Notes From A Bear's Journey

     What's new, asked Linda Ronstadt back when she was a heartthrob for young souls such as me, her voice penetrating me as if a modern Siren trying to alter my direction.  The arrival of a new year brings back those times to me both with surprise and pleasure, for it's a point of time when many of us tend to look back at what we did, or where we went, or what made the news, as well as looking forward to what may be ahead.  Both of these time qualities --the past and the future-- are apparently uniquely human traits.  To our knowledge, animals and other life forms live only in the present moment, something that science and few religious practices advocate.  One thing that believing in a future accomplishes is often an urge to make something better or more efficient.  In my personal view such efforts sometimes flop, such as the recent James Bond movie ( No Time to Die ) or the Brene Brown book ( Atlas of the Heart ), both characters and authors I've previously enjoyed.  A

     Oh the ads, the blitz of "deals" and retailers understandably worried about consumers (note the word "consume" in there) and profits and such.  Not like China, where Xi Jinping is now the lifetime head of the Peoples Republic of China; and according to the recent report on 60 Minutes , he really is more for the people and, as one person put it, the peasants.  Tech monopolies?  Not so fast.  Break them up and distribute monies back to the people.  Kids watching too many video games?  Limited them to 3 hours a week and only on the weekends.  Time to hit the golf course?  Xi considers this a game for the bourgeois and wealthy so rip up 10 courses and replace them with a game everyone can play....soccer fields.  Is this where the U.S. is headed, the dreaded path of government socialism as one Congressional party is so fond of using as a rallying cry?   Then we'd best forget about the socialistic practices here in the U.S. such as Social Security, or Medicare, o

     On a clear day you can see forever; well, maybe not quite as far as the other side of the Manson Crater, an impact crater so large that it "would make the Grand Canyon look quaint and trifling" in the words of Bill Bryson.  That and perhaps the fact that it's been buried for quite literally, ages.  And that it's in Iowa.  But that isn't even the largest crater in the U.S . -- that honor goes to the one in Chesapeake Bay (what??).  And if you're looking for a part of our planet that was heavily clobbered by meteors in general, then you're in the right place; North America is home to a third of all the major impacts.  Hmm, didn't see that coming, eh?  Or that the eight words that started this post came from a musical , one of those Broadway shows where one song (such as the Bocelli-sung, The Prayer ) is far more remembered than the show itself.  The words went this way: On a clear day rise and look around you and you'll see who you are.  On a cl

     My original title for this post was Believe Just A Bit (Coin) , but the truth was that I knew very little --er, make that nothing-- about digital currency (digital currencies differ from crypto currencies such as Bitcoin...what??)  If you're in a similar state, wondering what the difference is between Dogecoin and Shiba Inu, much less Tether and Bit Coin (now recognized as currency in El Salvador), perhaps even China's RMB, then welcome to my corner.  Which is not to say that people aren't diving into accepting this new method of "currency ."  One restaurant owner in San Francisco, who used to accept payment in Bitcoin when it was valued at just a few hundred dollars, recently made so much money selling his early Bitcoins that he retired much earlier than planned.  Still not sure how digital and crypto currencies are traded, or taxed, or how many such currencies there might be?  An article in Time noted: According to some estimates, a fifth of the global po

    The clouds of late fall are always a changing spectacle as storms come and go and the sun drops lower and lower in the sky (actually, it's not the sun dropping at all but rather our planet's orbit "tilting" its angle to the sun).  It's all a reminder, along with the slurry of leaves that continue to tax my mulching mower, that one had better ready oneself for the next season, that cold is coming and that shortages or changing tastes may be on the horizon...inflation comes in many forms.  Just a quick peek outside shows nature's workers already nestled in well ahead of time as squirrels and bees, ants and hummingbirds, all no longer seem to make an appearance.  It would seem that the only ones oblivious to what may be waiting ahead for us might be ourselves, the bevvy of new cars populating the roads and the homes that continue to sell well above their asking prices, blurring our vision temporarily (we hope).  Retailers appear to sense the restless mood up

     My tooth was rotting, as in causing my root-canaled, crowned molar to simply drop off onto the car seat as I talked.  Yuck.  That's gotta go, my dentist told me; talking about the tooth; "you won't miss it."  But it was a part of me, I thought, the first body part (other than my wisdom teeth back when I was about to become a teen) to actually be removed from my body, never to be seen again.  No big deal, my friends told me; and indeed it was out and gone in about 10 minutes, sawed into 3 pieces and pulled our root by root (I was numbed up so there was nothing but a few bits of tugging and such to feel; the back molars have 3 roots which I didn't realize).  And as I ventured home, my tongue now exploring the space with a feeling of what-happened?, I couldn't help but think of 1) how much the world of such "operations" have changed; and 2) that having my tooth taken out was nothing when compared to being told that your leg or your breast had to be