We, taking our very lives at risk, are planning on visiting Seward on Thursday to pick up provisions, so I now must locate a face mask and try very hard not to draw some bizarre item on it....maybe just a cartoon of sticking out my tongue. Oh, I believe in the distancing between folks, for indeed it might save on pregnancies, bad breath and hearing someone's political opinion concerning Trump or no Trump. I sleep in the closet and Mona has the bed. Now Biden or....No, I can't go there I hate hitting on senior citizens, for which I am one now and we should simply be cuddled often and our sweaty brows wiped with loving care.
I have finally decided, and I did think about this some, I will no longer be posting my lists of headlines. There is just enough bad news out there and fake news that my contribution isn't helping any. For those of you who will miss it, check out the newspapers, online and in paper form (works in place of toilet paper too). Though I shall continue to record said headlines for my own files, as I plan to put a folder together sometime to list all these headlines from the pandemic period and to pass it down to some unsuspecting relative in my will. Along with my files with actual newspaper front pages of the 9-11 and Pearl Harbor incidents. I am a bit of a history nut.
I understand a petition is going around hoping for early Alaska Dividends to be issued this year. for those of you not aware, each Alaskan citizen is provided with his appointed share of last years oil revenues. Not sure if I'm for an early distribution or not. For I sort of like having it in late fall in order to purchase wood for the winter, winter tires if needed, stock up food and batteries and maybe buy some winter clothes. Hard to find good winter clothes, like insulated undies in Spring.
I want to thank our kids for sending Mom and I photos of you and your children via online. Its a highlight to see the growing up that is occurring in the family. Becca, I really liked watching your post on health issues, your learned abilities in acting made for a very professional delivery. Me, I'm nervous being in front of a camera, especially all those security ones they now have posted just about everywhere. I tend to smile a lot. I was watching an episode of "Chicago PD" with my lovely wife and the Intelligence Squad inside the department was showing to each other how easy it was to use a person's cell phone to show exactly where they were at any given moment, plus exactly what they were viewing through their phones and e-mails. Big Brother is truly alive and well and in a lot of cases not even a search warrant is required. Oh, as a retired police officer I can see the benefit to this, similar to a police officer carrying a pistol and a nightstick, but such tools can be abused as we have all seen. but a human enforcer is still better than a robotic one. Be vigilant, that's all. If your honest, steadfast and have your 21 merit badges from scouting, no problem. What will they be able to find out? Your TV watching, possible torrid love affairs and what your teenagers just might be up to. If your a normal red-blooded American, you are up to just about anything you can get away with when you are 16 yrs old. But for you borderline cases....I guess that's me at times, we just have to thank the Good Lord for rational people to still be in existence and they just might become gradually extinct. Oh, "1984" was such a great classic....What?
Looking forward to the snow being all gone. Love it when it comes and then when it goes. I enjoy our seasons up here in the north. Mona and I have a lot of plans for gardening, before Agenda 2030 takes the freedom of private gardening away from us. Yes, NO private gardens! Mona and I had had to really make a change in how we do things about the house this last year, for we are long standing dumpster divers, yard sales enthusiasts and non-professional collectors of all things that might just have a use if you bent it this way or that. But it has now come time to make someone else happy and to deliver truckloads of things to the trash dumpster station in Crown Point, a very tiny settlement 6 miles south of us. All this makes me wonder if we'll even have neighborhood yard and garage sales this summer, or will they be illegal? Now have you ever been to a Southern California Swap Meet? Now that's is one all day party, especially when held in an old drive-in movie lot. You could just about find anything your heart desired and back in the old days, people were really friendly. I bought my first electric guitar at one, along with dozens of other items. Never did conquer the guitar though, decided I liked drums better. Much to my poor mother's mental health.
Parcel Post just arrived. They just drop things at the door now, don't even knock, to avoid human contact with the public. I am now waiting for news people to start wearing masks as they deliver the news on TV.
We have a medium sized spring in our front yard, comes off the mountain out in front of us, in a sort of a small canyon about 60 feet or so long by 40 feet wide, loose estimation, and the spring runs under our driveway through a large pipe. I hope to get everyone together this summer to clear it out of bushes and trees. It is quite a beautiful spot really and we dreamed of building a small tea house in it one day. But we now need another large green house. Our last one collapsed under snow load and it was a pretty good sized one. 32 feet by 16 feet, built for us by a dear friend. We make a list of things to do in the winter and hopefully by the end of summer we might actually have finished off one or two.
Traffic outside on the highway remains slow, which I tend to like as an ice covered roadway can be quite noisy in the middle of the night. This could be a mighty strange summer if indeed tourist season is all but canceled by the pandemic. So many people will be hurting financially who are involved in the tourist trade and a lot of businesses will suffer greatly, even as so many are now. Our church, like so many others, is closed to the crowd, but our Pastor delivers the Word of God over Facebook. So much for community worship, which I can only think is making our spiritual enemy overjoyed with glee. People need the Lord and the need of joint worship, for faith can come in real handy when the wolf is at the door. Whether it be spiritual or just plain physical. Like all of you who weather this, I just love getting calls from bill collectors at 6 a.m. from some East Coast party, who worries I will not pay my bills. I talked with this pest of a dude who called once a week from the Orient who represented an Alaska utility company. Though I've been paying these same bills for a very long time, they continue to feel several phone calls will help me to remember them. As if I want my electricity turned off, my propane not delivered or my rats to be left to run wild through my...Sorry, I have no rats. Just got caught up in it all. Up here we have little mice like characters we call a vole. Now my cats deal with that problem, I just have to keep them from bring the remains back into the house to show off their kill. If I could just get my cats to pay my electric payment, which doubled a couple months ago. Now isn't there a law that will not let a business double-dip. I'm pretty sure the electric company carried its own property insurance for all its power poles running through the wooded areas, but they still bill us for them too. Yes, prices can be high in Alaska and you learn to except that, but the beauty of the state provides a lot of mental health benefits. Now I paid $25 a month on my budget plan with the propane company. I use the propane for our kitchen cook stove. Over night we went from $25 to $67 a month, without any warning or explanation as to why the steep increase. If I've mentioned this before, I apologize. As to Anchorage and what occurs there, I try to ignore its existence. One of the reasons I stayed in Alaska was my dislike for big cities after being raised in Southern California and summers in Phoenix, Arizona. I can still recall when Phoenix had no skyscrapers, no smog and so many nice people. Love the desert country and my nearly 5 years of living on the Mojave Desert provided a lot of interesting times. On a bad summer day, where the temp was passing 120 degrees, we could see the smog from Los Angeles breaching the tops of the mountains between us like an onrushing tsunami. Anyhow, Alaska wide open spaces remind a bit of the wide open deserts. My Dad, favored the desert also. He loved to camp out by himself on his weekends off and once woke up to find 2 rattle snakes curled up on top of his sleeping bag. They came to him for his heat and he simply waited for them to leave and then aired out his bag.
My beautiful and delightful wife just delivered to me my lunch, so I will take bites between my paragraphs. She takes really good care of me and has done so for nearly 40 years. I could not wish or desire a better friend, companion and co-conspirator in the raising of our children and just having the guts to stick it out in being a cop's wife for so long. Believe me it is not an easy task and sometimes down right dangerous. but that is another story, which you might be able to read about when my Badge and the Cross series is put into print. I detail our history through the use of fictional characters who journey through a lot of the bizarre experiences, based in fact 90% of the time. We weathered a lot through my police work and working for 4 police departments and the State of Alaska. All the lives we have come in contact with have made our life one of WOW! Having our faith has been our mainstay and continues to be so.
Now getting back to an earlier paragraph, I wish to say I am not a frightened child or even a worry wart (I once wondered how that term came into use, did people actually believe worry could lead to nasty warts. Now sour stomachs is one thing, but items sticking out on your face? Any how, I try to follow the school of thought in watching this pandemic unfold. Fear can become such a nasty weapon to use against citizens, but good intelligence can be a benefit to helping one grasp the seriousness of the times and the decisions being made. Still, whipping out Agenda 21 and 2030, can make one almost believe someone out there was ordered to release this pandemic to start things into play. Reality? Time will be the judge. I mean look at our country. We haven't seen this kind of restriction since the World Wars and the Great Depression of the 1930's. I recall an old Twilight Zone...maybe it was Outer Limits, where similar things were put into play to gain control of a population and watch as the citizen danced to the tune of the government. In those episodes, it didn't fare all that well for the citizen. It is amazing how much freedom we are willing to lose because of fear. Put 6-people, with proper distancing of course, in the same room to make a decision on an action that might or might not be needed and listen in as fear enters into the conversation. I suspect that might be what happened in the Seward City Council Chambers. Now I'm not talking about good sense, I'm talking about fear without real basis of fact. As far as I know, no other city in Alaska has made it mandatory to wear masks. Then we have the beginnings of neighbor turning on neighbor....the list is long and can lead down a terrifying road. Like losing ones headlights in the middle of the night on a lonely stretch of highway.
I do really hope and pray that we will have a handle on this before the heat of summer hits, or it could be a replay of the late 1960's when the big cities went up in flames from racial rioting. I remember them all too well, especially being a military cop during two race riots on a military base and growing up outside Los Angeles and see the flames of businesses and homes burn on the night's skyline as the city nearly lost control. Several years later it almost happened again. As I said once before I went through the Phoenix riots as a young teenager and my oldest brother nearly lost his family during the San Bernadino riots in southern California. People get over heated, souls who have lost hope in their government and hate their lot in life. They are going through hard times and just tend to blow up from the slightest overture and harm is done. Oh, I am praying against that now, as I am sure so many others are who have experienced the same before. It is amazing how easy real sane people can become dangerous and reckless if fueled wrongly.
All I know is that the Good Lord has not lost control of the situation. Oh, He might be shaking his head a lot, but He, above all else, knows what is coming and when. "For Only The Father Knows" the date and time of the coming end and then the new beginning. I did my best to represent this in my two apocalyptic stories, from what I received and hopefully I was indeed listening. Oh that was my sales commercial if you didn't notice.
Wind is blowing again, yesterday it felt like a big Missouri twister was all to close by. Scary things. I prefer a nice soft breeze, without bugs. Yes, Alaska has more than its fair share of summer bugs and I am not looking forward to it. But, even with the bugs, Alaska is truly God's country. I think He supplies the bugs to keep us jumping and maybe a gentle remind of the plagues of Egypt....possible? Forget it.
So long for now and may the Good Lord bless your day and the events of your life. Bye. Bill/Appa