By Cecil Hoge

My brother, who happens to be almost 30 years younger than me, is under the impression that my generation was worthless and the source of many of today’s problems. My generation, according to my brother, was composed of loose-living, weak-minded liberals befuddled by drugs and a lack of a work ethic. He may be right.

I admit my generation, like all generations, had many faults and it was certainly true that many of our ideas went off the deep end. In particular, my brother has cited the wide scale drug use of my generation as an example of just how misguided we were. I cannot deny that my generation took drugs…lots of drugs…and those drugs, in many cases, had truly harmful effects. I cannot deny that our lackadaisical approach to life and some of our beliefs were wrong or, at best, misplaced.

That said, I cannot help but believe that the present period suffers from faults of its own. Specifically, I think this is The Age of Buffalo Chips. What are Buffalo Chips you may ask? Well, since this is a family type blog, I prefer not to call a spade a spade when it might be considered vulgar and profane. Therefore, I am not calling this The Age of Bullsh–t and I am not fully spelling out that crude term.

If you still have further questions about what I mean by The Age of Buffalo Chips, try to imagine you are an American pioneer setting up a homestead on the Great American Prairie. There were not many trees on that prairie. And during the winter it got cold and nasty. So how did they heat their mud brick homesteads. Well, Buffalo Chips of course.

What exactly were Buffalo Chips. Well, Buffalos, like humans, have to go the bathroom. And Buffalos did not have the modern advantages of present Americans, namely, indoor plumbing. So Buffalos did the thing that came naturally to them. They pooped on the prairie. And Buffalo poop, after being left out on the prairie tended to dry out. So Buffalo Chips were dried out Buffalo Poops. And fortunately for the first American settlers on the prairie, the Buffalos pooped a lot. Why, you may ask? It turned out that when the Buffalo Poop dried out and became Buffalo Chips, those chips burned nice and slow and made very good firewood where there was no other firewood.

I have no reports as to whether Buffalo Chips smelled when they burned. If you are interested to learn, you will have to organize a seance with some American pioneers who lived on the prairie or try burning Buffalo Chips yourself. Hint: Buffalo Chips may be hard to locate in this day and age.

So Buffalo Chips were used in the same way coal was and heated many of the first homes on the American Prairie before indoor heating and plumbing came into wide use. You could say that Buffalo Chips were the same as bullsh–t, even if Buffalos were not exactly Bulls. That is what I mean when I say this is The Age of Buffalo Chips.

My calling this The Age of Buffalo Chips does not tell you exactly why I am using that phrase, so I wish to go further into my explanation. First and foremost, I would like to say that while my generation did indulge in drugs and other intoxicants, it seems to me that the present generation is stoned out of its mind – translation: acting as if they were taking heavy drugs. How so, you may ask? Not in the sense that the present generation is actually taking drugs, although the recent emergence of head shops in my little town of Port Jefferson would argue that some youngsters are still into Wacky Tabacky.

I do hear a lot of talk about “Opiods” and heroin addiction, especially in those depressed mid-west towns that voted for our present President. But those people are not stoned out their mind in the sense that I am talking about. I am talking about the people who look and talk completely straight, as if they have never taken a drug or a drop of alcohol in all their life. I am talking about groups of people,..business leaders, politicians, pundits, experts, economists, statisticians, prognosticators, lawyers, stock market analysts, big company marketers who are not taking drugs or “Opiods” or heroin. I am talking about a generation of business and political leaders who I think are “stoned out of their heads”.

Let me give you an example of  The Age of Buffalo Chips. There is a company that is presently running an advertising campaign on a product that is supposed to help people lower their blood sugar levels. The commercial begins with a guy walking dog. There is one problem – the dog is refusing to move. I guess what this is saying is that the guy is being held back from walking his dog. You can see that from the commercial. The dog is obviously not co-operating, and I suppose the point of that is that something in the guy’s body is not complying.

Meanwhile, the commercial is discussing the difficulties of controlling your blood sugar level if you have diabetes. It goes on to show some kind of instrument that seems to be both an injection system and medicine holding system. This system seems to be able to assist you injecting yourself with some kind of chemical (presumably to control your blood sugar) and at the same time, it seems to have enough medicine in it to give you multiple injections over a period of time. That seems to be the gist of both the instrument and the medicine. At that point, the commercial says, in so many words, that this is an easier way to control your blood sugar level, something very important for people with Diabetes.

Pretty soon that commercial moves on to show the guy now walking his dog, who mysteriously gets up, presumably now because his master has used the mysterious instrument and injected the medicine. As he is walking along the guy begins to kind of dance. We can tell he is happy. Things are going better. The dog is walking with him…oh happy day. Then the guy ditches the dog and seems to be dancing through a park past picnic tables and happy park people.

At that point the commercial begins to list a litany of potential side effects from the medicine and we hear this list of problems that might occur…shortness of breath, wheezing, constipation, heart palpitations, diarrhea, bad breath, cancer, hernia, seizures, internal bleeding…I am not sure if this list is a complete or accurate list, but it gives you a feeling of the commercial. Meanwhile, the guy gets happier and happier, wiggling and waggling, shimmying and shagging his way through the park, dancing away, dancing around picnic tables, smiling at everybody and everything, with happier and happier music as the list of potential ailments goes on.

Then the guy moves to an office, presumably one where he works, dancing through the office aisles, around desks, past other workers, with get happy music. In the background, the list of possible side effects ends with a fatal heart attack or stroke and then moves swiftly on to the many advantages of this remarkable new system. The final few seconds of the commercial show the guy mowing his lawn in circles while the announcer provides the sensible advice that it is perhaps good to consult your doctor about using this delightful new system, advising you prudently if you have a history tuberculosis, heart disease, liver disease or several other ailments that it is probably best to stay from this new miracle system.

I, not having Diabetes or a problem with blood sugar level, do not pay too close attention to this commercial. I am guessing that this kind of marketing does work, not only because it seems to be running almost every night, but also because there seem to be many other medicines running commercials at the same time touting different medical benefits, while each listing several dozen possible side effects. I offer the man walking his dog commercial as a prime example of The Age of Buffalo Chips.

Another example of The Age of Buffalo Chips is politicians, some on the left, some on the right, telling us about a proper solution to a problem that they know never has a chance of ever being accepted. So, for example, Democrats today love to talk before TV cameras and say that we need to improve and enhance Obamacare. Now these politicians know of course that a new Republican President of the United States was just elected on the promise of abolishing Obamacare. And they know the Republicans now control The Senate, The Congress and most States in the country and that the Republicans have sworn, cross their hearts, to abolish Obamacare. Therefore, these Democrats know, clearly, absolutely, without any question or doubt, that there is not the slightest chance of Obamacare being improved or enhanced. And yet they say quite earnestly in front of cameras that this is what we should do.

So why do they go on TV and recommend something that there is absolutely no possibility of getting done? Simply because they want to put their faces in front of cameras and show their constituents that they are doing something that will never get adopted. Truly, this is an example of The Age of Buffalo Chips.

But fear not, this is a beloved technique of both parties. When the Democrats were in power and they had passed Obamacare, the Republicans proudly got up and said they would abolish Obamacare. Now they knew they had no way to abolish Obamacare with so many Democrats in Congress and in the Senate. But that did not stop them from getting up in front of cameras and saying and recommending what we should do.

And now, after they did get elected, after the Republicans did gain control of the Senate, the Congress and many state governments, these same Republicans cannot agree to adopt the very changes that swore they would put in place when they knew they could not do it. Truly, another prime example of Buffalo Chips.

While we are on the subject of TV through cable or satellite, I would like to mention that once upon a time TV was free. Now, you did not have many channels and in the beginning it was just black and white. As time went on, TVs moved from black and white to color and the number of stations gradually increased. Pretty soon it was almost 10.

There were still a number of problems with early TV. The channel selection was quite limited – there were a few local channels and a few national network channels. And then there were the advertisements. There were lots of advertisements.

The worst problem with TV of that time (the late 1940s and the early 1950s) was the fact that you had to physically change the channels. It makes me break out in a sweat just thinking about it. You had to get up, walk to the TV and turn it on. After that you still had to turn the channel dial, while standing at the TV. When you decided what station you wanted, you would select it and walk back fifteen or twenty feet and sit down. And most of the time you watched that station for the next one or two hours.

If you wanted to change a station, you had to get up, walk over to the TV and turn the channel dial to the new station you wanted. Then you had to walk back and sit down and watch that channel until you wanted to change it again. Truly, watching TV in those days was exhausting. And if you happened to be a channel surfer in those days and if there were as many channels as there are today, you would never need to worry about going to the gym because the exercise you would get changing channels would greater than the best gym workout.

We live in an age of progress and we can thank the good Lord for the invention of the remote. The first remotes were developed in 1950, but at the time you had to have a wire that ran from the TV back to your remote by the easy chair you were sitting on. This was a true danger because someone could trip over it on their way to get more chips or another beer. But progress waits for no man and in 1955 the first wireless remotes were developed and mankind, or at least many Americans, were freed from the need of wires.

Very early on there were attempts to have cable systems for TV, but these were only very limited. That was because no one wanted to pay for cable. In fact, in the 1950s and 1960s it was widely believed that TV would always be free.

But that is not what happened. In the early 1970s cable systems came into wide use based on the promise of commercial free TV. And for some years, cable TV was mostly commercial free, but you did pay for it. In the early days it was $10 or $15 a month. But as time passed and the cable networks saw new opportunities, the cost for cable went up and commercials began to work their way into cable TV programming. So by the 1980s people found themselves paying more for cable TV and watching just as many commercials as when TV was free.

Of course, because progress is always progressing, the number of cable TV programs was greatly enlarged. First to 30 or 40 stations, then 50 or 80 stations and then to hundreds of stations and soon to thousands. And that resulted in exponentially more channels to run commercials on.

It must be admitted, even by the most enthusiastic TV viewers, that the quality of these new programs was not always as high as the original programs that first aired when there were only two or three stations and when TV was completely free. And given the fact that instead of dozens of Tv commercials, you no had tens of thousands of TV commercials to work your way through. But, if channel quantity is a good indication of value, the cost per program became minimal and the opportunity to watch commercials became infinite.

So what cable TV offers today is a vast array of channel choices, some with good programming, good movies, some with myriad reality and Buffalo Chip programming and all with a sea of commercials for viewer to suffer through.

Given that we are in The Age of Buffalo Chips, all of this makes perfect sense.

Now my brother tells me that there are lots of new free digital programming available where the programming is much better and the commercials are either non-existent or at least far less. So this is a really good thing. Recently, my brother tried to convert his cable, internet and phone programming to just the internet. It sounds simple but this is a no no in cable land. I gather it took about three days and twelve hours in voicemail hell to obtain a talking, living person on the phone who said they might, just might, be able to do that although they absolutely recommended against making such a terrible decision as unbundling, since my brother would lose access all the wonderful programming cable, phone and internet that Verizon offered.

It is not clear if my brother John finally succeeded, but it is clear he is working his way through a giant pile of Buffalo Chips.

Let us move on to another field of activity…economics. Today we have a several cable or network shows reviewing and gleaning over and interpreting and pontificating on economic events on a daily basis and if one listens carefully to what these ladies and gentlemen say, one looks into the very heart of Buffalo Chips and sees that it is brown and dried out and, unlike the real buffalo chips, not even useful for heating homes.

What do these ladies and gentlemen of the dismal science tell us. Buffalo Chips is the answer.

Let’s make a few observations:

When the stock market goes down, the pundits interviewed tell us on the various national financial shows, that now is the time for “bottom fishing”. Oh, certainly, a few pundits are enlisted to say there may be some “risks” going forward, but then other pundits are interviewed immediately afterwards who point out that “the smart money” is “buying the dip”. Yes, we are told, at the time of maximum risk, the bold investor, the smart investor, the truly genius investor, is going into the market is…”bottom fishing”, “buying the dip” and surely, making a killing.

When the stock market is going up, the same pundits interviewed tells us about “the GoldiLocks economy” – that is when the business may not seem that great (for example, like today), but is still staggering upwards, while interest rates are held in check, while the Fed is still holding off raising interest rates too much, while the stock market continues to log increase after increase, though for no apparent reason. And so the pundits being interviewed always say the stock valuations are not really that high, even if they are higher than at any time in the last 150 years. Why? Because we are in a “GoldiLocks economy”.

And what happens if the “GoldiLocks economy” continues for years and the stock market goes up year after year and business stays about the same for year after year, as it has, for example, for the last seven years. Then these same pundits talk about “momentum” and “missing momentum”. Do you really want to miss the momentum when the economy continues to grow at a small rate and the stock market continues to surge upwards? Surely then, we are on the verge of a new boom, surely productivity is about to increase and there will be a growth rate that defies all others.

And yet, it does seem, when one looks at the stock market and the economy, that the stock market goes up 19% while the actual economy goes up 2.3%. Does that make sense. Not actually, unless, of course, you happen to be in The Age of Buffalo Chips. Then, it makes perfect sense.

I might slightly divert this discourse and mention that in recent years large corporations have discovered if they gobble up other companies and buy their own stock and downsize the overall number of their employees, they can see their stock valuations go up and they can show ever greater profits, even if the sales of all the individual companies they bought and own are declining. How does that work? In brief it works great for the brilliant business leaders of the company who draw millions and millions for their personal annual income. It does not work so well, however, if you are employed in any of these great corporations because there is a real possibility that you will be downsized. That is what is known as creative accounting in The Age of Buffalo Chips.

This might be a good time to give my personal opinion of what happened in the collapse of 2007 & 2008. First of all, I wish to warn you that my opinion is most likely not held by many people and so, it should be considered just what it is, an opinion.

Here is what I think happened: The United States of America went bankrupt in 2007 and 2008. Now we all know that America did not declare bankruptcy in those years, so what I am talking about is a bit of a secret. I think when the Bush Administration (they were ending their administration just as the great collapse was starting) came to understand the true ramifications of what actually happened, they quickly and correctly understood that they could not tell the American public what actually happened. Why, because if they did, 50 or more million people might have been thrown out of work.

So they did the best thing they could: they lied. They said that the problem was only a temporary disruption and the government began writing blank checks to all the corporations that got us into trouble. I want to say something in favor of the Bush Administration: I believe they had absolutely no choice and they did the right thing. Yes, they could have let all the over large businesses that got us into trouble go bankrupt, but that would have resulted in another Great Depression and truly another 50,000,000 plus people would have lost their jobs and the government would have had no way to assist those people or deal with that problem.

So the government wrote checks and issued bonds for trillions of dollars to solve the problem. How did they do it? The Federal Reserve Bank simply purchased with bonds vast seas of bad, failing assets held by the companies that caused the problem. Now there was no actual money that existed for this. The American Government simply created funds, literally printing money or issuing bonds to purchase bad assets. They then took these bad assets off of the books of the companies that caused the problem and said they were now on the books of the Government. The total of those bad assets presently total $4,500,000,000. It is a big pile of Buffalo Chips.

In addition, the Government literally gave money directly to many of the same companies that got us into trouble. So the huge companies that created the problem were given cash to keep going in addition having most of their bad assets taken off of their books.

What do I think was the cause of all these problems and why was it so difficult a problem? I think it was one word: Leverage. For most of the 80s, all of the 90s and up through 2007, the new generation of financial experts were figuring out new and creative ways to create more and more leverage.

Let’s go back a bit. In the early 1900s, banks and stock brokerage firms lent money on the basis of having about 15% in hard assets and raising 85% in loans, stocks and bonds. The assumption at the time was that not all your loans could go bad at once and if you had 15% in hard assets, it was relatively safe to raise money in loans or stocks or bonds for 85% more. That worked pretty well up until 1920 and then banks and stock brokerage companies got together and figured out new ways for their customers to buy stocks, real estate and other bad investments while putting only a small amount money down.

That worked great as long as the stock market and real estate was going up, but when they went down many investors found they suddenly had to put up money they did not have. That, in essence, was the problem that the country faced when the Great Crash and the Great Depression began in 1929. It was also, by the way, the reason for the Glass-Steagall Act of 1934 which forbid commercial banks and investment firms from working together.

In the 1980s, when once again the stock exchanges began to truly recover from the terrible losses of the 1930s, the young people going into financial markets began to figure out new ways to gamble on investments. All sorts of new opportunities were created to invest and in doing so it became possible to greatly increase the money raised from hard assets. So, instead of having 15% in hard assets and raising 85%, it became possible to raise 99% from 1% in hard assets. Most of those people were still from my generation.

That was only the beginning of the trend of the rise of leverage. New younger guys and gals came on to the scene. They had borrowed money to get through college and they now found themselves starting careers with substantial college debts. Admittedly, this was nothing like the college debts as of May, 2017, which presently happens to be 1.4 trillion dollars. Let me write that number out – $1,400,000,000 owed by 44 million college student borrowers. Anyway, the next generation of younger guys and gals saw that stock market and investment businesses were prospering and they decided to join the prosperity train.

Now these young guys and gals were starting out with debts from college so they wanted to figure out new ways to create for more opportunity for themselves. And what better way to do that than to increase leverage. This allowed more money to be raised from the same assets so more investments could be offered and everybody could profit. And this generally worked really well all through the 90s. And by the end of century, Glass-Steagall was revoked and leverage surged ahead to become more like a half of one percent assets with 99.5% of all monies raised from that. If anybody had cared to think about that they would have realized that there was no there there.

When the 2000s began, colleges began to really get really expensive and each new class indebted themselves more. So it should come as no surprise that the newest generations of college students looked around to see where the best opportunities for enrichment were. Everybody could see that was in the go-go investment and stock brokerage and merger/acquisition companies, not to mention the formerly conservative banks who leaped into the game by selling stocks and bonds, gambling in currency markets and offering home mortgages and car loans to people who could not pay them back.

By the year 2007, things were beginning to fray a bit. The Age of Buffalo Chips was becoming evident. People were buying homes and cars and boats that they could not afford and it was all on credit made possible by, you guessed it, leverage. By this time, the money raised in mortgages, subprime loans, stock investments, real estate, government buildings was about 1500 times the actual value of hard assets available to borrow from. Houston, we have a problem. It seems there is no there there. Ooops.

I do not think the Bush Administration or the Clinton Administration before it ever saw this coming. To be sure, some people did see it coming – one only has to read Michael Lewis’s book, “The Big Short”, to know, without question that some people knew what was happening and made investments to counter what they knew would occur.

Now the gurus and the pundits and the economists interviewed after the collapse of the stock market and the economy all, almost to a man or a gal, said that no one could have foreseen or predicted the collapse of 2007/2008. But of course that is just another example of Buffalo Chips since there are still hard copies of “The Big Short” out there to directly contradict all those gurus and pundits and economists who, by the way, are still pontificating today about the glories of our stock market.

Anyway, when the Bush Administration did realize what had happened, the first thing they knew and understood was that they could not actually say that America had gone bankrupt. And frankly, this was a necessity. So they did their best and they printed a lot of money, wrote a lot of checks and bailed out the people who had created the problem because they knew if they didn’t a new Great Depression would arrive.

And shortly after, when the Obama Administration came to power and also came to realize the full extent of the problem, they also did essentially the same thing. They continued to pay off the people who caused the problem. And this is because the alternative was just too tough. In doing so, they also bailed out the American Car Industry, with the exception of Ford, who happened to be reasonably, well-funded. I believe this allowed us to get to the present period with a minimum of pain, but with a totally lackluster economy and it did, we must admit, save the majority of the American car industry.

Of course, today, 10 years after the collapse, we are still in a kind of economic haze of tepid survival. Today’s politicians lie about that. Maybe because they do not know better, maybe just because they want to be elected, maybe because they do know better. Whatever the reason, the economy is what it is because of the events we have passed through and because of the failure and collapse of leverage. At least, that is what I think.

I would also like to interject another opinion of mine here – that is, that America’s stock markets are rigged. Just how they are rigged I am not quite sure. I am guessing it is a combination of people and companies with faster computers than the computers used by the leading American stock exchanges, of computer generated algorithms that favor certain companies and certain trends and of many financial institutions working loosely together. Again, that is only my opinion and, like all opinions, it may be wrong.

But fear not, this is The Age of Buffalo Chips. As we speak, new, younger financial wizards are out there trying figure out new ways to increase leverage and to make money where there is no there there.

Moving on from the economy and back to TV, it is important to note that once upon a time, before The Age of Buffalo Chips, news organizations tried to report on news without taking sides. That is hard to realize in this era of “Fake News” and biased news where cable, radio and TV networks take sides and report the news with specific agendas. Our President says the main stream media is the enemy because they are distributors of “Fake News”. And surely it is true that the mainstream is biased because no matter the news organization, each has a point of view.

For example, surely CBS, ABC, NBC, MSNBC and CNN are all left leaning, pro-Democratic and decisively against Mr. Trump and the Republicans. And if it were not for Fox News, you would have to say that all the mainstream media is decisively against Trump and the Republicans. A curious fact is that Fox News spends a significant amount of time saying that the mainstream media is completely biased against Trump and the Republicans. And that would be true if it were not for the fact that Fox News is the most watched and the most popular mainstream news media in the United States.

So the truth of the matter is that the most popular mainstream media, Fox News, has made a career of calling all the other mainstream media biased. At the same time, most of the rest of the mainstream media – CBS, ABC, NBC, MSNBC and CNN – spends a lot of time calling Fox News biased and “Fake News”.

Both sides in this debate are 100% right. All media outlets have their own agendas and they are all, one and all, biased. And that also goes for newspapers and radio stations and the Internet in all its many forms.

I remember a time when the national media networks felt that they should only report the news and they should not take sides. I am thinking of Walter Cronkite and many other newscasters who at least seemed to be reporting what happened without saying what or who is wrong or right. Perhaps, my memory of that time is hazy or rose-colored. In any case, that era is long gone. We are now in The Age of Buffalo Chips.

I would like to say that I do not like The Age of Buffalo Chips. I would prefer news organizations to be responsible, but they are not. So, what is one to do? In my opinion, it is to look at the many different agendas and listen to the “news” as they report it and then make up your own mind and decide for yourself what is true, what is not true and what is Buffalo Chips.

This is not easy and I think it means listening to many sides and then reading history, thinking about all the different news reports and then making up your mind. It is my opinion, in The Age of Buffalo Chips, you have to think for yourself, decide for yourself and yes, make up your own damn mind.

Now as long as I am discussing this present period, I think it might be useful to consider lawyers. A lot of things have been said about people of that profession and almost universally, most of what has been said is negative. This is understandable when one sees some of the ads on TV for lawyers.

Whether it be Mesothelioma, Asbestos poisoning, or some terrible ailment caused by a wonder drug that has laid low a portion of the population, lawyers never seem to be at a loss to offer their services. In the old days, when advertising for legal services were forbidden or frowned upon, some lawyers were described as ambulance chasers. But the times have changed and there are much bigger bucks to be made.

Consider the prominent ads of the renowned firm, Yuckem, Suckem and Shuckem – I may have misspelled their name slightly. Their ads flood prime time TV. If you or some relative of yours has had the misfortune to contract Mesothelioma, leukemia, psoriasis, or some other disease that may or may not be related to some blockbuster drug, please apply to Yuckem, Suckem and Shuckem. They are the heroes of the people, they can get you big money, which, of course, is your God-given right to have.

Now perhaps the above is an example of what our President calls “Truthful Hyperbole”. Perhaps, there is no such firm as Yuckem, Suchem and Shuckem. You decide that. As far as I am concerned, this is just another example of The Age Buffalo Chips.

In reading this blog story I realize that I may have said many negative things about this period. I would like to mention some truly positive things about what I am calling The Age of Buffalo Chips. Perhaps the best starting point for that is the lady shown above. Let us consider her life when she and presumably her husband first arrived on the plains of Kansas to settle and make a new home in what was then the West.

Truly, her life and her husband’s life was not easy. We know from the picture above that she had adequate heating materials and she was strong enough to handle a wheel barrow. We can presume that she and her husband had access to water somewhere nearby. How far she or he had to carry the water we do not know. What seems sure is that she or her husband did not have indoor plumbing, did not have oil, gas or electric heating, did not have AC to cool the little homestead on those hot summer days on the Great American Prairie. Nor did they have a washing machine or a dishwasher, so house-keeping was not easy and starting out on the lone prairie involved struggle and endless hours of physically back-breaking work for she, her husband and her children.

Yes, they might have had a horse or a mule or a goat or a cow to provide some limited transportation, help with the plowing  or give the family some milk. They might have had some chickens or pigs to tend to and slaughter and eat. We can be sure they did not enjoy the modern benefits of an automobile that propelled them air-conditioned or heated according to the time of year back and forth to a supermarket packed with a myriad choice of meats, vegetables or sweets. A trip to town, where ever it was, might have taken many hours and the fare available to buy…be it hardware or foodstuffs or blankets and sheets…must have been limited.

Nor did our lady enjoy the creature comforts of the digital age. She could not call her children to remind them about soccer practice, she could not listen to songs on the radio or view soap or reality shows on TV. And most of all, she could not call her lady friends or perhaps even her boyfriend on the side and tell them or him her troubles and excitements and accomplishments of the day.

Yes, there are many enhancements and improvements in our life today in what I am calling the The Age of Buffalo Chips. There is much to be thankful about, there are many things that were issues for our ancestors that are not issues for us. So, the The Age of Buffalo Chips may be a period full of bullsh–t, but it also an age of privilege and wonder.

Perhaps the most wondrous example of this period is the ability to search for information on the web. Admittedly, sometimes it is hard to understand what is true and accurate because the choice and range of information available is truly mind-boggling. I am thinking specifically of a resource like Wikipedia. It is admittedly not the Encyclopedia Britannica, but it is a remarkable tool. Because it is an open source, ever-changing, ever-expanding media – kind of like our universe. It is not easy to be sure that everything is true and accurate. That said, it is resource that can be consulted at a moment’s notice almost anyplace at almost any time for free to check or counter-check some information.

I think the ability to access many websites for news, the weather or other desired information is a another remarkable advantage only made possible by the Internet and smart cell phones. The two combined provide us with a vast sea of portable, transmittable data and information. We can check things, verify things, look up things, photograph, record and video people and moments in our life. We can write notes, stories, novels, histories and even lowly blog stories. In truth, The Age of Buffalo Chips, as befuddling and confusing as it is, is also The Age of Great Possible Enlightenment.

It is great because there is an enormous amount of information available to access. It is possible because we carry around a tool, the smart phone, that can instantly access almost any kind of information. And that is possible because there is something called the Internet.

Of course, being possible also implies that it can be also be impossible. That is because in The Age of Buffalo Chips we are the ones who must inform ourselves and that means all of us must be willing and capable to stay informed, to judge for ourselves the information presented to us and to be able to determine the truth within. And that my friends is not always easy in The Age of Buffalo Chips.