Tom's Musings

After a few days on this blog, I realize one fact already. I will be writing for myself, at least for the most part. On Facebook, as sorry as that platform is in many respects, I easily gathered followers … 30,000 the first time around and 7,000 in a short time on my 2nd tour of duty. It was flattering but the format didn’t lend itself to reflective thought nor did they comrehend basic communication skills like humor and irony. My God, were they dumb … those running FB, not my followers.

I doubt I will ever get more than a handfull of readers here, though some have suggested SubStack as a better platform except I tried that earlier and found it bewildering. So, shall I continue? To write or not to write, that will be the question. I might even if there is no audience. After all that is why I write books, for myself. The number who read them is minsicule compared to the effort and cost that goes into them. In the end, though, the process is its own reward. Only time will tell with respect to my short career, to date, as a blogger.

However, it is Sunday. On Facebook, I usually donned my religious robes and identity myself as Pastor Tom or Father Jim. As such, I would dispense homegrown comment and thought on spiritual matters. After all, I spent over a year studying for the Priesthood in my misspent youth. Doesn’t that make me an expert?

This is a vast topic so let us start by touching on some core meanings or concepts. Look at the next insert:

This is a very truncated overview of the evolution of spiritual thought. I say spiritual but this really is more about religious movements. When I say truncated, I mean really truncated. Beliefs in things beyond our own beings likely started when our primitive ancestors realized they were pretty helpless in the face of life’s uncertainties and, in the beginning, life was very uncertain indeed. Early forms of Animism posited a sense of awe into the things early homo-sapiens confronted, and feared or needed, on a daily basis. That turned out to be just about everything. Many of our founding fathers embraced a form of Deism that, to my mind, was a highly sophisticated form of Animism in that Providence’s presence was seen everywhere and nowhere.

As humans evolved, they needed more structure and certainly more rules to govern ever more complex interactions and populations bound together by urban density. Where does this moral authority to enforce consensual behavior come from … most likely something or someone very powerful and outside of ourselves. Things get complicated quickly, though. I saw one etsimate that people around the globe today worship some 3,000 distinct versions of God, though the notion of distinct might not hold up to scrutiny. There are that many more, probably, just within the Hindu tradition.

So, what we see is a glacial evolution in the concept of a controlling Providence, mostly in the direction of settling on a single omniscient and omipresent entity whose attribures continue to be debated. Monotheism seems to have prevailed in the very human contest to define the divine.

Thinking closely on this evolution, we might well ask … is God a human creation to satisfy the needs for survival of the species, or at least our own affinity groups? As society evolved toward hierarchical and top heavy governance systems, pluralism amongst those residing in the Heavens seemed at odds with the order and control extent rulers wished to see on earth. Even Constantine realized the single Chrisitian God was preferable to the many Roman ones though too late to save an empire already fraying at the edges.

In addition, there is a possible evolutionary process within given religious traditions. Take a gander at the next insert:

One might consider this the life-cycle of a formal religion. In general, you evolve from early passions and belief toward boundaries that separate you from others and then on to an increasing number of internal rules and methods for enforcing conformity. This is not unique to religious institutions but found in most organizational forms … what I sometimes like to think of as the ossification of institutional passion and the slow sclerosis of belief systems or sense of mission. In that process, the means for profiting from positions of authority grow, and the lure of profits based on unquestioning loyalty of devotees is tempting. Think about Joel Osteen, the tele-evangelist with his huge mansions and several Lear Jets. That is some distance away from an itinerent Jewish Rabbi of sorts with a few scraggly followers preaching love and sacrifice as he wandered about Judea.

If religion is, in fact, a man-made phenomenon, but possessing a strong sense of moral authority, the possibilities of abuse are extraordinary. With boundaries that separate the in-crowd from others, the potential for conflict rises exponentially. No one has been more bloodthirsty throughout history than those defending their God. We thus come to another core concept that has been called ‘Monotheistic Absolutism.’ All spiritual traditions can lead to violence but the emergance of monotheism raised the stakes. When there were many gods, it was a bit easier to switch allegiance or pick the one’s closest to your innate dispositions. When there is one God, other’s must be false … almost by definition. It comes down to “my god is better than your god.”

I will return to these themes, and many related ones, in future blogs … should there be any. But let me leave this one with a thought or two to keep you thinking. Let us look at the vast universe that the Hubble and Webb telescopes have revealed to us. There are untold trillions of stars our there in billions upon billions of galaxies that are stretched across distances that boggle our minds. If you want some sense of awe, look at the world out there. Seeking meaning in some ancient writings that probably were created by a committee looking for advantages given early political disputes about truth and power is not the way to go and surely a poor guide to comprehending the mysteries of which we are an integral part.

If we are ever to get some appreciation of an entity or understanding that simulates what we mean by God, it likely will be at the end of some evolutionary journey which our species playes an essential role. But we must look beyond our petty disputes and see the bigger picture. Someday, those who follow us may get a glimpse of that meaning which ties the infinitely vast and endlessly exciting cosmos together. They might well glimpse the rhetorical face of God. That possibility excites me.

However, that will only be possible if we don’t destroy ouselves at the beginning of the journey.

By the way, I write a lot about these themes through my characters in my book that should be released shortly …. ‘Refractive Reflections.’

This is what I woke up to this AM. I will admit, it is pretty while coming down but eventually you have to go out in this crap. Then it usually sucks the big one, especially if you don’t engage in those patently ridiculous winter sports like snowshoing or cross-country skiing or some such rot.

Okay, okay, I can think of a few folk who make good use of this solidified form of liquid. My neighbor across the street is a snow sculptor. He is probably ecstatic today, though I do question his mental stability. What is wrong with him? Still, he creates cute pieces of his art. Below is his creation from our last dump.

Such distractions are hardly enough to compensate for the dread I feel when seeing tons of this white stuff descending from the heavens. It is enough to make a man regret selling his winter home in Florida where the following was easily accessible.

Then again, I would have to live in Florida, where Ron DeSantis is Governor. No, I’ll take the cold and snow. Besides, soon Spring will be here and all will be glorious again.

Spring will arrive …. right?

Some political tactics are as ancient as those fossil specimens being dug up in various pre-Cambrian geological settings. That is, these strategies are almost as old as time itself. None is more time tested than ‘if you are unhappy, it is this other guy’s fault.’ This is otherwise known as the ‘scapegoat’ trick. And who is this other guy? That’s the beauty of this transparent distraction, it can be anyone you want.

For the earliest homo-sapiens spreading out of East Africa into Europe some 70,000 plus years ago, the ‘other’ of that era likely was the remaining Neanderthals they ran into as the glaciers retreated north. For King Solomon in the Old Testament, it might be the Hittites. For the early Romans, it probably was the Carthaginians. For the Spanish during the Age of Exploration, it was the the Portuguese for a while and then the Dutch and then the English. As nation states evolved, it was the English hating the French and the French returning that animosity in kind. When the Ottoman Empire struggled during the WWI period, the Armenians proved a useful scapegoat leading to one the earlier genocidal efforts in modern times. Northern Ireland had their Catholics, or Papists. Sunni Muslim’s had Shiites and vice-versa. The Nazi’s had the Jews. And the American’s cycled through a series of easy targets … Native Americans, the Irish, the Chinese, the Slaves and Italians, Hispanics and Latinos, along with the usual suspects … Jews and Blacks.

It is as if identifying and then blaming the ‘other’ is embedded within our genetic makeup. Then again, the appeal of the scapegoat tactic has an intuitive and obvious appeal. Who in their right mind wants to take responsibility for their situation and their fate. After all, that is just so … mature!

When Hitler, after recovering from his gas attack wounds late in WWI found that Germany had lost the war and signed a humiliatiing cease fire treaty, he found the very concept of national defeat impossible to accept. He quickly convinced himself that his homeland was ‘stabbed in the back’ by a perfidious cabal of Jews. That one man might easily convince himself of such a delusion is not surprising. But he was able to convince an entire nation of that falsehood, or most of it anyway … a society considered among the most cultured and sophisticated in the world of that time. In truth, Germany was exhausted by the Fall of 1918 and being over run by vastly superior forces.

Let us look at an example closer to home. In the anti-bellum South during the first half of the 19th century, only about 1 or 2 percent of Southerners owned significant numbers of slaves. They were the 1 percenters of that era given that the exploitation of human suffering led to egregious accumulations of wealth available only to the favored few. Here is the odd thing. Not only were African-Americans suffering, but poorer whites faced harsh economic conditions and few real opportunities for upward mobility. This was a feudal and authoritarian society in a classic sense. Political and economic power had been secured by the few at the very top of the pyramid and inequalty was hardening year by year.

You would think that struggling white laborers and hardscrabble farmers would confront such an unfair system. But no, just the opposite. Most, though not all, defended both slavery and the economic and cultural frameworks that supported this hideous institution. More remarkably, they went off to war by the millions to suffer and die for a cause that clearly repressed them and which materially dimmed their futures.

What did they get in return? They were able to look down upon their darker skin bretheren, people they were closer to in most respects than the elite who sent them off to suffer and too often expire in gruesome ways. It is hard to imagine such a bargain as making any rational sense. But a hundred years after that horrific conflict, the South yet practiced legal apartheid with enormous public support, at least until federal power enforced a limited form of de jure equality.

Recently, the scapegoat tactic continues to weave its magic in many places … Hungary, Turkey, Poland, Venezuala, and even England (Brexit was partly a reaction to immigration fears). The rise of Trumpism and today’s Republican Party is a direct result of ‘blaming the other.’ Almost half of America is convinced that barbarians from south of the border will steal ‘their’ country and, if they live too far away from the Rio Grande, that ‘woke’ liberals will confiscate their guns and their religion and their culture. As the latest generation of conservatives cower in the face of such threats, an ecomomic elite gathers more of the economic pie along with the power attached to that money.

We are, at the same time, an odd and fascinating species. With our technologies, we now can peer into the origins of our universe and create awsome forms of artificial intelligence. At the same time, we are driven by the same hate, fear, and divisions that infected our earliest ancestors.

Late at night, I often ponder a conundrum that has intrigued me for decades. Which will prevail, our primitive fears or our better angels. As of today, I have no freaking idea.

A friend of mine recently visited Hanoi Hilton while touring Southeast Asia. In case you have forgotten, that was the infamous prison where American POW’s were incarcerated and tortured during the Vietnam conflict. The scars generated by that war have remained within some of us throughout our lives. That must be my case since it a theme that simmers throughout some of my recent fictional works, particuarly Oblique Journeys.

Then there are the hundreds of pitches I get from conservative politicians and groups. Don’t ask me why they keep hitting on a confirmed Socialist like myself but there you have it. Aside from praising me for being one of their strongest supporters (I don’t give them a dime), a majority address me as ‘Dear Patriot.’

Are they kidding! Do they really believe patriots would pour their heart and soul into dismantling the democratic protocols and legal safeguards that once marked America as a leader in the so-called ‘free world’ and an example for people everywhere with democratic aspirations. Feverishly seeking to establish an authoritarian and totalitarian regime in the U.S. seems a rejection of my youthful view on this ambiguous concept of patriotism. Then again, what does it mean to be a patriot?

I still recall being drilled by three members of military intelligence during the physical I was required to take as part of the military draft process back around 1970. There was a question on one of the many forms to be completed asking if I had belonged to any organization advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government. Having ascertained from the friendly Sargent overseeing this process that SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) was such a nafarious organization, I entered that group in the space provided (I was a member before they went bat-shit crazy). Thus, my convivial chat with military intelligence took place.

For me, the highlight of our exchange of ideas came when they asked “if I would fight any and all enemies of the United States.” I recall leaning back and looking at them as if I was seriously considering their question before replying with great sincerity … “First, we must define enemy.” That led to their threats to drop assholes like me into North Vietnam though I thought that unlikely in the short term.

That vignette, and the crises of conscience that is reflected throughout Oblique Journeys and (more recently) Refractive Reflections, has stayed with me during the course of my life. What is patriotism? Who is the enemy? I did manage to evade military service, or a flight to Canada which my fictional protagonist was required to do and which I seriously contemplated for a time (some of my protagonists tend to be romanticized versions of me). Still, that whole experience left me with a sense of guilt. Had I acted totally from conscience? Was I rationalizing some form of cowardice? Or was I the true patriot from that era? A good deal of the personal struggles in Oblique Journeys and Refractive Reflections focus on such questions.

Fast forward some five-plus decades or so. The same questions haunt me. What does it mean to be a ‘patriot.’ Who are our enemies? I still cannot answer such questions with total satisfaction. There really are some imponderable questions that make life worthwhile. But I have inched along toward an answer:

First, despite a surfeit of Catholic guilt in my makeup, a residue of being raised as such, I no longer feel guilt for not bearing arms in the 1960s. Now, except in the rarest of circumstances, I would never do such a thing.

Second, it strikes me as foolish to defend a country simply because one lives there. One must embrace the culture and values of that nation. Do we still not look down upon the good Germans who supported a Nazi regime or do we not sympathize with the Russian youth of today who evaded Putin’s conscription. Mere citizenship is not enough. There are many aspects of American today that drive me to tears and shame, topics for future blogs. I would be hard pressed to fight for a country I do not respect.

Third, how would I answer my military intelligence inquisitors today? Who is the enemy? My simple answer is this. Based upon almost 8 decades of experience and thought, it seems to me that the enemy lies within. It is perhaps the 40 percent of our neighbors and fellow citizens who sport MAGA hats and reject democracy, science, and compassion. I have lived through the Cold War and the War on Terrorism. They promise difficulty but only one group, in my mind at least, offers an existential threat to what we purportedly value the most … today’s Republican Party. Madeleine Albright (Clinton’s Secretary of State and U.N. Ambassador) recently said in a book that America is closer to Fascism (her Jewish family escaped the Nazi’s just in time) than at any time since WWII. Yes, I have found an enemy which could bring me to bear arms.

My conscience is clearer now than it was those many years ago. Perhaps I will have it all worked out with just one more book.

People say I’m pretty smart. Okay, I can’t name names of such people at the moment but I have been in school a long time … like my whole life. That must count for something.

Yet, like virtually all other males, I am clueless when it comes to those of the female persuasion. Let’s get past their obsessions with relationships and feelings and other emotional nonesense when they might focus more profitably on sports and sex or, more promising, sex and sports. What is with this processing of the minutiae of one’s life. At the end of each day, my poor Mary would ask me how things went. I had the same response every day … ‘fine.’ It mattered not whether I made an earth shattering discovery (which I never did) or whether we lost all our research funding (which never happened either but there were some close calls). Each day was ‘fine.’

Of course, I would get an earful of what went on in her day (she was deputy director of the Wisconsin Court System). I recall when she went back to Law School. I would pick her up in back of the school and she would talk non stop all the way home about the cases being discussed in class. Like I could care. Perhaps that was the origins of the glomus tumor that grew in my ear and which took over 5 hours for the surgeon to remove.

Bottom line, what do women see in men? Why do they freaking bother? We don’t listen. If by chance we do, we want to fix things and not just listen to them express their frustrations. And if we try to listen, we often can’t figure out what’s going on. Face it, we are not the brightest bulbs on the marquee, the sharpest knives in the drawer, the fastest arrows in the quiver. Okay, you get the picture.

Then there are household chores. I was always getting fired by Mary (my long-suffering spouse). I know what all the females out there are saying. You think I tanked my responsibilities on purpose in order to get fired. You would think so, but no. It was all incompetence, plain and simple. I thank the good lord that he created universities where those without any skills whatsoever might go and toil away on meaningless things without bothering real people doing meaningful tasks like cleaning toilets.

There is sex of course. Even though it strikes me that female orgasms are more powerful than their male parnters, some seven decades of observation suggests women are just not that interested, and never have been. Mostly, for them, it is a transactional activity useful to achieve other ends … security, money and things money can buy, social status, and (god knows why) male companionship (see paragraph 1).

We males always suspected such even though our sparring partners from the other gender can, as we know, fake important things with considerable aplomb. This leads to a conundrum for us. If you watch female behavior closely, you realize they look upon us as dangerous predators (no eye contact, always checking us out on google, carrying pepper spray, and so forth). I didn’t have to get used to the social distancing during the Covid pandemic since women ALWAYS practiced social distancing around me … staying six feet away. So, when I was in the game, so to speak, life was difficult. I would worry that some friendly female was really thinking “oh no, this Corbett character is going to make a pass. Better I be bitten by a rabid dog.” Sigh!

But now, finally, I am the perfect male. I’m so freaking old that everthing has fallen into place. I’m pretty deaf so that I just nod while the females in my life are chattering away while blessedly not hearing a damn thing. I still can’t do anything practical but I have plenty of money and can hire people too do real work. And most importantly, I have virtually no testosterone left. Women can be around me without seeing me drool uncontrollably or fear I will make some clumsy pass.

This is nirvana for me and those on the other side of the gender divide. I have no freaking idea why Providence made two sexes so different as to be compleely incompatible, but He did permit us a few years at the end of life where we might get along and enjoy one another’s company.

You can send all hate mail to corbettirp@aol.com

I hate to admit this but I’m a bit of a snob, someone who borders on intellectual elitism of all things. This bothers me greatly since I grew up in a Catholic, ethnic, working class household where money was always an issue. There was, in truth, enough for the basics during my tender years but my parents had a tendency to fritter away too much on rather hedonistic pursuits. There was little left, none really, for culture or investments in education or other aspirational advancements. As a result, I’ve always felt a connection with ethnic, working class folk who struggle to make their lives a little better (more on this in future posts).

More accurately, I’ve always wanted to sympathise with the down to earth working types. I thought, since I shared their roots and was raised in this culture of struggle and upward aspirations, that I would have an affinity with the common people. It turns out … I don’t. They baffle the total crap out of me.

What mostly shocks my sensibilities, and I’m grossly generalizing here (mea culpa), is that so many of them cannot connect the simplest dots. Growing up, the working class stiffs around me seemed, though less educated, quite sharp about things. At a minimum, they seemed able to discern what was in their self-interest and what was not, who was in their corner and who was taking them to the cleaners. Few willingly voted for thhose who made their lives more dificult.

Somewhere along the line, working stiffs have lost their way, too many (though far from all) now enthisiastically support those who systemically rob them blind. Take a look at the chart below. It tells a simple story. Starting with the Presidency of ‘guess who,’ you can trace the red line which represents the famous (or infamous) top 1 percent of the income distribution. Their share of the income pie has steadily and inexorably trended up. On the other hand, the share enjoyed by the bottom half of the population has trended down … a simple way of demonstrating growing U.S. inequality of both resources and opportunity. By the way, the divergence has gotten worse in recent years, propelled by Trump’s massive 2017 tax gift to the uber wealthy. We haven’t seen anything like this since the end of the gilded age and then the late 1920s, just before the great crash.

Perhaps this is something beyound our control, perhaps God is willing this as a way of rewarding the blessed in His eyes. Well, not exactly. Look at the bottom panel. Our western European peers have seen a modest trend toward increased inequality but nothing like what we’ve seen here. A human hand, not Providential belssings, lies behind this ominous trend. Want to enjoy the American Dream these days? Head back across the pond.

You would think that the working classes, people struggling to make ends meet, would be outraged. You might even think they would be seeking redress from their growing difficulties through the ballot box. You would be wrong. Many of those who have lost out in recent decades enthisaiastically support the very people and the very political actors that have robbed them blind.

The reasons for their inexplicable actions will have to wait for further posts, the story is complicated. But I am reminded that W.E.B. Dubois, the first African American to get a doctorate from Harvard, over a century ago discussed the ease with which poorer whites accepted a ‘psychological wage’ in contrast to real compensatory relief. They would eagerly be pacified (and distracted) by those who promised an illusory superiority over those with different skin color or other superficial differences. Hate and division proved such an easy distraction. He described the classic ‘bait and switch’ tactic that has so many voting against their self-interest, and with surprising passion.

This makes me sad. It really does. I loved the people I grew up with. Now, many are an alien species to me.

PS: If you want a witty tour through my childhood, look for ‘A Clueless Rebel’ on Amazon.

Al Franken, one of my favorite public figures, commented on the most recent U.N. report suggesting that the globe put its collective affairs in order since we are all going to die soon. Like our friend the dinosaur, who went extinct suddenly after an unfortunate collision with an asteroid, we are on the precipice of a similar fate due to anthropogenic (human caused) global warming.

His perceptive take on the issue is that many Americans, especially baby boomers, feel like they are lucky enough to be on the ‘last chopper out of Saigon.’ They will die just in time, before the apocalypse becomes reality. Such a clever man.

For those of you too young to recall party line phones that were tied by a cord to the wall, the ‘last chopper out of Saigon’ references the embarrasing and hasty retreat of the American military and their South Vietnamies allies as the NVA and the Vietcong swarmed into the South’s capital in 1975 and toward their inevitable triumph. Those on the chopper escaped ‘just in time.’

To mercilessly beat this analogy into the ground, baby boomers and those even older (like the ancient fart writing this post), can smile in the face of doom. We likely will die before the inevitable collapse of civilization into toasty cinders. We will have boarded the last chopper to whatever comes next. So, do we have a dog in this fight? Since I was raised as a Catholic, I am wrought with guilt and therefore feel some reponsibility in this matter. Catholic guilt is a terrible thing … avoid it like the plague.

It is not like we have not been warned. I mean, the dinosaurs were caught by surprise. Over a century ago, there were reports in our major neswpapers that fossil fuel use was releasing dangerous amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. Now, we have irrefutable scientific evidence of our complicity in our species’ doom. Carbon dioxide emissions grew very gradually over time until the early 1940s (when I was born though I don’t think their is a causal thing going on here). After that, they increased exponentially and now imminently threaten the homeostatic status of our atmosphere that has kept temps relatively stable for eons. Soon, very soon, the game will be over, the last chopper will have left.

Our collective teponse to doomesday? We worry about March Madness, Prince Harry’s relationship to the Royal Family, Hunter Biden’s laptop, and whether Aaron Rodgers will play for the Packers next year. Really? Give me a f#@king break!

I am freaking glad I’m on the last chopper out of Saigon. I don’t want to be around when the ice caps melt and astonished politicians point fingers and say ‘but no one told us.’ We have known for a long time and chose not to respond. Shame on us!

…………………………………………………

PS: An old Peace Corps buddy of mine has written a scholarly book on the topic. Climate Policy Foundations, William C. Whitesell, Cambridge Press, 2011). He writes useful books, unlike me.

I can now insert a foto. Not bad for someone who has trouble changing the time on any of his clocks or watches. I marvel at the ability of young people to master all things technological and yet remain so dumb in other ways.

Of course, I did many questionable things in my sketchy youth. This is me overlooking the Thames River some 55 years ago. Can that be correct … 55 freaking years? At least, I think this is me. After all, this guy has a full head of dark hair and is skinny as shit. I’m on my way to spend two years in India, as a Peace Corps volunteer. Ah yes, two years living in a remote desert region of Rajasthan, defecating in a hole, and trying to be an ‘expert’ in an area about which I knew virtually nothing. Actually good training for my later career as a policy wonk and academic type … refining the ability to fake things.

India was a tough site, especially back then. We were really isolated, no cell phones of wi-fi. You were on your own, battling disease and heat and loneliness. But, in the end, despite our griping, this turned out to be a special and unique experience. While India merely survived our presence, we, on the other hand, learned who we were. I know I absorbed so much about the impact that culture has on an individual, lessons I brought forward and which greatly influenced my policy and academic work.

There are three things I really miss from those years and experiences:

1. Having a full head of hair.
2. Being that skinny.
3. Having all that time to reflect on things.

I can’t share all I want about those years here. But listen, go and find Our Grand Experience, my memoir on India 44. It is a witty recollection of my fruitless efforts to be an agricultural expert along with the equally funny stories of my fellow volunteers. Humorous, sad, and insightful. End of my self-promoting pitch (for now) :-).

Welcome to WordPress! This is your first post. Edit or delete it to take the first step in your blogging journey.

I am a refugee from Facebook who is seeking asylum in a blog. I cannot count the number of times I’ve been thrown in their gulag for using sophisticated humor or sarcasm or irony. I was thrown off their site (presumably for good) after posting a meme fearuring Jesse Owens getting hid gold medal at the 1936 Olympics. You are right, that makes no sense. I had almost 30,000 friends and followers at the time.

I started over as Jim Corbett and quickly rose to have some 7, 000 friends and followers. Still, they kept throwing me off, the final time for commenting on a post from an octogenerian about his lonely life. I jokingly commented that he would be visited by someone from the escort service. I guess they thought I was selling sex. Sure, a 78 year old geezer was selling sex to an 80 something geezer. Give me a break. Their community standards program is beyond incompetence.

I’ve gotten many emails from former FB freinds pleading for me to find a way to connect again. Several suggested a blog since Facebook is hopeless, Twitter is owned by a neo-Nazi, and the other sites seemed aimed at kids. So, here I am!

At present, I have no idea where I will go with this concept, other than experiment for a while. On Facebook, I posted a number of humorous and political memes along with occasional musings on our politics and current events. I may do more of the latter here but, as an experiment, anything is possible.

Join me in this experiment. Let me know what you are thinking. I can be reached at:

corbettirp@aol.com