ON MY MOTHER'S SIDE

  The difference between Read and Study is profound. Fiction will entertain but study requires reading or listening with the ability to stop, take notes, review, reread and even start over. Since they took my keys and reassigned my classroom to a younger, more affordable teacher I have plenty of time to read or study as I choose. Long story short; when I was going into the business it was an insatiable curiosity and need to know that drove me and not so much an appetite for entertainment. Now, when I sit down to write I seldom get very far before I need to research something I had not expected and am drawn away from my original idea. That puts me digging in a new hole and it takes some discipline to stay on task. 
I was trained in the school of science and critical thinking. The whole idea is relatively new, only a few hundred years since Galileo turned that corner and tradition is slow to change. Myself, I’m not all that smart but I pay attention to scholars who count molecules and know where to look for the human genome. Fear and imagination combined are still entrenched in the human condition. Both belonging and fitting in are usually more important than challenging the myth or pushing the boundaries. 
I find it irresistible, what it means to be human and our collective backstory. Whenever I find a reliable source that clarifies that meaning or expands that story I start taking notes. A good definition seems a good way to start. Anthropology; The study of human beings and their ancestors through time and space and in relation to physical character, environmental/social relations, and culture. In my notes I would emphasize; (through time and space). As a disclaimer I want to note that time is not an objective reality, but rather a human-made system for organizing and understanding the sequence of events. Without a way to measure and apply that sequence we could not function as we do. I had to find ways to appreciate if not visualize so many zeroes. But you have to find a way if you want the view to fit the frame. 
I want to imagine what I might say to one of my ancestors if I could bring us together in that slice of space and time. If I figure four generations per century (a plausible estimate) the math is easy. If I could restore even for an afternoon all of my maternal grandmothers going back in time to when Christopher Columbus set sail; how many places should I set at the table? Take a head count from then until now; 4.5 centuries times 4 = 18 grandmas. Compound those numbers another 4.5 centuries and there are 36 grandmas (all in the same line) stretching back to about 1066, William The Conquerer and the Norman victory over Anglo-Saxon rule in England. That 36th grandma on my mother’s side, she would have been alive somewhere. My takeaway is the small number of grandmas and the long stretch of time; not all that many conceptions to get maybe a few of her genes down to me. 
Still, that long, unbroken line of procreation is linear with a beginning that reaches back a lot farther in time and grandmas than 900 years or #36. The human backstory goes back at least forty thousand (40,000) years to small clans of hunter-gatherers who sustained a stable culture for 400 centuries; times 4 and somewhere lost in ancient prehistory there I have about 1,600 grandmas on my mother’s side. 1,600 generations in 400 centuries, not that many when I think about it. They were all born, grew up, lived, gave birth and died as the way of this life has always required. 
I find it ironic that the universe is birthing new stars and planets as others are turning super nova and being consumed by black holes. Here on Earth eight billion humans have been persuaded that something mysterious is in control and we are more special than the planet itself. I am reminded that life, all life from fruit flys to blue whales, from bacteria to giant redwoods; it sustains only as long as conditions strike that happy balance. Life requires light and water and climate that meets our needs. The chemistry of that narrow, thin little layer of air and water that supports all life is not guaranteed. Change is the nature of nature. How long can you hold your breath? 
I am shutting this down now with a shoutout for Carl Sagan’s quote about The Little Blue Dot. I recommend it. You caN GOOGLE it. 

REALITY CHECK

  When my dad was just about my age now he told me that he hated being old. He had been living alone for five or six years since my mom passed and he wasn’t handling that well. I was living far away which compounded things. His friends were aging out and dying off and he wasn’t making any new ones. Grandchildren had grown up and moved on; not that they didn’t or don’t care but life has a way of overflowing all of the space available. It leaves little room for grandparents and he was lonely regardless. I couldn’t help with that but I took it as an omen, a cautionary reality-check; not unlike the reckless driver who passed me a few miles back and I catch up with them later, pulled over by the police and instinctively I think; Not good, don’t do that. So here I am, same age (85) but I don’t hate it. There are drawbacks but without the Yin-Yang and Karma factors I couldn’t appreciate good fortune when it treats me better than I deserve. 
This is a story that was born in my preteen years. Sleeping outside on a hot summer night I woke up to a bright light and a voice coming down from the treetops. It said when I was being born I was delivered to the wrong planet and they were here to rescue me, to take me home where I belong. Then my mother’s voice called from her bedroom window. She told me to stop with the noise and go to sleep. In the still that followed, both the bright light and the voice had disappeared. It felt so real I couldn’t let it go, begging the question that has never been satisfied. I dream dreams, maybe not every night but often, still I don’t remember any of them. The one in our front yard when I was 10, I still remember it clear as a bell. 
Not wanting to sound like a fool, still it’s is generally accepted that the subconscious mind (which is unavailable to the conscious one) can and does bridge that gap with thoughts and ideas (language) that we have no control over. A thought, out of the blue that just hits you between the ears; artists and writers in particular refer to this inspiring phenomenon as the ‘Muse’. If you treat it with denial (WTF) then what you see is what you get. I pay close attention when I get those little flashes of inspiration, afraid if I don’t it will give up on me and go away for good. I am patient but never closed to an insight that has otherwise eluded me. 
Getting back to the hot night in the front yard, I still chew on that unresolved question. Certainly, across my lifetime I harbor reservations about being a human being. Sometimes, everything in my experience tells me that I don’t belong. I know,I know, I’m stuck here and nothing foreseeable to remedy that. Still this life has always given me a path where I could both learn from failure and try again, and again. I should be grateful and I am but it is in our nature to want more and better than what we have even when it comes at the expense of unfortunate others who are trapped in a working underclass. Here in the U.S.SA. we have the best government money can buy, where Liberty is confused with License and you get just as much Justice as you can afford. I certainly am grateful. If not for White-Male privilege it is extremely unlikely I would have ever seen the inside of a university library.  
I made it my life’s work to know biology and evolution, to realize the power of applied math and data but in my culture it’s not something you want to take seriously. Our leadership is content to popularize conspiracy theories, cook the books and blame each other for the shortfall. This could unfold as a rant against political parties and religious deities but they have joined at the hip and you can’t tell where one stops and the other begins. 
If I have a bona fide hero it would be Astronomer Carl Sagan, 1934 - 1996. He understood the frailty of life on this planet and the vast expanse of a universe that doesn’t care at all if we flourish for thousands of years in hunter-gatherer clans or perish in a civilized attempt to be the temporary Lords of an ordinary planet. For as long as I am remembered by anyone, for any reason, I don’t want to be lumped together with egomaniac narcissists  who can’t see beyond the next election cycle, who profit from building walls to keep their base happy as they worship their own image in the mirror.