CLARIFICATION

  Writing has a history that began with symbolic characters pressed into clay tablets from about 3,500 BCE (five & a half thousand years ago) in then, Sumer (Mesopotamia). From keeping track of grain harvested, stored and sold, writing has evolved to modern alphabets, written language and stories for every purpose one can imagine. By now reading and writing is a necessary skillset. From making your signature on a receipt to writing a text book, from reading a calendar to a (Tom Sawyer) classic, literacy is required to navigate our culture. Some have taken literacy seriously, so much so that we identify as Writers and work at length to master the art. 
Sometimes I need to clarify my Writer’s identity and this is one of those times. In 1964 as a 25 year-old college freshman I needed an outlet to vent some issues where there was no willing listener. I started writing with a purpose in a spiral notebook. A 40 year career in education followed and as my journal grew the writing improved.
After retirement in 2001 I became an itinerant storyteller, traveling anyplace and everywhere, still documenting my story, my spiral notebook had been replaced by an Apple laptop. In 2012 I summered in Halifax, Nova Scotia. My son and daughter in law requested (twisted my arm) that I convert the journal to a blog so they could keep up with me, know where I was and that I was alive and well. Me creating a blog has never been about writing for public consumption. I never stopped journaling and much of it made its way into my blog. The point is; most bloggers are trying to grow a following, I was not and I am not. Over the 12 years I've picked up a few followers but 7 or 8 hits on the same post is rare. Leaving a comment is a clumsy, unfriendly process so I have no idea who the visitors are, the website counts hits but doesn’t ID them. 
In the 1990’s I belonged to a really good writer’s guild in Grand Rapids, MI where I was nurtured by some awesome writer/friends. Y2K came along, I retired and went on the road. But I had identified heroes like Nobel Laureate, Elie Wiesel who deftly proclaimed; “I write as much to understand as to be understood.” I make that same observation. My writing explores and shapes whatever is on my mind, whatever the voice inside my head gives me. If it resonates with someone else that’s fine but I do it for me. I write it, then edit, then revise and rewrite, by the end of the process it usually stands on its own legs but I own it. I’ve learned that edit/revision/rewriting is the long, hard work of making the piece work. I remember submitting first draft reports in college and wondered why I only got C’s; duhh! By now, anytime I review old work I make new changes as I see the need. Often I write stuff in the journal/blog that needs work but then I never get back to them. It's like traveling; it's about the journey, not the destination.
This is not a disclaimer, rather a clarification. It will need cleaning up but I doubt it gets it. The point here is: Since emerging from the Covid pandemic, I’m not  happy with a lot of stuff that has gone into the blog, it’s like slow dancing. When the band stops playing and goes home, you are done whether you know it or not. So I’m not happy with some stuff I’ve done lately. Much of it is nothing more than process that needed to be written but not so much to be read. Still my kids know where I’ve been and when I’m back home again. 
Academically I was a late blooming wall flower, not ready until I was 25. I experienced the joy of discovery for the first time and I’ve never been able to satisfy that appetite. I want to know everything there is to know and I study more now that I’m retired than when it was my business. I have limits, not the sharpest knife in the drawer but I like anthropology (human history), brain based science, how we learn, make decisions, human nature, the improbability of free will, etc. It spills over into whatever else I’m working on and it muddies up my journal for sure and likewise the blog. Those old Sumerians with their clay tablets and Cuneiform symbols didn’t have a clue as to where their creative energy would take us but I’m glad they got it started when they did. 

WHO NEEDS IT?

To begin with I am an old, retired science teacher. The path I followed was delayed and in some ways strayed down a few dead ends but in the end I learned and shared lots of science content and still retain a valued life-lesson, to look (think) before I leap. I still have impulsive urges but pause and defaulting to reason has proven to be a better scheme. Passion is unreliable and after it has been spent it cares not at all about where it leaves you. As a disclaimer I would note that in philosophical terms I would be considered a Stoic. Stoics tend to be skeptics, not ones to share feelings or express ideas prematurely. Stoicism homes in on what you control (which isn’t a lot) and progresses from there. For a long time, dismissing issues where I have no control in favor of those I can put my hands on has served me well.

I am processing an experience from several days ago. Sixty seven years later, remnants of my graduating high school class meet for a monthly luncheon. There were ten of us last week; some were spouses and others were leap-frogged into our midst from the class the year behind us but we all had the same common cause. One classmate had been a best friend during our senior year and even though our futures would unfold in profoundly different ways, we still want to get along. One’s conscious, chosen identity in terms of religion and political ideology are usually deep seated, vulnerable to powerful, passionate expression. I work patiently and without exception to think and think again before I leap. As a result, I can be slow to react and appear to be detached and I don’t talk religion or politics with anyone who doesn’t already understand the difference between conversation and argument. Argument is for competing while cooperation is for cooperation, enlightenment, entertainment. Either everybody or nobody wins at conversation. My former BF knows very well that I do not share his passion for Baptist religion or conservative politics but it seemed we were agreed to disagree. It had never come up and neither has it been a stumbling block.  

Long story short: at lunch his wife unloaded on another classmate, a girl I have come to appreciate. Never close friends in school, we have parallel experiences and commonalities we now share and we get along famously. I don’t know which one broached controversial politics first but an unmitigated, one way attack by my friend’s wife followed in defense of former President Trump. She made her point in the the first words of her rant but stretched it out across several sentences. The most disturbing thing I noticed was that she both enjoyed the moment and was smug afterward. My classmate friend didn’t want to argue so my friend’s wife postured like the winner. 

Several years before, before they started coming to Lunch-bunch, I enjoyed the same kind of relationship with another one of my oldest-longest schoolboy friends (from the 3rd grade). We also avoided controversial issues. At a summer picnic however, somehow the conversation stumbled over the George Floyd murder in Minneapolis and the resulting Black Lives Matter movement. We realized where that track was headed and changed the subject. But as an afterthought he made the comment, “Blacks should be thankful for slavery because without it they would not have been born in the greatest nation ever.” I was dumbfounded. Following up I did say something to the effect; “If you had been born black you would not have said that.” He nodded, no he would not have and we moved on. But he had been serious as a train wreck when he said it. Over several days (thinking before leaping) I was troubled with how I should respond, if at all. I let it go but the next month when Lunch-bunch rolled around I didn’t go. I stayed away month to month until I realized I had looked long enough and had mande my leap. If that was to be what I could expect from a friend then I just didn’t need it and I am too old for word games over stuff that is out of my control. 

Our stalemate at the picnic was the last time I saw him. I stayed away and kept staying away. He died of a massive heart attack a few years later. Now I’m thinking again, and again, about if and when and how to leap. Four days ago when his wife was running out of breath my friend weighed in with an equally condescending observation that was in fact an indirect insult and I felt like Yogi Berra’s famous quote, “It’s dejà vu all over again.” I didn’t go there loaded for confrontation and I really don’t need that to reflect on a high school experience. I suspect come June’s Lunch-bunch I’ll be preoccupied and probably July as well. As for the other two classmates who share a long standing trust, I can see them whenever we can agree, no rules of engagement. I’m not angry, I really don’t care. Who needs it? Who needs it!

In conclusion, as I often rely on favorite sources to cast light on my little thoughts I turn to Robert Frost. 

The woods ar lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep. 

JUST ONCE IN MY LIFE

  In her acceptance speech for an Academy Award in 2007, Sally Field’s microphone was cut off my the FOX Network in mid sentence. The content of her message however was not lost. She said, “If mothers ruled the world there wouldn’t be any God-damned wars in the first place.” 
If mothers ruled the world there wouldn’t be any God-damned wars in the first place. I wish just once in my life I could be that eloquent, say something so profound. 

TINY STEPS

  Back in the early 1990’s I read a self-help book (Do It!) for people who needed help pursuing and achieving their goals. In the first or second chapter the author used an example that spoke to me, so much I still fall back on it. Simply stated, take small (even tiny) steps that move you toward reaching your goal. Every grand journey begins with a single step. Every day is a new day and you keep taking that first step from where you are at that moment, day after day, again and again. With relentless persistence one keeps moving in that direction (tiny steps) until the necessary knowledge and skills have been mastered. The one, absolute, unforgiving rule is: never compromise that tiny step, every day, for as long as ti takes.
The example he used was for aspiring writers (like me). I had been keeping a journal for twenty years and I identified with the challenge in that regard. An idiom attributed to Confucius tells us, wherever you may be, there you are: and the quest begins using the knowledge and skills you already possess. So we all begin with tiny steps, in the right direction and never give up. You don’t need a computer or a typewriter. You don’t need to take a class. If your goal is to be published and you have no experience in that discipline you can begin at the beginning, with a pencil and a piece of paper. Someday, all of those small steps will translate into knowledge and skills and you will need a computer. That relentless journey of tiny steps will (can) take you places you never imagined. 
Nowadays I am comfortable identifying as a writer. I have fair command of colons and semicolons, use run-on sentences when it servers a purpose, my spelling and grammar are adequate. Some words I like and use more than others but the vocabulary has expanded and continues to grow. Writing can be self serving or for other’s consumption, it is what it is. Yes, I am a writer. I am also a storyteller and an educator. Think of it as a blessing or a curse but once fixed in the scheme, it doesn’t expire or evaporate. So I still tell Story, still share my experience and understanding and then I write about it. 
The book, DO IT! was a good read and over the years I have taken its best idea and committed it to both memory and practice. But it begs more questions than answers. I’ve tinkered with so many different projects, toyed with dead end ideas there is no way to do all of it. But the writing has never been reduced to nothing more than, something I used to do. 
I recently came across the phrase, “. . . making strange bedfellows.” It is so well worn I should be more familiar with it. Sounds like something Shakespeare would say; “Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows”  it is by Shakespeare! The Tempest, (Act 2). I had to look it up but will remember it for at least a little while. Over time it has become a metaphor; to engage in an unusual or unlikely affiliation, usually in politics, government, war, etc. It runs close parallel with, “My enemy’s enemy is my friend.” If I try to unfold that riddle it comes full circle with Israel and Gaza. I didn’t set out to land on this square but here I am. I’d be afraid to fall asleep, worried who would be in my bed with me when I wake up. I’ve been derailed to a dreadful thought. Hamas is a mirror reflection of the Talaban, second verse - same as the first. Then there is Israel, their leaders have reinvented Nazi strategy to create a 21st century holocaust. In both cases, the preferred action is to kill your enemies, kill them all. Then kill their children before they can grow up and seek that self righteous ‘Eye for an eye.” Kill them all, God is on our side. I don’t want any part of waking up in that bed. Where is the voice of reason: Gandhi gave us, “An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.” I get upset just knowing and it wears me out. 
Here I’ve gone and started a good idea and it has turned on me in a cruel way. I’m sure someone famous or wise has left an appropriate quote but I don’t know who. The book DO IT! doesn’t dig in this hole. Certainly we hope for a share of good health, to love and be loved and a safe place to sleep.  It was 1978, Kenny Rogers wrote and sang THE GAMBLER; the lyrics are relevant here as he brings it home. “. . . every hand’s a winner, and every hand’s a loser, and the best that you can hope for is to die in your sleep.” I can wait on dying in my sleep just don’t be sneaking in no strange bedfellows. I’m sorry; I’ll try to be more positive, more forgiving next time.  

DON'T GO AWAY; I'LL GET BACK

  I sent a birthday card, it’s been a long time, can’t remember when but it was a small card and I started a personal note in the blank fold on the inside facing page. When I realized there wasn’t space to finish I wrote smaller. Then I wrote in the margins until I finally had to unfold the card itself and write on the reverse side of the card. I think that is how memory works. When you fill it up after so many years, memories overlap and run together for lack of space. It’s like digging in a laundry basket, looking for the missing sock. Back when Radio Shack was the computer store and Tandy was the brand name, when you hit the run-button on a seemingly complicated task it would default to a blank screen with a flashing green cursor. In computer-speak that meant “I’m busy working on the task you just gave me. Don’t go away, I’ll get back to you when I have what you asked for.”  After what seems to be sufficient time you question if it’s really working or stuck at a dead-end in a glitch. 
I am part of a coffee klatch, six of us meet mid morning at a noisy shop twice a week. Needless to say we are all retired. One couple, married to each other but his 3rd go-round and her 5th; he was a petroleum engineer, spent years in the Meddle East and she a photographer, landlord and I don't know what else. She is the only one without a graduate degree, any college for that matter but belongs to Mensa International (High IQ Society). She never flaunts it but when prompted, she thinks college would have been a waste of time for her, work hard - work smart is all you need. He is an incredibly deep well of reliable knowledge, current events, politics, history, etc. like his wife, he will tactfully correct errors but doesn’t condescend; really a good guy. Another lady is retired, like the rest of us. Formerly am Editor for a suburban, Wisconsin news paper, she is fun, a good listener, good in conversation, divorced with an edgy dash of humor toward her former husband and men in general (but she forgives us) and hates bad grammar. 
The man who recruited the rest of us to form a coffee klatch was curator at the State Museum of Natural History in another state. After his wife passed he did’t care for the big group we had belonged to for years and wanted to hang out with a small group of his closer friends, another really good guy. The rest of us  still hang out with the big group's Friday meet-up but it makes us butterflies of the coffee klatch kingdom. Number #5 is a retired nurse (educator) happily divorced. She is well versed, listens closely and contributes if and when she thinks it adds to the morning’s business. I like her, think she is the catalyst for the group. Then there is me. An old biology teacher but I have nearly a quarter century of reinventing myself and wanderlust to factor into my profile since retiring and I don’t know really how they measure my identity. They miss me when I’m not there and I take that as a good omen. 

Yesterday early evening we met at a small, local, authentic, Italian restaurant to break bread. It was half-price pizza night and I would have pizza. In making a distinction, I am the only one (I think) who feels more comfortable with paper napkins and one fork. My blue collar roots run deep and I notice when I’ve been bumped up the social ladder. My companions drank wine or beer and I instinctively stayed with water. On second thought with pizza, beer sounded good and I wanted to change my order. I was unfamiliar with their brands or style of beer and struggled with my order. When I do drink beer I order a Mexican brew. It was a no-brainer; they’re not going to stock Mexican beer in an upscale, Italian restaurant where everything on the menu is printed in Italian. In the moment I could not remember the name of my favorite beer. I couldn’t think of any Mexican beer by name. So my friends and the waitress helped me choose from the menu. When served I declined a glass in favor of the bottle. Of course, wine from a glass but beer would be from a bottle. 
Waiting for our order is part of the experience. Our conversation touched on a mutual acquaintance, a politically active woman who recently complained about homeless people sleeping outside, demonstrating in public places. When the Supreme Court recently took up a case against sleeping outside in public she concluded it would criminalize being homeless. Her opinion did a 180 turn around. Then our discussion turned to how easy it would have been for any one of us to have ended up homeless, due to a single devastating event and random chance working against us, it could be us instead of them. Our Mensa Society member commented that our good fortune was remarkable. 
I get hung up on particular social issues and responded, “Yes” I said, “but we had White Privilege on our side.” She thought about it, shook her head and said she didn’t think so, at least not on her part. I sensed by her tone and body language, she thought her ‘harder-smarter’ history had circumvented any white privilege she might have otherwise enjoyed. I remembered the same train of thought had been rebuffed: The very first white privilege we all experienced was probably the prenatal care our mother’s received while we were still in the womb. If one cares, the research is both compelling and easy to find. It’s not what comes to mind first when grappling with injustice but it certainly is real and it’s just one example. Opportunity in education, economics, health care, housing and cultural benefits simply exist more frequently and to greater extent for white people than people of color; significantly so. It is so integrated into the greater culture, so ubiquitous that we, the privileged, enjoy it as the norm without questioning its value or the cause. For one of us around that table to think we didn’t benefit from systematic, cultural bias was too much to digest. When the subject comes up we  slip into a form of benign denial. In the U.S.A., culture demands we earn our keep. We must deserve any and all success that we experience; the Puritan Work Ethic. Even if the work ethic is buried in layers of hypocrisy, we still want to take credit for every good thing that falls our way. So we make believe our passive connection to white privilege does not apply. 
The group really didn’t want to dig in that hole and no surprise, we moved on to a new topic. My pizza was just so-so but the beer was good. It made the pizza go down so much better. On my way to the car it came to me unannounced, the blinking green cursor on my subconscious monitor stopped blinking and from a deep synapse I was informed; “Corona; the Mexican beer you wanted me to remember is Corona.”

DESPOTS

  It only took a dozen years but I watched the final episode of The Hunger Games last night. Seventy-some years after a civil war, the oppressed underclass revolts against the ruler and a privileged upperclass. The only way to endure over 8 hours of screen time is that you know in the end the good guys win. The diabolical President holds out with his ruthless, vindictive schemes until he is killed in the end. His successor (a rebel) with her cadre of dedicated rebel followers replicate the same oppressive, dystopian government in reverse. The former, privileged, ruling class will be subjected to the same transgressions that sparked the rebellion. The heroine realized in the end that she had been manipulated by the devious new President’s promise of democracy and egalitarian rule. When The MockingJay is designated to execute (Bow & Arrow) the old President she kills the new President instead and the mob kills the old President. Then a good leader emerges, the sun comes out and it’s a happy ending for everyone. 
I like it when the good guys win. But even a long story on the big screen comes to an end but stories don’t end, movies end but stories keep unfolding with new characters and an evolving plot. It’s just a movie, one adventure in a larger story. Looking back all through the miniseries, President Snow (the evil schemer) grew more evil and more treacherous as his options died on the vine and he felt his grip slipping away. Donald Sutherland (Canadian actor) played President Snow. His appearance and demeanor made him appear as a warm and caring, fatherly figure but sooner or later everyone figures him out. Ultimately, with convincing bullshit, he justifies why the underclass must suffer an unthinkable,  devastating sacrifice in order for him to be (God) if you will and his tunnel vision, self righteous followers to live comfortably in that myth. 
When I was a little kid I peed on an electric fence, not knowing. The consequence was instantaneous. My experience with the movie was similar just in in slow motion. Sutherland’s character role modeled the Donald Trump stereotype. Narcissists around the world share the same self obsessed fixation but if they lack the means to suffer it upon the rest of the world, who cares. We all know a narcissist or two but we manage to avoid their insanity. However, if one falls into that niche (sinfully rich, powerful and omnipotent without a conscience) those despots and demagogues become world leaders. Vladimir Putin has the Russians eating out of his hand as he plunders Ukraine, making Russia great again. Hitler had Germans by the millions, signaling the Nazi salute as he attacked the Jewish problem. Cast from the same mold, Donald Trump takes aim on everyone who is not a white supremacist, an evangelical bigot, Misogynist, racist, self righteous nationalist or conspiracy addict. With seventy million voting admirers who think DT is God’s gift then he might as well be. The glaring weakness in a democracy is that voters can elect terrible, horrible leaders and the country is stuck with them. 
At the end of the movie you feel good but then it’s a movie. The real despots and demagogue leaders are like weeds in the flower bed. When you’ve pulled them all, a dandelion sprouts up underfoot and before you can uproot it another one pops up in its shadow. Trump bigots don’t surprise me. I just thought it would happen some other place, not here, not so soon. I don’t pick on him here in this blog often, no point. His loyal supporters won’t raise an eye lid. They can’t remember World War II.  Hitler comes off as a poor loser rather than a monster and we won it anyway. They want to make America Great Again, like it was when lynching blacks, beating your wife was legal and isolating people of color in ghettos was the rule. But watching the conclusion of The Hunger Games sort of set me off and see what that gets you. But I feel a little better getting it off my chest. 

HOLY MOLEY

  My Friday morning coffee group is made up of either members or friends of All Souls Unitarian/Universalist Church in Kansas City; that’s a mouthful. It’s not uncommon for people to confuse us with Unity, a left leaning, liberal, Christian denomination and though we do lean left and favor hard won knowledge over medieval mythology, we do not practice Christian religion. If we need a label it would be Secular Humanists. I can’t recall the source but I’m sure it has Buddhist roots, it goes; Whether or not there is a god at all is irrelevant. We are born with everything we need to live in peace and serve the greater good. In this coffee group our spiritual fingerprints can range from that of aggressive, hardshell atheists to passive disbelievers to simple unbelievers and agnostics, then come the philosophical agnostics and people who don’t like labels and balk at all of the ‘Come to Jesus’ hyperbole. Talk is cheap; we try to focus on what we do. What one truly believes is like cream in a jar, it comes to the top.
Yesterday (at coffee) one of our more aggressive atheists was chewing on a bone, that our minister was using the Big G (god) word and alluding to biblical wisdom way too much and it was not only inappropriate but offensive. How are you supposed to practice your atheist faith with all of that distraction. Me, on the other hand, I don't think of myself as an atheist rather, one of those philosophical agnostics. I don’t know and I don’t care. To my knowledge, no one has ever proven or disproved the God conundrum. I learned that the lack of compelling evidence does not prove anything. That was Bertrand Russell’s argument when debating his Christian adversaries in the late 1800’s. “In theory I am an agnostic but I go about my life with the atheists.” Leaning on Russell I feel like I am in good company. 
I make the distinction between unbelief and disbelief. I don’t believe because I have no reason to believe. It’s not an (Either, Or) but simply a vacant space. All logic and effort to find cause has failed so far and enough is enough. I don’t believe and I don’t care. Disbelief is simply belief turned upside down. It is a negative premise, predicated on the same emotional need that drives others to belief, some kind of direct or vicarious experience that creates an insatiable appetite to validate something that cannot be validated. Rather than keep digging in that bottomless hole I concur with Rhett Butler's rebuff of Scarlett O'Hara,(Clark Gable to Vivian Leigh); Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn. 
Next time we will chew on a different bone and I will try to stay out of it. But when someone asks what I think, that old ‘Gone With The Wind’ quote doesn’t satisfy anybody. We, (Unitarians) pride ourselves on being tolerant with a high value on diversity but truth be known, sometimes we are neither, sounding more like upside down Pentecostals, more concerned about seizing the moment than turning the page. In the movie, ‘Grumpy Old Men’ when, from his bedroom window in the middle of the night, Walter Matthau first sees Ann Margaret on her snowmobile with her long hair and he mutters; “Holy Moley”. I don’t think he was sanctifying a righteous dude named Moley. Joseph Campbell said, “God is a metaphor to which we attribute everything profound and mysterious that we cannot comprehend, God must have done it.” (a metaphor). When I spit out an O.M.G. I am not claiming the big G. We take lots of liberties with religious language that resonates a secular if not condescending lack of piety. I know a guy who, when truly amazed, falls back on, “Jesus @%#king Christ!” and we all know he’s not preaching. So when our minister prefaces a humanist idea with something out of the bible, I understand and I take it for what it is. I’m really trying to be tolerant and appreciate the diverse nature of all things, temporal and spiritual. But ‘Spiritual’ is another loaded word for my hard-shell atheist amigos and I’m not up to another philosophical disclaimer. Holy Moley after all.