TROUBLE THE WATER

  Everything I’ve ever learned about writing points to the comfort and convenience of the reader. Consider your audience before you start throwing words at the page. Years ago I  belonged to a writer’s group in Michigan that had thirty to forty aspiring writers. There were a few published authors and others who earned their livings as technical writers but the rest of us were trying to hone skills, wishing someone would take notice. Those people who laid eyes on my work and offered their best advice, they identified as writer-readers. They asked questions about why this and did you think about that. We all wanted the same thing, effortless reading with good story. I don’t enjoy that luxury anymore. 
In the 21st century my following has shrunk to single digits and from that shallow pool get little or no feedback. But that's alright. I write in self defense, quoting Ellie Wiesel, writing to understand more than to be understood, and I do that. A handful of friends and family check on my blog to learn where I am, sort of like Carmen Sandiego. But with Covid pandemic my travels and activity have been curtailed. So why write at all? It is still a case of self defense, of processing ideas and making meaning. 
At this point I have very few secrets or untold stories. I read opinions and general interest articles in the news but that is how those writers earn a living. My views depend on my experience and much of that is what I read. Take my opinion and $2.60 and you can swap them for a cup of coffee. Me delving into controversy serves no purpose. I have fact-checked my feelings and conceded that by definition conservatives are not as bad as I want to believe and that progressives are probably no better. Trusting your feelings is unreliable at best and changing the way one feels about anything is a mysterious thing, more an after-the-fact discovery than an in-the-moment decision. Indirectly (or directly) religion influences discussion and generates strong opinion. Organized religion is very important, like grease on the gears for civilization to function but as individuals, one can take it or leave it, however it makes you feel. I have been leaving it. 

Now I’m getting into troubled waters. I remember Madalyn Murray O’Hair from the 1060’s, an atheist activist, committed to the separation of church and state. At the time she was generally portrayed as being both evil and unAmerican. At the time, if you were not WASP (White, Anglo-Saxon & Protestant) you began with two strikes against you. Catholics (beholding to the Pope) only had one strike, not Christian enough. I was never a Big B Believer but neither did I trouble the water. The fact that I can express doubt (unbelief) without consequence, it speaks to the times and not so much about me. That tolerance makes life a lot easier for folks like me than it was for Madalyn O’Hair. 
My grandpa was an endearing old man. He loved us and we loved him back. He was a racist misogynist but he could repeat the Lord’s Payer which, at the time, covered a multitude of sins. Racism and misogyny have both wained in my lifetime but like winter’s chill, have come back around. In terms of lifespan, mine has surpassed his by nearly a decade and I think it gives me some perspective. He enjoyed some affection but not much respect, just an old man whose time was running out. All he had to feel good about was an alcohol buzz and a few like minded bigots who thought their self righteous prejudice be ordained by God. Whatever my shortcomings they are neither gender based nor racist. My feelings stir to the phrase, Liberty & Justice For All. The All part should actually mean just that, all, everyone, every gender identity, every color, every ethnicity. So said, I understand how difficult it is to change the way you feel and like my grandpa, I don’t have any regrets in that regard. He had his compass, I have mine but we would never agree on where to find true north.
I don’t think this exercise qualifies as a Rant. It is not a spontaneous outpouring, it has been thought out and lacks passionate overkill generally associated with rants. I have even left the door open with regard to change and ideology. After all, there was a time when social conservatives were deeply rooted in the Democratic Party. Things change and I want to be part of the change rather than choke on a hardboiled loyalty that has lost its salt. I have friends (people I know and get along with) and even family who think of me as a well meaning but woefully misguided old fool. Some even pray on my behalf that I regain my senses. I can’t dismiss that chance; stranger things happen but neither would you want to bet on that possibility. Nothing new here, not really but I wouldn’t want anyone, no not anybody to misread either my compass or my purpose. 

THERE ARE LESSONS

  With good health, a modest income, some good luck and a few reliable friends, old age can be tolerated. I used to worry the money would run out before payday came. I used to fret over unnecessary meetings and redundant paper work. Of course our work gives us purpose but its weight goes well beyond purpose. I have time now in jog-gear that I never had in sprint mode. It lets me relish things that once passed under the radar. Waking up from peaceful sleep, it should not be taken for granted; thank you! Likewise, hot water on demand may be the most underrated blessing the gods ever shared with mortal man. Still, with 25 teenagers scrambling through my door at 7:22 a.m., wanting nothing more than to beat the tardy bell, it never crossed my mind. With enough age it crosses my mind and any deliverance that befalls me, it beats tolerable, it is acceptable, even embraceable. 

Tolerance may be a good starting point but I want more. Tolerate means just to put up with, to endure. Long life should yield more than endurance. I was schooled early not to take the present for granted: don’t wish your life away. That was difficult when all I wanted was to be 16 so I could drive but what do you tell a 14 year-old. Still, things change after all. No rush now to be another year older. Every breath a bridge to the next, something else not to be taken for granted, thank you! 
I have several pet rocks from the bottom of The Grand Canyon, billions of years old and I nurture them as if they need it. Fact is, they wear their age very well without my help. I am the needy one in that arrangement, just a lump of flesh with a minuscule lifespan. The stones I collect, millions of earth years may pass between their breathing in and breathing out but then neither do they fear for the next breath. 
A friend told me, “There are lessons to be learned. If we fall short, the lesson is reframed to fit another circumstance and we get it again, and again, for as many times as it takes.” I still do that, fall short and repeat a previous lesson but the years have set me up to see it coming, to better be ready. Kris Kristofferson’s song The Pilgrim sums up my condition: “. . . never knowing if believing is a blessing or a curse, or if the going up is worth the coming down.” I can’t say with confidence but if I get to choose, the coming down isn’t all bad; depends on what you do with it.
I could have written about a troubled world, about people who don't care what they do as long as they win, beat the tardy bell. Sometimes I do write about them. They are alright one on one but get them together and they start counting their money and keeping score. As ambitious as the human animal is, if we could do better we would. Civilized problems are compounded by greed, so deeply rooted in the psyche we (humankind) think it a virtue.
So my closer is this: The lesson that may take a lifetime to appreciate teaches us, “Better to light a candle than curse the darkness.” What we believe has been fashioned from someone else’s recipe and the kettle we were cooked in. It gives us a reason to make noise and push back but who questions what we’ve been groomed to believe, that might change the recipe. When my dust goes back to its mother I will be forgotten but the lesson will still be there to learn. Life is short, be nice, love who you love. Tell them so but talk is cheap. Love requires action or it is just an abstract idea and who needs more of that!

THE WINTRY TEMPEST

  The 8th Century British monk, The Venerable Bede is considered to be the father of English History. Drawing from his work, after the Romans left and before England was unified as a nation, there was a Northumbrian King who maintained a library. Those earliest monk scholars devoted their lives to recording and translating their oral history and tradition. From that library Bede came across this story, notably from conversations and discussions between the king, his counselors and friends as it related to one’s destiny. 
With regard to destiny one of his counselors eloquently observed: he likened it to a sparrow flying into one end of a lighted hall and out the other. “While inside the hall, it is safe from the wintry tempest. But after a short time it disappears, passing from winter into winter again. So this life of man appears for a little while,” he declared, “but of what is to follow or what went before we know nothing at all”. What a great visual metaphor the sparrow. Destiny is such a human thing but concerning the before & afterlife, the king’s counselor knew as much then as we know now . . . nothing at all.  
As far back as 5,000 years (50 centuries), persons of high rank or important position were buried with articles and provisions for a  journey. They didn’t know either but hope is potent motivation, it gives birth to expectation and our nature is for us to ride that possibility for as long as we can imagine something that we hope for. Where would religion be without an epilogue? 
If I am the sparrow then my journey is approaching the other end of the lighted hall, I am safe from the tempest for now but soon it will default back to winter again and the best authority for what lies ahead of you would be a Northumbrian librarian from the Dark Ages. 
It is generally confirmed, life on Earth traces back to the formation of (amino acids) nearly four billion years ago, that is 4,000,000,000 (9 zeroes). Over that long history the best reason for life (the process) to persist is that it seeks after itself with an adaptability that is unparalleled and unrelenting tenacity. In the science of biology there is a hallowed axiom; Life will find a way. Life (how cells work) replicates a coded copy of itself not unlike a recipe. That copy then guides the formation of a new organism just like the parent (not discounting mutations). Generation after generation, the code is passed on to succeeding generations. Why are we here; the timeless  conundrum. Simple yet profound, the bottom line reason for being here, (existing) is simply to sustain that spark. From fruit flies to people, all organisms are vehicles or conduit that shelter and sustain that spark, copy and pass it on. Organisms wear out and die but the spark is passed along like the Olympic Torch, kept aflame, handed off from runner to runner to runner until the next Olympiad and after that, kept alive until the next Olympic Games, and the next after that. With life, anything and everything that facilitates replication and reproduction is absolutely necessary. What we believe about our destiny is not. As long as a species (humans in this case) keep copying and passing on the code, it doesn’t matter what they believe. Making believe may be irresistible but the plot so far is no more than the last page in an unfinished, open ended story.
People are smarter than the average animal. By now evolution has equipped us with a brain that regulates body function and facilitates imagination which in turn promotes self awareness and creates story, myth, belief. At some point it begs the ultimate question, where did we come from and why are we here? Civilization is a recent development (the last 8,000 - 10,000 years) and our species is still wrestling with it. Most important, it has enhanced our ability to pass on the life code. World population has more than doubled just in my lifetime. When civilization no longer serves that fundamental purpose it (nations, politics, economies, religion, etc.) will change to meet the need or go away, disappear. By definition, he word (extinct) can only mean one thing.  
Civilization and (technology) have advanced at warp speed while human anatomy and physiology have taken millions of years to get us down out of the trees, into houses and feeding on Taco Bell burritos. Humans are still equipped with bodies (minds) that are best suited to function in a hunger/gatherer culture. We manage now but it isn’t getting easier. There are computers that truly do perform brain functions faster and more reliably than our brains at their best. Those computers cannot duplicate all brain functions simultaneously but the overriding caveat is not (what if) anymore, it is (when). If and when artificial intelligence keeps getting better, humans might trust an exotic algorithm more than traditional wisdom or divine inspiration. We already do that with important decisions concerning medicine and meteorology. That revelation is disturbing, even damning if you believe in the myth that makes us feel so competent, so righteous, so essential. 
If and when artificial intelligence (computers) can fabricate humans in vitro; I don’t want to be around for that. So maybe it’s good this sparrow’s passage is coming up on the exit ramp, back to the wintry tempest that will swallow me up again. There is an insightful little story that parallels Bede’s account. A thinker asks another thinker, “The afterlife, what will it be like?” The 2nd thinker replies, “About the same as before you were born.” 

REMEMBERING CARL SAGAN

  I am awake in the wee hours, texted my daughter who works the late shift and she returned, “It’s Early:30”. I am remembering Carl Sagan, a truly wide and deep well of not only knowledge but also awe and wonder. He died before his time but he took the unfathomable mystery of of nature, of the universe in particular and made it comprehensible. His quotes hang in my mind like Van Gogh paintings on museum walls. 
Shortly before his death in 1996 he wrote, “We’ve arranged a society based on science and technology, in which nobody understands anything about science and technology; and this combustible mixture of ignorance and power, sooner or later, is going to blow up in our faces.” I am not a doomsday prophet but I don’t need help getting the point. Currently, scholar Yuval Harari is serving up that same message only from another direction. Together, ignorance and power have no fail-safe, no guard rail, no parachute, no compass, no self correcting autopilot. The dynamic duo of ignorance and power has been the trademark of many self serving former leaders, one in particular. Imagine a three year-old who has just mastered their first tricycle and you trust them with the keys to the car. 
Sagan was the reassuring voice that balanced calculated risk with prudent reserve. Falling down can be undone, you get back up but being blown up is unforgiving. His point was this, hubris that flourishes hand in glove with power doesn’t acknowledge its own ignorance. That bears repeating, “. . . hubris does not acknowledge its own ignorance.” Sagan doesn't need me to rail against ignorance and its diabolical deal with power, he said it well enough. 
On another day when he was waxing wonder he slipped into a poetic meter, something to do with seeing photographs of the earth from deep outer space. "Everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives on that pale blue dot, a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.” I would give Carl Sagan my undivided attention anytime, every time. Pundits and malcontents might call him a liberal elitist but when he didn’t know, he said, “I don’t know.” and when he said, “This is how it is . . .” you could count on it. 
For detailed, qualified political commentary I read the New York Times. Sometimes they beat up on popular dignitaries but that is their job. Sagan looked at his culture much like a new mother with her newborn that was both grotesquely deformed and had an incurable case of explosive diarrhea. She knew the unavoidable truth but then hope has always been able to bridge despair. I think Sagan took that position in self defense. I wish I could do the same. 

IF I WERE KING

  Once upon a time in the early 1990’s I was an Environmental Issues Resource Teacher, responsible for planning and implementing hands-on instruction for middle school environmental field trips. One of our 7th grade teachers was really good with his kids, he could turn the tables on provocative questions about why we did things a certain way or why the rules called for things they didn’t like. His best line was predictable enough and I’m sure his students could feel it coming. He would reply, “If I were King of the world I would . . .” and offer a (sometimes magical) fair minded solution to both satisfy the student and meet the spirit of the rule. It worked like a detour for road construction, a minor inconvenience but in the end you get there. That was so long ago but still, when I face a troublesome inconvenience, his wonderfully disarming disclaimer comes to mind: If I were King of the world I would . . .
I would make a rule; when you have a disagreement or disappointment with another person you sit down together and trade shoes. They put your shoes on their feet and you theirs. Then you go for a walk together and talk together. This collective effort must continue for a sufficient time or distance, whichever meets the need. So you walk at least a mile together in the other’s shoes. You can repeat the walk as many times as you like. Obviously, (In their shoes) is a metaphor for stepping back, letting go of one’s own opinion to see through new eyes. It may not be a cure but certainly, it will cast new light on the situation and that would be a new beginning. That's what I would do If I were King.

A GOOD FIT

  This is a round-about way of getting into the subject but then I do that. I have a new Sleep Number bed. My old Sleep Number bed lasted nearly twenty years and I am glad for that but both the bubble and the pump had lost their shine and my sleep was suffering. I don’t know why but I was surprised to learn about new features, like the pump is contained inside the bed itself and is accessible from the top. Then I got a new, expensive pillow at 50% off from the clearance rack and I sleep very well now thank you. But my dream world has changed also and I remember those involuntary dreamland experiences. I never did that before. In the first hour or so after getting up I will have residual feelings and emotional aftermath that emerged from the dream with me. 

This morning I kept hitting the snooze button. Mid October with an open window, the warm cocoon felt really good so I kept putting off the getting up. I usually need to turn on a light but daylight was streaming in and there comes a point when my body takes over without any voluntary motor commands. When it goes on autopilot like that I get up with it, as if I had a choice. In that moment of transition I thought about the semiconscious noodling that I was coming out of and the feeling was that of resentment bordering on pissed off. The uninvited observer from my dream had suggested that I was “uppity”. Demonstrating unmerited feelings of self importance is generally thought of as a character flaw. I wasn’t offended so much but the word (uppity) has racist roots. That plus the fact that many whites don’t know that, it compounds the insult and elevates the racism to a seemingly justifiable, cultural norm and that is what gets me going. I knew without being told and I am naïve as can be, always the last to know but when I can taste the blood I stop doubting.
After a few clicks on the mouse I came across reference to an insulting indiscretion on talk radio back in the middle of the Obama years. Host Rush Limbaugh commented on Michelle Obama’s condescending “uppityness”. When taken to task he and other radio bigots defended the comment as a colorless remark. But the writer had already done her homework and noted research that in the last half century that (uppity) usage in print was associated with racist text and context significantly more than as a generic term. It didn’t change anything in the bigot community. They were well schooled in the strategy, (never admit anything, deny, deny, keep selling the lie.) It was only news for a day or so but none the less; my first thought was to tell him to go to Hell but I suspect that is where he ended up. I never wished him dead but now that he is, along with his Presidential Medal of Freedom from the king  of (deny, deny, keep selling the lie;) I think it a good fit. 
I don’t think Michelle Obama or Stacy Abrams or Kamala Harris are loosing  sleep over his insults. But I do think the cat is out of the bag. Like toothpaste out of the tube, there is no going back. Polite, well intended White culture (people) have been jarred out of their complacent ignorance. Black Lives Matter is not just a catchy hook line. Nobody gets shot in their car for driving while White. Nationalists, white supremacists and whites who realize that opening the door of privilege to people of color would feel like punishment; they are lock jawed onto the past and won’t give up without a fight. But change is in the air and who knows how that will unfold. It is scary, it scares me. If you think four years of Trumpublican rule was bad, don’t think it is all behind us. I am afraid that what we thought was the worst can get even worse. But all I can do is throw words at the page and hold my breath. In a worst case scenario I can straddle the border with passport privilege. It won't be a divorce, nobody wants me but separation doesn't require alimony and I play well with Canadians.  

POLITE CONVERSATION

  It has been 2 weeks since I’ve had even the urge to write and that is unusual. From a writing standpoint I am in my Elie Wiesel mode, where a better understanding is more the purpose than being understood. I could use an ‘Ah-Ha’ moment right now, it would make my day. 
It has long been observed that religion and politics have no place in polite conversation. In Roger McWilliams’ self help book titled DO IT, religion & politics were referred to as The Gap. He had nothing to say or recommend other than it is a mine field with little to gain by going there. For the most part I follow his advice there. But like my hero Wiesel, writing is my way into the process. If I don’t shake the tree I end up sitting on my hands and that’s no good either. 
Growing old can wear you thin but it beats the alternative. I reference myself with that distinction frequently, not that it has import in itself but with any story you need a point of reference. Long life gives me that. But this is not polite conversation and all I want here is the better understanding. I was 6 when FDR died and since then I have been through 14 presidents, going on #15. My parents were blue collar, Yellow Dog Democrats and that influence on me cannot be dismissed. My dad was in the skilled trades, a tool & die maker. It was their firm belief and who am I to argue, without trade unions we would have scratched out a sharecropper’s living in a tarpaper shack. 
Our religion required we pray over food and at bedtime. Mom studied the bible, sometimes read aloud, other times she had us read to her. Sunday church was mandatory. In summer there was vacation bible school and a week-long, every night revival with an itinerant evangelist, dreadful prayers that put you to sleep, alter calls and baptisms. In self defense my dad said, “. . . we don’t fall down or hoot and holler like the Pentecostal’s down the road.” I got baptized at 13 because Mom said it was time. She asked if I felt the Spirit and I told her I did but I knew that was what she wanted to hear. What I got was all wet. With the benefit of hindsight and candor; from a lifetime of stumbling, falling and getting back up I think I can take a hard look at The Gap. 
All religion has its roots in Myth (Joseph Campbell). By definition Myth is a man made story that uses familiar language and shared experience to explain the inexplicable (giants in the sky, hammering out thunder and lightning and supernatural powers that can save the soul). It is how humans flesh out a plausible story when experience is either inadequate or incomprehensible but very real, a metaphor that gives you something you can hang your hat on. Made up stories with happy endings can offset the grim reality of a scary, unforgiving world. A large part of that construct involves a fabricated, spiritual life boat that we call religion. 
In a broader sense, religion has provided an important social matrix. Tribal clans were reluctant to cooperate with strangers. Religion allowed for large numbers of unrelated individuals to identify with each other and cooperate together (division of labor). It was necessary for the evolution of society and civilization. Myth did not go dormant after the Greeks gave us Zeus and Poseidon. Modern myth uses contemporary language and is compatible with modern times. But it is still the mind’s way of dealing with the inexplicable. We write poetry and build starships but we are no better than our primitive forebearers at rationalizing the mortality caveat. 
I (me) understand that this life is temporary, that birth and death are knots at the ends of the same cord and I just have to deal with it. For those who can’t cope, they can take shelter in the myth. If you need religion in your life then by all means you should have it. My parent’s religion served them well. I wanted to please my mother and I did everything she asked but Jesus was just a character in bible stories like super heroes today. By now my abiding faith is in gravity, replication and photosynthesis. I take comfort in Mark Twain’s, “Faith is believing what you know ain’t so.” When this life is through with me, my descendants will carry on. Whether or not there is a God is irrelevant, it doesn’t matter. Zealots who castigate others for following a false myth or demonize unbelievers for heresy are stretching the story, as if they can earn a greater reward in heaven. 
Politics and religion; sometimes they overlap, you can’t tell where the one ends and the other begins. Consider the Taliban. Consider the ‘fall down, hoot & holler’ Pentecostals down the road. But for my purpose here, politics is nothing more than the process of making decisions that affect groups of people. It may be simple as two people deciding on the opera or a ball game, or complicated as two nations at war. The Conservative vs. Liberal rift that has divided America is what comes to mind. If you think it to be as simple as the issues, you must have drunk the Kool Aid. As a disclaimer remember; mankind has been negotiating collective decisions for at least 20,000 years under the illusion that common sense and free will are reliable. We know better now but the rift between knowledge and tradition creates a terrible stumbling block. The brain/mind makes decisions, often without our permission. That is usually predetermined by what makes us feel good or feel right as in (righteous) and how we feel is a revelation, not a decision. 
Some people/cultures tend to be more impulsive while others more reflective. But all humans suffer the same hardwired program that gives us false confidence in our ability to do the right thing. Before there were people, there was no such thing as right or wrong. What is right or wrong, true or false turns out to be whatever we agree on and that is not as reliable as we trust it to be. Pogo, the comic strip character once observed, “We have met the enemy and they are us.”Throughout history, some lessons have been learned so we don’t have to repeat costly mistakes. That idea is true in some cases but evidently not others. Waging war out of fear and lust has never been put to rest and the curse of privilege & oppression is a thorny perennial with no apparent cure.
My ideological leaning is to the left, progressive if not liberal. I do question, even challenge my own feelings and I play the devil’s advocate against myself. When you do that honestly, with open ended possibility, having values and convictions that are carved in stone becomes difficult. You realize that right and wrong are parts of the modern Myth. I think it boils down to a few basic, acquired assumptions. First is the juxtaposition of centralized, authoritarian leadership with emphasis on material gain and vindictive punishment. Its counterpart is leadership that is diversified and collaborative with rehabilitation or consequences appropriate to the circumstance. Second, the one would cling to an unchanging, traditional model of vertical hierarchy and unswerving group loyalty. The other option is that change is good if it is managed with attention to an (egalitarian) greater good. Loyalty would be pragmatic, about looking forward in principle, not leaning back on iron clad traditional paradigms. Lastly, human nature gives us both a selfish, stingy side and a generous, sharing instinct. How they balance out is a reliable indicator of an individual’s political orientation. I would represent the latter possibility with all three examples making me progressive in the least. 
I don’t care much for political parties, maybe necessary evils considering the way democracy and freedom work but they all suffer the risk of addiction to power. You can’t serve your constituents if you don’t get elected so the first order of business is fund raising and counter measures. In that game, ends justify means and there has never been a more direct path from noble intent to corruption and deceit. So I vote for candidates who believe as I do that we have a collective responsibility to help each other. Those who have more than they need owe it to a system that put prosperity within their grasp. Some believe that their success is the direct result of their own decisions and actions, and it is but it doesn’t stop with that. No mater if your success is one of just scraping by or one of grandeur, someone else’s, many other’s finger prints are all over it too. I think of the Christian parable of footprints in the sand. When all you can see is one set set of tracks you think they are your own but that was where someone else was carrying you. You can’t have it both ways. You have to work as if you are on your own but without a full cast of actors the show doesn't have a plot, the curtain never goes up. To say, “I got mine, you get your own” is untenable. 
As a career educator my experience with poverty has been indirect, through children who lived with their mother or an aunt in a parked car or got shuffled around as need be from one relative to another. In school their most important lesson was lunch. I know enough to believe a comment from a radio interview with a single mom; “The hardest job in the world is being poor.” Of course my conservative counterpart would say, “It’s not my problem.”  That opens a can of worms and I could go on but I have opened the door and drawn a line, exactly what I set out to do.