I stopped in to the First Citizens near the Mall to cash a check yesterday. I took the paperback book I had gotten from Chappell’s Peaches a few days ago, with the intent that if the young cashier, with the 3 star tattoo on her hand (a reference to Harry Potter, on each page of his books), was still working as a cashier there, I would give her the book. “She’s a reader.”

I didn’t recognize her, but when I asked if the girl with the 3 star tattoo on her hand still worked there, she lifted her hand to show me the tattoo, and smiled. I said, “Well then,” as I held up the book and handed it to her, “this is for you.” It may have been almost a year ago that I first met her in First Citizens. Actually 3/4s of a year, because I think I was telling her about the Cumberland County Library Book Sale that was going to be in August, and now the next one is going to be in August. I think it was probably about three weeks ago, last year, so maybe July 2024.

Anyway, she said it “made her day” and it added to mine. I really do like performing these little vignettes where I surprise someone by remembering something special about them, and maybe even leaving a little gift. I have no dark ulterior motives, no sexual undercurrents. It’s just fun “playing” with people.

As I was walking out to my car, I stopped and looked across the parking lot to a cigar shop. There was also a line of people waiting outside the ABC store next door to the cigar shop. I tried to make the analogy of people standing in long lines, overnight for the latest Apple product or updated gaming system, but I couldn’t quite name everything correctly.

I went into the cigar store, and it was a large open space, but I saw a customer and a young woman clerk talking in the back. I stopped and started looking for the image of the red Avanti Cafe Mocha package on my phone to show the clerk. I finally found the image and walked up to the clerk. The other customer, a woman, had already left the store.

The clerk said they didn’t carry that brand. I asked if they had another coffee or chocolate flavored cigar, and she did find me one. A regular cigar, not small but about $6 and I did buy it. It didn’t have the same flavor, but it did burn well.

But, here was the fun part. Somewhere in the start of a brief conversation, I mentioned Clint Eastwood, and to my surprise I saw a blank look on the girl’s face, and I recognized that she had no idea of who Clint Eastwood was or is. After all, he is 90 years old or so. That’s funny, but not the first time that I’ve begun to realize that my heroes are dead or dying at an extremely fast rate (as too will I, but hopefully not too soon – 82?).

I went on to try and “catch her up.” Clint Eastwood, he played a detective, “Dirty Harry.” He had a really big gun and said something to the bad guy like, “Make my day.” *I’m trying to recall the first example of who he was, before I started on Dirty Harry, but I don’t at the moment. Rowdy Yates? No, but that would have been a good start. I guess the young people don’t watch Rawhide either. Or the Twilight Zone? **And now I recall, I mentioned “the Good, the Bad and the Ugly,” and there wasn’t much recognition on her part for that movie either. Oh well.

I was watching an old Tab Hunter movie yesterday, “Lafayette Escadrille” and here was a young Clint Eastwood playing a “bit part.” The movie was released in February of 1958, and portrayed a group of Americans that fought in WWI in French uniform & flying French airplanes, prior to America entering the War. David Janssen co-starred. And Tom Laughlin, who later would play “Billy Jack” was playing Arthur Blumental (actually  Bluethenthal). Arthur Bluethenthal was born in Wilmington, North Carolina in 1891 and died on a bombing mission in June of 1918. On Memorial Day, May 30, 1928, the Wilmington airport was named Bluethenthal Field in his honor.

So I stopped and asked her, well who is the macho, leading man in movies for you. She said Chris Hemsworth. I asked, “Does he have several brother’s that are also actors,” and “yes” was her reply.

I also briefly mentioned, or tried to think of several actresses that I just didn’t like. Nicole Kidman for one, and the clerk recalled her name. I then tried to think of Melissa McCarthy, but could only think of Sandra Bullock (who I do like), but I mentioned that she attended ECU. Another blank stare and that got us on the question of where she was from.

I asked where she was from and she said Michigan originally. I told her I had a friend who’s son had just recently married up in Pontiac, MI. That was a familiar place to her. But she said she had moved to Georgia, and I asked where. I don’t recall the exact town/city, but it was in north Georgia. I didn’t think of Flowery Branch (my half sister Donna), but instead thought of Stockbridge and then we had a short conversation about the airport and jets flying out about every 30 seconds or so.

I then asked if she had ever been as far south as Thomasville, and we hit on the Florida Panhandle, and Florida State. I then mentioned that as you travelled south you came to a change in the “road kill” along the road. In North Carolina the road kill might be a possum or a raccoon, but when you got that far south, the roadkill became armadillos. And I also asked about pink flamingos, and mentioned St. Petersburg, Tampa Bay and Bradenton where I had seen pink flamingos… like we might see seagulls here.

Ask your favorite AI about why birds will in a high wind, often orient themselves to face into the wind. I don’t recall, but my guess is the wind was coming from the left to right in the above picture and the seagulls were orienting themselves accordingly.

Okay, now that I rehearse this encounter, I was long winded, but it was interesting to me at how I needed to get a new “frame of reference” of idols & symbols for the current generation. I guess I really don’t since I could probably live out the rest of my life, content with my own heroes, and not having to learn new ones. I do like Millie Bobbie Brown.

If you don’t watch TV or movies, how do you get your extended frame of reference? Online, and that probably only on the phone. I’m not sure that young Americans are cohesive enough to weather the storm. Especially since I’ve seen Donald Trump almost single handedly… well not alone, he’s had a bunch of help by a bunch of “new school” Republicans and he has dismantled some major institutions, and questioned or ignored the courts & legislators, and the media. He’s knocked out a bunch of these things that are absolutely necessary for a society to continue and thrive… and he hasn’t got a better idea, or sometimes apparently any idea of an equal or better replacement to what he has destroyed.

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I just looked over at my little avatar, with his gray hair, yellow/green long-sleeved shirt and rust colored shorts. I actually have the shirt and those shorts, but I now wear black suspenders with them.

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A day or two ago I was listening to an Economist, an educator, and he may have been talking before a group of young people, or people that worked with young people. The camera was focused on his chair at a table and there was no sign of people near, or behind him and the camera never panned around to show if or who he was actually talking to.

Toward the end of his talk he made a statement that we would have to change the fundamental goal of our society, from working for monetary “profit,” to something more sustainable. I don’t think we will make that change, and I see a bleak future for America, or even a future in which America, as we know it, doesn’t exist. Donald Trump and the “new” Republicans are cutting costs, lowering taxes (except for the Big Beautiful Bill in which it adds a trillion or more to the Budget Deficit).

Since 2016 I’ve seen the World turned upside down and there is little on this Earth that you can put your trust in. It may have been that way all along, but Donald Trump has “put it in your face.” Don’t trust the Media. Come to me for your news. *He said that, and it was recorded on YouTube, at one time. How stupid is that suggestion? I’d prefer to listen to multiple sources, and make my own decisions about which ones to trust, or how to combine it all to come to a truth that no one of them is purporting.

As President, during his first term, he sat on his fat ass in the Whitehouse as those sorry pieces of shit Republicans attacked the U.S. Capitol. He actually wanted them to force, along with V.P. Pence performing unlawful actions, a reversal of the valid Election results, in which HE LOST! IT WASN’T STOLEN. HE’S A POOR LOSER!

Kennedy has presented the phrase, “Make America Healthy Again.” And my first thought was, is that fat assed, McDonald’s hamburger eater in the Whitehouse going to stop eating unhealthy, as a start of this MAHA Campaign? No telling how many people will die because Donald Trump appointed Kennedy to this position. There may have been waste, but there are idiots in the World that are worse than waste.

President Trump was the wrong person to have in leadership when Covid hit, and there were a bunch of people, mostly (maybe all) Republicans that followed his ignorant leadership regarding Covid as if they were lemmings, going happily over the cliff, waving their masks in their hand, instead of wearing them to protect themselves and others. He made wearing a protective mask a political statement, and one which Republicans weren’t going to have “the Government” forcing them to wear masks. And, “the Government” wasn’t to be trusted and they weren’t going to be taking any Covid injections, because loyal, good Republicans stand together. *Please, please stop the band from playing “God Bless America.”

That’s just stupid to make protective mask wearing a political issue. I grew up in a society that trusted Science and medical doctors. And now it’s almost as if we’ve taken a bunch of steps backwards into an age of voodoo and witch doctors. Donald Trump and his Cabinet member, Kennedy, don’t trust science nor medical doctors, or their years of scientific research. What in the hell is an “anti vaxxer?”

I knew there were people, often women, who totally distrusted vaccines, and would never have one of their children injected with anything. *I’m not saying that certain medicines can’t harm or kill you, but with a bunch of research, that’s how to reduce the risks, and humanity, at least in recent years, has managed to pull itself out of the Dark Ages. That is until now, and now it seems that you’ve got the inmates driving the bus. *I know it’s the inmates running the asylum., the crazy person driving the bus.

The only trouble with giving them enough rope to hang themselves, is that the decisions they are making will take themselves AND a bunch of others down at the same time. If their decisions only screwed themselves, then let them have at it. But if their decisions are going to mean that research doesn’t continue regarding protecting the Public from infectious diseases, and that MY insurance company isn’t going to pay for me having an updated Covid booster shot (which I’ve never had any serious negative reactions to the Covid shots or boosters I’ve had), then I’ll definitely have a problem with that… until they succeed and I am dead.

And even if “they” don’t succeed, I will still be dead in a few years, but just not at THEIR hands. On one hand, “I don’t want to die,” but on the other hand, “I don’t want to remain past my ‘Sell by Date.'” I’m enjoying my retirement because I have enough money & time that I can pretty much focus on whatever I deem important. *I may die before, but the age of 82 came to me several years ago, as the age at which I would die. Not sure why, but “82” has been the number for quite some time. But, I’m also aware that if I live to be 81 (and that’s only 10 years from now), I might get a little antsy, and want to renegotiate with God. But I really don’t want to live beyond my usefulness. I’ve had a productive work life, with computers and the Internet at an institution of higher learning for many years, and hopefully during that time I helped professors, admins and students provide & receive a better education using some of the tools I was in charge of.

When the time comes that I’m no longer reasonably healthy, and am stuck at home or in a “care” facility, then I definitely want to go on.