Personal notes and updates
I've also been involved in a lot of personal shit of little real note to anyone not in my close personal circle: tonsil surgery, in combination with uvulo-palatopharyngoplasty, and if that's not enough to look up on wikipedia, also an out-fracture of the turbinates. That took a bit to recover from, and then 5 days after the surgery, I had an artery rupture in my throat and had emergency cautery and extra stitches put in to control the bleeding. Not such a great day, that.
In more positive developments, I've been working on my public safety credentials. Two First Aid/CPR classes: Emergency First Responder and Diver's Alert Network first aid and CPR for professional SCUBA divers. Then we had Psychological First Aid for Disaster victims, Some FEMA courses (http://www.training.fema.gov) in Disaster planning, continuity of business, and emergency response, My Emergency Rescue Divers International Level I course, and now I'm working on my ERDI Contaminated Water Operations course, and on getting my Ham Radio Technician's license.
Even a venture into entrepreneurship, with a little side biz I'm trying to start.
Meanwhile, real life continues apace; with work, family, and relationship.
posted by Larry at
6/17/2010 03:30:00 PM
2 Comments:
You have had a lot to cope with.
Oh, me too, but...
I had a nice talk with a couple of folks today, one a car dealer, the other the CFO for a different local business.
Both got my "new" This Is The New Normal speech. We're going to be poorer for the foreseeable future. Get used to it. We will survive, and those who choose to survive have greater control over the tools they have available for survival. Going Galt is the wrong direction. Even though I loved the book.
There is an inconsistency to Rand's fiction; we cannot choose to become isolated. The act of attempting to become isolated is in essence an admission of the very thing we would wish to become isolated from. Perhaps Sartre had at least one good idea.
Europe is dealing with the very things of which this last Congress has put us upon the path. As France, Germany and the rest of the European states begin retranchment, hopefully we will see the folly of these past eighteen months and agree to shift course before we crash on the rocks of insolvency. All is not lost. Witness Christy in New Jersey. Freakin' New Jersey!
Hope you find the strength among friends and family to help you through your current tests. And, when you think about it, if you rely upon your sense of humour, I, as an occasional reader across a few years, have confidence that you'll, again, endure.
Best to you.
.
Thanks. To me, going Galt just means adjusting to the realities of taxation- finding a way to legitimately avoid them, but it also means that at such a confiscatory rate as I expect to see, there WILL come a point where further effort is non-productive. Just like there's a point where further effort becomes diminishing returns even disregarding taxation. That point of diminishing returns just comes a little sooner under the People's Soviet.
I agree: I was contemplating this going through a shitty area of Portland yesterday on the way back from a job site. We're going to see more of that. More trash on the street, more broken windows that don't get replaced, more boarded-up building and squatters.
People will drive aging vehicles, and work more outside the home, leaving houses to get slightly seedy with disrepair. Education will suffer (even more!) as people don't have time to make sure their kids are doing homework, and even more draconian "education system" will be proposed to address it.
Hopefully, we're just looking at a decade or two of economic depression and not the long night. Progress didn't stop during the middle ages, but it sure slowed down.
I read James Wesley Rawles and Matthew Bracken's books recently. They're both too pessimistic and too optimistic. If it comes to civil war, there will be no restoration of the Constitution. I certainly hope it never comes to that; if it does, the best we can hope for is balkanization with pockets of enlightenment trying to stave off the long decline. There won't be a continental United States in that scenario.
I really don't think it will come to that, but I do see us following in Argentina's footsteps. Fernando Aguirre's book is depressign but has some ultimate rays of hope. I don't think there will be any miracle recovery from that either, but it's at least livable.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home