Nixon’s accepted gift, a dog the family named Checkers.
Thomas Eagleton once suffered from depression.
Donna Rice and Gary Hart on the Monkey Business.
Paula Jones, Monica Lewinsky and Clinton.
Biden blowing a debate.
All ended Presidencies and/or reputations.
But, BUT, this guy
convicted of sexual abuse, threatening former groupies now turned whistleblowers like Bolton, Tillerson, McMaster, Bannon…, his intending to put former President’s or contenders in prison, while whitewashing Epstein and getting and getting preferred treatment for child sex abusers like Ghislaine Maxwell, gets a pass and a growing following.
Americans devolve into the compost. The why, comes with the rest of the story – my next missive!
If you’re certain to have little interest in seeing Alaska but enjoy glutinous multitudes fighting for somewhere to sit with a pile on their plates, an Alaskan cruise is for you.
My favorite stop was Hoonah, with a population of 931 or about one third the number that disembarked our ship that day, to see some bear, moose, or maybe a reindeer or whale.
There was no such things, so everyone did what the ship planned for – shopped. The options were mammoth: bear, moose salmon and whale shirts, caps, pants, pajamas with that cute little buttoned back flap, belts, eye wear, undies, and slippers, and, AND if you looked closely made in China.
Most went for some representation of salmon, not in your fresh, local Cosco sense, but dried salmon, flavored salmon, jerked salmon, puréed salmon, salmon spice, even not yet salmon – the eggs, all jarred, canned or sealed. Given the selection I went for a dozen cans of salmon spread: the pepper garlic, Chipotle and cruise dung flavored, as gifts for friends back home. Those cans seemed the most popular amongst the other cruise ships in port that day and the over 500,000 tourists dropping in to give a financial “high-five” to the 931 inhabitants of Hoonah each year.
One stop was in Juneau, the Alaskan capital. There we were greeted by three blocks of jewelry stores, filled with diamonds and watches, shipped in from Switzerland and Africa, followed by the same mammoth monotony from Chinese fabricators depicting bear, moose, salmon, whales and such!
My life having been spent in various conferences in every state’s capital, each built with pride as monuments to democracy, I decided to visit the only one on the continent that I had not visited.
Finding the address, I looked around, to the right, to the left, down in front, off behind, no, that lump of bricks was actually it, the same old lump you have in your town, in every town.
There was one remote stop, where we sat in the water a few hundred yards from a glacier: It was a jaw dropper. We hung on the rails as we approached and then glued there for the two-hours our ship stayed, watching a 300+ ft. high glacier calve blocks of ice weighing tons into the ocean.
Me, brother and our loves!
If it were not for that glacier and the chance to spend quality time with my wife, brother and his love, the trip would have been a bust. They made the trip right up until we tried to leave.
All was well as we left the ship for our 2 pm American Airlines flight home. The plane broke before take-off, and a new one was ordered, arriving 6 hours later, that would miss our connection home to Tucson. The airlines said we had two choices, one, we can get you to Los Angles where you will need to stay two days untill our next Tucson flight or we can get you to Phoenix sometime tomorrow where you will need to use your own resources to find home.
What fun, what experience, what adventure, what learning to just watch Animal Kingdom and be happy.
That first spank that makes you cry and breath sets the tone. Was it the spank or that first breath? Did it fill you with worry or wonder?
If worry, well there are plenty more to come: That mess down there, that chaffing, the sudden hunger that wasn’t there a second ago or just mommy’s not being in front of your face. Later that touch of a hot stove, the bee sting, poke, scrape or cut, particularly if anything comes with BLOOD.
But if it is wonder, then comes the marvels! Oh, those marvels: that first breath of fresh air, the warmth of a cuddle, that sweet suckle on mommy’s breast. As the days rolled on there was seemingly unending awe at what you heard, tasted, touched, smelled or saw for the very first time.
At his end, the Dalai Lama suggests that each year we should visit a place or have an experience for the very first time. Newness refreshes our senses, makes us feel alive.
If you aren’t so close to your end and still have some juice, I say:
JUST DO IT
If you are from the west and traveled at all, you recall first marveling at the monuments in your nation’s Capital, that incredible crush of water that keg riders took over Niagara Falls, or the single year it took to build and let you stand on the Empire State Building, the horrors at Gettysburg, or that historic walk down Boston’s “Freedom Trail,” and maybe just for this westerner, the marvel of being surrounded by what they called in the east lightening bugs.
If you are from the east your travels west had nature taking the front seat and making your jaw drop at how big a hole can be at the Grand Canyon, what trees can really do in a Sequoia, or those hundreds of crystaled streams, teaming with fish, or how enormous mountains and bears can be, or just how large a volcano was that at Yellow Stone.
If you were truly adventurous, you might have even spent some time in that underworld that thrives like a thousand alien species just below the waves.
Or maybe some adventures in sensations: Sky diving, blowing some weed, or just eating a bit of sautéed goose liver is what stimulated your senses. Find something, anything new!
The world has unlimited permutations of what makes us feel alive. Doing something new, something never known, might awaken what has ended in most of us oldies: That shock and awe we had for that first breath.
Richard Kimball
P. S. Spank me, I’m off to Alaska. Talk to you when I get back.
A long-distance runner gave us ten weeks of internship lending a hand with our research in the wilderness. Young and pretty she took off after work each day to put in a half-dozen miles or so.
But on this night, she missed the sunset, supper, the moon and bedtime, and just thus, forty-six young students and staff entered the world of mass hysteria.
It was their tears of fear that I might remember most if it weren’t for the testosterone driven young’uns I heard had just left to search the quarter million acres of wilderness in the dark.
It was all one could do to run them down and threaten them with dismissal if they did not return to the lodge, instantly.
Local search and rescue, some 26 miles away refused to respond until first light, “too dangerous” they said.
There would be no way on a freezing night to hold back a one of us, including me.
Trail maps were printed out, assignments were made with ridged timelines to return and report. I waited till midnight before making that most miserable of calls back east and woke up her parents.
Teams went out in threes and fours, each person in warm gear, a flashlight, water and most importantly whistles and a blanket should they find her. She jogged wearing only nylon shorts and a flimsy tank top.
The searches went on and on, each team reporting back and reassigned. Nothing. Not a hint, for miles around in any direction.
At first light, the lodge was full of the exhausted, and when I entered there wasn’t a dry eye, many sobbing uncontrollably. Sickened, I asked, “What was it? Did someone find her?” “No,” “No,” “No,” came the responses. And then one of the sobbing said, “They said it was probably a Mountain Lion!”
Only then did I notice off in the corner that the local volunteers from Search and Rescue had finally shown up. That is when my emotions overwhelmed my good sense. I went ballistic and demanded that the locals get out and stop talking to my young staff.
The morning crept on and on, then at exactly 10 am, “Boo Boo” walked in the front door with one of our search teams still looking for her. Before a single word was said, I had to excuse myself. It was my time to cry.
They had found her walking on one of the back roads. Unknown to city dwellers, there are many roads in the wilderness not excavated by human hands. Turns out that deer, moose, elk don’t just wander aimlessly in the forest, they make roads most traveled, and it is one of those that “Boo Boo” took by mistake but petered out and got lost.
“Boo Boo” and I first called her parents and then “Boo Boo” and I talked.
“Yes,” she said she was cold, but she remembered her older brother who was a Boy Scout had told her if you are ever lost in such circumstance, find the tallest tree and settle under it, it will cast your odor out the furthest so the dogs can find you, then gather all the leaves and twigs you can and bury yourself in them to stay warm. When it was first light, she said, she just headed downhill to a creek and followed it till she found a road.
In reverence, I finally asked weren’t you ever scared? She said that she was, when two bears came around in the middle of the night, but she just said, “BOO BOO” and they went away.
Sweet and kind, she sat next to me on the State Senate floor. Her one interest was to end abortions. We agreed on nothing, but I liked her.
She was becoming a rarity in politics, uncomplicated, real and true to what she believed, but about to be screwed by the leadership.
They needed her vote to support a bill, which I supported but that she strongly opposed, again on religious grounds.
On a bathroom break, unknown, only to her, the chair shuffled the agenda to confuse and get her positive vote on what she thought was another bill that she did support.
She walked off the Senate floor in tears.
I instantly felt the remorse, all feel of their silence, when a word of warning was due.
The creeping sludge of most local politics has long made it unlikely that the honorable, dignified people in our communities would enter public service.
That was decades ago, when much of the sludge remained low level, and dignity was still the cream that could manage to elevate to higher office.
For me, in politics, it was always confusing trying to separate the wheat from the chaff. As Websters says: “Which people or things in a group are bad and which ones are good?”
Is supporting education and science good or bad?
Is fighting environmental pollution good or bad?
Is fighting genocide good or bad?
Is spending trillions you don’t have good or bad?
Goldwater, Reagan, and every other Republican nominee for President screamed GOOD, GOOD, GOOD, AND GOOD!
But every recent poll shows that Modern Day Trumpians scream BAD, BAD, BAD AND BAD!
I loved that rescue, cooked for that dog, slept with that dog, hiked, swam, and camped with that dog.
Chase balls? Yes! Chase sticks? Yes! But her favorite? Our jump and catch tug of wars with a long leather woven rope.
A year or so passed when she became suddenly ill. I was crazed as to what to do. Just as I picked her up from the couch the first little blob dropped, then came eight more.
Screw the couch, I was so thrilled with the only little ones I would ever know.
Some weeks later, looking out my window, there she was growling with my butt end of our leather rope clenched in her teeth. The other end, now frayed into a dozen leathery straps, being pulled and yanked by nine puppies in a mommy tug of war.
How can anyone not love a dog?
It isn’t just the fun, the endless entertainment, but the loyalty and love that knows no end, even if you have been an ass.
Near the end of my dog’s life, I decided to move. It was a big move from a cramped apartment to a home I had bought miles away with a large patio for my love to enjoy.
In the last haul of odds and ends I put her in my car and then introduced her to her yard of green grass and pecan trees.
An hour later she was gone, not dead, just gone.
She had managed to dig out under the wooden wall when she saw me leave to go to the store.
The night was spent combing the neighborhood and major streets for miles around. Nothing.
She was just gone.
In the morning, I checked with the Pound, Animal Control and put up posters on street corners in every direction for a mile or more around.
Hope had faded away but for a whim. I drove the miles, crossing a half dozen of the biggest most trafficked streets in Phoenix.
And there she was, asleep on the mat in front of our apartment door.
Tested by Paramount, Skydance, Columbia University, Oracle, Morgan Stanley, McDonalds, Tesla, Melon, Chevron, Major Law Firms, much of the media and a multitude of growing worshipers: The Muzzle That Ends All Your Words.
Had a dream last night that my wife and I, who are of the same mid-seventies age, were visited by a fairy who wanted to honor our 40 years together. First, she asked Adelaide, “What one thing would you like?” Adelaide responded, “A trip around the world.” With a click of her fingers, the fairy produced two tickets on the Queen Mary’s maiden voyage across the globe.
Then she turned to me, “What is your wish?” I responded, “Well I would like my wife to be thirty years younger than me.” And with a click of her fingers, I became 106.
Americans are all hopped up on a pedophile and a comedian. Epstein and Colbert are better sellers of commercials than the tens of thousands shriveled and dying there from starvation.
No one’s going to care, when it is your empty bowl of gruel.
Hell, even what the U. S. Census Bureau considers white people, in Gaza and Ukraine being slaughtered, take a back seat to the gimmy, gimmy potential of Epstein and Colbert news coverage.
Just like the sitcoms of my youth, news programming only flourishes if it can attract an audience.
Attracting audience is everything, it is existence, it is another season, it is money.
In news entertainment, you first find a following, then feed it, and if you grow, you prosper.
All ten of the most watched entertainment news programs are now on Fox, because hate, vengeance and any abuse of you sells and demands attention, no less than one screaming SHOTS FIRED, anywhere, any place.
List what you can in human advance in all human time, till 1776. Then compare to the last few hundred years, when American’s launched what free peoples could enjoy with the benefits of their own labors.
Nothing of the joys and conveniences you now expect, did not come from that event.
All from what the rest of the world envies and has struggled to send their children to: our systems to develop knowledge.
Responsible for 419 Nobel Prizes, more than the next half dozen countries combined, is our prestigious universities, and the public education system Horace Mann championed 175 years ago.
All now being dismantled by those not in line when the brains were given out.
I have spent almost all my life thinking women were brighter, more thoughtful and compassionate than men.
I suppose that was due to my mother, who was tough but fair in her launching four difficult Kimball boys on her own, into successful lives.
But my view has taken a precipitous drop late in life for many reasons, almost entirely due to white women. So many easily manipulated, flock to jam about this slight or that, then in such parroted confusion as to who’s at fault, most will support a felon convicted of sexual abuse to lead the nation and their families’ lives.
So, it goes in Kerr County Texas where dozens of young women die fighting for their lives due to a bit of money, continually refused for a warning device that would have saved them all. Despite the loss of lives there from a flood just 10 years earlier.
Their Governor, says don’t point fingers at anyone, as he maintains steadfast support for reductions in Medicaid and the end of FEMA whose principal mission is “helping people before, during and after disasters.”
As we are schooled to fight each other, I plead with you to “just follow the money,” an expression I adopted forty years ago, when I was in politics. If you do, you will see the flood of cash flowing to those that least need it from those that most need it.
Coal, Petroleum, Natural Gas and Oil shales, our primary sources of energy, all from the remains of ancient plants and organisms, all polluting and with a dead end in sight — Cheapest but dirtiest for us.
Or
Solar energy, Wind energy, Geothermal energy, Hydrogen energy, Tidal energy, Wave energy, hydroelectric energy, biomass energy, even nuclear energy, all endless and relatively pollution and global warming free — Cleanest, healthiest, and YES cheapest for all those yet to come.
It is highly unlikely that any Congressperson will ever read the “Big Beautiful Bill,” not even the President.
These are busy people that have far more pressing, enjoyable options, crucial to their maintaining status and power. Besides, if they read it, few would be able to digest or comprehend the thousand pages of legalese in which it is written.
How these legislators abide by the oath each took to “well and faithfully discharge the duties of their office,” is to listen to, and adopt the point of view that attracts the largest covey of the subservient.
It is unfortunate that Trump got on the Knowledge-Go-Round so late in life.
I was with Trump on bunker busting their nuclear sites. After all, you just cannot allow such a despicable rouge state with the mantra “Death to America” to have nuclear weapons. Hell, they had built over 3000 ballistic missiles and enriched uranium to weapons grade, far beyond what is needed to generate power.
So, yeah, lets buy some time, bust it up, so we can get back to the Barack Obama deal that Trump trashed, where we do exactly what Ronald Reagon insisted, “Trust but verify.”.
