happens if the Yellowstone Volcano Erupts?"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Jeremiah Babe, "Biggest Robbery And Financial Scam In History, Families Being Left Behind"

Jeremiah Babe, 12/1/24

"Biggest Robbery And Financial Scam In History, 

Families Being Left Behind"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: Liquid Mind, “My Orchid Spirit (Extragalactic)”

Full screen recommended.

Liquid Mind, “My Orchid Spirit (Extragalactic)”

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Large, dusty, spiral galaxy NGC 4945 is seen edge-on near the center of this rich telescopic image. The field of view spans nearly 2 degrees, or about 4 times the width of the Full Moon, toward the expansive southern constellation Centaurus. 

 Click image for larger size.

About 13 million light-years distant, NGC 4945 is almost the size of our own Milky Way Galaxy. But X-ray and infrared observations reveal even more high energy emission and star formation in the core of NGC 4945. The other prominent galaxy in the field, NGC 4976, is an elliptical galaxy. Left of center, NGC 4976 is much farther away, at a distance of about 35 million light-years, and not physically associated with NGC 4945.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap090109.html

The Poet: Langston Hughes, "Dreams"

"Dreams"

"Hold fast to dreams

For if dreams die

Life is a broken-winged bird

That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams

For when dreams go

Life is a barren field

Frozen with snow."

- Langston Hughes

"Does Anyone Know..."

"All sins, of course, deserve to be treated with mercy: we all do what we can, and life is too hard and too cruel for us to condemn anyone for failing in this area. Does anyone know what he himself would do if faced with the worst, and how much truth could he bear under such circumstances?" 

- Andre Comte-Sponville

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Joe South, "Walk A Mile In My Shoes"

"Shall We Play A Game?"

“A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.”

- "War Games"

"This is the "lesson" scene from the movie "War Games" where we learn that the only way to win in Nuclear War is not to play, a lesson we apparently haven't learned. God help us...

The story behind the quote: The quote comes from the 1983 science fiction thriller, "WarGames." In the film, all of the United States nuclear launch capabilities is given to a computer called “Joshua” or WOPR, which stands for War Operation Plan Response. It is programmed to consistently run military simulations to concoct the best plan of an attack if nuclear retaliation is needed. David Lightman (played by Matthew Broderick) unwittingly hacks into Joshua and causes the computer to think that the Soviet Union has launched missiles at the United States.

The quote comes from the very end of the film. David forces Joshua to play tic-tac-toe against itself in the attempt to make it understand the concept of mutually assured destruction. As Joshua obtains the final launch code, it runs through all the possible scenarios in an attempt to find a winning plan. After cycling through all of them and not finding one where anyone survives, the machine delivers the quote."

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"It would indeed be a tragedy if the history of the human race proved to be nothing more than the story of an ape playing with a box of matches on a petrol dump." 

- David Ormsby-Gore

The Daily "Near You?"

Lower Hutt, Wellington, New Zealand. Thanks for stopping by!

"The Most Beautiful Lies..."

"Memories and feelings of nostalgia are nothing more than cruelties; they are the most beautiful lies we will ever convince ourselves to believe. We chase the false hope so fiercely that we nearly push ourselves past the edges of our sanity, longing for that which can never be in our possession again. These edges are blurred by our regrets and desperation all throughout the darkest hours of the night, until finally we are set free from the illusions and the ghosts of our past with the rising of the sun... and we are changed in some small, yet permanent way."

- Margaret E. Rise

Dr. Seuss," The Waiting Place"

"The Waiting Place"

by Dr. Seuss

"Congratulations!

Today is your day.

You're off to Great Places!

You're off and away!

You have brains in your head.

You have feet in your shoes.

You can steer yourself

any direction you choose.

You're on your own. And you know what you know.

And YOU are the guy who'll decide where to go.

You'll look up and down streets. Look 'em over with care.

About some you will say, "I don't choose to go there."

With your head full of brains and your shoes full of feet,

you're too smart to go down any not-so-good street.

And you may not find any

you'll want to go down.

In that case, of course,

you'll head straight out of town.

It's opener there

in the wide open air.

Out there things can happen

and frequently do

to people as brainy

and footsy as you.

And then things start to happen,

don't worry. Don't stew.

Just go right along.

You'll start happening too.

OH!

THE PLACES YOU'LL GO!

You'll be on your way up!

You'll be seeing great sights!

You'll join the high fliers

who soar to high heights.

You won't lag behind, because you'll have the speed.

You'll pass the whole gang and you'll soon take the lead.

Wherever you fly, you'll be best of the best.

Wherever you go, you will top all the rest.

Except when you don't.

Because, sometimes, you won't.

I'm sorry to say so

but, sadly, it's true

that Bang-ups

and Hang-ups

can happen to you.

You can get all hung up

in a prickle-ly perch.

And your gang will fly on.

You'll be left in a Lurch.

You'll come down from the Lurch

with an unpleasant bump.

And the chances are, then,

that you'll be in a Slump.

And when you're in a Slump,

you're not in for much fun.

Un-slumping yourself

is not easily done.

You will come to a place where the streets are not marked.

Some windows are lighted. But mostly they're darked.

A place you could sprain both your elbow and chin!

Do you dare to stay out? Do you dare to go in?

How much can you lose? How much can you win?

And IF you go in, should you turn left or right...

or right-and-three-quarters? Or, maybe, not quite?

Or go around back and sneak in from behind?

Simple it's not, I'm afraid you will find,

for a mind-maker-upper to make up his mind.

You can get so confused

that you'll start in to race

down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace

and grind on for miles cross weirdish wild space,

headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.

The Waiting Place...

...for people just waiting.

Waiting for a train to go

or a bus to come, or a plane to go

or the mail to come, or the rain to go

or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow

or the waiting around for a Yes or No

or waiting for their hair to grow.

Everyone is just waiting.

Waiting for the fish to bite

or waiting for the wind to fly a kite

or waiting around for Friday night

or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake

or a pot to boil, or a Better Break

or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants

or a wig with curls, or Another Chance.

Everyone is just waiting.

NO!

That's not for you!

Somehow you'll escape

all that waiting and staying

You'll find the bright places

where Boom Bands are playing.

With banner flip-flapping,

once more you'll ride high!

Ready for anything under the sky.

Ready because you're that kind of a guy!

Oh, the places you'll go! There is fun to be done!

There are points to be scored. There are games to be won.

And the magical things you can do with that ball

will make you the winning-est winner of all.

Fame! You'll be as famous as famous can be,

with the whole wide world watching you win on TV.

Except when they don't

Because, sometimes they won't.

I'm afraid that some times

you'll play lonely games too.

Games you can't win

'cause you'll play against you.

All Alone!

Whether you like it or not,

Alone will be something

you'll be quite a lot.

And when you're alone, there's a very good chance

you'll meet things that scare you right out of your pants.

There are some, down the road between hither and yon,

that can scare you so much you won't want to go on.

But on you will go

though the weather be foul.

On you will go

though your enemies prowl.

On you will go

though the Hakken-Kraks howl.

Onward up many

a frightening creek,

though your arms may get sore

and your sneakers may leak.

On and on you will hike,

And I know you'll hike far

and face up to your problems

whatever they are.

You'll get mixed up, of course,

as you already know.

You'll get mixed up

with many strange birds as you go.

So be sure when you step.

Step with care and great tact

and remember that Life's

a Great Balancing Act.

Just never forget to be dexterous and deft.

And never mix up your right foot with your left.

And will you succeed?

Yes! You will, indeed!

(98 and 3/4 percent guaranteed.)

KID, YOU'LL MOVE MOUNTAINS!

So...

be your name Buxbaum or Bixby or Bray

or Mordecai Ali Van Allen O'Shea,

You're off the Great Places!

Today is your day!

Your mountain is waiting.

So...get on your way!"

Dan, I Allegedly, "The Debanking of America - Are You Next?"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, PM 12/1/24

"The Debanking of America - Are You Next?"

"In this eye-opening investigation, we expose how banks are shutting down accounts without warning, affecting everyone from political figures to charity organizations. Discover real cases of people losing access to their money for weeks or months, including a Chase customer whose account was closed over "bad media" posts."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"How It Really Is"

 

"Russian Typical Apartment Tour: Could You Live There?"

Full screen recommended.

Travelling with Russell, 12/1/24

"Russian Typical Apartment Tour: Could You Live There?"

"What does a Russian typical apartment cost for rent outside of Moscow? Find out on this tour of a 20-square-meter studio apartment in Moscow, Russia. What is included, what does the area around the Russian apartment look and feel like?"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"How to Live a Miraculous Life: Brian Doyle on Love, Humility, and the Quiet Grace of the Possible"

"How to Live a Miraculous Life: 

Brian Doyle on Love, Humility, and the Quiet Grace of the Possible"

by Maria Popova

"Suppose we agree that we are here to love anyway - to love even though the work is almost unbearably difficult, even though we know that everything alive is dying, that everything beautiful is perishable, that everything we love will eventually be taken from us by one form of entropy or another, culminating with life itself. Suppose we agree that, as Rilke so passionately insisted, “for one human being to love another… is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.”

This, then, is the agreement: Learning to live is learning to love, and learning to love is learning to die - the imperative in the inevitable that renders our transience meaningful and holy. The price of this holiness is absolute humility: There is no pact to be made with the universe - we die, whether or not we agree to it, whether or not we have learned how to love in the bright interlude between atom and dust. We may or may not be lucky enough to live out the two billion heartbeats our creaturely inheritance has allotted us. But no matter how many we actually get, it matters how we spend them and what we spend them on. It may be the only thing that matters.

Not long before his untimely death by an aggressive brain tumor, Brian Doyle - who described himself as “a muddle and a conundrum shuffling slowly along the road, gaping in wonder, trying to just see and say what is” - took up these immense and eternal questions in what became his posthumous essay collection "One Long River of Song: Notes on Wonder" (public library).

Because the harshest realities of our own lives are often easiest to see and easiest to bear lensed through the lives of other creatures cushioned in symbol and metaphor - this is why we have fables and fairy tales - Doyle finds himself reckoning with mortality and the meaning of life as he examines the dead body of a Townsend’s mole (Scapanus townsendii) in his garden. Curious about the animal, he turns to the scientific literature and is suddenly disquieted by reading about the species as a lump-sum of data points. Overcome with tenderness for “this particular individual, and the flavor and tenor and yearning of this one life,” he writes:

"This tribe of mole is thought to be largely solitary, I read, and I want to laugh and weep, as we are all largely solitary, and spend whole lifetimes digging tunnels toward each other, do we not? And sometimes we connect, thrilled and confused, sure and unsure at once, for a time, before the family cavern empties, or one among us does not come home at all, and faintly far away we hear the sound of the shovel."

Over and over, through the different winding paths of the different essays, Doyle returns to his animating ethos that “love is our greatest and hardest work” - nowhere more poignantly articulated than in an essay about the people seen leaping out of the Twin Towers hand in hand, their hands “nestled in each other with such extraordinary ordinary succinct ancient naked stunning perfect simple ferocious love.” He reflects on this harrowing and holy emblem of our deepest humanity:

"Their hands reaching and joining are the most powerful prayer I can imagine, the most eloquent, the most graceful. It is everything that we are capable of against horror and loss and death. It is what makes me believe… that human beings have greatness and holiness within them like seeds that open only under great fires, to believe that some unimaginable essence of who we are persists past the dissolution of what we were, to believe against such evil hourly evidence that love is why we are here."

The trick, of course, is learning how to be here - how to remain fully present and filled with that ferocious love - knowing we will one day be gone, knowing it might be tomorrow. In what may be the most soulful and sensible advice on how to live an actualized life since Whitman’s, Doyle offers an anchor to that holy here:

"You do your absolute best to find and hone and wield your divine gifts against the dark. You do your best to reach out tenderly to touch and elevate as many people as you can reach. You bring your naked love and defiant courage and salty grace to bear as much as you can, with all the attentiveness and humor you can muster. This life is after all a miracle and we ought to pay fierce attention every moment, as much as possible."

Paradoxically, this active and conscious effort is a heart that can only beat in the chest of surrender. Doyle adds the ultimate disclaimer: "You cannot control anything. You cannot order or command everything. You cannot fix and repair everything. You cannot protect your children from pain and loss and tragedy and illness. You cannot be sure that you will always be married, let alone happily married. You cannot be sure you will always be employed, or healthy, or relatively sane. All you can do is face the world with quiet grace and hope you make a sliver of difference."

At the center of this recognition is that most difficult triumph of unselfing for us creatures of self-importance: humility. In Doyle’s definition, humility is not a lowering down to the ground, as the word’s Latin root (humus) suggests, but a rising up and a reaching toward something we can never quite touch yet must trust is there. Some call this faith - faith that the world holds together, that our tiny and transient lives are nonetheless an essential part of the whole, that the choices we make within them change the shape of the whole, that love is the mightiest choice we could ever make and the highest form of faith.

Doyle writes: "Humility does not mean self-abnegation, lassitude, detachment; it’s more a calm recognition that you must trust in that which does not make sense, that which is unreasonable, illogical, silly, ridiculous, crazy by the measure of most of our culture. You must trust that you being the best possible you matters somehow… That doing your chosen work with creativity and diligence will shiver people far beyond your ken. That being an attentive and generous friend and citizen will prevent a thread or two of the social fabric from unraveling.

[…]

This is what I know: that the small is huge, that the tiny is vast, that pain is part and parcel of the gift of joy, and that this is love, and then there is everything else. You either walk toward love or away from it with every breath you draw. Humility is the road to love. Humility, maybe, is love."

Complement with Seamus Heaney’s kindred advice on life and W.H. Auden’s kindred poem “The More Loving One,” then revisit Christian Wiman on love and the sacred and Oliver Sacks on finding meaning without religious faith .

- https://mailchi.mp/themarginalian/

Adventures With Danno, "Very Shocking Prices At Sam's Club"

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Adventures With Danno, AM 12/1/24

"Very Shocking Prices At Sam's Club"

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