Bread Lines

Once upon a time, Rhode Islanders could barely avoid delicious aromas of baking bread. You’d climb viaduct from Allens Avenue and inhale a heartwarming waft of Sunbeam from an adjacent mill. These day you must abide acrid exhaust, rotting debris, and skunk spray that Waterfires mask in burnt creasote. Across Point Street Bridge, then Henderson into Rumford, you’d pass Mrs. Kavanaugh’s English Muffins. Boulangerie and panetterie dotted Johnston and Providence neighborhoods: Atwell’s Avenue, Carpenter Street, Cranston Street, East Side, Killingly Street, North Main, Olneyville, and Washington Park. Nobody misses, or notices, ones long gone. Rainbow on Reservoir in Cranston is state’s last Jewish bakery. Get a Proustian remembrance of things past for checkerboard cake from Korb’s and danish from Bob Carol’s on Pontiac.

Bread was once the very staff of life and still underpines nutrition pyramid, though carbohydrate rich diets lead directly to diabetes, heart disease, and obesity. People have shifted to fruits, seeds, sources of protein, whole grains, and vegetables. Plates of pasta may be popular, but tacos full of beans and greens probably outnumber them. Inability to adapt menu may account for TGI Friday’s demise, another failed local restaurant to add to this list of over 500. Expect more with fears of Chinese or Italian foodstuffs. Bats and dogs, filth and infection, disrupt attraction and digestion.

Rapid evolution and technological change make Truth a victim. Pandemics, terrorists and wolves at their door, nobody has time enough to consider carefully and reason thoroughly, only react fearfully according to how they’ve been conditioned. Laughably, official channels warn of misleading info, when for decades they’ve been the biggest lie factory around. You can only choose to be cannon fodder, sacrificial pawn, servile minion, or surplus victim. Identified an informational crisis in What Do YOU Know!? on page 34 of Labann Says (2013). Bloggers account for only remaining independent journalists who report from direct experience without bias, though most still color observations with opinions. Indeed, prejudiced reporting will always be more popular than unvarnished objectivity. Seems disjointed facts require a roadmap to connect the dots, though oversimplifying veers far from tangled reality.

Impressionist paintings or literary masterpieces shouldn’t be the only place you can still find beauty. It should be evident everywhere anyone makes efforts necessary. Yet you may roll down bike paths flanked by bulldozed mounds of dirt, swampy creeks, and tangles of brambles and wonder, “Why not forests, gardens or lawns?” Overgrown corner lots used to feature exceptional gardens, but planting and weeding went out of style a century ago. Not uncommon now to find properties strewn with stuff that usually fills dumps. Staying isolated at home this Spring seems ineviatble, so who knows? Notice more people than usual raking yards and working properties.

Deficiencies in ambience directly relate to labor costs and lifestyle choices. Time is too valuable to fritter away at $10.50 minimum/hour. Last crew through charged nearly a grand for three hours of tree limb removal. Smartphone chatter, spectator sports, and stupid movies occupy intervals not otherwise spent earning and sleeping. Home baking and prudent yardening, lowest of priorities since housing standards are no longer enforced and Seven Stars was voted among nation’s best bread makers, could make a comeback. Small businesses are closed, and supermarkets have cut back on freshly baked local products. Retail visits reveal many empty shelves.

Home ownership, cornerstone of the American Dream, hardly exists anymore, since banks hold mortgages and town assess taxes that amount to rebuying over and over. Municipalities elsewhere terminate house taxes after 100 years, but not here. In addition to nation’s average personal indebtedness of $150,000, unsecured federal, local and state debt means every citizen - child, man and woman - owes at least $300,000 in total. Who can afford to buy bulbs, seeds or shrubs? But avoiding lines, dodging contagion, and staying sheltered leave hours to bake bread and trim verge. Any government relief only goes to paying back banks and state, Just another bigwig bailout, obligations that come before buying food and paying bills, since they’d make you homeless, take away your residence. Street beggars get no furloughs.

Always say that survival is paramount, and ways to die can be prioritized. In America over last hundred years, cardiovascular diseases killed more than any other cause, a million annually, with cancers second, hundreds of thousands affected. Car collisions, at around 40,000 per year, come in third, more drivers and passengers than soldiers in wars over the bloodiest century in history. Infections and gun violence are about equal, ~15,000/year. All are preventable, although few measures are taken to mitigate. Commuting by car to jobs isn’t necessary: can self propel to some, telecommute for many, and use public transportation for others. Home delivery has hugely resurged lately, though porch piracy spread to follow suit.

Worldwide today, infectious diseases, especially malaria, remain a leading killer. Pharma companies shy away from vaccines, because they can make billions treating allergies and annoyances where their drugs only need to be marginally effective. A vaccine actually has to prevent infections. Antibiotics can create incurable strains and spread illnesses. Lawsuits might result in billion dollar settlements. Diseases are directly related to sanitation. Viruses cannot live outside a host, either animals, bacteria, insects or people. So minimizing contact with bacteria is key, whether in airborne droplets, bug bites, or on surfaces. Humidity harbors but rainfall flushes bacteria. High internal temperatures, such as during aerobic exercise or fever, is a mechanism that body uses to kill infections. This new SARS virus is highly contagious, takes up to two weeks to incubate, tough to diagnose without specific kits, as many symptoms are like ordinary cold and flu, so may already be more widespread than reports say, some 300,000 identified cases. Supposedly, new incidents in China are falling, though America and Europe is currently being hit hard. So, avoid groups, disinfect diligently, and move under own power.

What about food? You must shop or starve. Since virus was traced back to food, can imported foods infect people? Will virus affect farming industry so drastically there will be shortages? Many reacted with stockpiling nonperishable items, though some bought retail only to gouge illegally during internet sales. Over last 5 centuries, over a billion people died of starvation for various reasons: antiscientific sentiments, bad policies, financial ruin, ignorant practices, unanticipated blight, and world wars. Shades of depressions bread lines still haunt memories. What jobs will go away forever after each organization is arranged around contagion? In this Decennial Census year, who’d want to open door to a visiting enumerator? Amidst an extinction vortex event with decreased genetic variance from outbreeding depression, can you expect global population to stall at 8 billion? Yet you’ve already dealt with HAV (Hepatitis) and HIV (AIDS), both far more prevalent, with fewer precautions. As usual, priorities are misplaced because news media fans fears for responses that favor the wealthy. Instead of genuine concern, it’s, “Don’t get sick, because you might make me too sick to profit and stockpile.”

War of Words

Wow! What’s our world coming to? Climate denialists discredit environmental activists, say solar cycles cause temperature fluctuations, and try to convince all to consider Little Ice Age, Maunder Minimum, and Wolf Index. Indeed, fewer sunspots always coincided with colder winters, but exact opposite is now occurring with least count and record highs. Begs question as to what’s really going on. Don’t know? Don’t care?

Wether or not you believe that greenhouse gases can trap heat from escaping into space, despite a 97% global scientific consensus and obvious precedent on nearby 900° Venus, you can’t discount or excuse manifest negligence, which has dumped millions of tons of plastics, putrid streams of nuclear radiation, and tons of toxins into air and seas that increased pulmonary disease and killed coral reefs, schools of fish, and vital plankton. Abandoned factories, arbitrary pesticides, acid rain, clear cuts, garbage dumps, inorganic fertilizers, multilane highways, strip mines, and throw-away mentality have ravaged landscapes. Before Lovelock discovered CFCs were destroying ozone layer, too much smog had already corrupted atmosphere. Hurricanes begin as desert heat from deforested land at man’s hand which causes evaporation over ocean and delivers devastation ever more frequently. Even worse, sheer heat boils off clouds that shelter planet from ultraviolet insolation.

Environment inevitably became a hot topic. For 200,000 years modern humans slowly rose to one billion around planet; in next 200 years they became seven billion; over last 20, they added another billion. China’s one-child-per-family policy curtailed an estimated half billion, but has since been rescinded. Despite some heeding advice of zero population growth, expect another billion in next 2 years. Average life expectancy worldwide has reversed from 72.5 years, the highest of all time. Until now how many children, men and women planet could sustain was never in question. Wars didn’t slow repopulation, but slammed conservation. Industries detest any carbon bargain as discriminatory regulation and would rather pay fines instead.

Despite headcount, it’s been indisputably proven that humans induce ecological decline. But who wants to admit blame or collusion? London smog lifted once burning coal ceased. Aggressive air quality regulations improved Los Angeles. What humans did can be undone. Once nature no longer supports life, extinction follows. Have we already reached the point of no return? Fear of doom dominates art, has already become a whole genre of paranoia films: bees, birds, bugs, dystopia, sharks, snakes, toxins, viruses, wastelands, zombies.

You can now visit Chernobyl, Fukushima and Three Mile Island disaster sites, but still must wear a dosimeter and protective clothing. Only takes one exposure of 100 rads in 8 hours to kill you from cancer or leukemia. There’s no telling what you might get in a one megaton nuclear blast, up to 10 times that within the first 48 hours. Cancer is already a pandemic, mostly due to petroleum use and radiation leaks. Why risk that by inciting ill will, installing fission reactors in your neighborhood, making insane demands, and negotiating in bad faith? Tough talk betrays weakness. True strength requires no explanation, qualification, or repetition.

See so many texting and typing their lives away, wonder what they're trying to say, what they expect to achieve, or who they hope to deceive. Consensus doesn’t assure truth. Throughout history, most of what humans agreed upon or believed alone couldn't be proven. Experts in a field should be given more credence than street rabble who can’t ace an arithmetic quiz. But monetary motivation and moral corruption strangle truth and subvert perception. Given catastrophic potential of doing nothing, logic dictates careful study of real causes and reasons behind 3% disagreement. Makes sense to dismiss a few naysayers as spokespeople for those for whom climate fixes would interfere with investments. Automotive, Big Oil, coal miners, industrialists, truckers can all afford to bribe scientists to lie on their behalf; so can venture capitalists for green startups. Lowbrows defend conspiracy theories and self delusions.

Personally test own choices, conclusions and resolutions. Practiced net negative carbon footprint and population growth. Produced and saved costs over compensation by a factor of 5. Owe no one. Expect and waste nothing. Am tempted to carry around a bar of wax to write warnings on car windows, not windshields, when drivers park illegally, especially in spots designated for the handicapped. It would be writing that would be read, provoke reaction, rise above apathy, unlike most of what's otherwise offered. To sacrifice own wealth for community's welfare is your strongest stance, unlike parasites and politicians who merely redirect what’s yours among favored groups.

Consensus is only heartwarming among those similarly minded, worth little among indifferent rabble. Anyway, don’t desire or require validation. Just because something once worked for you doesn't mean it will work now for anyone else. Persons are packages of particular looks and talents that may or may no longer suffice, has beens or heroes in the present. No matter what you profess, your message will be something some faction will dismiss due to unfair association by age, orientation or race. “Okay, boomer,” is evident ageism, gutless anthem among those who never been beaten down during peaceful protest to secure rights they take for granted, so will lose them. Don the Despot Trump is a boomer, as was Dubya Bush and Slick Willy Clinton, all born in 1946, but only one among them was a Rhodes Scholar. Arguably, Barry Obama was nation's only Gen X president to date, and only Nobel Peace Prize winner since Jimmy Carter.

There are plenty of reasons you wouldn’t want to communicate. Bad behaviors increase risks in billions of ways. Blogs, conversations and street corners are monitored. Though they claim they want to be heard, people never shut up, want ever more if your time, won't ever be satisfied. You're almost safer among wild animals. If peace is your goal, isolate yourself on a deserted island. Great invention, Caller ID: Answer no calls from collection agents, only fronts for organized crime. Being exposed in blogs and social media nudges you into crosshairs of scammers, who use what little they learn against you. It's too easy to lure people into something they don't need or want. Government notifies you by USPS mail. Scammers would add felony mail fraud if they decided to affix postage, but there's no misdemeanor for email or phone fraud, just civil suits, which are hard to mount and seldom recover losses.

Best forms of communication read people's minds, suggest new perspectives, think beyond boundaries to anticipate needs and inspire improvement proactively. This precludes catering and validating. Unique refuses to be dismissed or pigeonholed. Those who waltz through life with blinders on, who won't observe how others suffer from their acts of omission and transgression, warrant leaders who'll betray, rape and slaughter them. Aggression and neglect invite retaliation. Comforts carry hefty costs. Someone has to pay, though millionaires want to spread costs among current masses and future generations while evading own taxes. Pardon? If you're worth more than rest it’s a privilege to pay in a higher bracket. Amassing that much doesn’t make life any easier, either, just a struggle to keep surplus you'll never spend. Trick of trickle-down is it never created jobs, painfully obvious and repeatedly proven, pabulum and propaganda politicians use to hoodwink rubes and stooges.

Someday without warning you'll be given a choice to do what's honorable. Consider carefully. Sacrifices you make out of fairness and justice will best serve everyone’s wellbeing, including yours. Selfish greed and spiteful opportunism will damn and haunt you for eternity, invoke God’s vengeance. Sociopaths, however, have no guilt, never graduated past infantile need and teenage jealousy. Why care about how others conduct themselves, unless it impacts you personally? The real abomination is when a nazi fraud sets himself upon a throne in judgment over hard working, honest innocents who deserve better.

Guilty of ignoring what's important? Does negativity include people you just don't want to hear? No sense of duty to those who've turned cynical out of needs you didn’t fulfill? Is peace an earnest aspiration or final destination? Even graves are no resting place, corpses disinterred for land grabs. Such advice never reaches those too busy doing right or having fun. Conversations change corespondents, could cause growth, improves civilization. Life is confusing, messy, risky and therefore wonderful. Bono sang, “When you stop taking chances, you stay where you sit. You won’t live any longer, but it’ll feel like it.” Does this meme mean to ignore wretches you've exploited without conscience? Psychologists agree the primary reason for today’s epidemic of male suicides is silence. Heeding society's discontents leads directly to authentic life experiences though it increases risks.

Smart people constitute a minuscule minority. If democracy rules, they are actually outsiders, deemed among the unhinged fringe whose actions are akin to sadomasochist and skinhead sin. They probably ought to keep every opinion to themselves lest they confuse lamebrains and invite retaliation. It's conceivable there are individuals who think so clearly they can see through any scam, solve any problem, and view rest of humanity as if an insect swarm. However, revelations come to whoever is active or awake enough to invite them, and they never demand explanation or qualification, as does sales persuasion. It's almost proof of falsehood when someone has to lecture nonstop to convince anybody.

This barrage of agitation does provoke counterproductive polarization. Although exhausting, what’s required is to weigh merit of every argument and wend own way accordingly. When boomers were teens, they had little to go on. Information wasn’t so easily fact checked over internet. Based decisions instead upon common sense, fuzzy intuitions, gut feelings, moral codes, past experiences, scant data, or stubborn prejudice. These become awesome practices in an age of propaganda. Among authentic correspondents today you have axe grinders, bogus bloggers, disreputable publicists, fake reporters, official liars, scam artists, sedition broadcasters, and social backstabbers. Pays to remain skeptical.

Not one candidate in this election cycle laid out any visionary path forward. Effective policy requires intelligence to consider every aspect of all issues, how one effects another, what can be postponed, what must be prioritized. Survival always comes first with room for civility, etiquette, niceties. Greed, divisive posturing, misappropriation of public treasury, outright criminality, suborning lies and perjury (so common in congressional testimony it is cliche), and whatever doesn’t result in sensible compromise has no place on a national level. Eyewitness testimony ought to be encouraged and heard.

Parallels decades between wars in Germany a century ago, a gradual build up to nazi dictatorship, which led to constitutional overthrow and coups by thugs emboldened by those who bought into false hopes of criminal crackdowns, full employment, and infrastructure improvements, then closed eyes to genocides. And pharaohs whipped millions of slaves to build monuments to themselves, not what you'd call share the wealth or social justice.

Root causes of dysfunctional government include both integrity of politicians and system itself. Many narcissists, nazis, self aggrandizers, and sociopaths are drawn to positions of power. Normal people shy away from scrutiny. Those in office would never get away at real jobs with cheating, lying and making empty promises. Campaign financing means they have to cater to billionaires, creating devastating wealth disparity, and foreign warlords, leaving nation vulnerable to financial and military attack. All this could be cured by treating congressional service as if jury duty. Qualified candidates could be pulled from a pool of people between 30 and 50 years old, vetted for intelligence and psychological health (which would exclude many currently in office), with right of refusal based on family hardships. Pay them like sports stars, millions for 6-year contracts, with cuts should they be recalled. This resembles what the founding fathers intended, vital land owners conscripted into roles of representing neighbors, and sacks career louts who hang around until decrepit and senile, selling votes to whoever pays the most. Precedents exist for discriminating against age or youth in crucial roles, including not being able to vote until 21 years old, and mandatory retirement of pilots and police. But random selection would include women, who are nearly ignored and not currently represented as half the population. For the Senate, only those who’ve previously served a term in The House would be eligible. Presidents, too, should have previously served as legislators.

What would be the consequences of eliminating imperial aggression? History shows that England was none the worse after relinquishing control over Hong Kong, India, and other colonies. US interjects itself into every civil war, regional instability, and tribal squabble, when should only be there alongside UN overseers upon their request. No harm in patrolling seas to protect commercial fishing and shipping, but parking just offshore to intimidate probably backfires by losing more support than gaining. Shows of force make Americans more vulnerable, though irreparable damage has already been done, spent every credit from helping win WWII, spun lies to start subsequent actions in Afghanistan, Balkans, Iraq, Korea, Viet Nam, so warmongers alone could profit. Yet quality of life might diminish for lucky 10% who can spend on something other than debt interest. Readily availability of imported materials, in particular oil, would decline. The average motorists could no longer afford gasoline, though people still drive everywhere in Europe, where pump prices are higher by factors of 3 to 6, since they don’t possess own reserves as does USA. Electronic gadgets would cost more without slaves assembling them overseas, though minimum wage American assemblers could certainly handle.

Producing stuff locally for own consumption rates as an effective alternative to fuel wasting international shipping. One could argue that any savings through cheap labor cost are lost before product arrives at mail or retail outlets. In truth, shipping is done only to maintain industrial monopoly and intellectual property, how a thing is made and spread, so a select few profit. Allowing many factories to produce locally means distributing knowledge and losing control. After you make an expensive purchase, you are charged unjustified fees to use it. Computers more frequently go obsolete while crucial data and forms are increasingly transferred into internet sites, which demands your repeated investment. All this is by design, no coincidence at all. No longer a tool, a computer is a pricey ticket into an expensive amusement park.

Holding a job to earn money to survive is a demeaning and limiting construct. There are alternatives. Explore venture capital startups. Run for office. Start a religion. Parasites and scammers make more money doing these things than honest workers. Prisons are full. All wealth derives directly from only three industries: agribusiness, manufacturing, or mining. Oddly, employees in these industries are the least paid, with profits often marginal, because there is no social justice. Farmers keep you alive, and many go bust on abusive land taxes. Miners mortgage homes and lose them when dirt doesn't pay. And manufacturing assemblers must compete with slave labor abroad. Parasites win, producers lose.

Why should Rhode Islanders care? Because ills of entire country blow up over Watch Hill’s Napatree Dune across this nondescript state, whether political retribution or prevailing weather. Conservatives avenge disloyalty, cut funding for liberal states. Community either faces competition and rises to meet or slides downward and succumbs to scavenger mentality. Conservatives demonize liberals, because they fear real criminals and figure peaceniks make easy targets. They embrace evil, and need someone to blame who won’t fight back. Although it makes no sense, they group all non-conservative factions together, including moderates, progressives, and whoever won’t kneel before them and pledge allegiance to fascism. Rhode Islanders led the original revolution by burning The Gaspee, still worth considering during tax time, paying to fund their crimes against you. Blame nobody else for your fate if you do nothing.

Limited Natural Growth (LNG)

Years ago joined fellow bicyclists in a suburb of Boston where Mayor Tom Menino used to live to visit several houses lavishly lit, made it all the more special by braving the cold, damp and dark. Some make it a goal to view a million points of Christmas lights each season. Private homes display on average only 300, so you'd have to witness over 3,300 to reach goal without major installations, still doable, though becoming ever less evident hereabouts. Clark Griswold in National Lampoon movie, as a measure, mentioned 20,000. Cranston City Hall displays about 30,000, possibly surpassed by Praise Tabernacle Church also on Park Avenue. LaSalette Shrine in Attleboro states in excess of 300,000. Nearby Slater Park offers at least 30,000 on over 100 memorial Christmas trees. Taunton Green [shown], through which for several years personally commuted, probably has 100,000, though you’ll see as many driving by homes on County Road in Seekonk. Some of this has to do with the Festivals of LIghts, Diwali and Hanukkah, which celebrate how evil gets subdued by lighting the night and remind people of the miracle of sustainability, oil lasting in ancient lamps for a week longer than expected. Snacks of jelly donuts cooked in oil are symbolic accompaniments. Consider how much oil they now waste generating electricity for folly. Traditions outlive useful lives, and substitute stupidity for rationality.

Surprising how little people have learned given 25 years of free access to information via internet. ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) adopted TCP/IP in 1983; once NSFNET (National Science Foundation Network) was decommissioned in 1995, last restriction to commercial traffic disappeared. Ever since, persuasion and profit have mostly driven factual exchanges. Eternal tease of telling you how to get it, why you need it, but not what you need to know screams scam, though works upon the unwary every time. Get bored and exhausted reading articles seeded with so-called facts only to be propositioned by some businessman greedy for another payday. Like any other tool, cash or data can be used for evil or good.

Historian Sophia Rosenfeld also said, “The Internet is particularly important because of its reach and because of the algorithmic way in which it promotes what’s popular rather than what’s true. It creates a culture of untruth, probably, that other forms of publishing can’t easily.” Advertisers look to exploit situations based on prevailing trends that social media reveals. Show any interest in anything whatever, and your mailbox will fill faster than you can delete irrelevant input.

Basic logic has never been taught. Empty promises and logical fallacies dominate choices. For perspective, see Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions (2008). Historically, important facts were carefully withheld, whether by guilds, who jealously guarded lucrative skills, or monarchies, who feared revolutionary anarchies. At intervals, authors sought to rectify this knowledge gap. Voltaire’s circle published encyclopedias revealing how to do trades. The Whole Earth Catalog ambitiously collected what it deemed necessary for do-it-yourself sufficiency and global sustainability. Mistakes and snafus are inevitable, probably necessary, for learning to occur. Profitability often relies on waste.

Stuff never changes. Idle gossip and ingrained prejudices still predominate, then talk of past events. Future plans and new ideas only appeal to a small minority of already gifted, and then often as image props, not serious concerns. Observations are slivers of life, what exists in a moment that can be perceived, including concepts, feelings, measurements, memories, patterns, smells, sounds and touches. What many would prefer instead of facts are prophecies. Who wouldn't want to know for sure, so brace for the inevitable? The hopelessly doomed, junkies, ne'er-do-wells, parasites, prisoners, and walking dead who account for probably a quarter or more of population just don’t care, never did, rely upon dole, handouts, and other people’s efforts.

Spare us your words. Most are just attempts to bilk, hoodwink and steal. Don't need what you're so eager to sell. People adamantly rationalize poor decisions; to admit a mistake is to reveal own gullibility or ignorance. Many doing likewise is how crooks keep congressional seats and tyrants grip on power. Ideals of individuality mean taking personal responsibility, not such an agreeable proposal for many.

Easiest thing any writer can do is predict doom and provoke conflagrations that mushroom. Dystopian stories abound. Risking apocalypse and tempting fate, they’ve plopped LNG domes and nuclear power plants right next to population centers. Could have located them at remote nodes on edge of grid, but that’s where private estates of the powerful are. Any accident could prove catastrophic. Getting humans to cooperate on a shared mission means imagining alternatives to greed and sloth and understanding what keeps ideals aloft. Improbable? Optimism has always been irrational and seldom rewarded unless warranted. However difficult reasoning may be, it beats assuming, blindly obeying, and capitulating to crowds. You're granted rights to believe whatever you want, but you have to pick your fights. Some aren't worth waging.

Can't tolerate abuse of office, armed insurgency, conservative bullying, consumer fraud, criminal conspiracy, identity theft, mass shootings, minority discrimination, mob violence, power hegemony, or thoughtless policy. They demand immediate amendment and indictment. But, otherwise, why sweat someone else's lifestyle?

For the most part, people forgive heinous abominations and prosecute venial sins. They allow murderous results and squabble over imagined insults. They don't properly prioritize because government, institutions, and news media condense crucial issues and present alongside trivialities, so minimize importance. Plus anything too complicated is hard to indict. Without infotainment, ratings would suffer, and share of advertisement fees decrease. Some stories never get told, because they'd detract from earnings of those who buy ad time. For examples, direct link between soft drinks and Type II diabetes, distracted driving collisions and deaths due to smartphone use, dozens of cancers and respiratory diseases related to petroleum use, and other issues industry doesn't want disclosed. Not only advertising time but national policies are bought by profitable corporations, particularly automotive, financial, insurance, medical, petroleum, pharmaceutical, utility, and weapon. Trillions from treasury were misspent on stuff nation didn't want and nobody really needed, while innovations were suppressed and stupid choices fostered on behalf of exclusive interests.

Never want to tout beauty or benefits of what you cherish, because greedy and needy will swoop in to exploit and trash it. Will always be a lot easier and safer to belittle and denigrate, lest you'll be accused of bad taste and lame choices. Anyway, when you survey surrounding culture and landscape there's really very little to recommend. Blacktop is boring, roads usually lined with strip malls, toxic expanses, and ugly wastelands.

Spent months compiling lists of public places. Parks prove residents want to improve ambiance of environments which they deem less than appealing or healthy. Pretty obvious they've got no control over business or private properties, only minor influence over mutually owned spaces. Planting trees seems to assuage their rage, but pleases arborists with commerce maintaining and trimming. So who pays? You guessed it.

What’s out there to enjoy? Not enough vistas of neatly kept farms or shorelines still exist. Quaint villages with nostalgic architecture don’t receive deserved maintenance. Winding narrow lanes through overhanging forests are disappearing. Brookside bungalows you’d see on Christmas cards may be mere facets of memories and figments of imagination ever since poles with drooping wires and sign pollution befouled landscapes. What have you done to preserve anything worth seeing? Once cash, funds, gifts or taxes are given, you have zero chance to recoup.

Midwinter brings blues, depression, seasonal affective disorder (SAD), and scores of maladies remembered in melancholic songs. Cusp of a new year inspires hopeful resolutions to better oneself. “Art should improve your life, and who you are. It should lead to emotional and spiritual growth. Otherwise, why have it?” protested Billy Childish. But why suffer through self improvement when nobody values what you do? Because what one accomplishes against own expectations is all it matters. Readers will find and respect it. If one claims bicycling rates as a form of praying, then can’t disavow magic realism and mystic spiritualism. Never needed an otherworldly reason to improve self or trade fairly in any season.