My Small Life

September 9, 2026 — Pat Bertram

This has been a rough summer for me, one of sadness, incomprehension, and uneasiness about what is going on in this country. I blamed myself for a while, thinking my dejection was my own fault for paying attention, but it seems as if this summer really is an historic one, where the hidden agendas suddenly became unhidden. One that shocked me is the move to make socialism and communism thinkable, where for so many years it truly was unthinkable, even though behind the scenes the push was in that direction (the push, specifically, to take over one of the established parties rather than create one of their own). But now the plan is not only thinkable, it’s visible. The lies are more obvious, the propaganda more blatant, and the willingness of too many people to accept the headlines and the chopped video clips too appalling. Whatever the reason — the success of the victim/oppressor ideology taught in schools, the move to make Israel the instigator of all ills, the hatred of one old man, and anything else that might be behind it all — it does seem as if this is a pivotal summer and autumn.

So much, too, of the past is coming out — the truth that I knew but had no proof, such as the whole Covid mess, the insane level of lawfare perpetrated against elected officials, the election fraud — that it makes this summer even more of a pivotal one. Since too many people are holding on to the “truths” that their opinions are based on rather than the facts that could cause an identity crisis, they are exacerbating the rift that already has been created.

I know I’ve been talking about this way too much, but as I’ve mentioned before, writing is how I try to make sense of the unsensible. The plethora of these posts, as well as the all too obvious evidence of my dejection, has probably led people to think that I’ve given up my pursuit of gratitude. But there is no reason one can’t see what is going on and still dress themselves in thankfulness.

Because, despite it all, I am grateful for so many things. I’m grateful that people are fighting the push toward communism. I’m grateful that, despite my sense that it’s dangerous to speak the truth, it’s still a protected right. I’m grateful that we’re allowed to move freely without restrictions, still allowed to think, still allowed to own property.

It’s the last I’m most grateful for — owning my own house. As long as I pay my taxes, so far, there’s no one who can take my home from me. I’m grateful for every minute I spend taking care of the house and yard. I’m grateful for every beautiful thing I’ve brought into my life, whether outbuildings, plants, or friends.

I’m grateful, too, for the many moves of my life that have taken me from big cities to small towns until here I am, almost at the edge of civilization, where there’s a strong sense of community.

Is it necessary to pay attention to the outside world? That is one of the questions these blog posts never seem to clarify for me. I could block out the world quite simply — turn off my computer, turn my eyes to just what is directly in front of me, turn my mind to small issues, such as how to change smoke alarm batteries without getting on a ladder. The really important things of a small life!

And that, I think, is what I am most grateful for — that I have the choice to take a look at the big world beyond my environs and then find solace in my small life.

***

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

Posted in life, history/myth, being me, house, home, gardening. Tags: , , , , , . 3 Comments »

Ah, Liberty

September 8, 2026 — Pat Bertram

In any talk of immigration nowadays — legal or illegal — someone always brings up the Statue of Liberty and how it says that all people are welcome.

The odd thing about the Statue of Liberty, is that despite it being an iconic symbol of the United States, it was never commissioned by the USA. In fact, it was a gift by the French government. Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi, the sculptor, originally viewed the project as a colossal statue to stand at the northern entrance to the Suez Canal. It was supposed to have been entitled, “Egypt Carrying the Light to Asia.” When the Egyptians turned it down as being too expensive, France commissioned the revamped statue as a gift to the USA. It basically had nothing to do with this country; it was merely a French artist with a vision who needed a place to stash that vision.

As for the inscription of the statue: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” etc. It was written by Emma Lazarus in 1883 for an art and literary auction to help fund the building of the Statue of Liberty’s pedestal.

The poem was never, and was never intended to be, an official declaration of the United States’ immigration policy, though people think it is. In fact, the immigration policy grew into one of exclusion. Or inclusion, depending on how you look at it. What the policy included were people who could pay their own way once they got here and/or who had people to sponsor them— immigrants were never supposed to be burden on the taxpayer. They were, instead, supposed to add to the country’s coffers. And they were chosen because of their ability to eventually assimilate into the country and become loyal and patriotic citizens.

The more the far leftists made their agendas known over the years, and the more they dictate policy (if not government policy, then for sure the policies that their adherents advocate), the weaker the immigration laws became until under a certain president, there were in fact no laws. And the more they justify it by . . . actually, I’m not sure how they justify it, but as I said, part of the popular vision of our immigration policy is based on that not-so-American statue.

I have no idea where this immigration turmoil is going to end up, but I keep hoping that I will never have to see the culmination of the stated far-left policy of open borders, either because I will be gone, or because it won’t affect me way out here in the open high prairie. I used to shake my head in wonder at the local farmers and ranchers who sold their water rights so the front range cities could grow, but now it’s a nice thought — without water, there’s really no room for a lot of growth.

Ah, liberty!

***

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: , , , , , . 1 Comment »

Opinions

September 6, 2026 — Pat Bertram

I saw a quote, author unknown, that said, “A person is starting to progress down the road to wisdom when he begins to understand that his opinion is just an opinion.” I don’t know about being on the road to wisdom, but I’ve always known my opinion counts for little. I’ve never been able to talk anyone into believing anything that I do (not that I ever really wanted to); in fact, I can barely get anyone to listen to any of my opinions, especially those based on years of research because of course, to them, their opinions trump mine.

What seeing that quote did was turn on a light in my head. If my opinion is just an opinion, then so is everyone else’s, which means, I can give their opinions as little credence as they give mine.

Which leads me to wonder: if opinions are not anything beyond a mere attitude or personal view of something and don’t really mean anything, then what’s the point? More than that, if everyone’s opinion is equal, it means that the opinion of a person who has spent a lifetime studying a subject, such as history or politics, is exactly the same as the opinion of a person who watched a ticktock video and now thinks they know the truth.

This wouldn’t matter if, in fact, opinions didn’t mean anything, but they are dangerous in the hands of people who know little. For example, some of the young people who want socialism think it means being social. That’s a dangerous opinion since it can lead down a road most of the people in the USA don’t want to travel. Opinions are also dangerous when vented in front of people who don’t believe those opinions, because to certain groups, their opinions are the only “right” ones and everyone else needs to be excoriated for their views. Most dangerous of all, of course, are news media that packages opinion as fact.

On the other hand, sometimes opinions really are useless. For example, more than three-fourths of the country wants secure elections, but the people in Congress who are supposed to be representing those three-fourths refuse to do what people want.

So . . . opinions. Everyone has one, they say, though most people have a whole slew of them, some based on nothing more than “feelings.”

I don’t know what to take away from this “opinion” post, but the quote, at least, made me think about opinions in a different manner. Will it change anything? Probably not, though by giving this topic a piece of my mind, it might help bring me peace of mind. So that’s something.

***

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

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

Basically, a Basic Story

August 28, 2026 — Pat Bertram
Daily writing prompt
What’s a book you never finished but still think about?
View all responses

When I saw this blog prompt, my first thought was to let it pass as I’ve been doing with most of the prompts, such as “If you could relive one year of your life, what would it be?” and “What are your five favorite apps on your phone?” Those subjects just don’t seem worth wasting any words on, and neither does this one. After all, if I ever kept thinking about a book I’d never finished, I’d just finish it and get it out of my mind.

My second thought was to write a tongue-in-cheek post, even though most of my whimsies seem to pass people by, but I couldn’t think of anything even dubiously fanciful to say.

Then it dawned on me that there is one book, or rather a series of books that I never finished and that I do think about. The Lord of the Rings. I’ve started those books multiple times because I wanted to like them, but I simply could not get immersed into the story even though the series is considered a seminal work. For most people, I think, the books were a revelation, but as one who had been studying myths, legends, quests, and fairy tales my whole life, the books seemed . . . flat. The framework of the story isn’t new — it’s the quintessential hero’s journey story, where a naïve person (or hobbit, apparently), leaves the ordinary world, sets out on a quest, meets allies and mentors, encounters obstacles, fulfills the quest, faces one last transformative ordeal, then returns home with an elixir or boon to transform the ordinary world.

This framework of the hero’s journey is written in our psyches — it’s as old as humankind and goes all the way back to the very beginnings of literature: The Epic of Gilgamesh. Other ancient examples are Beowulf, The Odyssey, and most of mythology; also, King Arthur, The Fisher King legend, fairy tales, The Wizard of Oz, and the tarot (the major arcana seems to be an outline of the hero’s journey). The examples of pre-Tolkien heroic epics are endless, and yet he’s the one everyone holds up as the epitome of the genre.

A lot of authors who have been called derivative either had never heard of The Lord of the Rings or had been writing before the series was even published, and the similarity comes about because they used the same source material. The truth is, writers have always drawn on those ancient tales for their stories, and so did Tolkien. (In fact, his ending, where Frodo sails away, is part of the King Arthur story.) Still, I keep thinking I should have managed to read his books. After all, I’ve read tens of thousands of books, including one heck of a lot that were boring, uninspiring, and downright awful, so I should have managed to read The Lord of the Ring trilogy. But nope. Each time I tried, I got a little further — into the second book the last time — but never quite got caught up in the story. Finally, to give me some idea of what the books were about, I watched the movies that were supposed to be the closest to the books, so I basically know the story. Which, basically, is a basic story. Admittedly, he did do things like create his own language, develop his own mythology, and use the etymology of words to build depth to his world, but none of that interested me. And still doesn’t.

I do not like fantasy (though oddly, the two book series I find myself rereading are both considered fantasy, which goes to show . . . something, I’m sure), so it makes sense that I wouldn’t like the most foundational book of all modern fantasy.

Still, I do think of the books — not the story — just the books and wonder if someday I’ll finally be bored enough that those books would seem exciting by contrast. But I don’t think so.

***

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

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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

Posted in being me, books, history/myth, internet, life. Tags: , , , , , . 5 Comments »

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 »

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 »

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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