I turned 59 this past November and I can already feel that 60 this coming November is going to be a major event. I realize that 60 isn’t all that old but it is, nevertheless, old. You’re definitely on the backside and heading down fast. Things like retirement and death do loom ever larger. There just isn’t all that much time in front of you.
My dad lived to 82 and there’s no particular reason to think I can’t match that – though mom passed at the age of 70. Neither parent took care of their health and while both smoked (as do I) mom smoked like a chimney and some of the harshest tobacco I ever came across. She smoked these hideous little cigars called Erik’s; I did try them and nearly choked they were so harsh. So, 70 to 82…somewhere in there. That’s 11 to 23 years from now. That’s it. And I know any youngster out there of, say 25 years or so will think that 20 or so years is a long time, those of us past 40 know just how fast 20 years go by. It is a blink of the eye. And, yes, with modern medicine I can stretch that out…to, what?, 85? 90? Not much a difference there.
I’m not afraid of dying. I used to be; round there in the ages from 35 to 45 when the fact of mortality came into view I did have a fear of it. Long past that now. As Salisbury said, one might as well be afraid of falling asleep. It is going to happen – sooner or later in a more or less painful manner. As a Christian I do believe in the resurrection and I do work out my salvation in fear and trembling (per Philippians 2:12). Of course, no matter how strong our faith, none of us really know what is going to happen. That is why death is a fearful thing even for saints: you are stepping through a door which you will only go through once. But, no matter: God is with me. Salvation awaits. And if I’m wrong then my surprise at it will be much more short-lived than the surprise an atheist proved wrong will be.
What brought this all up was a bizarre video of Madonna taken on New Year’s Eve. She was wearing some strange, skin-tight suit and dancing like a maniac…but the skin under the suit wasn’t the skin of 25 year old Madonna and it showed. And she had to steady herself with a railing and she just looked absurd. A 65 year old woman trying to live as if it were 1984 forever. I felt sorry for her. I like getting older. No, I don’t like my bum knee. Nor do I like that I have to take pictures of things and use the zoom function to read them. But getting older has many advantages – not least of which is that I’m no longer expected to compete. I am what I am; take me or leave me. And I don’t care what anyone thinks of me. If you don’t like me, that is a you problem, not a me problem. I’m under no obligation to fit myself into your concepts of what I should be. It is nice to have very pretty, young girls smile at me and know that they’re smiling because they know I’m harmless – that I’m a man they can interact without any worry that I have an ulterior motive.
And I like being able to tell young people about the past. Sometimes you can really surprise the kiddies. One of my best surprises was calling the ‘fridge an “ice box” and my granddaughter asking me why and then explaining it. It gave her a glimpse into a different world, especially when I explained that one of her great-great-grandfather’s delivered ice for a living. She connected it with the movie “Frozen” which opens with men cutting blocks of ice from a lake – until that moment she didn’t know why they were doing that. This was just a cool thing – and it is something she’ll remember. Long after I’m gone; and maybe one day she’ll explain to her granddaughter what an “ice box” is?
And that is another fun part of getting old: thinking about what will be after you’re gone. My granddaughter will be my age in 2071. Think about that. We’ll all be long dead by then. She’ll still be here. And probably a mother and grandmother. I pointed that out to my granddaughter the other day when she was once again making fun of my white hair. And then I really got her thinking – and I could tell she was – when I pointed out that my grandfather was born in 1896. She’s only 11 and so time frames like that are still hard for her to comprehend but I think putting it like that got it driven home – about time, and how it passes.
Anyways, just me thinking about it as I enter the last section of my life. Not the end! Not yet! But I’m out of the rat race; I’m just living and seeing and enjoying those around me. The best part about getting old.
Blogs For Victory 
What a great topic. A week from Thursday will be the beginning of the last year of my 7th decade on this earth. I’m NOT afraid of death, but the dying part doesn’t sound all that appealing. My pastor took me out to lunch a while back and one of his first questions was how I was able to handle my wife’s death last year with such apparent ease. I told him, long story short, that, having grown up in the death business (my mom’s family has owned a mortuary since the mid-1800s), and being a devote Christian and knowing how the story ends, I have always looked at death, not as the end, but as just another step in the journey.
A friend who is not religious asked me a while back what would happen if, following my final breath, everything just faded to black. Short answer: NOTHING. Too late to say, crap, this isn’t how I thought it would end. but, as you say, the non-believer will have time to contemplate if the opposite is true. IMHO, there’s no downside to believing that there’s something else after this earthly life, something that the human mind can’t begin to imagine or comprehend.
I spent a week or two every summer from around 1950 to 1958 or ’59 with an elderly aunt and uncle (my maternal grandfather’s sister and her husband. They live in a tiny town in northeast Indiana, population around 300 back in the 1950s. They didn’t have indoor plumbing, and I remember going to the ice house to get large blocks of ice for their “ice box.”
To put things in perspective, my great-grandfather and great-grandmother on my dad’s side both had brothers who fought and died in the Civil War. When I think about that, I feel even older.
And you’re spot on about 20 years going by in the blink of an eye.
A few years ago I commented to a friend that as more and more people I know have died, the larger I sense my group of guardian angels to be. And I have also felt the veil between this life and the next feeling less opaque. I’m three years younger than you, Spook, and experiencing many of the same thoughts.
That sense of another life is not just based on religious faith but on experience, as I have had beyond-the-grave communications with a couple of people, most recently (in the last few years) from my late husband. So I share your lack of fear of death itself but some trepidation about the process. My perspective is also a little different from yours and Spook’s in that I refer to myself as Zen Catholic—-a Catholic who also believes in reincarnation. I hope it isn’t true, as I would rather check out of this life and not have to go through it all again, but there is a lot of evidence supporting it. I don’t find that speculation interfering with my life as a Catholic so I don’t worry about it.
My grandmother came to Colorado in a covered wagon to homestead out on the plains, and lived to see a man on the moon. The acceleration of technology is stunning. When some kids helping me clean out a property I had just bought found a rotary dial telephone my efforts to explain it took me into a lot more than I expected, as I had to explain the existence and purpose of a dial tone, and then we got into the incomprehensible areas of pagers, answering machines, the exciting development of being able to get messages from an answering machine without being in the same room to push a button, even the practice of always having change in case we needed to use a pay phone. Going back before rotary phones to party lines was just too far back for them. I’m still amazed to realize that there is more computing power in my iPhone than what was used to put men on the moon.
Going back before rotary phones to party lines was just too far back for them.
I remember back in the late 40s and early 50s we not only had party lines, we had 5 character phone numbers. I still remember my dad’s business phone was Anthony (A)7395. I don’t think Fort Wayne, Indiana, went to 7 digit phone numbers until the early 60s when the old Home Telephone Company sold out to or was acquired by GTE, which subsequently became Verizon.
Our number was 4259 but I don’t remember our “ring”. Everyone had a ring, so if the phone rang one short and two long it was for you, two shorts and one long was for your neighbor, etc. I think every party line had someone who would pick up to listen in on someone else’s conversation. It could be handy, because if you were visiting someone on your party line and heard your ring from their house you could pick it up.
The acceleration of technology is stunning.
Below shows just one aspect of our acceleration.
1.) In the first decade of the patent office, the U.S. granted 229 patents—the same amount today’s America grants every 7.2 hours.
2.) In the 46 years before 1837, there were just 10,135 patents granted. But in the 46 years after the electric motor was patented in 1837, there were 290,870 patents granted.
3.) The 1 millionth patent, the Vehicle Tire, was granted after 121 years.
4.) It took just 24 years after the Vehicle Tire to grant the next million patents.
5.) Through 171 years, the U.S Patent Office granted 3.3 million patents. After the semiconductor, which ushered in the age of computers and electronics, it would take just 38 years to double that.
6.) In each of the past four years, the U.S. Patent Office has set records for patents granted in a year, totaling 1.15 million patents (just 222,036 were granted in the entire 19th century.) And as of 2015, a total of 9,646,948 patents have been granted.
Patents are by no means a perfect measure of innovation. Many argue that intellectual property restrictions actually hold back technology’s pace of advancement.
In June 2014, Tesla, the electric car company and one of today’s most innovative companies, made the unorthodox decision to open its patents to the public—the idea being that fewer restrictions will spur innovation even faster.
The invention of the microprocessor and subsequent improvements led to today’s computers which are accessible to most people with the financial means. They are capable of things not imagined even a few decades ago. While this technology had numerous applications that improve our lives, it is also a primary aspect of today’s war. We’ve become so dependent on the marvels of technology, it has the propensity to become the very thing that turns us into slaves. All of our personal data is stored on computers and is mined by numerous entities used to their advantage. It will likely become the very thing that forces us to use digital currency, which can then be used to exert great pressure on our lifestyles. The threat of electromagnetic pulse (EMP), can be used to destroy our infrastructure sending us to a grinding halt and leaving us susceptible to a lifestyle few can imagine.
It was probably about 20 years ago I saw a televised think tank presentation on the dangers of an EMP attack and the speaker said this was the biggest threat seen by the Pentagon. He also pointed out that in spite of this our system had not been hardened to protect it, and as far as I know it still hasn’t.
I have resisted the movement of putting our entire lives on our cell phones but I know people who are totally dependent on theirs. A friend gets panicky if I don’t answer mine, and I keep reminding her that I think of it as a tool I use when I feel like it, not an appendage that I carry with me wherever I go so I spend hours with it in another room. I am reminded of the vulnerability of people who have, as they put it, their “entire lives” on their phones when I read about the upcoming surge in solar flares.
X5.0 FLARE CLOSES OUT THE 2023 YEAR ….A G1 (Minor) geomagnetic storming watch valid 02 Jan is in place in response
https://WWW.SWPC.NOAA.GOV/NEWS/X50-FLARE-CLOSES-OUT-2023-YEAR
And of course there was 1859 Carrington Event, when massive solar flares caused “northern lights” to be seen as far south as Cuba and telegraph wires carried so much current that operators were shocked and fires were started.
Many telegraph lines across North America were rendered inoperable on the night of August 28 as the first of two successive solar storms struck. E.W. Culgan, a telegraph manager in Pittsburgh, reported that the resulting currents flowing through the wires were so powerful that platinum contacts were in danger of melting and “streams of fire” were pouring forth from the circuits.
In Washington, D.C., telegraph operator Frederick W. Royce was severely shocked as his forehead grazed a ground wire. According to a witness, an arc of fire jumped from Royce’s head to the telegraphic equipment. Some telegraph stations that used chemicals to mark sheets reported that powerful surges caused telegraph paper to combust.
https://www.history.com/news/a-perfect-solar-superstorm-the-1859-carrington-event
Imagine the damage that would be done to our far more fragile and complex systems today,
The sun will reach the peak of its current activity cycle in 2024, one year earlier than previous estimates, according to experts at NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC).
The revised prediction now places Solar Cycle 25’s peak of activity known as “solar maximum” between January and October 2024 according to a NOAA statement. The peak will be earlier, stronger and last longer than estimates made in 2019.
………………
Accurate predictions of solar activity are crucial as geomagnetic storms triggered by plasma outbursts known as coronal mass ejections can affect electrical grids, GPS signals, drag satellites out of orbit and pose a radiation risk to airline workers and astronauts.
https://www.space.com/solar-maximum-expected-2024-new-predictions-suggest
Ice core samples have determined that the Carrington Event was twice as big as any other solar storm in the last 500 years. What would be the impact of a similar storm today? According to a 2008 report from the National Academy of Sciences, it could cause “extensive social and economic disruptions” due to its impact on power grids, satellite communications and GPS systems. The potential price tag? Between $1 trillion and $2 trillion.
I almost didn’t read the article Bill Ackman Lights Up Colleges and Media in Fiery Posts After Wife Targeted for Plagiarism because I thought the subject had been worked over well enough already. But I did, and am glad I did, and if anyone is interested in an extremely thoughtful (as well as very well-written) thought piece on plagiarism and higher education I highly recommend this one.
I’ve read several stories and watched a number of youtube videos of people who’ve experienced what is commonly called, near death experience (NDE). There are others who’ve told stories of their experiences of connecting with supernatural entities, without having gone through any traumatic NDE. While there are certainly some who make these claims with an ulterior motive, fame / money, there are many others who I feel genuinely have in fact dealt with the “other side”. I too have had experiences that tell me there is much more after physical earthly death.
There are many who go to great lengths to dispel this notion of “life after death” for a variety of reasons, but I suspect the underlying reason for many is because, to acknowledge the existence of God would mean they would be held responsible for their actions, something they wish to avoid at great cost.
While many of these stories and youtube accounts vary, including some who’ve expressed experiencing the darker side of the afterlife, the overall mindset of those people is, they no longer fear death and now live with God in their heart. This includes some who were avowed atheists, and hardened criminals. They comment on things like, just how short our lives are on this earth, about how many different supernatural entities there are to help us during our difficulties, especially guarding angles, and many of those things we perceive as a hardship are far less difficult to endure with the knowledge that God is with them.
For those who honestly accept the premises that, “this is all there is”, what a pitiful existence. Fortunately, God continuously seeks their return to Him, and rejoices when they do. Without God, there is no hope, no meaningful forgiveness, no absolute truth and no love. Watching some of those video’s, you’ll see honest expressions and immersion of emotions of people recounting their experiences, of people who’ve gained an unexplainable love, unlike anything they’ve experience here on earth.
I’m just a few years off 70 and have been dealing with a blood cancer for quite some time. The thing about blood cancer is it doesn’t spread and metastasize like other cancers, so I could live for many years yet to come, even while dealing with less than stellar health. So what. Near everyone our age deals with health issues of varying degrees. I’m not looking to die anytime soon. Like most, when it comes, I hope it’s quick. But no matter. God’s thoughts are higher than my thoughts, and whatever He has planned, for whatever purpose it may serve, I’m ecstatic that He’s in charge.
As usual, Jeff Childers nails it: About Trump’s new Summary of Election Fraud in Swing States
https://cdn.nucleusfiles.com/e0/e04e630c-63ff-4bdb-9652-e0be3598b5d4/summary20of20election20fraud20in20the20swing20states.pdf?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
<i>The Summary was carefully designed to prove beyond argument that there was enough fraud in 2020 to change the outcome of the election, which is the legal standard for bringing a case. The problem of course is that election challenge cases must be filed in an insanely-short period of time, like ten days. Since 2020, I’ve litigated five elections cases, and thought about the issues a lot. Reluctantly, there are probably good reasons the deadlines are so short.
Mostly, the rationale is that a stable society needs some certainty about who’s running things.
Notwithstanding that it’s far too late to file suit, over the last three years Corporate Media built election denialism into a thought crime even more perfidious than science denialism, if that’s possible. So the Introduction’s very first two sentences appear custom designed to trigger democrats:
Haha! They turned the “no evidence” gag right around on the media! I loved it.
You would think the media’s peals of protest would be loud enough to wake the alien diplomats on the International Space Station. After all, the Summary confirms everything the democrats have long complained about Trump’s state of mind: in black and white, Trump denied the election and said that Joe Biden is an illegitimate president. Not only that, but the Summary makes specific claim after specific claim, so it should be trivial to ‘debunk’.
Each of Trump’s prosecutors should have already filed the Summary in those cases as evidence of how unreasonable Trump is.
But no. Surprisingly, the democrats weren’t triggered. Nor were RINOs or Never Trumpers. In fact, six days later there seems to be a total media blackout on the story. They aren’t even writing ‘fact-checks’ or op-eds about it:</i>
Some interesting things were in the report that I don’t remember hearing before. For example,
Fulton County ordered over 1 million absentee ballots days before the 2020 Election, without any envelopes and the time necessary to mail. There were only 808,680 active voters in Fulton County as of Nov. 1, 2020, meaning the county had more blank mail-in ballots than the number of registered voters, and ordered them after the vast majority of mail-in ballot requests had already been sent tovoters by Runbeck Election Services
In Pennsylvania, among other serious issues of ballot manipulation,
Months after the election, there were 121,240 more votes than voters, according to the Pennsylvania Department of State. By law, Pennsylvania cannot certify anelection with this type of discrepancy.
……………………………….
The Pennsylvania Department of State’s office called this “obviousmisinformation,” while admitting the “only way to determine the number ofvoters who voted in November from the SURE system is through the votehistories,” which they said Philadelphia, Allegheny, and other counties had stillnot completed — an admission the election was certified without ensuring thenumber of voters and votes matched in the SURE system. The election wascertified on Nov. 24, 2020, and the Department of State’s statement came onDec. 29, 2020.
In Michigan, as one example,
Secretary Jocelyn Benson made unlawful changes to signature verification rulesfor absentee ballots, ordering election workers to presume all were legitimate. A judge ruled Benson’s order was invalid, but not until months following the election, and just 0.1 percent of mail-in ballots were rejected in the November2020 Election for all signature issues. The rejection rate for mismatching signatures was just 0.04 percent, as only 1,400 out of 3.4 million ballots were rejected.
It’s a well-researched, well-documented summary of various kinds of election fraud, from a video of a woman realizing her batch of ballots was not signed and of her taking them back to her car, signing them and then delivering them to a drop box to the simple math of more votes than voters.
Pretty much – there was no actual examination of the facts; and then very rapidly the facts were lost or destroyed. We’ll never be able to prove a lot of things by this point. But anyone asserting that 2020 was clean is either a fool or a criminal. It was obvious the Democrats cheated and quite a lot – and nobody cheats just a little. People who cheat do whatever amount of cheating they think they can get away with in order to secure the desired result. Can I prove existentially that enough fraud was done in enough areas to get Pudding Brain to 270? No; but neither can anyone prove that enough legitimate votes were cast for Biden to get that result.
For many years our legal system rejected the fruit of the poison tree. That is, if something was gained illegally it was not considered valid. Yet when it came to electing the most powerful man in the world this premise was simply abandoned. So ballots cast under a new and illegal law were accepted and counted as votes. Unlawful changes to signature verification rules for absentee ballots, ordering election workers to presume all were legitimate, went unchallenged and untold numbers of bogus ballots were accepted and counted as votes. States accepted ballots from unsecured unsupervised drop boxes and counted them as votes.
This summary shows utterly shameful actions by people in positions of trust, and those people should be prosecuted, including those who destroyed voter data in spite of preservation laws and subpoenas.
Can I prove existentially that enough fraud was done in enough areas to get Pudding Brain to 270? I think you could. The sheer numbers of fraudulent votes are so far above the margins of “victory” that I can’t see any other conclusion.
What’s with this new comment format? What does it mean “Type / to choose a block.”
That explains the mess of my last post.