I took a trip to Buffalo New York this fall break. I traveled on Saturday and Tuesday and visited my Dad on Sunday and Monday.

I have recently gotten the habit of listening to audio books. These seem especially useful when one is on the road frequently. My iPod lasts about 8 hours and really on a 14 or 15 hour trip, that is all the listening I can stand. I took CDs. I listened to three books. the latest Brian Herbert Dune novel, Battle of Corrin, A Beautiful Mind about mathematician John Nash and Forgotten Discoveries (not sure that is the title) about rhe REAL origins of math and science in the western world. While it turns out that the western world has hammered these tools into the finely shaped instruments we have today, the west has too long revised history to make it look like it all began in the west, which it did not.

It was good to see my dad. He is 85 and still active. With respect to politics he is like the rest of the democratic world with little to say about John Kerry and a good deal to say against Bush. The thing I agree with him about Bush is that Bush appeals to his own certainty when asked to give an explanation. This is very hard for any rationalist to swallow. They think he is crazy. In a time of war, that sort of confidence may be necessary, but I have to ask the question about the necessity of the Iraqi war despite all the good reasons for bringing down Sadam.

We ate and talked to the residents of Amberleigh, the facility he now occupies. He has made quite a few friends, not all of them democratic. He mourns the loss of his car and feels his freedom is limited. He has no sense of the world wide web and will NEVER see this missive. What he has lost in ageing is his sense of time and sequence. He will nap for an hour or so and think it is the next day. He often does not know what day it is.

He reads voraciously and is interested in lots of things. I read a number of articles he recommended and enjoyed them. I am still not going to vote for Kerry or Bush, but he showed me some convincing reasons (thought I didn’t need any) not to vote for Bush.

My feeling is that whether a person is Dem. or Rep., both are status quo who shut out dissenting voices that theirs might seem truer. Ideologically they are not really that far away from each other, though my dad would fight you over that one. Both are growing government at an alarming rate that will soon choke the life out of the American people.

Nuff said.

Posted by dougolena at October 20, 2004 10:00 AM