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It’s been a week since we returned home from Marquette. Our time on the Michigan Upper Peninsular was spent walking, sightseeing, and enjoying the blissfully fresh coolness of a Lake Superior summer. Wonders were sighed over, the clean air and friendliness of the natives enjoyed, and plans to move there with haste, as soon as our retirement date of May 2011 looms, were made.

Illinois hasn’t changed. Neither, it seems, has the rest of America. Our extended vacation took us away from that other world of Washington madness, power-crazed politicians, and a media rabidly slavering in its attempts to drag the American public towards its own frenzied arguments.

The debate over healthcare rumbles on. Can Obama succeed? He’s bitterly opposed by the rich, whose representatives in Congress are as wealthy and powerful as they are. Poor, and middle class, Americans would benefit enormously from fair, affordable, healthcare. Unfortunately, their representatives in Congress are as powerful and wealthy as those supporting the rich. Consequently, most politicians are on the side of the rich, even though they go to enormous lengths to disguise that fact, putting forward the most absurd arguments against a US health service in the hope it will sway some of the less intelligent among us, like – for example – employees of corporate media.

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton wrings her hands over Kim Jong-il who just won’t do as he’s told. She accuses Iran of creating an arms race, then announces the US will flood the Middle East with weapons if Iran gets “the bomb” – such crass logic.

What primitive beings we mortals are. This week saw a lunar eclipse. We rushed halfway round the world to view it, jumped into sacred rivers, or beat ourselves with sticks, to ward off the evil spirits conjured by this event. The media thrashed it to death. For a brief moment we stood in awe of a routine celestial happening of no consequence whatever to the human race, then, having made our sacrifices to the gods, forgot all about it.

What fools we are. Viewed through the wrong end of a telescope we are no more than rats in an overcrowded cage, bickering and fighting over our bit of bedding space, squabbling over food, the biggest and strongest dominating while those who oppose are unmercifully squashed and trodden underfoot.

How long before some Universal event tips over the cage, and we all learn in one catastrophic moment that none of it matters?

Who knows?

Lake Superior is the largest freshwater lake on the planet, by surface area. The statistics are stunning. It covers an area of nearly 32,000 square miles and its deepest point is over 1,300 feet. Superior is so big that, if it were emptied, it would take the water from all of America’s other Great Lakes, plus a further three Lake Eries, to refill it. It regularly produces waves in excess of twenty feet, and occasionally thirty feet.

To stand on its shoreline and ingest its vastness is a humbling experience.

Yet, a mere 10,000 years ago, it did not exist.

Filed under: Reflections

I’m in Marquette, on the Upper Peninsular of Michigan. It’s wonderful. If you don’t turn on the TV it’s possible to get through a whole day without hearing the name, Michael Jackson. Bliss!

The weather is terrific. While central Illinois steams in ninety degree heat, here the sun beams down generating a balmy seventy Fahrenheit, with nighttime temperatures dipping to a deliciously cool fifty degrees.

It was our intention to return home Saturday, but on Wednesday the car decided to shed its hydraulic clutch fluid everywhere and the garage can’t get the parts till next Monday, so we’re stranded with only a hastily-acquired rental car for company.

Darn it, I was so looking forward to that stifling Illinois heat again. Now, we’ll have to languish on the banks of Lake Superior, suffer sand in our chicken sandwiches, and quaff Chateauneuf-Du-Pape for a further three days.

Still, hopefully, by the time we do get back they’ll have buried Michael Jackson, in more ways than one.

Filed under: Wish you were here

No-one would suggest Bernie Madoff’s crime wasn’t serious. It was stealing, pure and simple. Probably the greatest ‘heist’ of all time. It was hardly on par with the crimes of a serial killer, though.

Or, was it?

There was a time when human life was the most precious thing. To take it away warranted the full penalty of the law. A life sentence, with no time off for good behavior, was the only suitable punishment for cold-blooded murder.

(NOTE: the all-embracing preciousness of human life rules out any mention here of the death penalty, which negates that preciousness and is no more than legalized revenge killing).

Yet, Madoff received a cold-blooded murderer’s sentence, simply for stealing.

Does this mean money has now become more important to society than human life? Is the greenback dollar the ultimate symbol of everything we hold precious?

Does anyone out there remember “Charlie’s Angels”?

“Charlie’s Angels” was a long running TV show from the seventies. Farrah Fawcett-Majors played the character, Jill Munroe, one of ‘The Angels’ in the first series, then returned for a number of episodes in series three and four.

This poster of Farrah Fawcett just happens to be the best selling pin-up poster of all time. It sold over twelve million copies.

Farrah Fawcett died on June 25th, from cancer, at the age of sixty-two years.

While cable TV aired the usual re-runs to mark her passing, and Larry King managed a mention on his CNN evening show, in the news bulletins Fawcett’s death was hardly mentioned.

Why? Because a little runt of a guy whose only claim to fame was his ability to sing and dance, behave like a spoiled kid throughout his fifty year life, and surround himself with vulnerable under-age children, chose that same day – June 25th – to expire on the floor of his California mansion, from years of drug abuse and unnecessary cosmetic surgeries.

The only surprise about Michael Jackson’s demise was how long it took to happen.

Both Fawcett and Jackson narrowly beat another fifty year old to the mythical ‘Pearly Gates’.

King of the pitchmen, Billy Mays, was found dead in the early hours of June 28th, from what appears to have been heart failure.

Mays’s claim to fame was his ability to sell useless products to brain dead housewives, who’d buy anything waved at them from a TV screen if it meant they could cease the vacuuming for ten minutes.

Death is no joke. Invariably, someone is broken by grief at the loss of even the most dastardly and worthless of individuals.

Life, however, is a huge comedy. At least, that part of life involving human beings. Surely there must be gods somewhere rolling helplessly, clutching their sides with mirth, as they watch we mortals constantly manifest our abundant inanity?

A mere four years ago, the media circus rallied in pursuit of a pedophile charged with preforming acts of gross indecency on minors. Shortly before that event this same individual was filmed dangling a newborn baby over a third floor balcony. The heinous nature of his crimes was discussed and dissected in a media bloodfest, the accused viciously slandered, tried, found guilty before even entering a courthouse.

Now he’s dead, that same media is moving, with all the precision of a great computerized monster, to turn him into a god.

If the deities on Mount Olympus could rein in their mirth for just a moment they might pause to ask themselves why mankind’s behavior is so fickle. Yet, they don’t have to, for the reason’s plain to see. It manifests in the form of a green-backed dollar bill.

The longer Michael Jackson’s memory is kept alive the more records and memorabilia will be sold. Already his sagging record sales have rocketed skywards. Keeping public interest in the Jackson story alive is the media’s responsibility. It means higher ratings, and that in turn produces greater advertising revenue. The inevitable squabbles over his possessions will likely rumble on for years, causing corporate executives to rub their hands with glee. It’s likely Jackson will be worth much more to them dead, than he ever was while alive.

There’s nothing to be gained from keeping the memory of Farrah Fawcett alive. No hit records, just a few long-binned TV shows and Hollywood movies.

As for old Billy Mays – well, I turned on the TV this morning and there he was, grinning back at me with a bottle of domestic cleaner clutched in his hairy fist.

After all, it’s not in the make-up of advertising executives to pull those adverts for a while, spare a thought for Billy’s wife and family, or those of us who might just consider it a mark of respect.

Not when there’s a greenback, or two, at stake.

Filed under: Rich man’s world