Why So Much?

Serving as the 44^th President of the United States, from 2009 until 2017, Barack Hussein Obama is awaiting completion of a presidential library to commemorate his time in office.

According to internet sources, this Barack Obama Presidential Center is being constructed on the South Side of Chicago.

Varying sites proudly announce this complex as the first fully digital presidential library in existence.

Presidential libraries, as presidential libraries are concerned, contain a wide variety of materials to lead visitors and admirers through an historic journey about the person being honored by these archives.

Photos and accompanying deeds of former residences, old family photographs, and diplomas, are among the notable documentation on display for all to ogle.

Letters of famous past interactions, swearing-in bibles, along with historic clothing, are also prominently placed in glass cases and mounted upon over-sized foam boards for wall displays.

Inside the Reagan Library

President Obama’s library is still in the building phase and is estimated to cost roughly $500,000,000.  That’s a half-billion dollars.

Not modest in cost by the wildest imagination, that money is being contributed by the University of Chicago, according to Wikipedia.  (Perhaps they could lower tuitions to make academe more affordable, instead.)

As a note of interest, the Reagan Library was built at a cost of $60,000,000, in 1988; that is equivalent to $101,000,000, in 2018. 

That being said, the Barack Obama Presidential Center is likely to house digital images of notable times in President Obama’s political career, and times leading thereto.

His brief time as an Illinois state senator, then a United States Senator, clearly aided his successful run up to the presidential elections of 2008.  Being a “community organizer” and a teacher of Constitutional law, such unremarkable endeavors paved Obama’s way to the presidency breaking an imaginary barrier as the first black United States President.

Supposedly creating a “post racial” America, Obama’s election to the Presidency was touted as the beginning of racial healing in a perceived divided country.

Eight years of “us-versus-them” actions and policies emanating from The White House only encouraged further division among America’s populace.

But the odd thing about Obama’s time in office, and the decades prior, was the lack of documentation about his early life.

According to his account, he was born in Hawaii.  That fact became contentious when he refused to provide an actual copy of his birth certificate that would verify his being an American citizen.

The waters were further muddied when he continuously misrepresented the truth by denying being in the company of overt racists, communists, and relatives, whose goals were to overthrow the United States government.

Repeated denials were the norm for his political stint as President, and any and all questions about his past affiliations were met with accusations of racism and hatred.

Attempts to discover the background of someone practically anonymous soaring from a mundane career as a mediocre Senator to the Oval Office, were met with roadblock after roadblock.

No one had yearbook photos, family photos, or wedding photos of the Obama’s.  Neither were there any written essays, test papers, or term papers, available to reflect Obama’s intelligence.

Also notably missing were report cards, interviews from fellow students, and comments from co-workers and neighbors.

He traveled around the world for years to both live and study, and wound up being elected to the presidency.  But there is no trail of his accomplishments or trials.

Which begs the question: what will the Barack Obama Presidential Center display?

As Seen On TV

It’s been more than ten-years since I retired.  And during that time I have completed many, many tasks.

House painting, building, mowing, raking, reupholstering, traveling, returning to school, bonsai trimming, auto maintenance, and cleaning cat throw-up, are just a few of the everyday jobs occupying my precious time.

In fact, I’ve practically run out of demanding activities to the point where I can finally go fishing.

But in the meantime, I have gravitated to the television to occupy my time during my newly realized down times.

I’m the type of guy who takes things pretty literally; if a product advertises a lifetime warranty, by golly I’ll test that theory as if it is a dare.

Wrist watches that claim to be “waterproof,” may be.  If you weren’t sure about the previous paragraph, I’m the fellow who will test the waterproofness.

While opening the watch packaging, I multitasked by concurrently filling the kitchen sink with water.  Immediately upon removal from the packaging, the watch is then dropped into the awaiting water.

If it is still ticking, we have a winner.  If not, it is returned to capitalize on that applicable warranty.

One morning a few months ago I stumbled upon a commercial for a copper-colored frying pan.  It was advertised as the ultimate in frying experiences, largely because of its non-stick qualities.

It seems as though this frying pan was designed and developed with me in mind.  Proudly advertised as indestructible and only $19.95, plus shipping and handling, I read this as a personal challenge.

With its shimmering copper-metallic finish, this culinary tool was calling out to me through my 55” HDTV.  I heard, “Buy me!  Buy me!” with what sounded like a seraphim choir in the background.

And so buy it, I did.

Often overlooked cooking tool

When it arrived two weeks later, after carefully unwrapping it in order to save the original packaging, I immediately tossed it onto the range.  While the stove was heating up I located some gooey candy, marshmallows, pea gravel, butter, orange juice, vodka martini on-the-rocks, and a fire extinguisher.

With the above ingredients loaded in the new pan, it wasn’t long before I had a “three-fer” on my hands.  Of course the martini and fire extinguisher were for my personal entertainment and benefit, respectively.

As the new pan was being tested, the range hood passed its test by healthily blowing the billowing smoke from the kitchen as the smoke detector functioned as it should.  But I digress.

Shortly after the volunteer fire department left, my sainted wife returned home from getting her nails “done.”  Her enthusiasm and delight clearly left her speechless.  But only for a moment.

Even though she didn’t say so, I could tell she admired my adventurism and gift of curiosity.  Eventually, she stopped yelling, and all was well, again.

Here’s some good news, though.  We returned the pan for a replacement.  And in the meantime, I discovered a sealing product that will glue boats together.

Since Clyde, my neighbor, is out of town for a while, I figure I’ll surprise him with his newly-sealed row boat when he returns.

Life doesn’t get better than this.

That’s My Wallet

Since the eco-scientists of the world found their voices the thoughts spilling out of their heads got stupider.

In case you lost track of the long list of brilliant ideas, I’m here to help you out.  You’re welcome.

Some years ago, elementary school kids were prompted to shame their parents into something called “recycling.”

Recycling is an exercise for you to pre-sort your garbage.

Before that magical time, you would place your garbage in a garbage can.  To get technical, you could also put it into plastic bags.  But I digress.

Dirty paper towels, plastic water bottles, empty tuna cans, jars, bottles, broken toys, Styrofoam, and clumped kitty litter would find their way into trash receptacles for their trip to the dump.

Garbage men would ride up and down the streets emptying the cans into the rear of the truck.  I am speaking with authority inasmuch as I worked as a garbage man to subsidize my college education.

Garbage truck and garbage men

But those elementary school kids became easy targets to invent new ways of approaching life.  In other words, they were looking for a problem to their solution.

It didn’t take long for the city municipalities to embrace the concept of recycling.  It’s one of those special times when they felt they needed to “do something.”  And do they did.

Those cities, whose politicians needed a platform for re-election, latched on to the idea of a special pickup for recycled garbage.  A lame way of “doing something.”

Of course there was no money in the coffers for repaving streets or hiring more employees at the Department of Motor Vehicles; but they found some stashed cash for buying and distributing dedicated recycling garbage cans.

If that weren’t enough, they also conjured up – through tax hikes – more money for recycling garbage trucks and recycling garbage men.

Week after week after week the people of our town dutifully separated cans, plastics, and bottles, from the soiled paper plates, blue bread, and leftover spaghetti.

Television newscasts applauded the public for this “first step” toward a cleaner environment, keeping true garbage where it belonged – in the dumps – from adulterating reusables such as the bottles and cans and newspapers.  And we were led to believe that the recycling of goods would be a money maker.

The plastics would be made into carpets and clothing, cans would be fashioned into rain gutters, and newspapers would be re-mulched into more newspapers.

And although this effort was minor in nature, we all felt good about helping Mother Earth maintain a level of livability for its inhabitants.  It’s a win-win.

Suddenly, the county decided recycling of bottles needed to cease. Evidently the glass recyclers were inundated with glass for which they had no more room, and the cost of recycling glass had become prohibitive as recycling fees dropped to near zero.

What is our society to do?

While you’re pondering that deep question, I’ll interject something even more disconcerting.

Amy Freeman, a writer for the Washington Post, issued a story concerning saving landfill space.  Her article addressed “skyrocketing” municipal landfill waste – “11.15 million tons in 2017.”

Freeman added that “unwanted textiles, however could be reused, upcycled or recycled.”

What a terrific idea, much like the glass bottle crusade that wound up as a buffoonish tax dollar and precious water waste exercise, a new campaign could make the populace feel stupid by forcing them to recycle clothing and other textiles.

It’s about time for the great environmental thinkers to stop with their knee-jerk reactions and concentrate on genuine matters that affect society, such as politicians conning constituents out of their hard-earned money to pander for votes.

Clearly we’re just not overwhelmed enough.

Cheater

Keeping one’s mind active in the stages of advanced aging is critical, according to my doctors.  It supposedly prevents one from repeating oneself in conversations.  Keeping one’s mind active in the stages of advanced aging is critical, according to my doctors.  It supposedly prevents one from repeating oneself.  Ha ha.

To maintain a good handle on a sharp mind I regularly engage in both paper and computer games.

Crossword puzzles and the like help me retain my rapier-like thought process, as I limit myself to completing daily newspaper crosswords to ten-minutes, and Sunday puzzles to an hour.

I also occupy my free time with other games, and so I fill that excess space with computer challenges, such as my email system and Scrabble.

This Scrabble game is both entertaining and mind-jogging, simultaneously.  Beginning as a board game, it has evolved into a computer game that allows society to use it on-the-go.

Playing against the computer, the electronic challenger is named “Maven” by the game designer.  The very definition of the word Maven is expert, or connoisseur.  After playing several hundred games I can tell you, with authority, that she is neither, but is a first-class cheater.

Anyone who ever played Scrabble knows that it is a game that consists of tiles and a graph-like board.  The tiles

are selected to replace those played until the “well” of unused tiles is empty.  The first player to exhaust their supply of tiles ends the game; the highest point holder at that time, wins.

Words you assemble from those tiles comprise the scoring system, with the hardest tiles to form words worth more points.

For example, Q, J, K, W, Z, and X, are difficult tiles to use in words.  Keep in mind that to use a Q, you usually need an adjoining U; it’s difficult to think of words with a Q that don’t utilize a U.  Quiz, squire, square, squirt, queen, aqua, are only a few.  And because of the rare number of words assembled with a Q, the Q tile is worth ten points.

Other, more common letters are worth only one point.  But enough about the game.

Maven has the built-in ability to challenge your words, unlike your ability to challenge hers.

She doesn’t recognize words such as oxen, ade, or homeboy.  I know, because I tried to use them.

She also uses words with which I am unfamiliar, such as vanadic, genitor, and trapezii.  Of course, it would probably behoove me to become a better speller.

Just to keep the games more honest, I often insert odd words that I use regularly, although they may not be legitimate.  Words such as buttclown, schiffliar, pottymouth, and pelosiloser, are just a few.

Of course, Maven challenges them every time.

So it’s not fair to play against a computer that plays a game which was incorrectly programmed to not recognize valid English language words like meatjug.

After all, who is to say a regularly used word shouldn’t be programmed in to keep up with changing times?

In fact, later I plan on going to Tallmart to buy two meatjugs.  I told you it was a valid word.