Whatever Happened to Spartacus? (part 5)

(part 1)
(part 2)
(part 3)
(part 4)

Partial recap: friend Spartacus hadn't heard from me in a few weeks, so he dutifully checked in to see that I and my family were okay... after all, a very, very deadly pandemic had seized the world – the nation – and many, many people were dying: family, friends, helpless strangers. Though there was no cure, there were still very sensible precautions we simply had to follow, and an antivirus vaccine that had made tremendous headway in protecting and saving lives. How had his friend, A. Gene Childe, and Gene's family made out? I reassured him that all were well, and laid out for him how our medical practice was facing down this great threat to our patients and staff.

And yet – counter to prudent, sensible precautions – people unmasked had been gathering en masse to loudly and very-visibly protest recent brutal killings of unarmed African-American citizens by Caucasian members of city police forces. These gatherings, and the anger and hurt and sense of betrayal behind them (besides added frustration at unending quarantine and self-isolation), were very understandable... yet foolish and downright dangerous, in that thousands of people were thereby exposed to frightening illness and death for themselves, and for loved ones they'd convey this unrelenting virus on to.

Worse, their to-the-streets justice-seeking movement had clearly been – can I say "infiltrated" without sounding conspiracist? No? – had clearly been alarmingly and unacceptably redirected by criminally-minded opportunists bent on looting and destruction... hardly a protest against race-based police brutality anymore. My heart being solidly with the original protests, and the families of the victims of those brutalities, the destructive turn of the protests sickened me.

Just for a moment in my reply to Spartacus, I shared my worried thought, first at the violent detour these protests had taken, in particular the threat they thus presented (regardless of intent, good or bad) in providing a rich and ripe means for the virus to spread even further and more quickly, and kill even more of us. And not just the protests themselves; too many fellow Americans – self-focused, and fed up with restriction – were casting aside their antiviral precautions and getting together for parties, vacation destinations, and so on. And the grim reaper would soon swing his sickle even more vigorously and viciously.

So in closing my note to him, I wrote to Sparks: "how much have the protests, and the merrily oblivious rush to beaches and parklands and bistros, caused the virus to spike once more, maybe even nurture a second wave? We'll see in another week or two. So stay masked and wary, kids!"

His reply came in a few days later... and took a disturbing shift:

From: "Spark" le Klaus
Sent: Saturday, June 27, 2020 4:34 PM
To: Aging Child
Subject: Re: Cheese pasta?

Glad to hear you and yours are doing well. I hope that continues.

Do we really need to further demonize the protesters? Please let’s not forget that if justice actually existed in Amerikkka there would be nI need for protests. Meanwhile, your boys in the Whitehouse, in addition to fanning the flames of racism, have only exacerbated the pandemic. In addition to the tragic, needless loss of life, the most horrific thing about the pandemic has been the perversion of an existential threat against all of humanity into a partisan political issue.

Spartacus

Please reread the last two or three sentences in my email to him, and feel free as well to look over my note's full text in Part 4 here. Where had I "demonized" the protestors at all? I was baffled, and reread that note, and just couldn't find that such a slant anywhere in it. I'd simply very briefly expressed my concern that unmasked gatherings like theirs, and others', could well have spread this nasty virus even further and wider. That's a reasonable, prudent worry; it's not a condemnation – let alone "demonization" – of their just cause. Nor had I made mention to him at all of the protests' alarming violent detour. (And besides with the viral-transmission risk to bunched-up marching people, was he in fact okay with the risk to people crowding into stadiums and bars and shopping centers? He hadn't shared a word on that.)

I definitely like his respelling of "America", and agree with his closing sentence, that "In addition to the tragic, needless loss of life, the most horrific thing about the pandemic has been the perversion of an existential threat against all of humanity into a partisan political issue."

Very troublingly, however, Spark himself had himself quite starkly climbed onto and proudly ridden out on that "perversion... into a partisan political issue", in firing away at the Trump administration. Yet I'd written nothing at all about politics, or politicization. Friend Spartacus is very intelligent and incisive (he has at least one more degree than I do!); how could he possibly have so poorly misread me? Especially two quick sentences in a much longer missive? He had skipped over almost everything else I'd had to tell him – in a polite and upbeat answer to his earlier questions to me – and had seized harshly onto something... I hadn't even written.

Out of respect and friendship, his words – his (mis)impression, and bizarre recasting, of what I'd written (and hadn't written) – of course required an answer from me... and not a brief one; this had somehow twisted into a very serious and sensitive matter. So:

From: Aging Child
Sent: Saturday, June 27, 2020 8:06 PM
To: Spartacus
Subject: RE: "Not a Single Sparrow Falls to the Ground, Without..."

Sparky, I apologize if anything in my wording even suggested an impression that I demonize our protestors. When I wrapped up my last note, I was wringing my fretful hands over the likelihood that the virus had been given fresh vulnerable victims, with so many short-sighted people rushing back to the pre-CoViD status-quo world of close physical association (especially unprotected). And: too many marching folks have been shoulder-to-shoulder without masks and with too little caution, even while pushing hard to resolve and redress a long-overdue injustice.

I strongly support this hard thrust against racism in our country and culture, and my heart is marching with our brothers and sisters out there in the street. I'm also apposed to disbanding police forces en masse, and to the use of a legitimate social demonstration as an opportunity to smash and grab. You and I know that this is utterly antithetical to the committed method of civil disobedience that Martin Luther King insisted on. Just by association, that violence dishonors both the movement itself, and specifically King's values and teachings.

Much of the violence has been instigated by a) arguably criminal opportunists; and b) anarchists seizing a spotlight and soapbox. Both groups, especially the latter, care far more for their own personal (and/or collective) gain than they do for generations of bloodied racial and social grievance long in need of resolution.

The timing – regardless of any commendable objective or execrable antisocial agenda – is absolutely lousy, with our being in the midst of an incurable plague/epidemic/pandemic. This morning's number of forty-some thousand new U.S. cases of CoViD was the highest single-day jump we've seen since the beginning of the health nightmare. And much of the cause of that huge spike lies in just what I was feeling very edgy over: protest-mobbing, and social-center reopening.

Most certainly a hefty chunk of the blame lies in Trump's pathetic response, in his arrogance and determined obliviousness; I'm with you there, and my blood truly heats up at the opportunities he and his administration have had to do great good and achieve profoundly wondrous results… and done nothing with those opportunities, or/and made the worst-possible response when those opportunities were clearly there (underscoring how he and his backbone-less boys aren't my boys). This morning, I saw a big fat pickup truck that was flying a huge Trump flag, and I was disgusted.

I'm totally with you, too, in how "the most horrific thing about the pandemic has been the perversion of an existential threat against all of humanity into a partisan political issue" – even where some of our words, mine and yours alike, themselves veer into the partisan political; we need to remain on guard against that. This virus and its great threat to every one of us on this globe most decidedly isn't political. It could unify all of us in goal and purpose and ultimate achievement. But we've grown too inflexible, divisive, and entitlement-focused. We have become a stupid people, sheeple and lemmings.

Black lives matter. All life is sacred and precious, and must be protected and nurtured. The life of a helpless man of color whose neck is under the knee of a coldhearted bigot; the lives of each person in CoViD's relentless crosshairs; the lives of children in the womb; the lives of senior citizens warehoused and forgotten – these matter. And the loss of even one is indeed needless. These lives I treasure and support and pray for and march for, and with… even when the current viral world requires us to march socially distant, march while sheltering in place.

Stay healthy and vigilant, my friend! LeRoux was right: nobody said it was easy.

Regards,

Gene

By the rivers of Babylon, we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion; and we hung up our harps on the aspens of that land. There our captors asked us for the lyrics of our songs, and our tormentors urged us for joy: "Sing for us a song of Zion!" But how could we sing a song of the Lord in a strange land? — Psalm 137:1-4

More soon; again, I did have to point out to him – very, very, gently, and just in passing – that his political comment had made the high standard of his last sentence profoundly hypocritical. His next reply would shock me with its direct and unprecedented hostility; we've never been at odds, all these years… although he had chewed me out over my vote in the previous election.

Whatever Happened to Spartacus? (part 4)

(part 1)
(part 2)
(part 3)

Another one of friend Spartacus's enviable and emulable traits throughout the long course of our friendship has been his patience, his curiosity over what the other person has to say, his open mind, his empathy, his compassion.

I remember how, during one of my visits to his family's secure compound, I was working to explain to him why it is that time travel isn't a simple matter of stepping into (and out of) a machine, or getting klonged in the head by a crowbar, or even of hypnotizing oneself into an earlier era. The issue is that time is part of the very structure of the universe; to free yourself of its confines in order to pass at random through it... which requires you to step entirely outside of the universe: you have to manipulate and restructure the universe in order to meet your objective.

That makes stories of time travel, nearly every last one, tales of fantasy, and not of science fiction, unless you're using a craft or gizmo that that works through demonstrated scientific principles, and follows the laws of physics... as with, say, a vehicle that can travel at supraluminal speed, and why it can.

This is something I've given much thought (and some informal study) to, over the last few years, since I'm writing a novel that uses time travel... with the characters themselves debating these very points – and from the further perspective that at least one of them has very likely seen (and engaged in) a couple jaunts to the past... and doesn't understand it either. Spartacus had read a draft of two sections of that thick novel-in-the-works, and liked it, and made some keen suggestions I liked in turn, and which helped parts of the narrative.

So while I discussed this with him in his refectory, a few years ago, he sat across the table from me, smiling gently and politely, listening respectfully to every last word and illustration I offered up – and, I noticed, not getting a single bit of it, even while clearly willing to hear me out silently for a few more hours, with no objection or interruption. That was his patience... and his indulgent nature as well, which I've seen him use as well with his children (and wife) and mastiffs.

When not during those rare instances under each other's roof, we'd been in steady, very-regular touch via email, sharing (as I wrote earlier) each our latest adventures and experiences, photos artistic and of latest craft accomplishment, bits of verse and fiction and bawdy tale, rant and rave on politics (Repugnicants, Democraps, and their meek sheeple – throw 'em all out!), and so on. Typically, if several weeks had gone past without an e-missive, one of us would metaphorically peek into the other's window, and make sure all was well. In that way, his wife and I had seen him through a very bad (and rare) depressive trough; I'd walked him and his family through some grief over the passing of particularly dear and beloved animal companion... and he'd done the same as well, when I'd run into my own parallels of these personal moments of life-challenge.

So against the backdrop of pandemic and riot and social sickness, I received an email from him late in June of 2020; his kindly heart and nature came through readily (as well as a soupçon of Sicilian), as always:

From: "Spark" le Klaus [mailto:SpartaCuss@Yabbadoo.com]

Sent: Tuesday, June 23, 2020 6:51 PM

To: Aging Child [mailto:AGeneChilde@YouWho.com]

Subject: Che pasa?

Hey guy, it’s been a while. Checking in to see if you’re alright.

Has your workplace instituted protective measures that instill some level of confidence in your safety?

Things are going well here.

We hope you and your family are well

Take care buddy!

It was good to hear from him, of course, and so I naturally had a response back to him just a bit later that evening... though (as usual) at length:

From: Gene

Sent: Tuesday, June 23, 2020 10:09 PM

To: Sparks

Subject: RE: Cheese pasta?

Sparkly, thanks for the tap at the door, and face at the window! All's okay here, overall. And your woodworking emails are impatiently drumming their fingers in my inbox, waiting for me to send an overdue and very interested reply.
 
The medical practice where I work shut down completely for the second half of March, then reopened in early April to severely curtailed hours and services, and just a handful of staffers (yours truly included). After a few weeks, as the number of new viral cases and deaths continued to drop, we went back to almost-normal hours, nearly-full staff, and resumption of most non-urgent services.
 
The past couple weeks have seen local restaurants partly opening their in-house (as opposed to outhouse?) dining... and I'm still not comfortable having a sit-down meal anywhere but home, let alone any other kind of gathering. Daughter One and I mutually punted our annual Fathers' Day dinner to July-plus for that very reason – she feels the same, and until just yesterday had been working entirely from her home since mid-March.
 
My older brother and I have been visiting our mother every weekend since that same point... through her bedroom window, or one of the emergency-exit doors/windows. She's been eating and drinking well, doesn't seem worried, depressed, or anxious (as I'd feared), and still asks some keen questions. Since last week, I've been able to drop off sealed, pre-wrapped brownies and milk shakes that can be wiped down with sanitizer before being served up to her, and help fatten her up further, which she still needs.
 
Her assisted-care facility has held daily Zoom teleconferences to keep their patients' family members up to date on all that's being done. The staff – from kitchen crew up to the director herself – has literally put its heart and soul into the cause of patient safety and health (and their own); twice in one teleconference, the director was in tears as she reported one of three virus-related deaths.
 
We still can't go into Mother's nursing home any further than the reception desk, and that's fine by me... and I'm not in a rush to see the doors thrown open and all kinds of virus vectors traipse in there. Out of a hundred-minus patients, nineteen contracted CoViD-19 – and staff clamped down immediately and extremely hard with closed doors to visitors, and with quarantines, strict and stringent sanitizing and PPEs and quarantines and isolation and repeated testings of all patients and staff... and lost no more than just those three patients to the pandemic. Meanwhile, the nursing home right around the corner here had at least 66 cases and some twenty deaths; another center down the road had over a hundred cases, and I don't know how many deaths... maybe several dozen.
 
All this has been stressful on the family. And some of the weight is beginning to lift; Mother's facility has just been designated covid-negative; the sixteen patients who'd had the virus (and not succumbed) have all recovered. Visits in person may start again within the next couple weeks, and under very strong limitations: outdoors only; staff-monitored social-distance, and limited to half an hour or less. I don't want us to rush into that, either... but it's one clear light of hope and of recovery in its much greater sense.
 
And the virus is still out there, so extreme patience and continued commitment to protecting lives are absolutely still called for. And I may be an asymptomatic carrier, for all I know; I do not want to be of danger to anyone.
 
One profoundly sad note for the family came in just a couple weeks ago. We got word stateside on the death of one of our German cousins on Mothers' Day (same holiday and date in Germany); she was in her still-young forties. This was not to the virus – as far as I can tell, the entire sprawling family has thus far not been directly affected/afflicted – but to diabetes; she passed away in her sleep.
 
She'd been fun company during my three visits to Germany, the first when she was a perky, merry little toddler of just two years. Her mother's heart – the biggest, deepest, and sweetest in all the family – must still be broken. For the last many days, I've been trying to pull together adequate words of consolation... and will have to let that struggle go, and just write what I can and send her sweet mother what my own lesser heart dictates, and then follow with photos from my and my dad's albums, and some more words and memories.

[Note: I later called my aunt, and heard her out in her grief and recovery, switching between German and English, and wishing I could be with her and my uncle's and their surviving daughters' reach.]

Times are still tough on all fronts, and in all areas... and also slowly improving. It's looking maybe-okay to peek above the trenches now – with helmets and masks on. I'm just not about to leap into no-man's-land with a soccer ball and an ammo-case full of wishful thinking, and am encouraging the same of everybody else right now.

 

Next worry: how much have the protests, and the merrily oblivious rush to beaches and parklands and bistros, caused the virus to spike once more, maybe even nurture a second wave? We'll see in another week or two. So stay masked and wary, kids!

Regards,

A. Gene

Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road broad that leads to destruction, and those who enter through it are many. How narrow the gate and constricted the road that leads to life; and those who find it are few. — Matthew 7:13-14

More shortly: Spartacus' reply would take a very unexpected, alarming tone, bordering on a stunningly cold rudeness.

Whatever Happened to Spartacus? (part 3)

(part 1)

(part 2)

By early summer of 2020, deaths in the United States from the still-unstopped coronavirus were already exceeding 125,000, barely a scant half-year since its first domestic toehold, with heavy prospects of deaths rising far, far higher. Most public gathering-places were just beginning to open again, although still to restricted numbers of patrons – e.g., restaurants and grocery stores and so on – and limited to drive-through and pick-up, etc., business.

I think the two biggest factors in the lack of control over the spread of the virus in the U.S. were two: 1) At-times too-timid response from the federal government, and most state governments, to more forcefully prohibit gatherings of people early on in order to bring down the transmission rate. (Note, though, that at the same time that ministers were being arrested for holding religious services, casinos were allowed to remain open – arguably bespeaking a clear governmental bias against spiritual expression, despite the First Amendment's free-exercise clause.)

As counterpoint, though: Americans have a poor history of following governmental mandates; one clear-and-simple case in point is the difficulty in emplacing universal requirements to just wear a motorcycle helmet... an obvious, sensible practice that shouldn't even be an issue. And so, very strong mandates to wear masks, and to (selectively) not congregate, wouldn't be followed to the degree they must be followed. Too many folks – particularly on the right – see such practical restrictions as curtailments of enshrined natural liberty... but it wasn't a matter of suppressing proud, individual citizens' freedom and independence; it was to ensure cooperation in protecting and saving the lives of many, many others.

This doesn't mean that laws and mandates should not have been emplaced – they most-definitely were needed, and should have been even stronger (and more consistent). They simply were spurned and not followed by people who were sure they knew better, and who were measuring clear common sense by how inconvenient common sense's dictates were to them. Many, many of these stubbornly unmasked people soon became cold statistics, underscoring the absolute necessity of such difficult mandates. The more sensible stayed at home, sanitized, wore masks... and waited for their next stimulus check.

2) Building on that, another obvious big vector of the virus's spreading even further was the series of protests over the cold murder of George Floyd by a police officer, as well as the shooting-death of Breonna Taylor by police, both these victims unarmed African-Americans. The two deaths clearly pointed out the entrenched racism in too many Caucasian-heavy metropolitan police forces. I supported the protestors, and the Black Lives Matter movement – so long as we include unborn black lives; anything less fosters racism, given that three times as many Black babies as Whites are killed in American abortions. With African-Americans comprising less than 13% of the American populace to White America's nearly 58%, some 39% of all American abortions are to Black mothers. These are Planned Parenthood's own statistics, via their Guttmacher Institute; it is immediately demonstrable that Planned Parenthood specifically targets the Black and Brown communities. And:

These protests and their movement lost my support once they turned to violence – especially in vandalism and looting of local businesses, and in murder (over two dozen lives were lost). The protest movement was hijacked by criminal opportunists, besmirching and supplanting the needful call for addressing and fighting against racism. You don't redress choking an innocent and helpless man... by torching a car dealership, by plundering and burning down dozens of businesses. We saw that same criminal idiocy three decades ago after the 1992 acquittal of a trio of Los Angeles police officers who had been witnessed and filmed brutally beating unarmed Rodney King. At least 63 people were killed over six days, nearly twice as many as were lost during the Watts anti-racism riots twenty-seven years earlier yet. We have learned nothing since then. And I say that from my firm personal stance against racism, against police brutality. We are capable of far, far better.

The initial 2020 protests, again, were understandable – yet also a) gathering hundreds of unmasked people together was stupid and unacceptable, regardless of the objective and cause; and b) months of seething tempers over being cooped up at home, over normal activities and businesses shut down, fed even more heat into the movement, contorting it into what became a disgraceful show of cathartic madness that did nothing to address what had been originally protested against: race-based murder and abuse by professionals trained and sworn to protect those very same people. I'd be interested to see reliable statistics on how many coronavirus deaths resulted specifically from those mass gatherings.

Oh, and the associated movement of Defund the Police was also stupid and short-sighted. Criminal police officers must be held fully accountable for their actions; likewise, their superiors who protect them. Suspend them and try them; if convicted, fire and jail them. Period. But shut down and remove the police entirely, and you've pulled the pin out of the live hand grenade that a lot of American inner cities and schools have become. Interestingly, and sensibly, in the two years since, communities have lately been quietly bringing police officers back into schools. They shouldn't be needed there in the first place. But the shamefully easy access of firearms to practically any young American, combined with ever-growing individual self-focus, means that our children are unsafe in what should be a very safe environment. That shouldn't surprise; babies aren't safe in their mother's wombs anymore, either – why wouldn't their older brothers and sisters (and grandparents, for that matter) be any less vulnerable to murder in this toxic, violent, arrogant, selfish culture?

Yes, this is still about our friend Spartacus, whose own outlook, I believe, has closely paralleled my own on matters of racial justice, and corruption in politics and the police. Here I've been laying out background and context, key elements of which a decades-long friendship has plenty. More shortly.

Whatever Happened to Spartacus? (part 2)

(part 1 here)

I don't recall how much I discussed my forced 2016 electoral choice with friend Spartacus... and at the moment am not supremely inclined to search for that among our 24 years' worth of email. I'm sure we took up the subject, though in brief, and I explained that my moral and ethical commitment (not merely religious commitment) to the sanctity of human life had brought me to where I could no longer support any political person or effort that ran counter to protecting human life at all its stages, regardless of how much my heart still lay with the Democratic party overall.

Our friendship continued; we were bigger than any differences and outlooks. That's friends from the heart... and increasingly too rare in our world.

Some three years after the election, I got a call from my sister Alicia, even more state lines away from me than Spartacus. Cammie, a dear friend of my sister and her immediate family, had recently passed away from cancer. As executors of her will, Alicia and her husband Levi now found themselves with an extra car... would I like it?

I certainly would! My Honda PoC was shedding oil and parts faster than I could cram scant $$ back into it to keep it moving. The car they offered was a near-pristine 2009 model that had seen very little use during Cammie's exclusive ownership, only a scant 9,000 miles over ten-plus years. Per Cammie's estate, her car wouldn't be free – but the purchase amount my sister named put it in my astonished reach. (I learned later that other family members chipped in further... which was all the more touching.) I would just have to find my way over some 450-ish miles to pick it up.

The car wasn't ready just then for me to get it, fortunately granting me time to stack up more shekels, and make plans for its retrieval. And then, come Spring 2020, Alicia let me know I could now drive up for the car.

At that point, though, thanks to (supposedly) some Chinese lab or farmers' market, the entire country was completely locking down, to the point where interstate travel was nearly illegal. After shutting down for two weeks, the medical practice where I work had come open again (with many restrictions and limitations to keep patients and staff safe), and I was issued papers showing I could travel on behalf of the practice.

Yet travel was still too dangerous to one's health – the death rate was climbing exponentially, and no one was out of danger's reach. I received both doses of the Moderna vaccine, and worked more on the travel plans. And no matter how I mapped it, the only practical one-day route to Alicia and Levi's home was right through the center of one of the nation's two biggest viral-hotspot metropolitan regions (e.g., there'd been word of mass graves, in the news).

It also would take me within rental-car honking-distance of Spartacus's tight-locked compound. He and I discussed this via email, but concluded, first, that the trip wasn't worth the risk to health; and, second, that it would not be safe for me to stop by, either – not for me, nor for his wife and kids. In fact, he very understandably and very strongly advised me against making the trip at all; I agreed – he has a good sense for practical and realistic matters. I'm more prone to wishful thinking, and more than once he's been the perfect litmus strip.

Over the next few months, things slowly began to lighten up, in terms of transportation and socially-distant interactions. Early on, my mother's nursing home had suspended all visits with family members – wisely; among its 100 or so patients, nineteen had caught and died from the virus. Administration there been very strict, and that had kept their patients' losses low... whereas another facility just a block from my and my mother's home had lost nearly seventy patients.

Mother's nursing home had limited the family interactions to virtual visits via Zoom, and visiting/chatting from outdoors, through the patients' windows, for a few minutes. We did both, mostly through Mother's window: brother Sarge and our other sister Mew, and some of the grandchildren, made avail of the opportunity, really lifting (Grand)Mother's spirit... and probably also that of the hard-working, PPE-laden staff assisting and sometimes translating.

Mother and I were both born just outside a colonial-era city... and Alicia and her family live just a few miles away from there. So in mid-July, a week after Mother's birthday, I let her know (through the window) that I would be driving up there the following weekend, to the city she (and I) had always loved, and wanted to return to. I saw her eyes grow really wide as she lay there in her bed: clearly she was pleased with the news, and agreed when I told her I wished she could come along with me. But I'd show her the car as soon as I'd get back, and we could drive right up there once it was completely safe.

Resting there in bed after her lunch, Mother's mood and focus on us were very good; the nurse/aide assisting us through Mother's window showed Sarge and me the book Mother had been reading the last couple days: Motherhood Is Murder, something right up the alley of her crime-story-loving maternal heart! So I'd be out of town that next weekend, not able to make my usual visit, though Sarge (and likely some other family members) would happily fill in and keep her entertained... and vice-versa.

I scheduled that next Friday and Monday off from work; I'd planned out ever step of my itinerary, including a one-night layover with Alicia and her family, before about-facing behind the wheel of new(er) car, with rental vehicle contractually dropped off. Interstate transport restrictions had been largely lifted, and I deemed I could make the trip safely with masks, prudence, inflexible social distance, thanatophobic caution, and a thick supply of sanitizing lotion and wipes... all of which I had in abundance.

I wouldn't detour en route and visit Spartacus's fortress, much though I'd like to see and BS with him again, and his family. So I didn't let him know I'd nonetheless be in their neighborhood, just en passant – what would be the point? I had a feel as well that he would regard the long drive as unwise, bordering on foolishly (even suicidally) stupid. He may well have been right... though, for the record, let me state that I did survive, returned with the car (RIP, Cammie; and thanks, Alicia), never contracting so much as a sniffle twixt Alicia's home and mine.

More later...

Whatever Happened to Spartacus? (part 1)

Both readers of this long-running (and at times long-dormant) blog likely remember many-years' friend Spartacus. A quick visit to the searchbox there on this page's northwest corner will turn up a warm number of times where he's very illuminatively weighed in on something I've passed along here, or has himself shared something of particular note. He's even taken the blog's mike – well, keyboard – more than once. Go ahead; check 'em out.

We met in elementary school more years ago than I can believe, and with mutual friend Eileen were the Huey, Dewey, and Louie of the playground. Then after just a couple fun and busy years, Spart's family moved a number of state lines away, and after a few letters we fell out of touch.

About three decades later (that can't be right), I located him online and reached out... and in a particularly short time we were close friends all over again. I found him to be sharp-minded, knowledgeable among a dizzyingly wide range of fields, including avionics and history of both Europe and of music. He is skilled in a number of art media, from intricate model aircraft, to palette and canvas, to fine-crafted (and rough-hewn) wood, to electronic music, and far more yet. I admire (and have envied) these exceptional skills... and have very few equivalents of my own.

We found ourselves on largely parallel paths politically as well, pitched well to the left of center: distrustful of entrenched politicians; advocate of the overlooked and underrepresented; anti-NRA, anti- big-business, anti-conservative, and so on. Economically, he considered himself an anarcho-syndicalist, while I was beginning to discover distributism.

And thus we were for a good many more years, buddies over the miles and internet, armchair scientists (and SF-readers), fellow snarkers via email, occasionally visiting each other's homesteads and families, and sharing tales of respective journeys and discoveries, and the every-so-often off-color chuckle.

Yet at the time that our now-adult friendship began to coalesce, my Catholic faith was returning to me, and vice-versa. Over the succeeding years it continued to deepen and flesh out, and enrich and inform and direct my inner life and values... in turn directing my outer actions.

Spartacus is (I believe) agnostic, and distrustful of organized religion... and I can't blame him, given the wealth of religious hypocrites and the hypocrisy of the wealthy "religious". Throughout nearly all our modern-years' friendship, he has been especially polite and respectful in regards to my ever-deepening faith, keeping his own read and opinion silently to himself. This was very rare to find, and I appreciated it. Nor has it ever been in my nature be a proselytizer, so I had no sense that what my heart had come to embrace could come across to him as obnoxious.

The growth in me of faith led to a shift in how I applied it to the world around me, most especially socially and politically. I was proud to have voted – twice – for an African-American for president, even while finding a growing discomfort within at how closely the Democratic Party, and seemingly its entire slate, from Commander-In-Chief to downtown dogcatcher, had blindly and resolutely aligned itself with values and objectives I could no longer align myself with, not and be the Catholic I wanted and needed to be. I've been a registered Democrat since my late teens, but, to paraphrase St. Thomas More, I am the king's good servant – and the Lord's first.

One of those troubling political thrusts is abortion... and long before Barack Obama finished out his second term, I realized I simply could no longer mark the ballot checkbox next to any candidate supporting that issue. At some other place on this blog, I'd like to detail why it's glaringly clear that abortion is cold-hearted infanticide, hand-in-glove with racism and entrenched political misogyny. Right now, and in immediately following posts, we're looking at a maelstrom-sized, inexplicable sea-change in a greatly valued friend, man, buddy... and that same rich and world-spanning sea turned shallow and stagnant and unnavigable.

And so at the next election – 2016 – I greatly wanted to cast my vote for the country's first major-party woman candidate for president... and simply could not. The alternative was to not vote, which would be to abandon my social duty, or to select another candidate. Decades ago, faced with a similar pair of unpalatable opponents, my father defiantly wrote in Mickey Mouse on his ballot.

I considered that, but chose instead to vote for the candidate most likely, if possible, to beat the former First Lady... and that happened to be the arrogant, pompous, womanizing jerk Donald Trump – who had also come down firmly on the pro-life side, where I myself was anchored. So come election day, I pinched my nose hard enough that it nearly bled, and pulled his box's lever.

We know how that election turned out; more later.

The Post: From Beacon and Leader, to Blind Lemming

At the expense of sounding like a conservative, let alone a stuck record (or flawed CD), I've got to howl out loud about yet another abomination:

 

I've linked the particular Washington Post article behind the above synopsis… and I totally agree if you feel no need to sully your summer afternoon with that bit of filth.

The left has largely shaken loose of its common sense… and has clearly failed BIO 101 as well. So let me take the lectern and address this monster personally: If you have a uterus, particularly a functional uterus, you are a woman. Period.

You're not a "he"; you're not "transitioning" into a sex that can never be yours; you're an XY for life – get over it. You can take all the chemicals and lab-fashioned hormones you want, to force your body to unnaturally grow facial hair; you can even have the doctor sew you up, stitch on a prosthesis, lop off your mammaries – you're still a woman. (And what did all those hormones do to the baby in your uterus – did you even consider that? Or do you value your "beard" and spotlight more than protecting a helpless, innocent child? Where in that is the "love" you profess?)

There's no such thing as "transgender", unless you're a rare species of fish, or living inside an Ursula K. Le Guin novel. At most, the only "trans" you are is a transvestite, and indulging in your disorder and living a deluded life – with the arrogant desire to be applauded for it. Well, I'm not clapping; if you see my hands together, it's in prayer for you both, and the poor kids… and the world you want all of us to live in.

And if this were simply harmlessly funny, instead of personally disgusting and socially demoralizing, I'd toss out a pun of "delusions of gender". But I'm not laughing.

Deep breath; end of current screed. All that is yet another darling of the left that I'm no part of, and voted against in November.

I'm also not subscribing to that paper – I'll still buy the Sunday issue, but I'm going to don latex gloves first… if I can get them past these extended fingers.

Thinking It Through

The other day, I baited the hook and tossed it out into the far-right end of the pond, to get a weigh-in from my conservative Brazil-raised nurse friend, Senhora N. Fermeira…

From: Aging Child [mailto:AGeneChilde@YouWho.com]
Sent: Tuesday, July 04, 2017 12:44 PM
To: Senhora@Yabbadoo.com
Subject: Intriguing Thought-Experiment

This from the funday sunnies:

I think it's way too simplistic… but also great fodder for many alternate-world novels.

Regards,

Gene

Give peace, O Lord, to those who wait for You; hear the prayers of Your servants, and guide us in the way of justice. — Sirach 36

…and she came out swinging her Bible belt:

From: N. Fermeira [mailto:Senhora@Yabbadoo.com]
Sent: Tuesday, July 04, 2017 5:30 PM
To: Aging Child <AGeneChilde@YouWho.com>
Subject: Re: Intriguing Thought-Experiment

It is UTTERLY pagan.

I don't enjoy alternate-world/dimension fiction since I became a Believer. I like my science fiction firmly planted in the real and the really possible. I wouldn't have a problem with a novel imagining an extension of the Created Universe --

"God's work done in God's way will never lack God's provision." ― J. Hudson Taylor

Okay; got it.

From: Aging Child [mailto:AGeneChilde@YouWho.com]
Sent: Tuesday, July 04, 2017 5:45 PM
To: Senhora@Yabbadoo.com
Subject: RE: Wringing the Bell

I hadn't thought of the pagan side of it — which is why I run some of these odd ideas by you, and your well-anchored feet.

Beyond the simplism, I also see wishful thinking in cartoonist Darren Bell's dream. And you're right, further, in this way: anyone can come up with an imaginary, different-world scenario, and then retrofit steps backward to make it credible… to those who don't look beyond the surface, or who have a weak grounding in reality. Well, it's not credible. Intriguing idea, yes, but there are more ideas than there are people… and on average, the quality of those ideas is all over the board as well, and weighted toward not just unreal, but utterly unrealistic.

I think I mirror your perspective, in that I don't read fantasy, except a) Tolkien's; and, b), a teeny handful by sturdy, first-rate SF writers (exactly two come to mind). I want the real, too; and not the haphazard, random, unstructured. I believe the Greeks called that Chaos.

And speaking of Greek fire and Roman candles, I hope there'll be great (and safe!!) fireworks for you and the herd this evening. Ciao bella!

Acropolitanly,

Gene

Give peace, O Lord, to those who wait for You; hear the prayers of Your servants, and guide us in the way of justice. — Sirach 36

Bell certainly thought through a lot of steps; it's not a shallow idea… but, no, not realistic. Still, the best SF, and the pinch of very-good Fantasy, is almost always written from a keen what-if perspective. And though Senhora wouldn't, I myself would read an alternate-worlds novel set in that milieu.

I'm not dismissive of what-if… but it's certainly a mule I can ride too much, far into that kingdom of wishful thinking. And did I mention I don't have a GPS?

My next fishhook into the water was a pair of fantasy novels that I mailed down to her for her summer birthday, Niven and Pournelle's great take on Dante, Inferno, and its more-recent sequel, Escape From Hell. She liked them.