Musings of Old Man Joe

There and back again!

Joe

Truth is important

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Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

The Trump years were a low point for the United states; I could see the damage he was doing to the Republican Party, which had been more radical since Obama was elected, and also the extreme damage to the country. I found myself, every day, asking the question, how this could be happening?

I like many loved President Obama, his intellect and way of dealing with things and the respect he showed even to people who decided he was the enemy. I like many thought that, with him , the United States had moved on toward a more open & less racist society. I was wrong and it was just an image painted over the country during his tenure in office.

It was only when Trump got in and made changes to so many Obama policies, just because he hated Obama and nothing to do with making the country better, you could see the birther racism show through. My surprise is how many people went along for the ride, and how quickly the Republican Party went from small government to a white power party. They were anti immigration anti muslim pretty much anti anything that threatens the white guy in charge.

The last four years have been an education on how much racism there truly is in America, and how fragile the system is, how open to attack from within. The safe guards against the rule of law can be manipulated by those in power very quickly. America can and did lose the moral high ground in world politics, and as many times as Joe Biden will say America is back, the damage is done and will not be forgotten so easily, even though he is trying to clean up after the Trump policies debacle. The world breathed a sigh of relief when Joe Biden was elected; I believe he won four times in Georgia!

The politics in the United States is so full of lies, it’s hard for some to know what the truth is. I personally say to anyone check your news sources, and move away from just American news sources as they can be biased, even local news can be manipulated like the Sinclair media story. It’s time for the American people to start believing the institutions that have been established to provide information to the government since the inception of the United States, namely the intelligence community, who even during the Trump years stated the truth to power. While Trump was saying Russia was great & Putin was a great guy this was happening.

There needs to be open hearings to get the truth out to the people again, all these politicians who are spreading the lie need to speak under oath and see the consequences. Those who manipulated the crowds who stormed the capital due to a lie need to be held accountable for the country to move on, otherwise the elections in the future are rife with peril. If you cannot trust the election what can you trust.

The United States is a super power and with the other ones being china, wannabe Russia, the world needs a super power doing the right thing. Europe needs to grow some balls and get it’s act together, because racism and special interests cannot be allowed to determine our direction.

One Year in Lockdown

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Looking outside window at rain on car.
Rainy Day today

I have found it quite difficult the last few months to focus on anything other than the lockdown. I have friends who have had the virus and some who have been very sick & are lucky to be alive, also coworkers who didn’t make it through. During these times it doesn’t seem right to say how beautiful it is here in Ireland with all this going on. I was so lucky to be able to move here with my wife that any expression of gratitude seems a bit lame compared to what my friends have had to go through and are still going through!

I think like many people I am tired of restrictions, it would have been better to close borders and restrict people entering the country to stop lockdowns going on for so long. Best example New Zealand, worst example continues to be the United States. How much a human life is worth seems to vary from one country to another.

In a few days March 15th it will be a year since the lockdown entered my world. I was living in Los Angeles with a job and a home/apartment I had lived in for 15 years. My wife was starting to feel unwell with what we now know was frozen Shoulder. I was trying desperately to get time off work to care for her, even though I worked in a hospital & had a doctors note a hospital is just another corporation that happens to look after sick people. So I ended up having to deal with corporate ego’s trying to flex their unimportant lives to prove to themselves how important they are. When your partner is sick that means nothing, you will do what you have to do.

Then the apartment we lived in was sold to a developer who wanted to remove the old tenants, do the place up and sell it for profit. During a pandemic when the City was supposed to be protecting tenants, NOT!

One year on myself and my wife are living in Ireland and under a lockdown as Ireland does care for people more than just profit. There is frustration waiting for the vaccines to arrive as every country is scrambling for the jab. I am grateful that in this day and age the science is there that could make it possible for a vaccine in such a short period of time. I say to myself there was a pandemic in 1918 and until now the world got over that one without the science we have today. This will pass and the world will begin again to look like it did before Covid-19.

Trip To Ireland

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From the front yard.

After three months preparation and two days travelling, two weeks in quarantine, time to sort out jet-lag & look around, here I am with family.
It’s a good sized town in south Tipperary called Clonmel. My family have been in this town since bloody Cromwell I would say, and I would be scared to think how many relations I have in the town. But let me tell you about the journey to get here!

Our trip was in three parts, there was the furniture, then the animals (two dogs & two Cats), then the wife & myself. The furniture while stressful was actually the least problematic of the three. They came on the day planned and packed the stuff and left.

The Animals were much more involved, as there are things that need to be done on a specific time line to please the country you are heading to, and of course different countries have different rules.
We used a Pet-Relocation team and it was a must, I couldn’t dream of doing this again ( I am not), without the help I got from them. Of course coordinating with vets during a Pandemic made things just that more interesting.
Because my dogs are Pugs that have to Fly with certain airlines that will accommodate them, the answer is Lufthansa, who specialised in the travel of animals, good to know! They even have a hotel in Frankfurt that allows the pets to have a comfort stop during the trip. Flights leaving the United States were subject to change at any time due to the Pandemic and the dogs flight was changed so they ended up taking two days to get to Ireland. Which is exactly what happened to my wife and myself!

Once the Pets were on there way we planned to leave our apartment of fifteen years and head to a Hotel to rest and Fly out the next morning. Of course that was the plan, not what happened!
First we were flying to Shannon which was a bit closer to my Town, the airline changed it to Dublin instead, well Ireland is not too big and it’s a couple of hours drive, and I was leaving my LA home so being homeless I agreed to fly to Dublin.
Next Surprise was the flight time was changed, it went from 7am to 11pm the night before, so now I am on the red-eye, oh joy!

Remember the flights were changed by the airlines and I was also moving home so I just went with the flow, we still went to the hotel near the airport to freshen up before the night flight to JFK.
The airline was Jet Blue, I cannot say enough how bad it was!
What I discovered as I was seated and looking around was jet blue charge more for different areas of Coach, yes different areas of coach!
So there were parts of coach that were empty, and there was this area just above the wing where everyone who had not paid the extra was piled together, social distancing was non existent. I was upset and my wife was crying. This was during a pandemic the hight of ignorance and greed. If the airline had some sense of decency just charge one price for coach and try some social distancing. This is why America is the Virus central of the planet. The flight staff were giving me BS when I asked about the seats that were empty, one of the stewards said I could place the charge for the seat and the one in charge said they couldn’t do it on board and should have been done online. As I complained we were allowed to move a few seats back to have our own three seats to calm us down. It was nice but not the way it should be, so I don’t recommend Jet Blue to fly with.

Once in JFK we stayed in a hotel TWA which is next to the airport, it’s cute as it’s a throwback to the 1970’s. We had a 12 hour wait until the flight to Ireland so a rest was needed and because of the virus nothing comfortable was open in the Airport.

After a rest and a Hotdog which was ok but didn’t impress, probably due to the location I bought it from. We headed to the gate for the flight to Dublin.
I cannot state enough the difference between Jet Blue and Aer Lingus, the Flight was organised for social distance and the flight staff were very professional in stark contrast to the previous flight. It was a great way to finally find our way to Dublin very early in the morning. We in fact arrived an hour early. Had to wait twenty minutes to pick up the rental car and headed to the M50 south out of Dublin. Two hours later we arrived in Clonmel ready to Quarantine for two weeks.

Next Post will be about assimilation into the community, specifically recycling and rubbish collection!

Leaving Los Angeles

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Photo by Dillon Shook on Unsplash

I decided with my wife it was time to go back to Ireland where I am from. I have been in Los Angeles for nearly thirty years and the city isn’t the same place it once was.
The Pandemic changed allot of things, I am lucky and I count my blessing that I can get out and head back to a small town for a break from the big city and the problems that are going on here.

Things weren’t that great before the pandemic hit us. I wrote about a pole that was drooping and could hurt people if they were blind and walked into it. After a month or so I took it down, The City never came to fix it and actually just complained about the way I asked them to help with said pole. So obviously there was something not that great even before Pandemic.

Of course then we had Pandemic, and the world changed. I had to take time from my job to look after my wife who wasn’t well. Then after a while we decided I should take an early retirement and we should head back to Ireland. Of course the original plan was to head back sometime next year. But fate would deal a few blows that changed our minds.

The building we live in was sold and the new owner/manager wants to do the LA thing and kick out the existing tenants, paint the place and charge a fortune. It doesn’t matter the people in my building are here on average 15-20 years. The longest has lived here about 45 years. Kicking people out of their homes is not a noble enterprise. Then new guy (I won’t use real names to be politically correct), let us just call him ASSHOLE!

So asshole started the three month retrofit during and pandemic to cut us out or our parking and make it just that bit more uncomfortable living here.
I feel like I am looking at the end of Los Angeles as I knew it, nobody I know can spend $3000 a month in rent. So it’s been harder to get things ready to leave, moving is already a stressful thing.

I left my job but needed health insurance for the last few months here. There is Cobra, which sounds great if you can afford it. But it’s even worse than you think. After you leave your job you are usually insured until the end of the month. The job has a few weeks to send the papers to the cobra people letting them know you have officially left. Then the cobra people have a few weeks to send you the papers to sign up for cobra. Then you sign up and they have another ten business days to let the health insurance company know you are paid up and they can cover you. This means it takes about a month the get the coverage with cobra, during that month you have no coverage, they back date it, but you can’t schedule appointments or get medication because you aren’t covered. So you pay a month for health insurance that doesn’t exist! Fucked up!!

I bought a car last January because at that time I was still going to be here for a few years. The Title for the car had the wrong address on it so of course I didn’t get it. I found this out about eight weeks ago when you could still actually call the DMV after only a two hour wait. Today I would forget it as I have been on hold with them the last week for about six hours and no joy. Happily I am also a AAA person and boy did it save my life this time. I was able to get my business done with a real person, Go figure!!

On reflection I am glad I gave myself the time to get ready, because if I was in a rush I wouldn’t have had enough time and I wouldn’t be ready when I am supposed to leave. I am looking forward to writing about where I am from and getting to know it again. I hope you will enjoy my getting to know Ireland again posts from November on.

Blog Update

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Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

For all those entrepreneurs who mail asking asking me if I want to market my blog in so many ways. I say to you thanks but no thanks!
My humble blog is not for money or for marketing anything. I am not a writer and for this space I use to just share my experiences good and bad.

I thank you all for the offers but should you mail me please understand I shall not be replying to you. I hope you have a great day and I wish you all there best with your endeavors.

Peace! ??