Morning all, well into January and our first real taste of winter – mornings around ten yesterday and this morning. However, friends in Canada have it ‘better’. But first a bit about coffee; this week we’ll finish up our coffee test batch number two. The previous Mayan stays in 1st. #6023

Back to weather, I guess that the best way to explain what exactly it is that they (our Canadian friends) are dealing with. Well, just watch this one minute clip, you’ll understand:

Quote of the week –

”You can resolve to live your life with integrity. Let your credo be this: Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me.” ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn; Russian novelist, philosopher, historian, dissident, Nobel Prize winner, and political prisoner. 1918 – 2008

First of all – This list of individuals, all of whom Solzhenitsyn would have termed; Honey Badgers.

Each of them have been cancelled, silenced, or marginalized in the media and on Social Media for disseminating Covid19 ‘disinformation’. These aren’t just ordinary ‘blokes’ such as yours truly. These are people who are operating in their field of expertise and understanding. Nevertheless, since their views are at odds with the currently accepted ones, therefore they’ve been cancelled.

Dr. Michael Yeadon, British and served as the chief scientist and vice-president of the allergy and respiratory research division of Pfizer. Dr. Peter McCullough; internist, cardiologist, epidemiologist, a full professor of medicine at Texas A&M. known for being one of the top five most-published medical researchers in the United States and is the editor of two medical journals. Dr. Robert Malone; the primary innovator of mRNA vaccines and one of world’s foremost experts on messenger mRNA therapeutics – having invented the field in 1988. Dr. Karry Mullins (1944 – 2019); the inventor of the PCR test (Polymerase Chain Reaction) who won in 1993 the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Dr. Luc Montagnier; 2008, was jointly awarded a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Françoise Barré-Sinoussi for their discovery of the HIV virus. 

Alongside these folk we’ve watched similar actions taken on a, then, sitting President as well as members of Congress. Are these individuals correct in their assertions? Maybe, maybe not, but in a nation which touts and lives by its Constitution, then places FIRST on a list of Amendments one touting Free Speech; the Freedom to discuss and be heard should be paramount.

Cancel culture is real. I see it on line, in national and local political discourse, even down into the neighborhood scuttlebutt and within families.

Now that the New Year is here, possibly add a couple of New Year’s Resolutions.

1st. – Push back whenever you encounter ‘group think’ and what Dr. Malone terms; “mass formation psychosis”.
2nd. – Then grab a coffee to discuss with someone you deem knowledgeable and who opines views differing from your own fast held beliefs. Open doors to insights you’ve not seen before. Live on.

Built around 1927 – When I was 7 or 8 my dad took me on a flight around my hometown of Enschede in The Netherlands on a Ford Tri-Motor airplane (built around 1928). I remember my mother saying she was afraid and didn’t care to go.

The Ford Tri-Motor was the first all metal passenger airplane. I remember the one I rode on had seven seats, which were made out of rattan. As a kid what struck me was climbing the aisle up-hill to make it to my seat. I don’t really remember much more of the flight other than the ‘climb’ and the ‘rattan’. That was my very first airplane ride, funny what sticks in one’s memory banks.

The embedded video is of a short flight over the Long Beach, CA harbor in one of the 7 or 8 still certified to fly Ford Tri-Motors out of the just over 190 made.

The black ocean liner with the three yellow and black smokestacks seen in the video of the Ford Tri-Motor flight is the old Queen Mary – now a museum in Long Beach, CA. The reason I mention it is that years ago I met up with a customer from Taiwan and took the group out for dinner at the Winston Churchill room, a restaurant on that Ocean liner. The restaurant was a very fitting setting as the liner itself dated near the end of the Edwardian era. Then afterwards took the whole group on a tour of the old Cold War Russian submarine docked adjacent the Queen Mary’s bow as part of the museum’s collection. 

U.S. Holocaust Museum – “Light is in us, even if we have no eyes” were words written by Jacques Lusseyran (1924 -1971). Born I and living in Paris he was blinded in a school accident at age 7. During the 1930s he began to study German from radio listening as a way to better understand what was happening in Germany. As the war began he formed a Resistance group in Paris. In 1943 he was sent to Buchewald concentration camp where he continued his resistance efforts while a prisoner. Of the 2,000 French and German similarly sentenced individuals only 30 were liberated 15-months later in 1945.

What made him this week’s focus? To display that whatever life has dealt you, there is always opportunity to make the world a better place. 

Tooting – May I toot my own horn a bit? A couple of days ago Strava (an App I use with my west coast family to track my walks and workouts) sent me the accumulated totals for 2021. TOOT TOOT 

Fini –
• Can you figure out whose grave this is? Hint; it’s located in the NY area. Answer can be found at the very bottom of this ‘Ramblings’. 

• German Federal Environment Minister Steffi Lemke: “A technology that leaves behind dangerous waste…..cannot be sustainable”. Ms. Lempke, please note that the photo shows a disposal (read: burial) site of discarded wind-farm turbine blades; thought you’d be interested. 

• It’s been a long time since I saw the first Star Wars Episode IV – A New Hope movie. It wasn’t so much the scene as it was the soundtrack accompanying Darth Vader’s inspection of the amassed Stormtroopers which added to the visual. Glad that our 28th Secretary of Defense, Lloyd J. Austin III reminded me just how powerful that scene was: 

• I came close to performing another ‘faceplant’ when I hooked up to the kid’s new Oculus Quest 2 over Christmas. A 3-D exploration of the International Space Station module was right up my alley. When the alternate reality really kicked in I quickly became a confused panic ridden mess teetering on my feet. This week I spotted a photo which proves that I am not the only adult severely affected by Oculus. 

• Part of Marcia’s Birthday celebration was the renewal of her driver’s license. She passed! She will also be setting up an appointment with our favorite vision center. 

• This week at our nearby bookstore I spotted a couple with whom Marcia had worked years ago. I showed Marcia the photo I snapped of them and asked her who those people were, she had NO idea. Oh how we age! 

• This week Tevita saw one of the best NFL games of the season, the Kansas City Chiefs against our Bengals. The Bengals won with a field goal with 1 second on the clock, and thus secured their division’s First place. Lucky you Tevita!

And so ends a week of 1sts.
Have a wonderful new week and stay positive, be healthy, and continue to be connected.
Best till next weekend.

Dirk – a rattan memory man

Answer: Glenn Hughes was ‘Bikerman’ [aka ‘Leather Daddy’] 
of the group The Village People