Always good when a failure isn't.

.
.
What you may ask?  Calling my mother on her birthday.  It WAS today, not yesterday as I had feared.  I did call a bit late.  When I realized it was about time to call I found my cellphone quite dead.  Even plugging it in, at that point, will not allow it to function.  Which is odd, as I had it fully recharged yesterday.  Sometimes it simply dies in a matter of hours, other times it will hold a charge for days, nearly a week.  Since I don't use it very often I frequently find it quite dead.  Anyway, she was quite pleased to get the call.  I called once, actually, and she didn't answer.  She called back shortly.  It seems my brother called her right before I did that first time.  I have asked her about birthday presents and such, but she... really... a phone call.  That's... all.  I even offered to have lobster shipped to her, one of her favorite foods.  But she fears cooking them.  No, she just... couldn't think of a thing.  Oh, I know something.  I keep forgetting though.  Help!

I will probably be getting to town yet tonight.  I wouldn't normally, this late, but I want to be sure I have snacks and drinks in line for the meeting.  Actually I might buy enough for two meetings, in case I need to do this again soon.  Beer should do fine down in the cellar.  Ice lasts quite a long time in the freezer too, and is just dandy so long as no one uses it in the beverage.  I will chill some of it, and a run tonight would ensure that the drinks are cold enough, along with making sure the cooler is clean enough (I do actually clean that after use, so... should be fine).  It is a little project, but... it is about all I can really handle.

We are so weak, aren't we?  We are fragile creatures.  Everything, sometimes, seems so thin.  People love you because of what you bring them or do for them.  You can do some things, but it is never as simple as "just doing it", either.  And my cats, for example, are always hungry and yet often don't like what I give them.  I have no idea what to do with Sassy.  I feed her, lately, and she just turns up her nose at the food.  I could say she is ungrateful, but I won't.  I know what it is to receive food you can't tolerate and to have to leave it.  It is the same brand of food she has always eaten though, and there is great variety of both textures and flavors with that brand.  But for the last week the poor waif has simply not been all that interested.  It is cooler, so I thought she would be more heartily on feed.

So much of life seems so shallow.  And much of it is, and has to be.  I suppose wisdom enters when you can see what is and by musts is shallow and then separate that from what is deep and should be given all due resources, and heart.  Still, much of life, from feeding to bathing, is more about just doing it.  Much of our relationships are based on giving and receiving.  Only family is different, and it doesn't always have to be by blood.  My mother, though she didn't give birth to me, is possibly more fully my mother than any woman could be.  She has, at times, tried to make up for not giving us birth.  To which I assure her that she did more, she chose and stuck with her choice.  Even when we rejected her, as I think almost has to happen, for any child and parent.  Then the bond is reforged, if all works out, as an adult relationship (mostly, or sort of, oh... who am I kinding... it does change a goodly bit though).

I was reading at Aunty Belle's Front Porch recently.  I certainly see her point in the way life has changed.  Well educated, she says?  Technically I am not well educated, certainly not by modern standards and most likely not by the old standards either.  I am sort of a mix.  And yet Shakespeare?  Of course I know him.  And I used to know him every bit as well as I knew Poe and the New Testament, King James version.  It does disturb me that modern educated folk know nothing of Shakespeare.  Oh, well, something I should mention is that I rejected Shakespeare before I was past my mid-teens.  Not because he didn't get some things right, or that he wasn't interesting the first dozen readings, only that... he cut a lot of corners using dramatics to get at the heart of things.  While I understand he did that for the masses who didn't have the time to sit and think, and I have had the luxury of all the time in my life to do just that, even as a teen I... varied from that path.  Well, and I suppose I became a bit weary of 'teh blathering', so I do that on my own now.  *laughs*  Don't buy his bull pucky, buy mine!  Innit?

I do note how... mechanized people have become.  Who doesn't have a smart phone?  Who doesn't have access to the internet, often high-speed (for what that really means today), who doesn't have a chip in their car feeding back data to the manufacturer (and possibly being given to the government or whoever else has the power, money, or such to take it)?  So many people are so transfixed on things that mean nothing, including me with my games, that much of life just passes them by.  I honestly think the whole notion behind world peace, at this time, is to get everyone so hooked on tech that they lose interest in fighting.  Well, and they lose self-interest in general.  Crowd control that is voluntary?  It's the best kind.  Me... I don't have a lot of choice.  I either goof on games or sleep too much and end up sore and more out of it.  But most have a choice and choose... giving up their life, the worries, the bothers, to machines.  Electronic heroin. 

Though, the old notions of being well educated were quite... liberal.  There is that.  And I don't mean the good kind of liberal, I mean the indoctrinational sort.  Poe wasn't so bad, but many if not most of the heritage writers were directly or close enough to socialists and communists to make it so that anything read from them was an indoctrination.  My early readings lead me directly to that, until I read history.  History has a way of upending theory, false hope, lies, and such.  It just was.  And the conclusions?  You make up your own mind, but they are rather clear.  History destroys heritage education by disproving it over and over and over again.  So, I'm not too bothered that others have rejected classical education.  What does bother me is that nothing has moved in, yet, to take it's place.  Professional education, of course.  But that isn't... anything like a classical education.  I am surprised the Catholic Church hasn't created a new form of non-liberal liberal education.  I know the Church has been hampered by the government in doing what it prefers with it's educational institutions though, too.  The Church has nearly been severed from control over those.

So, what would a non-liberal liberal education include?  First, history.  Not just remembering dates, places, faces, names... but understanding key points in American and then world history.  Knowing why Rome rose, and fell, and continued to do so several times.  Knowing what generated "The West", "The East", and who the various cultures and players were, how they worked, failed, succeeded.  And that pretty much means who fought, who won, why, and roughly when.  What were the differences?  After that, we get into English as a language and cultural, social, personal, and professional tool of extensive power.  Our American language, all by itself, is a wonder.  It is exceptional.  While others may wish to save dying languages... why?  We already can't actually speak Latin for heavens sake!  As well, the sciences and mathematics would need to be covered to a degree.  Not fictional theories, but the real workings of what makes science science.  Can you prove it?  Then it isn't science.  Can you repeat the proof, can others?  Then it isn't science.  Stick to what is known, get rid of the stuff that has been corrupted.  A class in basic chemistry, a class in basic biology (minus eco-anything), and another course or two in other general sciences, such as electronics.  As for mathematics, I don't think people need to know differential equations for example, or even matrix algebra or even simple algebra to be quite honest.  While I have found uses for most of the mathematics I have taken, most people simply don't contemplate problems to that level.  What they do need is a basic foundation in the simple mathematics, a bit of an education in operational (personal/business) economics, and maybe a little bit just to throw them a curve... Perhaps algebra would do nicely there, for most. 

All of this would be set up to create a society of the educated that work from common principles.  Where they go with it, what they do with it, would be up to them.  While I don't believe in centralization, for the most part, I do believe there has to be a basic core of understanding from which people can begin to do their work.  As is, there is no common core.  There is... just smatterings of whatever.  It is a break down in our education system, society, politics, and the rest.  I am not precisely sure what the exact root of the cause is, though I think excessive wealth may be a big part of the blame.  We are, or were, too successful.  Or at least we borrowed and lied our way into believing that.  I don't know.  I just liked her article and my mind began to whir...

Ah, I best get cleaned and dressed in order to head out at some kind of time so that I might return in some sort of reasonable time frame.  Later of good night.  And, again, happy Birthday Mom.  You are well loved.