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. 

A SHORT REACH

  An interesting aspect that comes with aging is that you have so many years of acquired experience to reflect on. My neural hard drive has never been updated but the memories keep dropping in, looking for a cozy corner. In the late 1940’s World War 2 had spent itself but the aftermath was slow to heal. Its death toll estimated at 85 million souls both military and civilian still touched most everyone in Europe, Asia and North America. The U.S.A. was spared the destruction of bombing and occupation by foreign armies so our social fabric was strong. Infrastructure (buildings & roads) were in tact; banks, industry, work force, transportation, agriculture, none of it had to be reinvented. Europe had to print and spend tons of money on social programs, trade unions and such, rebuilding for several decades before their economies were able to compete. The popular liberal stereotype for European culture traces back of necessity to the post WW2 recovery. Shifting gears from a wartime economy to a free market culture was easy in America. After only 4 years of fighting (our allies had been fighting for 6 or more years) we ran amok with an economy that never had to be reinvented, only retooled and turned loose. We were very good at what we did but the global prosperity we enjoy these 80 years later is to some degree a lingering testament to the (right place & right time). With enough head start even I could win a gold medal at the Olympics. 
In 1948 my dad was up before dawn and off to work before my brothers and I woke up. Breakfast was usually on the table by the time we hit the kitchen, two poached eggs on toast and milk, sometimes hot oatmeal and bacon. It was the first year our school district had a school bus. It stopped, honked if you weren’t outside waiting, honked again and started easing away. The consequences for missing the bus were real and we made it out the door before the second honk, even if I had my shoes under my arm and left my lunch on the table. 
We had a radio but I didn’t get to pick the station or even when we listened but it was how we got the news. Sometimes we got a copy of the Sunday news paper but news was basically what we overheard at the dinner table. Dad was a Tool & Die Maker for a company that made Coca-Cola vending machines. We were Yellow Dog Democrats which means we would vote for a yellow dog before any Republican. Even though I thought I wanted to be something else (a father/son thing) when it was all said and done, at the bottom of every hole I’ve ever dug in I find my blue collar values. It shouldn’t be a surprise that I have a built in pull to the left on any issue that has a moral caveat. 
It’s ironic I still remember what I had for breakfast when I was 9 and the name of the first girl who kissed me on the lips; I was 12. Billie Jo Davis wasn’t my girlfriend and she never did it again (must have been on a dare) but still. Along with other mundane memories I specialize in random trivia. By the time I got to high school the news was the Cold War. People were burying bomb shelters in their yards and every time you get the news it was about a nuclear bomb test on a Pacific island or in Siberia. I didn’t pay much attention to the news. I couldn’t change any of it and I had a girlfriend by then. 
More recently, this century; I find myself tuning out when news breaks. Back in the 70’s & 80’s we got sports scores  and local news and that was alright. Racism, misogyny and the class divide (invisible poor) were still a shameful legacy for the Land Of The Free & The Home of The Brave but they were so deeply entrenched in our national culture we didn’t take offense, it was our normal. Popular sentiment in the mid 2020’s seems to favor a self obsessed focus on those same character flaws. Our leaders keep their aggressive, malcontent followers ginned up with hateful rhetoric and punishing the wicked as a cure-all. I have a friend with a PhD in philosophy and a few classes at the seminary who ministers to a liberal congregation in Grand Rapids who told me privately: “The world is broken, you didn’t break it and you can’t fix it. So be the change you want to see, fix what you screw up, pay attention and find the Joy.”  That kind of accountability appealed to me then and passing years haven’t dimmed its glow. 
I really do avoid media news. News is a business and that means sell advertising that means identify a target audience. In this case you get extremes on both sides and a slim few who try to balance their reporting. Recently, on one of the few networks who try to keep that balance, they reported on a new (organized) movement that touts former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson as a spokesperson. The feature was not a report as much as simply soundbites from the (Carlson) podcast. Their issue is that manhood is at risk due to liberal influence. Men are being emasculated in the work place and in the home by advances in women’s independence and opportunity. Sperm count is down, birth rates are down and men no longer need protect their families. There was interest in framing a plan for cash rewards to families with 6 or more children. Keep moms making babies  so men can be real men again. AYKM (are you kidding me); that’s what Hitler did in 1943 to guarantee his super race. I would think the low sperm count issue better identified as the Save the Self righteous Penis. It would be laughable if it were funny. 
I am familiar with using the radio or television for background noise to offset silence. I have over a thousand songs uploaded into my smartphone and the phone itself is linked to my hearing aids. I don’t have to hold the phone up to my ear or select the speaker mode. I get a clear, edgy tone both incoming and outgoing. I can also select my I-Tunes AP, set it on random select and listen to music all day. KCUR is the NPR station in Kansas City and I can anticipate their news breaks if I want to skip the rhetoric; it’s a short reach to the mute button.