EVEN IF I SPILL IT

  This life can be capricious and fickle like a moody lover but last night’s sleep was sound and the wake-up; what can I say! I didn’t want to get up from it but then again I did. With such a good start I figure, it’s going to get better. I don’t have a lot to share other than the good feeling. The mug is heavy-heavy by itself with a typical Mark Twain quote about procrastination molded into the sidewall. Full to the lip with French Vanilla coffee, even if I spill it, it smells good. 

I haven’t turned on the radio or read the headlines yet so I don’t know today’s bad news. I am still coming down off of Twain’s quote: “Don’t put off until tomorrow what can be put off until day after tomorrow.” It is clever but it can backfire and I am a ‘Backfire’ veteran. I can’t change the bad news but I can feel good about the good feeling. Without religion to fall back on I feel good about anything that doesn’t hurt. 

Yesterday was Memorial Day but I skipped the patriotic hoopla and passed on going to the cemetery. For a long time I have gone to funeral services but stayed away from cemeteries. I realized that the internment itself is a ritual for survivors to formalize closure and at a much deeper level, to address and mourn their own mortality. I didn’t want any part of that custom but old age has a way of softening us to the melancholy and hardening us against the comfort of denial. 

I went to my parent’s graveside last year and discovered an emotional thing that I had not expected. I tend to be a skeptic but I can and do change, depending on how feelings weigh in against what I think I believe. The passage of time doesn’t diminish the connection, just that more timely things push their way to the front. That bittersweet was mostly sweet, remembering and being thankful that the  fruit of their labor turned out to be me and that they lived well. I must concede that I took some comfort knowing their bones are next to each other and will remain there for a long, long time; until the next Ice Age comes through and scowers this manicured park side down to bedrock. That would be my idea of resurrection. Yesterday my son stopped by instead and we took comfort in each other’s good company. 

Today is a new day and I have high expectations. I have a road trip coming up in July and the idea that I have no appointed day to return is uplifting. I could stay away until school starts in August or even Labor Day weekend. I have several friends and family who will harvest tomatoes and tend the lawn. I’ll post this piece on my ‘Stones’ blog this evening. With only a few followers there is no pressure to publish (that’s funny) but if I go too long without making some noise someone wants to know why not. I would say, “Relax and enjoy, the weather is here and I wish we were beautiful.” 

HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATION

  I went to my granddaughter’s high school graduation the other day. I also submitted a a written article for my high school (RHS ’57) class newsletter. With the class of ’23 fresh in my mind I was reminded of things I seldom think about. Sixty six years is a long reach for an overburdened memory. But back then our big ‘Hurrah’ featured a very serious, somber processional, lots of ceremony and an equally sober recessional before we started acting goofy in the the lobby: I remember all of that. Sandwiched in between an insufferable invocation and a dreadful benediction, accomplished speakers addressed a captive audience. 
By current standards my school was small, graduating (80) seniors was about average. It wasn’t normal for a tornado to destroy the high school building the night before the ceremony and that did complicate everything. Three nights later a nearby high school let us use their auditorium for the ceremony. The storm and its impact on the community certainly offset a high school graduation’s influence but it was then and still is a once in a lifetime benchmark. It is the day young adults weigh anchor (supposedly) on the journey of their life. 
The first big discrepancy I noticed between the two graduations was time and numbers. My granddaughter’s ceremony spent most of the time passing out diplomas and not so much listening to deadly oratory. With 450 seniors to honor and bestow, nobody cared much for a lecture on timely prudence, noble ambition or squandered opportunity. The next thing to jog my moment was the  crowd ‘crush’ that oozed out of the soccer stadium and toward the parking lot. Finding your graduate in the crowd was made easy with smart phone & GPS but it was still a lot of strangers in cramped touchy-feely space. What kept the ‘crush’ in proper character was the excitement of so many new graduates, all searching for best friends and favorite people to capture perfectly posed selfies. ‘Excitement’ is the best word, the catalyst for a bittersweet, last time they would all be together. For me, graduation has always been a déjà vu thing. I spent 35 years in the business and the end of the school year is like reaching the next landing on a long staircase, a brief respite to savor something you’ve come to love and then let it go. Soon enough a new group of seniors will inherit their own mantle, grow up in spite of themselves and dance together again for the last time. 
As a long suffering contributor to my own class newsletter I am afraid that genuine excitement we generated so many years ago has worn thin. My classmates from 1957 have been preoccupied with their own reality Netflix series, one that won’t run out of episodes until none of us are left. Age has a way of letting the air out of your ballon. Abraham Lincoln said, “People are about as happy as they choose to be.” I’ve been choosing 8’s all along and it works but 9's and 10's are out of the question. Now that I have a few spare dollars, sky diving has lost its allure and my eyesight does not allow for tying my own fishing lures. Nearly half of my graduating class has passed on and they’re not coming back. The ones who still want to restore 1967 and 1985, the good old days when the world was a better place: I hate to spoil that myth but we were young then and that was what made it good. We can rub shoulders now and be friends but what they believe, about who takes credit and who takes the blame is about them and I don’t want to trade places with any of them.  
I have another granddaughter who will graduate in two years. She is a sweetheart too and I will be in the soccer stadium again for her outrageous selfies, throwing hats in the air and proud parents looking for the car in the super-size parking lot. George Bernard Shaw (Irish Playwright) said, more or less; The most wonderful thing in life is youth and it’s a shame that it is wasted on the young. I think otherwise. If our journey had been charted with Shaw’s experience and hindsight then our lives might be as dull and lackluster as his comment. I will keep writing for my class’s newsletter; nobody else wants to send in selfies. I never heard of George Bernard Shaw before college; must have left him there as I haven’t thought about him since. The beauty of old age is that we are still here and I am still sitting on an (8). The truth after 66 years is that maturity loses its edge and  that 'Wisdom' is a moving target. 

THE SAME DAMN THING

  I have (several times) tried to find the source for the well traveled but dismal quote; “Life’s a bitch and then you die.” Surprisingly, if you can believe the internet, this grim revelation first came into print in the Washington Post in 1982. I would have thought its trail would lead far back to someone famous like King Solomon’s “Vanity” sidebar in the Old Testament. The wisest man alive was lamenting his fate. He realized that his lifetime was finite, it was running out and he couldn’t escape his own mortality. Compounding that insult, someone else who was both unworthy and inferior would by one means or another acquire his power, possessions and wealth. He thought that just wasn’t fair but to that outcome he was powerless. He concludes that the only earthly good that one can look forward to is to eat and drink well and take comfort in the time we have. 
Solomon was King; he could have anything he wanted. The, “Life’s a bitch" analogy would spring from the low end of the socioeconomic ladder. Foregoing the gender disrespect associated with its origin it would certainly allude to a set of circumstances that are unreasonable, malicious and unforgiving. Only after you've suffered that misfortune, then you die. I draw from it the idea that in the end, death may be preferable as one would no longer suffer the slings & arrows of this life. Edna St. Vincent Millay, a wonderful American poet from the early 20th century took creative license with the similar misgiving; “Life is just one damn thing after another.” Her view was altered slightly. She said, “Life is the same damn thing again and again and again.” Her angst was channeled in a narrow vein rather than a broad sweep. 
I would think by now the slang rendition is more of a general consensus that ‘Times are hard.’ I was born to a time when my country was emerging from the Great Depression and then the Great War. Times were hard but getting better. America was the only major participant in the war that did not have to rebuild cities, infrastructure and begin a new economy from scratch. In all those years my family never missed a meal nor had to sleep in a borrowed bed. Still, I identified with ‘Los Pobres’ - The Poor; and I still do. The times have changed but the poor are still poor. One can look away and not see them, as if they do not exist at all. One can blame them, as if they chose their station in life but I know better. Anybody can, with good judgment, perseverance and a sufficient share of good luck, rise above their limitations; but not every everybody. There are only so many seats at the table and they conform with few exceptions to a well established pecking order. If nobody saved a chair for you it won't matter how smart or hard you work. 

    My parents would rather go hungry than accept charity but they would drive across town and spend their last dollar on food for strangers whose only crime was being born low, in a bad place, in the wrong year. I have no Silver Spoon pedigree but we had common spoons to go around. When I fell down someone helped me up and let me back in line. My family was high enough in the pecking order for me to get a second chance, and a third, and a forth. The most important decision one can make in their lifetime is picking their parents. I chose very well and their message hasn’t changed: “Do unto others. . .” This life will do with you whatever it will and when it’s done, then you can die. 

STEAMING CUP OF 'JOE'

  Growing up I never drank coffee; why I don’t know. I never wanted to smoke either, except for that week when I was ten. It took a week of sneaking smokes from my dad’s open pack before I begged the gnawing question: Why am I doing this? It was my friend’s idea and being a follower I went along. It still reminds me of a joke (if you will) where a man who is beating himself on the head with a hammer is asked why would he do such a thing. His reply; “Because it feels so good when I quit.” My curiosity with tobacco smoke was satisfied in short order and forever since I’ve never, ever been tempted to repeat that folly. 
On the other hand, drinking coffee can sneak up on you. It smells good to begin with and part of its appeal is that little hint of ‘bitter’. Still, if I wanted it hot and dark then hot chocolate was preferable; until one cold December day in 1958. I was in Basic Training (U.S.Army) at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. It was our final week before graduation. We were in the field for several days and nights, putting all of our Grunt-training to a final test. It was cold but we were dressed and they kept us busy. But the second or third night it plunged down into the 20’s and there was a lot more waking up cold than there was sleeping. The next day was gray and windy and the temperature stayed stuck down in the (cold as a witch’s tit) zone, or maybe  a (well digger’s ass)? Whichever is colder, that’s how cold it was. 
We marched a while and navigated the obstacle course which put us at the rifle range. Until then we had been moving which helped but on the range it was a lot of ‘Hurry up & wait’. When your turn came it was shooting in either the upright or prone position and the cold wouldn’t leave you alone. No hot lunch, only cold C-Rations but they had plenty of hot coffee. Portable heaters hung on the sides of galvanized, 50 gallon barrels like outboard boat motors. I don’t know how they brewed it but the closer to the bottom of the barrel there were more grounds to chew up or spit out. We walked by in line with our empty canteen cups for a fill up and if you came away with more than half a cup you were lucky. It was steaming, too hot to drink. So on cold days I went through the line and used that steaming cup to warm my hands and face. On a subfreezing, windy day; hot coffee in an aluminum cup doesn’t stay hot. So you take your gloves off and switch hands until it cools a bit, then when the steam subsides you press it to your cheeks and move it across your mouth. 
On that frosty-cold day in 1958 my bias against coffee gave in to another conditioned response, the one to sip from the cup’s lip and it was good enough. It crossed my mind even then, “For something I don’t like it tastes pretty good.” I went back for a second cup, repeated the steam first, bare hands, cheeks and mouth in that order but had to chew & spit more coffee grounds than with the first cup and it didn’t matter. Now it’s been sixty five years and I don’t like coffee cups at all. If I can’t hold a proud mug (even a large insulated paper cup) of steaming ‘Joe’ in both hands, elbows on the table, up close to my face; I feel cheated.
For me, those three years in the Army were like the extra but critical last few minutes for a loaf of bread in the oven. The Army didn’t need me but I was a warm body with feet on the ground and they needed that. My part from the mutual benefit was, I stayed out of trouble and out of debt while I browned in the oven. Whatever else I learned in those short years was that the alcohol buzz isn’t worth the hangover. I learned that I could only spend my dollar once and that hurt me once, shame on you; hurt me twice, shame on me. The Army put me in the right place to mix airplanes with parachutes, which turned out to be the catalyst for a true sense of self worth. I became very good at something that others respected. In the end it translated out to be (if not great then) good enough: And (Good Enough) has been the needle on my compass ever since. So here I am a content old man reflecting on my (coffee from a mug) experience and the rewards of living well and knowing when squat and when to move my feet. 

CHURCH OF THE HIGH MEADOW

  M-22 is a scenic stretch of blacktop that runs up Michigan’s west coast from Manistee all the way up around Northport and down to its other end in Traverse City. Without a litany of awe inspired endearment, that ‘hundred mile shoreline is what every sandy little berm on every coast wants to be. There is a spot near Glen Arbor where the woods give way to hayfields, to century-old barns and long abandoned orchards. Beyond them a high meadow and steep glacial moraines left there from the last ice age are overgrown with beech and maple forest. The first time I saw it I knew; This is the place. To my surprise it was part of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lake Shore. As a taxpayer I am an owner and I can be there, hike there, climb in the woods and sit in the tall grass whenever I please. 
Four hundred years ago Shakespeare penned the lines “all the world’s a stage. . .” and we (all of us) are actors playing out our roles. What a wonderful metaphor. But there is no script, we have to improvise and ad lib as we go; and it’s all one act, no intermission, no prompters, no do-overs. Each of us has to find our way and deliver our lines over and under, in between and around every other actor on that stage. That part is often taken for granted as if we (the protagonists) are upstage with everybody waiting anxiously for us to speak. When I first drove by the hayfields and the high meadow I knew it would be my center stage and my story should unfold from there. 
Whatever I might have been before, I am by now an old heretic. It doesn’t take much imagination to imagine primitive people and their helpless fear with every thunder clap and lightning bolt. Creating a mythical god was their only-best course of action. It must have eased their anxiety in the moment and it still underlies western religion but I don’t believe any of it. I didn’t chose to be that way but too much to believe is just that. I fit in very neatly with Secular Humanists. In lieu of a long, wordy manifesto our commandments tell us to Cooperate, Be nice and Play fair. All we need to maximize and fulfill our righteous potential is programmed in our brain at birth. An all knowing, all powerful god isn't necessary. Some seeds never germinate, some sprout, some go back into the food web, some feed on the same food web and make more seed, lay more eggs, birth more babies, enough to replace themselves and sustain their species. I’m lucky to be here, a minuscule but relevant link in the web. 
The human brain is a marvelous instrument but needs a skilled artist to make music. It works like a high centered, short wheelbase little jeep with big tires and a 600 horse power motor. It can take you places nobody dreamed we could go. But if you drive with imaginary insurance and reckless abandon it will, without a second thought, leave you upside down in the ditch. 
I don’t really know why I fleshed out this idea today; maybe just the Muse and me, doing what we do. That would be me going along with whatever it tells me. I have to believe in something that resonates to a high moral principle, something Right (Righteous). It’s part of the human paradigm. In my case, I find that at the Church Of The High Meadow. I go there when I can and it looks like that will be this summer. Rain or shine, I will take comfort in the natural order of gravity and photosynthesis, sit in the shelter of pine trees and marvel at their seed cones in the grass beside me. I’ll walk, checking under gnarled, old apple trees for deer beds in the tall grass and a few green apples too high up for them to reach. 
I have taken a page from Christian tradition in my own self interest. Communion for a pagan would be to ritualize the sacred interdependence of all things. It has nothing to do with (God so loved the world . . .) and everything to do with wildflowers, bees, honey, me and the flowers I plant around my patio. I do communion anytime I feel like it, alone at the kitchen table or with loved ones at the Church of The High Meadow. It takes a little brandy in a paper cup, raise it in thanksgiving to honor the Cardinal Points of the compass, our Mother Earth and Father Sky. Sip the brandy slow, wash it over your tongue, breathe in through your nose and swallow. When your head is clear, raise up a piece of chocolate, repeat the ritual and crush the chocolate against the roof of your mouth. Savor that blessing for as long as it takes and wash it down with the last bit of brandy. I finish with a benediction borrowed from the Lakota Sioux. Hard to pronounce but profound none the less; (Mitakuye Oyasin) which means, (We are all related) or if you prefer, (All My Relations). I take the Liberty of borrowing from another language and another culture after all; we are all related. 
I have done enough here for today. Cooperate, be nice, play fair, take care of our Mother and take care of each other.

EVEN BABY BIRDS

Being compulsively curious with a short attention span I spend more time ‘down the rabbit hole’ than most. It would seem maybe I should be more focused on my achievements and credit rating but I missed that train. When Alice followed the White Rabbit down into its burrow she discovered a strange and surreal, even nonsensical world. I don’t know if it was by choice or by chance that I stumbled down that same rabbit hole but the situation there hasn’t changed. Like Alice, I feel like an alien in my own culture. 

E.O. Wilson (Sociobiology) was one of the first to notice: Not until hunter/gatherer society gave way to cities, agriculture and living together in large numbers, about (7,000 yrs ago) that civilized priorities turned away from Mother Earth’s nurturing influence. It marked the beginning of civilized wealth & power with no inkling for the planet’s greater good. From down here in the rabbit hole, I can see how civilization is digging itself into another hole. In the 1986 movie Top Gun, the Air Boss was chewing hero, Tom Cruise, a new asshole. He growled, “Your ego is writing checks your body can’t cash.” Collectively I think we are writing checks our society cannot cash. Too bad for my descendants. 

Dinosaurs ruled the earth for over 150 million years, and got wiped out by an unavoidable meteor strike. Humans on the other hand have only been around for maybe 2 million years and most of that time as an insignificant species, barely able to sustain themselves. Not until roughly 500 years ago (Christopher Columbus) could we have qualified as a significant species. Only in the past 300 years (Industrial Revolution & fossil fuels) could we be considered the dominant species. I will not allude to writing checks but I will observe; even baby birds know not to sh*t in their nest. 

 

THERE BUT FOR . . .

  How do you deal with beggars at intersections with disclaimers in magic marker on scraps of cardboard; God Bless, Viet Nam Vet, Haven’t eaten, etc.? I will vent my own disclaimer here: I give up. I do not give money to desperate people who may or may not be what they appear to be. But my mother did a thorough job with me. Any time, every time we encountered someone who needed a helping hand or suffered a grim affliction she whispered in my ear; “There but for the Grace of God go I; and you too.” I got it; the only thing between ‘Lucky’ me and a wretched beggar was God’s Grace. At our house charity and forgiveness was the price of God’s Grace. The downcast suffer enough, don’t send them away hungry.
So I don’t give money to downcast people but I do feel compelled to feed them. Today my appetite called out for chicken salad. I didn’t have any celery so I drove across town to the grocery. Just down the line a young woman stepped out from between parked cars. I don’t think you can grow this old and not see a shakedown coming. She was clean and dressed to fit the weather, a little chunky. Her hair had been bleached some time ago and the dark brown had grown back in several inches. Well spoken and very proper she began a story how she and her little girl had not eaten since the day before yesterday. I watched her lips move but I was paying attention to body language and to my own dilemma, what should I do? I believed her then and I believe her now; she was hungry, what ever else she might have been I couldn’t know. I told her I don’t give money to strangers, period, then asked her, “If you had money, what would you buy?” She thought for just a moment and told me; bread, eggs, milk and some apples. I asked her if she was safe, did she have a safe place to stay and she volunteered that she was safe and that things should get better next week.
Then I asked her, “If I go in and buy your groceries for you would you wait here for me to bring them out?” She said she would; I added her items to my list and told her, “You wait here. Don’t go away. I’ll be back in 20 minutes.” As I walked away she added, “White bread.” It took all of 20 minutes but when I got to my truck she was nowhere to be found. I waited for another 20 minutes and still no-show. I felt a little foolish but why so; she may have thought I would report her to store security or she may have been with some other person who didn’t like the deal. But she was hungry and I believe she had a hungry little girl somewhere, I’d bet on it (I guess I did). 
Now I’m stuck with a large loaf of white bread and a half gallon of 2% milk: who in the world eats white bread! I volunteer with a (Hunger Outreach) group that puts sandwiches together one night a week for the homeless and food insecure. We host a big picnic feed twice a week at a downtown park and our Thursday night assembly line turns out maybe 300 (maybe more) ham & cheese sandwiches from donated supplies. Sometimes we feature lasagna or stew along with the sandwiches and we don’t hear any disclaimers, just ThankYou, up and down the line. That’s when I hear my mom’s “There but for the Grace of God.” She was a true believer. I think it a metaphor and a good one for people at their best, for the convergence of charity and forgiveness in the same space. The eggs and apples will keep several weeks and I can work them into my diet but the white bread will probably be enjoyed by the birds and squirrels.