I Wonder Where This is Going

It might sound strange, but I write about three thousand words a day, some days a lot more. There are a few days where I don't write, but mostly I do. This story is just over 3400 words and seems the entrance into a book of maybe ninety pages. What I'm putting up here is a first draft to a book  introductory idea I had woke to a few mornings ago. The flow (how these things emerge) came with the eleven chapters and the epilog included, but grunting them all out onto the page is going to take some time. The vision also came with three or four follow up books . . . So many years of work I might never do. . .  Like most of these I will outline it and put the thing away in a file for when there's time.

The Road to Almitra
Fragment by David Smith, All rights Reserved

    1.1 I'm writing this incognito.

If I had used the professional name I put on every  article I write, the person finding this little story might bring into it part of an opinion about what they are reading. For a writer this is not entirely a bad thing. I have been writing a daily sports bi-line for more years than I can remember and that's no exaggeration. I really can't remember quite a few of those years and they often sort of blur into one another. If you were to ask me about a specific game, or some trivial firing of a manager that hadn't ought to have been let go, something specific, I could probably tell you the whole story; or at least enough of it to fill two columns of half sheet print. I write a syndicated bi-line that seems to be pretty well received. Just ask my manager “Manny” (not his real name). He's the one that puts the checks in the account and he seems mostly happy it. At least it seems to put money into an account. I've never seen it. But I've never been able to empty out either; and I really tried; more than once.

I have an easy writing gig, even though I cover the weird sports stuff people don't usually watch on television and never hear on the radio. Articles about The One Horse Race (with literally one horse in it), or the big game of actual Native American Lacrosse played in a meadow outside of Detroit. They do this to stop a blood fued , but there's definetly blood in it at times. These sorts of Sports usually don't wind up being about the statistics which Sports Enthusiast love to ponder. Writers like me, that can tell a good story about Gaelic Football, or let you feel the heat of Fijian Rugby culture, put something fun between the meat and potatoes of horse races with more than one horse in them, or sports where statistics matter. Anyway, it seems to pay the bills. Just ask “Bill” (again, not his real name), my accountant. It is a pretty good gig and I seem to do pretty well at it.

For a guy not saying his name you could guess at it right now and be correct. But my name simply isn't why I'm writing and the story isn't about me or the usual stuff I write about.

No. This little story is about the single most interesting man in the world. A guy who is either the biggest and best liar I ever met, or maybe the best there ever was. A man with a story so absolutely weird and unbelievable, but told in a way that it comes out as honest somehow, that I spent eleven weeks letting him tag along with me as I flew from place to place, gig to gig. I mean to say that this old man is something new.

I'm a writer. I have to tell stories and I couldn't stop it if they chopped my arms off and sewed my lips. But this story is one of those deserving to be told. So let's just settle in for a while and get it done. Each story starts at the beginning. The end comes later on.

    1.2 The Beginning

Like I wrote a minute ago. I am one of those guys who is lucky to be doing what he does. I fly somewhere that sounds exotic about twice a week, then I sit next to with someone who is likely pretty famous where he lives, and watch some sort of game that is interesting but doesn't get a lot of notice.

This story begins on a Thursday morning at about five A.M.

I was staying in a townhouse my Booker had set me up in for two nights. (For the sake of creative consistency we'll name him: "Booker"). I don't like hotels so I stay in houses people rent out to tourists and visiting professors. I'm told I own a few of these places by Manny and assume I rent them from myself at times without knowing my name is on the paperwork. I was in Boston to cover a strange South Boston neighborhood game involving mild violence and some pretty good cheese (I'm not kidding.) 

Anyway. I'm leaving early for a plane out of LeGuardia International, but I'm in Boston. The plane out of Boston Logan is iced firmly to the ground and I have to be in Spain the next day so I had Booker get me one of those ride share guys to drive me the hundred, eighty-five miles to a plane that might actually fly today. At exactly five A.M. an old guy in a light gray Prius four-door showed up.

I had to load my own bag into this odd little hatch-back before settling in for what promised to become at least three hours of ungodly morning freeway traffic, uncomfortable seating, and fast food scenery. Note to self: put a bruise of some significance on Booker next time you see him.

The old man driving wore one of those dark blue Greek fisherman's hats that looked black because of the early hour and general lack of lighting on this residential street. The driver had set the front passenger seat so that it laid deeply into the space usually reserved for back seat passengers' legs and feet and had put newspapers onto that empty front seat until they would probably slip off onto the floorboards of the stupid little car if he had to stomp the brakes. So there was no front seating and the only place to sit in back was directly behind the driver. The little old man had his seat set far enough forward that I would get enough leg room and since I was tucked in behind him I wouldn't have to engage in conversation and hear all about his lovely wife and the no-good son he also loves. I thought about mentioning the lack of seating but figured I would need to pretend to be sort of pissed off about it, so I let the opportunity to fiegn indignation go unspoken. So I got in without saying a word and he put his foot to the floor before I could find the seat belt.

This rapid aceration was strike two on the guy's decreasing tipping card and I said “and the count goes two and oh” out loud, but quietly enough the man didn't seem to notice. Gravity, or what airplane pilots call “g-forces”, and the unexpected power of a Prius meant we were going to make good time getting to New York. At this rate we might make it out of Massachusetts before what they ironically call "The Rush Hour" began. "Rush Hour" is a daily occurance where nobody gets to rush anywhere and that's at least two hours long.

People once took commuter trains to jobs in Manhattan from Massechussettes. Now they all join the throng of freeway bi-passers with jobs in the Outer Burroughs. I never had the sort of steady job people thought of as cool in an outside burrough sort of way, but I guess it might have been interesting at some point. Who knows? It might seem much more trendy and hip to work where you might get mugged and actually talk to a cop if it happened. Mugging in Manhaten is thought of as a toll on pedestrians unaware of the way things are; calls are largely unanswered by police.

As we sped through yellow lights which turned red halfway through the intersections neither one of us said anything for what seemed to me, a talker without any off switch, to have been a long time. Once we go to it we drove along the freeway at a speed that would certainly provide a quick and merciful death should something go wrong, all the while wildly weaving in an out of traffic. I was guessing from the nearly white hair and completely white beard poking out of the bottom of the hat that my driver might be sixty something, maybe older considering his smallish stature. With wordiness welling up in me I searched for the hook I needed to make talking less about me somehow, though I think we all know the truth.

Hanging from the rear view mirror was a cross and what appeared to be a rosary. Both of these were much larger than you'd expect so let me help you out with a visual: Picture in your mind a standard Catholic rosary, then make it bigger and then triple its size. The thing was huge when compared to every other rosary I even saw, and I come from an Irish Catholic family with an Italian Catholic mother. We had a few of these rosary things laying around on nearly every surface not covered by pictures of Jesus or Mary. This cross was different somehow. If not in form or function, different none the less.

“That's quite a Rosary,” I said. I pointed to the thing but was pretty sure he couldn't see me do it in the rear view mirror.

“Yep,” the man replied, suddenly weaving into the “fast lane' for two seconds before bailing back out because “fast” was not over there at all.

Okay, I thought, nobody gives me any one word answers. “What's the deal on it.”

“It's a Rosary.” The man said, just loud enough I could hear him in a mostly electric car that was proving to be pretty well made and didn't rattle.

“I can see that,” I said. “What's the deal on it?” I repeated the question, and then wondered why I was trying so hard. I really had not intended on getting into any conversations but somehow found myself opening up a can without a label. No telling what was going to come out of it.

“No deal,” the driver said, “I'm a Catholic right now so there's a rosary hanging off the mirror. If I were Jewish there'd probably be a Star of David. I don't know what Muslims hang off of their mirrors but the Hidus and Buddhists hang a ton of stuff off of theirs.”

“I know it's a rosary,” I said, really trying not ot have any sort of jerkiness in my voice. “”It's pretty impressive.”

“By that you mean big?” He said in this same even and almost too quiet voice. “Yeah,” he said, “It's pretty big all right.”

“So what's that all about?” I ask. I was getting more and more curious about it. Now I think I needed an explanation. “Why is it so big? Where'd it come from?”

“Why do you care?” The man ask his question without anger, but there was at least some anger to it.

“Well I'm a Catholic too and that cross looks big enough to have a story worth hearing.” I was feeling like I should say that I am sorry to have brought it up in the first place and then to remain quiet for the rest of the trip. The he answered before I could shut the hole in my face.

“Okay then,” He said, this time a bit more emphatically. “The cross isn't a regular rosary. It's a belt rosary. The sort of thing monks used to wear to keep their wool robes closed up. The Beads are actually chestnut shells worn smooth and turned black from a long time of use and endlessly repeating counting of the Stations of the Cross. The cross itself is said to be of the same wood as the one Jesus got himself nailed to, but I suspect it isn't since it is Spanish Oak. There's no Jesus on this one because it's old timey Jesuit and those guys didn't want to see their Savior killed all the time.” The man stopped and adjusted his rear view mirror so that I could see his bespectacled eyes, which seemed to be crinkled with humor lines. He stopped talking for a moment, “I hang the thing up there because if it's in your pocket it pokes everything it touches and gets tangled up in my keys.” He smiled, though I couldn't see his mouth. “Anything else you want to know?”

“Where's you get it? Antique store or something?” I wasn't feeling like apologizing anymore. Then again, I wasn't feeling like apologizing any less either. Just looking for a way to get out of this conversation and not finding one.

“Fellow gave it to me a long time ago.” The man said, but I could tell more was coming. “It's a funny story. He was about to be burned at the stake and handed it off to me, a stranger, as he climbed up onto the scaffold.”

Okay, I thought. So things just got a lot more interesting then and now I have a story to tell. “Burned at the stake huh?” I said this like it happens all the time. “Rough way to go out.”

“I've seen worse," the old man said happily, "but you probably don't want to go that way yourself.” The man was obviously smiling when he said this. Like his smile originated at the back of his head. “They don't do that sort of thing much these days,” he continued, 'that's good enough for me.”

“So what did he do to get himself roasted like that?” I was having fun now. Fun is alwasy about agreeing to rediculous stuff like this.

“Back then you really didn't have to do anything. Just hang out with the wrong sort of people, read the wrong book maybe. The Inquisition finds out and the next thing you know someone is poking you with scissors or tearing at your balls with old pliers. Dominicans used to be a lot tougher back then.”

“I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition.” I said this figuring it was funny reference, but with old people might have been too vague.

“Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.”

We sat happily for a while after that. I had found my way out of the conversation and we go to LaGuardia about an hour before I had budgeted in my schedule. Breakfast time was unexpected, the trip did not end in a firey car crash, and the conversation was lively and entertaining. The guy deserved a good tip. But in the time of this conversation tipping was done by the person booking the trip, in the case Booker, who did this sort of thing for me, had probably added a fifteen percent gratuity onto the bill despite having to pay for the return trip to Boston. I decided to let loose of a one-hundred dollar bill I carried around for “just in case”.


    1.3 Okay, this is where things get strange.

When I saystrange, what I mean by that is that things happened that I didn't expect and these things developed into a whole big bunch of weirdness nobody could expect. So let me get though this last bit quickly and we'll start in on the really strange stuff in the next chapter.

As I was pulling the one-hundred dollar bill out of my wallet, a move which was as generous as it was me showing off, I heard a voice in my head say the following “Ask about the Road to Almitra”. This voice between my ears was clear, in my own voice, and absolutely used the word “Almitra”, a word I never heard before or used in a sentence.

I have a real good idea about how my mind seems to work. And I like to think the reason people like me is that I listen to my conscience and do the right thing for the most part. The little voice most people hear in their heads is that conscience voice and I think people probably ought to listen to it more. Most people probably have this sort of little voice and the sick ones probably listen to it, even when it says to burn down the local Elks' Lodge. My little voice never says anything about the Elks and I feel pretty good about listening to it. This time the voice didn't seem to be the same as it always had been, and it wasn't telling me to do something evil, but I decided to ignore it this time. This isn't what happened.

As I held out the hundred dollars, instead of saying; “thanks for the ride', which would have been expected, my mouth said: ”Do you know the Road to Almitra?”. Just as clear as day. Out it came.

The tiny little man, maybe five foot four and built like a coat hanger, opened his door and got out of the car. He came out quick and easy, considering that he looked to be eighty-something years old. If there had been time I might have expected to hear his joints creaking. After all he had just sat through four hour of driving.  As his face finally came into view he looked straight ahead into my chin and then and stood there for half a minute doing nothing.  I wondered if I was about to get punched for saying something wrong. I didn't know what "Almitra" meant. Maybe it was an insult in his native language and I had crossed some line into rude behavior without meaning to.

A for the potential for violence I figured I could take him. I was maybe half a foot taller,  half his age, and of Irish descent. I like to think I can defend myself if needed, but I have really never had to fight with my fists. Not even in Junior High School when this sort of thing happens quite a bit. But it didn't come to that.

The little guy looked down after what seemed a long time and seemed to talk to his shoe laces:”What? You been expecting this for a long time? It had to come someday.” Then he turned back toward me.

I was trying to figure out his accent. My ears liked the sound of it. His voice seemed smooth and foreign. Not scary like Korean or Thai, which are hard on western ears. This one was like a lovely brown sauce that added spice to a hearty dish with potatoes in it.

I was still holding the c-note out to him, so he simply had to reach out to take it out of my hand. But he left my hand hanging out  for a longish time until it seemed he might not want the money, but then he took the paper with a nod of thanks broke the tension.“Let me guess,” he said softly, in a clear voice, “you don't know why you just said that?”

I didn't have time to formulate the lie that I needed to tell to get out of the hole I dug myself and didn't answer right away. 

“I'll take silence for a yes then.” His thick accent didn't get in the way of him speaking, but it did force him to use fewer words at times. “Yes, I do know the Road to Almitra. He then simply re-entered the car and slammed the door harder than it probably needed. “I suppose I should to tell you about it.”

As if it were some sort of magic trick, a business card appeared as he stretched an arm out the open window of his Prius. I reflexively grabbed it to take a look. “You can do any of three things with that,” he said while pulling his seat belt over his narrow shoulder. “The smartest thing would be to call me if you ever need another ride to the airport. But you might simply throw it away as well. Then there's a third possibility. ” There was a hesitation to this next sentence. “You call me and I will come with you and tell you how I came to Almitra.”

For some reason I still don't understand what the guy said didn't seeming like a bad idea . Red flags were waving around in my head but it wasn't like he was asking for something right now. “What is the Road to Almitra?” I ask what seemed a perfectly reasonable question. “Why don't you just tell me now?”

The little man laughed, “Let me answer the last question first. It will take time because it is a long answer and your mind must be prepared to hear it. The Second Question is less simple. I cannot possibly tell you now because we are parked in the White Zone. They hang people for less at LaGuardia.  Nor can I prepare your mind to accept the answer in less time than it might take that cop walking our way to tow away my car.”

Undeterred I quickly answered: “I travel every week, so you'd have to go along with me.”

“We will have fun I think.”

“I'm not sure you can always go where I go.”

“I can and I will.” He said this as a matter of fact and was pretty believable.

“So let me ask you this. What good will this do me?”

“No good I think. At least nothing you can use.”

“Can I write it down?”

“You can roll it up and smoke it for all I care.”

“I'll think on it and give you a call.”

“It seems we have at least some agreement." His heavy foot hit the accelerator pedal and he was gone.

    1.4 So let's wrap this up.

This guy says he'll go with me to tell me about something I know nothing about which will do me no good. It will take some undetermined number of weeks and he'll tag along with me everywhere I go. I'm figuring I'll have to pay for all of it. But tonight I'm eating Paella in Barcelona and a loaded bagel in New York for breakfast. The most interesting day of my year so far.

 So I'm in.

The Opossum Buddha by David Smith

 A spoken word thing of one minute length.

The 85% Rule where Perfection is never attainable.

The 85% Rule where Perfection is never attainable by David E. Smith of Banks, Oregon

Abstract: In all areas of endeavor, desire for perfection exists at the onset of any project, but perfection does not exist at the end of the same project. The Principle Rule governing this is proposed as the 85% Rule which governs returns on investment of resources in efforts of the pursuit of happiness over perfection as a consequence. So when is Enough of a return sufficient to become Good Enough to end the project at its most acceptable result? This is a moral consideration and therefore the 85% Rule is a Moral Calculus and within the boundless precepts of Moral Consequentialism.

Enough is a moral threshold which, once met, constitutes a level of utility, or happiness, in those efforts where happiness is an expressed goal. To accept the outcomes as sufficient to our needs and cease striving further to achieve what might be imagined as perfection in the result, one might say this is a level of enough, or a good enough result. The amount of effort and resources necessary to achieve Enough is being put forth here as a universal constant. This is to say that if creating perfection is achievable using the 100% of resources and effort necessary to achieve 100% of perfection then, in all things, using 50% of those same resources and efforts will achieve 85% of the perfection in the outcome, at all times.

This 85% Rule on return on investment is objective and enough or good enough subjective.

This is the 85% Rule in action:

For all (A ) IF:

100% of desire (A) = 100% of Total Resources Available (A1)

AND

85% of desire (A) = 50% of (A1)

THEN

15% of desire (100-85) or (B) = 50% of (A1), or (B1)

Once this rule is enacted the result is to achieve 85% of any desired perfection, while only expending 50% of the resources available to achieve the same perfection. While not perfect, the result may well be economically efficient and this may be said to be Enough to satisfy the moral desire expressed with the minimum expenditure of resources. (In building the perfect chair, one might sit on a chair for half the investment and be happy enough.) But the desire satisfied by the result, no matter how efficient, may not rise to the threshold of Good Enough and a Better result may be desired.

Better: The “85% Rule” is compounding. The result (B) becomes (A) in any second (or subsequent) iteration and so outcomes are an asymptote if tracked mathematically. 100% of perfected outcomes cannot be met no matter how many iterations of the 85% Rule are cycled. But one might wish for a Better outcome than that found in the initial (A) = (A1) exemplar and so continue trading resources for outcomes in the pursuit of Better:

IF (B) is 15% of (A) = 50% of (A1)

AND

85% of (B) = 50% of (B1)

THEN

12.75% of (A), now (C) = 25% of (A1), or (C1)

In this second iteration, of the 85% Rule, 97.75% of (A)is achieved using 75% of (A1). This is still quite efficient, but might be in excess of need and therefore potentially wasteful of resources and a less than Good moral result. (In building a perfect chair you may find that 97.75% of a perfect chair is really quite nice.) 

More: But one might wish for More and put forth additional the effort toward achieving 100% of the desired outcome. The 85% Rule is compounding, and so:

IF (C) is 12.75% of (A) = (C1) is 25% of (A1)

AND

85% of (C) = 50% of (C1)

THEN

1.9125% of (100-(C)) = 12.5% of (A1)

Remembering that 100% of budgeted resources are available to create a 100% result, should it be the only acceptable outcome, in this third iteration more than 98% of 100% is achieved by expending only 87.5% of resources. But since the economic return is diminishing at every step and 100% can never be achieved in the result in any case, returns on effort become increasingly inefficient. Again, resource allocation remains constant, there is no cost over-run, and (A1) is never exceeded, but the economic return in happiness is diminishing in any and all areas of effort as the effects become smaller. (Our perfected chair now will be prectically indistinguishable from the perfection of the desire. But are the savings worth the addtional result?

Conclusion: While never exceding the resources available at the onset, More costs an increasingly larger percentage of resources at every iteration and returns a cumulative smaller result in an asymptote where 100% is never met and returns on investment diminished. This then becomes a moral consideration in all circumstances: If perfection cannot be met, then, is Enough the good which allows redirecting unspent resources to other projects or thrift?

On Entering the Stream

The Stream

I walked through the illusion in prayer.
Conceptions prying at my soul.
To pause at the bank of the Stream.

The liquid sparkling of all souls.
All thoughts, and yours too,
adrift in unique bubbles;

countless in number;
counting the illusions;
a sum of only one.

My toe entered the stream,
having known only cold;
warmed only by pretense.

My soul tasting everything,
the light and the dark,
always balanced in its perfection.

And it scared me so.
For to know all is to know nothing.
One cannot be without knowing.

My toe rebelling sent chills up my spine.
What is known
may be enough.

-David Smith 2025

A Farm Update

 We haven't been posting about the Farm much. Farming has not been my priority for two years, and deep depression took one of those away from our long history. But things are happening right now worthy of letting people know something about.

We had a litter of puppies in the last Winter which gave us some excess money to spend on putting a floor under our wrap around porch roof. We had planned for concrete but concrete got really expensive and I suck at it. So we are going with 2x6 wood planks. We are using concrete to make a barrier between the concrete bases of the porch supports. Even though they are strange the idea is to block out the rats and raccoons who would just love a nicely sheltered home under the decking. The concrete retaining wall comes within a quarter inch of the understructure of the deck so there's a chance it will keep the bigger people out. We will not be putting a wodden deck under the west side roof so that our segregation kennel has the drainage and is easier to clean up. Part of that section will house a newer hot tub too for old bones to soak in next Winter.

We put up a new greenhouse last year and it worked wonderfully. All of our plantings came up strong and the garden is looking really well. Today all is doing super out there and we have bought a few new tools to make things easier on arthretic hands and tired bodies. We got a nifty rechargable pruner which cuts anything up to 5/8 inch without slowing. Ann oftentimes uses it to cut off larger weed stalks and berries. The battery lasts for months and we have two of them. I bought Ann a mini rechargable roto- tiller which tears anything up which is less than two inches into the dirt. The thing clears crabgrass, the last thing in the dirt after everything else is gone. And last Summer we bought a used riding lawnmower so our flowering weeds don't stand a chance in the longer term. The place seems much more managable these days and we get more done in less time, which is good. We need more done and time is fleeting. Our corn is chest high today, we've had strawberries for two months, potatoes are doing very well. Tomatoes, peppers, zuchinni, cukes, are doing better than we've had in a while. We're no longer a farm, but as gardeners we are killing it.

The fruit trees I put in at odd intervals in the past five years are fruiting their little branches off. We have four varieties of apple, five of plum, all of these fruiting it up out there. A nectarine which is doing nothing, an apricot which is barely hanging on, and a peach which is doing less than nothing still look good at a distance. Our Mimosa is flowering and lovely. We initially started the Farm with the idea of becoming a Upick orchard. It might have worked too.

Our chickens and Ducks are healthy and egg sales happen weekly. Not enough to do it for the money, but it does defray some feed expenses. We built them a larger run this year to keep them out of the gardens and protect them from Raptors. It has two ponds and loads of berries hanging around, so the birds are happy.

And finally, but not the least of our good fortune, our Hound business is doing very well. We have had two litters this year, boarding rates were risen and the business is up, and we even have one order for dog coat (in Summer) so far. Between retirements, dogs, eggs, and our age keeping expenses low, the accounts are stable. 

Life is good here. We hate leaving, even for an hour. Ou personal health is exceptionally good for a pair sixty-seven years old. It won't last, as nothing ever does, but if you live day to day by God's grace and it works out. . .  Celebrate.

AI – Luddites and Light Switches

 It seems to me, an old man with a lot of rudimentary computing experience, that the current hulla-balloo about Artificial Intelligence, it's promise, is either polly-ann-ish, or outright deceptive.  Let us discuss for a minute the public perception in my close-by neighborhood.

The generalized fear is that AI will replace people. End of story. These machines will somehow become self actuating and self replicating. Ultimately they will do whatever we human types do and we will be out of a job; whatever that particular job is. So we better get busy finding a new line of employment before the AI figures out what we are doing and gets there before us.

The much brighter vision is that AI will begin doing the menial work we loathe. AI will do the cleaning and the cooking, begin doing the hard tasks, the hot work, and the danger will go out of our lives. Nothing but improvement for humanity and the only people effected are those who do the menial labor, the hot work, and the dangerous stuff; you know . . . immigrants. Those people need to find better work or become useless and superfluous back in their old countries.

Of course there's a spectrum of possibilities between these two and the AI hub-bub will most certainly bleed over the outside edges of these two visions as well. But the fact of the matter is that AI cannot do any of these things, and likely won't be able to do much of this for many years, likely decades, possibly a century or so. Despite the hype, this isn't happening. Let me explain.

I have been in the computing world for many decades. I did manual labor directly for Steve Jobs. My Step mother had Wosniak over to the house before his name became well known. I spent my early teen years punching card stock on a big machine to program a much bigger machine that couldn't compete for computing power with a modern blood pressure monitor. I built my own computers through the 8086 chipset days, with their 5.5 inch floppies and 256K of storage and continued to engage in this until it just got cheaper to buy a laptop which did everything I ever dreamed of. I knew personally the guy who helped create the MP4 format and waited patiently for the 1982 promise of streaming video and broadband internet to deliver the movies in 2012. I adopted cellular telephony as soon as I could afford it and bought a smart phone as soon as they got into the price range I desired. I witnessed the entirety of the Internet's birth while in the military and watched it grow for almost fifty years. I paid attention to this extraordinary period of informational growth and access with curiosity and took the good with the bad. Not once was I filled with overwhelming wonder because I saw the actual bones of the baby before the flesh got added; saw the bubbles bursting even as the pundits huffed and puffed. So much soap.

And AI, for all it's promise, is just another thing of this fictional genre. Possible, but not probable. Certainly not practical. All the bubbles people seem willing to invest and believe in will be found to be more bubbles in the making once the current flotilla fails to fly. And here's why it will sink.

At the root of computing is the idea of data. Computers keep this in files. Files are simply numerical things filled with organizations of letters and numbers designed to keep things where things go for use when they are needed. Computers access these things when ask, develop these things as instructed, and output whatever the result is when the result is found. Back in the old days (back when Luddites worried about computers taking their jobs) much of what went into the machines was trash, so when we ask it to tell us something we didn't know we got trashy answers. Things have become better since then.

Faster computers, loads of data, billions of lines of code. If you hadn't seen the beginning you wouldn't have reason to suspect that what these wondrous things do is just the same as they have always done, only faster. The machines are much smaller, and they do so much more and, strangely, unemployment decreased because we still needed people to put the data in, tell the machine what to do, and read the results. Result which are likely going to need correction because the inputs were trash in the first place.

This is not to say the machines are trash, they are not, but the paperless promise cut down a lot of trees and the wireless promise installed a lot of wires. If you were to guess how much wrong information, both accidental and intentionally included was contained in the database we call the Internet you might have to say about half of what we know is suspect and all of it will take a human with an education to know the difference. If you were to ask an AI, the best ever created, to tell you how much of the data is false it would wait for more instructions. It would need to know what the scope of the project is, where to find the data, what does false mean, and then give you an answer which is likely needing analysis and correction by human minds.

AI is a machine trick incapable of making a moral choice and having no stake in the decision. It might someday be able to follow a well defined set of instructions and procedures for making a pseudo moral choice and might one day do this so as to be thought of as good at it. But humanity still has no such set of moral definitions to work from which might allow the programmers to commence work writing code. Eventually these machine choices will fail and be amended to call for other programs and fuzzier statistical manipulators which check the work and seem to decide better. But these machine will only give you what you gave them and do with it what they were told to do with ever increasing specificity. Don't expect this to happen any decade coming soon to your lifetime.

AI has limits as to what it possibly might do. It might become a light switch which knows when to turn on the lights in many situations. But the switch will still need to be given instructions to work the way the user wishes it would; instructions which might take as much time as flipping on the lights a thousand times. There will be many thousands of man hours dedicated to making this basic system of light switching to actually perform as expected. The promise of the intelligent light switch, if we ever get around to it, is potentially achieved in the efficient replication of the invention which lowers costs, (which will take a bit of time to be set up before promises come true). Today all you need do is walk over to the wall and flip the switch and this might always be the case whether they build smart switches or not; but saving humanity a few hundred thousand hours and countless piles of treasure takes a different moral choice.

Automobiles and airplanes might someday move themselves with speed and accuracy, but they will get to do this because thousands of people made millions of moral choices and hypothetical questions were eventually answered to our collective agreements. Until then self-flying planes will crash, self driving cars will find themselves driving in circles or into rivers, both are economic decisions. The tragedies will continue and moral decisions about the effective usefulness of the machine will be sorted out by legislators and invisible market based hands. Until then employment of drivers and pilots will continue. The AI promise un-kept for the time being despite the hype.

Today we are being ask to allow the building of thousands of expensive data centers where the promise of AI is said will be found. We are ask to invest in the bright new future of AI light switches and talking bathroom mirrors, none of which we need, and most of which will fail on design or marketing made by people capable of doing what AI can never really do: make a moral choice which will hold up in the real world of life, legality, and longevity. But it isn't going to happen they way they sell it today. It might happen some day, but not how they planned it. And we don't have to allow these hypothetically driven dreamers to gamble the life we have on their promise of the life we someday might.

What Could You Have Done?

What Could You Have You Done?

I saw what you did
and then I did wonder,
what could you have done
to allow this to be.

What crime you committed
has caused you to travel,
with a criminal unworthy;
with a man so unclean.

That you'd give up your soul.
And give silent assent.
That you'd offer your favor
without any cost.

And gladly you saw him
continue to rise
all the time knowing,
he arose without you.

You carried his weight
the weight of a criminal
and the weight of his loot
your share became his.

Was it some magic?
What caused you to give
to him your support
and a vote against you?

Was there some reason
you support him today.
And is there a reason
to support him tomorrow?

When will you grow
into your own decisions?
When will you look up
and see what you've done?

And remove from this person
the power you gave him,
and send him to hell
he deserves and has earned.

Copyright David E. Smith
Banks, Oregon
All Rights Reserved

Things have been different

 In the past few weeks things have changed in me. Big things. All things. Who knows. But my life has been better than most will believe. And my mind seems to have changed as well, the way I see the world and how I communicate with it is changing. So much, in fact, that I am preemptively declaring all discussion as too egotistical to talk about and refuse discussing it further.

The below are letters that popped up on my keyboard and demanded I play whack-a-mole. So I punched keys and these things fell out. It seems the Muse are out and about these days. The Second one is challenging to read and this seems intentional.

No Kings Is Not A Protest Poem

The righteous they scare him.
And boos drown his demon.
He pays for ass wiping.
His lies and his semen.

But listen to him.
Believe what he's saying.
Believe what he's doing.
For Him they are praying.

They give him the power.
They'd make him their King.
They'll call him messiah.
But it all means nothing.

He comes just to use them.
He comes for their worship
He comes for their money.
Their ears filled -his bullshit..

They pay for the privilege
of paying him more.
And he keeps on taking.
We all know the score.

And we know the answers.
Are they're all just for asking.
But you'll get no reply,
from the man who would be King

Kings might be cowards.
Kings might be brave.
They don't follow rules
and take what they crave.

The trick to it all.
Is to heed every call.
To not have a King.
For the good of us all.

We have little voices,
But hear what I'm saying.
Use the voice that they give you.
And don't have a king.

©All rights reserved to David E. Smith
CreeksideFarmOregon@gmail.com

A Novel Poem That.Nobody Will Get

People will peep.
Fighters will fight.
Talkers will talk.
Trees grow.

Seekers must seek
Seer's got to see.
Sorcerers use source.
Rocks do nothing..

Poets don't po.
While Singers do sing.
And Puppies might pup,
And Dogs might do it too.

Truth is from God.
Truth's undeniable
Like beauty and Sadness.
Some gifts you don't want.

It's an open book test.
They furnish the answers.
And right there before you.
You stand in your way.

Every four lines,
you expect to hear rhythm.
But this is strange meter.
Get over yourself.

This isn't about you.
Not part of your story.
Not one of your answers.
Give God the Glory.

God's Grace make this happen.
Informed not conceived.
You got all the answers.
So why did you keep reading?

©All rights reserved to David E. Smith
CreeksideFarmOregon@gmail.com

---

A new way to go

 We have decided that it is time to begin activating ourselves in the service of our nation. The current horror show we experience around us requires people of good conscience to act. We are aware of our age and the relatively little difference we can make, but every small act of resistence to evil is part of a bigger picture. 

Today I have closed my Facebook, Twitter (X), Instagram, and other social media accounts because those people running them want to destroy my country in their support of evil doing. I will close my Amazon Prime account too, even though I like it and use it all of the time. We cannot give one more dollar to a company which serves evil. We are not revolutionaries, we hope to save our nation as we have all along. But there needs to be a nation and right now the nations itself is placed on the block by men who have benefitted so much, yet given so little, and now are failing to protect it. Fuck them and anyone who supports them. We are through with staying out of it and there's too much at stake. 

This came to me in a stream of conscious today. I release any copyrights to anyone who wishes to use it.

Ice Out

My muse is so noisy
From God's Lips to my ear.
And now I stand fighting,
without any fear.

For my God is mighty.

I have God's protection.
What you have is simple,
Not a Godly connection.

For my country I fight,
for Red, White, Blue.
For my nation I stand,
and stand against you.

For my nation, my family.
Native born are we all.
Since 1832,
we heeded the call.

We were soldiers then,
as we are soldiers now.
We follow our God.
Never herded like cow.

You follow a madman.
You follow a fool.
You follow him blindly.
You're only his tool.

For he does not love you.
Though he may tell you so.
And when you aren't useful.
He will suddenly go.

For He is not loyal.
And He is not true.
And He's always false.
But expects more from you.

You stand on his bastions.
Carry weapons of hate.
We stand on the streets.
Our numbers more great.

You give him your body.
You give him your soul,
You give him your all,
That's His only goal.

So keep giving freely.
And He'll take it all.
For the shekels he offers
For the shekels you'll fall.

But he lives in safety.
And promises you that.
But he is a devil.
And you wear his hat.

A hat full of troubles.
You wear it all day.
For life you'll wear it.
You can't get away.

You will be known,
for the damage you do.
But you can leave now.
We give this to you.

He offered you shekels.
And now you're a cog.
If your pockets are empty.
Let him send out his dogs.

He gave you hotels
and restaurant bars.
He told you he'd do this.
He tricked you this far.

But when it all stops.
When he grinds to a halt.
Hotels becomes barracks.
And food without salt.

The sweet and the salty
will go from your diet.
But we have a plan
and you might as well try it.

The plan is so simple.

Go home or just join it.

We are fun people
But can be a riot.

And there you will stand,
with eleven and one.
And there we will stand,
without any gun.

And they will say shoot,
and shoot you just may.
Shoot brothers and sisters.
Shoot children they say.

What names we will call you
the word choices horrid.
And you might not like it.
It might make you torrid.

And you just might want this,
for a fight you are spoiling.
You do something stupid.
And we all will start boiling.

And when all that heat
Gets a just bit all too much.
And you are not sleeping.
And feel out of touch.

Think kindly of people.
The one's you disdain.
And wish to rekindle.
Our old friendship flame.

And we will accept you,
and your weak excuses.
Your claims you were fooled then.
You hope for forgiveness.

And we will accept you
but you followed orders.
We'll bring you to judges.
As His cannon fodders.

And if you can't see
what you read here is true.
Pull the trigger and find out
just who protects who.

For our God is mighty
and our God protecting,
our wives and our children.
while yours will be wailing.

For our fight is righteous.
God calling the tune.
Your god an orange man.
But more the fool you.

You follow him blindly.
Lend ear to his orders.
You pull the triggers.
You cause these disorders.

It's you causing riots.
You offered no peace.
And you stand there thinking.
That you are police.

But you are the person.
Whose doing the wrong.
And when you start singing.
We'll love your sad song.

And when your own family
does leave you behind.
You will cry at their doorstep
for your sin of pride.

It all comes from God
and pride's a great sin.
You are responsible
for the trouble you're in.

Your leaders are guilty
of crimes against us.
And they will sit sadly.
On our prison bus.

Or theymight just flee
to resorts full of plenty.
And leave you behind to
face the wraith of almighty.

And they you might follow,
and stand at their door.
They will smile at you.
But won't offer more.

They'll steal all your money
take your soul then forget it.
And leave you behind,
To face truth unprotected.

You'll know what you know
just as you do right now.
You're cattle to them.
To them only cow.

They will eat you or wear you
without any thought.
They will herd you to slaughter.
And sit on their butt.

They will laugh at the carnage.
They themselves have created.
And call out for more cowboys.
Their hunger not sated.

New cowboys may come.
Cows do what Cows do.
Because cows are just cows.
And now so are you.

These fences you build.
Will soon become walls.
The walls will contain you
if any of us falls.

They rope you and brand you
and put you in stalls
Our God sees our peace.
And break down your walls.

For our judges all know
from where power's derived.
And who is the righteous.
And who must be fried.

You do Satan's bidding
You shit smelling pup.
And we will stand peaceful.
Then cover you up.

And forget who you were.
You're not worth remembering.
And your name will be lost
Your family forgetting.

That they gave you a life.
And a good life no doubt.
They offered you all.
Then you sold us all out.

February 2, 2026 Moving forward again

 We have made some minor progress this year so far. Our plans to do some work in the kitchen has gone forward, but slower than we planned. A typical thing here, the farm has its own schedule and ignores ours.   Lots going on anyway.

Pixie had her pups two days ago, ten beautiful little Basset babies. But toward the end of her pregnancy she got so big that we had to spend quite a bit more time with her. We started taking shifts to cover her care 24/7 and got very little sleep for about a week. Her whelping was pretty quick without any troubles at all. Now we take shifts watching the pups and keeping them cleaned up and safe. Two pups already have a home and the rest usually go pretty quick. We'll have them until at least early April and we can begin sleeping regular schedules in about a week.

The arrival of puppies may allow us the money to finally put in the parking lot project. We gleaned fence fabric for the project years ago and hope to get the fence posts and gates in during April. This graveled and fenced area will finally allow us to get our cars off the street and provide a place for segregating dogs when we need to. Between puppies and dog boarding we spend quite a bit of time on the dog business. Having a parking area will help with having people come around more often as our customer base of visiting Hounds gets a bit bigger. 

This coming week we hope to find time to finish the tile backsplash and then go on to some minor cabinet fixes before painting everything. Some things had to wait after we built the house and finishing the kitchen will take until late Winter at least. But it will be a welcome change.

Our egg sales are brisk. The flock is laying around a dozen eggs a day and we sell almost half of them and we eat the rest. Just as before the eggs sold pay for all the eggs produced. I just wish the business would scale up and add to our income. But it doesn't. Costs rise as quickly as production and the time needed to do the job take time from other projects, so there isn't anything extra to be gained by having a  bigger flock. Small enough to manage, big enough to have really good eggs . . . We'll take it. 

The chickens and ducks are free ranging and their scratching has opened up holes at the bottom of the fence keeping dogs and birds in, so we have had a few escapes in the past month. We have a fix for the problem and fix the holes almost as quikly as they find them. Hounds are good at finding holes in the fence, but easy enough to catch.  Luckily for us there's not too much traffic on the road out front. 

Life goes on apace through a farily warm Winter. There's plenty of rain and plenty of work to do. It seems the world outside is not nearly so nice we want to go out into it much right now, but things will improve. We are hopeful for the future. Today however is something of a drag on the spirit.

January 6, 2026 Creekside in the New Year

Creekside Farm stopped trying to sell produce last Summer and stopped selling eggs a bit earlier in the year because investment increases didn't produce sales increases. But we are still planting in the Spring and spent quite a bit of time building a new greenhouse and garden space last year to get restarted in a smaller format. What we are planning is to use the growing plan we had, scaled down to the crops we can make the best use of ourselves. So, many of the same plants, in ones and twos will be planted instead of the fifties and hundreds we did a while ago.  We also rebuilt our flock this past Summer, twelve instead of forty, and so our free ranging girls are giving us about a Dozen eggs a day.

The new greenhouse is about ready for the planting months between March and May. Nothing really grows in our cold dirt until June so our plants will live confortable lives in the new Greenhouse until we can get them into the ground in late May. We will be tilling again this year. No-till gardening works well for making good soil fertility but our soil condition is a bit wild right now. Lots of grass out there.Our soils are every bit as good for composition as they were two years ago and we have perhaps sixty yards of compost for use to get things going. We'll till a bunch of our leaf mold and mature compost into our rows sometime on April and the soils will be very ready in late May.   This year we'll take more steps to put down weed blocking between rows to keep the weeding workload down a bit. We've plenty to do. 

My dream plan is to put in a wooden porch floor this Summer if time and money permit it. We had always envisioned a concrete floor under our wrap around porch roof but the little bit of concrete work we did wasn't really good enough to want a lot more of it. Paying for concrete workers was always out of reach and dry mix concrete is much more expensive now, so we're looking at a wooden porch floor. Wood is quicker and far easier to work with. Until Summer comes we are keeping busy on Winter house projects and it looks like we'll be working in the kitchen this month. This afternoon we found the tile for putting in a backspash over all the counter spaces. We might get to painting in the Kitchen this month, but things here seem to follow their own schedule, and always have. There's always more to do and too little time or money to do them. We only have a few weeks to get things done.

From February through April we will be very busy with a litter of puppies. Pricilla Pixie Stix is having her first litter and is doing very well. We spend a lot of time with our girls, trying to make them comfortable and their pregnancy as easy as we can, but it is still quite a big thing for a dog with such short legs. Lucy had three pups in her first litter and it was fairly easy on her, but most of the time a litter is around eight pups and can go higher. It's a lot of work for everyone and there's only so much you can do to make things easier.

I have always used New Year's Resolutions. Last year I resolved to lose thirty of the pounds I had packed on being depressed. I achieved the goal in August and then went back to eating normally for a few months. This year the goal is another thirty pounds. Weight loss isn't a difficult formula, it's simply not eating when you aren't hungry and eating less when you are. Lots of rice cakes, fewer cookies, hungry all the time, that's the plan. 

Life goes on at Creekside Farm. If anyone needs a garden space to grow food this year, or eggs, give us a call and we'll get you growing.