NO - toes first

 

I’ve never had to explain how socks work, although I have had a few bosses who made me realize there are some people operating at that level.  They will never grab the obvious.  Common sense is a foreign language to them.  House plants knew more of what was going on than they did or ever will.

        If I hadn’t been their employee, I may have viewed them simply as quirks.  The one candy in the dish that didn’t get stamped with an M.  I may have seen them as an oddity or some tiny blemish just passing through life.  But the moment someone else saw fit to put them in charge, things changed.

        That caused me to evaluate the entire system.  The system is broken and yet people just let it carry on – business as usual.  “If we ignore the problem, it will eventually just go away.”  Sorry to say, it doesn’t.  Suddenly it becomes the norm, and we find ourselves explaining how socks work.

        Maybe it is as it should be.  There is such a variety of people on the planet, the diversity must be astounding.  Maybe there will always be those who find an atom and think, what will happen if I split it?  Then there are the ones who can stare for hours at a fish swimming in circles, or look at a tree and think it is dancing, just because the wind is blowing.

        Hopefully, we are light years away from meeting any neighbors.  I hate to think we are the ones swimming in circles.

 

 

 

 

zc

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What I've noticed

 

The trees actually like the wind.  Dirt and bugs get shaken off their branches.  Bird nests are the worst.  They hate bird nests.  When it is windy, for a few moments the trees get to feel like they are dancing.  Hurricanes and tornados – not so much.  They are never bothered by ants. They are much too tiny to be felt by a tree, but squirrels, they hate those leaping acrobats.  Landing on branches way too thin to support them, and yet they keep jumping from one to the next.

Not necessarily blog worthy.  Just something I noticed.

 

 zc

 

 

They are not from around here

 

Don’t go out there.

They watch and wait for you.

I noticed them trying to get in.

So far, the screen has stopped them.

But they are many in number,

and nothing survives in their path.

Listen, and you’ll hear them –

I’ve heard them use your name

They know about you

 

I mean it.

Don’t go out there.

 

 

 

 

 

I don't use guns

 

Only Magnets

This one surprised me...

ZC - in front of the camera

 

It’s not always a straight line.  I try hard to keep a balance between my opinion and the simple gibberish I crank out.  The nonsense I spew forth comes from the silly side of my view of life.  I’ve always found it difficult to take things seriously.  That statement alone temps some people to jump in with, “Yes, but what about…”  And then they’ll rattle off some horrid atrocity and then wait for my reaction.

My tendency is to see the bigger picture.  We are all going to cross the same finish line, so why not make the journey as fun as possible?   

The thing that nudges me to one side of the line or the other is the fact that I am human.  I am going to have off days, There are always going to be things I can’t fix, or correct.  However, because the powers that be have seen fit to leave me completely unsupervised, nothing prevents me from snagging the line with my foot and dragging over to where I’m more comfortable.  So, no matter what it is, I can still pull it over to the fun side. 

Oh sure, I may break a few germarial rules along the way, but my permanent record is already laminated.  No bad grades or harsh comments can be added to it.  Ha Ha

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pocket Change

        If I could change anything, I would begin with the simplest correction: the misconceptions my teachers carried about me. They mistook my curiosity for defiance, my questions for confusion, my silence for ignorance. I wasn’t dumb; they simply weren’t good teachers. The first reform I’d make is to reclaim the truth of who I was — and who so many children still are — misread by adults who never learned to see beyond their own assumptions.

        From there, I would turn to the education system itself. We burden students with dates of wars they will forget and facts they will never use, while leaving them unprepared for the world they must enter. I would replace trivia with tools: how to balance a checkbook, how deceptive advertising works, how to avoid the legal system unless absolutely necessary. Schools should teach young people how the world actually functions, not how textbooks pretend it does.

        I would change the way political candidates debate. The current spectacle rewards performance over substance and obscures more than it reveals. I would rebuild the structure from the ground up, making transparency a requirement rather than a slogan. Special‑interest groups would lose their shadowy influence, and campaign contributions would no longer be the quiet currency of power. Democracy should not depend on who can afford the loudest microphone.

        Some changes would be small but meaningful. I would designate a single day for trash pickup so neighborhoods aren’t interrupted by a weeklong procession of trucks. Civic life should feel orderly, not perpetually disrupted.

        Other changes would be structural. Drug companies would no longer be allowed to bury side effects in microscopic print, and insurance companies would no longer dictate what doctors can and cannot do. If insurers insist on influencing medical decisions, then they should share the liability when those decisions lead to harm. Power without accountability is not a system — it’s an imbalance.

        And finally, I would build into my system the most important change of all: the ability to change again. No reform is complete if it cannot evolve. No structure is sound if it cannot adapt. The world shifts, and our solutions must shift with it.

        These are small coins, perhaps — pocket change. But gathered together, they form a different kind of currency: a vision of a society that sees clearly, teaches honestly, governs transparently, and treats people with the dignity they deserved from the start.

zc

Drive-time Radio

 

To some it is the sound of chirping birds.  Others appreciate the sound of the coffee pot starting for the first time.  To the factory owner it is the loud and varied sounds of the machines coming to life.  To a rare few it is the alarm clock screeching that sleep time has ended and that great adventure was simply a dream. 

But to Carrie Wilson, today anyway, it was going to be her voice.  For this morning she would begin her first day at KLMP Radio.  Her’s will be the voice coming over everyone’s car radio as they sit in traffic.  She will announce the weather, introduce the sponsor’s products, and unbeknownst to her, give the breaking news of the explosion at the Pine Crest Mall that will end up changing her life forever. 

Carrie parked in the dim lot behind KLMP, the sky still deciding whether it wanted to be blue or gray. The building itself hummed faintly, as if warming up its throat before speaking. She sat for a moment with her hands on the steering wheel, listening to the muffled world outside: a delivery truck downshifting, a lone bird insisting on being heard, the soft tick of her cooling engine.

She whispered her first line into the empty car, testing it. “Good morning, Pine Crest. This is Carrie Wilson with your early rise and shine.” It sounded almost real.

Inside, the station smelled like burnt coffee and old carpet — the scent of a thousand mornings that weren’t hers. The overnight DJ, a man with headphones permanently denting his hair, waved without looking up from his screen. He mouthed good luck as if she were heading into surgery.

At 5:59, she slipped on the headset. The studio lights glowed a soft amber, like a sunrise made of electricity. Her heartbeat synced with the blinking red ON AIR sign.

And then, at 6:00 exactly, her voice — steady, warm, unaware — became part of the town’s morning music.

She read the weather. She introduced a sponsor’s new breakfast sandwich. She smiled when she didn’t need to, because smiling changed the sound of her voice. She felt, for the first time, like she was inside the day instead of watching it happen.

Then the station Manager slid a note under the glass. Two words, scribbled quickly across the page. Breaking News.

Carrie read it, at first to herself to make sure there wouldn’t be any words she might stumble over.  As she read about the explosion, her first thought was of her sister, who worked at Forever 21.  Her heart sank as panic suddenly took hold of her.

The station Manager began tapping on the window of her booth.  “Read it!” he shouted.  “Out Loud!”