time to lower the lifeboats

In the essay I published yesterday (That Sinking Feeling), James Howard Kunstler asks if it is time to lower the lifeboats. Here, I will put it in a bit of context with that paragraph because I really like it:

It does not escape the attention, however, of some people on deck that the US ship is riding lower in the water each day, and listing at a distressing angle. Many other passengers have retreated to their staterooms, sick from the “vaccines” they were required to take to stay on-board for the voyage. Meanwhile water is streaming in below-decks, down in the stinking bilges, from many cracks in the hull. Nobody seems to know what to do, least of all the ship’s captain, who won’t come out of his quarters. (It’s whispered that he’s gone mad.) Is it time to lower the lifeboats?

The hits just keep on coming … from every direction imaginable, and plenty we could not even imagine in our wildest dreams or nightmares.

Yes. It very definitely is time to lower the lifeboats… or reach into your Inner Noah and build one.

I put the audio track of Bette Midler’s “From A Distance” at the top of this page. It was playing in my head this morning as I decided to post this blog. You might as well play it as you read. I am considering using it as a sound track for a video production I might get around to creating today… or might not… I’m working on my lifeboat, you see.

The big thought burning in my brain this morning is that we will never see our enemies. The closest we get a shot at are the foolish dolts who bought the BS, or the hirelings sent to deliver pain and destruction. It is certainly proper to defend against them however you can, but dispatch them with sympathy and kindness in your heart. Don’t let the perpetrators’ evil gain a foothold in your spirit.

Whenever my daughters would use “hate” in a sentence, I would remind them that hate is far too powerful to waste on little stuff … and that it all is little stuff. We would work on synonyms that were more appropriate to the person, place or thing they were angry with at the moment.
… animosity, dislike, enmity, hostility, loathing, rancor, resentment, abhorrence, antipathy, aversion …
They could always find a more descriptive word.

While you develop your ramparts, build your repelling toolset, practice your warrior face and prepare for the seige, do not forget to Put a Little Love in Your Heart.

As always with my blog, I am writing to me, pondering and journaling, as much, or perhaps more than I am trying to save the world.

I won’t claim to “Be There”, but it is a place I want to keep reaching for.

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By the way, I did take some of my own advice and ordered a few books from James Howard Kunstler. There will be no shortage or lack of variety in my library for reading by lantern-light in our bunkhouse between watches.

I have been feeding my desire to make music with friends in the real world, exercising my trombones and bass as well as the artistic and human sides of the healthy me. Swing, jazz, blues, bluegrass … I like it all when I’m helping make the noise.

I feel a welling up of the need to exercise my firearms too. Expect some shots fired shared here soon.