PULL TO THE LEFT

My writing recently has been pulling to the left like my truck with low pressure in the front tire. My truck won’t fix itself, I have to do the fixing. February has been a challenging month. I am too old to be taken seriously but I can live with that. What little leverage I have is limited to mundane muttering over issues within my grasp. I know that and it’s alright. But February has been a month of reprehensible behavior by my country’s CEO and my mind keeps going there against my wishes. I don’t want to focus on his mischief as I cannot change his ways. I must have started this entry 6 or 8 times and never gotten to the 2nd paragraph.
I am missing a big lower tooth in the very back. That leaves the back-side surface of the next tooth exposed. It has a sharp edge that had been out of reach but now my tongue keeps going there without permission and I don’t notice until it makes a sore spot that I cannot ignore. Here comes the metaphor; my conscience is like my tongue and all the Trumpfuckery is like the sharp edge on my tooth. The term is defined in the Urban Dictionary as; . . . involving racist, misogynistic, hateful speech & actions masquerading as patriotism. I love my country and I’m sure that DT Disciples do too but the irony seems to be, we don’t want to live in the same country. 
I have friends who delight in beating up on the man but when I go that way all I get is a sore spot on my conscience. I’m old and life is short, too short to be pissing in the wind over a broken system. I choose not to think of it as being in denial but rather, spending my energy on things where I can in fact be an agent of change. I can help with feeding hungry people who cannot meet their own need, and I do. When I can, I make small contributions to Planned Parenthood, National Public Radio and the A.C.L.U. They put my few pennies to work with other donated pennies to make for a fairer, more equitable society. 
Somewhere in the middle years of my career I had a revelation so to speak. I became aware that being an educator made me a moving target. Students, administrators, parents, other teachers; I never know who is paying attention or what they notice. If you care at all what others take from your example then you have to wear the hat you want to be associated with all of the time, every minute of every day. I like to think I don’t care what others think but I do care about the quality of their experience when I am part of it. I still think about the hat I’m wearing. 
This life is truly a journey and we know its destination, the ride stops with a eulogy. That makes every day more precious than the day before. I’m not going to let an egomaniac at the wheel spoil my day; that bears repeating, I’m not going to let an egomaniac at the wheel spoil my day or the next, or the next. American poet Emily Dickinson wrote; “Not knowing when the dawn will come I open every door.” I like that. I don’t know when the dawn will come but I have to believe that it will.  

LIKE A ROLLING THUNDER

     This summer will make it fourteen years that I have been writing this blog. All along I’ve made a habit of going back to reread articles. I used to belong to a writer’s group where we brought new eyes to each other’s work and that peer feedback is important if you want both your process and skills to improve. Haven’t had that support for a long time so I improvise with my own new eyes. More often than not I will leave an article dormant over-night or a day or two, so when I see it again I’m coming back around and it has to stand on its own legs. When I’m satisfied I can share it with others. I’ve deleted a lot this winter. The most recent blog post got away from me without the follow up revision and it was awful when I saw it with new eyes; a rant on DT that felt good with the writing but not what I want for the blog. I had addressed that situation sufficiently the blog before. He is a diabolical scoundrel but my scorn isn’t going to change either him or me. So I pulled it down a couple of days later and today is another day. 
    For over twenty years I have created a letter/story for the holiday season, sending it to 80 or 90 friends and family. The purpose was partly in the writing but also to reaffirm that I remember and I care. I am moved by the idea; if you love someone then you should tell them and this was sort of that. But I didn’t send my usual holiday greeting in 2025. I sat down and went through the motions but the words didn’t come; wanted it to read authentic but it just wasn’t there.       

    I am thinking a road trip would do wonders for me. But right now there are two doctors, a dentist & dental hygienist, optometrist, audiologist and the guy who services my truck, all wanting a spot on my winter calendar. My health is better than most at 86 and my pit crew all want the good health to stay good. There is a point when a promising idea becomes a plan and I haven’t quite reached it. But neither can I imagine spending a full winter in Kansas City. Still, other than a bitter, week-long, below zero cold snap in mid-January the weather has been a pleasant surprise. The road trip will happen, the when & where is still up in the air but I can pack and be out the door in a couple of hours. 

    The old Greeks has five or six different words to discriminate between all the different kinds of love. ‘Eros’ was passionate, physical love, ‘Philia’ love was dispassionate affection between equals or brotherly love, ‘Storge’ was familial, between parents and children, ‘Philautia’ love is love of self, etc. But most of us Love-speak without splitting hairs and draw from the context what the feeling is. So I can say without reservation that I love being on the road. What is it about keeping it between the lines, checking gauges and mirrors that gives me a dopamine hit? I do take satisfaction in the protocol but I suspect my love for driving is more about being in motion through time and space, watching signs and billboards slip by; certainly topping the next grade for a glimpse of where the road unwinds. I love it.

    I'm giving a shout-out to The Australian band, ‘The Waifs’ from their song, ‘How Many Miles’. It speaks to moving on, even whethe destination doesn’t meet expectations. The chorus goes: “How many miles did we wander, how many nights did we drive on through. We traveled that road like a rolling thunder; Yea but none of them led to anywhere that we wanted them to.” 
Back when I was a regular in my writer’s group with monthly meetings and seasonal workshops I learned a trick to offset writer’s block. You just start writing, about anything, random nonsense, descriptions of the wallpaper, anything at all. Before long that process of pointless wandering will spark an idea that should be explored. That is what I’ve been doing now for almost two pages and the only accomplishment I can boast is two pages of random rambling. I’m not giving up, just taking a break. I’ll come back tomorrow but I won’t throw this out and I’ll know where I’m going or I won’t sit down. 

THE DAMNED THING

  Edna St. Vincent Millay was an early 20th Century poet and playwrite. In 1930 she responded to an article titled “Life is one dam thing after another.” She said, “It’s not true that life is one damn thing after another—it's one damn thing over & over.” For two months now I have neither written in my journal nor made a blog post. Like Edna I knew my hangup wasn’t one thing or another, it was the same damn thing over & over. In my case writing is therapeutic. Framing ideas and organizing language to meet those needs feels good. Likewise, the process itself helps me to correlate and remember both the order and rationale of those ideas. It’s a win-win. But that same damn thing is depressing and I just didn’t want to dig in that hole. To avoid bad news I played computer games or went for long walks, listened to I-Tunes on my cell phone. Still, if I don’t process the damned source of my anxiety I’m afraid I’ll never move on. 
It is no secret that my truths and values are rooted in a progressive, liberal ideology. I didn’t choose to be this way. Those who tout ‘Freewill’ as the driver of belief and behavior would have it the other way. I do believe in the perception of freewill but it is no more credible than believing the sun revolves around the earth. The subconscious brain is programmed to react (choose this or that) and that program resonates with our emotional core faster and with more weight than the conscious mind. But this is getting away from my issue and better left for another day. 
Today that same damned thing is the current administration and its damned leader. I voted specifically against Donald Trump in the past three general elections. Who his opponents were didn’t matter. My vote was a firm rejection of an ultra-aggressive, irreconcilable, narcissist-billionaire. Every news broadcast, every media headline is in response to DT’s need to be the center of attention, to project the image he is peddling and to bully his way to dominance. I cannot pretend that his style and intent are in the nation’s best interest. They are unique to his self-obsessed sense of grandeur. They run parallel to the backstory that propelled Adolph Hitler through a decade of pillage & plunder in Germany from 1934 to 1945. Hitler used hatred of inferior races, Jews in particular to fuel genocide and global war, to ‘Make Germany Great Again.’ Hitler’s Gestapo broke down doors and dragged families away, deported them to prison camps in conquered countries and disappeared German citizens who resisted publicly against his tactics. What I see going on in Minnesota and California are the actions of Trump’s Gestapo. What else would you call masked white men with guns, breaking into houses and disappearing the residents, exercising deadly force against citizens who protest too loudly. I am not saying that DT is another Adolph Hitler but he is following the same patterns to the same ends. It’s not that I object to our borders being controlled and unregistered aliens being sent home. What makes me shudder is the way it is being done.
After 9/11/01 there was a shift in national sentiment against aliens and moslems in particular. The Department of Homeland Security was created to conduct criminal investigations, enforce immigration laws, preserve national security, and protect public safety. In the past quarter century Homeland Security has been focused on those President’s priorities. DT’s priority is his own unchecked authority. Hitler crushed Eastern European countries to expand German territory, gain resources and conscript a labor force to build his war machine. DT is turning his back on NATO and century old allies. Beyond that we have invaded Venezuela, seized its President and his wife, holding them for trial in the USA while capturing oil tankers from Venezuela in the Caribbean. Not to mention posturing a takeover of Greenland, all neatly packaged in the MAGA model. I fear that his slogan, “America First” is no more than a coded message that translates, “DT First”. His perception is that if you’re not #1 then you are just another loser. 
This is the damn thing that discourages me from writing, over and over. One could go on page after page of the Trump method vs. democracy as the founding fathers intended. He is a dangerous force in this culture. If I’m correct about Free Will, a public that has grown accustom to prosperity without sacrifice is at high risk of falling. Socrates among others noted that an uninformed or misinformed populace will give way to tyranny. Democracy (self rule) has always been and continues to be slow moving, messy, expensive and full of dead ends. But when people are well informed and employ critical thinking skills, it works. Today in my homeland there is a huge element that wants governance to be faster, less expensive, neat and clean with no dead ends. That chemistry is the working model for authoritarian autocrats around the world; just conform and obey. They are burning the candle at both ends, vulnerable to a Strong Man Overlord who rules in his own personal best interests rather than the Greater Good. Just because one’s feeling are strong it does not constitute a worthy purpose and that goes for me as well. So I keep going back to a fundamental truth that logic has never been able to disqualify; do unto others as you would . . . . . ! I think DT is just another wanna-be Despot (oppressive, authoritarian ruler) who would rule the world. 
I don’t know if this dive into my comfort zone will ease the struggle to keep writing. We’ll see. 

JUST SAYIN'

 

8 6 4 7

GOTTA HAVE FIRE

  Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. Most of my family (20 + or -) brought great food, we got to hang out for the afternoon and feel grateful, satiated and obliged to start shopping for Christmas. I celebrate just about any holiday even if I don’t identify with its reason for being. Thanksgiving is a no-brainer; granted there are millions of people in dire straits with little or nothing to celebrate. But if we get it right then it’s a time to share, even if it’s just a token meal at a homeless shelter. Gratitude is the feeling, an emotion that moves us to be thankful, to behave in a selfless way, for the greater good. In all my life I’ve never gone to bed hungry or not had a bed of my own. I suspect that if we made it a weekly celebration it would lose its magic, just another weekend. I have a family that forgives me my foolishness; how lucky can I be? 
I like Christmas as well. It’s like Siamese twins, two joined stories and we get to choose the one we like best. One is an excuse to get righteous with traditional religion and many take that route. I prefer the childlike practice of exchanging gifts and even if we can’t make the world a peaceful place we can be at peace with those around us. “. . .  Children laughing, people passing, Meeting smile after smile, and on every street corner You’ll hear; Silver Bells, Silver Bells, Soon it will be Christmas day.” 
But the December holiday I do take seriously goes by practically unnoticed, four days before Christmas. Winter Solstice has been observed continuously, uninterrupted around the world longer than any other holiday in human history (think of it as a holiday). Ancient people noticed and kept track of the sun’s arc across the sky, measured the length of their shadow at high noon when the sun was straight up, high in the sky as it gets. Every year on the same day, the sun stopped sinking and started pushing its arc back up. On that day a person’s shadow at noon stopped getting longer and every day after measured a tiny bit shorter than the time before. 
Imagine 20,000 or 30,000 years ago; our ancestors were just as smart as we are. They were very good at what they did (stay alive) they just didn’t know as much as we do. They knew as days got shorter and noon-shadows got longer that the cold winter season was coming. They had to move around, follow the animals to find food and keep warm as best they could. Times were difficult and life was a struggle, almost enough to give up, lie down and die in their sleep. But they didn’t give up. After thousands of years of watching the arc of the sun and counting days, they knew when their shadows stopped getting longer and the sun’s arc stopped dropping in the southern sky that spring and summer would follow. It was like a promise; “It’s going to be harsh and bitter cold but the sun is coming back and spring will follow, bring new plants and long, warm days so don’t give up.” 
For all these thousands of years people have been very good at counting the days, knowing when that shadow will stop getting longer and it hasn’t failed in all of those centuries. It will be harsh and bitter cold but the sun is coming back. I can celebrate that wisdom and perseverance and I do. On December 21 as the sun is setting I build a fire for myself and sometimes a few friends (you gotta have a fire) and welcome the longest dark-night of the year. I listen to music, songs about sunshine and day light, dance around the patio, tell stories and put more wood in the fire. Then we raise a shot of peach brandy to the sun’s return and chase it with milk chocolate Hershey Kiss. Sometimes we repeat that toast several times. After we’ve sung and danced and it’s really dark, only glowing coals left from the fire, we go inside and eat chili. 
All I can do is fantasize about those paleolithic people but I’ve done the math and there is; there has to be a continuous, unbroken, genetic linkage between us. I don’t know how special we really are but whether it’s real or just self-ingratiating I feel gratitude and do something physical in their memory, the ones who did the heavy lifting so I can sip brandy and sleep in my own bed. 

CAN'T LET IT GO

  I ate the last of the fresh strawberries this morning after the other night’s hard frost (21 degrees) and I’m feeling the urge to rearrange furniture. My short sleeve shirts have all migrated on their hangers to the dark end of the closet but I don’t mind the frost and long sleeves feel good for a change, but I’ll miss the berries. I had a roadtrip planned for this week but either something unexpected happened or something expected didn’t happened and I’m parked in Missouri until December. My blood pressure has been hovering at the boundary for a decade and it finally crossed the line so I’ll be adding another pill to my morning upload. If I wanted to grumble there is plenty to whine about but we didn’t evolve to be happy, we evolved to overcome and survive. So if it’s true, that life is a bitch and then we die then she’s a wonderful bitch; and if the fear of dying is too much to bear then there is religion. It won’t save you but believing makes you feel better.
I spend a lot of time learning more of the Human backstory. It’s not easy getting your head around the truly big blocks of time. Life spans are so short and to realize that other Homo sapiens just like us have been walking the earth, generation after generation in an unbroken chain of life for more than 270,000 years; it’s difficult to process hundreds of thousands of years when we only get to experience 90 years if we’re lucky. But the story is so fantastic I can’t let it go. 
Compared to how long it takes for humans to evolve, technology is advancing at the speed of light. When I was learning to use the telephone there were no reliable computers of any size, anywhere. A quarter century later the computer that guided Neil Armstrong’s crew safely to the moon and back had less power and less capacity than the smartphone in my pocket. So said; anthropology, the scientific study of Human origins and cultures from the beginnings to the present, it has been leap-frogging forward with that same, forward leaning technology.
Time for a disclaimer: Modern science as we know it is a relatively new discipline, less than 500 years old. Religion on the other hand can be traced back to its beginnings at least 70,000 years ago. Across that gap any questions about human origins and their purpose fell on priests, shamans and other holy men. Answers to difficult, complex questions required answers that were simple, easy to understand stories that were considered to be universal truths that would be true everywhere and forever. Within the last 500 years the science community has advanced knowledge with a process and discipline that has proven itself over and again. But that knowledge often comes slowly and with many dead-end possibilities that must be disproven before moving on. So what they got then was often either incomplete (emphasis on incomplete) or incorrect and the story likewise, too complicated for the layperson to understand. After all those centuries of faith based wannabe science, today we share the other truth. “This is what we’ve learned and have great confidence in but that can change. When we learn more and better we will tell the world and rewrite the book.” Anthropologists have been learning more and better in the past decades. What we believed when I was in college has been updated significantly due to better science and technology. 
In the past few decades the difference has been better technology and more scientists working in the field. They are making new updates concerning longer windows of opportunity for different Human species to interact and how that translates with DNA analysis. After all, fossils that were buried for hundreds of thousands of years and examined in the 20th century are being reexamined and yield new and better data than with the technology from only 50 years ago. Point of interest: “Human” is a genus category and there was a time when there were more than one human genus coexisting on the planet. But we (Homo sapiens) are the only surviving Humans on the planet now. All of the other humans have gone extinct. So when we see the word ‘Human’ used we also need to determine whether it includes one of several closely related species or just us. It seems that Neanderthals were not only coexisting with both Homo sapiens (us) in Europe and another human species, Homo denisovan in South East Asia but interbreeding as well. We’ve known for a long time that every modern human except for those in subsaharan South Africa carry a small amount of Neanderthal DNA in our body cells. We knew that but the vast increase in exposure to other species in terms of range and overlapping changes the way we treat the data. Here I am hanging on a hook and I can’t let it go. 
So I choose not to grumble, that this life is awesome even when it gets scary and even when it hurts. I’ll miss the fresh berries but I’ll make cookies. One thought in particular has humbled me for years. It goes like this: If I could trace my family lineage back from my mother to her mother to mother to mother all the way back to the dawn of civilization, about 10,000 years ago, I would consider that linkage as the path of my maternal grandmothers. The obvious question is, how many would there be? There is a certain amount of speculation but children matured sexually later than today’s children and lived shorter lives. So I speculate the average age for child bearing across the ages to be 20, for reasonable ease of calculating generations in a century. That would give us 5 generations per century times 10 for generations per thousand years, times another 10 for ten thousand years = 500 generations of grandmothers in my own personal, matriarchal lineage back to the dawn of civilization. Looking back I would have thought there be more than 500 grandmothers between the dawn of civilization and now but the numbers don’t lie. If it were possible you could get them all together in an auditorium and we could all share a meal together. What would I say to my 500th grandmother? I would certainly say “thank you”. She would have been born to a hunter-gatherer clan somewhere and moved continuously, following the food chain as seasons changed. She would have  grown up, given birth to a daughter, lived and died but most of all her DNA would have been passed on to my 499th grandmother, and from her to #498, and and from her to #497 and I can’t let it go. If that chain of grandmothers across 10,000 years had been interrupted just once by a different grandfather then her daughter would have been a different person and my DNA would make me different, eve if just a tiny little bit and I can't let it go.  
Buddhist teaching tells us; "Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn't learn a lot today, at least we learned a little, and if we didn't learn a little, at least we didn't get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn't die; so, let us all be thankful.”

RAMBLING A BIT

  By definition I must identify as a professional photographer and artist as well. I take photographs, make frames and some of them I put together, show and sell. Most people like them but choose not to purchase because they don’t come cheap. I have difficulty putting a price on my art so I ask my artist friends to help me and none of them have ever suggested I am asking too much; just the contrary. “Why only $450, this should be $650; people who appreciate art are willing to pay.” But if making money was my purpose that would make my photographs the means to an end and in my case the art is the end. No matter how much they sell for or whose wall they hang on, my name is on the mat and the frame and that’s not nothing; sort of like my children who move away and take on a life of their own. I want them to hang on a wall where people can appreciate them.
By definition, ‘Science’ is the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world. The only credible, reliable system to that end begins with observation then experiment, and the testing of theories against the evidence obtained. Those who make that study a way of life and lifelong profession would qualify as scientists. I am not a scientist. I made a career of teaching biology and a few turns at chemistry but at best that made me a facilitator for others at the start of their science journey. 
Science is a disciplined process and as long as that discipline is observed, the product (knowledge or technology) is reliable. But historically the science of science only goes back 500 years at most. Civilization on the other hand has been moving its feet for from 9,000 to 11,000 years in different places at different times. They all sprang from agriculture (plants & animals), densely populated cities, specialized jobs that created social classes, armies to protect the cities and (upper class) rulers to enforce authority and maintain the system. Every civilization had/has its own particular spin but they all conform to these criteria. For a civilization to prosper and endure it must defend its territory (food producing lands) and or capture the same from others by means of war. Rulers could be cruel and indifferent to their subjects or kind and compassionate, it doesn’t matter as long as the system works. 
Science has evolved and no nation/culture/civilization can compete without good science. It’s only been a few centuries but rulers keep a close reign on how science can benefit them and what science is discovering that can threaten their financial/political best interests. After World War 2 tobacco companies had the best laboratories, the best scientists but their science was tainted by either intimidation or extravagant salaries to bury evidence between smoking and cancer. Duke University in North Carolina is still heavily influenced by the tobacco culture. In the end, good science prevailed and smoking took a hit but nobody went to jail. Today those same companies have stopped overt advertising but still send subtle messages to minorities and children who are most likely to take up the habit. 
I am rambling a bit, thinking through my fingers and onto the page but I’m moving to a point where I question the efficacy of intelligence and knowledge. When good science gives us bad news about climate change or harmful side effects from any profitable industry there is a reflex pushback. They attack institutions and individuals with the same strategy insurance company lawyers use against victims; here-say and fabricated testimony to create doubt and destroy any credibility of the victim, the evidence or their witnesses. Good science is predicated on a profound discipline that favors no one, nobody, only what is! Too bad there are science experts who can be bought and sold by unscrupulous players.
The host of the PBS NOVA series HUMAN is paleoanthropologist Ella Al-Shamahi. She observes that modern humans have not evolved to live and function in this modern world. Living in a small clan of hunter-gatherers was relatively simple. Their brains were as developed, no different than ours today but the demands of their culture were simple. That has changed but our brains have not. Our cultural pressures make us vulnerable to believing the unbelievable and conforming to the whims of charismatic leaders. That’s my interpretation, not a quote. Then there is Harvard Primatologist, Evolutionary Biologist Dr. Christine Webb who has written a book, The Arrogant Ape: The Myth of Human Exceptionalism. I am eager to get the Kindle version so I can have my computer read it like a podcast. Then I can stop, go back, listen again to a paragraph or a page, make notes and move on as it serves me. It certainly addresses ideas about the efficacy of intelligence and knowledge that I had already considered.
The church I go to has a good number of artist members. Some sell their work and others not but this time of year we hang a show for members to display their work. I put two matted, framed photographs in the mix. They are good enough to sell and I could use the money but they are NFS. Money has a way of going away and that’s alright but I wouldn’t have those photographs anymore and I would miss them. They both came down off my bedroom wall, one on either side of my bed. In preparation for taking them down and into my truck I discovered a photograph (it wasn’t lost I just wasn’t sure exactly where it was) I took it back in 1993 with a little point and shoot with a good, fixed lens. It’s a close up of snow covered ice in a farm creek with a very small sycamore branch in the snow. Next to the seed pods on the twig actually, there were several turkey tracks. It doesn’t sound like much but it grows on you. I’m going to mat and frame it sometime before Christmas and give it to someone I love. I have lots of those around.