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I have no particular solution to this problem, which is not even really a problem, just sort of a depressing state of affairs, so I’m just bitching or, as so many people say nowadays, just sayin’.

I have noticed, in recent weeks, a new tendency in the posts on my facebook page, a new direction, a new trend.  I’m not talking about the Buzzfeed clickbait IQ tests for morons, like “How many faces can you see in this picture?” or “Name a film that doesn’t have the letter T in the title?,” even though I feel stupider every time I even respond to one of those.  I’m not talking about those people who constantly post pictures of their children.  I’m a parent. I understand the urge.  And kids are, generally, pretty cute.  Ditto with cute animal videos.  It’s a bit much, but  they are cute and there’s no law that says you have to look at all of them.

I’m certainly not talking about the birthday greetings, which is one of my favorite features on facebook.  Everybody gets one day a year when they are the most important  person of all your friends, and that makes for a pretty cool holiday.  And how the hell else would you know, if facebook weren’t there to tell you?

No, this one isn’t even facebook’s fault.  In recent weeks, I have noticed an alarming number of people announcing medical problems -everything from an infected foot (my aunt, who is 100, so it’s not such a minor thing) up to actual death (nobody I knew in person but, still, an unpleasant reminder that life is limited)

Maybe it’s because I’ve got a lot of old people among  my 1500 odd friends.  Maybe it’s because everybody is related to somebody who is old.  Maybe it’s because it’s just been a bad couple of weeks.  Maybe people are just becoming more and more comfortable with  putting  every aspect of their lives online.

Which is O.K.  Illness, injury and death are important  life  events and all of your friends want to know.  But pictures of your hospital room are not terribly interesting, and close ups of your post-op scars can be a bit gross.  Just sayin’.

I’m writing a book about an old hippie guy, who grew up in the American Midwest, and went on a journey of enlightenment that took him to the Czech Republic, China, Amsterdam, Egypt and a couple of other places.  No, it’s not about me, although we’re about the same age and have plenty of similarities.  I’ve never been to China.

Anyway, this raises the question: What is enlightenment?

Let’s look at this etymologically.  Enlightenment means the act of making lighter.  Lighter means more light, but light has more than one  meaning.  It can be the opposite of dark or the opposite of heavy.

So,  on the one hand, enlightenment can be like tuning on the light in a room.  You go from stumbling around and bumping your shin on a coffee table to being able to see everything in an instant.  It’s a good metaphor.  We say “To shine a bit of light on the subject” or “to see things in a different light.”  Light is clear, so we have clarification.

We go through that process of enlightenment a little bit every morning, and have since the dawn of mankind, being diurnal creatures.  We see the dawn as a beginning, we say “a new day is dawning” whenever there’s a new invention or human civilization takes a new turn of any kind.

On the other hand, to enlighten can mean to make less heavy.  To take a weight off your shoulders, to disencumber yourself.  It’s what we’re talking about when  we say “Lighten up.”  Certainly, it’s a good thing.  If you want to strengthen your legs for running a marathon, you might put weights around your ankles.Then, when you take them off, it is as if you have wings on your feet.  (I’ve never trained like that, but it sounds right)  Is the key to enlightenment just lightening up, losing all your excess baggage?

I don’t know.  Which is fair enough, as I haven’t found enlightenment yet.  I’m still looking.  So is my friend, the one the book is about.

I had a very nice day, today.  Got up early and was out at shortly after 6 a.m.  Helena needed to drive Isabel back to nature school, after her two day break in the middle for her ballet performance.  My presence really wasn’t necessary but, since I have no Tuesday classes, I couldn’t refuse when asked, without being a jerk and a bad parent.

It was a lovely ride down, not much traffic at that time in the morning, it was a fairly sunny day and it was a scenic drive, uphill and downhill, past farms and small villages, to Lake Orlik, about 90 kilometers south of Prague.  Once we turned off the main road we drove about 10 k through some heavily forested land, and over the dam which forms the lake.

We didn’t spend too much time there when we dropped her off, chatted with her teacher for less than 5 minutes and we were on the road back.  The difference in traffic level was immediately obvious and by the time we got back to Prague, it was a full blown traffic jam.  I am so glad I don’t drive.

Anyway, H dropped me off where she works and I headed home. Picked up the free paper on the Metro, as I do, just to do the Sudoku puzzle, I am totally addicted to those, I see one all blank and just begging to be filled in and I can'[t resist, and realized immediately that I’d left my glasses in my car.  I considered calling her and going back, but decided against it.  I keep a spare pair at home.  One ear bar is broken, so I wouldn’t wear them to go out, but they’re fine for browsing facebook.

Sam got home from school about 10:30 because he had a football game.  I think it’s kind of nuts to let him out of school to play football, in fact I think it’s kind of irresponsible for the organizers to have a game on a school day, but all he missed out on was a field trip, and the decision had been made before it ever got to me.

I let him go by himself, but went later, and got there a little before half time.  They lost.  It was still a pleasant  day, but clouds were starting to gather and there was a bit of a breeze blowing.

Went home, made some lunch,  browsed facebook, and it was time to head off to my poetry reading, the last one until September.  It was a good one, but not heavily attended.  I particularly liked the story about the boy who got his hand bit while petting a lion.

Barack Obama is a fucking genius.  He just got rid of 5 of the prisoners at Guantanamo, who were being held without any legal justification whatsoever, got an American POW released, who was the only American POW in Afghanistan, which clears the way for a total U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and left the Republicans spluttering and whining that they weren’t notified 30 days in advance, that Obama is negotiating with terrorists, and that it was Bowe Bergdahl’s own fault he got caught, and so on, giving credence to the widely held liberal belief that if Barack Obama came out in favor of breathing, Republicans would all turn purple and die.

Bowe Bergdahl: Free at Last

It is an experiment I urge him to make.

As to the 30 day thing, if he had notified Congress 30 days in advance, they would have found a way to block it, because OBAMA, and Bowe Bergdahl would still be in prison.  In  principal, it’s not a bad idea for Presidents to be required to inform Congress of stuff. In practice, however, you are dealing with a congress whose #1 goal (they have said this themselves) is to make sure the President does not succeed.  So, in principle is one thing.  In practice, fuck them.

In business, in sports, or in military ventures, one important rule is that once something has succeeded, you stop arguing about how it was done.  Success trumps going by the book, every time.  Captain Kirk knew that.  Barack Obama knows that.  Republicans even know that, but they’re bitching anyway.

There is another example from American history, where Congress, and in fact the President, were not notified until after the fact.  When Thomas Jefferson sent future president James Monroe and Robert Livingston to Paris, their mission was to buy New Orleans.  They went ahead and bought the whole Louisiana territory, for peanuts.  Jefferson had sense enough to just say ‘Good job.’  A few people in congress complained, but they came around.

The negotiating with terrorists charge is bullshit, too.  If the terrorists are holding somebody you care about, you fucking negotiate.  The alternative is to just leave your guy there.  That is, in effect, what the Republicans are saying:  Obama should have left an American soldier behind.

It is staggering.   They are against healthy school lunches, against clean air, against health  care, against paying taxes (if you are rich) against pretty much everything except polluting the environment and starting wars.

‘No negotiating with terrorists’ makes a nice slogan, but in reality it’s a policy that’s going to be broken every time.

Reagan sure did it, with far less justification.

As for their charge that Bowe Bergdahl brought it on himself, because he went off the base, well, shit does happen in wartime.  He  wouldn’t have been captured if he hadn’t been in Afghanistan in the first place.  If you want to blame somebody for the deaths of soldiers in Afghanistan, even those soldiers who were trying to rescue Bergdahl, the blame lies squarely on George W. Bush.

If we want to prevent things like this happening in the future, we need to stop starting wars.  I have my quarrels with Obama but, on that score, he hasn’t done too badly.

This appeared on my facebook page a couple of days ago, as things like this appear from time to time.  And, I had a good laugh, as I do.  A smug, condescending laugh.  I would feel a bit awkward about writing that, but I am reasonably certain that nobody who makes spelling mistakes like that is reading my blog.  In fact, they probably don’t read much of anything, which is my point.

Of course, there are many different kinds of spelling mistakes, and they aren’t all comical.  Sometimes it’s just a typo.  If someone writes “I talked to my sixter today,” Occam’s Razor says they probably just hit the wrong key.  Then there are things like your v. you’re, there, their, and they’re, its and it’s.  It’s important to know  the differences, misspelling these can actually lead to confusion, but I must confess I occasionally slip up.  Then there are words that are seriously hard to spell.  A person may misspell hypocritical or subconsciously and still be making a valid point, although it does indicate that they are ignoring the squiggly red marks.  Ignoring the squiggly red marks is like ignoring a ‘Road Closed’ sign. When it turns out there was a good reason for the notification, you are seriously going to feel like a dumbass.  I have personal experience with that one.

But, when someone makes a mistake like ‘lack toast intolerant’ or ‘die of beaties’ (or my personal all-time favorite, which was not on this list: low self of steam) it is clear to the educated reader that the writer has probably never seen the word in print. They are going strictly on what they have heard. If they’ve never seen those words in print, it means they don’t read very much, and have probably formed their opinions based on what their friends have said or, worse, Rush Limbaugh. If that’s how they’ve formed their opinions, there is no need for anybody to take their opinion seriously. 

So, bad spellings (that certain kind of bad spellings) are useful in monitoring a conversation.  In the same way that a steaming pile of  grizzly bear poop lets the hiker know that it is advisable to take a different path, when you see ‘die of beaties’ in a comment, you know you should not take that person’s medical advice.