PLAY THE CARDS

Habits are hard to break and we are creatures of habit. Wake up, get up, ritual, check weight, coffee, write; I boot up the computer and go straight to journal. While coffee was perking I was processing and if I don’t write, those thoughts will die unexamined. One of my boys has a truly high maintenance family, so many things, so much to do, to keep up and he tries to keep up with me and my needs as well. When my things slip past him and they do, his apology will be real and he feels much worse than I do but he is still a work in progress. I said not to fret, shared a little story from my summers in Alaska with Kenai Fjords National Park. 
Our uniforms had shirt pockets and we were issued small note pads with National Park logos that fit the pocket perfectly. Part of our training was emphasis on being in proper uniform. That included the note pad in our shirt pocket, never be without a pen and note pad. The more you take note, the more you recall, the more you follow up, the better you learn and likewise the more completely you perform the mission of the N.P. Service, the 3-P’s; Protect, Preserve and last but not least, Please the public (Park visitors). It becomes habit, jotting down a few words to follow up on later. Names, email addresses, sightings, questions, locations, observations; it doesn’t take long to jot down enough to make sense of later. It was for real, the note pad was no less important than bear spray. Keep it close, use it. I learned to do that and it changed my life. Sometimes it works like carrying an umbrella, insurance against rain. The time lost to scribbling a note is well invested, especially if you remember because you wrote to begin with rather than having to read.
I knew my son would not rush out and buy a note pad for his shirt pocket but I shared the story anyway. No telling how long a seed will lie dormant in a dusty crack before it gets a drink and shoots a root. I was 70 that summer in Seward and learning that lesson has been worth the wait. I have small note books and 3x5 index cards in every room, in the truck, my back pack and shopping bags. My note pads get the same devotion as the preacher with his bible except it's what I write in mine that counts. My note books are all scribbled half full with plenty of clean pages still at the ready. It is a good habit in a time of so many bad ones. 
I am on my last few sips of morning coffee. When I was younger, less seasoned, I spurned the idea of hot coffee in summer. But that changed like everything else and morning is hot coffee time. Then last night I made orange spice tea with tea bags in the microwave. It’s not involved as it sounds and it works like a charm. Shred and dry fresh orange zest in a tin to be used later. Whirl the fleshy orange in the blender with a tall glass of water, add dry zest from the tin, from the time before, five or six orange tea bags and microwave on high to near boil and let it stew for a while. Cold water, ice cubes, a chili in the freezer and you have a couple of liters of great orange spice tea, enough for a second call before turning in. Hot coffee early is a kick start while icy spice tea in the p.m. is a fix, not unlike a timely kiss.
It rained again last night when we didn’t really need it. For over a month the ground had been drying, cracking and I thought maybe summer’s Dog Days were early. Go on the road for a week and return to ground too soft, grass too wet to mow. Still, I’ll be watering again before my housekeeping to-do list gets caught up. But right now it’s time to get up and move my feet. My job today is to make it a good one. I know, I know; shit happens but karma tells me, play the cards you’ve been dealt.

EVERYBODY'S TALKIN'

First wake-up after an 8 day road trip, sort of a déjà vu rewind. Covid kept me sidelined for nearly 16 months and I have missed truck stops and tires singing on the blacktop. Not knowing how I would hold up, I split the drive down to the Gulf Coast in half with aa overnight layover in Grenada, Mississippi. Sleeping in the truck cab is nothing new, been doing it for decades but temperature and humidity made it uncomfortable. Daylight is always a welcome sight over the dashboard, even more so when you have slept folded up like yesterday’s crumpled napkin. I thought about bringing the generator and a cot for the back but chose otherwise in the last minute. The revelation here would be that I am a year older but none the wiser. Next time I will bring my bed and electricity with me. The year may have dulled my edge but not enough for me to shell out ‘beaucoup’ (too many) dollars for eight unconscious hours at a Best Western or Super 8 Inn. I remember on this same trip in 1993 I paid $12 for a good sleep at a little Mom & Pop motel in Jonesboro, Arkansas. She dropped the price $1.50 if I agreed not to use the towel or take a shower. In the spring of 1970 my brother in law and I slept on plush chairs pulled together in a motel lobby in Durango, Colorado, $5 for the both of us. Nobody does that anymore. A mediocre bed now would cost $100 with taxes and a tip. Call it progress, not complaining but I can be like the turtle, carry my bed on my back. Either way I keep my $100 for another day.

The drive yesterday (850 miles) with fuel stops, food breaks and time to stretch & walk-about took 15 hours and minutes. After the lesson learned on the drive down I figured to drive until I needed a nap. I can still nap for half an hour and be fresh again for another hundred miles. If the coffee doesn’t keep me alert, stopping frequently to pee does. 

I will bumble around the house today, putting things away and reorganizing the mess I came back to. It makes so much sense to leave things in order so you don’t come home to a train wreck but I haven’t mastered that trick yet. One might think I would learn but when the last minute comes and time has run out, I just go and don’t look back. What I return to will be neither a surprise nor a disappointment. It is what it is and that’s alright. I keep telling myself I’m not complaining but for someone not complaining it sounds a lot like complaining. 

This time last year I was social distanced (home-alone), listening to my favorite music on You Tube and CDs. I’ve stopped prefixing my days in pandemic time. This would have been day 456 but from now on every day should be day number #1, start off fresh and new again every day. I still keep the music going. Right now it’s Susan Tedeschi; “Everybody’s Talkin’...goin’ where the weather suits my clothes…bankin’ off of the northeast winds, sailin’ on a summer breeze…skippin’ over the ocean like a stone.” 

REST OF MY LIFE: DAY 1

  Summer solstice, not quite the deal as winter solstice but still a day to celebrate Mother Earth and Old Man Sol. I am on the North Shore, Lake Pontchartrain, Louisiana after a two day road trip. I hadn’t seen my traveling companion of 28 years since Day #1 of our pandemic ‘Hunker-down’. Here it is 461 days later and we are gearing up for a 3 day walk-about (travel with no plans in particular) between here and Mobile, AL. I think maybe it is time to let go the numbers. I would rather think of it as day 1 of the rest of my life. Tomorrow (wake up) I’ll start over and it will be day 1 again. Every day should be a fresh start. 
I haven’t written off Covid but neither do I want to wear it like a wet blanket. Shit happens, you do what you can and when you can, in good conscience, you move on. I keep a mask close at hand and wear it in company of others who choose to wear. Sometimes I wear out of my own sense of caution. If someone carries, I would presume it means they have firearms onboard. Wearing in the same context would be a surgical mask. So I pass on the carry but wear as the situation calls for. 

LIKE A FINGER PRINT: DAY 456

Trying to teach a life lesson I coached one of my boys concerning money. We made a list of all the things he could buy with a dollar. Then I had him pick one, a make believe purchase. Without itemizing all steps in our process the point was made, after you trade your money for something you want, you have the item but the money is gone. A dollar will buy so many things but you only get to spend it once. There is a big difference between (many things) and (one of many things). That wasn’t the end of it. He had to make a list of all the things he spent his money on. Periodically we totaled up the balance and I put the question to him; “What had been worth the money and if you could go back, what would you rather have now, the money or what you spent it on?” We never have enough to buy everything we want. He didn’t like having his dad in his business and it was never smooth sailing but over time he did learn to manage his dollar.

Swimming laps in the early a.m. all sorts of ideas cross my mind, ideas that simply need to be developed which means writing. By the time I finish the swim (about 40 minutes) half a dozen, maybe more topics have rolled around, begging for my attention. If I don’t move on them right away they go away. In the water yesterday I thought about a repeating pattern, how I hate the getting up and going to the community center (the pool). Every time, I dread getting in the truck and pointing it into the sun. But not 10 minutes later, in the water, there is no place I would rather be. 

Maybe there is a touch of deferred gratification going on, sacrificing something in the moment for the chance of a reward later. Then, still in the water, the life lesson idea surfaced. Every time I sacrifice my creature comfort by moving my feet and driving into the sun I am rewarded, I get to make like a fish, weightless, streamlined and my lazy instinct is a fleeting memory, it goes away.

The only problem is, I forget the ideas that make a splash but go away. It’s like all the cars you see on the drive home. You avoid the ones with potential for a crash and yield to others simply as a courtesy. By the time you make it inside and stow your gear, details of the drive (the other cars) evaporated like mist on the window. I am hopeful the good ideas will recycle, come back around again sometime and I get another chance at them. On mornings I don’t swim I be lazy. There is a slow coming around, getting up to speed that I never suffered in my 70’s. When I woke up then I was awake. 

It just occurred to me, this blog is a little window into my life. Going back, last week, last year, many years; random rereading connects the dots and I get it. It is like a finger print. All those crooked, parallel lines with swirls and convoluted kinks, they tell a story. “This is who he is.” He is the only human who could make this print and leave it behind.” I leave them on everything I touch, on everything I write. With ‘Stones In The Road’ someone would have to take time, read lots of stories to identify. It would not be a sprint but rather a marathon. Another credible metaphor to consider is that my journal is almost like a commode. I leave little remnants from my journey there but hit the ‘Save’ button rather than ‘Move to trash’.

HOLY SHIT: DAY 451

  I listen to NPR when I listen at all, which actually says a lot about me (the ‘at all’ part) but this is not about me. Their Saturday morning programming is less news-news and more stuff-stuff. Saturday is about the only time I listen in the morning, maybe Sunday for the puzzle quiz but even at that, what you get with news-news is a lot of crap you really don’t need to know. As if; News Flash - Peace breaks out in Palestine. . . right! Don’t hold your breath, or - Trump apologizes. . . not gonna happen. That kind of news would stop clocks. But I gave Saturday a chance and the result has been, not good but to some extent bearable. Last night in Austin, Texas there was another mass shooting with 13 wounded. The police chief reports happily, no one has died. If the shooter had a bigger clip in his assault rifle or better aim, I would think, he could have killed them all. I used the pronoun ‘he’ because women simply don’t go ‘round shooting everyone in sight. I have maintained for decades and still contend, even when my self conscious male cohorts cringe at the thought, that any time a man picks up a loaded gun his penis doubles in size and what else might stroke a man’s ego so; the ultimate, righteous phallus. That was the news this Saturday morning. 
My thoughts today originally had to do with Jesus’ humanity. Whatever else I believe concerning all powerful, all knowing, supernatural beings; I believe he was human, at least for a while. That so, he consumed food, gleaned its nutritional component and jettisoned what was  left via his fully human, anal sphincter, his asshole. At the distal terminus of his digestive tract, Jesus had an asshole. If not you know, he would have been full of it. It is not something Christians would think about, much less talk about but then, their curiosity has been stunted by a terminal case of obedient denial. It begs the question, blasphemous as it may be, how did he keep it clean? Personal hygiene was in its infancy or primal state. No shelf at Nazareth’s local market for soap or toilet paper. Human excrement is nasty stuff. You don’t want it stuck to your flesh as you go about your daily tasks. Certainly you don’t want to wake up with an odoriferous crotch, laden with yesterday’s crusty poop. 
That brings up another question, related but far removed: how do they break down and recycle the unavoidable fecal stream onboard the international space station? I can imagine a filter that separates urea, creatine, ammonia and (yellow) pigments from water but shit after all, that must be a marvelous piece of hardware. 
I began today with misgivings about the news only to leapfrog my way through religious malfeasance and decomposing/recycling waste in space. I am old and I gravitate toward the attitude; “Begging forgiveness is preferable to asking permission.” The really good thing about writing this blog is that I don’t have to concern myself with either one. There are no excuses but there is always a reason. Tomorrow will bring a new story or not, maybe more of the same but it won’t change the fact, life is good so be well.

THE DEAL IS THIS: DAY 450

  This writing thing is like any other patterned behavior, we do it because that’s what we do; it’s what I do. The morning has come and gone and I’m still in the first paragraph. When I measured cold water into the coffee maker everything was as it should be. Pouring my first cup of coffee I noticed on the patio, the door on my squirrel trap was closed with a mature, full grown squirrel inside, bent on finding a way out. The deal is this; if you (squirrel) eat the peanuts I put out for the woodpeckers, you win and I settle for a stalemate. I feed both the invited and the uninvited. But if you eat the peanuts I put in the box trap for you and you get caught then you suffer the consequence. I had to choose, keep to my morning routine and relocate the squirrel later or do squirrel business right away and play catch up all day. 
It is after 1:00 p.m. and I am playing catch up. I carefully wrapped the trap in a quilted, mover’s blanket, put it in the back of my truck and drove the 12 miles to James A. Reed Wildlife Area near Lee’s Summit, MO. That is far enough (I am told) that a squirrel will not find its way home. This is the 9th tree rat I have expatriated this year. I don’t give them much credit, don’t attribute human properties (anthropomorphize) to the bushy tail rodents. I did consider the squirrel’s first truck ride, in a cage box trap, in the dark, how strange (unfamiliar) it must be. At the drop off spot my passenger stayed both still and quiet as I positioned the trap on a game trail, peeled the blanket away from the door so all it could see was its escape route. I raised open the door. After 20 seconds, no action and I bumped the cage. Squirrel came out of the chute like a thoroughbred racehorse. Without a look back, it disappeared in the brush and is by now (I would presume) exploring its new habitat and looking for food. 
Shortly after I got home my son stopped by to check on a step stool I am making for his wife. We talked measurements, glue, C clamps and made some fresh saw dust. Hanging out with your kid is something you don’t take lightly, don’t rush. He stayed for nearly an hour. I had missed breakfast altogether so an early lunch was washed down with the morning’s coffee. Something wood workers will identify with, a 5 minute reset and then wait 3 hours for glue to dry. I did one of those but they always stretch into 20 minutes with impromptu house keeping chores and dust control. Sawdust will collect and bury you if you don’t stay ahead of it. I have improvised a crude dust collector from several long hoses and one large shop vac and it is better than nothing but yes, a 5 minute task can turn into a 20 minute sawdust adventure without warning. 
I am back at my computer, mindful of an old but appropriate saying. I wish I knew who to give credit because it is such a clear eyed, simply stated truth. It goes; “The hurrier I go he behinder I get.” I volunteer with my church group that feeds the homeless and those who are food insecure. At 5:00 p.m. we (a bunch of us) will make up about 250 ham & cheese sandwiches and bag up meals for distribution at Washington Park, near Union Station in K.C., MO at 7:00. I have not been going to the distribution as plenty of help shows up at the park. That puts me home with enough time before dark to reload and position the squirrel trap. 
Recently I have been releasing juvenile cardinals that have discovered the squirrel bait. When I see the door is down I look for the squirrel but all I get is a little red bird, just standing inside, praying for mercy (humor) as I don’t anthropomorphize, right! They are pint sized little things, cardinals for sure with top knots and color but much like 13 year-old humans. Their learning curve is really flat. I doubt they learn anything, only move on through that turbulent growth spurt and hope things get better. I release the birds but suffer them with a torrent of blasphemous scorn that would leave my mother speechless. 
I don’t talk to the squirrels at all, maybe because I don’t ever want to see them again and that’s the difference. I want my cardinals to grow up and come back for the black oil sunflower seeds in the feeder atop of the pole. In winter they (males) perch in the top of the tallest tree and make that shrill, one note call that either ascends or descends for several seconds. It is so loud, so clear it is unmistakeable, even inside the house with windows closed and the TV on. It is not too soon to be marking territory and advertising availability for a prospective mate. That’s a good thing if you are a cardinal. Humans prefer small talk over a shared dinner, a glass of pinot noir, maybe playing footsie under the table. 

RESURFACING: DAY 448

  By now, anyone who follows this blog knows that I collect quotes, remember them like art collectors keep track of where they put a particular painting or hand carved piece of jade. Then, like the Native American totems I wear on a tether around my neck, some quotes just will not be put away. Not on a cord, quotes under my tongue or behind a tooth, they wait ready in the moment for a chance to be my voice. Some are hook lines from songs. One came to mind spontaneously this a.m., It was Willie’s “I woke up still not dead again today.”  and I was delighted that I did, wake up still not dead again.
I weighed in three pounds lighter than yesterday. I keep track every morning, the second thing I do after I get up. How much I weigh is not so important but knowing the number is like turning the key to start the day. I drank enough water yesterday but I was out in the full sun from 9:00 a.m. to 3:30, on my feet, moving, talking. I volunteered to help work an, end of the year field day for an elementary school that my church supports. 
The public school district for Kansas City, MO is typical of inner city systems where white flight and poverty go together like weeds and an untended garden, schools underfunded and berated. Carver Elementary is a Dual Language school. Both English and Spanish are taught simultaneously. They want their students moving on to middle school to be bilingual. Without digging into that pedagogy, Latino parents like it because English is integrated along with Spanish and many if not most, ‘no hablan Inglès’ in the home. 
I was in charge of the football throw. I had a (grandparent) volunteer who limped with a cane, perfect for chair sitting, data keeping and supervision at the launch point. I organized an ever changing , rotating cadre of ball chasers and ball returners. Out on the hash marks, in the line of fire, I marked and measured, called out the best score of three attempts and enjoyed the kids. If something unexpected happened that needed action I made the call .My recorder was busy enough, content to be in the subordinate role. 
I had forgotten how much I enjoyed the physical activity on a game-field with kids. I slowly realized that some of my ball chaser’s English was weak. The blank eyed stare was universal in that regard. So each new set of replacements I asked who spoke the best English and told him/her to make sure the others understood and that worked. My directions were simple: we don’t have time to waste, you need to finish here and move on to your next event. So whoever is closest to ball, run it back to me and I’ll throw it back to the helper at the line. With three balls, we should be able to keep them supplied. If I got a daydreamer or slow poke we had a little conference and I told them, “You have to do better. If you can’t, I will have to get another helper.” They understood that. 
We finished all the boys before the lunch break. Afterward, we helped a couple of young (high school) ladies who were basically doing the same thing with the girl’s softball throw. The volunteer worked the clipboard again while I helped chase down softballs, call out the distance and roll the ball back. The old, dormant coach in  me resurfaced. The young lady was cool and smart but I am old and set in my ways. We only needed to record the best of three attempts, which I marked with my foot on the corresponding hash mark. If the next throw came up short I kept my foot on the best spot. But the universal score sheet had five space for attempts and she felt obliged to record every throw. The extra effort was unnecessary but my job was to help her and I happily conformed to her method.
After that came the running relays, the last events on the day’s schedule. I sat down on a folding chair beside the grandfather volunteer. His granddaughter had been in both the softball throw and on two relay teams. I should not have been but was a little surprised as the girl was Latina and he was a level #10 gringo. I work at being nonjudgmental. The man was probably a good neighbor and grandpa. Likewise it is normal for parents, grandparents to brag on their progeny and I do that as well. But you can’t spend forty years with kids, students, parents and educators and not recognize bullshit when it wafts your way. He was a bullshitter, talked way-too much, not offensive but embellishing believable truths with unbelievable exaggerations. Trying to put our best foot forward, sometimes we stretch the truth. I know that. With 8 kids and dozens of grand kids, his story segued from one kids extreme anecdote to the next without a pause.
After what seemed like a really long time he did pause. The silence was nice. My dad (another quote) told us all,”If you have to honk your own horn to be noticed you don’t deserve to be noticed.” That went through my mind, wondering how long it would be before he realized I had nothing to say. But then I did say something, another quote came to mind. It was hot, we were sweating, the day was just about spent and I was ready to move on. I asked, “Does this make you think of mad dogs and Englishmen?” He looked at me with the same blank stare I got earlier from my 5th grade Latino helper. I didn’t wait for a response, just finished the line: “. . . they go out in the midday sun.” Still no replay. Our conversation had run its course. Over my shoulder I called back, “It was nice working with you today.” He replied something appropriate. I didn’t have my hearing aids in and he didn’t know that but I got the message.
I plan on volunteering as a classroom assistant in the fall. I hadn’t forgotten how much I enjoy youngsters or how important speaking Spanish is but the reminder was timely. Volunteering will be, as it has always been, rewarding in both directions. Everybody wins. On the drive home I booted up a playlist I had burned on a CD several years ago, a compilation of favorites. When the volume came up it was Willie, in the middle of the chorus, ‘. . . still not dead again today.’

2 CLOTHES PINS: DAY 443

  I remember, once upon a time, learning how to tell time, not the clock face but relative years in human time. There has to be a Zero (0) point at the beginning and over millennia that start-up date has changed depending on when and where you were at the time. According to the Chinese calendar, this is the year 4715 and as long as someone keeps one hanging on the wall, it will be as 'right' as you believe. Most of the world, even China now, recognizes the current, (Gregorian) calendar. It evolved through several similar versions as the importance of getting Easter calibrated with the lunar cycle lost out to getting the solar year in sync. 
AD and BC confused me. If AD stood for ‘After Death’ (Jesus') and BC for ‘Before Christ’, how do you reconcile the 33 years in between? Turns out, the AD came from Latin, “year of our Lord” which mitigates my ignorance. With the Christian Zero (0) year fixed, it didn’t take long for Jewish scholars to push back with a Hebrew-friendly designation, CE (Common Era) and BCE (Before CE). Within my lifetime, academic and scientific scholars have begun to favor the CE, BCE form. I have only noticed the shift recently, the last 30 years but the more I write, the more I read the more often I am reminded.
Interesting, how little kids can be entertained with just two clothes pins and a rubber band, and simple minds with a catchy phrase like ‘Zero (0) year.’ I can’t escape that fate, I play with words. Christians I would think (I cannot speak for Christians) may still prefer the “Year of our Lord” thing. I was raised in that belief system but like my Amazon trial membership, when I didn't invest the privilege stopped. I have no axe to grind just no reason to believe. I draw a blank on the Jewish community. Their preference for CE/BCE is understandable but from my own personal experience (I do have Jewish friends) they are heirs to a legacy of both tragic persecution and tenacious resilience, not as much about Belief as one might think. The persecution part is matched only by that of black skinned people, swallowed up in white skinned culture. Jews who want to mingle unobserved have a distinct advantage over black skinned people. To that end, I think the seemingly universal disparity measured out against breathing while black is unparalleled. In any case, I like the secular adaptation. Other than symbolic inference, they are the same. 

This old heretic is extremely cognizant to the fact that my parents religion and its influence on me is permanently installed on my hard drive. My Mac’s current operating system is ‘Big Sur 11.4’  but all of its previous versions are still in there, just pushed back out of service. Keeping with my Mac metaphor, I could say that my current, Spiritual Operating System is ‘Skeptic 81.8’ but it gets updated frequently. I treat sanctified anomalies (reoccurring, residual Christianity) with the Star Wars protocol; as a disturbance in the force. It is like an old, long healed scar that itches from time to time. When it does, I scratch it until it stops itching. Then I default to something else. The year (approximate) 12,000 BCE comes to mind, just about the time Siberian humans started crossing the Bering land bridge into North America. They must have had Shaman storytellers and certainly mythical gods with tribal history. Wouldn’t that make for a great ‘Back To The Future’ sequel!