Rant #2,649: Written On the Wind

Today is May 6, but an anniversary passed that I think should be noted.
 
On May 4, the Ranting and Raving Blog turned 12 years old.
 
Although not yet ready for its bar mitzvah, this blog that you are reading has made it through a dozen years, and right at the top, I have to thank you for supporting it as much as you have.
 
Way back in May 2009—when things were very, very much different than they are today—I decided that I needed another outlet to vent, to talk, to chat, and to basically get off my chest exactly what I was thinking.
 
I had been a professional writer for a number of years then, but I was always pigeonholed into writing what my employers wanted me to write, which was entirely understandable.
 
But as a writer, I did not want to be straitjacketed, and since I love to write, why not write some more, but write about stuff that I was interested in … whether it was a current event or news item, or record collecting, or baseball, or about people who put glue on their heads or women who feel the need to show themselves off in the latest bikinis.
 
So I started the Ranting and Raving Blog to satisfy my need to write, write, and write some more about the things I wanted to write about.
 
If you wanted to join me and read my writing, that was fine with me.
 
And if you had an opposing viewpoint, that was fine with me too.
 
And over the past 12 years, the blog has taken me to places I never thought I would discuss or go to, but it pretty much is shaped by what I want to talk about.
 
The incredible thing about the blog is that probably 75 percent of the time, I have no idea what I am going to write about on that particular day.
 
Today was such a day.
 
I had no idea what subject I was going to pursue today, and when I sat down at my computer, it kind of dawned on me that the blog’s anniversary was coming up. I kind of remember that because I know I created this thing right after my birthday and right before my daughter’s birthday, but I never remember the exact date of its creation.
 
So yes, I missed it by two days, but what the heck … as I said, I write what I want to write about, so why not write about the blog’s 12th anniversary, even though it is a few days late?
 
And in 2022, the blog will celebrate its 13th anniversary, so it will have its own literary bar mitzvah, which I think it pretty neat.
 
And even though a few years ago, during an April Fools Day spoof, I said I was giving up writing this blog, the truth of the matter is that the blog is more important than ever to me, and I have no intention of giving it up any time soon.
 
It is just too much fun to write each weekday, so what, me worry?
 
Twelve years of this isn’t too much. As far as I am concerned, I haven’t even gotten started … which is sort of a white lie, but you just know that there are plenty of other things that I will have the chance to write about using this forum to put my thoughts down on.
 
And no, I have never gotten a dollar out of this blog. It is incentivized, but no one clicks on the ads, so I don’t get any money from that.
 
I don’t even have the blog spread across search pages, because I am really not interested in that.
 
I want to keep it small and nice and cozy.
 
Yes, I do put it up on Facebook each day in two of my members-only sites there, but that is simply as an added feature of those two sites.
 
I do put up a teaser each day on Facebook for the general public to read what I have to say, but generally, the blog has a small audience, and that is what I like about it—you read it if you want to read it.
 
What is next for the blog?
 
I don’t know, other than I will continue to put out product each weekday into the foreseeable future.
 
I toyed with taking the blog to YouTube and making it something of a “vlog,” but at least right now, that doesn’t appeal to me.
 
I was also thinking about maybe doing the same thing on Facebook, making it sort of a daily video blog, but that doesn’t really appeal to me right now.
 
I am a writer, not a performer or an actor, so why not do what I do best and just write, write and write some more?
 
The last time I acted was in a school play in third grade, where I was a painter, wearing a beret and a false beard. I don’t remember how that fit into the play, but my previous acting experience was in the second grade, where I played the Farmer in the Dell.
 
My one line was, “Ask the white cock. He will tell you where to go.”
 
After reciting that golden line, I should have known my acting days were over and done with right then and there, but it took me one more year to really cement my place in the “has-been-but-never-was” acting category, so I think I will just stick with writing for now.
 
Let me tell you, the past 12 years have been fun, and I hope to continue to do this for as long as I like.
 
So, as I celebrate the 12th anniversary of the blog, albeit two days late, all I can say is the following:
 
“Write On!” 

Rant #2,648: Your Cheatin' Heart

Seemingly everybody cheats one way or another.
 
Some people cheat on their taxes.
 
Others cheat while driving, as they go through stop signs, pass school buses, and speed toward their destination, among other things.
 
Some people say that we were cheated out of 2020 and maybe even 2021 by the presence of a virus that has established new protocols that are untenable.
 
Heck, our prior president, Donald Trump, said he was cheated out of a second term by voting irregularities, including people voting more than once, people voting under different names, and people voting who were not citizens and thus, should not have been anywhere near a voting booth.
 
But most of us who cheat do get away with it, at one level or another, unless you are someone like Bernie Madoff, who cheated with peoples’ money and ended up paying the ultimate price for his shell game.
 
I mean, how many times have you gotten a ticket for speeding or gong through a red light versus how many times you actually did it?
 
What I am leading up to here is that in Major League Baseball, cheating, to a certain degree, has been going on since the beginning of time, or in baseball’s case, certainly during the past 100-plus years.
 
Even non-baseball fans have heard of the 1919 Chicago White Sox, who, during supposedly the last pandemic we had, threw the World Series that year at the behest of some big-time gamblers.
 
Those participating in the scheme paid for their deeds by being banished from the game, including “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, one of the best players of the era, who was not only “Shoeless,” but he was also evidently “Clueless.”
 
Flash forward to more recent times, and just about every team has been accused of stealing signs—either “legally” or “illegally”—and some have been found out, but most have not.
 
When I say “legally,” I mean that there are certain players who have had the knack for being able to pick up things from the other team simply by watching them. Fred “Chicken” Stanley, not one of the greats of the game, was a Hall of Fame sign stealer, and he did it right from his usual perch on the bench.
 
Then there are the “illegal” sign stealers. Cleveland’s old, cavernous Municipal Stadium was a ripe place for these actions, as people were regularly perched at different points in the often nearly empty 80,000-seat stadium with cameras and other electronic devices stealing signs with aplomb.
 
And then you have the more recent steroid area, where players were pumping up their bodies with substances to make them both super-human and weird, i.e. Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, the poster boys of this era, who weren’t really ever convicted of much of anything untoward.
 
Fast forward to the past few years, and you have teams that are stealing signs electronically through Apple watches and even through … get this … banging on garbage pails.
 
And the latter is where we sit now, with the Houston Astros having been proven to have stolen signs during at least the 2017 American League Championship Series, but who probably were stealing signs against baseball rules during the entirely of that season and into 2018 and 2019, too, before they were found out.
 
Sure, a few heads rolled when all of this came out—the manager, a coach, a general manager and one specific player who had retired and was named manager of another team all lost their jobs—but players were given immunity, so with the exception of the one player who had already moved on, none of these players were penalized at all for their wrongdoing, which led to their World Series win in 2017.
 
Yes, the Astros are still considered World Series champions of 2017, even though they cheated their way to this success.
 
And what has made it all the more worse is that the main culprits of this nonsense, the very players who benefited from this canard, have pretty much blown it off, and never admitted to doing much of anything wrong.
 
This has riled some opposing players and many fans of opposing teams, and last night, the Astros met the New York Yankees in Yankee Stadium for the first time with fans in the stands since all of this has come out.
 
The Astros beat the Yankees in the American League Championship Series of the years that they have been accused of cheating by banging garbage pails to alert batters of what pitch was coming, and the Yankees have not forgotten that they might have been prevented from going to the World Series in at least two years because the cheating went down to the deciding games of that series, and it appeared that the Astros knew exactly what was coming when they won each of the deciding games.
 
So yesterday, with about 10,000 fans in the stands sounding like the place was full to the brim with nearly 50,000 fans, the Astros came to play, and the Yankees handled it with their own type of aplomb. The only way to answer the Astros was to outplay them, and that is what they did, beating them 7-3 while the fans booed and yelled and held up signs and stamped their feet berating the Astros for what they did.
 
Sure, it was just one game, and there are two more in this particular series, and further, no one would bat an eyelash if the two teams meet again in this year’s American League Championship Series to see who goes to the World Series.
 
Each team got off to rotten starts, but have picked it up the last two weeks, and nobody would be surprised if five months from now, the scenario presents itself once again.
 
So one game is one game, but the Yankees did just about what they had to do to get a very slight amount of solace for what happened a few years ago.
 
It probably didn’t amount to that much, but for the players that were there a few years ago, I guess it gave them at least some temporary and minor satisfaction.
 
But again, they have a game today against the Astros, a game tomorrow against the same team, and then they have more than 100 more games to play this season, so they just have to play on, continue to play at the high level that they have been playing at after a miserable start, and hope that things fall their way during this season.
 
Would they love to play the Astros in this year’s American League Championship Series once again?
 
You bet they would, and if they beat them, that might close the door on this entire episode …
 
But it won’t really, until an asterisk is attached to the Astros’ World Series win in 2017, with the footnote stating clearly that the team cheated their way to the title that year.
 
Nothing else would close the book on this than the addition of that little asterisk, but whether that happens or not, yesterday had to make the Yankees feel a bit better, their fans feel a little bit better, and yes, baseball feel a little bit better …
 
If only for one day and one game. 

Rant #2,647: Pleasant Valley Sunday (?)

The world is finally beginning to open up.
 
During the next few days and weeks and months, we will all be able to do things that we enjoy doing, with fewer restrictions.
 
This is happening in most of the country, but in other parts of the U.S., like Oregon, the coronavirus supposedly is running rampant, and in those areas, increased restrictions are supposedly being put in place to stem the tide.
 
I wonder if the “Occupy” protesters—those that took over cities like Portland last year—are also part of these restrictions, or, like the protesters in New York, somehow they are thought to be immune to getting infected.
 
Whatever the case, in the New York Metropolitan Area and other nearby states like Pennsylvania, within a few weeks, you will just about be able to do anything you want, even though you will still have to wear a mask … and you know that those days are coming to an end too.
 
It all has to do with infection rates, those nebulous numbers we have been hit with since day one of this supposed pandemic.
 
Once they got below 2 percent, all of a sudden we are supposedly in the clear, and we can do anything we want to do again, as if by magic.
 
It just tells me that those infection rates were taken too literally to begin with, and they meant little to nothing.
 
When the infection rates were 9 and 10 percent, what did that actually mean?
 
Yes, 9 and 10 percent of those being tested supposedly were infected, but again, what did that mean?
 
Since most people who got the virus had few or no effects, which meant few went into hospitals that couldn’t have been prepared for this whole ball of wax to begin with, of course it created a panic.
 
The images of stacked hospitals, with patients seemingly all over the place, didn’t make anyone feel good, and even scared a lot of people into thinking that the end of the world was near.
 
But again, 99 percent of the people getting this scourge were able to weather it out at home, with few or no effects.
 
I am not downplaying those that got hit hard by it. My sister had it so bad during the height of this thing, so bad that she really should have been hospitalized; my brother in law is in full recovery mode now after getting it just a few weeks back; and my father in law died of the disease while in a nursing home, which is another story for another time.
 
But to me, we were sold a bill of goods by medical experts and our elected officials that we were forced to buy, and now, all of a sudden, workers are going back to their jobs on site, restaurants can serve to almost 100 percent capacity, and you will be able to see you favorite sports and movies and Broadway and concerts in a blink of an eye.
 
Kind of strange, isn’t it?
 
Again, I do not believe like some do that the virus experience was some sort of mind control initiative launched by the government to see what ends they could go to literally force us to do things.
 
The virus exists, but I do think that it, itself, is a virulent variant of the common flu.
 
We get different flues each and every year, so the coronavirus is a variant of the basic flu bug that hits us every year.
 
We, as a civilization, were taken unawares by it, and it put us in this mess that we are slowly crawling out of.
 
The problem is that going overboard in its enforcement has ruined businesses and ruined lives, but those in charge who went completely overboard in its handling would call all of that “collateral damage.”
 
Yes, I got the vaccine myself, got it for my mom, so I guess I am a bit of a hypocrite, as I was taken in by a lot of the blabber myself, but I do believe that restrictions will continue to be in place where you are going to have to prove you have had the shot to do certain things, like taking a cruise, and I just wanted to get this out of the way for myself.
 
We have a cruise planned for next year—it has already been postponed several times during the pandemic—and this way, I am done, or at least done until I have to get a booster shot.
 
Look, we are NEVER going to reach that herd immunity of 85 percent that our officials feel that we need to reach to completely hold off this disease.
 
We are lucky to get to about 30 percent or 40 percent, to be honest with you, because not everybody is gung-ho about getting the vaccine, and their reasons are valid.
 
When we had the last pandemic 100 years ago, it took roughly 25 years to create, test and validate a vaccine—this time around, it took about maybe six months.
 
Based on this and based on this alone, I can understand why people do not want to be vaccinated. We don’t know what we are being injected with, and we don’t know the long-term effects, if any, with these vaccines.
 
And then there have been the scares, like with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, related to even their short-term effects on some people.
 
Roll that up into a ball, and all I know is that the world is opening up to such an extent that even the Monkees are going out on tour again.
 
Yes, the two remaining Monkees—Micky Dolenz and Michael Nesmith—are revving it up again for their final, farewell tour, which was announced yesterday, and yes, they are coming to my town.
 
Now, do I get tickets for the October show, or do I not?
 
Ah, that is the rub!
 
Will we be safe enough, as a culture, to do to concerts again?
 
I just don’t know at this point.
 
Funny, my family has had tickets to a postponed Tommy James and the Shondells concert for about two years now, and it has been postponed about four or five times at this writing. It is now supposed to be held in March 2022, and presumably by that time, everything will be copacetic again.
 
October 2021? Is that doable?
 
I have no idea, none at all, so what do I do?
 
I don’t know at this point, I really don’t know.
 
My family has been vigilant in holding off this disease … we haven’t actually eaten in a restaurant for about a year, and while everyone around us has gotten the virus, my wife, my son, myself, and for that matter, my mother, have not gotten it.
 
Do we venture out into the wild blue yonder on this?
 
I don’t know, I really don’t know.
 
I know that my wife has said that she had hoped to celebrate her next birthday in November in her favorite restaurant with others.
 
It is a big birthday, and her hope was that by November, she could do this.
 
Well, how about pushing it, and doing something “outside the box” a month early?
 
That is the $64,000 question, and I simply do not have a final answer to it yet.

Rant #2,646: You Can Make It If You Try

This past weekend, I pretty much relaxed after a very, very difficult week.
 
I was literally chained to my computer the entire week, doing work for my remote job, and happily, that is over.
 
I was kind of blindsided by the week and all the work I had to do, but it is pretty much all done, and all in.
 
So this past weekend, I did what I had to do, and I also relaxed quite a bit.
 
One of the ways that I relax on the weekend is that I take my son to his athletic activities, namely basketball on Friday night and bowling on Saturday afternoons.
 
He has been participating in these sports for the past several years, through programs run by the Police Athletic League’s division devoted to young people with disabilities, the Special Needs Unit.
 
This group puts on all different sporting and other activities for people with any number of disabilities, and it has been a godsend for my son, keeping him active and engaged with others like him.
 
No judgment is made on anyone in this group.
 
Some of them have slight mental and/or physical disabilities, others have major disabilities, but in this group, the participants are all equal, and nobody looks down on anybody else for any reason.
 
The past year had been a tough one for these groups, because the pandemic canceled all such activities for many months, and my son and others like him were robbed of not only the athletic endeavors, but they were robbed of their social activity, too.
 
But last fall, I knew that things were getting better for my son, and everyone on the whole, when these activities ramped up again.
 
And now, with the restrictions and protocols a bit lessened in society, and with every precaution possible still taken, my son and the other participants can pretty much go back to what they were doing, which is play competitively.
 
He had already been doing that in his bowling league, but over the past few weeks, he has finally been able to do that in the basketball group, and every Friday, the participants play in organized games.
 
Unlike his bowling league, where records are kept, the basketball league is really for 100 percent fun, and no records are kept, but the participants do get a real workout, playing end to end basketball.
 
It is fun, and it is also relaxing to me, and heartening to me, to see my son participate in these sports, and also to see how he has matured over the years.
 
He is 25 years old, and will be 26 in August. Most of the people in these groups are around the age, some younger, some older, into their 30s.
 
But they need activities like this, because society often forgets these people, whether athletically, socially, or even employment-wise.
 
During the height of the pandemic, my son sat around, through no fault of his own, because everything he did was canceled due to supposed safety.
 
Thus, he and others like him lost their athletic endeavors, lost their jobs, and pretty much lost hope—not just people like himself, but millions of others went through this for months just a year ago.
 
Even now, this group is suffering.
 
I would say just through speaking to people at these endeavors, that probably about maybe seven or eight of 10 of them are still not working, losing whatever jobs they had over the past year … and those jobs are never coming back.
 
That happened to my son’s job, where he was put on furlough, was still kept in the loop by what turned out to be his former place of business, and then was unceremoniously cast aside.
 
Thank God he was able to get another job, albeit one where he only works a few days a week on a part time basis, but it is something—most people in his situation don’t have even this to look forward to each week.
 
And I see my son’s progress, from sitting around doing very little because his world was pretty much shut down, to being active and busy at least a couple of days a week.
 
And as I see him run up and down the basketball court or throw his bowling ball down the lanes, I really get into it, and I cheer him on, just like all the parents cheer on their children participating in these sports.
 
And I cheer him on when he is at work. I’m not there, but I drive him back and forth, and when I pick him up after his workday is done, I always ask him how the day went and what his upcoming work days are.
 
I think back to years ago, when the school system he was in couldn’t put a handle on him, couldn’t place him correctly, and pretty much let him down from the get go with a diagnosis from a professional that they pointed us towards who decided that from one single meeting with him, that this then-little boy would never amount to anything, wouldn’t be able to do anything, and was doomed to a life of nothing.
 
My wife and I did not accept that idiotic diagnosis, and over the years, our son has proven the skeptics wrong time and time again.
 
As long as the opportunity is there—and the opportunity is there through employers who understand, and through the Police Athletic League—he and others like him are not cast aside, but become productive members of society.
 
So when I see my son play basketball and roll the ball done the lane while bowling—and I remember the eight years he played Little League baseball and the fact that he has been working since he was 15 years of age--I just remember back to those darker times, and I get a lot of nockus from seeing what he can do, rather than what he was told he could never do by supposed medical experts.
 
And let me tell you, that is so pleasurable, so relaxing, and so rewarding to see this unfold right before my eyes.
 
And by the way, my son had a great basketball day this past Friday, running up and down the court with aplomb, grabbing several rebounds and making several nice shots.
 
And in bowling, his team is in fifth place in his league of 10 teams, he has a 130 average or so, and this week he bowled at 134 and a 157.
 
He also works three days this week, including today.
 
Not bad for someone who was told all those years ago that he wouldn’t be able to do anything by someone with a medical degree who judged our son on whether he could catch a bouncing rubber ball or not.

And this person used an antiquated term in her summation, a term that is frowned upon and no medical expert in their right mind would ever use today--I will let you figure it out--but that is how this person with degree on top of degree described this kid.
 
I kid you not about that.
 
And I kid you not that when he participates in all of these endeavors, I get a tremendous sense of pride about his life, and what his possibilities are in the future.

 
And they are as lofty as the sky is high.