Tycoons and Typhoons

I figure all of you, my little circle of friends, have read about the "new" concept of libertarian islands that are currently being started and funded by billionaires. They are going into international waters and putting up oil rig style platforms on which to live unencumbered by the rest of the unpleasant world and the unpleasant people in it. No one will be able to dictate restrictions to them. They will be "free". Free from taxes. Free from the FDA. They can make any miracle food or drug they want. No building codes. No pollution laws. No gun laws. No sex laws. No socialism. No poor people. Free. Rich and free. It sounds pretty good to me. It sounds good to all of us. If they get it going I want to visit there and see what it is like if I would be invited or allowed.


I know, I know. We are all already thinking of all the new problems that would crop up as the old problems go away. Typhoons, pirates, marauders, terrorists with air forces, jealous folks, the need to regulate within the new little family country.

I don't really want to talk about what a great concept it is. Nor do I want to tear the idea apart, which is fun and easy too.


I want to talk about this as being a new idea. It is so not a new idea. Remember in Star Trek that funny fat pirate guy was in several episodes. He had his own utopia on his own planet. He had an android replica of his ex wife that he could activate and listen to her whine just for the pleasure of saying "shut up" and deactivating. Ayn Rand's book "Atlas Shrugged" had all the best men in the world in a secret hideaway in a bowl of mountains in the Rockies or someplace where they could own their inventions without having to give them up to the government which would equally distribute the ideas to all companies to be "fair". This book was in the fifties. Who said "No Man is an Island" John Donne ? He knew centuries ago that you can't opt out. What about grizzly Adams? R. Redford. They had to beg him to come back sometimes to save the folks who couldn't get thru the pass. But if he got sick, or broke a leg he could die without help from the mean cruel civilization below. I remember a book from senior year high school. You could only read British authors for your book reports. It was James Hilton's "The Lost Horizon". The guy finds himself after a crash in "Shangri La", a mountain utopia. Even closer to home, there was a James Bond movie where the guy had an underwater world where he could plot his evil undisturbed.

So the media can tell me all about what these smart, rich, superlative men are doing in their off shore Xanadus. I'm highly interested in the tech and bio and sociology. But please don't tell me it is a new idea. And don't tell me it is happiness or freedom either. I challenge you to even imagine in a fantasy a perfect world. You may find it impossible.

I'm Gonna Miss My Best Friend

I wrote to you a while back about our dog Jack passing away. He was such a fine friend. All our animals really are my wife's. She feeds them and cleans up after them and takes them to the vet etc. But one dog is mine as far as the bond. I really didn't know what friendship and love were until I bonded with my dog "Jake". He was a dog my wife had rescued. He was a puppy who was "dropped" and left to starve or be run over by a car or truck. He was frightened and starved. I had never had my own dog before. This little guy was outside in a pen because my wife didn't want to mix him with the other dogs yet until he got shots and was fixed. At night he would howl a little cry and not go in the doghouse inside the pen. The first night I went into the pen with a chair and sat down and picked him up on my lap and held him and made him stay there. He stopped howling. I did this night after night and after he laid in my lap he would go into the doghouse and be quiet for the rest of the night. This went on for a week until he got his shots and his vet visit out of the way. For the next twelve years he was always at my side. Always. Even if I was mad at him for making a mess or running off, or too much barking. He never held a grudge or was mad at me. Unconditional love. A human can't do it.

About six weeks ago the vet told us Jake had cancer in addition to his severe heart arrhythmia. He would have about a month to live. He would be put down about the time of my fly-in party. The fly-in has come and gone. The vet revised his death sentence to two days to three weeks. If he stops eating, it's the end. So I have been given the wonderful blessing of having some more days to say goodbye. He is on the floor by me as I type now. Yesterday he ate watermelon pieces I threw to him. He caught in the air seven in a row. I'm sleeping on an air mattress now downstairs because he has trouble with the stairs and I want all the time with him I can get. When I went upstairs the other day, he battled his way up and surprised me by walking into my bedroom. I was touched by his devotion, but I don't want him on the steps. Wife took pictures of Jake and I. I say goodbye and I love you everyday to him. Readers I can't express how much I love this dog and how much I will miss him. Many of you are dog owners and you have understood this much longer than I have.

So Jake has lived and he will soon be put to sleep. Death is part of life. Jake will die and I will die and you will die. Jake seems to be hanging in there for now. But it can be anytime. So this, plus the other aspects of my life are one day at a time. Jake is still teaching me a better way to live.

LLITTY :::::+:::::

What was I Just Going To Do?

Last Saturday was the biggest party I ever threw. And it was the best. I thought last year would be unbeatable and all I wanted to do was just repeat it. And I would have been thrilled. We were worried about the weather through the entire event. But we didn't get rained out. The details of what we did and who was there will be in my other blog. I want to talk about being a geezer.

I started preparing for the party by fixing a big hole in the plaster in our dinning room which has turned into a kitchen annex. The room is too small to be a dining room anyway. The rooms in our 100 yr. old farmhouse are small and cut up with doors and windows. There are no closets except the ones I made and they take away from the rooms too. While I was patching the ceiling hole, my wife was deciding to paint the room and she snowballed the ceiling patch into carpet and other things. As we fooled with this room, time started clicking down on cleaning up the cluttered house before the party. And it was an outdoor party so the outside needed a lot of work too.

Here are some of the geezer things I did:

I would go upstairs to my bedroom and then not know what I was there for.

Every time I needed a marker on a project, a sharpie, a carpenter's pencil, anything to mark a line, I wouldn't be able to find one and had to go upstairs to my desk to get it. This went on for four days and 10 trips upstairs. I finally carried a handful of markers downstairs and put them on the kitchen table. And told my wife to buy me a ten pack of Sharpies. And every time I put my wallet in my pocket, or my phone I would put two markers in my pocket. Regardless of what I thought I was going to do.

I was always looking for tools that I had several copies of. The most common missing tools were
tape measure, utility knife, MARKERS, hammer. I got to the point that when I was working with my friend Eric I would call out to him and tell him where I was setting the tape measure so we would both know where it was, at least for that moment.

When you work with paint and drywall compound you pour or scoop out what you need then seal up the can again so your product stays clean and doesn't dry out. Well, I would pour it out and get to work and finish up and put away my working container. Then come back only to find that I never put the top back on the main container.

I was making a repair on our tiny garage building and I had set the electric drill on the back of the golf cart. I needed something elsewhere and I jumped on the golf cart to quickly go get it. My wife was walking by and yelled stop. I didn't want to stop because I was under the sprinkler's water spray. But I did stop and got wet and asked my wife what was so important that I had to stop. And I was kind of cross about it. She pointed to the area behind the golf cart where I had dragged a trail of tools, lumber, chords, lights, a boom box etc. The drill that I had forgotten was on the back of the golf cart and had gotten lodged and the cord was connected and wrapped around everything in the garage eventually yanking out the power strip and the plug. It was a mess, and I quit for the day and apologized to my wife for the next 24 hours.

I went to Nagal's hardware a few times during the last few weeks. It's a feed store, general store. They always have what we need to repair a house or barn or fence or shed. They cost a little more than Wal Mart, but it is more than worth it. One day I went up there for "liquid nails" , a kind of glue. I bought all kinds of things I needed. But after I was home and back at work I realized I didn't get the liquid nails. I had to wait to the next day to go back to Nagal's.

I was working on my hay wagon and had parked it in the shade. Then I had moved the tractor away. Later the shade had moved, I guess the sun had moved. I mean the Earth had rotated. I was in a hurry. I didn't want to go get the tractor. It was 100 degrees out. I put a strap on the hay wagon and tied it to the air conditioned pick up truck. I only wanted to move it about ten feet. There was a limb from a tree that I thought I could clear. I broke the strap and damaged the wagon. I was exhausted and hot and I said some bad words and went into the pool with my clothes on.

I had put that same tractor's battery on the charger. The tractor had been put away last season and was not expected to start. So I tried the key one day and the tractor jumped. I was excited that it had juice. So I went and hooked up cables to the truck, got some starting fluid into the intake, and got out the air hose to fill the front tires and blow off debris. When I saw a big hornet I reacted by spraying air at it. Bad idea. The next thing I knew my hand felt like somebody had stabbed it and I was howling and jumping and getting away from that tractor as fast as I could. I quit and headed for the pool. My wife thought this was amusing.

One morning before everyone was up I wanted to get an early start painting. I had about a half dozen little places that need to be painted with primer. So I went around with a can and a brush and got it all done. I was proud of myself and ahead on the day with projects. Then I realized that for the last hour I had been painting with my white exterior latex which was not primer at all. The cans looked similar. I went in and took a short nap hoping to start the day over again.

Happy mid summer everyone. LLITTY :::::+:::::

Do I Talk to Myself?

I have to admit. I'm not doing as well as I'd like concerning gracefully aging. In my last post I talked about ego and letting it go. We all seek "validation" constantly. We talk about our successes. Our kids. Our talents. If we don't have talents we brag about our close friends and family that do. We want to belong yes. But we also want a time to shine and be recognized. We want 15 minutes of fame. If we get that, we want it again. I bet you have a friend or two that can not shut up about themselves. You could try to tell them that you just ran a marathon and got a promotion at work. Before you could get out the first two words they would be telling you how great they are and never allow you to talk at all. We sort of feel sorry for these egomaniacs. We are embarrassed for them. I am one of them. I'm not overt enough to be embarrassing. But in my busy talking mind, I want validation. OK here's my questions for the 62 year old me:

Can I just let myself be quietly happy?

Is it OK if I do something fun or good and no one knows about it?

Can others shine and succeed (that are way younger than I, of course) and I enjoy that?

Must I really accomplish anything anymore ?

Do I have to think about whether someone likes me?

Does anyone care what I wear?

Will I be able to just "be" some of the time without the image of "me" talking to me constantly?

When will I put up my next UTube vid and will you like me, love me, look at me, me, me, pay attention to me?

LloydLou you think too much. Better try to get some mowing done. . . . LLITTY :::::+:::::

Up Out of the Cave

I have some things to say that would be good for my Aviation blog. But right now I need and want to say personal things. About me of course. I can't say these things on "Twitter" because these remarks will be more than 140 characters.

Right now I should be at a Wings and Wheels at Bay Bridge airport. I never miss it. I love it. But I'm not there. Tonight I should be going to an absolutely fabulous party on the western shore. A party that suits me to a tee. A party that includes picking and singing. People that I like. A magnificent house and grounds I've never been to. But I won't be going there either. I've been ill for a week or so. I seem to be much better today.

I can't understand why it is that I have so many chores and so much mowing to do, and I find myself talking to you my friends. In a dark room with my lazy beagle mix dog, Jake. On what might be the prettiest day ever. I feel dark and pensive, yet oddly at peace. My plan is to later go out on the deck with coffee and watch the shadows lengthen and feel the air cool.

I used to think that if I felt like doing something, then I felt like doing everything. And that's mostly true. But I learned today that I can not feel like going to two wonderful outings that I am supposed to love, and at the same time "feel like" writing to you. My body just somehow told me "not yet" and my mind jumped on it to agree.

We all have an internal dialogue going on in our heads. We are thinking a mile a minute. It's all about our ego. Of course. Everybody knows this. I think that in order to gracefully and happily grow old I've got to work harder on controlling that ego dialogue.

Besides subconscious stuff, I've also got a morals question: How do I deserve this? Here i am at my house. i have enough to eat. i have heat and ac. I have pets that get health care treatment better than the people in third world countries, I have the means to go out and eat with my wife at diners and chain Bar and Grills. I like "Chili's". But they got the worst reviews. dead last. I get to look out my back yard and see wildlife. It used to be wildlife. It's "tamelife" because my wife has birds that will come to her. A horse that will cantor up to the house when she comes out, two barn cats that follow her around in spite of the dogs. A nest of wrens below her air conditioner that are the same birds year after year, the Martin house on a pole has starlings in it, not Martins, A pair of Pigeons she feeds and their chicks, a rabbit or two that she feeds and talks to, deer in our back pasture. I'm retired. I pretty much get to do what I want all the time, I learned that you can't get to do anything you want. And certainly not all the time. Even though I don't work for money anymore I still work. I co- manage our home. Do indoor and outdoor chores. My laundry. I do consider that work. By not having work to go to, I have more control. Control is good and bad. Self help volumes have been written about letting go of control. I am checking off control as one of the things I have. Good for me. Maybe. How can I have what I have when people are starving. Should I feel guilty having a good life?

A Car with an Incurable Disease

I have type 2 diabetes. Fortunately my case is moderately mild. The disease has a tendency to progress so I will be in real trouble in the future and perhaps die from it, or from complications arising from it. I've been told that the disease has been "cured" in pigs. And that lab rats can be given the disease and then "cured". I'm hoping for that cure. Really hoping for that cure.

I've sometimes wondered what it would be like to have conventional medicine work on my car. I would take my car to the Doctor: Hi Doc. Getting the appointment way far ahead and doing all the paperwork and insurance verification to make sure I can afford you wasn't too bad. And the wait was actually tolerable. Your nurse has done everything on my car for you. The symptoms, the vitals, the questionnaire. My car has been weighed. My car's ancestry has been gone over. We've answered the questions about whether any other cars from the same factory have had this malady. Going back to 1920. So now I have this valuable 90 seconds with you while other cars are waiting in the next stalls to see you too. I'm going to get the help my poor car needs. Every time I start it up, It steams and the engine light comes on and it hisses doc.

"LloydLou, your car has a disease. Don't worry, it's fairly common. It's called "overheating". Now that I've done the diagnosis I'll be recommending a specialist for you. I don't actually work with cars that have "overheating". The specialist will help you. He will teach you what you will need to know to take care of your car now that it has this disease. He'll show you how to let the engine cool down. He'll install an expensive instrument called a water temperature gauge that will work in conjunction with your engine light. He'll probably tell you to add water to the radiator every day. Usually it's every time you operate the car. He'll explain that it is better to use a coolant called anti freeze which is more expensive than water. As a matter of fact if you use water, your car will blow up. He will be able to explain why that happens. I have a free sample of anti freeze you may have, It's the kind I recommend. The representative from that anti freeze company was just here yesterday. The specialist will caution you that overheating is a progressive disease. You see, when your car steams and hisses, that's bad. And the more times it does that the more it affects other parts of your car. Parts that you don't understand. The engine, the hoses, the radiator, the water pump, the oil pump etc. But don't worry too much. There are specialists that can help you with these components. Eventually, you will need a new engine, and sadly your car will of course die eventually from this disease. Good luck with the specialist. And remember to take you water temperature every day and add water. Your 90 seconds are up. Stop by the front counter for scheduling and billing. I'll see you in three months."

What a Friend

We had our dog "Jack" put down on Wednesday. He was 12 and his cancer caught up with him. My wife took him in to the vet for a final diagnosis. We both went back to see him and say goodbye. We were there in a room with him and he was awake and responding nicely to us as we pet him and hugged him and talked to him. I never wanted to leave that room. That was a sad day. When we left I told my wife that I was free all day and would hang with her or not as she wished. And that we could go to lunch and "toast" the best friend we had. She wanted to go home and see the rest of her animals and just have a quiet day. So we went home. I was surprised when after she had checked on her animals she asked me if I was still up for going to lunch. I said of course. Another surprise was that she wanted to go to Milford. A town an hour away by the seashore that we had never been to. We had a lovely drive on back roads. A lovely meal in a quaint neighborhood. A lovely drive home. Our three remaining dogs have acted quite differently since Jack has been gone. They know he's not coming back. My dog "Jake" usually hangs out where I am. But now he's staying even closer to me. The other two dogs are being very quiet. The morning after Jack died was tough for my wife. That's when it really hit her that he was gone. We have a very old nanny goat with horns. She is not going to be with us much longer. We already have a grave dug for her in the back pasture I have boards over the hole so no one can fall in. I'm sad about Jack. I may be even more sad about BeeBee, our goat, when we finally lose her. I've learned so much about friendship and love from these animals. I didn't even know what friendship was until my dog "Jake" bonded with me. He is with me now as I type. He's old too and within a year or two we'll be putting him down. That will be hard for me to bear. But I won't want him to suffer. All I know is I'm happy to have Jake now. All he ever knows is "now". I asked my wife how is it that I can love a dog so. She said: "They are so loyal. They don't hold a grudge". Bye Jack. We will miss you. LLITTY :::::+:::::