LUCKY TO BE ALIVE

  Our neighbors to the north observe thankful gratitude on the 2nd Monday of October. Like our Thanksgiving it stems from a perilous journey and crushing hardship upon arrival. In both cases, those white Europeans were lucky to be alive in a harsh, unforgiving new world and they attributed that miracle to God’s intervention. Over the next 400 years their Thanksgiving celebrations have acquired a more secular feel. Still, I like the idea of humble gratitude. The bounty of harvest time is like the rain that falls; it falls on the sinner and the saint both and Black Friday is a springboard for unchecked consumerism and its holiday spending spree. 
In 2012 I got to celebrate Thanksgiving twice. In Nova Scotia it was certainly about abundance and gratitude. It must come easier when defending the “We’re Number #1” title isn’t hardwired in the national fabric and run amok religion does not prevail. That whole cultural shift away from self righteous conformity leaves me with some hope. It is easy to fault my parents for birthing me south of the border. No question, I would have fit the Canadian profile much better than I do the American. 
Here in my homeland we celebrated our own big ‘Thank You!’ in late November, on a Thursday. A four day weekend is something to behold and I cannot fault that tradition. I remember when I was teaching school, the pre week was only 3 days long and the 4 day break was plenty, a win-win.
I am not selling salvation, only a pause to reflect and be thankful. Even as my prayer goes off into the cosmos unaddressed, it is mine and it is real. This is old news but I no longer concede to the pride and swagger that exalt and laud the human pedigree. I marvel at evolution, the process that got us down out of the trees and up on two feet. Along with it came self aware sensibility with language and imagination so we can create our own backstory. I don’t know who or what to thank but I need to make that gesture. It doesn’t matter who notices as along as I know.
I do know that I am no more important than a fruit fly that squeezes a lifetime into 4 or 5 weeks. I am programmed to live for 4,500 weeks and with a little luck enjoy the good life that comes with electricity, milk chocolate and a good book. So, Thanks, Thanks a lot, Thank you; really. I like going back to Canada, I have friends there. We can all push the bubble a little closer to mutual civility and good will. The bonus, Thanksgiving would be like having two birthdays in the same year without the added aging. 

GOOD ENOUGH

  In the past week or so I have written my Season’s Greetings letter and a piece for my high school class newsletter. Both require a lot of trial & error and creative thinking. I can do that but it doesn’t just flow like a Robert Frost poem. It is more like a sculptor chipping away at a marble slab, trying to liberate the naked lady who is trapped inside. Whatever it is that I do, that I have ever done, I observe the rule of ‘Good Enough’. Every task has its own trajectory and when it satisfies the rule I give it a name and move along to another task. But there needs to be a disclaimer or one might think the rule is a weak excuse for shoddy work. ‘Good Enough’ simply means the result meets or exceeds my arbitrary expectations. Those expectations can range from awesome to barely meets the need and true, sometimes it does mean shoddy work.
Both written pieces required several edits and revisions before they measured up to my ‘GE’ rule. This piece is still in its first draft and I never know how they will finish. I tend to edit as I write which is very bad if you listen to authors who put on writing workshops. They think you should know the whole story and where you want it to go before you start. They want you (me) to get the whole idea down in rough language and sequential order and then do a final edit and rewrite. I smile, nod and go on with my own scheme and a dash of Creative License. I did put together a research thesis in graduate school and that requires a detailed format from start to stop. After what seemed like endless (go back and fix it) revisions it was approved and I got my degree. But I keep my writing in the narrative mode now where I get the last word. This little stream of consciousness will end up Good Enough for my journal regardless but a place in my blog is still up in the air. I will come back tomorrow and again in a few days, tweaking structure, phrasing and word selection, again and again until it either collapses under its own weight or grows legs of its own. 
The weather is unusually cold for this time of year and the only control I have is to dress appropriately. I have been weighing the pros and cons of a midwinter road trip to Arizona and that option looks better every day. At this point (in my life) anything that may stave off the sting of age related obsolescence is worth serious consideration. I tell others but more so myself that it is never too late to begin something new. That lets me look to possibility and good fortune rather than brochures and itineraries.  
I researched the word ‘Skinflint’ and wasn’t surprised by synonyms like miser, pinchpenny and chintzy. I don’t think I’m all that selfish but I am a pinchpenny when I travel. The idea of paying motel prices for a warm bed and a shower leaves me cold and dry in the cab of my truck. I have a tiny, 4’ x 8’ teardrop camper, a serious sleeping bag and can overnight at truck stops where a long, hot shower sets me back about $15. Addiction to creature comfort seems to me a greater insult than Skinflint-ing my way down the road. It takes about 3 hours for me to organize and be outbound, for as many miles and as long as it takes. I could keep throwing words at the page, whatever comes to mind but throwing words has lost its appeal for now and moving my feet sounds good enough.

BACK TO THE FUTURE

  The movie trilogy ‘Back To The Future’ was set in 1985 time but leapfrogged (time travel) backward and forward across time. In that sci-fi adventure Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) repeatedly warned against any interaction with characters from the past that could interrupt the (Time Continuum), it would likely change history. Not a problem while traveling in the future as that future was yet to unwind. A time traveler could go back and interfere, causing history to veer off an already established course to an unpredictable result (the rule of unanticipated consequences). Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) almost kept his parents from falling in love. If they had not fallen in love, Marty would have never been born and who would have cared? Doc Brown would have been without a sidekick. 
‘Time Continuum’ is a profound idea. If you went back in time you could be armed with information on events and their outcomes before it happened. While in the future, Marty McFly bought a sports book with scores and winners so he could bet on them when he returned to (his time). But the book ended up in the wrong hands and a monster-bully-autocrat was created who never lost a bet and had so much money he could buy respectability for his blatantly corrupted self. The misappropriated book was the catalyst for all of that (unanticipated consequence). The bottom line would be, even a seemingly insignificant interruption to the (TC) has the potential to serious, far reaching, long lasting consequences. 
From ’Back To The Future’ its a short leap to ‘Back To The Past.’ For Marty McFly, his parent’s hook-up was iffy and unlikely with any number of alternate possibilities but for Marty it was the difference between a life and never been born. Who misses or even has second thoughts about the child who was never conceived? It begs the question, over countless generations, it took all of them, just the way they unraveled for me to be created. Times that by 9 billion people on the planet and the ‘Butterfly Effect’ doesn’t sound so farfetched. That would be, from Tokyo Japan the disturbance created by a butterfly flitting between flowers, compounding over time, might determine the exact point of landfall for a future hurricane in North America. 
Nature is an incredibly complex, dynamic system made up of many other complex, dynamic systems that all give and take between competing forces. The greater system is of its own necessity pushing and pulling, all the time, on everything in an effort to create ‘Stasis’ or equilibrium (balance). The odds against planetary equilibrium are so great it is universally understood that stasis will never happen. That’s how nature works. Think about it, a planet with a fractured crust that floats on a core of molten iron while rotating on its axis and revolving around the sun, absorbing radiant energy at constantly changing rates: and we (humans) busy ourselves on the surface like so many fruit flies on a great peach seed; really. I question (doubt) man’s self ordained high place in the overall scheme (the jewel in creation’s crown). It should be enough that we are functioning pieces in a grand puzzle. 
Still, the idea of time travel (Back To The Future) is irresistible. Knowing what I know now, ff I could go back to the 3rd grade again my life would have taken a decidedly different route. I would have certainly been more focused on work ethic and material wealth. But who knows if I would be any happier than I am now or healthy or even be alive. I think the human tendency is for short sighted, too good to be true schemes and no plan B. 

ITS LEAKING

  Last spring I noticed that my truck was losing antifreeze. It was a very  small, slow leak, just an occasional drip spot on the drive but I asked the service manager at my garage to check it. They specialize in brakes & exhaust systems but run a full service shop. They found the leak, small now. Ford trucks have a problem there but will not fix it with a recall so he sees that problem frequently. It could drip for a long time and it could blow out any time. He said “You don’t want to be far away in another time zone when it blows up.”  and it made sense. The part would be $400 and labor about the same. I decided to watch and wait a while and take my chances. 
My son is a good mechanic so I asked him what he thought. True, Ford trucks have that problem. He reached in beside and below the motor and found the wet, drippy spot and concurred, “Its leaking.” But he also said, “Eight hundred dollars os too much, let me check on it.” He made a few calls and got the part for $120, fixed the leak with hand tools in about half an hour. The shop manager has always been fair with me but nothing more serious than oil, filters and wiper blades. I don’t want to believe he was trying to gouge me and I don’t run a brick & mortar business. I still get my oil changed there. 
Going on two years ago my dentist noticed something on an x-ray. “That tooth is going bad and cannot be fixed.” No rush, but someday it would have to come out. It is the big molar in the back on the bottom and it has never given me a moment of trouble. Then my dentist retired. His practice has grown exponentially from two to a tribe of dentists and all the technicians it takes to keep them busy. My new dentist is great but she is on maternity leave and her backup wants to pull that tooth now. “You don’t want to be out of town on a holiday and have that tooth blow up.” I thought about my truck and its leak. “The tires on my truck will wear out too and may blow up when I’m out of town.”  She didn’t care for the analogy and said they were just concerned with my best interests, reminding me that oral/dental health is directly related to other major-serious conditions and bad teeth makes them all get worse. I already knew that but I’ve never had a bad bite with that old tooth. It still works and who knows how long it may keep working? “The tooth needs to come out.” I put that into street talk and came up with, “Pay me now or pay me later.” I have a few hours now before I leave to go get my tooth pulled. I don’t have any relatives who are dentists or I would check with them. I like my own teeth and the only option after one is pulled is a false tooth. I have two implants now and they are much more expensive than my meager insurance will cover, the equivalent of the $800 truck fix. Not wanting to wait for it to break, just the weight of knowing it will, someday: you don’t have to be a dentist to do the math. So I’m on my way to say goodbye to a tooth that has served me very, very well. I will be happy when my old, new dentist comes back off maternity leave. I think I trust her, like her better than the Toothologisgt I don’t even know his name yet but he surly needs a patient in his chair this afternoon. I bet he has a blue-water sailboat or an ex wife with expensive appetites  and to leave him sitting on his hands when he could be pulling my tooth would be selfish of me. 

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.