False Equivalence

The following is a direct quote from Dan Rather's Facebook post today, referring to the deaths around the demonstrations in Charlottesville, Virginia.

 "What has unfolded in Charlottesville, Virginia today is a national tragedy fueled by bigotry, white nationalism, and home grown terrorism.
Freedom of speech is not a license for the incitement of violence. And the neo-Nazis and KKK members who gathered are anathema to everything this country should stand for.
For too long President Trump was silent. But when he did speak his refusal to call out the hatred for what it is, and his general message of false equivalence was disgusting and counterproductive.
[Said Trump:] 'This egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides.' 
That's a dangerous misrepresentation of history from a politician who has bigotry as a large part of his base.  All decent Americans of all political persuasions cannot allow these actions to remain unchallenged - both the hatred on display in Charlottesville and the rhetoric of the President."

(Emphasis mine.) 

The term I was floundering around trying to say during a phone conversation this morning was "false equivalence."   That would also apply to the example I gave of the bicycle incident where someone put up the sign that said "peace on the streets" where the bicyclist blew the stop sign and the motorist was simply unlucky enough to not notice him coming, and/or not expect him to break the law.

Again, the idea of false equivalence--a car hits a bike, so surely each party must have been at least partly at fault. Maybe that's true sometimes, but when it is not, the statement implying equivalence is false and, it seems at least in the example of Trump's statement, engineered specifically to divert blame away from the party(s) to which it rightfully should be assigned.

I think it's worth the effort to find and label these logical fallacies and manipulations, to help defuse them.

Non Productive

The day following my last blog entry I was hit on the side of my head with a big rock (or, more accurately, a chunk of concrete) about six inches in length when some kid threw said rock/chunk at my car and it came in through the open passenger side window and struck me. ( I was going 50 mph ) Car is fine. Head is fine. I actually wasn't hit that hard. It seems to me it was about as hard as it could be without seriously hurting me, but as it was it nearly knocked me out, and gashed my head so that I required stitches. I say stitches but I got staples. Now I look sort of like the victim of an office copy machine collating task gone horribly awry. The good news is the healing is probably 80-90% done, and the staples are coming out tomorrow. Yay.

Never saw it coming.

So, slightly out of sorts, I didn't get much accomplished this week as far as my move in December. I thought about stuff though!  Which counts. I have a plan for the kittehs, who unfortunately will remain in the Midwest. I hate doing that. I have a friend in California who I think is mad at me, but no one wants to move two cats 1,600 miles, or whatever, and if you've ever apartment hunted, you will realize that two cats will cost you plenty in terms of extra deposits and "pet rent." (Don't get me started on that. It's right up there with "application fee" on the bullshit scale.) There is also the issue of a mild (I guess) cat allergy I have. The last time I lived without a cat in the house was 1984. Since that date, I have taken roughly 12,045 Claritin or Claritin substitute pills to keep my head clear. That can't be good for me. At any rate, I'm anxious to get off of it. I can't help but think my flagging immune system will get at least a slight boost by me taking cat dander out of the equation.

My last, recent, move leaves me with a minimum amount of extraneous crap, so I actually believe I can get rid of it before December. At this point, I am leaning heavily toward getting rid of all regular furniture and moving with just my belongings and clothes. It doesn't really sound realistic, but I have a platform bed that breaks down into fairly short boards and lots of hex wrench fasteners, and a couple of antique drawleaf tables (with chairs) that also break down and can be boxed. I doubt I will be able to move in just my car, but maybe a small trailer . . . ????  I dunno. Needs more thought. I can always hire it done and to be realistic, again, that's probably what will wind up happening.

The really crappy Kansas City summer we are having this year only strengthens my resolve to move to California. It will be hot where I'm going, but . . . I'm not even going to say it. Here, we reached 101 degrees today, and it was a very humid heat. Not a dry . . . well, I'm not going to say it.

Kadima: The Meandering Line of Life

A lot has transpired here since my last blog post. I was just reminded how long ago that was. Summer arrived, the hot weather tethered behind. The thunderstorms, the humidity, then the shimmering, still, broiling hot afternoons followed by sultry nights and blazing mornings you just can't seem to wake up ahead of. I take my daily walk in the mornings in a desperate and futile bid to "beat the heat."

Bees, by the way, whether regimented beekeeper bees or feral bees, swarm in the spring, before the summer heat. A new queen is created deep inside the honeycombs of the hive, and the old queen takes a big percentage of the hive's members and they swarm off to a new home. They only go maybe 50 yards, though, that first day, and settle in a huge, frightening ball hanging from a tree limb or the eave of a tall house, maybe. Here they stay for a day or two, at the most, and then off they go, suddenly, over the horizon, as it were, and find their new permanent home, much farther away.

In the same way, once I had spent a year in my old house alone, I sold it and moved--not too far away--to an apartment just over the state line, in the adjacent city. Here I stay for a short time.  That time is already half used up--I've been here six months now, with another 6 months to go before the lease is up. And like the swarming bees, I'm ready to make another move, this time much farther away, to my (next) permanent home. So a couple weeks ago, once I realized that all that was necessary was for me to decide to do it, I decided to move to northern California, to a small college town in the Great Valley, a very few hours drive from my old home in Palo Alto which I left over 40 years ago. So, an old familiar place, yet a new place.

I'm a lot more streamlined now than I was when I moved from my house. I still have junk--don't get me wrong--but not as much, now, and I should be able to trim down to the clothes I normally wear and my favorite or necessary things, like a hobo with a bag tied to the end of a stick, (if said bag was, oh, about fifteen feet in diameter, perhaps suspended by some sort of small portable crane.)

Again I am putting items on Craigslist and giving away other stuff, and coaxing and cajoling my son into taking all the things of his that he once thought I would store for him in perpetuity. The most difficult thing is that I am trying to find a new home, or homes, for my two cats. I hate to remove them, like this, from my life, but I don't want to move them to California, and the reality is that I'm allergic to cats and have been taking allergy medications daily since 1984 when my wife and I adopted Roscoe, our first cat.

Note to unsavory characters and evil hackers scanning my text from afar: none of my passwords is "roscoe." But, you know, knock yourselves out.

So, fingers crossed that we find good, loving homes for my cats, Uma and L-Bot. Maybe with sort of gentle kids, or with yards populated with endlessly fascinating bunnies that nonetheless have lightning fast reflexes. Maybe with at least one little kid who can appreciate the aloof but sincere companionship of these familiar yet strange creatures.

More as it develops.

Saturday

Another dreary, rainy day here in Kansas City. The cats and I are stationed by the front window, getting as much indirect, filtered daylight as possible. There is not much going on outside. Since it's raining off and on, the construction crew across the street isn't working. There is very little pedestrian traffic up and down the street--only the occasional car going either north or south with a little swoosh.

I meant to say that the "real" Busy Bee Cafe, the inspiration for the errant half-baked and eventually aborted plot line of my latest novel, is undergoing a refurbishment. The building front is getting new trendy floor to ceiling windows that are very clean and very modern, even set as they are in the old brick wall. Same treatment with the front door at the corner of the building. Not sure what's going on upstairs. All I know about the upstairs is that there are windows. It always looked to me like a couple of apartments might have been up there at one time.  The big sign on the side of the building is still there. Perhaps they mean to leave it. I guess it is to be a bar/restaurant/music-venue, like other places up and down the street. I suppose reality is actually being altered there, but in the same way that we are time traveling to the future--slowly and with great pain and anguish.
At any rate, I once thought if there were apartments up there, I would like to live in one of them--but not if there is going to a bar with live music downstairs. That's a little too much reality for me.

Not to complain, although I do reserve the right to whine and pule, my neck is still sore. It still hurts when I turn my head to the left too far. When driving, for example, I can look out the driver's side window, but I can't really look over my left shoulder without wincing. I've been to the chiropractor, which was no help, and a masseuse (same) and I've been to the acupuncturist twice now. My third appointment is this Wednesday. He seems to be doing some good. My neck is improving incrementally. It's expensive and not covered by insurance. However, not to complain as I'm sure there is a Republican somewhere who is confident that this is all somehow my own fault. I'm not arguing the point.

My acupuncture guy is also into other things. He mentioned that he does past-life regressions. I can't say that I believe in that, but I confess it sounds like fun. He just mentioned it, not as a course of treatment for my neck, but he told me sometimes revealing a past life can cure maladies in this life.

Due to the chronically sore neck, I'm giving up most of my guitar playing. I discovered that the position(s) I get myself into while playing are aggravating the situation. Playing music turns out to be a sort of asymmetric endeavor on more than one level.  I told the guys in the jazz band I'm going to have to give it up. I hate to do that, but I also hate being in pain much of the day, so there you have it.

I am alone by the window. The cats left unceremoniously and covertly, in the same way that they arrived. They are stress-free.

Friday Arrives Without Divine Intervention

   Just as an exercise, I am trying to write a blog entry knowing that I sit alone in my dining room in front of my computer. I am not somehow in cyberspace, swirling around touching other cyber-people, communicating with other intellects out there, maybe feeling the warmth of their souls; I am just sitting here in my dining room, typing.

   Well, and my cat.

   We humans are so easy. Any reality will do. It's become a kind of theme for me. The easiest, most obvious one is the one where we construct the knowledge of a world around us using sensory input. I hear a voice. A fire truck just went by. Bam, there must be a wall right here. OK I see it now.

   There are the alternate realities that very closely resemble the one based on sensory input. The one where your nose is too big, or where your friends are witty, or where the aliens are broadcasting mind-control rays down upon the continent.

   Of course there is Cyberspace and all the alternate variations you could possibly dream of.

   Reality check: yep. Still sitting here in the dining room. The cat has jumped down, though, and has stationed herself on the hallway desk where she may keep an eye on the kitchen. Beyond the kitchen is the back porch and the stairwell that provides passage from all the back doors to the parking area behind the building. In the other direction, beyond my livingroom, is the front of the building that sits in a row of other buildings, across the street from the new apartment building that is currently under construction. I've been here since December, so I watched it go up, so far. The workers just built the third floor. I hope they stop, as the whole thing has begun to impinge upon my view of the morning sky.

Midweek Appraisal

The A/C is not repaired yet. I guess repair is not the word. It is not cleaned. I would post a picture of the mold and mildew found inside the plenum chamber, just below the a/c coils in the basement unit, but it's disgusting. Not going to breath that stuff anymore. Probably why I have felt like crap since moving into this apartment--even though the furnace running does not smell, it was surely still blowing mold and bacteria into the system. For the last two nights, it's been hot and humid, but I'm not running the a/c.  Today a thunderstorm rolled through, which cooled things down temporarily but also increased the humidity. I had to close all the windows, which warmed it up inside. I'm on the second floor. It is 75 degrees outside right now. I have all the windows open and three fans running and the temperature inside has maintained at a steady, sticky 84.

Uma has adapted to the heat in her own way. 

Furthermore, if this weren't bad enough, I'm becoming a little disenchanted with the little musical group I belong to. OK, we're bad.  So bad. But, that's OK. The trouble is, the more I learn about jazz--the genre of music the two other members of our group want to play--the more I realize that I'll never be proficient at it. It's just one of those things. Like, if you enjoy painting as a hobby, and fall in with a bunch of people who aspire to paint the ceilings of chapels across Europe at the behest of various Popes or whatnot. Not gonna happen. I won't critique the other members. I just know that I have learned enough to suddenly realize that I should be embarrassed. I do NOT know what I'm doing. This has all given me a new respect for jazz and for jazz musicians, but, to be honest, I don't really like listening to it. I understand the allure of playing--but it's like juggling bean bags: fun to do, sort of, if you can get off the ground, maybe even impressive to some degree, but no one wants to observe you doing it for more than, say, five or ten seconds. I think to sum up without excuses, it has stopped being fun.

I'm diggin' the acupuncture, though. I go back Tuesday with questions and a few more items on the list of things I'd like to address. And the a/c repair guy is coming over tomorrow morning to fix the mold/mildew problem. Really looking forward to that.

Sultry

Much like the six-year-old whose very first words were, "Mom!  The toast is burning!" I have decided to create a blog entry now that something is wrong.

My air conditioner is out of commission, and it is hot and humid here. I am not a happy camper. I complained to the landlady about an odor when I first turned on the a/c earlier this summer. Smelled like dirty socks. The Internet said it was probably mildew and bacteria growing in the basement unit of the air conditioner. People came out to look at it. The third person figured it out and is going to fix it Thursday. That is two days away. Actually, two nights. Two hot, sticky nights up here on the second floor.

We are all listless, the two cats and I. The cats drape themselves over furniture like discarded rags. So do I. Is this how humans lived before there was air conditioning? Except for the people in California? (And their "whole house fans?")

OK. Enough of that. Work continues apace on the new building across the street. The parking lot/basement has been put in, and the first floor, which is wood frame. They are now working on the second floor. I'm curious how many floors the building will have, because after the second floor, the thing is going to start to impinge on my view of the sky. I mean to ask someone how many stories the plan calls for, but so far I haven't run across any English speaking workers.

I gave up on the chiropractor because she and the masseuse made my neck feel worse, instead of better. I'm no rocket scientist, but I believe this is a good reason to stop treatment.  Monday I went to an acupuncturist, which turned out to be a very positive experience. I will go back there, and in fact I have an appointment for next week. My neck feels better, if not totally cured, and, like, three other things are better that I never even mentioned. (Yeah I have a lot of stuff wrong with me.) So, I'm very optimistic.