Introduction Part I

RunningRoach is of a science, engineering and business background, and one who has often marveled at the workings (or not) of the brain and the mind. He finds himself intrigued with the variety, depth and musings of many of the bloggers found here, and like so many inhabiting the blogosphere, he’s doing his best to make sense out of what is going on around and among us. He looks forward to continuing observations into, and ramblings about, politics, values, education, life, the universe... Everything.

Since he plans to post some of his ramblings and rants here and to comment on the ramblings of others, he wanted to first introduce himself and to give readers of this blog, if any, a bit of background and insight into this writer and his sometimes whacked-out sense of humor. ( Like; Why did he name it RunningRoach?) That’s a story for another post.

Downshifting into first-person mode, RunningRoach continues:

I started as a child in a small, quaint and quiet town just 10 miles west of New York City, called Newark. I managed, not only to survive but to grow up and develop into much of what I am today during the first 18 years of my life, more times than not as a bit of a delinquent, “exploring”, muddling thru puberty, then adolescence, right on into manhood, while being “educated” there. (In the streets as well as in the classrooms.)

I can without the least bit of hesitation admit that this life, now into its seventh decade, has been a parade of significant and sometimes unanticipated changes. While I don’t claim to be a “neo” anything, my evolution has formed, reformed and reinforced many basic values that have attached themselves to me as leaches along the way, and most of which I maintain to be undeniable truths. (Unless proven otherwise.) You know what I mean…the existence of a higher power, like God; “Do unto others..”unless you can’t deal with what others are doing to you.; “If at first, you don’t succeed”….have it fixed.; along with several other “commitments of prejudice” and all that heady stuff most of us won’t admit to.

A BS, an MS, a Ph.D., an Honorable Discharge from the U.S.A.F. along with several patents and society memberships, are among the many sometimes dusted mile markers along this trip hanging on my office walls. An older more cherished document, presented to my great grandfather by King Emanuel III of Italy, hangs squarely centered within this mare's nest and proclaims him ”Il Cavalieri” (A Knight.) He was a Provincial Judge in Sicily, and was heralded as being “Una giustizia delle persone.”(A Justice of the people.) I do have some pride in my ancestry and hopefully a bit of the empathy, tolerance and common sense he possessed. From my reading of his diaries, translated by my late father, I found him to be a strong family man, fair-minded, forward thinking and far from an activist judge. The Fascist government that ultimately followed the “Throne” brought an abrupt end to his fairness, fame, fortune, and life, and booted his children, my grandfather aged 16 included, out of the country.

I didn't ask to be deposited into this world as the only child of a lower middle class Italian American family during the Second World War. Nor was I asked permission to be baptized a Catholic shortly after my arrival. Nor did I bend my fathers’ arm to encourage him to declare the family “Republican” upon his return from fighting the Fascists and Nazis in Europe. All of these “gifts” were freely and lovingly given. The one thing that my parents bequeathed upon me, for which I am, more times than not ambivalent, is a brain. At times a curse far worse than being “fat, dumb and happy”!

It’s not an easy chore to be “smart” and then do some monumentally dumb things. Fortunately, I learned a bit from them and mended my ways as a very young man... then as a middle-aged man, and now as a senior. Learning never ends. I now observe with a strong measure of incredulity and gastrointestinal discomfort, “dumb things” repeated with ever-increasing frequency by people at the highest levels of government, power, and influence. I’m not talking about overtly criminal activity here, per se. Just stupidity…Unabashed childish stupidity that sometimes equates to outright criminal activity.

Take the Trump-Russia collusion meme as an example. After all the endless discourse that we’ve suffered through,

More about that stuff, and of the evolutionary process that brought me here in Introduction Part II.