I Almost Voted for Hodor

My vote today won't be a surprise to you if you've been reading this blog for the last month or so. Though I felt like I was choosing lounge chairs on the Titanic, I voted for Clinton. I wish there was a way I could affix an asterisk next to the oval I filled in, so that beneath it I could write * with extreme reservations. But you can't do that, so I filled in my ovals and moved on. I took a 20-question poll afterward, which took a lot longer than did the voting itself. I live in a rather small community, so the vote took maybe 5 minutes, max, starting with me approaching the women at the table who had the books of eligible voters. (One of them yelled my name aloud, which may have woken an astronaut on the moon. Can someone tell me in a comment why they have to do that?)

Someone asked me recently why I would vote for Clinton. Even if that person has read my blog (he hasn't), it's a fair question. You may have noticed that I wrote a lot of blogs about why I won't vote for Trump, but not one blog about why I'd vote for Clinton. In essence, that's my answer: I'm more voting against Trump than I am voting for Clinton. I almost wouldn't mind voting for one of the other candidates (as a friend of mine did, who voted for Jill Stein), except a) that would take a vote away from Clinton, which essentially is a vote for Trump, which helps him win--and I simply cannot do that; and b) the other candidates seem a little screwy, at best. They are not awesome alternatives.

So that's my answer, really. I'm voting against Trump, not for Clinton. I suspect that a very large percentage of people voting for her would say the same. That leaves a bad taste, but nobody promised me a rose garden, and I'm a little too long in the tooth to think that everything needs to be fair in this world. To emphasize this point, I almost voted for a write-in candidate: Hodor. Because I wanted to make a bumper sticker that said: Don't blame me. I voted for Hodor! But I chickened out.

Photo: If anyone wants to start a Vote Hodor! campaign, count me in

Despite the dozens (or perhaps, literally, hundreds) of offensive, stupid, arrogant, ignorant, harmful, disrespectful, biased, xenophobic, and misogynist things Trump has said and done, he lost me a long time ago when he physically and verbally mocked a disabled New York Times reporter, imitating both his slurred speech and his uncontrollable movements. My President simply doesn't do that. Chances are, if my high school teachers wouldn't tolerate that behavior in the classroom, I'm not going to tolerate that behavior in my President. Mine will not mock and make fun of the disabled. It is that simple. My President also will not hate women, physically abuse women, say hateful things to and about women, and cut corners on taxes for 18 years if he's a billionaire (You don't think Bill Gates and Oprah also know those loopholes? But they've given millions to charities--and they pay taxes).

My President will not hate. And that's what this man does--or, at least, is what he wants us to think he does. He hates. He's shockingly bitter and angry for a very rich, very privileged white man. I don't know why such a pampered rich guy is so hateful, but he is. I suspect a personality disorder, such as narcissism, is to blame. Maybe a sociopathic issue. Or maybe he's just a butthole. Nobody's got the right to be a d--chebag anymore. I'm betting that with him, it's just that simple: he's just an a--hole.

And so that's it. I'm looking forward to the end of this fiasco, by far the worst of my lifetime. I suspect that elections with the likes of John C. Calhoun and others around Lincoln's time were far worse than this. I remember that a vice-president (Alexander Hamilton) was killed in a duel, after all. And then they made a musical out of him. I'm guessing there will not be a Trump musical.

Even if you disagree, please go out and vote. People all over the world are dying in their battle to get this right. You can't complain about the winner, or anything at all about politics, if you don't vote.

And for a hilarious send-up of Trump, called Darth Trump, using famous Star Wars scenes, go to https://youtu.be/KU_Jdts5rL0

Now This Is Messed Up

This, from the San Francisco Chronicle:

A coffin over 130 years old was found beneath the front porch (of a Ms. Karner) in San Fran recently. It contained the body of a little girl. Authorities figure it's the body of a girl who had been buried with many other people in cemeteries all over the city, but who had been moved in the 1930s to create room for city expansion, or urban sprawl, or overpopulation. Whatever. The point is: this little girl's coffin was left behind and not moved with everyone else in the 1930s. So just put it where all the other bodies had been moved in the 30s, right?

Not so fast:

That nearly century-old mistake presented a big problem in the present for Karner, who told KPIX that she was left without an option by the city for what she could do provide Miranda a final resting place. The city wouldn't claim the remains, because Miranda was properly buried, but it also wouldn't let her rebury the casket, because Karner could not present a death certificate. The result was that Miranda just remained in limbo in the backyard.

"It put us in this position of having this individual in our backyard and feeling awful as a mom knowing this is a small child," she said.

Lucky, Miranda's story is finding its resolution. Garden of Innocence, an organization that facilitates "dignified burials for abandoned and unidentified children," has offered to rebury her casket this summer.

Me, again. (Sorry for the type change, but I can't seem to fix it.) So, two things:

1. The city won't claim the remains because she'd been properly buried? Didn't it claim the remains of the hundreds of bodies moved in the 1930s? Or, why doesn't an enlightened city administrator (If there is one; we lack one here in my neck of the woods.) just use a little common sense, cut through the red tape, and bury the poor girl with her ancestors? Is that too much to ask?!?

2. So we live in a world where we need a charitable organization that pays for "dignified burials for abandoned and unidentified children"?!? Why are these children abandoned and unidentified? People just drop off or leave behind bodies of dead children? Are you @#$% me? And why isn't the city paying for such a thing as well?

Now that's messed up.

Re-Claiming My House and Land

So now I bring your attention to http://thedeliberateagrarian.blogspot.com.  This is a website, also a little old and I don't know when it was last updated, about a guy who essentially is like the MacGyver we all want to be in, and around, our own homes.  He has gardens that could apparently feed a small army.  He makes awesome-looking wall shelves out of old desk parts--and these shelves have great-looking and handy drawers, too!  He uses types of paints I've never heard of, and he uses metal pieces to kill weeds in his gardens.  He makes his own honey and jams and things, and he only uses a stove to heat his house.  He sort of comes across as a survivalist, big-government hating kind of guy, but whatever--the point is that he knows how to really take care of his home and land.

Now, I'm never going to be this guy, and aspiring to be this guy is useless.  I'm just not that handy.  But after viewing his site, I decided that I needed to take control of my own home and land.  He has his son (maybe sons) and his wife to help him, and I don't, but I can still do some things.  And, believe me, some things need to be done.

So the first thing I wanted to tackle today, in the second straight day of 95+ degree heat, is clearing away this nice shed/patio area I have (basically it's a much smaller version of my house).  This thing has a large-ish storage shed, with electricity and plug outlets, no less, and a large sitting area that's completely in the shade, with blinds that I could maybe use, but that also may be a bit of an eyesore.  We'll have to see about those.

Anyway, I used to sit in this area and a) watch my father work very hard; b) watch gales or hurricanes; and c) drink a beer with my father after I'd exhausted myself sitting in the shade watching him work very hard.  When I bought this place after he died, I would sit in the same area, on comfortable chairs, and just kind of chill.  Which I don't do very often.  I guess I would also reminisce, and read a little, and enjoy the outside.  It's as country as I get.

But now I can't do that.  For some reason, I thought it would be wise to store large, and small, pieces of wood against the stone wall in the back.  This ended up taking more room than I thought it would, and I also now have to walk through the entire area, which is also full of other things, to get to this wood, which is now inconvenient, which defeats the whole purpose.  (Though the wood was kept dry over the winter, without having to cover it.)  For some reason, a mostly-hollow door also found its way to this porch area connected to the shed, and there's a grill there, and boxes and barrels of kindling and smaller pieces of wood and sticks, and some broom handles, and lots of plastic barrels, and...and beside this shed is another area of wood--a pallet that is now empty because I used up all the wood that was on it, and a box-spring from a neighbor that I have flipped over and stored more pieces of wood, of various shapes, sizes, and thickness.  (I have a little bit of a wood/fireplace/firepit problem.)  So now I can't get into the sitting area, and the land between this area and the fence is crowded with a pallet and a box-spring of wood.  And, oh yeah, I also have a very old glider, with no cushions (though the thing still works very well, I think, but I wouldn't ever sit on it again), that has some very old wood on it--wood that goes back to when my father was still alive, when he would pile his wood on that.  (My father would jury-rig things like that all the time.)

That whole part of my backyard, in short, is a mess.  And I also have wood stacked haphazardly on the other side of the fence, on my side-yard.

Now this is obviously a multi-day, perhaps multi-week task.  What to do first?

Well, here's where I impressed myself with my slight MacGyver-ism.  I took this door, and I quickly but carefully tore off all the cheap, weak plywood, or whatever it is, and I broke that up into little pieces to use for the firepit.  (I told you, I have a firepit, firewood problem.)  I also took off most of the round cardboard thingies on the inside, and I threw that into the same barrel for the same purpose.  These will make good kindling.  (The barrel is weakening on the bottom, so I'm not using one of the good ones for this.  And it's just for storage, so I'm not worrying too much about moving the thing and having the bottom fall out on me.)  Then I noticed that some of the nails I took out to do this were really good, long, strong nails.  So I took these, and I hammered them into the wooden boards of the lower walkway in the backyard, as these pieces were coming loose because the wood had warped, or the screws and nails in it already had given way (Yes, screws and nails; as I mentioned, my father would jury-rig things--but they always worked when he did!), or whatever.

So the point here is that by tearing up this door, I a) re-used the plywood, or the wood panel, or whatever, and the round cardboard thingies for the firepit, so there was no waste or more junk for the landfill; b) I re-used the nails as needed for my wooden walkway; and c) I'm going to re-use the solid, good pieces of wood of the door for other projects around the land, as the wood is still good; and d) I'll re-use the wood I can't use for other projects by burning it in the firepit or fireplace.  And I cleared some much-needed space off the shed patio, so I can sit and reminisce again about how I used to exhaust myself watching my father work very hard!

And now there's only a dozen more hours of work to do there before I can really relax there again, as opposed to the fourteen or fifteen total hours that there had been.  I also spent some time in the sun--with constant breaks for water and central air; we're not stupid here.  Well, not all the time--and I exercised, got a tan (or a slight burn?), and enjoyed working on my own land to try and re-claim it.

Not the Deliberate Agrarian, maybe, but not bad--for me.  And I will put a garden around here, too.