Bang bang all gone

I read an article on forced sterilization in the US of A.
Riveting stuff.
Apparently, there were many forced sterilizations in the US from 1929 to 1974, where people that were deemed to be "feeble minded" were sterilized. Now this was in North Carolina, and, as a plan is sometimes better than the implementation, a lot of poor black women were sterilized.
This gave me a lot of wicked thoughts.
Perhaps the plan was not so bad. But in today's everything-goes-society, how would you deem a person to be eligible for sterilization?
Well, dictators could be on the list. Good ol' Bob Mugabe, the wrecking-ball of Zimbabwe could be on the list. I could think of a longish list of crooked politicians and political crooks. Rapists, pedophiles, gangstas and the likes?
But what is the theory? That the bloodline should be eradicated? That the seed sown by the tree will only grow to be like the tree? Surely not. Bankers, and my distaste of them, do not beget bankers. They are trained, not bred. A lot of Christian ministers have seed that grow up to be weeds. A lot of weeds have kids that become ministers.
The point is - can we decide for others? Can we decide that a person should not have babies or not? Is this not what pro-choicers are practicing when they decide to terminate a life?
Well, no answer pops up as yet. But I will add a few to my list, and hehehe over the list like Schmiegel with his ring...
There is a dictator in every one of us.
- Jonah

How much is that doggie...

Apparently our food is going to the dogs.
I read an article that claims that food is becoming scarcer and more valuable, not only due to supply-demand-economics101-warawara but due to industries competing for our food.
Now this is interesting.
Apparently the pet food industry will be $56 Billion in size in 2014 and $96 Billion in 2015. One of the reasons quoted is because the Chinese are getting more and more pets.
Made me think of another supply/demand equaliser, where some other nations are fighting back by having munchkins on the menu. It all balances out, at the end? Eat or be eaten?
I wonder if anyone calculated the enormous impact the growth of the international dog population will have on the manufacturing of slippers. Slippers seem to be a primary food source of my little puppies. Just after sneakers. And lawns? Why do my pedigree pooches prefer to rather eat my lawn than the balanced protein and fat nibblets that are served to them?
Where is all of this going?
Is the world going to the dogs?

No Regrets

A few weeks ago Jonah and I looked each other in the eye, and I saw how good he looks after twenty years of marriage. I wonder what he saw, ‘she has to wash that grey right out of her hair’?

 We unanimously decided from now on, no more regrets.  We’ve got at least thirty years of good health in front of us.  We’ve got a lifetime worth of experience behind us .

 If I look back now, there’s regrets.  Choices that I’ve made, things that I could have done very differently.  Opportunities missed, stubbornness, hurts, forgiveness.  While my mind wanders down the lonely roads of the past my heart says stop.  Keep the vault door closed, you’ve had a good life.

From now on – NO MORE REGRETS. 

I’ll have to learn to listen more to my heart and turn down the volume of my reason.  That first thought that comes through your mind is most probably the correct answer.

So honey, we are going to buy that 80’s Mercedes campervan!

-Mary O'Neill

Of mice and actuaries

Interesting how the banks, who, without a doubt, created the international debt crisis, react to it.
Times are tough. For people losing their jobs, people still trying to stay afloat after the banks quite eagerly inflated their property values and were willing to grant nice liquid loans against the new values.
And now, the customer, Joe Blow, is bearing the brunt of it. The banks are being baled out and Joe is being drowned.
I recently defaulted on the loan payments on my one business property.
What was the bank's reaction to this?
Well, obviously, increase the interest to prime plus 9%!
The logic had been checked by the team of actuaries - if the customer battles with paying prime, he should be fine with prime plus nine, or put differently: Double Prime!
It's prime time, guys, they slap each other's backs on the way to a well deserved drink after work.
And obviously, they will be getting their bonuses this year.
All paid by Joe, off course.
Interesting how the bank treat people in down times, not caring if they take their custom elsewhere, because the other banks treat their customers the same way.
Time for a new banking model?
- Jonah

The Right Shoe

Fathers day came with three pairs of shoes. One deliciously decadent pair of slippers, one pair of indestructible rubber farm boots and one pair of slick leather slip-on formal shoes.
This feast for the feet is a summary of my life and times. I get up at 4:15 and slip on my luxurious slippers. They have stripes on the material insides, and look like little landing strips for my size elevens to touchdown on.
I slipslop to the door, where my feet then leave the comfy warmth of bedside and glide into the rubber boots. Out into the fields, checking the pipes and plants and what the dog destroyed in the night, picking up some crap along the way.
Back from the fields, clonking the boots to the floor, landingstrip time again.
Into the shower, out of the shower and into leather shoes that are so long and pointy that you could use them to kill cockroaches in corners with.
What a blessing these three pairs are, one from each kid.
The best is, through the life and world transition between the three, not a single shoe is touched by a hand. All slip on slip off. If changing your work roles could only be so easy...
I could see myself turning up at a client one of these days with the wrong pair on.
-Jonah

That bothersome wind

The wind always seems to blow here. As we are on an escarpment, and a little higher than the city, we catch the winds. There are pros and cons to that.
The pros are that we have clean air, the smog of the city cannot blanket us. We can see the stars at night, bright and beautiful. We can generate wind power, although we haven't as yet. (The theory of this possibility is always intriguing to have in the back of the mind, whether it will actually become a verb, well, time will tell).
The cons are that dust seems to creep in and settle everywhere. The winter chill crowbars itself through every small gap in the window-frame, under the doors, even through the key-hole.
Which made me think of a story my dad used to tell.
He was a deacon in church (even into his late sixties, when he was supposed to be an elder. "What, and sit with the old people", he replied to the pastor when he attempted the subject).
As there were no air-conditioning in church, the windows were open in summer to let the breeze in. This particular Sunday, a nice breeze flowed thought the building. An elderly lady was sitting next to the window, and the breeze were playing with a set of large purple feathers sprouting from her ponderous hat. As the feathers danced, one would bend down and tickle her cheek ever so often. She would then wave her hand and scratch her cheek distractedly.
My father went over to her and asked her: "Is that wind bothering you, ma'am?"
"No, don't worry", she said, "I will wait for the organ to start playing".
-Jonah

Seasonal Kids

As the sunrise threatens behind the trees, and the frost sparkles with a last hurrah, my thoughts are dwelling on my kids.
Claire is a winter child. Nothing to do with when she was born. She is frosty. But warms up as the light touches her. She is clear and crisp and what some people would call a left brainer. And what a brain she has! All thirteen years of experience crammed into a hormonally-powered framework. (Now that she's going live in cyberspace, would that make her an e-clair?)
Bob, the little one, ten, is a summer child. All growth and heat and raucous winds and thunderstorms and sunshine. Clear start to the day, sudden outburst after lunch, quickly gone, peace again. Temperamental, some would have it. But oh, so warm.
William, the eldest is a spring child. Subtle warm breeziness about him. A subtle fragrance when he walks into the room. As other fifteen year-old girls have noticed. He's had more bees visiting his flowering character than I had at 25! Everyone likes spring.
When winter and summer collide without the benefit of spring between them, as so often happens in our little terrarium, there are violent storms. Low pressure and high pressure systems rear up and butt heads with thunderclaps. And there are no winners. Ever. Just another day in parenting paradise!
-Jonah

The Age of Steam

The entire kitchen smells of curry. There are bits of cabbage in the toaster, bits of carrot in the kettle. The windows are frosted over with a sandblasting of a light buttery yellow colour. And our kitchen is now eau-de-curry.
Incredible how a steam cooker can explode.
It said "SSSSSSSSHHHHH!", and as I got up to go and turn the heat lower, it said something it hadn't said before. Ever. "PPPPPPPPSSSSSH PAAAAAH!".
As I rushed into the kitchen, the pot, all six seven kilos of it, had lifted off and landed on the floor. It was doing those moves the African Americans would do on cardboard sheets in New York. It was spinning around, stopping with its arm propped under its chin, upside down. It was an incredible performance, but I did not feel the urge to applaud or to flick a few notes out of my wallet at it. My curry! I thought.
As the SSSSHH became SSSSSsssshhhh, the lifeblood of my curry started squirting out onto the floor. Rich orange yellow juice puddled and started flowing like lava across the floor and under the cupboards.
Ay yay yay. We were just about to go and take a power walk through the plots and farmsteads before the sun went down. We swapped our sneakers for a mop, our plans for a bucket of warm soapy water.
Afterwards, as I opened the steam cooker, I saw that a little piece of cabbage had blocked the release valve. The littlest piece.
The steam, having nowhere to go, pushed the o-ring aside, and the jet of curried steam was so powerful that it could turn the pot into the space shuttle Challenger.
The blessing was that no-one was in the kitchen at the time.
The kitchen was covered from corner to corner in the fine spray, a spray that had been super-heated as it came out. It would have scalded anyone in its reach.
Made me think of my feisty temper. Sometimes it would take a little thing to block me up, and when I explode, whoever is in the room gets scalded. A Mediterranean character, the spouse would say. Big PPPSSSH PAH and then its over as soon as it started.
We all need a release. A controlled release. Otherwise we could explode more.
Perhaps I should take up break-dancing, and do a few moves when my steam built up too much. Perhaps that is the lesson life is trying to teach me.
-Jonah

Seeds sown apart

My little one looked at the seedlings I were transplanting. His brow, all ten years old, furrowed. I thought that my instruction to him had been simple: " We have to plant them about 15 centimeters apart".
"But dad", he said, "in nature the seeds wouldn't fall 15 centimeters from each other, would they?"
Impeccable logic here.
Begs the question: if seeds are sown together, or blown together by a chance wind, and sprout, how would they grow? In a bunch, yes, but some would rise above the others, eventually stealing the light, leaving their brothers and sisters in the shadow of their glory. And the more they have shadow, the slower they will grow. Whilst the others, the tall winners, will grow and grow and perhaps even reduce their brothers and sisters to compost. Hmm...
As reality came back into view, I saw that the little source of wisdom had wandered off, aiming for the door that leads to their PC room. That ol' magnet was just too strong...
"Hey", I growled at him. "Back here, lazybones".
"Just because you are Mr. IQ does not mean you don't have work to do".
"Whether nature plants them in a bundle or not, I want them 15 centimeters apart!"
"Now".
He gave me that lazy puppy-eyed smile, knowing that he had been caught out (again).
One of these days he will outwit me without me even realising it, I thought.
-Jonah