Today 11_21_24. Waiting for some rain to accompany the clouds that fill the sky as I write this. The weatherman even had maps to show the potential. So where is it, I’m thinking.
I read about the world we’re living in every morning as soon as I’m vertical. It’s the first thing I do after I check the incoming mail quickly — since 80 percent of it is commercial or spam — selling something (or scaring you about that backache you woke up with).
Then I focus on certain news websites which are national and international with their material. The world I cover on the NYSD is inevitably the world I live in or have lived in or been influenced by and even been protected by. Living here in New York is the perfect example of feeling like you’re in the middle of it all — the human race of which we all are exclusive entities.
The mainstream media these days has lied to the reader all the way back to Vietnam, JFK, and on and on. It probably is so that “mainstream” daily journalism has always has been “imaginative” throughout the history of the printed word in terms of informing the public of certain political matters.
The result is a habit; no other thought given to it. Writing the script as we go along. When I say “They,” however, it is in a way erasing the whole matter from any measure of truth. This is just what we humans do. And those with the power often are the humans who do it the most.
The Street. I was just on the phone with JH. He was on the street, on the sidewalk somewhere; I was at my desk. Our conversation was interrupted when he began speaking to someone right there where he was. I could assume from the little conversation that it was someone he was giving money to. A delivery? No.
He gave the man a twenty; and then I heard him say, “I can give you a five or a twenty …” Evidently the guy was what used to be called when I was a kid: a beggar. Beggars used to be viewed with disdain or pity. Or kindness depending on the approach. However, as you get older, if you’re listening, you realize beggars come in all forms.
I could tell by listening to their conversation and hearing JH’s normal tone of voice that he knew the man he was talking to (and later he told me that he does know him). The man’s a fixture in the area on Madison Avenue primarily, above midtown, the domestic upper blocks. He’s not a young man, maybe just beyond middle-age, as JH described him.
The neighbors all know him and aside from his needs which he requests the cash for (what he intakes as much as possible), he’s at times very helpful in keeping the streets copasetic for the neighbors, many of whom you’ve read about and even seen on the NYSD one time or another. In other words, in the scheme of things this man is part of “the neighborhood,” a totally natural role to play.
Just before JH’s call I’d been reading some dispatches about the current situations across the world, including the effect of the re-emergence of Donald Trump to the Presidency; and other subjects I have always followed by habit, such as the Financials, as well as the general trends in our behavior.
I tend to read “Comments” after articles that are interesting, where opinions are varied and credible according to your own mind. The personality is inevitable; and its power personally observable. And there is always much to learn for one’s own edification.
At this time in my life I have already learned what I need to know (and keep knowing), but ultimately there is always more and new that comes with Time and Change.
We are most definitely in one of those Moments in our history, and in many ways. Many of us tend to ignore most of it. Others, such as myself, literally feel compelled to keep reading. Although our amazing “progress” technologically is now competing with the “drug’s” — including the cell phone — effect on us and our presence. This has happened in less than one generation; simply a natural outcome in the 21st century.
