Should have bought that wire

[Monday 4/10: 3.2 miles; Wednesday 4/12: 3.2; Saturday 4/15: 3.8]

Last week went Ok.

I had an MRI of my head on Thursday to check if there was any cause for some recent hearing loss. According to the results posted on the “patient portal”, nothing unusual found. That was my first experience with MRI. It was noisy, and I had this feeling of being scanned, like different parts of my head would have kind of a resonance feeling. One of the segments had my teeth chattering just a bit. Probably it was my imagination. Anyway I can now prove with pictures that I am not empty headed.

We went to Lowes one evening and purchased some wood glue and some new window blinds. I got some of the blinds installed. They are the same as the old ones for style but just 13 years newer, cleaner and less sun burnt.

I used the glue on Saturday to reconstitute the lower disk of a porch column which I hope to finally get installed soon.

Then we have one more post to replace with a column. That one also has problems with the lower disk as in part of it missing. I don’t know yet what I will do to solve that issue.

We went to an estate sale on Friday and I picked up some items. I also saw a spool of wire that I wish now I had bought. It was just #12 house wire, but most of a spool, maybe 200-300 feet. They wanted 20 bucks for it. I’m wanting to put up an HF antenna and that wire would have come in handy. Maybe I will go back there this afternoon and see if they still have it. I’m also on the lookout for some kind of a support that I can put up near the house, either a couple of tower sections or a push-up pole, just something that will be higher than the peak of the roof a little bit.

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In politics, the two Tennessee representatives who had been cast out were sent back to that body as temporaries until replacement elections take place. And maybe they will get elected again, that would be fine with me. That is the process.

There seem to be two theories about “democracy” at work these days. One is that we elect representatives and those representatives are our voice in the congressional bodies. This method has been frustrating of late because #1 the federal congressional bodies have abdicated a lot of their jobs and turned over power to the executive or judicial branches and #2 things move slow and require compromise. [Let me add a #3: both parties have taken to attempt to solidify their station by jiggering the voting districts in various ways… mostly ineffective, but demoralizing to those of us who still want “the system” to work. Personally I think they should go back to normal geographical features and quit it.]

The other theory is that the people who protest and march and shout are speaking truth to power, raising awareness, bringing justice, etc. That holiness of protest has been a feature of the anti-establishment for my lifetime.

The Tennessee representatives deployed the second theory to physically subvert the first, effectively filibustering with bull horn and crowd chanting from their supporters in the gallery.

And of course there is a lot of similar stuff happening on the federal level if you want to look for it. Youtube is full of congressional “testimony” that is mostly representatives showing off for the voters in their home districts.

But the difference is between using the system and subverting the system.

And, since we voted in the current system in theory we could vote in another system which relied on the best protesters, the loudest bull horns and the biggest number of burnt stores and cars. I don’t think that will actually help any minority position in the long run because shouting is a zero-sum proposition. There is only so loud things can get before it is all unintelligible and ears just start to bleed.

Minority positions of all kinds rely on the majority to give them a place for expression. Why would the majority do that? Because they realize individually that they each are a minority of one; if the majority has complete control then tyrannical control is the result as surely as if a king or dictator were in charge.

An interesting angle of the incident is that the protesting representatives were actually using the established forum to make an anti-establishment statement, effectively and philosophically ending the position they worked to achieve. And their supporters sent them back, supposedly as a sign of approval (???) to that strategy. And… to top that off their issue was gun control, for which their opposition is probably well armed to assert their shouting/rioting/anti-establishment opinion in an overwhelming fashion if we dropped the current civility-based system. I don’t think they had thought it through very deeply.