It’s a grey, dreary,drizzly day out here in New Jersey, I can’t stop yawning, and I’ve heard a lot of my friends have come down with we don’t know what.
I think we need a “Relax and enjoy it” video.
Here are three pet rats playing tag. I used to let our rats loose on the living room floor, but they never went very far before scampering back to me. I was flattered. Heck, what must a human look like, to a rat?
Who invented play? I would submit that it came from God, Himself. The capacity to suspend seriousness and just do something enjoyable and refreshing to the spirit. Some play involves a lot of hard work. I remember a lot of preparation involved in heading to the mountains with the dirt bikes, and skiers invest a lot of time, money and effort into their passion, sometimes even buying second homes near ski areas. A lot of work can go into play … or you can just play tag with some friends, until you run out of breath. 🙂
A perfect Spring Day in Arkansas today – 77* and blue skies. At Walmart a man came up to me and asked if I was David Ingram. It was an old church friend who had moved to Colorado years ago, but the liberalness of the State forced him to come home to Arkansas.
He knew you after all that time?
Colorado was my home for years. It’s changed drastically and Denver reminds me of LA, now. I’ve avoided it for years now.
Ach, you wouldn’t believe how beautiful New Jersey was, when I was a boy. Democrat rule has trashed the place.
When my parents moved to Colorado, in my early teens, it was great. People really enjoyed life there, with the wonderful climate and lots of interesting places to visit. In most areas, traffic wasn’t bad and it was just a very relaxed life.
Now it’s crowded and I’ve sat in traffic jams at off-peak hours on back roads. You can sense the presence of drugs and crime everywhere. I rented a motel room 30 miles north of town, a while back, chosen because the area had historically been quiet, but it was like trying to sleep through a never ending rave gathering. The time before that, I was staying in another small town peripheral to metro Denver, where I used to feel completely safe, and someone started pounding on the door to my room at 2 AM. I spoke to a desk clerk at a motel in rural Colorado and he told me that his wife and he had folded their security business a few months before, both having faced life threatening situations since drugs were legalized.
Somewhere along the line, someone approved the development of land in an area where everyone and their dog knew the winds were very high, and a brush fire spread taking out nearly 1,000 homes. Poor planning and poor policy choices right in the middle of woke Boulder County.
The place I loved, knew like the back of my hand, and considered home is now a place I avoid. Most road trips, I skirt through the southern part of the state and never get within 100 miles of Denver, AKA L.A. Lite.
It sounds worse than New Jersey.
It’s gotten pretty bad.
Circa 20 years ago, I was taking some computer training which required a week in San Diego. I judiciously chose a motel a ways out of town, thinking that I’d be in a safe, quiet place. Quite the opposite proved to be true. The parking lot was crowded and when I carried my luggage (and a guitar) in, to check in, I had a string sense that my movements were being taken note of, by people in the parking lot who seemed to have a lot of time on their hands.
There was one young fellow, of distinct appearance who seemed to lurk around the parking lot, all hours of the day. The only time I didn’t see him in the parking lot was one occasion where he was in the office, in handcuffs, being interviewed by the police. The next morning, he was out there again, still lurking.
Now, that was SoCal, circa 2005, and while disappointing, hardly surprising. What changed in Colorado is that same atmosphere came to pass. Motel parking lots seem to magnetically attract shady characters, and I have literally changed my mind about staying someplace after a drive through the parking lot.
The same sense that this is not a safe place has taken root in Colorado over the last 10 years or so. A lovely little ski rental place in the mountains, which I’ve driven past many times, is now a marijuana dispensary and the last time I passed through, a young man so wasted that he could barely stand was supporting himself on a rail that used to be used as a place to rest skis. It was sickening, and quite sorrowful.
It’s gotten bad in many places. A reliable lodging place in Minnesota that I’ve used for years was overrun with some questionable folk in the parking lot the last time I visited there, all giving me the evil eye for having the gall to invade their claimed domain.
I pray for this nation, and for it to recover from what has happened to it.
God help us–I mean that literally, as a prayer.
No kidding.
Dave, Unknowable posted some computer advice for you–I hope it helps.
They were really moving when I used playback speed of 2.0