Well, we’ve reached the point where the blog goes dark for a short while. There won’t be anymore posts for 2020. I will; however, be writing during the time that I am not posting. Yes, I will be doing what I have said that I don’t do – creating a small army of posts that I can draw from. I just won’t be posting what I write. The idea here is to give my brain a little bit of a rest, and make posting to the blog feel a little less like a chore. Ya know…to stimulate the creative juices, so to speak.

Let’s take a look back at 2020. Don’t grumble. 2020 definitely was a bad year. But even in a bad year, there are lots of lessons to be learned from what has happened. Both personal and on a wider public scale. Some of it hurts to talk about. Some of it…well, we really do need to talk about it.

Why don’t we come to terms with the facts
There’s a method behind all this madness
We must be blind not to realize
We’re all victims of chance now
Talking ’bout what everybody’s talking ’bout
I wanna talk about, we gotta talk about it

Dweezil Zappa, “Let’s Talk About It” https://youtu.be/iiLG-pSgR2k

In Dweezil’s song, the lyrics state that we need to talk about it, so let’s talk about it.

Probably the largest issue that faced us all was COVID-19. No, not President Donald Trump’s antics and statements. I’ll come to that in a minute. However, COVID-19 was the most disruptive aspects of our lives from somewhere in March to today. In that time span, this virus has changed the way we deal with one another on a daily basis. Well, for most folks it has. There are those that continue to call the virus a hoax and refuse to follow the concepts of masking-up, washing your hands, and practicing social distancing. “Don’t want to be afraid of a virus.” Yeah, I can understand that, but only to a point. As I have stated over and over here on the blog – I have underlying health conditions that require me to be a bit more cautious. Contracting the virus could literally kill me. But from this particular issue of combating the virus and staying safe, comes two more points to consider for this post. First, the division that these safety procedures have created between those who follow the safety protocols, and those who deny that the virus is even real or as deadly as has been reported. Second, what happens if these deniers do not get the vaccine that is currently in the early deployment stage to the public?

I have been in three distinctly different areas of Texas over this time period of the virus’ existence. Denton (a small city located just north of the Dallas/Fort Worth metromess), Hillsboro (a small, rural town located just south of the Dallas/Fort Worth metromess), and the huge metromess of Houston. Thinking of the size of each population, I would have expected to find more people not following the COVID-19 safety protocols in Houston. However, the exact opposite has been the given here. With the sole exception of a single day that I happened to shop inside of a local WalMart. Everywhere else I have been, the large majority of people are masked and practicing social distancing. Its actually the smaller-sized community that was the opposite side of things. When I have been in Hillsboro, I have routinely seen people not wearing masks, gathered in small crowds, and not socially distancing at all. Denton, which is a fair-sized college-based town, seemed to have similar levels of not following the protocols that Hillsboro had. What conclusion can I infer from all of that? Well, its not scientific or based in numerical aspects. However, I would conclude that the more rural areas treated the virus far less seriously than the environments where more people happened to reside. The larger the community, the more serious the measures following COVID-19 safety protocols were taken. Not scientific or fact-based at all…merely my own observations.

The second largest issue, and the one that seemed to generate more opinion and perspective throughout social media was current President Donald Trump. Whatever the Donald did, it was scrutinized, criticised or praised from nearly every corner of the World Wide Web. His followers proclaimed him as a stealthy genius. His critics offered up a cartoonish image of an over-sized infant pitching a titanic tantrum. The reality of his four years as President are that he was ineffective on most subjects, and where he was not, he stumbled to get to the right footing. Here, at the end of a Presidential election cycle, the Donald is raging against the outcome, claiming he was cheated. Interestingly enough, this position of crying foul has been rather common in American politics for nearly two decades now. The difference is that no one has continued to cry foul over the recount processes. American politics used to be about accepting losses at the polls, vowing to win in the next election cycle, and moving on with life until then. However, our election cycle did uncover one extremely ugly truth. We are far more divided amongst ourselves as Americans than united. In my opinion, because we cannot accept the losses and move on as Americans, we have created the largest two-party rift ever in the history of this country. We can thank Donald Trump’s usurpation of the Republican party for that, as well as the Republicans for being led down that path by their collective noses. And to some degree, similar rifts have occurred in the political world around the United States as well. Folks, when political and ideological rifts like this occur…major wars are typically not far afield.

The next big issue, for me, has been the challenge of handling my own mental health issues. Yes, I have depression. That depression has fed into other aspects of my life, and has made things difficult – if not impossible for me. While I still scoffed at the idea that I had mental health issues, I have sought out help. I never felt like I was depressed….even though I had no personal experience with the feeling, and thus no perspective to work from. I have friends who have been diagnosed with depression. I have friends who battle their own demons daily. Many of them saw their own struggles occurring within me. They spoke up. They asked – even begged – for me to seek help. Again, not having anything to gauge my understanding of what depression was and how it felt – I still scoffed. But I knew all of these people were speaking out in concern, and love. It took convincing, but I have taken that first step – seeking help. If you have that “lost” feeling, but don’t consider yourself to be depressed because you don’t know what depression feels like – do what I did, and seek help. It might not be depression, but a different perspective can always help you find your way back.

The death of Eddie Van Halen was an extremely difficult moment for me. When I first found out about rock and roll, one of my cousins had played the first album for me. Jokingly, we would refer to Eddie and Alex as “lost members” of the Van Hook family. Eddie was an original guitar hero of mine. The sounds he could elicit from a guitar were just incredible stuff. I had never heard sounds like that before. A few years later, I would “discover” Randy Rhoads’ playing with Ozzy Osbourne’s first solo album, and Eddie was replaced at the top of the guitar player pile. It is fairly well documented that Eddie was an asshole to many people, particularly Michael Anthony – the original bass player for the band. Nonetheless, his talent and creativity with a guitar have always been incredible. The music industry lost a talented player in 2020.

My last, “gotta talk about it” moment of 2020 was the May 25th death of George Floyd while in the custody of the Minneapolis police department. So many protests were sparked throughout the country from this single incident. And even with COVID-19 running rampant, people still came out to protest. People wanted the officers, particularly Officer Derek Chauvin, to be brought to justice for such a brazen, disgusting, public display of police brutality. Many of my friends chose to take to the streets of their local municipalities to show their anger and disgust over what these officers had done. I absolutely agree with many folks who are asking for police reform, banning brutal tactics such as kneeling on the necks of individuals who are considered to be resisting arrest. Furthermore, I am a firm believer that many of the incidents that occur could be handled better by the officers by using deescalation tactics. Particularly in stops where the officer is Caucasian and the individual being stopped is a Person of Color. Police Officers are emblematic of their communities, and should provide proper levels of decorum to the individuals within their communities. I can assure you, if officers treated everyone like a valued person, rather than as something akin to an animal, I believe far less of these various stops would be violent in nature. Notice I said far less, not all. I am also not in favor of defunding the police departments. Rather, I am in favor de-militarizing the police departments. Just north of Hillsboro is the slightly larger town of Cleburne. Here, their police department has a military-style assault vehicle decked out in the police department’s normal vehicle colors. While I do not think that the city would have need for such a vehicle…I would certainly be interested in what the declaration was that made the purchase of this vehicle necessary. As for defunding, no thank you. Certainly, police budgets need to be heavily scrutinized and funding cut for unnecessary needs, such as these urban assault systems. But let’s remember that the police department needs to be funded so that officer can be paid for the services they should be providing to the community. And that appropriate training for them also needs to be funded, so we can have police departments that are truly in a position to serve and protect their local communities.

Now, you are probably noticing that much of this is fairly political in nature. That’s correct and intentional. This is a Pagan blog. I am a Druid. I try to stay between those lines as much as I can. I am; also, a member of the wider aspect of society. I watch. I observe. I listen. I form my own opinions on things. The Gods know damn good and well that many people are not going to agree with me on a lot of this stuff. I am not worried about that one bit. Because everyone has to make up their own minds and find their own footing around topics such as those above and so many others. This year, 2020, I made a promise to myself not to delve too deeply into politics….knowing that a Presidential cycle was underway. I also tried to stay outside of the Black Lives Matters issues, even though I do fully support them. Why? Because all of you reading this are adults. You can read. You can watch and listen to the news. You need to make up your own minds, and my opinion should carry very little or no weight in your personal process. You are intelligent, caring, loving, and understanding people – for the most part. I have always believed it is important for you to derive your own perspective through your own research. Yes, I understand that reading my blog – essentially my own personal opinion – is a type of research. but as I pointed out above…I’m a Pagan. I’m a Druid. And I try my best to drive between those lines the best that I can. But as this post is meant to showcase, I do have opinions and perspectives on stuff. Sometimes….I say something.

See you sometime on January 2nd or 3rd.

–T /|\