May 27, 2024. Memorial Day. Written on a beautiful and bright Saturday afternoon in Manhattan with temps in the early 80s. And especially quiet all over town. Oh, there are still people out on the streets, not crowds but not in a hurry.
As is my habit, I spend the first couple of hours of waking time checking the incoming email and then check my News outlets. Online. The first is the gotta-glance at the picture-rich homepage of the New York Post. Next come a few news pages with the subjects of financial/economic.
Next come the opinion pages about the subjects of interest. These are important to me because I not only read other Opinions but often learn about someone or something or some place that is important.
From my reading:
Cankerpuss, May 24, 2024 at 11:52 am:
A righteous people would have no tolerance for a corrupt government.
The government as it exists is a bright reflection of the people it governs.The American people have become slothful, decadent, lazy, greedy, stupid, selfish, ignorant, immoral, amoral and did I say greedy? Oh yeah, I said greedy.
Anyone who thinks a politician will fix this is a fool. Trump won’t fix anything if by some miracle he retakes the White House.
To fix what ails us we must first fix ourselves inwardly. From there everything else would fall in line.
Twill never happen in my limited time remaining on this big blue marble.
Jarek, May 24, 2024 at 12:19 pm:
Matthew 5:13
Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.
Jarek continues: There is no replacement for morality, no system of economics or government that can stand in its stead. Good people are what makes good systems work and even bad systems tolerable.
Returning to my thoughts: It’s an “iffy” world. I grew up in an iffy world and have lived in one all my life. I firstly attribute that to the parents who, it turns out, were both also brought up in iffy worlds. And brought that mindset with them in forming a family. If I don’t, if I do; If it is, if it’s not. This is just Nature.
There’s a news website that I read which also includes video film moments of animals, fish, birds and even bees. ALL of them are short moments — 15 to 50 seconds — for all of the aforementioned creatures are onscreen, in their lives. Here’s a taste …
A girl, her horse, her dog & the sunset 🌅 pic.twitter.com/7u7UpQJJZ3
— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) May 23, 2024
All of them are extraordinary just watching the way they live and move. Among each other and among their neighbors. Their offspring immediately follows them, and within days and weeks, they grow into sensible creatures who also have the experience of curiosity and pleasure that we do or learn over the years growing.
All of these creatures seem to be either born with the information or learn it in a matter of weeks and maybe but not frequently, months. All the things that we creatures learn over the years of growing up. If we do. Grow up.
The “news” that I read — including tv and print media — is deeply depressing. It’s the result of the work of Damned Fools. Which is what we all become when we happen to bump into it.
This is nothing new in human history or even contemporary history. We know if we don’t take care of ourselves health-wise we’re risking “injury” in one way or another, or even death. We don’t all know this because a lot of us are also “damned fools” and always have been.
In writing all this down I suddenly realized that my own preferred and favorite moments in my days are watching people in my neighborhood. It is a completely residential neighborhood except two large girls school and a small but beautiful park by the river. Over the last few months, or maybe years, I’ve got into the habit of when I get up from my desk where I live a great deal of my conscious life (gladly), I go to the balcony and watch the street traffic.
Being residential, the majority of the traffic is commercial of all kinds in the working hours of the day. That invites a great combination of humanity from school children, pre-school children, all the way up and down all around to the guys picking up the masses (and masses) of trash that the neighborhood puts out constantly.
But on a nice sunny day, like today, a trip to the balcony just to watch the world go by leads me to see just the opposite of what I was discussing in earlier paragraphs. A few stories above, I’m looking from an almost distant view so that the details of what I see are general.
Firstly, the variety is mainly residents of the apartment buildings and the children from the schools. It’s a holiday weekend and there are a lot of empty parking spaces on both sides of the avenue. That means people are away. And the mothers and the mother’s helpers are pushing the carriages — and often the fathers are doing the same (and frequently on phone while pushing the pram). They are all taking the children to the nearby park playground. Add to the promenade the dogwalkers and owners walking their dogs.
This is what I focus on observing, although normally — instead of on a holiday weekend — there are the inclusive characters from deliveries, repairs, laundry and pizza messengers moving about. They are the background to the action that I enjoy watching.
It is the way they walk, which varies as widely as the personality. It has to do with age but it really has to do with The Beginning of each character in my purview.
I also watch specifically to take in the different gaits, thousands of them. Because that initially gives this writer an idea of “where” they came from emotionally. And how they dress. Because the way we walk is the only way we walk. Others can imitate it but one’s gait is the human version of a book cover. About a life, an individual. And from that purview, it is beautiful. And it’s important to keep one’s eyes on the beautiful, especially on these sunny days of ours.
