Reading my last blogs I have come to the conclusion that I have to stop writing them late at night or at 5 in the morning. They read more like a stream of conscientiousness than structured essays. But as I am pretty sure hardly anyone is reading them I have decided to push on writing them as they are helping me to fill the gaps in writing on my book.
Last week St.Valentine’s day was celebrated. One of the many commercial holidays that I love to hate. Reading up on it the connection between the religious saint’s day and romance was first started with a mention of the day in one of his poems:
“For this was on seynt Volantynys day
Whan euery bryd comyth there to chese his make”.
Which funny enough was similar to the first Old Dutch poem ever recorded: “Hebban olla uogala nestas hagunnan hinase hi(c) (a)nda thu uuat unbidan uue nu”. Which loosely translated means something like: All birds have started making their nests, except you and me.What are we waiting for? Another trivial item of knowledge of which my head is full I am afraid.
Other days are Fathers’and Mothers’ day. My husband sometimes complains that my sons do not acknowledge these days. Naturally as they were raised by me. I think expressions of love and affection should come from the heart and be spontaneous. My sons taking me out on a mother-sons day to a wellness center for massages and afterwards for a lovely meal or writing on a book token how much they appreciate that I am their mother and to please live as long as possible makes those days the real Mother’s day . I get enough of those impromptu days to make me a very happy person.
Risking to sound like the sheriff of Nottingham I don’t even like Christmas and birthdays.
Maybe it is due to the fact that my birthday falling right in the middle of the Summer holidays was often forgotten by my parents who, my father being a teacher, were then in relax mode. When I was small I felt terribly neglected and never said anything until the end of the day. When I then told them looking like a little martyr they felt very guilty, as I knew they would, and got me a very good present. As an adult I decided to only celebrate the big ones such as 21, 30,50 and 60. After that it is better not to mention it at all.
The aversion to mandatory feast days is probably one of the many ways I rebel against anything that is forced upon me. A rather difficult trait to live with especially in a working environment.
I can still hear my new manager telling my old manager :”Sylvia can’t be managed. Just give her a lot of work to do and she will be good as gold”. It was always difficult for me to respect my “betters” when I could not find anything worthwhile to admire in them. Over a career of 43 years I can count the good ones on the fingers of one hand. That is probably why I changed jobs 20 times over those years. The moment my manager stopped being an enabler and started being a micro manager I was out of the door. One even had the courage to tell me to apologize about a rather vituperative mail I sent someone, or else…… My resignation was on his desk 5 minutes later. Thank god my children take after their father when it comes to following orders. I take after mine. He changed schools on our small island 13 times and I think there were only about 15. Yes, we Lowiks do not take to authority very well.
Last week yet another school shooting in the USA. Listening to a reaction of some moron from the NRA, a club of very powerful weapon manufacturers, their solution is not to make getting your hands on any sort of weapon, as we do in more civilized countries, but to arm schoolteachers and have more armed guards in the schools! How crazy can you get? The president who is very dependent on the gun lobby to stay in power only came with the usual platitudes. A nice example is how the sister of the founder of Blackwater, now named Academi after a lot of scandals, is now the United States secretary of Education, while not knowing anything about this subject. The family Prince have always been staunch supporters of the Republican party, which has done them no harm financially. But what was more shocking that even Obama hired this private army now and then. Listening to an interview with an HR person from one of these private armies I found out that they are now hiring former Child soldiers from Africa, who have already been through hell as a child and have been raised to kill with no remorse. He coldly said that a trained soldier would cost the army about 8000 a month while these young men will go out and fight for you for a few 100 dollars a month and still think they are being paid over the top.
Having the time now to follow up the news not only by looking at the dumbed-down items shown on the regular News in three countries, but on line and by reading up on the history, I am becoming more and more like Mel Gibson in the Conspiracy theory. I see relations between the bad things happening in the world and Globalized Big Business. Climate change, wars and the divide between the have and Have-Nots becoming wider. In the USA they show it quite openly. A rich man who has promised other very rich men more wealth when he is in charge of the country, is now President and has taken measures to give those very rich men a free hand in becoming even more wealthy over the heads of the workers. The latter actually supporting this television celebrity as they have been taught to do since they were children being brainwashed by that same television. It is all happening right in front of our eyes. Naturally the arms lobby was not forgotten and they have made a considerable part of the budget available for them instead of education, healthcare and getting all those homeless people off the street.
But lets stop about that country. It is a shame we cannot put a big Dome on top of it as Stephen King did in his marvelous book Under the Dome. A great predictive parable on life in the US as it is now but on the scale of a small town. Big Jim is Trump reincarnate. Stephen is a great writer but sometime the quantity seems to go before quality. He has published nearly 60 books in 44 years. most of them are very good read without knowing his whole output. But when you read them all you see he has done quite a bit of copy paste between for example the Dark Tower books and some other standalone novels. I quit that series when he started to appear as himself in the novel. But the first 5 were very good. For me the Stand and hearts in Atlantis still are the best. Though Revival shows him back at his best.
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