Tag: retirement

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Rev. Joe’s Random Thought #8,063

yeah I know you did not ask!

Florida famously is the warm, tacky place old folks retire to to await their pie in the sky.  They are down there in gator-land, realizing that their golden years are more fool’s gold than Inca ingots.  Additionally, their kids seldom come to visit, and when they do it is a fly-by drop in on the way to Disney World.

Wanting to get even for these indignities, they have started sending to the rest of country the most gawd awful politicians imaginable: Ron DeSantis, Rick Scott, Marc Rubio, Matt Gaetz, ad nauseam… literally

Go visit the old folks in Florida.  Maybe next  time they go to the polls they will not be quite so vengeful.

Just saying.

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Rev. Joe’s Random Thought #563

yeah I know you did not ask!

The other day I was at home, dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt.  Needing to go to the store, I tucked in my shirt as it was cold enough to need a light jacket.  While I do it a times, I think it looks a bit sloppy to have your shirt tail hanging out beneath your jacket.

Upon seeing me with my shirt tucked in, admittedly rare for me, Señora said, “My, my, how fancifed you are. Where are you going?” Well not her exact words, but the sentiment is the same.

I’m thinking this retirement gig has lowered our standards a bit.

 

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There is a story in here somewhere.

bkThere is a story in here somewhere.

We went to a retirement dinner which was actually breakfast foods.  Our protagonist is retiring from a lifetime of teaching elementary school.  What makes this interesting in the dime novel sort of way is that our heroine is a late in life lesbian.  She and another woman met, became enraptured with each other, and divorced their respective husbands.   What followed was tumultuous relation over a period of years.  The romantic portion of the relationship did end, but the relationship continues at some level.

What grabbed my attention at the dinner was that we were sitting next to her current girlfriend.  Her original girlfriend, now her ex was walking around taking pictures.  Both the divorced husbands from above were there.  At one point the two gentlemen were visiting with each other.

I can only imagine what would happen if I showed up at my ex’s retirement dinner.

You cannot make this stuff up.

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Easter Sunday & Friday the 13th

I was looking at things… So did you engage in an activity on July 13th, 1951 of a procreative nature?  A question posed to my 80 year old mother.  I wonder if she remembers or even will answer.

April 13th, 1952 I was born, an Easter Sunday.

I turned 21 on a Friday the 13th
I will turn 60 on a Friday the  13th.
I will reach my full retirement age of 66…on Friday the 13th, 2018

I’ve always considered turning 21 on Friday the 13th (and standing in front of a judge) a foreshadowing of the rest of the decaying rollercoaster ride that has been my life.  Does turning 60 on Friday the 13th foreshadow my senior years?  Does turning 66 on Friday the 13th foreshadow my retirement years.

Being conceived on Friday the 13th would explain the whole miserable lot. Taking my Okie calculator out of their gloves, it seems that it would have been a good statistical probability that I was launched into being on that infamous day.

Looking ahead – Easter Sunday is occurring on April the 13th occur in 2031 & 2036.  While both seem a little early to be checking out, they do have a certain synchronicity to them.  Of course, Easter occurs on April 1 in 2018, 2029 & 2040.  I like the irony of that.  Friday, April 13ths occur in 2029, 2035, 2040 and 2046.  On those days the irony and synchronicity are overwhelming.

You do not have a choice in when you were born.  You probably will not have a choice when you exit, but maybe…

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Guardians of the Future

The saying is, “Children are our future.”  The meaning is obvious.  The children are the next generation that will carry on the human species.  Our hope as parents and as a specie is that the next generation will better,  have it better, increase the humanities knowledge ,  among many other things.

Children do not grow to functioning positive members of a society without some guidance.  Parents provide (hopefully)  a large part of this guidance.   Other significant guiding forces in young lives are teachers.  Without teachers, formal and informal, where would any of us be as people?   I can just about guarantee that everyone reading this can relate a story about someone who has taught them something or modeled behavior.  Frequently the impact of this is carried with the person the rest of their life.

We seem to be in a period of vilifying teachers within our education system.  We seem intent in denying them retirement, fair pay and decent working conditions.  We are asking them to do more and more with less and less.  We expect results this year that are stellar and next year are stellar plus.  Many teaching jobs have turned from teaching to paper work and preparing for standardize tests.  The burn out rate is high, and we seem to prefer it that way as it keeps young people coming into the system at the bottom of the pay scale.  Add to that the not so subtle process of privatizing education in this country.  At one level I am clueless why anyone would want to work in this mess.  But I am very glad there are, and that many of those  feel called and dedicated to guiding the next generation.

Below is a link to an article praising those who teach.  In the article was a wonderful little Rudyard Kipling snippet.

“No printed word, nor spoken plea can teach young minds what they should be.  
Not all the books on all the shelves – but what the teachers are themselves. ”

Teaching: The Greatest Responsibility and Opportunity

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Counter the Koch Billions…Protect Social Security

Best I can figure out is that these the Koch Brothers want to totally weaken our government and the American middle class so their greed can ran rampant over the country. It is very scary to me.

This video is narrated by Senator Bernie Sanders, one of the few politician fighting for the American people and all that is good and right with this nation.

 

The Facts:

  •  Social Security belongs to you—the workers who contribute to it—not the politicians in Washington.
  •  Social Security will never go bankrupt. Its major source of income comes from the contributions of workers and employers; as long as there are workers, Social Security will have income.  Closing tax loopholes for wealthy individuals will increase the long term financial health of the program, and protect it for decades to come.
  • Raising the retirement age is a terrible idea and a large benefit cut. If you were claiming benefits as a 66 year-old retired worker and the full retirement age was changed from 66, where it is today, to 69 your benefits would be cut 20 percent. A typical benefit would drop from $14,000 a year to $11,200 a year.
  • Privatizing Social Security would be a disaster.  Social Security is so valuable because it provides a guaranteed benefit. Privatizing Social Security would remove this guarantee and have people gamble their retirement savings in the casinos of Wall Street. If the recent financial crisis taught us anything, Wall Street is the last place where our money is safe.

For more information, check out the Strengthen Social Security Campaign.

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Do I have this right?

Do I have this right?

  • We are not going to extend unemployment payments…
  • We are going to raise the retirement age…
  • We are going to get rid of the mortgage interest deduction…
  • We are going to freeze Federal salaries…
  • We have made it tougher for individuals to file bankruptcy…
  • We are not funding schools to the point where we are no longer providing quality education.  Our children are falling behind the rest of the industrialized word…
  • We are thinking about cutting Social Security benefits…
  • The Republicans are trying to repeal the new health care law, weak though it was…

Yet the Republicans are going to hold our legislative process hostage until their rich benefactors get the tax break none of them need…

Do I have this right?

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Letter on Health Care Reform

There is fixin’ to be a big brouhaha in Congress about Health Care reform.

Below is a letter (email actually) that I have sent to both my Senators and my representative.  You may not agree with some or all of my comments, but you need to make your voice heard on this.  We do not need to let the profit driven corporations dictate our level of health care or even if we have health care any longer.

Find your Senator’s email address here

Find your Representative’s email address here

Dear Senator/Representative: 

There is going to a concerted effort by the Obama administration to Continue reading “Letter on Health Care Reform”