Anyway, my blog faded and folded for the month of June. No excuses, really, just the swoon over life in America these days. My wife and I ditched our television satellite service last year, which brought some sanity back to my head for awhile. I did not miss the big sporting spectacles nearly as much I thought I would, and the calm from not seeing endlessly repeated commercials, Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, Anderson Cooper, Rachel Maddow, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity and every other overpaid mouthpiece all-dolled-up and angry as hell about everything truly refreshed my spirits.
I experienced a calmness while reading some of the horrific headlines of violent confrontations coming from the US-Mexico border, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Israel, Iraq, Africa and Southeast Asia. Yes, it bugged my peace vibe, but I had a new zen about me from my courageous and thoughtful stance against corporate media, and could now refrain from launching into terrible tirades about the stupidity of war and premature death.
The usual political divisive wrangling of the Right-Left Death Match 2010 became boring and increasingly meaningless in my new found net-only plug-in world. Rants against our President and his response to fiscal crises, or the health care reform initiative, made no impact on my serenity. Even the many food recalls from tainted livestock and produce, along with the growing number of stories on our nearly used up last line of anti-biotic defense against new and more virulent bacteria did not dispel my fresh new sunny disposition.
Yes, I was good through May. The oil bursting on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico in April would be contained by the corporate crooks with big damage, but not total devastation damage to the region and beyond.
I was a little saddened to see Dennis Hopper die right before Memorial Day, but actually found a zany bit of humor in his passing. By then the oil rupture had surpassed the Exxon Valdez as the worst oceanic oil spill on record. (Does spill sound right to you? Spill always implies tipping a tea cup to me. This was no spill.) Kevin Costner was on hand that week to deliver a new technology and save the day. I had to chuckle, maybe just a bit nervously, that Waterworld
had come full circle here in 2010 in a cosmic joke kind of way with the Deacon sailing off into the sunset on his broken down tanker, Valdez, while our futuristic Hollywood hero saves the day. Into June the nervous chuckle was gone, and although Kevin's considerable efforts have made a small difference in the Gulf waters, the flood of oil continues at an astonishing high death rate for life in that large body of salt water. As June days ticked away my calm began to recede much like the oxygen in the Gulf of Mexico's waters, I began to ponder that it has been a full seven years since moving from Sacramento, and my reason for being in this city now rests in a little wall niche on the Panorama Bluffs. My beautiful wife, who dutifully joined me on my elder care road, these past several months has been cursed with some allergic reaction to something we eat. She has gone through three doctors an over the course of three months trying to find the culprit for the digestive disorders and hives she now endures. She has had every test the mind can conceive, but no answers.
For several years we have read and followed the food stories in this country. We have substantially altered the types of foods we eat in response to these articles on food. Less meat, more vegetables, very few processed foods. We have not had ground beef in nearly four years. We don't even say the word burger any more. I digest food much more easily than I used to, and I have none of those Tums bouts of acid-reflex or heartburn any longer. My wife has hives, and they do not seem to want to go away no matter what plain basic ingredients we use and what major food groups we avoid.
Both of us do realize we live in the very worst area when it comes to air pollution. More harmful particulates sit on this city than on any other in America. The actual worst oil disaster in terms of volume of oil "spilled" happened in Kern County one century ago. This was the Lakeview Oil Gusher out between Taft and Maricopa of 1910. The Gulf hemorrhage is about half way to the Taft Disaster. Much of the southwest portion of Kern County was literally soaked in oil. Much of those chemicals I am sure still sit in that large stretch of scrub and dirt that make up the extreme southwest quadrant of Kern County.
Knowing where we are both locally and nationally, and now fully realizing what lurks just below and just above the surface here in my current habitat, dissolved the last vestige of my calm about a week ago. So here we are starting the seventh month on the anniversary week of seven full years in Bakersfield just as agitated as ever. So much so, that I went out two days ago and purchased a converter box and antennae for my television set. I guess I missed the serenity of the constant lies that can only be gained through television commercials.
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