Day 960 – Fig Crisis, Sex Raft, Fall

Tuesday, September 5, 2023

I have crossed the 75 pound line in terms of the fig harvest. We are out of freezer room. I’ll have to start making jam. By offering figs to people I’ve found out who loves and who does not. … Love figs. What did you think I was talking about?

Oh. Burning Man? No. Yes, it was not what lots of people expected this year, but the weather there is what it is and you have to learn to adapt or you can get relly screwed up. If it rains the dry lakebed makes a gooey cement like mud. Pedal your bike one revolution and you have your tires and wheels coated in it for four to six inches of the stuff, which will dry and be like cement. People who know I’ve been have to Burning Man sent me updates and news articles – all appreciated. However, let me say this – if you haven’t been, whatever you assume is probably not the reality of the experience if you should go. The festival is marketed “as a festival of radical self-expressionism.” I have been in discussion with people who say, “oh it’s people wandering around nude, taking drugs and having sex.” Hum, says more about the speaker than what happens. In fact, I asked a person proferring that line when he he had been. He said he never had. I told him I had been twice, and while there were people walking around with little or no clothing and there were others taking drugs like ecstasy that what I found was amazing art and huge dance parties and some wicked funny “camps” like “Talk to God” and “Disgruntled Postmen.” Didn’t make a dent. As soon as I stopped telling him my experience he went right back to nude, sex, and drugs. The difference for me now as opposed to when I was telling him is that I am no longer surprised by this behavior.

BTW If you are into art and the art of today go to Burning Man. If you like the art of yesterday (which I do) go to a museum.

Okay. I know. The Sex Raft. You want to know about it? Well, I was looking up something on the Maya and a side clickbait thing said, “The Sex Raft.” You know that it’s bad when the article starts with “this guy was a really bad scientist.” Then repeats it every other sentence for the first part of the story. So, here goes. 1973 this “scientist” had an idea that if people were left in a small group in isolation and faced some very challenging and terrifying events they would revert to their basic instincts, get violent, and have sex. So he created this large metal raft (40 or 60 feet by 20 or 40 feet and six or eight feet deep) put a rudder on it and a sail, got about a dozen people to sign up to float across the Atlantic. The women outnumbered the men by a few and the women had the jobs of captain, diver (if any work needed to be done on the raft’s underside) and navigator. This scientist guy would sit in a corner and observe. Once a week he’d give them all a questionnaire. He’d ask very personal questions like “who do you hate the most?” and “who do you want to have sex with?”

The people were all young, in their twenties. They got along. They got bored. Some had sex, more out of boredom than anything else. They didn’t have feelings of violence toward each other, despite this guy trying to start something. As the trip progressed the answer to the question, “Whom do you hate the most?” turned out to be the scientist.

They had two events that were crisis inducing. One was the rudder failed and instead of letting the woman who knew the scuba equipment and was fitted for it the scientist insisted that he go fix the rudder. He failed. The next morning the diver lady went over the side and fixed the rudder, which really pissed off the scientist. After that he kind  retreated into his shell.

That is, until they had a real crisis, a freighter was bearing down on them. If they couldn’t get the freighter’s attention they would be run over, sink and die. The scientist ran around ineffectively. He had replaced the captain lady with himself, but she took over gave orders. They got on the radio, sent up a flare, climbed the mast to get the freighter’s attention. They succeeded. The freighter diverted. 

By now the scientist was sitting in the corner sulking and then got sick, or claimed to be, so someone had to pay attention to him. As they neared shore the other crew members shared deep personal stories and became friends for life.

Did I tell you he was a really bad scientist?

I sat out on the deck early this morning. There are dead leaves on parts of them on the deck. The fig harvest is slowing down, (thank goodness) and the leaves look like they are ready to turn. Maybe more because they look like they aren’t getting enough water, which does’t make sense, but that’s the way they look.

College football started and I’ve lost Shelby to GameDay. She’ll be back after The National Championship or the Super Bowl. Right now we are in the “this might be the year – no it’s not” phase. From what I saw this won’t be the year. It will be an okay to good year for Virginia Tech but not a great year.

Surprising to many was Deion Sanders at Colorado where his son is now the QB. Many didn’t think his team would do well against TCU. Colorado won by three points. There were some really really good plays. Young Sanders showed poise and precision. It might be the year for them to do very well. Consider that Deion came to Colorado, interviewed the existing players and got rid of most of them, then built a team from the portal. Like him or hate him, Deion Sanders is exciting and gets things moving. Now they call him Coach Prime, not Deion.

Okay, that’s it. I thought a little distraction before we get to the ever tightening net. Imagine if Republicans had done the right thing from the start? Who am I kidding? It’s not that Trump has a huge lead over everyone else in the field, it’s that the rest of the field is boring, placid, and in most cases crazy (or completely out of touch.) But this is nothing new for the Republican party. They have played this two tiered game for decades. Ever since Eisenhower, who was the last Republican President who actually tried to do something to help people and not the rich, the corporate, and the powerful. Since then it’s been a parade of sleazy or stupid. 

Nixon was sleazy, but he did try to appear to do things to help people and he did. He also screwed them. He signed a medical bill that ripped control from the hands of the AMA,(ie doctors) and gave it to his businessman buddy. This led to medicine business being controlled by people looking for profit not good health of their clientele. Eventually, it led to Rick Scott taking over many hospitals in Florida and pleading over seventy times the fifth in one of the biggest cases of Medicare fraud. He got away with it, ran for Governor and won, where he began a systematic dismantling of anything that could help the poor and the middle class. He went on to be their Senator and has continued the assault on the common man in the halls of Congress.

Then we got the Gipper and his Aw Shucks I’m just a great nice guy. He destroyed the unions, let the crazies out of medical institutions, ran up the debt, fueled the anti-abortion movement and this led to the slow decline of the middle class, which had been doing pretty well since the end of World War II.

He was followed by his VP – Papa Bush, who had a great resume but no vision and like Ron DeSantis no ability to communicate with people. He was mildly awkward. The best description of him came from a historian who said once H. W. Bush got to the White House and didn’t know what he wanted to do. His lack of common touch was summed up by his being amazed by a bar code scanner at a grocery store. Apparently, he hadn’t been in a grocery store in twenty years.

His son ran and lost to Gore. However, due to dirty tricks from Roger Stone and the lets play fair of his staff he lost in the Supreme Court. This ushered in the goofy stupidity of W. He tried. I’ll give him that. He just wasn’t that smart and thought being a nice guy to have a beer with was enough. It wasn’t and we saw more unraveling of the social and economic network that had been forged by FDR and the post war boom go by the wayside. The best description of both Bushes was supplied to me by an old friend who said, “Remember Texas under Ann Richards?” She was the last Democratic governor of Texas and the mother of Cecile who was the President of Planned Parenthood. Texas was doing okay. They had their struggles, but they were getting things done. In came the Bushes and the Republicans and they cut taxes, and then services. This affected the poor and the middle class. It ran up their debt. Now the state is in dire circumstances and continues to be.

Now we have these show politicians who don’t have an interest in reality and spend all their time railing against windmills. They end up getting bitten by their own conspiracy theories. some have learned to keep the foe an amorphous thing like Antifa, or woke. But others don’t and that can hurt them. Like the election commission to oversee the 2020 election. When all was said and done the commission said there was no fraud, except for, what?, five cases of Republicans in Pennsylvania?

Now we have Mike Huckabee’s daughter passing terrible hurtful legislation as Governor of Arkansas and the Republican Presidential hopefuls all wanting to ban abortions. Has anyone asked them what business is it of theirs what a woman does? 

What I see is a generation or two that have gotten their etiquette from the Simpsons and are being led by the nose of the hidden forces of wealth and power in this country and more and more the wealthy form an international elite.

In soon to be breaking news the head of the Proud Boys is due to be sentenced today. The prosecution wants 33 years. Others have gotten 20. We’ll see.