Globus

The song of the day is Diem Ex Dei from the 2010 album Epic Live! by Santa Monica-based band Globus featuring singer-songwriters Lisbeth Scott and Scott Ciscon.

Thanksgiving Story

It was Wednesday night, Thanksgiving Eve. Nuria, my Costa Rican lady friend who is visiting me for two months, had gone to bed. I stayed up for a while longer, doing Spanish lessons. The urge for a bedtime snack overcame me, and I fixed a small plate of Ritz crackers with peanut butter and honey. After eating the crackers, I squirted honey into the jar of peanut butter and feasted on that for a while. I love peanut butter and I love honey, so what could be better than both together?

Finally I decided it was my bedtime, too, and I went to the bathroom to brush my teeth. I grabbed a toothbrush and began brushing, but I immediately recognized that the toothbrush was much more "bendy" tonight than usual. I took it out of my mouth and looked at it. It was Nuria's toothbrush. Oops.

I rinsed it and put it back in the toothbrush holder, and then I retrieved my own toothbrush and finished brushing my teeth. I went to bed, but I did the right thing and I confessed to Nuria that I had accidentally used her toothbrush. She was okay with it; she even laughed about it. 

The next morning, after Nuria had brushed her teeth, she came back into the bedroom and told me that her toothbrush "tasted like peanut butter." We both laughed, and I got a great idea for a new invention: peanut butter flavored toothpaste. Why not? You can brush your teeth with it, or you can spread it on Ritz crackers and eat it. You can even do both.

Today is Thanksgiving Day in America. Down in Costa Rica, they don't celebrate Thanksgiving. It's an American holiday. Nuria asked me how it began. I told her that Walmart created it in 1962. She wanted to know why Walmart created Thanksgiving, and I told her they did it in order to have a reason for Black Friday. They wanted to have Black Friday to boost their sales, so they created a special Thursday to lead into Black Friday. It sounded to me like a good story, but Nuria was quite skeptical. I ended up telling her the real story (as real as history books will allow) about the Pilgrims and the Native Americans getting together for a feast and how all the men got drunk and ended up lying around while the women-folk cleaned up the Thanksgiving dishes. Kind of like today. As far as I know, that's the real Thanksgiving Story.

Tim McGraw

The song of the day is I Thought About You from the 2019 album Here on Earth Ultimate Edition by Tim McGraw. The song was written by The Warren Brothers (Brad and Brett Warren) and Lee Thomas Miller.

Restless Spirits

I had a restless night of sleep last night. Nuria told me I was talking in my sleep, though she couldn't understand what I was saying. She said that I was not speaking English or Spanish, and that I was speaking in a voice not my own.

I've blogged about having restless sleep. I've thrashed about, kicked the wall or the radiator beside the bed, punched the headboard, rolled off the mattress onto the floor, etc. One time I knocked the lamp beside the bed halfway across the room. And so on.

But I'm usually alone when I do that kind of thing. I only know what happened from seeing the aftermath. Nothing so dramatic happened last night, but I have eyewitness testimony that something odd happened. Talking in tongues while using other voices? I'd call that odd.

I had a good friend named Ralph. Cancer killed him. But when he was alive, he sometimes talked in tongues. He wrote notes in his Bible—in ancient Greek. But Ralph had no training in the Greek language. Sometimes he would enter a trance-like state and he would dictate notes while his wife wrote down what he said. His wife's name was Nuria.

Ralph performed many mysterious deeds. Here are three things he did that seem extraordinary.

Nuria was at work when suddenly she began bleeding—she was having her period. But the flow of blood was very heavy and Nuria became concerned. So she left work and went to her gynecologist's office. But it was the lunch hour and the doctor wasn't in his office. Her apartment was only a few blocks away, so Nuria drove home.  Ralph was there. Nuria went to the bathroom to change her clothes and Ralph followed her. He put his right hand on her head, between her forehead and scalp, and touched her stomach with his left hand, and he began praying in a language that Nuria didn't know. The bleeding stopped instantly and Nuria never had that kind of bleeding again.

Another time, Nuria had a very bad headache that lasted for days. Exhausted from pain, she went to the ER and they gave her a CT scan. The CT was clear. Afterward, Ralph touched Nuria's forehead and the headache stopped. I asked Nuria why Ralph didn't cure her headache before she went to the ER, and Nuria said that Ralph didn't like to do these things unless there was no other choice.

Ralph said he could look inside a person and see their soul and he would know whether that person was good or evil. He often talked to spirits and sometimes the spirits would talk to Nuria through Ralph. When he began talking with spirits his nose would start running, like with clear water, and when he finished talking with them, he would black out because talking with spirits took all his energy.

In the Bible there are just a few names of angels, but Ralph gave Nuria the names of many angels. He told her that every angel in Heaven has a mission. Ralph said his true name was Rafael. He talked about fallen angels, and he told Nuria that he was a fallen angel himself.

Nuria has three daughters. One of her daughters is named Joanna. Joanna gave birth to a baby boy; Ralph predicted the date of his birth. A few years later, Joanna gave birth to a baby girl; Ralph predicted the date of her birth. Ralph predicted the sudden passing of Nuria's father; he died of a sudden heart attack while he was standing in church reading a Bible. Ralph knew it had happened from thousands of miles away and he told Nuria that she had to call her family right away.

When Ralph was dying, he asked Nuria what she would do after he was gone, but Nuria didn't have an answer. Ralph told her that he didn't want her to marry again, with one exception. He told her that it would make him happy if she were to marry me. Yes, me, your blogger.

I don't know why he chose me. But I've been interested in the Afterlife since I was six years old. I was about age 12 or 14 when I read The Search for Bridey Murphy, and I was a year or two older when I read the Mary Roff/Lurancy Vennum story. Beginning with Raymond Moody Jr's Life After Life, I have read many books about after-death experiences and reincarnation. But I never told Ralph about any of those matters.

Nuria wrote pages of notes from her sessions in which Ralph spoke as a spiritual medium. Listening to Nuria's stories, I know there is a book in all of Ralph's revelations. But I never saw that side of Ralph. Ralph never showed it to me. He was married to Nuria for a year before he allowed her to know about that side of himself.

I didn't know Nuria well while Ralph was alive. After Ralph passed, I got to know Nuria better by talking with her on Skype, which is how Ralph and I used to video chat.

Nuria visited me for the first time on November 24, 2020. One year later, Nuria is on her fourth visit with me, and we're trying to make her life here permanent. We've filled out the forms for U.S. Customs and Immigration. Now we're waiting.

I often think about the things Ralph told Nuria and the seemingly miraculous things he was able to do. A lot of people will say it's all coincidence and deception. Maybe, but if so, what did Ralph gain? He wanted it to remain private, and it has. I've just cracked the book open a little bit, just to give a glimpse of what might be.

Credulity

Along with fear (see previous post, Paranoia), which is the root of the anxiety behind mask-wearing, there is a weakness among many people to think properly, to discern truth from fiction, and an exceptional amount of gullibility. I'll give you a brief example.

Once, a long while ago, I received an email from a friend that was forwarded by him and probably by many people before him. The email stated that if you burn yourself (and here, we're talking about something like a kitchen burn) the best thing to do to cure it immediately is to plunge the burned hand/finger/whatever into a bucket of sand. Not cold water, not ice...sand.

My friend emailed this bad advice to many recipients—around 50, as I recall. I am sure that many of them responded with their own emails. One of the responders hit the "Reply All" button instead of replying only to the sender. So I got a copy of his reply. He stated that the next time he burned himself, he was going to use the bucket of sand therapy.

I sent him an email which said, "Don't do it. Use cold water on the burn."

He replied to my email, asking why he shouldn't use the bucket of sand treatment instead of cold water.

It seems like common sense to me. If you burn yourself, you want to bring down the temperature of the burned flesh as quickly as possible, and immediately running cold water over it will do that. Your burn won't be as bad as it would be if you did nothing.

But it wasn't common sense for the person with whom I was communicating. So rather than go into the laws of physics and try to explain why cold water will cool your skin faster than sand, I took a different approach. I noted that the original text that advised using sand had no references and no author's name. It was merely a piece of text written by an unknown somebody and then passed along to many others. I pointed out that the anonymous somebody who wrote it could be a bored 14 year-old kid sitting in his parents' basement and making mischief by sending out stupid advice to people. How would you know?

There is an adjective: credulous. It means having or showing too great a readiness to believe things. (The noun is credulity.) A lot of people today are too credulous. They suffer from an excess of credulity. As a result, they end up with pain and suffering and sometimes jail time and, sometimes, they end up dead.

The treat-a-burn-with-sand email was a long time ago, but people are still credulous and are still being "played." The most recent snake-oil being offered to those credulous people is a way of "undoing" a vaccine with a variety treatments. But Angela Rasmussen, a virologist and professor at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, stated, "Once you're injected, the lifesaving vaccination process has already begun. You can't unring a bell. It's just not physically possible." This should be obvious but, unfortunately, too many people are too credulous. They will believe anything if it's something they want to believe. As a result, many people have died and many will continue to die unnecessarily. There's a vaccine for Covid-19. Unfortunately, there's no vaccine for stupidity.

Paranoia

I suspect that someone somewhere is putting something in America's drinking water. People are acting crazy today. People—at least some of them—are acting paranoid.

I've seen people online, in blogs and commentaries, comparing mask-wearing rules to the rules requiring Jews to wear Jewish stars and other holocaust badges in WW2, prior to the deportation of Jews to killing centers. Yes, they would have us believe that wearing a mask to protect you from airborne germs is exactly the same as publicly identifying yourself as a Jew so that you can be put in a ghetto and then sent to a killing center to be exterminated. No difference, they say.

But...if there were to be some kind of comparison to be made, then these people have it backward. Everyone is, or was, supposed to wear a mask. If everyone followed the rule and wore a mask, then we would all be unidentifiable to public cameras. If the police were watching the camera, you could give a finger to the camera and the police would be unable to identify you, because you would be...faceless! That's why bank robbers wear masks. They don't want to be identified.

I don't care if the government tracks me. Google tracks my phone and once a month they send me a map that shows the places I've visited that month. Usually, according to Google, I've been in my home and Walmart and Food Lion. Wow, what a revelation! Sometimes a trip to Home Depot or to a public park makes it onto the map. So what? 

But let's say you're so paranoid about being tracked that you keep your phone turned off unless you want to use it. The covert, government organization that wants to track you simply goes to the major network operators and they install a special "bug" (my term for it) that will download to your phone the next time you use your phone. Then, when you turn the phone off, the bug continues running and gathering tracking data. Periodically, it uploads the tracking data to the guys in the black hats. The U.S. government has actually taken out a number of terrorists using this tracking method. The government has ways of tracking you that you haven't dreamed of.

I guess the crazy crap isn't getting into my head because I don't drink water. I drink diet soda, mostly. Now if they start putting crazy juice into diet soda, I may be in trouble, cuz I drink a lot of diet soda.

Impasse

On Sunday, my lady friend Nuria flew into Richmond from Costa Rica. 

Since then, it seems like every day we've needed to buy something from a supermarket. I don't mind the supermarket trip, but I do mind the holiday crowds that have already started appearing in the stores. Today we went to Walmart; Nuria had a 10AM appointment to get a Covid booster, so since we were there, we decided to do some shopping. An hour later, we went to checkout and there were about twenty customers ahead of us in the checkout line. And this was the express line. It had the shortest queue.

Anyone who has booked round-trip flights knows that you can never be sure of your flight dates and times until you actually board the aircraft. Delays happen. Delays can be for minutes, hours, days, or weeks. So Nuria has been having a battle with her travel agency about her return flight. It was supposed to depart Richmond at 11:15AM on January 24. Then they rescheduled it to 6:30AM. That was unacceptable to Nuria. It meant that I had to get her to the airport at 4:30AM, so we had to leave my home at 3:30AM, so she would get no rest that night. She protested, and the travel agency offered her a more reasonable departure flight, which she accepted, and which American Airlines promptly canceled. Then they wanted to know if she could be flexible about the departure date. They could book her on a return flight at a more reasonable hour if she could depart on December 7 instead of January 22. That would have cut six weeks off her visit, including the Christmas and New Year's holidays. So that was a no-go.

Tonight we saw the International Space Station fly over my house. At first it appeared as a bright, moving star. A minute passed until it reached its zenith above my house, at which point it faded out of sight as it entered the earth's shadow. The last time I saw the ISS was more than twenty years ago, and at that time, the Space Shuttle was docking with it. Or undocking, perhaps. So at that time there were two bright, moving stars passing overhead. I watched them until they faded out. (I wrote about that here.) Seeing the Space Station is totally mundane but absolutely cool, at the same time. 

Nuria has been online for half a day with both the travel agency and the airline. The travel agency has told her that they cannot change the return flight without the approval of the airline. The airline says they cannot change Nuria's return flight because the ticket was purchased by the travel agency. Nuria is whistling and singing and in a good mood. Though she's been online for hours, I think she senses victory is near. I have no doubt that Nuria is going to prevail in this standoff. Have you ever tried to take a bone away from a bulldog?

Procrastination

Nuria is coming to visit me. She leaves Costa Rica tonight and will arrive in Richmond tomorrow at 11AM. The trip has been planned for several months.

I made a mental note months ago, which was to clean my house before she arrived. I allowed myself a month to make it clean and tidy. A month ago the day to begin cleaning arrived, and I decided that a month was too much time. The house would be a mess again before she arrived. So I decided to begin cleaning two weeks before she arrives.

Two weeks ago, the day to begin cleaning arrived again. I decided I didn't need two weeks to get the house in good condition. One week would be long enough. I decided to put off cleaning until the week before she arrives.

The final week arrived, but a week is a long time, and I realized I could get the house clean in three days. So I put off cleaning until three days ago. 

But three days ago, I felt sure that I only needed one day to clean the house. So I put off cleaning until, well, today. Saturday. And then I put off cleaning until midday Saturday. And then I felt sure I could start cleaning early Saturday night and in just a few hours everything would be tidy.

Now it's 6PM Saturday night. Nuria will be here tomorrow. Of course, I have to drive to Richmond airport to pick her up. All I need in order to do that is gasoline, which I've been meaning to buy for a week now. But no worries, I can buy gasoline in the morning on the way to the airport. 

Another item on my to-do list was to buy groceries. That didn't happen. Now I'm out of food. Almost. I have leftover cabbage-and-sausage from last night's dinner, and I have fixin's for Gallo Pinto, and I have Beanie Weenies. I have peanut butter and applesauce and fruit cocktail and, uh, oatmeal. I've had the oatmeal for a long time, but oatmeal lasts forever, doesn't it? 

And I have tuna fish and mayo and pickle relish (I think) and bread, so tuna sandwiches are a possibility. I'm an optimist.

I meant to wash and dry my laundry (sheets, towels) but I think I can do that while Nuria is unpacking. I know I'm cutting some of these tasks close on time, but that's what procrastinators are good at. I'm concentrating on the important thing, which is to be at the Richmond airport at 11AM tomorrow. I'll meet her in the North Concourse. No, in the South Concourse. No, wait...

Tunkashila

Apocalypse, a Hopi Prophecy narrated by Floyd "Red Crow" Westerman, a Dakota Sioux musician, political activist, and actor.

Old Cars, Old Friends

Someone asked this question on Quora:

"They say a Ferrari or Lamborghini, if properly maintained, can be driven for 100,000 miles, and be in good driving condition?"

I suppose they're asking if it's true that if you buy a very expensive car, can you really drive it for 100,000 miles and have it still be in good condition.

The car I own now is a 1995 Jeep Grand Cherokee that I bought in 1998. Now, in 2021, it is 26 years old and I've driven it for 23 of those years. It still looks good inside and out. It runs well. It doesn't burn oil. The carpet and upholstery are like new. The paint is good. No complaints. It has over 100,000 miles. I change the oil and filter about every three years. I've never changed the spark plugs. I changed the engine air filter once, at 78,000 miles. I've never changed the transmission fluid, nor added to it. 

The only major problems occurred in the year after I bought the Jeep. I had to repair the automatic transmission ($1500). I had to repair the 4WD transfer case ($1800). I had to replace the air conditioner's evaporator coil ($0 - warranty repair). 

I recently drove to another city, three hours away, then drove around in that city, then visited a friend a further 45 minutes away. So, 7½ hours round trip, plus another two hours of driving around town. The Jeep made the trip uneventful.

Before the Jeep, I owned a 1988 Subaru that I purchased new. It was well-built and seldom needed a visit to a garage. I put 150,000 miles on it before I sold it. The only major problem was the car's computer (Subaru mechanics called it a "brain box"). It had a bad component that caused the Check Engine light to stay on. The dealer quoted me $750 to replace it. I bought a new brain box at an auto junk yard for $80 and installed it myself under the dashboard in about five minutes using only a screwdriver. It worked like new.

You don't have to buy a Ferrari or Lamborghini to get a car that will run reliably for over 100,000 miles. It helps if you know how to do some simple repair jobs yourself. By simple I mean, replace a light bulb. Install an air filter. Replace the Idle Air Control motor (if cleaning the pintle doesn't fix the problem).

But go ahead and buy that Ferrari. Then pay a factory technician to come out to your house and replace a light bulb that can only be replaced with a special factory tool that only Ferrari has. It won't impress me because I know who owns Ferrari. Do you know what automaker owns Ferrari? It's Volkswagon. Now I'm not putting down Volkswagon. They make a good, reliable car. I've heard. It's just that the Volkswagon name doesn't have the same je ne sais quoi as Ferrari. 

I'll stick with my old Jeep for a while longer. We all wear out: cars and drivers, both. I won't dump an old friend just because she's got a few miles on her. You know?

Whitney Houston

I haven't posted a Song of the Day in quite a while, so one is overdue.

The song of the day is I Will Always Love You performed by American singer and actress Whitney Houston. The song was written and originally recorded by Dolly Parton in 1974.

Booster Shot

I got my Covid booster shot today.

I got the first shot in March and the next shot 28 days later, in April. Then six months went by and I saw on the news that the CDC had okayed a booster shot. So I went to the CVS store where I got the first two shots, and I told them I would like to get a Covid booster. No dice. They said they had no Covid booster shots and I had to come back. That was two weeks ago.

Today I went back for the booster shot. The pharmacy assistant said the pharmacist was busy and that I had to make an appointment. 

"Okay," I told her. "I guess the sign at your front door, the one that says 'Walk-Ins Welcome', is what made me think I didn't need an appointment."

"Yeah," she replied.

I drove home and I sat at my computer and I made an appointment—with the Walmart Pharmacy. First I checked the appointment times at CVS, and the next appointment was at 4PM. Then I checked appointment times at Walmart, and the next appointment time was at 2:20PM. So I made the earlier appointment. I wanted this booster shot "over and done with."

I drove to Walmart. I went to the pharmacy and told them I was there to get a booster. 

"Do you have your vaccine card?" the pharmacist assistant asked.

Dang it, I had taken my vaccine card to CVS, but when I went home I left it on the fireplace mantle. I didn't have it with me.

"No," I told her.

"You'll have to come back with it. We have to have it before you get your booster."

"I have a photo of it on my phone. Will that be okay?"

"Yes."

So I took out my phone and thumbed through my photos and I found it. I handed my phone to the pharmacist assistant and she used it to enter my previous shots, which I had gotten at CVS, into the Walmart computer.

After a few minutes, the pharmacist came out and gave me the shot. I didn't feel anything. Literally, it was the most painless shot I've ever had.

"You will have to come back with your card if you want to have the booster shot recorded on it," the pharmacist told me.

"Okay," I replied, "but can't you take a blank card and record the booster shot on the line labeled "Other" and leave the first two lines empty?"

"I can do that!" he answered, and a minute later I had my new card with the booster shot information written on it. 

And here's a word to pharmacies (and stores of all kinds): you can tell a customer he has to come back when it's more convenient for you, but given extra time to think about it, the customer may decide to go where it's more convenient for them.

Critical Race Theory

My state, Virginia, just had a gubernatorial election. That's an election where someone is elected to be the governor of the state. (Although, Virginia is a Commonwealth, like Massachusetts, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania.) 

The Republican candidate (I'll call him R) had a strategy for defeating the Democratic candidate (I'll call him D). He (R) ran a series of TV ads that implied that D, if elected, would have Critical Race Theory taught in public schools. Many people, especially senor citizens, were very opposed to teaching Critical Race Theory in schools and so they voted for R. The strategy worked.

But what, exactly, is Critical Race Theory and why are so many people opposed to teaching it? First, a few facts.

Critical Race Theory is not taught in Virginia public schools.

Critical Race Theory is not taught in American public schools.

Critical Race Theory is a collegiate level course. And even in universities, most students will never encounter Critical Race Theory, because:

Critical Race Theory is a subject taught in law schools.

What is Critical Race Theory? If I could explain it in this blog post, I doubt that it would be taught in law schools. But to put it into as few words as possible, Critical Race Theory explains how some laws that don't mention race can nevertheless be racist and produce racist outcomes in our society.

But the Republican strategy relied on the fact that most people are firmly opposed to teaching Critical Race Theory, even though they don't know what it is and cannot tell you why they are opposed to it. They just know they don't like it, and that's good enough for them.

Here we have the dumbing-down of America on display. Do you remember Jay Leno's "Tonight Show" segment called "Jay Walking"? Leno would stand on a busy sidewalk and stop occasional young people (high-school and college-age) who were passing by and ask them to answer a very simple question. Such as, which is closer, the sun or the moon? Can you point to America on this map of the world? Who is America's Vice President? Rarely could a young person answer Jay's question. 

But if you ask the right question, you can be assured no one will know the answer. "What is Critical Race Theory?" is one such question. People are strongly opposed to teaching it, while at the same time, they don't know what it is. They can't give you a hint of what the subject is about. All they know for sure is that it has the word "race" in it, and they're pretty sure it's not about NASCAR. 

And so R won the governor's race by scaring people about something that was never going to happen. I shouldn't say "never." After all, I can't see the future. Maybe one day our public high schools will be teaching law school courses and turning out lawyers on graduation day. (For the literalists among you, that's called sarcasm.)