I was going to entitle this “Debunking the Bible” but changed my mind.  It is not that I consider the Bible a lot of bunk, I do not, but that I think it truly lacks for good definition in many places, and really has a lot of things in it which can be categorized as debatable at best.  I am not trying to offend anyone nor am I trying to make an argument that it is wrong.  I think people of faith are wonderful and they should hang on to their faith regardless of what I or anyone else thinks.  Faith is a really good thing.  For my part, I am a real skeptic.

What got me started on all this?  Long ago when I was visiting Lebanon, July 1971, I was reading a book by Isaac Azimov in which he challenged many of the modern notions of what was written in the Bible.  For example, he pointed out that the Aramaic word for “virgin” is the identical word for “young girl.”  He first explained that the Aramaic language had about one tenth as many words as Greek, into which the Bible was translated, or modern English.  That simple fact calls into question anything that was translated from Aramaic to other languages.  This prompted me to rethink all the ideas that my Roman Catholic upbringing had taught.

Anyway, in the book of Genesis we can find the story of creation.  I have long been a fan of the idea of combining “intelligent design” with science and seeing what comes out of it.  According to the Bible, on day one God created the heavens, my translation, the universe.  It says the Earth was basically a wasteland.  All right, that puts the time from “the Big Bang” to that beginnings of the Earth at about 11 billion years in length.  We know, with a fair amount of scientific certainty, that the universe is about 13.7 billion years old, and the Earth is about 4.7 billion years old.

On day two God puts water on the Earth.  Well, that happened at about one billion years into the Earth’s age.  On day three God brings land out of the water.  Not bad, because we know that the Earth was pretty much covered in water back in those early years.  And on that dry land plants and animals rise up and the third day ends.

Now the real problem arises.  On day four, God supposedly creates light and time.  That actually happened back on day one when the stars were created.  All right, so Moses goofed up on this one.  I can give him a pass for that.

Then on day five, God supposedly created all the living creatures.  Can’t be, because that happened back on day three.  Remember, life gets created back then, and life existed everywhere and in all forms right for the start.  This is a scientific certainty too.

Now if you read closely, you will find that on day six God really didn’t do anything at all, save blessing everything that was created.  Then it says He took the seventh day off.
Well, actually, he took two days off and created the weekend.

Anyway, the point in all this is the measurement of a “day” and what happened in which order.  And this is only the beginning of the scientifically provable problems.

Then next big problem comes with Adam and Eve and their incestuous children.  Yes!  I said it because it needed saying.  If you take the Bible as written you have an immediate reproductive problems, and you have to allow for incest being acceptable.  For the record, this is far from that final time incestuously acceptable relations show up.

By the fifth chapter of the book of Genesis you have people living to 800 years, Adam, 807 years, Seth, and that was only after the birth of a son named Enosh so he is obviously much older than 807.  Methuselah, whose name is now synonymous with being old, lived to be a paltry 182 years old.

The thing is, we know for fact that people in those days had a tough time living past the age of 40.  After all, it was certainly a tough life they had to live, and they did not have the advantage of medicine to help them out.

It seems that not only did Moses have a tough time getting things in any sort of logical order, he was really poor with the concepts of time and age.  To be sure, when he lived there was a calendar that farmers used for planting and harvesting.  Seasons were well established and the concept of a year was already in use and not that different from what we now use.  Why then, you ask, would he write, or more likely dictate, such fantastic tales?  That is the easy one, he needed his followers to believe as he did, in a monotheistic fashion that was in line with the other beliefs of the day.  What galls me is how people today swear by what is written there rather than using it simply as a source of faith.

Don’t get me wrong, I think the Bible is a great book.  There is a lot that can be learned from it and it certainly does not lack for wisdom that is entirely useful in today’s modern world.  The bottom line is, God did not give us brains so we could blindly follow whoever put themselves up as His interpreter, as knowing exactly what He desires, or what He thinks.  I would like it a whole lot better if the Bible started out with a disclaimer that admonished people to read the book as a starting place, not as an answer to the mysteries of man and the universe.  What greater sin could there to be than to have a brain and refuse to think and decide for ourselves?

Today is my day, our day.  It a little over 43 years ago that I joined the army.  I was only 18, a month away from being 19, but the army was a choice I had made for two reasons, to get my life together, and because I had a strong feeling of patriotism.

My father was a veteran of World War 2.  He served in North Africa, Italy, and France as a part of the 319th Bomb Group, 335th Bomb Squadron (B-26s).  He was a corporal in the armament section.  I remember as a kid asking him to tell me of his experience in that war but he was heavily resistant to saying much of anything.  When he died in 1970, I knew very little of his experience.  Over the years and mostly because of the Internet, I know a lot of the details of his experience.  I have also come to understand why combat veterans give details of their experience begrudgingly.

In late 1968 I was assigned to a signal company in Korea, a short distance north of Seoul.  I was one of the fortunate few who did not receive a Vietnam assignment, although I have a sort of “survivor’s guilt” about that.  I was told by a sergeant major in 1974 that I had been in a combat zone myself.  He said that all troops north of the Han River in Korea were in a combat zone.  I don’t know.

It must seem curious today to people that there was any combat in Korea after the peace treaty of 1953, but there was.  Early in 1968 the Naval ship USS Pueblo was seized by the North Koreans and its crew was held hostage for a year.  In 1969 an Air Force EC-121, an intelligence gathering aircraft, was shot down over North Korea.  I was in Korea at that time.  I remember our battalion commander coming into my area.  I was in charge of a portion of the communications for the 8th Army Headquarters although I was not attached to those HQ.  He looked scared.  We were receiving messages that were identified as “Red Rockets.”  That meant they were messages of the highest priority coming from either the White House or the Pentagon.  We learned that one of the two Infantry Divisions stationed in Korea had been moved from its more southerly position toward the DMZ (demilitarized zone).  STRIKE Command at McDill AFB in Florida had been scrambled and was en route as were squadrons stationed in Japan.  So to were western Pacific naval forces.  From a neighbor I had in Italy in 1972 I learned that at least a portion of the McDill group was nuclear capable.  Fortunately we did not know this.  My communications center was locked down, no one in or out, and machine guns were set up around it.  I knew then, and now in better detail, that we were preparing for war.

At the time, the South Koreans wanted a war to start.  They were still convinced that they could retake the north and be reunited with their relatives.  South Korea at the time, had one of the largest standing armies in the world, and from my own observation, were extremely well-trained and highly motivated.  They were a great ally and formidable foe.

That crisis was averted but troops stationed at or near the DMZ were always on alert.  It was not unusual for the North Koreans to lob some artillery shells towards the south.  I do not know if the troops in South Korea responded in kind.  But there were deaths, not daily like in Vietnam, but still as a result of hostile forces.  I remember one day a lieutenant, who was inspecting the actual DMZ, was attacked by North Korean forces and within eyesight of fellow troops, was macheted to death.  Those troops were obviously in a combat zone although I have never heard any recognition of their efforts by anyone, save this day when all veterans are recognized for their service.

I am intensely proud of my service.  I was on active duty from February 1968 until November 1979.  From November 1979 until April 1984 I served in the Massachusetts National Guard.  I still have two of my uniforms, one summer and one winter, with their ribbons in tact.  Over the past several years, upon request, I have worn my uniform to the elementary school where I have been teaching on the day they recognize Veterans Day.

As veterans, we all understood that at any moment we could be told to put our life on the line and we accepted this as part of the job.  Although most of us experience regular work hours during our duty, most of us also experienced varying lengths of time when our work hours went on for days or weeks on end without end.  We were happy to do it.  We did not always want to do it, but that was irrelevant.  We had to learn how to clean up out of our helmet, eat C and K rations, deal with lack of sleep, lack of comfort, the cold, loneliness, and constant alert that comes with such duty.

I always knew why I was doing it, although we often joked that we did not have a clue.  I was always proud to be wearing the soldier’s uniform, and at the end of every day I was happy to be serving.   If I could, I would do it all again in a heartbeat.  Even though it was a job unlike any other, it was still a job and I knew it was my duty to see it through.  It was an honor to have served, and I am thankful to my nation for having allowed me to serve.

I have had the good fortune during my life to have visited a fair number of foreign countries.  The first time I left the continental United States was in 1968 when while in the army I was sent to Korea.  I was only 19 when I arrived and to say I experienced a culture shock is something of an understatement.

It was early December 1968 when I flew from Seattle to Seoul Korea.  Immediately upon disembarking from the airplane there was a decidedly different scent in the air from any I had known before.  I cannot tell you exactly what it was, or even how to describe it, except to say it was different.  It was not a bad scent but it was the first of a long line of experiences.

The two most obvious things, to everyone, is that it is a different language and a different culture.  The Korean people in 1969 were still recovering from a war that had ended 16 years before.  Korea at the time was a country of a very small upper class, a slightly larger middle class, and a huge poor class.  The poverty these people experienced was, and probably is, unknown in the west.  It was not unusual for a poor family to say that they had at one time or another had to eat rat to survive.  It was an accepted way of life.  Fish and cabbage were the mainstays of daily life and you could hardly go a block without smelling one or the other in the air.  The cabbage was fermented into what is known as kimchi.

What I found extremely endearing about the Korean people was their generosity.  On a number of occasions I was invited to supper at the house of one of the poor people.  Invariably they put out a spread that there was no doubt in my mind was more than they could afford.  But that is just how they were.

The next time I came into contact with a group of Koreans was when I was at the army’s air defense artillery school at Ft. Bliss.  I was chief of maintenance there and oversaw the equipment the students practiced on.  One time a class off mixed foreign students came in.  Between them, the Korean students worked the hardest and were the most studious.  I had seen some of that while I was in Korea but it really came out at Ft. Bliss.

In 1971 I was stationed in Italy.  I decided that summer that I should take the opportunity to visit Lebanon.  I got that idea from the Danny Thomas Show.  He was Lebanese and also spoke highly of the cedars of Lebanon and its beauty, so I decided to find out for myself.  When I arrived in Beirut I had no idea of what to expect.  I stayed in one of the best hotels in Beirut at truly bargain prices.  My stay in Beirut included a trip to Damascus Syria.  I was not supposed to go to any country that the U.S. did not maintain an embassy and such was the situation in Syria.  But the desire to go to the ancient city of Damascus won out.

While in Damascus, as part of a tour from Beirut, we were guided by a fellow who was a Muslim and gave us lots of insights into his religion.  We visit the central mosque which was a former Christian cathedral that had been converted.  He told us that the majority of Christian holy places in the middle east had the same status in the Moslem world.  He took us to a gold cage that was in left front portion of the mosque.  He said this was the place that they believed the head of John the Baptist lay.  I had witnessed many Syrian soldiers going to the cage, kneel and pray.  I was very struck by this.

My experience in both Lebanon and Syria was that the people of these countries are friendly and did not really care that we were westerners.  They were all very courteous and friendly.  They always made me feel comfortable and welcome.

My last experience with a very foreign culture was with Pacific Islanders of the Marshall Islands, the Marshallese.  Again, these people were always friendly and welcoming.  Their culture could not be more different from ours but as long as I did not make that an issue, they did not either.

I have also experience the cultures of Poland and Greece, among other countries.  While these cultures are decidedly western, they certain do not mimic American culture, nor should they.  Invariably I found the people of the countryside not so very different in their ideas and desires from anyone in America.  They want to be happy and to enjoy their family.  They are mostly disinterested in politics and even religion.  They know we are different but they really do not care about that.  For the most part, they treated me better than I could have guessed.

It is always a mistake to categorize a nation’s people as a reflection of its leadership.  The truth is, that is seldom the case.  Most of the worlds’ governments are vastly different from the people they represent.  At the time of my visit to  Syria, the Syrian government was decidedly not friendly towards the U.S. and yet the people did not reflect that at all.  I think it fine to hate the leadership of any country, but it is wrong to lump the people of the country with its leadership.

In the next sixty days we celebrate four holidays, Veterans Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year.  Even though I am a veteran, Veterans Day is not a favorite.  I am old enough to remember when it was called Armistice Day, the end to World War 1.  Somewhere in the 1950s it was changed to Veterans Day, and I am very happy they did.  But back when it was a true holiday, it was a day most people did not work.  They enjoyed the local parade, there always was one, and enjoyed a day off.  Somewhere along the way some genius decided it should be an optional holiday.  I am offended, as a veteran, by that because it says to me that making money is more important than having a true holiday for everyone who has served, or is serving, this country.

Other holidays became optional as well, Columbus Day and Washington’s birthday, which was combined with Lincoln’s Birthday, February 12, and renamed Presidents Day.  It is not difficult to figure out who wanted these days co-opted.  And after all, what’s so wrong about wanting to make money?  It is after all, what America is all about, is it not?  And that is the scariest question of all.  Is that what America is all about?  Does that mean at some future date days like Memorial Day, Independence Day, and Labor Day will also become optional?  Thanksgiving and Christmas are likely to stay as they are, and there is no possibility that New Year’s Day will change because football is really big business and advertisers and the companies they represent make a lot of hay on that day.

The only holiday on our calendar that seems relatively uncorrupted is Thanksgiving.  Yes there are a few commercials that encourage us to buy the foods associated with the day, but other than that, there is nothing really commercial about the day.  I love Thanksgiving.  It is one of my two favorite holidays.  To me it represents a day when families come together, a day when we are thankful for all that we have.  I also love turkey and cranberry sauce, so that could be another reason.

Then there is Christmas.  The Federal Government recognizes Christmas for the day that it is.  So what you ask?  Well, the second part of the first Amendment says that Congress shall make no law respecting religion, and so I am a little surprised that they do not call the day something else but Federal law 5 U.S.C. 6103 says it is Christmas.  I don’t want this holiday to go away in any respect but why would the Fed keep the name unless it is contrary to the interests of other parties?  What if the Federal Government changed the name of the December 25 holiday to the “Winter Solstice” holiday?  Then people could argue that they day should occur on the 3rd Monday in December which would put it in relative context to the solstice and also be more in line with our Constitution.

The reason why is really simple.  Corporate America loves the holiday, and Americans, 85% who are Christian, would be up in arms at any attempt to change things.  Even so, corporate America has largely hijacked the holiday.  It is not unusual for companies to withhold releasing a new product until the season is relatively near.  With high demand they can enjoy a relatively high price.  And they are also really good a creating a good demand where there had previously been little through advertising campaigns.

The commercialization of a religious holiday seems to be the ultimate wrong.  Kids are heavily influenced by advertising, and frustrated parents are wont to discuss the true spirit of the season, giving.  When I am in front of a class of elementary school kids, I try to get in the story, “The Gift of the Magi.”  To me, it exemplifies what we should be all about, and not what we seem to be about.

Well, that is my rant for today.  I want my holidays back and unmolested.

I tried to create a poll to find out what you think but it only allows me to ask a single question.  I don’t understand why it won’t let me ask ten but that could simply be my lack of understanding.  Here are the ten questions, and I would love to hear what all of you think.

1.  Starbucks, Dunkin’ Donuts, or other

2. Oreos or Hydrox

3. Coke, Pepsi, or RC

4.  vanilla, stawberry, or chocolate

5.  Colgate or Crest

6.  bacon or sausage

7.  Ford, Chrysler, or Chevy

8.  cheese puffs or cheesits

9.  plain or peanut M&Ms

10.  cat or dog

In September, I think it was, in 1978 I was on the big island of Hawaii.  I was in an area known as “the saddle.”  It’s the valley that lies in between Moana Loa and Moana Kea, the island’s older and dormant volcanoes.  It is an area where the temperatures can actually reach the freezing point.  The 25th Infantry Division, of which I was a part, did its annual maneuvers there.  One very dark evening I was taking a shower.  We lived in tents while there but there showers at least was a permanent building.  At some point I experienced the first panic attack of my life.  Of course I had no idea what was going on.  I wandered out of the shower not knowing what to do.  The nights sky was clear and filled with stars.  I got back to my tent, a large thing that slept maybe ten of us, and I lay down on my bunk waiting for the panic to pass.  Mercifully it did in a relatively short time.

That was the only such occurence for some time.  But a few months later, back on Oahu, another one hit one evening.  The guy I lived with took me to the hospital at Schofield Barracks where I was assigned.  Once the doctor saw me he asked me what drugs I had taken.  I was appalled by this question.  I did not do illegal drugs of any sort.  Not even marijuana.  He gave me a shot of something, probably diazepam, to calm me down.  That was not the last time I had such an attack while in Hawaii but it was the last time I went to see a doctor about it.

In September of 1979 I was separated from active duty in the army.  I didn’t have another episode until some months later when I was living with my wife in Leominster MA.  Then they started coming with some regularity.  I was finally prescribed medication to deal with it.  I was given imipramine, an antidepressant, and Valium to deal with the attacks.  The Valium worked, but not very quickly, and it was not unusual for me to get on the phone with a doctor who would always tell me to be patient.

I have had to live with this condition ever since.  I used to let it control me but no longer, I control it.  Still, it sneaks up on me.

What is a panic attack?  My understanding is that there is a part of all of us that is very primal This is the part of us that fights for survival when danger approaches.  It quickly sends a signal to the adrenal glands and we get a shot of adrenaline that sets out heart to racing.  It is sometimes called the “fight or flight” instinct.  Regardless, it sets the body into an immediate state of high alert, every nerve stands at the ready, and the mind races seemingly aimlessly, desperately seeking out the danger.  But sometimes, in cases such as me, another part of the mind tricks us in to believing there is a real and present danger.  It is of course an illusion, a lie, but the protection part of the mind does not realize this and always leaps into action.

The problem is, even knowing these things does nothing to dissipate the panic attack.  The knowledge that there is no danger seems to have no affect upon a panic attack once it starts.  And at least in my case, left unmedicated, the panic attack can go on for hours on end.

I think it is very important for those who have never had this sort of panic understand what it feels like.  Most people, I believe, have something in their life that they are intensely afraid of.  Most people can summon up the basic feeling simply by imagining they are looking over the edge of a cliff or from the top of a very high  building looking down at the street below.  A knot quickly appears in the stomach and the desire to back away is immediate.  Now all you have to do is imagine the worst of that feeling and that it does not go away in a second or two.  It stays.  I cannot be run from, cajoled, or ignored.  The whole time it is going on the ability to focus is impossible.  Worse, the intense feeling that flight to safety must take place immediately and yet that safety exists in some unknown place so you do not know where to go.  Someone holding your hand does no good.  Talking about it does no good.  People touching you not only does no good but can make it worse.

What I have found over the years is the panic attack is fairly common in society.  Those who have never had one do not seem to have any understanding of those who do.  Worse, those who have them feel a huge amount of shame surrounding the condition.  The people who suffer from this condition need not feel ashamed, it is a real medical problem, not something imagined.  Those people who are with people who have panic attacks need only know that their presence is all the afflicted person really needs.

The decline of various sorts of public transportation has been going on since the 1920s.  It started way back then with the bus replacing the streetcar.  Then in the 1950s, and particularly with the start of the Interstate system, the highway replaced all public transportation except the airplane which was growing rapidly.  Private rail companies worked hard to end most of their passenger service.  Prior to 1920 there was hardly a city, town or village that you could not get to on the train.  The appearance of the truck as an alternative to the rail freight car to the transportation of freight gave the railroad its first competition.  The branch line of the railroad suffered.  Revenue declines caused many of these branch lines to be abandoned.  With that alternative transportation came to small town America.

After World War II the Intercity bus quickly became a much less expensive alternative to rail travel, and, the provider had far lower costs than the railroads.  That coupled with the rise of air travel sapped passenger traffic from the existing rail passenger service.  Railroads tried to compete by modernizing their fleet but it was still far more expensive than the bus and the cost of that service quickly became a financial loss for all railroads.

In the early 1960 cities all over the U.S. began taking over operation of the once private city bus and rapid transportation systems.  They recognized they would always need some sort of public transportation to support the economy of their city.  It wasn’t long before individual states became involved with the introduction of the regional transportation systems.

Then in the late 1960s the railroads were petitioning the government to abandon all their existing passenger rail service.  All railroads were losing money.  The Federal Government recognized this truth and created AMTRAK.  The expectation was that service in the Northeast Corridor in particular would be retained and maintained.  The view was it was economically responsible to do so.  AMTRAK agreed to take over the railroads’ existing service provided they allowed AMTRAK unrestricted access to their right of way.  At the start of AMTRAK only four railroads opted out of AMTRAK and were therefore required to continue service on their own.  They were the Boston & Maine Railroad, the Southern Railroad, the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad, and the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad.  Two of these railroads eventually came to terms with the government, the Southern, and the Denver and Rio Grand.  The Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific went bankrupt and out of business, and the Boston & Maine was  allowed in time to end its intercity service.

People often wonder why AMTRAK is not more like the railroads of Europe and Japan.  The reason is simple.  The intercity railroads of those areas have always been government operations.  But even more importantly, the governments involved were always proactive in maintaining and upgrading their rail system to meet the demands of the day and of the traveler.  They also never had a profit motivation.  They simply look at intercity rail service as a necessity and provide adequate funding.  This has allowed them to maintain the first-rate service we are all familiar with.

Conversely, the U.S. Government has never shown complete commitment to rail passenger service.  Short sighted politicians make foolish arguments about rail service paying for itself.  The only criteria they all is monetary.  They never allow for the greater good because that idea is intrinsically not quantifiable.  Because of that we have a 3rd rate system.  Even the northeast corridor, the very best portion of AMTRAK, is in truth second-rate.  It is second-rate because while the northeast corridor struggles to provide their version of high-speed rail service, they are still trying to achieve 100 MPH for the length of the corridor, European countries and Japan are working of 200 MPH service.  The ugly truth is, the speed of service from Boston to New York can be increased by 50%, and service between New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington DC can be sped up by 25%.  There have always been plans on the table to make these increases but excepting for the introduction of faster trains, little else has been done when there is so much that could be done.

Where long distance rail travel is concerned, this country is 3rd or 4th rate.  These trains are slow, their frequency far to low, and the destinations far too few.  For a variety of reasons, service between many large cities, cities that are oft time in fairly close proximity, does not exist.  Some examples of this are: Boston to Montreal, Detroit to Cleveland, Cleveland to Indianapolis and St. Louis,  Cleveland to Cincinnati, Los Angeles to Denver, Los Angeles to Houston, Los Angeles to Dallas, and the list goes on and on.  Particularly in cities west of the Mississippi, it is not so much the major cities that lack for rail passenger service, it is there small cities and towns that lie between any two destinations that presently have no air service, and limited, if any, bus service.  This situation is embarrassing for as rich a nation as the U.S. is.

Along that same line is the transportation authorities that exist in most cities of the U.S. today.  The system I am most familiar with is the MBTA here in Boston.  The MBTA is struggling to meet 2011 transportation problems with a system that was designed around 1900.  Such systems are very expensive to maintain and a nightmare to improve.  Only two major cities in the U.S. have built new subways systems, Washington DC and Los Angeles.  I am familiar with the Washington DC system and it is a model system.  That simply says it can be done, nothing more.

Transportation systems put rail travel into one of three categories, rapid transit (the subway system), light rail (the streetcar), and heavy rail (commuter rail transit).  All systems provide bus transportation.  When most of these systems were put in place, the late 1970s and early 1980s, a new fleet of buses was provided.  Their rail fleet, regardless of type, was, except in the largest cities, also new.  Today most of these systems are aging and in desperate need of replacement.  That is very expensive and politicians are very reluctant to provide the needed fund fearing public recriminations.  Of course, they a short on information.  They do not inform the public why the price tag is high and how they plan to pay for it.  Both can be done suitably.

Those systems that have provided continuous service since they took over for the private companies, still use models set up by those old companies.  Here in Massachusetts, at least, you cannot take an MBTA bus that takes you to the bus system of an adjoining transportation authority regardless of how close they are.  For example, you cannot take and MBTA bus to the Lowell, Lawrence, or Brockton regional systems even though those systems all border the MBTA.  I do not think it unreasonable to believe that these same situations exist in cities all over the U.S.

The point of all this is, the cost of traveling via automobile is going up and will sooner than later escalate faster than our individual ability to keep up.  Our road system, the entire infrastructure, is falling apart and this is due in no small part to the high usage by automobiles.  You cannot fault a person for driving a car when there is either no alternative or the alternative is not reasonable.

I am not suggesting that we return the city and inter-city bus and rail system we had in the 1920s but I am suggesting that we need to expand what we have presently.  We cannot allow our politicians to load us down with the idea that public transportation must pay for itself in a solely financial manner.  For the most part, that is not going to happen.  But it can pay for itself by providing economic centers transportation between each other.  We have to recognize that not only is our road system over-burdened, but our airports are also at or beyond capacity.  The expense of air travel is also out of reach for more and more people.  It is time we recognize that the only reasonable response is a comprehensive transportation system that is affordable to even the poorest of our citizens. To do otherwise is both foolish and irresponsible.

When I was a kid, I ate candy like some people drink water.  It seemed to have the same effect, none.  I don’t think I ever experienced a sugar high back then.  But since I was forced into adulthood, I have had a constant battle with my waistline.  The thing is, it is generally a good sign when you come from parents who were thin.  Neither of my parents ever weighed more than 140 pounds, and that is not because they were midgets, they were of average height.  I, on the other hand, have weighed in as much as more than 240 pounds.  Granted, I am considerably taller than either of my parents were, my mother probably 5 feet 2, and my father about 5 feet 6.  I am 5 feet 10.

When I went into the army in 1968, I weighed in at about 185.  I was 19 at the time.  Many years later, like ten years ago, a doctor told me that was my ideal weight.  What!?  The last time I was at that weight was in 1971 and I had been in the hospital for two weeks and not eaten a whole lot.  Since, I have managed to end up on the army’s “fat boy” program.  I believe I was 230 at that time, and I hadn’t reached 30 yet.

Right now I am around 220 but that comes with constant exercise and a semi-healthy diet.  It is rare that I have fast food of any sort, and I am moderately successful with staying away from chocolate and other sorts of candy, high fat nuts, and chips.  I do not like sugared soda so that is not an issue for me.

Here is one of my major problems.  I am addicted to chocolate.  Yes, I admit it.  Unfortunately, even having done a thorough search, I have been entirely unable to find a 12 step program for chocolate addiction.  I looked on the Internet and I thought I had found just that sort of group.  It is called “Chocoholics Anonymous.”  The bad new is, it is a chocolate store in California!  The bastards knew we existed, and they are playing upon our weakness to draw us in!  Those people are amoral and obviously have no conscience.

Everyone knows somebody who seems to be thin no matter what.  You will ask them what sort of exercise they do to keep the weight off and they will respond that they do not exercise.  Really?  How can that be!  This very same person can be seen eating everything in sight when you sit down to a meal.  They do not stay away from the starches, the fatty foods, the carbs.  No!  They eat at will.  In general, I think life is always fair but that is the exception.  The only thing I can come up with that explains their amazing metabolism is that they cannot possibly be human.  They are some alien species that has been set down here on earth as part of some huge scientific experiment by E.T.

Seriously, ask any doctor about such people.  Find the person that is the same age as you with relatively the same diet.  That person is thin, always, and you are not, always.  The doctor will invariably respond, he doesn’t know why.  It is not like this is something new to science.  There have been innumerable studies about obesity and never ever have I heard of any findings that explain why we get fat.  Therefore, it has to be a diabolical plan that E.T. is conducting on us.  Nothing else makes sense!

Now that we all agree that E.T. has got to be behind this conspiracy, it is time we also accept that chocolate and sugar cane are not natural to this planet!  Long before humans were capable of writing down their thoughts, E.T. planted the stuff everywhere it could possibly grow knowing how defenseless the average human is to it.  Once humans discovered the stuff, I am certain it was done with a little prodding by E.T., humans started getting fat!  Seriously, humans are genetically not predisposed to getting fat.  We are members of the animal kingdom, and with the exception of dogs and cats, none of the animal kingdom gets fat!

Now you say, ah ha!  Other animals do get fat!  But consider who they are allying themselves with. Us!  By nature they are hunters but we humans reduce them to beggars of our food.  They are not required to hunt to live.  Also, we pen them in, so their natural exercise that occurs during hunting goes away.  They get fat!

Well, you inquire properly, why would E.T. even care that we get fat?  Simple.  Where ever E.T. came from, getting fat was banned long before their most recent history.  Also, the harvesting of sugar cane and chocolate on their planet is against the law, very much like marijuana is on this planet.  They foolishly forgot to log why getting fat was outlawed and what its consequences are.  They needed to conduct a scientific study on others of their kind, and this being against the law as well on their planet, they needed specimens to study.  And voila!  They knew about this remote planet with a bunch of apelike creature who were genetically identical to them and a scientific experiment was born.

Why tell you all this?  Simple, next time someone tells you that you are fat, or you actually feel that way, remember it is not your fault!  It is E.T.’s fault, whoever E.T. really is.  I expect that scientific experiments being what they are, E.T. has also come up with the fat antidote and returned it to his home planet.  It is only fair that E.T. share his finding with us.  You can be sure that our Federal Government is fully aware of E.T. having an antidote but the sugar and chocolate lobby does not allow them to reveal E.T.’s findings.  If that were all there was to it, we would probably have found out anyway.  But, even more sinister, is they would finally have to admit that Area 51 is real and the aliens that were held there were the ambassadors of that far away planet.  At the time of the flying saucer’s crash, we were fearful of being annihilated by an angry E.T. and felt compelled to keep it quiet.  Once the government found out that E.T. knew the crash was purely accidental, however, the government was trapped by its own lies and therefore vowed that the truth would never come to light.

Remember also, were the antidote given to human beings there would no longer be any need for the “health gyms.”  Health food stores would lack for purpose and everything related to such business would fail.  Hopefully now you can see the vastness of this conspiracy keeps us, me, from enjoying those things that come natural to us and that we find enjoyable.

Now if you live in New England, as I do, you have no doubt heard the expression, “you can’t get there from here.”  That’s New England speak for “it’s way to complicated to give you any reasonable directions” or, “I have no idea how to get there.”  That said, you have got to admit that getting there can at times be extremely difficult!

I remember wanting to there once.  That particular time, there was a place called Dublin, New Hampshire.  Dublin is the headquarters for Yankee Magazine.  It sounded like a quaint place to go on a day I had nothing else going on.  I looked at a map to see which routes in needed to take.  This was, of course, long before the GPS took care of all such problems.  Dublin has no four lane highways anywhere near it.  It has a single two lane numbered road that passes through its center.  That is not at all unusual in rural anywhere.  Thing was, I had it in my mind that you should be able to get anywhere interesting in about an hour.  That was about the time I was beginning to believe “you can’t get there from here.”  I did end up going there, however once I was there it occurred to me that it had not occurred to me that it takes about 3 seconds to slowly crawl through such a town’s center.  I was left with the question, why had I wanted to go there in the first place when I probably would have been better off staying here.

Now there is another scenario I’m sure we have all experienced.  We decided there is the place we want to vacation at that we have never been to before.  Well, we leave home, here and make our way there.  Once there, and suitably happy with where we are staying, we make the decision to head out and see the sights.  Everyone knows that all the sites are somewhere removed from where we went to, there, which is now here, and so we are once again confronted with going from here to there.  Once we are at are destination if it happens to be a place known for its food, for instance, we will ask a hotel employee for a recommendation and we’ll be given one.  Once again we are confronted with the getting from here to there, and that can be particularly troubling if there happens to be a city in a foreign country and we don’t know the language.  In attempting to follow the first set of instructions we discovered we’ve become hopelessly lost, and not only do we no longer know how to get there, but we’ve also lost sight of how to return to what had been here.  Our sense of self-assuredness gone, we hail a cab to get us there, and hope he really knows how to get there.  Worse, the cab driver, a person who knows exactly enough English to say he knows how to get there, but he instantly recognizes we don’t know how to get there and since he can take us as he pleases and insure his fare is fair, as far as he is concerned anyway.

There are times in everyone’s life where there is the best possible place to go.  Those are the times we say to someone “I want to be somewhere, anywhere but here.”  Most people will passively agree with us or somehow show the acceptance of our situation.  But if someone were to press us about where we would go, we find that we don’t have an answer for where there actually is.  Worse, we haven’t even considered how to get there.  Now some people will say, don’t worry about it, just go!  I am certainly guilty of having said those words.  I made a plan and went there.  I lasted there for about a year and then made another plan to return to here.

Well, that brings me back to that old Yankee saying, “you can’t there from here.”  Maybe the truth in those words are this: once you get there, where ever it may be, you are really here and there is just another place to go.  We never really leave here.  We are always here and here is actually a pretty good place to be.  If we don’t like it here, maybe we just need to change things up a little, come up with better plans, and sometimes, just grin and bear it.  Certainly things could be worse there but we just a certain know how things are here.  Isn’t the known better than the unknown?

I have not got a clue.  I am a man and when it comes to the female mind, we men really do not know what they are thinking.  Even when they claim we have read their mind, it is just a trick.  Women have always known that allowing men to believe we know what they are thinking is just to get us to go along with what they are really thinking.

When humans were in the infancy of the species, women had already gotten a plan on how to get men to do their bidding.  In those earliest of days, women were given the brains and men the brawn.  That has not changed, much.  Men have always had to chase the woman and get her attentions, even way back then.  Once the woman decided who she would allow herself to be caught by, she immediately pointed out to the man how much stronger her was and that of course he truly had to be the “hunter /  gatherer.”  How did she do that since communication, as far as we can tell, was little more than a bunch of grunts and groans?  Easy, she allowed him to “have his way with her” and immediately got pregnant.  Once pregnant she made it obvious that childbearing was about all she could, or would, do.  But she did it in a way that the man was convinced he had conquered her, had his way with her, and that he had dictated her place to be with the children.

That particular setup was done while she was still single and hanging out with the other single girls.  Whenever a sabre tooth tiger would show up, she feigned freight and immediately hid behind the closest group of men.  In do so, she signaled the men that since they were all so strong and wonderful, it was only natural they should want to defend their women.  And guys, not only did we fall for it then, but we are still falling for it.  In truth, way back then women actually spoke the same language as the sabre tooth tiger and knew they were never in any sort of danger.  I mean think about it.  Is a cat not a feline and do we not think of feline as being female?  Guys, who do you think invented that idea?  We didn’t!  I can assure you of that!

That was just the start of a litany of things women have thought  of to control their men and compel them to do their bidding.  Men have the misconception that they basically created the languages of their world.  No!  We may have created a lot of words that exist in any language, but when it came to forming sentences, women have always been at the forefront.  The theory is that in society, men and women share the same spoken language.  It is true that here in America we all speak English but the translation of those  words is controlled by women.  Any guy who has been with a woman has heard her say “that is not what I meant.”  And when we dare ask her to explain she acts put out and replies, “Weren’t you listening?”  At that point most of us bow out having been cowed and made to feel that we in fact had not been listening.  And for guys who are pretty good listeners, woman use a different technique.  They will say something like, “honey, remember how we talked about doing (insert subject here) and we agreed that we would . . . ”  Those words are used to confuse the good listener making him think they have already had a conversation.  Men almost always respond that they remember the conversation even though it never happened.

The most recent thing invent by women to cajole and control their men is the “man cave.”  Oh yes!  Guys, we didn’t invent that and if you think about it, where are most man caves?  In the basement!  What better place can a woman get her man to go so she can do what she pleases!  Not only that, she gets us to build this place making us believe it was our idea in the first place!  Really?  What is in most cellars besides the hot water heater and the furnace?  How about the washer and the dryer.  Did not we men designate such appliances and being the woman’s domain?  Now she’s got us spending time next to the washer and drier!  And as to the rest of the house, who decorates it?  Not us guys, that’s for sure!  Aside from the entertainment center, maybe, she has designated what should be bought for the rest of the house, what it should look like, and where it must be placed.

Single guys, prepare to see “girlie flicks” once you get married.  It is not a matter of choice, you will do it.  I still have not figured out how they get us to do it but they do.  And when you want to go see an action adventure movie, well, you better have sons or other husbands who will go with you.  Your wife will have other ideas that you will agree when present by her that of course she should be doing those other things.  Shopping is a given.

Guys, the female mind is extremely complex and men have yet to decipher it.  It is unlikely we are going to figure it out anytime in the near future either.  Acceptance is not only the best route, it’s the easiest route.  Women are much smarter than us and they know it!  A million years of human growth has allowed women to not only stay a step ahead of men, but to improve their ability, in the long run, to convince men that it was their idea in the first place.

Guys, if you don’t believe what I’ve just told you then do this.  Tell the woman you are with your plans.  If she responds with the single word “really,” this means she saw your plans coming and has made her own which of course do not line up with what you had in mind.  If she responds “that’s nice,” run, don’t walk, because not only does she not like your plans, but she is going to strike back quickly and incapacitate you.  And if she responds in a manner that says basically how great she thinks your plans are, prepare for a contest, because she already has plans that will make you wonder why you made your plans in the first place.

Guys, we love our women but never doubt that we are here to do their bidding, and they still think in terms of “love, honor, and obey” towards us.  If that is all they are demanding, consider yourself fortunate.  Regardless, the woman who has allowed you to be in her life, to share her space, who is allowing you her intimacy, has judged you worthy of her consideration.  And when you consider everything else I have said, that means you are doing pretty good, that you have a good woman who will protect you with everything she’s got.  You’ve done well, so, DON’T SCREW IT UP!!!!