Three Castes of Americans

We have an interesting Caste system here in the US. We have the Rich Elite, The Educated Elite and The Ignorant Peasant. The most mobile caste is the Ignorant Peasant. Once a person is in the Rich Elite there is no incentive for anything but power and dominance over the IP and the EE. The EE are stuck in their class since they know too much to be trusted by the RE and the IP are unaware of the power the EE could have.

The Rich Elite are those who were handed money at birth and a few lucky jerks who had an idea and bulldozed it into society and were successful.... Jeff Bezos, Gates and that guy who gave us Apple come to mind. The Old Monied families are dinosaurs and extinct they were the ones who had some level of duty to those less lucky than themselves Kennedy, Roosevelt, come to mind, to do public service for the greater good.

The Educated Elites are a mixed income group. Well read, paid attention in school, learned critical thinking skills and practice them. I am in that group. By the time I was able to afford to go to university I had already read the books, novels and other publications that allowed me to sail through university honing my knowledge, learning research techniques...I was fine tuning what I had done on my own.

Ignorant Peasants can be wealthy we have prime examples today...Trump, DeVos (and everyone else in Trumps circle)
as well as all those who voted and support republicans who are not wealthy now. IPs have few manners but manners as in knowledge are acquirable to those who want them ...all for free.

The most mobil caste is the Ignorant Peasant since to learn stuff is free....there just needs the desire. Every town in the States has a library or at least one close by. If this backward state I live in has libraries all over then most other places have libraries. The IP can be extreme trash and have no desire to read beyond the National Enquirer and watch FOX and the garbage on their cable or they can be readers of books. IPs come in all income groups, all races, genders, religions. Many IPs are willfully ignorant, revel in their ignorance as we see on TV and hear on Talk radio.....preachers, bullies, O'Reilly, that loudmouth lout whats his name, Kellyanne Conway....et al. IPs are all genders female, male, and trans. Since IPs are willful they can rise from one Caste to another.

A Few will go into the EE...many are driven by greed and happily step on everyone to get rich or whine in their poverty and suck lemons, scowl at every one with bits of ambition. They are genius at excuses for their lot in life. My daddy done it so will I. Or at least I am no {insert ethnic slur here} and feel superior to anyone they have no right to feel better than...... The REIPs cater to this group of their fellow IP. They are bread and butter of these vampires. They suck the marrow from the ignorant peasants and while telling the IP how bad they have it and they can fix it. IPs are either the laziest or the most ambitious of the castes.....I know many in this caste some are pleasant enough.....but the aura of common sense is missing...
So there is my opinion. I was born into the EE caste alas my sibling chose to move to the IP. Our caste system is mobile. These castes have nothing to do with income or money. Castes never did. SO which one are you in?

We Need to Feel Sad and Grieve

An actor I admired from my favorite TV series died a day or so ago. The public announcement coming from the family asked us not to feel sad or grieve but remember his comedy and his joy of making people laugh....Sounds OK, innocent enough... However; I just lost a dear one and the loss cuts me like a knife. And this loss also cuts me.....we need to feel sad and grieve for the loss of a life that touched us. We can rejoice in their memory of laughter a little later on but now we need to feel our sadness.

It is a good thing to feel the loss, to feel the pain, to mourn. Later (some sooner some later) I can enjoy the happy memories but now I do not have that being in my life and there is a HOLE where they used to be. Even when I did not personally know the departed one Their life touched my life and I feel the loss. I was devastated when my favorite author died suddenly, I feel the loss of another favorite author who also died too young and could not continue to create. Selfish? Maybe but that was their joy and their life was cut short.

In order to value life we must mourn the losses or life becomes disposable and we see that everyday. We are disposable all the life on earth is treated as so much surplus trash to quickly get rid of. That is why we continue with wars and hate filled rhetoric spree like open sewer pipes from the religious, politicians, and "average citizens". We need to feel sorrow in order to feel joy. And we need to be allowed to feel our sorrow. If we do not mark a life passing with tears, sorrow, a keen sense of loss, then that life had no meaning. It means we did not value that life.

Other

When one is a displaced person nowhere is ever home. We know no one here, there is no family, and those that we do meet there is a strange desire to cling fast...yet we hold back because we know we will be disappointed ....and that is true..... hold back and when we do venture a test footings we are never disappointed. We stay the "other". That is why people from other places tend to clump together, even when, if they were in your home town, they would never be desired for friends but the shared fear, the shared isolation, the feeling of being "other" allows the standards to be dropped and welcomes anyone who knows who you are. That is one reason we love our pets and we fuss about getting them to be with us no matter where we end up. That cat or dog is family and is there with us being company during the long dark times when the only people you know are those your pay. We can never go back, we can not stay here. The situation is still the same as when we became refugees. Two things happen one clings to stuff since stuff is never judgmental, it never disappoints and it is always there when needed. Like the fallen friends before we were displaced. Some traditions are kept close while other tradition need to be tossed aside as too much baggage for the journey. The second is fear. fear of loosing what we have left, each other, what little health and becoming helpless in a strange and for all intents and purposes hostile land. We will be the first to be singled out since we are not from here.
One thing that many will find odd or bizarre is when one of out pets dies there is the anxiety of having to leave their bones behind when we realize that this place is not our place to settle. We will never be able to visit a grave, like we can not visit our parents graves, our friends from the life we once had.
It is this that makes grief that much more intense.
Other......I enjoy the scenery, the weather is not bad.....but I know it can not become home since that choice has been denied us....we still need to go a little farther down the road, further still until be too die but then our bones can rest since we are back to the beginning ......

Always On the Wrong Side

I am full of grief today but I will not write about why. I am also full of shame, more grief over the way this, my country, has turned to the dark side.
I was born in a double whammy out of favor set of minority ethnic stuff. I had no choice it was the gift from my parents. I coped the best I could. This coping lead to a secretive nature, loner, quiet child. I am still all the above. I was another even worse minority for neatly 40 years but I was able to get rid of that but I did not really it still follows me. What I never did was feel indifferent to others. I saw people as people and wanted for them what I wanted for myself. I am a generous person I share. I am always, even after this whole life I have I lived, surprised when I meet people who begrudged others crumbs from their table. I am well off in a sense my house is paid for, I am independently lower class. That is like independently wealthy but not much money to throw around, still the need to watch the pennies and such.

However, I no longer need to endure the crap of the right to work states, the nasty supervisors and the overt/covert discrimination that dogged my working life.
I have developed strong dislikes over the time of my life for certain attitudes and the ones that appalls me the most are: I got mine the hell with you attitude...if one is poor they deserve it since I am not poor I worked for what I have...; and all the similar attitudes that plague this country. I especially dislike libertarians, and of course republicans...don't get your knickers in a bunch I am not fond of the current incarnation of the democrats either.

Many of you can walk by a homeless person with out seeing them...no one asked why people have no home no room.....no food..nothing but what the scrounge on the streets. Many are veterans. I remember when the god Reagan emptied all the mental institutions in the 1970s he put people on busses with a one way ticket and a few days worth of medication to the last address of the last relative on the records...some of those records had not been updated for decades....Of course these outcasts got off the bus wherever and had to cope...they coped by living on the streets.....1000s of people were cast out in the name of money. I hate Reagan and glad he suffered in his last years.

I am sad for the fall of empire of the USA. It will never recover from the current Trump and Republican regime. Morality lost, humanity lost, anything altruistic lost last November....And what is the most horrifying change that has occurred is how few people see this spiral down into the abyss of the neofascist united states of america as a bad thing. So many people think this is a good thing. And too many blame Russia for interference....they are not the problem really, the "interference" was welcomed by the republicans! It was not a surprise to them that is why they are not concerned about the events of this first 6 months of Trump.

This is why I grieve, this is why I feel shame....I saw it coming. I wrote about it. Many others see it now...but now is too late to save the old America....we need to create a new america out of the ashes yet to come..... will any of us survive these coming 4 years? It is not trump anymore the people are in place no matter how many people get ousted, impeached, disappeared, the line of succession is full of trumps and worse! Welcome to the end of the line.

Nothing Real only Hype

So I risked my health last night and took a benadryl for this awful allergic reaction I have been dealing with for over a week.....with in 20 minutes I was breathing and not coughing. My joint pains went away and my swollen feet went back to normal feet. Yes I get a massive reaction to certain chemicals used in common products. I just spent a few hours reading or rather chasing a Will-o'-the-wisp for some real information something yes or no would help; I could not find much on the NO DON"T TAKE IT YOU WILL LOSE YOUR MIND verses sure take it it won't hurt...and lots of nothing in between. Now that I have reached that magic age of imminent death I am concerned since I refuse to linger like a useless sponge like OO. But I still feel at least young in heart and mind...the bottom line is there is no bottom line. I do not take it to sleep but to not die from anaphylaxis, or rather a milder form of it which is still pretty freaking bad too.

I do not consider me an old fashioned old person like those I knew in my youth. I look better, I eat fairly healthy don't smoke or drink. Yet after menopause things in the body does change so why would not other things also change in old people? There is not much really out there about Boomer old people. We are all over the place. I know people younger than me are all granniefied and settled in their ways, I know a lot who have died before they got to the age I am now...my own father never made it past 58. And I know old people my age who are truckin' along with just a few roadside reminders that we ain't 30 anymore. The absolute terror of this age is not knowing when we will pop off. S many have died in this last 18 months that I have become concerned .....am I just a heart beat from dropping dead? Should I start to downsize my stuff since there is no one to leave it too? Do I need more stuff? You know different stuff. I do not want an old persons house decor.....how gawdawful that would be all that crocheted TP roll holders, collector plates and figurine, and such.... yuck I did not like hat stuff way back when I was young and I certainly have not developed a taste for it now.

Not only do I now need to worry about dropping dead, but the only medicine that keeps me from dropping dead when the allergy hits is suppose to give me Alzheimer's or dementia too boot( yes I said too boot! bite me!). As I was saying I was chasing down some real information and found next to none. Everyone said to talk to your doctor... doctors are nice and all, but they do not have time to run down all this information like I do. And I can see most of what they can read also. I will continue to take As Needed benadryl so I can not die of this allergic reaction. I will stay well informed of health issues and just try to not die yet and not become a sponge either....there has to be the right time to kick off. I just am not sure when that is.

Hippies Lost

I have seen the movie Bullitt several times. We watched it again the other night and we looked at each other and asked have we seen this before? As pieces of the movie were familiar the whole theme was not and it became the first time we watched and understood the movie.
Now I am a real fan of reading into what I want as critique. I do not follow any one school of thought believing my ideas are as valid as any one else’s. I am educated and was an English Professor for over 10 years before I was black listed …but that is another story. So I am as well versed in the many schools of critique and found each one of them stilted and wanting in depth. So I do my own thing. I was hippie-ish and not a Mod
In these times of Trumpistan and Kafkaistan I now see where these of my age conservatives came from.
In the old days there were the Hippies and the Mods. Our music was different, our values were different, our clothes were different. We did not coexist but ran parallel through the 1960s and 1970s.
There are no Hippies in Bullet even though it was San Francisco in 1968. There are Mods and the then current establishment. The politician was the same as today’s…talk about dinosaurs ! Politicians are the living fossils of the human race. However, it is the Mod who is the most telling in this movie. The Mod is Bullitt’s girlfriend. She wears a kicky mini dress with boots drives a sports car (I could not tell if it was a Porsche or a Carmine Ghia) convertible. The Mods, for the most part, embraced the sexual revolution so GF sleeps with Bullitt but she is strictly an establishment woman. Some Mods could embrace the ideology of Hippies but not many did. She did embrace the Mod ideals of staying aloof from the real world of the poor, the non establishment peoples. She even tells Bullitt after she sees the dead woman in the motel that he lives in the sewer and is becoming calloused by the misery of the real world of the police detectives. She knows it is there but choses to ignore it. She lives her life with out much care for others outside her sphere. These Mods are the young people who later became the politicians they were already establishment. They were fossils with groovy clothes and haircuts. They already felt entitled to their comforts and way of life.
Hippies wanted to change the status quo, to make the air clean, water clean, and love everyone like brothers. They took hold and that is why we have the EPA( or rather had) and the various other nice things that helped everyone not just the rich. We got Medicare during these times and many other social services. As an aside the vaccine for Mumps was the new health thing in 1968.
Even though the mantra for Hippies was tune in & drop out, we all could see the problems in the world as solvable. With effort we could clean the air( we did) with effort we could create equality… we were stopped by the fossils and establishment since that would cost them prestige and money. Many hippies sold out and joined the Mods in spirit but kept the jeans and house plants. Few Mods joined the ideals of a new world nice for everyone. They were selfish then and are even more selfish today.
I can watch the movie a few more times and take notes to expand this essay but what would be the point? Hippies lost the war of life and the Mods took over. Now we live in Trumpistan( I have moved to Kafkaistan)
I just wanted to share this revelation with you. The world would have been a much nicer place if the Hippies had won.

OPPORTUNITY IS KNOCKING!

In these times of uncertainty, and lets face it all times are uncertain, the best thing to have is your own home. A safe harbor to cocoon in, fix your way and just be. Another wonderful thing is natural beauty coupled with the amenities of a charming village. Four seasons is also a way to connect with nature. You will find a new and improved rhythm of life knowing to each thing there is a season and each season has its work and its pleasures.
Houses are very expensive in the USA, except in places with nothing going for them…or is that just a fallacy? Big city life is nice. I have lived in some wonderful big cities. However there is great charm of nature civilized. By Nature Civilized I mean all the beauty of the natural world married with the needs of a modern life.
If your habits are not beyond your means then this opportunity is for you!
Water front property on two sides, parks on the third, and a decent road in front. All this with in walking distance to everything: grocery store, post office, restaurants, doctors, more parks, and shopping for stuff. There is high speed internet, cable TV, cell phone service. Be connected to the outside world with out the outside world pounding on your door.
What is the marvelous opportunity am I writing about? 100 Main Street Milbridge, Maine. An 1880s original duplex on nearly an acre in town with water views, park views, wildlife views…… Live in one side and rent out the other side full time or seasonally for your income.
If you have some skills in handyman stuff you will find lots of work here to add to your income. If you have some trade or other skill that requires an office there is a place to have it in you home. Are you a psychologist? An artist? A writer? A tailor? A candle maker? Then you have space to be. To do you job from home.
If you are tired of the rat race, and let’s face it the rats are winning, then downsizing with out down grading is a great option.
The link to the duplex is provided.
But before you say no just think of the possibilities of a calmer life. A life where you can call you own shots. Watch the Canadian geese from your windows, and the many other shore birds from every window and just marvel at the migration. Hear the laughing gulls, Smell the salt air…which, by the way, is a real tonic for the soul!
The welcome you will get in this DownEast village will not be like an outsider….why? You will be living in a famous home. Everyone in town has been in these duplexes as children, residents, or visitors. When the Coast Guard /Navy had a bigger presents in this area these homes were lived in by the many families who were military stationed here. 100 Main St is not a converted old house to be a duplex but built as a duplex for the people who lived and worked in this once bustling community. You will meet people and let them know where you live that you bought this property and they will smile and tell you how wonderful….This does not happen in every small town. It will happen here in Milbridge.
Can you decide what kind of life you want to live or are you a slave to the times? Are you adventurous and want to experience life before you rot in place in some suburb or studio apartment in the big city. Do you really like to see water and hear birds and get to know people? Then 100 Main St is for you. It is not just a dream but can be your reality. It just depends on how you treat yourself. Are you the Queen or King of your life or the slave of someone else?

http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/100-Main-St_Milbridge_ME_04658_M49585-68933