EASIER TO FOOL PEOPLE

  Mark Twain has been a hero of mine for a long time and for many reasons. His clear-eyed skepticism and mastery with language left a legacy that is as timely and relevant now as when he penned Huckleberry Finn. I dwell on his quotes as seriously as devout Christians do their favorite scriptures. He said, “Politicians are like diapers. They should be changed frequently and for the same reasons.” He also said, "Conservatism is the blind and fear-filled worship of dead radicals.”  With regard to religion he left no doubt; "I am quite sure now that in matters concerning religion, a man's reasoning powers are not above the monkey’s.” Today’s conspiracy and misinformation culture was foreseen by Twain when he observed: "It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.” It has always been easy to point out flaws in human nature but all we see when looking at ourselves in a mirror is the lipstick on the pig. I tend to identify with others in Twain’s camp as he didn't exclude himself when it came to mocking human folly. 
After 40,000 years (a significant number if you know our backstory), the weight and measure of our checkered past can be as much an inditement as an accolade. Historically, small groups (hunter-gatherers) were egalitarian. They lived together peacefully (more or less) and sustained a stable culture for at least 30,000 years. Every person contributed to the greater good. Cooperation and resolution of conflicts were far more productive than competition and violence. The loss of a peer, even to an injury could threaten the clan’s survival. 
Civilization started evolving in many different places and at different times but experts agree it began with the Agricultural Revolution some 12,000 years ago and it was about 6,000 years later before they started building cities. I have a friend, a lady in her 70’s, educated, intelligent and very confident in her own opinions. At coffee maybe a year ago she was treating the words ‘culture’ and ‘civilization’ as synonyms, as if they were interchangeable. The two have commonalities but they are not synonymous. Gently, I tried to share that with her but she was upset to begin with and gave me a dose of ‘What-for’. But culture is about behavior and beliefs, how people interact and frame their expectations. Civilization requires infrastructure. A civilization requires large numbers of people living in densely populated areas (cities), it must be able to feed all of those people, it requires specialized division of labor (work) which in turn forms a class system hierarchy, it requires leaders, some form of government, religion, a means of self defense and/or waging war. There are other criteria but you get the drift. There can be many cultures present in one civilization but not vise versa. My friend reminded me of the expression: “I know what I know so don’t confuse me with facts.” So I moved to another table.
I am reminded at this point that we are all civilized and we all fit into a culture, even a subculture; not a choice. What goes unobserved is that Civilization (as we know it) is driven by large numbers of people and serves its own organizational and technological needs with little or no accommodation for individuals. Whoever prospers in that culture wants to maintain status quo. They may give lip service to social reform but not if it call for them to sacrifice anything they value. 
What would you call a well aged, almost but not quite humanist with an ever so thin shred of misanthrope, a recovering Christian with spiritual leanings toward nature based (pagan) traditions? That would be me. I am comfortable with that identity and I fit there in a relatively small niche. I know what I know and like to believe but sometimes I miss the mark. When I must deal with my own, erroneous conclusions I certainly hope someone gently helps me balance the equation. 
When I began this writing I thought it would be about culture and herd mentality. Herd animals benefit from safety in numbers. Predators may pick off individuals that wander but inside the herd is a pretty safe place to be. For people who herd together the risk is falling out of favor with peers if you step outside the rule. We are social animals, we need each other and in order to enjoy that ‘Herd’ security we can’t wander too far from the herd’s agenda. So if your subculture tends to be racist or ultra political, one side or the other there won’t be much tolerance for an individual who deviates from those prejudices. Social rejection is hard to bear and it’s easy to fall back on the herd mentality rather than be rejected or worse. Here and now in our greater herd, I fear the herd at large is smitten with Twain's, blind and fear-filled worship of dead radicals. 
It’s a delicate balance and often, more often than I like to admit; I surrender that independence for the sake of belonging to the herd, even if my herd is few and scattered. I’m sure Mark Twain would have something to say about people who take pride in their herd mentality. 

BAD DAY FISHING

  I had breakfast yesterday at the Sportsman’s Cafe  in Deer River, Minnesota. If you draw a line to the Northwest from Duluth, MN it’s about 90 miles on paved road. My son and I were headed home from a windy day on Sand Lake which is another 25 miles Northwest of Deer River, mostly paved. I will not find fault with anything as generations of fishermen before me have concluded, a bad day of fishing is better than the best day at work. The boat ran perfectly and we both got what we thought were hits but the line went slack and empty hooks were all we got back to the boat. Still, a good day on the water, good company and we slept sound. 
In Deer River our slow moving appetites woke up and required attention. The Sportsman’s was a plain storefront on the main street with blinds pulled against the sun and no clue to what we would find inside. Church parking lots were occupied so I would guess it was the Sunday morning breakfast crowd had left only two tables to choose from. There was a natural buzz but not too loud and several waitresses were scurrying to keep up. The menu listed the standard offerings but the prices were throwback to another decade, before Covid. We both ordered three-egg omelettes with American fries at under ten dollars and coffee was fifty cents. Not to labor the issue but my cup got topped off several times before I could empty it. It came as a pleasant surprise. Somebody somewhere has figured out how to stay in business, serve a better than average, full size meal, all you can drink coffee and a three dollar tip for under $15. I thought at the time; too bad they couldn’t get the fish to bite. 
Here it is Monday morning in St. Paul, my son was off to work while I slept in and I’m having to create my own itinerary for the day. I’ll stick around another day then go over into Wisconsin to see some longtime friends before I make the long-day drive back to Kansas City. I haven’t been fishing for so long I can’t remember when and I am thinking I should find a way to do that without needing a long drive time or a boat for myself. I don’t need to land a big fish or even fill a stringer with panfish. Catch & release sounds great and I can keep myself company. 

WOULDN'T IT BE GREAT

Memory can be like a leaky faucet. When you turn it off it may slow down to a trickle but it keeps on giving. In 1977 we lived in an old farmhouse with a step-down from the kitchen to what had been a closed in porch with a door in the floor that led to the basement. Some time later, someone extended the room with a dirt floor and a back door. I finished the room with a real floor all the way to the back wall, paneling, a dropped ceiling, lighting and a wood burning stove with a hearth. I got a good deal on carpet samples, sewed them together by hand and we had a family room. There was just enough space between the kitchen wall and the pull-up door for a wardrobe we used as an entertainment center. If someone needed to go down in the basement while watching TV everyone sitting on the floor had to get up and pull back the carpet so we could open the door in the floor. 

Our television set was made of red plastic, about the size of a small suitcase with a handle on top, a 17” screen with a black and white picture. There was no remote control, to turn it on and off you had to twist a dial. To change channels you had to twist a different dial. The kids could all sit together, legs crossed on the carpet a few feet back from the screen. Two favorite programs were animated time-travel spoofs, The Flintstones were a typical Stone Age family with primitive technology and modern behavior. The Jetsons were from the future with yet to be invented flying cars & robot housekeepers. It was great entertainment, a time when adults were as simple as the program their kids were watching. 

Forty-plus years later I find myself going to a coffee klatch with my niece. She is living in her camper in my back yard this summer to avoid the heat and hurricanes in south Florida where her furniture lives. She usually drives her two year-old Tesla and I ride along in the all electric smart car. The experience rivals astronauts checking with Mission Control, switching from mode to mode as they prepare for docking. Almost everything with the Tesla responds to voice command and almost-radar displays other vehicles coming or going and won’t let you get too close to any of them.

Coming home from coffee she asked if I wanted to do a demo ride in the new, self-driving model. So the guy at Tesla checks her out and she knew as much as he did. She drives up the street, pulls off in a shady spot, touches an icon on the big screen and tells the car we want to go to Trader Joe’s on Ward Parkway. She folded her arms and leaned back in the seat while the car pulls out into traffic. We held firm at the speed limit, centered up in the proper lane, changing lanes when necessary and braking hard when other drivers misbehaved. I was grinning like my kids used to but they are too old now to grin like that. We drove around south Kansas City for almost an hour. At Trader Joe’s negotiating traffic around rows of parked cars was like running with the bulls at Pamplona. Terry pointed the car at the space on thee control screen. It was easy, just point and hit the ‘Go’ button. When I got out I looked down at my feet and the only words that came to mind were; “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” 

O.M.G. I have seen it, done it in my lifetime. I have transitioned from Fred Flintstone’s Stone Age boulder-cars and pedal powered technology to George Jetson’s Artificial Intelligence and automated shuttles. I don’t think I have either the time or money to tap into the self-driving. Too much new stuff for me to assimilate and short of $$ for a retired biology teacher’s benefits. Having my own self-driving vehicle may be too much to hope for but you never know. I am still impressed with the superimposed lines on my car’s backup camera that guide me backward into spaces so I can pull straight ahead coming out. Talking to my car doesn’t do anything but I can unlock the doors and start the motor from inside the house. Wouldn’t it be great if I live long enough to have my own Tesla toothbrush that lets me sleep while it scrubs my teeth!

NEVER IN EXTREEMITY

  Recently my daughter in law sent me a poem, ‘Hope’ by John Roedel. We share stuff like that sometimes and she knows what I might like. I thought it like the Call part in a Call & Response from church tradition so I responded with Emily Dickinson’s poem, ’Hope’. Roedel characterized Hope as a treasured stone you carry in your pocket, just the feel between your fingers was uplifting. Then he turned it upside down, portrayed Hope as a river you can float in, it can carry you; a reassuring metaphor. In Roedel’s free verse he juggled with line length but otherwise it could have read like prose. 
Dickinson wrote with tight, measured phrasing that coupled like rhyme but not quite. I wrote recently about wordsmiths, writers who not only choose the perfect words but arrange them naturally as petals on the bloom. Emily Dickinson was maybe the ultimate wordsmith. Her poem ‘Hope Is A Thing With Feathers’ required only three verses, twelve short lines. Today, this little reflection opens with free verse and closes with Dickinson. 

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all.

And sweetest in the Gale is heard
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I’ve heard it in the chillest land
And on the strangest sea
Yet never in extremity
It asked a crumb of me. 

FOLLOWING AN ASS

By definition, a Wordsmith is a skilled writer, an expert at crafting
language in creative ways that resonate with readers and listeners. I
have Wordsmith friends who have been a good influence but for me to 
think myself a crafter of language would be presumptuous. But with
the writing I can get inside my head and work ideas that are too many
and too big to organize and recall. Without the writing it’s like juggling. 
Back in the day I could keep three tennis balls in the air for a long 
time but never four. How does one recall the scope and sequence of
several thousand words just like they were issued? On the page I can
go back to edit, rephrase, even delete passages. The conscious mind
can master many tasks but not all at the same time. So I write, revise
and redo; and when nothing jumps out that needs a fix I can hang it
out to dry where new eyes can see for themselves. To be sure, 
nothing I write goes public on the 1st or 2nd draft.
In the army my Platoon Sergeant was a short, stocky man who
tried to make up for his short stature by crowding your personal space
and a booming, loud voice. Sergeant Crowe was no wordsmith as he
either botched or corrupted grammar as if it were the enemy and we
mocked him for it. One of his habitual language blunders was a
disclaimer concerning how little he cared about something. He would
boom, “I could care less!” But if he could care less then he must have cared at least a little bit. He should have said, “I could NOT have cared less.” He didn’t like being corrected and we were not going to take him there. But low ranking PFC’s, even me, the guy who barely passed high school English, we kicked him around in private like a tin can. His shortfall is still a reminder; pay attention to details and do your homework. It’s not that I don’t want to be corrected but there is a significant difference between making mistakes and serial stupidity; and I’ve been told, you cannot fix ‘Stupid’.
I check and double check words that could easily fall into misuse as a failsafe against ‘Stupid’. Creative license only goes so far and even then the intent should be obvious. Two words in that category are the verb ‘Perceive’ or the noun ‘Perception’, and another noun, ‘Insight’. The perceive-perception combo is about becoming aware or conscious of something. It is (what you think) about whatever it is. If we get the aroma of burgers & fries outside a McDonalds the mind processes the experience and either makes sense of it or begs the question. We decide (think about) whether the speaker is being truthful or selling a lie, a (perception). 
The other word, Insight is defined as the capacity to gain understanding, a deep understanding (emphasis on ‘Deep’). Now, we have to look at ‘capacity’ - the maximum about that can be accommodated; a full bucket has the same capacity as when it was empty. That deep meaning can be about anything you can perceive; a  person, idea or thing. But unlike a perception, it is not about what you think. Insight is about how you think. Not unlike baking bread, insight is partly the way flour, water and yeast interact at high temperature. The other part is how disciplined and persistent the baker is in the preparation and knowing when to take it out of the oven. 
To be insightful one must carefully, accurately observe and examine their perception (what they think) so that any conclusion is both reliable (consistently trustworthy) and credible (it truly is what we say it is). This pattern is also inherent in the discipline of Critical Thinking, the process of creating a bridge between being fundamentally uninformed to having full knowledge. But insight is sufficient to keep me occupied here. Think of perception as a library full of books and insight as the Dewey Decimal System, a library classification system which allows new books to be added to a library in their appropriate location based on subject. Once insight has been acquired there is no rule about what to do with it. Successful criminals and politicians have terrific insight or they could not bend and circumvent the rules like they do. 
Two other words that come to mind, often used erroneously are Presume and Assume. A presumption is an informed guess based on reasonable but insufficient evidence. Still, one need remember, a guess is still a guess, who knows? An assumption is a best guess based on little or no evidence at all; is the beggar on the street corner really destitute or maybe just lazy? There is a clever acronym for the word ‘assume’ that goes, “You & me following an ass.” 
It’s no secret, I write to understand as much as to be understood. That is what I’ve been about here, today. Most of it is little more than touching old bases but the digging puts distance between  ‘Insight’ and ‘Perception’. Being insightful requires a high level of integrity, something lacking in today’s polarized culture. How about ‘Integrity’, now there’s another potent word; it is ‘the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles that you refuse to change.’ I’ve dug in this hole about as deep as I care to go today. I may expand on that ‘Integrity’ thing after the November election. 

CLOAKED IN THE DUSTCLOUD

  One of the first things I did when I moved back to Michigan in 1996 was join a writers guild in Grand Rapids. That summer I attended their annual week-long workshop at Glen Lake. The 2nd night we had a potluck supper followed by an informal meeting with stories, Q & A’s, announcements, etc. Sitting in a big circle around the meeting room our leader for the evening explained our first activity: Introduce yourself with a short story about yourself that you think nobody knows. A lady sitting several spots to my left began and the rotation went away from me so I would be one of the last to speak. The stories were informative, funny, even profound and I was caught up in the camaraderie. Listening to the stories I forgot that my turn was coming up and was not prepared. Everybody focused on me and there was a long pause. I managed to say my name thinking something would inspire me but I drew a blank and another pause. When I opened my mouth this is what came out, “I am a Dirtboy from Missouri. I throw stones and sometimes I don’t play fair.” They liked it, some clapped hands, others hooted and we moved on to the next person. 
A bulletin board on the wall with workshop highlights and quotes was updated to include, “I’m a dirtboy from Missouri. . .”  I had branded myself with a new nickname. I keep in touch with writer-friends I made there and “Dirtboy” still pops up in conversation. Being a Dirtboy has little or nothing to do with where you come from. It is about the dirt itself, soil, dust, grit and I have an almost spiritual connection with Mother Earth. 
Pigpen is a character in the Charlie Brown comic strip who travels in his own personal dust cloud. Charles Schultz, the comic strip creator described him this way: He may travel in his own personal dust cloud, but Pigpen’s mind and conscience are clear. He’s confident in who he is and carries himself with dignity and respect. He treats others well and hopes they will do the same for him (they often do not, but he perseveres). Pigpen takes pride that he is cloaked in the ‘dust of countless ages.’  I don’t think I can improve on that; “cloaked in the dust of countless ages.” Any comparison with Pigpen that includes me, I take it as a compliment.
As for being from Missouri; what can I say? Your current zip code or the one before that doesn’t dictate your backstory but it is real and people want to know. It gives legs to the idea; the most important decision one ever makes is choosing their parents. If you were born into poverty in rural Mississippi you probably made a poor choice; shame on you. We don’t get to choose where or to whom we are born. Missouri was a slave state and still clings to its Southern, rural, conservative roots. I don’t want to be from Missouri if that rubs off. Missouri is sometimes described as a sea of Red with two Blue islands (St. Louis & K.C.). I keep to the Blue Island, refer to north Missouri as West-South Carolina and everything south of I-70 as New Mississippi. 
Moving away is just wishful thinking. I have a significant network of family and doctors here and too old to start over again. If being from one place or another is understood as where you feel most at ease I would be from Halifax, Nova Scotia. I spent a couple of summers there in 2001 & 2012. Good place, good people, good times, they keep their politics out of the gutter and their religion inside the church. I know a musician, song writer, we still keep in touch. After noting how crazy American politics are I asked her what it’s like sharing a border with us. Her reply was a gentle insult and she didn’t have to think about it. “Yeah, it’s like living next door to the Simpsons.” I bought her dinner and we joked about the bizarre neighbors next door. But for a guy who throws stones and sometimes doesn’t play fair, playing fair comes easier up there.

TO UNDERSTAND

  I like having heroes. But who you admire and respect, who you would want to emulate speaks as much of you as it does your hero. It’s not simple as squeezing peaches to find the perfect peach. I find myself coming back to the same question; what is it about this particular peach that keeps me coming back? Elie Wiesel was a writer, professor, political activist, Nobel laureate, and Holocaust survivor. A Romanian Jew, his mother and siblings were murdered by the Nazis and his father was worked to death in captivity at Auschwitz and Buchenwald death camps in World War 2. Elie Wiesel survived the holocaust but that’s not what makes him a hero. He is heroic for a life of reconciliation rather than hate. I’ve kept this Elie Wiesel quote on my refrigerator door for over 30 years. “I write to understand as much as to be understood.” We have that connection; I know exactly what he meant. The writing, organizing complex ideas, framing the language; it is the one venue where I can create a lasting image that exceeds my reach. 
Albert Bierstadt was a 19th century American artist who painted large (very large) highly detailed landscapes of the American west. When you stand close enough to appreciate the detail the canvas is too big to grasp the whole image and you find yourself moving left and right, looking up and down at small sections. Once satisfied you can back off and view the painting’s entirety but you cannot do both simultaneously. Still, at some point the viewer is able to appreciate individual brush strokes and texture variations from memory, just knowing they are there. That is when the whole painting becomes an experience. 
When a writer draws from his or her own experience and becomes the source, the work comes together much like a Bierstadt landscape with its multitude of brush strokes and textures. That process is what Elie Wiesel was trying to tell us with his, “I write to understand . . .”  quote. I went for the same idea with, “an image that exceeds my reach.” A fully formed idea that has a life of its own doesn’t need language. But if you want to share it exactly as intended, the only way I know is with word selection, phrasing, scope and sequence. I cannot do that with a single stroke. It requires lots of little strokes and rearranging before I own it, before I grasp the whole, like Bierstadt would do. 
From the beginning I was going to segue here, into the connection between two words; Perceptive and Insight but I think this little Elie Wiesel piece is steady enough to stand on its own legs. His perception and insight were remarkable. I have other heroes but he is the one who could have raged with hate and revenge but he didn’t. Exploring Perceptive & Insight can wait for another day.