Tag: Reclaiming the Family

The Great Sorting

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The powers that be are working to reshape the world.  It will no longer be an old-fashioned analog model where people can find their own place in the world and cobble together a life that suits their individual talents and preferences.  No, this new model is a quantized arrangement.  There are only a few allowable choices for profession, school, sexuality, race, religion, and only one choice for political party and belief system.  And that’s only the start.  Soon there will only be one kind of car, one kind of heating system and one kind of bathroom and kitchen.  And the power company will tell you if you’ve used too much power for your car or the air conditioner (if they even allow A/C to exist anymore).  And the city will tell you if you’ve taken too long a shower or flushed the toilet too many times.

But where it really gets tricky is if you aren’t from the right family and didn’t go to the right college but you still want to have a normal life.  You know, like having a wife and kids.  Well, that’s sort of a problem.  Because they don’t want just anybody having kids.  You’ve got to have the right pedigree and the right mindset.  Kids are expensive and it takes a village to raise them so unless you’re the kind of person the village approves of, you’ll just be messing up the orderliness of the hive.  So, the mechanism they’ll use is to make it almost impossible to be able to afford kids unless you’re the right kind of person.

It’ll cost a fortune to buy a house and it’ll cost a fortune to send them to good schools and even feeding and clothing them, unless you’re an illegal immigrant, will cost an arm and a leg.  So, many people, especially young men are just giving up.  It’s just not worth the effort.

Well, the alternative is family helping out with providing a place to live until a house is affordable and providing resources for a down payment and maybe foregoing luxuries like vacation homes and expensive toys to provide help with medical expenses and other incidentals that are bound to come along.  And also providing advice and contacts for the young.

And in the past, I’ve kidded about opening up my own match-making business but I think it’s a real need that exists.  Women especially could get involved by finding eligible girls who wants to get married and have kids.  Sure, I know there are all kinds of dating services and maybe some of them are selective enough to help serious, normal men and women find mates.  But relatives and friends are still a valuable source for finding a man or woman for someone looking to start a family.

It may seem like this whole thing is a silly topic.  But I think it’s serious enough to think about.  There is a great contraction already in the works.  If you want your family to survive it then you’re going to have to provide some extra help to make it work.  Now, some people probably don’t care.  A cheap apartment, a streaming service and a small government check will keep things going until your health gives out and then there’s euthanasia so what’s all the fuss?  The path of least resistance is the preferred route for some of the young.  The government is just making the choice easier.

But for those of us who want a future that includes a fulfilling human life for our descendants then it’s time to take a hand in what happens to your kids and their kids.  Lend a hand.  Or go extinct.

22AUG2023 – Scenes from a Family Gathering

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Christmas Cooking, Sony A7 III, Sony 90mm f\2.8 macro lens

Driving from a rural area toward a megalopolis is almost always a frustrating experience.  The closer you get to the heart of darkness, the worse the traffic becomes and the more likely it is that you will accidentally cross the event horizon and be sucked in, never to break free of the bumper-to-bumper traffic of the black hole collapse.  Or so it seems to me.

By comparison driving in the reverse direction, away from the beast, feels like a continuously increasing sense of relief as the road and the entrances become less and less congested and the craziest of the homicidal drivers are left behind or at least no longer have the traffic density needed to ensure maximum mayhem.

Now all of that was true yesterday as I arrived and departed from the party that I travelled to.  But despite the tension of defying the human density gradient around the suburbs of Gotham City I was sorry that the party couldn’t have been extended indefinitely.

Everything about the gathering was congenial.  It was almost the entire family.  And that’s no mean feat.  We are many and we are scattered much more than in the past.  And Sunday is a tough day for travelling.  Saturday being the optimal day to allow for recovery before work resumes.

And everyone there was splendidly sociable.  The talk was the usual mixture of family events, politics, current events and reminiscing about crazier things and planning for crazier things.  And I learned things that I had never known about people I know very well.  And I saw what the youngest generation is starting to look like when they socialize.  And despite all the dire warnings and predictions they seemed quite healthy and normal.

Of course, food is always a highly important component of one of these shindigs and the hostess was extremely wise in her choices and provisioning.  There were several completely different themes with respect to the menu and there was never any danger of running out of the favorites which is always comforting.  I will admit that I no longer make the impact on the buffet table that I used to.  And that is necessary.  I wouldn’t have survived my former exploits as a trencherman.  But I still grazed high and low and tried a bit of everything.  Wonderful.

But the highlight is when the old bulls stagger into a corner, collapse into a circle of chairs and start pontificating about what’s wrong with the world and what we should do about it.  And eventually we come to agreement that things are going to go to hell no matter what we say or do and then we come to agreement that at least the world has us in it to make it a world worth living in.  Now this was what I remember when the old bulls were my father’s and my grandfather’s generations laying down the law and telling us what was wrong with my generation.  And now, heaven help me, I’m at my grandfather’s age and making my last speeches before shuffling off the stage permanently.  What a strange thing time is.

And just in time the cake and coffee are served and we lapse into a warm glow of caffeine and pastry ingredients.  And all too soon it’s time to go.  We need to leave before it’s too late to make the drive back.  But of course, there is at least a half hour of goodbyes, to each and every one.  Back slapping and hugs and hand shakes for one and all and then last-minute details remembered and plans for the next gathering.  And then we’re on the road and headed home.  But the glow from the party is still with us.  We talk about what we’ve heard and seen.  We talk about those who couldn’t make it and those who are gone.  But it’s all a happy feeling.  A good feeling.

The country and the world have gone straight to hell.  There’s no denying it.  But good things still exist.  And the best of those things is family, is the humanness of family.  The ties that bind and the hope for a future and the precious, priceless treasure of the young in our midst.

The world is not all ruin and depravity.  There is hope.  And I can see it when we get together.

29JUL2023 – OCF Update

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Hazy, hot and humid.

July!

So today I have the sixteen year old grandson here.  Now I have to up my game.  Sixteen is an island and nobody from off of that island can crack the code.  Will I have to play video games?  Do I have the reflexes do I have the brain cells left?  We’ll see.

Needless to say some part of the day will be a black out period on the site.  But I also expect the day to be shorter.  No one can expect to keep a sixteen year old’s attention except with other sixteen year olds.  But I’ll do my best.

Sixteen.  A fraught age.  At that age nothing I did involved coherent thought.  So many stupid people.  So many stupid ideas.  Just surviving the age was a minor miracle.  But that was a more forgiving age.  Social media did not exist.  All our sins and stupidities, for the most part, faded into nothingness.  Today they’ll nail you on a cross for anything or nothing.

But it’ll be good.  The torch is being passed.  With the abandonment of the European Americans by the federal government it behooves all of us to marshal our resources to boost our children and grandchildren out of the wreckage of the middle class and give them a fighting chance.  And just letting them know they’ve got a family that cares whether they live or die is a part of that.

So today will be interesting.  Hopefully we’ll shoot some pool, watch some bad super hero movies, eat some junk food and who knows maybe even talk.

See you around.

Guest Contributor – War Pig – 16JUL2023 – Grandchildren

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Great plan and very worth while. Since my grandson’s father died young, I became the masculine figure in his life growing up. I took him to many firsts. His first fish caught, teaching him to shoot, the first squirrel shot, then cooked, kindergarten “graduation”, elementary graduation, high school then college graduation. The first time his team won a football game in juniot high then high school. His first big job out of college. Great memories to take with me when the black camel kneels at my door.

It is said you die twice. The first time is when your heart beats its last, and the second is the last time someone thinks of you. I have tried to place myself in as many good memories as I could.

 

 

Seven

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Six hours of Godzilla movies, some lime ices, two hours of swimming, a couple of pounds of spaghetti and meatballs, an apple pie and a quart of vanilla ice cream.  Apparently, that equals the optimal day when you’re a seven-year-old boy.  At least in one case.  Now I’m not seven.  And when I was seven, I’m guessing I would have preferred six hours of Universal Classic Monster Movies and maybe I’d have gone with blueberry pie in that line up.  But I definitely remember most of the vibe in that set of choices.

And so, I set up the itinerary exactly as specified by my guest.  And it was swell.  Now don’t get me wrong.  I would have preferred six fewer hours of Godzilla and maybe a ribeye steak would have been higher up on my list than spaghetti today for instance but bonding with the grandkids is an item very close to the top item on my list of priorities.  And because when you have several grandsons and they all differ in their preferences about everything including activities, foods, desserts and movies it sort of behooves you to divide and conquer.  So, I’ve instituted a separate day for each of them to spend the day with me and Camera Girl.  And on that day, they get to pick the activities, entertainment, food and desserts.  And they even get to decide when it’s over.

And it works.  Without his brothers or parents there, each kid gets to call the shots and be the king.  No one tells him to eat his vegetables or finish everything on his plate.  No one says six hours of bad movies is too much or says to get out of the pool because we have to pick somebody up from something or other.  And he even gets the chance to discuss with a supposed grown man whether Godzilla would beat King Kong or T. Rex or Indominus Rex or the Mosasaurus and why and under what circumstance.  And how Godzilla can have radioactive fire but somehow it doesn’t kill King Kong.  And he has to do it with a straight face.

And he can even eat his dinner while watching tv on the couch and not have to do any chores all day and go home as late as he wants.

But it’s also a good deal for me.  I can sort of remember caring about, “Who would win?”.  Sure, maybe it wasn’t Godzilla.  Maybe it was a Roman legion versus Alexander’s Macedonian phalanx.  Or Superman versus Thor.  Or whatever ridiculous thing I imagined that day.  But the point is I sort of recall the feeling.  Some very old neurons fire off a few synapses that I haven’t used in sixty years or so and it’s fascinating.  I almost remember being that age.  I almost remember the feelings.  And it’s pretty great.

I’m working this program youngest to oldest.  So, as we move up the line things should get more and more familiar.  Or will they?  Is nineteen any closer to who I am than seven?  I don’t know.  Each page in the book of life is an island.  A snapshot.  All of them are long ago.  But I expect to enjoy each chance to delve into their present and my past at the same time.

And ultimately, I’m trying to build a little immortality.  I still remember the times my grandfather came to visit me as I was growing up.  He understood that public relations with your descendants was terribly important.  So, he did it right.  He brought us out for the biggest, greasiest triple cheeseburgers at Wesson’s and he always had chewing gum when he came over and he always took us for a drive to the most beat up neighborhoods in NYC where he knew the most bizarre characters like a jeweler that he worked for as an armed guard.  And he always had stories about his times as a cop or when he was the mayor’s bodyguard or a private detective.  Or when he shot it out with armed robbers from the running board of a commandeered taxi.

And because he spent the time with us, in a sense, he’s still alive even forty some-odd years after his death.  And if I tell his stories to my grandkids then maybe he lives another hundred years.  So that’s my game.  I’m working on my immortality.  And I’m paying forward things that were given to me long ago.  What’s more valuable than that?

Father’s Day 2023

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Ah, Father’s Day, that most inexplicable holiday in the calendar.  Children, wives and the fathers themselves walk around that day with confused expressions on their faces.  What are they all supposed to be doing, or feeling or even pretending to be feeling?

Everyone understands Mother’s Day.  The bond between mothers and their children is self-explanatory.  Even the act of becoming a mother to a child is one of self-sacrifice and love.  Even husbands are unable to be completely selfish on Mother’s Day.  We’re forced to acknowledge that our role in the circle of life is the easier side.  And we do.  Every man in a good marriage honors his wife on Mother’s Day and tries to show some class on that day.  And so, he encourages his children to gather around his wife and celebrate the nurturing nature of mothers.

But Father’s Day?  I mean, we try to be good fathers.  We spend time with our kids and teach them things and show affection.  But do we want to be applauded and be fussed over about our role in the family?

Honestly?  No.

What we’d prefer is to get up late, have a nice big breakfast, watch some really bad movie or go fishing or read a book then have a steak dinner and then watch another bad movie and go to bed.  Of course, this leaves room for variation.  Maybe instead of fishing you’d rather work on restoring an old car or head to the gun range or have a catch with your grandson or something.  And I even know some fathers who aren’t happy unless they’re doing home repair projects on their day off.  There’s a natural range.

One of my favorite fatherhood memories was taking my son to the north shore of Lake Champlain to fish for pike and bass.  It was a long trip and we didn’t know any of the local details for fishing so we tried a row boat which turned out to be a dicey thing on a lake with a particularly strong current.  But we caught some fish and ate some bad food and spent a memorable weekend together as father and son.

I guess it’s natural for us to think of our own fathers and try to figure out how we stack up.  My own father had six sons and he spent most of his time with us trying to stop us from hitting each other quite so much.  He was one of the most aggravated individuals I can remember.  He was just outnumbered was his problem.  But deep down I think he liked us most of the time.  And since I feel that about him, I would conclude that he was a successful father.

So really none of us get to decide if we were successful at fatherhood.  It’s the kids who get the last word (although the wives probably would like to add a footnote or two as usual).  So, if after they’re grown, they’re still talking to you and if from time to time they still talk about any of the things you did together, then a case can be made for you as a good father.  Anyway, that’s my take.

Men and Women – The Fish Pond Rorschach Test

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I have known Camera Girl for about forty-eight years.  We met on a beach while each of us was skipping out on our respective high schools.  Physical attraction was the initial force that brought us together but over the years, we have interacted to the point where, we know each other as well as a man and a woman possibly can.  And yet our motivations, methods and objectives are, if anything, even closer to being diametrically opposed now than they were at the beginning.

I like to think that I base my plans on a somewhat analytical approach to accomplishing my objectives.  So, let’s say Camera Girl tells me that she wants a fish pond.  Before committing to such a project, I would first look at the pros and cons of such a goal.  I would ask my client what are the objectives?  How many fish and what type are desired?  What’s the budget for construction and maintenance?

Then I would look at the various options for constructing the pond.  Should it be a liner or a solid shell?  Should I build it or hire a contractor?  Where should it be set up with respect to the sun?  What safety considerations need to be weighed?  When does it need to be completed by?  What additional items (like a bench or some plants) are also required?  What modifications will need to be made to the property (power line, water line) to accommodate the pond?  And finally, how will the pond be impacted on by the surrounding wildlife?

Camera Girl, on the other hand, cleans out an old muck bucket that she has lying round the yard, buys a dozen “shiners” at PetSmart and tells me she wants me to buy a “solar” fountain on Amazon.com for $12.98.

I find this very disconcerting.  I explain to her that the “shiners” will probably die in the bucket over the course of the summer, the fountain is a piece of crappy plastic that will probably stop working after a few weeks and she’ll have to replace fish and water every few weeks.

This perturbs her not the least.  Our granddaughter will be coming over tomorrow and they like looking at the fish in the bucket for a few minutes every day.  And none of my arguments address this goal.

For she knows that if I were to undertake this epic project by the method that I favor, it would involve weeks of planning and months of installation.  Just digging the hole would take a week or two.  So, from her point of view my method has no upside.  A pond that was finished in September is worse than no pond at all.  The weeks when our granddaughter would be without the fish to interact with would be an epic failure.  Because by September she’ll be entering kindergarten and no longer around to enjoy the mega-pond that I would create.

So, shaking my head and grumbling under my breath I look up this magnificent “fountain” and find a plethora of companies selling this same crappy plastic fountain and select the one that will deliver it for a total of $7.53.  This is my consolation.  I paid five bucks less for a piece of junk that probably won’t last through June.

But when all is said and done.  She has logic on her side.  That muck bucket pond is almost an optimized solution to the mission.  A little girl will sprinkle some fish food into it and watch the fish come up to get it.  And even if the fountain stops working and even if the racoons and the herons eat all of the fish on a weekly basis it will have served its purpose.

But my pond would be much better.

A Splendid Mother’s Day Post

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Kudos to Menagerie over at Conservative Treehouse for a truly great post on motherhood.  Just reading it I decided I better be nicer to Camera Girl today  Happy Mother’s Day to all the real moms out there.  You deserve it.

 

“Motherhood. Contrary to ridiculous claims otherwise, it starts with being a woman. Which starts with XX chromosomes and can never be changed.

It didn’t take God long at all in his creation process to get to the male, female, mother, and father part. I can see nothing confusing in his words. “

Guest Contributor – Nostradumbass – 25FEB2023 – Rant on a Rant

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A Rant for February Twenty Fifth

I so wanted this post to be true, but the main ingredient for the actions you state require the “parent” to actually be a parent…

just a start on commenting about this post:

If you have children, teach them what you want them to believe.

There are a good amount of teenage and welfare mothers that are teaching their children exactly what they believe, that being it is someone else’s responsibility to provide a home, food, clothing and health care, and it should not involve any costs or labor on their part. I think this lesson is being taught effectively.

Show them how to achieve the things they want.

The lack of principle, the ease of acquiring the largess of American good will is how the children of these mothers is shown.

The problem is now that the people that raised this version of parents were never actually parents to begin with. I’m not saying that this is true for all the current crop of parents, or even that they are the majority of the current generation, but there are enough that are, that they become “models” for the next generation.

The question becomes “Why should I work and bring home less than what the government will give me for doing nothing?”. That seems to be the current model.

A Rant for February Twenty Fifth

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Winter has reappeared here in Dunwich.  The estimate is for up to eight inches of snow on Monday night.  Looks like I’ll finally break out the snowblower this winter after all.  But not yet.  Today I look out the window and a light snow is falling.  A fraction of an inch has accumulated and it gives the environs the correct veneer of New England winter to make the picture fit the calendar.

I read the headlines and what do I find?  All the same boring nonsense.  Inflation continues to impoverish us.  The Ukrainian war continues to impoverish us and kill Ukrainians.  Our incompetent federal government continues to impoverish our descendants unto the fourth generation and our monstrous Deep State continues to spy on and entrap Americans in false flag operations of their own manufacturing.  Really, it’s horror and tedium in almost equal measures.

But none of that is my topic for the day.  What I want to write about is the practical course of action for our people.  And that is to find the actions that you can take locally and do them.  Don’t think about doing them.  Don’t talk about doing them.  DO THEM!!!!

If you have children, teach them what you want them to believe.  Teach them by doing, not talking.  Show them how to achieve the things they want.  Help them in school.  Warn them about the propaganda they will hear in the classroom.  Help them to figure out their abilities and counsel them on figuring out what trade or profession they should get trained in.

And teach them patience and perseverance.  Keep them from picking up bad habits like wasting their time on frivolous on-line activities.  And socialize them.  Make sure they are comfortable interacting with their peers, the opposite sex and with adults.  Force them out of their comfort zone.    AND TEACH THEM TO WORK!!!!

Get involved in your community.  Find out how things get done.  Find out who runs the local government.  Volunteer for something with which you have some expertise.  Or if that’s not possible volunteer for something that anyone can help with.  Towns and local governments are always looking for help.  Pick something that can make your environment better.  There are committees for school, zoning, budget, infrastructure, etc.  Meet the local Republican committee and find out if they’re useful or useless.  And maybe even run for some very minor local office or position.  But at the very least find out who the people are who want to run your town or district.  And for pity’s sake at least make sure you vote for the ones who are least bad. Get to know what the problems are in your local area and decide if these are things that can be fixed and figure out whether they will make your life unbearable.

So this is me saying grab a hold of your life and your world and make it change in ways that make it better for you and yours.  You can’t fire Joe Biden or end affirmative action or lower the federal deficit.  But you can give your kids a shot at flourishing in whatever environment they’re in.  You can find out who really runs your town.  You can find out what kind of people they are.  You absolutely need to find out who is running your kids’ school and you damn well better find out what their teachers are like.

So, there’s my cabin fever rant for today.  Ahhh, I feel better already.