Occupation of Independence

Central Utah.  I am adjusting to some pleasant surprises from the 20 pound cockapoo/miniature poodle that I adopted in February of this year.  I treat her as my sweet little girl, but in fact she is quite rugged.  Especially her feet. She is going through a 'mid-life career change' and needs to learn about things she didn't experience in her former life in a Phoenix apartment.  She loves to run to the edge of cliffs and to scare me into a near heart attack. It is hard for a human to look at things from a dog's point of view.  After all, they are closer to the ground, have four paws on the dirt, and have sharp toenails.  Let's zoom out on that last picture: At some point I have to stop being so over-protective of Q.t. π and trust in animal instincts. But that is tough when you visit places with sheer vertical drops of several hundred feet! My goodness, around my little dog I have become as sentimental and soft-headed as a doting grandpa.  But what a service the littl

When Washington DC (perhaps through proxies) destroyed the Nordstream pipeline a couple weeks ago, I wondered if Germany was going to act like a real country, for a change.  But it didn't. But there was another consequence.  Turkiye started moving forward with expanded Turkstream pipelines.  We will see how real that turns out. What if Turkiye joins the Eurasian block?  What a location Turkiye has!  Roman Emperor Constantine was no fool when he chose the Greek city on the Bosporus to be his new capital.   If Turkiye joins Eurasia, it should damage Washington's and Israel's plans to destroy or dominate Syria.   Gas pipelines from the Persian Gulf to Europe might have to go through Turkiye.   An understanding between Russia and Turkiye could close off the Black Sea to Washington's navy.  That would help throw Odessa into Russia. There is something visual about Turkiye being a key player at the end of the "Atlantic" or European era, just as it was at the beginnin

The perfect setting for a dog is an arroyo.  It's almost as perfect for the dog's owner because the arroyo contains the dog and keeps it visible.  My little sweetheart and I were walking an arroyo the other day when we stumbled upon a gravel peninsula that jutted out into the bend of the arroyo.  It was perfectly flat and weed-free.  Someone had built an elaborate stone fireplace there.  Small trees blocked out the world from this little spot. I was almost laughing at myself.  There was nothing spectacular or grand about this little spot.  But my heart skipped a beat.  Then I started fluttering my eyelashes. If somebody has been in a certain racket for years and years, and can be affected like this, they must be doing something right.  You might think that one would resent somebody else's earlier discovery of this special spot.  But instead, I tried to visualize them in a tangible way: they likely had children or dogs. This experience is probably something that happens to m

Try as I might, the world just doesn't pay much attention to my efforts at improving it. For example today is the official International Pronoun Day. (Look it up if you think I am kidding.) Of course 99% of the attention goes to the gender of the pronouns.  Who the hell cares?  Have you ever gotten confused by someone else's use of pronoun-gender in any real world conversation you have had in your entire life? But the greatest cause of confusion is the reckless and promiscuous use of acronyms, slang, jargon, and abbreviations.  Abbreviations are getting especially troublesome because of smartphone virtual keyboards and because they don't teach typing on a QWERTY keyboard anymore -- or do they? Pronouns are just one example of evil abbreviations.  People tend to lose track of the pronoun's antecedent noun, especially in long or complex sentences.  This is the single most common source of confusion in real world conversations. Therefore I say "screw it" to prono