Notes From A Bear's Journey

     A wave of the wand, the curtain drops and poof...gone.  What happened?  Where did they go?  We hold our breath and applause, as if waiting for the surprise finale when the "illusionist" will call to the back of the room and --like magic-- the person will walk calmly to the stage and take a bow.  But what if that didn't happen?  What if the "magician" simply walked off the stage and left us all wondering.  Was that it?, we'd ask.  Are they  ever  coming back, and where the heck did they go?  The lights go on and I turn around.  Wait, my brother .  And where's my mom , or my aunt and uncle?  What happened to them?  They were right here!  Show's over folks...time to go.      We now live in a world of illusions and smoke & mirrors, so I'll be blunt in saying that this post will not be uplifting for the most part.  It is one thing to be entertained, and quite another...

     Truth is, I never intended to head this direction, at least not while pushing my cart through my local Costco.  Like most "middle" class folk, I was starting to notice the $2 and $3 jumps in most of the prices there: bags of frozen vegetables, jams & preserves, granola-like energy bars, those bulky but everyday items that end up in your pantry or freezer because at such wholesale retailers, they're generally cheaper than the smaller (if more usable) sizes one finds in everyday grocery stores.  But from what I've read, this is just the beginning of prices increasing as even the major chains deplete their pre-tariff inventories.  And if I was noticing it, imagine what the struggling single mom, or middle-class couple still renting or eeking by on their mortgage, was seeing.  Of course, looking back to my childhood days when I was that 7-year old hanging onto the grocery cart as my mom shopped, I didn't think about any of that: rising prices...

     These days when one hears "supreme" leader one tends to think of Iran and its non-voter appointed head, although after Trump voiced that he wouldn't mind being the Pope, he might be entertaining that title for his own remaining months or years, both in office and on Earth.  Here's a portion of that term as defined in Wikipedia: ... the supreme leader delineates the general policies...supervising the legislature, the Judiciary, and the executive branches.   The current lifetime officeholder... has issued decrees  and made the final decisions on the economy, the environment, foreign policy, education,  national planning, and other aspects of governance...also makes the final decisions on the amount of transparency in elections, and has dismissed and reinstated presidential  cabinet  appointees .  But the devil is in the details since that copyrighted term is used strictly by the Islamic Republic (gasp...could it be TACO time...

        The celebration of the 4th passed by once again, seemingly a bit more muted despite the many parks and city centers blasting away celebratory fireworks.  Our state now leads the nation in drought so things are rather dry here and the personal setting off of fireworks are banned in most parts of my city (that said, our state allows five days of fireworks around each summer holiday).  But a stray firecracker, apparently thrown from a car (according to police), started a small field on fire just four houses from us.  It's a rather eerie feeling to be getting ready for bed and looking out to see the sky bright orange yellow outside your window, with increasing waves of smoke drifting by.  Two doors down from us, a recently sold house had been gutted by the new owners, gutted as in it was now a skeleton of a house with decking and drywall gone and only framing visible through the front windows.  Can you see flames from that house, asked th...