HAPPY HOLIDAY

  It certainly is Christmas morning. So far all I’ve done for the holiday was yesterday at Walmart I nodded approval when a lady with packages and kids thanked me for pushing her empty basket to the cart corral. I had my own canvas shopping bag full of avocados and chips for today. What could be more ‘In the spirit’ than corn chips, guacamole and ginger beer. It is very cold outside and snow won’t go away until the temp gets up above single digits. But I am still glad for Christmas.
It is Sunday as well. At my church the traditional service has been forsaken for an extra hour of sleep and the board of directors is hosting brunch in the dining room. We are Unitarians so that or something more sociable (if not secular) would be keeping with our tradition.
December has been a silent writing season. I think it was Mark Twain who said, “If you have nothing to say, say nothing.” and I take anything he says to heart. I will enjoy good company soon. It takes about half an hour to get to church but with the cold weather and people traveling I don’t think a parking space will be hard to find. My long range plan is to go south and west until I find a “Welcome To Arizona” sign. After I discover the desert again I’ll wait for an omen, like three lost wisemen trying to find their way back to where they came from. Have a merry, Mary quite contrary how does your garden grow-Christmas? How did that ditty go: silver bells and cockle shells and one dandelion. Don’t want to miss the bacon quiche so I’m going out the door as I type.   

ADMIRE CURTAINS ALL NIGHT

  I vacationed several weeks in July in Colorado with my teardrop camper, mountains, a traveling companion and old friends. Some old friends are long lived and others long treasured, some both but never the less friends. Then for nearly four months it has been waking up in the same place every morning. Having a sticks & bricks home is more work and responsibility than investment and reward. Thanksgiving weekend in New Orleans was an appreciated getaway. Road time is always equal to destination time. I hadn’t forgotten but rediscovery is like a booster shot against doldrums.  
Driving time lets me reflect and butterfly (verb) from one idea to another. I never know when or where one thought will springboard off into unchartered water. Driving still requires diligent focus so the mind can’t afford to wander too far. On several occasions there has been the idea to write an essay on places I have spent the night. It will make a good story without any embellishment. Last Friday I did a rare thing, stayed in a motel. No defense necessary but I am a hard core pinchpenny in that regard. Without making a case, I can sleep just about anywhere and I do. All I need is a safe, clean, climate friendly space; I bring my own soft pillow. I remember $22 overnights at Motel 6 and Econolodge and it doesn’t seem all that long ago. But I am old now and time doesn’t age well with frugality. 
My $62 overnight last week provided what I need (safe & clean). The hot shower was appreciated but not necessary and I found several electric outlets that worked. The TV glowed with no sound or tuner and the wifi came and went away like a late night, AM radio station. It rated one star on the five star scale and I can make that work; went to sleep at 6:00 p.m. and was back on the road at 2:30 a.m. For me to get value from a $100 room I would have to stay awake and admire the curtains all night. 
It begs the question; is this a peculiar weirdness or just another age related throwback to another time. I liked the 20th Century at the time and even with the flexible, stronger, more resilient body I don’t want to redo that period. If motel prices were rolled back to 1980’s rates I would still condescend. Our first real family vacation (I was 12 going on 13 - 1952) five of us in our overloaded ’47 Plymouth took off for Yellowstone. It was long before Interstates, campgrounds and google maps. With 45 & 55 mph speed limits several hundred miles in a day is a good day. Along with my parents, Grandpa Roy and little brother, wiggle room was nil. The trunk was full of clothes and soft stuff with a canvas water bag hanging outside, over the license plate. Two folding army cots, blankets, an improvised camp kitchen and whatever else was deemed essential but no space to pack was assigned to the borrowed roof rack.
In Nebraska on the second day a rear leaf spring broke and we lost a day. The unexpected expense just meant we would have to cut back on spending. Back on the road we stopped the car to fix food and to camp at night, washed up in the dish pan. Compared to mules and a covered wagon, we were convinced how lucky we must be. Mom & Dad slept on cots beside the car, Grandpa slept in the back seat and I slept with a blanket and little brother on the ground. In Yellowstone we splurged, rented a cabin with one bed. Grandpa slept outside in the back seat and my brother and I slept on the cabin floor and loved it. This was the good life, traveling was never better. 
The Plymouth was still dangerously overloaded and we had to drive slow. On my 13th birthday we arrived in Cheyenne, WY late in the day but celebrated with a restaurant dinner; I had the Rabbit dinner. It was getting dark with no convenient place to camp so my dad paid for himself and Mom at a tiny motel then parked the car close to the cabin. Nobody noticed the old man in the back seat or the two boys on the ground. I am sure, if she were alive today, my mother would still feel guilty for three unpaid sleep-overs, even if we were outside. To her disapproval, my dad never had any such guilt anxiety and told the story as if it were a clever stroke of ingenuity. 
So now, after this nostalgic reflection; I think maybe my long suffering discontent with motels and traveling sissies who need more than they need; I think there is a logical backstory and credible rationale for my ‘Covered Wagon’ attitude. I do think in recent years (my lifetime) ‘Fast Forward’ technology and quality of life has reached a tipping point. Carl Sagan noted and I paraphrase; in a society where more and more of what we depend on (actually need) results from a system of science/technology infrastructure, fewer and fewer individuals know anything at all about either science or technology and that is a ticking time bomb. 
Telltale anomalies and outright warnings (Global Warming) that surface in the greater science community are generally dismissed by political and/or economic authorities; Sagan’s ticking time bomb. Barely 2 years ago a freak cold snap seriously damaged and shut down the power grid in Texas. By the second day there was no supporting infrastructure to keep people safe. No power to pump fuel, to transport food or keep it frozen, grocery stores had empty shelves by the next day; just one of many important systems that depend on other systems. The great failure of that lopsided dependance is; only a minuscule percentage of people have skills and access to fix technical things and they are not elected officials. The risk of exploiting that ‘real’ power in their own personal interests is scary. Even if everyone wants the right thing for the right reasons, there are not enough expert ‘fixers’ to fix everything in the next few days or weeks. Even a week without electricity would cripple the nation and that possibility (like in Texas) is unlikely but it is just as real. So I keep on sleeping in my truck or on the ground. It doesn’t fix anything but I get my sleep and feel a lot better. 

LUCKY TO BE ALIVE

  Our neighbors to the north observe thankful gratitude on the 2nd Monday of October. Like our Thanksgiving it stems from a perilous journey and crushing hardship upon arrival. In both cases, those white Europeans were lucky to be alive in a harsh, unforgiving new world and they attributed that miracle to God’s intervention. Over the next 400 years their Thanksgiving celebrations have acquired a more secular feel. Still, I like the idea of humble gratitude. The bounty of harvest time is like the rain that falls; it falls on the sinner and the saint both and Black Friday is a springboard for unchecked consumerism and its holiday spending spree. 
In 2012 I got to celebrate Thanksgiving twice. In Nova Scotia it was certainly about abundance and gratitude. It must come easier when defending the “We’re Number #1” title isn’t hardwired in the national fabric and run amok religion does not prevail. That whole cultural shift away from self righteous conformity leaves me with some hope. It is easy to fault my parents for birthing me south of the border. No question, I would have fit the Canadian profile much better than I do the American. 
Here in my homeland we celebrated our own big ‘Thank You!’ in late November, on a Thursday. A four day weekend is something to behold and I cannot fault that tradition. I remember when I was teaching school, the pre week was only 3 days long and the 4 day break was plenty, a win-win.
I am not selling salvation, only a pause to reflect and be thankful. Even as my prayer goes off into the cosmos unaddressed, it is mine and it is real. This is old news but I no longer concede to the pride and swagger that exalt and laud the human pedigree. I marvel at evolution, the process that got us down out of the trees and up on two feet. Along with it came self aware sensibility with language and imagination so we can create our own backstory. I don’t know who or what to thank but I need to make that gesture. It doesn’t matter who notices as along as I know.
I do know that I am no more important than a fruit fly that squeezes a lifetime into 4 or 5 weeks. I am programmed to live for 4,500 weeks and with a little luck enjoy the good life that comes with electricity, milk chocolate and a good book. So, Thanks, Thanks a lot, Thank you; really. I like going back to Canada, I have friends there. We can all push the bubble a little closer to mutual civility and good will. The bonus, Thanksgiving would be like having two birthdays in the same year without the added aging. 

GOOD ENOUGH

  In the past week or so I have written my Season’s Greetings letter and a piece for my high school class newsletter. Both require a lot of trial & error and creative thinking. I can do that but it doesn’t just flow like a Robert Frost poem. It is more like a sculptor chipping away at a marble slab, trying to liberate the naked lady who is trapped inside. Whatever it is that I do, that I have ever done, I observe the rule of ‘Good Enough’. Every task has its own trajectory and when it satisfies the rule I give it a name and move along to another task. But there needs to be a disclaimer or one might think the rule is a weak excuse for shoddy work. ‘Good Enough’ simply means the result meets or exceeds my arbitrary expectations. Those expectations can range from awesome to barely meets the need and true, sometimes it does mean shoddy work.
Both written pieces required several edits and revisions before they measured up to my ‘GE’ rule. This piece is still in its first draft and I never know how they will finish. I tend to edit as I write which is very bad if you listen to authors who put on writing workshops. They think you should know the whole story and where you want it to go before you start. They want you (me) to get the whole idea down in rough language and sequential order and then do a final edit and rewrite. I smile, nod and go on with my own scheme and a dash of Creative License. I did put together a research thesis in graduate school and that requires a detailed format from start to stop. After what seemed like endless (go back and fix it) revisions it was approved and I got my degree. But I keep my writing in the narrative mode now where I get the last word. This little stream of consciousness will end up Good Enough for my journal regardless but a place in my blog is still up in the air. I will come back tomorrow and again in a few days, tweaking structure, phrasing and word selection, again and again until it either collapses under its own weight or grows legs of its own. 
The weather is unusually cold for this time of year and the only control I have is to dress appropriately. I have been weighing the pros and cons of a midwinter road trip to Arizona and that option looks better every day. At this point (in my life) anything that may stave off the sting of age related obsolescence is worth serious consideration. I tell others but more so myself that it is never too late to begin something new. That lets me look to possibility and good fortune rather than brochures and itineraries.  
I researched the word ‘Skinflint’ and wasn’t surprised by synonyms like miser, pinchpenny and chintzy. I don’t think I’m all that selfish but I am a pinchpenny when I travel. The idea of paying motel prices for a warm bed and a shower leaves me cold and dry in the cab of my truck. I have a tiny, 4’ x 8’ teardrop camper, a serious sleeping bag and can overnight at truck stops where a long, hot shower sets me back about $15. Addiction to creature comfort seems to me a greater insult than Skinflint-ing my way down the road. It takes about 3 hours for me to organize and be outbound, for as many miles and as long as it takes. I could keep throwing words at the page, whatever comes to mind but throwing words has lost its appeal for now and moving my feet sounds good enough.

BACK TO THE FUTURE

  The movie trilogy ‘Back To The Future’ was set in 1985 time but leapfrogged (time travel) backward and forward across time. In that sci-fi adventure Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) repeatedly warned against any interaction with characters from the past that could interrupt the (Time Continuum), it would likely change history. Not a problem while traveling in the future as that future was yet to unwind. A time traveler could go back and interfere, causing history to veer off an already established course to an unpredictable result (the rule of unanticipated consequences). Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) almost kept his parents from falling in love. If they had not fallen in love, Marty would have never been born and who would have cared? Doc Brown would have been without a sidekick. 
‘Time Continuum’ is a profound idea. If you went back in time you could be armed with information on events and their outcomes before it happened. While in the future, Marty McFly bought a sports book with scores and winners so he could bet on them when he returned to (his time). But the book ended up in the wrong hands and a monster-bully-autocrat was created who never lost a bet and had so much money he could buy respectability for his blatantly corrupted self. The misappropriated book was the catalyst for all of that (unanticipated consequence). The bottom line would be, even a seemingly insignificant interruption to the (TC) has the potential to serious, far reaching, long lasting consequences. 
From ’Back To The Future’ its a short leap to ‘Back To The Past.’ For Marty McFly, his parent’s hook-up was iffy and unlikely with any number of alternate possibilities but for Marty it was the difference between a life and never been born. Who misses or even has second thoughts about the child who was never conceived? It begs the question, over countless generations, it took all of them, just the way they unraveled for me to be created. Times that by 9 billion people on the planet and the ‘Butterfly Effect’ doesn’t sound so farfetched. That would be, from Tokyo Japan the disturbance created by a butterfly flitting between flowers, compounding over time, might determine the exact point of landfall for a future hurricane in North America. 
Nature is an incredibly complex, dynamic system made up of many other complex, dynamic systems that all give and take between competing forces. The greater system is of its own necessity pushing and pulling, all the time, on everything in an effort to create ‘Stasis’ or equilibrium (balance). The odds against planetary equilibrium are so great it is universally understood that stasis will never happen. That’s how nature works. Think about it, a planet with a fractured crust that floats on a core of molten iron while rotating on its axis and revolving around the sun, absorbing radiant energy at constantly changing rates: and we (humans) busy ourselves on the surface like so many fruit flies on a great peach seed; really. I question (doubt) man’s self ordained high place in the overall scheme (the jewel in creation’s crown). It should be enough that we are functioning pieces in a grand puzzle. 
Still, the idea of time travel (Back To The Future) is irresistible. Knowing what I know now, ff I could go back to the 3rd grade again my life would have taken a decidedly different route. I would have certainly been more focused on work ethic and material wealth. But who knows if I would be any happier than I am now or healthy or even be alive. I think the human tendency is for short sighted, too good to be true schemes and no plan B. 

ITS LEAKING

  Last spring I noticed that my truck was losing antifreeze. It was a very  small, slow leak, just an occasional drip spot on the drive but I asked the service manager at my garage to check it. They specialize in brakes & exhaust systems but run a full service shop. They found the leak, small now. Ford trucks have a problem there but will not fix it with a recall so he sees that problem frequently. It could drip for a long time and it could blow out any time. He said “You don’t want to be far away in another time zone when it blows up.”  and it made sense. The part would be $400 and labor about the same. I decided to watch and wait a while and take my chances. 
My son is a good mechanic so I asked him what he thought. True, Ford trucks have that problem. He reached in beside and below the motor and found the wet, drippy spot and concurred, “Its leaking.” But he also said, “Eight hundred dollars os too much, let me check on it.” He made a few calls and got the part for $120, fixed the leak with hand tools in about half an hour. The shop manager has always been fair with me but nothing more serious than oil, filters and wiper blades. I don’t want to believe he was trying to gouge me and I don’t run a brick & mortar business. I still get my oil changed there. 
Going on two years ago my dentist noticed something on an x-ray. “That tooth is going bad and cannot be fixed.” No rush, but someday it would have to come out. It is the big molar in the back on the bottom and it has never given me a moment of trouble. Then my dentist retired. His practice has grown exponentially from two to a tribe of dentists and all the technicians it takes to keep them busy. My new dentist is great but she is on maternity leave and her backup wants to pull that tooth now. “You don’t want to be out of town on a holiday and have that tooth blow up.” I thought about my truck and its leak. “The tires on my truck will wear out too and may blow up when I’m out of town.”  She didn’t care for the analogy and said they were just concerned with my best interests, reminding me that oral/dental health is directly related to other major-serious conditions and bad teeth makes them all get worse. I already knew that but I’ve never had a bad bite with that old tooth. It still works and who knows how long it may keep working? “The tooth needs to come out.” I put that into street talk and came up with, “Pay me now or pay me later.” I have a few hours now before I leave to go get my tooth pulled. I don’t have any relatives who are dentists or I would check with them. I like my own teeth and the only option after one is pulled is a false tooth. I have two implants now and they are much more expensive than my meager insurance will cover, the equivalent of the $800 truck fix. Not wanting to wait for it to break, just the weight of knowing it will, someday: you don’t have to be a dentist to do the math. So I’m on my way to say goodbye to a tooth that has served me very, very well. I will be happy when my old, new dentist comes back off maternity leave. I think I trust her, like her better than the Toothologisgt I don’t even know his name yet but he surly needs a patient in his chair this afternoon. I bet he has a blue-water sailboat or an ex wife with expensive appetites  and to leave him sitting on his hands when he could be pulling my tooth would be selfish of me. 

ON MY BEST DAY

  A former classmate (sixty-some years ago) spent all his adult lifetime preaching evangelical, Pentecostal religion, laying on hands, people speaking in tongues, moaning, falling down: my dad called them, “Hoot & Holler” Christians. Recently I learned he cannot preach from the pulpit anymore. I don’t know if he can’t meet the physical demands or if his followers found a younger champion to keep them coming back. You know, hootin’ & hollerin’ through a two hour sermon can leave an old man too weak to collect the offering and shake hands at the door. He said he misses his connection with the congregation. I believe him but also think he misses the sound of his own voice and the righteous authority it presumes. So now he writes his religious views and political opinions, trying to grow an online following. 
I can identify to the extent that for years I had a captive audience, 120 young people for an hour, five times a week. Teaching  biology doesn’t rise to the level of righteous authority but I do miss contact with teenagers. Add to that, I write a blog, several posts a month now for over 12 years and have kept a dedicated journal for decades before that. Where we truly part ways is that he believes his message is vital to both the salvation and proper prejudice of everyone who hears it. I believe objective, open ended communication is better than propaganda. Flogging a dead horse is bad business and whatever I believe about knee-jerk issues, it’s a dead horse: who really cares? One of the best life lessons I've learned is to not take myrself too seriously.
I tend to get stuck on issues but not the ones that make headlines. I keep trying to unravel Human Nature and the complications it precipitates; the perception of free will, decision making, neuro plasticity, confabulation, etc. I can write about it for my own sake (better understanding and rationale) but if I try to frame that story for others, all I get are long, blank looks. It still feels important and I sympathize in some small way with my old classmate in that regard. Still, sleeping well is its own reward and I don't have to sell anything. At my age it is easy if not troubling to dig in the same hole too long. So I try to not do that anymore, content to file those ideas away in my journal now rather than scroll them out in my blog, sounding like a conspiracy theorist. On my best day I will never save a soul or influence the Supreme Court but I do like to play with words and ask well thought out, relevant questions. 

PET PEEVE

  By definition, a ‘Pet Peeve’ is something one finds particularly annoying. I didn’t think I had a pet peeve but thought about it for a while and there is one thing that annoys the hell out of me. That is; people who pronounce the state name, Missouri with a long (ē) ending and ridicule others who learned to drop the (ē) and substitute (uh), “Missour-uh”. It is the self righteous ridicule that annoys me, not the pronunciation.

I am a writer and when I write I follow certain rules with an appropriate dispensation for creative license. When formality is required, the rules of grammar and syntax are clear. Writing the word “Colonel” is one thing, misspellings are bad news. But when spoken, an (r) sound comes out of nowhere. “Kernel” is another word that is spelled different but pronounced the same, but a single seed has no reference to a military officer. I know many native Mississippians who pronounce the name of their state, “Miss-ippi” a convenient shortcut and nobody takes them to task for it. 

Children frame their language from their role model’s accent, phrasing and vocabulary. Before they can read and write, their spoken language has no rules, it just has to work. The oral tradition has only one measure; is the message received the intended message? Urban street slang is almost another language but you seldom if ever see it in print. English is unforgiving once it is on the page. The spoken word doesn't leave any tracks and, if it doesn't conform to rules for writing, it can be easily forgiven. Even then, language is a dynamic construct, constantly evolving, changing, adding new words. Being gay in 1950 was not the same as being gay in 2020. The word ‘Bad’ used to mean just that, bad. But now it can mean; really good. 

When I was a little kid we lived in Missour-uh and when we spoke, nobody mistook it for some other place. When we put the return address on envelopes it was spelled, Missouri. Writing vs. Speaking, they use the same language but do not dance to the same tune; different cats from the same litter. But all this ranting only gets us to the fundamental issue. Missour-uh people don’t care, they never raise the argument. The wannabe intellects use a spelling gimmick to fake a higher IQ or to gain altitude in the pecking order. It is a condescending insult agains someone they consider to be inferior, and use the Mississippi precedent (ends with an (i) and the (ē) sound) to make their case. It is an insult; it may be subtle but an insult none the less. 

Somewhere in the argument the baiter will introduce the word, ‘Wrong’. “You are just wrong!” It has always been about right and wrong. There is a big difference between (Correct-Incorrect) and (Right-Wrong). In the first case the point is about whether or not there is an error. But (Right) expands linguistically into righteous which has moral consequence and (Wrong) is defined first as an immoral or unjust act and then, as they can be interchanged synonymously, intent is easy to identify. Context, body language and tone speak clearly to the intent; well intended correction or smug judgment.  

Formal writing has well defined rules for everything but they do not apply to creative writing, where wiggle room (creative license) allows for coloring outside the lines. Verbal communication only has one rule, it has to work. It allows for a wide range of cultural influence (accent & vernacular) and intentional anomalies. For someone to stand up in front of others and tell anyone 'Missour-uh' is wrong, is both stupid and wrong in itself. Certainly it is different but wrong? Take, ’aluminium’; in the King’s English they change the accents, add a vowel to give it five syllables (āl-ū-mīn-ī-ūm). North America is the only place in the world that doesn’t. Is someone wrong here?

I have not researched it thoroughly but I read it somewhere, once upon a time: In the early 1800’s, backwoods settlers from Kentucky were the first Americans to venture west across the Mississippi into present day Missouri. (Daniel Boone, etc.) Their pedigree and backwoods ways were deemed inferior and undesirable by the elite French culture around and south of St. Louis. It has been suggested that (Missour-uh speak) came west with the Kentuckians. They also dropped the letter (y) from Kentucky all together and it works. No less, it is generally agreed that the boundary between Eastern and Western Culture in this country is somewhere between St. Louis and Columbia, MO. Times change but some things don’t. That Eastern sense of patronizing, snobbery can still be found, especially in Greek organizations on college campuses all over the state. It would not be a far stretch to make that comparison; wanting to prove oneself superior to uncultured, wrong spoken, backwoods ne’er-do-wells. But I am an uncultured, backwoods, . . . and my pet peeve is self righteous, wannabe experts who make up rules as they go. 

LATER DOWN THE ROAD

  I like to read David Brooks (NY Times). An excellent writer to begin with, he writes on timely, relevant ideas and issues that affect everyone. He researches, separates fact from fiction and makes the distinction. I don’t always like what he has to say but I trust him to be thorough, open ended and fair. He wrote a piece back in 2012, another election year. Both candidates had given (not taken) credit for their success as well as their potential to lead the nation - essentially; If not for many others I wouldn’t-couldn’t be here. It prompted a letter from a disgruntled reader who believed the wannabe wisdom; “All of your successes and failures are the direct result of the decisions you make.” He challenged Brooks to take up a position. 
I think it common for critics and disputers to ask questions calling for an (either-or) answer and feel cheated when they get a (this-and) response. Brooks acknowledged, we need to believe and proceed as if the premise is true; our decisions are the catalysts for whatever happens to us. But later, down the road when hindsight and backstory are credible and compelling, we realize we got more & better than we deserved and that we don’t live in a vacuum. Much if not most of our struggles and outcomes are shaped by forces and people beyond our control. 
I have gone back and reread the article several times. Perhaps the critic had a crystal ball that sorts out the good decisions from the bad. If you have enough reliable information and can interpret complex data sets you can come up with a fairly strong probability. But random chance is a fickle mistress and sometimes the sure thing goes belly up. I knew a man who advised me; There are neither good nor bad decisions. There are only decisions. In other words, to know for sure, good or bad, revisit the question in 20 years and reflect on the outcome. Even then, there will be those who disagree. 
Recently, David Brooks wrote an article titled, “I Was Wrong About Capitalism.” His message wasn’t as much about capitalism as it was about how people (himself) trust attitudes and principles that seemed appropriate at the time,  but times change and we (himself) are slow to get the message. The world changes and its best interests change along with it. So it is a 1 - 2 punch: If things change enough or too fast, that new world calls for different, better policy and practice. But we (himself) remain entrenched in an old (if it was good then . . .) no longer effective or equitable process. Add to that, we are slow to see the new need and even slower to adapt. 
Capitalism had been on a long running hot streak where profits and employment were setting records. It couldn’t be better. But then it became evident (too much to ignore) that the wonderful “Ism” had produced a society that was not only inequitable but more and more wealth is controlled by fewer and fewer people. The question is, what is so good about what we’ve got if it only prospers a minuscule fragment of the population. Brooks thinks he was stuck in the zone between the world changing and him noticing. 
I think people (myself) do a pretty damn good job at economics and government for self aware, high functioning monkeys. The idea that humans are more special than humming birds or monkeys is a form of self medicating Hubris (my opinion). I suspect David Brooks wouldn’t judge the species so harshly but I bet it has crossed his mind. But then I don’t have millions of regular readers (high functioning monkeys) to satisfy. 

KUMBAYA

   In 2001 I retired from teaching school and my son was fresh out of University with a BS in Chemistry. Taking no time off he plunged into a PhD program at the University of Michigan. He found lodging with a couple whose huge house had more bedrooms than most houses have rooms. Woody, the man and, I forget his wife’s name, they ran a boarding house for graduate students. Woody had other business as well but every time I was there he was the concierge in a two legged ant hill while ‘What’s Her Name’ hovered around the kitchen. There was a standing joke about how many days the pan of soup had been sitting uncovered on the stove top. She fixed plenty of food but the boarders preferred their own P-B & J sandwiches over petri dish soup. 
Come spring, bullets were flying, people dying, bombs and IEDs booming in Afghanistan and the news networks covered every encounter, every casualty. Grad students were consumed with school but 9/11 was too much to ignore. George W. was ranting, “You’re either with us or against us.” and that hubris still remains a self inflicted insult with a life of its own. His advisors who oozed with confidence were the same experts who ridiculed the Russians for waging war there; “You simply cannot win a ground war in Afghanistan.” At Woody’s place everybody followed their own compass but were also collard by the same war. 
My son was full of piss & vinegar (aggressive energy). American casualties are factored into the cost of waging war and he dismissed that easily; they had all volunteered and knew the risks. Dead insurgents were just numbers, squandered by a corrupt Taliban regime and he (my son) certainly had no qualms over their demise. Analytic chemistry was his full time concern, 24/7.
For five years I loved going to Ann Arbor. I had recently retired and got to see my kid, got to hang out in a bonafide research laboratory, be around enthusiastic, young people whose stories were just beginning to unfold; not to mention Ann Arbor’s concerts and food scene. Around the house I blended in and nobody noticed me. Woody was still ‘the man’ and ‘What’s Her Name’ grew increasingly troubled by the war. She would sit on the sofa watching real time coverage of air strikes and roadside bombings. Her reaction to every report was the same. She winced and groaned with each explosion and whimpered, “Why can’t we just get along?” it was 2002.
A year later my son moved across town to a different house, shared by different grad students but no surrogate parents. They lived in a bubble, away from politics, away from George W.’s war. Their work was consuming and challenging but that is why they were there. I could sleep on the sofa whenever I was in town. It was a good time but seemed he would grow old and die before he finished his program. In hindsight it confirmed the adage; a watched pot never boils. 
Twenty years have slipped under the bridge and down stream and we’ve both moved on. He did good, got his gold braid, Maize & Blue Hood and a real job. But also I remember ‘What’s Her Name’s’ whimpering; “Why can’t we ...” Her concern was well taken but whimpering was all she could do. The difference from her then to me now is that I don’t beg the question, I know why. 
Human evolution bogged down about 12,000 years ago when the 1st Agriculture revolution started crowding people together in towns and city states. They suffered a highly contagious outbreak of arrested development, stuck at the 3 year-old stage. It didn’t affect our creative talents, only manifest in the selfish, ‘Me-me’ & ‘I want’ nature of spoiled 3 year-olds. We are still stuck. If a 3 year old can’t have what they want they can throw a temper tantrum but then they grow up. Regular people get mad but they get over it. Tyrants have no qualms about killing their enemies if that’s how they get what they want. Whoever gets in the way, they die too. The ‘Bullies’ believe their own dead warriors make their mothers proud and dead enemies have only themselves to blame. Tyrants know if you don’t win you die so they have no reason to compromise or follow rules and wholesale murder is a universal remedy for bad neighbors. 
Mrs. ‘What’s Her Name’s’ moaning just vents some anxiety; a question with an (!) instead of a (?). Humans get along very well with inanimate things but not each other and it will be a while before the Bullies hold hands and sing Kumbaya. 

NOTHING COMES FROM NOTHING

  I’ve written several beginnings recently but when I come back with new eyes they give the writing a thumbs down. I’ve been thinking and reading about paleolithic (Stone Age) people. It is hard to imagine how long the culture was stuck in the hunter gatherer mode. Technology amounted to simple bone tools and a stone spear point with sharp edges. That didn’t change for twenty five thousand years, likely longer. Humans were modern in a physical and mental sense but limited to what they could do with their bare hands. Everything they couldn’t understand was mysterious and fearsome so they made up parallel stories (myth) that they could understand. It was the beginning of fake news.
It occurred to me that once upon a time, say 15,000 BCE, a woman birthed a child who grew up to replicate and reproduce another child who followed suit and did the same. That sets up a pedigree, the blood line linkage between parent and child from generation to generation. Some people can document their pedigree as far back as the Middle Ages but most of us stumble before we get to our great-great-great generation. Even so, there is an unbroken stream of DNA linkage that runs back from me  through my parents, through all of my great-greats all the way back to hunter gatherer clans, 750 generations removed. I don’t need to know anything personal about any of them. It is enough to know that without them there would be no place for me to come from and after all; Nothing comes from nothing. 
So I am retired, able to sleep late if I please but I please to be up early, watch the birds at my feeder, have coffee or tea, make sawdust in my wood shop, wait for glue to dry, water my tomatoes, make a phone call to hear another human voice and think about things only curious old men would imagine. Then I sit down and write a short piece about something that crossed my mind. If it lives long enough to make it through an edit and into my journal maybe even posted on my blog, someone may stumble across it. But as I’ve shared so many times, I write to understand more than to be understood. I am amazed with the mind boggling numbers, so many archaic, prehistoric people who never, ever gave a thought to their place in the blood line, to the possibility that I might be far, far, so far downstream in the making. Then they laid down a continuous stream of genetic material that would find its way through millennia and materialize in a blue-eyed little boy. That little boy would be me. I don’t advocate ancestor worship but I do feel its appeal. 

TRYING TO GET RID OF US

  I just finished talking with a friend on the phone about global warming and how it has manifest itself. I suppose there are doubters left but their argument has lost its legs. I will not rant here about far reaching, overlapping, incredibly complex effects of rapid climate change. All life is interdependent on a common network, the biosphere with its unique chemical/mineral makeup. Climate change itself is not the issue. Climate is always changing. The problem lies in the rate (speed) of change. In the past 200 years the planet has been warming exponentially, at an unprecedented rate. Not surprising, it corresponds directly with the the industrial revolution (Europe) and its shift away from an agri-based economy to an industrial/factory model; machines, steam engines and excessive burning of fossil fuels. 
It is too late to ponder what will happen, it already has. The question now is; who pays for every expensive response, and the next, and the next? Climate driven damage to civil infrastructure, property and crops already has become the new normal. My friend asked jokingly, “Do you think it’s just the planet trying to get rid of us:” I thought it clever but didn’t laugh. I am not an expert but certainly better read than most. I remember in the late 1980’s when experts (Climatologists & Anthropologists) began making noise about spiraling human population and global pollution. The issue was mocked and dismissed as a liberal hoax. 
My brother (BS in Biology) told me in 1990 that the sky was just too big for us to (f#@*) it up. He also said that modern agriculture could meet the needs of a 10 billion population (it was 5.3 billion then, 8 billion now) on course to reach 9 billion by 2050. He believed, the more people the better; good for business. That was 30 years ago. I’m still breathing but he is not. He died believing that burning the candle at both ends is good business, good for people. You just need a bigger candle. He’s not here to defend himself and I still love him so I won’t labor that story, just sayin’.
In the 2012 movie, The Bourne Legacy the Director of the CIA is sternly rebuked by a higher ranking official who admonished him, “You were given a Ferrari and you treated it like a lawnmower.” The same could be said of the whole of mankind. Live within your means is a proven axiom, another way to say; Don’t borrow money that you can’t pay back. The human animal doesn’t seem to think that far ahead. Some people can manage their money but collectively we plunder a resilient ecosystem as if it were indestructible, but it is not. Our enviro-debt is approaching its due date, when full payment is required. But I think we will disappear like the Wooly Mammoth and the Passenger Pigeon. After all, they both went extinct due in large part to human activity. It should be no surprise that we have both the means to fashion our own demise and a naive blind spot in that direction.
I’m thankful that I got so lucky. My very best decisions in this life were choosing the right time and place to be born and picking parents who excelled at integrity, love and nurturing. I have enjoyed the benefits from machines, from burning fossil fuels, and modern technology. Beyond that I am deep enough into my lifespan that all of my chemicals, minerals and molecules should have been recycled back into their source (Mother Earth) before I am required to pay my share of the enviro-debt. 
Oops, starting to sound like preaching. That would be dangerously close to ranting and I said I wouldn’t do that. I just wanted to document a conversation and the irresistible spin off that it provoked. I really do feel privileged to have lived out eight decades in the donut hole of prosperity, modern gadgetry and health care that borders on magic. My earthly joy ride spans from Hitler and the Holocaust to Donald Trump and his self obsessed assault on human dignity. The Human odyssey is approaching full circle. I don’t fault The Donald. He is just the point of much larger spear. I look to 70 million MAGA disciples who have been so easily seduced by his bold ego and charismatic rhetoric. 

NATURE HATES A VACUUM

  I do not multitask well. It’s not that you (anybody) can focus on several things simultaneously. It is more like juggling several tasks, like tennis balls. There was a time when I could keep 3 tennis balls in the air for 15 or 20 seconds. When first learning I thought the task would be mostly catching the balls as they fell but learned otherwise quickly. The fine motor skill with juggling is to keep your hands in the same place and toss the ball so it will land in the same place (your other hand) every time. When you discipline your hands to a precise, repeating pattern and make every toss exactly the same height and trajectory, the ball lands in your free hand without having to look for it. Keeping your head still and not having to shift your weight (move feet) and things get easier fast. That’s not multitasking. 
Multitasking would be like preparing a big dinner with an unfamiliar menu, remembering when to check rolls in the oven, when to stir the kettle so the bottom doesn’t burn while chopping veggies for the salad.  You can be a multitasking wizard and still be a bad cook but those are two different stories. I can get a good meal on the table but it takes twice as long as it should, the kitchen looks like a train wreck and every dish & pan is dirty. For me it is more of an impromptu experiment, knowing what it should look like in the end. It can be full of surprises but if it pleases the palate, you hope you can remember how you did it for the next time. I’m not good at that either. 
In any case, I don’t multitask well. If you have more time than you need to keep 3 tennis balls in the air then it’s just moving things around without being pressured. I get lucky more often than not and nobody notices. I recently went on a July camping vacation (3 weeks in Colorado) and other than a mechanical problem on the 2nd day (sh*t happens & you deal with it), it went smooth even if we changed routes and itinerary in the middle. But when I got back it took over a week to focus on anything. Every day was a blank page and no ideas, it was all I could do to single-task and I didn’t like it at all. Through all of June, my primary purpose was preparation for hanging an art show of my photographs. Even though I was doing other things, art show preparation consumed all my concerns. August closed in on the art show and the last 10 days were frenetic, waiting on indifferent suppliers and late deliveries. The last 3 days were helter skelter but the show is up, it looks good and all there is now is an artist’s reception at the end of the week. Now I am back on a blank page, checking the clock to know when it’s bedtime.
But nature hates a vacuum and so do I. Maybe this is what it’s like coming off a hangover. I haven’t been hungover since 1963 so I’ll plead ignorance and a leaky memory. I think a road trip would cure a lot of my ills. I have shrimp in the freezer and I make really good gumbo bit it all tastes (feels) better in good company, in Louisiana in particular. I would take a good shrimp salad over a Po’ boy any day, don’t need all that bread. It doesn’t matter how good the food is, it is better when shared with someone you care about and maybe that’s all I need. Even if I don’t go right away it is a seed that might sprout, even take root. 

HOGWARTS

  Recently I bought the box set (8 episodes) of Harry Potter movies. I had seen the first one, The Sorcerer’s Stone twenty years ago when it came out and another one but all I remembered were some of the characters, the flying broomsticks and the deadly chess match. Not surprising that the magical, special effects prevail over the timeless dilemma of good versus evil. I had totally forgotten Professor Quirrell (with his head in a turban)and was caught unawares when the stammering professor emerged as the bad guy in the first episode. He had been possessed by the villain, Lord Voldemort who was under a spell of his own and could only manifest himself by taking over another person’s body. 
Voldemort’s plan to regain his powers was to recruit the young wizard Harry to his cause; shades of Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker from Star Wars. While in Prof. Quirrell’s body, Voldemort revealed himself (two faces on the same head) and informed Harry the fundamental truth of his shameless plot. He said, “There is no good and evil, only power and those too weak to seek it.” 
Wow, I thought; sounds like Donald Trump! From his book The Art Of The Deal, Trump speaks to the reader’s lowest common denominator and affirms that having the balls to break the rules is not only good but that getting caught cheating is the only evil. Cheating is alright just don't get caught You must win at all cost (being seen as a loser is worse than being exposed as a liar and a cheat). I think that departure is where negotiable ambition gives way to the Slippery Slope. That (slippery slope) would be a semi load of dynamite skating on an icy overpass. 
I remember wannabe wisdom from another time; All’s Fair In Love & War. Over the years it seems to have been modified; you throw out love & war as conditions and cast a bigger net; Everything is fair for any reason, anything goes, whatever you can get away with. 
It took two sittings for me to get through The Sorcerer’s Stone. I didn’t want to miss the subtle nuance and with all of the magic, it was too much, went too fast for me. British audiences have a keen taste for the dark side and clamored for more. The up close, evil magic and its peril left American audiences divided between mild shock and religious outrage. Come to Jesus merchants castigated against wizards, spells, sorcerers, potions as if they were real and that all things magical were inspired by Satan.
It is interesting how that preoccupation with good and evil is fixed in every culture. Early western philosophers Epictetus & Marcus Aurelius both concluded that discerning between right and wrong depends on what people decide. Whatever it is that we can agree on, that’s it, the truth! When humans first started drawing drew that line (good & evil) they were guided by ignorance and myth. Greek and the Roman philosophers were in the same room but they were following logic when they reasoned; “There is neither good nor evil.” They reasoned since people make that distinction, it is their call. By simply believing this is right and that is wrong, they make it so; the thinking makes it so. In other words, Truth is not carved in stone. If you can all agree that GOOD is a BAD thing then it is. Correspondingly, BAD must be GOOD. Looking back, Flat Earth people were not wrong, the truth changed. It changes with both new discovery and fast talking bigots but memory is short when it makes us look stupid.
It has been twenty years since I first saw The Sorcerer’s Stone. Over the next decade seven more episodes would follow. I know who prevails in the end but still want to see it unfold with Harry and his friends at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry. I wonder; if I let my beard grow and get a pointy hat they might take on another old professor mumbling and shuffling around Hogwarts? I could be the resident wizard of prophesy, keep telling the same made up stories until they become the truth.  I would be fantastic on a flying broom. 

WHO COOKS FOR YOU

  Last night in that moment when you realize, it will soon be bedtime, a Barred Owl nearby began to call. I was in the kitchen wiping down the sink and countertop. Both of the windows were open and it sounded so closeI thought it must be perched on top of my patio umbrella. It called out again, several times without a pause. I got a fix on where I thought it must be, up high in the Ash tree at my back fence. The goofy feeling caught me unawares, the one you get when you catch yourself grinning without warning or conscious thought. It was just there on my face, the best kind of self indulgence. 
Every self respecting naturalist learns how to call in Barred Owls. Around dusk on nature walks with students or adults for that matter, everyone sits down at the edge of a clearing in the woods. The goal of the evening is to engage a Barred Owl and absolute silence is the rule. After a 10 minute walk, the leader gives a hand signal and everyone sits down. The naturalist cups hands around their mouth and delivers a well practiced greeting. The call is paraphrased into human English with phrasing that corresponds to the owl’s timing and tune. “Whooo, Whooo, Who-cooks for Youuuuu.” He raises the pitch to match the bird’s and we wait. 
The bird will vary its song so the well practiced expert does so as well. “Whooo, Whooo, Whooo”. After a short pause, “Who-cooks” pause, “Who-cooks” and a long pause. You have to be patient. Owls can hear from far off and they often move cautiously to investigate another bird (sounds like a bird). They fly so quiet you simply cannot hear them approach or land in the same tree you are sitting under. 
After several minutes of wannabe hooting and silence, people need to be reminded (with hand signals) to sit still and keep quiet. If they get lucky the wait isn’t too long. From nearby they hear it clear as you please. OMG, it really does sound like, “Whoo, whoo, whoo cooks for you.” If the caller is skilled, they may exchange calls for several minutes. You are never too old to take pleasure in that moment. “I engaged with an awesome owl last night.” 
It occurred to me in the kitchen that I might try to answer the owl’s call. But I was just sucking up the moment and the grin was still pulled back against my teeth. Identification by song or call is just as credible, just as rewarding as visual confirmation. Brushing my teeth I thought about feral cats in the neighborhood. They keep the mouse population in check. Owls exercise major control over wild mice populations but they are happy with lizards and birds, other small mammals, even insects. So I offered up some good karma for the owl’s sake. 
Today, and every other morning this summer I hear another bird calling out its unmistakable song; “Cock A Doodle Do”. Someone up the hill, maybe on the next street has a rooster. Keeping urban chickens is a popular trend now. Most towns have rules about how many, odor control and containment but think about the eggs. But keeping a rooster; it must be a pet. I remember in Todos Santos, Mexico they had feral chickens everywhere. The roosters crowed all night and you just get used to it. But I don’t remember any Barred Owls there. My local rooster up the street would be no match for the owl and not that I really care, but he need be advised to keep inside from before dusk to well after dawn or all his master might find is a crime scene with feathers and picked over bones. 

AN UNSETTLED CLIMATE

  I wrote a couple of pages yesterday and left it to cook overnight. Sometimes it turns out well done and other times my ideas can still have some salt but the words miss their mark. I get caught up in clumsy, compound, run on sentences that lose their way. They feel good in the moment but the second time around, I know gibberish when I see it. Nonsense gets a cursory second thought before I hit the delete trigger. I keep telling myself that any time is a good time to begin again. 
I had been chewing on an old bone when something digestible would have been the better call. In the last half century I have come to grips with an uncomfortable, unavoidable observation; emotions and feelings are unreliable. Joy, anger, sadness, pleasure, fear; you get what you get. They are not decisions. But many people use those feelings as their compass, following that energy as if it was their fate or destiny. I choose to think those emotions are just momentary weather updates in an unsettled climate; and I don’t trust them. Feeling good or feeling not so good, I don't want to be on the wrong end of a leash. If I take the time to weigh and measure, to check my numbers before I take comfort too soon or lash out ill advised, everyone is better served. 
I feel better, not that feeling better is actually better but I said something in a simple paragraph that I wrestled with earlier and lost. I might lament the time lost as a failed effort or I can rationalize (think about) the value of processing ideas and words before throwing them at the page. Then what I do is a choice, as much as possible. I don’t think we make near as many choices as we believe we do. Google, FB and Amazon together have enough data on most of us to predict with accuracy, how we will decide on any circumstance. If they can do that for 80% of us with 80% accuracy, what does that say about free will decision making? In a few years with a better algorithm it will be 90% & 90%. But free will and decision making is another can of worms, best left for another day. 

A DÉJÀ VU VIBE

  In the (1991) movie Fried Green Tomatoes  Kathy Bates plays a middle age woman (Evelyn) whose husband has lost interest in her. She is struggling to find purpose in her life and a sense of identity. By chance she encounters the eighty-something (Ninny) Jessica Tandy in a nursing home and the two of them join forces with a wonderful story. It is a powerful, feel good movie that speaks to something important; not the same message for everyone but it will touch you none the less. If you have seen it already, see it again.
There is a scene where Evelyn has been grocery shopping and is in the market parking lot. Reacting to one of many disappointments, she can’t shake her frustration with having no control over her life. Just when it seems things cannot get worse, the bag tears, her groceries spill out on the ground and she stands there not knowing what to do. I got a déjà vu vibe. 
Starting a written piece is much like Evelyn going to pick up bread and eggs at the A&P. As I start browsing thru characters and plot, framing story has a lot in common with  her shopping list, simple and short. But along the way she notices things that should have been on the list and adds them to her cart. By the time she gets out to her car her arms are full and any slip or distraction would bring on a collapse that cannot be undone. If I could keep to my short, simple story it wouldn’t be such a task. But at this point in my life I am drawn to the big, complicated stories. The Human Condition; why do we do like we do? That seems simple enough but if you look close enough, nothing is simple. John Muir (one of my heroes) said; “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.”  
When I want to examine a narrow aspect of the human experience it is a short reach from me to Evelyn in the parking lot. By the time I get a thousand words into my work it overloads and starts coming down like a house of cards. My shopping bags get so full of backstory and cause-effect other-story that I can’t keep it together all the way to the parking lot. I find myself elbow to elbow with a frustrated lady and her groceries in a heap on the ground.
Without going down that Rabbit Hole I’m not afraid to dance around it. I do not soft-pedal or fantasize either my beliefs and convictions or how I got to be this way. I don’t really know how I got to be who I am but here I am just the same. My growing up was so 20th century, blue collar, White, Protestant, Male stereotype that there were not many weighty decisions for me to consider. One’s culture is incredibly difficult to resist and I was a passively compliant youngster. Even though I stumbled with school work and my academic skills were severely limited, I must have had a streak of native curiosity. Never bored, I always managed with what I had and it never dampened my imagination.
So when I did challenge my culture I was too old and independent to be intimidated or dissuaded. Rejecting traditional myth (religion & politics) was not traumatic, only a series of profound disappointments. What I had trusted for so long was nor more real than an episode on a TV sitcom. I’ve had plenty of time to learn about how Homo sapiens have maintained and expanded their niche here on Earth. I have confidence in qualified, secular experts who make it their life’s work. A large part of that open ended endeavor has been their collective willingness to be proven wrong, to reexamine, correct and update the current knowledge base. The underlying principle is that progress is punctuated with human error and dead ends. When we know better we update our findings and communicate the results. 
A glitch in human protocol is that for millennia, civilization has been seduced by wannabe wisdom and persuasive propaganda. Even now, people still prefer what is perceived to be indisputable, universal truths. (“We want to know what will be true forever and we want to know right now.”) Nobody questioned myth based metaphors in a time when the naked eye and sense of touch were all you had to separate truth from fiction. The gap between reliable scientific enlightenment and the comfort of faith based tradition has expanded faster than the human animal has been able to accommodate it. Humans still struggle with the brain’s internal duality. We still act instinctively on emotional impulse long before the logical part of the brain can do the math. The old system was sufficient for hunter gatherer clans and the dangers they faced but that was then and this is now (spears close up vs far away nuclear weapons). 
There I’ve done it. Here we are, Evelyn and I are standing in the parking lot with our arms full and no place to turn.  Kathy Bates got paid and moved on to her next movie. My story is like a loop film, fluttering in the projector like a WW2 news reel. But I know how it began and where it lost its legs. So if I want to keep shaking this tree I best delete the whole thing and start over. 

LESS THAN A MINUTE

Nine years; is that a short time or a long time? At my age time is hard to put a collar on. In the dog days of summer 2013, 9 years ago, I was driving home from Alaska. The drive up had been awesome. Eight days alone on the AlCan Highway gives words like Remote, Wilderness & Lonesome a feeling you can’t experience vicariously. After nearly two months in Alaska the road home was no less an adventure. One might think that one repetition would be sufficient but Planet Earth is full of surprises. The 2,300 mile journey from Anchorage to the border crossing at Sweet Grass, Montana is anything but (Ho-Hum). The farther north, the more challenging the roads. Frost heave and erosion make travel risky if not dangerous. Feelings come and they pass but once on the highway the only sensation is to keep moving. 

On my second night out I splurged on a bed at a hostel in White Horse, Yukon Territory. Day 3 would be would be the ‘Either-Or’ day. Either go back the way I came or take a less traveled, even more remote route. I was on Canada #1 but just west of Watson Lake, route #37 heads south across the border into remote, northern British Columbia. It seems Parliament wanted to help the economy in those logging camps and fuel depots so they connected several existing roads and bridged a few gaps with new blacktop and called it The Cassiar Highway. Everyone I talked to said it was a glorious ride and baring mechanical problems, I couldn’t go wrong; just remember to top off the tank at every petro pump I come across. That was good advice. The route eventually dumps you out at Prince George, BC with a nearly straight shot into Jasper National Park, Lake Louise and Banff. 

My 2nd day on The Cassiar the forest had open spaces and I could see both out to the side and up ahead. The road had comfortable, rolling, up and down rise and fall for as far as I could see. As I topped one rise, up ahead on the 3rd or 4th crest I saw a large animal on the road. Easing over the next crest I could tell it was a moose and her calf. Not wanting to startle them I slowed down but the thought of getting close enough to have an encounter overcame my concern for their convenience. They were still there in the middle of the road at my next glimpse and I turned the motor off, coasting up the last slope before we merged on the same stretch. Mom was in my lane and baby was lopping along the shoulder on the left. I rolled quietly to within maybe 200 feet before she noticed and started running. 

There was a steep bank on the right of maybe 20 feet with a gully full of water at the roadside. Everything happened too fast for much thinking. I was gaining ground and had eased over into the middle of the road. She plunged down into standing water up to her shoulders and struggled to get up onto the steep bank. Baby wanted to follow but that would require crossing in front of me and I was still closing the gap between us. I eased on the brake, slowed down almost to a stop. She moose was keeping up but separated from us above and the other side of the water hazard. Baby saw its chance and bolted across in front of the truck, down the gully and sank immediately in the water. 

I kept my camera ready, wedged between the seat and the pull-down arm rest. As I let myself out and around the door, Mama was down close, coaxing Baby upward and out of the water. I started taking photos over the hood. Moose calf thrashed and failed, thrashed again but I sensed the little calf would eventually make it up onto dry ground. I kept taking pictures. In the pressure of the moment I did tap into the danger. Moose are the most dangerous animal in the north woods. Bears would rather avoid you but moose are aggressive, territorial and protect their young with deadly effect. I sensed that she wanted to kill me then and there but she had too many irons in the fire with the truck between us and her baby still struggling. Once up on level ground and me content behind the truck, she must have figured I was too much trouble to go back for. I got in, closed the door and watched as they moved off into the trees. The whole thing from my sneaky roll-up to the walk-away took less than a minute. 

I am preparing a show of my photographs at the end of this month, roughly 20-22 pieces. Choosing the first dozen is easy. Then you get into all of the really good shots that are too good to leave out but leave some out is what you need to do, #22 gets to go to the party and #23 stays home. One of those, too good to leave out that made the cut is a mother moose and her calf walking off into the woods. The photo is a split second summary of a story that might have ended another way, any number of ways. That story was born nine years ago: seems like a long time but the details haven’t faded at all. Maybe it wasn’t all that long ago. Some stories are so good you don’t have to make up anything. 

Today is my 83rd birthday. I have surpassed the 2022 life expectancy for American males by five years. I’m not sure about life expectancy for moose in the wild. I read somewhere that moose can live to be 20 but the average is more like 8 or 9 years. There it is again; 9 years. I still have the photograph. It is clear and crisp; you can imagine the story without the photo, good enough but all you have are the words. Next year will be 10 years, I’ll be 84 if I’m lucky. The story will not have aged a day and together with the photo it will still be good as gold. 

BEFORE YOU LEAVE THE MARKET

  I am emerging from either the afterglow of an adventure or its aftermath. A three week adventure to the mountains, parks & basins of Colorado has winnowed down to dirty laundry in the chute and a lawn begging to be mowed. Adventure is, by my definition, any action where the outcome hangs in a balance. It can end with a boom or a bust and you stand to either gain or suffer as a result. It ain’t over ‘till it’s over and what you get is what you get. In that context, almost anything can be experienced as an adventure. Certainly, sh*t happens but then so does the excitement of a happy surprise. Likewise, some uninvited sh*t may be a blessing in disguise. The rule of unintended consequence is always at work and the Colorado adventure featured both afterglow and aftermath.
Waking up in the same place every day and reinventing the wheel makes it hard to escape the mundane: and even though we need the mundane to have balance in this life I find myself looking for ways to escape its sameness. Still, here we are. Times like now I reflect on (explore) ideas and perceptions that for one reason or another have had to wait for my undivided attention. Reflection is generally considered to be a good thing. It requires deep, patient, open ended thinking that may or may not have a clear purpose. One might think of it as mental gymnastics that keep the mind flexible and fit. The opposite of Reflective is Superficial which would be neither deep, open ended nor patient. Most of us like to think they are reflective in our thinking but if one is closed to possibility and impatient with the process then it’s just memory reinforcing what it has already concluded. 
What has me thinking today is the widening breech between the virtues of my long held heroes and a surge of narcissistic indifference that typifies today’s self obsessed leaders. Kahlil Gibran is a legitimate hero. He lived and died  before I was born yet still a moral presence. A Lebanese Christian, Gibran’s art, writing and reputation as a philosopher stem from a multicultural identity, both Lebanese and American. I was introduced to him in the 1980’s through his best known work, The Prophet. 
In The Prophet he speaks to aspects of living in community and to personal relationships. I particularly identified with his thoughts on Love, Marriage and Children. But the rest of the book is equally profound with a humble yet demanding expectation. The section, On Buying & Selling is short but leaves no doubt as to what the issue is and where responsibility falls. His use of poetic language may pose a distraction but his intent is clear. It is a short piece, you should read it. Gibran pleads the case for writers and performers to be rewarded fairly, that every talent has value. Then to the point, “Before you leave the market, see that no one has gone his way with empty hands. For the master spirit of this earth shall not sleep peacefully upon the wind till the needs of the least of you are satisfied.”  
I cannot get my head around the moral disparity between Gibran and 21st century, wannabe Winners. In my lifetime the righteous rule has been revised from: We’re all in this together, to, Win! at any cost, at all cost, by any means necessary. Neither can I frame language (God helps those who help themselves) to suggest God’s approval for corrupt business and abuse of power. Unfortunately, corrupt business and abuse of power are inseparable, Siamese twins. Gibran has a biblical, christian style and his message rings of the Beatitudes. Yet today’s aspiring moguls would tell us: Blessed are the Winners because they kick ass. By inference the weak and the defenseless should be kicked to the curb because they are losers and deserve what they get. Despots and demagogues have been digging in that hole forever but now they have an equally selfish, unscrupled army of followers. 
It makes me want to pack up my little teardrop camper and melt away into a canyon somewhere or up to a high mountain meadow. I can take comfort there with food and drink, in my work and with my loved ones. Life is short and you can't take your trophies with you. So don’t squander it pissing in the wind. King Solomon shared that insight nearly three thousand years ago.  But dead now, he is just another loser. 


 

TWO CATEGORIES

  Eighteen days and 2,000 miles might not sound spectacular but it kept me busy and I am still getting over the wear & tear. It averages about 110 miles per day but some days the wheels never moved and others they didn’t stop.  Our longest layover was four days & nights in Gunnison, Colorado. The longest drive, just shy of 650 miles was the last day. It came with with a late start, me alone on a hot 100+ day, crossing from where the mountains level out in a sea of sagebrush all the way to Missouri. My traveling companion took a (Southwest Airline) flight back to Louisiana. I think she got the better with that, a day ahead of me on the reboot. 
I’ve been home two days with 100+ temps setting records but beginning to feel like being up and around.  All of my blog writing over those two & a half weeks was about the road trip. Sitting at my kitchen table watching the grass turn brown I have settled into my place in time on the calendar. The world (civilization) is no better off than when we left it behind. I managed to avoid radio & TV news all those days and nights and I didn’t miss a thing. I don’t want to go off on a rant but as I acclimate to the scheme I left on July 2, I get that same old feeling. If God really did create mankind, men in particular, his head (God) was so far up his ass he had to look out through his ears to see what he had done. 
I think old people like me fall into one of two categories. Some are angry that progressing old age is robbing them of not only their relevance but their authority as well and someone younger or different must be to blame. So killing your enemies and punishing their children is reason enough to keep on breathing. Long life has taught me that nobody deserves anything.  We get what life deals us and we play those cards. If you want someone to blame for all that’s wrong, pick anyone you don’t like. Blame seems to me a two headed serpent that bites both coming and going. Play that game and die young, full of fang holes.  We’re all in this together; we need each other. Make love, not war; where did I hear that? Most of the tie/die hippies went on to manage hedge funds or sit on boardroom committees but they had a good idea to begin with. It says something about the power of power and the lust for more. I overshot the hippie generation but not the futility of malice and greed.
Here I am babbling old-man excuses for failing to Make America Great Again.  The author of Great Again had his head up his ass too. No, I never want to wallow in popular, ideological quagmires so I’ll not go there.  You get days and years to learn that this is all there is. Live now, grow, learn. Don’t forget to love someone who makes you feel important. Love is underrated.  Take all you’ve got and give it away. My road trip didn’t do anything to change my mind on why we are here. It just refreshed my understanding and appreciation of geology, gravity, photosynthesis, humming birds, and that all of us, we are just star dust with nothing better to do. 

SUM-SUM-SUMMER TIME

  The campout got off to a shaky start and tonight it is all history but the shaky didn’t last and I don’t know how much more of the mountains I could survive. Our schedule was blown up on the 2nd day and the last day was chiseled in stone. Sharon’s plane would leave Denver International on July 20 (noonish) with or without her so we had to be creative as that deadline approached. Our friends from the Narrow Gauge adventure told us in parting, “If you come out on Interstate 70 and have some time to hang out, we don’t have any plans.” To me, that’s an invitation and it worked to perfection. So we stayed with Martin & Joan Strand in Evergreen, rested, ate very well and tightened up a long standing friendship. 
Packed, cleaned up, well fed, hugged and bid bon voyage we were on the downhill chute into Denver. I dropped (didn’t really drop anything), stacked suit cases to roll through the terminal before 9:00. Her plane took off on time about the time I rolled through Limon, Colorado. I remember in 1973 when we moved from Western Colorado to SW Michigan. I watched in my side mirrors as the mountains disappeared into a sinking horizon thinking, I will never get over the mountains, and I never did. I came to love Michigan and the big lake but you don’t have to stop loving either one just because it is far away.
Cool mornings at 8.000 feet are easy to take. The sun shines and the world is right even if I have to make believe. Fifteen hours across the plaines on a 100+ day is a grim reminder that my job changes to meet the need. Retirement leaves me a lot of wiggle room but sooner or later I pay the piper.  But I’ve slept late and taken naps enough to face all the chores that require my attention. I hear the heat wave is largely due to an ongoing El Niño in the Pacific. Regardless, it takes longer for me to bounce back after long days behind the wheel. Tomorrow will be a new day. My alarm is set for 6:15 and I may hit the snooze but if I want to get stuff done with tomorrow’s (103 forecast) it will need to be early. 
I’m thinking about Arizona in January. Thinking about Canada’s maritime provinces next summer. That’s how it gets started. If you want the wheels to go ‘round you need to get started. 

MY YOUTH OR CHILDHOOD

I forget how many theme parks I have been to but I remember the rides. It could have been King’s Island in Cincinnati or Sandusky’s Cedar Point, maybe the big one just over the line in Wisconsin from Chicago. Whichever one it was they claimed the world’s largest, fastest coster with steel wheels on steel tracks. We took two turns on it. The vibration and shaking were so violent I felt my teeth trying to come out of their sockets. The noise was deafening and hanging on to the lap restraint was not a rule to enforce, rather an exercise of self preservation. Then the rattle and clatter started to even out. The steep ups and downs gave way to long, rolling sections where the steel-on-steel roar slowed down to discernible clackety clacks and you realized the ride was about to end. For me, an old adrenaline junking, I had had enough. But later in the day my kids talked me into another bone rattling go ‘round. What I remember about the second time was anticipating the clackety clack of the slowdown and silence when the safety bar came up. I still love the speed and G-forces but I only ride the nylon wheel & tubular track models now. 

So maybe it’s not so strange I associate these last days of our Colorado excursion with that roller coaster sensation. Near the end, only two days away and it’s the clackety clack of Murphy’s law telling me that no true fun comes without bumps and bruises. For every unblemished delight there will be unanticipated consequences that either hurt or cost too much. To amend a long lived axiom I might say, "sh*t still happens but so does love, fun, laughter, coffee and cherry limeade."

I can feel the wheels easing down to the last ‘clack’ and a long, hopefully uneventful ride across Kansas. I don’t mind the driving but I’ve never been one to feel great about coming home after an adventure. It takes a few days to decompress but it won't be long before I start studying maps again. Marcia Ball’s song, Saint Gabriel is a lament about a woman wrongfully imprisoned. One line goes; “all the sad songs about leaving, not about coming home.” I always thought the sad part was coming home. it should have been, “all the glad songs about leaving". But then my ‘Leaving’ home has never involved incarceration.  

No complaints here. We will hang out with our friends from Evergreen, CO. Then I drop off Sharon at Denver International and she flies back to Louisiana. When I get back to Missouri I’ll learn how my tomatoes have survived the heat and how big the brown spots on my lawn have grown. I have plenty to keep me busy. Decompressing isn’t really decompressing, just a few days of clackety clack and a new idea will hatch. In the August heat I can always go make sawdust in the cool of my basement wood shop. 

Georgetown, CO; you have to look up at a 45 degree angle to see the horizon which puts the sun down behind the peaks early and the temperature goes down with it. The summer 'Cool' that comes with altitude is something I will miss. Squeezing the sweet out of something good is a talent I have preserved, even enhanced. Another song comes to mind, Julie Andrews from The Sound of Music,  “Nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever could. So somewhere in my youth or childhood I must have done something good.”

FAIR IS FAIR

  By definition, ‘Vacation’ means an extended period of rest & relaxation. When I look up ‘Roadtrip’ there is no mention of either rest or relaxation. The thought of rest and relax never came up in the planning stage of this roadtrip. But after a week with unexpected breakdown and being on the wrong end of the leash, I’ve taken to naps and sleepy before normal bedtime. 
We (Sharon Flanagan) and I haven’t been on one of these trips in four years and those years have come and gone at a cost. We made up most of our time only to lose a day in Ouray, Colorado. I took a chance there might still be someone alive at San Juan Scenic Jeep Tours that I might recognize. I drove open top jeeps full of tourists in the early 1970’s there. San Juan is still in business. A kid who worked in the shop is running it now and did recognize me. His morning trip had empty seas; he invited us to go along and we stole the show. 
He asked what my favorite half day trip was and that is where he took us, to Yankeeboy and Governor Basins. Good photos, lots of ‘remember when . . .’ and Sharon kept scooting to the high side. We couldn’t afford that ride. In ’73 the ride cost $15 and the driver got the first fifteen. Two half-day trips was a $30 day. With nine passengers (full) tips could push that up to $45 or $50 for a day’s work.

    We were a day late in Gunnison that night but spent four days basically with rest and recovery. Cool nights and dry air; sleeping late in the tear-drop camper came easy. Gunnison is nearly 8,000 ft. elevation you discover ‘chill’ sometime in the night and make a cocoon of covers you had push down to the foot on going to sleep. We met nice people, the restrooms were good but a long walk in the wee hours. Still, I understand that all trailer hitches were designed to shed pee in the dark of the night. Murphy’s law; on the last day you discover the great coffee shop (with toasted bagels and raspberry muffins).
We are trying to stay up until it gets dark tonight. In Fairplay, (South Park) Colorado they are having their County Fair. We went late this morning as the girls were qualifying with their barrel racers. Little girls (maybe 3) were making the circuit with a parent or older sibling trotting along side to steady them in the saddle. Again, after two days we get the word on the good coffee shop. That will be out (get out of town) duty as we are headed for Georgetown, CO, on Interstate 70, below Loveland Basin Ski area. 
We are treating ourselves to a motel in Georgetown, then spending two days with our friends (my former classmate Martin Strand) & his wife Joan. We all did the narrow gage train from Durango to Silverton last week and they asked us to stay with them before I put Sharon on the jet liner back to New Orleans. What I’ll do on my own after that is hard to say. I have bills to pay and ripe tomatoes waiting but that ‘Chill & Cocoon’ thing is hard to resist and I can pay bills over the phone. If the birds and squirrels should leave me a few tomatoes then I guess fair is fair. 

ANY TRAVEL MAGAZINE

  I haven’t been able to write lately. No WIFI up on Mesa Verde at the camp site. No signal at the registration/gift shop/restaurant/laundry/showers either. So we settled for a 20 amp electric hookup. Moved on: the drive from Dolores, Colorado to the Telluride turn off was awesome. We went around Red Mountain; been there, done that, took what I hope turn out to be good (better) photographs. I’ll do some editing tomorrow.
Rain in Ouray was uncomfortable but dry by 9:00 a.m. In 1972 & 73 I drove tour jeeps full of tourists for San Juan Scenic Jeep Tours in Ouray. I stopped there this morning just to see if anybody was still alive. The old, old ones either died or dropped out. The guy in charge remembered me and treated me like a VIP. He offered; we’ve got space on the morning ride up to Yankee Boy & Governor Basins, do you want to come along. I twisted Sharon’s arm and we went. Great ride. It never occurred to me that I would make that ride again. Took photos of Columbines & Indian Paintbrush. The big, panoramic landscapes never capture the feel so I look for smaller stuff just on a grander stage. I can find a photo of a 14,000 ft mountain in any travel magazine. I want things that only I can get and I have to be there to begin with. 
We fell behind schedule and arrived late in Gunnison, Colorado in time to devour a sandwich and set up camp. She turned in at 7:30. I did that too in Ouray last night and woke up at midnight; went to the clubhouse and did some rewriting. I’ll stay up tonight. Getting up to pee is one thing, getting up because you went down too early is another. Getting up and out of the teardrop in the middle of the dark is a struggle even when it goes smooth. We are packed in pretty tight at the Tall Texan Campground and even if everybody else is sawing logs, you imagine they are watching you half naked, waddling to the bath house. Then getting back in and under the covers is an even bigger mess. Sleeping space is 42 in. x 6 ft 2 with no wiggle room. Two of us leave none of that precious commodity. 
We will be here for 4 days so nothing pressing tomorrow. I have lots of photos to edit and that takes time. Sharon finished her book so no telling how she will busy herself. It is late enough now, after 9:00 and it will take me 15-20 min to potty and try to get under covers without spoiling Sharon’s night.

ANIMAS RIVER GORGE

  It has been a full day. Up early at the motel in Durango, CO, catch the 8:30 a.m. train (Narrow Gage Steam Excursion) to Silverton, CO, up the Animas River gorge. Traveling with Martin & Joan Strand. Martin and I had lockers next to or nearly next to each other all four years of high school. He is retired from his career in emergency medicine (MD) and we are having a good time. I retired from hanging out with teenagers so long ago I can’t really remember how I did my job. The ride up the gorge; everywhere you point the camera there is a photo crying to be taken and sooner than later I hope, I realize I can’t take all the pictures that demand my attention. 
In Silverton we checked into the Avon Hotel, no way to describe it other than the 120 year old. Its 3-story red brick building has more features and old stuff than one could imagine and I am loving staying up late just discovering things. I thought it was time for me to have a Pagan communion, time to renew the spirit and my companions went along with it. I picked up a baa of milk chocolate Kisses and a couple of sample bottles of brandy. I read some Carl Sagan quotes, rolled chocolate around on the tongue and sipped brandy. It has never had a bad effect. 
I am still up, doing what I do. Sharon thinks I’m overdoing and should be resting for tomorrow but I’m still processing today. The hotel is full of young people (30’s) talking like I did in the 70’s and building up a sleep deficit. They (my companions) went to bed agreeing to sleep in rather than set an alarm but I will set one for 6:45 anyway. Too much computer work to do. But I am ready for a shower and such. Tomorrow promises as much or more stuff to see and do. Pooh (that’s me) is a happy camper tonight.