| New Year's Eve. 2011-2012 |
[Dec. 31st, 2011|04:32 pm] |
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This year we're going out...to the Roseland Theater to dance to the music of "Leftover Salmon", apparently a NW jamband. For too many New Years we've stayed home, alone. Before that, we even hosted parties. Going further back, we'd have Grateful Dead New Years parties--cuz the Dead did a traditional New Years concert sequence, culminating with New Year's Eve. I had a stereo system that could reproduce the Dead at live sound levels, so the concert could be heard as far away as the corner, but no one ever complained. New Year was always my favorite holiday, and remains such. So tonight, we climb on the Max (Portland's light rail), and head downtown. I'm happy to have made it to 2012, and hope for a few more. |
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| Just keeping in touch, Nov. 7, 2011 |
[Nov. 7th, 2011|05:57 pm] |
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Oddly, in the last post we were going to Cabo, and on the 10th on Nov. we're going again. I'm saddened that I'd forgotten Jim Stensberg's 11/11/11 birthday party, which he did advise me of well in advance. I forgot it, and booked Cabo. Needless to say he's a bit pissed at me. Hope we can mend that. I lost Doug Stanley as a friend over politics. I guess if politics get's that intense, we couldn't have been friends anyway. Healthwise, so far, so good. Still, fingers crossed, symptom free. Looking forward to another year. Alex got his PdD, dissertation accepted with no revisions--unheard of. He and Lady Alex moved to Auckland. Lotus continues on in Christchurch working on cargo inspections, doing swing dancing and enjoying her posh new apartment near downtown. All for now. |
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| Its' 2011 |
[Jan. 12th, 2011|04:18 pm] |
It's January 12th, 2011. Nothing special going on. Lots of rain, quite gray. We're thinking about getaways. Possible trip to Cabo San Lucas in late Jan, early Feb. Maybe a trailer trip south looking for sun. All in the spirit of escape from the dark and wet and cold. We'll see what comes of it.
Not that I'm much of a football fan, but it was an almost good year for Wisconsin and Oregon. Wisconsin went to the Rosebowl and lost. Oregon played Auburn for the BCS championship, and lost. No joy in Eugene.
I mainly wanted to post something so that folks might realize that I'm still active on this site. More later. |
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| Back again |
[Aug. 7th, 2010|07:11 pm] |
It's been a while. As you might have guessed, things have been a bit surreal. Still, I survive, and hopefully thrive. It's August 7th, 2010, and I'm still feeling well. I want to write about the condition of the USA. The technical term is, "we're fucked".
I actually had tears in my eyes on that November evening in 2008 when Obama trounced McCain in the presidential election. And by a thrilling margin, as well. It looked like we'd turned the corner.
Finally, the Bush era was over. Now we could move forward. What a colossal disappointment. At nearly every turn, the Obama administration has ratified the most egregious policies of the Bush administration and, indeed, in many instances made them worse.
Let's begin with the wars. These are conflicts that have no actual justifications. Afghanistan is not "the good war", it's not even a rational war. No one in Afghanistan was directing the actions of 9/11. These actions were planned out of places like Germany. The invasion was a total joke. There was no justification Another "war of aggression". Check the Geneva accords on that one. Iraq was much the same. We're ostensibly "drawing down", but about 50,000 troops seem committed for an indefinite period.
The Obama administration also has championed the continuation of mass surveillance of US citizens, and endorses the executive assassination of US citizens it deems dangerous to national security. This can be done with presidential approval to anyone, anywhere, without charges being publicly filed or any trial. It's extra-judicial execution. Very new as a US public concept.
Then there's the Wall St. thing. The Obama administration seem very closely tied to Goldman Sacks and the other giants of Wall St. finance. Timothy Geitner can't escape the perception of being in the employ of Wall St. Mega banks, indeed, he almost proclaims it. The financial "reform" package passed by Congress apparently does nothing to address the real issues involved. (check out Rolling Stone www.rollingstone.com) for details.
My Chinese herbalist, acupuncturist doctor asked me, as an economist, what I thought our prospects as a nation were, and whether the right or center of left wing economic advice was correct. I responded that Paul Krugmanm was probably right and that the left was closer to right. We, the USA, are, I said, in technical terms, "fucked" Good night and good luck. |
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| Life Change Time |
[Jun. 12th, 2010|07:04 pm] |
I'd assumed I was fine. I'd quit smoking nearly 20 years ago, and my most likely weak spot, the liver, seemed just fine. I got into golf and enjoyed the "walks in the park" that it entails. Recently, there was just one little problem, minor, intermittent hip pain. This came and went over a period of a few months, and then just stayed. It ceased being minor, and become an issue. So much so, that during a trip to Florida to visit Marianne's folks in March 2010, I required a wheelchair to get around. It just hurt to much to walk. We assumed it as bursitis.
On returning to Portland, I got a stock of good pain killers, and was getting around on crutches. One evening in early April, we were watching TV down in the TV room. I went upstairs to get a drink, and when I returned I fell down the stairs landing on the rug over tile floor below. I couldn't get up, but that wasn't totally obvious to me. Marianne went outside to see if there was any help around, and found our neighbor, Andy, who plopped me on the couch. Armed with entertainment and opiates, I managed to watch the program to it's end. Then, I really couldn't get up. I have to point out that after the fall, I wasn't really fully conscious for quite a while, so I don't remember the program I watched, nor do I remember Marianne and room mate John stuffing me into the Scion and taking me to St. Vincents Hospital. What I do remember is being loaded into an ambulance for a trip to Kaiser Sunnyside where I was schedule for a new hip.
The entire hip process is a bit of a blur. I recall the surgeon signing my leg, and my anxiety at being wheeled into the operating theater. I awoke in recovery and spent the next several days adjusting to the new hip. I hadn't taken the time to ponder why the hip broke (the fall, I assumed), and what the hip pain had been about. The answer was a jolt.
The hip failed because the hip was weakened by prostate cancer. A fairly advanced and aggressive cancer at that. As it turns out, I may have a reasonable chance at 7 to 12 or so years of symptom free life. That'd be great. We shall see. Truly a life changing sequence of events. |
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| Reveries |
[Mar. 31st, 2010|08:40 pm] |
I haven't been here for quite a while. Indeed, one wonders what ultimately happens to inactive Livejournal pages. I'm sure the answers are buried somewhere in the fine print of the "terms and conditions" which no one reads. For me, it's been a bleak couple of months. A period of decay, in a way. Things were rather looking up 4 or 6 months ago. We'd had a wonderful cruise, and had put up a new shed, read shop for me to work in, I'd been active in golf and Marianne's situation looked promising, well, still does. Then the hip acted up. Started with working to insulate the shop. I needed to build some lofts in this barn like shop to allow significant overhead storage. This meant flinging plywood sheets up to be screwed to the joists supporting them. Got a couple of serious twinges after that, they weren't alarming at the time, painful and annoying, but not particularly worrisome. Indeed, the shoulder pain went away, and the hip pain faded to insignificance. Then the hip thing came back, with a vengeance. Got to the point where I couldn't walk more than 100 yards, then got worse. The doctor at Kaiser had X-rays done, and revealed little except that, apparently, the cause wasn't arthritis. Got some pills, and was sent home, only to have things get very much worse.
As an aside, since I couldn't walk, I couldn't mow the lawn, something which is getting serious. Room mate John did mow, but this is a singular outcome. New arrangements will need to be made pending recovery. Recovery, by the way, probably involves dealing with hip bursitis. This tentative, but informed, diagnosis means the treatment might be fairly simple, but, as a matter of fact, getting to the proper doctor to have the treatment done is rather complex, like a month long and four non-qualified doctors who can't do the treatment complex.
Perhaps, tomorrow, I shall see the right doctor and get some relief. In the mean time, the grass grows with springtime vigor, the shop awaits my attention, the bathroom in room mate John's space needs to be ripped apart and an inner wall leak fixed. The kitchen sink is leaking water and needs fixing once again (for the next of many iterations), the kitchen cabinets need replacing--at great expense, lawn work, generally, cries for attention. You see the issues. It's the end of a long, cold wearing winter. Things can only look up. |
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| The Latest Harry Potter Flick |
[Aug. 9th, 2009|04:56 pm] |
I saw Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. Understand that while I've seen most of the films (probably all of them), I've never actually read the books, so my judgment about this movie is not informed by a familiarity with the written genre. The film has a number of threads, some dealing with the emerging romantic interests of the youngsters at Hogwarts, the remainder (and more central) dealing with an emerging plot to kill Dumbledore and continuing efforts to prepare Potter to deal with the Dark Lord. While amusing, the film degenerates into absurdity. An example: I'm assuming everyone knokw that Dumbledore is, indeed, killed. Much of the plot followsl Draco's efforts to prepare for killing Dumbledore, a task he has been assigned. His efforts involve devising an elaborate way to get a group of "death eaters" into Hogwarts. The apparent aim of the death eaters is to assist in the killing of Dumbledore. As it happens, however, Professor Snape actually kills Dumbledore without any assistance from Draco who proves incapable of the killing (or from the death eaters as well). Thus, since Snape, who is always at Hogwarts actually kills Dumbledore, Draco's role, his actions and the involvement of all the ancillary characters and death eaters is finally pointless and irrelevant.
Another major plot line involves the dark lord's dividing his soul into 7 horcruxes, or parts, six of which are then hidden so that as long as at least one exists, the dark lord cannot be killed. Harry's main task it to try to pry out of the potions professor the information he gave to the dark lord when the dark lord as a student asked about a bit of arcane magic. In the potion professors "edited" memory, the professor scolds the nascent dark lord and denies him any information. Harry is assured by Dumbledore that this memory must be discovered in it's original form, or all is likely lost. In brief, Harry succeeds in getting the potions Professor to reveal the true memory. It turns out the dark lordlett was interested in a horcrux. In fact, he wanted to create 6 of them. Harry, upon discussing this revelation asks Dumbledore if the recent travels he's undertaken were done to locate the horcruxes. Dumbldore admits this to be true. Well, if Dumbledore already knew that the dark lord had created horcruxes and was out looking for them even as Harry probed the potions professor's memory about what the dark lord wanted, that suggests that Harry's efforts were useless and plot pointless since Dumbledore already knew, effectively, what the dark lord had done.
Given these plot gaffs, most of the movie is pointless and illogical, and the rest only mildly interesting.
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| It's been a long time |
[May. 16th, 2009|07:53 pm] |
Much has happened in the past year. Hell, we've a new administration. I've my doubts about that. After all, didn't I vote against George W Bush? Why am I looking at his war policies, and espionage policies, and detainee policies all over again? I'm really disappointed. That's not to say Obama is all disappointment. He's done a bunch of good things...environment, stem cells, and so forth. But, civil liberties, war, detainees, not so much.
I think it's like Bill Hicks(http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1366476727111157120) said..."they take the newly elected president into a room and show him a film of the Kennedy assignation done from a perspective no one has seen before.." Kinda gets his mind right. Of course, the economy has collapsed. That isn't new, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the recession started in November of 2007, back when the political assholes were telling us "the fundamentals were sound". \
Well, nothing new. Nothing to see here....move along. |
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| MY NEW WEB PAGE |
[Jun. 27th, 2008|04:23 pm] |
My old web page, www.francisferguson.com is going away.
My new page is
www.fpferguson.com |
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| Impeachment |
[Jun. 26th, 2008|07:52 pm] |
Dennis kucinich has brought articles of impeachment against George Bush (and hopefully, Dick Cheney--I'm uninformed on this). It's imperative that we impeach. The quasi-democratic leadership argues we haven't the necessary votes in the Senate, and that impeachment would be impotent, embarrassing and pointless. That's hardly true.
This administration has been so oblivious to the Constitution (calling it "quaint" at at least one point) as to require a positive response from Congress. Winning doesn't matter. The effort is critical. Congress can't simply sit by and let these criminals flaunt their Constitutional duties, limitations and obligations. We can't allow the administration to lie us into war, torture, spy on American citizens, arrest anyone without warrant or charges and hold them incommunicado, indefinitely, decide through "signing statements" what portion of properly passed legislation they will actually enforce (more often than all previous presidents sighing statements), refuse to respond to Congressional subpoenas, leak the identities of a CIA agent, trammel and coerce scientific research that reaches inconvenient conclusions, gut environmental protections for the benefit of industry cronies and on and on seemingly without ent. No, success is not the issue, the gesture is everything. Really. |
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zapdog's journal
discontent