history/myth | Bertram's Blog

Shenanigans of the Political Class

June 25, 2026 — Pat Bertram

I find it ironic that politicians who scream about citizens making (ie: creating) too much money and profess the need to confiscate that wealth through punitive taxes, never once promise to give back the millions that have stuck to their fingers during their tenures as “servants” of the people. The mega-millionaires in Congress seem to be the loudest of the “eat the rich” contingent yet don’t see themselves as one of the problems. Apparently, their money is theirs. And so is everyone else’s money.

Too many people agree because they don’t understand that created wealth — wealth that is invested in business and creating thousands of jobs — is not the same as money in the bank. They complain that the wealthy don’t pay their fair share of taxes, and yet if everyone were taxed at the same rate, those same people would be complaining about their tax bill. The richest pay around 35% of their income in federal taxes. The middle group pays about 15%. The workers at the lowest end either pay minimal taxes, or they don’t pay into the system at all but are instead given money via Earned Income Tax Credits. (There is a wide range in each of these categories, but these are the averages I found.)

An even bigger irony comes from those communist mayors (calling them democratic socialists doesn’t change the nature of their rhetoric) who have never held a job in their life, led affluent lives because of family wealth, and yet now pretend to be bringing about a better life for working people while a) making things worse, and b) somehow getting richer.

I’ve never understood why working-class people listen to such hypocrites, except perhaps that they think that when the billionaires are taxed to death, then some of the money will be parceled out to them. I certainly don’t understand this push toward turning the United States into a communist country; it’s the surest way for everyone to go broke. Except for those at the top, of course.

A current scheme is a wealth tax, which never worked in the countries that tried it, but apparently, people still think it’s a good idea. But the trouble is, if they tax unrealized capital gains, then the owners of the company will have to sell off part of the company, which means people losing their jobs, which means fewer taxes overall. Also, all sorts of retirement funds that are invested in those companies lose money, because the sell-off will lower the value of the stock, which means the vulnerable also lose out. And of course, the politicians won’t bother giving a rebate for the loss of the rich person’s wealth when the stocks go down. And yet, when the stocks go back up again, they will again tax those unrealized gains, which means double tax on the same money. So bizarre!

I guess the moral of the story is that one doesn’t need to know economics to be in congress — or a mayor — though it should be a requirement. But then, it’s never about the truth, just the perceived truth. At least as long as it gets them reelected.

Which brings me to the biggest irony of all — that I, who have always had a head-down approach to the shenanigans of the political class, am not only aware of such doings but am blogging about it.

I might have to do something about that — not the shenanigans, which I have no control over, but the writing.

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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 blogging, history/myth, life. Tags: communist mayors, democratic socialists, economics, economy, irony, political irony, politics, pride in the flag, pride in the United States, punitive taxes, taxing the rich. 2 Comments »

Unfair World

June 24, 2026 — Pat Bertram

That some working multi-billionaires (those who created their fortunes through buying or creating companies with services people want) are worth way more than almost everyone else offends the “equity” folk. They think that outcomes should be the same for everyone. Since not everyone has the intelligence, resources, and focus to make such a valuable impact on the world, then it makes perfect sense (to them) to take the wealth from the rich and give it to those without the genetic gifts, education, and determination to make their own fortunes. Somehow, this “intelligence tax” is supposed to even things out.

Truly, I don’t understand why everything has to be even. The Marxist ideal supposedly is “From each according to their ability, to each according to their need,” but as of yet, we do not live in a Marxist society. Nor do we live in a fair world, and nothing will ever make it fair.

Everyone has different talents and attributes. Some of these attributes naturally give a person an edge that others don’t have. Not just intelligence, as mentioned above, but height, beauty, athletic ability.

If everyone is supposed to end up in the same place, then what are people going to do about these gifted folk? You can more or less even the playing field when it comes to smarts by lowering the standards of tests to make sure everyone passes.

But how do you even the playing field when it comes to height? Being tall gives people an overall advantage because their height evokes feelings of power and consequence. Tall people also make more money. Every inch of height over average translates to an extra $800 a year, so how would the “equity” folk remove this natural advantage? Cut off heads? Feet?

Beautiful people also have an advantage. People equate beauty with intelligence, kindness, and honesty, though beautiful people aren’t necessarily better than unattractive ones. They are simply perceived as such. People tend to accept lies from beautiful people while shying away from truths told by unattractive ones. And beautiful people earn more — as much as 12% more on average. So how would this be equalized? Force beautiful people to wear masks?

Athletic prowess is widely divergent even among athletes. I suppose, to even the “score” (so to speak), athletes could be forced to carry weights like racehorses. If a horse with all its accoutrements weighs less than the assigned limit, jockeys need to add extra weights so all horses in the race carry the same handicap. Golfers have handicaps, so why not all athletes? Wouldn’t that make everything more “equitable?” Wouldn’t that allow everyone, no matter how little expertise they have, the same opportunity to play professional sports?

It seems to me as if those people espousing equity are trying to make the world fit the individual rather than giving the individuals the skills to try to fit themselves into the world.

But then, no one is asking me.

***

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: beautiful people vs unattractive people, equity, equity vs equality, even the playing field, even the score, Marxist ideal, political equity, tall vs short. 2 Comments »

On My Soapbox

June 23, 2026 — Pat Bertram

I was going to write about the history behind what is happening today, going all the way back to Alexander Hamilton’s economic system of tariffs, domestic manufacturing, and sovereignty, but then changed my mind because I’m not sure it’s a good idea to get on my soapbox in today’s political climate. Still, Hamilton’s system is worth a mention because it is what made American great, what created wealth in this country, what developed an unprecedented middle class who kept the money they earned without it being taxed away. (Tariffs were always supposed to be the way the United States government supported itself, not taking from its citizens.) This Hamilton system (what is left of it) is the very system that that globalists want destroyed. For over one hundred years, their mission has been to gut the USA middle class, leaving only high earners who make the money and a political class that takes the money and gives what it doesn’t keep to low earners. It’s why manufacturing was sent overseas — the globalists convinced the political hacks that people wanted cheap goods more than they wanted jobs, and so the middle class dwindled. (You can’t have a one world government if one country is wealthy while others are mired in chaos, so since they couldn’t raise the entire world to the USA standards, they decided to lower the USA to third world standards.)

It’s been hard watching this destruction my whole life. And no, it’s not a democrat vs. republican thing — it’s a combined political class that bought into the corruption, thinking that having all countries run by a so-called “world-based order” was a good thing. (The globalists kept their power by playing one country against the other politically, where the Hamilton system was about creating working relationships with other countries by trading as equals.) Many political hacks have kept their own power through several degrowth cycles, though I wonder if they ever see their end — the end, of course, is rule by an international elite that makes the political class in each country obsolete. I also wonder if they are as ignorant as they seem — too many of them seem to think wealth simply exists. They don’t seem to see that wealth needs to be created. Hamilton knew this. You’d think that people who have been running this country for decades would know the truth. Unless they do know and their naïveté is part of the game?

The huge influx of illegals into all the western countries was part of this degrowth — a way of crashing the economies of the western countries, leaving them un-sovereign and at the mercy of the globalists. (The one thing I didn’t realize until recently was that this gutting of the middle class by off-shoring manufacturing, energy dependency, and an acceptance of anti-white racism was aimed at European countries too. How else to explain the British allowing a quarter of a million girls to be groomed and trafficked and murderers set free because people in positions of power class didn’t want to be called racist.)

Because of what previous administrations in the USA allowed, without any real objection from voters until recently, we came very close to what those globalists envisioned — a chaotic USA that could be grabbed up by those who have been aiming for that very thing since before the Civil War. And no, it’s not the same people — the originators of the scheme are long dead, unless, as some people claim, those originators have cracked the code of longevity — but the system and its aims are the same.

Weirdly, in an age of overwhelming information, most of this information isn’t easily found anymore. I did my early studying with real paper books, and paper books are a lot harder to destroy than information on the internet. I went looking online for information about a couple of people — one I know is helping fund the “mostly peaceful” demonstrations in this country, and another I know was part of a grooming industry that involved all sorts of celebrities and powerful people, and almost no negative information about these “benevolent” folks exists. Apparently, they have whole swarms of internet drones who do nothing but scrub the internet, and if they can’t erase the information, they bury it under thousands of new posts that are liked and shared by their bots until it all but disappears. I don’t know why they bother — much of the information available on the internet is leftist leaning, anyway, and AI seems to downplay any mention of conservative values (such as more autonomy and less government).

I used to get upset with people for wearing blinders, but I’ve come to see it’s not them so much as the algorithms. They are never shown a point of view they might disagree with, and so one’s world view is constantly reinforced. Nothing that might challenge that view is ever shown, unless, of course, their outrage needs stoking.

I know this firsthand. I have two separate internet accounts, each using a different browser, and each feed is totally different. Apparently, one browser thinks I am a demonic democrat and the other a rabid republican, when in fact, I am neither. I am a student. A watcher. A pattern recognizer. Nothing more.

Oops. I guess I got on my soapbox anyway. Oh, well.

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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 history/myth, internet, life. Tags: Alexander Hamilton, algorithms and politics, American economic system, conservative ideals, domestic manufacturing, economy, Hamilton's economic system, politics, tariffs. 6 Comments »

Talking to My Twenty-year-old Self

June 17, 2026 — Pat Bertram

Daily writing prompt

What is something you wish you could tell your 20-year-old self?

View all responses

Hypothetical questions like this make me think — not about the question I’m supposed to blog about, but the mechanics of it.

Truly, assuming there was something I wished I could tell my twenty-year old self, how would that work?

At first, I thought of leaving a message somewhere for me to find when I reached this age, but then I realized that’s the reverse of the question. Besides, there’s nothing my twenty-year old self could say to me today that would make any difference. If there was something that was important enough for that younger version of me to want forwarded into the future, it’s already been done. First, there is a little thing called a memory. Second, even if I don’t recall the important thing itself, it would be written in my very life — everything that ever happened to me stemmed from the thoughts of that year (and every year) so any message would be redundant.

As for the logistics of getting a message back to that younger self — reverse email? But email hadn’t been invented back then. That twenty-year old self would have to wait several more decades to receive the message, and by then, she’d be almost as old as I am now. If not that, then what? Time travel? Okay, so assume I went back in time, how would I ever convince that person I was her? I’m sure she’d think I was a relation, perhaps a great-aunt or some such because I did at one time bear a distinct resemblance to my mother.

I remember when I was young not ever actually thinking that old people were forever old, but I somehow presumed it. I knew people grew older, but it just seemed to me, in that accepting way of youth, that they were old, and had always been, just as I was young, and would always be. It makes sense, I suppose — when you’re young, you can see the changes in yourself as you graduate to a new grade every year, but the older folks always looked the same. I don’t know when it struck me that old folks had once been young, that they’d lived a whole life before getting old, but I’m pretty sure it didn’t happen until later in my twenties or even in my thirties. (I knew people aged, of course, but old age seemed so alien to my young self that I never made the connection.)

So there my young self would be, seeing this old woman, and no way would my twenty-year old self ever believe that I was this old. Oddly, I doubt that my current self would even recognize that young self. Odder still, now that I’m old, I feel as if I’ve always been old, as if I’d never been young. I mean, I know I was, but . . . who can remember that far back? Or care? It is easier just to accept what I am today and go with that feeling rather than give credence to a past.

Which means, I suppose, that even if I could go back and tell my twenty-year old self something, there’s nothing I would wish to tell her.

As for the photo accompanying this article, I realize it’s not my twenty-year old self, but nowadays, one young age is as remote as the other.

***

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

Posted in blogging, culture, history/myth, internet, life, writing. Tags: dailyprompt, dailyprompt-2794, going back in time, the old are always old, what would I tell my younger self. 6 Comments »

Miniscule

June 15, 2026 — Pat Bertram

I’ve always prided myself on my vocabulary, a vocabulary gleaned from my vast reading over the years. This vocabulary doesn’t translate to speaking because many words I know and know how to use I don’t know how to pronounce, and I’m leery of using such words ever since I was made fun of at a young age for mispronouncing “macabre.” At the time, I was being driven home by the father of the children I’d been babysitting, and for some reason I used the word, pronouncing it as “mackaber.” I still remember his laughter. So, since I’ve never been able to handle being made fun of, I only use words that everyone else does, though I don’t hesitate to use any word I wish in my writing, confident that my spelling is correct.

Well, I was confident until yesterday. I was writing something, I don’t even remember where or what, and I used the word “miniscule,” which is how I’ve always seen the word written. Whatever spell check that particular site was using flagged it as wrong, and said the word was “minuscule.”

Not believing the program since I’d never seen that spelling and since neither MSWord nor my blog has ever flagged the word, I looked it up online, and sure enough, the word is “minuscule.” How is it that I have lived all these decades and not known that? It’s also pronounced with the emphasis on the second syllable. I did not know that either.

Further reading tells the story. “Minuscule” used to refer to lower case letters (the minus coming from Latin meaning less) as opposed to “majuscule,” referring to uppercase letters. It seems to me that since “minuscule” refers to something being simply lesser, rather than something very tiny, “miniscule” (pronounced with its emphasis on the first syllable) should be a word in its own right.

And it’s getting there. Although “miniscule” is still considered a typo by purists (which I thought I was but apparently am not), the correct spelling is “minuscule.”

Except when it’s not. “Miniscule” has been used since 1871, though it wasn’t until the 1940s that it became an accepted variation that wasn’t always flagged as a typo. My print dictionary includes “miniscule,” and mentioned that it’s a variation of “minuscule.” So whew! Maybe I’m not as far off as I thought I was.

So even though it may or may not be a full-fledged word, I will continue using “miniscule.” It sounds like what it should mean: something vanishingly small.

It is funny, though, that a word such as minuscule/miniscule is only slowly evolving, but other words are almost instantaneously accepted, like my most unfavorite word, “veggie.”

Oh, well. I learned something, which is always a good thing, even if it did deflate my already under-inflated ego.

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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, history/myth, life, writing. Tags: macabre, majuscule, miniscule, minuscule, mispronouncing words. 10 Comments »

Creating Wealth

June 13, 2026 — Pat Bertram

I read something interesting the other day. The writer claimed that the default setting of humans is poverty. Which is true when you think of it. For as far back in history as you can research or imagine, humans lived in poverty so vast that even the poorest person today is wealthy by comparison. People today seem to think that the hunter-gatherer culture was a myth, just a morality tale to make a point about being grateful for what we have. But that’s the way humans lived for tens of thousands of years. Even in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance years, where learning and the building arts were at a highpoint, most people lived in poverty. Not only was wealth in short supply, what there was of it remained in the hands of a very few, and even those folks — kings and other nobles — weren’t wealthy by today’s standards.

What is truly remarkable about our current life is that there is any wealth at all. Even more remarkable is that the overall wealth of the world is growing. So are opportunities to find your own source of wealth. Of course, most people don’t count wealth as I do — a warm place to live, a vehicle, appliances and all sorts of other labor saving-devices, food to buy in a grocery store rather than having the backbreaking job of growing it. There are also parks — local, state, national — to play in, and such open spaces had once been reserved for royal use only.

In today’s world, there are also all sorts of programs for people who either can’t or don’t want to work (and there are plenty of able-bodied people who simply prefer to sit around watching television six hours a day; this isn’t a guess — they make videos bragging about it). There are way too many homeless, though the money that was geared for those people seldom reached them and in fact was sometimes stolen and used by the administrators of such funds to buy multiple homes for themselves. And, too, a lot of homeless do cling to a life of addiction.

But for all that, we are generally living in a time of vast wealth — wealth that was created by human labor. (Except of course, for those who preferred to do such things as crash the currencies of other countries rather than come by their wealth honestly.) Human labor today is still creating wealth. Pulling assets from the earth, making things, selling those things, using that money to make other things and selling those other things and around and around it goes, with more wealth created every day. Working wealth — the wealth that is contained in on-going business concerns — is what keeps the world going. If there were no people creating more wealth, we’d all be scrambling for the bits that were left, until finally, the world would run down and we’d be back where we started — in abject poverty but with the memory of when we had it so good.

There is a growing hatred for the working wealth creators because people say that no one deserves the kind of wealth that some entrepreneurs have managed to accumulate (though they say nothing about the non-working billionaires who are funding the insurrections in this country), but the truth is, the wealth of the working rich is in their businesses. They do not have cash sitting in a bank. Very few of the working wealth creators have cash on hand. Their money goes into their businesses, which creates more wealth by creating more jobs, more products, even a higher standard to strive for.

Although the working wealthy are using their wealth to create more wealth for everyone, too many people think it needs to be stolen from them and given to those who don’t have the ability to create wealth. The problem is, if these working wealthy were to pay the vast sums in taxes that people think they need to pay, the wealthy would have to sell off large chunks of their businesses, which means they would lose control of their own companies, which means there would be a dearth of working capital, which means less aggregate wealth in the world.

With their money always in use, many (maybe even most) people who own high-performing businesses, borrow money to pay their employees because they are cash poor. Cash in constant circulation creates more wealth, more jobs, more . . . possibilities.

Humans are the ones who have created the wealth in the world today. As far as I know, dollars didn’t spew out with the big bang or on creation day or however the world came into being. Wealth came from human labor.

There used to be a time when people would hear of someone getting super rich and would think, “I can do that. Become rich. Maybe. Someday.” Now people see the wealth that’s created and they think, “They need to take his wealth away from him so I can get me some of that.”

Wealth isn’t a matter of everyone having the same amount of money because if it were, then there would be no money. If you take from the “haves” and give to “have less,” then why would anyone do anything to create wealth just to have it taken from them? They wouldn’t. Which would leave everyone sinking back into the default mode of poverty. Besides, if all the billionaires in the USA — supposedly there’s fewer than 1,000 of them — were taxed 100%, their taxes would fund the government for less than two years, so it’s much better to let them keep creating wealth.

People complain about loopholes that the wealthy businesses use to bring their taxes down, so the answer is not to take even more of their money but to lobby to close the loopholes, assuming those are loopholes and not just a way for the money to keep working. But for the most part, the taxes the wealthy pay are dependent on many things, so one year a fellow can pay 11 billion and the next year nothing. And even if the companies end up not paying taxes, the owners who take a salary and all the people they have working for them pay taxes, and generally a lot of taxes, because many of them become very high earners, so the aggregate taxes paid ends up being significant.

Whether or not the working wealthy “deserve” the money they make, is almost beside the point. Nowadays, I’d prefer to leave wealth in the hands of those who created it and who are continuing to create it. If you took it from them in the form of punitive taxes, then it would disappear into the same grifters’ hands where so much of the working people’s taxes are ending up. Why people are so accepting of that money being stolen, I have no idea, but throwing more money into a grifters pool does no one any good.

Either way, it doesn’t matter since the money is not going to end up in our pockets, neither mine nor yours.

***

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. Tags: creating wealth, entrepreneurs creating wealth, passive-income, stealing from the rich, taxing the rich, what people deserve. 9 Comments »

As Old Fashioned as a Hollyhock

June 2, 2026 — Pat Bertram

There are a lot of topics I stay away from mostly because . . . well, because I don’t welcome backlash. I’m just too sensitive. But sometimes a topic keeps staring at me, which makes it impossible not to face it. For example, every time I opened my internet browser the past couple of days, I had Google reminding me about pride month (small letters are my subtle rebellion), which reminds me that the only group in the whole country that’s not allowed to be proud are whites. If you’re proud to be white, then you’re automatically a white supremacist. According to some people, simply being white means you’re a white supremacist, which is utterly ridiculous. (And so is the term “white privilege,” now that I’m on my soapbox. It used to be that certain minority groups were considered under privileged, but that terminology, which was deemed racist, was replaced by “white privilege,” which is racist in a whole other way.) And why are whites so despised? We might not yet be the minority in western countries, but we are perhaps only 10% of the entire world population and destined to decline even further.

I’m not proud of being white, but not in any sort of apologetic way for crimes my ancestors never committed or crimes I am supposed to have committed simply for being born the way I am. I’m not proud because why would anyone be proud of the way they were born? It’s not something we could choose. It’s not something we did. It’s not something that took courage. It’s not something we earned. It’s simply who we are. Pride used to be a sin. Now it’s — apparently — something to celebrate.

I looked up the definition of “pride” in my actual book dictionary, printed before “diversity” was a thing, and pride is (or at least it used to be before the word was redefined) “Conceit. Disdainful behavior. Ostentatious display. A justifiable self-respect.” In other words, pride is not good unless you did something to earn your self-respect. (Or perhaps it’s just an excuse for that “ostentatious display” as the dictionary defined it?) But then, as I’m finding out, I’m terribly old-fashioned with old-fashioned values. I suppose I could be proud of that, but it’s not something to be proud about because it’s not something I earned. It’s just who I am.

I am proud of my writing skills — that is something I earned, something I worked hard for. I am proud of my blog, because it takes a certain discipline to keep a project going for almost twenty years. I am proud of being kind (mostly kind, anyway). I am proud of opening up and telling the truth about grief and dealing with the absence of a deceased spouse or life mate. I am proud of the work I’ve done on my yard, though I’m not necessarily proud of being a gardener, because the truth is, a garden does what a garden wants to do. (As I discovered again today. Years ago, I tried to plant a hollyhock garden, but it died and no other seeds ever grew. Until now. Apparently, the garden decided it wants hollyhocks.) I’m sort of proud of being a good photographer, but the photos are more from an excellent camera as well as the instinctual sense of artistry I was born with.

But being proud (or not proud) simply for of sake of pride? I don’t understand that. But then, I did say I was old-fashioned. As old fashioned as a hollyhock, actually.

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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, gardening, history/myth, life, photography. Tags: hollyhocks, not proud, pride, pride and justifiable self-respect, pride for the sake of pride. 6 Comments »

Self-Censorship

May 30, 2026 — Pat Bertram

You’d think that someone who says she writes for herself would write whatever she wants, and that would be true if I saved the writing for myself alone as I did with the journal I kept after Jeff died. Once a piece is written, however, and I go to post it, things change. Suddenly, it’s not just for me but for anyone who wants to take a peek into my life and thoughts and emotions.

For example, I tend to stay away from anything controversial, and if by chance I happen to mention something that could be construed as political, I edit it out because it’s just not worth the backlash. So perhaps it’s not self-censorship so much as it is simply editing to make a more universally accepted piece. Or do I mean peace?

Either way, I do sometimes second guess what I write, not just when it involves world affairs, but also when it involves people in my life, especially if I know they read this blog. In fact, I’m sitting here right now debating about whether or not I should mention something that recently happened. (Apparently, I decided to go ahead with the article, because here I am.)

A few days ago, I accompanied a friend to an appointment. I’ve driven with her hundreds of miles over the years, so I’m familiar with her driving, and I’ve never been concerned about safety, but that day, she was driving erratically, swerving from lane to lane, cutting in front of cars she apparently couldn’t see, seemed to have no depth perception, had a hard time hearing, could barely handle the steering wheel. Bizarrely, she had no idea what she was doing. To her, all was fine, she was just tired after a sleepless night. In fact, when I later mentioned that it would have been better to have cancelled the appointment, she said she had no idea there was any need.

I wondered if she’d been having a mini stroke, so when she next went to the doctor, I urged her to tell him the story. She did. What she discovered is that all out-of-whackness was caused her insomnia the previous night.

That is why this story is important and why, even though I worry my friend might think my writing this might be a betrayal, I ignored my inclination for self-censorship and posted it anyway. If you have a sleepless night, especially if you are getting up in years, please stay home even if you feel fine. Truly, the symptoms she showed were traumatic and life-threatening (for me too) and are common side effects of a sleepless night. It makes me wonder how many people are going about their lives as if everything is fine, when in fact, it isn’t.

I’m lucky in that I don’t worry about not sleeping. If I have a rare sleepless night, I just stay home the next day. And if I ever can’t because of an appointment, I hope I am as smart as I am urging you to be and cancel the appointment.

It’s funny how small things can have such devastating effects. We never think of a sleepless night as being life threatening in the short run, but it is or it can be.

So be careful. Please. And don’t drive if you’ve had a sleepless night.

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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 blogging, dealing with old age, history/myth, life. Tags: driving eratically, side effects of not sleeping, sleepless nights, small things with devastating effects, writing for myself. 13 Comments »

Questioning Reality

May 23, 2026 — Pat Bertram

Daily writing prompt

What’s a moment that made you question reality?

View all responses

A moment that made me question reality? There never was such a moment in my life, nothing like seeing someone out of time or out of place, seeing an alien or ghosts, finding gaps in my personal timeline. Nothing fun or lighthearted like that. But there are a couple of current events with historical overlays that are seriously making me question reality.

I’ve been reading a novel based in occupied France during World War II, and of course, there’s the whole story of antisemitism and concentration camps. That’s normal for such a book since those things happened back then. They are part of the story.

Then I take a break, go online and read about the growing antisemitism in this country. Even more horrific is that two candidates in Texas are using as their platform the promise of concentration camps for Jews. What the heck?? I thought we’d finished with that, though sadly, with the increasing population of Muslims and Islamism galloping across the country, it sort of makes sense that they would be selling the idea. But no one has to buy it. Jews are more a part of this country than Islamists. Hello? Judeo-Christian tradition anyone?

As if that’s not bad enough, I’ve been reading about the origin of the marines, and especially their hymn. I’d always thought “From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli” was just a poetic way of saying “From sea to shining sea.” But no. Those were two battles fought by the marines. During the Mexican-American war in 1895, the Marines seized the Chapultepec Castle, aka the Halls of Montezuma.

And the shores of Tripoli? In the 18th century, Muslim pirates from the Barbary Coast (The North African Islamic nations of Tripoli, Tunis, Morocco, and Algiers) attacked ships in the Mediterranean, ransoming them for huge amounts of money as well as demanding bribes for letting ships use international waters. It had been the practice for countries simply to pay the extortionists to appease them. In fact, the newly formed USA had been paying over 20% of its revenue to the Muslims, but when pirates upped their demands, Thomas Jefferson refused to pay. So in 1801, the Pasha, who believed that all nations who would not acknowledge Islamic authority were sinners and that it was his right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, declared war on the USA. That was the first Barbary war. The second came fifteen years later.

And now? Really? Another Barbary war? It’s not called that, of course, but what we have is another Islamic nation of pirates extorting “tolls” from ships in international waters. Or they’re trying to, anyway.

This isn’t about the truth or even what you or I believe. It’s about the unreality of what’s going on today.

Antisemitism and concentration camps?

Islamic pirates?

Really? Really?

It’s as if age-old evils are bubbling to the surface of reality like marsh gas. Or maybe we’re stuck in a time loop of forever wars. Or . . . who knows. All I know is sometimes it feels as if none of this is real. And for sure, it does make me question reality.

***

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, life. Tags: Barbary Pirates, dailyprompt, dailyprompt-2772, from the halls of Montezuma, Marines, Muslim pirates, the shores of Tripoli. 5 Comments »

Learning Something New

May 17, 2026 — Pat Bertram

Daily writing prompt

How do you stay motivated when learning something new?

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This must be a question for people who are forced to learn things they don’t want to, such as for school or work or new technology, because otherwise it makes no sense. At least not for me. Learning something new has always been its own motivation. Now that I think about it, learning something new seems as if it is sort of the point of life. If we never learn anything new, where would we be? Lolling around in oversized cribs, I imagine, crying from sheer boredom.

The joy of learning is written in our genes. That’s obvious if you’ve ever watched babies, newly sprung from their playpens, crawling all over, learning new things, trying to pull themselves up. And oh, that grin of sheer pride and joy when they manage that first step. They didn’t need to stay motivated, the learning itself was the goal, though encouragement from their parents never hurt. Obviously, there are some things babies need to learn that perhaps they don’t want to, such as using the potty or not touching the pretty fire, but for the most part, babies learn because they want to. Because to them, learning is playing, and playing is learning.

There is an old quote: we don’t stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing. I never liked that quote because it’s too specious, too simplistic, too out of touch with reality. Look at professional athletes. They have to stop playing because they get too old to be able to compete with younger players, not the other way around.

Now, if I were to substitute “learning” for playing, then that quote makes sense, though again, it doesn’t always hold true. Often the elderly can no longer learn because of growing cognitive issues, but still, I tend to think curiosity (and boredom) does motivate people of any age to learn new things. Besides, whether we want to or not, we have to continue learning as we age if only to learn how to do things we once did with ease but that now seem complicated, like opening jars or bending to pick something up. For sure we have to learn how to be mindful or else a reckless step can lead to disaster.

Since writing this has convinced me of the importance of learning — with or without a need for motivation — I’m sitting here trying to think what I’ve recently learned, but I can’t really think of anything. At least nothing fun. I learned a lot of fun things in the past decade — dancing, camping, buying a house, taking care of a house, the tarot, landscaping, gardening — but not so much today except for small things I learn while reading or gardening or doing puzzles. The only specific thing I can think of is that I am learning more of the history of the middle east than I ever cared to know. I never did understand anything of their history or who they were or why they did what they did — it was simply too confusing, uninteresting, and of no particular value to my life, but now I’m seeing a much broader picture, one that dates back almost to the first days of civilization, but specifically back to the 7th century. Is it important to know the history? Only if I want to know the historical reasons for a lot of today’s events, which I don’t, not really. But it is learning, so that’s good.

What I need is to find something new to learn. Something I want to learn just for the fun of learning, something I don’t have to worry about motivating myself to learn. Though what that might be, I don’t know, because if I did know, I’d already be learning it.