Locked out on a Starry, Starry Night

Last night I returned from the Club a tad earlier than usual to find I had locked myself out. Fortunately, there was no wind, but I had to dig out the basement key, shovel a path and snow off the cellar doors before I could enter.

Light from the moon, full last Sunday, reflected off the snow making the work easy, and when finished, I wandered out to the back yard to where a short fir windbreak screens much of the light from the street and the houses on town hill. Recent frigid winds had cleansed the air of impurities, even moisture and the starry, starry night above was breathtaking.

It’s probably a very good thing to lock yourself out once in a while, less you miss the great beauty of what above us on a pristine winter night.

Biz as Usual after the French Horror Show

Media biz as usual in the wake of the French horror show.  Save your time and do your Sat. cleaning, you can predict what is being said:

1)      Fox is castigating Obama for playing into “their” hands and advocating dumping our national budget in the security agencies’ coffers to ward off the threat of Islamic extremists, who are on their way here!!!

2)      Alyson Camerota crossed over to CNN and is asking guests if the staff of Charlie Hebdo were not aware of being “provocative” publishing “incendiary” cartoons. This was being asked all over—and why the French think we’re wimps.

3)      NPR played it intellectual with a discussion of American self-censorship and pointing out the history of the Catholic Church in Europe has resulted in     greater suspicion of religion on the continent.

Actually, a guest on Fox News got closest. She referenced her Ph.D. thesis, that discovered Paris is full of Algerian neighborhoods, with young people who cannot find decent jobs and end up finding religion.

She wouldn’t dare articulate the real issue either: Capitalism is great at raising expectations, but hourly getting lousier at fulfilling them, as companies use technology to replace workers and more desperate ones flood in. Hyper birthrates in dictatorships with little water and too many humans send us/Europe their excess. Mr. Obama wants to make them all citizens and in December wages went down again.

            It certainly doesn’t take a Critical Eye to see something has to give, and it’s no surprise the problem continues, but it would help if elected officials could analyze reality.

Winterwonderland--A Fur Coat Chronicle

My personal cold weather strategy is a fur coat we bought Mom for Christmas in 1970s when the middle class still could. Old, a tad tattered now, still so warm the temp has to be below zero and the wind above 20 mph to wear it. Otherwise, you sweat like a wrestler!        

            No. 2 cold weather strategy is a quilt. You must sidle around the outside of my living room, as the center is filled with the frame. Wednesday while I sewed, the wind whirled the snow up sparkling the air to the tops of the trees. A perfect marvel of a winter day: bright sun casting blue shadows on the pure white snow.

            Another strategy is visiting friends with fireplaces and wood stoves. Vince & Alyce also have a bird feeder with a plethora of cardinals, juncos, a variety woodpeckers, who flitted back and forth to the feeder, fluffing themselves for warmth as we drank hot coffee and munched ole fashioned gingerbread and anise cookies.

            Critical Eye says eat your heart out Florida and Pheonix!

Understanding Euro Culture

Last weekend there was a demonstration in Dresden, Germany against the Islamization of die Deutschekultur. While German culture has its negatives—Hitler, the Holocaust, and Skinheads—it has more positives: Bach, Beethoven, Brecht, Dix, Grosz, Goethe, etc. and people believe they have a right to protect it.

Some years back, the French passed a law restricting face and head coverings of Moslem women. Perhaps the wanton shooting of a dozen people at the offices of a satirical newspaper in Paris, Charlie Hebdo, will bring it home to the American media & people what is really going on there: The Germans, French, Danish, Dutch, and others see themselves has having a culture to protect.

American culture makes no similar effort and "diversity" is highly prized. Even in Cedar Rapids, Iowa women are running around in headscarves and chadors.

           In fact, casting an Ironic Eye on the situation, in spite of the fact that certain behaviors are clearly in violation of secular American and uncontrolled immigration from Mexico has undermined wages for those of us who have been here a century, no one objects. Because business profits are the be-all/end-all? Ironically, we don't seem to count for any more than the Indian culture that was here when we arrived!!!

A Dog of a Year

A regular reader of this blog might conclude that the Critical Eye was unable to wax sentimental about the passing of that old dog, 2014. Amen!

Though it featured cataract replacement which allowed me to appreciate autumn as I have not in years and new insight into the term “medical miracle.” Mid-July I knew personally no less than a half dozen people having that surgery. One experienced infection, another initial encumbered vision. Most of us, unlike humans of the ages who went blind as they aged, see better than we have in 50 years. Easy to become jaded about miracles.

Biggest turd from the old 2014 dog has to be the reject of my book, Adventures among the Awesomes—a Boomer Teacher Memoir by a local publisher. I realize the proper subjects for memoirs are sex, particularly incest; drugs, and assorted sleaze, and that a hard line look at what is really going on in the classroom is not, but it does reveal why reform after reform yields no change in education stats.

            Critical Eye is trying to keep the passing of a dog from contaminating hopes for the coming year, especially the Cascade Spy Project, the true story John Yates Beall, a Confederate soldier who spent the summer of 1862 here and was hanged 150 years ago as a spy.