Between Five And Eight Million People

Our temps have been slowly creeping up, but it sounds like there’s more snow forecasted along with dropping temps, but according to the meteorologists, this weekend, and especially Sunday, is supposed to be substantially warmer.

It was another slow day in real estate, and about all I got accomplished, was a long chat with a buyer regarding a home I may be getting listed in the near future. The biggest problem I’m gonna have, is coming up with an asking price which will have already factored-in the number of updates it’s needing, so perhaps if I have time tomorrow, I’ll do some deep digging.

Another call I had to make, was to a seller in regards to the pricing of a home they’re planning on selling in the near future, and as chance would have it, there’s already someone interested in it who happens to know one of the sellers. Of course if that buyer does step up to the plate and buy it direct, I’ll likely get asked to handle the paperwork for them. Oh well, it’s been happening all the more since the pandemic arrived, so I’ll likely end up doing it.

One of the members of St. Paul Lutheran called earlier, and then stopped by mid-afternoon to show me an accompaniment book for a solo clarinet, and after paging thru it, I suggested we perform a duet with one of my favorites which that book contained and it being, ‘Be Thou My Vision’. It’s actually been one of my favorite pieces, and since she left the book with me, just so I could practice it before we meet up to play together, not long after she left, I sat down at piano and ran thru it a few times. Yes, it’ll be another learning curve for me because it’s strictly an accompaniment which sounds considerably different than what’s normally played, but after the third run-thru, I believe with enough practice, it’ll be fine. My gosh! It’s been more years than I want to admit since I’ve accompanied another instrument. I’m gonna put it out there that we’ll both be in sync with each other. I could already tell how excited she is over the two us performing over at St. Paul Lutheran. I quietly said to myself before getting up from the piano bench, “Well Mr. Chodur, you’re always looking for another challenge, so git er done.” Who knows, maybe I’ll start steering in the direction of playing more for the voices of other instruments, and I’ve definitely not forgotten about the young man who’s still working at comfortably playing his cello.

In between the calls and drop-ins, I remained diligent at getting more of my taxes in order and journalized, but the one thing I don’t like about going over past expenses, is seeing some of the price gouging that took place last year, and believe me, there are three companies doing business in our city whom I’ll nevermore have them do work for me. Can you believe, I was charged $320.00 labor for something that couldn’t have taken anymore than an hour? It’s no wonder more people are going on YouTube and learning how to replace broken parts and where to order them. Unfortunately our city has a high percentage of senior homeowners who’re fair game for such rip-offs. It’s no wonder many of them put off important maintenances in their homes, and mostly because they’re afraid of getting taken to the cleaners. As I’ve mentioned before, we definitely need more trades competition in our city, just so their labor pricing stays under control. For sure if someone asks me about who I would or wouldn’t use, I’ll freely tell them.

If I continue to have slow days the remainder of this week, I may have all the journaling done with my taxes, and all I’ll be waiting for, are the mailings from various institutions which seem to take them forever to send.

I just remembered a soulful conversation I had with a young gentleman yesterday regarding how religious beliefs have been key ingredients for starting wars, and if you’re done enough reading of history from the time records were made, you’d soon find that nearly all wars over these hundreds and thousands of years, had something to do with religious differences. The religious war which always stands out in my mind, was the thirty years war which took place in Europe during seventeenth century and the rough estimate of lives lost, ended up being between five and eight million people, and it was all predicated on religious differences. Just thinking about number of innocent lives lost, sends a chill thru me once again.

Since I’ve been more involved with various denominations these recent years, I’ve grown more accepting of their ways, which is how it should be, because we’re all supposed to be praying to the same God, and if they have their own forms of worship, why should anyone care?

The problem I’ve been having these recent years, is with some of those who’ve aligned themselves with the right-wing churches which heavily promote the proselytization of the general public. I have to admit that I’ve had certain members of those churches work very hard at getting me to attend their services, and in spite of my assuring them I’m just fine where I’m now at with my faith, they just don’t wanna stop.

Yes, I’ve even lost business over it these years, but if that’s what a person has to do to make a dollar, I’d rather go out and pull weeds out of onions for a living instead of pretending to be one of their ‘brethren’.

I know I’m getting a bit opinionated about it all, but I must end this by saying how crazy some of them have become to where they’re crossing over into our political arenas and demanding to be the voices for all the more of their ‘moral’ legislations. Now that’s bad.

Tonight’s One-liner is: Natural forces within us are the true healers of disease.

Joe Chodur

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