Sunday, June 27, 2010

CREEPING CHANGE WITHOUT MUCH HOPE

It’s Sunday, and it’s raining again. Any time there’s a thunderstorm, there’s a good chance of it being SEVERE! At least that has been the case of late. This has been the wettest June ever in Indiana. It wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t for the nasty humidity and high temps. Well enough of my complaining about the weather and onward to complaining about something more important.

Does anyone else feel there is far more commercial time and far less program time on both TV and Radio? It wouldn’t be bad if the same commercials weren’t repeated at each break. On average, there are 5 minutes of commercials for every 10 minutes of programming. It’s making Tivo more and more attractive. There is no Tivo for radio. Damn! It may reach a point where no one is seeing or hearing what these advertisers have to say. Is it possible the radio and TV stations are getting a bit greedy and overselling commercial time. They wouldn't do that! If they keep this up, there will be 24 hour a day infomercials. Oh I forgot. Some stations already have back to back to back infomercials!!

I saw some good news on Face Book. I follow the Navarre Beach comments. Today they showed pictures of Navarre Beach from yesterday. They show a large number of people in the water and on the beach. No sign of oil or tar balls. I’m a little confused. I’ve heard there is oil on the beaches of Pensacola and Destin. Since Navarre Beach is right between Pensacola and Destin I’m curious how Navarre was skipped? What am I missing here?

Most of the news of the oil spill is not good. If any of you have seen MSNBC’s comparison of the oil spill off Mexico in 1979 and this year’s oil spill off the coast of Florida, you should check it out on You Tube. It’s fascinating. The exact same attempts to stop the oil and clean the beaches are being used today. Was nothing learned? Silly question. Obviously not. The technology for digging deeper has improved dramatically. The technology for dealing with an oil spill is the same as it was in 1979. Pretty sad, but not surprising. When do we ever learn from history. Another silly question. Perhaps it has something to do with the re-writing of history?

This is a warning. It’s incremental! It’s a little bit more loss of freedom each day, week, month and year. Hopefully none of us wake up one day under a dictatorship. If we all keep saying, “oh well, it could be worse”, tyranny will slip in the back door. Those of you familiar with events leading up to the holocaust will know what I mean. The Germans told the Jews they could no longer have radios. The Jews said, “we can deal with that”. As we all know, that was only the beginning. Get involved. Make sure this doesn’t happen for the sake of our children and grandchildren. I won’t be around to witness this, but my kids will. Remember, I said it’s incremental.

jim

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

POWER OUTAGE?

So much has happened since my last blog. Mary Ellen and I drove to Carlyle, IL for Diane & Jeff’s 25th anniversary party. We had a wonderful time meeting some of Diane and Jeff’s family and friends. We’ve heard so much about them while with Diane and Jeff in Navarre, FL. I got to meet Diane’s sister who is a nun. We’ve referred to her in FL as ‘sister-Sister’! I asked Jeff where she was in the crowded banquet hall. Jeff told me to look for someone who looked “nunly”. I found her!

Since Friday night the power has been out at the RV campground in Niles, MI. This is day 4! No one seems to know when the power will come on. I have a feeling I & M is somewhat disorganized. I heard from one of the campground workers that a crew that came in from OH had pulled out because they got no direction from I & M. The OH crew said they were ready and willing to help, but found no one who could or would tell them what to do. Another example of disorganization might have been what I witnessed this morning. There were SIX I & M trucks parked at one spot. None of the workers seemed to be doing anything. What’s that about?

Keep in mind that anything I write is my perspective. I don’t expect all of you to agree with me. I apologize in advance if I offend any of you., but do you sense that the White House is somewhat lacking in leadership. This is especially evident in their handling (or lack thereof) of this oil spill in the Gulf. The criticism of the president is now coming primarily from those who supported him. People like Oberman, Carville, Matthews and many others on the Left. If this doesn’t wake up the White House I believe the situation is hopeless. Gallup conducted a poll asking people to rate the handling of Katrina and the oil spill. Fifty one percent of the people said Bush handled Katrina better than the current administration handled the oil spill. Thirty one percent said the oil spill was handled better than Katrina. The other 18 percent were too dumb to have an opinion. Either that or they hadn’t heard about either one! I could go on with other examples of incompetence, but I’m sure you’ve heard them all by now. When Bush was in office he waved the Jones Act so that foreign ships could help with the rescue of people. With this administration the Jones Act is being used as an excuse for not allowing foreign tankers to assist with the skimming of oil from the waters of the Gulf. The Dutch were one of the first to offer help. This came a couple days after the spill. Unbelievable! If anyone can give me an example of ONE THING that has been handled well during the spill, please let me know. I think the more serious ‘power outage’ has occurred at the White House.

jim

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

What's Happening?

It has been awhile since last I blogged. I’ve been on a two month sabbatical. Sabbatical sounds so much more professional than ‘I’ve been too lazy to write’. So anyway I got the urge today. It helps that we’re at a campground in Niles, MI and it’s raining. In fact it’s cold and raining. It won’t reach 70 degrees today. This is following a week or more of temps in the 80’s.

Since we returned from FL in April we’ve been ‘decluttering’ the house. We’d like to have it ready to put it on the market in August. As many of you know, this is a lot of work. After living in the same house for 34 years you tend to accumulate so many things that you no longer need. In fact we probably didn’t need them whenever it was we purchased them. Now it’s a question of 3 piles—trash, goodwill, store or move. Yeah, I know that’s 4 piles. It’s worse than I thought!

We had our annual family gathering for the Indy 500 on May 30th. All 4 sons and 9 grandkids! We gather at my son Dan’s house in Westfield, IN. His wife Jill is a great hostess. Food and drink were in abundance from Friday till Monday. This is the first year in about 30 years that Mary Ellen and I didn’t go to the race. I’m getting too old to do all that walking and climbing the bleachers, not to mention driving that 500 miles! We were really glad since the temperature reached 90 degrees at the track!! If I had gone I’d probably be on a permanent sabbatical! We actually had a job to do since we didn’t go to the race. We stayed home with our youngest grand daughter, Ally. She was much better than the race.

The rest of our time has been spent with doctor appointments. It’s pretty disgusting, but I guess it’s necessary.

This morning we met our friends, Joe & Julie Lee at Next Door Neighbor. It’s a neighborhood bakery/cafe with a small but delicious menu. We had a good time as usual. Some of the time was spent discussing medical issues, but only about 10% of the time. That’s not bad since doctor appointments have occupied 90% of our time over the past few days. Joe burned 3 CD’s for me. I’ve only listened to part of the Celtic Women CD. The other two we’ll listen to on our way to Quincy, IL. We’re attending the 25th anniversary party for a couple of our good friends from Navarre Beach . Sure beats doctor appointments.

Today has been a beautiful day at the Spaulding Lake RV Park. I’m sitting outside right now overlooking one of the three spring fed lakes. Mary Ellen had to go back home tonite because she has pre-op blood work tomorrow morning at 8 a.m. We’re only 45 minutes from home, so it makes going back and forth as needed rather easy. Since I’m 'baching' it tonite, it’s almost time for me to microwave something. I’m hungry.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t comment on the oil spill in the Gulf. For those of us who winter on the Gulf this disaster is especially depressing. But, (tongue firmly planted in my cheek) it’s good to know the White House has been on top of this since day one!!! Now doesn’t that make all of us feel so much better?

Jim