Monday, July 11th 2022

Another beat up lazy Monday morning here without rain. Apparently town is getting flooded. All the rain that is falling is falling on everybody but us. I don’t know why I have to be so lucky. The Taurus says that a black cloud followed the Jews around in the desert and you could slap a rock and get some water. I’m living with the exact opposite. I can’t even get my pump to get water out of my well and though they promised rain 3 days in a row, literally there is not a cloud in the sky.

My choices for doing something about this are pretty limited. If the newest problem with getting this pump running is a broken plastic coupling, I hate plastic parts, I cannot go to the market today because the market is closed today. I also cannot go tomorrow because I am awaiting this land inspection. Of course I have no idea what time of the day they are coming but the market only works in the morning until 2:00. The odds of the state showing up even before I have a chance to run and get on the train are minimal. It’s possible, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

This leaves me with Wednesday to run to town. In the meantime, we watered yesterday and again, it’s really supposed to rain today and tomorrow and the next day but we never get any rain which means my only option is to go back to my original pump. The Plus is that it will work and I can get at least 2 days of water and possibly three out of my well. The negatives are that there’s not going to be any drinking water available from that well because the vibrations from the submersible pump destroy the water quality. I can make sure to fill up the house tanks before I do this but still, we’re working on little technical nuances here. Better something than nothing but still, this is an irritating mess.

Then again, I don’t really feel so much like a rookie at this anymore. I’ve basically done all the jobs that there is to do. Sometimes I’ve been a little lazy with my work and sometimes it has come back to bite me. I don’t think I have been unilaterally incompetent because of laziness. I know if I was fully able-bodied I could do more and personal physical issues have been the main problem I have kept me from really being perfect about all of this. But I think generally speaking, I have done the job I set out to do and I’ve made most all of the things happen that I wanted to happen. As with all things, it’s a little good and a little bad. I really thought we would get a little bit more rain but basically, I’m not really worried about anything anymore. I’m here and I’m doing my job and that’s it. Now it’s just kind of my job.

This does mean that I don’t really feel any sense of excitement that I had earlier. I had quite a bit of drive at the beginning of this year to do some good things. There were lots of emotions in there and I really didn’t mind going through the pain. I don’t really have that drive right now. It’s all becoming just a little banal. I’m used to all of it. I’ve seen all this already. I’m getting into the repetitions now. This doesn’t mean that I can just get up and walk away from it. There is the Zen perfection of doing one’s task over and over again, perfecting the movements, making them smooth and graceful. There is a beauty to minimalism and usualness. The World turns a lot slower than human endeavors. I can enjoy the pace and the tempo and take what beauty I am given with gratitude.

I actually think that this is a more correct philosophy for life. I do think people should embrace minimalism, especially when it comes to Nature and to learn to enjoy the subtleties and the nuances more than the giant expensive explosions. Those expensive explosions get old very quickly. You can only pump so much excitement out of something before it becomes a complete irritant. I could give some examples but I think you probably know what I mean.

I have been watching videos about Japanese restaurants. I tend towards vegan restaurants and I have some links to share today about some of the more interesting things I have found. But even in the shops that serve meat, there is this particular Zen physicality that comes along with restaurant work that is a bit hypnotizing. You understand that when you run a restaurant, there’s going to be limitations on the menu but both acquiring the food, preparing the food, cooking and serving and then cleaning, there is a massive amount of physical labor, all of it repetitive and all of it with its extreme nuance. There is also time pressure that goes along with it. Restaurant work is an amazing thing to get used to.

Ideally though, this is where I am headed. This is what I have been looking forward to actually. I’m not sure that I planned on all of the miseries from global warming that I’m getting here. I mean, I understood that this was a part of it and I understood that water was the place to place my attention. I just didn’t think there would be so many negatives to the place, especially socially. I wouldn’t change any of it. I wouldn’t have it any other way really. In fact, I’m kind of glad I learned about my neighbors as quickly as I did. It saved me from wasting a lot of time trying to be friendly with them.

I think allowing the world to settle is the answer. Allowing people to find the things they need quickly and teaching us all to love and respect the nuances of life as they come is the answer to all of our problems. The exact opposite of this, all of the relentless endless noise and excitement and disturbances that we give each other all for the purposes of inspiring economic growth are the problems themselves. These are the destructive aspects of life. In fact, I’ll bet you you could find a direct correlation between economic growth and ecological damage.

In fact, why bother doing the work. I bet you someone has already done it.

Is there a correlation between economic growth and ecological decline?

Economic growth leads to resource depletion and loss of biodiversity. This could harm future ‘carrying capacity of ecological systems’ for the economy. Mar 29, 2021 https://www.economicshelp.org › blog – Environmental impact of economic growth

See what I mean? Ask a question, get an answer. I have to make a note to remind myself to name my writings from this week “ask a question, get an answer”.

So if we are looking at an ecological catastrophe, and we are, and we understand that the foundations of this catastrophe begin with an economic system that drives human activity, therefore the problem is with the economic system. And if we live in a world where we seek constant growth, the answer logically would be to seek constant stability. Stasis. Keeping things the same and getting used to and enjoying the nuances of Zen repetition.

What is Zen repetition?

There are no particular immediate phrases to this search and if you dive in there, you will find that most of it is about meditation. The idea of meditation is usually the repetition of simple phrases or mantras so as to get into a flow or rhythmic state that you can physically kind of GrooVe along with. This is a very hippie way of saying this or at least a musician’s way of saying it. You could lean towards the words altered state of consciousness but I don’t really believe that is practical or wanted. We are not looking to leave the planet, we are looking to enjoy it and become a part of it.

But the word meditation does belong in what I’m speaking about. When you involve yourself in a repetitive physical task, I am exactly talking about working here and not playing or resting, you do find that it becomes very meditative. Perhaps your thoughts will flow to certain areas or perhaps they will go in many different directions. Or perhaps you won’t really think of anything at all and you’ll just watch your hands and the instruments you’re working with. The point is though that when you are deeply involved, time passes in a particular manner. When you are deeply into your work, very often you are at peace.

So, I chose writing as my hobby or avocation many years ago. I chose theater writing and then a little bit later screenplays as my medium. When I had a low in my life and I needed something more engaging than what I had, I would come up with an idea and flesh it out on paper. There would be something of an inspiration to start it, some idea I wanted to talk about or a situation I wanted to illustrate and then I would just do the creative work of putting it together. Almost universally, I would start with some things like a timeline so I could get a genuine human idea of the pacing. Then I would put together some structure in terms of the scenes and the people in the scenes and what sorts of things they would talk about. When all of this is in place, it’s just a matter of putting the dialogue together. Sometimes you take bits and pieces from outside sources or sometimes you even throw little random bits in there just for interest. There is just no other way to say it. You build these things just like building a house.

I used the same sort of planning and filling in to put together the systems that make this house I’m living in work. I have been almost completely uninterested in decor or remodeling or rebuilding. The structure itself is fine by me and I’ve really only been interested in seeing if I can grow some food for myself and making good use of what this particular piece of land has to offer. Again, I didn’t feel like bringing in tractors and bulldozers to recreate anything here. I just used what I was given and tried to bring a touch more function to it.

What I’m talking about though is that it is the work of doing these projects that is most interesting. Perhaps I enjoy the planning equally. I very much enjoy making plans on how to make things happen. Probably I like planning more than I like doing the physical labor but that only has to do with how much pain I’m experiencing here later in life. When I was younger I had more bodies than mine, now I have more mind than body. It’s a shame not to be able to put these two things together but that’s life.

But the overriding thread through all of this is that nothing I have ever done has been specifically and only to make money. All of the writing works that have been done and this particular place had nothing really to do with making money. It was more idealism. Certainly being able to eat something that comes as a result of your work is a definite positive and you could attach economics to it. And of course, if people wish to see some of the artworks I’ve created, there’s a possibility of remuneration. I’m not against getting paid for my work. I’m just saying that it did not start with economics and because of that, and because I have lived my life on a very tight budget, everything ends up being rather sustainable. I do not believe I’m putting a great burden on the ecology by anything I do.

This would be my idea of Zen repetition. Doing things again and again looking for some sense of reasonable perfection, enjoying the minutiae and subtleties where you can but not being destructive in your actions. I would think this would be a lovely goal for anybody. After this, you just have to remember to be polite when taking in other people’s projects. You have to respect others as much as we should respect our environment.

Perhaps this is the inevitable mathematics of peace. Allowing people to build something for themselves. Not everybody would want to do this. Some people would gravitate in other directions. There seems to be quite a few people who wish to be told what to do or given their jobs. I have always preferred to create my own but I’m sure if it weren’t only for money and personal satisfaction while respecting nature was the absolute goal, I’m sure there are quite a few idealists who wouldn’t mind sharing their thoughts with others.

These pictures at the top of the page came from my ex partner. The work ran a little bit late yesterday. Nobody was paying much attention to the time and she had given herself a very minimalist window of opportunity. She just refuses to do the bicycle train thing and every other variant is either more expensive or more time consuming. So she was late for her bus and ended up walking the service road to the train. She took some pictures of some local herbs that we use for tea and that nice landscape. My ex partner is excellent at zeb meditations. It’s probably the reason why we got together in the first place. She’s not me and I am not her. But we have probably more in common then we are different.

***

It’s 12:30 and I’m taking a break. I guess this day turned out to be a bit more athletic than I thought.

In the morning, I genuinely thought I would take it easy. I know that I need to do whatever I need to do to move water to places I will need it to water the field later on. The last 3 weeks of July and the month of August are going to be like a war I guess trying to keep enough water on the plants until they are ready to be harvested. Some will go later but I think that September will bring at least some cooler weather. Certainly the second half of the month will be that way.

But the day didn’t turn out this way so far. In fact, it’s gone completely different. My thinking is that all of this was caused by some green food.

I understand that 26 and a half weeks into a project called green food that it might be a little ridiculous to try and be prophetic. But let me tell you what green food is and apparently what it does.

Last night before I went to sleep, I threw some buckwheat and chickpeas into a jar and filled up the jar with cold water. I absolutely knew that in the morning this would be a fully edible and tasty breakfast and one that would not burden my system too much and give me lots of energy. I know this because I’ve been doing it for a little while now and I’ve seen the positive physical and mental effects of raw food. At least in the morning.

Now, I have also been using my blender to make green sauces. These are made by using some kind of a protein / fat like peanuts or sunflower seeds and mixing them with various Garden greens. I tend to add a little salt and pepper for taste and sometimes I add some chili pepper for some yang. Other than this, I let the flavor of the vegetables carry the day.

My usual green of choice at least as a base is Dill. Dill is amazingly delicious and adds a certain freshness to things. I think it’s one of my favorite herbs right now and I’m really lucky that it grows in absolute abundance everywhere without me doing a damn thing about it. Just don’t destroy it and you have all you want.

This morning though, I was faced with the choice of whether I wanted to go out in the field and cut some things or whether I could use what I had lying around in the kitchen. Specifically, my ex partner pulled up some rather festery looking daikon radishes. They were not really healthy at the bottom, they were bolting and going to seed on top and for some reason she pulled up three plants. She did not drop them in water to keep them fresh but instead just sort of laid them down at the end of the kitchen and forgot about him. I don’t know what she was thinking or what I should do with them but there they were. They were also a couple of full Young horseradish plants. She pulled them up out of one of the boxes and again just laid it down without water.

So here’s where this story gets interesting. The other day, I used an entire radish plant in the blender for greens and it turned out really well. I don’t know if you knew this or not but radish greens are not only edible but very tasty. Radishes are off in the first veggies that appear in the springtime and I am a great fan of the greens as well as the red and white are root tubers. As daikons are radishes, I took a wild guess but there was nothing particularly wrong with the leaves. And if there was nothing wrong with the leaves, why would there be anything wrong with the seed pods or even the stalk? 

So this was my choice. First some peanuts and then some sunflower seeds. And then an entire daikon radish plant. I cut the root off and use the potato peeler to take off most of the dirt and unsightly damage. Then I washed it a little bit with a sponge and water to get most of everything else out and then I threw that in the blender as well along with the horseradish plant, root, stalk and leaves.

Maybe what I’m trying to tell you is that this was unbelievably tasty. You could use this as a salad dressing and be completely happy. You can also use it as a sauce for any dish you want, I would recommend vegetable dishes of course. It was ridiculously flavorful in many interesting ways, gave what felt like an absolute vitamin lift to my body as I was eating it and basically made breakfast a rather invigorating experience.

Immediately I noticed that my brain was going in creative ways. I started thinking about things to write about and say and things that I needed to get done. I started solving problems and wondering why I was sitting still. Suddenly, all I wanted to do was get up and do something. Sitting down was just too uncomfortable.

I also really needed to go to the bathroom.

No details about that but after I walked out in the field and found quite a few baby potato beetles. Maybe they are from Saturday or maybe I have been lazy. I would not call it an infestation. The seed piles were very small this year. Probably from a lack of water or maybe because I had never really allowed them to take root. But I just can’t have this sort of thing so I went to discontinue the conversation. No fanfare, no tools and no insecticides. Just a little push between thumb and forefinger and whatever dreams and aspirations those little ones might have had go into The ether to be shared collectively by all of us.

It took two trips around the potato box before I was satisfied. After that I started looking around for more things to do. My partner did her thing in the boxes so it wasn’t really much to pay attention to there. But what could not escape my attention was the lentil field. No one’s been out there in a while and the place is completely overgrown. Yes, there are beans growing but frankly, there’s no way to get to them. Somebody had to do a job.

So I gathered three tools that I thought might be good for the job and carried them down to the beginning of the center path. It took about 1 minute for me to understand that all of them were useless. I dreamed a little bit about a cordless electric weed wacker. But then I did the math of how much money I would be spending and how soon before it turned into garbage. I also owned a weed wacker one time and I remember how hard it was to find fishing line that actually lasted or did the job. It is an imperfect tool and one that requires quite a bit of attention. I threw that idea into the trash bin and blamed myself immediately for laziness.

I then decided that what I really needed was a bench grinder. If I had a bench grinder, I could sharpen myself a tool to a razor’s edge and just shave down the path effortlessly. No electricity, no playing around with a mechanical deal. Just a raise or sharp instrument to cut myself with, give myself tetanus and end up back in the hospital again. 

Again, I have to stop myself from these sorts of thoughts. I have to quit solving the problem with buying things or making things. I have to quit solving problems by finding an easier way. I have to stop thinking my way through every bloody problem. The only tool that I needed was the only tool I always have without any money whatsoever.

I went back to the house and grabbed a pair of cheap gardening gloves, got down on my knees and started tearing out everything growing in the path with my hands. It didn’t take very long but it was probably the best thing I could have done. Along the way I noticed that quite a few of the lentil plants are absolutely ready to be harvested. They are brown through and through, even the seeds are dry. It’s time to take them and, truthfully, start gathering the beans so that we could get maybe three meals out of the whole field.

Seriously, lentils are a field crop and not a garden crop. We did this mostly because they are also nitrogen fixers as a way of improving the soil in this Garden. But really, nobody expected this to be food. You can grow beans in enough abundance to be food for yourself for a while. You are not getting very far gardening lentils. Just so you know.

I made it halfway through the first row when I ran upon this absolutely gorgeous daisy/dill plant. Have you ever seen something so beautiful in your life? And of course it is absolute love for pollinators and other flying herbivores. I didn’t have the heart to knock it down.

But what I did was get up and get my wheelbarrow and a rake. It is now officially harvest Time and my first crop to be harvested are the weeds. I started the Year by cutting these paths to use the dirt for the flower boxes and now I’m ending the year by harvesting what’s growing there to feed the boxes next year as compost.

After dropping off the wheelbarrow load, I came back and started working on another path. I then raked them up and wheelbarrowed the contents over to the compost pile. The compost pile is going to require a little work but I’m not sorry. Maybe by next spring or somewhere within the next year or two, there’s going to be a lot of sweet organic material that I can drop into my garden boxes to help feed New Life.

I got tired though. I needed to take a break. I’m not even slightly hungry. I don’t think I’m going to be hungry again for a long time. But I needed a moment to catch my breath and I thought to write this down so I remember this moment. This is the result of green food. Green food creates good green people. I knew I was talking about something when I named it this blog. Now I have the answer. We are supposed to be eating plants. It makes us who we are supposed to be and stops us from being who we are not.

***

It’s about 8:00 and I guess I need to wrap up a few things.

Today was a bit of a mixed bag. I got some work done outside which was good. I didn’t pump any water which was bad. I don’t know why I got lazy on the water side. I guess I will make it a priority tomorrow. But on the plus side, I did make a great dent in the lentil Garden. It was just one of those things that I just didn’t pay attention to. I have an explanation. I even respect my own explanation. My explanation is not a lazy explanation. But then we could very well consider that this whole thing is my responsibility and that absolutely no explanation makes any sense. It’s hard to say. But I’m not going to beat myself up about it and I did the work today and I feel like I’ve won a battle on two fronts. I’ve dug deeply into finishing up the garden and also I’ve gotten a huge jump on next year’s compost. For these things at least I feel like I had a good day.

Tomorrow is inspection day and I got a call from a very nice inspector who told me that she would be here after 1:00. She said something about between 1:00 and 2:00. I don’t know how long these inspections take or how many people are coming. She said the word I which means she does the labor herself. I don’t know what equipment she uses or whether she just eyeballs things. I don’t really think there’s anything interesting about this property to look at. There is some question about the trees which absolutely used to be on this property but somehow managed to slip into the forest department. I’ve been told I am welcome to buy them back for an amount of money that I’ve never really felt like parting with. I don’t think I’m harming anyone with my activities. Anyway, tomorrow everything becomes official and then there is one last thing but I have to worry about.

There was no call from the medical bureau unfortunately. Whatever the word quickly meant from the nice lady from Brest who asked for my identification had nothing to do with any quick motion or any paperwork going back to Minsk. Yes absolutely, I am thinking of my one particular bureaucrat and I am definitely considering filing suit. I am suffering and if they are doing one thing specifically to push me towards paying money rather than accommodating me through social medicine, I’m going to sue this person. Not the clinic, just this one bureaucrat. And something tells me I might even win.

The reasoning behind her actions though are quite political, quite conservative and rather shameful from almost any point of view. I can understand what she’s thinking if I consider objectification a rational way of addressing other human beings. In terms of her job, this would be abuse of power. And if she walks around looking for opportunities to abuse her power, this is way more telling for this country and especially this country as of the last eight years. I have no idea why I’m obligated to feel extra pain. I’ve never done anything to this woman in my life. I never knew her before and I don’t really know her now. All I know is she is violently insulting and she’s causing me more than emotional distress. She might very well have caused me a lifetime injury. Really, she needs to go find another job.

The thing is though, she is not the only one in the world who thinks this way. If anybody reads me regularly, I do seem to spend an awful lot of time picking out and identifying what we might call conservative thinking. This is the accusatory and abusive rhetoric of people who look for other people to piss on. These are not people who are artists or craftsmen or serious workers. These are just people who like to sit around and tell other people how to live and enjoy the opportunity to dish out punishment. Relic of the Christian church? Call it any damn thing you want. I don’t like these people and it’s never fun to be the object of their attention. I think this is one of these reasons for keeping to myself mostly. I am extremely tired of the number of people there are in the world exactly like this. How many books do I have to write about this subject?

But I found something today worth talking about in yet another Star Trek episode. I am binge watching the entire original series right now. Well, I’m not watching all day but I do go for an episode every day.

I also want to say that when speaking of conservatives, the Enterprise is absolutely a part of conservative leadership. They talk a good game about not influencing other cultures and looking for unity between races and of course species. They seem to say that it is about democracy but at the same time, the captain is a powerful guy, he is in love with how powerful he is and the rights to dictate policy that his job gives him and has a proclivity for taking advantage of the pleasures that comes a captain’s way. That he is the boss seems to get him a lot of women as well as a lot of leeway winning arguments with people who are arguably smarter and more realistic than he is.

Today’s episode was a really interesting example of that. The name of this episode is called a private little war. The story concerns a visit to a very earth-like planet that is inhabited by something slightly above Stone age Neanderthals. These people are clearly homo sapiens, they speak English in their way, but they dress in leathers and furs and live a very peaceful existence. They hunt, which means they are not vegetarians, and they have access to metals. But they are knives, Spears and bows and arrows. The wild card on this planet is this crazy single-horned white ape that likes to eat people and has a poisonous venom. You got to be tough to live in a place like this.

The captain and the doctor beam down to the planet simply because Kirk is interested in knowing what has become of his old friend Tyree. They had bonded 13 years previously when Kirk visited the planet and therefore he had the right to divert the actions of an entire starship. Perhaps I missed some genuine point of order but that’s what it seems like to me.

When they get there however, they find out that a different tribe has somehow gotten their hands on flintlock rifles. The idea that so much evolution has taken place in 15 years seems strange and the fact that a Klingon vessel is in the vicinity seems to lead the crew to believe that some foul play is afoot. One of the basic rules is to try not to overtly influence any cultures especially those who are not evolved as much as the federation.

But before they can figure anything out, Spock gets himself shot and has to beam back to the ship. They put a little splash of green paint on his blue uniform to remind us that he has green blood. Don’t worry, Vulcans are tough guys and a little thing like a lead ball is not going to cause any harm for too long.

There is also a woman in this who also wears furs and leather, though for some reason she has fur that is dyed some kind of a red orange artificial color and she wears quite a bit of makeup. So much for rusticity. But she is power mad and she is angry at Tyree because of his pacifist ideas. This other tribe is killing his people and yet he is not willing to kill them. He believes that eventually they will come to their senses and realize how much better it was before all of this killing started.

So this is the premise, I’m not going to get into the resolve but eventually they figure out that the Klingons are indeed behind this and that they are arming one of these groups. Their reason for this of course is to have access to mining rights and the minerals of this planet. Does this sound familiar? If they can get one group to destroy the other groups and have power over them, they can run a puppet government and get whatever they want in terms of natural resources.

The reason I decided to write about this was because of a line of dialogue or a couple of lines of dialogue spoken by the Klingons to a villager who they had gotten to shake their hands. In a brief scene where they were together, the Klingon explained exactly the sort of rhetoric he used to tempt this villager away from peace as a way of life:

APELLA: I thought my people would grow tired of killing. But you were right. They see that it is easier than trading and it has pleasures. I feel it myself. Like the hunt, but with richer rewards.

KRELL: You will be rich one day, Apella, beyond your dreams. The leader of a whole world. A governor in the Klingon Empire.

Just a few minutes before this line, the Klingon advised Mr krell what to do insofar as being a fine leader of men:

KRELL: You are late, my friend Apella.

APELLA: A quarrel by my people. A division of some skins and a hill woman taken this morning. It’s hard to divide one woman.

KRELL: Give her to the man who killed the most of her people. The others will see the profit in bravery. I’ll make a Klingon of you yet.

Exactly. I guess they really want to make Klingons of us all.

But before we can think that we are definitely against the Klingons and for the federation, it should be made clear that James t Kirk wants to arm his friends as well. He doesn’t want to remove the weapons from the planet. He has some kind of a policeman’s bureaucracy to contend with as to whether or not he has actually caught the Klingons and has evidence of their misdeeds. I guess the Klingons are the ultimate conservatives in the galaxy. They love war, they hate intimacy and love and they don’t really give a crap who dies as long as they get what they want.

Dr McCoy argues with Kirk about this, Spock argues with Kirk about this, nobody wants this to turn into a weapons situation. But at the end, after all of the physical abuse suffered, watching this two-faced woman actually take a phaser over to the enemy tribe if this will get her more power, Kirk just simply says he’s tired and wants to go home. His last orders are for Scotty to whip up 100 rifles to give to his friend so that they continue this war. This, says Kirk, is the way it must be.

You know, when I started watching these shows it was mostly just a thought of being intrigued by it. They are an extremely popular franchise, I believe I read somewhere that there are 14 separate franchise entities including the movies and different Cruise going on different types of missions. There is probably as much as 400 or 500 hours of Star Trek that can be seen if you’re into it. But I just can’t get over the perspective of the original series.

It is definitely conservative leadership. There is no hippy peace and love. To join the federation or to join Starfleet is to do so because you love discipline. Perhaps you want adventure and to go to the Stars. But this is secondary. In order to make it in Starfleet, you have to be disciplined. 

There is a lot of money in Starfleet as well. They are not just adventuring around the Galaxy and exploring strange new worlds, seeking out new life and new civilizations. When they boldly go where no one has gone before, they are looking for minerals and other resources. They are exploiters. They have some rules about how they can negotiate, but I don’t think there’s a single episode where phasers are not fired. They talk a lot about democracy, but at the end of the day if something goes wrong, they are there to shoot to kill. 

I suppose if I googled the actual body count of people who died during the original series, they might have a number of crewmen, usually those with red shirts, who seem to have no other purpose other than getting killed during their missions. But in addition to this, they’ve already killed at least 4 billion people when some evil space thing, and they absolutely said this was definitely evil, set to work breaking apart planets just to feed on its minerals. In other words, this evil thing was doing the same thing the Enterprise wanted to do, it was just better and faster at it.

I could also try to look positively at it. I can take one spin line and say that it was addressing things like prejudice. I told that story about Nichelle Nichols the other day and how she actually had Martin Luther King express to her that she was a positive influence for black people by being on the show.

But at the same time, there seems to be no end of people attacking Mr Spock simply for being different. That Leonard nimoy is extremely Jewish and even the Vulcan “live long and prosper” hand sign was taken from Orthodox Jewish ceremony seems to make all of this acrimony towards him as much anti-Semitism as anything. Literally, and this despite his rank of Commander, he is insulted by anyone and everyone in a moment of distress even simple enlisted men and nobody ever seems to do a damn thing about it. Even Dr McCoy, his name pretty much telling us of his Irish Catholic background, cannot seem to find anything to say to spa that is not directly insulting to his species. Certainly spark takes it with eloquence. We are told that his Vulcan logic enures him to pain. Literally, you just can’t kill him, which by the way is another line from this particular episode.

Also for that matter, they never let us forget that uhura is black. She may represent an intelligent black lady, but we never are allowed to forget that she is a lady or that she’s black. We also have a hard time not thinking of the ethnic backgrounds of all of the players. Yes, it is a diverse cast. But, we never actually see any homogeneous dialogue or any lack of specificity in the themes that are addressed to their ethnicities. Maybe they work together but they are never not divided and of course the captain is a white guy.

I guess the point is that I don’t really know what to say about all of this. At the end of the day, you could say that I’m investing in myself. I can say that all of this thinking and writing that I have done should mean something. A friend of mine made a comment about how our teeth make us carnivores. I’m sure he saw that somewhere or heard it on television or something like that and believed it was enough of a reason to dismiss any thoughts I had about veganism being a better way of life. My friend is very conservative but we keep it going and have been keeping it going for 30 years. I feel a bit like Spock sometimes.

But this is really the whole thing. It’s not really that intelligent of a series. Certainly, there is this great technology and humanity still exists. But it seems that governments somehow have managed to continue with the exact same themes they always have. The rhetoric changes. But eventually, it is conservatives who make themselves feel better by speaking as if they are liberal Democrats. They don’t really believe it and their actions do not mesh with their words. But they get to fly around in space so it’s enough.