ON MY BEST DAY

  A former classmate (sixty-some years ago) spent all his adult lifetime preaching evangelical, Pentecostal religion, laying on hands, people speaking in tongues, moaning, falling down: my dad called them, “Hoot & Holler” Christians. Recently I learned he cannot preach from the pulpit anymore. I don’t know if he can’t meet the physical demands or if his followers found a younger champion to keep them coming back. You know, hootin’ & hollerin’ through a two hour sermon can leave an old man too weak to collect the offering and shake hands at the door. He said he misses his connection with the congregation. I believe him but also think he misses the sound of his own voice and the righteous authority it presumes. So now he writes his religious views and political opinions, trying to grow an online following. 
I can identify to the extent that for years I had a captive audience, 120 young people for an hour, five times a week. Teaching  biology doesn’t rise to the level of righteous authority but I do miss contact with teenagers. Add to that, I write a blog, several posts a month now for over 12 years and have kept a dedicated journal for decades before that. Where we truly part ways is that he believes his message is vital to both the salvation and proper prejudice of everyone who hears it. I believe objective, open ended communication is better than propaganda. Flogging a dead horse is bad business and whatever I believe about knee-jerk issues, it’s a dead horse: who really cares? One of the best life lessons I've learned is to not take myrself too seriously.
I tend to get stuck on issues but not the ones that make headlines. I keep trying to unravel Human Nature and the complications it precipitates; the perception of free will, decision making, neuro plasticity, confabulation, etc. I can write about it for my own sake (better understanding and rationale) but if I try to frame that story for others, all I get are long, blank looks. It still feels important and I sympathize in some small way with my old classmate in that regard. Still, sleeping well is its own reward and I don't have to sell anything. At my age it is easy if not troubling to dig in the same hole too long. So I try to not do that anymore, content to file those ideas away in my journal now rather than scroll them out in my blog, sounding like a conspiracy theorist. On my best day I will never save a soul or influence the Supreme Court but I do like to play with words and ask well thought out, relevant questions. 

PET PEEVE

  By definition, a ‘Pet Peeve’ is something one finds particularly annoying. I didn’t think I had a pet peeve but thought about it for a while and there is one thing that annoys the hell out of me. That is; people who pronounce the state name, Missouri with a long (ē) ending and ridicule others who learned to drop the (ē) and substitute (uh), “Missour-uh”. It is the self righteous ridicule that annoys me, not the pronunciation.

I am a writer and when I write I follow certain rules with an appropriate dispensation for creative license. When formality is required, the rules of grammar and syntax are clear. Writing the word “Colonel” is one thing, misspellings are bad news. But when spoken, an (r) sound comes out of nowhere. “Kernel” is another word that is spelled different but pronounced the same, but a single seed has no reference to a military officer. I know many native Mississippians who pronounce the name of their state, “Miss-ippi” a convenient shortcut and nobody takes them to task for it. 

Children frame their language from their role model’s accent, phrasing and vocabulary. Before they can read and write, their spoken language has no rules, it just has to work. The oral tradition has only one measure; is the message received the intended message? Urban street slang is almost another language but you seldom if ever see it in print. English is unforgiving once it is on the page. The spoken word doesn't leave any tracks and, if it doesn't conform to rules for writing, it can be easily forgiven. Even then, language is a dynamic construct, constantly evolving, changing, adding new words. Being gay in 1950 was not the same as being gay in 2020. The word ‘Bad’ used to mean just that, bad. But now it can mean; really good. 

When I was a little kid we lived in Missour-uh and when we spoke, nobody mistook it for some other place. When we put the return address on envelopes it was spelled, Missouri. Writing vs. Speaking, they use the same language but do not dance to the same tune; different cats from the same litter. But all this ranting only gets us to the fundamental issue. Missour-uh people don’t care, they never raise the argument. The wannabe intellects use a spelling gimmick to fake a higher IQ or to gain altitude in the pecking order. It is a condescending insult agains someone they consider to be inferior, and use the Mississippi precedent (ends with an (i) and the (ē) sound) to make their case. It is an insult; it may be subtle but an insult none the less. 

Somewhere in the argument the baiter will introduce the word, ‘Wrong’. “You are just wrong!” It has always been about right and wrong. There is a big difference between (Correct-Incorrect) and (Right-Wrong). In the first case the point is about whether or not there is an error. But (Right) expands linguistically into righteous which has moral consequence and (Wrong) is defined first as an immoral or unjust act and then, as they can be interchanged synonymously, intent is easy to identify. Context, body language and tone speak clearly to the intent; well intended correction or smug judgment.  

Formal writing has well defined rules for everything but they do not apply to creative writing, where wiggle room (creative license) allows for coloring outside the lines. Verbal communication only has one rule, it has to work. It allows for a wide range of cultural influence (accent & vernacular) and intentional anomalies. For someone to stand up in front of others and tell anyone 'Missour-uh' is wrong, is both stupid and wrong in itself. Certainly it is different but wrong? Take, ’aluminium’; in the King’s English they change the accents, add a vowel to give it five syllables (āl-ū-mīn-ī-ūm). North America is the only place in the world that doesn’t. Is someone wrong here?

I have not researched it thoroughly but I read it somewhere, once upon a time: In the early 1800’s, backwoods settlers from Kentucky were the first Americans to venture west across the Mississippi into present day Missouri. (Daniel Boone, etc.) Their pedigree and backwoods ways were deemed inferior and undesirable by the elite French culture around and south of St. Louis. It has been suggested that (Missour-uh speak) came west with the Kentuckians. They also dropped the letter (y) from Kentucky all together and it works. No less, it is generally agreed that the boundary between Eastern and Western Culture in this country is somewhere between St. Louis and Columbia, MO. Times change but some things don’t. That Eastern sense of patronizing, snobbery can still be found, especially in Greek organizations on college campuses all over the state. It would not be a far stretch to make that comparison; wanting to prove oneself superior to uncultured, wrong spoken, backwoods ne’er-do-wells. But I am an uncultured, backwoods, . . . and my pet peeve is self righteous, wannabe experts who make up rules as they go. 

LATER DOWN THE ROAD

  I like to read David Brooks (NY Times). An excellent writer to begin with, he writes on timely, relevant ideas and issues that affect everyone. He researches, separates fact from fiction and makes the distinction. I don’t always like what he has to say but I trust him to be thorough, open ended and fair. He wrote a piece back in 2012, another election year. Both candidates had given (not taken) credit for their success as well as their potential to lead the nation - essentially; If not for many others I wouldn’t-couldn’t be here. It prompted a letter from a disgruntled reader who believed the wannabe wisdom; “All of your successes and failures are the direct result of the decisions you make.” He challenged Brooks to take up a position. 
I think it common for critics and disputers to ask questions calling for an (either-or) answer and feel cheated when they get a (this-and) response. Brooks acknowledged, we need to believe and proceed as if the premise is true; our decisions are the catalysts for whatever happens to us. But later, down the road when hindsight and backstory are credible and compelling, we realize we got more & better than we deserved and that we don’t live in a vacuum. Much if not most of our struggles and outcomes are shaped by forces and people beyond our control. 
I have gone back and reread the article several times. Perhaps the critic had a crystal ball that sorts out the good decisions from the bad. If you have enough reliable information and can interpret complex data sets you can come up with a fairly strong probability. But random chance is a fickle mistress and sometimes the sure thing goes belly up. I knew a man who advised me; There are neither good nor bad decisions. There are only decisions. In other words, to know for sure, good or bad, revisit the question in 20 years and reflect on the outcome. Even then, there will be those who disagree. 
Recently, David Brooks wrote an article titled, “I Was Wrong About Capitalism.” His message wasn’t as much about capitalism as it was about how people (himself) trust attitudes and principles that seemed appropriate at the time,  but times change and we (himself) are slow to get the message. The world changes and its best interests change along with it. So it is a 1 - 2 punch: If things change enough or too fast, that new world calls for different, better policy and practice. But we (himself) remain entrenched in an old (if it was good then . . .) no longer effective or equitable process. Add to that, we are slow to see the new need and even slower to adapt. 
Capitalism had been on a long running hot streak where profits and employment were setting records. It couldn’t be better. But then it became evident (too much to ignore) that the wonderful “Ism” had produced a society that was not only inequitable but more and more wealth is controlled by fewer and fewer people. The question is, what is so good about what we’ve got if it only prospers a minuscule fragment of the population. Brooks thinks he was stuck in the zone between the world changing and him noticing. 
I think people (myself) do a pretty damn good job at economics and government for self aware, high functioning monkeys. The idea that humans are more special than humming birds or monkeys is a form of self medicating Hubris (my opinion). I suspect David Brooks wouldn’t judge the species so harshly but I bet it has crossed his mind. But then I don’t have millions of regular readers (high functioning monkeys) to satisfy. 

KUMBAYA

   In 2001 I retired from teaching school and my son was fresh out of University with a BS in Chemistry. Taking no time off he plunged into a PhD program at the University of Michigan. He found lodging with a couple whose huge house had more bedrooms than most houses have rooms. Woody, the man and, I forget his wife’s name, they ran a boarding house for graduate students. Woody had other business as well but every time I was there he was the concierge in a two legged ant hill while ‘What’s Her Name’ hovered around the kitchen. There was a standing joke about how many days the pan of soup had been sitting uncovered on the stove top. She fixed plenty of food but the boarders preferred their own P-B & J sandwiches over petri dish soup. 
Come spring, bullets were flying, people dying, bombs and IEDs booming in Afghanistan and the news networks covered every encounter, every casualty. Grad students were consumed with school but 9/11 was too much to ignore. George W. was ranting, “You’re either with us or against us.” and that hubris still remains a self inflicted insult with a life of its own. His advisors who oozed with confidence were the same experts who ridiculed the Russians for waging war there; “You simply cannot win a ground war in Afghanistan.” At Woody’s place everybody followed their own compass but were also collard by the same war. 
My son was full of piss & vinegar (aggressive energy). American casualties are factored into the cost of waging war and he dismissed that easily; they had all volunteered and knew the risks. Dead insurgents were just numbers, squandered by a corrupt Taliban regime and he (my son) certainly had no qualms over their demise. Analytic chemistry was his full time concern, 24/7.
For five years I loved going to Ann Arbor. I had recently retired and got to see my kid, got to hang out in a bonafide research laboratory, be around enthusiastic, young people whose stories were just beginning to unfold; not to mention Ann Arbor’s concerts and food scene. Around the house I blended in and nobody noticed me. Woody was still ‘the man’ and ‘What’s Her Name’ grew increasingly troubled by the war. She would sit on the sofa watching real time coverage of air strikes and roadside bombings. Her reaction to every report was the same. She winced and groaned with each explosion and whimpered, “Why can’t we just get along?” it was 2002.
A year later my son moved across town to a different house, shared by different grad students but no surrogate parents. They lived in a bubble, away from politics, away from George W.’s war. Their work was consuming and challenging but that is why they were there. I could sleep on the sofa whenever I was in town. It was a good time but seemed he would grow old and die before he finished his program. In hindsight it confirmed the adage; a watched pot never boils. 
Twenty years have slipped under the bridge and down stream and we’ve both moved on. He did good, got his gold braid, Maize & Blue Hood and a real job. But also I remember ‘What’s Her Name’s’ whimpering; “Why can’t we ...” Her concern was well taken but whimpering was all she could do. The difference from her then to me now is that I don’t beg the question, I know why. 
Human evolution bogged down about 12,000 years ago when the 1st Agriculture revolution started crowding people together in towns and city states. They suffered a highly contagious outbreak of arrested development, stuck at the 3 year-old stage. It didn’t affect our creative talents, only manifest in the selfish, ‘Me-me’ & ‘I want’ nature of spoiled 3 year-olds. We are still stuck. If a 3 year old can’t have what they want they can throw a temper tantrum but then they grow up. Regular people get mad but they get over it. Tyrants have no qualms about killing their enemies if that’s how they get what they want. Whoever gets in the way, they die too. The ‘Bullies’ believe their own dead warriors make their mothers proud and dead enemies have only themselves to blame. Tyrants know if you don’t win you die so they have no reason to compromise or follow rules and wholesale murder is a universal remedy for bad neighbors. 
Mrs. ‘What’s Her Name’s’ moaning just vents some anxiety; a question with an (!) instead of a (?). Humans get along very well with inanimate things but not each other and it will be a while before the Bullies hold hands and sing Kumbaya. 

NOTHING COMES FROM NOTHING

  I’ve written several beginnings recently but when I come back with new eyes they give the writing a thumbs down. I’ve been thinking and reading about paleolithic (Stone Age) people. It is hard to imagine how long the culture was stuck in the hunter gatherer mode. Technology amounted to simple bone tools and a stone spear point with sharp edges. That didn’t change for twenty five thousand years, likely longer. Humans were modern in a physical and mental sense but limited to what they could do with their bare hands. Everything they couldn’t understand was mysterious and fearsome so they made up parallel stories (myth) that they could understand. It was the beginning of fake news.
It occurred to me that once upon a time, say 15,000 BCE, a woman birthed a child who grew up to replicate and reproduce another child who followed suit and did the same. That sets up a pedigree, the blood line linkage between parent and child from generation to generation. Some people can document their pedigree as far back as the Middle Ages but most of us stumble before we get to our great-great-great generation. Even so, there is an unbroken stream of DNA linkage that runs back from me  through my parents, through all of my great-greats all the way back to hunter gatherer clans, 750 generations removed. I don’t need to know anything personal about any of them. It is enough to know that without them there would be no place for me to come from and after all; Nothing comes from nothing. 
So I am retired, able to sleep late if I please but I please to be up early, watch the birds at my feeder, have coffee or tea, make sawdust in my wood shop, wait for glue to dry, water my tomatoes, make a phone call to hear another human voice and think about things only curious old men would imagine. Then I sit down and write a short piece about something that crossed my mind. If it lives long enough to make it through an edit and into my journal maybe even posted on my blog, someone may stumble across it. But as I’ve shared so many times, I write to understand more than to be understood. I am amazed with the mind boggling numbers, so many archaic, prehistoric people who never, ever gave a thought to their place in the blood line, to the possibility that I might be far, far, so far downstream in the making. Then they laid down a continuous stream of genetic material that would find its way through millennia and materialize in a blue-eyed little boy. That little boy would be me. I don’t advocate ancestor worship but I do feel its appeal. 

TRYING TO GET RID OF US

  I just finished talking with a friend on the phone about global warming and how it has manifest itself. I suppose there are doubters left but their argument has lost its legs. I will not rant here about far reaching, overlapping, incredibly complex effects of rapid climate change. All life is interdependent on a common network, the biosphere with its unique chemical/mineral makeup. Climate change itself is not the issue. Climate is always changing. The problem lies in the rate (speed) of change. In the past 200 years the planet has been warming exponentially, at an unprecedented rate. Not surprising, it corresponds directly with the the industrial revolution (Europe) and its shift away from an agri-based economy to an industrial/factory model; machines, steam engines and excessive burning of fossil fuels. 
It is too late to ponder what will happen, it already has. The question now is; who pays for every expensive response, and the next, and the next? Climate driven damage to civil infrastructure, property and crops already has become the new normal. My friend asked jokingly, “Do you think it’s just the planet trying to get rid of us:” I thought it clever but didn’t laugh. I am not an expert but certainly better read than most. I remember in the late 1980’s when experts (Climatologists & Anthropologists) began making noise about spiraling human population and global pollution. The issue was mocked and dismissed as a liberal hoax. 
My brother (BS in Biology) told me in 1990 that the sky was just too big for us to (f#@*) it up. He also said that modern agriculture could meet the needs of a 10 billion population (it was 5.3 billion then, 8 billion now) on course to reach 9 billion by 2050. He believed, the more people the better; good for business. That was 30 years ago. I’m still breathing but he is not. He died believing that burning the candle at both ends is good business, good for people. You just need a bigger candle. He’s not here to defend himself and I still love him so I won’t labor that story, just sayin’.
In the 2012 movie, The Bourne Legacy the Director of the CIA is sternly rebuked by a higher ranking official who admonished him, “You were given a Ferrari and you treated it like a lawnmower.” The same could be said of the whole of mankind. Live within your means is a proven axiom, another way to say; Don’t borrow money that you can’t pay back. The human animal doesn’t seem to think that far ahead. Some people can manage their money but collectively we plunder a resilient ecosystem as if it were indestructible, but it is not. Our enviro-debt is approaching its due date, when full payment is required. But I think we will disappear like the Wooly Mammoth and the Passenger Pigeon. After all, they both went extinct due in large part to human activity. It should be no surprise that we have both the means to fashion our own demise and a naive blind spot in that direction.
I’m thankful that I got so lucky. My very best decisions in this life were choosing the right time and place to be born and picking parents who excelled at integrity, love and nurturing. I have enjoyed the benefits from machines, from burning fossil fuels, and modern technology. Beyond that I am deep enough into my lifespan that all of my chemicals, minerals and molecules should have been recycled back into their source (Mother Earth) before I am required to pay my share of the enviro-debt. 
Oops, starting to sound like preaching. That would be dangerously close to ranting and I said I wouldn’t do that. I just wanted to document a conversation and the irresistible spin off that it provoked. I really do feel privileged to have lived out eight decades in the donut hole of prosperity, modern gadgetry and health care that borders on magic. My earthly joy ride spans from Hitler and the Holocaust to Donald Trump and his self obsessed assault on human dignity. The Human odyssey is approaching full circle. I don’t fault The Donald. He is just the point of much larger spear. I look to 70 million MAGA disciples who have been so easily seduced by his bold ego and charismatic rhetoric. 

NATURE HATES A VACUUM

  I do not multitask well. It’s not that you (anybody) can focus on several things simultaneously. It is more like juggling several tasks, like tennis balls. There was a time when I could keep 3 tennis balls in the air for 15 or 20 seconds. When first learning I thought the task would be mostly catching the balls as they fell but learned otherwise quickly. The fine motor skill with juggling is to keep your hands in the same place and toss the ball so it will land in the same place (your other hand) every time. When you discipline your hands to a precise, repeating pattern and make every toss exactly the same height and trajectory, the ball lands in your free hand without having to look for it. Keeping your head still and not having to shift your weight (move feet) and things get easier fast. That’s not multitasking. 
Multitasking would be like preparing a big dinner with an unfamiliar menu, remembering when to check rolls in the oven, when to stir the kettle so the bottom doesn’t burn while chopping veggies for the salad.  You can be a multitasking wizard and still be a bad cook but those are two different stories. I can get a good meal on the table but it takes twice as long as it should, the kitchen looks like a train wreck and every dish & pan is dirty. For me it is more of an impromptu experiment, knowing what it should look like in the end. It can be full of surprises but if it pleases the palate, you hope you can remember how you did it for the next time. I’m not good at that either. 
In any case, I don’t multitask well. If you have more time than you need to keep 3 tennis balls in the air then it’s just moving things around without being pressured. I get lucky more often than not and nobody notices. I recently went on a July camping vacation (3 weeks in Colorado) and other than a mechanical problem on the 2nd day (sh*t happens & you deal with it), it went smooth even if we changed routes and itinerary in the middle. But when I got back it took over a week to focus on anything. Every day was a blank page and no ideas, it was all I could do to single-task and I didn’t like it at all. Through all of June, my primary purpose was preparation for hanging an art show of my photographs. Even though I was doing other things, art show preparation consumed all my concerns. August closed in on the art show and the last 10 days were frenetic, waiting on indifferent suppliers and late deliveries. The last 3 days were helter skelter but the show is up, it looks good and all there is now is an artist’s reception at the end of the week. Now I am back on a blank page, checking the clock to know when it’s bedtime.
But nature hates a vacuum and so do I. Maybe this is what it’s like coming off a hangover. I haven’t been hungover since 1963 so I’ll plead ignorance and a leaky memory. I think a road trip would cure a lot of my ills. I have shrimp in the freezer and I make really good gumbo bit it all tastes (feels) better in good company, in Louisiana in particular. I would take a good shrimp salad over a Po’ boy any day, don’t need all that bread. It doesn’t matter how good the food is, it is better when shared with someone you care about and maybe that’s all I need. Even if I don’t go right away it is a seed that might sprout, even take root.