Openly Discussing

WHEN I WAS IN SIXTH GRADE,1966-1967, I adored my teacher, a twenty six year old lady who was married to a navy seal away on active duty, had a son of her own in first grade, and was well liked by all, students and teachers alike. Within the past year or two she passed away at an old age, which saddens me, while rekindling my love and admiration of her. She was among my first true role models, morally and intellectually, and inspired within me and others a love of learning. I think, however, that she made a mistake, an important one. She advised us to never, ever, ever discuss religion or politics, with anyone, at any time. I questioned this admonition then, and I question it now. Why tell us to avoid talking about what to me were then and still are the two most interesting and relevant topics of all? Why foribd, for some fearful potential result, the most important matters from public discussion and discourse? How and why are those two areas of human endeavor lumped into a single category, as if they have anything directly to do with each other?. Religion, maybe. Its a private matter, ultimately, even though we tend to soialize it highly merely by gathering together in large social groups of like minded people when we engage in it through worship. But politics? In a functioning democracy, it is, it seems to me, of the utmost importance that citizens engage in discussions about public affairs, matters of political concern for everyone.. The public forum, wherein we the people exchange thoughts and ideas about matters relevant and important to everyone, is a necessary and vital market place of ideas and ideals for all good, concerned citizens. The reason for the prohibition is obvious; the avoidance of conversational dispute based acrimony. Acrimony, however, is in a democracy an unavoidable certainty, assuming the certainty of different citizens having differing views on matters of vital public concern. No two topics are as fraught with undertones of divisiveness, laden with undercurrrents of potential conflict, than the twin towers of politics and religion. The solution resides in a determination by all involved to refrain from harshness of tone or speech, to avoid all name callling or insulting; in essence, to remain "civil". Easier said than done, perhaps, but absolutely necessary. America has always been a divided country, in one way or another, but has remained united by ideals, ideals articulated by our uniquely wise founders. Modern American society, especially in our modern era of unfettered social media, is a boiling cauldron of conflicting controversial points of view. The bubbling of the boiling point has now become a perpetual roiling, erupting volcano of sundry opinions. Only those who wish to exclude themselves from the cacophony remain outside the perpetual explosion of sentiment. When somebody tells me that they don't vote because their vote doesn't matter, I respond by saying that if one hundred million people vote, their vote consists of one hundred millionth of society's decisions. It should neither be more or less. It matters. The fact that all votes cast are but drops in a grand ocean of societal self governance makes each vote cast more, not less important. Would the individual voter prefer to live on an island, unto herself, discussing issues alone, possessing all power, power over nothing but herself? Let the public forum be wide open and chaotic, let it include everyone, and let us have a spirited, energetic conversation, especially about, of course, religion and politics.

Failing To Watch Trump's Speech

I COULDN'T WATCH Trump's speech. I honestly thought I could, but I was wrong. I had the flatscreen all fired up, ready to go,but just couldn't pull the tirgger. I can't even remember which network I chose. It didn't matter, because the appearance of Trump's orange face and hair on my relatively small forty three inch TV was to me instantly unbearable. My living room is small, so even a small TV seems to loom large, over there in the corner, wedged between a fake fireplace and a window on the sill on which sits a beautiful, healthy, very real fern, which I lovingly water each day while it grows far beyond the intended limits of the pot it sits in - soon, it will need replanting, to a larger pot, and I might have to solicit help from my neighbors or call the local fire department to achieve this huge objective. But...The orange hair, now rapidly greying, is famous, or infamous, and by now we should all, myself ncluded, have long gotten over the plastic look of it. Does or does not our chief executive reprobate wear a hairpiece? Do I care? Should I? Does anyone, other than he, his ridiculous caricature self? Is it my imagination, or is his face really orange also? Like millions of real Americans,I can barely stand the sight of tha mass of putrid orange excrement. But its hard if not impossible to get around the fact that the great reporbate still governs America; Mmorons Are Governing America. The central of the speech is that the American elections are rigged, except when he wins them. As always, the villains are the Chinese, and the company which manufactures voting machines. Nothing new there. Nothing new anywhere. Nothing about the American people, how to help them, plans for a better, brighter American future..nothing. A screed full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. American elections, local, state, and national, are in fact a model of integrity, honesty, fairness, and accountability. Every vote cast by every letigimate voter is counted and recounted, with witnesses, more than once. Illegally cast ballots are vanishingly rare, rarer than would be predicted by any statistical analysis conducted by any Department of Mathematics and Statistics at any major university in America or in the world. That has not always been the case.There is strong evidence that the presidential election of 1960, the closest in history, was decided by a bit of bllot box xtuffing in the city of Al Capone, by his municipal lordship, the notorioius machine boss, the Hon. Mayor Richard Daley the first, but not the last. The Daley mob boss of the windy city machine may indeed have handed the election to the young charismatic JFK, over the somber, sullen, sweating Richard Milhouse Nixon. Maybe. We still don't know, and at this point likely never will. Its just too complicated to figure out. But for damned sure the election of 2020 was not stolen from Trump, the election of 2024, which Trump supposedly won, was not corrupted, and the forthcoming election of 2026 will likewise be fair, free, and so forth. Funny, how elections are only corrupted and stolen with rigged "Smart-O-Matic" voting machines when Trump loses. Since nearly everyone in the U.S. of cultural and political Anarchy votes on paper ballots, the consistent integrity of American national elections is easy to verify. But it matters not. As long as there are mentally ill narcissitic petty tyrants like Donald J.Trump at the top of the chaotic political heap, there will be chaos and uncertainty in our sacred electoral process. You can bank on it, because sowing chaos and uncertainty in the political process is precisely what petty fascist dictator wannabes do.

Waiting For Trump To Speak

AS THE MUCH ANTICIPATED moment for Der Fuhrer, Herr Trump, to blather to the nation approached, his sycophants pretended to await in enraptured eager anticipation for words of patriotic inspiration, while in fact secretly, nervously hoping and praying that their iconic idiot wouldn't do anything to embarass them, or himself, or the Republican semi-fascist party of America. After all, he might pull a Joe Biden, and lapse into dementia ridden incoherence, or stammer and mutter purely bland cliches and patriotic,shining city on the hilltop tripe, Ronald Reagan style, or, heaven and disposables forbid, flll his diapers with shit and wretch at his own stench. In our era of Artificial Intelligence and organic idiocy, all possibilities remained on the table.I recall after a particularly senility inundated Ronald Reagen speech, my mother remarked that she was embarrassed for our president,The Gipper.I had that same sense of foreboding as the clock ticked towards Donnie's screeching, self serving screed. I just knew, and most Americans probably knew, that Don the Con would have little or nothing to say about the actual state of the nation, the various situations and conditions it is in, wars, inflation, and all. Nothing to say about our glorious future in which America's best days still lay ahead and not behind, but that he would only try to indulge in self glorification, about how he has already made America great again, and how he intends to go about his usual businees of making it greater still, barely more than one year into his second and final, lord willing, term in office. Would he have the decency and decorum to mention that during the recent past few days one influential Republican Senator had died, and another lay in a comotose state, near death, his political cereer over? You have to believe that if nothing else, he would have the decency to wish them a speedy and full recovery, aside from the evident fact that its much too late for that. As one might suspect, I know a lot of anti-Trump anti-MAGA Americans; they comprise most of my circle of friends. To a person they intend to boycott the speech, preferring some other banal television diversion. They insist that they can get more out of reruns of "The Kardashians" or "The Nature Channel" than from anything that our moronic head of state could possibly utter and offer. And, to a certain extent, I agree, I can see their point. My point is this: H.L. Mencken's admonition of a hundred years ago has come to pass. Under the currrent system, he asserted, the day will come when a complete idiot will be elevated to the American presidency. That day has come. H.L. Mencken, our modern American Nostradamus. Since he said this in the middle of the Harding or Coolidge administration, we must be careful about giving Mencken too much credit for his predictive prowess. It is much easier to forcast the political rise of an idiot when a political idiot has already risen. What I notice in all my perspicacity is that all of our modern presidential idiots arise from the conservative end of the political spectrum, from within the Republican party, the party of Lincoln, who by now has doubtless turned over in his grave more often than the Earth has rotated on its axis. Yet another reason for watching Trump's speeches is Machiavellian: know thy enemy. Donald Trump is, it is to be hoped, the last of a dying breed, conservative Republican morons who seek and rise to the presidency. With luck,Trump's speech will be the last ever given by an American moron in the White House, and we can all get back to the Kardashians. Tragically, you can't count on it.

Staying Mad Forever

A HIGH SCHOOL CLASSMATE of mine, a very perceptive lady with whom I became close friends long after we gradatued, is now deceased, but will remain enshrined in my memory forever, or as long as I live. Her humor and wisdom educated and inspired me. Among her most percipient remarks was: "When a woman gets mad at you, she stays mad forever."I readily agreed with that astute observation, and added a corollary. When a human being, male or female, gets mad at you, he or she remains mad forever. What actually happens, most likely, is that people have memories, good ones. Conssciously or not, our brains are like tape recorders,and we pretty much remember everything that happens to do, everything that we do and experience. There is no reason to believe that any behavior fundamental to human existence is reserved exclusively to either gender. For instance,men are as capable of changing their minds, of being "fickle", as women.I have what seems to me en extraordianry memory, Until quite recently I could have told you the name and seating location within the classroom of every student in my first grade class. Now, however, my memory is fading with age, but is still geed enough. Whenever I make a stupid mistake,or treat someone with less than acceptable behavior, which I hope is not often, I seriously hope that he or she will forget or has already forgotten about the incident. Likely they have not. Since people are not always the best at forgiving, memory loss can be a good expedient to maintaining friendships, The old cliche about first impressions has merit. We never havea second chance to make one. Memory, hard at work. Our selective memories give us the comfort of filtering out the worst mamories, and preserving those which do not distress us. Over time, events which frighten, horrify, or distress us when they occur are smoothed out by our filtering device, our past becomes less the traumatic scenario it once was, and our previous lives, up to and including yesterday, became somewhat tolerable, less regrettable. More than ffty years after I graduated from high school, my memories of school, all twelve years of my public education, have taken on a warm, fuzzy feeling, But when I dig deeper, the warm fuzziness blurs into a composite of fear, apprehension, worry, about assignments due, bullies lurking, grades about to be given or already given, the whole business of hidng report cards from parents. I only started needing to hide mine late in high school, when the classes became so boring for me that I stopped paying attention, preferring to day dream about girls, science fiction books, or baseball. The older we get, the more memories we accumlulate, and the more important our filtering and editing mechanism becomes, serving us well. Most of us in old age can and do look back on our long lives with a positive attitude, including even warmly remembering the hard times, and our resolution of them, whatever it may have been. When we stay mad at somebody long enough, we might as well drop the anger and simply decide that we do not like the person we're mad at, which is waht we tend to do. Or, we do the math. We total up the pros and cons of the person and their treatment of us, and turn our total into our lasting attitude. We must do something with our anger, process it somehow, lest it eats at us and psychologically damages us. The best solution comes from people like Jesus, who tells us to wipe the slate clean, to forgive everybody for everything, without reservation. If only human nature worked like that.

Devolving Democracy

H.L. Mencken,in 1920,said that under the current American political system,the possibiity exists, indeed it is probable, that the time will come when we the American people elevate a complete idiot to the presidency. It didn't take long for his prediction to be fulfilled. In fact, it can be argued that we elected three in a row for the price of one; Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover, all Republicans, three men of distinctly mediocre capabilities in a post war era in which the American people wanted only to forget the horror of their relatively brief participation in the "war to end all wars", and to get down to the more important business of partying their tails off, partly in defiance of the government tyrany of probition of alcohol. The nation was founded upon the niave presumption that only men of the highest quality would be chosen as leaders. By the tiem James Buchanon took office in 1857, that false belief was out the window. The ancient Romans and Greeks both invented and tried democracy, and both times its inherent inefficiencies and corruptability devolved into dictatorships. It was too easy and too tempting to let Julius Caesar take care of everything, as he proclaimed himself tribue and consul and imperitor for life, all the offices and powers of state intact, but bundled, like a group of sticks tied together, like a "fasci" into one entity. Most people seem to think that Benito Mussolini invented fascism, but it was another, far earlier Italian,the great Caesar himself, who deserves the credit. The great war hero general marched his aremy, illegally, into the city, and took over. Amid the sloppy chaos of democracy, with thousands of voices competing to drown each other out,it is easy to see the appeal of slick, stremlined, efficient government by a single ruling oligarch. Of the three forms of government, by the many, by the few, and by the one, as leadership narrows and devolves into the hands of fewer and fewer human voices, efficiency increases. True democracy requires too much effort on the part of we the people. It is evident that a high percentage of the American people, perhaps as much as one third, would willigly cede all power to Herr Trump, thus cutting out all the middle men, those troublesome members of Congress, the irksone anti-Trump judiciary, the unfettered media, and a few other villainous democratic trouble makers. A sizeable percentage of the American people are obviously tired of the odious, burdensome apparatus of self government. Desptite a recent spike in voter turnout, historcally, less than half of eligible voters have bothered to vote. As Gore Vidal said, they are smart enough to know that their vote is meaningless in a pseudo democracy. Solutions such as mail in voting, computer voting, automatic voter registration for eighteen year olds offer hope, but are repeatedly squashed by the oligarchs within. We often forget or ignore the fact that, ensconced within our American democratic republic, are serious undemocratic forces, well funded ones. Why would the wealthy elite want to live in a country where the unwashed masses had the power to vote the money out of their powerful, plutocratic hands? They don't, and they don't have to, and they know it. Plutocrats control the media, and have succeeded since the founding in convincing the ninety eight percent to vote against their own interests, for plutocrats to govern them. In every society which ever existed, the oppressed masses have had the power to revolt and take control. LIke the Eagles sang: "So often times it happens, that we live our lives in chains, and we never even know we have the key."

Serving

MY SISTER, a retired military and civil service veteran, was recently summoned to jury duty, an obligation to which she willingly responded. The duty didn't last long; a plea bargain was reached, and the trial never happened. She did, however, have a chance to meet her felllow dismisssed jurors,and to thus make a few new friends. She puts me to shame. Several years ago I was also so summoned, and when I opened the envelope I regarded the impending experience with a mixture of apprehension, dread, and eager anticipation. I would learn something, and contribute to the jurisprudence community as a good citizen. Alas, it was not to be.My duty was not scheduled to begin for several weeks. I laid the summons on my cluttered desk, where over the days and weeks it somehow got lost in the shuffle. The trial came and went,I assume, some sort of resolution was obtained, and the matter went into the files of the local county clerk, or wherever. When several months later I inevitably came across the summons again, I nearly fainted with fright and guilt. The proceeding, I reckoned, must have gone on without me. I can't claim to be a model citizen, gung o to jump into any form of community or national service, but neither am I a shirker of duty. When I was eighteen I went straight to college, as I would have anyway, glad to have avoided serving in the Viet Nam War as a non college bound draftee. I saw that "police action" as a scam, and still do, another of the many American adventures in naked imperialist aggression. LBJ's gift to the military industrial complex. LBJ, the outwardly tough and strong inwaredly insecure people pleaser. He told the Joint Chiefs; "boys, if yuns want a great big ole war, I'll sure as shootin' give yuns one". In 1981 sis and I had an argument. I claimed that the United States lost the Viet Nam War, she insisted that "we", the United States, had won it. I meekly mentioned that she should take notice of precisely who had been governing South Viet Nam since 1975, and still was, and seemed disinclined to go anywhere. As I recall, she made no response. Military service would had been anathema for me when I was draft elegible at eighteen, and I considered myself fortunate, and still do, that I got a draft card with a number above three hundred. My friends and I used our draft cards as identification to get into twenty one age limit bars between the ages of eighteen and twenty one. Kids of that generation did ths same, all across America's fruited plain. I swear to goodness and to the flag for which we stand that I would willingly report for military service now, at my tender age of seventy one. Easy to say, huh? Still and all, maybe not such a bad idea. Gather together America's retired masses, folks with basic good health, and form them into and elite corps of the elderly. Why not? I can still run, albeit not at my peak prime sub eight mile pace. But I can do a mile in well under fourteen minutes, and that is the current requirement, isn't it? If we're going to kill off our own people in wars, why not kill those who have at least had a chance to live? On the other hand, old folks in peak physical shape are not exactly a dime a doszen, here in the land of donuts and cappuccino. The point, obviously, is to serve. I still occassionally wash dishes at my local senior center, and I did so for four hours a day, five days a week, sans pay, for several years. I got my lunch for free. Anyone can serve community and humanity at any age, by being good in day care, doing well in school, and by working and paying taxes. I'm thinking about volunteering for jury duty. My duty to my country now consists in being a good old man.

Surviving, Somehow

MY FATHER, who art in heaven since 1986, was born in 1918, and graduated high school at the tender age of sixteen, having skipped two grades, the fourth and the tenth, an arrangement agreed upon by the school system and my grandparents. He was a sixteen year old college student, and flunked out his first semester of college, preferring to play keyboard in a jazz band to studying. He matured and recoverd with a B.A, in Latin, which was then the prerequisite for law school. He graduated law schhol as a tort laywer at twenty two. My grandfather, his best friend, welcomed his only son into his family law firm in 1945, after my dad did a four year hitch in the World War Two navy, a stint as a Lt. Jr. Grade. He served as a navel aviator after learning to fly at the big naval base at Coco solo at the Panama Canal. One bright and sunny caribbean day he was training another pilot, a fellow teenager, cruising languidly at a few hundred feet, when a German U Boat, one of many harassing up and down the U.S. East Coast, surfaced and shot a hole in dad's Steerman biplane wing. The copilot trainee wanted to attack the U Boat with a twenty two caliber automatic pop gun rifle on each wing. Dad said holl no no way, and a cockpit wrestling match ensued, which my father won. The copliot got a scratch on his face in the brawl, put in for and received a Purple Heart for sustaining a wound in combat, amazingly...The family law firm had one and only one client among the fake diversionary ones; the Kansas City mafia. Grand dad and dad got a hefty retainer for getting the made men out of hot water when they broke knee caps, extorted people, ran illegal gambling rackets, and eliminated people. While all that was going on I was being invited to finish high school early in the family tradition, but I didn't want to, and both parents said no hell no, leave him alone. Let him enjoy social maturation among high school buddies, and avoid mental difficulties stemming from being in college way too young. My grandparents and my mother blamed early graduation and the war for my father's post war depression and alcoholism. I met some of dad's mafia clients by accident, and liked them. They and their children liked me too. Summers, my father, to get me out of the way and away from his unscrupulous law practice clients, put me on a plane every year, made all the necessary arrangements, and let me follow my beloved New York Yankees all over the United States and back home in New York for several weeks each summer, my textbooks in tow. I had to prove once a week that I was studying. I still get Christmas cards from the mob kids, all of whom say they did or still are pursuing legitimate careers. I don't ask questions. I might be afraid of the answers. I loved college so much that I refused to quit going to it, and ended up with a doctorate in history, and a career teaching, high school and college, which I loved dearly. I still sneak off to attend as many Yankees games as possible, when my cats allow it, and have done so all my adult life. I'll never completely lose touch with the mafia kids. We were too close and have too much in common. My high school classmates still number among my best buddies. I attend all the reunions, glad that I didn't abandon them early. I have no regrets about my life, but huge ones about my father's, who should have been a musician. which his parents would not allow, rather than a tort lawyer inundated with stress. Of course, how would that have helped him avoid a drinking problem? To a certain extent, you're screwed no matter which way you go. I'm just glad that I have nearly made it through life in one piece, and if the Yankees win one more World Series before I die, I'll die happy.

Building the Great Green Wall

THE GREAT WALL of China, visible from outer space, is listed as one of the great wonders of the ancient world, and the modern world as well. This, despite General George S. Patton's admonition that fixed fortifications are monuments to the stupidity of man. Monuments to that are a dime a dozen, like monuments to Christpher Wren in London. Now, the ever innovative Chinese are taking innovation a step further. They are in the process of planting a "Great Green Wall of China" to parallel and border the brick and mortar one. It is estimated that for this purpose approximately sixty six billion trees are being and will be planted. Whether they are saplings, seedlings, or transplanted mature trees remains unconformed; possibly some of all the above. The Chinese were achieving greatness when Europe was a primitive backwater mud puddle, thatched huts and tiny filthy towns. Desite communism's best efforts to stifle creative, innovative engenuity, China is still hard at it, a proud dragon, her inventive people untamed and unbowed. Often mentioned on this website is that scientists estimate that the planet harbored roughly seven trillion trees at the dawn of recorded human history, but that human "civilization" has, in the name of "progress', reduced that number by more than half, and counting. Ten billion trees each year are bing harvested for wood, paper, and agriculture. Most famously, the Amazon rain forest of Brazil, which used to be called "jungle", is vanishing at the rate of hundreds of acres of harvested trees daily. for humanity, the United States of Avarice, to conquer its long standing addiction to Grade A sirloin beef steak would greatly help in solving the problem. It would at least be a healthy start. Instead of chopping down forests to use the land for growing feed grain and grazing cattle, why not serve the grain to people? Cut out the "mmiddle man", so to speak. A diet of grain, fruits, and vegetables is the healthiet, we know. Also, nuts and berries, the "gorilla" diet. Reverse the deforestaion curse. Stop extracting the lungs of the Earth from the body of the living planet, Gaia. Give all plants and animals a chance to first exist, then, to thrive. The only thing at stake, the only thing we have to lose, is the Earth's ecosystem, and all life on Earth, including our decidedly unnecessary, demonstrably self destructive, indisputably vain and shortsighted selves, yours truly, home sapien sapiens. An ancient Hindu scripture says "Man is a creature who lives by faith, and whatsoever is the faith, also is the man." We must first have faith, if unsubstantied by empirical fact, that we the human species is a blessing rather than a curse to Gaia, worthy of our prsence here. And that we can become a blessing rather than a curse on Earth. We must prove Goethe right when he said: "Noble be man, compassionate and good." But we cannot possbly do that by injecting thirty billion tons of industrial waste product carbon dioxide into the atmosphere annually, with the total nearly one trillion atmospheric metric tons. Among all the sounding alrams of our impending self destructive doom there are hopeful signs. Our awareness of our plight and that of the planet which perhaps reluctantly owns us, despite climate change deniers and corporate, cultural material greed, is growing fast. The Great Green Wall is not only a very tangible step forward towards planetary and human renewel,it symbolizes our determination to endure, survive, and proceed in our evolution toward a higher form of life. That we have long way to go reminds us that we have come far, and can and must go farther still.

Counting Trees

I'VE LOST COUNT of the number of trees in my one third acre yard in a tiny town in the American south. My best guess is that, including saplings and volunteers, it totals about sixty. My yard is well shaded, even during the height of summer, when sun hits the bright red shingles of my house only around early afternoon for an hour or two.I can endure most summer days in comfort without using the air conditioning. My love of and interest in my tres and all trees is evidenced by the dozens of essays I have wirtten and published about them. I am happiest when waking or jogging along a wooded trail. I other essays I reported that at the dqwn of neolithic civilization, it is estimated that there were seven trillion trees on Earth, adn that now the number is less than half that, about three trillion. My reversed mortgaged house will devolve to coporate ownerhsi when I die, and I've got to believe that the next owner-occupant will see a need to remove some of them,feeling a bit hemmed in by a forest. I won't e around to see it,but if people rally roll over in their graves with post mortem disapproval of the living, I'll be rolling. When I bought a barren third of an acre and put of a ranch style house, then planted saplings all over god's green one third acre, my mother, a gardenre but a practical woman, predicted that I would rue the day when I made the fateful choice to forestate my homestead. I could see her point and still can, but she was wrong. No regrets here, inundation of autumn leaves notwithstanding.I bag up many of the leaves, and include thm in th outgoing garbage. what remains I mow over, composting the soil. The forty foot oas and maples which sorround my house and leave it in perpetual shade is cool, dark comfort in summer's blistering heat, and in winter, the leafless trees offer no obstruction to the winter sun coming in through large windows from low in the south, the direction my house faces. My heart lepaed with joy when I saw on Facebook that China is in the procees of planting sixty six billion treest, I believe mostly along its northenr border, bordering the Great Wall, which never kept out anybody but give s feelig of comfort to the ancient kingdom. Wouldn't it be wonderful it humanity could restore the four trillion missing trees, and thrive with them on a planet with eight or nine billion humans, and millions of other species of flora and fauna? With efficiency, there is no telling how many people could populate the world. Maybe ten or twenty billion, although some estimates are that the most the planet can handle is about nine billion. Rest assured that whatever estimates and numbers science generates tdoay will be augmented and corrected by ever self improving science soon enough, and this is a good thing. What good would any science be if it didn't get upgraded constantly? Let's leave the rigid, unbending dogma to religion, which still has a place, somewhere, within human society and within the human mind. We sipmly don't knwo how many people we want or need in the world. Not too many, and not too few, let's say, and "leave" it at that. Trees are another matter. for trees, its themore the merrier. If most of the Earth's land eare is heavily forested where nature intends it to be, while animals of many sorts frolc healthily among them and people build cities in and around them without destroying them, a beautiful balance will have been reached. Balance, it appears, is the key to natural health and harmony. The keys to human health and harmony remain largely a mystery, but for starters, let's assume that it has something to do with an absence of human destruction, and an abundance of harmmonious human habitiat, among the beloved trees.

Living Life Well

I REMEMBER ONCE, about fifty years ago when I was twenty years old, saying and believing that I would like to meet everyone in the world. All four billion people. During the same conversation I mentioned a few names of folks of whom I was especially fond. As I talked, my list lengthened. "Hell, you like everybody" my friend piped up. He had a point. I had been a shy kid, but nice, and friendly, had grown popular, and was well supplied with friends, neighbors, whifffle sand lot baseball buds, classmates. I was very popular in high school, smart, if a bit geeky, the class clown. By the time I reached tent hgrade my shyness was gone, evaporated in the hallways of a high school filled of peers. I was out of my shell. I stayed out of it, and my fify years as an adult have been gregarious ones.Usually, I speak to stranges psssing in the street. I start conversations. I often wonder whether I am being too aggressively friendly, too forward, but such musing dost not change my behavior, which is dug in deep. One my my closest lifelig freinds says that he can understand people becoming occasionally annoyed with me, but that he cannot understand anyone not liking me. Thatflatters me. My older sister, my only sibling, says that I a the smartest, nicest man she has ever known, including, evidently, her husband, but I think she adores me and is is biased. Like almost everyone, my youthful exuberances have mellowed somewhat with age. My philos has gradually, with elife's experiences accumalting, soured a bit into misanthropy, or something like that. Now I always think and talk about how I don't like people, but those closest to me think, or know, that I am lying. I make friends with people, and I wear a derby on my head, as others do, to quote Brtolt Brecht. I tell myself to maintain a positive attitude, and generally I do .My old love of humanity never totally died, it merely got submerged in layers of living. I want to die old, amd I will. Equally, I want to die with a certain nobility of soul, as I like to say, and a positive attitude about a life for the most part well lived. God and other people are free to form their own opinions. What matters most to me is mine.

Going Ahead

DAVID (Davy he pfeferred beind called "David" Crockett said:Be always sure you're right, the go ahead." That was his motto. Among other suggestions for a killer motto include: "Expect nothing, blame nobody, do something." And then perhaps: "Forgive instantly, and never hold a grudge". That last one is mine, thank you. Having preferences, even and especially among people, is inevitable, natural, unavoidable. Becoming angry, and staying angry forever, at anybody you otherwise like and consider a friend, at any time for anything, is pure posion, whose only real victim is the angry one. When we forgive others for perceived transgressions we relieve ourselves of a heavy emotional burden. Isn't it better to simply decide that you are not particularly fond of a particular certain person than to cling to a personal esteem that no longer exists, while holding that person accountable for meeting or not meeting your expectations of his or her behavior, including their treatment of you? We do not need, are not obligated to justify our dislike or lack of esteem for anybody by fabricating and enumerating justifications for it. Having personal peferences in anything, including people, is norml and acceptable. We are entirely responsible for our thoughts and actions. Nobody ever makes us angry. No force external to ourselves influences our thoughts and actions without our allowing it. Our permission is required. No matter what treatment we receive from others, our reaction to it is entirely an internal affair. As Gautama Siddharta says in The Dhammapada: "Mind foreruns all conditions. Mind is chief. Of mind are we made." We often say "He made me mad". NO, he did not. You allowed yourself to became angry, you made that decision. Blaming others for our thoughts and actions is nothing other than giving your power over ourselves away to other people, to the world. It is tossing our freedom out the window, and why, for heaven's sake, would anyone wish to throw away freedom? Heaven and government only knows that our freedoms are limited enough already, by the society in which we live, by its laws and customs. And this is how it should be. All good citizens should and must be cognizant of the fact that our freedoms are relative, not absolute. We do not want absolute freedom even when we delude ourselves into thinking that we do. We are horrified at the thought of a group of hunans, whether a band of paleolithic nomads or a modern city of ten million people, in which everyone has absolute freedom. Humans have never really found the proper, most evolutionarily successful level of balance between personal freeodm and limitations of personal freedom. Our rather recent invention of "democracy" complicates matters by making citizens at large sovereign. It has been suggested by more than one astute observer of human behavior that the best, most effective form of government is a benevolent dictatorship. The enlightned despot, or king. But until an enlightened entity like Joshua ben Joseph, aka Jesus comes to take charge, which would probably be satisfactory to us all, we demonstrably less than perfect little primates are left as always to our own devices, engaged in a seemingly endless struggle to find and implement the most perfect form of self governance. We choose democracy, the most inefficient, awkward, and chaotic form of all. We live with our choices, our choices being freedom and total responsibility for ourselves.

Agreeing With Trump, Amazingly

TRUMP'S PLAN (I think its Trump's plan) to start a one thousand dollar savings account for every American baby born soon and everafter is one instance in which I wholeheartedly approve and agree with Trump. What a wonderful idea, and Democrat rather than Republican sounding to boot. One might even wish this had started much sooner, say, in 1955, the year of my birth. Since something like forty thousand births occur daily in these United States of Amorous, the math indicates an expense of forty million dollars daily to the American people, our much strained national treasury, and our out of contril national debt, now north of a mere thirty two tril. Forty million federal dollars a day to start kids off prosperously. The greatest risk? What's to prevent greedy ole mom and dad, other than the law, from raiding little Suzie or Johnnie's piggy bank while said infant slumbers in a federally subsidized crib? Lock the money up in a bank or wherever ma and pa can't get at it, one might suppose. Penalize parental pilfering preciously, perhaps. Like all ostensibly good ideas, there would seem to be a few bugs to work out. Don't conservatives, like Trump, usually object strenuously and vigorously to precisely this sort of government intervention in people's financial lives? If some feel good liberal Democrat dared concoct such a mandatory transfer scheme, you'd expect Trump and the MAGA mob to rise up in outraged righteous indignation, no? Doesn't one expect this blatant pandering to the very young potential Republican future voters and their panhandling parents to meet with harsh, vociverous resistance in the congressional Republican caucus, which is not known for its generosity towards anybody not wearing a uniform and dropping bombs on some poor unfortunate foreign enemy of the month country? We'll soon see whether Congress turns Trump down flat. If they don't, look for hell to freeze over.

Getting Complicated

I AM CERTAIN that many old people have the problem I have; being old, and living in a complex world. I got my first computer in the science fiction year of 2000, a gift from my generous mother, and I was, to say the least, overwhelmed. It had...what...8 ggiabytes of memory? That's primitive by today's standards, isn't it? Now I have only a laptop, and it works fine, except when I for some reason don't have an internet conncetion, for instance, when its raining. That the year two thousand has now receded far into the remote past means that the year in which we are living is even more science fictiony. Nobody has ever successfully predicted the future, even Nostradamus. I never would have thought that I would be a young seventy one years old with the opportunity to carry a telephone in my blue jeans pocket. Almost certainly America's founders, all men of status, edcuation, wealth, dignity, and whatever matters, would have predicted anything anywhere close to where we stand today as a nation. Where we stand is in a strange place in which the presdient of the United State is a demonstrable reprobate, an adjudicated rapist and thirty four time convicted felon. This description is not slander or intended as insult. As Casey Stengal used to say: "You could look it up." We had the corruption of the Grant administration. We had it again with the Harding administration. We had Nixon. My mother, who was a nurse and not a historian, once told me that she assumed that every president in American history had had at least one mistress, and probably many more. My father was a laywer, an alcoholic and a womanizer, so my mother get a good education about men when she married one. The thre men in her life all abandoned her. Her father died in his early fifties, her husband ruined their marriage with alcohol and women, and then came me. Why do I think I belong in that sordid category? Really, I don't. I have hardly ever had a girlfriend, since romantic relationships seem complicated and stressful to me, as they involve getting close to a human being instead of a dog or cat. I never maried, although I still might since I am only 71 years old, but probably won't at this point, since I seem to be, as my mothe said, "smart". Yes, to my mother remaining single is (was, she's dead now) a sign of high intelligence. I tend to agree. Dogs and cats make excellent children, are far cheaper than human ones, and, on the whole, much better behaved. I have no regrets at having avoided marriage and my own children, although I confess I sometimes, oftenwodner what my children would have been like, gender, intelligence, pesonality, and such. More peole seem to be saying that if they were to do it all over again, they might not have children. A baby being born today seems destined and doomed to encounter the worst effects of climate change, which is aleady cascading down upon us, but has barely but begun. Ask the French about climate change. The heat wave currenly engulfing Europe is worse than our American variety. Europe, it is now becoming evident, is being hit harder, faster and quicker by global warming than any other continent, even though both polar ice caps are melting, fast. The French, like Europeans generally, don't go in for air conditioning, but may at this point be reconsidering. If I had had kids they would now probably be middle aged, and would by now perhaps given me grandchlidren. Almost all of my high school classmates have grand children now, and are ostensibly glad of it. Who wouldn't be? Grandparents and grand children are a match mad in heaven. Spaced apart by an in between generation, they pose no threat to each other, unlike children and parents. Children replace parents, the friciotn that oftn ensues between them is predicated upon this fact: people don't want to grow old, die, and be replace, no mater how much we pretend that we don't mind. Neither do we want to die, but since we currently have no other choice, we try our best to take the high road and maintain a good attitude about it. For millenia the world changed little from one generation to another. Then, around rolled the year fifteen hundred, and the Reformation, the rise of nation states and capitalism, and soon thereafter the scientic revolution and Protestant Reformation. Europeans began hitting the oceans to explore the rest of the world. Little wonder that Western Civilization classes in college are divided into early and modern. Western Civ I starts with the ancient Egyptians, and takes you up to fifteen hundred. WC II starts where WCI left off, and takes you as close to today as the professor can get. Interesting though WC! is, WCI! is exponentially more interesting; more people, more change, more everything. History is nothing but change over time among people, or,as one historian put it, "one damned thing after another". If yuo like history, you have more of it the more modern you become. For examination taking, modern history is inherently more difficult, with more folks and facts, but more interesting, which is the most important aspect of history; that is interests people. It is impossible to imagine how complicated and interesting the history of the rest of the twenty first century will be to students in the early twenty second century and beyond. It has to level off at some point, doesn't it? Since the human population must either level off or decline at some point in the fairly near future, presumably, so will the complexity of human society, culture, and events. That is, of course, if we solve the problems of climate change, environmental collapse, high tech mass war, and all the rest. Its anyone's guess whether we will, whether we will cause our own extinction, or our progression to a higher, more evolved lifeform. All we can do is try our best, and hope for the best.

Torturing Pets For The Fourth

IN THE TINY TOWN deep in the heart of the former confederacy where I live in usually quiet, peaceful retirement, The 4th of July fireworks display is entirely over the top. There is no civic, public fireworks display, one isn't needed. Private backyard shoot offs occur in what seems to be every, or every other private residential back or front yard. It is the one day per year when the conservative Christians deem it appropriate to torture their own pets, as well as every other dog and cat in town.I loved fireworks as a kid, I hate them with a bloody passion as an older adult. A single, big public display, maybe at your local minor league ballpark I can handle. Our local minor league team does it after every Friday night home game, and it must be very expensive, but impressive.I'm down with that. I got no sleep last night, as the booming went on until near midnight, then mercifully ceased as my benighted neighbors started wondering where their money went, and whether it was worth it. It wasn't, and they know it, but will likely pretend that it was. My indoor cat, who is fourteen, showed no signs of distress. Perhaps her lifetime of experiencing human folly, mine and other's, has educated her to the inevitable human craziness. For me, merely knowing that fireworks terrify animals, cause cows to stop giving milk, frighten birds into dropping out of trees, abandoning their nests and fledglings and taking flight, is more than enough reason to cease and desist with the explosions. Not so for most, it seems,in me me now now America, the land where, under the pseudo sacred banner of "freedom", we go about the business of making life miserable for anybody who dares get in our way. I wadded up pieces of toilet paper and stuffed one in each ear. No good. The war zone came through in fine fettle. My two outdoor cats vanished during the Revolutionay War neighborhood reenactment, but probably would have anyway, in deference to their instinctive noctural hunting compulsions. When they showed back up a couple of hours after midnight,I was so grateful and relieved as to be tempted to forgive my masochistic neighbors, but not quite enough to actually do it. I read the stats on the number of human fingers, thumbs, and toes severed from bodies every Independence Day. It runs into the thousands,but is evidently not too high a price to pay for a few hours of battlefield noise.We are a nation of permanently mained and wounded Independenxe Day survivors. No actual military battle in humam history ever lasted as long as a typical fireworks night in the land of excess nonsense. This annual human, pet, and animal torture and carnage festival is more than sufficient reason to bring to an end our annual celebration of exploxives and death. We are, however, as a violent culutre, quite willing to pay the high price we pay, and probably a much higher one, for our few hours of annual devastation and cacophany. When I was ten or eleven my father, as he did every year, bought my sister and me a whole bunch of fireworks, and we went to a public park to shoot them off. I mindlessly threw a firecracker into a dry grassy area, and stared a wildfire. We threw a gallon of lemonade on it, but it was not ehough. The fire laughed at us,and kept spreading. We ran to the nearest house, and the occupant kindly called the fire department, which came soon and put out the fire. My father, a lawyer, suggested that we might go to jail. We didn't, but I never felt the same way about fireworks again.

Modeling Doom

YOU CAN'T WALK OUTSIDE on a hot summer afternoon, feel the heat, walk back inside, and proclaim for all the world to hear that climate change is a reality, and that you just proved it. It just doesn't work that way. Maybe the temperature would still be one hundred degrees or more if homo sapien sapiens had never injected a single ounce of industrial carbon into the atmosphere. You can't manufacture another Earth out of thin air, an identical Earth inhabited only by pre industrial people, and compare the two duplicate worlds, ours and theirs, in terms of atmoshperic composition, heat retention, and climate change. But you can use computer simulations, construct models, and make those exact comparisons, in cyber space, if not rock solid reality. That is what climate scientists, and probably many other kinds of scientists have done, often enough to convince themselves that climate change cuased by human activity and not mother nature is indeed a proven, stark reality. They haven't convinced all of us lay folks, and many are beyond convincing, aka conservatives, but the scientific community is united, dead set certain that human made climate change is here, and getting more extreme, fast. In the nineteen sixties and seventies, where I live, we had a run of several years in which the weather for the Fourth of July was picture perfect for the holiday. Clear, sunny, puffy cumulus clouds, soft breeze but no wind, perfect for throwing firecrackers at each other and having good, rousing bottle rocket fights. I liked to insert a firecacker into the spaces between strips of bark on a large tree, and set it off. It never fazed the forty foot tall forty foot canopy deciduous tree with a trunk eight feet around, but it was fun trying. I like to think that I knew in advance that no harm would come to the tree. I remember being in Minnesota in August, 1966, when the temperature was one hundred degrees. I was eleven years old, and confused and surprised by the heat being so hot so far up north. I was in Minneapolis one year in the nineteen sixties the day or two after Independence Day, and I was somewhat surprised that for several days after the holiday, you could still hear fireworks exploding all over the city, slowed down a bit, but not stopped. I loved firewroks when I was a kid. Now as an old man, I despise them with a passion beyond expression, mostly because they injure people and terrify animals. My last bottle rocket fight eventuated when I was 22, old enough to know better,so, I hung in there as a kid as a young adult. In that last botttle rocket fight,I took one just above my left eye. It made a circular indented scar the shape of a bottle rocket butt in my left eyebrow, which I can still see. I'm lucky I can still see out of that eye. The formerly usually warm sunny days of Independence Day have morphed into usually blistering hot days of climate change. Anybody my age or a decade or two older or younger knows damned good and well that the "climate", which means long term weather patterns, has changed. Its that obvious. It used to snow where I live, but no more. October used to be a cold month. Now its a summer month. Spring used to begin at the very end of March, not late February. We oldsters don't need computer models to know that climate change is real. We have lived it, and still are. Progressive oldsters know that humans are causing it, because we believe in science. Old conservatives pretend that it would be happening anyway. I can think of no way to prove them wrong, of proving a negative. Climate scientists, all of them, know that we are causing climate change. They are preaching to the choir, so to speak, because thsoe who refuse to see reality beasuse it contradicts their political beliefs are not going to change their politics, or their attendant comfortable illusions, no matter how many computer models or hot summer days in March you show them.