SOAPBOX #1

 

SOAPBOX #1---

You know what they say about opinions…’everyone has one’.

So, here’s mine for this week. You are welcome to comment back to me if you want to discuss.

Anyway, all of us in this country (except for the Native Americans or Indians) came from some other country at one time or another. It might be of interest to you to know that before the America revolution, England sent their convicts to Maryland and Virginia. They started sending them to Australia after we won our independence. So, those of you in those states might not want to go back too far on Ancestry.com and be surprised that your great+ grandparents were pickpockets or worse. Might put a damper on that Mayflower story you’ve been passing around for years.I have no problem with immigration if it is done legally. Aside from the 100,000 or so convicts sent from England, I am fairly certain most of our ancestors came in the legal way, not just walking across the border.

So how does this relate to todays opinion piece?

Well, here’s how. In today’s news there is a story about an old guy (88) named Ed Bambas of Brighton, Michigan. Old Ed worked for General Motors for over 20 years and lost his pension when the GM entity went bankrupt in 1999. He is a ex-Army veteran as well. He lost his pension and his health care. His wife was sick, he sold everything, and she died 7 years ago. Now he works at a grocery store 8 hours a day, 5 days a week to support himself. A reporter heard his story and set up a Go Fund Me page for him at gofundme ed bambas. They have collected over a million dollars for him so far.

Good for them. Good for the folks who have chipped in and tried to help.

But my question is this….how many more Ed’s are there in our country who are in similar circumstances? How many have lost their pensions or life savings after years of hard work?

We are having a national debate at this time about the illegal immigrants living in our country at this time. I have no idea how much they are supported by the taxpayers. Do they get housing, food, cell phones and health care? We cannot absorb the population of the entire world.

Don’t we have an obligation to take care of our own citizens first? Shouldn’t we be looking to help Ed and others who have paid taxes and served in the military before we fund someone who entered into our country illegally?

I am in favor of regulated immigration for those who want to contribute to our way of life. I am not in favor of providing everything needed for their existence to those who do not want to work or assimilate into our culture and society. We need to provide for more people like Ed and less for those who want a free ride forever and who actively despise our nation and it’s ideals.

That’s my opinion and I’m sticking with it.

See you next week----Peary Perry

pperry@pearyperry.com

WHO NEEDS IT?

 

WHO NEEDS IT?

I think it is fair to say that the majority of the folks reading my blog were born before the advent of so-called ‘artificial intelligence’ Many of you, like myself, were born before cell phones and computers were in everyday usage. Charles Lindbergh thought that  “The evil of technology was not in technology itself; Lindbergh came to see after the war, not in airplanes or the myriad contrivances of modern technical ingenuity, but in the extent to which they can distance us from our better moral nature, our sense of personal accountability."

So, I think old Charles was onto something in that our current technology is removing us from developing closer relationship with one another. Look at what we are dealing with on a daily basis, cell phones, computers, television, cameras of every shape and size. Today I am besieged with advertisements for a ‘bird buddy’ that will allow us to see what each bird is doing when they come to our feeders to eat. I already know what they do, they stick the birdseed in their little beaks and fly away to poop on our cars. We have cameras that tell us if anyone is on our property and if they ring our doorbell. We can be in China and our phones will tell us who is on our front porch. We get the weather reports for the entire world from a multitude of sources. Most of it is useless since it changes by the hour, but we still look at it, don’t we?

 

Our ovens talk to us and tell us when we need to come and take out the pies or cakes. I have seen refrigerators that have computer screens to tell us what items are out of date or what we need to buy. What happened to a plain old pad and pencil for a shopping list? I will admit that the GPS in my car has been one of the greatest inventions ever. Moses could have certainly used it and would have saved himself forty years of wandering around the desert. Paper maps are strictly from the devil himself in my opinion.  

 

I was wondering if anyone compiled a record of the injuries caused by walking and texting on your cell phone. Well, Bunky guess what? The Readers Digest reports that over 11,000 people are injured each year in this country by walking and fooling with their cell phones at the same time. This should be a lesson to all of us that cannot walk and chew gum at the same time. The National Safety Council estimates that cell phone usage causes 1.6 million accidents a year in the good old USA. They also say they think this is a severely underreported number since the majority of people will not admit that they were driving and using their phones at the same time.

 

So, my question is simply this: since the invention of the internet and cell phones, have our lives vastly improved or have our lives gotten worst? I think we need to do a Ben Franklin evaluation of all of this. Yes, we have seen many things greatly improve our lives such as medical devices and medical discoveries. We are able to communicate with anyone, anywhere at little or no cost. We can obtain vast amounts of information about virtually anything at any time we like. No more trudging down to the library to look up some needed facts. But we do seem to have increased the gap between each other at the cost of face-to-face conversations and discussions, haven’t we? We definitely need to not be on our phones when we are walking or driving. We also should shut them down when we enter into a conversation with our kids or friends. Phones and computers have a purpose just like a hammer, but they are tools, nothing more, nothing less and should not be the central point of our lives.

 

See you next week---Peary Perry

WHO KNEW ?

 

WHO KNEW?

 

162 years ago this week, Abraham Lincoln gave us the Gettysburg Address. As you might recall he also gave us this famous quotation, “Don’t believe everything you read on the internet”.

That quote may very well be false, but these days who knows.

They say that history is written by the victors, which may very well be true, and this is what is causing all of us so much anxiety these days. The folks who conquer countries or nations get to write their story as they like to without any opposition.

It is virtually impossible today to know what is or what isn’t truth. The advent of so-called AI or artificial intelligence is leading us all down the primrose path to eventual stupidity.

Who can tell what is real or not these days?

You might recall a Greek philosopher in about 300 BC named Diogenes. He was reported to be searching for ‘an honest man’. I sincerely doubt if he could find one in those troubled times. Anymore than he could find one in this day and age. Lots of luck doing that.

But isn’t that what we all are trying to do in this day and age. Looking for something to be honest and truthful? And it seems to be harder and harder to accomplish each and every day, isn’t it?

Now we have to question each and every piece of information we receive and try to determine if it is true or just make believe. The other day, for instance, I saw this NBA basketball game being played atop a stadium built on top of this very tall skyscraper in Dubai. The quotes from people included one that stated, “you could actually feel the building swaying.” Now the graphics and effects were very realistic, and I started to look into this only to find out it was all make believe.

My question, is why go to all of this trouble? They weren’t selling anything or pushing me to subscribe to anyone that I could see, so what is their purpose?  For fun? Who knows?

Anyway, rather than getting my panties in a wad, I have decided to view the news and internet the same as I do a novel. Pure fiction until I can prove otherwise. I will trust but verify anything I read from now on. Those ‘feel good’ blogs and ‘reels’ that show lost kids who become brain surgeons and save the guy who gave them a sandwich thirty years ago or the lost dog that pulls the children from a fire. I will read those and cogitate upon them for what they are or might be. I will view those with a grain of salt and smile or laugh or cry in the right spots. But I will not be consumed by something that I cannot verify. News or not.

Maybe real, maybe not.

Who cares, it could be real, it might not be, so why get all upset over it and ruin my perfectly good day? There you have it for this week.

See you next week…Peary Perry