A TRAIN THING

  I am hung up on a ‘Train-Thing’, a steam engine powered train thing to be precise. I took the Cumbres-Toltec steam train two days ago; a full day with a buffet lunch that goes down into New Mexico and it was a very good day. Fall colors were at their peak and the money was well spent. Today (right now) I’m waiting for the ticket office to open on the Georgetown Loop RR, at a coffee shop in Georgetown, CO. There is a very good chance I’ll have to stop writing before I’m finished here; not that I write slow but I think slow and then I rethink that. 
Today’s ride is only a short loop that runs along I-70 as far as Silver Plume, a short stop and back down the same way we came up. The whole trip takes just under two hours. I’ll have my camera but don’t know what the views will be like. I’ll pass on snapshots (to prove that I was here) and hope for something worthy of a photograph.
I’m staying with an old friend, classmate from high school so the friendship is long lived as are we. we are. After high school we lost track of Martin, rediscovered at our 50 year reunion in 2007. He spent those years in California and Colorado as an emergency room surgeon. He does’t come back to the K.C. area anymore but since then I’ve enjoyed a standing invitation to crash at their house just down the hill a dozen miles from Georgetown. We will hang out this afternoon and winterize his daughter’s camper; I’ll hold the light and nod when I approve. 
It’s about time to move on up to the rail head and get my ticket. I’ll put the computer away and pick up again when I have a good story to finish. 

                                        Later . .  .

The Georgetown Loop Rail Road was a nice little ride up the mountain and I’m glad I went. It was less than two hours and more of a tourist tourist thing than an adventure. Just two days after the all day, rockin’-rollin’ ride on Cumbres-Toltec it was a bit of a letdown but understood, that was a hard act to follow. Seating was a bench against the wall on both sides of the car, back to the scenery but big, open air windows. Standing up and moving around was against the rules. The ride itself was nice and the views likewise but trees along the way were so close to the tracks you couldn’t see out. Not complaining; everybody else seemed pleased and the whole thing was just too affordable to pass up. 
Everything in the gift shop was over priced so I went back into Georgetown, walked the main street and visited shops and stores I’ve learned to appreciate over the years. Bought a nice little pocket knife and at my favorite market I picked up a jar of cherry/jalapeño jelly. If not for the steam train I would have missed hanging out for an extra hour in one of my favorite towns anywhere.
I’ll be moving on tomorrow; have a reservation through my travel club to stay in Colorado Springs again. I’ll hang here with my friends until noon or so and then head down to the Springs. Day after tomorrow it will be all over but the long ride across the flat-land. I’ve learned that excitement is unsustainable and disappointment is relative to one’s expectations. So I look for the best and make do when it disappoints. It’s bedtime and I just finished a shot of peach brandy; nothing remarkable just prepping the eyelids. 

QUAKING ASPEN

I like to start a written piece with an interesting but trivial tidbit then segue into the idea that I want to examine. But it’s getting late, tomorrow will be busy and I need some good sleep. Getting to it: The last four days have been like falling down stairs but today has been worth all the bumps. Today I took a ride on the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad. It runs 64 miles between Antonito, Colorado and Chama, New Mexico, a narrow gauge system established in the 1880’s between Durango Colorado and Alamosa, Colorado. Antonito and Chama are both situated at about 8,000 ft. elevation and the train ride goes up and over Cumbres Pass at just over 10,000 ft. so you’re in high country all the way. 
The ride takes about seven hours altogether. The steam engine was built in 1925 and by steam engine standards it is relatively small. With a coal tender (it burns coal) and nine passenger cars in tow the ride is slow. The views are grand in scope and the constant clickity-clack belies a ride that is neither smooth nor measured. Moving car to car requires one hand on the back of the next seat every step or guaranteed you land in someone’s lap before you get to the end of the car. The seating ranges from plush chairs at period correct tables in the expensive cars to comfortable school-bus-like seats in the more affordable cars. Big windows slide up and down like a school bus. 
The train ride was nice and the throw-back technology to the 1800’s gave us a historic if not adventuresome sense of place in time. But the star of the day was not the hardware. There were 150 passengers, maybe more and there was no question about why we were there, especially today. At altitude the forest is mainly spruce and fir but as the terrain gets more vertical the Aspen show up on the mountain sides in clusters and groves that can reach for miles it would seem. The locals call the Aspen “Quakies” as they make a quaking sound in the wind. I lived out here just a hundred miles Northwest of here and since I moved away 50 years ago it’s always a sort of ‘home coming’ and I feel like I belong. 
Those Quakies, their leaves shimmer in a breeze with a shiny surface and a dull, flat green underside. It is a sight that defies description and the sound is equally indescribable. But that’s not the part that we came for. In early October those shimmering green leaves start to pale and then turn the richest, most dazzling yellow. You have to see it to believe and that is why we all chose this day to make this slow, patient, unencumbered odyssey. I can only speak for myself but I trust that many others would agree; Fall colors are more than just yellow quakies against a verdant green mountain side. But little white clouds in a cerulean blue sky, they grace the mountain and it’s golden dusting like only nature can. I’m not good with flowery prose but saying something like, “the blue and white and green and yellow are so cool.” it just doesn’t meet the need. 
We rode a charter bus from Chama back to Antonito where I said thank’s and best wishes to friends I hadn’t met before today. On the train I sat beside an old man with a Canon camera like mine. We were taking photographs out the same open window. He was a retired biology teacher and his wife had taught 5th grade in San Antonio, Texas. Small world; we had lunch together at 9,000 ft. at a mid-way stop. The building reminded me of the ski lodge at Arapaho Basin only the crowd was too old and they didn’t have on ski pants. An awesome, all you could eat buffet. I had spinach salad, BBQ pork and a scoop of green chili casserole. 
I’m about done here. Sometimes when I’m tired I make a blog post without the necessary edit and revision. I can blame it on exhaustion or sleepy eyes or any number of made up reasons and give it wings with a clear conscience. This is one of those times. 

CHUCH-A-CHUCH-A-CHUCH

  Driving I-70 across 424 miles of Kansas is not the worst duty you can pull but Colorado has another 2 hours of flat, treeless prairie before you shake the ‘Kansas’ off your shoes. I am out on the road again so soon. Michigan/Minnesota in August went so well and the weather is still good so no reason to stay home and watch the leaves fall. I’ll be taking in fall colors in the mountains this week. Stayed with a Travel Club host last night in Colorado Springs. She rents this little house out as an air-B&B but also, if it isn’t spoken for and a travel club member needs shelter for a night or two she takes them in for the club gratuity. In that case my overnight cost is $20. Usually you stay in the house with the host like ‘long lost family’ and you meet the nicest people that way. But I spent the late afternoon and night by myself in the B&B house. Very small but nice 3BR in a pleasant old, well kept neighborhood. The street looks like a two-track gravel driveway that disappears between and behind two houses. Narrow with no room to pass and lots of trees it’s easy to miss. My GPS told me to turn right and I went to the next corner several times before I figured it out. 
Today I’m on my way south of Alamosa to a little (pop. 900) town Antonito, CO. Tomorrow I’ll ride the narrow gauge, steam powered excursion train (65 miles) down to Chama, NM and take in the fall colors. I brought my Canon SLR camera. I know, I know; my phone takes great pictures but I want photographs. My experience leaves me to believe, the only way to get great photographs is with a precision glass lens and a mechanical shutter. If that makes me a photo-snob then I’ll take it. People who buy my framed photographs want to know how I get such great photographs and I say, “Thank you.” I’m hoping for good light tomorrow. It can get cold at altitude this time of year on the Colorado-New Mexico border still, weather permitting I’ll spend most of the ride outside in the open-air excursion car. But coffee and doughnuts do wonders.
I’ll be hanging out with old friends from high school later in the week and maybe another steam train ride up in Georgetown, CO.It’s just a loop of a dozen or so miles but it goes Chuch-a-chuch-a-chucch with steam shooting out between the driver wheels and they don’t make-em like that anymore. 

IF IT QUACKS LIKE A DUCK

  “In every life you have some trouble, but if you worry you make it double. Don’t worry, be happy.” Bobby McFerrin wrote that song thirty seven years ago and I still turn to it for a breath of fresh air. In sync with that is the clever axiom, “The only two things you should never worry about are the things you control and the things you can't control.” Don’t worry, be happy. 
The only problem I see is that our primitive forebearers evolved through a time when there was good reason to feel anxiety and uncertainty and whether we agree or not, the way our brain works now has not evolved from our Hunter-Gatherer ancestor’s. We don’t get to pick and choose which underlying fears we can disregard. Still I catch myself mouthing the words; “. . . if you worry you make it double; don’t worry, be happy.” Often it helps for a few minutes or a few hours, like a Tylenol with a tooth ache. So when fears come back I am preconditioned to accept, even if just for a while, the fate I cannot prevent. 
I can’t remember a time when Americans were so divided. Both sides worry the other will gain ground and the dispute falls just short of organized violence, and that’s on a good day. Our Civil War came on a bad day. Southern conservatives defended their God given right to buy and sell human beings, to use and abuse them as slaves. After General Lee surrender the country was tired of killing each other and turned to the west. Manifest Destiny would drive the next ideological purge. It was a national movement to conquer, exploit and rule over all the lands west of America’s existing borders. Ironic that we had just fought a six year war to undo slavery only to follow up with a campaign of genocide and ethnic cleansing against indigenous nations that had sustained their culture in those contested lands for thousands of years. It seems when God is on your side then war is a righteous instrument and killing is how we keep score. 
Again in the early 1900’s it was conservative ideology that resisted and fought fiercely against Women’s Suffrage. It was considered necessary to keep women ‘Bare-foot and pregnant at home where they belong’. The struggle to give women voting rights and move toward gender equality was a very big deal. They got the vote but gender equality still moves two steps forward and one step back.
Then, just when the slavery issue had been put to bed the 1960’s unraveled with Civil Rights legislation. The laws changed but the culture did not and we looked the other way rather than address prejudicial practice and ‘Jim Crow’ injustice. Historically the South has been deeply conservative socially but their economy was based on agriculture and they favored the Democratic Party as a hedge against big banks and industry in the North. But that changed dramatically with Civil Rights in the LBJ years. With the stroke of a pen LBJ flipped the South into the conservative Republican camp.
Currently there is a political ideology gaining support that comes right out of the 1800’s. White Christian Nationalism asserts that American identity and institutions should be explicitly Christian, primarily white, and patriarchal. It is a political construct, not a theological one. What could be more conservative than guaranteeing white male privilege by marrying it to centuries old Christian tradition? Resisting change & preserving tradition are the pillars of conservative ideology; the powerful stay rich and the weak stay poor. 
‘Ain’t no place to lay your head; Somebody came and took your bed. Don’t worry, be happy.’  That’s about all I can do. I’m too old to make a fight of it but I refuse to let the bigots spoil my old age. Our rulers rule as if the country was a corporation. They are the CEO’s and Board of Directors who can hire and fire whoever you please for any reason, any time and as long as the privileged white men profit and nobody else matters. 

I realize that an articulate conservative could present an equally biased observation in the other direction. But ideologies tend to remain static and fixed while politics and practice change when it serves the purpose. They can change their names and pledge allegiance to whose ever star is rising but conservative ideology doesn't change. I’ll keep asking the question: Who exactly: Who profits from what you would have us do? If it looks like a duck, if it waddles and quacks like a duck then I’m going to presume that it is in fact a duck. All I can do is vote and I do vote, even though the bastards are scheming to gerrymander congressional districts to their advantage. What I truly believe is that nobody is in control, no one to save us from ourselves and God doesn’t give a damn, why should she? What is certain is; the rule of unintended consequence is timeless and proves itself every day. In every human undertaking there has been unintended, unexpected consequences that may be either a blessing or a curse. All things being equal that suggests that half of the time our best efforts yield damaging, costrly, unintended consequences. So I do worry, feel uneasy and suffer anxiey with feral humans and their nuclear weapons. Short sighted and self obsessed, their only constant is to win at any cost. But if you want to sleep easy, Don’t worry, be happy. 

MAKING LEMONADE

  My life evolved overnight in 2020 with the Covid pandemic. I’m not even a blip in my culture but I’m all I’ve got. So in April of ’20 I was well adapted to retirement and the self inflicted quarantine seemed easy enough. After five years it may seem like a small bump in the road but I’m still wrestling with the aftermath. Avoiding human contact when you live alone is like wearing shoes that don't fit. You push on through it but you walk funny and you never really get used to it. The President told us it was a liberal scheme to undermine his MAGA plans and that sick old people were going to die anyway. His shills are still bought into all the ‘Trumpfuckery’. The Urban Dictionary definition is; “any actions involving racism, misogyny and hate speech masquerading as patriotism.” But I don’t want to go there. Been there, done that. At my age I’m not going to let the narcissist bigot spoil the years I have left. When you get lemons, make lemonade.
Some people collect stamps or play golf or any number of hobbies to stay busy while navigating retirement. Neither stamps nor golf work for me, the house and yard require some attention and I have family I like to family with. But I live with a case of wanderlust, I love moving through time and space, moving my feet; don’t need a destination just need to be in motion. I’ve shared this often, what should I call it, (personality quirk) with whoever is listening. Like anything else, wanderlust is an ultimate freedom and sometimes it goes up in smoke with crash & burn. It’s not for everyone. All I can do is speak for myself and I’ve no regrets over any of it. 
There were a couple of health issues in the spring that I worked through but it was well into summer before I got all of my ducks lined up for a road trip. I put a couple of thousand miles on my truck, did my August 4 birthday on Lake Michigan's coast, made a concert in Grand Rapids with friends, a ferry ride across the big lake to visit with my kids in St. Paul, Minnesota. On return I felt so good I started thinking about my nest road trip. Fall is the perfect season to go exploring. It took a couple of days to hatch an idea (New Mexico) but I’ll be going out again 1st week of October. I write more and better I think when I’m on the road so there’s that to look forward to. Going alone I meet more people; I like that as well. 
Sitting here writing I’m listening to a play-list from my I-Tunes library. It’s not easy, do one or the other but both together I listen more and write less. Just listened to Helen Reddy sing Don McClean’s ‘And I Love You So’. I’m a sucker for good love songs and this one is about as good as it gets. I really identify with the 4th verse; “The book of life is brief, And once the page is read, All but love is dead, That is my belief.”
Just now as I write, the music bumps up to Kate Wolf singing; “Here In California.” Maybe not a standard but she died early in her career (1980’s) and this one is too good to skip over. In the 1st verse and the chorus a mother cautions her daughter; “She held me ‘round the shoulders, In a voice so soft and kind, She said love can make you happy, And love can rob you blind.” The chorus follows with a cautionary metaphor; “Here in California, Fruit hangs heavy on the vine, But there ain’t no gold, I thought I’d warn you, And the hills turn brown in the summertime.”  In 3 verses and a chorus she spins a story it would take an accomplished writer several chapters to write.

    They say that money is the root of all evil but money and power are interchangeable and I think it's the power part that goes sour first. So the shills have power now and I'm making lemonade. 

OUT OF SIGHT OUT OF MIND

  By definition a ‘Peeve’ is something that you find annoying. A ‘Pet Peeve’ would be something most annoying. But there are some peeves that are so benign that they barely register on the ‘Annoyance’ scale, still you notice and process with a level of disbelief. I can think of three, one is for real, one I forgive and one that’s just a distraction. In high school I took Drivers Education class, a 17 year-old senior who already had a drivers license. It was an easy A grade and you got a discount on insurance if you passed a Drivers Ed. class. 
My pet peeve is drivers who switch lanes in heavy traffic while driving way-way too fast. Defensive driving was a big deal in the class. Our teacher reduced the idea to a simple rule; “You must believe that every car on the road is being driven by someone who is trying to kill you, so drive accordingly.” It’s like playing dodgeball with cars. Offensive (aggressive) driving belongs on a race track where getting there is not enough, you have to get there first and it doesn’t matter how you do it. But on streets and highways going twice the speed limit and cutting others off to meet your need for speed is extreme and not a good thing. I know I’m old and maybe that’s why I still pay attention to those defensive driving rules; observe the speed limit, keep close track of the traffic behind you, keep a safe cushion between cars. Yes, I get annoyed by aggressive, speeding, lane changing drivers.
The 2nd peeve is not a serious peeve but it can be annoying. As much as I appreciate my I-phone sometimes I hate it. I see well enough to keep my drivers license but reading fine print, I don’t even try anymore. My I-phone has a (zoom) app with a sliding zoom feature but it’s like a camera, it can’t take pictures of itself. Many texts have fine print and I might as well call the person and ask them to read it back to me. I can try the ‘pinch-in’ move to zoom in but a mild case of arthritis is enough to lose that fine touch. I bump too hard and it’s like the phone sneezes and goes someplace I don’t want to go. All it takes is once and I am annoyed. I’m better with other apps like my Spanish/English translator but the ‘pinch-in-pinch-out’ is a challenge. The annoyance gets my attention still I remember to be thankful for all the other good stuff I can do with my I-phone like texting photos and blocking spam numbers. 
The 3rd peeve is not annoying so much as distracting. My dad had eight tattoos, three on one arm, four on the other and one on his chest. As a kid I was fascinated with pictures on flesh and the fascination never went away. In the military tattoos are common, so common they don’t raise an eyebrow. I remember guys who woke up with a dreadful hangover and a new tattoo that they didn’t remember getting. My ‘Tat’ was more about identifying with my dad than an alcohol induced act of ‘crazy’. What I wanted was a small, inexpensive, animal located in a suitable location. I accepted that it would be with me for the rest of my life and hoping for a long life the idea of a faded, washed out image on flabby, wrinkled flesh was a turn-off. So the small gorilla landed on my right buttox. It was high enough I couldn’t sit on it and the recovery was amazingly easy. Some of my amigos thought it was cool and copied with their own, better tattoos. One got a mountain climber climbing up and out of the crack of his ass, another had a target with an arrow stuck in the bullseye. 
For the past 66 years ‘Kong’ has been living in obscurity under my jeans’ hip pocket. Only a few friends and family have seen him and nobody wants to bend over for a closer look. It’s never been big deal but it is a link back to my dad. But I like body art and often score it mentally like judges score gymnastics. To get a high score it has to look like it belongs there; I like leafy vines and flowers growing off the shoulder and down the arm, like it grew there. Don’t care much for flags, knives, names, symbols, anything that doesn’t fit the moment or needs an explanation. After many years of informal judging I consider myself a qualified expert. When I see half a dozen bad tattoos splattered up and down arms and legs I might roll my eyes and muse, “What were they thinking?” but I let it go without much thought.

        ‘Kong’ my gorilla is a bad tattoo. But nobody’s going to see it at Walmart or anywhere for that matter, not even on a shorts & T-shirt day. My dad smiled and that was good enough for me. On a 1-10 scale I would give ‘Kong’ a 3 for its location. The gorilla on my butt is not news, looks more like a bruise than a tattoo and hasn’t come up in conversation in a very long time. A better name for him might be; ‘’Out of Sight, Out of Mind.’

EVEN LITTLE BIRDS KNOW

  I don’t remember exactly when but I must have been in Junior High, my grandpa lived with us. He was a cranky old man who kept to himself but we had an unspoken trust, what went on between us stayed between us. One day in the fall I came outside as he was coming around the corner of the house with a shovel and a bucket. I followed him to the middle of the front yard, asked what he was doing. There was some dirt in the bucket and a Maple whip (a small tree in its 1st or 2nd year with a single, unbranched trunk and a few leaves at the tip of its leader.) He was going to plant it.
He had me uncoil the garden hose at the corner of the house and drag it to he spot he had started digging. I asked questions and ran water into the hole then watched him nest the taproot into the mud at the bottom. He held the whip steady while I started back-filling dirt into the hole. We let the water trickle into the loose soil long enough for me to learn; “Planting a tree is always a good thing and the fall is the best time for it.” The house is still there, I don’t know who lives there but after 70 years, when I drive by the old place I see the tree is still making afternoon shade on the front porch. 
In the early 90’s I was a resource teacher at an Environmental Magnet Middle School and read an article that said; “People who have a keen sense of appreciation for nature and the environment can usually trace it back to a childhood experience that was shared with an elder role model.” That Maple whip was the first tree I ever helped plant and my grandpa and I did it together. 

        My job was infusing the environmental theme with plant science. I had a greenhouse and a lab where teachers brought their students for hands-on activities. We did lots of tip cuttings and seed plantings in paper cups with follow up to measure the seedling’s progress and took field trips to identify trees by their leaves. Before I got that assignment my biology had always favored animals. But the more one learns about any aspect of nature the more it draws you in. The chemistry of photosynthesis is complicated but it can be modeled with toothpicks and miniature marshmallows and we did that in small groups of 2 or 3. My plants vs. animals preference adapted considering that waste product of plants is the free oxygen we breathe and animal’s waste is - you know what cats try to bury and birds leave on your windshield. 
In the 1990’s Americans were polluting the environment at a record rate. Right wing politicians and big business knew what was happening but didn’t want to believe it. They stood to profit from irresponsible policy & practice and nothing would jeopardize those profits without a fight. In denial hey mocked and discredited researchers, called it a liberal hoax saying, “The sky is too big and there is too much water for us to do that.” and the threat of pollution had become a running joke. I was dismissed in my own family as a Tree-hugging, hippy, save-the-whales freak. After all, those plastic bottles and coal burning industry create jobs that drive the economy and corporate profit. We are still polluting at a record rate but everybody knows. Human nature is strange, they used to call cigarettes ‘coffin nails’ due to the cancer connection but millions keep on smoking. It’s no surprise that businesses that save money by polluting the air and water and land, they keep on doing it. 
John Muir was a pioneer naturalist in the late 1800’s/early 1900’s and instrumental in the formation of our National Parks system. He was quoted, “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.” Out of sight-out of mind translates to, “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.” Yet, that translates to, “Pay me now or pay me later.” Everything is connected, interconnected and the ‘Pay me later’ certainly will come around. When it does it may be too painful to bear. Even little birds know not to sh*t in their nest. 
I don’t know what my grandpa would think. His time was the 20th Century and suffered from the ‘Out of sight’ mentality. But he got the tree planting just right. In the 70+ years since we planted the Maple whip I have planted more trees than I can count. I like to think I would have grown to love and understand the nature of nature without my grandpa’s influence. 
I think about this stuff, I really do. If that makes me an old ‘save-the-whales’ freak then that’s alright. I do care about our Mother planet, especially the thin layer of air, land and sea that supports life. It is fragile, only about four miles thick and it’s the only place on earth where life can flourish. That’s not just human life but all life. Trees were here long before humans climbed down from the trees and started walking upright and trees will still be here when there are no more people. Thanks again Grandpa.

I GUESS IT DOESN'T MATTER

  I have deleted so much from so many unfinished written pieces I can’t remember what has survived and what was dumped without a second thought. Sometimes just framing the language meets the need to write. If nothing else it’s therapeutic.

                                   *    *    *    *    *

I don’t do this very often but this will be one of those times. I am rewriting my last blog post. So it’s a different piece of work even though it deals with the same ideas. The idea I came up with originally isn’t bad but it feels a little fractured and I can do better. I have a fifty-ish friend about the age of my kids, we don’t always see things the same but it doesn’t get in the way. His backstory is wide and deep and he likes to think he knows all of the why’s and how’s of how his journey has shaped his personality, values, beliefs, etc. I like to think that the self-analysis task is a lot easier said than done. The human animal is hard wired to overestimate our own ability to read the tea leaves and connect the dots. That is the premiss that I began with. 
I introduced ‘Confabulation’, the unintentional creation of false or distorted memories to fill in the gaps in an incomplete memory. Those distorted memories are usually attributed to a medical condition (amnesia, dementia, etc.) but a healthy mind can also loose or misplace parts of a memory. The remembering part of the brain is subject to a constant stream of information and there has to be a way to sort out the irrelevant stuff and keep the rest. Even then the mind keeps sorting and deleting; short term memory. The point is; even though we pay attention a great amount of detail in a particular sequence of events is lost from memory. So said, even a healthy memory bank can lose things and the mind creates a fix like a patch on a flat tire; an alternate reflection. 
That remembering part of the brain is a lot like artificial intelligence (AI) software. Give it a story that is full of holes and it will fill in the holes with a plausible but fabricated substitute to complete the story. The person remembering has no reason to doubt the authenticity of the altered memory. A healthy case of Confabulation: If it doesn’t cause a problem then I guess it doesn’t matter. But I can connect the dots and understand that it is what it is. I am old enough there has been plenty of opportunity for my old mind to ‘Confab’ my backstory. I like to think I have a handle on how I got to be the present version of ‘Me’. But I don’t have a crystal ball and I can’t trust memory to be perfect. Personality is a complicated soup and develops over time so whatever I am is what I’ve become, one day at a time rather than following a recipe (stir this stuff and then add that stuff and keep stirring).
I’ve been told that the lawyer who defends himself in court has a fool for a client. I would think the same thing for those believing they can solve the riddle of how they got to be the person they are. My friend has a cut & dry rationale for the way he picked and chose his way up to the present. I cannot even address that idea without leaving space for the thousands of individuals whose finger prints are all over my backstory. It’s not only what one chooses but also experiences they never experienced and nobody lives in a vacuum. Add to that, how does one factor random chance into their own destiny?
How did I get to be the person I am? As I remember, I trusted and loved my parents. I always wanted to please my mother and going to church made her happy. I didn’t have to believe anything, just sit still and drop my coin in the offering when it came by. As a young adult my sanctified enthusiasm fell way short of the mark but Mom was looking the other way. It wasn’t until college I learned to question tradition and value the discipline of science and critical analysis. I never thought of it as a major change in course but what did I know? Since then “God is the metaphor that transcends all levels of human comprehension.” (Joseph Campbell). Everything mysterious that we cannot understand is attributed to the metaphor. It came easy, swapping Faith for Good Karma. How it came about is not as important as the fact that it did.
I’ve never been attracted to tobacco or booze. My dad smoked cigarettes but Mom got him to quit and she would not allow booze of any kind in the house. How that low profile unfolded I don’t know.
As memory would have it a good friend and I sneaked cigarettes out of our dad’s smokes and puffed away under a bridge near his house. After a week or so I couldn’t ignore that I didn’t like the taste or the smell and the buzz from getting away with mischief wasn’t fun anymore. It never made me feel grown up or cool. I quit before I could learn to inhale, he didn’t. My friend died of lung cancer twenty years ago. Dun! Good story I suppose, just can’t be sure it’s all true. 
I can only remember being drunk three times, twice in the army and once shortly after I was discharged. What I do remember is being sick and the vomit part. Whatever sense of uninhibited bliss it provided it did not survive the edit. I sip a little wine with food now and an occasional shot of peach brandy but the memory of my head in the toilet, vomit coming out my nose is both powerful and real, too much so for it to be a confabulation.
Yuval Harari is a scholar/writer/historian, the source for one of my favorite quotes: “Whatever it is that you believe, it doesn’t have to be true; it just has to work.” How we get to be the person we see in the mirror, the person others see from afar; that story doesn’t have to be true but it does have to work, to serve a purpose that can be either a virtue or a vice.
I’m going to change the title of this blog post. If nobody notices then it doesn’t matter either. I haven’t received any death threats and my retirement check has never been late so I’ll just stay with what’s been working for all these years. 

TOES & SQUIRT

  It’s early on a rainy morning here so naturally it’s more dark than light but my alarm still goes off just like it should. At 6:30 it takes me a little while to get vertical, serviced, dressed and become functional. I was at the kitchen counter trying to get my morning pills out of the pill caddy without scattering them. That can be a challenge with warm weather and high humidity; they stick to the plastic and to each other. If I’m not careful the whole cache can end up rattling around on the counter top or even on the floor. Two pill caddies, morning and bedtime, they date back a dozen years and the snap-caps have lost their snap. Their lids pop open while I’m liberating the stuck-together pills and pills escape like puppies through a hole in the fence. All together, morning and night I take nine nutritional supplements and two prescriptions that I could do without but my doctor says, “Just take them.” This morning, that’s what I was doing. 
Wearing sandals, a T-shirt and shorts I felt something squirt on my ankle. I wasn’t ready for that, it was too early for a mystery and I was preoccupied with pills. There was nothing down there except for my feet. The squirt felt like water, I wiped it away with a paper towel and racked my brain for a reasonable explanation. There was none but the obvious next step was to shine a light on the dark floor and look. Nothing there except the floor and the cabinet but I looked again. 
There, in the kick-space below the cabinet and in front of the kick-board was a tan blob the color of the floor. I bent over to shine the light closer and it leapt out and under the table. It was a treefrog, in that had squirted on my ankle. I grabbed a plastic cup and tried to capture the little amphibian but it was too fast for me and after the third try I didn’t see where it landed and with due diligence I kept searching. It had to be down there somewhere but I had looked everywhere and I gave up. It was not an unwelcome intruder like a mouse or a snake so no ref flags. I wanted then, still do, want to get it back outside where it can flourish and survive. 
Thirty years ago in Michigan we had sliding glass doors that opened from the dining nook onto the patio. The dining table was the best place to grade papers and make lesson plans so I saw a lot of those doors. In late summer especially we had a pair of tree frogs that stationed themselves up on the outside of the glass door at night, feeding on insects attracted by the light from inside. One was larger than the other and they had names. The big one’s name was Toes and I can’t remember the little one. Life was good there in ’97 and the performing treefrogs made it even better.
I did some research on my little tan visitor and yes, they squirt a toxic spray in self defense. It’s enough to ward off predators but apparently not enough to damage me. (Dryophytes versicolor) or Gray Treefrog; they can also change color to blend in with the environment. Squirt, I’ll just call it Squirt; it was tan on the tan floor and probably threw me a curve by changing color. I have no idea how it got inside but I leave a night-light on over the kitchen window. I guess a fly might buzz the night-light but I doubt that Toes will be able to make a living in my kitchen. I’ll keep looking, see if I can come up with a better catch and release strategy. 
The treefrog thing segues into another conversation. I have neighbors across the street who keep cats. By definition they are feral (domesticated animals that revert to a wild state either directly or through their descendants). The people feed the cats but they live outside which in effect makes people the pets. My yard slopes up to the house with a southern exposure and the cats love to sun in my yard and on my driveway. They climb on and under my vehicles with casual familiarity, even explore inside my garage if the door is up. These cats are absolutely fearless. They know when to fight and when to run and just how close you can get before they move away. Even then they retreat at the same speed you are approaching, stop when you stop and you can’t stare them down or shout them away.
Every year in spring and fall we get one or more new litters of feral cats. In my neighborhood the mortality rate for feral kittens is high. But at any time I can see and recognize 6 or 8 of my neighbors cats, some young and some mature but there is a constant turnover with no change in the way they behave. I’m sure they capitalize on pet food left outside by other neighbors. They prey on mice and voles, snakes and stalk birds at feeders. Young squirrels in the spring are also prey, before they learn that cats can climb trees too. 
I tolerate feral cats but I welcome treefrogs wherever I find them. I would be disappointed to find the brittle little, bone dry remains of a treefrog somewhere in the house. Good luck Squirt and let me know if I can help you find the door. And: who said retirement would be boring?

SORRY 'BOUT THAT

  I cannot recall another mid-August when things here were so green. I just got back from a 12 day road trip and the grass in my yard was lush, no brown spots. By now the big cottonwood should have leaves turning yellow and falling for lack of rain but not this year. Yesterday I had to mow a second go-round to shred the dense layer of clippings that blanket the yard, a third time in some places. 
I’ve shared this before but still it’s what comes to mind; most of the folks I talk to suggest that travel is great but the day you get home is the best day of the trip. I don’t argue the point but neither do I agree. Pulling into the drive and reacquainting myself with the familiar is my least favorite day of a road trip. I have to agree that sleeping in my own bed is better than any other bed but that’s about beds. I’ll wake up in a strange new place with open ended anticipation that never strikes at home. 
One advantage of being on the road is that I don’t hear the news. My little-old truck has a good radio but I rarely listen to it and never the news. The truck is old enough it has a built in CD player and I have a dozen of my favorite albums in the sleeve on the sun visor. When I want company I can pick a CD. I believe the axiom, "Never say never." so I won’t say the news is never good but the odds in favor of good news on the news is 1:99; the 1% scored when someone beats cancer and rings the bell at the clinic. Then again, the odds in favor of a terrific song are 99:1 with the 1% scored to a damaged CD.

People talk to each other about the news and that is where my defense is thin. “What do you think about (such & such or this or that?) and I’m left hanging on a hook. I can say, “I don’t think about it.” and I share that feeling often but it just compounds the issue. Between politics and religion I don’t have much in common with anybody. I dreamt a dream last night where I had been embraced by Canada and it felt so good. I’m too old and lack resources to become a citizen there but the dream was sweet. 
In my homeland Democrats want to serve the underclass without disenfranchising the 1% by raising taxes and helping those who need a 2nd or even a 3rd chance which is no better than wishful thinking. Republicans want to protect both big business and the 1% by slashing their taxes at the expense of the working poor which is what they’ve been doing for the past 50 years. I don’t like either party or the way they go about their business but I vote for the Dems in self defense.  
Religion is just as ugly. Evangelicals have joined with political conservatives so completely they are like fingers on the same hand and they cannot undo the damage. It is an unholy alliance but I’ll not dig in that hole today. The idea of religious freedom has been transformed into self righteous authority. In the name of religious freedom we should all be free to worship or not worship as we please as long as it doesn’t violate other people’s freedom, my freedom, my body, another person’s body, my daughter’s body, etc. Historically more people have been murdered in God’s name than have been saved. The Sons of Abraham (Jews, Christians and Muslims) have been killing each other for thousands of years and all in the belief that they are the same God's chosen ones. In God’s name they kill their fellow believers to gain wealth and power. Something wrong here, with the believers or with their god. 
There I did it (Damn!) and I hate it when I do that. That’s what happens when I listen to the news or to someone who won’t shut up about the news. I got this piece off to a good start with road trips and lawn mowing. Then I fell off the cart, must have landed on my head and started venting: sorry ‘bout that. 

I TAKE MY CHANCES

  August 8; I am sitting in the air conditioned comfort of a study room in Ludington, Michigan’s public library. It’s hot outside. The weather app on my smartphone says it’s only 83 but it’s hot. Still, if you’ve got nothing to do but wait, no place in the shade to take cover then ‘Hot’ is about how you feel and not a number. I parked under a shade tree on a side street but that only lasts a while. Then I thought of the library and it’s really nice here. I’ve got a few hours to kill before they start loading the ferry for the evening run to Manitowoc, Wisconsin. The Badger is a big ship by anybody’s measure and the hold will accommodate (I don’t know how many) but it takes an hour to load all the cars and trucks. All the people ride topside with lots of deck space to walk and retreat to a huge lounge. There will be a running bingo game, game after game until we dock in Wisconsin. You get one card and the prizes are token trinkets but it’s more like meet & greet than serious bingo. We get a free hour as we cross the line between Eastern Daylight and Central Daylight time. So we dock around midnight central time and I’m not driving in the dark so I’ll find a corner of the parking lot and wait for sunup, get some zzzzzz’s. 
The concert last night was good. The concert crowd from Grand Rapids is a heady, middle age collection (my idea of middle age is 60+) and they favor artists and their music from the 80’s, 90’s and early 00’s. Mary Chapin Carpenter (I Feel Lucky) fit that niche perfectly with old favorites and stuff from a new (to be released) album. I have new hearing aids and they hear everything, maybe too well. I have trouble filtering out background noise and lots of the band showing-off makes lyrics difficult if not impossible to comprehend. I know, I know; if it’s too loud then I am too old. But the beauty of that generation was in the lyrics, they told a story and if I can’t follow the story then it may be wonderful but still, if the vocals are just other instruments making awesome noise then I should have spent my money on something else. She did one song solo with the band off stage and her magic is still there. 
Meijer Gardens Amphitheater is surrounded by residential neighborhoods and the city requires all concerts to end by 9:00 and I’m told they enforce that rule vigorously. In that case they will be paying a fine as the encore went well beyond the 9:00 hour. They finished with a flurry and left the stage but everybody knew we would get the encore. The song was “He Thinks He’ll Keep Her” which is a pushback against male dominance and without missing a beat, within the chord structure of the first song they slid right into “I Take My Chances”. It was an 9 or 10 minute treat and I loved it. 
“Now some people say that you shouldn't tempt fate - And for them I can not disagree - But I never learned nothing from playing it safe - 
I say fate should not tempt me - I take my chances.”

Addendum: 8/10/25
Lake Michigan was windy with big waves and we were late into Manitowoc. The ferry offloads late every nigh and the local authorities don’t want unauthorized travelers hanging around, waiting for sunrise so there is a curfew. Nothing is open and the my only choice was to drive after dark. Fifty some miles up the road I found a truckstop that was open and I stopped for a long nap. Back on the road at 5:30 there was  just enough Gray-light to see up the road but still need headlights to be seen by others. 
Arriving at my son’s place near Saint Paul, Minnesota just in time to unload and go into Minneapolis. Yesterday was the first exhibition game for the NFL and the Vikings were playing the Texans; we had tickets and off we went. In a few words, none of us really wanted to sit through an NFL game for the sake of the game. Our seats were six rows from the top of the top level, looking almost straight down at players so far below you had trouble telling the color of their jerseys; so far we couldn’t see the football. We (my kids) wanted to be in the new stadium with the crowd and hype. Football is what it is and we like it when our team wins but going to a game is more like running with the bulls in Pamplona. Too loud, too far away to watch; without the jumbo screens at both ends of the field one wonders how far fools will go to brandish team colors and spend a ton of money. We enjoyed the game and left a few minutes before the half ended. Getting out of the parking lot and downtown was very easy; good lesson, if you want to escape the bumper to bumper crush, leave at half time. 
It is Sunday morning. We are going out for breakfast. I am still really clean and fresh from my shower last night and the sky is overcast (weather is cool). The world is a pretty good place as long as you don’t watch the news. 

GOOD KARMA

  I am in Kalamazoo, MI at a McDonald’s across from the bus station. At 7:10 a.m. people traveling by bus are coming in and out for coffee or an egg McMuffin. I’ve been approached several times by panhandlers hitting on everyone with a suitcase or a samdwocj. If my mother were here she would surely say: “There but for the grace of God go I.” I never embraced her religion but she was a righteous soul; never let me forget that this life is fragile and that being smart and working hard is not enough when you’ve  been dealt a bad hand. Yes, there but for the grace of good Karma, that could be me. 
I belong to a travel club where members offer up their spare room to strangers (fellow club members) who need an affordable place to sleep while on the road. Last night I stayed with a retired biology teacher and his wife. Their home is 98 years old, brick two story with arched doorways and mahogany woodwork. The stairway railing to upstairs was so massive and detailed I couldn’t help stroking it like a favorite pet. She had already left for the morning when I got up at 6:15 and he was sleeping in. There is no formal charge but it is understood to leave a $15 gratuity. That way you cover the cost of changing sheets with no records or bookwork. 
I can’t get over the people here. They all had a mother who probably loved them, had high hopes for their future and would have been crushed to see them now. Nobody sets out to be a failure and they make choices that at the time, feel like their best chance to succeed at whatever the day brings. Even though I’ve turned away from Christian faith there is wisdom scattered through the bible’s stories. “Judge not lest ye be judged.” If not for the thousands of other people’s finger prints on my story I might be panhandling here as well. 
The sun just popped out from clouds to the east and I’ll think of it as a good omen. I have stuff to do and I’ll get out on the road. The truck is running well and I’m not hungry yet. Good karma.

HATS OFF TO MEIIJER

  Wednesday, August 6; Hats off to Meijer Stores, particularly the one on Westnedge in Kalamazoo, MI. For anyone not fluent in Great Lakes culture, Fredrick Meijer was a contemporary of Sam Walton just upstream several states. Meijer Stores are basically the same dream-come-true as the Walmart Super Stores, just not spread outside the Great Lakes States. I am sitting in a section between the main entrance and the produce where 8 tables for two line the walls and a countertop with half-a-dozen stools. Add to that, electric outlets are plentiful. You won’t find that in any Walmart store I’ve ever been in. The Walton plan is all about shopping carts that are too big and moving customers through the checkout lanes as fast as possible. They certainly don’t want computer hacks like me hanging around with a drink and sandwich while writing or doing research or play games or work at keeping their journal up to date. I even had my choice of large or small push-carts, something else most Walmarts don’t like to see. 
I stayed in a $73 motel in Grand Rapids last night. I try not to pay money for time spent unconscious making motels a last resort. Two nights ago my power station (high tech battery pack) either lost its charge or I misread the meter and I woke up in the wee hours without the support of my c-pap machine. So I didn’t get much sleep and had to resort to that last resort last night. The power station took a full charge and looks good so I’ll try camping at the truckstop again in a few days. That will be in Ludington, MI.; have to be there early to board the ferry for a ride across Lake Michigan to Manitowoc, Wisconsin. I don’t like driving unfamiliar roads in the dark and motels in Ludington are all well over the $100 toll. If I don’t get good rest at the truckstop I can nap on the ride across the lake. That’s my plan. Like any other plan I anticipate the possibility of life throwing me a curve, followed by reboot, adapt and update the new plan. 
Tomorrow night the MaRY Chapin Carpenter concert is still on in Grand Rapids. I’ll go back up the road I came down today. The gates open at 4:00 and my good company for this show won’t get there until just before the music starts so I’ll fix food for the cooler and stake out a good spot (lawn chairs) as soon as they let people in. The worst part of this trip is pulling in the driveway. But I’ve got a plan for September. 

IN DOG YEARS

  It’s almost 8:00 p.m., I’m in a McDonald’s in Traverse City, Michigan . I left Grand Rapids just about 12 hours ago, drove by the seat of my pants to Cadillac, MI and turned it over to the GPS. The next hour and a half was a maze of twisty-turn course through the woods; tried to stay oriented but even on a sunny day the tall, dense woods and narrow roadway left me clueless. But my navigation machine got me to a familiar junction near Glen Arbor, my destination. 
Finding a parking spot in town has always been a challenge and it was even worse today. My first stop was Cherry Republic, a restaurant-winery-bakery and everything-cherry store. Had a cherry-pulled pork sandwich with cherry bbq sauce, cheese and cherry coleslaw between the buns; so big I had to cut it up and eat it with a fork. Then I picked up six jars of cherry horseradish; one for each of my kids and two for me. 
They set samples out for everything they sell and nobody checks to see how many times you go back for 2nds, 3rds, 4ths; you get the picture. Everybody is careful to scoop chocolate covered cherries up with the teaspoon that is provided but it takes several scoops to fill up the palm of your hand. One lady does nothing else but refill the chocolate covered cherries bowls (3 types) milk, dark and mint chocolate. By the time she refills the bucket the samples are empty again. I managed to constrain my predatory nature but I made several passes by the chocolate covered cherries and it’s my birthday today (12 years, 3 months in dog years.)
I’m going back tomorrow morning to a place I call ‘The Church of The High Meadow.’ I’ve been going there for over 30 years to worship nature, take comfort in my pagan instincts. Then I head back to Grand Rapids for a Mary Chapin Carpenter concert on Thursday. Finding an opportunity to journal requires some planning. This little blurb will not get a re-read or edit. I’ll just toss it up and trust the universe to give it legs.   (Couldn't help myself) I did make an edit or two after all. 

GREAT MEDICINE

  In just a few days I will be up early and on the road. I need this roadtrip I really do. Last Thanksgiving’s long weekend wasn’t really a roadtrip, more of an escape; out Friday morning and home late Sunday afternoon. Arkansas, for the most part a cultural desert but its Northwest corner would be a lush oasis. From Bentonville south to Fayettville, whatever prejudice one might have against the Walmart monopoly they drive an economy and demonstrate high standards that make the region feel more like New England. The streets in Eureka Springs are so steep your socks wad up either heel or toe depending on the up or down but that’s part of it’s appeal. That Sunday I went to church with Unitarians in Fayetteville and I felt right at home. But two days and three nights leaves you shortchanged if you need a roadtrip. Since then if it wasn’t one thing bogging me down at home its been another. In a few days I’ll shove off on the front half of an 800 mile trek; haven’t decided whether to sleep in a motel or in my truck. I’ve been sleeping in truck stop parking lots for so many years it’s the normal. I wake up early with a $15 shower, stand in the hot water for as long as I want. If sleeping gets a little cramped it goes away when I remember the $100 I didn’t spend on a motel. But age has a way of making one soft and then my kids feel better when I sleep in a bed under a roof after all, $100 doesn’t weigh as much as it did when I had a real job. 
I’ll stop tomorrow night in Springfield, Illinois and make Grand Rapids the next day. I am a Missouri transplant who took root in Michigan when my kids were in preschool and if you like the axiom; Home is where the heart is; my heart is still in that stretch of Lake Michigan’s coastline that gets lake effect snow. 
There are three big stops on this trip. The Coast Guard Festival in Grand Haven is first. Every person with a Coast Guard connection of any kind will be there for the weeklong conference and celebration along with thousands of local families. The fireworks show on Saturday night is worth the trip by itself. Then I want to spend my birthday at Sleeping Bear National Lake Shore. The town Glen Arbor is close-by with The Cherry Republic’s Mother Store; everything Cherry from chocolate covered cherries to cherry-chocolate chip cookies to cherry salsa to cherry mustard, cherry t-shirts and cherry aprons and their catalog leaves nothing to the imagination. You have to be 21+ to sample the half a dozen variations of cherry wine but two or three sips is my limit anyway. I might even rent a canoe and float Crystal River. 
Glen Lake is a small town, a favorite summer destination for people from Chicago who have enough money they don’t have to ask how much anything costs. So lodging is both limited and expensive and I’ll be camping at the Shell Truck Plaza in Traverse City. The third feature on my itinerary is the Mary Chapin Carpenter concert at Meijer Gardens Amphitheater in Grand Rapids: she sang I Feel Lucky, (No Professor Doom gonna stand in my way, mmm-I feel lucky today.) I will be in the good company of Miss Nancy; when we met in 1973 I was 35 and she was 1. Our families were best friends and all the kids thought they had two houses and four parents but her parents have passed and we are the only ones available now. Most years we’ve tried to make a summer concert together at Meijer Gardens and this is one of those years.
I will be hanging out with other old, long-time friends as fate allows but after the concert I’ll be free to find my way home, with other stops along the way. I could stay away indefinitely. There are other places I need to go, friends I haven’t met yet. But there will be bills waiting, the house and yard will need my attention by then. That’s my plan for now. Still, I know from experience that another roadtrip in the fall would be great medicine.

THE NEIGHBORHOOD WATCH

  When I was 13 or 14 I took a spiral notebook and spent a Saturday printing my own newspaper. Two columns per page, I reported on a crash I saw on the highway and about riding my bicycle. Then I wrote a couple of made up stories as if they were real. I had to keep sharpening my pencil, printed as neatly as I could, even sketched a couple of wannabe photos. It took all afternoon. On the header I printed; The Neighborhood Watch. My mother read it when I finished and told me I should become a writer. She was always telling me I should become something or other but duh! Who would have thought! I kept that five page spiral news paper for a long time, never shared it with anybody else. Not a stellar student, quite the opposite; I thought a C- was great and a D was good enough. I didn’t want to be made fun of so I kept it to myself.
Nobody knew about ADD then. I was not a trouble maker, just another underachieving blue-eyed little boy with high energy and a short attention span. They told my parents I was capable but lazy.
So here I am writing. I use commas and semicolons more than I should but chalk that up to creative license. When I feel a pause in my train of thought I leave a comma. I can always move or remove it later. Nothing I write goes to bed without several reviews, edits and rewrites to satisfy my second thoughts. This is just my opinion but I think people who say they can’t write just don’t want to write. Framing language takes too much time and they are too busy to throw words at the page. I’m a little biased I know. But if you would rather trust everything to memory or memorize every long or complex argument, good luck. 
We all start out with 23 pairs of chromosomes but variations  within that format make us all unique and I marvel at the way personalities develop. No guarantee that kids who share the same experience will perceive them the same way (fear vs excitement, good vs bad). Adults tend to lean on values and expectations they acquired in their youth but changing one’s mind on religion or politics or how to raise children is common as dirt. We all begin as selfish creatures, ignorant, intolerant and (in the philosophical sense) conservative. Babies are consumed with ‘Self’, all they care about is; keep warm, eat, sleep and their mother’s scent. But they learn, beginning with the first eye contact, the first smile; they see others showing affection and sharing food. Heredity sets the stage but the way we attribute meaning to those experiences gets the last word. By the time we reach the age of accountability that blueprint for belief and behavior is pretty well mapped out. It can be altered inwardly to benefit the self or outward to embrace the greater culture, depending on millions of minute but repetitive details or a single significant, life changing event. 
A mother’s nurture and affection are the first acquired influences to shape a person’s personality. In most mother-child relationships we see tolerance, generosity, affection and even cooperation. Growing up, siblings, peers and adults within our sphere also model behavior and it can be forgiving, affectionate, cooperative and value diversity as well. But not everybody gets the compassionate stuff. Some never get past the Me-me-me stage that values either competition or stealth (whatever you can get away with) to get whatever you want.  Nobody is off limits to the selfish narcissist. There  you have the two extreme stereotypes, Mother Theresa and Donald Trump. Most of us fall in between the extremes. 
Along with old age I’ve acquired a trove of experience and the writing habit. It doesn’t have to be about anything in particular but the human mystique is hard to resist. The writing process requires at least a shred of authenticity and expertise and in return it is therapeutic, I feel better when I finish. Obviously I prefer the carrot to the stick. Wealth and power come with two handles. The balanced person understands that we are all in this together and a collective responsibility is necessary. For the self obsessed the other handle has only one beneficiary, Self. Across time and with me unaware, a primary value that is deeply rooted in my psyche is that of fairness (fair play). In the pledge of allegiance the last line is clear; “. . . with Liberty and Justice for All.” A political activist on a local radio program put it in context; “We’ve got the liberty and justice part down pat but have trouble with the ‘All’ part.” I thought then and still do, great quote; so much content in just 16 words. That puts me at odds with my counterparts who behave and believe as if there are only two kinds of people; Winners and Losers and in order to win you do whatever it takes; anything.! 
This dichotomy of values and resulting behavior has been shaping the human experience since the birth of civilization some 10,000 years ago. The Selfish and the Generous will never be comfortable or trusting in the company of the other. I cannot fix the problem and neither will I point the finger of blame. I am lucky to live in an affluent country, unworthy but lucky to have white male privilege. I read and write; never gone to bed hungry in all of my life. I don’t deserve anything other than the good karma I keep trying to put back in the system. The big difference between then and now is I swapped my pencil and spiral notebook for a good laptop computer. 

ODYSSEY

  We have a program at my church where at 9:30, before the main service, a church member speaks to their spiritual journey (Odyssey) from whenever it began until they came to All Souls. In 2004 when I, quite by accident discovered the Unitarian-Universalist denomination the atmosphere was extremely Humanistic. By definition: Humanism is a philosophical stance that emphasizes the value and agency of human beings. We have no need for a condescending, supernatural god or a faith anchored in medieval ignorance. There is no issue if you do believe in God. If you identify with our principles and want to church with us, you can believe whatever you like. Our faith is manifest in what we do rather than what we say we believe.
The lady sharing her Odyssey last week is a relatively new member (2 years) fifty-ish, highly educated, well traveled and an open minded, forward leaning, progressive, lifelong Catholic. Her story was enlightening and when you’re allowed to travel that journey with them it’s easy to identify; we all fall down and get back up. But it confirmed and reinforced what I already know about faith based religion.
Even before organized religion people have known and struggled with the certainty of their own mortality, falling back on hope first and then belief in an afterlife. In that first millennium after Jesus, the Emperor (Constantine) adopted Christianity as the religion of the Roman Empire. What he and his advisors believed is secondary to the way they used religion to influence and manipulate the masses. The fear vs. salvation caveat was then, still is the best vehicle to unify large numbers of otherwise strangers in both their loyalty to each other, their leaders, to authority and to a cause, their nation. Over the next thousand years that scheme has recycled over and over and is still the most potent unifier that civilization has ever employed. 
The lady’s story confirmed the popular idea (among Catholics) that Nuns have been telling every generation: “Give me a child for six years and they will be Catholics forever.” As recently as 4 years ago she had been a doubter, questioning the disparity between the churches rhetoric and its practice. But the addictive nature of ritual and peer pressure may be incurable; the collective kneeling, crossing one’s self, Hail Marys, confession; together they cement the parts and pieces so the whole construct survives. Her story reached a crisis when her daughter came out LGBT. The church, priests, bishop showed little or no sympathy and zero tolerance. She was faced with a choice between the faith of her upbringing and her conscience. She’s been a UU now for a couple of years; like most of us who were pointed this way by a friend or in my case it was a random discovery. In either case she still takes comfort attending mass occasionally, simply because the ritual feels familiar and safe in the moment and she still believes in God. 
There was no crisis in my spiritual trajectory, no scars. In my growing up I wanted very much to please my mother who was as devout a believer as ever drew a breath and going along was easy. About the time I moved my family far away and my kids were going to Sunday school I had if not a revelation then a stroke of insight. Either I had grown all the way up or my mom was far enough away; the stories and propaganda my kids were getting at church went too far and that peer bond between believers was a small sacrifice for my secular leap of logic. We just quit going and Sunday mornings got better and better.
What really touched me listening to the lady last Sunday was how much our spiritual community had changed since I came aboard in ’04. We still have an abundance of Atheists and Agnostics but the hardboiled, aggressive attitudes had mellowed, giving way to a wider, deeper sense of conscience. I am one of those Agnostics who does’t know and doesn’t care. That hardwired need to believe in something mysterious is still at work. I still react with awe and wonder when lightning and thunder strike over my head in the same split second.  I understand the physics. Loose electrons closing a circuit does not require a supernatural being but I’m programmed to go slack-jawed and feel so small in that split second. I don’t understand everything and maybe feeling helpless is part of the journey.

SAME OLD BONE

 
“I write as much to understand as to be understood.” Ellie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate is a hero by any measure. We have something in common, writing for the sake of our own understanding. I write to help me understand and every time I sit down to write it always crosses my mind. 
I am growing weary writing about the human condition and our long, evolutionary backstory. There are two views and mine is not the popular, self-aggrandizing version. If I believed that civilization was following a fixed path, that someone was in control and we (human beings) are predestined to prevail; then we could all sit together and sing Kumbaya but I don’t and I won’t. In the last thirty years I’ve worn myself out wrestling with the myth of human superiority. It is my considered opinion we are highly evolved animals. Our history of attributes and accomplishments is long and impressive. Still, like proud artists who write their own reviews we wax praise rather than an objective critique. What self respecting singer or artist calls attention to their own shortfalls and failures? 

        Elephants and whales are highly evolved mammals too and their attributes work for them as well as ours work for us. People write poetry and whales cannot but how long can you hold your breath. The difference between elephants and people is obvious to the educated person but only a scant few skilled experts are connecting and analyzing data as to how much we are alike. If you’re a whale, holding your breath is a very important attribute. We all do the best we can with what we’ve got. The whale cannot duplicate our natural talents and that makes us superior but neither can we do what the whale does and nobody thinks we are the less for it. Human nature would have us believe what we want to believe: Mirror mirror on the wall which species is superior over all? I believe that civilization is peopled by creatures that practice to some degree, self-worship. The fact that we follow our creative, problem solving nature may be no more profound than elephants that stand in the shallows and take a shower on hot afternoons. 
Misanthropes are people who dislike (or hate) and avoid humankind. I am not one of those; I love people for the most part, some more than others but we belong together either way. We are social animals. As a species we need each other. Solitary animals do very well living alone but humans do not. The axiom, “It takes a village to raise a child.” could not be more true. So I am not here to beat up on humankind. Still I am disappointed that with all of our logic, creative thinking and ability to cooperate in large numbers we still wage wars for the sake of greed and power. We still practice racism and misogyny. 
For many thousands of years our predecessors lived together in small clans that were more or less isolated from other clans. Scratching out an existence was difficult but the group would be egalitarian rather than authoritarian as every person was too important to the group to diminish their role with a vertical hierarchy. It wasn’t until civilization began to develop around 10,000 years ago (at different times in different places) that we got agriculture, towns & cities, division of labor, specialized skills, authoritarian rule, social classes, etc. Civilization improved the quality of life for many but also suffered poverty and discrimination on many others as well. Having specialized jobs resulted in many of them being strenuous, repetitive that literally wore people out before their time. Women were for the most part relegated to child care and needing a man to depend on. I’m not saying civilization is bad but it has resulted in bad side effects that were never encountered in the hunter-gatherer culture that flourished for 35,000 years. An interesting idea (food for thought) is that people flourished without civilization for over 35,000 years but civilization cannot survive without people who translate out as fuel to drive the process and function as a piece of the machine. The civilization construct needs highly organized people who conform to time, space and purpose or it dies on the vine. People who live off the land in small groups have never needed civilization to survive and sustain a stable breeding population which in evolutionary terms is the definition for species success.
I am not ready to give up my pickup truck or the interstate system or my smart phone or toothpaste but I am beginning to feel like the corner piece of a gigantic jigsaw puzzle that only fits in that particular space, farthest from the center and irrelevant to the picture on the completed puzzle. Self-aggrandizing is a uniquely human business and I have to stay self aware not to go there. Before the industrial revolution (1830) and the mass burning of fossil fuels, the species (Homo sapiens) was no more significant on the planet Earth than dandelions or mosquitoes.  But I am tired of chewing on this same old bone and I need a better distraction. After all, This world is broken, I didn’t break it, I can’t fix it. So I’ll take comfort wherever I can and be glad.

FEELING GOOD

 
Yesterday I took a long nap in the late afternoon and when the movie I watched finished at 10:00 p.m. I knew not to go straight to bed. So I watched some of my favorite music on YouTube and checked concert schedules and ticket prices. The Tedeschi Trucks band will be in Morrison, Colorado at Red Rocks in a couple of weeks and still have a few general admission passes  at ($230 each) but I don’t really want to go alone and the price is steep. It was midnight so I turned the AC off, opened windows and turned on the attic fan. 
My alarm went off at 6:20. The streets were wet from last night’s rain but it was clear and cool. I had dreamed or dreamt, I think both are correct, it was  a long dream that went on and on. I was riding-bike; not to be confused with riding (on) a bike. Riding-bike you and the machine become one, integrated system. Make the distinction between a two wheel kid’s toy and the legitimate mode of travel. In the dream I was with several others, dressed properly with lycra shorts that come almost the knees, shoes with toe clips, gloves and helmet. We transitioned from hills to winding grades, to the flat, went through a little rain shower and took turns riding up front. It was awesome.
I rode my bicycle seriously from 1978 until 2018. There is nothing like a 20-25 mile ride to satisfy an inherent need to be in motion. You have time to focus on technique: the spin, frequent gear changes to hold a steady RPM, small shifts forward and back on the seat, standing up and leaning forward on inclines, changing grips. It spreads the work across all of the muscle groups and for an hour and a half you stay fresh. All the while you check your mirror for traffic, take in the sights and sounds, spook wildlife you surprise as you roll up silently and people going about their business who miss you altogether. It’s almost like being invisible.
I was still biking in my mind in the shower; can’t remember when I woke up feeling so good. In 1983 I took my 11 year-old twins and 9 year-old daughter on a week long trek up the Lake Michigan shore from Kalamazoo to Traverse City. By then they had good bikes and were accomplished riders. With a small tent and two sleeping bags we camped, ate at delis along the way and made new friends at every stop. Nine summers later we were living in Missouri. My then 15 year-old daughter and I were the only ones not working but we both had great bicycles. We put those bikes and the same old tent in the back of the pickup and went to the West Coast for July and part of August. Between camping and visits with friends and family we took in Yosemite National Park and biked most of the Southern California’s beaches from Huntington Beach down to San Clemente. 
Time either flies when you’re having fun or it can drag through the doldrums but either way it will pass. So there I was in the shower, remembering details about bicycle technique and about happy, joyful times on the road with my kids. I turned 50 that summer in California. I have a photo of us on our bikes, on the beach in Newport Beach and I take a lot of comfort in old photos. They speak to another time with crystal clarity: yes, that’s us and this is how it really was. That was a great day and I knew it even then. Today is a great day as well. I woke up feeling not new but certainly better than my years might suggest. 
Early July and the Tour de France is underway. Super Bowl is an American thing that gets a lot more attention than it merits. The money it generates is remarkable but it’s business, more about the the money than it is a sport. The Tour de France is a 21 stage bicycle race (21 days, 21 separate races) with a global following, competitors and teams from all around the world. After 4 days the individual leader is Mathieu van der Poel, a Dutch rider. A typical stage race can last from two to five hours and cover long, grueling, steep mountain grades or straight, flat stretches between villages with their hairpin corners and crowds spilling onto the course or challenging combinations of both. What I like about the Tour is that all the riders belong to a team of 6 or 7  and they work as a team to protect their #1 rider and move him to the front as the race nears the finish. Not negative but I prefer the leg-pumping, elbow bumping on the steep climb to the finish line. I tend to fall asleep with NFL and NASCAR business. 
Getting back to waking up feeling good and keeping that happy thing going, I was informed by a friend who should know, “Do what you can with what you have, fix what you break and find the joy.”  Joy; a feeling of pleasure or happiness. It is after-all, a possibility made real. Finding the joy is not about getting what you want, it’s more like getting lemons and making lemonade. “You want joy, if it doesn’t come knocking on your door then make some from what you’ve got.” I have to look for it under every stone, in the darkness as well as the light. I have to treasure every tiny little shred of happiness with the full blown weight of the greater joy I seek. Sometimes I lose my way and sh*t happens but you start over, look under a new stone or grope in the dark for a new beginning. I still get up on days I don’t feel this good because time doesn’t stand still and I have high hopes for 
tomorrow’s wake-up.