All Souls Day

 

(source: Wikipedia)

Today, November 2, 2026, is considered to be All Souls Day by many Christian traditions; see this link for additional information.   It's a day that I typically don't dwell on most years, but this year is different, and I am not sure why.  Maybe this is one of the parts about getting older that no one warns you about:  

You accumulate experiences and memories to a point where there is far more behind you than in front of you.  

It's a kind of tipping point, if you will, of the consciousness.  Now I will state for the record that, while I readily admit my issues for all the world to more or less read about (here, over the years), remaining sullen and fixated in the past is not one of them.  While my feet remain planted very firmly in the present moment, I also acknowledge that a certain kind of sadness at the thoughts of others departed is something that is part of a healthy existence.  Or this is what I am telling myself.

While it seems like many have passed away over the past decade or so, my thoughts gravitate towards my brother Chris, who passed away almost 10 years ago.  There's a lot written about that in this blog already, so I'm not going to repeat myself.  What's not written though is how much on certain days the loss feels somehow greater.  The spiritual among us (a group of which I am not a member...) would probably say that a kind of veil between existences may be thinner on days like this, making these kinds of contemplations more readily available.  Such things are beyond my paygrade, but so are a lot of things in life that I readily acknowledge, even if I am incapable of comprehending the reasons behind them.  Liking peanut butter is one such thing.  Seriously, it is.  I am not sure how humans can consume something so vile.  But so I digress.

In point of fact, I am not really sure what I miss about my brother Chris.  His final year(s) was an unmitigated disaster.  Addiction and relationship issues had taken their toll, along with, I firmly believe, a kind of reckoning about the relationship he had with our mother.  As I have noted in prior postings, I think Chris had a kind of unacknowledged quest to prove our mother wrong.  Not about any one thing in particular, but to basically just prove that he was smart, capable, independent, confident and worthy of the love she was really incapable of showing to her sons.  When she passed away, I think part of what motivated him died as well.  He was a knight who no longer had a quest, and all of what was left were demons hiding in the shadows.  In the end, those demons won the battle, but I think/hope/believe that they ultimately lost the war.

I don't know what I would say to Chris if he suddenly appeared.  Once in a blue moon he will appear in a dream, but it's always in the most mundane of scenes.  A kind of reminder that he is still here, if only in my memories.  That's what I am left with, along with some photographs and the ability to think "well, what if..." from time to time.  More than anything else though, Chris was a member of a very, very small and exclusive club of folks where I could, while around them, exhale.  

(Albert Boys around 1970:  from left...Steve, Joe, Chris; Rich in the back)

In fine est veritas

Note:  I readily admit I am a sucker for a nice Latin phrase, even though I've never had any education in the language.  So, forgive the indulgence.  

It's been a relatively long time since I've written anything.  I think that happens to me every once in a while.  Things just get so very hectic, and I am getting older, and the sum total of those two things effectively means that my life consists of three things now:

1. Go to work
2. Recovering from work
3. Doing all of the other things I didn't do because of #'s 1 & 2 (also known as "the weekend")

I get that the above is not healthy.  I also know that knowledge in the absence of action is little more than trivia.  I am trying though, and as this is October, a month of change, some reflection is in order.  

I've written countless times over the years about October, and how things in my life have changed dramatically during the month.  On the surface, we all can view the external changes of October as being a kind of slow death...trees change and drop their leaves...critters seem to disappear...the weather begins to change in ways that start to make the outside intolerable...we becomes shut-ins within our own homes.

In the end though, October has its own truth.  What seems like a slow death is actually staging for a re-birth in the future.  This is more where I am now.  Probably for the first time in my life I am facing a very big change where I am neither anxious nor apprehensive about it.  That says a lot.  I'm not, by the way, facing any kind of health or otherwise existential life crisis.  I'm sure those things are in my future...they are in all of our futures actually...but not just now.  

This doesn't mean that my life is a 24/7/365 joy-ride.  I will still not get enough sleep.  I will still over-work.  I will still feel the weight of crappy things happening around me.  But now, just maybe, there is a kind of Spring Season on the horizon.

Speaking of October, this past Tuesday (October 13th) was an anniversary of sorts: 10 years since I was involuntarily retired from Prudential Financial.  Not that I was counting (well, I was...), but I ended up leaving with 27 years and about 48 weeks of service.  I know that people lose jobs all the time these days, but that knowledge didn't make it any easier.  A few thoughts now, 10 years in the rear-view mirror:

• Treated Well...I was treated well by the company from a financial perspective.  My severance package and being treated as a retiree allowed me to find new employment that would pay far less, which turned out to be very much needed.  10 years out and I am still making half of what I did during my last year at Pru.
• Treated (not so) Well...To this very day I remain disappointed by those folks that I worked with for a very long time who didn't reach out to me.  For some, it was as if we were all living in an Amish town and I was being "shunned".  This includes the person I reported to at the time.  However, there were folks who did, and I am deeply grateful for every call and email of theirs all these years later.
• Surprised...On some level I was not surprised.  I had survived similar "Cullings" in the past, so it doesn't take a degree in philosophy to realize that my number may come up in the future. Knowing it could and then actually having it happen though were two entirely different things.  When you work for a place for that long, well, it becomes part of who you are at a very deep, personal level.  I still occasionally have dreams where I am in the Prudential Scranton office.
• It Was for the Best...I am a better person in a couple of different ways for having gone through this process.  I know that for a fact, and important growth sometimes carries a high price.  That doesn't mean that I am grateful for it happening.  There is something deeply flawed about a society that features this kind of thing happening on a regular basis, and these days it happens all too frequently.  Companies want loyalty and commitment from employees, but they don't offer it in return.  Such a thought is even more salient when someone has close to three decades of loyalty and commitment.  We truly do live a disposable society.  

There have been 5 other employers since my "retirement", including my current one.  This current employer, for the record, is the last.  At some point in the not-too-distant future I am getting off the train.  

For the record October is now more than half over.

Each Man Stood at His Post

Each man stood at his post,

while all the weaker ones went by,

and showed once more to all the world,

how Englishmen should die.

 The above is the inscription on the grave marker of Everett Edward Elliot, Titanic crew member, who died in the line of duty during the ship’s sinking.  In a way it speaks to something far bigger, something related to what it means to be human, to do one’s duty, to serve others even when it means sacrificing oneself.

 

(Victorian Gardens, Halifax)

Among the things we did on Thursday, August 13^th was visiting the public cemetery where 150 victims of the Titanic sinking were buried.  Note that many of the grave markers do not list the name of the person buried, as many of the victims remained unidentified.  The fact that these graves exist is a remarkable testimony to the character of Canadians in general, and residents of Halifax in particular, as these graves have been cared for by the community for over 114 years (well before a certain famous movie). 

Our all-day Halifax tour was guided by a wonderful lady who is a retired schoolteacher.  She was funny, well organized, and presented history in the most human of ways.  She was, by far, the best guide we had all week.  If I can find her name, I’ll add it into the post at the end.  One of the things that she told us was how she is a cancer survivor, who received immediate treatment once diagnosed, and paid the grand sum of nothing to become cancer-free. 

This is a reminder that medical debt in the United States is…

1) Real…I have personal experience with it…and…

2) A national disgrace.

This topic crosses party lines, in that there are many politicians that would prefer that you not really spend all that much time thinking about medical debt, thank you very much. 

Back to Halifax, which was in some way a continuation, at a significantly larger scale, of what we experienced in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island.  By this I mean it was impeccably clean (for Halifax, a city of more than 500,000, that’s something of a feat), the few locals we encountered were very friendly, and there was this sense of community responsibility.  Another example, in addition to the public cemetery that we visited, was a beautiful public Victorian Gardens, which the community helps tend to during the growing season.  The place looked like it would never exist in that form if it were anywhere else in the world.

Another location visited in Nova Scotia was Peggy’s Cove, which is one of the more well-known tourist attractions in Nova Scotia.  Worth a visit, but it’s important to wear good shoes while there.  Speaking of there, Ms. Rivers and I are absolutely certain that we will return to Halifax at some point in the future, maybe post-retirement.  There’s a lot to do and see in that you get the combination of a large city and, after about a 30-minute drive, you end up in a picturesque place that would be just like rural Maine. 

As I write this (Thursday evening…posting it will likely be some time tomorrow, which would be Friday the 14^th), we are out to sea, in route to our final stop on the cruise, Portland, Maine.  We’ve driven through Portland on other Maine trips, but never really stopped there.  This leg of the trip will take us back to the U.S. and Eastern Standard Time all in one fell swoop.  Unlike other stops, we aren’t doing any tours/excursions, as we can always come back to Portland at some point in the future anyway.  Instead, Ms. Rivers and I just identified a few things we wanted to see in town.  Post Portland, it’s off to the end of the cruise at Boston and a flight back to Philadelphia. 

Will it be good to be back in the United States?  Well, at least for me, I would phrase it as “it will be good to get home”.  Unless you’ve traveled outside the United States lately, you probably haven’t experienced an environment where you are not bombarded constantly by the negativity that comes with the current climate of the U.S. I know that some folks have different strategies for dealing with this…some, for example, just pretend that nothing bad is happening in the country…others simply don’t care unless it creates something bad that directly impacts them…but both strategies are deeply flawed at a most human, moral level.  The fact is that we should care about others, even those others who look and sound differently than we do.  Why?  This is what separates us from other animals, this is what makes us fully human.  This is what Everett Edward Elliot understood.

On a related note, yes, vacationing is nice, and taking a cruise is certainly full of pleasantries, but cruising is just not something I think I’d like to do all that frequently.  Part of it is just the sheer logistics of it all…a lot of planning, passports, etc.  Another part is that I’m not overly comfortable with being waited on to the degree that cruise ship staff excel.  I get it…it’s their job…but being constantly served for me is awkward and I dislike the feeling of entitlement that goes with it.  Bottom line?  If I were on a cruise every few years that would be just fine. 

On that note, I think I’ve cleared my mental deck, so it’s time to wrap this up. 

Lido Shuffle

Interesting event on Tuesday: As we docked, a small brown critter decided to come up to the ship, hoping for asylum or something like that; a chase involving port and ship staff, along with hilarity, ensued.

My initial thought was that the critter was a weasel of some sort or maybe Rob Ford, former mayor of Toronto.  Further investigation identified the Canadian resident more specifically as a mink.  Which is a type of weasel, of the non-politician breed.  Anyway, we don’t know what happened to him/her, although the consensus was that it eventually stopped trying to get on the Voldemort and headed back into the woods.  Or to Toronto.  To do more mink-esque things.

On an unrelated note, Ms. Rivers sometimes has trouble pronouncing non-Anglo-Saxon words/names.  Case in point:  She was pronouncing “Goombah”, the Italian-American slang word for friend, as sounding like “Gum-ba”.  A more recent example was the pronunciation of “Lido” (as in the Lido deck of this ship) as “Lie-Dough”.  As a service, I played the Boz Scaggs song Lido Shuffle for her in order to make the point about proper pronunciation.  Now it’s important to note that she is SIGNIFICANTLY more cultured than I am…to the point of me sometimes being Beavis to her Daria…so in totality, this is about all she can ever hope to learn from me.  But at least it’s something.

Getting back to cruise notes, Wednesday, August 12^th was spent in Syndey, Cape Brenton Island, Nova Scotia.  Prior to this trip I had never heard of the place.  It strikes me as being kind of like the lessor achieving brother of Prince Edward Island.  Some of the views were very scenic…

…reminding me of what one would see in Maine.  We also visited a museum dedicated to Alexander Graham Bell.  Honestly, I didn’t know he was Canadian.  That previous sentence is probably the most American phrase I will utter during the entire trip.  The museum was small, but informative, and like most things Canadian, impeccably clean and the staff was very friendly.

Speaking of Canadians being kind and friendly, on Tuesday we stopped at a kind of tourist-y store where I proceeded to look for AA batteries (needed for the mouse I am using on this trip).  They only had AAA.  However, the store owner insisted on going back to her storeroom and scrounging up two slightly used AAs for me.  She would not take any money for them, but we settled on my making a 5 Canadian dollar donation to her cat fund (she told me she had 4 cats).  Reason #458 why I love Canada.

Special note about Canadian tour-guides in these here parts:  They seem almost genetically compelled to sing while guiding groups on a bus.  I am not joking.  I am also not complaining, as so far, I’ve heard far worse coming out of my own mouth, but it does seem kind of strange.  I wonder if they take request?  Maybe next time I can ask for “Fly By Night” by Rush (after all, we are in Canada…), although based on experience to date, they would likely insist on singing it in Gaelic. 

All things considered, Wednesday was a lighter day activity wise.  While on Tuesday we walked over 16,000 steps, Wednesday was half that total.  It’s all good though, as none of those steps on either day were for purposes of earning a living.    

Speaking of earning a living, part of what I want to do on the trip, inside of my head, is ponder my working future.  Do I want to retire sooner or wait longer?  The head and the heart aren’t all that misaligned on this topic, yet there is something in the larger equation of it all that I don’t understand.  A kind of “dark matter” that is influencing how I feel (just as dark matter in the universe influences other things), but yet I can’t quite understand it.  Understanding is a big deal to me.  How big of a deal?  Well let’s put it this way:  I greatly admire folks who possess true faith, as in the ability to believe in the absence of empirical evidence (which is why I find Anne Lamott’s books so compelling).  This is a gift I mostly lack.  At some point though, I will need to make a leap of faith when it comes to my working life.  It’s more a question of when than why or how.

Next stop? Halifax, Nova Scotia.  

 

Important Places

 I told Ms. Rivers this morning that, if I had to name the two places in the world that I would most like to visit, the answer would be Stockholm, Sweden & Prince Edward Island, Canada.

Having visited Stockholm in 2018, and Prince Edward Island (henceforth PEI) on this trip*, that life goal has been completed.  No celebration is needed. Instead, I can rest with the satisfaction, unusual for this day and age, of experiencing something positive that actually was everything that you expected.  That was PEI. 

Just what did I imagine?  A place of green rolling hills, a city (in this case, Charlottetown) that is impeccably clean, a place filled with friendly people.  It was all those things.  Now I get it: I am firmly wearing rose-colored tourist-y glasses.  But with all the nasty business going on in the world today, I think having a bit of PEI is due.

Side note: I am still thinking about the significant anxiety that I felt on Sunday as we navigated the whole flight thing (see my last posting).  I need to give myself a bit of grace in the fact that…

…I was running with not nearly enough sleep

…I have a mind that is wired for control

…I have an almost fanatical attachment to always being on time

Being exhausted, out of control and missing every single departure and arrival time wasn’t a good thing for me.  As noted above, maybe I was due for a bit of PEI.

There is also a kind of sensory overload thing at work for me as well.  Ms. Rivers and I were walking somewhere in Charlottetown and I pointed out some obscure thing, which surprised her.  “How did you notice that?” she asked.  “I notice everything”, was my response.  Now that last point needs both a bit of a clarification and an explanation.

Clarification: I noticed everything that I can actually see.  One simple fact of my life is that my vision has been getting worse over the past few years.  What seems to happen is that it gets bad, I get new glasses, it gets better for a while, then it gets worse again.  This is a combination of age and the “walleye vision” that I possess (there is actually a long, detailed posting about this somewhere in the blog archives).

Explanation: As I told Ms. Rivers, I grew up in an environment where, at any given moment, my mother could erupt at something that went wrong or something we (my brothers and I) did wrong.  Similar to my vision issues, I’ve written about that before.  The net lifetime impact of that kind of environment on a child is that, as an adult, I am hyper-vigilant when it comes to my physical environment.  Well, to the extent I can actually see my environment.  Anyway, this also is part of the whole travel anxiety thing (see above).  Lastly on this point, the whole anxiety thing is something that has been a feature of both my life and that of my brothers.  How each of us has chosen to deal with that seems, in retrospect, quite different.  For me, it’s been a combination of internalizing/ignoring and intellectualizing how I process life’s issues that produce anxiety.

Anyway, clarification and explanation provided, sometimes there is a positive side to all of this, namely being in a wonderful place can feel, well, extra wonderful.  See PEI.

I'd like to end the posting with a few pictures, but the internet access situation here is not great, so it looks like I'll only manage to get 3 added.   

(the Voldemort, in port at Charlottetown, PEI)

(Confederation Bridge, PEI)

(Inside St. Dunstan's Basilica, Charlottetown)

(*) Writing this on the evening of August 11^th and 12^th, 2026

The Good, the Bad and the American Airlines Shuffle

A follow up to my last posting:  It is pleasing to report that the cruise Ms. Rivers and I planned finally came to fruition.  How we get to this point is a somewhat longer-than-it-should-be story.  More on that in a moment.

As a side note, I don’t know when this will end up getting published, as we are a bit internet impaired while on the SS Volendam (which shall, henceforth, be referred to as the “Voldemort”...no particular reason why, other than “Voldemort” sounds way cooler than Volendam.  Sorry Dutchmen.).  Eventually I will be able to get this posted, but until then, well, it’s strictly offline city for me at the moment.  This is not necessarily a bad thing.

Not to add yet another cultural reference, but I think our captain, when he makes his announcements, sounds like Goldmember from Austin Powers.

I wonder if I gave him $20 he would say “it’s goooolllllddd!” for me?  And yes, I have muttered the phrase “freaky-teaky Dutchman” under my breath more than once.  So far.

My admittedly weird sense of humor documented, it’s time to talk about how we got here.  Literally.  A chronology of events is in order.  Please skip ahead if you don’t want to read that part.  Better yet just skip the whole posting.  Or the whole blog for that matter.  It’s all good-n-the-hood for me.  Onward.

Friday

Thunderstorms filled drive down to Philadelphia. 

During dinner we get the notice that our flight to Montreal for Saturday has been cancelled.

After two phone calls and about 45 minutes of hold-time we are re-booked on a different flight that will take us to Quebec City instead of Montreal on Saturday, but we will still be able to board the Voldemort, all be it one day into the cruise.

 Saturday

Re-booked flight to Quebec City is cancelled by the airline.

One hour of the phone (mostly hold time) with the cruise line.

New flights booked…this time going to Chicago and then connecting to Quebec City on Sunday.  Two hour layover in Chicago, and there will be about two hours from when we are scheduled to arrive in Quebec City and when we need to be on the Voldemort (which is 3pm Eastern).

Oh, and the flight from Philadelphia to Chicago leaves at 5:45am.

 Sunday

Woke up the super-early requisite time, and Uber to the airport.  Security and check-in are uneventful.  The plane leaves more or less on time.

The Plane arrives in Chicago but seems to taxi around the airport for 45 minutes or so before it gets to the gate.

I have a few bites of disgusting quasi-warm Chicago deep dish pizza for breakfast.  It was the only place I could get food without waiting in an ungodly line.  After that I realized why.

Got to the gate for the flight from Chicago to Quebec City and it is delayed.  By almost an hour.  Suddenly our two hour turnaround time on the ground in Quebec City has been cut in half.

Flight arrives in Quebec City at about 1:45pm.  Thank God for Canadian efficiency, as we get through the whole passport control thing in record time.

Uber ordered from the airport to the cruise ship port.  Feeling that special kind of disgusting that comes from sitting on airplanes for hours, I order us an uber-Uber.  The electric Mercedes Benz SUV arrives, and Andre takes us to the airport.  We played a musical trivia game in-route.  I impress Andre and Ms. Rivers with my skills.  Too bad music trivia isn’t all that marketable an ability.

The uber-Uber, as driven by Andre, arrives at the airport at 2:35pm.  And we get on board the ship with about 20 minutes to spare.  I throw Andre an extra 20 Loonies just out of relief (and yes, I also tipped through the app and rated him 5 stars).

 

There you go, that was the saga of getting here.  We did have a minor wrinkle in that the ships X-ray found something that looked like a knife in my backpack and something similar in Ms. Rivers suitcase.  My backpack?  It turned out to be my belt.  Ms. Rivers’ suitcase?  It was a pair of tweezers.  The security staff apologized…I thanked them for doing their job.  Honestly, after what it took to get to the ship, they could have done whatever the hell they wanted, and I would have been good with it.

Post Script:  It's Tuesday morning and I barely have a thread of a mobile signal, so I'm getting this one loaded.  Well, that's the plan at least.  Onward to the day's festivities.                                                                                                           

Of Man-no-grams and Flight Delays

Yeah, it's been a while in the blog-posting department and while no one other than me may care, I am not one for loose ends, so a bit of catching up is in order.

This is an "interesting" time for me, and, I think, others.  Note that I used the word "interesting" and not "good", although there is plenty of good to go around.  But before anything else, I'm going to deal with the crappy stuff first.

As a country we are lost, but there are signs of hope.  Now I understand that many of us can and do differ when it comes to issues of politics and such, but there is a kind of line in the sand that separates mere differences of opinion about policy and basic, functioning human decency.  The current president is not a decent human being, by any functional definition, and his leadership of this country screams of the worst of our collective instincts and history.  Don't take my word for it; see HERE, HERE, and HERE.  Just to pick three.  I would be lying if I said that I could pass off the daily insanity of Washington DC as being just background noise in my life, but I can't.  It impacts us all, and not in a good way.  Instead, I'll just say that, like many, I just try to deal with it, knowing that nothing lasts forever.

Also in the "less than ideal" department, I will note that my professional life has its share of ups and downs.  I try to be...and to do...good, and I think I make a positive impact on those I work with most days.  Or so they tell me.  But on many occasions I am doing it in an environment that is not always well suited to who I am.  That's not a criticism of who I work with, both directly above and around, but more so an acknowledgement that my personal values aren't always in sync with my working world.  I know, "circumspect much?" as I try to thread the needle here.  In the end, I try to balance who I am with what I do to earn a living.  See above though..."knowing that nothing lasts forever".

One recent and noteworthy event, at least for me, was the first of a now-annual mammogram (or, as I told Ms. Rivers, a "Mannogram").  This comes courtesy of genetic testing and a resulting BRCA2 mutation.  In a more perfect universe I would have a cool genetic mutation, like tail that could pick things up from the floor, but alas, I did not get to vote on the issue.  The actual experience for me was fine/uneventful, but I can appreciate how that's not necessarily true for women.  What helped was the wonderful technician at Geisinger Mt. Pleasant, who told me she typically has a about 1 male patient a week.  I will also note that I have two other related health screenings scheduled for later this year.  

On a final note, I am writing this from a hotel near the Philadelphia International Airport.  I am not supposed to be here, by the way.  Ms. Rivers and I are supposed to be on a cruise ship at this very moment on the St. Lawrence River, leaving Montreal and heading to Quebec City.  Two flight cancellations for today later, and we are going to meet our ship in Quebec City tomorrow.  This will be a flight west to Chicago to then go east to get into Quebec City, hopefully in time to meet the ship at port.  It has been a bumpy ride so far, and we haven't yet gotten onto a plane.  However we are nothing if not resilient, and Ms. Rivers (and I) have some traveling skills, so we are going to make an honest effort to catch up to our ship.    Some good luck might be helpful too.

On that note...

My Canada Theory

I have this theory:  If the decent folks in the United States had to create a new country from scratch, the end product would basically be Canada.  

Now by way of disclosure, I will note that I am writing this from a rented condominium in Carleton Place, Ontario, Canada.  This is my third trip to Canada, with the fourth coming in August.  There can be more after that, and it would be perfectly okay with me.  

Canada is unique in that its is one of those places that manages to under-promise and over-deliver.  You hear that the people are nice, then you come to here and are still surprised at just how friendly people really are when you meet them.  You see pictures of how scenic it is, but then you come here and, well, you are pleasantly surprised just how much better things look in person.  You sense that this is an orderly kind of place but then you walk along the road and you see streets that are cleaner than most KFC restaurants.  It is a place of sometimes subtle, sometimes overt, understatement.  

As a United States citizen I feel like I should be saying sorry to folks here for just how asinine our government has been treating the residents of the Great White North.  Being here, there is one of part of U.S. policy that now make sense though:  The (U.S.) president's comments about Canada reflect how a bully sees those they view as "weak" and "vulnerable".  The failure of that logic lies in the fact that Canada is not a place for the weak (try lasting a winter here...) or the vulnerable.  Like most bullies, the current president chronically underestimates those he targets, up until the point where eventually one fights back.

Having spent a little bit of time talking to actual Canadians about the current U.S. president, the good news, if you want to call it that, is they:

1) Recognize that most U.S. citizens don't support Drumpf.

2) See him for being as ridiculous as most of us do.

Case in point -

Actual Canadian Teenager:  Why does he want to paint that pool in Washington D.C.?

Actual U.S. Citizen (me):  Because he's an idiot.

Actual Canadian Teenager:  Doesn't it cost like a lot of money to do that?

Actual U.S, Citizen (me):  Yes.  And he thinks this is somehow more important than providing healthcare of the poor.

Actual Canadian Teenager:  That's stupid.

Actual U.S. Citizen (me):  Congratulations, you are smarter than 32% of the U.S. voting population.  Want to run for Pennsylvania Senator?  If the current guy can run and actually be from Connecticut, then I don't see why a smart teenager from the Great White North (who has dual U.S.-Canadian citizenship, by the way) can't be elected as well.

(Part of the above is somewhat fictionalized)

One thing that I haven't sensed in speaking to actual Canadians is fear.  That's a good thing.  Fear is the currency that bullies trade in, and it's refreshing to know that most folks don't buy what Drumpf is selling.

As they say up here...

(Source HERE)

U.S. Midterm Elections - The Hungarian Dress Rehearsal

5pm ET, Sunday, Update - It appears that Viktor Orban has conceded defeat.  If true, and barring any surpises, this could be a very good sign for both Hungary and the United States.  For the record, sometimes being wrong is really, really good thing.  

******

This will be short and to the point.  

As I type this, citizens in the country of Hungary will be going to the polls with the outcome deciding the fate of current Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has ruled the country for 16 years.  

Hungarian Election Coverage -

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/hungary-elections-2026-live-updates-victor-orban-results-b2955998.html

Why should you care?  In part because Orban wrote the MAGA playbook.  He is to the current U.S. president as Mussolini was to Hitler.  His creation of an "illiberal democracy" has been the template for what many in the current administration are trying to achieve in the U.S.

What do I mean by an "illiberal democracy"?  Here's a good definition:

Seem familiar?  It should.  Note that U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance actually went to Hungary to campaign for Orban (citation HERE). 

If Orban loses his re-election bid, what happens next will be a test case, a dress-rehearsal if you will, for how the current U.S. administration prepares for, and responds to, the mid-term elections in November.  Expect immediate claims, evidence be damned, of wide-spread election fraud.  The potential exists for some form of action on the part of Orban to nullify the election results.  He will likely not go quietly.

In the case of the U.S., a significant Orban loss could create a further incentive for the current president to declare some kind of national emergency around election time, in an attempt to limit turnout or, intimidate voters via the public placement of armed forces.  It's entirely possible the current administration will simply refuse to accept election losses that will change control in Congress from Republican to Democratic majorities.  The current president has already attempted to use executive actions to nullify constitional protections (i.e., the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution).

This is a play that may not end well.  And today is the first act.

In the Strangest of Places there is Sometimes Truth to be Found

I've been wanting to post this for a while.  Not necessarily to share it, but more so that I can have it.  Some things are just worth keeping.

I am a big fan of the FX television series "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia".  It is an absurd, often times raunchy, off-beat show; a kind of "If the people in the TV show Friends were scumbags".  You can watch the whole series, as I have, via Hulu (and likely other streaming platforms).  You can learn more about the series HERE.

Towards the very end of the last episode, there was a scene that I was completely unprepared for; granted that there is a lot that comes out of left field when it comes to Always Sunny...think guns, drinking green paint, huffing, rum ham, crowtein, anything MyPoyles related, etc.  Yet what I saw in the scene, well, it actually meant a lot to me.  

By way of set-up, the character Charlie finally meets his actual father, who then dies.  Charlie goes on a quest to honor a tradition that involves taking his father's body to a certain place.  Here's the scene...

...I could have said most of those words about my own father.

Legacies are complicated things.  

I Have Questions...for my fellow Dads

The following has been attributed to Attorney General Pam Bondi:

 "If we prosecute everybody in the Epstein Files, the whole system will collapse" 

For the record, I can't find evidence that directly ties her to this comment though, and in fact it has been deemed in accurate by Snopes (attribution here:  https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/bondi-epstein-files-system-collapse/).

Yet this is where we are in that the quote seems entirely plausible, given the dynamics of life and politics in the United States of America right now.

Yes, this is a posting about the Epstein files.  Now, are some on the political left using the Epstein files as a tool to hammer the current presidential administration?  Sure.  This kind of stuff is as old as politics itself has existed.  But discussions like that ("...well the left...") are utterly meaningless in the larger sense of things in that, motivations aside, one simple fact remains:

Jeffrey Epstein ran a criminal enterprise that allowed rich and powerful people to sexually assault children and young women.

I will also add the following:

The United States government (and other world governments) has done virtually nothing to bring the folks that engaged in that abusing behavior...towards children and young women...to justice.  Why?  Because those same folks are rich and powerful.

Take a step back for a moment and consider just how utterly terrible all of this actually is; it is as if the plot for some horrible thriller has actually turned out to be real life.  Because it has.  

In particular, if you are a father of daughter(s), regardless of their age, I am wondering why you are not personally outraged at all of this; if you have been publicly silent* on this horribleness, why?  Because it doesn't directly impact you or your daughters?  When all is said and done, none of us are really above others by design.  Some folks achieve greatness in their lives, others live a quiet but good life.  Others are deeply flawed.  Regardless, we are all people.  If you are a parent (especially if you are a father of daughters), do you honestly believe that the lives of the children and young women victimized by Epstein and his rich/powerful friends really don't matter all that much?  Or are you afraid that the societal price for bringing to justice the rich/powerful people that engaged in this stuff will be too high?

To those last two questions, I offer the following quote, attributed to a labor lawyer (Attorney Ryan) I follow on social media:

"Anything that would be destroyed by the truth has no right to exist at all."

Citation HERE.  Ratcheting this up, we have the president publicly stating that he thinks the country has/should move on from this issue (citation HERE).  Well, I say that "getting on with something else" in the face of what we know now is a moral failure...second only to the fact the collective us took so long to recognize this whole thing in the first place. 

The "collective us" includes me, and I have been guilty.  Like many, when I first heard of Epstein and these allegations, my reaction was dismissive at what seemed like yet another in a series of Internet conspiracy theories running rampant on social media.  I claim not to be perfect, but I also know that I can learn.  And what I've learned about Epstein makes me wholeheartedly believe that our society as it stands now needs to fundamentally change, moving from the rotted belief that the life of some tech billionaire is so much more inherently important than the life of an innocent girl.  Any innocent girl.  Indifference is easy here, but if you are the father of at least one daughter, again, then would you allow your daughter to be sacrificed for the ego and pleasures of a billionaire?  

If your answer to that last question is "yes" or "I don't care", then you have no right to call yourself a parent, let alone a dad.

Moving forward, everyone who supported Epstein and his evil empire needs to be brought to justice.  All of them.  Every.  Single.  One.  For far too long, the cost of those crimes has been born by children; it's about time that the adults start to pay.  No matter what the cost, we fail to live up to the title of being civilized with every passing day when perpetrators go on about their lives while victims remain damaged.

Once some measure of justice begins to be actualized, then we have an even greater challenge ahead of us: How was it that this was allowed to happen in the first place?  Any system that allows this needs to be ritualistically burned.  It needs to be destroyed.  It needs to be fundamentally re-built in a way that recognizes the search for thrills among the rich and powerful is not more important than the very lives of children.  

We either start acting on what we say we value, or we allow ourselves to completely decay into the nothingness that we deserve for turning a blind eye to all this stuff in the first place.

SILENCE ENCOURAGES THE TORMENTOR

(*) As opposed to taking action, including contacting your elected representatives in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, to cite just one example.

When Grace Seems in Short Supply

It has, admittedly, been a rough couple of weeks.  This comes on the heels of a rough year (this posting).  Yet while I can (and sometimes do) complain about things, the reality is this:  There are bigger...and with apologies to English teachers everywhere*... "worser" things afoot.  

As I write this, the news is consumed by events in Minnesota.  Specifically...

Alex Pretti Shot and Killed by ICE Agents

...which is just a kind of punctuation mark in a larger story about control, violence and the desire of one man to retain political power for the rest of his life.  A story that is still being written and with an ending that can't come soon enough.  We know the ending already, by the way, in that his mortal coil will fail at some point, and the United States will be left to sort through the damage.  I suspect that I won't live to see how long that will truly take.  Maybe that's a good thing.

The last time I felt this way was during the events of 9.11, when it all just seemed so overwhelming.  This comes from a place inside of me whereby I can't really fathom an event, where it seems surreal in a very horrible way.  I do feel a certain degree of anxiety that is widely generalized, a kind of pall that falls over me where nothing I seem to do takes me out of my own head for any length of time.  I tried cleaning, which usually works, but that didn't help.  I'll do some work stuff later, which may help, but that's got its own set of issues.  Writing this is helping...a little bit...which I suppose is better than nothing.

I did try to divorce myself from the news and social media, but that didn't last long.  Like a moth attracted to a lamppost on a dark night, I feel drawn to the horribleness of this event.  It's like part of me is searching for a big revelation, but yet nothing is in the offing.  There is, instead, a kind of societal rot that has been creeping into the collective us, where part of the net product is trying to understand why our government is killing American citizens.  It's a kind of end to something that we once took for granted.

  

Let's just hope that some sense of Grace returns to this country.  We desperately need it.

(*) Including my oldest daughter, Katrina.