Strolling Amok

Pops goes on tour.

12 Jul 2017
8 Comments

Much Ado About Nothing

I regularly come across examples of how our perceptions can markedly contrast with reality. That always impresses me, and in the realm of major media, I’ve found that it takes quite a bit of personal digging to negate the filters of bias which tend to permeate their end products. If you want to know what they think about an event or an issue, all you have to do is read or see what they produce. If you want to find out what actually happened or what else is involved within an issue, you’re going to have to do some excavation yourself, elsewhere. You may be one of the those who trusts their news source these days, but Walter Cronkite passed away decades ago, so if you just turn on the news and accept it without question as accurate and balanced, you may find yourself becoming unbalanced. Editorializing does that. Propaganda does that. The difference between them is that editorials are labeled as such. Propaganda is not, yet purports to be a reasonably accurate representation of the true situation.

Straight news reporting and accountability for errors has become an endangered species. Propaganda works. If I listen to Fox News long enough, I find my opinions of facts and issues swinging their way over time. If I switch over to NPR, I find myself going the other way. In the end, we’re stuck with listening to the bias that we prefer, and become unable to understand Read more…

Posted in Miscellania, Navel Gazing
11 Jul 2017
4 Comments

The Nature of God – Part 6

[If you are just now stumbling onto this post without having read the various parts in this series from the beginning, I strongly urge you to go back to the start and continue on from there through each successive post. None of these individual entries stand on their own, and you may wind up with little but confusion and unanswered questions by starting here. That is easily done by entering “The Nature of God” in the search box on the home page, which will list links to all available parts.]

By the time I was entering my late-twenties, life began to resemble some kind of grim endurance contest. By cultural standards, I was doing just fine, thank you very much. Internally, something big was missing. Since my 52 Religions paperback came up dry, I thought that perhaps I could look for some significance in Science, since it had earlier seemed competent in explaining things. I more deeply researched the theories and evidence behind evolution, and the deeper I looked past the confident and reassuring patter, the more disappointed I became with it. It felt kind of like a betrayal, after my former fandom. The series of complete human skulls fabricated from a few random shards had clearly been forced to show things that were imagined rather than indicated or justifiable. The defining shards did not support the speculated whole, yet I was being assured that they did.

They were presented as scientific fact instead of what they really were: more religious icons forcefully hammered into a new dogma of belief. Even the basic tenets of how biological creation and evolution worked began to present a long train of required logic miracles that wound up needing a lot more faith than I had available. I felt like Dorothy looking behind the curtain in Oz. The only thing that seemed to evolve over time was the direction its dogma took. Theories changed, and when they became referred to as facts, the facts changed. Truth was merely Truth du Jour, which is handy for scientific inquiry, but hardly something to lean your life’s weight on. The Science I was familiar with, the one of logic, observability, measurability, and repeatability was clearly missing in this area. It was rife with speculation parading as something else. It became apparent to me that cooly logical, impartial and reasoned Science and its proofs were being controlled by Read more…

Posted in The Nature of God and tagged
08 Jul 2017
3 Comments

Voss Park Campground

Not much info is available online for Voss Park Campground, and what’s there is out of date, including the park’s own website. Best to go check it out personally, when possible, before financially committing!

Intense research last night and this morning as to my camping options to avoid the brunt of the current heat wave produced the affordable option of Voss Park, a large city park in the tiny town of Butterfield, Minnesota.

An aside: The town of Butterfield exists today only because of a poultry processing plant in town, Butterfield Foods. It suffered controversy earlier this year after Read more…

Posted in Campsites, Travelin' Man and tagged , ,
05 Jul 2017
6 Comments

Gang Aft Agley

In 1785, Robert Burns penned To A Mouse, which includes the lines, “The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men, Gang aft agley, An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain, For promis’d joy!”

I’m apparently just about to hit the “gang aft agley” part, since a prolonged heat wave expected to last at least through the third week of July will make camping a distinctly unpleasant experience, and it gets markedly worse the farther west I go. Please, no cheese with my whine, thanks. We’re talking triple digits here, folks.

Currently at a rest stop near the western edge of Wisconsin near Sparta, I just found all this out while Read more…

Posted in Uncategorized
01 Jul 2017
9 Comments

Pentwater, Michigan

One of the nicest tourist traps in Michigan, Pentwater offers much to amuse.

Even though I’m now in Columbus, Ohio visiting yet another relative and mooching all I can, I thought it appropriate to look back at the little burg of Pentwater, which has a nice, protected harbor on the shores of mighty Lake Michigan. This post is mainly just a photo essay, so let’s get at it. Read more…

Posted in Tourista! and tagged
30 Jun 2017
6 Comments

Mr. Picky on Fender Flares

Lifted, big tires, Chevy.

Rant time! Okay, maybe not so much a rant as expressing an opinion parading as a pseudo-fact. Aftermarket fender flares for trucks. They are plastic attachments that emphasize the wheel openings in vehicle fenders. They’re fairly popular as a way to make one’s pickup look like an off-roading titan. They often look good. Sometimes they look bad. Really bad. I’d seen individual samples here and there, but whilst pigging out on a heavy-duty ice cream confection at Whippy Dip in Silver Lake, Michigan (which is not entirely unlike a pilgrimage to Mecca), I saw two pickups parked near each other that illustrated the far ends of the fender flare universe. I was motivated to take photos with my ever-present iPhone.

Now, you may not think that fender flares are worth writing a blog post about, and you’re right. I’ll give you that. It’s decidedly a waste of electrons, especially since half of my readers are of the female persuasion, and I have yet to discern the topic of fender flares when walking by any conversation on the street. But some things just need to be noted, and although this isn’t one of them, I’m writing about it as if it is. Personal quirk.

At any rate, the truck in the above photo has fender flares that work well visually, mainly since Read more…

Posted in Miscellania and tagged
26 Jun 2017
6 Comments

Michigania

The roof is up on the Intrepid, not for camping but to let the fabric dry completely. Of necessity, I had packed up wet in Illinois, and it’s best to not let the fabric sit folded and enclosed damp for too long. After sitting out all night to dry, I lowered the roof right after taking this shot.

Much of Michigan is it’s own world, it seems, if one can mentally survive the crawling frustrations of circumnavigating the south end of Lake Michigan via Illinois and Indiana. Once you escape the molasses grip of those and cut northward in Michigan, it’s suddenly a robust automotive invigoration. On six lanes, divided, surrounded by thick forests of towering trees, one is free to barrel along at 70 MPH for miles and miles. A fair number of folks pooped along at my pace, which today was above my usual fuel-conserving 65 top end. But the massive traffic snarls earlier had also badly snarled my schedule, and relatives were expecting me in some timely fashion. The law enforcement community was doing a nice if not lucrative business along the way.

The roads near the shoreline are simply hard-pack sand, one lane wide. Yes, everything really is this green.

US-31 itself is down to 55 MPH and has stoplights in towns, but this is not abused, and breezing through is still pleasant. Once you hit your desired crossroad toward shore, a dirt turnoff is presented and it’s sand from there on in. Sand, sometimes rocky or with a hint of dirt, is all there is. It’s packed to a pavement-like firmness. The shore in “my ” area rises in Read more…

Posted in Miscellania, Travelin' Man and tagged
23 Jun 2017

Rock Cut State Park

Picturesque.

Due to the 14-day limit at Chain o’ Lakes State Park, Rock Cut, out near Rockford Illinois, is the only viable alternative for a short stay. But with all the necessary activities and need to get out and about most days, I haven’t seen much of either of these parks, actually. Between that, the heat, and the frequent fronts of rain moving in, taking care of business is usually the order of the day. “Business” that has included seeing good friends, my beloved chilluns and grandchilluns, annual medical checks, and registering a home address change with the entities that I do actual business with.

The drivers license change will have to wait until next year, since they want me to produce mail with the new address on it, which is not easy when you just moved and you’ve selected “paperless” as your preferred receiving mode. I’ll have to remember to turn on the “paper spigots” next February or April at the latest, in order to accumulate mailings from the “proper” kinds of outfits in time for my next arrival. Pity my poor son, who will have to use a laundry basket to store my mail instead of a handy little envelope-sized bin.

Of necessity, life here more resembles a continuation of the Read more…

Posted in Campsites, Mod Squad, Navel Gazing and tagged , | Leave a comment
19 Jun 2017
6 Comments

The Nature of God – Part 5

[If you are just now stumbling onto this post without having read the various parts in this series from the beginning, I strongly urge you to go back to the start and continue on from there through each successive post. None of these individual entries stand on their own, and you may wind up with little but confusion and unanswered questions by starting here. That is easily done by entering “The Nature of God” in the search box on the home page, which will list links to all available parts.]

Life continued while I kicked my way through it, thankfully without God. After all, that’s the way I wanted it.

I’d just had my project car’s engine rebuilt. I installed it, put on the cylinder heads, and bent a valve because I misadjusted one of the lifters during final setup. And that damaged the cylinder bore, too. Damn. Printed instructions aren’t always enough. That and other things were starting to go wrong because of my utter inexperience, and one evening as I stopped work, I once again took a last look Read more…

Posted in The Nature of God and tagged
16 Jun 2017
9 Comments

All My Problems Are Over!!!

Fraud is where you find it.

I just received the following email:

“Paymaster General Office,
Foreign Remittance Payment Department,
Federal Capital Territory Wuse Zone 11
Abuja Nigeria.
TEL: +234-08118516420

Attn: ,

Good news for you, We have been immediately assigned to effectively co-ordinate the immediate release of the sum of $2,500,000.00 ( Two Million, Five Hundred Thousand United State Dollars) to you from your approved funds. Kindly re-confirm the following details to enable us get this transfer done, as we only have 72 hours to make
this transfer happen for you.

Full Nmae:
Your Direct Telephone number:
Your Home Address:
Occupation:
Age:
Marital status:

Kindly get back to us immediately.You can call me on +234-08118516420 for more information.

Respectfully,
MR. JAMES MOORE
(FOREIGN  REMITTANCE DEPARTMENT)”

 

Apparently, Nigeria has had a problem with disbursing vast fortunes to deserving recipients for many years now, but their persistence to the task at hand should be an inspiration to us all. Admittedly, the chosen task itself is not so admirable, yet is a reminder that how we choose to live out our time on the earth – our basic orientation to it and how we choose to relate to others – is a very personal decision that reflects the kind of world we perceive and want to expand upon. Our answer to the simple question of “What is our purpose here?” can have a profound impact on ourselves and well beyond ourselves. As Batman once growled, “It’s not who I am, it’s what I do that defines me.” Yet what we do comes from who we are, or often, who we choose to be. There isn’t a one of us who isn’t flawed, but our aspirations and conduct are a better indicator of us than are our self-perceptions.

Posted in Navel Gazing and tagged

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