PERSONAL ATTACHMENTS KEEP GROWING

I’ll define ‘personal attachments’ first: it’s your leg, your arm, your head.

It’s anything you’ve grown fond of.

Baby boomers are officially old enough to have grown fond of most everything.

And that’s a normal life.

Over the past years I’ve grown an attachment to the readers of boomerpdx.

Thank you. My appreciation has grown day by day.

It’s been an honor and privilege to be able to sit down and write consistently.

Not every blog post hits the same with every reader. They’re not supposed to.

What is supposed to happen instead?

My goal is to achieve authenticity, which means a clear and focused view on the world I live in, the world we live in.

Am I biased?

I’m a blogger, of course I’ve got bias.

But I’m not an armchair instigator calling for anyone to do anything.

I like to think my readers can figure shit out for themselves.

I’ve been called a ‘wishful thinker’ more than once.

Unfortunately, I’ve also got a guilty conscience.

Two events happen every four years: a presidential election and an Olympic Games.

The Olympic Games took a stand this year.

In a move similar to the American Olympic boycott in 1980, Russian athletes in Paris do not represent Russia.

My personal attachments to the Olympics is getting in shape to watch the competition and hope it’s a fair playing field for everyone.

 

This is me holding the NBA’s Larry O’Brien Trophy.

I’m either an NBA champ, or this is the trophy in the Portland Trail Blazer’s 1977 case.

I forget which one until someone reminds me I didn’t play basketball in high school or college.

But you’ve been around sports fans who forget they never played anything but act like All-Stars?

They know the game, the players, the stakes, and get over excited, but you’ve seen their athleticism.

If you’re around new people, let your pal have his run.

It’s not your job to correct him in front of others.

Don’t be the downer while your pal is flying high.

 

At heart I’m a cheerleader, but I don’t cheer for stuff like this:

 

Future Olympics, Future Leaders, Kids Are Watching

Growing up with my baby boomer brethren, we started the President with Truman.

I started with Eisenhower because I’m a ‘middle boomer.’

From old Eisenhower to young Kennedy, old Johnson to retread Nixon, appointee Ford to Carter in 1976 who boycotted the Russian Olympic Games in 1980, to old Reagan.

I voted for Jimmy Carter the first time I was eligible. Twice.

 

I will never be on an Olympic team, but I got a small taste when I made the Oregon All-Star wrestling team and toured the Midwest for a month taking on the best, culminating in the 1973 Junior National Championships held on the University of Iowa.

It’s been a special memory, one of many personal attachments, from my more youthful days.

 

Looking back across forty years, it feels like a right of passage, one last roadie for the record.

What were we thinking?

ME: What did you tell your parents?

ABBE: That we’re on the Oregon All-Star Wrestling team headed for Iowa.

ME: You didn’t tell them we’re hitchhiking?

ABBE: They would worry. They think we’re in vans with the team. What did you say?

ME: Same thing, but I told my Dad the truth. He said check in.

ABBE: You told him the truth?

ME: He likes the truth, so yeah.

(My Dad liked the truth, but not as much as I disliked getting caught in a lie. It was a learning process.)

 

I came away with all-American honors for placing third in the nation for Greco-Roman wrestling.

The haunting memory I’ve purged is how I was cheated out of a national championship by an incompetent referee.

I worked hard to let it go; I’ve got more work to do.

When I read about incompetent people explaining their lack of competence as a plus to an audience willing to suspend their sense of disbelief, what’s a blogger to do?

Write about it, what else?

But it’s important to write with sensitivity to the subject.

 

The Subject 

This map may look odd, but not to the ‘coastal elites’ like me.

My elite class of people spent summers sliming salmon in coastal towns like Charleston, Oregon instead of traveling the world.

We picked slivers in the plywood mills of Coos Bay instead of sailing the ocean.

That was normal when you got big enough to do man-work where I come from.

The midwest is populated with hard working men and women who like what they’re doing right where they are.

They don’t need some oceanside cabin to feel good about things, but they’re amazed when they hit the beach for the first time.

It’s a big ocean, after all.

We elites are lucky in the sense that we don’t have to travel more than a few miles to see a working farm, a working ranch, a working dairy.

So why the attention on the big red heartland?

Some ding-a-ling decided he knew what’s best for the farmers.

He knew what’s best for their wives and daughters when his appointees on the Supreme Court followed through on Roe v Wade.

In 2024 he still knows more about everything than anyone else, just ask.

 

Dear Readers,

If boomerpdx veers toward too much politics, don’t worry, it won’t last.

I won’t be honking my horn if a soft man with no conscience takes his golf ball and goes home.

As a granddad with two kids and their families, I don’t want to answer questions like, “Did you vote for that guy?”

But if I do, I want to show them I did more than vote.

As a writer I avoid cliches that paint pictures in black and white, good and evil, and it troubles me to think some unfiltered blowhard is painting that picture and putting the Midwest in it.

They are better than that, you are better than that, and instead of spewing lefty accusations about low IQ, ignorant intent, lower taxes up front with the big cut trickling down in back, I encourage people to vote.

That’s it. Vote. Get your ballot and fill it out.

Show your work, show what you’ve learned, and make sense of it.

Let me know if you need help. I’ll be out digging post holes, washing the dog.

I’ll be walking with my girls secure in knowing there’s a chance they will achieve more equality with the correct candidate.

Why is that important? Ask anyone living in a state with restrictions on women’s health.

Imagine any of the young women in your life needing women’s health that’s illegal in their states.

Which states?

Stay tuned and vote.