The Bob

April 2, 2026 — Pat Bertram
Daily writing prompt
How have you adapted to the changes brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic?
View all responses

I was going to make this a lighthearted post because I’ve adapted well to the changes brought on by the “Bob.”

In case you don’t know, I call it the “Bob” after an excerpt in my novel, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, where protagonist Greg, and his boss, Olaf, are discussing research papers. Olaf says:

“Convoluted writing and obscure terms are a way of intimidating the uninitiated, keeping the profession closed to non-scientists, and adding to the scientific mystique. Just think, if diseases had names like Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice, doctors wouldn’t make anywhere near the amount of money they do now.”

Greg laughed. “That’s an idea. They do it for hurricanes, why not everything else?” He mimed seizing the phone and dialing. “Mr. Olaf? I can’t come in today. I’ve got the Bob.” He hung up his imaginary receiver and looked inquiringly at his boss.

Olaf nodded. “Works for me.”

All during the worst of the shutdown, I hated giving the malady — both the physical ailment and the widespread cultural and financial ill — the hated name. I didn’t want to grant the horror more power than it already had and, too, I didn’t want to surrender to the fearmongering. At least, not for myself. I don’t get the flu, and besides, I’d made a vow never allow myself to get caught up in another scarifying scheme such as happened with the Swine Flu fiasco of 1976. Outwardly, I made a point of following their dictates. I stayed home. (Yay!! Such a good excuse to take a break from socializing.) I made sure to stay 6 feet away from anyone I did happen to see. (Again, yay!! I’ve never liked people standing on my heels while waiting in line.) I wore the mask. (Another yay! I liked the anonymity.) And I always made sure I had an easy answer when asked if I’d gotten the vaccine. (It wasn’t a lie, but not the strict truth, either.) And even though we’ve been paying for the stimulus checks with inflation for the past few years (each of us has probably spent more in inflationary dollars than we ever received for “free”), they were a nice bonus for me at the time.

So, for me, it wasn’t a hardship. The worst thing, I think, was keeping from getting caught up in the fear. And the best thing was having an excuse to be alone, and that still holds true to this day.

So why did I change my mind about a lighthearted post? Because other people weren’t so lucky. I know several women who lost their husbands and subsequently their way of life. (Too often widows end up in financial straits, as if losing that one special person isn’t trauma enough.) I know others who have lost beloved family members. And I know still others who have become lost in a cycle of never-cured illnesses.

If this had been a naturally occurring illness, there might be some sense of fatalism to help with acceptance, but I doubt there’s anyone out there who still believes it “just happened.” We (the people) might never know the truth. Might never know who to blame. Might always be shadowed by the spector of “if they did it once, they can do it again.”

One thing I do know: we — individually and as a people — will always be changed forever by the “Bob.”

***

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

Posted in culture, grief, history/myth, life. Tags: , , , , , . 1 Comment »

Stringing Stories Together

March 11, 2026 — Pat Bertram

I happened to read an old review of the Wheel of Time book saga, where the reviewer dismissed the massive work by saying all Jordan did was string together stories like The Lord of the Rings and Dune.

That made me laugh because that was sort of the point — an iteration of previous tales, stringing them together to create his world. No, Jordan didn’t copy those books. He simply paid homage to writers he loved, though there could be more similarity than maybe he intended because he used a lot of same sources as did those authors. What he did do, during the ten years he spent researching his world before writing one single word of the first book, was . . . well, research. He researched world myths, legends like King Arthur, folklore, history, costume, culture, war. Then he broke all that up into little pieces and rebuilt his world from those fragments of our past and an imagined future. There are few if any direct parallels to our word but instead there are multiple parallels for each character and culture.

For example, a lot of people think Jordan’s warrior culture, the Aiel, is based on the Fremen from Frank Herbert’s Dune since both are desert-dwelling warrior cultures, and perhaps Jordan did give a nod to Dune, but Jordan’s warrior culture is an amalgam of Zulu, Bedouin, Apache and Japanese cultures, and maybe some others. Their looks (pale skin, light hair, and light eyes) and their system of clan and sept is a parallel of old Scottish and Irish clans and septs. The Aiel are further connected to the Irish through the Tuatha’an, a Wheel of Time culture named after The Tuatha Dé Danann. And something I just discovered — their system of ownership, where women own the houses and everything in them, comes from the Cherokees. (In case you’re wondering, this puzzle aspect of the books is one of the reasons I keep rereading. It’s fun for me to dig out all the references.)

Jordan said over and over again that he wanted his world to be both our past and our future. As he pointed out, “You can look two ways along a wheel.” Also in his world, what goes around, comes around so that the characters in the books are the source of many of our myths and legends and we are the source of many of theirs. He said he wanted to explore what the nature and sources of our myths might be.

His explanation for why the myths and even the histories that the characters experience in The Wheel of Time are so different from ours is that what is remembered and how it’s remembered changes throughout the ages, like the game of Whisper, or Telephone, or Gossip, where someone passes a secret to the next person, who passes on what they heard to the next person, and in the end, what results is generally unlike what was originally said. His point was that things change over time, that stories change, that names change.

He points this out at the beginning of the first chapter of every book: “The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again.”

When asked where he got the idea of a wheel, he said, “The name comes out of Hindu mythology, where there is a belief that time is a wheel. Many older cultures believe that time is cyclic, that it repeats. In fact, I believe the best thing the ancient Greeks gave us was (the idea) that time was linear and change was possible.”

That’s for sure! There is a fatalism to the books stemming from the wheel, where everything will be repeated when the wheel comes around again, though perhaps with minor differences. Which also gives them their belief that you can change your life in small ways, but not large ones. Not an easy philosophy to live under.

But I’m getting away from my original point: to say that Jordan strung a bunch of stories together is true. Sort of. But it completely negates the brilliance of the world he created — our distant past and perhaps our distant future.

***

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

Posted in books, culture, fiction, history/myth, writing. Tags: , , , , . Leave a Comment »

So Turns the Wheel

March 10, 2026 — Pat Bertram

So here’s something I don’t understand about the publishing decisions for the end of the Wheel of Time.

They chose an author based on a memorial he wrote for Robert Jordan, but that piece was more about how Jordan had been a big influence on him in his own writing career rather than about Jordan’s books. Admittedly, the memorial was a paean to Jordan’s writing and to the saga as a whole, but though he called himself a big fan, he barely knew the books. And he certainly didn’t seem to comprehend the characters or where they were going.

I do understand they wanted a proven author yet one who wasn’t so big that he couldn’t take the time to work on the ending of Jordan’s books, but even so, the writer they chose didn’t have the time to spend rereading the books or going through the notes that had been gathered for him because he had his other deadlines to meet.

Still, a major factor with the Wheel of Time, is that the books and the internet were more or less born at the same time and attracted the same age group. So there were many thousands of people who’d lived with the books their whole lives. While waiting for a new book to be published, they spent millions of words on hundreds of sites discussing the books and their theories of what they thought would happen. Some of these people gave brilliant analyses of the characters and the culture. One fellow in particular, a college student who was majoring in comparative religions, wrote reams of essays and had insights that gave him a major following.

So getting to what I don’t understand — with that amazing resource at their fingertips (literally at their fingertips since they’d be typing on a keyboard), why didn’t they use it?

They could have started discussions asking what loose ends there were in the myriad plots, asking about where they thought the characters should go and what they should do, asking what they’d most like to see at the end, asking about what needed clarification, asking what things that were foreshadowed still needed to happen, asking . . . well, asking just about anything. With all those thousands of people ready to discuss everything to do with the Wheel of Time, there’d be no need for the substitute to reread the books or go through notes that made sense only to Jordan himself. If nothing else, it would have been a good starting place. And the books would actually have been a continuation of Jordan’s story instead of filled with new characters and revamped long-standing characters because the substitute wanted to . . . actually, I don’t know what he wanted to do. Make the books his own, perhaps.

It’s funny that almost no one will criticize any of those last three books. I have no idea why they are so sacrosanct except that maybe people were glad to have any ending. Oddly, the bits of criticism that are let through the barrier of protection are blamed on Jordan, even though the points in question were completely the creation of the substitute author. Also, in one book of Jordan’s, the timeline wasn’t kept straight (the story for each POV character started at the same place, giving the book a feeling of repetition), which he later said he regretted. And so did his fans. They sure dumped on him for that! Yet when the substitute skewed his own timeline in one book so badly that he had a character in two places at once and another who was in a different timeline than the characters he met up with, no one said a single word.

I suppose, in the end it doesn’t matter. No one else cares, obviously. Nor will I once I forget those books completely. As it is now, I feel an itch every time I see something in Jordan’s work that was mangled by the substitute. For example, Jordan explained how one magical machine worked on its own to project a character into scenarios based on the character’s fears, and yet the substitute had people working the machine to create horrific scenarios for the one being tested in the machine. Nothing major. Just itchable.

It’s possible no one could have finished the series properly. The more I see all the foreshadowing that appears in Jordan’s work several books before the foreshadowed event, or find hints of wry humor and ironies that won’t be understood until later, or see minor characters that are threaded throughout the saga, or marvel at the subtleties as well as all that goes on beneath the surface, or understand that something that seemed to be a win for the side of Light was actually a win for the Dark, the more I am astounded by what Jordan was able to keep in his head. I had a hard enough time keeping the 100,000 words in each of my own books straight. (In one case, I had to use a bulletin board and hundreds of tiny pieces of paper each containing a bit of information to figure out the timeline.) I can’t imagine keeping millions of words and thousands of characters and hundreds of plotlines in my head. Nor can I imagine doing all this in a world of my own creation. (Long before I’d ever heard of the Wheel of Time, I considered creating my own fantasy world for a book or series of books, but I gave it up since I have a hard enough time imagining the real world, let alone a fake one.)

His writing technique probably precluded any other author, too, since he was both what is known as a pantster (one who writes by the seat of his pants, who creates and discovers the story as he is writing) and a plotter (one who outlines, who knows the story before he writes).

It amuses me to think we had that in common — that we both had major points we wanted to hit as well as an end to aim for, but the journey to get there wasn’t plotted out. But the rest of it? Keeping all those words and characters and worlds in one’s head? That’s not me, for sure!

Just one more thing for me to puzzle out when it comes to these books — not just what he wrote, but how he wrote.

None of this, of course, helps me with my own writing because I’m pretty sure I don’t have another book in me, nor does it help me to understand . . . much of anything, actually.

Which brings me full circle to the beginning of this article where I mention that there’s something I don’t understand.

And so turns the wheel . . .

***

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

Posted in blogging, fiction, history/myth, internet, life. Tags: , , , , , . Leave a Comment »

The Algorithms Made Me Do It

March 4, 2026 — Pat Bertram

Algorithms are an interesting concept. Because I followed the monks’ walk, my news feed is full of Buddhist teachings as well as a daily meditation on peace from the walkers. Also, for some reason, I see a lot of biblical references especially referring to Armageddon.

Because I posted a blog about conspiracy theories, my feed is full of conspiracy theories, (Note to R.U. — including information about lizard people). Also, there’s much talk of what people have found in the Epstein files now that they are searchable for the public, confirming events that once were only surmised by the theorists.

Because I like to see all sides of what is called “truth,” I get a lot of leftist ideology. And because I sometimes check out news from black conservative commentators, I get a lot of information about what this administration is doing to counteract what the left is doing.

This makes for a wild ride, for sure. And it makes for wild thoughts, especially when seen through the lens of The Wheel of Time, which is, at its most basic, a tale of a cosmic battle between the forces of good (and not so good) and the forces of evil (and not totally evil).

What if the conspiracists and the biblical scholars are right and we are currently going through a cosmic battle that is being played on various stages?

The political stage, of course, which seems pretty obvious since the two sides are diametrically opposed.

The religious stage and the battle between cosmic forces for good and evil as described in The Lord of the Rings, The Wheel of Time, and countless other novels. An ongoing battle between Christians and those who are trying to decimate Christians, such as what is going on in Nigeria.

A technological stage with perhaps a battle between humans and artificial intelligence (as has been predicted in hundreds of science fiction stories for the past century). And what is called a paradigm shift from our present awareness to a greater one (or at least a different one) if we are to sustain our species.

If the algorithms are telling me anything, it’s that there is a present good to counter the “evil,” though I wouldn’t call it evil — it seems more like unrest, an acceptance of criminal behavior as the norm, and a growing feeling that laws don’t have to be followed if you feel morally superior to those laws. As the left continues to push their socialistic-communist agenda, others are fighting back, stressing individualism over collectivism. As the unrest grows, so does the personal need to find peace within and hence the vast influence of the Walk for Peace. And the paradigm shift continues to shift, at least on a political level, such as the abandonment of punitive climate controls to one that accepts the necessity of power-hungry AI data centers.

Even if there is some sort of cosmic battle going on, and even if I sometimes worry that the world is changing to a reality I might not be able to recognize, would we even notice, or for the most part, will our lives go on, with us noticing only small changes in how we interact with the world and each other?

Probably what will happen, no matter what the algorithms tell me, is the same thing that is happening in The Wheel of Time now that I have eliminated the ridiculous substitute-author ending from my studies — just the same scenarios played out over and over again.

Does any of this make sense? I have no idea if it even makes sense to me — it’s just a wild idea I am playing with. And who knows, maybe the algorithms made me do it.

***

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, internet, life. Tags: , , , , , . 7 Comments »

Buying Colorado

March 3, 2026 — Pat Bertram

After Jeff died, I moved to California to help take care of my father. He didn’t actually need a lot of help, but he did need someone there to watch over him, so I was able to find a life for myself. During the first three years, I mostly walked. And walked. And walked. Then I discovered dancing, and that became a saving grace for me. (Well, maybe not “grace” since it didn’t make me all that graceful, but I still managed to hold my own, even during performances.)

After my father died, I became nomadic — housesitting, traveling, staying in motels. But always, I ended up back in that desert town because I didn’t know where else to go. Besides, I had friends there, and dancing.

Then came the opportunity to buy a house in a small town in Colorado. I was sad to leave my dance classes and my friends, but I was delighted to leave California. Although the high desert was livable, the politics of the state weren’t. Even if I could have afforded to live there, I would have left out of self-preservation.

I was glad to settle back into Colorado. That is, I was glad until I realized that the Colorado I left wasn’t the same one I returned to. The state had always been moderate, and yet somehow the state had become uber-liberal, as bad if not worse than California, with punitive policies and little representation of the rural areas. I live far from Denver, but that sanctuary city with its insane laws neutralizes the outlying areas even further. Not only do they try to take our water (which makes the building of the conduit from Pueblo out to the Kansas border a boondoggle because there won’t be any water for them to share with us) but they are also taking away the ability for counties to create their own zoning laws. Instead, small towns must adhere to the same unaffordable “affordability” zoning laws that are being put into place in the big cities. A state that once had a tax surplus is now in a sinking hole of debt because of liberal ideologies and the fraudulent misuse of tax dollars. Then there is the bought-and-paid-for governor who’s making his own deals with WHO and Zelensky and anyone else that can further his agenda of separating Colorado from the governance of federal agencies. (Though he still wants federal funds.) All this creates at times an uncomfortable dichotomy between the individualistic rural areas and the collectivistic urban areas.

So how did Colorado come to this when I wasn’t looking? Tons of money from east coast liberals, and maybe even west coast, came flooding in. Most of the money for democratic candidates comes from outside the state, while most of the money for conservative candidates comes from inside the state. Which says to me that the state would have preferred to remain conservative, or at least somewhere in the middle where it had always been. (Today, slightly less than a quarter of registered voters are democrat, another scant quarter is Republican, and slightly more than half are registered as independent or unaffiliated.)  Many districts no longer even put forth a republican candidate for any office. They simply can’t match the funds the democrats have at their disposal.

Why the push to buy Colorado? I have no idea, though I guess it was easy in part because so many people from California had moved here. I never understood that, frankly. You move from a cesspool of high taxes and an overreaching government, and you immediately start creating a similar cesspool, but that’s what they did.

Although the politics of Colorado has changed drastically, the feel of the state hasn’t. The air feels like home. The weather, though not always to my liking, is what I was used to growing up.

And I’ve made good friends here, making this small town even homier.

Even though I grew up in Denver, it turns out I’m a small-town girl at heart, though I do wish — silly me — that politically things were different. Still, the machinations of politicians and their backers, and those who espouse extremist policies have always horrified me so I don’t imagine things will be that different. I hope not. And anyway, I’ve managed to survive seven years here, so with any luck, I’ll continue to do okay.

***

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, home, life. Tags: , , , , . 28 Comments »

We Have Met the Alien and He Is Us

March 2, 2026 — Pat Bertram

I had to laugh at the news that the government is going to release the UFO files, because the truth is, most have already been released, but people don’t want to believe the prosaic (though often horrific) explanations. I spent years researching UFOs and looking for the truth of aliens among us. And you know what I discovered? They are us. Not you and me, but humans, nevertheless. Top secret projects like Project Mogul. MKUltra and human experimentation on US citizens by the likes of the CIA and the DIA. Experimental aircraft that was decades beyond what was released to the public. Drone technology. Laser technology. Extra-Low Frequency beams. And fake stories to cover up illegal dumping. (This last was Fred Crisman, an agent of disruption for the CIA, who also turns up in JFK conspiracies.)

We always think we deserve to know the truth, but our leaders don’t think that way, so there’s a lot of so-called UFO activity that will never be released, especially if it involves crimes against citizens or when it involves national security. (Or even when it comes down to how to control us citizens.) Military technology is always a decade or two ahead of what is released to the public. In UFO lore, there is a tale of a mysterious fellow who went around to various businesses and shared information that supposedly came from the aliens, such as fiber optic technology, but the truth is, this fellow was very human. He was Philip Corso, who headed up the Foreign Technology Desk in Army Research and Development, and one of his jobs was doling out military technology that needed to go public.

[He’s also the intelligence officer who did research on POWs from the Korean War, found out that most of them had been sent to Russia, and so decided it was best — and cheaper — to tell the world they were dead rather than continuing to pay their salaries or even trying to rescue them. And that’s been the US policy ever since. He’s also the one who said he saw Oswald at the Russian Embassy. And oh, after the truth about Roswell came out, he wrote a book supposedly telling the truth about Roswell, which was, in fact, all a lie. Shady fellow, for sure.]

Of course, if you’d read my book Light Bringer, you’d know all this. It’s fiction, but I needed a place to dump a lot of my research. Weirdly, though it was supposed to debunk all the UFO theories, I ended up creating my own alien group based on Zecharia Sitchen’s books about Sumerian cosmology, so if you do read the novel, take what that part with a grain of salt.

I was going to set out all I discovered about Roswell here, but I did a bit of online research, and everything that took me decades to find is available, all included in the U.S. Department of War’s “The Roswell Report: Case Closed.” It tells all about Project Mogul, a top-secret military operation that once had a security rating and a budget as high as that of the Manhattan Project. Sheesh. I could have saved myself a lot of work if I’d just waited a few years and read that report! At least now, though, it will save me the trouble of writing it all out here.

One thing I haven’t been able to find more information about is that supposedly, when the CIA were in Tibet, they discovered a living group of tiny humans, three or four feet tall, with long fingers and long, skinny necks. Add a jumpsuit and a mask with strange eyes, and there you have the “aliens” we are so familiar with. I wish I could have found out more than just the snippet I did, but still it’s worth mentioning.

It does makes me wonder what sort of things will come out if the files and information and photos are released now. Will there be a redaction, saying that aliens are real? Will there be a bunch of stuff released to hoax us? (Because someone wants us to believe the myth, otherwise, why would a character with the clout of Corso be negating the truth?)

Either way, I doubt people will believe the official story. The UFO myth we believe is too powerful. Of course, knowing how we’ve been played for so many decades, it’s always possible the myth covers up a more disturbing idea that they live among us. But frankly, I don’t know and don’t want to guess.

***

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

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

Stepping on Toes

March 1, 2026 — Pat Bertram

I stopped paying attention to partisan politics when, as a young adult, I learned about shadow governments, globalists, an international elite of some sort that was running things behind the scenes.

Even if I hadn’t researched the histories hidden in books, some of the sense that both parties were working toward the same agenda is obvious when you see how often policies changed to reflect the losing candidate’s point of view. It seemed so contrived — a play put on for the benefit of the voters who otherwise didn’t count in the rulers’ grand scheme of power and political leverage.

The way I saw it, when a tiger and a lion fight (or an elephant and a donkey), the poor rabbit always gets trampled. Or devoured.

Trump’s first term caught my attention because he seemed an outlier, not a politician but someone who had a different agenda, something more than just accruing power and money as politicians so often do. But I never really thought much about him and his presidency until the personal attacks on him began, most of which have subsequently been litigated out of existence or are proving to be false as more information comes out. (Many of those lies are still believed despite proof to the contrary.)

Those attacks continue. There’s an almost constant barrage of lies, hatred, vilification, name calling, more than any other president in my lifetime. Even if the current president is as bad as they say he is, it still comes down to why he’s not being protected from the outrage. Almost all presidents were corrupt (or corrupted) in some way, almost all overreached their power, but (with a couple of exceptions) the system protected them, hiding their transgressions from the voters, or at least downplaying their corruption. But not him. He’s out there on his own. The traditional media will not report anything he does that benefits people, and if they do, they spin it so it’s a bad thing. And news apps perpetuate this bias.  A content analysist, Media Research Center, reviewed the news that was presented in January to Apple News’ 140 million subscribers, and out of more than 600 articles during the most popular time slot, not a single article was from a conservative point of view.

Since this is history as it’s happening rather than books, I have no recourse but to do my research online to try to find out why the power brokers, the opposition party, and those who influence public opinion are treating this president differently from previous presidents. I’ve found many in-depth articles showing how he’s making his deals. Like with any dealmaker, he starts out with a brash opening, and it’s that opening that gets reported and excoriated. The steps that come after the opening salvo are ignored, so people only see how outlandish that first statement is without noticing the strategic moves he has already planned to get what he’s really aiming for.

I suppose it’s possible that the globalists let him continue doing his thing because of the chaos his presidency causes, which I’m sure furthers their agenda. But why do those in powerful positions hate him so much if he’s just the reverse of the same globalist coin presidents have always been? Is it possible that he’s actually doing something to upset or at least delay globalist policies that have been playing out for over a hundred years?

The first 150 years of the United States, there was no income tax. There were tariffs to support the various government programs, tariffs that were so successful, there was money to spare. Then, at the instigation of a cabal of bankers, the US money system was turned over to the newly created Federal Reserve Board, which Woodrow Wilson later admitted he regretted: “The Federal Reserve Act, which I signed, allowed our system of credit to become too concentrated. The growth of the nation and all our activities are in the hands of a few men who, even if their action be honest and intended for the public interest, are necessarily concentrated upon the great undertakings in which their own money is involved. We have restricted credit, we have restricted opportunity, we have controlled development, and we have come to be one of the worst ruled, controlled and dominated governments in the civilized world — a government run by the opinion of small groups of dominant men.”

Not only did the government of the time create the Federal Reserve Board (which they kept secret from the public for more than a decade), but they amended the constitution to allow for an income tax, which just twenty years previously had been decreed unconstitutional. (At first, they only taxed the highest 1%. In 1942, Frankin D. Roosevelt increased the number of people to be taxed to 75% of workers.) Because of bribery, corruption, and influence from other nations, tariffs were rescinded and taxation and debt became the name of the game.

Tariffs were always meant to be the main source of income of the United States not, as it is now, directly and solely from American citizens through taxation.

So why the hatred of Trump and his tariffs? Why the hatred of his push for nationalism? Why the insistence on destroying the immigration policies that all of his predecessors had created and espoused? These things, in the main, seem as if they would only help the country, though people point to each of these things (as well as other policies he’s followed) as reason to hate him, forgetting that the hatred and vitriol came first. Even before he was inaugurated, before he did a single thing, there was already talk of impeachment. And in the years between his two terms, there was a concentrated effort to discredit him irreparably.

After weeks, months, and way too many hours on the internet trying to figure this out, I still don’t know the truth, but I do know that anyone who is so utterly vilified (someone moreover who once was loved by the very people who are now vilifying him), has to be stepping on someone’s toes. It could be all part of the play, but it seems too extreme to me. Too confusing. By the time enough years have passed to put this all into historical perspective, I’ll be long gone, so I might never know. I don’t suppose it matters anyway, since what is happening and what is going to happen will happen even if I don’t understand the play that’s being enacted.

***

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

 

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

White House vs. White Tower

February 28, 2026 — Pat Bertram

More and more, I see The Wheel of Time saga as an allegory of our time.

In the story, there is a powerful group of women, called “witches” by some, who use the energy of the universe to sometimes help, sometimes hinder humans. It used to be that men used one side of the power and women another (think yin yang), but the men’s side became tainted and unusable, leaving women the sole users of power. The women power wielders live in a town more or less based on the Vatican, in a building called “The White Tower,” that supposedly was based on the Padgett-Thomas Barracks at the Citadel, Robert Jordan’s alma mater. This white tower also invokes images of “ivory tower” because of their detachment from the world and their arrogance in believing that despite their insularity, they know better than everyone else. And, in being a seat of power, it also invokes images of the White House.

The leader of these women is called the Amyrlin Seat, which is both her title and the name of her position. (Can you see the similarity to “Merlin?” That’s the fun puzzle part of the books for me.) Although many of the various factions of this White Tower hate the woman who holds the office of Amyrlin Seat, they still respect the position because the position itself is more than the current leader. Leaders change, but the position remains, and it’s the position itself that’s important.

I’m sure you know where this is headed. When did we come to see the position of president as solely the person who holds the position rather than the position itself? This was so very obvious during the State of the Union Address. Half the politicians completely and totally disrespected the presidency. Not just the man. The position. The institution. (And the constitution itself, since the State of the Union Address is a constitutionally mandated report from the president to Congress.) I can understand not respecting the office holder, but to disrespect the office itself, the “position of the president” seems . . .

I had to stop there and think. I don’t know what it seems. Uncalled for, certainly. Defiant, probably. Childish, perhaps. I do wonder though: if one faction can’t respect the position, if they demean it so publicly, why would they expect anyone to respect them when they attain that position?

The position itself should garner some respect even if the person holding the position doesn’t. Or maybe I’m wrong. Or the wrong generation. I don’t know.

In The Wheel of Time, the tower splits, and each side chooses a different Amyrlin Seat, basically running two different governments under the same name. Each Amyrlin claims she is the true leader and the other is the rebel, which leaves most of the common folk crushed between the two of them.

In the USA, we still have just one president, but half the government doesn’t even seem to acknowledge, let alone respect, the elected leader, which gives us two factions, each acting as they are the “real” leader.

Doesn’t sound as if this bodes well for us common folk.

Or maybe it will end well. After all, the White Tower was eventually reunited under one Amyrlin, so perhaps we’ll eventually find some sort of unity.

It could happen.

***

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

 

Posted in life, internet, history/myth. Tags: , , , , , , . 6 Comments »

Weary of Lies

February 21, 2026 — Pat Bertram

In 1976, swine flu was discovered at an army training center, and several people got sick. Testing confirmed that the disease had spread to more than 200 people, and suddenly, public officials panicked. Money was poured into development of a vaccine that was intended to inoculate every single person in the United States. The scare stories were horrific, with countless news articles predicting a repeat of the 1918 flu pandemic.

The vaccine was developed quickly, and people lined up for the shot. (Literally, a shot — needle-free jet injections shot from some sort of gun.) By then, for good reasons (unimportant to this story) I had developed a vast distrust of the medical establishment and didn’t want to get inoculated. At the time, I was managing a franchised fabric store, and the district manager told me that I needed to set a good example for my employees. And if I didn’t, I’d be fired. I was young and still too honest to even think of lying and just telling him I got the vaccine so, to my utter shame, I caved and got the injection. It backfired on him because I refused to make anyone else get the shot. In fact, I didn’t tell anyone except him that I was inoculated. Even before I learned the truth that I’d only surmised — that the whole thing was a misdirection, that there wasn’t going to be a pandemic, that the flu was mild, and that the vaccine caused various health issues for people, some not until later in life — I vowed that never again would I fall for one of their scarifying schemes.

I was lucky, and so far have managed to be side-effect free from that swine flu vaccination, but I never forgot that episode. I never told anyone I got the vaccine either, until just now — I was that ashamed of my lack of confidence in myself.

So fast forward to 2020. Same story. I admit, I was afraid — those scare tactics work even on people who are aware of them. But I remembered my vow, and though I didn’t lie, I never told anyone I didn’t get the vaccine. I couldn’t. People were willing to turn in friends and neighbors who didn’t comply with mandates, and even though I trusted the people I knew, I couldn’t take a chance. (At that time, they were talking about rounding up the unvaccinated and incarcerating them in FEMA camps.) Even with stories of the necessity for showing proof of vaccine and such, I believed I was right. Of course, I took precautions, staying home almost all the time, and on the rare occasions I had to go out, I made sure to keep away from people. By then, though, I wasn’t really worried about getting sick since I don’t seem to get the flu. (I don’t really know why. Something to do with blood type and stronger protein coatings on cells, or so I’ve read.)

As time passed, stories started coming out about horrendous problems stemming from the vaccine. Young people who now have heart conditions. Middle-aged people who died. Older people who developed severe eye problems. And more.

A lot of people who didn’t get the vaccine or any of the boosters are patting themselves on the back for their perspicacity, but I’m not. It’s just one of those things that life taught me: to trust myself, not the science. (Thalidomide, anyone?)

We’re still dealing with fallout from the shutdowns, but already people seem to have forgotten how much we were forced into giving up our autonomy. But it’s important to remember. And it’s important to remember that we were lied to.

The lies are still there — maybe not about diseases and vaccines, but oh, so many lies that it’s hard to find one’s way through the maze. But it’s possible, if not to figure out the truth, at least to recognize the lies. It’s about looking at both sides objectively without emotional ties to either. It’s about seeing the pattern (as with those two universal vaccination attempts, though admittedly, a sample of two isn’t much of a pattern). See who actually benefits from the lies; who ends up richer because of the lies; who acts as if their lies only affect other people, not them. (For example, if you hear someone say the oceans are going to rise in the next few years because of climate change and then they buy ocean-front property, there’s a good chance someone is lying.)

Just as with the vaccines, I seldom talk to anyone about things I’ve researched and lies I’ve uncovered because people believe what they want to believe. Too many people seem to want the same old story — a simple plot, a villain to hate, a feeling of moral superiority — and so the complexity of what is going on in the world slips by them while they remain emotionally entrenched in the noble myth they choose to believe. Luckily, I have one or two good friends who have done much of the same research as I have, so I can talk without getting a heap of programmed responses in return. But still, I am weary of the lies — a lifetime of lies — and weary of the people who accept the lies for truth without bothering to look further.

Oops. Sorry. I didn’t mean to get on my soapbox. I generally don’t let my guard down, but I am writing at night when I am physically tired, not just mentally tired.

***

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, life. Tags: , , , , , . 10 Comments »

The “R” Thing

February 19, 2026 — Pat Bertram

I don’t know if I’ll ever post this because of . . . you know, the “R” thing. Still, I’m writing this for me because I think it’s interesting and because it’s something I’ve been noticing and thinking about.

I mentioned once or twice before that I sometimes listen to conservative black commentators. I started because I wanted to hear what they thought about white liberals insinuating (if not flat out saying) that blacks were too stupid to figure out how to get an ID in order to vote. Interestingly, most of those commentators ignored the issue, as if it had nothing to do with them because of course, it didn’t. The insinuation is merely talk from people who haven’t a clue what they are saying and no concept of how the world works.

I continued watching these commentators because they are smart and informed, they have great sources and resources, and they gave me a different slant on what was happening in this country. I especially wanted to hear things from their point of view rather than from the white liberals who are always telling us what blacks think (or what they should think).

That’s neither here nor there. It’s just something I did. But here’s what’s interesting: suddenly, I’m seeing a lot of these non-white people asking, “Where are the whites?” You’d think (if you listened to liberals) that living in a white-free world is what people of color want, but it isn’t. These commentators want what most of us want — to be known as Americans (or rather, United-States-ians since “American” suddenly means something different from what it always has meant), and they want to be part of a country where the races can intermingle. The first time I heard a mention of disappearing whites was from a black commentator who reviewed the half-time show. She said if it was supposed to be inclusive, “Where are the whites?” And then she admitted she missed seeing them.

Another black woman said that if it’s okay to promote black-owned business, then it should be okay to promote businesses as white-owned, but instead of doing either, she concluded, all these businesses should simply be promoted as “American-owned businesses.”

Then another black commentator noticed a white student being blocked from entering a “multi-cultural” area on campus and pointed out that “multi-cultural” by definition would include whites.

And yet another black commentator mentioned the difference between black pride and white pride — one is hailed as a good thing, the other evil.

And one often tells the history of slavery and mentions that whites are the only ones who fought to get rid of slavery, a practice that has gone on all over the world for thousands of years.

A prevalent comment left on these videos is from whites telling them they are betraying their race. Luckily, the commentators continue to voice their opinions despite this.

It seems ironic (or maybe fitting? I don’t know) in a world that’s trying to erase whites, where whites are made to feel ashamed of their heritage and skin color, where you can’t state simple facts if those facts include “whiteness,” where the European influence on the founding of this country is being overwritten, where an entire generation of white boys have been demonized for things that happened before they were born, it’s blacks who are pointing this out.

Maybe I am that “R” thing as so-called friends on Facebook once railed at me when I merely shared a post by a conservative black commentator who refused to be told what to think simply because her skin was a certain color.

Still, I think it’s an interesting turn of events, and apparently, since you are reading this, I decided it was interesting enough to post here on my blog.

***

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, life. Tags: , , , , , , . 7 Comments »
« Older posts