I have struggled all week to find someway to put down on paper our last little get together on the back porch. I have shared with you many times in the past that most of us here on the back porch are kind of in our older years so to speak as some people would say, the old-timers would say we’re a bit long in the tooth. We’ve learned that there’s very little agreement or support for our view and we’ve kind of learned to live the best we can and get through these last few years that we have. I believe if I’m pronouncing the name right Mamdani, the soon to be mayor of New York has been a subject that’s pretty well dominated the news for a few weeks now. Well, everybody is upset because he jetted off to a luxury resort for his organizational conference days after his victory. After we discussed that for a short period of time, it was pretty well agreed that he’s not the only one that’s ever done this,  We’re just talking about facts. Matter fact, most politicians love these resort meetings at the taxpayers expense. If we follow the headlines, we see that the government shut down is still in full swing. It doesn’t look like it’s gonna get settled any time real soon. Then there’s for a little bit of comic relief, the verdict that the jury came back with on the gentleman who threw a sandwich at a border agent, I’m sorry. The jury decided after several hours of debate that he was not guilty of assault on a federal agent. I wasn’t the only one in the group that found the verdict OK with us. His actions are pretty much the norm nowadays, and if all he did was throw a sandwich the agent who was the target got lucky. We would much rather have seen the agent having to answer to the question of why, after he was hit with the sandwich he slapped the guy across the face and put him on the ground, we would’ve liked that a lot better. Now, remember, we’re just a bunch of old man sitting on our back porch, our day has come and gone. We are fascinated by this chaos on wheels where these chaotic groups get together and they take over the streets and the police can’t seem to do anything about it. This last instance in Fall River, Massachusetts was rather small compared to some others, but it did draw at least 50 to 100 individuals over the weekend. They took over the streets on dirt bike, scooters ATVs, motorcycles, and disrupted the traffic while performing these reckless stunts risking not only their lives but lives of innocent law abiding citizens and putting pedestrians at risk. The thing that got our attention was the fact that there’s 50 or 100 people involved in this business and the police made arrests, three, that’s right, you read it right, three people out of at least 50 to 100 that were disrupting the traffic and the safety of people in the area, that’s it. Actually, we were having a pretty big time on the porch laughing about all these things and how complicated life is today and how easily you can get irritated just getting out of bed. But the one that really took the cake for all of us was that dear lady that we all love to follow occasionally and that is Elizabeth Warren. She got called out the other night by Washington Post for blaming Trump over Monday nights football blackout. I don’t watch pro football anymore so I wasn’t affected by It, didn’t even know about it but it seems that she that she said,  It’s all President Trump’s fault. The Washington Post editorial boards will they pushed back? They had an editorial which simply was titled, Elizabeth Warren knows better. So for the record what was really going on was that a couple of our larger entertainment networks who were at odds over contracts and they just canceled each other out so to speak, and there was no broadcast because of it. The lack of it not being on the air was due to corporations being at odds about who’s gonna pay who how much and when. President Trump didn’t have anything to do with it and rightfully so, it wasn’t a government matter.

Well, we’ve gone on with a bunch of stuff really and having not accomplished anything but that seems like that’s a pretty common situation today. Remember the 50s? Families went to church on Sunday. Most of the stores were closed in observance of the Sabbath. Of course I remember the young girls they dressed modestly yet they were some of the prettiest things in this world. It seems kind of odd to me, and I don’t quite understand it but the less skin that showed the more intriguing the ladies. These were the Eisenhower years, calm, peaceful suburban life, the church, the center of family activities, you could go anywhere you wanted to and not have to worry about your safety, you didn’t have to lock your front door or your car. It was just a laid-back time. I remember a lot of things about the 50s while I was growing up and even at that young age I remember the Eisenhower, president Dwight Eisenhower delivering his farewell speech. I remember his warning about the industrial military complex. I didn’t understand anything about it, but it became part of a historical writing that is still remembered today. Then came the 60s and with them, we began to change. It’s only natural for us old dogs to look back on that day and time and wonder where the quiet went. What happened to the families, our communities, our churches, and our life enhancing moralities. So that my friend is the ponder of the day? Ponder this… where did all of our yesterday’s go? What happened while we complacently enjoyed life.

Kurt