...so you younger people, please don't just pass em by and stare as if you didn't care, say hello in there.

Beautiful. The song and the sentiment.

(09-02-2023 06:39 AM)BartlettTigerFan Wrote:  Beautiful. The song and the sentiment.

It's one of my favorites. The first time I heard it I was 18 and it had an impact on me even then. I've always had a soft spot for kids and the elderly and now that I am one of the latter it means even more.

The worst part about getting older is I have way too many people to miss now.

(09-02-2023 06:50 AM)BartlettTigerFan Wrote:  The worst part about getting older is I have way too many people to miss now.

That's how I'm feeling. I'm 76. My parents, grandparents and all my aunts and uncles are long gone now.

My good buddy college roommate passed away 2+ years ago. Several other friends, too.

Makes me sad, and makes me appreciate every day.

Being old also makes me miss how this country used to be. What's happening now is beyond words.

(09-02-2023 06:50 AM)BartlettTigerFan Wrote:  The worst part about getting older is I have way too many people to miss now.

That's one of the hardest parts. Get get older and you have to say goodbye one by one to the people you love the most.

And man do you miss them when they are gone.

(09-02-2023 08:03 PM)TripleA Wrote:  

(09-02-2023 06:50 AM)BartlettTigerFan Wrote:  The worst part about getting older is I have way too many people to miss now.

That's how I'm feeling. I'm 76. My parents, grandparents and all my aunts and uncles are long gone now.

My good buddy college roommate passed away 2+ years ago. Several other friends, too.

Makes me sad, and makes me appreciate every day.

Being old also makes me miss how this country used to be. What's happening now is beyond words.

I have one aunt left, she was much younger than my mother. Other than they are all gone. I haven't lost any close friends so I'm lucky in that regard. I lost my ex brother-in-law 3 years ago, he was 50. I considered him a little brother, he was my fishing and deer hunting partner and I sure miss him.

I just turned 67 so I may be a younger elder but I too remember how this country used to be. It's heartbreaking.

(09-02-2023 08:03 PM)TripleA Wrote:  

(09-02-2023 06:50 AM)BartlettTigerFan Wrote:  The worst part about getting older is I have way too many people to miss now.

That's how I'm feeling. I'm 76. My parents, grandparents and all my aunts and uncles are long gone now.

My good buddy college roommate passed away 2+ years ago. Several other friends, too.

Makes me sad, and makes me appreciate every day.

Being old also makes me miss how this country used to be. What's happening now is beyond words.

1. Prine had some great songs which expressed raw and real emotions and the truth contained in them. I'm a fan of his writing. Joan Baez did a nice cover of that song.

2. It is getting lonelier and the disbelief in my life is how many young people deny reality and truth to believe lies. Show them the proof and they still believe the lies. I'm not sure what to do about that! I've always liked the philosophical thought that the absence of reason was the truest expression of hell. Brothers we are there.

3. Too many people now live only in my head. I find that comforting yet disquieting at the same time. I miss them, love them, and still here their voices directing my thoughts when confronted with what we face now.

Technology has become our prison. It tracks us, and watches us, evaluates us, and tags us. It says a lot about us much of which is inaccurate. It is impossible to correct, and while it keeps up with all of us, the cell phone and Facebook have actually made being able to locate someone more difficult than when we were are cataloged in Bell telephone books and information could connect us to anyone when we were ready to speak to them. We live in greater proximity to others, but without neighbors in the sense we had them as kids. People are there, but the contact and exchanges are not.

4. This is not the country I grew up loving. It is alien and hostile to freedom. It takes rights and doesn't defend them. It is unresponsive to its citizens and solicitous of corporations and their bribes. Everything here today is corrupted by degree of association with corporations. And neither side of the political aisle works for us, let alone gives a damn about us.

5. I would love to do something again that makes a difference for people. I've been fortunate to have done it a few times with my years. But it is more difficult to get people to make a stand than ever. Fear! Not of violence directed at them, but of the consequences to family members.

6. I have decided that the Shire has been overrun with orcs and if there is one thing that the movies taught me that the books didn't is that no matter how many orcs you kill there are always more. I grew up living with nature. Now the people who claim to be green are the very ones who dump garbage into the oceans, pile up plastics which can't be really recycled efficiently, or in a green way, and who rail against glass and gas when nuclear power rods still don't have acceptable means of disposal and the damn batteries, they tout are more toxic than fuel emissions. And yet those orcs want to tell me, one who gardens, plants fruit trees, plants deciduous trees, composts, and grows a portion of his own food that my gas tiller is killing their garbage filled, high rise world, where they drink recycled piss. I could laugh if I didn't find it so tragic. But hey when I'm dead the law won't let me rot in peace in the ground of my world but will force me into a garden of stone to be placed in a tin can, pumped full of formaldehyde, and surrounded by concrete to keep my secretions out of the groundwater. You tell me who was screwed! My great-grandparents were buried in a pine box in the ground of their farm without preservatives pumped into their corpse, or mandated funeral practices so wholly unnatural that 8 billion of us will poison the ground for decades without even more unnatural containers to prevent it.

Even in death they screw it up! And they call themselves green! Well, they are as alien to Earth as Martians so maybe green is right, or maybe green means naive or stupid, or too young to know better, but what it doesn't have is reason and what it doesn't represent is truth.

75, will be 76 next month, 8 year prostate cancer survivor. I've lost a lot--parents, all uncles and aunts, all grandparents (actually only ever knew two grandparents, grandfather on mother's side and grandmother on father's side), 4 cousins. Still have one brother, 2 cousins, and one son left. All in all, it hasn't been perfect, but I've had a pretty damn good life and am still enjoying living.

(09-02-2023 09:40 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  75, will be 76 next month, 8 year prostate cancer survivor. I've lost a lot--parents, all uncles and aunts, all grandparents (actually only ever knew two grandparents, grandfather on mother's side and grandmother on father's side), 4 cousins. Still have one brother, 2 cousins, and one son left. All in all, it hasn't been perfect, but I've had a pretty damn good life and am still enjoying living.

Same here. I enjoy my life to the fullest still. I have lots of younger friends and relatives still living, lol.

I still enjoy every day to the fullest, follow my sports teams, eat out at cool places, target shoot now and then, and make several vacation road trips with my sister each year to fun places.

I just stay annoyed and sad at what the evil idiots on the left are doing to this country, and they are going to win, but I don't let it affect my quality of life.

I still feel sad for my grandkids, who have no clue what is going to happen to them. And they have no clue of the world I grew up in.

(09-02-2023 11:15 PM)TripleA Wrote:  

(09-02-2023 09:40 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  75, will be 76 next month, 8 year prostate cancer survivor. I've lost a lot--parents, all uncles and aunts, all grandparents (actually only ever knew two grandparents, grandfather on mother's side and grandmother on father's side), 4 cousins. Still have one brother, 2 cousins, and one son left. All in all, it hasn't been perfect, but I've had a pretty damn good life and am still enjoying living.

Same here. I enjoy my life to the fullest still. I have lots of younger friends still living, lol.

I just stay annoyed and sad at what the evil idiots on the left are doing to this country, and they are going to win, but I don't let it affect my quality of life.

I still enjoy every day to the fullest, and make several vacation road trips with my sister each year to fun places.

But I still feel sad for my grandkids, who have no clue what is going to happen to them. And they have no clue of the world I grew up in.

I have a mother and mother in law both around 90 one just short the other over. All grandparents are gone, but I was fortunate to have known all 4 and 2 great grandparents. I have 1 aunt left as well. She's 12 years older than I am. My wife and I still enjoy our lives too. I still have 2 of my best friends but lost one to Parkinsons and multiple myeloma in 2008.

My wife and I have had a great life and we are fortunate to have each other as so many of our friends have lost a partner either to death, or mentally via stroke or Alzheimer's. We don't regret anything and are just puzzled as to how our country lost its mind enfranchising the perverse and wicked, lamenting the executions of murderers and allowing hardened criminals to roam free, opening our borders to let the drugs in and spies in, and trading with cultures bent upon our destruction. Greed truly is a sickness.

We enjoy friends, family, and life in general and refuse to let TV and the idiots around us ruin any of it.

When I post a lament, it is for my children and grandchildren who will have to retrace the steps of their grandparents and great-grandparents in sacrifice if it is to change. All I can do is support them and teach them. What I wish I could do is to be there to protect them when it all hits the fan and hope I'm still in good enough shape to make a difference on their behalf. Time may not be on my side to be able to do that so I'm there to support two sons in laws who are capable. For that I am thankful too. One is a screaming eagle and the other puts it on the line for others daily. Hopefully my younger brother gets his flying days behind him and is around to help as well.

All I can tell you guys is it's coming. I don't care what technology has done to provide a military advantage. Victory or defeat is what dwells in the heart of those who fight. I've been around veterans all my life and know them pretty well. I do not see the same commitment, the same awareness, or the same dedication today. And the rot starts at the top, not in the ranks.

I'm still an optimist. Now I'm a cynical optimist. Things will work out ok in spite of people's efforts to screw them up! Being a Texan is a state of mind. And a true Texan is an optimist.
There will be a reaction against the excesses of the left. I already see some of it among my college age kids' friends.

We had been fortunate, not having lost anyone in the direct family since the grandparents. Did lose my in-laws in the early 2000s. But over the last few years, I've lost a young niece, a sister and my Father. There's still aunts, cousins, sisters and my Mother, but some of them are getting pretty old. Had a milestone birthday not too long ago and reflected on the fact that other than my family, I am only in touch with 4 people who knew me before I was 32 when I met my wife. Just haven't kept track of many people. I've made an effort over the last year to make sure I was staying in contact with them.

(09-02-2023 09:40 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  75, will be 76 next month, 8 year prostate cancer survivor. I've lost a lot--parents, all uncles and aunts, all grandparents (actually only ever knew two grandparents, grandfather on mother's side and grandmother on father's side), 4 cousins. Still have one brother, 2 cousins, and one son left. All in all, it hasn't been perfect, but I've had a pretty damn good life and am still enjoying living.

(09-02-2023 11:40 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(09-02-2023 11:15 PM)TripleA Wrote:  

(09-02-2023 09:40 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  75, will be 76 next month, 8 year prostate cancer survivor. I've lost a lot--parents, all uncles and aunts, all grandparents (actually only ever knew two grandparents, grandfather on mother's side and grandmother on father's side), 4 cousins. Still have one brother, 2 cousins, and one son left. All in all, it hasn't been perfect, but I've had a pretty damn good life and am still enjoying living.

Same here. I enjoy my life to the fullest still. I have lots of younger friends still living, lol.

I just stay annoyed and sad at what the evil idiots on the left are doing to this country, and they are going to win, but I don't let it affect my quality of life.

I still enjoy every day to the fullest, and make several vacation road trips with my sister each year to fun places.

But I still feel sad for my grandkids, who have no clue what is going to happen to them. And they have no clue of the world I grew up in.

I have a mother and mother in law both around 90 one just short the other over. All grandparents are gone, but I was fortunate to have known all 4 and 2 great grandparents. I have 1 aunt left as well. She's 12 years older than I am. My wife and I still enjoy our lives too. I still have 2 of my best friends but lost one to Parkinsons and multiple myeloma in 2008.

My wife and I have had a great life and we are fortunate to have each other as so many of our friends have lost a partner either to death, or mentally via stroke or Alzheimer's. We don't regret anything and are just puzzled as to how our country lost its mind enfranchising the perverse and wicked, lamenting the executions of murderers and allowing hardened criminals to roam free, opening our borders to let the drugs in and spies in, and trading with cultures bent upon our destruction. Greed truly is a sickness.

We enjoy friends, family, and life in general and refuse to let TV and the idiots around us ruin any of it.

When I post a lament, it is for my children and grandchildren who will have to retrace the steps of their grandparents and great-grandparents in sacrifice if it is to change. All I can do is support them and teach them. What I wish I could do is to be there to protect them when it all hits the fan and hope I'm still in good enough shape to make a difference on their behalf. Time may not be on my side to be able to do that so I'm there to support two sons in laws who are capable. For that I am thankful too. One is a screaming eagle and the other puts it on the line for others daily. Hopefully my younger brother gets his flying days behind him and is around to help as well.

All I can tell you guys is it's coming. I don't care what technology has done to provide a military advantage. Victory or defeat is what dwells in the heart of those who fight. I've been around veterans all my life and know them pretty well. I do not see the same commitment, the same awareness, or the same dedication today. And the rot starts at the top, not in the ranks.

Same here. I'm a Navy vet from the VietNam era.

What Milley and the other idiot leaders have said and done recently is chilling. But even beyond that, the video asking recruits why they joined the military dumbfounds me.

Not one said for love of country. They all said to get free food, or not have to work as hard.

We're screwed. The decades long indoctrination did its job.

(09-02-2023 09:36 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(09-02-2023 08:03 PM)TripleA Wrote:  

(09-02-2023 06:50 AM)BartlettTigerFan Wrote:  The worst part about getting older is I have way too many people to miss now.

That's how I'm feeling. I'm 76. My parents, grandparents and all my aunts and uncles are long gone now.

My good buddy college roommate passed away 2+ years ago. Several other friends, too.

Makes me sad, and makes me appreciate every day.

Being old also makes me miss how this country used to be. What's happening now is beyond words.

1. Prine had some great songs which expressed raw and real emotions and the truth contained in them. I'm a fan of his writing. Joan Baez did a nice cover of that song.

2. It is getting lonelier and the disbelief in my life is how many young people deny reality and truth to believe lies. Show them the proof and they still believe the lies. I'm not sure what to do about that! I've always liked the philosophical thought that the absence of reason was the truest expression of hell. Brothers we are there.

3. Too many people now live only in my head. I find that comforting yet disquieting at the same time. I miss them, love them, and still here their voices directing my thoughts when confronted with what we face now.

Technology has become our prison. It tracks us, and watches us, evaluates us, and tags us. It says a lot about us much of which is inaccurate. It is impossible to correct, and while it keeps up with all of us, the cell phone and Facebook have actually made being able to locate someone more difficult than when we were are cataloged in Bell telephone books and information could connect us to anyone when we were ready to speak to them. We live in greater proximity to others, but without neighbors in the sense we had them as kids. People are there, but the contact and exchanges are not.

4. This is not the country I grew up loving. It is alien and hostile to freedom. It takes rights and doesn't defend them. It is unresponsive to its citizens and solicitous of corporations and their bribes. Everything here today is corrupted by degree of association with corporations. And neither side of the political aisle works for us, let alone gives a damn about us.

5. I would love to do something again that makes a difference for people. I've been fortunate to have done it a few times with my years. But it is more difficult to get people to make a stand than ever. Fear! Not of violence directed at them, but of the consequences to family members.

6. I have decided that the Shire has been overrun with orcs and if there is one thing that the movies taught me that the books didn't is that no matter how many orcs you kill there are always more. I grew up living with nature. Now the people who claim to be green are the very ones who dump garbage into the oceans, pile up plastics which can't be really recycled efficiently, or in a green way, and who rail against glass and gas when nuclear power rods still don't have acceptable means of disposal and the damn batteries, they tout are more toxic than fuel emissions. And yet those orcs want to tell me, one who gardens, plants fruit trees, plants deciduous trees, composts, and grows a portion of his own food that my gas tiller is killing their garbage filled, high rise world, where they drink recycled piss. I could laugh if I didn't find it so tragic. But hey when I'm dead the law won't let me rot in peace in the ground of my world but will force me into a garden of stone to be placed in a tin can, pumped full of formaldehyde, and surrounded by concrete to keep my secretions out of the groundwater. You tell me who was screwed! My great-grandparents were buried in a pine box in the ground of their farm without preservatives pumped into their corpse, or mandated funeral practices so wholly unnatural that 8 billion of us will poison the ground for decades without even more unnatural containers to prevent it.

Even in death they screw it up! And they call themselves green! Well, they are as alien to Earth as Martians so maybe green is right, or maybe green means naive or stupid, or too young to know better, but what it doesn't have is reason and what it doesn't represent is truth.

You can speak for me any time at all JR. Well said, as usual.

(09-02-2023 11:15 PM)TripleA Wrote:  

(09-02-2023 09:40 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  75, will be 76 next month, 8 year prostate cancer survivor. I've lost a lot--parents, all uncles and aunts, all grandparents (actually only ever knew two grandparents, grandfather on mother's side and grandmother on father's side), 4 cousins. Still have one brother, 2 cousins, and one son left. All in all, it hasn't been perfect, but I've had a pretty damn good life and am still enjoying living.

Same here. I enjoy my life to the fullest still. I have lots of younger friends and relatives still living, lol.

I still enjoy every day to the fullest, follow my sports teams, eat out at cool places, target shoot now and then, and make several vacation road trips with my sister each year to fun places.

I just stay annoyed and sad at what the evil idiots on the left are doing to this country, and they are going to win, but I don't let it affect my quality of life.

I still feel sad for my grandkids, who have no clue what is going to happen to them. And they have no clue of the world I grew up in.

Those two sentences say it all brother. It's especially sad that none of them know how great life can be in a free and fruitful society and at the rate things appear to be devolving, they never will.

(09-03-2023 06:38 AM)TigerBlue4Ever Wrote:  

(09-02-2023 11:15 PM)TripleA Wrote:  

(09-02-2023 09:40 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  75, will be 76 next month, 8 year prostate cancer survivor. I've lost a lot--parents, all uncles and aunts, all grandparents (actually only ever knew two grandparents, grandfather on mother's side and grandmother on father's side), 4 cousins. Still have one brother, 2 cousins, and one son left. All in all, it hasn't been perfect, but I've had a pretty damn good life and am still enjoying living.

Same here. I enjoy my life to the fullest still. I have lots of younger friends and relatives still living, lol.

I still enjoy every day to the fullest, follow my sports teams, eat out at cool places, target shoot now and then, and make several vacation road trips with my sister each year to fun places.

I just stay annoyed and sad at what the evil idiots on the left are doing to this country, and they are going to win, but I don't let it affect my quality of life.

I still feel sad for my grandkids, who have no clue what is going to happen to them. And they have no clue of the world I grew up in.

Those two sentences say it all brother. It's especially sad that none of them know how great life can be in a free and fruitful society and at the rate things appear to be devolving, they never will.

And herein resides my sorrow. It happened on my watch, though I had little control. It happened because anti-trust laws were not enforced against politicians corporate benefactors and because the SCOTUS granted corporations the rights of citizens and PAC money was never outlawed.

Their NET worth exceeds that of the populace and they get to contribute to campaigns and not just Federally but in all 50 states and territories. They have bought our Republic and in so doing have created a Fascist state unresponsive to its citizens.

"The greatest generation" (including my dad) who served our country proudly, are all rolling over in their graves right now.

Good grief

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Where did you get a picture of me??