Notes From A Bear's Journey

     Tracking has never been as universal as it is today, from the postal service ("track your package"} to those hidden pixel tags.  Wait, those what?  Here's how one site put it:  A pixel tag is literally a microscopic image—often just one single dot on your screen—that you cannot see with the naked eye.  They are embedded in web pages and, most annoyingly, in emails.  When you open an  email  containing a hidden pixel, it secretly sends a message back to the sender. It tells them exactly what time you opened the email, what kind of device you used, and whether you clicked anything.   When my wife and I broke down and bought a new television, we checked beforehand if it had a camera built in, as most newer models do (ours didn't...phew; but it did have ACR or content tracking which tracks what you view and needs to manually be turned off).  But there are even more trackers being uncovered beyond those tiny pixels, and yes, th...

     Don't ask me why but I picked up a book on tractors.  Never owned one, no idea how to operate one, and no idea why the book attracted me like...well, like a tractor beam.  Maybe it was title: From John Deere to Lamborghini.  Wait, what??  Or maybe it was that naive thought of spending my later years in the country, grow a few veggies, chat with the nearest farmer ten miles down the road, hang out a Trump 2028 flag.  Okay, snap out of it.  Who was I kidding?  First of all, I'd starve, or worse if that pump to the well broke or that "cute" horse I bought for a song and a dance was one mean mare ready for the pasture and was having no part of my city-boy antics.  But then look at those tires.  Wait, I'm not being misogynistic because I still am talking about tractors here.  But what's with that younger, slimmer, no baggy eyelids Trump posing with a young Army cadet in the Oval Office?  Well I had to get your attent...

      My wife listens to and loves music of all sorts (except jazz for some reason), all while I am quite content to sit with a book in silence.  Yet plop me at a concert, or put on a good concert video and I'm all in (that is, if it's good).  But for the most part, my wife is far more open to new music and new artists while I am the one continually asking who that guy is who jumps off pianos (and does he have more than one song)?  So shiver me timbers when the International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry reported that after studying nearly 11,000 elderly folks (yes, that's me raising my hand in the air), they found that those who "always" listen to music: ... are 39 percent less likely to develop dementia than those who said they "rarely" do.  Wait, didn't the report also say that more research was needed to confirm such a link?  So what about the other new stat that said that 40% of those over 45 report that they're often lonely.  So what...

     There's something rather amazing of what once was and is no longer, that is except for those many pieces now beautifully preserved in museums, whether obtained legally or by some other means.  The spoils of war philosophy: what was yours is now ours.  And so everything from jewelry to statuary (not to mention animals and people) were often moved around the world to decorate homes and palaces, or in the case of people and animals, to be put to work.  And if a few countries were fortunate enough and wealthy enough, some material items would end up in museums for many to see (albeit still in a foreign country).  The complicated issue of whether ill-gotten (i.e. stolen) items taken decades or centuries ago, and now resting in universities, or the black market (or museums) becomes a rabbit hole that extends into bones (think massive dinosaur "finds" or the gravesites of ancestral peoples) and pottery, maybe even DNA samples.  But no worries becaus...