4279 - 9/11

It's hard to believe it's been 20 years since the towers fell. So much has changed and yet nothing has changed. I still sit at the same kitchen table where I watched the days events unfold that fateful morning. The kitchen TV is a modern flatscreen now, but it still sits on top of the same indestructible old Toshiba microwave. Spot had died in June of 2001 and I don't think we'd gotten Petey yet. We had just started getting involved with Dalmatian Rescue. I was still working and was very busy. I remember flying to Germany to work on an ad campaign for Siemens a few weeks after 9/11 and feeling that the world had changed forever.

We flew an American flag in front of our house for the rest of the year. Most of our neighbors did too. The country seemed united in a way that seems impossible today. There was a lot of fear in those early days.  I remember buying gas masks after the anthrax scare. They probably wouldn't have done any good, but they made us feel better for a week or so. Everybody was in favor of going to Afghanistan and kicking the Taliban's ass in those early days. It wasn't until we went to Iraq and completely ignored Saudi Arabia, which was always the elephant in the room, that people started having second thoughts about wars in the Middle East. Nobody would have ever believed that we would end up handing Afghanistan back to the very same Taliban twenty years later.

I wonder if we have learned anything during the past twenty years. The world is more of a mess than it ever was and our own country is hopelessly divided. Janet and I used to travel a lot and loved spending time in Paris and Barcelona. I can't think of a single major city where I'd feel safe anymore. I never could have predicted twenty years ago that my favorite place would now be a lonely mountaintop in West Texas. 

I used to go to New York frequently to edit television commercials. I had a lot of free time and visited the Wall Street area several times. Once I took the elevator to the observation deck on top of the South Tower. I took today's picture from the window of my room at the UN Plaza. I never ate at Windows of the World because I was young and couldn't afford it. Those times seem so long ago now. It's almost like I was living in a different universe.

Now I'm retired and would love to live in a world that made sense again. Lots of luck with that. I still think the primary problem is globalism. You can't just take hundreds of different cultures that have developed over thousands of years and just mix them all together. It doesn't work that way. I look for clues in the animal kingdom, but even ducks can be mean and nasty. Humans never were very nice and probably never will be. We have big brains but we'll never last as long as the dinosaurs. We'll probably do something stupid and be extinct in 300 years.

On days like today we always resolve to never forget. We do forget though. Often way too quickly. History is littered with momentous events we've totally forgotten about. I'm not looking for miracles here. I'd just like ten good years with no major problems. OK, let's be optimistic about my long walks. How about fifteen years?

Shadow is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 3762 - Easter

You know something, I don't want to go back to normal. Normal wasn't that good. I'm not typically an optimistic person, but I see a unique opportunity in the days ahead. The world has been given a once in a lifetime chance to wipe the slate clean and start over. Everything has been so fundamentally disrupted that there is no reason to go back to what we were doing before.

Personally, I like the fact that everything has slowed down a bit. Streets are much quieter now. It's rare to hear an airplane overhead. They say crime is down in many cities. Maybe I'm imagining things but people even seem more polite. Who knows. Maybe we should have been staying six feet apart all along.

Easter is a time of rebirth. Why not give it a try. I'll be the first to admit that it won't be easy. If we continue our political bickering here in the United States it will be impossible. Don't the Democrats and the Republicans seem almost irrelevant now? They don't have the answer. It's time to stop blaming each other. The virus isn't Trump's fault or Pelosi's fault. It's a plague. I'd like to see a third person unaffiliated with any party come out of nowhere and capture the country's imagination. Neither party deserves to win at this point.

The problem with starting over is that your idea of a brighter future might be a lot different than mine. What would I do? Probably the same things I've been doing for years. I certainly don't find the answer in government. It's time to start taking personal responsibility for our own lives. Nobody owes you anything. Start eating healthy food. Get outside more. Quit smoking, vaping, and putting anything other than air into your lungs. So many of of our problems are caused by bad lifestyle choices. If we were a healthy nation both physically and mentally, the next few months would be a lot easier.

We need to realize that global pandemics are a consequence of a global economy. We need to think small again. A bunch of small economies, each making what they need for themselves ensures that nobody can bring the entire house of cards tumbling down. I hear people wondering why we don't have enough masks and gowns for doctors when we're the richest country in the world. Duh. We don't make anything anymore. The countries that actually make the masks and gowns have people dying too and are keeping their production for themselves.

It doesn't really matter what things cost if people have secure jobs and there is food on the table. When I was growing up every little town had a factory. We made everything here. Wouldn't you like to have those factories back now? Sure, your TV and sneakers would cost more, but who cares. The world is telling us, "you can pay me now or you can pay me later."

Back in the day it use to cost a lot more to fly, but was your last trip to a business meeting really even necessary? People used to fly me to Germany just to go to meetings. I didn't even speak German. It was silly. Lets get back to basics. Make the things you need. Use the things you need. Develop self-sufficiency as a person and as a country.

I like analogies. It is Easter. Maybe people are dying for our collective sins. We have an opportunity to start over as a society. Call it a resurrection if you will. We got so many things wrong, but there's no reason we can't get it right this time.

Nellie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 3753

Isn't it time we stopped calling this a pandemic and started calling it a plague? It's probably time we stopped blaming people for what has happened too. A plague is a force of nature. Like earthquakes, hurricanes, and volcanic eruptions, I doubt that we'll be able to stop it. Humans have never been very successful at stopping a plague before. Even the medical experts will tell you that "flattening the curve" is a temporary measure at best. If people rebel at being confined before the virus has run its course, the disease will spring up all over again, just like a forest fire that wasn't completely extinguished.

At some point we will have to decide whether preserving the basic fabric of society is more important than saving lives. Maybe we can do both, but there is a breaking point. Civilization can survive with fewer people. It can't survive for long with mass chaos. Nobody is talking publicly about civil unrest, but behind the scenes, I bet leaders in every country are more worried about this than the disease itself. They know people want a return to normalcy and very few are looking forward to Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome becoming our new reality.

I think we have to accept that life will never completely return to normal after this virus has burned itself out. The Black Plague in the 1300's fundamentally changed society. It took 200 years for Europe to fully recover. We are determining what the future will look like right now and I hope we get it right. You simply can't place the entire world on pause for very long and expect a good result.

I hope we are able to determine who is immune to the disease or has developed an immunity very quickly. We need these people to keep the world running. If we can reliably determine who is healthy and who is sick it will become much easier to help everybody. At the moment everyone is a potential carrier of the disease and nobody knows how to stop it.

Right now I'm just a bystander following rules set by people who probably don't have a clue what is really going on. Nobody knows what makes this virus so contagious or how to stop it. Unless someone makes a breakthrough discovery, we are just postponing the inevitable. It's not all bad. I'm actually enjoying the lighter traffic. I can finally get out of my driveway again. Unfortunately, there is no place to go.

I hope we all learn something from this. I've never been a fan of globalism. When the world becomes "too big to fail" what happens when it does fail? I think we are finding this out. We all need to become more familiar with the concept of redundancy. Complex machines like rockets and nuclear reactors usually have built-in redundancy. If the primary system fails, a back up system takes over immediately. So what would a redundant world look like? I think there would be lots and lots of small independent countries that were completely self sufficient. If one country screwed up and failed completely, the others wouldn't be affected and would continue on. Who would be the last ones standing if something really bad happened. Who knows? It could easily be the segment of civilization still living in mud huts.

No answers on anything today. We were still able to take our walk in the park and had a really nice dinner. That's probably enough for one day.

Lexi is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 3684

Whenever something bad happens these days it almost always reminds me of a movie I've already seen. Reality and fiction have become hopelessly blurred together in ways I never would have thought possible a decade ago. When I first started hearing about the coronavirus scare it seemed so much like the movie Contagion that it would be impossible for me to tell which story was real if I didn't already know that Contagion was a movie. In many ways the idea that there is a city in China that is larger than New York City where people routinely eat bat soup and snakes on a stick seems more like fantasy than any movie I've seen. I guess I'm not as well informed as I thought I was. Until a few weeks ago, I didn't even know that the city of Wuhan existed. Sure, I knew about Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong, but Wuhan? Never heard of it.

A pandemic like ebola, bird flu or the coronavirus has to make you wonder about globalism. When anything becomes too big to fail, what happens when it inevitably does fail? When engineers want a failsafe system, they build in a lot of redundancy. When a single system fails, the machine continues to run. We ought to think of the world this way. A lot of independent, self-sufficient economies is a lot safer than a single global economy. We were a lot more resilient as a country when every city had a factory and we were able to make everything we needed ourselves. I think a world where it is not so easy to travel from one country to another is better as well. What is so bad about applying for a visa and planning ahead? The reason we all know about Wuhan today is that it is super easy to just hop on a plane and be anywhere else in the world in a matter of hours.

A guess you can't have it both ways. I'd like to see flying cars and cities on Mars, but I'm still more comfortable in the simpleminded black and white worlds of Have Gun Will Travel and Perry Mason. Old TV westerns make more sense to me than today's news.

Our world may be falling apart, but I find that my own little world usually gets better as soon as I turn off the TV. There is something to be said for concentrating on your immediate surroundings. There is usually plenty there to keep you busy. I ran my usual Saturday errands in the morning and took my walk in the afternoon. Not a lot happened today, but that was fine. An uneventful afternoon is much better than a roof leak.

As my trip to the Davis Mountains draws closer, I'm starting to realize that my knowledge of astronomy is woefully inadequate for conducting star parties at the observatory. I'm reading a lot online these days and spending time looking at star charts. This is no substitute for actually going outside at night, but we haven't had many clear nights lately. The more I read about contemporary astronomy, the more I remember why I chose advertising as a profession. A clear, dark night fills me with wonder, but I don't think I'd have the patience to spend years studying the rotation of galaxies or exploring stellar mass and luminosity.

I hope tomorrow is uneventful as well. A good breakfast and a trip to the gym are all that is on the agenda. That's enough for me.

Bones is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2863

I think Jawbone has pulled the plug on my fitness tracker. It hasn't been saving steps or heart rate data for the past several days. I guess I should have expected this. The company is going bankrupt. They stopped manufacturing fitness trackers over a year ago and don't even answer their phone anymore. Customer service is non-existant. I guess it was only a matter of time before they decided to shut down the servers that sync your data.

It's a shame I'll have to quit using my latest UP band. It hasn't even broken yet. The product quality for these things has always been terrible, but I really like the little tracker. I've had numerous Jawbone trackers, mostly because they inevitably quit working after a year or so. Jawbone used to be really good about replacing defective trackers, but I think they became overwhelmed when their entire customer base started demanding replacement bands. The UP3 is still one of the smallest, least obtrusive activity trackers you can buy. It's easy for me to wear one on my right hand and still wear a watch on my left. I'm going to miss this worthless product.

I used to jokingly tell friends that I should become a product tester for manufacturers. If I really like something it is almost guaranteed to fail. It I hate it, there's a good chance it will become a runaway success. I'm the guy who used to own two Citroën automobiles. Back in the tape era, I used to favor Betamax. Every store I've bought furniture from has gone out of business. While other professional photographers use Nikon and Canon, I have stubbornly stuck with Olympus. It's uncanny how consistently I become fond of unpopular products.

Sadly, my taste for unpopular things even extends to restaurant menus. I stopped to pick up some Thai food for dinner on my way home from the post office this afternoon and discovered that my favorite go-to meal had been removed from the menu. This happens surprisingly often. One of the reasons I don't enjoy my Friday morning breakfast outings as much anymore is that I've never been able to find anything as good as the Migas the little neighborhood restaurant that went out of business made.

We put on Dash's knee brace and protective boots before Janet left for work again. He doesn't seem to want to walk early in the morning anymore, but if I let him wander around the house for a while while I'm eating breakfast, he eventually gets in the mood. When I see him head toward the back door, I'm ready. My coat and Dash's leash are on a chair near the door. I already have my dog walking shoes on, so it only takes a few seconds to hook him up and go. Usually Dash feels like walking while I'm in the middle of breakfast, but that's OK. I just finish my meal when we get back.

I'm not sure if Dash's heart condition is improving, but he certainly is happier now. He gets a can of Castor and Pollux stew in the morning and a can of Hills ID in the evening. We usually walk about 10 AM and he gets a snack early in the afternoon. He still sleeps a lot and doesn't play much anymore, but that's OK too. He's getting old.

There was no work today, so I wrote a letter to my sister. If more people started writing letters and quit depending on their phone, many of the problems we have with hacking and identity fraud would simply go away. A connected world creates a lot of problems. I'm sure my little fitness tracker would still be working fine if it was self contained and didn't have to store all it's information in the cloud. I don't like to depend on a server in California or India. I wish the strawberries I like were raised locally. I wish my clothing was made in a local factory. I'm not a fan of globalism at all. With my track record, this means that globalism is exactly what we'll get.

Pearl is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2639

There weren't any blueberries when I went to the store this weekend, so I substituted blackberries in my morning smoothie today. I think I like blueberries better. Do I go out and look for some more blueberries tomorrow, or do I just live with the mix of blackberries, strawberries and bananas for the rest of the week? Why do I concern myself with such minutiae? Probably because it allows me to avoid the frustration of thinking about larger issues.

I could be thinking about globalism vs. nationalism. It's certainly a hot topic right now. I prefer blackberries vs. blueberries because I can actually make a choice about things like this. Larger issues just become abstractions that nobody really understands. If you really want to know, I think nationalism is better than globalism. Not for the reasons you might think though. Nobody seems to take the long view on these type of issues. It's not national pride vs. cheap flat screen TV's for everyone. I tend to think that globalism is a recipe for the extinction of the human race.

A global society is the ultimate too big to fail entity. If a global, unified society fails, who's going to bail it out? Small redundant systems are much more resilient. The natural world works this way. So does the internet. When you have thousands of independent connected servers, it doesn't matter if one goes down. The signal just gets rerouted to a different server and everything stays connected. Wouldn't a world consisting of thousands of small independent countries be better? Lots of small countries, each developing their own rules, traditions, and culture would give the world the genuine diversity and redundancy it needs to survive. If a few countries screwed up, it wouldn't really matter.

It is ironic that we even talk about diversity in a global society. The whole point of globalism is to maximize efficiency and standardize everything. This destroys diversity. If there is a Starbucks in Beijing and your food comes from Argentina, choices gradually diminish for everyone. When everything is one big giant system, the repercussions from failure are enormous. Remember, when the world becomes too big to fail, who's going to bail us out when it all starts to crumble?

I don't know why people can't understand this. Lots of small, weak countries that manufacture their own stuff and create their own traditions is a better recipe for long term survival. If the European Union fails, it is probably a good thing. The United States should probably split into several smaller countries too. We just aren't smart enough to create a unified world where everyone follows the same rules. With lots of little, isolated, self sufficient countries, you wouldn't have to worry about world wars as much. People would still fight, but it wouldn't really matter if nobody had any power.

It is hard to even explain this concept, because this is not the world we live in. Humans seem to operate on two emotions: fear and greed. When a country gets a little more powerful than it's neighbor, they become greedy. The temptation to gobble up the weaker country becomes overwhelming. That's how the world became the way it is. We just can't leave things alone. I take the long view. Democrats vs. Republicans is just a minor distraction if you're convinced that the human race will be extinct in 30,000 years.

So, this is why I spend my day talking to dogs and wondering whether blueberries are better than blackberries. The larger issues are like the wind and the tides. I can't change things. I can't even articulate what I am seeing. I just watch and wonder, thinking that something has gone horribly wrong.

Anne is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2594

I had a major website revision to complete today, but I kept the television on for most of the day to watch the inauguration. Kudos to anyone with the stamina to endure a day like this. Trump, Pence, and their entire entourage were up at dawn, standing for most of the day, and apparently still going strong, because I hear coverage of the presidential balls on the bedroom TV as I write this. A two hour meeting can wear me out. This is one of many reasons I could never be a politician.

I have been opposed to globalization long before Donald Trump arrived on the scene, so I found his inaugural message of a return to nationalism strangely comforting. I've always thought that we as a country should mind our own business and let other countries mind theirs. The Vietnam War was a mistake. Both Gulf Wars were a huge mistake. Virtually every attempt at nation building we've embarked on as a country has been a mistake. Maybe now, we will finally learn to get our priorities straight.

Income inequality is a direct result of globalism. It may be efficient to have the entire world eating Kentucky Fried Chicken and drinking a latte from Starbucks, but this kind of efficiency puts more and more wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer people. Globalism turns every conflict into a potential world war. It really doesn't have to be this way. I like the Internet model better. Instead of a single giant server, the Internet consists of tens of thousands of independent nodes. It is virtually indestructible, because if one server goes down, the information is just rerouted and the net continues to function normally. The animal kingdom is the same way. There is a reason why there aren't elephants or penguins on every continent. With the notable exception of humans, each species on this planet is very localized and thrives where it is best adapted to the existing conditions. Nature has been trying to teach us that small and independent is better for centuries. Why do we still insist on a homogenized world where we all think alike? Maybe it's just because giant international companies want to sell everybody the same thing.

Just a few observations about the inauguration. Burning cars is not going to win people over to your cause. Hey, it's OK if you think Donald Trump is a sign of the apocalypse, but if you really want to marginalize your efforts and become the next Green Party, just keep doing what you're doing. Oh, and all you fashionistas; Melania looked fabulous. I don't think we need to worry about politically correct designers deserting her. Ralph Lauren did a spectacular job of evoking the ghost of Jacqueline Kennedy.

I ordered the wrong thing for breakfast this morning. It happens sometimes. I often don't know what I'm hungry for until I actually start eating. If I wasn't so tired, I could create some sort of metaphor that linked breakfast choices to desire and expectations. It probably isn't that complicated though. I just shouldn't have ordered pancakes today.

If the weather continues to be nice this weekend, I'm going to wash the car and remove all the remaining leaves from the roof. The evil bird that shits on my car has been busy this week. It's time to show that bird who's boss.

April is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day