Time to Fill

August 26, 2026 — Pat Bertram

I thought I’d have trouble spending way less time on the internet, but the only problem I have so far is what to do with all that free time. There’s only so much work I can do outside before the heat makes being out there a dangerous folly, so I’m not doing too much more than I had been. I did clamber about my back garden patch, the one where I planted a pumpkin vine that is creeping over the entire area, to do some weeding. Luckily, I was able to do most of the work near the fence, so I had something to hold on to as I worked my way through the jungle. To my delight, I discovered a pumpkin hidden back there! It’s still green, so it will be a while until I can harvest it. Meantime, the first pumpkin I found has turned a luscious orange. Now I just need to figure out what to do with it. Maybe cook it, peel it, puree it, and freeze it. The best part is that the work will take up some of my free time.

And I will have to find things to do to use my reclaimed time. Although I’d just as soon not play the game I’ve been fooling around with for the past six years (being at home during the Covid mess and needing something to do is what got me started with it), it’s hard not to want to log in when I get bored. So I do. Log in. Not to play. Just to check to see what’s going on, maybe play one of the less irritating side games for a few minutes, then I’m finished. Anything more annoys the heck out of me. It’s a simple hidden object game where you look for hidden objects in pictures, and yet they act as if each move is a major casino-like win, with all sorts of lights and flashes, and whirling objects that seem to fly out of the screen. Luckily, I have nothing invested in the game, so whether I play or not is no big deal.

I also check on the news aggregator I follow, but even that now is a quick in and out. To be honest, I’m getting to the point where I don’t want to know what’s going on out there. I’m so much better off in my own little world. Or in the magic worlds of the two fantasy authors I like. It doesn’t even bother me anymore that the books were never finished. Well, I suppose The Wheel of Time was finished, but since it was finished by a terrible substitute author after Robert Jordan died, to me, it is unfinished and will always remain so.

I did find another series from that same era (before Woke hit the fantasy genre), though who knows if I will like it — the reviews are mixed. Still, I’ve read about a third of The Dragonbone Chair, and so far, so good. Best of all, it’s a million-word novel spread out over four different books, so even if it turns out that it’s not my sort of story, it will keep me company through thousands of meals.

Although I don’t particularly like fantasy, in fact I can’t stand most of it, there is a genre within a genre — a coming-of-age/hero’s journey story in an earthlike world, where much is familiar though skewed with a bit of strange — that I do tend to enjoy, but so far, I’ve only found three such series that appeal to me. Luckily, these stories are all very long with multiple books in the series and deserve more than a few readings. In fact, it was only during the second reading of The Kingkiller Chronicles that I realized that much of the dialogue is in rhyme or seven-word sentences depending upon the character. Something to go back and pay attention to. Best of all, none of those books has much to do with our world today except in an allegorical or fable-ous way, which is good for my peace of mind.

Still, as with working outside, there’s only so much reading, and working puzzles, and such that I can do in a day, so there’s still a lot of time to fill.

Luckily, as I find myself reaching for the keyboard to offset an upsurge of boredom, I remember what is waiting for me, and that makes it easy to stay away.

At least for now. Who knows what I’ll get up to in the coming days.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

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Acquiring Knowledge

August 25, 2026 — Pat Bertram

The acquisition of any knowledge is always of use to the intellect, because it can thus drive out useless things and retain the good, for nothing can be loved or hated unless it is first known. — Leonardo Da Vinci

I certainly need to acquire more knowledge to drive out the useless things I’ve learned about how so many people are trying to destroy this country — not just the globalists and other international groups, but groups of citizens and non-citizens, politicians and judges, fraudsters and lawbreakers within our own country. Useless knowledge indeed since there’s nothing I can do so long as the elections in Colorado are pre-determined as they have been for the past couple of decades.

I’m not sure how to acquire more knowledge except by reading, and for the most part, I’ve read all the non-fiction I intend to, at least for now, anyway. I do have a small collection of alchemy books I inherited that I started to read, but they aren’t so much a history of alchemy as self-teaching books. The exercises all start the same: visualize something (that something varies from book to book). In one book, they explained how to change things: visualize your immediate surroundings down to the merest detail, change what you need, then merge the visualized world with the real world, and voila! Or presto! Or ta-da! Or whatever your preferred word is, and the world has changed.

The problem is, I can’t visualize anything. I am mentally blind. (The word for that is aphantasia.) So much for my becoming an alchemist.

There are, of course, real world ways to acquire more knowledge, mostly just by living. Recently I’ve learned that one needs a certain ruthlessness to be a gardener. For example, my petunias were getting long and leggy and producing few flowers, so I trimmed the plants way back and now they are blooming again. And I wacked the branches off an overgrown bush, so now I have an unattractive stump with lots of arms sticking out, but I can see green where new sprouts are coming up, so in another year, that bush will be small and attractive and evergreen.

Another real-life bit of knowledge I acquired (or rather reacquired) is that no matter how careful you are, there will always be some weird accident that brings you low. In my case, I had just pulled a cup of tea out of the microwave and carefully set it on the counter, but my fingers must have been entangled in the string of the tea bag because as I pulled my hand away, the bag sloshed out of the cup and onto the back of my hand. 200 degrees of heat is painful!!

I did what I always did with burns — slather it with natural vitamin E from a capsule, and when I still felt that excruciating burn, I iced it. That took away the heat enough that I felt fine. Whew! The weird thing is that it actually charred the skin. Turned it brown. Luckily, it’s healing well, even the bits that blistered, and I haven’t had any pain since those first few minutes. Even now that the charred skin is flaking off, there’s no problem. (And yes, I do know that brewing tea in a microwave is not the way it’s supposed to be brewed, but it’s a lot easier to brew one cup that way than with a kettle.)

Frankly, I can do without that sort of learning. Perhaps I ought to dig out my alchemy books again and try to see what I will never be able to see. That has to be easier than to damage oneself, however accidentally, in the name of knowledge.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in Adventure, books, history/myth, How to, life. Tags: , , , , , , . 2 Comments »

We Are Not the Same

August 24, 2026 — Pat Bertram

I mentioned a few days ago about no-showing contractors and handypeople (just to be gender neutral, even though I haven’t found a single handywoman around here who does the work of a handyman), but to my astonishment, the guy I’d hired to clean my gutters did show up! He had kept me informed — mostly — about his no shows, so that was a point in his favor. He and his hired hand did a great job cleaning out the gutters, so that was another point in his favor. He’s also a personable fellow, so that is yet another point and he gets still another point for his willingness to do any job, no matter how big or how small. Plenty of points for me to keep his card handy.

When he was here, I mentioned a few things that needed to be done that workers hadn’t show up to do, such as filling in the cracks in the stucco, and a few things I hadn’t yet asked anyone to do, such as repainting the peeling trim on the eaves, so when the weather cools down, he’ll be back to do some more work.

The morning turned out great, especially since he loved my car and my yard. (Those are two ways to always get on my good side!)

The most amazing thing was when he and his helper gathered up the tarp and moved from one side of the house to the other. As you can see from the photo below, there is a knee-high drop-off on the ramp to the right of the door. They strode up the ramp that’s parallel to the door and kept on walking even when I yelped that there was a drop-off. The guy called over his shoulder, “I see it,” and kept on walking. The two of them walked off the ledge and over the flowers as if they weren’t even there. I was going to say they walked off the ledge with the ease of someone stepping over a crack, but even so, sometimes people hesitate a fraction of a second before stepping over an uneven crack. But these guys didn’t pause for even that fraction a second. There wasn’t even a hitch in their step when they landed. They just kept on walking.

Me? I stood there with my mouth open. And when I could talk, all I managed to say was, “That’s not fair!”

Admittedly, he was half my age, but even so, it seemed like an astounding feat. I could walk off a curb like that when I was young, but something that steep? I didn’t know such a thing was possible for anyone, but apparently so. It does prove to me, though, that contrary to what people want us to believe, we are definitely not the same.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

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Complicating My Life

August 23, 2026 — Pat Bertram

If everyone were honest, just think how different life would be. No need to protect yourself from theft, fraud, scams, hacking, and any number of other dishonest occupations that complicate life for the rest of us.

My brother called me to warn me that Microsoft Windows does automatic encryption when you close down your computer so that if it’s stolen, thieves can’t get into your records even if they can figure out your password. The problem is, if your computer is dropped (for example) and you get it fixed, the encryption goes into force, and you need your encryption code to get back into your own computer. Apparently, this code is about 40 characters long, so isn’t exactly memorizable by most people.

Anyway, since it took him hours and a separate computer to finally get his encryption code so he could get into his own computer, he thought he’d save me the same hassle in case I ever needed the code, and so he tried to walk me through the process of finding out what my encryption code is.

As it turned out, I couldn’t get into my Microsoft account because they wanted to send a security code to a defunct email. I was able to change the email to a current one, but meantime, they have placed a hold on the account for 30 days. I can still do things like check my email, but nothing beyond that until the end of next month.

So why was that first recovery email incorrect? I didn’t realize I’d ever given them a recovery email, so I didn’t change it when Microsoft made it near impossible for me to access that recovery email account.

And why was it impossible to access that recovery email? A year and a half ago, Microsoft informed me I would have to download an authenticator app to my phone so I could continue using that email account, the one associated with my webpage. The bizarre thing is that this particular email was never able to be downloaded to my phone, and the authenticator doesn’t work for PCs, so they were demanding something utterly unnecessary. Since I didn’t want to clutter my phone with something so ridiculous, I ended up having to go through the insanity of updating my accounts with the new email. Except, apparently, for Microsoft.

I wondered if anything had changed, so I tried to log into my webpage and check the status of the email from there. First, they wanted me to download an authenticator app, and when I passed on that, they sent a code to my phone, which I used. Then they again told me to download the authenticator app, and when again I didn’t do it, the same page came up asking for my phone so they could send me a second security code. I gave them the number again and they said, “You already used that number. We need another one.”

So, since I don’t have another phone, I still can’t access that email, and now I can’t even access my web page. You’d think I was big business rather than a solitary person with almost nothing to protect.

My webpage is paid up for five more years, and who knows what might happen. Considering that my online presence as well as my following is steadily shrinking (in fact, probably because of my recent political commentary, I’ve lost three-fourths of my readers), I might let the site go rather than go through all the foofaraw to pay for additional years. Luckily, my website was updated a couple of years ago, and nothing has changed since then, so I’m fine. And who knows — in five years I might be finished with the whole online thing. (If, in fact, in this world, anyone can be finished with it.)

So, after all that hassle, with nothing accomplished, I asked my brother what would happen if I just turned off the encryption. My computer never leaves my desk, so I’m not in danger of inadvertently losing it, and if someone breaks into my house and steals the computer, I’ll have more troubles than an encryption code could solve.

As it turns out, it is possible to turn off the encryption code, but it takes perhaps 8 hours for the computer to completely unencrypt everything. So I left everything as is until next month at least.

Why does everything have to be so complicated? Oh, right. It’s because of all those dishonest folk who are so willing to trespass on the good graces of the rest of us.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

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Young vs Old

August 22, 2026 — Pat Bertram

I’ve been playing a hidden object game for a while now, and every time the game updates — about once a month — I think it’s time to find something else to do because every month, they add annoying effects. For example, a couple of months ago, they added an effect where when you clicked on the found object, it flashed a bright light. Yikes. That’s enough to give a person migraines, to exacerbate epileptic tendencies, to aggravate people with the beginnings of cataracts, as well as create a whole bunch of other problems. Apparently, enough of us complained, so that they removed it. All went okay for a couple of months, but now they brought it back. It’s not as much of a bright flashing light, but it’s still a quick flash of a light, which is just as bad. Even worse, it slows down the game, especially if you have to close your eyes every time you click on an object to keep from being hit with the flash.

From what I can tell, the game players are mostly middle aged and older, not a whole lot of young folks, though I imagine the people who write the code for the game are all young. (Or AI for all I know.) Still, we older folk don’t need flashing lights to hypnotize us into playing. We do better in a staid atmosphere, but apparently, that’s not fun for the developers. I also bet they’re trying to attract more younger people, but it doesn’t seem a good business model to upset the older folk before they attract the younger generations.

Usually I can get used to the changes, especially since I turn off the annoying sounds, but those flashing lights are a deal breaker. So I’m going to have to find an alternative to the game as a way of wasting my time. Reading used to do it, but I still haven’t been able to force myself back to the library. I simply do not want to read romances or mysteries or thrillers or pretty much anything written in the age of AI, so I read and reread the books I have — a couple of fantasy series. I did order another series that seemed like one I could read, which surprised me — both the ordering and the finding. Most of the books in that genre are written by writers I don’t like who use bizarre names with bizarre spellings that leave me totally confused, and I’m confused enough as it is. (Not really, but it sounded good.) So finding something I might like, something, moreover that I’d never read, is appealing.

I’m not only going to have to step away from the game, but the internet in general. For a time, I liked seeing that the United States was actually working to break the globalist hold over us, but now that the midterms are nearing, the part I’m interested in is being drowned out by the horrendous specter of a communist takeover from inside the country. Not that I think they could do anything permanently — the whole reason for the second amendment is to prevent that sort of thing — but it could be a sad and depressing time. Even if by chance those so-called socialists are voted out, which I don’t think they can be since the blue states simply arrange the votes so they get who they want, it’s still sad and depressing to think that so many United States citizens hate this country and want to rip it to shreds. And I simply don’t want to see that hatred anymore.

It seems as if I got way off track. Or maybe not. Maybe the game and the politics are simply two sides of the same issue — the young vs the old.

Today, while trying to play the game, I understood why so many young people have no use for us older people. They need the lights and sounds and constant changes while we prefer a quieter game. For us, time goes so fast, it seems as if the changes come in a constant flash, while for them, the time must drag between the changes. We also don’t need the changes — we’ve lived through so much that it’s a comfort to immerse ourselves in a slowly evolving game instead of one that changes rapidly. But for younger folk, it’s all new and exciting and a thrill to be able to constantly think of new ways to “improve” the game.

It’s the same with the greater world. For us older folk, at least those of us who are not imbued with a savior complex, we’ve experienced way more than the younger people, and prefer a slowly evolving political scene, not the rapid and rapacious one we have right now. But for them, it’s all new. They are caught up in the whole “change the world to suit me” mystique without ever realizing the damage they could be doing.

So my solution? (For me, that is. There is no solution for the idiocy of youth except time, and no hope for the older people who should know better than to root for communism.) It’s a matter of my trying to find something else to do to shut out the outside world. The problem with that is that I risk becoming too insular. So, I guess, I’ll just do what I always do but just be a bit more circumspect and a lot more protective of myself and my peace of mind.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in being me, internet, life. Tags: , , , , . Leave a Comment »

Delusions

August 21, 2026 — Pat Bertram

A delusion is a fixed, false belief that is held firmly even when facts show that it is wrong. The trouble is, today a large segment of the population won’t accept the facts, and instead, tries to force everyone else to accept their delusion. I hate to think that our culture is going insane, but that’s the way it seems to me. As with most of my recent offerings, I’m going to stay away from any of the obvious whateveraphobia examples and go with a more logistical one — poverty and the suicidal empathy that uses it as an excuse for defunding the police, emptying prisons, and hoping people’s good nature rises to the fore. Once their poverty is relieved, of course, by raising taxes and impoverishing the working folk.

The first false premise is that defunding the police decreases crime. It’s no surprise that cities that cut way back on their police budgets ended up with even more crime.

The second false premise is “poverty.” When poverty rates are calculated, any government assistance people receive is left out of the equation. When that assistance is calculated in, our poverty rate drops to 2% and consists mainly of people like the homeless or drug-addicted street people. Even that low number would disappear if all the millions of tax dollars sent to help those people was used to help them instead of disappearing into the bank accounts of the funds’ administrators. Actually, that’s being a bit specious. A lot of people live below the poverty line, like the elderly on a fixed income, though they still manage to deal with life without committing crimes.

Assuming the lower poverty rate is true, then the real poverty is one of consequence, attitude, character, spirit. People don’t steal because they are impoverished. They steal because they can, because there are no consequences, because they want something and want it now.

Young people who descend en masse on a store, break in, destroy it and loot it, are not doing it out of poverty. They are doing it because they can and because it’s “fun.” Will defunding the police stop this sort of thing? Absolutely not, though in truth, the police might as well be defunded since they so seldom show up at such events until long afterward, if at all.

The defrauders who are stealing billions of dollars of our tax dollars are not doing it out of poverty, but again, because they can and because they are greedy. They see an easy mark and go after it. Even those who steal a smaller stake, such as less than $10,000, do it because it’s a cinch since the number was too small for any government to want to go after it.

People who commit murder don’t do it because they are financially impoverished, but because they wanted to do it for whatever reason. Did poverty compel them to murder? No. It’s something within them. Sometimes that “something” is drugs. Sometimes it’s psychopathy. Sometimes it’s a reason known only to the doer.

It’s the same with rape. How could financial poverty contribute to such a crime? A rape in no way gets them out of their poverty-stricken state, unless they end up incarcerated, but too many people are rapidly let out again. Some are not even charged, especially if they are from a culture that believes rape is not a crime. But here’s a clue — when you are in this country, it doesn’t matter what laws hold in another country. If you commit a crime for whatever reason, you need to pay the consequences. Unfortunately, all too often, the consequences are paid by the perpetrator’s next victim.

Socialists and other far-into-delusion leftists believe, or at least want you to believe, that “curing” poverty will cure all social ills. We know it’s not true. Taking more money from hard-working, law-abiding citizens only makes those citizens poorer and fraudsters richer. Why, when socialists talk about “free,” do they never mention clawing back the money fraudsters have stolen? Because it’s not money they want. It’s . . . too be honest, I don’t know what the individual socialists and socialist voters want, though the globalist agenda for more than a century has been to turn the United States into a third world country.

Luckily, I’m not a politician, so I don’t have to come up with a solution, but I do have a couple of ideas, besides clawing back those defrauded funds. One problem is that people on government assistance make more than they would at an entry level job, giving them no incentive to work. So, instead of penalizing the rest of the country by raising the minimum wage and gutting businesses to subsidize these people further, lower the subsidies. Give them a reason to try to better themselves. Or here’s an idea: stop teaching people the oppressed/oppressor ideology. Not everyone fits into those two categories. Most people are not oppressed. Most people are not oppressors. But once you start seeing yourself as a victim, you’ve impoverished yourself to the point of helplessness, where all your problems are someone else’s responsibility to cure. As for the drug problem that creates so many social ills? I have no idea. People who want to drug themselves will always find a way.

I have another thought — since the socialist leaders and their backers in this country are millionaires and billionaires, why don’t they start with themselves? There’s no law I know of that says you can’t pay more income tax than you owe. They and their agenda to take rights away from individuals while charging those citizens exorbitant taxes to do so, would seem so much more sincere if they put their money where their mouth is. As it stands now, they just sound delusional.

Come to think of it, the biggest delusion is that the government can fix everything. Quite frankly, going by the past fifty years or so, they can’t fix anything. The more money they throw at a problem, the more the problem increases because more money is available to pay for the same static services. With all the money thrown at the homeless problem, it’s greater than ever. With all the money thrown at the medical establishment and the insurance companies, the costs of care are greater than ever. With all the money thrown at the housing industry, housing has become less affordable. And people think taking more money from people who are actually solving problems is going to cure anything? Besides more government money causing more problems, it’s the government regulations and laws and licensing at every level of government, down to states and counties, that control the building industry that has caused the problem in the first place, since it’s more cost effective for a builder to build a monstrosity rather than a small starter home with few amenities. (In Denver, for example, total fees and permits add up to $40,000 before a single hour of work can be done.)  Yep. Delusion.

I’m sure you didn’t need to hear any of this, but I needed to get it out of my head, so here it is

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in history/myth, life. Tags: , , , , , . 3 Comments »

Dealing With Uncertainty

August 20, 2026 — Pat Bertram
Daily writing prompt
How do you deal with uncertainty?
View all responses

Some people go through life absolutely certain about themselves, their opinions, their place in life, and life itself. Even as a kid I noticed this. There were some grade schoolers who absolutely knew without any tinge of uncertainty about . . . well, about everything. Those kids tended to be the leaders, the ones others would follow, perhaps, because like me, they were riddled with uncertainty. Unfortunately, for me, my uncertainty about myself, my place in life, and life in general, also encompassed those “certain” people, and so I just sort of “uncertained” my way through grade school, into high school, and into the rest of my life.

Because of that pervasive uncertainty, I learned to learn. I wanted to be certain, but I also wanted to be certain I was certain about things that were true, not just the things that everyone else was certain of.

During times of exceptional uncertainty — such as the years after Jeff died when I was left without an anchor, and so just hovered above life, trying to find something to tie myself to — I simply endured the uncertainty. I even learned to embrace it because after all, life is uncertainty. Some people are lucky, and their faith brings them a certain degree of certainty, but as an adult, I was never gifted with that sort of belief.

And so I deal with my uncertainty today the same way I always did, by trying to find out the truth.

This very idea of certainty and uncertainty is one I’ve been struggling with lately. People seem utterly convinced of the rightness of their ideals and politics and even their own righteousness, and yet, to me, they seem ignorant of any fact or historical context or perspective. Which is where my uncertainty grabs hold of me. If they are so certain of things my years of learning have taught me are wrong, maybe I am the one who’s wrong. So I go back and forth, seeking out the origins of my thoughts, digging deeper into history and finding people who know more than I do about certain subjects, and I seldom find I have to contradict myself, mostly, I think, because any idea I had or have was a long time forming. I try not to jump to conclusions, try not to believe something just because I want it to be true, and yet there is that dichotomy between what I have come to know are facts, and what lies and untruths other people are so certain are true.

I’m not in grade school anymore, and so I see that certainty for what it is — a belief some people hold on to because it’s what they were taught or have come to know through ticktock or wherever they get their ideas, and because they need that certainty. Since they are so convinced of their certainty, they feel free to blindly hate those who disagree without ever looking beyond the dark veil of their own certainty. Most people don’t even see they have a veil.

So what makes me think I don’t also have a veil? What makes me trust myself more than the “certain” ones? The same way I trusted myself in grade school — by not trusting. Not trusting the “experts,” not trusting the “certains,” not even trusting myself. And it’s this uncertainty, I think, that leads me often to a truth, sometimes even to a truth I dare not say because of the backlash from the “certains.” Uncertainty leads to study, to seeing what the “certains” are certain is true, seeing where they got their “knowledge,” and heading out from there.

In a discussion in the novel The Wise Man’s Fears by Patrick Rothfuss, a character defended a story he told that the others found pointless. “Not pointless,” he said. “It’s questions you can’t answer that teach us the most. They teach us how to think. If you give a man an answer, all he gains is a little fact. But give him a question and he’ll look for his own answers. . . . That way, when he finds the answers, they’ll be precious to him. The harder the questions, the harder we hunt. The harder we hunt, the more we learn.”

And that’s why I trust that my truth is closer to the truth than those who scream their epithets and polish the same old “facts,” and publish their vile insults.

Am I certain? No. And neither should anyone else be, but that’s always been the way. The “certains” are heard because they scream loudest while we uncertains quietly stumble around searching for more of the truth.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in being me, history/myth, life, writing. Tags: , , , , , . 2 Comments »

No Shows

August 19, 2026 — Pat Bertram

I had two or three days in a row where I didn’t have to do any outside work because of rain. I’d scheduled Monday as the day to start up again, but someone was supposed to come clean my gutters, and I didn’t want him to have to deal with wet ground while he was on a ladder or a scaffold, so I crossed my fingers and hoped the yard would be okay another day without care.

And yes, it was fine yesterday morning when I went out to do the chores I should have done on Monday. The respite must have been good for me because I was able to do a lot of cleanup work, like trimming bushes and pulling up a few weeds.

It seems as if we’re back to high heat and no rain, so there won’t be many more respite days for a while. But that’s okay. August is nearing the end, and though September around here usually remains hot, there’s no doubt cooler days are coming. If nothing else, the sun time is less and will continue to grow less for the next four months, so that leaves less time for plants to get heat stroke.

So, I’m okay and my yard is okay, but my gutters aren’t. What’s with people? Two years ago, my contractor promised he’d stop by to clean the gutters, but he never did. Last year, I hired another fellow who’d been doing occasional work for me to clean the gutters, but he never showed up to do the work. Last week, when I was out watering, a guy who was working next door came over to me and introduced himself. He said he was certified for all sorts of work, so if I needed anything, he’d be glad to do it. I asked about the gutters, and explained about the others who had never showed up. He said, “Sure no problem. I can do that. Is tomorrow first thing in the morning okay?” Of course I said yes.

The next morning came and went with no sign of him, though later he did stop by to explain that he’d been hired to do some emergency cleanup after the big storm we had, but that he would be here Monday. For sure.

But he was a no show on Monday. I thought maybe he’d come when I was outside working yesterday, but that was another day of no showing.

I imagine someday he’ll show up, but then, I imagine a lot of things. Luckily, with as little rain as we get, the gutter problem shouldn’t really matter, though I don’t like seeing twigs and such sticking out from those gutters. Too bad there isn’t a long-handled gutter cleaner so I could do the work myself without having to get up on a ladder. Although I’d sworn off ladder climbing, I did tack up a shingle that blew off my gazebo because the guy who promised to fix it never came. But that was a short ladder (a step stool, actually) so it wasn’t much of a problem. But cleaning gutters? Not for me. I’ll just wait until . . .

Well, I’ll just wait until he shows up, and if he doesn’t, next year I’ll hire someone else who probably won’t show up, either.

I did find one surprise in my yard today — a couple of daylilies! I thought they were finished for the year, but apparently not.

At least something knows how to show up!

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in gardening, home, house, life. Tags: , , , , , . 8 Comments »

Creating a Whole New Reality

August 18, 2026 — Pat Bertram

Despite my extensive research in previous years into ancient civilizations and the mysteries they left behind, I’d never heard of Tartaria until recently. Some days, my online feed is filled with tantalizing tidbits about a super-advanced civilization that lasted until around the turn of the twentieth century when it was buried by a mud flood in a great global reset. To prove their theory, they point to such things as the massive fortress-like buildings that were erected to house the insane, or rather, according to the story, to house those who still remembered the Tartarian world before it was destroyed. Also “proofs” are the incredible cathedrals and government edifices that were seemingly impossible to create in horse-and-buggy times. Those buildings were supposed to be conductors of earth energy, a free energy source that was known once upon a time. Also, so many of these buildings all over the world were created in similar styles, which leads people again down the trail to Tartaria.

As much as I enjoy fun theories, I couldn’t get behind this one. Oh, I do believe in earth energy (something Tesla supposedly proved, though that “proof” disappeared after his death), and many researchers have found connections between cathedrals (if you’re familiar with The DaVinci Code, you know as much as most people about those connections). The half-buried buildings could have come from settling over the centuries (much in the same way that Venice is sinking), rather than a single mud flood.

But despite the cohesion of the theory, I couldn’t buy into it. How could they make a billion people stop believing in what they knew happened?

Well, I have my answer. All I had to do was pay attention to what’s going on today, how the liberals in particular are rewriting history and teaching kids things that simply are not true, or at least not the whole truth. (I’ve written and deleted several examples because all of them would get me called a liar and a racist and a bigot and a whateveraphobic and a bunch of other unsavory things, which would prove my point, but proving a point isn’t worth getting curses called down on my head.)

So, let’s try this one: kids are being taught that this is the worst country in the world, that we are an oppressor civilization, which leads kids to believe we created the whole slave trade when in fact, it had been going on for thousands of years before anyone in this country held a slave, and it continues to this very day. What this country did was make slavery illegal. You can’t teach kids one thing without following through with the rest of the story. Nor can you ignore the hundreds of thousands of white Americans who died to free those slaves. Nor can you shame a country for things that happened before anyone alive today was born, without balancing it out with all the good things that the country subsequently did. We are a country in progress, with each generation trying to improve their lives, their family’s lives, and the lives of their fellow citizens. You leave those important parts out, and what you end up with are a couple of generations who want to tear the whole thing down and make the billionaires pay for everything. And though there are some rich folks using their money to sow discord in this and other countries (and somehow, the money those billionaires have is sacrosanct) others are simply working, providing jobs for people, creating wealth. Wealth is not a pie. When someone creates a successful business, it adds to the prosperity of everyone. But that, too, is something that is left out of the discussion.

So, there begins the erasure of the truth. In future generations, assuming this current crop of neo-socialist/communists don’t rip the country to shreds, that’s what people will believe. They’ll sit on top of the destruction of a country that was built to serve the individual and protect individual rights because they believe the government needs to be in control of everything. (Which is utterly insane. The more money the government has, the more it squanders, the more fraud there is, and the worse off things are.)

Anyway, those future folks will be digging through the ruins, and they will find the Smithsonian Institute and the exhibits (paid for with our hard-earned money) that instead of celebrating this country, tell the story of how terrible we were. And those folks will nod in self-congratulation, and tell themselves that, even though they ended up in rags, they did the right thing by tearing it all down.

This is an exaggeration, of course, and with any luck, we’ll never see that destruction, but my point holds — it is possible to create a whole new reality within a short time. So who’s to say that there wasn’t some kind of great reset that lies forgotten in the not-so-distant past, just as people today are rewriting our own history.

There is one lingering question I have that mention of Tartaria brought to mind: in 1900, our population was only 76 million people, so why were there so many immense buildings erected all over the country to house the insane?

 

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in culture, history/myth, internet. Tags: , , , , , . 2 Comments »

Power and Corruption

August 17, 2026 — Pat Bertram

When I was young, I thought the world would be a lot better off if women were running things. I figured there would be no war, that kindness would prevail, that courts would be fairer, that there would be more empathy, and that government fraud would be reduced to a minimum. Boy, was I delusional!

In my defense, I didn’t really have any facts to base that theory on, just what I knew about women. Mainly me.

Now there are plenty of facts, facts that show up in the news every day and have for the past couple of decades, and it turns out that women are every bit as corrupt and as sociopathic as men, using their positions of power to lie, cheat, steal, manipulate, enrich themselves to the detriment to the country, and all the other ways people in poser have of holding themselves above “the deplorables” they hate, as well as their own constituents. And oh, yes . . . as is abundantly apparent when some of the women politicians open their mouths, they are every bit as unintelligent and ignorant as some of the men in politics.

It’s not just politicians and those running political machines, as well as anyone else who carves out a place of power for themselves, but district attorneys and judges, too. It’s no secret why so many of these individuals are women — women make up about 56% of students in law school. I was right — women in such positions are more empathic, but for the wrong side. It used to be that justice favored the victim (or at least it was supposed to), but now “justice” favors the perpetrator. Occasionally victims defending themselves end up in prison instead of the perpetrator. Too often, cops arrest doers, the DA refuses to bring them to trial, and so the criminal ends up back out on the street to do it again. And so more victims. But oh, that poor perpetrator! He had such a terrible life. (Not a word about the victim who now has no life, just a grave and grieving relatives.) Then there’s cashless bail where the perpetrator is released on his own recognizance with no incentive to return for his trial. Even worse, when they are here illegally committing crimes, sometimes the judges even conspire to let the doers go to keep them from being deported.

Why? I have no idea. Perhaps they really are empathic, though judges are supposed to be impartial. Perhaps they really do care, but it’s a killer’s empathy — not just an empathy for killers (because as some judges have said, they can’t convict if they don’t know the reason for the crime) but an empathy that gets innocent people killed. Perhaps they have a greater agenda — greater crime rates increase chaos, and in chaos is power.

As it turns out, women — or rather some women — are every bit as addicted to power as some men. Lord Acton’s belief that “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely” holds true for women, too. Even if women go into politics or the law or whatever for humanitarian reasons, they begin to believe that they deserve their power, and when their bad actions have no consequences, they begin to believe that they are right no matter how reprehensible they might be. It’s more than that, though. Although power does lessen people’s moral culpability, it seems as if morally ambiguous people — people who are ready and willing to be corrupted — are drawn to positions of power.

Despite the message you might be getting from this blog, the truth is, it doesn’t really matter to me if the powerful, morally ambiguous person is a woman (except that it gives women a bad name). I simply don’t like corrupt people. Period. They take too much power from the rest of us.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in being me, culture, history/myth, life. Tags: , , , , , . 2 Comments »
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