I’m lying in bed over thinking at 4:00 AM. Is the totality of human existence merely the storage of human experience in the brain as memory?

Is all that we are, simply experience collectors?

I told you my head is messed up.

“Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.”- Lord Acton (1834-1902).

Back when I was in school, this one maxim about governance made the greatest impression on me. Drawing on the history of the Roman Republic, the founders of the United States of America, structured our government to reduce the possibility of the abuse of power. We have three co-equal branches of government, Executive (The Presidency), Legislative (The Congress), and Judicial, (The Courts). It also follows that the individual sovereign states have that sovereignty to check the power of the Federal Government.

So I get a little perturbed when demagogues rail against the Constitution and its built in safeguards against the accumulation and abuse of power.

Are these structural safeguards fool proof? Obviously, they aren’t. But following these precepts is the best chance we have to maintain our personal liberties against the overreach of megalomaniacs in government.

This republic has always been vulnerable to attack, from persons or institutions who want to nullify this system of limited government. Every four years, we elect a President who can issue Executive Orders, that circumvent the power of Congress, whose Constitutional mandate is precisely to make the laws. The Executive Branch enforces the laws that Congress enacts. A President or an unelected administrator (“bureaucrat”) cannot make up a law or embellish a statute. The Executive “executes” or carries out the will of The Congress, who makes the laws. We, The People, elect The Congress, who write the laws.

Congress also authorises the collection of taxes and issuance of debt to fund the activities of the Executive Branch, i.e. , the military, the National Weather Service, the FBI, The Departments of Education and Health and Human Services, etc, ad nauseum. Through the “power of the purse”, Congress has a check on the Executive Branch. The intention is limiting power to avoid tyranny.

At every level, petty individuals want to use government for personal enrichment. Corrupt city governments are numerous, from New York’s Boss Tweed in the 1870’s to Chicago’s Mayor Lightfoot today. So we teach Civics to educate the citizenry on the purposes and limitations of government.

Limited Government. That is the whole point of our governments in the United States. Limitations to power isn’t the guiding principle of the government of The Peoples Republic Of China, just to name one government among many.

Think about that.

On July 6, 1919, my mother was born. She was born at home, in a Richmond neighbourhood called Fulton Bottom. It wasn’t the nicest neighbourhood, even then. It was near the Gas Works, where they burned coal to obtain coal gas, that they piped through town. With that gas, people heated their homes, cooked their food, and even lit their rooms. All that’s left of the Fulton Gas Works are the structural steel remnants of the holding tanks.

There was also the Fulton Yard of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad. This is where my grandfather would pick up his train to go East to Newport News, West to Charlottesville or Lynchburg, maybe all the way to Clifton Forge. I don’t know.

Mother talked about the railroad, and how there were Summer excursion trains to Buckroe Beach (for White folks) and Bayshore (for Colored folks). By the time I came along, we drove to Buckroe.

Mother had a vast reservoir of memories. Street cars figured in. The Blizzard of 1940 and the street car figured in one story, where not even the streetcars ran. She loved the movies, with Clark Gable, especially.

The Depression hung over her childhood and her life. People would take jobs like turning Bull Durham Cigarette tobacco bags. People actually did roll their own cigarettes. It was piece work turning those bags. A good job was the brass ring to be grasped from the carousel ride of the Depression. And one day that dream came true for Mom.

She got a job at Reynolds Metals, when they moved from New York, because she knew how to type. She learned Spanish in high school, at a proficiency level that enabled her to translate for her boss.

The anecdotes about her alcoholic father were dark and told us much about her and her frequently dark moods. Clinical depression was what I grew up around. It took me years to understand that this environment was dysfunctional. And that I was scarred by her nightmare as well. Recovering from one’s family of origin is always a life long ordeal.

Happy Birthday, Mom.

Modern sexual morality is not a morality at all. Call me sexist, patriarchal, homophobic. I’m all of those and more. 

We’re headed to the ash heap.

Who will survive are the families who stay together, committed to serving each other, who procreate and rear morally upright children.

I just don’t care any longer what the Marxist, secular agnostic Left thinks and does any more. They will go extinct, from the choices they champion. Their social policies from contraception to abortion to euthanasia are suicide pacts, no voluntary genocide.

Have a nice day.

Patriarch Kyril, of the Russian Orthodox Church, is consecrating a new cathedral, somewhere in Russia, on a rainy Sunday.

Many in the congregation are recording the event on their smart phones.

I will write more later. Now I am tired, hurting, sick to death of reading about and listening to and watching the Death Culture mourn the passing of Roe vs. Wade.

Слава Богу!

Back in March, 1988, I met a woman about thirty years old. She was 7 months pregnant, and she wanted to give the child she was carrying up for adoption. She chose my wife and me to be the adoptive parents.

34 years and 24 days later after she gave birth to that child, he thrives and gives hope and joy to our family.

So I’m pro-life, unapologetically. A foetus and a child are not commodities. That’s it.

I made the mistake of resubscribing to The New York Times. I’m old enough to remember when New York City wasn’t a cesspool and the Times reporters weren’t ideological hacks. Of course, I haven’t found the sports section yet. But malaise doesn’t read well on a summer Sunday with low humidity and a pleasant breeze. The Magazine section ventures into transgender therapy among paediatric and adolescent populations. It’s a shame perversion is no longer considered appropriate to describe modern times.

What happened to “regular” people, who want to live in a safe neighbourhood, free from addicts and dealers? They’re there, I suspect, but they’re ignored. And “regular” is becoming a broader and broader descriptor. Politicians are more interested in being recognised than being effective. Mayor Adams, take note. I don’t care what you wore to the Met Gala or that you’re vegan. Deal with the homeless and mentally ill camped out on the sidewalks. It’s not like they don’t know you in Albany. Or Washington.

Let’s go back to the Warhol declaration, “In the future, everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes.” What he meant was that fame isn’t the point. Aspire for results that make a difference and endure, art that is beautiful. I think of the silk screen print he made of Marilyn Monroe, how it captured her beauty and her tragedy.

New York is still the cultural capital of the United States, but how long will that distinction survive when people are Hell bent on cultural destruction? Eventually the adults have to take a stand against barbarism.

Rant over.

Last night, the power went out. The power company is working on it. Around 7:00AM, I left the house to get breakfast at McDonald’s. I got the “Big Breakfast”,scrambled egg, sausage, hash browns, biscuit, and coffee. Plenty of food. Senior citizens hang out here, no surprise, and quite frankly, it’s rather pleasant.

I lived large this morning and ordered at the automated kiosk. It wasn’t hard or confusing. A nice kid brought my order to my table. Somehow, I feel like the kid, my fellow seniors and I are all part of a population that is either privileged enough or unfortunate enough, not to be in such a hurry to have to “drive through”. Kinda nice.There is a receptacle at every table to charge my phone. I need that when there is no “juice” at home.

I went to Mass last night. I hadn’t been in a while, because of my hip. I just decided I was going, no matter how I felt. This Sunday is the Solemnity of Corpus Christi, that Christ’s Body and Blood are truly present in the bread and wine of the Eucharist. I’m too tired to get all theological on you, so I’ll leave it at that.

I’m eavesdropping on conversations, Old People Conversations about how much stuff costs, grandchildren, stuff like that. There’s no “news” on.

I’m watching the guy mop the floor, the people at the tables with friends, and I realise that we are the lucky ones, to have this blissful morning, all for around $5.99 plus tax.

That’s the price I saw on a three pound can of Crisco, a pure vegetable shortening sold in the USA, probably, Canada and, lots of other places. I grew up with a can of Crisco as a fixture in our kitchen. That was the go-to shortening for Mother’s fried chicken. We had fried chicken almost every week, I suspect. We liked it. And getting children to eat is one of the great challenges of parenthood.

Not only is Crisco steep, but Ice Cream Bars bearing the silhouette of our beloved Mickey Mouse, are $9.29 / 6 ct. carton. How can I cope? I can no longer purchase Eskimo Pies (take a guess why).

Then, when I returned home, I looked at my freezer, my cupboard, and I’m hoping I can get by. If there’s a holodomor (look it up), in the climate change zealots’ arsenal of strategies to save the planet, I won’t be surprised.

youtube.com/watch