May Day in Africa. Who Celebrates in that Continent?

    Angola had gone communist for a while. Joseph Savimbi fought that government. Guinea Bissau has been communist. Who else?

    That was so yesterday. The communists need to adapt to be communitarians. Like good religious organizations and folks.

Hard Work on May Day. Prices are High, as War Bogs Down the Straits of Petroleum

    Who celebrates May Day? Leninists? Maoists? Was a Pol Pot a participator in some kind of May Day festivity?

    Kim Il-Sung, or whatever despot ruled North Korea for decades?

    People who voted for Salvador Allende in Chile, or revere his memory still, or the few knaves who thought that Fidel Castro stood for something beyond oppession.

    How do we tax the wealthy? What is fair to all?

    What and how do we want to work and live?

May Day in America. The United States. Canada. Mexico. And On...

    Here we are capitalists and communists, libertarians and socialists. And maybe some anarchists, wherever or whomever you are. And millions celebrate the day dedicated to the proletariat, the laborers, the people who work and toil and sacrifice for the greater state, one party.

    Revolutions and the removal of the bourgeoisie. The materialist middle class. Heard of them?

    People in different countries, like Chile where I have lived, or likely China or possibly North Korea, march and tout their red flags or other emblems of the Marxist wave of economic hopes and dreams.

    The rest of us see failures and nightmares. Suffering and tyranny.

    Marx and Engels must be suffering plenty in heaven or the afterlife in which they are found. Because what resulted from their thoughts and plans, theories or systems, either was very much corrupted and abused, or the ideas were asinine and brutally deadly to begin with.

    May Day in Magadan, and dozens of other lands.

    Capitalism and its 

 What. We. Need. What. We. Want.

    May Day is tomorrow. Communists and socialists celebrate.

    What?

    Really, what is there to celebrate?

    Death and ruin.

    And hopes to help the laborers.

Not Who I Thought I Would Be; May I Be What God Wants

Not Who I Thought I Would Be; May I Be What God Wants me To Be

    Sometimes I can feel lowly, imperfect, and far from where I thought I should be. This is natural. But it has to be tempered by feelings of self-worth and esteem.

    Do we have feelings of a higher purpose, hopes and anticipations of reaching the higher plane?

    Yes.

    May it be so.

    May God make us how he designed us. May I focus on those things.

    And be right and good. Correct for the tasks at hand and for the long term.

Augusta to Augusta among the Rocks and Escarpments 

    Why Augusta? Why so?

    Because we moved there, some nine years ago.

    Nine years come, nine years go,

    Not quite ten, close enough to know.

    A decade will pass.

    We lived on a smaller cul-de-sac called Wicker, not much more than a mile away.

    Wicker, like the baskets or reeds of interwoven craftsmanship

    Underwater or above, as the jokes go.

    

    Suburban living is no joke, no fancy riddle

    Between the urban and the boonies,

    The urbane and the hayseeds

    Thus we live betwixt and between

    The ghettos and the hollers, the high rises and the prairies and mountain valleys

    Suburbia and its detritus, is we (are us).

    We moved to a bigger home, closer to the high school, separated by

    Augusta.  Road. Traversed by the stream, or rather partially dried creek

    Which meanders by our back yard area, with little rocks and stones.

    She left later that summer for a county called Rockingham, 

    But attended school in Augusta County, south of there, down the road

    Hence, Augusta to Augusta.

    August means great, or reverend, or some culminating thing of veneration.

    We were in the august time of the years of her childhood.

    She parted, between the rocks, which were Rockingham and Rockridge counties, to the north and the south.

    Rockridge, below, in the not totally august Shenandoah Valley, where Buena Vista, 

    as the locals butcher its pronunciation, is located.

    She and her sister went there, for some church social and activity says those of the youth...

    Southern Virginia University, just a generation old

    Within the culture of whom we have been bred and raised

    Based on tablets hidden for centuries and other such lore,

    Of Israelites and their tribes and destinies and outcomes beyond the 

    Empirical, scientific, quantifiable and known.

    Running throughout Utah and the greater Inter-Mountain West

    And now this rock that we inhabit, the third from the sun.

    Rocks and escarpments, crags and crevices,

    Stones and steeples made from caverns and cliffs and endless

    Rolling valleys, mountain chains, oceanic templates of tectonic masses,

    Frozen tundras and huge, vast airs of expanses through all the spheres of the 

    Earth's layers on up into the zero gravity of space,

    To the moon and beyond.

    That dead, mostly dead, lifeless, mostly lifeless, chunk of rock the width of Australia,

    Circling us, the bigger chunk of rock below, with our alleged iron core,

    And its heavy, and rather portentous, gravity.

    Rocks and stones are heavy, huge and massive. They become mountains,

    like the Appalachians, where she

    Began to explore.

    Climbing.

    Perusing,

    Pursuing.

    Thinking. Dreaming. Running, but more hiking, traipsing.

    Among the rocks and escarpments.

    From Augusta to Augusta

    From the Blue Ridge college, to the colored, or "red" bigger mountains 

    Centrally orientated 

    In a place called North America.

    August, weathered, snow capped, unconquered.

    Some ski their slopes, thinking they have mastered something 

    in nature, they have tempted and overcome the gravity

    Our massive orbital rock.

    We are just novices and neophytes here, just pilgrims and sojourners.

    Climbing, weaving, grasping, dancing, hiking, hepting,

    Huffing and puffing,

    From Augusta to Augusta,

    And nine years later, to the red rocks, the colored mountains

    The crags and peaks and pikes of the giant towers reaching the heavens,

    The ice and snows and rivulets that derive into bigger channels and flows and oceans across and beneath.

    Among the rocks and escarpments.

    Where we find ourselves now.

 Oceans Unknown - Unknown Oceans

    How many oceans of the world are we destined to see, to know, to swim in, to breathe in, to get to know? How many oceans are there? Perhaps five.

    Some live and die and never see one. They may see some fresh water rivers or lakes, but they stay landlocked and never make it to the beach, or go on cruises or trans-oceanic voyages or fishing excursions.

    

    Out of the 8 billion on the planet today (2026), maybe 5 billion have been to the ocean, at least to one of its shores? Which continent has the most that do this? Likely Europe. Then North America.

    I grew up seeing and and swimming in the Atlantic Ocean. The world's second biggest. I did a few trips on boats on it, like a ferry from Nova Scotia to Maine, and and a whaler around the top of Cape Cod. We would go to beaches and places around the Cape. Nausett Beach. West Dennis. A few other beaches. I saw the Atlantic from Nova Scotia as small child. A squid among the rocks of the cold, shiny beach, there. Or the horse shoe crabs near the house of my grandparents in Quincy, Massachusetts.

    It was not till I was an adult that I saw and touched the great Pacific. It was down in the southern hemisphere, on the outskirts of Concepcion, Chile, by the Desembocadura, where the Bio Bio River emptied into the greatest mass of water on earth. Later, after my mission, where I smelled the fish and shellfish of Coronel, or the fish factories north of there, I swam at Chilean beaches like Cobquecura and Curanipe. And still later Coquimbo, or fourteen years later Vina del Mar. With wife and kids in tow.

    The Pacific I have now scene and swam in from Canada, British Colombia, Alaska, Hawai'i, Washington, a smidge of Oregon, and much of California and Mexico.

    I have scene and experience more of the Pacific, possibly than the Atlantic. But now I have been up and down the East Coast of the United States, and even seen it from Iceland, so I guess I am conversant with the Atlantic, too.

    I have not been to the Indian Ocean, nor the Arctic nor the Southern Ocean. Yet.

    I did see the Persian Gulf; I missed a beach party by it, and I did not take much advantage of its shores. Others of my group did. Some even went scuba diving.

    What other oceans must we visit? When will we get a chance?

    Should we seek them?

    You tell me.

 What is Up with these Short Posts? This is blog-fation, in the Time of Hormuz Uber Stratification

    I am finally getting through the big book the Silk Road, by Peter Frankopan.

    Is this tetchy? (A word that Frankopan, a British citizen, methinks, wrote in page 470 or so. Lots about Iran, with plenty of Iraq and Afghanistan. The Cold War, i.e. U.S.S.R., and us, of course, made them important. Oil and the sea access. Strategic areas. Links, as the Silk Road has always been.

    April Glaspie gave tacit approval for Saddam Hussein to take Kuwait? Hmmmm....

    Harold Bloom loved literature of all types, both prose and poetry.

    I read up on what the Yalie prized and treasured. Oh, so much!

    The modern stuff surprised me.

    Bloom. Rest in Peace.

    Good, night, Poeta.

    Que descanse en paz, tambien.

    Estas in el sur de Chile, ? o que?

 Only One Post with Pablo Neruda? ?Que lo que que?

    I searched for what I wrote back in 2019. It came up fast with keyword search of Neruda.

    Huh. Only one mention? I guess poetry is not in me that much.

    I write it more than I read it. But then again, there is music and lyrics.

 She Loves Me. She Loves me Not. She loves me Again. Still. Be Still. She Loves Me!

    She loved me years ago. I know she did. I know that she did.

    She did! I know it.

    Time passes, I get lazy, I show weaknesses, I fail and I can be less than what I have planned, or hoped, or what was in store.

    She wonders. No wonder.

    Does she love me? Some times it is hard.

    Are there hopes stunted, hopes deferred, hopes blunted, hopes inerred?

    Yes.

    So we continue on.

    Hoping for the the best hopes.

    And hopefully love.

 She Wants to Flee

    Sometimes I feel that she wants to be anywhere,

    But with me.

    That is okay, I guess.

    She loves the moon, and the stars, and the outdoors.

    She craves the air, and the night, or the day, and the sights.

    She needs the outside, and its freedom, and promise.

    That is okay. That is great.

    It is a large part of what makes her, her.

    As long as she comes back, I cannot complain.

    Too much.

The Young Single Adult Branch of Bloomington in the late 1990s, Going on Part II

 The Young Single Adult Branch of Bloomington in the late 1990s, Going on Part II

    Some of us moved to Indiana newly in the fall of 1997. I was back from a five year stint in mostly Utah, although some great stays in Chile and the Holy Land. Who else came with me that fall? John and Trevor Irwin, the contrasting brothers from Hurricane, Utah. The smart one could not find the address of where to return his rental truck, and circled the whole beltway of Indianapolis to finally get it back to where it belonged.

    Who else? David A. had gotten there some months before me, think. Paul Schumann had been there a year or so, maybe? He would be a graduate student who would introduce Ann (later A.) to David A., who would marry and go one to have four children together.

    Tricia Nagel joined the church that fall of 1997, and eventually married Jared Barker. Jared came back from the very wet mission in the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State. He did well in marrying Tricia. 

    Who else did we have? Jared Asay, James White, Liz Wood, Rhea Le Master, Dave Hawkins and his sister: I cannot recall her name! Megan Knight, Zlota, of Czech Republic. Tara Tribble. Chris Arick. He joined the Church (of Jesus Christ), our Young Single Adult Ward. We were good sized and growing. Julie Taylor, Sandy Padron, Kaaren Saafsten, Margeret Gingrich. There were more. 

    Ben Sweeney, Tim Young? Andre Snyder, Darxavia Stephens, Kristen Clark...

    To be continued...

The Young Single Adult Branch of Bloomington in the late 1990s, Going on and ...

 The Young Single Adult Branch of Bloomington in the late 1990s, Going on and ...

    Caitlin Shirts!

    Nicole Nichols!

    Her brother Eric!

And on...

    Real names, real people, real times, the end of the 20th century.

    A 19th century restored religion bridging into the the 21st...

    In the centralized state of Indiana.

    Stay tuned for more, dear readers. Should I used all the real names? Maybe not all...

 Nimit Moore of Mali - Gone Too soon in the Wilder Sahara

    I watched "Out of Africa" with my wife last night. Made in the middle 1980s. I think that it won some Oscars back then. Robert Redford and Meryl Streep. Not bad. It shed light on parts of Kenya, and things between Europeans and Africans in the 1910s. Thought provoking, my wife commented. Yes. The local ethnic groups with their particular cultures and differences. She, as well as I, were interested in the dynamics and interests of the characters of the story. The woman, the man. The things.

    This morning I was thinking about her, my wife, in Morocco, interacting with many displaced nationals of French-speaking Niger. I think that there may have been some people in Ceuta, (Sebta), Morocco, enclave of Spain, from Mali as well.

    Nimit was from near Gao, Mali; perhaps within 50 miles of that town. Around 1984 ABC television did a spotlight of the drought and malnutrition occurring in Mali. An Indianapolis family adopted a boy that they saw on TV, Mohammad. He was Tuareg; later he wished to have his best friend come to him, so the Moore family of Bloomington adopted him. (Later they acquired another boy from Mali, Adam.)

    Things went well for a while. I met Nimit at my Scout Camp in rural Jackson County, Maumee, when I was 15, that first summer he was in the U.S. We were asked to clean some dishes in the mess hall kitchen. I remember being interested in his newness and the novelty of his change of lifestyle. He was kind of cool, as the local paper explained. I had read up on him. Years before the Internet.

    My parents lived in West Africa. Togo and Sierra Leone. Some things about the continent and the peoples there spoke to me. Later, people I knew like Joseph Hill and Robert Bogh had further, deeper experiences and lessons there. Greater West Africa. In Sierra Leone, Senegal, and into Mali. And other lands. I know a good deal of people, including the natives themselves, of most of the nations of Africa. Quite a place.

    I saw Nimit again after my South American mission in the summer or fall of 1992. Maybe he was a freshman? He was three years younger than me, as I see it based on ages mentioned in articles. He had plans, and went through with them, to set up tours of his home country.

    

    It all went tragically awry when he brought his American family there in January 2001. A local tribesman, perhaps resentful or jealous of Nimit, shot and killed him. A long rifle, I presume, to Nimit's forehead. The man was never charged.

    Articles celebrate and lament the life of Nimit.

    I do that here, now. Blessed to have known him. He inspired me, and many others.

    Africa, with its billions, living and dead, has done more good to the world than bad.

    Nimit was among the best of them.

    We thank God for him. His memory will live on.

 Jorbit Vivas Loses the Nats the Game!

    Ouch. If he had run out his grounder in the 10th inning the Nationals would have won at home. But he slowed down. The inning was over. The game went on, and the Nats lost in 12, seven to six.

    Ouch.

    Ay yai, yai. Jorbit. Hard to live this one down.

    Mental errors can happen, and cost games, but not like this...

    The Nationals are doing well, but have lost some winnable games.

    Let's improve on this. Go Nats.

Jealousy, Coveting; Feelings to Temper or Phase Out

    This past year maybe I have felt jealousy or pangs of want more than any other year. In a sample of fifty plus years, I have some perspective. It must be my circumstances, which does have to do with my age. Age income, job or jobs, family relationships. Satisfaction for my personal account, or satisfying others close to me.

    Health. Economic comfort or success. Or the lack of it.

    Not pleasing your family members, disappointing them or your colleagues or bosses.

    Wondering if God is good with you, which you know you are with Him, as He has promised, but wondering if He is teaching you in very humbling ways. Patience and hard lessons.

    Paradoxes.

    Health trials and aging, work issues and not controlling so many factors of what we would consider a better or blessed life.

    Failure. Disappointment. Dissatisfaction.

    Sounds negative. It is.

    We have to choose to be grateful, to count our blessings. To not be jealous of others, or covet what they have.

    We can be jealous of the care of those that we are linked to. How much they think of us, appreciate us, love us, like us.

    Yeah.

    That is a tough way to to be jealous.

    Some call it low confidence in oneself, or low self-esteem.

    A guy killed himself last year and claimed that his wife did not like him.

    What a terrible feeling.

    People who end their own lives do not feel appreciated, I am quite sure of that.

    I can think of a few.

    Ben. Rob. Robert. (Maybe it was an accident). Nicholas. And others.

    Low sense of others caring for them.

    Yep.

    Need to phase out the negativity, and build up how we see ourselves and how we think of ourselves, and how others see us.

    Drop jealousy and build up your life.

    More than God thinks highly of you. You and Him together.