I'm seriously considering giving up this blog altogether, going completely cold turkey, simply stopping and just never coming back At some point, due to my own age, illness, or death, the blog will inevitably come to a final halt. When that happens, I don't know if past postings will live on or even for how long. The blog is not something tangible like my books, whose printed copies may continue to exist as physical objects well beyond my death.
There must be countless blogs popping up around the world, not all of which will survive, ad infinitum. In fact, just how long does an email last? I am able to easily track my own emails going back to January 2009, despite several changes of my entire computer system. But what about going back even before that to when I first started using a computer regularly?
I first started using a computer in Honduras for sending out messages to my family and friends back home, paying for hourly use at a computer center while in the Peace Corps there, starting back in 2000. But surely no record exists of what I or anyone else wrote from such commercial places.
Yet writing, whether by computer, via pen and ink, or even with cave images, goes back for centuries, even for milenia.
CNN,
Researchers have uncovered links between the precursors to the world’s oldest writing systems and the mysterious, intricate designs left behind by engraved cylindrical seals that were rolled across clay tablets about 6,000 years ago.
Scholars consider cuneiform the first writing system, whereby humans used its wedge-shaped characters to inscribe ancient languages such as Sumerian on clay tablets beginning around 3400 BC. That writing system is thought to have originated in Mesopotamia, the region where the world’s earliest known civilization developed in what's now modern-day Iraq.
Before cuneiform, however, there was an archaic script using abstract pictographic signs called proto-cuneiform. It first appeared around 3350 to 3000 BC in the city of Uruk, in modern-day southern Iraq.
Scholars consider cuneiform the first writing system, whereby humans used its wedge-shaped characters to inscribe ancient languages such as Sumerian on clay tablets beginning around 3400 BC. That writing system is thought to have originated in Mesopotamia, the region where the world’s earliest known civilization developed in what's now modern-day Iraq.
Before cuneiform, however, there was an archaic script using abstract pictographic signs called proto-cuneiform. It first appeared around 3350 to 3000 BC in the city of Uruk, in modern-day southern Iraq.
Even before that, cave paintings told a story.
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Trump is deporting so many immigrants that it could cause inflation to hit 4% next year,
top economist says
A serious labor shortage has developed in our country and Mr. Trump is only making matters worse.
We actually need more more folks in the demographic trying to get across the border right now.
Unfortunately, the US, like most other countries, has never developed a good system for screening
new arrivals.
Do we even need to screen them? Maybe we just need to
take our chences, like we do whenever we are cross a busy street. Most would-be immigrants
don't have nefarious motives. They just want to earn a decent living to provide for their families.
Deporting undocumented immigrants, who are people we really need here, It's an example of:
"Cutting off your nose to spite your face."
NY Times, Judge Rejects Trump's Attempt to End Standards of Care for Detained Migrant Children
Fortunately, Mr. Trump and his allies are getting a strong pushback on their efforts to gut government protections for detained migrant children.
Not only are immigrants and their children being blocked now from entering the US, but Americans
already here are having fewer children.
Google identifies the following reasons for the baby shortage.
Americans are having fewer babies due to a combination of economic, social, and personal factors. These include the high cost of raising a family, concerns about climate change, and a shift in priorities towards career and personal fulfillment. Many also cite difficulty finding a suitable partner, which further delays or prevents parenthood.
West Virginia, South Carolina, Ohio to deploy National Guard troops to D.C.
This is totally ridiculous and completely unnecessary.
West Virginia governor to deploy National Guard troops to US capital | Reuters https://www.reuters.com/world/
Apparently some troops from right here in West Virginia, where I'm living now, will be sent to Washigton, DC, to help keep order there. Are they really needed or is Trump just trying to create a police state in the nation's capital to override decisions being made by locally elected officials? Unfortunately, a low-level Trump staffer had been car-jacked by a group of unruly young men, which gave Mr. Trump an excuse to try to completey take over the city.
Trump and Putin concluded their meeting in Alaska. What did they decide there? We haven't heard.
Israelis are saying "Never again is now." They want the Gaza war to stop.
Three dead, eight wounded in mass shooting at Brooklyn lounge
Israelis stage nationwide protests to demand end to Gaza war and release of hostages
Netanyahu may be deliberately prolonging the war in Gaza for his own protection, but it will be hard for him to ignore growing protests from his own citizens.
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South Sudan, officially the Republic of South Sudan, is a landlocked country in East Africa. It is bordered on the north by Sudan; on the east by Ethiopia; on the south by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda and Kenya; and on the west by the Central African Republic. Wikipedia
South Sudan is a very poor country, quite sparsely populated, and with many natural resoures.
South Sudan would welcome new immigrants.
My own family members who identify as "black" have commented that the South Sudanese really are "black".
Here I am with my granddaughter.
And here I am with her son. He and his mother might considered "black?" (But maybe not in South Sudan.)
If Palestinians being displaced by Israel's assault on Gaza should choose to leave voluntarily for South Sudan to try their luck there, as is being offered to them now, then that might help spur greater development there.
South Sudan is a nation of 11 million, a place I actually know quite well. It could certainly benefit from having some new people and new ideas, and is not currently at war.
South Sudan also has ample gold reserves and oil, but has yet to fully develop its economic potential.
Admittedly, South Sudan's physical environment can be quite challenging: hot and dry alternating with torrential rains, depending on the season.
After having spent considerable time there myself, experiencing both rain and drought while traveling all around the country, I found most South Sudanese to be quite welcoming and trustworthy, as well as very trusting. Absolute mutual trust seems to be a hallmark of their culture. That works because everyone there abides by unwritten rules about never stealing or cheating, so no laws or stiff penalties are actually needed.
As perhaps mentioned before, I once left my purse with ample cash and my passport unattended all day in an open tent there and nothing was taken. not my compact, not my chapstick, not my handkerchief. Everything was there exactly as I'd left it.
So I certainly believe that some Palestinians, though they surely would miss their homeland, could create a brand new satisfying life in South Sudan.
I might easily become a vegetarian, even a vegan, as I tried both while in the Peace Corps in Honduras. Even now, if I eat any meat, it's only fish or chicken and not much of that. I do eat eggs and cheese.
While I was debating recently about continuing with the blog, a former neighbor sent me this well-known proclamation by Hamlet as a possible guide.
To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them. To die—to sleep,
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to: 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there's the rub:
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause—there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th'oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of dispriz'd love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th'unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovere'd country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action.
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