There’s Something About Old Stuff my Crusty, Old Inner Self Truly Appreciates

Our 45… maybe 46-year-old house still has its original windows, and some other, maybe not original, but pretty old, stuff, I mentioned in Oldish but Goodish, one of my guest columns, in the Daily Post.

After a series of pounding storms, every few days, this past fall and winter… and even this spring, those old windows around our place, are holding up really well. We haven’t had water leaking around the aging window frames, even when almost hurricane-force, cyclonic winds were pounding down, toppling big trees, all around.

A neighbor of ours, not all that long ago, had some pretty serious leaks around newly-installed windows, with rainwater dripping down walls and soaking carpeting.

During one of the most powerful storms ever recorded in northern California, that meteorologists described as a bomb cyclone, my wife and I were right in the middle of it. I was behind the wheel of our aging, but delightfully functional vehicle, somehow making our way through pounding, torrential rain and cyclonic wind. The worst of the storm was supposed to have been over, when we headed out that day, but the storm had wobbled suddenly, and if I’ve got this right, caused low pressure and high pressure to encounter each other much differently than anticipated, so that blustery, rainy weather became suddenly cyclonic. And so there we were, all caught up in an effing maelstrom, in that delightfully functional, old vehicle of ours.

And what is it, now? The many thousand times we’ve been opening and closing an old screen door at our house? Bumping up against it? Throwing it open and slamming it shut?

There surely is something about old stuff.

It’s other stuff that’s driving me crusty. Like too many folks spouting off like they really know all about everything, I mentioned in my Oldish but Goodish column. Some so-called leaders in government, and business, and organizations.

In another column, I mentioned zealots. They’re getting irritating, and they’re all over the place, these fanatically committed folks, stirring things up with political and religious dogma.

Beliefs are just fine, as long as they’re not getting way out of hand, like when some politicians are thinking physicians should face life in prison, or even the death penalty, for aborting a fetus, and even suggesting harsh punishment for women taking abortion pills.

The Supreme Court overturning Roe v Wade, eliminating the constitutional right to abortion, back in June, has been a pretty big deal, that got me thinking about all good things coming to an end. With so many severe penalties in place, and in the works, I was wondering, in one of my columns, if halting procreation might be the only viable option… folks could take up hobbies, instead, to get their mind off procreating.

Seemingly serious stuff sometimes can get sadly ridiculous.

And did you hear, in a CNN story, that “An appointee to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ new oversight board in control of Disney’s special tax district… shared a baseless conspiracy theory that tap water could be making more people gay.” That’s another thing I was wondering about, in a recent column.

‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ I can hear my crusty inner self saying.

Speaking of God, can anyone really know for sure, absolutely, without any doubt, God’s gender? Whether God is a he, a she, or even LGBT?

Since… isn’t God a spirit?

I looked that up, online.

Some politicians’ ‘bravado,’ when, for example, they’re talking about guns… you’ve got to wonder how they’d fare, in a war zone, in a real war.

There’s just a whole lot to be ruminating about.