2014 is winding down, here in North America winter is gathering its forces, having already stretched its muscles with tons of snow in November across nearly the whole continent.

You need a couple good parties to face winter’s frigid, stalactite, stalagmite grin, eh? Indeed.

After we kiss and hug all of our loved ones, open all the presents, eat all the food, drink all the booze and generally put aside the challenges of the upcoming season, we’ll wake up on January 2, 2015, recover from our excesses, and move forward–one step at a time. You almost have to be a stoic at that point.

2014 has been a year of change–for the world and for me as well. Enough about me already.

The Internet, through social media, takes more and more precedence in our way of life here in the States and around the globe and moral questions like “Freedom of Speech,” “the right to privacy,” and “Racial Profiling” are being redefined.

It’s scary. The predictions of Orwell, Bradbury, and Huxley are becoming realities as we speak. Fear is rampant, everyone is afraid of something, eh? As we strive to make our lives safe and secure we’re giving up our individual freedoms one little bite at a time. How long before we find ourselves in a paranoid, barricaded, police state?

Add to that the impending restructuring of the global economy, good for us all in the long run but problematic for the individuals living through it, namely you and me, and the rosy future looks a little faded, to say the least.

Look at the Anne Frank quote from my post about Vonnegut’s “Galapagos.” In spite of the horrific life she led, she still believed that human nature is basically good. I must agree.

There are good, hopeful, and inspiring stories permeating the news all the time. However, the “massacre of the week,” the great catastrophe, the beheading, the hacking, and all the other evidence of our “dark side” overshadows any ray of sunshine. It’s more fun to contemplate Bill Cosby’s sexual appetite than the reason that bell ringer from the Salvation Army stands out in the freezing rain in front of Walmart.

Malala Yousafzai was riding a school bus when some maniac shot her in the head for being a female who wanted to get an education. What in the hell were they thinking? It’s much easier to control and manipulate bovine cattle than informed and intelligent human beings? Fortunately Malala survived, continued her education in spite of adversity and ultimately, as the youngest person ever, won the Nobel Peace Prize! From darkness comes light.

Secret Santas, Layaway Angels, and other philanthropists purchase gifts and give away diamond jewelry to help the poor.

A black woman extends her condolences to the families of police officers assassinated by her “disturbed” son. This is in stark contrast to the pitiful parents of vicious children, taught by abuse and neglect to disrespect and malign everyone and everything, who jump into and bask in the glory of the national spotlight.

People do good things all the time. It’s a shame that it’s unimportant.

So, what can I do? I think the answer is: “just keep on keeping on.” I’ll continue to try to treat the other guy as I wish to be treated, judge people (inasmuch as I must) by nothing more than their actions and do my best to stay positive.

So merry Christmas everyone! Have a happy New Year!

You can’t change the past. You can change the future but the only time you have to do it is now.

ChitlinChild

I’ve recently finished reading two novels by Kurt Vonnegut.

BLUEBEARD

The first, “Bluebeard,” copyrighted in 1987, the paperback  published by Dell, is a fictional autobiography of an artist named Rabo Karabekian. With his usual acerbic, facetious sarcasm, Vonnegut outlines the life of the “Abstract Expressionist” Karabekian; his family history, his fortunate artistic training, his experiences in World War II in the camouflage unit, his art collection (made up largely of paintings other Abstract Expressionists gave him in payment for debts) his dysfunctional marriage, and his subsequent second marriage that left him with a palatial house on a potato farm in New Jersey.

One of the hooks Vonnegut used was curiosity about the “potato barn,” locked up tight with six heavy duty padlocks, and what Karabekian had inside. Many of the novel’s characters (as well as the reader) begged and pleaded to know what was inside. Of course, Karabekian (Vonnegut) refuses to divulge the contents until the very end of the story.

Early on, Vonnegut relates the story of a king named “Bluebeard” and his many wives. Bluebeard told his latest wife she could do anything she liked except open a certain door. Curiosity gets the best of us sooner or later and the new wife couldn’t resist looking into the forbidden room. There she found the remains of all of her husband’s ex-wives! And so on . . .   🙄

So what was in the potato barn? Read it and find out!

GALAPAGOS

The second book was “Galapagos,” a novel narrated one million years in the future by the ghost of Leon Trotsky Trout. Leon is the son of one of Vonnegut’s recurring characters throughout his ouevre, science fiction writer Kilgore Trout. The paperback that I read was published in 1985 by Dell.

The story describes the series of events that causes one man and ten women to wind up on Santa Rosalia, an island on the extreme end of the Galapagos island chain. It starts in Ecuador, where the Bahia de Darwin (Spanish for Darwin Bay) is about to embark on “The Nature Cruise of the Century,” her extravagant maiden voyage to be jam packed with notable celebrities.

However, a world wide economic depression has ruined the Ecuadoran sucre and only six people have arrived to take the cruise. Vonnegut kills most of them off during the insurrection and riots of the starving Ecuadoran people and the ravages of war with neighboring Peru. The captain of the Bahia de Darwin, along with the women who booked the tour and six native children, manage to escape the chaos and eventually wind up on Santa Rosalia.

Leon, a marine in Vietnam haunted by atrocious massacres, went AWOL and fled to Sweden for asylum. There he worked in the shipyard that built the Bahia de Darwin and there he died when a sheet of steel sliced his head off. (Heh, Vonnegut always seems to take life and death so casually. So it goes . . . )

Upon his death, our narrator refuses to enter the “blue tunnel of the afterlife.” The blue tunnel appears four times in the story. In its last appearance his father, Kilgore Trout, appeals to him to leave the tawdry humans he’d been observing and join him in the afterlife, threatening not to return for a million years should Leon refuse. Thus shade Leon has observed the evolution of humanity into creatures similar to seals.

Vonnegut waxes philosophical throughout the novel, shining powerful light on many modern day ironies. In the novel he blames humans’ “big brains” for all of humanity’s shortcomings.

So, is Vonnegut really that much of a pessimist?

Maybe not, eh? The epigraph of Galapagos was a quote from Anne Frank: “In spite of everything, I still believe people are really good at heart.”

In case all you know is Call of Duty or World of Warcraft, Anne Frank was a young Jewish survivor of the Holocaust who wrote a diary about her experiences with her family as they hid in an attic during the German occupation of the Netherlands. Sadly, they were ultimately caught and murdered in 1945. So it goes . . .

Both novels were easy to read, though keeping track of Vonnegut’s timelines isn’t always the easiest thing to do. Vonnegut seems to have an insider’s grasp of the human condition and both novels are profoundly thought provoking. I enjoyed them both.

It’s easy to expand your horizons. Read something!