One thing I learned prior to traveling to Ireland is that the people of that country grow really and truly tired of Americans (meaning people who were born and raised in the United States) coming over to the Emerald Isle and proclaiming themselves to be Irish because one of their 32 great-great-great-great grandfathers was from County Cork. I made it very clear to any of the Irish people I spoke to that I was not one of "those" Americans. One fellow couldn't believe that I wasn't trying to claim to be his long lost cousin. I explained that my grandmother was of Scottish descent. He asked me her family name. "McFadyen," I told him. He assumed a triumphant look and led me to a monument located right beside the famous Free Derry wall. The monument was to a man whose last name was, you guessed it, McFadyen. He told me that I might not claim Ireland but that Ireland would claim me.

Honestly, I don't really care that much where any of my long dead relatives came from in the sense that i just can't identify with national pride. It's seldom a good thing is it? It leads to nationalism and feelings and acts of unearned and undeserved superiority. I'm fine with other folks who feel some sort of spiritual kinship with the home of their ancestors, as long as they aren't obnoxious about it. Just don't tell me that you know you'd be good at bullfighting because you have Spanish blood or any kind crap like that.

As a general rule, most cultures have two sides. For every selfless act of sacrifice, there tends to be a corresponding act of something horrible. Even the Irish, a people I hold in high esteem for persevering under years of exploitive English colonialism, seldom talk about their Nazi sympathies. Wait, what? Well, after Irish independence, certain folks decided that any enemy of England was a friend of Ireland and well, that kind of led to a certain acceptance of Germany that was most underserved. Read about it in the Irish Times

The heroic American Army of World War Two had soldiers stationed in America guarding their fellow citizens in Japanese Internment Camps. That doesn't take away anything from the men who landed on Omaha Beach, it just solidifies the fact that it's a very grey world, no matter how black and white we wish it could be.

For my fellow pale skinned brethren, expressing something as warped as racial pride is just weird AF to me. Thankfully, the tendency of white people to express that notion was on the decline prior to the last election, although it seems to be making a comeback. I can see where traditionally oppressed people have a sense of "Yay! We survived!" but I'm not sure what their genocidal oppressors have to celebrate. Don't even come at me with an "But not all white people" argument either.

I am much more inclined to identify with my self-chosen tribe of freedom fighters. I celebrate my people based on what they did and not on geography or the amount of melanin in their skin or the shape of their eyes. Our real families are the people we choose and not the blood in our veins. My people were the abolitionists, the Freedom Riders, the IWW and the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War. My people were Susan B. Anthony, Fannie Lou Hamer, Fred Korematsu and Sitting Bull. My people started Occupy Wall Street and rioted in the streets of Seattle. They were gunned down at Kent State by the Ohio NationalGuard and in a Greensboro housing project by the KKK. My people are finding ways to resist the tide of fascism right this red hot minute.

If you feel the same way, then you are my sister or my brother. I love you.

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Sometimes being online is absolutely like panning for gold. I can be perusing one of the blogging platforms I frequent and discover the most heart touching essay by someone i've never encountered before. They could be writing about anything, a relationship, or work or just anything about surviving life in 2025. When I find someone like that, it brightens my day and gives me something to look forward to. I felt that way when I found Keenan and Annie.

There are times when even a well done commercial site providing high-quality content is a joy to spend time on there. The Atlantic or The Verge or Wired on a good day are prime examples. I happen to like and respect quite a few journalists. Some of them are doing some absolutely vital work for our democracy right now, and i appreciate it. I also like the tech nerds, who I can tell are just as excited to find an interesting new tool as I would be in their shoes. After all these years, I still think computers can be fun. I'm not jaded yet.

But.

But then... I log on to Mastodon or Bluesky and I see a message in my inbox, not from some software curious Mac fan, but from an incredibly attractive woman, appearing younger than my adult kids, who is just dying to find out how I'm doing tonight. Sigh. It only takes a minute to block and delete those kind of scam messages. They are such downers, though. There's some lonely guy out there, maybe someone who isn't as sharp mentally as they once were who is going to fall for that kind of thing tonight. He will get taken to the cleaners and have his heart broken. I don't like the constant reminders of that reality.

Other times, I'm just doing my thing, minding my own business and I get a text message, which is cool if it is a friend or our kids or grandkids. What's not cool is when it's someone from the political party I don't support crowing about the latest MAGA atrocity as if it's a good thing and asking me to send them money.

Lately, I've voluntarily been extricating myself from my involvement with the websites of the billionaire class. It's not a project to be taken on lightly. It changes the Internet, injecting friction into areas where I am not used to it. I have to think instead of using muscle memory. Having a new email address for the first time in 20 years is disconcerting. Leaving Facebook was absolutely the right thing to do, but I miss the people from my old job and high school friends I only saw on there. For years, I've been able to watch whatever blockbuster show I wanted because subscribing to ALL the streaming services wasn't that expensive. Now, having a moral code is giving me FOMO. What if something superb comes on Amazon Prime after my divorce from Jeff Bezos goes through? I hate the thought.

It's been a good weekend. I got to spend a few hours with my oldest friend today. Wonder Woman and I wrapped a good British TV show. I have a couple of trips to look forward to, And, I am still retired.

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Our house is a quiet one. Our neighborhood is quiet. Neither me not Wonder Woman have loud voices normally, although we do occasionally get excited. My kids follow my lead on this. My son doesn't even have a TV and although, like me, he loves music and has a large collection, he enjoys nothing more than sitting in silence with a book. My daughter does have a TV, but it isn't on much. She has a six-year-old who can be a little rambunctious, but generally, it's a calm home.

Although Wonder Woman is like me, the rest of her family is not. Her girls and her parents like having a TV on in the background. The grandkids are all big gamers so you get those sounds too. My Dad is another person who gets nervous without a TV on in the background. He turns one on just as soon as he wakes up, and it stays on all day, either on Fox News or sports, although he does enjoy the odd YouTube video from time to time. It doesn't bother me, but I'm usually ready for quiet when we go home.

When we have grandkids over for a visit, I know that it will be louder than normal. I am OK with that. I may occasionally ask one of them to use headphones or to turn the volume down on their video game or tablet, but I don't make them feel bad about it or walk on eggshells. I wasn't always that cool about it, though. I've grown more flexible about that with age.

One of my greatest traveling anxieties is being trapped in a loud hotel. I've left more than one in the middle of the night because I just couldn't handle the racket and the staff's inability to do anything about it. I may have even yelled at the noisemakers, a group from a ski trip who came rolling in loud at midnight. I just don't understand the mentality of people who are not volume aware.

Camping in a group campground brings on the same feeling. Breaking out a boom box and serenading people who may have different taste in music or who might want to, I don't know, hear the birds sing is just pure rude. Getting drunk and talking loud around a campfire past the "quiet hour" is another sure sign of low intelligence and poor home training. I also consider hiking spaces to be close to sacred. When some trail runner with a Bluetooth speaker comes blasting by, I want to trip them. Then kick them.

For years, one of my hobbies was downloading, listening to and rating music. I'd sit at my computer for long stretches happily tagging songs, reading reviews of albums and making wish lists of songs or albums I wanted to get. Streaming took the joy out of that, and I rarely add anything new anymore, unless it is an album by an artist I already like. If I am home alone, I'll play music while I cook or clean house, but apart from that, it's quiet.

Oddly, I can write in the noisiest locations. I am perfectly fine to work on my blog on a car trip while a podcast plays in the background. Writing on a plane is no problem. Before I retired, i'd often write at work during my lunch break, with the usual office sounds going on around me. I get aggravated in loud restaurants if i am can't have a conversation with my companions, but it is that fact and not the noise itself which I find grating.

My idea of heaven is sitting on the deck of a cabin up in the Appalachian Mountains, preferable beside a stream on a mild day with a cold beverage and something good to read. That's the spot I go to in my mind when I am trying to relax when tense.

Oh, and leaf blowers suck.

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