Woke is Broke

What does it really mean to be “woke,” and how can you tell if you’ve experienced it? Can you even spot it in others? Awakening isn’t something that happens overnight. It’s not a quick fix, a flashy moment, or some energy rush up your spine. Ironically, people who loudly claim to be “awakened” often miss the point entirely. True awakening is more like peeling back layers—each realization uncovers more to understand.

Being truly “woke” isn’t about acting superior or forcing your views on others. It’s about living in a way that encourages understanding and inspires change. An awakened person doesn’t preach—they show through their actions and mindset. Real growth comes from stepping into the unknown, planting seeds of insight, and embodying the changes you want to see. Judging others or locking yourself into one way of thinking? That’s not awakening. True wokeness is about living fully and engaging with the world, not shutting it out.

Instead of pushing your beliefs onto others, stay present and open to learning from different perspectives. We’re all students and teachers for each other. Awakening isn’t about isolating yourself or critiquing everyone else; it’s about embodying the values you talk about. If you’re seeking genuine awakening, remember it’s rooted in love, connection, and growth. Ask yourself: are you here to lift others up and support them, or are you just enjoying the feeling of being “better” than them? Awakening means connecting with something beyond our senses and living that truth every day.

Case in point: What was supposed to be a simple birthday treat devolved into the latest flashpoint after “The View” co-host Whoopi Goldberg implied that a New York bakery refused to take her order because of her liberal politics. It’s an accusation that the bakery has denied. Now, the store is claiming that an influx of orders has flooded its phone lines as local residents show their support for the small business.

I can’t help but wonder what cut Goldberg got from the spike in sales, all thanks to the free nationwide promotion.

My Notable Death Dossier #1

As someone over 60, I find myself suddenly interested in browsing obituaries. However, with the decline of newspapers, my only source is the “Notable Deaths” page on Wikipedia. Inevitably, my curiosity leads me to uncover some surprising and unusual details, so I thought I’d share my recent discoveries here.

Continue reading “My Notable Death Dossier #1” →

Starr Tracks: Top Albums of 1971 Ranked (Part 1 of 2)

I am very excited to welcome our old friend Kevin Starr back to the blog. My taste in music is pedestrian, right Karen and Richard? Keven is a student of rock and roll. He’s got more, much more to offer. Have fun!

___________________________________________

___________________________________________

Welcome to Starr Tracks! I’m Kevin Starr, your fearless (and totally amateur) guide on a mission to rank the top-selling music year by year, starting in 1971 and going… well, until I run out of steam.

“Who is Kevin Starr?” you ask. Well, I’m not a musician, nor a professional critic. I’m 62 and have spent decades listening to music and forming highly debatable opinions.

Thanks to modern technology, we now have access to the kind of epic record collection we could only dream about back in the day. In the ’70s, before the internet was even a twinkle in anyone’s eye, listening to music required buying a big, unwieldy contraption called an LP (short for long player). These discs spun at a mesmerizing 33 1/3 RPM and played sound using a tiny needle, or “stylus”—which was basically like playing music with a sewing machine, if you think about it.

Continue reading “Starr Tracks: Top Albums of 1971 Ranked (Part 1 of 2)” →

A Feigenbaum tree of chaotic behavior?

The above chart is a summary of various hurricane models predicting the future course of Hurricane Rafeal. I got it from an article at Watts Up With That by Kip Hansen, whose cv appears to be a Chaologist, or someone who studies chaos theory. The black spot above Cuba is the 24-hour point for the storm, and the diverging lines thereafter are predictions of its future course by the models.

As you can see, nobody knows. Why it seems almost … chaotic.

Continue reading “A Feigenbaum tree of chaotic behavior?” →

Election oddity

Paper ballots are considered the gold standard of vote counting. Three states in the U.S. use them, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington. Other states claim to use them, but they are not reliable. Some just issue receipts repeating what the voter intended, but offering no guarantee that is what is recorded. Quite a few states offer nothing, just a smile and thank you to the voter, no assurance at all that the vote was even recorded, much less counted.

In the three states mentioned, voters hand-enter their choices on ballots, and the ballots are then run through optical scanners to tally the vote. It is not fool proof, as the scanning software can be corrupt, but the ballots are stored under lock and key for at least 22 months for recounts and perhaps study or statistical sampling. I think that 22 months storage is the law.

Continue reading “Election oddity” →

Now it can be told

I am winding down now on my second pass through Frances Stonor Saunders’ The Cultural Cold War, befuddled at how new the book seems new to me even as I read it well in 2019 and even took notes.

My original impressions were of how the art world was affected, with the likes of Jackson Pollock and Andy Warhol replacing real artists. Warhol is not mentioned, oddly. Could it be that he is left out due to his transparent nature? His work was hardly worthy of  mention in the circles of real art, yet he stole the show in the 60s and 70s, Wikipedia now calling him “…one of the most important artists of the 20th century.”

(Warhol became prominent due to an obviously staged event, a shooting by a feminist who advocated the elimination of men, Valerie Solanas. Sometimes it takes a fake major event to garner headlines and usher a fake, a charlatan into the public consciousness.)

In Saunders’ tract, Warhol should be as prominent as Pollock or Georgia O’Keefe, but is absent. Odd.

Continue reading “Now it can be told” →

Jimi Hendrix/Cornel West revisited

Someone linked to this post that I wrote in 2016 this week, and I reread it. I liked what I wrote eight years ago, and stand by it. I think that musician Jimi Hendrix faked his death in 1970 at age 27, and later down the road reappeared as philosopher, theologian, political activist, politician, social critic, and public intellectual Cornell West.  He has made frequent appearances on Real Time with Bill Maher, appropriate, as Maher was once known as Welsh musician Pete Ham, who faked his death in 1975. You decide. I left the comments intact underneath, 59 of them, all useful.

_____________________________

See Addendum below on dental comparisons.

for-openingOne of the “zombies” we discovered some time ago was Jimi Hendrix/Cornell West. This particular assertion has created doubt, even within our group of writers here. At least part of that doubt comes from rookie caliber work – I was new at this and easily satisfied once it was established in my head that I had found a match. Consequently, others did not see what I saw, and naturally thought I had reached. I’ve got a lot more experience now, and can maybe do a better job here.

I have redone the Hendrix/West match not with the idea that I needed to prove I was right, but from scratch and letting the photos talk to me. They either convey a match or they do not.

Continue reading “Jimi Hendrix/Cornel West revisited” →

The Mighty Wurlitzer, Again

I wrote using the title above before, and then became engrossed in other pursuits, mostly having to do with cutting up logs, hauling them up a hill behind our house, splitting the logs and then stacking them. It takes hours and offers so little payback! All that results is a stack of wood for the winter and a savings of perhaps $300, but then, I could pay that $300 and then have the wood dumped in our driveway. I would still have to haul it and stack it.

Why bother do it myself? I have a sense that the amount of work involved is making my sore aching body somehow better.

Enough of that. I want to recount four experiences I have had on this blog with my face splitting experiments. Many years back I learned that human beings develop in many ways, some permanent. One of those permanent ways is the shape of our skulls, which are finalized in our late teens or early twenties.  It does not change thereafter. ( I can recall one person whose head was deformed by ALS so that photo comparisons of him, young and old, could not be done: Stephen Hawking.)

I thought that if I could develop a means by which I could compare faces of supposedly different (or dead) people, or people at different ages, I could uncover a mystery or two. Just as an example, another blogger used humor, splitting my face and placing it next to that of John Candy, claiming we were the same person, by my technique, anyway. 

Continue reading “The Mighty Wurlitzer, Again” →

The Mighty Wurlitzer

A couple of anecdotes that hopefully, at the end, will tie into this piece, which is based on my reading of Frances Stonor Saunders The Cultural Cold War. They may seem detached, and if you are reading this, I have decided they are useful. Or maybe just interesting.

First, we had a man come to our house recently to clean our wood stove. It’s a long and tedious process that requires that he walk up onto our steep-peaked roof and use various tools which only make sense in light of chimney sweeping. While he was working I asked if he would mind my looking on, as there is always much to learn about the machines and devices in a home and how they work. We talked about a wide range of subjects, including music* and the sign business. While he set the ladder for the roof ascent, I mentioned that my Dad had been in the sign business, and my Mom insisted that he take me with him on summer trips to various Montana outposts. My job was to hold the ladder. I could have been filling shopping bags with Styrofoam for all the help I gave him.

Continue reading “The Mighty Wurlitzer” →

About those contrails

A while back the subject of contrails (versus chemtrails) came up here, and I knew I had linked to an article on the subject and written a post. But I could not find it anywhere, nor could I find the piece I had linked to. c’est la vie. I know now that the reason I could not find the post was because the word “chemtrail” is not used in it. I searched for “contrail” a couple of days ago, and it popped up, top of the list. Clifford E. Carnicom is the man brought to us by Oregon Matt, and he does not use the term “chemtrail.” He does not want to be lumped with the chemtrail conspiracy crowd, and so goes with “aerosols” and “aerosol crimes”. Contrails, clouds and aerosols are three quite different phenomena. (Note how “conspiracy” is an effective thought control device, its intended purpose, to prevent thinking on any given subject.)

In the comments below from the original post, Oregon Matt links us to an hour-forty-minute video by Carnicom, which I had started watching in 2021 and then lost it along with the post. I will finish watching this weekend. Yippee! It looks riveting. I will reproduce that video at the end of this piece.

Here’s another link, a paper by J. Marvin Herndon, Raymond D. Hoisington and Mark Whiteside called Chemtrails are not Contrails: Radiometric Evidence, published in the Journal of Geography, Environment and Earth Science International, and brought to us by commenter Riccardowa. It is right on target with Carnicom.

https://journaljgeesi.com/index.php/JGEESI/article/view/476/952

___________________________________

The original:

This post comes to us courtesy of our friend Oregon Matt. It is about contrails. There is math involved, some intimidating formulas presented, but the kind of formulas where all of us who took high school math could solve by inserting values. It’s not terribly difficult, but I don’t expect anyone to go running to the link by Clifford E. Carnicom just to see the formulas.

A little background about me. I have long operated on the assumption that contrails depend on the amount of moisture in the sky. If there’s a lot, then we see long tails behind jets flying over, and if the air is dry the contrails dissipate right away. Also, I assume that in addition to water vapor, the stuff coming out of the end of jet planes also contains nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide and other invisible stuff. But according to Carnicom, what we see is virtually 100% water vapor.

Continue reading “About those contrails” →