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A picture of a geometric me, near an old swimming hole, maybe in Alabama, with strange smoke stacks just behind, (I’ve never been to Alabama. ‘Easy Rider’ kept me away) just surfaced like one of those post traumatic stress eye floaters, which I keep following now, as it slowly lifts and drops across my field of vision. Barefoot, wearing an old Brooklyn Dodgers baseball cap, a weed of grass hanging from mouth, my feet kick at the opaque water until I’m satisfied that fish and potentially poisonous water snakes have vacated my territorial claims; I jump in, flinging the Dodger cap to a stranger on the shore before immersion.

the way I feel at the swimming hole

The water feels good. “You’re a skinny minny,” the shore stranger calls out. And I wonder who wrote the ‘Book of Love’ and why Major League Baseball just stepped in to take over the Los Angeles Dodgers. Thrashing around a swimming hole, I’m not particularly in the mood to ponder another Soviet take over of one of our professional teams or anti-trust ramifications or courts (mc and otherwise).

Not to perseverate, but since I’m all wet, I might as well tell my readers, that I still hate the NCAA; a monopolistic body of strange invisible men, that rule over college athletes as if the kids are on a ‘plantation.’ I didn’t say this. A respected commentator, JW, said this on a recent cable sports show. See how impressionistic I am swimming around? When freshmen college basketball players come to the NCAA, they sign a contract giving the NCAA the right to use their images on clothing, games, posters and anything the NCAA chooses “forever and throughout the universe” without ever compensating the players, no matter how old they get.  Even the cool waters of an Auburn, Alabama swimming hole, doesn’t lower my internal thermometer; I’m still hotly enraged that the NCAA let a college basketball game (Rutgers versus St John’s in a Big East Tournament game. See April 1st and March 11th blogs) be ostensibly fixed, favoring St Johns, by three complicit referees and a league commissioner.

basketball referees and a commissioner

The media is in bed with the NCAA, their meal ticket, so me thinks that’s why no one protested the obvious ‘fix’ very much. The NCAA system is so corrupt that one day it’ll get fixed by Congress or by the athletes themselves, who might finally decide to sit down at mid-court during the NCAA tournament and not play anymore. The ‘system’ doesn’t care about our athletes beginning with their college education and for example, continuing after the NFL, when so many ex-football players become ‘Broken Pros.’ Take a few minutes out and watch HBO and Bryant Gumbel’s ‘Real Sports’ segment about ‘Broken Pros.’

the last minute of Rutgers-St Johns game. A must watch

Bryant Gumbel Real Sports “Broken Pros” video

What are metaphors for?  A swimming hole has me almost drowning in a pond of cerebral input. Thrashing the murky water, I call out, “Help me, I’m melting.” I don’t want to get old. It’s a bad place to be with the likes of Congressman Paul Ryan wanting to pasteurize my generation and future ones by throwing us out to pasture without entitlements like Medicare and Social Security. Now hear this. A battleship just landed in the pond. A sailor threw me a preserver, imprinted with “S.S. Rational Independent Thinker.” No Virginia, there might be a Santa Claus and at this later stage of life’s cycle, I still don’t profess any political party affiliation.

Congressman Paul Ryan

So if I’m picking on Paul Ryan, it’s because I like Ike and Kennedy and preservation causes and don’t like to see human potential abandoned to save budget dollars. So here it is folks. Me thinks there’s a water world of only young people under thirty surviving in a Paul Ryan-esque world.

So the congressman wants to fix Medicare. Does he know that some polls say up to 72% of Americans do not want to fix Medicare and he may be damning his party to a rocky road ice cream cone in 2012?(and that other Wisconsin elected dude who took away bargaining power). And I don’t think Mr. Trump will be running for anything. Jerry Seinfeld probably agrees with me after pulling out of attending Trump’s son’s charity fund raiser in Florida. So Ryan wants to give seniors a $15,000 Medicare voucher and once that’s gone, duh? On a recent ‘Bill Maher Real Time,’ Bill asked Michael Steele, former head of the Republican Party, what would happen to a human senior when Ryan’s Medicare program voucher money runs out, to which Mr. Steele said, “We don’t know.” Ah, to be a senior citizen in a new world order.

In past blogs, I’ve discussed movies which scare me, like “On the Beach” or “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” Michael Sarrazin, one of the amazing stars just passed. That movie is eerily close to this Medicare blog segment. Hint. Now, the movie ‘Logan’s Run’ from 1976 is another scary crystal ball. Imagine a world when you turn thirty (21 in the novel), a palm crystal lights up, and it’s time to report to ‘Sleepshop’ where you are willingly executed. No one over thirty is alive. Nine years ago, I went to a niece’s 21st birthday party in Greenwich Village at Bowlmor Lanes. First ball thrown, I knocked down two pins, and then decided to grab my son and brother-in-law and explore the Village on foot. Wishing upon the first star I saw high above the rows of pricey brownstones, why couldn’t it be 1962, with sounds of early Bob Dylan echoing from nearby clubs. Six blocks from the sounds of pins hitting bowling balls, I observed to my sixteen year old son, there is no one walking around the Village that’s over thirty. My hand was glowing and stomach ached because I was in the world of Logan’s Run; because I was way over thirty and still alive. I took six shots and I was still alive. And I’m still alive now contemplating ‘Ryan’s Run,’ my new story of shortened life in the alabaster future.

There are over five million Alzheimer’s patients now with up to 20 million expected in several decades. Hey Ryan, that’s a lot of resources, funding and cut budget dollars to get ready for. Recently, they’ve simplified new guidelines that establish three distinct stages of Alzheimer’s disease. Pre-clinical dementia is more of a scientific description. There’s some biological or structural brain evidence that the Alzheimer’s process is under way, but the person’s not disabled and the family doesn’t notice any problem.  The second stage is mild cognitive impairment; someone has problems that don’t cause disability, but they’re evident enough that the patient and a family member really notice. Mild cognitive impairment progresses to dementia. The thrust here is to alert people that we need to diagnose the disease earlier. ‘Ryan’s Run’ is a futuristic (and contemporary) view that “Life is for the living, not the aging or infirmed” and “Let’s get them in for a few decades and then get them out; after all, we’re running out of money, water, energy and food.” Rummaging in my basement, I found a pair of old gloves, perfect for covering up my glowing palm, alerting Ryan’s gang that I’m too old to be a valuable contributor to society. More signs of the establishment not caring for human beings while I realized that nature here on earth has been making things right for 4 billion years and only 165,000 years for us sapiens:  It’s always money, ay Ryan? Here in Jersey, I recently read about a 61 year old man who is desperately worried about the care of his 35 year old autistic son when they are too old to take care of him or when they’re gone. The son is one of 4900 priority (because parents are older than 55) cases for housing and services in Jersey on an overall 8000 person waiting list (229 people got removed from the list this fiscal year). Of course the culprit is budget cuts. In addition to the people with developmental disabilities, there are 12,000 homeless people here in Jersey; 20,000 human beings in dire need in the Garden of Eden State.

Back in 1970, the first Earth Day, I was as old as my son is now and didn’t know what to do first; we had so many problems back then. In 1970, it was a great to be alive and involved; the environment, a war raging far away and its peace movement, civil rights unrest here in America. Interrupting my son this morning while he was playing a war themed video game, I regurgitated youthful memories of that Earth Day and realized that nothing has changed except exacerbation; a few wars now raging, terrorism, a rapidly deteriorating environment and civil rights issues still alive and well. With the institution of neighborhood schools growing, we have re-segregation all over. Nearly sixty-four percent of all new movies released have no speaking parts for women, only glimpses of their skin exposed. Environmentally, I won’t over do it now. The gulf oil spill was exactly a year ago: how we all forget. The media helps. Reading a newspaper (soon extinct?) the other day, there wasn’t one article about Japan and what’s happening now. I did read GM is making a car strictly for the China market and there are 19% more jobs (mostly techie) for college graduates.

one of the first Earth Day posters 1970

A brown gulf Pelican covered with BP's oil

Back to the gulf and good old BP. 49% of people last year supported offshore drilling. Now 69% want offshore drilling as gas will go to $6.00 a gallon by a mid summer nights dream. BP set aside $20 billion for gulf clean up. They’ve paid out $3.8 billion to date. Are strippers in New Orleans getting more payouts from BP than fishermen? And if you had a boat that was used in the cleanup and it got ruined by the oil, BP is not going to pay you. What really bothers is all the chemical dispersants they used; all that oil (200 million gallons) and jazz got broken up into infinite parts; it’s seeping into the cells of fish and animals affecting ability to reproduce. And 85% of oyster reefs were lost. And did I read that over 30 billion plastic bottles still get dumped into our landfills every year and it takes between 700 and 1000 years to decompose into nasty chemicals? Somewhere over the rainbow, a government will haul a company head into court and make him/her responsible for deaths incurred by negligence and send them to right to jail. Eleven people died when that rig exploded in the gulf.

For the last few years I’ve felt we’re in this race between technology and knowledge gifting us unlimited life extension versus the deterioration/habitability of earth’s environment. I heard futurist, astro-physicist, genius Dr. Michio Kaku say the same thing recently; that race is on. In the meantime as global climate changes, maybe some brave, caring souls ought to take in the sights before it’s too late. Here’s a list of places to see before. Wadden Sea in Denmark. Congo Basin in Congo; deforestation will take away half of the rain forest. Ganges Delta, India; parts of this delta will permanently flood.

Mississippi delta

Big Sur, California; fires and subsequent flooding also threaten the region’s fragile access roads and infrastructure. Mergui Islands, Mynamar; within 30 years, scientists fear Asia will lose 30% of its coral reefs. Mississippi River Delta; more severe storms.

NYC Battery

Yangtze River, China(this really scares me); China accounts for about a third of the world’s rice production. Roughly 500 million people depend on the river for fresh water. Due to the diminishing of the Tibetan glaciers, the flow of the once mighty Yangtze is dwindling. The Battery, New York City; according to the worse-case scenario, extreme events may occur every four years by 2080, with floods raising water levels by 11-14 feet and paralyzing the whole Manhattan infrastructure.

Tuvalu, Pacific Ocean

Tuvalu, Pacific Ocean; a country of only 10 square miles and 12,000 people and coupled with the expected rise in global sea levels, the entire nation could ultimately become submerged.

This has become a stressful blog. I didn’t mean it. Yes, I did. The good news for me as I wrap this up, an exercise bike and 90 budgeted riding minutes is in my future. Why good news you ask? Exercise may prevent stress on telomeres, the protective caps on the ends of chromosomes that are a measure of cell age and cellular health. Elizabeth Blackburn, from the University of California/San Francisco (UCSF), and colleagues report, that while psychological stress leads to shorter telomeres, exercise may prevent this damage. So get yourself a bike or take a walk in the sun and eat some raisins. A while back I met a neat man in his nineties; vital, funny, cerebral, mobile and not hostile but warm, endearing and enriching lives. I’m glad Ryan doesn’t get his hands on our seniors today. The old man’s aide’s cell phone rang; her daughter, an executive from ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ country, called to say hello and so I thought, “What a small world after all.” The other night, I verbally went one on one with my NYU law school nephew on entitlements like Medicare. He didn’t care. He asked why I did; after all, I’m over 55 and not affected. And I said, “I came out of the sixties when we all grew up caring and it’s in my telomeres.” And he said, “what?” And I hugged him and jumped into my American car to head back to Jersey over the Verrazano Bridge with its $13.00 toll for passage over.

Contact info. website:   http://vichywater.net

Facebook:  Cal Schwartz

Twitter:  Earthood

E-mail:  earthood@gmail.com

Book Trailer:            http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qj2ko9gcC_M

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