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.
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.
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.
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.
Take just one teensy example, a favorite: Lindsey Graham, who Trump called a “disgrace, nut job, one of the dumbest human beings,” who is now tethered on the ring Trump had punched through his nose.
Today, Lindsey just hobbles dutifully along, echoing his master’s every whim, just as he did during his long-lost salad days when he did the same for his buddy, John McCain with his spine to crawl up on.
Islamic leadership that clings to a mindset locked in the Middle Ages, organized to end another inch of advance for women or any other minority or religious sect, endlessly preaching death to Americans, histories most advanced civilization.
Let me be clear, I think the assassination of Trump would be repulsive.
However, I am surprised that in America, such evil still exists.
Even Hitler had at least 40 attempts, many by insiders, but with Trump no insider will do what over 700,000 of our family members, neighbors and fellow defenders of democracy have done: Die in freedom’s defense.
Subverting the 2020 election and having his sycophants attack the capitol.
Abusing his pardon power to release the vilest attackers of democracy.
Using the “bully pulpit” to spread lies and hate.
Withholding funds from Ukraine in support of one of the world’s most hideous dictators.
Hinging all new government appointments to lackeys, compliant to any whim.
Dismissing all whistle blowers, anyone disagreeing with him.
Scrounging what cash he can for his family, off the most need of a hand up.
With a Congress subservient, and the Supreme Court neutered with his appointees, all hope resides, where it has always resided, in the democracy our American ancestors gave birth to, and died to preserve – YOU!
Never mind that he claims responsibility for parking dead bears in Central Park. Never mind the worm he claims ate its way into his brain. Kennedy has stumbled on the truth I have long been straining to uncover “Fluoride causes low IQ and brain damage.”
That’s it, that must be it! Fluoride has made Americans stupid.
In spite, of all those Trump intimates, the Generals, Chiefs of Staff, even Musk, broadcasting Trumps childish, ignorant nature, millions that don’t know him, never worked with him or have ever even seen him, are stuck on him.
Why is it that so many Americans not in the know, without the teensy bit of know, lock on, despite what those in the know are screaming at them.
They have itty bitty, tinny weenie, scrappy lives, some leaning female, some male. Born in captivity, they live for months dreaming of freedom. If released, they are discharged with 10s of millions, all wiggling and straining to find the one home given to the first that gets there.
How can you not have compassion for the littlest losers dying by the millions, lost, starving for love, or just drying up in the bed sheets?
They have itty bitty, tinny weenie, scrappy lives, some leaning female, some male. Born in captivity, they live for months dreaming of freedom. If released, they are discharged with 10s of millions, all wiggling and straining to find the one home given to the first that gets there.
How can you not have compassion for the littlest losers dying by the millions, lost, starving for love, or just drying up in the bed sheets?
The few males in a hive just wander around looking for some queen to stick it too, while the females do all the work.
If there is trouble, it is the females that have the stinging weapon and launch into battle often giving up their lives, while the bigger males just pretend to be girls to save themselves.
If our hive is to be saved, it will be women that do it!
I spent 33 years locked in a promise I made Presidents Ford and Carter. I would not involve myself in partisan politics while running the organization we had begun.
Once retired, I still would not involve in political discussions. That isn’t to say I had nothing to say, it is just after those 33 years of struggling to help people deal with the facts, I am no longer interested in what anyone else thinks.
From where I have stood, no one thinks. Like eating a Big Mack to satisfy their hunger, people have become accustomed to tunning into some political preacher who says what satisfies and then mimics them with “lock box” conviction.
When politics becomes the conversation, I have become a joke. “Mention politics,” they say, “if you want to watch Kimball walk out of the room.”
If I am stuck, as the other day, with a devoted Christian, Trump supporter and close friend, who thought him God’s tool to make things wrong, right again, I simply agree.
Yes, Jesus was selfless, thoughtful, kind, forgiving with endless compassion for the suffering, downtrodden and all those without hope. Trump, his doppelganger – very difficult to see much difference.
