809. Everything to Gain

Like the color red, it’s easier to see the negative signs in life– danger and stop signs, flares and red flags. We are wired with primal instincts to recognize code red danger in order to increase our odds of survival. Because of this evolutionary predisposition, it takes longer and requires more focus to see the positive. Though positives surround us, negative lenses can cancel them out. I want to seek only positives in this post despite the chaos outside in the economy, the pandemic, the racial injustice protests, and the values vacuum in America’s soul. I am not ignoring these issues; that would be irresponsible. But it’s just as irresponsible to focus exclusively on the darkness. For this day the focus is just on the good, true, and beautiful.

Lilac colored snow cones erupted on our rhododendron bushes a while ago. They are dropping petals now that the wedding of patience and warmth is over. Glorious beauty can not last forever, though. Then it would devolve into the familiar; and contempt follows familiarity that has lost its vibrant novelty. By the back door enormous velvety red poppies stand up straight, waist high, like Swiss guards in the mini-Vatican of Oz.

Eilen Jewell is singing on my Pandora feed. Though her sibilant syllables and tones are dark, like poppies can be turned into opium, hers is a dark beauty standing tall, calling plaintively… “I’m gonna write you a letter on a dusty boxcar wall….”

Two days with back to back crisp spring air minus the cow manure scent that creeps up with the humidity on lesser days. Skies that look like acrylic paintings of cornflower blue overlaid with purest puffs of spun silk clouds of milk. The air seems cleaner and clearer than any time I can remember since my childhood, when I’d lie down under damp sheets my mother had hung on clothes lines during sunny summer mornings in Virginia. The overlapping images pull memories out of the fertile ground of my personal history.  Little green stalks, six decades old, pop up in my still mind.

There were few fences to divide the back yards on Dorset Drive back in the 1960’s. We cut through neighbors’ yards with no fear of trespassing charges. We knew only the cranks who loved control and hated kids would complain. Safe yards held other kids in them. Oddly enough, as time went on and improvements were made all over the community, fences started being erected. No problem: we learned how to hop them with a high leap or a forward belly flop. Boom! Without breaking stride we’d be on the other side. This skill came in handy years later on dark nights when we were running from bad consequences that might have included errant fire crackers or eggs or snowballs thrown.

Before the fences we played ballgames in the contiguous back yards. Our neighbor Tommy Storm used to hit golf balls down the fairway of adjoining fenceless back yards. We younger kids would race to retrieve the golf balls for his approval and something to do. We’d hunch down and try to follow the line of the hard white balls. One time I didn’t have to try and track a shot; it tracked me, hitting me in my right eyebrow, splitting it bloody wide open. Six stitches were needed to close my swollen eyebrow back up in the Old Alexandria Hospital, not far from the old Confederate soldier who faced south for over a hundred years. He was just uprooted the other day. Yeah! Progress at a snail’s pace, but one less pin prick for minority citizens. “My tax dollars are going to protect that fool? Uh uhhh.”

The little pond off our deck is pristine again. Birds swoop in for a dip– cardinals, robins, purple martens, grackles, migrating gold finches, mockingbirds, blackbirds, sparrows, and red headed something or others. In the dusk bats flit around spasmodically gobbling up flying insects. Soon the lightning bugs will return with heavily humid nights, while crickets chirp rhythmically and frogs croak their seductive ululations. Our home has never looked or felt better as we put our homestead up for sale. “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone…” whispers a young Joni Mitchell through the big trees we planted thirty years ago.

We do not live for the past, however. “Life is a highway,” as my grand daughter sang and danced in a grocery store produce section a few years ago, “I want to ride it all night long.” I chuckle to imagine her struttin’ ala Cheryl Crowe in a central Pennsylvania chain store, while adults giggled at her passionate impersonation. Fifty years from now it will be her turn to look back from the edge of a placid lake in her soul, at all her treasures reflected there. I hope she recalls seeing Cheryl Crowe at Hershey Stadium on an autumn night, wearing glitter jeans just like Leah’s. Each rhinestone sparkle will smile across time and space to pump her heart beat in sync with “Life is a Highway”.

Patience, peace, understanding, pearls of wisdom. Hope, joy, love. Exuberance, exultation, excitement. Melody, rhythm, harmony. Goodness, kindness, beauty. Compassion, contentment, comfort. Effervescence, permanence, resilience. Faith, loyalty, sacrifice. Purity, integrity, dignity. Journey, journey, journey… toward everything to gain.

 

 

808. Nothing To Lose

Dylan said it in another context, Like a Rolling Stone, but these lyrics fit today’s chaos…

When you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose
You’re invisible now, you’ve got no secrets to conceal                                         How does it feel, ah how does it feel?
To be on your own, with no direction home
Like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone

A country’s laws are supposed to protect the rights of the governed, but for centuries now the laws have served to protect and enrich the privileged. It’s seems similar to chess pieces in which there are two systems of law: one for the pawns who are many, undistinguished, and expendable. The other system is for the back row pieces that gain value in their proximity to the King– the landed, the knighted, and the clergy. This is not new to the U.S. or any nation. Foot soldiers are limited to straight forward marching, cannon fodder to block the other advancing cannon fodder lego men. Their only hope beyond death is to make it across the board to be promoted into royalty and real back row power. 

The back room, back row pieces can move back and forth, sideways, diagonally, and in variations of the L shape. Congressmen, Senators, diplomats, lobbyists, business titans, Cabinet members, influencers, bankers, media giants, etc. sit back and watch the pawns go out in their lanes to die or simply stall in a blockade.

Off the chess board it’s not so different. Immigrants, minorities, minimum wage earners, under-educated, uninsured, second class citizens, are tossed a hollow bone of promises and saccharine idealism, and then soundly ignored by the real power brokers. Who makes the law? Who manipulates it? Who governs? The same upper echelon for whom society is slanted, who maintain home field advantage and never switch ends or take turns to approximate fairness. Why should they when they make the rules?

Voting in a democracy is supposed to make governors answerable to the governed. However, when the power brokers manipulate voting districts, methods, primaries, funding of elections, gerrymandering, voter suppression, the electoral college veil… well, you know we don’t wind up with one person/one vote results. Two of the last three presidents lost the popular vote. Our current baboon in chief claimed massive voter fraud after winning! Imagine the claims when he loses.

So if the process of making lawmakers is as polluted as the water in Flint, Michigan, how filthy will the resulting law be? Give it an F for FLaw that becomes a pretense at justice, an insult to thinking people’s intelligence. “Fool me for 400 years, shame on you. Fool me this year, shame on me.” Desperate folks have no hope left. Rage grows ripe in hopeless soil, watered with blood and steaming streams of dead black bodies for fertilizer. Enough! It’s a torched line in the asphalt and a battle cry. When Law is a lie, all Hell and lawlessness breaks loose.

And here we are again, hearing the same platitudes served up by new lying mouths. And Langston Hughes cries out from the grave of 1951 “Harlem (What Happens to a Dream Deferred?)

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore–
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over–
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?

Well, the answer is burning in our cities this week like it did in 1968 when Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered. I was 12 years old that April 4, 1968 in the outskirts of Alexandria, Virginia. It was near evening as I recall. I was collecting for the month of March on my paper route, The Washington Evening Star. As I walked across one customer’s lawn to knock on the next door, I heard a cheer go up. I was confused. What’s to cheer about that vociferously? It’s a Thursday evening. I was greeted by some redneck in a wife beater tee shirt who was drinking a PBR and just about dancing with joy. “They finally killed that nigger!” he blurted out exuberantly, like the Redskins had won the Super Bowl.

I was stunned and felt dirty at this display of racist pornography. This was wrong on so many levels– the slur, the celebration of murder, the unbridled racism. I don’t recall if it was that vile white trash cretin or the next one who gave me a happy PBR influenced tip. It might as well have been an STD. I wanted nothing but to go home and make sense of this madness. That night the country’s heavy load of constipated ordnance exploded. It wasn’t a raisin in the sun;  it was projectile vomiting racism in the merciless sun of an immoral desert… leading to spontaneous combustion. Mr. Law and Order, Tricky Crook Nixon, the other president who resigned rather than be impeached, ordered out the National Guard to surround the Capitol as a firestorm engulfed 14th Street.  The next day and the next week I could see the black smoke funnel from over ten miles away. And what wise lessons did I learn from this hellish summer? First you form a committee to look into allegations of police and political misconduct. Then you ask for open public comments. Later you disband the committee and thank everyone for their sincere comments. Then you practice intentional amnesia. Wait for the next news cycle to sweep this one under the tug of the River Lethe….

Also known as the Ameles potamos (river of unmindfulness), the Lethe flowed around the cave of Hypnos and through the Underworld where all those who drank from it experienced complete forgetfulness. … In Classical Greek, the word lethe (λήθη) literally means “oblivion”, “forgetfulness”, or “concealment”.

And here we are again. I’m reminded of Billy Joel’s “River of Dreams” song…

In the middle of the night
I go walking in my sleep
Through the valley of fear
To a river so deep
I’ve been searching for something
Taken out of my soul
Something I’d never lose
Something somebody stole

“Bartender, another round of that green absinthe. And a double for my orange headed, baboonish friend.”

807. Truckin’ On

A lot can happen in a week, and a lot did happen this past week; more than my teensy brain can process. Last Sunday morning I was sitting in this same position with the sunlight pouring in through our open front door, over the white oak floorboards, across our napping dog, and finally onto my bare feet. It felt good, a promissory note or a hopeful kiss for a rich harvest later on. Yeah, all that at the speed of a sundial.

My wife woke up with determination, “I think we should sell our house. I just felt a peace with this decision come over me as I slept last night.”

“Well, okay then”, I replied as if she had just told me to burn the ships that had brought us to the land of Troy. ‘We are not going back, retreating, or staying. We are truckin’ on. Damn the torpedoes; full steam ahead.’ (I know I am mixing historical allusions. But unless this is your first Burrito sampling, you are not surprised.) This was a decisive attitude that would be followed soon by other decisions/cut throughs/surgical scalpel plunges. To be followed by irreversible actions. Once you cut a rug literally, you can’t sew it back together. Once you burn your ship, sell you house, shatter the glass… well, you get it.

By noon last Sunday we had shared our need for clarity with our Sunday School class via Zoom. We were hoping for affirmation if not strong confirmation. By 1:00 p.m. my Arizona daughter called unexpectedly. She put our grand daughter on to chat us up. This was not the typical pattern. Usually my daughter Grace has to corral the kids and coach them to talk with us on Facetime or the phone. Finally Leah cut to the chase, “Mommy has a baby in her tummy.” We both were caught up in the brief shock. We thought that pro-generative ship had sailed and child bearing was over for her. Well, we were joyfully wrong in our assumption.

Gravity temporarily relented. I did a happy dance with arm pumps in the kitchen while my wife smiled and laughed into the phone. Here was our sign, the confirmation, the impetus to truck on out west. I’d been longing to go there for years. I interviewed for a job in Tucson about five years ago. It was disappointing all around– the licensure was tough; the pay was less; the cost of living more. The woman who interviewed me said, “Finish out in Pennsylvania and then move out here once you’re retired.” Sadly, after I returned home, I painted my office walls with mural images of Tucson’s mountains and deserts. If I could not be there, I could bring vestiges of the Sonoran Desert here in vibrant paints and thick palettes of drywall compound.

Four years ago Grace uprooted her family so that her husband could fulfill a long time dream of his– to be an airline pilot. In such an ironic twist they came to live with us for ten months and then moved a mere one hour drive northward. Stu became a pilot. Grace worked remotely for three years. Last Memorial Day they moved back to their old house. My lizard longing for endless sunshine followed them like the morning sun’s promise revisited me in paragraph one above.

The pilot life worked out as Stu flew his various routes and lived in various hotels over the last few years. And of course, lately the airlines have floundered. He was flying four and five people at a time. Finally he took the offer to furlough indefinitely, which sort of locks him in to Tucson for a predictable length of time. Slowly the swampy ground my wife and I stood upon began to firm up. She decided to retire. I agreed and we began the thousand piece jigsaw puzzle task of trying to close up life on the east coast and get to Arizona in one sane piece.

Strangely, the COVID pandemic accelerated our timetable for relocating. I started virtual counseling and she moved to virtual occupational therapy. I sit at our dining room table while she does screen time in her sewing room… and we have come to realize that we don’t need to commute to offices that are not needed. “You know, you could do this from Tucson, right? Then you could sell your office building and be out of the landlord business even sooner.” I thought about the proposition… any resistance I had melted away. “Yeah, let’s do it”, I replied.

Suddenly the gears and sprockets in our minds began turning at excited rates of speed. “We have a lot of work to do. Clean, discard, pack, sell the house. Move. Oh, find a place out there that suits us. Disconnect and close up here. Open and connect out there.”

“We’ll have a yard sale, or two. Then donate the stuff  that does not sell. Habitat, Goodwill, Salvation Army, the Animal Shelter Thrift Store…. So much to do!!”

“But what a perfect time to be doing it. While this virus has paralyzed so many, taking away their livelihoods, their social connections, their sense of security, here we are ready to truck on out for an adventure!”

“Yeah, that’s gonna complicate our plans since no one can come in our house to see it. And I don’t want to stay at hotels or use public restrooms. Or fly. Humph! How are we going to get there safely?”

“I don’t know. What I do know is that we have flourished in life so far with God’s blessings upon us. We’ll see how we made it after we arrive and have solved all these small problems. How did we make it this far in life? We’re like moles feeling our way around the tunnels we dig with lively whiskers. The way behind us is a clear path that was once compacted dirt, Mrs. Mole.”

“Yeah, I have no idea what you just said, but I’m not a rodent.”

“But if you were, I’d be blindly in love with you, digging you wherever you went.”

“Holy Moley!”

“Exactly.”

806. Willful Ignorance

Not to know. Pure ignorance is the absence of knowledge. It’s nobody’s fault that a baby does not know what it has not learned yet. But when folks don’t want to know, i.e., they have the capacity to know but choose not to know… well that is willful ignorance.  I’ve written about this phenomenon before. Choice is the difference between simple ignorance and willful ignorance. If someone says legitimately, “I don’t know how to make fudge”, that’s a genuine excuse, that when presented with a simple recipe goes away immediately. On the other hand, if you present the same recipe to someone who says, “I don’t know how to make fudge and I don’t want to learn how. Leave me alone”, well, that is an entirely different kettle of fish altogether.

Imagine a house infested with termites and carpenter ants, mice in the walls, rats in the garage. Okay, our Congress. Those who occupy the crumbling institution practice the “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil, smell no evil, taste no evil, touch no evil” method of problem non-solving. When you inquire what their plan is to achieve the lofty goals they expound on the campaign trail, they sing, “You put the lime in the coconut, drink’m both up”. In reality they don’t look, don’t smell, don’t taste, don’t listen, etc. so that they don’t have to speak and self incriminate. When asked a yes/no question as is the practice in courts of law, they spin long elusive stories that wind away from the definitive question. Never ever give a straight answer that could be used in a campaign ad against you later. When pressed by a pesky reporter who has not sold his soul for money yet, the congressman or senator exclaims, “We have passed a bill to put air fresheners under every desk in Congress and put a drain hole in the Capitol ceiling to vent the stench.” Term limits. Oversight. Reform. Integrity… all soothing notes played on a harp behind heavy curtains by Harpo Marx.

In the last few years our country has seen a vacuum in leadership and moral modeling by elected officials of both major parties. There are no heroes in Congress. Like that old sad Pete Seeger song from the sixties goes, “Where have all the flowers gone?” By the final verse we see the horrible reductive outcome of flowers to young girls to young men to soldiers to graveyards to flowers once again. The question posed over and over again is this, “When will they ever learn?” Human beings become fertilizer for flowers of promise that never bear fruit. In the end we wind up with tearful eulogies and more promises to never forget, never repeat the sins of racism, bigotry, injustice, blah blah blah.

Problems of systemic inequality are not new. Structural poverty is built in to the fabric of America. The minimum wage was always set at the level of nearly drowning; and even then many ultra conservatives grew hysterical that businesses would go bankrupt with such minimal survival models, while simultaneously pressing down any social assistance as freeloading. The beauty of this sort of non-thinking is, you guessed it, willful ignorance. By focusing only on one side of the ledger, and then generalizing theories based on incomplete information, privileged folks around the globe have managed to justify their superior economic position. Rather than reforming an unjust system, the willfully ignorant cite exceptions to the overwhelming numbers that scream “Racism, Injustice, Economic Slavery”. Instead, racists utter fallacious statements as self evident proofs: minorities are over represented in prisons because they are lazy, evil, stupid, fill in the blank with your favorite accusation, criminals.

It’s so easy to do. Blame the victims. Maintain the stereotypes that have been propagated for centuries to justify continued exploitation. Currently we have a mafia operation in charge of our declining nation. This is what happens when you confiscate the law; when you tribalize political winners and losers as friends versus enemies; when you rig the system to continue built in inequity that favors the favored.

There was a time not so long ago when unity would break out from domestic arguments when our country was attacked by an outside force. September 11, 2001 was such a date. For a short period of time the country rallied around a minimally competent president and the flag. I’m not sure that our divided country would respond in a similar manner now, nineteen years later. In fact, it has been demonstrated over and over again that blatant Russian interference in domestic U.S. politics has occurred. But willful ignorance prevails like crickets on a summer night.

“I didn’t see anything. Do you see anything?”
“Mitch, you hear anything?”

“Ahhm sorry, I had my hearing aid turned to tone deaf again. Whudya say?”

“Devin?”

“Nah, nothing there but a nothing burger.”

“Sweaty Jim?”

“I’m so torqued up, I’d pin anyone or anything that moved.”

“Mr. McCarthy? No?”

“Goetzy? You’d drool it out if you saw something, right?”

“Yes, I am so embedded in the President’s posterior that I can’t see a thing.”

“Doug, the auctioneer filibuster of bluster, did you smell anything?”

“I grew up on a hog farm, boys. It all smells right to me.”

“Lindsey, Lindsey, look up. Your good friend John McCain’s ghost is calling.”

“Ahh saawhhh nuthin’, damnitall. If sumthin’s wrong, wipe it on Obama’s coat tails. That’s what we’ve always done in the past and it works good.”

That’s why they are known as the Seven Moral Dwarfs. They know fully well what they are ignoring. However, when they arrive at their final destination, level 9, section 4, in Dante’s Inferno– treachery, they will have to look at their miscreant ways while frozen silently in a lake of ice.

The Fourth Round of the Ninth Circle is called Judecca named after Judas Iscariot. The traitors against God are frozen into an immobile and distorted ice statue. There is complete silence in this round. 

After crossing Judecca comes the Centre of the Hell. People who committed the absolute sin of treachery against God are punished here. Here, Satan resides who is trapped in the frozen central zone in the Ninth Circle of Hell. Also, Lucifer, the arch-angel who betrayed God is trapped waist-deep in the ice. 

805. Freedom and Responsibility

It’s pretty basic, really: the degree of freedom you are entitled to in life is in direct proportion to the amount of responsibility you first demonstrate, i.e., freedom is earned. No responsibility, no freedom. Loads of responsibility, loads of freedom. The sweet spot is when the amount of freedom you desire lines up with the amount of responsibility you are willing to accommodate. That’s where the fun is… the privilege of driving after you pass your exam; the privilege of home ownership after you develop sound credit; the privilege of a monogamous marriage after you have defeated extra marital temptations and intra-marital battles . The reward list is as endless as the irresponsible list; they are paired opposites.

Imagine a see saw with a stable fulcrum near the middle. The fun of a see saw comes from the counterbalancing of two people who are about the same weight. Good see saws have an adjustable fulcrum notch to balance varying weights. If one side is all Free for All Willie Nillie Nelson freedom, and the other is no responsibility at all, then you have a behemoth on his butt growling about a lack of movement.

On the other hand, if you have a rotund rigid Ronnie Righteousness of Responsibility on one side, with no fun counterbalance, the see saw is just as stuck… and aint nobody having no fun.I believe the inverse of this relationship was captured in an old nursery rhyme…

Jack Sprat could eat no fat.
His wife could eat no lean.
And so between them both, you see,
They licked the platter clean
Jack ate all the lean,
Joan ate all the fat.
The bone they picked it clean,
Then gave it to the cat

The problem is that responsibility and freedom do not easily cooperate in children, especially when they are in adult bodies.

Another image of this relationship is a diving board at a community pool. Bouncing at the business end of the board to gain momentum for a double gainer is where the risk/reward happens. However, if the other end of the board is not anchored in the concrete pool apron, it will rocket forward, hitting the daring diver in the back of his thick skull. On the other hand, though, if the would be diver spends all his time inspecting the anchor bolts with a torque wrench and a magnifying glass, he will never dive. The reckless and riskless both end up dead from self inflicted wounds to the impulsive head or the calcified heart.

All or nothing at all makes a nice song lyric but a poor life motto. Since all is not attainable, you wind up with something closer to nothing at all. The false polarity feeds perfectionists’ delusions like the search for mythical El Dorado led European explorers to mountains and jungles in the New World. Lust for gold illuminated and energized the myth of a lost city of gold. They didn’t want a little gold or some gold. Nope, all or nothing at all. All freedom and no restraints, yeah, like the autobahn in Germany… except that there are rules for driving on the autobahn. Contrary to popular belief, it is not a motorized free for all.

On the other end of the spectrum is all restraints and no freedom; another all or nothing proposition. We call this situation prison. Aside from the falsely convicted, incarcerated inmates disregarded rules, laws, limits, and yes, responsibility. They might have loved their freedom but they did not guard it… like some spoiled heiress who tosses her diamond necklace onto a couch after a night on the town, and in the morning she can’t locate her favorite adornment. So sad. She did not treasure her treasure as much as the thief who stole it.

We, the responsible party, guard our treasures. Lock our cars and houses. Put valuables in locked safes. Comply with clever passwords to protect our cyber valuables.  Wear sunscreen. Dress ourselves modestly. Obey speed limits. Wear seat belts. Eat sensibly. Visit health care providers routinely. Exercise. Avoid toxins and toxic people. It’s work to ensure the security of our treasures– our kids, grand kids, pets, heirlooms, antiques, etc.  You know, like the security system at the Biltmore Estate.

Only a feckless (lacking effect, value, vigor) reckless individual would disregard security, especially national security, but I refuse to mention Trump in this post. One should not mock the indisputably mentally ill.On the other hand, voting for a mentally ill person is the criminal abdication of morality.

The difference between responding and reacting is thought. Thoughtful folks happen to also be responsible. Hmmmm, ponder that, my responders. They respond to situations rather than merely reacting. They act from a base of training and knowledge not from knee jerk reactions. Here’s an example that should illuminate the difference– You are driving on the interstate when a car up ahead swerves into the median strip at 70 mph, bounces, flips over and begins to steam and smoke. You might pull over to reactively try to help in a non professional manner, but in doing so you could make matters worse. Because unless you have been trained as an EMT or fire fighter, you are still a first reactor.

First responders don’t follow emotional urges and impulses; they follow previous training. Because they can stay in their training zone, they can be free from conflicting emotions in the moment of trauma. They wouldn’t be much good if they ranted, “Oh my God!! This is horrible! The humanity!! Why? Why?” Their cognitive driven professionalism, earned through the sacrifice of time and energy, discipline, postponed gratification, and saying no to many cheap freedoms, actually freed them from cheap, ineffective helplessness.

Therefore, my responsible bloggy wogs, keep doing the right thing for the right reasons and one fine summer day you will morph into adult blog frogs, croaking out justice and freedom all over this land.

804. Cyber Conflatriots

“So I was having this polite and civilized discussion with two conservative friends of mine on Facebook last week, you know? And it was pretty intellectual but respectful and responsible, sort of a debate/discussion about the power and responsibility of the state to exercise this stay at home order. It’s complicated. I suggested that if we err, then it should be on the side of caution. My two friends made some very valid points against the lock down. In the end we agreed to disagree and said good bye. Well, not two minutes later a now no longer close friend of mine jumped in on my feed and lambasted my debate points. His tone was hostile as he threw me in with Dems and socialists and totalitarianism. It was stunning, really, shocking to me.”

“Yeah, that’s Facebook, man. It’s a bad neighborhood to visit. Total strangers will jump you and tear at you mercilessly like a pack of rabid hyenas.”

“Oh yeah!  That’s exactly what happened next. Two or three total strangers started to curse me. So now I’m a ‘liberal POS Dem commie scumbag traitor’. It was a dog pile and I was on the bottom. I was concussed by the attack.”

“Yep, wild dogs nipping at your virtual legs and throat. And let me guess: they did not pursue the issue; they pursued your character.”

“Yes! Shamelessly. Don’t they know you can trace them?  I mean the one guy is a local businessman with two young kids. What if I drove to his house and read his words to him in person? You know, called him out on his front porch.”

“Don’t. These internet idjiots are usually armed also, turning any argument into gun control and Second Amendment rights. Castle doctrine. Citizens arrest. With Tyranny and Just Us for all.”

“Oh my goodness! You’re right… the one guy jumped on me with NRA talking points when I said you couldn’t shoot the virus. He accused me of wanting to take his gun rights away, and I’m a pussy and… it was awful!”

“Dell, look at me. Is this the face of shock? Surprise? Apallment? Agitation? Thunderstruckness?”

“No, no, no, no and no. So my experience is not unique?”

“Nope. Social media is a minefield littered with mouse traps and pits filled with sharp sticks to kill the unwary travelers.”

“But this is so depressing. What ever happened to civil discourse and shared ideas in the marketplace? I’m all for Free Speech, but their speech isn’t free; it’s trapped in debt to hate and fear and conspiracies.”

“Uh huh.”

“It’s basically a bunch of emotional ranting that gets personal in a split second.”

“True. True.”

“And this doesn’t concern or upset you?”

“Concern? Yes. Upset? No.”

“Well why not?”

“Okay, let me quote Wikipedia for a second… Ad hominem (Latin for ‘to the person’), short for argumentum ad hominem, is a term that is applied to several different types of arguments, most of which are fallacious. Typically it refers to a fallacious argumentative strategy whereby genuine discussion of the topic at hand is avoided by instead attacking the character, motive, or other attribute of the person making the argument, or persons associated with the argument, rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself. “

“That’s a mouthful, for sure. Ad hominem, huh? Going after the person instead of the argument. Precisely, Sherlock. That’s what these people do but why?”

“It’s easier. If you can’t fit the ideology on a ball cap, then it’s too complex. Your FB convo bombers could not engage in the intelligent dialogue you were having so they brought it down to  their level, street talk, vulgarity and profanity, hostility and threats.”

“Oh my God! Were you there? It was like, I don’t know, maybe recess in third grade. A bully and his sidekicks took the ball to show their power.”

“Dell, they also took the ball to disguise the fact that they weren’t good at sports. You see in sports you have to take turns and follow rules of the game, give and take, cooperate, work as a team.”

“I  never thought of that… right again, my friend. Why couldn’t I see that? Now that I’m focused, I can see the same bullies pushing kids into the pool. But the bullies never swam or played Marco Polo or any group games. They came to intimidate those of us who were having a good time to cover up their inadequacies. Oh my… this is a big insight, Burrito Man. I can’t quite take it all in.”

“Okay. We have the diagnosis but not the cure.”

“What do you mean? Can’t we just point out the fallacy of the ad hominem argument to these hyenas and then… oh, I see.  They are still hyenas and won’t get it, will they?”

“Nope.”

“But this is serious. Our country is drowning in a septic tank and we have to do something!”

“Right. And what do you propose?”

“In our day we marched for civil rights and against the war in Vietnam. And then for women’s rights and gay rights.”

“And?”

“Progress was made, a lot of progress.”

“Because of marches or because of court decisions?”

“Both. I think the marches forced action by the Supreme Court and Congress.”

“Dell, where do you think all the racists, misogynists, homophobes, xenophobes, and generic Neanderthal idiots went?”

“I don’t know. Away. Some died.”

“How many of them do you think woke up one day and said, ‘Aha, now I see the error of my ways. Slavery was bad. Women are equal. Gay rights are human rights.’?”

“I don’t know. A few.”

“Yeah, damn few. I believe most burrowed underground like a fifty year locust, and now that their queen bee locust is ripping and snorting on Twitter, it’s time for them to crawl out and devour the verdant fields before them. Trump didn’t make them; they made Trump. He just legitimized their hatred.When he showed up bigly, they re-cognized him. In other words, they already knew his words and dog whistle codes. He just put on the old records to jog their wicked dance memories. Countries in decline always throw a rooster tyrant up rather than admit their impotence.”

 

 

803. Money Bombs

I was reading about a family in Virginia that picked up what they thought was two bags of trash from a rural byway and tossed them into the bed of their truck. They continued with their Saturday afternoon routine and didn’t open the bags for hours. When they did, they found scores of blue sealed packets with U.S. post office emblems and addresses. Curiosity piqued, they opened one packet to find hundreds of fresh notes– cash, nearly a million dollars when it was all counted. Jackpot! Adrenaline rush. More money than they would earn in a lifetime… two boys watching mom and dad. Moral Jeopardy time. Who wants to play?

If you ever saw the movie No Country For Old Men, then you may recall that the main character was out hunting in the desert when he arrived after a drug deal gone bad. He finds a suitcase full of money and a bunch of dying or dead drug runners. After giving one a drink of water, he scurries away with the money. He knows where it came from and that it’s radioactively dangerous, but greed wins that moral battle. It’s EZ money… $2.4 million. What he does not know is that packed inside the suitcase is a GPS tracker that signals the demonic drug cartel hit man commissioned to retrieve this dirty, blood stained money.

The rest of the movie is a roller coaster ride from Hell. Moral choices are made. Consequences like blood flow out on the sun baked landscapes. Something like Good fights, but Evil wins. The movie is a moral gut punch, much like another drug movie, Traffic. There is no happy ending. Instead, Lady Justice limps away with a saggy blindfold and leukemia.

Back in Goochland County, Virginia, however, the finders of the million dollar jackpot were not keepers. They operated on a simple principle: “It’s not our money. Let’s give it to trusted authorities who can return it.” And that’s what they did, calling the sheriff to take custody of the fortune. What’s tricky about these decisive situations is not the moment of temptation. The family that picked up the million bucks thought it was litter. They did the right thing for the right reason in a small way. Their moral compass told them to be good stewards even if someone ahead of them on this country road had failed to be one. Do you see it?  Their code of ethics and morality were forged long before the moment of truth. The temptation merely revealed it. When the supposed litter turned out to be riches instead, their moral compass still pointed to the same direction– true north.

In the movie, Josh Brolin’s character is not out for a Sunday afternoon stroll in the desert. He’s poaching wild deer on land that is not his. So he is already off the edge of morality when he encounters temptation. Call the authorities? Not a chance. He simply continues in a pattern of faulty moral choices. “Finders keepers” is the rule of convenience for the opportunist. And he got what was coming. The money was not his and never would be; he realized that from the jump. What he did not realize was that the merciless hounds of Hell would soon be upon him.

I recall standing in line at a popular buffet with my family years ago.  As we approached the end of the line, I found a $50 bill on the floor. Back in those days I did not come across many $50 bills. I picked it up in front of my kids and wife. We all knew it did not belong to me. I asked the older gentleman in front of us if he had dropped some money. He looked a little confused as he looked at his hands and open wallet. “Yes, I’m missing a $50 bill.”

“Well, here it is”, I said as I returned it to him. He was taken aback in a good way, surprised that I would not just pocket the bill without doing any asking or drawing attention to it. He offered to reward me. I resisted and then refused.

“It’s yours. If you’d dropped a pen or your glasses, I would have returned them to you simply because they are not mine.”

He was not the Pope, but he smiled approvingly and I felt somehow satisfied that my five years in Catholic elementary school had not been wasted.  Sloppy and slippery moral compasses were re-calibrated back in those days when families actually cared about such things. In the neighborhood where I grew up there was a generally agreed upon morality upheld. So when Timmy O’Brien drove a stolen car into our next door neighbor’s living room one drunken Saturday night, everyone was aghast. Clearly he was a Hell hound if ever there were such a thing.

And when a bunch of us broke into the concession stand at the baseball field and liberated gum, candy, and sodas, we were not celebrated as revolutionary communist heroes, junior Che Guevaras. We were hunted down and punished for our crimes. Again, at the other end of my life I am so glad that I suffered consequences for my transgressions, though I certainly got away with a lot also. My buddy Clark claims I was not beaten enough as a child and my wife immediately agrees. Still, rightness somehow percolated through the mental filter floss which trapped the false half truths and situational ethics along the way.  A potable morality liquor dripped out to quench our community’s thirst for justice.

Passing along cherished values is critical to maintaining morality. We can’t embalm our childhood Mayberry or Leave It To Beaver experiences, but we can demonstrate a moral code that applies to the present. Many years ago my wife and youngest daughter were walking in the park in winter. Jessica looked down in the parking lot and found a frozen wad of cash that had obviously fallen out of some visitor’s pocket in a parking space. Thawed out at home it amounted to $400 or so.

What to do? That decision was made years before she found the money. We called the state police. They said if no one claimed it in thirty days then it was ours by default. Well, wouldn’t you know, an elderly man called them to say he’d lost a significant amount of money. The police knew he was truthful because he knew exactly how much he’d dropped.

Later on he called Jessica to offer her a reward. She resisted and then refused. He was taken aback in a good way. Finally she said he could make a donation to our church if he wished. I’ve never been prouder of her than in that moment of integrity. Her moral compass was precisely on point.

802. Gracias

Saying or giving thanks is good manners and demonstrates good breeding, but it’s a lot more than that. In saying thank you in any language the speaker/receiver is acknowledging a generous act, word, or a gift received. Acceptance is implied. There is also an acknowledgement of the giver and the intent.

Components involved in gratitude.

The giver.

The generous spirit of a giver.

The meaning ascribed by the giver to the gift and indirectly to the recipient.

The act, word, or object given freely. Or not.

The receiver.

The attitude/spirit of the receiver.

The meaning ascribed by the receiver to the gift and the giver.

I started down this path early this morning during a Zoom meeting with my peer supervision group. We haven’t met for three months due to the COVID chaos. In the interval one of our group stalwarts, a wonderful spirit named Joe Carolin, died of cancer, RIP, bringing us down to four old men on a screen.  Dave organized a check in meeting over coffee. We finished discussing our book on the intersection (sometimes home of the hit and run) of spirituality and science, which included the intersection of meaning and purpose in the cosmos versus a meaningless mechanical existence according to the immutable laws of science. Heady stuff indeed. As we worked our way out of the last chapter of John Haught’s The New Cosmic Story, things got clearer. Here’s a sample…

Science, according to Einstein, cannot work unless everything in the present and future is in principle completely predictable on the basis of what has happened in the past. Since the universe  exists by necessity rather than as an underlying generosity, moreover, there is no place for the religious idea of a responsive God–and hence for prayerful petition and gratitude.

We poked around at some of the implications involved with absolute certainty. How everything according to science is somehow inevitable or earned, limited, self evident, indisputable. By contrast the idea of gratitude falls out as I suggested above, especially the implication that there is a cosmic Giver of the life we are grateful for. If you have no giver or any sense of life being a gift, then there is no need for gratitude. And what a cosmos that would be, eh? Gifts become culturally approved transactions. Entitlement and greed run the show. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Generosity is reduced to gravity and force. Love is converted into an equation.

Ready to walk through this with me?  This may strain credulity, but as I was noodling through Facebook Messenger this morning after I had typed my post topic, I noticed a two week old message from a former student of mine, like way back there. I’m talking 25 years ago. It was a simple inquiry: had I been an English teacher?

I replied yes, and that I remembered him. He had a brother, as I recall and an aunt, maybe, whom I helped with a messy custody case later on in life. All vague stuff behind two decades worth of veils and sheer curtains. I held these memories as positive but fuzzily obscured, like a weak January sun at the Arctic Circle.

Not for long so it turned out. Later this morning a longish message came back from Mike, my former student, now 38 years old. He replied,

I was teaching chess to someone recently who asked how I learned how to play. I told them the story of when my dad died. I was pulled from your English class and when I returned you invited me to stay after school and taught me chess. You were at my dad’s service. Most people can single out people who were major influences in their lives. You influenced my life through the patience and critical thinking of chess and by caring more than you know. This conversation made me think of you, and I wanted to reach out and tell you after 25 years… thank you

What you did for that 13 year old kid meant way more than you know.

Well, I felt more grateful than two dead Grateful Dead members.

This gift of affirmation and thanks had a specific giver behind it, though it seemed to come from across the universe. His spirit was clear and pure. The message and meaning were crystalline, unmistakably genuine.

I received these words with a smile and a tear. Recognition. Validation. Late blooming purpose washed over me. Confirmation of a meaningful cosmos in which I mattered to someone else, someone who had no obligation to express his gratitude… but did.

I could not go along with just the laws of nature and science, not when human nature broke through time and space at such a perfect moment. It reminded me of a time when two other former students visited me years ago. Ja Taik had been a summer student in remedial 10th grade English. The thing was he was in 8th grade; he attended class to make sure his older sister Min Jeong passed. We bonded, I think because his dad was in Guam. He moved to Los Angeles but kept in touch.

Fifteen years later I had David as a student teacher. Like Ja Taik he had lived in L.A. and had no knowledge of his biological father. After Dave launched into his own teaching career, I had a visit from Ja Taik. He had moved to D.C. and was pursuing his masters at G.W.U. In our getting caught up conversation, he was complimentary of my c.d. of flamenco guitar music. He told me his old friend David played flamenco guitar in L.A. I said, “What a coincidence. My former student teacher was from L.A. He played flamenco guitar too.”

That’s when the laws of probability and gravity stopped working. “You mean David Perez?”

“Well, yeah, but it can’t possibly be the same guy. I mean, what are the odds?”

“He’s like 6′ 5” and has green eyes. Thin?”

“Yeah, but, but, but… I can’t believe this.”

The three of us got together for dinner the next night. As we walked down my street on that summer night, I felt like I was walking into heaven with two fine young men whose fathers never showed up, but across the universe God did in one word: 

Gracias.

 

 

801. Mental Master baiting

I know, I know– provocative title. It struck me as I was grouting some tile around my bath tub today, realizing that you reap what you sow if you follow yourself step by step. I could not complain or blame the guy before me because I was the guy who measured and set the wonky tiles a couple of days ago. I was the same guy who didn’t really seal the grout very well twenty years ago. My enemy was the construction firm of me, myself, and I. Now I’m just working with the imperfections at hand. I never expected an easy, perfect job. It’s fantasy that ignores the hard road to the good result. But we have crossed over to fantasy land in our current leaderless world.

Fantasy is the appetizer to an angry meal when you think, “Oh yeah, easy… health care for all. Gut government. Build the wall. Drain the swamp. And Lock her Up.” ‘It’s gonna be so easy cuz I’m a genius. See, I negotiate and know more than anyone ever born. I know more about the military than my generals do. Money? Easy. Mnuchin is just my bean counter stooge. Who needs intelligence when you went to the best schools?’

Whew, my sweaty red Maga hat was bleeding into my liberal leaning brain. Dang, that was close! I was ready to launch into the previous administration for all my failures, how I broke a couple of new tiles while moving them around. How I lost my gift card worth $100. It had to be a Deep State conspiracy and not my clumsiness and stupidity. I mean the guy at Lowe’s should have bubble wrapped them. Bet he was an illegal. Definitely not a smart Norwegian.

Without trying very hard at all, I found myself channeling the Donald at each step. ‘This place is a dump. Who uses chrome instead of gold? Loser.’ It was great because I could simply react, shoot from the hip with absolutely no responsibility or accountability. If anyone said a word to me, bam, “You’re fired!” …my signature move, though I was alone in the dusty bathroom. I even began to move awkwardly like Trump does, you know, the walking chaise lounge with a long red tie. He is hinged at his ample waist and brittle knees. He folds up easily too.

Some call him the Master Negotiator. Okay, it’s just him who says this, but I’d call him a Mental Master Baiter. He baits people into petty skirmishes where he gets to call them insulting nicknames and Twitter on venomously about what he projects onto them. Big, small, male, female, foreign, domestic, red, blue, orange… he gets one on his hook and keeps them there, trolling for his base of thrashing piranhas. He tosses out a Hillary lure when his own ethics are under scrutiny. Here’s a shiny silver Hillary head. Hmmmm, oh look at the waters churn with blood lust.

If his morality starts to stink more, he puts Bill Clinton on the hook with a red plastic nightcrawler. “My people never tire of that one. Uranium One, their foundation, his success with the economy. People still like him, even the Bushes. My barracudas would grow an extra row of teeth if they could. I love to chum with Bill bait.”

Grande Grandiosity seems to be Trump’s poker strategy, constant bluffing and puffing as he cheats through each hand.

“Fire the dealer. He dealt me a deuce.”

“Redeal. I don’t like my cards.”

“I won again. I love winning… even when I get sick of it, I love it. Winning is like a hot blonde. I never get tired of beautiful.”

“But, Sir, you weren’t even at the table.”

“I’m too busy on my next deal. Tell the Secret Service your complaints. I had a full house. I won. I dismantled Obamacare just in time to keep millions on the edge of health insecurity.”

“Uh, Sir, not entirely. There was that John McCain thumbs down moment. Even though he was dying of brain cancer, he had more sense than you’ll have on your smartest day of perfect health.”

“John McCain was only a hero because he was captured and I made him a hero with his fawning loser fans. My enemies should thank me for making them famous. Look at Rosie O’Donnell. I mean, don’t really look because she is an ugly hog, but I made her famous by denigrating her publicly. What a loser!”

“You have taken the presidency to unparalleled lows, Sir.”

“People love me. They have to or I’ll sue them. I’m suing Joe Scarborough. Loser. He used to kiss up to me, and then he figured if he asked nasty questions about me on his loser low rated Morning Joe show, he might grow his ratings. Nuh uh. No one puts Donnie in the corner. Hit me, I hit back harder. I learned that in third grade at recess. I organized some low life hangers on and we had a thug posse in Queens. ”

“Yes, you tweeted about his wife’s plastic surgery, I believe. Very gallant, sir. Very third grade bully.”

“Yeah, I hit women hard. I know they won’t hit back. You know, blood in their… whatevers. Powerful men like me attract powerful women.”

“Awesome coward strategy, Sir. Since I know you are incapable of listening, I am simply saying these things in an upbeat, bouncy voice. You’ll hear the happy tone and that’s all, right Sir?”

“Yes, Michael. True.”

“And it doesn’t matter what you say because you will deny it later and blame the press for trying to crucify you.”

“Oh, yeah. Look at the Access Hollywood tape. That wasn’t me. Somebody did a hit job on me. But nothing like the stuff we’re cooking up for Biden. I call it Creepy Sleepy Joe bombs. Muhammad Ali couldn’t survive the beatings I’ve taken. But here I am, President of the USA. King of the World. I love that shot. It’s real, you know. I’ll never forget when Melania gave me the gloves and trunks and said, “Flex, Donnie.”

“Sir, is there one that got away from your master baiting?”

“There blows a black whale called Obama. I’ve spent my last dozen years stalking him and trying to hook him, but the damned leviathan breaks my line. He mocked me once at a banquet, and I will not rest until I avenge that wound.”

“Sir, could it be he was just too big for you? Too clever?”

“No, never. I will have that whale. No one puts Donnie in the corner.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

800. Downsizing

That’s a big number looking back at me on the monitor. Somehow I convert it to 80% finished, though I can’t be sure that I’ll just stop posting at 1,000. I have a pattern of going all in on an activity and then stopping without any particular reason– chess, golf, watercolors, hunting, fishing… to name a few. Well, there are reasons but not insurmountable ones. I ran out of chess friendly partners. Time squeezed golf out of my schedule. I just stopped my miniature paintings when my stress load dropped. (Ya think that might have been a coping strategy to de-stress? Oh yeah.) Time again squeezed me out of shooting the wily groundhogs on Gary’s farmette, but I still get a kick out of plinking a too comfortable hog in my back yard. (Just nailed a fat one this morning over coffee.) Fishing was long ago abandoned due to a lack of time and patience, and the fact that I can’t eat fish. At least when I went deer hunting, I could eat the venison afterwards. But it all got complicated when the rewards were weighed against the costs.

I look at my current age and consider the 80% rule also. At 64, 8 tenths means I’ll max out at age 80. That’s about right according to statistics, and it’s about right for my sense of order and completion. Twenty years to go if my health continues to be as good as it has been. One thing I didn’t quit but had to stop doing was running. My back and hips could not take the pounding. Still, I miss those quiet morning runs around the farms behind my house. Two big hills– one to start and one to finish– and lots of rises and falls along the way. I walk the treadmill at four miles an hour or at the pace of our aging dog now. No complaints, mind you. I’m glad I can walk a few miles still.

An older gentleman came to see me years ago with high anxiety about turning 65. He woke up at 5:00 a.m. in a panic, wondering if this was his last day on earth. It was his last year of employment since he was retiring to be more available for his chronically ill wife. It was the end of many things he cherished.

“What will you do?”

“Maybe write a history book, you know. I have lots of material and ideas.”

“Well, that’s a big  project. What else will you do when you’re not writing?”

“My wife will need me until…”

“Until she dies.”

“Yeah, then. We built our house with retirement in mind. It’s handicap accessible, all on one floor… but it’s not going to be enough. Her illness is shutting down her ability to breathe. She can’t talk any longer, just a few guttural noises and hand gestures. It doesn’t seem fair. We saved and planned for a comfortable retirement, but it looks like we’ll spend a majority of it on nursing assistance at home until she passes.”

“So your focus over the last two years has been on the inescapable losses, huh?”

“Yes. And it makes me mad. Even our little church is dying. Everyone is my age or older. We can’t afford to attract a pastor, and we’re literally looking at closing the church and selling off the property.”

“So wherever you look, you see a diminishing return?”

“Yeah, and I don’t like it.”

“What do you still enjoy?”

“My golf foursome. We play every Thursday and we go to the movies two or three times a month.”

“That’s great. You have long standing relationships with these guys?”

“Oh yeah. We know each other’s stories and jokes. We’ll go for lunch together too after 18 holes. Good guys.”

“Sounds like a rich social scene. How’s your golf game?”

“Well I can’t hit it 250 yards like I used to…”

“Wait, when did you hit the ball that far?”

“When I was 25. I was a pretty good athlete, very competitive in any sport.”

“But you’re 65 now. So you are comparing yourself to yourself 40 years ago.”

“Yeah, I know, it’s absurd.”

“You can’t win that comparison. How do you do compared to your golf buddies?”

“Good. I’m usually the best ball. I still hit it straight just not as far.”

“Well there you go.”

“There? Where am I going?”

“Toward the reality of here and now, Willard. When you compare yourself to your 25 year old self, you enter a fantasy world that no longer exists.”

“But I want it to exist. I want to be able to turn a double play, and ski, and run.”

“Sure, and we’d all like to buy gasoline for 19 cents a gallon. Remember those days?”

“I sure do. A dollar went a long way back in those days.”

“But we don’t live there anymore, Willard. Here’s what I think: when you listen to these siren songs of long ago when you were strong and fast and virile, you don’t like what you see in the mirror. All you see is what you’ve lost.”

“That’s right.”

“But what’s still there is as good as any man’s present situation.”

“Okay, that’s true. I see what you mean.”

“I wonder if looking into that void of what is no longer accessible is what stirs up the panic in your soul each morning.”

“Could be. I’m not afraid to die. I’m pretty secure in my faith.”

“Are you afraid to live in the stripped down version of life that lies ahead of you? Not that there is a choice when it comes to your body, but you do have a choice where your mind will focus.”

“I see where you are going. If I focus on what remains with my wife, my work, my health, church, strength, and so on, I’ll be looking at the candlelight and not the darkness. Is that it?”

“I think you just turned a cognitive double play, Willard.”

“I feel good, coach. I think I’m gonna go home and take a nap.”

“Good effort.”