Amazon may have done me a favor by dropping me as a reviewer. I wasn’t getting any financial benefit out of reviewing. I didn’t develop any great insights over the last couple years - simply filled in the detail about things I already knew.
The powers that be continue to relentlessly insist that nothing is amiss. If you search on Cоvid vaccіne deаths your browser will flood you with more fact checks than you could imagine and in the end, you never come up with a number. That’s information enough to tell me it is a dangerous question to ask, and I already know the answer well enough for my purposes.
This applies also to my Substack reading. Іgor Chudov, Mеtatron, Jеssіca Rosе, Matthеw Crawford and othеrs tell me over and over what I already know. Confirmation bias is satisfying but it doesn’t inform how I lead my life. This morning I unsubscribed to blogs such as this that take up my time without improving my understanding.
This applies also to political blogs such as Mаtt Taіbbi and Glеnn Greеnwald. I admire these guys greatly but they don’t tell me anything I don’t already know. Moreover, there is a small element of danger in being subscribed to them and talking about them. Bіg Brоther is watching.
On the other hand, my blogging has not brought me to the attention of anybody who shares my ultimate interest, raising children who will give me grandchildren. Nobody has as much as suggested they were interested in moving to Eastern Europe to raise a family. Nobody has proposed to meet in person so our families might socialize. I conclude that there is far more interest in what is wrong with politics in the United States than there is in how to lead one’s life.
The viciousness with which the establishment is treating truth tellers is having its intended effect. I’m going to shut up and hope I drop off whatever lists I’m ready on. There are enough voices already screeching about stоlen elections and the like. I’m looking beyond that. What happens if Trump wins again? Could it again be a country in which I’d feel comfortable raising my kids? I don’t think so, certainly not in any timeframe that would be useful.
People drop out as they get older. I wrote that Grandpa Sasha spent most of the last year cracking walnuts and apples. It was all he could do. I think about him every time I take a sip of apple compote. I hear less and less frequently from those of you with whom I worked in Vietnam 55 years ago. Time takes its toll. Your health is not what it was, and your interests are focused inward. You have done whatever God put you on earth to do and you are increasingly looking over the horizon.
I’m spending more time on the kids’ schoolwork. I looked at American first grade mathematics books and concluded that they also don’t get past addition and subtraction of the numbers zero through ten in the first year. That strikes me as rather unambitious, but it validates the content of the Ukrainian textbook. So, there is no need to talk to Zoriana’s school. Instead, we are playing dominoes with a double 12 set, and she gets extra points when she is able to add up the four ends of the dominoes in play and decide if it’s divisible by five. She loves the attention, and it doesn’t feel like studying.
I’m teaching myself Ukrainian. Again. We have three translated children’s books written for kids between six and 10 years old. The titles are in English were “Earth: My First 4.54 Billion Years” and the “I Wonder Why Encyclopedia” published by Macmillan, and in Swedish “Beaver - With All Four Paws a Craftsman.”
Language has four modes – reading and writing, listening and speaking. Up to this point I have been mostly just reading for comprehension. I am now reading these books out loud, by which I learned to recognize my mistakes in pronunciation. Reading at a conversational pace forces me to sight-read the words instead of sounding them out. It does a better job of cementing them in memory.
Although Marianna likes it when I read to her, these books exceed the attention span of a three-year-old. I’ll go with that. She listens as long as she wants, and then wanders off. Her fixation is three German books left by Charlie and Susie Spell - My first book of bedtime stories, first book of rhymes, and first book of children’s songs. Though she has no idea what the words mean, the tunes are appealing. I can sing the whole book to her at bedtime.
Zoriana insists on Calvin and Hobbes the way Eddie did. The kids still don’t get the humor, but they like the insurrection. Fortunately Zoriana also likes some Little Golden Books such as the Saggy Baggy Elephant, and will at times read them herself.
Tomorrow Oksana and I are looking at a car we might buy. Though she got her license before we met, she has never driven much. Fortunately the license does not expire. The time will come when public transportation does not meet our needs. If the war ever forces us to leave Kyiv we would almost certainly wind up someplace where a car would be a necessity.
There is a lot to learn about owning a car. How to shop for it, how to register it, how to keep it fixed, how to talk politely to policeman and much more. We should do all that now while we have time. The plan of the moment is to buy something fairly old for about $3000, something we could use for grocery shopping and taking the kids to school. In the course of driving it Oksana will pay attention to what other people drive. She will develop a better idea for what kind of car the family really needs. Then, once we understand the process and know what we want and we can do it right.
Those are the changes afoot at Lake WeBeGone. I am going to assume that you know my points of view on the big issues of the day as I write more frequently about the little ones.
It's probably a good thing Amazon isn't interested in your reviews. It'll give you more time for the rest of your life, and you may post more often here. I started a website a number of years back, and posted an article every two weeks for five years. I enjoyed it very much, although my readership wasn't large.
At some point, I realized I had expressed an opinion on the many topics that interested me, and there was no reason to continue. Every dog has its day, and I was happy to stop. I often wonder how professional writers do it, year in and year out, opining on many of the same topics. Sometimes there are new things to write about, but often it's the same old, same old.
You wrote: "I hear less and less frequently from those of you with whom I worked in Vietnam 55 years ago. Time takes its toll. Your health is not what it was, and your interests are focused inward. You have done whatever God put you on earth to do and you are increasingly looking over the horizon." True, Of the 70 still on the PacOps mailing list there are only 7 that I personally communicate with, not counting you as one of those since we do not communicate, I simply read what you write. It seems to me you are making an intellectual mistake in seemingly just looking inward to your family. I believe your brain functioning is like any other muscle, if you don't use it you lose it. But, perhaps Toastmaster presentations will provide sufficient exercise. Wife Anna and I are seriously considering spending 1/2 a year in Poland and 1/2 a year in Arizona. While we are not moving to Poland to raise children, I can understand your desire to raise your current crop there rather than in the USA. Having been like you, growing up in the 50s in the Bay Area (Alameda) and going to UC Berkeley, I am disappointed in how American Society has changed to such a focus on materialism and supporting those "less well off". Anna will not go to Ukraine while there is a war on, she has too many bad memories of being in Warsaw when The War started (she was born in 1934). However, if it should stop and we are in Poland and still capable of moving around I would like to visit you. We were in Kiev in the mid-Eighties as tourists and remember it as a pleasant place. Our outstanding memory from there is that for some mythological reason the university buildings were painted red. With your change of focus, I hope you keep up your personal blog - it always seems interesting to look into someone else's personal life. I am too private to write as you do, in addition to not being going through anything interesting to others at this stage of my life.