Old Life New Life

My life changed drastically when my wife died.  We both knew cancer cells her body was producing was going to kill her in the near future, but we didn't know how near the future was.  She received various treatments, took her medications, and fought very hard.  There is a whole book of stories and facts to say about that, but not now. 

She died and I am still here.  Her suffering ended and I am so glad it is over.  But I am still here.  I go on with my old life, but it is actually a whole new life without her.  I have to take over tasks she used to handle but I still have to go to work at the same job and the same people.  I live in the same house but she is not here. 

Much of her possessions are still here, but she is not.  Her daughter could not deal with them for a while, so I store them in our (my) little house.  I drive her car because it is newer and nicer than mine but she will never drive it again.  Nor will she go anywhere with me, ever again.

So I live and build a new life on top of my old life like a new city is built on top of an old dilapidated on.  I am devasted by her loss, but at the same time, amazed at how a new life is creating itself as I go on without her.

My family, friends and entire support system, my life, has slowed and is surrounding me.  I couldn't be more grateful to them and need them so much.  I have never had so many hugs since I was a baby, I imagine.  But tonight, I sit, amazed and surprised how this upheaval has occurred and continues.  It also helps to put words to the page and explain this all to me and to you.

To Celebrate the Fourth of July, Impeach a Traitor

The only appropriate celebration of the Fourth of July would be for someone in Congress to introduce articles of impeachment of the 45th President of the United States.  That process will take months, and I have no illusions about a Republican-controlled House and Senate following through on removing one of their own from the Presidency.  This is not going to happen.

But a true patriotic American Congressman or woman would prove their allegiance to the republic by formally charging Donald J. Trump with perverting the course of (obstructing) justice, and ten other charges that any effective Congress would convict on and remove this scamming criminal from office.  But alas, that is not the current Congress we have elected.

Instead, we move, step by step, toward a mock democracy where Trump arranges to remain in office after losing the 2020 election.  His statement about the Chinese President arranging for himself to be President for Life, "That sounds good to me." The principles on which this nation was formed will be pushed aside and forgotten until the current neo dark age has run its course.

My fear is that real explosions will be needed, not fireworks, to reverse the course Putin and Trump have put us upon.

Deleting Facebook

Deleting Facebook

            It takes two weeks for Facebook to delete your account, that is, if you can figure out how to ask them to do so.  One can ask them to “deactivate” an account, but that is not the same as deleting an account.  As the word deactivate indicates, when your account is deactivated, it still exists.  It can be re-activated.  Deletion is elimination.  It probably exists somewhere, so that Facebook can still monetize your data, but after two weeks, and that is two weeks where you do not attempt to access your old account, either accidentally, or change your mind, that account will be deleted.

            Farewell, for the moment, to those “friends” on Facebook who have accepted my “friend request”.   Some are actual friends, some acquaintances, some people who I knew from various jobs, some close and distant family members.  Like anybody else, some family members are more like friends or acquaintances, and some friends are more like family.  I will not be able to view your likes and dislikes, your dog photos, you cutest-baby-in-the-world photos.  Nor will I be able to see those clever posts that you have shared done by people quicker and more creative than me.

Facebook shared those fun quizzes that are actually personality tests.  Tests whose results were stolen, along with our “friends” accounts, psychologically weaponized and sold to the highest bidder.  As various media outlets have reported, losing political campaigns attempted and failed to use that data to their advantage.  The worst of those campaigns won, though.  It began using that data before the current President knew he was running for office.  Using that data was technically legal.  It remains to be seen whether cooperatively using Russian psychological experts to manipulate Trump’s base and uncommitted, fence sitting, potential Clinton voters was legal.

            Facebook did not sell that data to the Trump campaign.  But they did cover up the loss of that and much more data extraction.  They still are, and it is still legal.  Google and other tech giants have done it and will continue to do it.  But deleting my account is my butterfly wing flutter.  It is my cry of BS to Mark Zuckerberg and his saying he is sorry and will try to do better.  Mark, if you are truly sorry, give the DNC ten billion dollars for the mid-terms.

-->

            Google and Twitter could be next. For now, I delete Facebook and urge all other users to do the same.  Legislation or legal action against Facebook as a monopoly will not be effective.  Deleting and shunning it will, eventually.  My action is personal activism.

Never Too Late for Sentimentality

This blog started more than ten years ago.  Today's post harkens back to the first one:  https://jfing.blogspot.com/2007/08/no-one-knows.html.  Thanks for reading. Please support the sponsors.

    Greetings visitors to About.me.  If you clicked on "Read My Blog" send me a short email to let me know.  This is my first advertisement of any kind.  I am testing About.me for its ability to promote. They send me emails, but I really can't tell if anyone sees the page.  If only a couple of people send emails, I'll keep it.  Most people will visit the page and not say anything.  If a couple of people send email responses, then I'll know a dozen visited.
   
It is fairly evident that I have little confidence in my writing, and even less in my promotional pursuits.  Blogging is self publishing.  Blogging is often under-edited and unsolicited.  Mine is the latter and somewhat edited.  I edit as I write.  There is one or two read throughs and then I hit the "Publish".  There is no discussion.  Maybe that is what I am lacking.  If there was discussion or pre-publishing reading, then may I would have something.  But I have found no one interested in what I have to say.

Today's post is a test and half hearted one at that.  Send me an email, or a comment to the blog.  I'll keep writing either way.

Donald Trump is President Elect

December 19, 2016

This is only the second post of "Wading Into the Stream" for 2016.  The first was just a video filmed by my niece.  It was a video review of my father's ninetieth birthday party in May. She did a great job and I am proud of her and my Dad.

Today I write about the Presidential election of 2016.  To review, after a grueling Primary season, Hillary Clinton, Democrat, ran against Republican, Donald Trump.  All of the pundits and experts were shocked and amused by Trump's outrageous campaign, but on Election Day, they predicted Clinton would be the victor.  To more than half the voters amazement, Trump won the electoral vote. Clinton received well over two and a half million more popular votes than Trump did, but he became the President elect.

The College of Electors met and voted today, officially electing Trump.  This man will be President of the United States.  A great many extremely smart, accomplished, successful people are afraid of the various probable outcomes of his administration.  They have spelled them out in endless articles, blogs, interviews, speeches, and by now, even books.  The people Trump has nominated and has spoken of appointing to his administration represent many kinds of backward, destructive, divisive, earth-destroying, profit driven, bizzarely religious, and wantonly immoral ideas that American public figures have expressed in the last thirty years.

Several of these people have failed at the highest offices and jobs they achieved. A couple were fired. One or two were nearly prosecuted.  And among these individuals, it is my opinion, based on what I have read, seen, or heard, most of which, I assume, is factual, Donald Trump is the most likely one to have committed serious felonies.  I think it is only a matter of time before his crimes are exposed. Even with a Republican House and Senate, I think he has the best chance of being impeached and removed from office.  That is, assuming those who supported and voted for him don't rise up in civil war, which is a remote and horrible possibility.

Alan Fothergill's 90 Birthday Celebration

No Dramatic Results, Please

    Politics in the United States of America has slowed the legislative process to a near stop. I would speculate, without a poll, that most Americans would say, if asked, that there are laws that need fixing and social problems that could be solved only by legislation. American government needs to get to work to fix the things only government can fix, and right away.
     Yet what is the problem? Better yet, what are the problems that prevent government from functioning? First of all, there is far too much money involved. Whatever is successfully legislated, creates or costs enormous amounts of money. Corporate America or worldwide corporations are far too large and far too powerful to allow any significant legislation to affect the bottom line.
     The second problem is that significant legislation usually affects a large number of people. People are afraid to do this anymore. Even well paid members of Congress refuse to risk this.
     Finally, backlash from significant legislation is so huge, mail volume, email volume, media hype and anti-hype, that no one wants to be responsible for it. Congress would much rather leave things as they are. If the government is minimally functional, that is good enough for them. As long as the rocket of government is inching along towards its gantry, it will be a long time before it takes off.

The Best People are the Best Americans

   It is so easy to post a social or political opinion these days. So many people do it. I am doing it now. But many people exclude or demean groups or individuals they are against. Political foes, other races, and other religions are very common targets of hate, or just being labelled, "other". Is this necessary? If love and happiness are any part of reality, should we all not wish our fellow human beings these states of being, first and foremost? Yes.
   If you are, in any way, intelligent, then pointing out the differences between yourself and those who differ from you is unnecessary. If you are smart, you will know that you will be more appealing if you are humble and let your actions speak for you.

The Game of Online Genealogy

   When I began to look at my family history in 2008 I was earnest about finding accurate records of my relatives as far back as I could.  I had many family stories and hundreds of photos with which to begin. Then I found Geni.com.  After entering my family's essential information, name, where and when they were born, date of death, and in some cases, a photo, I started to find relatives who I did not enter into the system. My family was growing.
   The next six years found me entering an occasional distant relative I had neglected.  But more often, I started collecting new relatives that other people had entered.  I possess family records that go back six generations in three lines of my family.  The other lines were not that extensive.  Just for context, six generations got me back to the 17th century, in terms of time. What the millions of people participating on Geni.com did for me was to trace my family back to the 13th century or further.
   I learned a few tricks for searching for relatives like Googling possible relatives, then plugging them into Geni. This way I found how I was related to Confucius and even Biblical figures.  Let me stop, at this point, and say that not all of Geni's records are accurate. Surprise!  Of course many are inaccurate. When I found the first King that was my 21st Great Grandfather, I knew there were inaccuracies. It didn't matter.  Searching for interesting relatives like William the Conqueror and Charlemagne became the game and it did not matter how accurate the results were.
   Geni made it easy to collect relatives.  I stopped collecting 18th Great Grandparents when I had more than eighty.  Then I started doing the math.  Typically, people have two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, sixteen great-great grandparents, and on and on. At your tenth great-grandparents, you could potentially have 4096.  At eighteenth, the number is 524288.  That is, people could have as many as a half million or more eighteenth great grandparents.  The real number is impossible to know because at a certain (unknown) point, the same person can be a great grandparent and great great grandparent at the same time from different relative perspectives.  It can be extremely complicated.  You'll have to trust me, or ask a real genealogist.

                                                      Pope Gregory X 1210-1276


The game continued when I found that you could pull up your family tree, horizontally, on Geni.com, and then follow one line as far as there were relatives.  It didn't surprise me when I traced my line back to Ostrogotha "The Patient", King of the Goths.  My family can be very uncivilized.  But when I found I could directly trace myself back to Pope Gregory X, 1210-1274, my 23rd Great Grandfather, then I knew it was all silliness and I had to treat this as a game only.  I hope all of the genealogists forgive me.

Opinion without Education

    If you are not educated enough, you are not going to learn anything from me.  I will write my opinions each month, but do not make the mistake of thinking that I will teach you anything.  Teaching was never going to be one of my objectives.  If you need more education and you know it, you are my kind of reader.  One can never have enough education.  Learning must continue ad infinitum. Unfortunately, this forum, "Wading Into the Stream", is not educational and will never seek to educate its readers.  Those who came here for that will just have to try somewhere else.  May I suggest Khan Academy.
    My writing is expression of thoughts, opinions, ideas, and just-plain statements that occur to me, that I suppose you may have not verbalized for yourself.  You may have come close to thinking the same thing yourself, but not quite.  If you say to yourself, "I always thought that, but I've never seen it in print before," then I am on the right track.  Many people have said I have a knack for stating the obvious.  Wait a second. That is not a compliment, is it?
    While studying English Literature at the University of Cincinnati, many years ago, I decided that pursuing teaching as a profession that English majors fell back upon when real jobs could not be found, was not a place I ever wanted to be.  And I have not been able to land a full time job for seventeen months, now.  Nevertheless, I'm sticking to my guns and will not pursue teaching unless faced with homelessness and starvation.  Thanks for supporting me, Suzie.  You are the real teacher.
_________________________________________________________________________________   March will bring my one thousandth blog view.  Thank you to all of my readers.  You guys are the best.  But you didn't know you were exclusive.  Most worthwhile bloggers celebrate their one millionth or ten millionth readers.  Not me.  Very few people have read this blog.  I do not market this blog.  I do not collect any revenue from it, at all.  (And I have no income, at the moment.)  Finally, I have only mentioned it to a few people.  It is, more or less, a secret.  No need to forward this to anyone.  It is not funny, and definitely not educational.
So those of you who are reading this and those of you who have read more than one posting must really want to be here.  I salute you!

Woodchurch to Cincinnati in 579 Years

In the village of Woodchurch,
in the county of Kent, in the country that called itself England was born a
girl named Katherina to the wife of Richard Endingham. The year was 1435. She
may be my 16th great grandmother. 



She married a man named Robert
Clarke. One of their sons was named William Clarke. William married a woman
named Benedicta Ashburnham. They had a son named Richard. The year adult Richard's wife had a daughter named after her mother was 1504. The place was called
Wellbourne, in Lincolnshire. 



When Margaret Thomas Clarke
grew up she married a man who was made a Knight of the Realm, Sir Richard Smith. Together,
they produced thirteen children, the eldest of whom was born William, in 1518.
His daughter Eleanor, grew up and married Alexander White. Sometime around 1546
or so, they had a daughter named Frances. 



They also had a daughter named
Katherine, who would grow up to travel with her husband, John Carver across the English
Channel to Holland. A couple of years later, they would take a small ship
across the Atlantic with a group of religious dissenters to start a new life in
a wild land near the James River in the New World. That trip would be
interrupted by bad weather and that group of Protestant dissenters, later
referred to as Pilgrims, landed and named Plymouth in 1620. Frances did not
follow her sister. Instead she stayed behind in England and grew up to marry
another Francis. 



Frances and Francis also followed her sister to Leiden, Holland, but at some point, they ended up going back to England.  Their son, John, was born in Leiden in 1602. Sometime after 1620, John made his way across the Atlantic in the
great Puritan migration, and ended up in Connecticut. He married a woman name
Johanna Whitmore. Their daughter, as was the custom at the time, was also named
Johanna. 

When little Johanna became a
young woman, she married a man named John Burrows. To them was born another
John Burrows in 1671 in Groton, New London. Young John married a woman with a
name typical of the time and place, Patience. Patience later gave birth to
Eunice. 



Eunice grew up to marry a man
named Jonas Curtis. Jonas and Eunice lived for time in Stratford, Connecticut,
where their daughter, Hannah, was born in 1739. Hannah grew up and married my
fifth great grandfather, Henricus, known also as Henry. Henry Ellsworth saw
action as volunteer for the Revolutionary militia. He had a famous lawyer for a
cousin by the name of Oliver Ellsworth. Oliver would become the third Chief
Justice of the Supreme Court a few years after helping to write part of the
Constitution of the United States. Oliver was also a friend of George
Washington. 



Much more ordinary Henry and
Hanna raised a family containing one son named John. John became a man and
married Mary Whitney, probably in New York state. They had two sons, one of
whom fought for the Union in the American Civil War. His name was Freeman. 



Before going off to war,
Freeman married young Scottish immigrant, Jane Smith. They had several children
before Freeman's unit went to Murfreesboro, Tennessee in 1863. This was where
Freeman probably died of dysentery. 



Jane had to raise the younger
children, the last of whom was a spunky but mildly deformed girl named,
Marilla. Not one to let a little deformity deter her, Marilla met young Orlando
Richmond, whose family was also from New York. 



They married and had three
children. Their son, Harry was born in Ohio in 1875. He grew up in North
Baltimore, Ohio. Harry met and married a young Pennsylvanian girl named
Ninetta, who insisted on being called Nina. Nina rhymed with china. In North
Baltimore, Nina gave birth to Gladys, Grace, and Harold. Gladys was born in
1903, the year those Dayton boys, the Wright brothers, flew a motorized vehicle
in North Carolina. Early in the 1920's, Gladys, having gone to the teacher's
college in Bowling Green, married a man who towered almost a foot over her five
foot, one inch height. 



His name was Forest Borough.
Being from Weston, Ohio, Forest and Gladys bought a house half way to North
Baltimore, in the village of Deshler. Gladys and Forest had only one daughter.
Her name was Roberta, but like her grandmother Nina, she insisted on being
called by her nickname, Bobbie. Bobbie grew up to become a nurse and married my
father in Cincinnati, in 1951. I was born in 1958, third of four children.
Cincinnati was a long way from fifteenth century Woodchurch in Kent. By the
records written and maintained by many other people, I found my way there in
2013.

January One is an Excuse to Produce

     How many hundred 750 Words writers are starting today's writing mentioning the date.  Yes, it is the beginning of the year.  Yes, it is the first of the month.  And yes, it is a beginning.  That is okay.  Beginnings are a good place to start.  Start your week, your month, your year of writing, today.  Yes, start.  That is what is important.  Is writing necessary to you? Do you have things to say? Is expression vital to you?  By all means, start writing!
    Personally, I would like to invite everyone I know, who has any interest in writing, to use New Year's Day as an excuse to begin writing as a habit.  It will take about thirty or more days for it to begin the habit of writing.  There is a website called 750words.com.  It is a convenient place to start that habit.  Whether you want to write a journal, a novel, some poetry, an article, or maybe a wikipedia article, 750words.com is a good place to begin those pieces.  You can store the writing, here.  It will count your words for you.  It gives you an automatic community of writers, where you can be a member.
     You, who may never have been published.  You, who may have never belonged to any writing group.  Or, on the other hand, you, who have written three novels that you cannot get published.  Or you, who write in your journal every day since you were ten years old, may need some encouragement.  Or, as I implied above, you, who have something to say, can and should say it here.
     Today, I write.  Today, I tell myself, I will begin to write everyday, for a week, month, or, if I am disciplined, a year.  Yes, I will write 750 words or more, every day that I can, for as many days in a row that I can.  Yes, I will.  I have that many thoughts and words inside me, that are bubbling to the surface, daily, for many days in a row.  The row is not important.  How many is not important. Those percolating thoughts put into words are what need to be put down for whoever might read them.  It might only be you.  It might be 500,000 reading it online.
     New Year's Day is a fine day to start anything.  Maybe I will take one or more photographs, everyday for the next year as well.  I could be quite busy.  Write 750 words, minimally, daily, and take a photo or more, daily, everyday, from now until January 1, 2015.  It sounds very doable. Looking back over the last year, 365 days will go by in a flurry, and next year will be here in a couple of shakes of the head.
    What will I have accomplished. If nobody notices, nobody reads what I've written, nobody sees my photos, did I do anything?  Perhaps, but that would be the most negative and discouraging way of looking at it.  Minimally, if I write and photograph daily, for hundreds of days, I will have much more experience in both.  Anybody doing something like writing or taking photos daily, for any prolonged period, is going to get better at it, if only by doing it slightly faster.  Any awareness of increasing quality while performing regularly, will produce increased quality.
     I would invite anybody, who practices any skill, to begin to practice it with more regularity, today, January 1, 2014.  Then continue on January 2nd, 3rd, and continue.  If you have not shown yourself as much discipline as you know you need to accomplish your goals, start practicing today. Then do it again, tomorrow.  Is it important to you to get better?  Do a third day.  Do you really want to get good.  Do it a twelfth day.  How expert do you want to be? Do it a thirtieth day.  Go.  Be you.  Develop your skill.  Make it yours.
     That's it.  I am not going to encourage you more.  It really has to come from within you.  If it does not, you may quit on day six.  Ask yourself, how important is what you want.  For someone to give it to you is just not as important as you conceiving of it, thinking about it, and making it come to pass.  To not do it is failure.
     These are really my words to myself.  I write to myself.  Write more.  Write more frequently. Write more originally.  Write more imaginatively.  Write more tightly, more efficiently.  Be more interesting.  Be more compelling. Write like your life depends on it.

My Disclaimer

     This posting is to acknowledge that I, Jim Fothergill, otherwise known as James F. Fothergill in official documents and on the WWW, am the only author of "Wading into the Stream".  I am a real person, not a group of writers.  I am also "wordsforfree". The views and opinions in this column are mine. I am the management. If I have quoted or used someone else's words, it was an oversight, and I was not paid for their re-printing.  It is my hope that qualifies as fair use.  If I did not credit those words to the originator, I apologize.  It was unintentional.
      My views come from my upbringing, my education, my supplementary reading, and what I hear from various sources including print, broadcast television, broadcast radio, all internet sources, and person conversations.  My topics could include virtually anything. I create no limits.  They are also my views of the moment I write them.  They are subject to change at any time, including during the piece in which I originally stated them.  That is to say, my thinking can evolve within a given piece. Actually, that is often the goal.  I think it would be fair to say that my thoughts are amorphous until I actually write them down.  They are frequently mistaken and I will reverse myself with no notice.
     These columns have been free for the entertainment of my readers.  I have written and will create other columns from which I intend to be remunerated, one way or another.  These columns may not use my actual name (see above), but they may be built in such a way that I can get paid when they are viewed, and it is possible I may create a non-profit entity that readers may contribute to enable actions that they could financially encourage.
     Today's posting is really for me and anybody interested in my writing and its intentions.  Thank you for reading it, and thank you for reading any of my past postings on "Wading into the Stream". I greatly appreciate you time and interest.  It is my hope that we can continue this writer/reader relationship well into the future, and that we both will benefit from it in unseen and unanticipated ways.

Reconnecting with the Past or the People

    This fall, I reconnected with a couple of friends that I have not spoken to in decades.  In both cases, I have not had any contact with them for over thirty years in one case and thirty four years in the other. Yes, this does qualify me for "middle age" status, minimally.  Some would just say I was old.  To them I say, my eighty-seven year old father and ninety-five year old uncle are assuredly old.  Okay, I am old to teenagers and probably, to twenty-somethings.  Alas, I'm probably old to my thirty-two year old daughter.  Old but not necessarily mature.
     But reconnecting with my old friends is a time conundrum of its own.  On one hand I would like to say to them that I've lived the heart of my life, the important and significant years.  I'll just have to catch you up on all of my important moments in the last few decades and then we'll start over here now, in 2013.  I'm still the same person I was at twenty, right?
     On the other hand, a significant part of me feels like I am not the same person I was at twenty.  That twenty year is within me, but another person has grown around him like a tree.  To strain that metaphor a little further, I've grown more than thirty rings of new person around that twenty year old and it might be a little hard to access him now.
     How do I explain this to my old friends?  After all, we have all moved on, as the cliché says.  There were reasons we both moved on.  Part of me would say that real life got in the way and some of our friends got pushed aside.  And there is some truth to that.  Then there are those reasons that they have not connected with me in all that time.  Those could be ordinary or those could be a little uncomfortable.  But that twenty-year-old person in me is shouting from within, "I really liked that person and want to know them again."
     Now the work begins.  Now I have to communicate with them and get to know them all over again.  Now I will hear the significant moments in their lives over the last few decades.  Then we'll see how it goes from there.

The Anarchy of the Rule of Opinion and Belief

In a democratic republic, such as the United States of America, the idea of democracy takes the form of representative government.  The people do not actually rule.  They do not directly create laws in any form.  Representatives are elected to localities, and those representatives create the laws.  Ideally, the people have agreed to follow those laws as they conduct their business and their lives.  This idea is known as the rule of law. 

Generally and specifically, the people and their representatives tacitly agree to not to break the laws their elected representatives have democratically voted on and enacted.  There is no suspension of these agreed upon laws short of blatant disobedience. The result can be the beginning of societal disorder, such as the partial shutdown of the government brought about by the House of Representatives stubborn refusal to legislate. Remember, writing, arguing for or against a bill, and then voting on it, is why, by law and by oath, they are there.

It does not matter what representatives or constituents believe.  If an enacted piece of legislation is personally disagreeable, then any representative is welcome to write new legislation to reverse it, if he can convince enough of his fellow representatives to go along with his new thinking.  Congressional rules preventing any part of this process obstruct the governmental process. This is the main exercise of democracy we use in Federal government.

If large political groups, religious, business, or just professional lobby groups, assert opinions that are contrary to Presidentially endorsed laws; that is their right.  Written or spoken opinions are protected by the First Amendment.  Nevertheless, politically aligned Congressional representatives cannot prevent the enforcement and enactment of those laws under any circumstances.  To allow governmental obstruction is to disrupt the rule of law and risk the fracture of the foundation of American society.