4 posts tagged “2008”
In Japan, the first everything in the New Year is considered important. And the first fire is often lit with embers taken from a temple ground.
This was our first fire. It was at the home of a friend with quite a large number of people present. About half of them were Chinese, public officials here in the US to study public administration.
It was a good gathering, a good first social event of 2008. I hope there are many more that are equally warm-spirited!
Just for the record, at the start of this new year:
- My weight is 235 (too high, but it is what it is) (However, it "ought" to be below 190!)
- My blood glucose reading is 165 (that is also too high; now they like it below 100).
- My blood pressure is 146/99 (and that is too high, but at the gym it is always lower than that!)
- My pulse beat is 72, but irregular. (The average for an adult is also 72--60 to 100 range) so that is okay).
- My nose is runny (and has been for a couple months)
- I have ringing in my ears (tinnitus)
- My feet tingle (peripheral nerve damage)
- My vision is a little sort of foggy (diabetic effect?)
- My memory, especially for names, is terrible!
- I have the same chronic headache that I have had for decades!
- It is pretty hard to walk up and downstairs, as it has been since I broke my leg a couple years ago)
- I'm taking 13 pills a day!
On the brighter side:
- My house is paid for
- We have two cars, both of which run well
- My total investment portfolio, upon which I depend for retirement income, adds up to $946,000. That ought to last me for a few years, although a friend in a nursing home is paying $8,000 month for care!). Anyhow, my impression is that many people at or nearing retirement are worse off than that!
- I do have a really great wife, who made us a fine breakfast this morning.
Out there in the world, there is rioting in Pakistan and Kenya today. Public figures were shot last night in Sudan and Sri Lanka. What with a variety of dangerous global circumstances, the Doomsday Clock stands at five minutes to midnight.
I'm not sure about the U.S., I don't think there is a U.S. doom clock, but for sure we have a bunch of major economic, political, social, technological and ethical problems. This is a country where major bridges, on major roads, in big cities, can just fall down! Where about 46 million people lack health insurance! The federal deficit is--well it is enormous, really really really big! We as a country are spending a lot for things without being willing to pay enough taxes to provide them, and of course we are spending a lot of money on the wrong things. Including, in my mind at least, a very costly (n blood and dollars) war in Iraq which is where the international terrorists who actually may pose a threat to the U.S. are not hiding and plotting.
So, there are a lot of things to think about in assessing how things are right now, from the personal to the planetary. I'm not sure how to sum it up.
However, it does pay to remember that (a) the isn't supposed to be paradise, and it isn't; and (b) for all its flaws, Earth--the third rock from the sun--still is the garden spot of the known universe.
With the start of 2008 at hand, we have been thinking about plans for the year ahead. Mostly in terms of travel.
For me, number one is going down to Florida, for some warmer weather, hopefully some sun (although there was little last year--instead, we ran into tornados!--and to see some friends and relatives.
I would especially like to travel south on the "Blues Highway," going among other places to Memphis (and Graceland) and then along the Alabama seacoast.
For Connie, it especially means going to Oxford, England, and Ireland, both touring and seeing her son and his family.
We do have other trips in the barely-formulating stage, but those are the first two. Hope we can!
I have already made one change for 2008, this in my TV viewing.
The Comcast recorder keeps lists of "favorites," groupings of channels you enjoy. There can be a max of five such lists, each including many channels.
The change I have made is deleting the big list called "news" and creating a new pne called "nature." Into this latter I have put Discovery, National Geographic, Science and the like. Animal Planet, etc.
I think I am just fed up with "the news!." Fed up enough that I don't want to try to write about why now. But it isn't just the stories, it also is the quality of the coverage.
So, I would prefer to watch "Christmas in Yellowstone" (a recently-shown documentary) than see Pakistan teeter on the brink. Brink of what? This is a nuclear power we are talking about, where civil order and the hope of democratic government seems (from this great distance) to be disappearing. How much do I want to know about that? Especially given my certainty that the Bush administration and his State Department will not be able to deal with this new crisis helpfully, any more than the have the many others in the past.
More important to me now is--knowing how DO the grizzly bears make it through the winter? And are there other animals that hibernate? (Which I guess I wouldn't mind doing myself!)
For too long I was involved in government to easily give up paying attention to elections, to presidential statements and misdeeds, to budget and taxation, war progress or lack thereof; to notice the degree attention to important public problems (or how they are ignored) and to the various policy proposals to address them, however well or poorly. I can't give that all up yet, not totally.
But I don't need as big a "video diet" of it as I've been getting! There is nothing much I can do about it all anyhow, and it must raise my blood pressure some.
Instead, like Walt Whitman, perhaps I am better off to "turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contained."
Or, if not that, to change the channel at least!
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