Category: Orphans

I just spent almost an hour writing something and realized it was stupid. That happens sometimes.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

I hope that you got all the valentines that you could store without creating a fire hazard. I want to thank everyone for the valentines, the one valentine actually. My friend Suzie sent it by multimedia text message and since I don’t have a text plan, it cost me 25 cents. Oh well, if well wishes cost a quarter then that is a pretty good deal considering what some have cost me. And my head keeps saying: “Don’t go there.”

But I really never understood the value of sending everyone a valentine in class and having everyone send you one. This is especially true when you are in graduate school. Okay, I am just using poetic license here minus the poetry. I never went to graduate school. I started to a couple of times. I got so far as to take the hours minus six that I needed for a second major in political science and then I had to have a minor — history. I went two semesters — this was a year after I graduated with my B.A. — with hopes of being a college professor, you know, one of those academia nuts. Does something need be placed here about macadamia nuts? One never knows.

Love is a many splintered thing. I am just full of them this afternoon. This is not to be confused with my being full of it most of the time.

Valentine’s Day is a day companies promoted to sell flowers and candy, I have heard many say. I don’t think that is so. There are a lot of people out there who see the romance of it all, perhaps all those hopeless romantics who are not quite like the helpless romantics. Hey, you, quit pointing your finger this way! But there is really nothing wrong with Valentine’s Day even though I don’t openly celebrate it, nor do I covertly celebrate it.

I don’t believe that Valentines Day captures the essence of love because I don’t think the collective society is capable of catching Cupid’s arrow right through the old ticker. Individuals can catch the love bug, surely, but not everyone is able. Perhaps it because love is such a deep, personal and so often indescribable emotion, state, sickness, that I equate it to a crowd of people describing an armed robber to the police.

“The guy had a bow and arrow,” says one.

“No he had a bazooka,” said another.

“He wasn’t wearing any pants,” says still another.

“No he was wearing a body stocking and was armed with a slingshot … ”

And so it goes with love.

Lust, on the other hand (huh?) being so heavily invested in the physiological, is another matter. I would really rather talk about the “Lust” word and not in the sense of Jimmy Carter’s Playboy interview where he said that he looked upon on a lot of women with lust. I like Jimmy. He was the first president for whom I voted. Getting back to lust, though, many people are hesitant to have a frank, philosophical discussion on lust. One would think that it is surprising how many have no problem — in small groups at least — talking about lust in the bawdy manner that gives the word a bad name. Yes, men like talking about lust. Women do too. But all such discussions usually run toward what they see, at least, as the sordid. Not that there’s anything wrong with it.

Well, I hope I didn’t pluck the romance right out of you and cut it up in 16 slices. Like the song says: “I Want to Know What Love Is.”

Maybe I do and maybe I don’t.  Perhaps, a la Bill Clinton, I want to know what “is” is.

As a political freak and a self-professed “world citizen” I find it fascinating to watch the pictures from Egypt streets of thousands of protesters. The mobs, often clashing with police firing tear-gas, want an end to what they see as a repressive regime under President Hosni Mubarak. Egyptians are also feeling the crunch of a sour economy with high unemployment, inflation and young people who are tired of the same old same old which is partly at root of the protests across the Middle East world.

Strangely, the live pictures of crowds clashing with police do not include an overt animosity to Egyptian soldiers who seem to be trying to keep the lid on a boiling cauldron.

At the moment while writing this I am also listening to a press briefing from the White House to see if they have anything but the continuous and rightly cautious words spoken earlier by Secretary of the State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Caution seems to be the watchword for many including some of those in Egyptian’s neighbor and one-time-sometime foe, Israel. Outgoing Obama administration Press Secretary Robert Gibbs is walking the fine line he has had to travel most days and predictably doesn’t stray far from earlier statements made by the Secretary of State. Gibbs has reflected upon the caution the U.S. government is urging for the Egyptian military for restraint while the press secretary sounds in undertones as if it might be possible for a popular overthrow of the Mubarak government. At least that is what I hear, but what do I know?

An editorial from today’s online version of the Jerusalem Post notes that unrest has flared up in the neighborhood with protesters taking to the street in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Libya all following the so-called “Jasmine Revolution” that continues to unfold in Tunisia. The commentary by the English-language Israeli newspaper not surprisingly, I suppose, takes a point of view which sounds very much like the phrase “why rock the boat?”

“Oil prices are tolerably high, security forces are loyal, foreign aid is available in abundance, elections have been manipulated and Islamists have been repressed,” says the Post editorial. “Nor would it necessarily serve the interests of national and regional stability for these authoritarian regimes, many of them allies of America, to be suddenly deposed.”

Quite truthfully the commentary says that the framework for a Western-style democracy in Egypt or in the other Arab-world countries lack the necessary infrastructure. The newspaper points to power grabs by Hamas and Hizbullah in Gaza and Lebanon, respectively, to make its case.

The revolutionary push from power by authoritarian rule has, from the American government standpoint at least, been known to backfire in some nations over the years. The rise of Castro in Cuba and the emergence of a severe theocracy in Iran following uprisings are just a couple of examples. The U.S. also has some tolerable-to-staunch allies in these countries which seem on the precipice of revolution. King Abdullah of Jordan and several members of the Saudi royalty seem at home at Western events or on TV news talk shows broadcast in the United States.

I certainly don’t have any answers to the strife over there, not that Mr. Obama would tap me for an envoy to the Middle East. I have a hard enough time managing my own life.

Also, I could see why Western interests might worry that even democratic reforms could cause problems with their economic designs. After all, at least in the Republican mind, it seems that democracy and a free-market economy walk hand-in-hand. While the multinational corporate world seem to espouse the view that an open market is truly open, competition is not always welcomed fully.

But if these countries in which thousands are marching to rid their tyrannical heads of state appear to be like-minded with the Western world, then why would not those free Western nations fully welcome more countries into the family of democracy?

Perhaps the offices and organization charts are not all ready for those who seek a democratic government but it is doubtful any national government could be built, like Rome, in a day. While I have reached the end of my comments and I am not averse now to using a cliche to end my writing, I think it would be appropriate to suggest that “democracy is a messy business.”

I just hope it doesn’t get too messy.

Travel stories are really boring. That is except when they are mine. I am a humorist too. I say that with a dead pan. Well it’s not dead. It’s deadpan. If it were chicken it might be dead pan (of chicken) unless it was live.

Yesterday afternoon I spent about four hours waiting around Bush Intercontinental in Houston for a flight on standby. I had one for sure an hour later, but getting somewhere an hour early is always better, right? I kept getting different answers from everyone I spoke with from Continental about my chances of making it standby.

“Well, there are 50 seats and 47 are filled,” said one inContinent employee.

“Oh, you’re on top of the list,” said another employee from another Continent.

“We’ll just have to wait until the plane is full until we see,” another Continental breakfast said.

When the flight was finally called, the airline employee sought the standby people first. I was on the phone and was the closest. Still, not one of us showed up at the desk.

“Oh come on,” said the Continental Army lady, “There were eight of you up here a minute ago.”

She was pretty cool.

So we got up. And we got on the flight. And we waited and we waited some more. And then the flight attendant shut the door. She turned out to be pretty cool too.

I flew to Kansas City on a regional jet full of eight standbys, one flight attendant, a pilot and, I think, a co-pilot. I felt the luxury of two seats to myself. It only took 15 minutes to get off the plane at KC instead of the usual 30. Oh yes, I also got enjoy the moon on the wing. Actually the sights were pretty awesome. The sun had just gone down after we took off from Houston. Skies had cleared. I saw probably the reddest horizon I had ever seen. It was blood red, which is kind of  freaky, but pretty as hell. Later on I looked out the window at the Moon. It looked as if we were passing right by it. Still later, we kept getting a  view of the “Moon on the wing.” Somebody could probably write a pretty good country song about it. I’d do it, but I am kind of busy right now.

Go figure. I can’t. I certainly can’t figure out those airline people. First we had an almost full jet. Then we had a jet full of standby rejects. Maybe the other 40-something passengers who were supposed to fly thought we smelled bad.

Parts of the 1 hour 45 minute flight were pretty bumpy. The air inside the cabin was kind of funny, like it couldn’t make up its mind to be hot or not hot. Of course, feeling the window you could feel it is cold. It’s 17 degrees outside my hotel right now in KC and snowing. The Weather Service said its “light snow/mist.” I am not far from the Downtown Airport from where the weather reading originates. But looking out my 15th floor balcony window, it looks as if it is snowing pretty hard. Visibility isn’t the greatest for the bumper-to-bumper traffic below. It’s been snowing since about noon and will probably snow some more.

I’m hunkered down for it.

So far the best part of the flight from Beaumont to KC has been riding the shuttle on US 90 to Bush Intercontinental. My flight that was supposed to have left Jack Brooks Regional Airport came down with a “significant delay.” That means that I arrived at the big Houston airport just as my scheduled flight to KC was leaving. I’m on standby for a 5:45 flight. But if it doesn’t go I am confirmed for one an hour later. At least my baggage is supposed to be in KC when I get there. Supposed being the key word.

I spent the last 30 minutes going through the world’s longest phone menu in order to use the ATM. As is usually the case. I fixed the problem while I leave the telejackasses scratching whatever.

Ah such is the adventure that is flying. Plus all the “nice’ people you meet. I did have a steady conversation with the shuttle driver all the way from mid-Jefferson County down Hwy. 90 to FM 1960 to Bushhhhhh.

Now you see why I write. It’s to amuse myself.