There is no proper and neat way to do this.

So one has to find the “best” way, one’s personal way around it until someone else does find the truly best way.

Of course, others claim to have found the best way…if you understand coding and computer science, which I do not. So, screw them. I know how to type and I am rapidly losing that function as well.

Therefore, as an aid for the two people and three canaries who might ever want to go back and read anything I’ve written, I’m arranging my work on MEDIUM in a way that makes it a slightly easier way to find…

I complained to a friend back home, out West, the other day about what’s taking place, especially in and around LA, regarding the irrational displacement of the homeless.

Today I…

I want to write this before I wash dishes and lose track of the random data points floating around in my ever-diminishing brain.

Earlier, I was sidetracked into reading YET ANOTHER fistfight on this platform that popped up in my feed because it had been highlighted by someone I follow (thanks a bunch, Ms. humor-writer on the side!). This had one decent highlight — a lengthy convo with another writer I’d been meaning to contact.

Other than that, Holy Nightmare!

As if the Ashley/Simon Legree crepusculence wasn’t enough, in crawls THIS creepshow about who writes for how much with what “authenticity” and “quality”?

Everyone knows Medium doesn’t care and has no editorial values! What’s the fuss? You get paid by the algorithm, not by the Pulitzer Committee! Start your own platform if this is problematic.

You want “authenticity” and “quality”?

Work for The Paris Review. You’re on Medium, bud.

Climate Change

When Ronald Reagan was governor of California in the 1960s, even though he was ideologically right-wing, like his compatriot Barry Goldwater, he was still an honest man. He had not sold out. Yet. As he would later.

He was still capable of doing honest things like signing the first abortion rights bill in the country, and, in 1967, putting into effect the first emissions control in the country.

Yes, even Reagan, as early as 1967, understood that something was wrong with the internal combustion process. Scientists from the University of California, and others, were able to convince him that carbon…

Da 70s

Gearbox locked on Memory Lane…

Pushed up that hill by two voices here, lately…

Do I ever contemplate the past? Me?

These days I listen, primarily if not exclusively, to music while driving my tiny and aging Honda Fit.

The idea being that, should I be killed — something which seems inevitable where I live in rural Tennessee, and where the only other vehicles on the road appear to be souped-up trucks equipped with coal-burning engines — a few hopeful bars will bring me a bit of pleasure in my final moments of agony.

Stuck precisely between Nashville and Memphis, of course, I no longer drive and have not for several months which has caused a bit of a predicament. …

Balance

Always start with a smooth introduction.

Otherwise, people will think you are shilling for someone or simply writing for money.

I am trying to give advice for free. I am not a “life coach.” Apologies to all my friends who are, or who say they are (they don’t read my stuff, anyway…) as well as all those who are self-designated yogis and empaths.

Note how Medium says that last one isn’t even a word.

And I believe it to be good, important, necessary advice. At least a particular percentage of the population might get something out of it.

After all this is not a news article…

Why do we speak English here, exclusively, and without conscientiousness about those with whom we are communicating?

We make assumptions, because Medium originates in the United States, that everyone here should be comfortable functioning in “our Mother tongue,” but is it always true?

More than one billion people speak English only as a second (third, or fourth) language.

At times this creates, for them, potential difficulties native speakers cannot imagine, circumstances rarely or never encountered in English-speaking countries.

When “hate speech” arises in the use of an indigenous tongue that cannot be immediately translated by content monitors in California (or the Philippines or India or wherever) by the time that translation is completed the ensuing violence coming on the heels of that hate speech may be complete.

A dead body, or more than one, in some African field, because they did not speak “the King’s English” but only Tigrinya.

BEHAVIOR

When I was a lot younger I took to a formula drawn from a tiny aspect of my personality and began writing in a style more or less sarcastic and cynical which brought me success.

As is often the case success led to desire leading to repetition and because of my extreme youth, this chain of circumstance, this reverberation of a trait exacerbated the habit.

This made me happy

Where I had been somewhat more good-natured of a person, I became very much more a cynical and sarcastic person over time. …