Farewell 2018

This being the final day of 2018, I feel obliged to review this past year and put forth my thoughts in a final blog post of the year.

In the areas of reading and writing, this has not been a productive year for me. With this being the 95th post of 2018, I regret to say that I've written fewer blog posts this year than any year since 2013. If it wasn't for the occasional mango shake review, or VW Beetle spotting, I'd have almost no posts to speak of.  Normally my postings drop off in non-Presidential election years, but this year is far worse than 2017.

As one will see in tomorrow's list of books read this year, my reading dropped off. I read fewer books this year than any year since 2013. It makes me wonder what went on that year.

One area where I feel like I've done well is in the area of exercise and physical fitness. As a general rule, I walk every morning - unless, of course rain prevents my doing so. I've set up different dumbbell routines thru out the year, trying to maintain a balance between working on every major muscle group and getting the proper amount of rest.

My current schedule calls for approximately 40 minutes of dumbbells six days a week - taking Sunday off as a full day of rest.

Without going into too many details, the basic schedule calls for a chest workout for Monday, upper and lower back on Tuesdays, followed by a leg workout on Wednesday. Thursday is for triceps, Friday biceps, and shoulders on Saturday.

I normally change my routine every 3 or 4 months - this routine being only a couple of weeks old, I'll stick to this one for some time to come.

I don't usually make New Year's resolutions - that being my only one. I'm not going to promise to post more often, or read more books. I'm not going to try and stay off social media or any of those other things folks resolve to do this time of year.

I'll just be me, and we'll see how that works out.

Obama Fans/Trump Fans - Birds of a Feather

A little over three years ago, before Trump was elected President of the United States, I wrote a blog post where in I said that Barack Obama and Donald Trump were two sides of the same coin. Now, after two years into the Trump presidency, my belief in that position is even stronger.

I observed as early as January 2016 that both Trump and Obama are narcissists with followers that have fallen victim to a cult of personality.

When I read Internet comments of Obama lovers/Trump haters and the Internet comments of the Trump lovers/Obama haters, I see that both sides are operating under intense emotions with little or no objectivity.

A quote from an article on goodtherapy.org can be used to describe both groups :
"A common theme in hatred is a complete negation of the humanity of the other person or an inability to believe that the other person has any redeeming qualities or any worth".

Neither side is able to accept any criticism of their guy and anyone speaking in the least way about a positive quality the other might have is branded an enemy as well, and perhaps the spawn of Satan.

Both sides love comparing the other guy to Adolf Hitler without realizing that you immediately lose any argument once you've resorted to Reductio ad Hitlerum.

I haven't gained any friends or changed any minds trying to point out the flaws in either side. I'm attacked while attempting to remain reasonable.

The Trump haters will say vile and vicious things about Trump's wife and children just as the Obama haters will give no quarter to his family.

Sadly, I don't see any end in sight and I'm not optimistic about the sanity of the United States.

The Silver Beetle Redux.

Yesterday morning, while taking my walk, I decided to detour down a side road in Sibulan where I don't normally walk. By taking that detour, I came upon this silver Beetle. Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera at the time. I brought my camera along with me this morning and took the same little detour as yesterday in order to snap a photo or two.

Looking over my VW photos, this Beetle compares favorably with the Silver Beetle I photographed last March at the VW graveyard.

I believe the two Silver Beetles are one and the same. It isn't just the color that leads me to think this. I've looked at my VW Beetle photos and no other Beetle has the front turn signal indicator (AKA blinker) on the bumper of the vehicle. Every other Beetle in my photographs has the front turn signal indicator positioned atop the fender.

Based on these similarities, I'm giving this the same number as the earlier Silver Beetle - #45.

A Ghost From Decembers Past

Yesterday, I wrote a post entitled Oh, He's Such a Trump.

Being the old fart that I am, I had forgotten that I had written a post covering the same subject in February of 2017 - Trump : Are We Finally On "The Road to Understanding" ?

Can one plagiarize oneself?

At any rate, it gave me the idea of looking at previous posts with the idea of possible updates. I began by looking at what might be called the ghosts of Christmases past, or at least the ghosts of Decembers past.

That look brought me to this jewel from December of 2014 - The Warren/Clinton Slugfest , when some felt that Elizabeth Warren might make a good POTUS. That was four years ago, and I think there are very few today who would give Warren the same chances in 2020.

That being said, the highlight of that previous post was my inclusion of a Youtube video called "Run Liz Run". When I added the video, I said that, if I were a Hillary Clinton supporter, I would make every effort to make "Run Liz Run" go viral.

The song in the video is horrible. It still remains to be seen if Hillary will make another attempt at the White House, but should Warren test the waters, any Democrat opponent should encourage this video to sweep the Internet.

Oh, He's Such a Trump

Anyone who has read this blog for any length of time should know two things about me -
1) I enjoy reading
2) When it comes to buying books, I'm very cheap.

2018 will be, unfortunately, a year in which the number of books I've read through out the year will be far less than usual. As I've mentioned often enough, most of the books I've read over the past few years have been e-books, downloaded from either fadedpage.com, project gutenberg australia or the much larger project gutenberg, where books out of copyright and in the public domain are available free of charge.

Getting most of my reading material this way has lead me to read quite a few books written during the late 19th century or early 20th century.

Two particular novels I want to mention here were written in 1917; one written by Ethel M. Dell, The Hundredth Chance and the other, The Road to Understanding, by Eleanor H. Porter.

In both novels, a word is used to describe men, who are, as Merriam Webster might put it, as " dependable and exemplary persons".

That word is "trump".

In Chapter X (The Head of the Family) of The Hundredth Chance, after the character Jake helps his friend Bunny, we have this:

"You're no end of a trump!" said Bunny with tears in his eyes.

In Chapter IX (A Bottle of Ink) of The Road to Understanding we find this:

"What a trump dad had been to offer it! What a trump he had been in the way he offered it, too! What a trump he had been all through about it, for that matter. Not a word of reproach, not a hint of patronage. Not even a look that could be construed into that hated 'I told you so.' Just a straight-forward offer of this check for Helen, and the trip for himself, and actually in a casual, matter-of-fact tone of voice as if ten-thousand-dollar checks and Alaskan trips were everyday occurrences".

I note all this because I'm amazed at how the word has changed these past 100 plus years. Once, it was considered a high compliment to be called a "trump", while now, some still might look at it as a compliment, many people in the U.S. might consider being called a trump fightin' words.

VW Number 56

It's been quite a long time since I last posted a photo of a Volkswagen Beetle that I might have come across while out and about in Dumaguete. As a matter of fact, I haven't posted a Beetle photo since last November 3rd.

It isn't because I haven't seen any Beetles - on the contrary, on one particular day, I came across three different ones, but unfortunately that day was one of the rare days when I'd left my camera at home. There have also been occasions when I'd spot a VW while driving, but because the VW was traveling in the opposite direction, getting a photo was impossible.

That was almost the case with this VW Beetle I came upon while driving thru the city. I was unable to snap a photo while driving, but as luck would have it, I happened upon the car an hour later when I stopped at City Mall to purchase powdered milk.

I've looked thru my collection of VW photos, and it appears that I haven't photographed this on before, so I'm tagging it number 56.

Gandhi: India's Robert E. Lee?

Although it had once been the latest craze in civil disobedience and protest, one doesn't see much in the news of late, concerning the removal of Confederate monuments throughout the U.S. . There was a time when you couldn't go to an online news source without reading a story covering the public cries for - and against - the removals. The last one I recall coming across was a story from more than a year ago, when then Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams from Georgia was calling for the removal of the three Confederate war leaders carved on to the face of state-owned Stone Mountain.

My personal view is that it is long past time for any monument to the Confederacy to be removed from places of prominence. I see no reason to honor the likes of Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Jefferson Davis, or any of their ilk.

It's come to my attention, that there are calls being made outside the United States, to remove statues of other notable figures, who are now looked upon as less than admirable by some. A statue of Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi has been removed from Ghana's most prestigious university following complaints that he was racist against the black Africans, and over 3,000 people have signed a petition opposing a planned statue of Mahatma Gandhi in Malawi's commercial capital Blantyre.

Though Gandhi is more commonly remembered for his non-violent resistance to British colonial rule in his native India, his legacy in Africa is mixed.

One website detailing Gandhi's dark side gives the following :

"While Gandhi's time fighting for the rights of Indians in South Africa is often now mythologized as the heroic precursor to his later efforts in India, the dark side of this tale reveals that Gandhi's motivations in South Africa included his strident racism against the local black populations there."

'Ours is one continual struggle against a degradation sought to be inflicted upon us by the Europeans, who desire to degrade us to the level of the raw Kaffir [a slur now classified as hate speech and generally considered to be the equivalent of "nigger" in the United States] whose occupation is hunting, and whose sole ambition is to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife with and, then, pass his life in indolence and nakedness,'   Gandhi said during an address in Bombay in 1896.

It's more than a little bit ironic that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had noted Gandhi as a positive influence on his philosophy and non-violent approach, without knowing Gandhi's racist views toward black Africans.