This post is merely a bulletin, a progress report and a reminder, for myself, and my followers patiently expecting the last installments of two blog-series I have yet to finish. They are:
Conclusion: A New U.S. Constitution
Paul, Acts, Forgeries & Marcion – Part III (the Marcion part)
There are several other drafts pending and waiting to be finished, but it seems they will have to wait longer to be completed and published.
As many of you know I am the full-time/overtime caretaker of my mom 7-days and nights a week. She suffers from severe dementia which has now progressed into Early Alzheimer’s Disease. Her condition has been noticeably progressing since at least 2017, but has really advanced the last 18-months. She now requires more than one person (me) to care for her. I am no longer able to care for her as one person. I’ve been a one-man show since August of 2021 with very few and limited breaks so this is not only required for her, but more so myself.
Come this June or July—that’s the time-frame we are shooting for—Mom will be admitted into an Assisted Living Memory Care facility. You might imagine what all has to be done to 1) find the best Assisted Living Memory Care facility, 2) move out of her current Senior Living apartment and lots of furniture moved into storage, 3) getting all the legal paperwork sorted out to move her into an Assisted Living Memory Care facility, 4) the Long-term Care insurance policy claim initiated, which has been done, 5) her late husband’s Veteran’s Benefits Assistance initiated, 6) get Durable Power of Attorney completed, and 7) finally get myself completely moved back up (again) to Dallas, Texas after all tasks for Mom have been completed. Then 8) find employment in the Dallas metroplex that pays enough to live on and hopefully (fingers crossed 🤞) with a little safety net rainy day fund. The latter is not as easy as it once was 25-35 years ago. Wages in Texas have not kept up with “inflation” or the cost of living per zip code.
In other words, my next 10 or 12 weeks are going to be quite busy, to say the least. I will do what I can for my blogging, but I can make no promises. I do appreciate all of your patience and understanding. At some point in late July or early August I will be back into Dwain’s full-swing and living his own life once more. It is so needed and cannot come soon enough for me. 🙂
Live Well – Love Much – Laugh Often – Learn Always
“You see us as machines. But if you really want to understand how we work, you’re going to have to dig a little deeper.” — Kai-125
Have you ever stopped to think whether humans, you specifically, have complete self-determination? Or are we just pre-programmed to follow precisely how we were prenatally built, constructed by our parents, and their parents, and all of our prior biogenetics from our ancestral genealogy? Are we not all byproducts of our past generations? Why do all of us have certain traits and not others? Why do we have particular preferences and tendencies for some life-experiences and less so or none for others?
Does that not suggest a prearranged blueprint handed down to you from many who came before you? Did you have a choice of various blueprints before birth? Of course not. Whether we like it or not we get the hand dealt to us.
Perhaps I should’ve entitled this post Humans or Machines. Maybe I’ll change that later after further thought and introspection.
Petty Officer, First Class Kai-125
Lately I find myself engrossed in a new military sci-fi series on Paramount+ called Halo. I was drawn-in right from the first episode, “Contact,” and haven’t been able to stop watching ever since. Why do I find the series fascinating, compelling, and profoundly aligned with real life, this non-fictional life we live right now?
It asks the same existential questions I asked above about each of us, about human nature, and whether or not humans are capable of saving ourselves… from ourselves. The series also asks Can we unite as humans, as one species, and save ourselves from other lethally aggressive alien species or cosmic forces?
Master Chief-117: What I can see on the ground may not reflect the entirety of the situation. Kwan Ha: What does that mean? Master Chief-117: Sometimes, others know things I do not. Kwan Ha: It ever occur to you that it might work the other way around? Master Chief-117: Then you question everything? Kwan Ha: And someone told you that’s bad? [pause] (somewhat resigned, she exhales, answering her own question) …Of course they did.
halo episode 1 “contact,” season one
Kwan challenges Master Chief-117’s purpose in life
Watching this first episode and this particular scene really struck a chord with me. It reminded me of how so many people both around me today and those from my past, live or have lived their lives according to how others think of them or want from them. It could be parents, family, bosses, friends, or even a theoretical ideology or religious belief system, a political leader(?) that dictates how lives will be lived. Is that not a machine rather than a free human?
Dr. Catherine Halsey, Chief Scientist of the UNSC and founder of the Spartan-II Project begun decades earlier the next improved evolutionary step beyond antiquated human military soldiering. Otherwise, the human race was not going to win the war against a far superior alien enemy. Therefore, in order for her Spartan project to be a guaranteed success against a winning enemy—known as the Covenant—with better weapons and soldiers than any humans, Halsey had to commit several immoral, deceptive, and unethical acts upon human children and their families in order to rescue all of humanity and its fragile, hopeless future. This was how Halsey justified her heinous actions: sacrificing a few for the greater good of all.
Dr. Catherine Halsey founder of the Orion and Spartan-II projects
Putting further twists and conflicted reasoning into these existential dilemmas is Captain Jacob Keyes, ex-husband of Dr. Halsey and the father of their one daughter, Dr. Miranda Keyes, Deputy UNSC Scientist under Halsey, her mother. Talk about familial tensions wound super tight, all stirred into the uncertain future of humanity, it doesn’t get more thick and riveting than that! For example, when Miranda discovers that the UNSC will execute the teenage rebel Kwan, she confronts her father:
Dr. Miranda Keyes: [referring to Kwan] We’re murdering a teenage girl. And I’m complicit. Capt. Jacob Keyes: We’re in a war, Miranda. The future of humanity… Dr. Miranda Keyes: What’s the point in saving humanity if we’re going to give up our own? Capt. Jacob Keyes: Sometimes you have to make hard choices to get good results. Dr. Miranda Keyes: Now who’s sounding like Halsey?
halo episode 1 “contact,” season one
Dr. Miranda Keyes (left, daughter) and Capt. Jacob Keyes (right, father)
As I got into episode two, three, and four, I couldn’t help but compare the Spartan-II soldiers (Silver Team) to specific groups of actual humans and ideologies the United States possess today. Although these fictional badass, undefeated soldiers had superhuman characteristics along with unwavering resilience for mission success—“Failure is not an option” mantra—even if it means death to achieve it, first and foremost they obey every order given to them from their superiors to the tee and without question. Sound familiar? Dr. Halsey also implanted into Spartans an augmentation pellet in their lower spinal cord at a pubescent age. The device increased their physical mass and height to approximately 7-feet by adult age giving them highly advanced exoskeleton physiques required to slaughter and defeat Covenant aliens.
“You have been called upon to serve. You will be trained – and you will become the best [I] can make of you. You will be the protectors of Earth and all her colonies.”
— dr. catherine halsey, to the spartan-II recruits
For me, Halsey reminds me of all our history’s past authoritarian, self-consumed megalomaniacs of the world. Remind you of one we have today in the United States? In other words, the end always justifies the means, even if it is unconstitutional and blatantly illegal. Getting the picture?
Discussing the work of Dr. Halsey and her Spartan-II’s and Halsey’s obsessive complete control over their ultimate purpose to first serve her, then second to serve humans:
Dr. Miranda Keyes: Dr. Halsey designed everything to her specifications. When her creations behave in unexpected ways, she get’s uncomfortable. Kai-125: Well, what does it mean to behave in unexpected ways? Dr. Miranda Keyes: Like a human I suppose.
Dr. Miranda Keyes: To Dr. Halsey, human beings are messy, irrational, chaotic. They make decisions based on emotion, passion. Halsey is different. She sees the world as a set of data to be optimized, regardless of the short-term pain or sacrifice. Next to this level of dedication, the rest of us ultimately fall short. And when people let her down, Dr. Halsey has a way of cutting them out of her life.
halo episode 4 “homecoming,” season one
Both Master Chief-117 (John) and Kai-125 have cut out their augmentation pellets in order to know and understand better who they are as well as to better decipher who Dr. Halsey is to them and whether she truly is their “protector” and confidant. These are the first signs of Spartans questioning their superior’s motives. To this point, Miranda says to Kai-125:
Dr. Miranda Keyes: Kai, your act of rebellion could just be a glitch. But if I know Dr. Halsey, she doesn’t tolerate glitches.
halo episode 4 “homecoming,” season one
Halo Season 1 Key art featuring L-R Yerin Ha as Kwan Ha, Natascha McElhone as Halsey, Bokeem Woodbine as Soren, Pablo Schreiber as Master Chief, Kate Kennedy as Kai, Natasha Culzac as Riz and Bentley Kalu as Vannak. Photo Credit: Paramout+
Or in our real time conditions today in America, with a rising cult-mentality and blind, unflinching loyalty to the cult leader, if a soldier steps out of line or questions, or criticizes the supreme leader, that dissident or dissidents are quickly attacked, cut out of his/her life and future plans. They are “fired,” replaced for more obedient more loyal subjects/soldiers. Why are so many (poorly?) evolved humans susceptible to this sort of brainwashing? Dr. Halsey gives a few possible answers below. When Master Chief-117 confronts Halsey about lying to him and all Spartans, he demands why:
Dr. Catherine Halsey: Nothing I say to you will make any sense until the benefits are manifest. I just have to accept that you will hate me. I was planning the future. Master Chief-117: Whose future? Not mine. Dr. Catherine Halsey: Nor mine. The future of our species. Natural evolution is failing us. Human beings are still hardwired for conflict and selfishness, John. I knew years ago that if we were going to survive, we needed a force. A force that would intervene, that could prevent conflict before it started. So, I created the Spartans, a group who would protect us from ourselves.
halo episode 6 “Solace,” season one
“Protect us from ourselves.” And humans “are still hardwired for conflict and selfishness.” Well, that is certainly true about the human race over its entire existence on Earth. Dr. Halsey is extremely intelligent and accurately observant regarding basic human nature. This cannot in the least, however, be said about America’s current cult leader and apparent 2024 Republican candidate for presidential re-election. This is one glaring difference between the Halo character Halsey and the real-time Orange Orangutan.
Nevertheless, here is another spot-on observation by Dr. Halsey based on her experience regarding human nature and our species’ progress by the 26th-century:
Dr. Catherine Halsey: We are on a journey. We are born, we live, and we die according to the rules of blind and unguided evolution. As a result, our species is simply not equipped to survive what comes next. It is time for us to take control of our evolution, to push past our narrow ignorance and venture out into the wide unknown, where we will discover our true potential. I suspect the Halo will provide the key.
Much has been lost, and there will surely be more sacrifices to come. But I believe our species will soon spread its wings and soar to new heights, that we will rewrite what it means to be human. That we will achieve transcendence.
halo episode 9 “transcendence,” season one
But will we? Are we really capable of Renaissance and Enlightenment 2.0, the next huge step in human evolution over the next 1 to 5 to 10-years? Is the United States capable despite the growing deterioration and dismantling of our democratic institutions and our pillars of higher education-expertise these last 10-20 years? How is it possible to insure a Golden Age will arrive when so many Americans or humans choose to be simple “Spartans,” or automatons, for the sake of a tyrannical leader and his or her ideology of hate, violence, prejudices, and racism? I wonder.
Aside from our bleak reality in the U.S. today, I am looking forward to Season 2 of Halo streaming on Paramount+ this February 8th. If it is anything as enjoyable as Season 1, then it will provide plenty of further existential questions, dilemmas, and realizations about our human species and whether or not we truly are capable of “saving ourselves from ourselves” or if we are merely machines destined for extinction. One thing is certain, however. There is no supreme deity or one human that is going to do it for us or rescue us. It is in our collective hands and our hands alone to do it together.
Bring on Season 2. Can’t wait.
Live Well – Love Much – Laugh Often – Learn Always
My free-time for WordPress blogging and commenting, on all of my sites, is going to become very short, sometimes infrequent or rare. My soon-to-be 84-year old mother will be going into a full-time Memory Care Assisted Living facility this month or early December. Her Stage 7 Dementia is now into Early Alzheimer’s.
Two other reasons have caused this over the last 4-5 months. First, Mom has fallen twice in the last 3-months. She is unable to get up from the floor or ground on her own if no one is nearby or within earshot. Fortunately, I was home when these last two falls occurred. One of them was around 2:30am when I got out of bed to use the restroom. She happened to hear me and yelled for my help. She had no idea how long she had been on the floor or how she fell/tripped.
The second reason she must go into Assisted Living is because alone by myself, 12-16 hours per day with her, the last 28-months (with no day off every single one of those 12-16 hrs days), has almost killed me. I can no longer manage everything for her life, especially with no respites at all for that long. Mentally, emotionally, and physically… I am fried, spent.
Mom at Mackinac Island, MI, June 2021 (L), and Mom & I at Kerrville Renaissance Festival, Jan. 2023
As a result of these 850+ days and nights of non-stop caretaking, I have developed chronic health problems. My own health has taken a serious nosedive the last 12-14 months primarily due to a worsening of my sacroiliitis, agitated and inflamed daily due to the fact that Mom’s Senior Community apartment is designed for elderly wheelchair residents, i.e. everything, and I mean everything in the bathrooms, sinks, kitchen appliances, pantry, bathtubs, closets, etc, are intentionally installed/built down low, where I must constantly bend over/down or get on one knee or sit on a footstool. Two plus years of doing this daily has three-times dropped me to the floor in the fetal position in excruciating pain.
It can wait no longer. I now have no choice but to greatly improve or recover my own health.
Therefore, my sister and I will be moving Mom into River Point of Kerrville within the next 2-4 weeks. This also means me moving out, perhaps back to Dallas, TX. This is up in the air for the moment. But one thing is certain: I can no longer live in a small country rural town with so many ultra-religious, super-Conservative rednecks and a never-ending sea of LOUD (diesel) monster pickup-trucks that don’t fit inside ANY parking-space in any parking lot! And I won’t go into the intellectual levels or prowess (or lack) of most people in this four-county area. I badly need more brain-stimulations on higher levels, period.
Hence, please excuse my increased absence here, on WordPress and your blogs. Hopefully, when life settles back down and returns (for me at least) to “normal,” after I know exactly where I will be living and working (again), then I shall be back in force. 🙂
Live Well – Love Much – Laugh Often – Learn Always
“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” But they never realized just how fragile life is or how very short it can be.
They say “The hottest love has the coldest end.” Now in my opinion and throughout my 6-decades of life that is painfully closer to the truth.
They say “The eyes are the window to the soul.” Yes. This entire week my eyes have been swollen with tears bearing open my ripped and bleeding soul.
It is sometimes said by them “It’s a broken heart when you’ve lost a soul mate,” but that’s only part of it. I hurt in my whole body, to the marrow.
But enough of what they say.
On Thursday, June 29, 2023, my lovely Hat Burglar boxed up and shipped my fourth or fifth package of what she always called “Surprizzles.” If I made a list for you of everything she has shipped to me from Georgia, USA, I’d have a 3- to 4,000 word post. So suffice it to say that she lives and loves to make people’s lives a little easier and a lot happier. And she is the Queen B at it. She is just as gifted in calming you, making you burst out in laughter, while simultaneously sorting out the berserko chicken-pen with chickens running amok with heads lopped off. She rightly earned the title of “Supreme Chaos Manager.” It is sheer black or white magic, a sight to behold actually, to watch what she can make happen; the consummate Doer! And with that my Doer did and with no delay, my box of Surprizzles was on the way …to my door.
But I want to jump back to and ahead in this story.
In the United States we have a non-existent FTC that is supposed to protect individual American consumers and phone users from insane amounts of telemarketing sales calls, AI spam callers, and other invasive businesses blowing up your phone’s call-log and voicemail capacity. A few wireless carriers offer a very basic spam-protection feature and/or app, but they too are near useless. I hate this infuriating marketing with an intense bitterness and our nation’s defunct economic model these wireless phone-cancers feed off and breed from: Free-enterprise or Hyper-capitalism. My fury is boiling just below atomic eruption when one listen’s to my cell phone voicemail greeting aimed at all telemarketers and AI spam-dialers.
Growling, my attempts to waste as much of their time as they would mine with my 2-3 minute greeting-of-torture, are not as effective as I had hoped for several reasons. One thing that is recognizable in my tone and attitude to this American AI plague is my enormous growing aversion and maddening for all-things-technology and their blatant abuse by sales and marketing departments upon my precious time. I mean, I’m ready to push the red-button labelled “Never Push This Button.”
Unknown to me, my lovely Hat Burglar often called my cell just to listen to my polite rage, or in her message to poke me with the proverbial stick inciting her grumpy grandpa (me) and make me either more grumpy or tolerably grumpy, just for her own amusement and entertainment-fix. Here are a few of her voicemails I will treasure for the rest of my life:
April 8th, 2023:
May 16th, 2023:
May 23rd, 2023 with her son Jay calling me:
June 29th, 2023 – her latest, and last VM to me:
Greatest worst best friend EVER! 😍
∼ ∼ ∼ § ∼ ∼ ∼
In the late morning of July 2nd, 2023, between 10:31am CDT, my time, and 1:40pm my time, my Soul Mate and Twin Flame, my Hat Burglar, who I’ve written about so affectionately since May 11th and she wrote about me/us June 6th, died suddenly of a severe heart-attack. Her husband tried to revive her several times with CPR, but the attack/seizure was simply too harsh and too swift. She was 47-years young. I don’t want to let her go…
my all-time favorite pic of my Hat Burglar, aka Jodi
Her box of Surprizzles arrived, wanted and unwanted, three days later on Wednesday, July 5th, 2023. It had her typical flashy, Gothic, dark stickers smacked everywhere on the box. One sticker was the Jolly-Roger skull and crossed bones. It said on it in large pirate-script: Poison! I knew inside there were specially baked chocolate-chunk cookies (lots of them!) along with my various surprise items of shock-n-awe and/or uncontrollable laughter. In this reaction Jodi never failed; she was undefeated against me at 8 — 0. But her box sat there in a living room chair all morning, all afternoon, and into the evening. I could not muster the courage to open what should’ve been a sensational Cloud-9, Made-my-day moment… that instead would make all the life-long memories very different than intended.
Around six or seven PM, I don’t remember exactly, with Mom nearby I opened the box. There were eight to ten containers of big cookies, a book she knewI would love reading (she was spot-on, 10x better than Robin Hood’s second arrow through his first arrow), and then the real kicker; another envelope with her handwriting.
Out of all the surprizzles she included in this, her last shipment to me, this one in particular item/envelope evoked the most intense mixed emotions I have experienced in my life to-date. Forgive me, but to fully understand its profound euphoric and devastating impact on me, it requires some past context.
One afternoon in June when I was out running errands she called my cell. I always have the car stereo semi-blasting (not), playing my many favorite songs from several genres. This one time she called me while driving—then I pulled over of course for public safety reasons—and after 3-4 rings and her call almost ready to go to my voicemail greeting, I caught her just in time! However, I had not had a chance to mute/turn-off my loud music. Hence, she immediately heard this song (we both love) blaring on my stereo CD’s. Try to listen to its entirety and lyrics:
My Hat Burglar has or had an exquisite talent for imagining, creating, and manifesting serendipitous, life-long moments and memories for everyone around her, especially those she adored and loved most. For example, my heart-wrenching, gut-punch special envelope with cinematic directorship of exactly how we would part after finally meeting in person after a long, trouble-making, breathtaking weekend with sore face-cheeks from too much smiling, on top of sore ribs from laughing non-stop, she included this:
Ouch… just ouch. Eery. Are you fucking kidding me!
“They say crying makes the heart lighter.”
If that is true, then my heart is weightless; it is gone missing… with her. The rest of this earth-shattering, upside down, euphorically crushing, unfair life, for me, will NEVER be the same until my last breath. This painful emptiness, why? How?
— Photos below of Jodi, my Hat Burglar, added July 12, 2023 —
Jodi and Pudge, her youngest son.
Dante, the little Schnauzer, grabs & tries to eat Jodi’s hair!
One of the most difficult parts of being a woman is perception. (Really any human, but I can’t speak to the male experience…) Depending on the viewer, I am a wife, sister, mother, lover, administrator, artist, writer, musician, Appalachian kitchen witch, agnostic, Methodist, businesswoman, benefactor, singer, failure, genius, angel, heretic and… and… and… (yeah, I know.)
Yup. I’m all of that. The best people in our lives see the whole person. They love us for everything we have been and will be. Rarely – all too rarely – we meet someone who intrinsically knows the depths and the heights of ourselves almost immediately, recognizes their kindred soul and latches on like a barnacle to the hull of an ancient wooden ship.
The Professor is one of only two men I have ever met who would cackle wildly to Meredith Brooks’ song and immediately look across the room at me and laugh even louder when I’d scream, “SHUT UP!” Somehow, through abuse, trauma, anxiety, depression, loss, love, pain, triumph and even a little surrender, I’m still me. I genuinely LIKE me. I’m never bored and few around me are either.
However, as I say so often in real life, “We’ve all got our shit.” GenX (and those so adjacent they scraped their nose missing the boat) is in an ice skating death spiral with our parents who won’t die and our children who can’t leave. We caretake, we earn, we work, we give, we worry, we shepherd, we beg, we plan… it’s fucking EXHAUSTING. The reward in the end is maybe getting by… but definitely losing our loved ones to death or adulthood.
When we find each other – those who genuinely vibrate on the same frequency as we do – we have a debt to pay to each other. We’ve been holding this shit in check since our mothers were ordering speed out of the back of Cosmo. We were supposed to be “slackers” and instead ended up with the world on our fucking shoulders.
The positive part is that we gave ourselves permission to love without apology. Bands, fandoms, books, D&D, cars… whatever it is, we’ve found ways to connect with our own kind. It’s said all the time online, “Never apologize for your passion.”
You can’t keep rowing if you don’t have a paddle. For some of us, those rowing the heaviest payload, we need more than one paddle.
I have a husband who is absolute perfection. He is smart, kind, a loving and engaged father, a generous lover and he has unending patience. I also have… a Professor. To me, he is the pressure valve on my life. He’s endlessly fascinated with my weirdness and never gets tired of my nonsense. He adores me as his twin flame and – here’s the shocker! – he loves my husband too, because my husband makes me happy. He balances me in a way I’ve never experienced.
So, I have two paddles and I thank the glorious Universe every day for that. I couldn’t figure out for so long why I was going around in circles. Now I know – I needed both. I won’t apologize for it and I won’t tell you that you need to be what I am either. I’m just telling you… if you need two paddles, there’s no medal for going down with your ship. When the waves take you, there will be no one there to tell you that your morals were stellar.
We don’t know what comes next after we go. This could be all there is, but I can tell you with certainty that I know My People. These two men are My People. These two men would bail me out of jail, kiss me when I’m sad, take care of me when I’m old and hold my hair while I throw up. I’m not dyin’ for anyone, but if I had to go, I’d have two hands to hold onto. That’s the definition of a blessing and they’ll pry it out of my cold, dead fingers.
'Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it' - Terry Pratchett
The Professor's Convatorium 