Hola Amigos,

Hey, my Bolivia visa is temporarily "up"-- why not head past that southern border for a few days (?) in most-scenic Jujuy province of north Argentina again? Try a tepee camp in the warmer weather this time, avoid a room in that more expensive zone? See if cheap color copies of a few watercolors of the nearby scenes and some singing with guitar in little well-touristed plazas might earn a sandwich or three? Never know when sensible plain work might replace "retirement" for one reason or another? Just test the waters. Street sales, including food, are still basic traditional livelihoods throughout Latin America. Maybe a few more interesting conversations will show up this way too?

What matters most? I'm feeling strongly -- with a few web writers also noting it -- amazing new levels of public insanitizing kicking in (or kicking out at the new President) now. Not that the Trumpeter is any saint -- more like "who knows?" But you can identify large volumes of misquotes, misrepresentations, and shallow temporary interpretations blown out of scale. NYTimes carried THIRTY-ONE judgemental "news" items against the President in one day! (Jan 30/"Tomatobubble").

You might expect to rely on the main media to lie and re-lie, often quoting their anonymous "re-lie-able sourcerers" (wasn't that how it's spelled?). But now too -- how many internet "truth sites" and formerly-thoughtful folks seem to be "losing it" too?  Old standards -- and alliances around the world -- are changing too fast to be understood at first?!

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Excuse me nurse, can I talk to the doctor? I seem to have dislocated my mind.

Take a number and have a seat. But you're in for a long wait. A lot of people lost their minds a long time ago. No I didn't lose my mind (though it seems to always want to go farthur south!). It's just bent out of shape somehow. Like when I found out that "ethnic cleansing" refers to a form of mass murder.

Now that you mention it, that was one of the first exercises of the Public Insanitizing Division of our Ministry of Truthiness. Since you seem to have a more acute case, you can move ahead in the line. But you'll still have about a twenty year waiting period to see the Minister.

No, no! Just a Doctor! Maybe some mental calisthenics or something? I haven't lost my reason. I must have a reason?  It must be right around here somewhere!

In that case, you can sit in this other line. There's still a ten year waiting period though.

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Ah, memory serves me well. It went south a lot but always came back. It was fifty years ago this week! -- "midwinter week", first week of February 1967 -- that I loaded all my stuff into the old Buick Dad gave me and headed north for Canada. A first effort to define my reason for being born into a "morally uninhabitable" country. Didn't make it out of California. Didn't end up needing the "mandatory" Vietnam tour either. Or the inviting other alternative -- "You can be anything!" -- more Grad School, any profession. Did make it finally to a saner, simpler trade, housebuilding,   .

The "Free Speech Movement" of Berkeley had passed me by, as I spent a year at University in Germany. But during that Senior Year as I got back -- though I rather preferred to -- I couldn't avoid the basic truths about the brand-new War in Vietnam that were freely spoken by loudspeaker in Sproul Plaza every day as I passed through for lunchtime.

Now, this very same ("midwinter") week, Berkeley ushers in an opposite precedent -- violent crowd behavior AGAINST free speech! To prevent -- truthful(?) "controversial?" -- information or opinions of a well-known scheduled speaker. Silent through these decades of unfathomaably inhumane (and "humanitarian") wars, concerned students(?) are now finally "protesting" -- what? The new Presidential Administration has been too slow about what matters most to "making America great again" -- that would begin with making The United States of America a Nation again?  Say retuning the issuance of money and the power to make war to the US Congress, as required by the US Constitution?

No. This "Maidan"-style beginning evidently involved a hundred and fifty(?) MASKED "PROTESTERS" --  and the large SWAT team that was there was "standing down" inside the Student Union. While outside, some new heirs to Adam Weishaupt's Illuminasties (paid by today's disbursers of monopoly Rot-child blackmagic money-from-nothing?) were throwing a fit. And, daily now, all the fakedebtmoney that's fit to print is being thrown at stirring up every possible opposition to the new Administration. A fake (televised!) Revolution! -- now to include such colorful historical characters as "anarchists"? Outright Civil War -- among the coming attractions? People so confused and distracted that they just stop thinking?

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Nurse! -- What matters most?  They usurped our money?! With it they tell any and all stories and hypnotize some of the people all of the time, all of the people some of the time ........   USURPED OUR MONEY!!

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Who me? No -- I didn't slurp your money! You prob'ly slurped it yourself. Stop blaming other people!

Nurse! -- gimme a break! Let go of my arm! So I'll wait another ten years! What are you doing? Put that needle away!  I'll go souther again!

Be well (?) northers!

-- Rickardo