Green Dragon Tavern
A place to sit down with a couple of pints of ale and wax subversive.
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Lights on at the Tavern? WTH…?
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Lights on at the Tavern? WTH…?
Hey Fellow Taverneers, Someone once said, “Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” I don’t remember who, and as I finally have a kick back day, I’m too lazy to look it up. Several of my good friends here on the platform, loved ones in reality, have checked up on me to make sure I’m OK, since I’ve been silent for a bit. Well, I am OK, and I appreciate so much the concern. It warms the old heart. North Carolina, where I live, has fairly decent winters; not too cold, and not too warm, and, for the last 5 years, we’ve had no snow at all to speak of; dustings at most, where a few wind driven flakes blow around and melt upon lighting on the ground. This winter we got hit with freaking Siberian arctic blasts, dropping temperatures down to single digits, and on top of that, we’ve had three snows. As I heat my almost 100 year old home with a wood stove, I’ve been kept on the run just trying to keep from freezing to death. DISCLAIMER: Alright, alright, I know some of you live in places where Springtime is below zero, with gigantic snows as a matter of course, and, if you think me a “whiner” well, OK, duly noted; I’ll shut up. The distillery (from where I retired a couple of years back) has had some big projects, for which I’ve been taken out of mothballs and returned to semi-active duty. My son in the US Virgin Islands and his bride are expecting a baby girl the end of this month, so I’m going to be a Grandpa again. The hospital on St. Thomas is, how can I politely put it?, medically challenged, so the kids decided to have the baby up here, where we are close to one of the best children’s hospitals in the Southeast. So my daughter in law moved up here in January, since she is not allowed to fly after the middle of that month, and old Pops was enlisted to help—not a complaint, just an observation. My son is still in the islands working, until the end of February, when they plan to induce labor. Then he’ll head back here for the birth and a month’s paternity leave. So I haven’t just been sitting around enjoying my vast fortune…or perhaps I have, if you consider said vast fortune to not be related in the least bit to money or financial wealth. When it comes to family and friends (take a bow y’all) I’m richer than Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos put together, and I’m better looking too. 😉 Alright, enough about me. On the podcast forum today, Fancyflora23 posted the following: “What if the corruption discovered by Musk leads to them deploying the 87,000 agents because 1/3 of the American people will stop paying their taxes. Kind of like people who refused to take the poison?” Now, I subscribe to VM’s maxim, “Consider everything that comes out of DC or the mainstream news media to be a lie, and work back from there.” So I don’t know how much of what all Musk is doing, has been doing, is supposedly doing, or not doing at all is true or not. It’s no stretch that our government is more corrupt than all the Banana Republics combined, and, they have spent and misspent and profited wildly from their earnings from robbing us. That’s no secret to anybody. But I responded to Fancyflora23 with something that she triggered in my cobweb shrouded memory, and that is, I’ve spent a fair amount of time in my life traveling in Mexico, and also working in Honduras, and, I have visited many ancient Meso-American archaeological sites. From the Zapotec and Mixtec Indian sites in Oaxaca, Mexico, to the impressive Mayan sites in the Yucatán down into Central America, one thing they all had in common: the ruling classes and the priests forced the common folk to build huge pyramids, palaces, observatories, altars, all kinds of elaborate construction projects for centuries, and mostly with stone age tools, and no beasts of burden. The people were also obliged to furnish their “betters” with food and other sustenance (kind of like a primitive picture of where we are today, don’t you think?). Most of these cultures ended, not due to famine, disease, war, or foreign invasion, but because the people got tired of caring for their slavish masters, and simply up and moved away, completely abandoning them! There was a lot more land to where entire populations could move away to in those days. Not so now, but the US equivalent would be if the American tax base just stopped paying taxes. That was the beautiful, wistful mental graphic I took from Fancyflora23. If we cut off ALL the money to the politicians, I wonder how many would remain “public servants?” That would be the modern day equivalent of our whole population just up and moving away, like the cultures of antiquity. I know I’d be more likely to find a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow before that would ever happen, but like good old Jesse Jackson used to say, “Keep hope alive!” Well, It’s “boot heels to be wandering” time. See y’all for happy hour at the tavern. Missed y’all/love y’all, and thank you for caring.
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20 Replies
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Dana, It’s good to hear that you have come out of hibernation to sniff around like the black bears in these parts often do when the weather gives a brief hint of spring! Congrats on the next grand kid also. Remember to take him/her out for some fresh air and sunshine once home. 😎
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Delaney, Bonnie & friends put the concept of ‘vast fortune’ into words: https://archive.org/details/duane-allman-friends/Duane+Allman+%26+Friends/08+Gift+Of+Love.wav
archive.org
Duane Allman & Friends : neastwi : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
Duane Allman & Friends 1) It's How You Make It Good 2:32 Laura Lee 2) Sweep Around Your Own Back Door 2:43 Lulu 3) That Can't Be My Baby 2:22...
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Thanks! This is great. So so good. The Delaney and Bonnie traveling musical carnival with all of its in and out members was one of the most underrated and under appreciated musical phenomena in the history of rock music. Everybody who was a part of it or had anything to do with it was a star. Thanks again.
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I was hoping you would appreciate it. They were able to capture things with their music in a magical way and that particular song came to mind with your statement. Good to see the tavern light is still on!
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❤ Glad to hear your thoughts. I suspect it is getting closer to most folks saying to those folks telling us to jump what is said in Ireland:”I will, yeh” which means either “Don’t hold your breath” or something a bit saltier. YMMV.
All in all, we’ll get there. It is nice that it will be, continues to be, in good company, the Paine community.
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Nice to know you haven’t froze to death hang in there we’ve got more coming probably next week congratulations on your new grandchild and just being there for all of us 😊
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Good to hear from you again Dana!! Congratulations to all of you on the upcoming birth of your grandchild.
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You sound good my friend. You know how it is. Don’t stop in much when your favorite bar keeper takes some time off . 😉
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Happy to hear all is well and that you’re expecting another grandchild! Nothing better! As far as withholding taxes, I’ve been thinking that for 20 odd years. What the hell would they do if we just said, I mean millions of us, hell no? There’s NO representation for my taxation. The wastefulness/corruption is beyond the pale…you are right, banana republics have nothing on us. Take care, stay warm, and let us know when the bundle of joy arrives!
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Yeah, we have the Banana Republicans and the Banana Democrats! Everybody’s gone bananas!
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Sorry I missed you last year. Did find a great place in town for chow that had lots of ice cream passing thru. It was opened pretty late so I felt blessed.
I hear ya about cold. Mind yourself with that wood. Lows down here were 15-16 degrees below normal coldest January, since at least 1990. 20’s thru low 30’s all month in Midlands SC. This El Niño or el paco system is outta control. Good to hear from ya. Good to hear your family is getting bigger.
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I pray all turns out well for the family.
Nice observations with your comment. After getting my experiences of getting drafted into the Army in 1967, sent to the Republic of Vietnam, getting all those fancy degrees, the internship with Governor Jimmy Carter, and my 2 years in federal employment, I find that people are okay with corruption.
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We all need to step away from the bullshit. Readjust, reevaluate, reintroduce ourselves to family, friends, loved ones from time to time. I salute you for having the world wisdom to take the time. Time…a commodity we all are running out of and should use this commodity to focus on what’s really important…family.
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Cheers Dana🍻Good to hear you’re doing okay👍
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Good to see the lights on & hear from you Dana. Congratulations to you & your family on your new Granddaughter, what a wonderful gift! My Grandmother reminded me often to cherish where no moth nor rust can harm, as where your treasure is there will be your heart. Thank you for sharing & reminding us what is true, good & beautiful.
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That is a magnificent picture! I am not sure how to reply to Dana’s initial post…. Awesome thread and discussion… however… this picture is THE BEST !
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An absolutely adorable angel there. God bless.
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Hi Dana🙋♂️
It is nice to hear from you. Congratulations on your coming grandchild. That’s a bright spot for sure. Our 27 year old daughter is pregnant with her first, and our first grandchild. Our bright spot. Fingers crossed as she progresses into the 1st trimester. She has a checkup tomorrow, so prayers for Jordan, we are all anxious to find out all is well.
A lack of snow winter here in the SW Rockies in the San Juan Range. This is not good. Spartan snow packed mountain peaks this winter after two previously heavy snowpack winters. That said, snow is finally coming today, on 2-12. I fear we will see a dry summer and forest fires, unless we get a wet spring and summer. Snowpack is a water battery with gravity feed. No snowpack melt, then no running rivers to fill reservoirs and canals for our ranchers, hay fields and crops down stream.
On government bureaucrats, IRS agents, paying taxes, and funding the “elected” Beltway Bandits – the old world model is dissolving before our old eyes. The old social paradigm and models (operating system) we are programmed on top of (like a software application) are being rewritten in real time onto a new operating system – one predicted in AI. One void of humans and human interaction.
Reflecting a lot lately on my professional experience and sharing it here only to make a point on the current state.
I was employed in the high tech world and IT business sector for over 40 years starting at 20 years. From a modest beginning testing, fixing and calibrating electronic instrumentation, used at the likes of CERN, and Los Alamos labs, to becoming a budding telecom and computer systems analyst for bond trading at Salomon Brothers, onto support and IT engineering roles for Motorola – the Iridium Satellite and other military projects. Then landing into a two plus decades in enterprise data centers, networked large scale data storage (a field touching everything we touch- from banking, medical, power generation, government, retail etc.) and eventually cloud computing and AI in those varied industries. I witnessed, albeit unwittingly, the trajectory of where we are and what we have become because of, in part, technology. I witnessed an accumulated perspective and still today I research and read about the progression of AI and technology – and we are captured and controlled by it. AI governance is here. I can only imagine the world that our daughter, her husband and our coming grandchild will face. Staying optimistic can be difficult. But we find ourselves filled with joy as our very small family grows and I see the happiness in our children as the persistence to bring new human life into this strange world never ceases.
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Quote attribution: Mark Twain.
In “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” he includes this take-away on the French revolution. It’s a 30K-view of the geo-political situation of his time, yet rings true today.
THERE were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.
Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
goodreads.com
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
One of the greatest satires in American literature, Mar…
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