Arrivederci, 2025!

I made the trip around "our" star again. Always glad to still be in this dimension, on this planet, in this solar system, in this galaxy.  As crazy as quantum physics seem, you never know.  However, this year's big question is: Am I still in the USA?

If you are a trump supporter, stop reading right now!  If we are still friends, let's just call it good for now, and hope that we are still friends after that bloated gas bag openly selling his Presidential favors for millions of dollars, among other egregious, immoral, illegal and disgusting acts, is gone. 

The terror among US citizens of Mexican lineage, of Native American heritage, of any brown-skinned ethnicity is a blight on each of us.  The innocent baby tear gassed in its parents' car by ICE "agents".  The women slammed to the pavement, violently clubbed, choked.  People taken off the streets and disappeared into the black hole of racial hatred, cruelty, lawlessness and monumental incompetence by trump's army of angry white militants.  Even if someone IS here illegally, it is a misdemeanor, not a goddamned criminal felony offense!

I simply cannot list all the terrible things occurring in my country right now, not because I am not aware of them, but this is supposed to be my summation of another year, when I take stock of my life.  I normally determine that it was a pretty damned good year, all things considered. Not so much this year.  The USA I grew up in is gone. Oh, we are still a country but things have changed.  Even once trump and his handlers are gone, the old USA is forever gone.  We cannot go back.  The young people will have to rebuild the country into whatever makes sense to them.  There is the yawning abyss of a tragically uneducated population fed a constant soup of rage-baiting propaganda flowing from Fox News, Christian Nationalist FM radio stations, X, various podcasts, and a host of militant hate groups - to name a few. 

Climate change is bearing down on our children and grandchildren like a horde of demons. The ugly failings of unrestrained Capitalism have produced the richest assholes in the history of the world and starved the American middle class almost out of existence, while creating an enormous working class of honest people living in poverty regardless of how hard or long they work. Add to this dismal picture the failing medical system, also being starved of money by insurance companies with fiduciary accountability to shareholders, not ill human beings. 

When it comes time for me to shuffle off this mortal coil, I will take my failed responsibilities and the despair for my children's future with me, but it will do not one iota of good.

So... that's the bad news.  

The good news is that I am still kicking, though getting old is for the goddamned birds!  More often than not, I cannot open a jar, or even a carton of milk, because my hands are losing strength.  I have to wrestle those jars like I am wrestling a baby alligator.  Every year it seems the 'gator gets bigger and stronger. 

I can still lift 50 pounds bags of horse feed, but I certainly cannot carry them very far.  I can still take care of myself and the Supreme Beings and the wolf pack of German Shepherds. However, if you come to my house unexpectedly, you might catch the floors between vacuuming operations.  I had NO IDEA that two German Shepherds shed enough hair every single day to cover a small home in drifts of black hair.  They are not allowed on the furniture, so all of their hair is on the floor.  I do not invite people to meals any more because I am terrified a black, two-inch long German Shepherd hair would make its way into the soup!  I have only had this happen to me once, but it killed my appetite for several days.  I would hate that to happen to someone eating at my table.  

This year has been a steady stream of doctor office visits, tests, and the beginning of a list of medications and physical treatments.  I have officially entered the realm of old age, I guess. Even so, I am still lucky.  Nothing has progressed to a critical or debilitating stage.  I will take my good fortune and be thankful. 

I will be thankful for my little house here in the peace of the Kansas countryside.  If I could magically transform my life, I would be living in a little cabin high on a cliff above the Pacific Ocean - northern California or Oregon, maybe.  My bank account would be full of so much money that I could give money to family or friends any time they needed some.  I would donate to environmental organizations that actively protect and support wildlife, wilderness places, and educate the rest of the world.  I will thankfully accept my humble home here, and share my meager stash of treasure as I can, when I can, for as long as I can.  

I will be grateful for another year with my beloved old horses, who patiently wait for me by the gate so we can all make the trip to the barn together in the mornings.  I will always be happy to look out my window and see them quietly nodding in their frequent naps, or leisurely grazing, or standing near together, companions in their equine experience of this strange earth and mysterious life.

I will be grateful for my Mattie's gentle canine companionship.  We recently discovered we could communicate quite clearly.  She will sit quietly, staring at me until I become aware of her.  When I get up and say, "Show me."  She will take a few steps toward the door, the food, the water, or most often, to the location of the bag of treats!  She stops every few steps to look back, making sure I am still following.  Then she will glance at whatever it is she wants.  She doesn't ask for treats every day, and when she does get them, two tiny morsels, that is enough for her.  Somehow, that breaks my heart - either for her trusting innocence that two is all she can expect, or my human frailty that makes two morsels never enough. 

I pray for this world, for my country, for my friends and family, for myself.  I give thanks for the sum of all of humanity's wisdom at my finger tips via Google, though I have to wade through a lot of dross to get to the goods.  I fell asleep listening to Professor Brian Cox explain how black holes evaporate, that black holes are at the end of time, and how Albert Einstein intuited the Theory of Relativity by simply imagining.  Of course, he was brilliant enough to produce the rigorous mathematics needed to prove it. But it was his imagination that led him to the holy grail.

What an amazing experience it is to live on this earth.  

As is customary:

Peace on Earth and Good Will Toward (Some) Men.

from the Old Lady, the Supreme Beings, and the German Shepherds of Spirit Creek

   

We Take a Turn on the Crazy Train

In the years since horses have lived on my little "farm" there has been a long string of unreliable farriers.  Then I found Vince via google search. At first I thought maybe he was nefarious because he claimed to live in St George, Kansas but his phone number placed him in far western Kansas.  Desperate I was, so I hired him.  He has been trimming hooves here since. He treats my horses like they are my friends, not livestock.

My horses know the drill and cooperate with Vince, often almost falling asleep.  There must be something quite comforting and pleasant to having your hooves trimmed and filed.  It takes Vince all of ten minutes per horse, or less.  He is usually here for about thirty minutes.  It takes that long because we are talking.  It is crazy that you can become friends with someone you only see four or five times a year for twenty minutes, but it happens.  

The same veterinarian has taken care of all my animals since I moved here, but he no longer looks after horses.  Luckily for me, he hired a young woman veterinarian who does.  It means my horses are not hit or banged around, or have twitches placed on them.  If something dangerous needs to happen, like floating their teeth, they get tranquilizing injections, then nullifying injections to return them to normal - sort of.  After a half hour or so, they resume their normal horse business with apparently no ill effects.  No one is stomped, kicked, dragged away, and no horse is terrified or injured in a panicked outburst of bucking and rearing.   

I got off the spring schedule with the horses' yearly immunizations so now they are vaccinated in late November or early December.  They get rabies, West Nile Virus, and I am not even sure what exactly the vaccines are for.  Maybe I should know, but I simply trust that the vets know what they are doing in this matter.  Kansas State Veterinary College is a mere thirty miles from here.  The college and the area veterinarians work closely to stay current.  In fact, all of the veterinarians I have ever taken any of my animals to are, without exception, graduates of  Kansas State University.    

The vet was here yesterday for an annual check up and the immunizations. Since the good doctor is a decades-younger, stronger woman than I, as well as being taller, I asked if she would also please administer the dewormer paste.  It is for ridding horses of the parasites that plague them, and sold over the counter at the farm store.  No horse alive appreciates the unimaginable horror of having a small tube of goopy, awful-tasting chemical substance squirted into his mouth. The secret it to just do it quickly before the horses have an inkling.  Otherwise, they toss their heads up and I cannot reach them.  

So, the Supreme Being Herself was not happy with the parasite treatment, and did not want to hold still for the immunizations administered into her neck, either. After a dance at the end of the halter rope, and some white-eyed pulling back, and escalating behavior that did not bode well for anyone, I took the rope.  I stood next to my old friend and spoke quietly to her.  She settled down immediately and did not even flinch when the Doctor stuck her with two needles.

I learned a lesson that I should have already known.  My horses trust me not to let anything bad happen to them.  And if people they do not know very well begin acting in suspicious ways, they are naturally going to behave defensively. The Supreme Being settled down immediately - even closed her eyes.  The two inoculations were administered in less than a minute with not so much as a flinch.  It warmed my heart and also broke my heart.  

No one knows who will go first - me or the horses.  I continually ask that I outlive both of my horses so that when their times come, they will be put down humanely, so they won't be sold for slaughter.  The thought of my old friends suffering on the slaughter truck to some distant inhumane end, surrounded by the horror and fear of their terrified companions simply cannot be allowed.  She was afraid of the gentle veterinarian and the young assistant.  How terrified would she be at the hands of cruel men who will gladly crowd as many horses onto a truck as possible, never bothering to provide even water regardless of how many days they are on the truck in transport.  These men do not care if horses are trampled on the truck, if they are sick or pregnant, young or old, sound or not.  All it takes is for someone to not want a horse.  

Once horse slaughter was effectively halted in the United States (2007), people who make a living from horses one way or the other were angry. They claimed it ruined the horse industry since they could no longer easily dispose of unwanted horses.  I am talking about people who breed horses for sale, who profess to love horses, but have no compunction sending young horses to slaughter - horses that are perfectly healthy, just not conforming to breed standards or otherwise not marketable.  

Horse slaughter has not been outlawed in the USA.  The work-around is that the Federal Government no longer allows inspection of slaughter houses that process horses for consumption.  Since meat that has not been inspected cannot be sold for food, then there is no market for dead horses.  All horses that end up on the slaughter trucks go to Mexico or Canada, so it is a long, shameful, terrible end for horses that worked all their lives for farmers, or cowboys but are no longer sound or otherwise useful.  Many are pregnant to add weight, upping their sale price by a few dollars.  Many are injured or ill.  Many are simply unwanted.  It is a terrible end for horses, the selfless companions that carried our species into agriculture, warfare, and civilization.

If, by some unimaginably evil twist of fate, either of my horses end up in Mexico or Canada, slaughtered and sold as food, just know that every summer they have been liberally sprayed with fly and tick repellant that has a warning label to not use on horses intended for consumption.  They have been given annual vaccines and stuffed with ivermectin twice a year every year. So, go ahead, motherfuckers:  Bon Appetit!

Did I mentioned ivermectin - that miracle "medicine" that some online folks argue quite ferociously saved them from covid? They also swear it neutralizes cancer despite the fact that there is zero scientific evidence that it has any effect on cancer whatsoever.  It is given to humans for the same reason it is given to horses:  internal parasites.  

The world has gone off the rails  - on a crazy train.  Difficult to stay sane but better than believing in a flat earth or that ivermectin cures cancer.  Who is making up these crazy fairytales? 

Map of the Flat Earth can be bought from Amazon for $21.95 plus shipping and handling.

"Black Holes Lie at the End of Time"

With the Spotify subscription, there are selections of podcasts and audiobooks available for free.  I have been listening to several books by Professor Brian Cox.  

There is something immensely appealing about this mild mannered Brit who also plays in a rock band.  I recently came across a YouTube video of  Dr. Cox as a guest on Conan.  Brian Cox angered Depok Chopra, by "tweeting some facts", to which Chopra tweeted in reply, "I am going to shove my cosmic consciousness up your ass."

Professor Cox was wearing a suit coat over a t-shirt with an origami unicorn stencil, clearly the unicorn left for Deckard and Rachael at the end of Blade Runner, the greatest science fiction movie of all time.

Brian Cox is also a Professor of Particle Physics, and has written several books.  With all of this, you would think Professor Brian Cox is an immensely cool guy, but his appearance on Conan proved beyond a shadow of doubt that he is a (super-intelligent) nerd.  I am a serious fan of the Professor! Listening to him explain quantum physics in his Oldham accent just kills me, in a very good way. He says the most outrageous things in the incredible English vernacular.

If you ever need to stretch your imagination, think about these facts:

Our sun converts 600,000,000,000 tons of hydrogen into helium EVERY SECOND! (My emphasis.) It has been doing this since before the earth was formed. It has enough hydrogen for another five billion years.

(31,536,000 seconds per year x 5,000,000,000 years = 1.57680000e+17 on my little calculator - which might mean that the math broke its little chip.  There are big number calculators on line, but you get the idea.) 

Our sun is 1.4 million kilometers in diameter.  A passenger jet would have to fly for six months to circumnavigate it.  It is a small star.  The largest known stars are thousand of times larger with diameters in the region of a billion kilometers.

The rigidity of matter is something of an illusion,  Electron clouds surrounding atomic nuclei keep atoms apart but a sugar cubed-\sized lump of neutron star material would weigh at least one hundred million tons.

September 14, 2015, scientific instruments on earth (LIGO and Virgo Collaboration laboratories) detected gravity waves from a black hole collision/merge 1.3 billion years from earth. The black holes were 29 and 36 times the mass of our sun.  They collided and merged in less than 2/10th of a second.  During the collision, the peak power output exceeded that of all the stars in the observable universe by a factor of 50.  ***

These are numbers and time frames that are inconceivable to our mere human minds. Alright, I am speaking for my own mind here.  Unimaginable, but the math is owed to all of our science and physics prior to September 2015.   

Where are we headed as a species in this unimaginable, inconceivable universe?  What is our purpose  (aside from pissing off Depok Chopra)? What the hell is the purpose of black holes?

Black Hole Bonus fact!!

"The idea of objects whose gravity is so intense not even light can escape them is far older. In 1783, an English cleric and amateur scientist named John Michell showed that Newton’s law of gravity suggested such objects could exist. But Michell went further, suggesting that despite being invisible, such objects might reveal themselves if they happened to have a star in orbit about them." 
- BBC Science Focus Magazine

***All facts in italics are either direct quotes or paraphrased from: Black Holes - The Key to Understanding the Universe by Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw, Published 2022 by HarperCollins

First photo of a black hole, taken by Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration

Kindness

So, there I was at the Farm Store with the subpar customer service, buying ONLY dog food for the resident wolf girls of Spiritcreek.  (One needs weight management and the other has allergies.)  For the two different 25 pound bags of Science Diet, I expected the total cost to be $110 - $120.  When the grumpy young man rang it up, for a whopping total of $200, I was shocked.  I have been buying 38 pound bags for about $82.

"Good God Almighty!  Those dogs are going to have to start earning their keep!"  It just slipped out.

Amazingly, a young man behind me in line immediately said, "M'am, I will pay for it."

What did he say? 

I was taken aback and slightly embarrassed. I told him that was very kind of him but I was just complaining.  

He said, "I heard no complaint."

I was so shocked that I do not think I properly thanked him for his offer.  I did not accept it but was very moved just the same.    

Who does such a thing in these days of people ranting over women buying cupcakes from the bakery for their children's birthday party using SNAP cards?  

I have been praying for that young man, asking for blessings of good fortune, good health and much happiness for him.  Each time I think of it, I automatically call for blessings for him.

As for the wolf girls, those creatures of splendid canine senses, they who bark at the wind blowing, earthworms tunneling in the soil, silent and invisible extraterrestrials surveying the domicile at night, ghosts and whang doodles haunting the timber, and that most horrible monster threat of all time:  hoofbeats of the resident horses far out in the pasture!  The very same animals - German Shepherds of quality breeding - that never made a sound when a truck full of men got all the way to the front of my house, exited the truck, and circled the house.  That is how I came to be standing naked in my bedroom when I saw a man walk past the window in broad daylight.  Not a peep from those $200 dog food burners!!! 

Has Science Diet added unicorn meat to their recipes?  Pixie tears? Hobbit leaf?  

Regardless, next time I buy dog food, it is going to have to be something much less expensive. Counting on the kindness of strangers is probably not an effective budgeting practice.

 See where one particular wolf girl is stationed? 

 At all times, she finds the exact location where I need to be!