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2015 and all that “Stuff”, Can I Change?

I wonder if there is anyone else out there who thinks that an entire economy built around consumerism is not such a good thing?

This Christmas has got me to thinking about it. One of my granddaughters gave to charity in her family’s name instead of buying them “stuff” My son and his wife also did the same one year. I think that this is an admirable idea. I really wonder how much “stuff” we really need. I ponder it every time I open my clothes closet and can’t find room to hang up another shirt. (Mind you…it’s a rather small closet) I also wonder why I rent a 10 x 20 building by the month to hold “stuff” I haven’t looked at in months. Is there anything there I really need? Apparently not….

When I was a child, I would watch my Grandfather work in his “shop” and use his tools. “How long have you had that hammer?” I asked. “It was my Father’s” he answered. Tools passed down from generation to generation. I sometimes checked out Grandpa’s closet. Three or four pair over overalls, three or four shirts, a couple of Sunday outfits and a couple of jackets. He owned one of those metal “shoe last” things on which he would repair shoes when they would start to wear out. Put on new leather soles, and sew the uppers. Those folks knew how to make things last.

I am sure there may have been a few storage buildings back in the days when I was young. They were probably spare buildings which had been abandoned for their original purpose, and in which a manufacturer was storing things. People had attics at their homes to store the few things they needed only sporadically. We had one, and it contained our Christmas stuff, Mom’s canning supplies, and a few other sundry things which Dad knew would be needed at some time or another. There were no acres and acres of storage buildings neatly built on just about every empty lot in every town. There were no “storage wars” guys, who would go buy out the stuff from the storage buildings when people didn’t pay their rent. There were no huge flea markets in every town for people to take their spare stuff and sell it to other people. There were not dozens of “yard sales” every weekend during the warm months where people would sell of that stuff they got for Christmas which they “really” didn’t need.

The beginning of this out of control consumerism post World War II….basically from the 70’s on forward, has blossomed into the “make it or break it” cycle for the businesses where many people are employed. Sears and Roebuck has changed from a company whose catalog used to be full of needs, to one which is chocked full of wants. The only people who seem to be benefiting from this type of economy are the super rich people who own the factories who make “the stuff” This wasn’t such a bad thing during most of the years when I was growing up because most of the “stuff” factories were in the U.S.A. Now they are not. The rich people figured out they could make more money if they started making the stuff in other countries which paid people a lot less. Yet even after that, we continued to buy.

In addition to all this stuff people were buying, there was a lot of waste being created by the making, packaging, and marketing of the stuff. No longer did milk come in reusable bottles.

Plastic became the standard packaging. Things which previously came in “biodegradable” packaging, was suddenly packaged in non-biodegradable plastic. Cloth diapers evolved into plastic “throw away” diapers. 1.8% of all garbage in landfills are disposable diapers. From the 1920’s until the mid-1970’s garbage was thrown away in largely uncontrolled “garbage dumps” Basically big holes in the ground. Anything and everything was thrown into them. Chemicals of all kinds, which now are still leeching into the ground and affecting our water and other aspects of our environment. Almost 8,000 huge garbage dumps were in the U.S. until 1976 when Congress passed the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. This act solved a lot of the problems in our country and reduced the number of dumps, but has created a transportation issues for garbage, as it now has to travel from state to state to huge facilities. What do other countries such as China, Russia, Japan, and India do with their garbage? Most of it goes into the ocean. Google the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” It’s scary as hell. So from consumerism comes a threat to our environment. (All those little plastic army men…….)

In 2007, a lot of factors came together to create an economic crisis. Banks and bankers were lending people money, and giving people credit who they knew couldn’t pay it back. It didn’t matter your credit “score” you could get credit if you needed it. Housing prices went sky high. Stock markets were riding a wave. The financial crisis was caused by…and I quote from Wikipedia:

the crisis was the result of “high risk, complex financial products; undisclosed conflicts of interest; the failure of regulators, the credit rating agencies, and the market itself to rein in the excesses of Wall Street.”

In other words, they gave people too much unguaranteed “imaginary” money in the form of credit and then couldn’t support it because some of them got too greedy and wanted to get rich instead perpetuating the “ghost” economy. There was a lot of financial “hanky panky” going on. The Government bailed them out. None of them have gone to jail. But, how short is our memory?

In the recent budget, which was passed by Congress and signed by the President there was a reversal of an important provision of the Dodd Frank Financial Reform Act, which will allow banks to do “loan swaps” which allows larger banks to spread around the money to numerous smaller banks which are insured by the FDIC. This allows the money they are gambling with (which is the money of the depositors…such as anyone who has stocks, bonds, IRA’s, etc.) to be covered by “government insurance” so that if an investment fails it will be the government (read…our tax money) who pays the bill for the failed investment. So, we go right back to giving Wall Street the power to do what they will as they had before the financial collapse in 2007.

This huge “house of cards” financial system of rampant consumerism is starting to be built again. It looks really big and flashy on the outside, but it’s empty on the inside and really, really easy to know over.

The stock market has climbed above 18,000 since the new budget was signed into law. This encourages people to contribute more money to Wall Street, or to leave their money there. In my opinion this is a giant lure. We are like fish in the water, and they throw out the lure and pull us in with the glitz and glitter of new “toys” new “stuff” We’ve been told that oil is in “short demand” since the 70’s, but suddenly they are pumping it like there’s no tomorrow. The Saudi’s apparently have a huge stockpile, and surprisingly the United States is right behind them due to new drilling areas being opened or reopened in the past several years. This makes it easier and more alluring to fill up the old car and drive down to the local mall and buy more stuff to store in storage buildings.

I hope that during this coming year, 2015, I can change my “consumerist” ways. I need to be more aware of the way waste is killing our environment. I certainly need to clean out my clothes closet and get rid of the stuff in my storage building. Recycling plastics is extremely important. Making do with things which I need and not things which I want, is going to have to be a must. I don’t know whether I can keep this “New Year’s Resolution” but I am going to try. Maybe next year at Christmas, give money to charity except for the kids…who still deserve a little stuff.

The New Year is creeping every closer. Just a few more days until Sunday and it will be 2017.

When I was a kid in the 1950’s, I often thought about the year 2000 and beyond. I thought it would be a magical time where most problems of health and poverty would be solved and I thought that surely by then the world would find a way to be at peace. I thought people would travel around in “sky cars” sort of like the Jetsons and that there would be devices to take care of human needs. I thought human beings would be living together like the people in the Coke commercials. Singing together in “perfect harmony”.

I think maybe if we, the human race, had spent as much money and effort on the problems of health and poverty, and on finding ways of helping our fellow man instead of on wars, weapons of wars and ways to destroy each other we might have seen that idealistic world I dreamed off as a child. Instead, the rich have become richer and the poor have gotten poorer, and our divisions have deepened.

Where did we go wrong? Surely I thought, after two huge wars that killed so many people in the middle of the century we would LEARN something……I want to go back sometimes to those days in the past and see if it was something I did, or didn’t do, that might have helped. Surely I could have done more. Certainly we could have all done more.

Instead we have become slaves to technology, instead of beneficiaries of it. People use it to spread hatred and discord. People spend hours and days lost in cyber space instead of talking face to face with each other.

Instead of moving forward for the good of all mankind, and in the spirit of love, it appears we have gone backwards. In this past year especially, hatred has become more widespread. The population of our country seems always to be split right down the middle on important social and cultural issues. The holiday season this year has given us a tiny break in which to catch our breath, before we apparently embark on a new national journey….a tact we have never before taken. We are sailing in uncharted waters. Bad or good? Depends on which half of the population you belong to.

I have to have hope that we will learn from what lies ahead. I have to have faith that somehow humanity will turn over a new leaf, and that my children and grandchildren will have a world in which to live.

Yes…the new year is creeping every closer this week. There is still a chance for all of those good things that I have pondered on in the past to happen.

I wonder if there’s a chance they will?

I wonder if we can solve the the number one problem in this world? The problem of people hating other people just because they are different from them. Just because they look different. Just because they think differently.

I used to fantasize as a child about aliens coming to visit Earth, and bringing us the secrets to peace and prosperity. Now I realize that in order for any culture or beings to reach out into the Universe to spread harmony and knowledge, they must first learn how to have it themselves.

If they are anything like us, it doesn’t appear that’s a possibility! We earthlings can barely cooperate long enough to decide what’s for dinner…much less think about reaching out to the stars.

When the ball drops, and it becomes 2017, think about what you can do to make this a better world. Let’s try a little selflessness instead of selfishness. Is it too late, or not??

Winter evenings in the South are gray, bleak events. The sky is the color of the cotton that used to fly out of the sides of the bales that the train would haul into the cotton docks. The cotton that used to lay around for several weeks and get rained on, and run over by cars. That’s the kind of color the sky was today. But it was not silent. Hundreds of thousands of blackbirds kept coming overhead in huge flocks which covered the entire horizon. Hollering and cackling and screaming in their blackbird language heading west to east. Looking for some farmer’s field laying fallow and ripe for ravaging.

I have lived in the South, and have watched this cycle of life for 68 years now. I have seen times so awesome and exciting that they are beyond belief. I’ve experienced lows so low that crawling five miles out the dirt road where my Grandpa lived his entire life would seem like a walk in the park.

2014 IS A’COMING.

One week from today it will be 2014. I turn around and look back at all the wonderful and terrible things that have happened in this world since my birth in 1950, and I am simply awestruck.

It seems like a totally different world now. For things to have moved on so quickly is also sometimes disconcerting to those of us who are moving into the “older American” demographic. I try to adapt to new things, and I think I do fairly well, but I don’t think it is possible to just pick it up like the youngsters who start out in life with all the new and modern electronic gadgets, gizmos, and equipment. My little two and a half year old grand kids amaze me at what they can do, which seems second nature to them, but are things which I consciously struggle with when I have to do them. All I can say, is that if things start to go too much faster, I am not sure I can hold on to the caboose of the train without falling off.

Yes, 2014 is coming. Coming fast, and maybe in some respects careening out of control.

I don’t like the way some things are happening. People’s love for other people, which has always been less then it should be, is getting to the point of being minuscule. Many of the things I read and see about the way humans are treating other humans makes me sick, and I guess it makes my kind of glad that I AM 63 years old. If I was a lot younger, I am not sure I could survive the world with the type of outlook that I have. But, I have to hold out hope that there are better days to come. I have to do that for my children, grandchildren and their unborn children who will come into this world one day and struggle to live in it.

2014 is coming and as we go through this season of “Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men” I really wish we all (including me) would try to live those words a little more, and not just sound them out meaninglessly into the air, never really thinking about what it would REALLY take for there to BE Peace on Earth.

I really think that the thing that we need to think about the most is what can we give to the world, and to the people we love? I have spent weeks now looking for presents, trying to select just the right things. Material things. But when I stop and think about it I know that one of these days all of these material things will be meaningless. When I think about it, the most valuable thing we can give to the ones we love is our time. That’s the thing I think I have been the worst manager of lately.

I work and work on things that I think are important in order to get extra money, or try to make ends meet, when I should be putting more faith in the one whose birth we celebrate during this time of the year to take care of things. We as humans always try to take too much on ourselves. We try to do everything on our own without giving our creator a chance to help us. I think during the coming year I am going to try and take a little more off of my shoulder’s and have faith that things are going to be ok.

I hope that during the coming year I can get back on track with my writing and communications, my music, but most of all just helping others when I can. I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and let’s get ready to celebrate 2014, a year which is open for opportunities for us to become better people…to become better human beings. We only have to look just a tiny, tiny bit closer for the opportunities…they’re there, believe me, they’re there.

I had a walk yesterday and timed it to end at 6:03 p.m., which is/was sunset for the day. I wanted to do this because I had read where scientists said that yesterday was going to be one of the longest nights in the entire history of the planet. Yep, that’s right. At first they were saying it was going to be THE longest night ever, but then they decided that it was sometime back in 1912 in which that happened. But last night was a very long, dark span. I slept deeply and much longer than usual. I had unusual and vivid dreams. Perhaps it was because my legs were like lead weights as I walked yesterday, or maybe it was just my imagination. That aspect of my personality doe run wild every now and then.

In some respects it was really kind of eerie. It was as silent as I can remember with the exception of a few dogs barking off in the distance. I closed my eyes as I walked down the long straight away next to the railroad track, almost an entire quarter of a mile, and tried to imagine how our distant ancestors must have felt in this season of the year. Sitting in a cave or at a rock overhang, with a tiny fire as the only heat and light. Straw as a bed, and perhaps a fur or two as cover. Hungry from not having enough to eat that day. Howls and growls of animals drifting in through the opening of their abode. A lot of them who would have considered us as prey. It’s amazing to me that our species is so tough. It’s remarkable to me that humans made it through that primitive phase.

We have survived all of that to get to this point. Now we are divided by religion and politics, along with race and class. These are the most divisive issues in our world today. Maybe there are some other “minor” issues, but these are the ones which continue to rear their ugly head. These are the ones which people are warring and dying over by the thousands every day. These are the issues fueled by the two “children” beneath the robe of the “Ghost of Christmas Present” in Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” He tells Ebenezer Scrooge:

“They are your children! They are the children of all who walk the earth unseen! Their names are Ignorance and Want! Beware of them! For upon their brow is written the word “doom!” They spell the downfall of you and all who deny their existence! “

Ignorance and want combined with all of the divisive issues.

We no longer sit in the dark in the caves and fear that we will become the prey of fierce animals. We ARE the fierce animals and we now prey on each other.

As we head into the Christmas Season after one of the longest nights in the history of the Earth, I wish some type of unknowable magic could be worked in the middle of one of these long Winter sleeps, and we would wake up at dawn as creatures of total love and peace….Peace on Earth, and true Goodwill to all men and women.

…”but Jacob,” said Scrooge “you were always a good businessman.”

“Mankind was my business!” Said Marley.

And so it remains. Mankind is the business we should all be worrying about. Who doesn’t have enough to eat, or four walls to surround them? Who is down and out, and needs help? Who is hurting, either physically or mentally….financially or spiritually?

As my son reminded me, I only gave a dollar to the man who said he was homeless. But he did turn down my offer to buy him a meal at the Maple Street biscuit company….said he’d already eaten. And those biscuits are ‘spensive. I did, however, wish him “Merry Christmas” as I handed him a dollar. Then I went the next day and gave 20 dollar tips to the three young ladies who have taken turns waiting on us at Jim’s over the past year.

I consider mankind my business, oh so much more than most. And not just at Christmas either. I take Charles Dicken’s lesson to heart. Oh, I’m far, far from perfect. And I will never be mistaken for a philanthropist. I’ll muddle through by doing what little I can for my family, my friends, and those whose lives intersect with mine. I want to thank all of my family and friends, and the people around me for all the kind things they do for me. It’s mutual, and it’s a balance.

Merry Christmas if I fail to see you, or if I forget to say it again in the next two days. Merry Christmas and a Happy New year.

With Christmas drawing near it naturally evokes many feelings and emotions in those of us who have seen a few of them come and go. In my case, more than a few.

Christmas, I think, is lived in stages in the hearts of we humans.

We begin as children, with the mystery of Santa Claus. No matter what religious persuasion to which you belong, Santa fits. He’s the epitome of unselfish giving. The uncanny being who can somehow make it around the world in only one night in order to pass out gifts to “good little girls and boys”. His existence alone during the first few years of my life, kept me from committing many awful offenses.

I solidly believed in him. I revered Christmas. Of course, being Baptist raised, I also knew the story of Jesus’s birth in every different gospel version. I knew every Christmas hymn by heart by the time I was eight. (I knew the entire Baptist hymnal by the time I was 12, and still don’t need a book for 99% of the songs if they do the first, second and last stanzas)

But Santa was my hero, and Christmas was my big day. I kept a handmade calendar, which I drew on notebook paper, using a ruler in order to keep the lines straight, just so I could X out the days one by one starting the day after Christmas every year. I kept a calendar even after I knew there wasn’t a Santa, just because I found it reassuring to be able to visually see the days, and be able to make notes on special occasions. For many years after I got out of school, I still had those calendars, along with my genealogy charts that I had compiled with information gleaned from my Grandparents and my Great Grandma Locklear. There was some invaluable information that got gone forever when I lost the big huge notebook that contained all that hard work. I still hold out hope that I’ll be going through some long packed up box someday and find them. They might possibly still be in the attic of the old house on ninth street if somebody hasn’t thrown them away. Wonder if they’d let me in to look?

I remember quite a few Christmas Eve nights spent at my Moms’s parents house in Blue Ridge. Cold, cold nights sleeping upstairs under piles of quilts so tall, that turning over was almost impossible. You see, Grandpa Stewart only had an old pot bellied stove back then, which was a wood burning hog. He shut the air flow down at night and there was no heat at all upstairs. By midnight you could see your breath on those frigid December mornings. By six a.m., the cold had penetrated those six quilts, and as soon as I heard grandpa’s feet hit the floor, and hear the old heater start to go swoosh with heat, I was gone! Besides, it was Christmas morning! I had heard Santa downstairs during the pitch black night going “ho, ho, ho” and I wanted to see what he’d left me.

Those were the younger years, the magical years before I knew the “secret” of Santa, and became a part of Santa myself. Those were the years of the Lionel train set when I was 8….one of the few years we didn’t go to Blue Ridge, and the only year I can remember as a child when my Mom woke me up to say “look out the window, there’s snow”. There was.  Those were the years before Mom got sick, before the mental illness which would haunt her the rest of her life, embedded it’s claws into her.

The years before that one had been wonderful Christmases too. I remember the set of Hoppalong Cassidy cap guns, and his replica outfits. I remember the red Radio flyer wagon, which I hauled rocks, dirt, dogs and toys in until it literally rusted through. I remember marbles in drawstring bags, matchbox cars, and tootsie toy trucks. I remember a bow and arrow set with rubber stoppers on the ends of the arrows. Then there were the comic books….usually Superman and Uncle Scrooge. I was a lucky little boy those first eight magical years.

After the first nervous breakdown Mom had when I was a fourth grader, Christmases were fraught for a few years. By the time “normality” returned, I was twelve years old. I looked at a photo of myself the other day from the sixth grade. I was on the end of one row, and had a sad, hollow look in my eyes. As I moved on through the next couple of years, and across the street to the High School, Christmas took on new meaning and understanding.

I had left behind the mysterys of Santa Claus by the time I was an eighth grader. I knew years before that about the secret. Santa Claus only existed as the spirit of Christmas. He was the joy of children, provided by the largess of the familie’s grown ups. I don’t remember exactly what day, or the exact hour I stopped believing that Santa Claus was a real person. I just remember it being a sad day. A day of disappointment. A day of numbness. How could such a thing actually be true?

I think during my High School years I actually became more affectionate of the holidays, and of Christmas. After I got over my initial disappointment at there being no “real” Santa, I began to realize that those of us who knew Santa’s secret actually became Santa ourselves, for those who still did believe. I remember thinking how I would never want to disappointment a child who still believed.

When I grew up and married, and had kids of my own, I wanted to always make sure that Christmas was a most special time of the year for them. I tried every year to make them happy, and to make my wife happy. Perhaps I went overboard on the gift giving at some points, but I didn’t care. My philosophy has always been to make the ones you love happy while you can, because you’ll never know when the day comes that you won’t have that chance.

As the Kathy Mattea song says:

… “Time passes by, people pass on
At the drop of a tear, they’re gone
Let’s do what we dare, do what we like
And love while we’re here before time passes by…”

Its never more important than it is right now, today, this year….to let people know how you feel.  Let the child in you who once believed in Santa Claus take over.  Approach life one more time with that innocence and awe, which made you believe in Magic

The magic is still there in most of us….I can’t say all, because I believe the joy of life and love are absent for some people, and that’s beyond sad.  Some vessels are empty, and some are corrupted .  I pray for those people, I pray they are not beyond redemption.

For this year, this year 2018…I wish all of you my friends and family, a very Merry and Magical Christmas.

December 25th 2018 was the last “best” Christmas the world knew.

Oh, Christmas celebrations continued, as well as New Years day, Thanksgiving and all the rest. People still gather in smaller groups to have remembrances. They still exchange some gifts at Christmas, and have prayer services. They do the best they can under the circumstances.

And what are those circumstances, you may ask?

Those circumstances include a world in which it’s hard to find comfort. A world of constant storms and natural disasters. A world in which there are no great democracies left. The United States ceased to be a world power sometime around 2020. France devolved into nationalistic chaos, Great Britain diminished after falling on it’s “Brexit” sword. China and Russia rose to fill the power vacuum left after the US/Iranian and Israeli War.

The Great World Depression of 2019 had set the stage for all the above events to take place.

The stock market plunged in the United States early in 2019 due to political and economic factors, and the rest of world followed. There was a lot of famine and civil strife throughout the world. Revolutions took place, and coups were common.

In the United States itself, militia groups ran rampant for months on end, until the Federal government declared martial law and the US army went into the countryside and forcefully quelled the revolts. They also bombed most urban areas which had also been taken over by mostly minority militia groups. America ended up as a shell of its former self.

The world as we knew it before 2018 was forever gone. The freedoms for which thousands of American citizens had fought and died for almost 250 years were abolished. Authoritarian rule became the norm.

So, remember this year when you’re unwrapping your gifts with your family. When you’re eating your Christmas turkey. When you’re wishing your loved ones a Happy New Years.  Perhaps we should remember the words of Ebenzer Scrooge when he confronted the Ghost of Christmas future about whether or not the future could be changed:

Still the Ghost pointed downward to the grave by which it stood.

“Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead,” said Scrooge. “But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show me!”

I should have stayed away from the lead based paint chips on the windowsill of that old millhouse we used to live in on sixth street when I was three. They tasted so sweet though. I remember Daddy washing out my mouth, and busting my butt at the same time.

Now, I don’t know if I ate enough of that paint to get lead poisoning. I remember getting a super high fever not long after that, and my eyes crossed so badly Mom said I looked plum pitiful. I don’t remember ever looking in a mirror, so I can’t confirm that statement. I think it mad me meaner that summer. I remember throwing tantrums at home, and throwing rocks at my equally mean and slightly older neighbor Gerri Lynn. I think I stayed a little mean for a few more years.

After we moved to Simmons Street when I was five, I used to play with a kid just two doors down from me named Billy. We got mad at each other one day about something and I slugged him a good one right in the nose. Blood started gushing everywhere and scared me poopless. I thought I had killed the boy and turned around and ran like my tail was on fire back past Jake Woods house to ours.

That afternoon my Dad explained to me in no uncertain terms that it wasn’t right to throw the first blow..only in defense. My sore butt didn’t hurt me nearly as much as my conscious. I was truly sorrowful for what I had done. Dad took me down to the Arden’s house the next day and made me apologize.

I didn’t realize it at the time but that incident set the timber of my personality for the rest of my life. I have never since that day, through anger or strife struck “the first blow” I would and will defend myself and my family, but I will not start a fight.

I will remember that philosophy from here on out, and try and adhere to it here on Facebook also. Peace.

I’ve walked over 5000 miles, probably closer to 6000, according to this “Fitbit “ I wear since I started this daily ritual over three and a half years ago. I don’t know if it’ll extend my years any though.

I can’t remember back far enough in my childhood to remember when my Grandpa Jervis was any active man of any sorts. I remember having to live with my Grandparents for half a year when I was 10 years old, and Grandpa mostly just sat around in his chair and listened to his radio, and sang songs out of his songbooks, and smoked his pipe. Occasionally during that long snowy winter, he would drag himself, bad knees and all, out of his chair and go down to the woodshed and haul a wheelbarrow of wood or two up in front of the porch and toss it piece by piece over the porch rail onto the porch right next to the door. Bad knees, but nothing wrong with those strong arms.

That was 1960, and Grandpa was born in 1893, so…that woulda made him…67. Just like I am today.

I don’t smoke a pipe, and the radio is long gone. I love music, but don’t have any song books except Grandpa’s old ones that I salvaged. I don’t sit around all day anymore though. I hope I never have to.

Seven years ago on this day, I didn’t know it fully quite yet, but I was entering into the hardest two weeks, and then the hardest year of my life. Four bypasses are a tough haul. It’s certainly something my Grandpa never had to go through, and he lived to be 98, albeit the last several years, he was not “himself”. I don’t expect my body will carry me that far, but I’m certainly going to keep on walking, and hope I can get there.

I’ve still got a lot I want to do, grandchildren to watch grow, and junk I’ve collected that will take at least 20 years to get rid of. I have love I want to give, and stars in the sky which I haven’t yet seen.

I want to better understand this Universe in which we live, so that perhaps when I leave this little speck on which I live, I can enter into whatever comes afterwards in joy and not sadness.