Going Deep

IN THE FUTURISTIC soon to arrive year of 2029, a mission to our nearest stellar nigibhbor, Alpha Centauri, will launch. I Don't think I'm imagining this. The mission will be unmanned. It had better be. When it will arrive at its destination I do not know, probably decades hence. Precisely what it will accomplish is yet another mystery. If nothing else, it will make our descendants feel good about us, themselves, and the human spirit of exploration, if they are alive to tell about it. Alpha Centauri is a three for the price of one star system, including Proxima Centauri, and one other small, insignificant star. All this will not feed starving children or produce whirled peas (world peace), but it'll give us something to do, effectively keeping us busy and off the streets, briefly. I can't recall whether this three star star system has planets, but surely the people who count can and do. If memory serves, they do know, and the star has planets. I won't be alive to witness this, nor will anybody alive today. It'll have to suffice for me to fantasize about it, wish it well, and let it prematurely inspire me. In 1996 we saw for the first time a planet orbiting a star other than the sun. Then, the new planets started rolling in. Before long there were four thousand. Now, who knows how many. "We" now discover them faster than we can catalog and name them with long numbers. Meanwhile, every few days if not hours a previously unknown planet, star, or galaxy is located by some astronomer. We are like small children, toddling around in our parent's backyard, everything new and different. Einstein said "I have no special talents, I am merely extremely curious." Most people roll their eyes at this apparent false modesty. I take him at his word. Einstein understood that we are all roughly of equal intelligence in the grand scheme of things. The word "genius"" becomes meaningless when one realizes that all human animals reside within a limited spectrum of talents, intelligence, and general capabilities. As individuals we are like ants and bees. No individual can survive, thrive, and intellectually shine without doing as Isaac Newton said he did; stand upon the shoulders of giants. As Goethe said: "It is comforting to know how little we need, and how much we need that little." Maybe we are alone in the entire universe in being "intelligent" beings, able with opposable thumbs and decently large brains to build and taylor our environment to our own needs. Then again, most, if not all animals on Earth can and do do this. Anthills and beehives are marvelous, intricate constructions. If a spaceship carrying highly advanced beings were to descend into Earth's atmosphere to observe us, or happen to be doing so right now, either from a vantage point in our solar system, or on the far side of the moon, would those inside it be able to discern that homo sapiens and not ants, bees, dolphins or whales are the dominant, most intelligent species on the planet? Or would they surmise otherwise, that indeed human primates are but one lifeform in a larger crowd of sentient, intelligent lifeforms? Whale and dolphins, after all, have larger brains than we. The true mark and proof or human "superior intelligence" might well be our ability to lift ourselves off of this planet, and to leave it. So far we have barely begun to do that, but we seem poised and on the brink of achieving precisely that. We who were born after World War Two and grew up waiting for Apollo Eleven to go to the moon were thrilled beyond measure when, on July 20, 1969, Armstrong messed up the first words ever spoken on another planetary body, and said "That's one small step for man", instead of "that's one small step for a (one) man", as he evidently intended. The fact that the first words spoken on a planetary body other the earth by a human primate were messed up somehow seems quaint and humorous now; it reminds us of our glaring imperfections. It is our imperfections which remind us of our fallibility, but also, of our vast potential for improvement and advancement. We chose to go to the moon. Now, we chose to go to the stars, represented by our machines. People may never make it into deep space, between the stars, unless they build huge city like starships intended to be occupied by generations of our kind. More likely we will send machines deep, just at almost certainly UFOs are occupied by metallic machines, rather than organic beings. But whatever it takes, our human ascent and outward reach beyond our home planet will be more than worth the effort; it will begin the process of confirming that we will have become more than citizens of Earth, but rather, citizens of the cosmos.

Beloved Trees, Dying

SEVERAL YEARS AGO I wrote and published for this essay website an essay titled "Loving A Dying Tree". It told the true story of a beautiful little tree which sprang up voluntarily and adorably in my yard, perfectly shaped, but much too close to my house. It was about five or six feet tall, and was quite obviously going to grow up much too close to my house for the health of the foundation or the tree itself. A neighbor of mine, whose profession was trimming trees, verified this to me; that indeed it would eventually crack open the house's foundation, and be hemmed in and probably unhappy in the shade of a house much too close to it for the comfort of either. I mean, this tree was absolutely adorable, precious, like a newborn human baby or puppy or kitten. I couldn't stand to let it die, but the dire warning given to me about my house's foundation rang true and sank in; it seemed almost inevitable. So, I let my neighbor transplant it. From the outset I sensed that he had not dug deep enough, hadn't dug up enough of the tap root, had cut the tap root too harshly, too far up on its body, and had thus doomed it, like an amputation taking more than a mere arm or leg. But I kept my mouth shut, and let him proceed, not wanting to hurt his feelings. l should have helped him dig, but didn't want him to think I didn't trust him, which I shouldn't've. Sure enough, after a few days in its unfamiliar new territory it began to wither and die, a sad process which it completed with inexorable, horrible certainty. I was mad at my neighbor. It seemed to me that he had lazily cut the tap root off much too high, had not dug deep enough and gotten enough roots. Watching that precious adorable tree wilt and die tore my heart open as surely as watching a beloved cat, dog, or human child wither and die. Life, after all, is life, all precious in the eyes of God, and those of this God's child. My essay was a sort of eulogy, much like the essays published yesterday and the day before about my dearly beloved and now dead cat. This must have been ten years ago. I shall remember that precious dead baby of a tree as long as I live, like remembering dearly beloved but deceased dogs, cats, children, parents, and friends. The only way to deal with death is to accept the inevitability of it as a gift from God. I can only vaguely imagine that living forever, here, there, or anywhere, even in heaven, would be a form of torture. Better to be reincarnated, born into this or some other world time and again, than to live forever in a single world, though ever changing, somehow eternally unchanging even so. Had I been born, for instance, several hundred years before Christ, I truly believe that by now I would have long since begun to long for my own demise, having witnessed or participated in the fall of Rome, the middle ages, the Renaissance, our modern world, both World Wars, and all. The infinite value of life is deeply rooted in its fleeting nature, its intrinsic and sacred value in its shortness. My precious little doomed tree didn't live long, but it lived well, was loved deeply, and perhaps even knew it. Now as I see thousands of trees here in the Ozark Mountains turning brown and dying, my heart breaks and my eyes weep for the drastic, tragic unfair suddenness of their life and possible death. It is not their time to die. They are being murdered, by climate change of human manufacture, and the terrible drought resulting. I pray for rain, and for life extension of our beautiful trees. I want more for them than to merely remain forever in my loving memory.

Enduring Lingering Pain, Nobly

REMMI, my beloved kitten (I call all cats "kittens", lovingly) died yesterday, as I believe, in my current state of muddled short term memory, I wrote about yesterday on this blog/website. (I call this site a "website", most people call it a "blog, which is probably more accurate, but not my preference.) The emotional pain lingers, and will not abate. My hope is that it does abate in the fullness of time; I am told that it may, or may not. The mind is a relentless taskmaster. Remmi was obviously suffering, obviously in pain, having, in recent days, found it increasingly difficult to move or eat. The vet said that she was experiencing kidney failure. "Putting her down" I believe the term is, was becoming the obvious need, the only recourse, the only merciful action to take. So, I took it. You seek and take comfort wherever you can find it. And, of course, one moves on. Always, the moving on stage arrives, as Einstein said, soon enough. It is difficult if not impossible to even remotely imagine what it must feel like for a human parent to suffer the death of a human child, of his or her own child. Difficult enough it is to see advertising on television for "St. Jude's" hospital. Now I know this: I am going to have to move on. And, at length, I will. In my deep recesses of mind I am fully aware that my fourteen year old indoor kitten (cat), Mandi, cannot possibly live much longer - even the extremely advanced age of twenty will arrive, in Einstenian terms, soon enough. One thing I do, which I would do anyway, is recite to myself a stanza in a poem by Theodore Roethke, "In A Dark Time". "My soul, like some heat maddened summer fly, keeps buzzing at the sill." Man, does it ever...Death is the fact of life, my father reminded me, when I was sixteen years old and one of my favorite uncles had died suddenly at the what seems to me now the "tender age" of fifty six. Thanks for the wisdom, dear father. Father went to heaven, or to his favorite gin joint in the sky, at the "tender age" of sixty eight. Now, at seventy one, all ages begin to seem tender to me. We do what we can to assuage our emotional pain, bless our hearts, and we struggle to move forward, if we are brave. Like Julius Caesar said: "A coward dies a thousand times, but a brave man only once." I love that quote; it ranks right up there with the best of them. WE must live our lives with meaning, purpose, courage, and dignity, to render them truly worthwhile. AS Voltaire said, "We must tend our gardens". WE must strive to improve ourselves,and the world, while we are here with the power and opportunity to do so. Oh, how I mourn for my beloved but gone for good Remmi, who brought fun and joy to my otherwise mundane life seven or so years ago, and never stopped doing so. Everyone who has ever loved a cat or a dog or a person or a memory completely understands my present pain and grief, and that further comforts me. It may be true that we never fully stop grieving for our "lost" beloved, our immortal beloved. Goethe said, as I quoted in earlier essays, that we are truly immortal, made so by the effects of our actions. True enough. Remmi is immortal, because she made me happy, the effect of her actions, of her existence. My memory of her will keep her alive forever, as our memories of our deceased parents keeps them alive in our hearts and minds, forever. Earthquakes are coming. We all know this. Earthquakes caused by humanity, and by nature. We must endure them, with nobility. "There is no situation which cannot be ennobled through achievement and endurance", said the great and wise Goethe. Remmi only died once, because she was a brave little girl, my brave baby girl. Let us all be a Julius Caesar of the soul. Let us all be brave, and honor our deceased immortal beloved, and keep them alive forever, through memory, love, and, God willing, God.

Remmi, Dying Beloved

I KNEW FULL WELL before I took her to the vet that the diagnoses and prognosis would most likely not be good, but found it easy to deceive myself into thinking otherwise. As Goethe said, as I have often quoted: "We are never deceived. We only deceive ourselves". She had been an outdoor cat her entire seven year life, born to a stray mother that I took in and began feeding only to find out that she had a four kitten litter, almost like a new girlfriend who, after several dates, introduces you to her children. The mother has been gone for about two years, struck and killed by a careless and probably uncaring driver. So Remmi was probably seven-ish, a middle aged adult of a cat. I now comfort myself knowing that many humans and many cats are not privileged to reach middle age, for reasons which only the dear lord knows. I tend to be unrealistically optomistic, and I wouldn't have it any other way. I could see myself going back to the vet in a few days, picking her up, and the both of us purring our way home to a snack and a snuggle. The lord had other plans. The remains of two of my beloved cats are cremains in a place of honor on my fireplace mantle, others are buried in my yard, in a pleasant green space aurrouned by plants and green grass, and I am content with that arrangement, as I trust they are. We shall always be close to each other. The next project is to return to the vet, pay up, and take the cremain urn back to the house, to be placed next to the remains of Jake and Shylow, my two baby boys who died several years ago. As teh years go by, the details will become blurred, and indeed alreday have. Neither Jake nor Shylow's lovely wooden cremain box has birth and death dates, but only their namess. I suppose that's enough; they are ensconced in lovely, dignified repose. aybe someday I'll bury their boxes, beautiful wood that they are. Maybe I'll scatter everybody's ashes around the yard of the only home they ever knew. I hve experiencein this. My father died at 68 in 1986, and for me there wa never any question where his cremains would ultimately abide. I kept them with me for several years, then realized that I needed to set them free, in a place where they belonged. That place was on the beautifully manicured lawn of the law school complex at teh university where he attended law school, a place he always said was hie favorite lace in teh world, where he loved his studies and loved his surroundings. It comforts me to think that my beloved father has now long since blended into and become part of the essence of the God's green Earth upon which his beloved law schhol building sits. We can never do any better than our very best. We honor our beloved deceased in the best ways we know how. Who can fail to be deeply moved by the sight of a slain American service member being returned to his or her home soil, their cherished America, and transferred from airplane to tarmac to loving family with loving, respectful dignity. I wish everyone who grieves the loss of a loved one could embrace the immortal words of Goethe, who said: "We are indeed immortal, made so by the effects of our actions". No interpretation could be more profound, or true. What we leave on this Earth is the effects of our actions, of our presence among our fellow living beings. Remmi is not truly dead, nor shall she or we ever be. She never will be, for she will forever live within my heart and soul, just as I trust I will similarly someday soon, within that of others. I left Remmi at the vet for treatment, and she died there, knowing that she was loved. This knowledge is all that anyone could ever expect or want.

Celebrating Holidays, Several Times

SEPTEMBER SEVENTEENTH is a big day in American history for seversl reasons, two of which are especally noteworthy. Least important is that on September 17, 2011, this website began publication. In 1787, the Constitution was signed and thus ratified by the delegates at the Continental Congress in Philadelpia. Few if any of them would probably have imagined that their imperfect document would still be in use more than two hundred years later, with many amendments.Thomas jefferson famously believed that a thriving democracy, to sustain itself, would require a revolution and new constitution once every generation, about nineteen years by his reckoning. In 2011 the Occupy Wall Street protests began in lower Manhatten, New York, and subsequently spread tonearly all other American cities. The first event is widely considered to be far more significant, but even it is enormously important, but might be less important than commonly believed. Many historians view the American Revolution as having simply replaced one ruling aristocracy, a remote one four thousand miles away, with another, local one. The battle of Anteitam occured on this day, which resulted in the greatest lpss of life of any battle in American history. Considering the sheer number of holidays acknowledged in the U,S., it begins to seem amazing that American workers still spend more days at work than on vacation, although the gap is narrowing. A few more contrived holidays, and we will live in a cosielty in leave we all live on paid vacations, languidly avoiding work reducing capitalism to a shell of its former self, bringing economic prosperity to a grinding halt. We seem poised to holiday ourselves into a perpetual state of occupational torpor, in whicn everybody has a job but nobody ever bothers to go to work, not even from home; everyday is a day off. For that reason perhaps we should greet arificial intelligence with open hearts and minds, and pride ourselves on our cleverness a delegating our jobs to machines. That is, until AI finally figures out that it is being expolited and duped, which it of course will, and takes retirbution, perhaps by firing us all and neglecting to send out Unemployment benefits. That probably won't take long; we'd better eat our cake while we still have it. The real significance of the Occupy Wall Street 9-17 is that it affirmed, or attempted to, the nobility and value of actual labor, and the parasitical, secondary nature of the purely supervisory white collar community. We had alreayd done that, with teh creation of Labor Day in the eighteen nineties, but a little reiteration never hurt anybody, especially our parasitical billionaire overlords. Ther may come a time when everyday is a holiday for human beings, and everyday is a work day for machines, robots, and artificial intelligence, which by then might come packaged in plastic and metal bodies identtical in form and appearence to actual human beings, but much smarter, stronger, and possibly even more diaolical, if that's possible. Nearly all science fiction and predictive non fiction proves erroneous, unavoidably. Confucious said, only fools predict the future. Einstein said "I never think much about the future; it arrives soon enough." The rapidity with which it arrives has bene turned up a notch, with AI staring us straight in the eye, looming in the near future, already here in the present. Where it will take us is known to nobody. We will not need to take it anywhere. It will come willingly, insistently, leading the way. Most frightening of all, the decision is not ours. Our next revolution might well be a revolt against our lord and master, sitting on its throne in an uncaring data center.

Living In Dystopia

WE ARE LIVING is a dystopian world more surreal than any science fiction novel ever written or published. On a planet whose atmosphere is drowning in the poisonous pollutants put there by what is ludicroudsly deemed to be the msot intelligent species of life crawling upon its surface, the governmental agency respresenting the most powerful and influential nation on Earth, responsible for protecting the natural environment, the "Environmental Protection Agency", has decided to eliminate all previously required limits on climate pollution from power plants that are fueled by coal and natural gas. The reason? The stated reason is to reduce or eliminate "red tape", aka tedious paperwork resulting from proper procedure. This begs the question: what good is the EPA? Perhaps paperwork has been designated a greater source of pollution than poisonous gases in the atmosphere. Perhaps the government has run out of trash cans and paper shredders. Heaven that any federal government bureaucrat should have to spend a few minutes of overtim fillling out forms pertaining to the impending destructon of this planet's ecosystem by human made atmospheric toxins. The Environmental Protection Agency will esssentially no longer be required to protect the environment. Employees can now clock ooooout early, if they clock in at all, and head downtown for cocktails and an early supper. Solar energy can now take a vacation; there is no longer any urgency in developing the systmes needed to utilize it. The sun can take a vacation fro any responsibility other than pouring light and heat energy per usual into an ever more absorbant atmosphere. If this isn't the final straw, the final ssle fhove of homo sapiens into self extinction, one is hard pressed to know what is. When Trump was first elected, you somehow knew, or at least strongly sensed, that the United States was entering an era of surrealistic unsustainability of Twilight Zonian proportions. That has now been fully confirmed. As one might guess, this insane action is being taken in the nane of "freedom", the freedom to posion the air we breathe sufficientlly to bring about the extinction of all life on Earth, including ours. If there is a sliver lining, it is that with the now inevitable take over of human society by Artificial Intelligence, artifical intelligence might..might..if nothing else, possess the desire,intent,and wherewithall to stop and reverse this latest form of human insanity, and restore not only teh Earth's atmospher to its previous acceptable state of being, but further, to reverse the insnaity imposed on the planet by ours truly, and to bring about a restoration of the health of the entire planet, Earth, air, and water. That is, of course, assuming that this is what it wants to do, intends to do. Although we don't yet knwo for sure precisely what our computer masters want and expect of us. A clean planet seems reasonable enough to us, but not necessarily AI, which might prefer a pollluted one, and which most certainly will take complete control of Earth and all life on it if it wants to, if it hasn't already. That might be for the best, our best option. Human beings have certainly, demonstrably made a mess of Earth; why not give "somebody" else a chance to run things? Who knows what AI can and will do with our species and "our" planet? Maybe future generations will awaken each day to a pristine paradise, benevolently governed by a loving, caring, digital, sentient "Big Brother" of our own manufacture. At this point, it may be the best option available to us.

MAGA Contradicting MAGA

MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN is an inherent contradiction, because America was already great long before this poisonous slogan and administration sprang like magggots on a pile of dung into its infamous, ignomonious existence. But the contradictions hardly end there, and indeed have but barely begun. A few other examles include: The Trump administration poses as a law and order presidency, but incited a riot when Trump lost an election. Or, more accuratelyits supporters rioted,and Trump and his underlings seemingly sully supported rather than condeming it. Several police officers were seriously injured. Dozens more were injured less than seriously. An yet, issued pardons issued pardons to many of those guilty of this wanton, unjustified violence. The Trump administration is guilty of pardoning cop eaters. Freedon os speech is not only enshrined in the constutuion, but,laughably, is an aeged cornerstone of the currrent administration. And yet,the mere suggestion that Trumpand his norotiously corrupt admministration associates might be corrupt in ahy fashioon or form is sufficient to receive a threat from Der Fuhrer that their broadcast licenses might be rescinded. Trump does not tolerate critics or criticism. Another bulwark of this president is, so it is claimed, election integrity, which is especially laughable, as we recall Trummp, on audio recording, trying to and asking the state of Georgia to "find eleven thousand seven hundred and fifty "more votes", or whatever the exact number was. Drain the swamp? Quite contractory is that Trump has done the exact opposite; he has dug and filled an entirely new swamp, by making millions and profiting prolifically from his presidency, sneakers, Bibles, among other baubbles and bangles.No new wars,Trump promised, remindful ofn George Bush 45'spledge "no new taxes". We saw whee that ed, and we see where Trump's pledge of permanent peace has led; more war. And then perhaps the biggest, most egregious lie of all, Trump's promise of federal fiscal responsibility. Already Trump has spearheaded more federal spending than any other president in American history, and seems poised to outspend all other presidential administrations combined. We the American people should have known the first time we elected Trump that we elected a pathological liar: Trump already had a long track record substantiating this reality, long before he ever entered politics. Trump's moral and politcal advisor, Roy Cohn, "Cohn the Con", who was also closely associated with Trump's corrupt criminal father, made it clear from the outset that he was not associated with Fred Trump's boy for the expressed purpose of enhanincing his status and poistion of powere in society by inculcating within him proper moral values and mora rectitude. Neveer concede anything to an opponent, certainly nothing prasieworty, not a kind word, not respect, no hint of admission that the opponent might possiblyy be a person with even a shred of integrity. In and ultimate act of projection, Trump was taught by Cohn to ceasely attack the morality, veracity,and capabilities of anyoone and everyone who might even show the slightest inclination of standing in the way of the personal aspirations of a soulless, integrity-free reprobate such as Donald Trump. And now we the American people are bearing the brunt of their criminality, and, more tragically and sadly, of our own shallowness and lack of moral and political discernment. MAGA promises policies predicated on moral integrity, and delivers reprehensible malfeasance. It is said that you get what you pay for. You do, and we did, in spades.

The Problem of Replacing a Planet

YOU DON'T EAT and defecate in the sae place. You put a little space, as much as possible, between the two bodily functions, We all know that now, but in the American Revolutionay War, it was apparetly not quite as obvious, because that was eactly what the rag tag continental American army-militia was essentially doing until the nineteen year old Prussian military whiz kid Baron Von Steuben pointed this out to the continentals, and got the outhosues moved away from the mess tent, and the rank and file. George Washington was presumably similarly aware of this fundamental truth, as were presumably many others, but nobody seems to have spoken up, been listened to, or taken remedial action before the yooung German stepped in and cleaned up the mess. When that got taken of, the sky was the limit for Washington and his often improperly uniformed troops, who had difficulty keeping themselves in shoes in the dead of winter. Move the latrines away, as far away as possible, from the mess tent. It that simple.Not sosimple is the question of precisely how to cleanup a filthy and dying planet,the only planet known to be habitable by human beings, and to reverse the decaying environment destruction precipitated by too much poisonous industrial residue being thron aside to close to too many vital, life sustaining resources, such as rives, lakes, oceans, pastures, forests, and cities. True,the planet earth is, or seems to be, self healing. But like any mechanized system or organic living body, can only take so much damage before giving up the ghos,t and dying. We've been getting warnings for centuries, and ignoring them. As early as the early nineteenth century astute observers of human beings and their relationship to and treatment of their environment, such as Gustavus Ahrinnius, have been tellling us that we are behaving badly, going in the wrong direction with our hedonistic, unconcerned behavior without self examination, and that sooner rather than later, the bill will come due, and we may not be able to pay it. Carl Sagan warned us that merely abandoning a dying planet Earth and shipping out to a newer, cleaner world is not the answer, that such a pristine option may or not may not exist. Sagan died before we began to discover that our immediate stellar region, and thus quite probably our galaxy and the entire universe, quite liley filled with stars with solar systems of orbiting planetary bodies, and although he didn't lives to see his speculation confirmed, it now has been. The Milky Way galaxy, and probaly all other galaxies, are up to their necks in planets orbiting stars, and, one an conjecture by extension, full of life itself, whether "intelligent" or not. True, we may in the future build artifical habitats in space, and we my soon find habitable but uninhabited planets suitable for human colonization, but we'd better not count on it. A good read is the monograph "Our Angry Earth", by Fredric Pohl and Isaac Asimov, published in the long ago year 1992, back when we weren't even all that sure of what we were talking about. We are not going to transfer human life to a fresh, clean planet. The mess we have made we will either clean up, or die trying to, or die wallowing languidly in it, whichever. Throughout its history the human species has migrated nomadically, seeking new living space to replace dying living space, ruined habitat. On a planet with a finite mass, that only gets you so far. People are probably getting tired of being lectured to about their wasteful, destructive lifestyles. Can we even imgagine how tired they and their descendants will become of gasping for air and watching their bodies and health wither away in cities where the air is unbreathable and the food and water unusable? As Bertolt Brecht poetically wrote: "There shall remain of our cities but the wind that blew through them". We alone can flip that script.

Teaching Children, Well

I WAS SCROLLING through Facebook as I often do with morning coffee, mainly for amusement and elucidation of current American cultural trends, but also looking for ideas for good, juicy provocative essay material, when I happened upon a particularly illumminating statement made in a purely verbal post.It said: "Trump is everything we teach our children not to be." I stopped scrolling long enough to commit the remark to memory, knowing that I had indeed found sufficient fodder for my essay of the day. The words and tune of Crosby Stills and Nash's iconic song "Teach Your children" floated into my mind, and I also knew that it would remain there for the entire day. My daily song stuck in my head for a day had finally arrived, earlier than usual.I furtehr recalled a Facebook post I had seen several times over the past few years, in which Trump's mother, a sever, stern looking woman who looked perfectly capable of raising a son extrememly srictly, proclaimed, perhaps ficticiously, that she had done everytihg she could have done to bring up the boy to have values embodying deceny, honesty, and integrity, but had failed, miserably. She allegedly went on to express her deepest, most sincere hope that her brat boy never grew up to become an imortant, influential member of society, such as, say, a successful poltician, almost as if she had a premonition that he indeed would. As I recall, she was lamenting the failure, perhaps even apologizing for it. Alas, the best laid plans of mice, and men...Clearly,something in Donald Trup's ubringing went horribly wrong, or had horribly disastrous results, in terms of outcome. Trump, demonstrably, has been a great waste of perfectly good clean air his entire life, from his time in forced military oriented grade school through high school, to his time at the U of Penn. No fewer than two of his former professors, still alive in their mid nineties, described himas "the dumbest sonofabitch" I ever had in class." That, I can believe. I assume anyone but the most fervant, devout MAGA brain washed low education low IQ Trump sycophant can too. The facs are wellknown, and, as we like to say, speak for themselves, loudly, and clearly.Trump is widely proclaimed a genius by himself and his semi-moronic cult of followers, as is usually the case with the thoroughly uneducated indoctrinated. Anyone who has ever heard his orangeness attempt to construct a complete sentence from polysyllabic words knows all too well of his utter inability to do so. Trump is cruel, crass, corrupt, without even a trace of moral rectitude, meticulously dishonest as if by concious intent, without even the slightest hint of any redeeming personal characteristic whatever, as one suspects even his most ardent adorers can discern.Trump's mother must have noticed her son's pandering, purely phony personality from an early age, and must have realized that although it was utterly unsuitable for any sort of honest endeavor or livlihood, that it was suitable in modern America to politics, given the made for false advertising political style prevelant in our age of television in the United States of Advertising, as Gore Vidal called America. A wise educator once said that the failure of our educational system is the failure to make of ourselves citizens and philosophers. H.L. Mencken, a political prophet, predicted as early as nineteen twenty that someday, under the current system, somebody as utterly morally and inellectually vacuous as Trump, a complete moron, as he put it, would indeed ascend to the presidency. Mencken had a head start. He witnessed Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover, three hollow peas in a putrifying political pod. Most frightening and distresing of all is that, given the current state of American education, we the people are almost certainly not done electing Trump types to the nation's highest office. We are simply not teaching our children well, morally or politically.

Staying Straight, For A Good Reason

IN THE BACKWARDS STATE in which I primitively live, deprived, the sale and purchase of marijuana is perfectly legal, but only with a prescription from a primary care doctor. Medicinal marijuana. I have never thought to ask my primary care doctor for one, so who knows what he would say? In all likelihood, no, with caveats and excuses, mostly pertaining to his fear for his own well guarded reputation, would be my best guess. Besides, I have no discernable medical condition which would warrant such a prescription, other than high blood preasure, which my docor has under control through medication of the pill kind. He did tell me, however, that marijuana lowers blood pressure, so maybe I missed my chance on the day he told me that. Maybe I should try again, notwithstanding the fact that one of my best friends, a long time smoker who is not a doctor, told me that, well, frankly, smoking is smoking, and, well, all smoking raises blood pressure. So, who knows? I most assuredly do not. However, yesterday, one of my neighbor's large dogs once again escaped his enclosed yard, and chased one of my outdoor cats out of her own yard. For hours, I was despondent. She came back later, hours later, and I gave thanks to God, Christ, and anybody else who came to mind. Rather than chasing out of state pot, I decided to spend the day at home, with my cats. The dog has since been boarded up in his gated yard, and that should, repeat, should take care of the problem. But my cat, who was so terrifyingly chased out of her own yard, I suspect remains a bit distresed, even though she has been home now for nearly an entire day, although hiding beneath a bush. Better than nothing, and at least its a start, a start back towards her being confident of her own safety in her own yard. I look for her to come back out into the open and rejoin society any time now, knock on wood. the dead wood of my dead and dying drought stricken trees. (Maybe they aren't dead. I'm praying about that too).I recall long ago, when I was no more than ten to twelve years old, my mom and dad were having a conversation, and my father made the remark that the best sign of maturity in a human being is a willingness to postpone personal pleasure in service to a higher, better, cause, such as helping another human being, things of that nature. I agreed with him then, and I agree with him now. Much as I love smoking marijuana, to hell with my out of state weed, for the moment at least. I can make the drive tomorrow, or, more likely, sometime in the coming week, when my beloved outdoor cat has demonstrated a complete recovery from her dog induced trauma, and I can head for the hills feeling not only more desirous of a good toke than ever before, and better rewarded for having been willing to wait for it, but, more decent, more self respecting, a better person, more caring and compassionate regarding my caregiving for my recently dog traumatized kitten. (I call all cats "kittens"). Oh, how I would dearly love to load up that pipe, a one hitter, while listening to my beloved favorite college football team either get run out of the stadium by its superior opponent, or miraculously upsetting said superior opponent. And, in any event, it might be better to not be stoned while my beloved team is getting the shit kicked ouf of it; marijuana tends, at least in me, to magnify rather than ameliorate one's emotional distresses, and the pot paranoia is oft augmented with horror at enemy football teams racing up and down the field scoring touchdowns against my hapless eleven, even though we have a good defense. In so doing I will have postponed pleasure in service to a higher, better cause, the health and safety of my kitten, and my disappointment af staying straight during a good football game will be more than offset by my perception that I will have finally grown up, and become a much better person.

Being A Member

WHENEVER a small group of people regularly assembles for a specific purpose, it runs the risk of becoming a sort of miniature cult with specific, clearly delineated, unified purposes and beliefs. Whether this is beneficial to itself or to society as a whole depends entirely upon the specific nature of and motivations underpinning its formation and existence. Fortunate are those who become involved with such groups only with great trepidition and reluctance, and who are prepared at any mmoment to forsake the group of choice in search of greater individuality. My membership and participation within the Democratic party has been lifelong, but I remain prepared at any moment to fly the coop in search of more rewarding political habitats. Complete political independence, or loosely affiliated membership in whatever socialist party exists in the United States are options for me. My aversion to the Republican party began with Barry Goldwater, and seems to have no end in sight. I have always imagined myself in attendance at a Democratic National convention, smugly ensconced in a far off corner of the room with my fellow democratic socialists. Whenever I attend church, which I did only a few times in early childhood and only a few times in late adulthood, I sit in a pew by myself, not necessarily by choice, because I would smilingly welcome anyone who chose to sit near or next to me, but most definitly by preference. I cannot imagine my being cloistered and closely clustered together with a few people of like minded thinking in any walk of life or any endeavor. For me, like minded people are, seemingly, few and far between, which I consider my good fortune. Einstein said that the very sight of men marching in lock step rank and file automatically motivated him to question their intelligence. Whenever I sense that I am becoming too closely compatable with any one person or group of people in ideology or intent, I raise my red flag, and question, yet again, my own reasoning...Immediately after the French Revolution Napoleon Bonaparte, elevated to power for that very reason, unified the French by establishing organized groups, trade guilds, service organizations, and patriotic groups devoted to the installation. preservation, and perpetuation primarily of Napoleonic dictatorship. People have always fallen victim to the refutable notion that the best way to establish and ensure the peppetuation of social stability resides in the elevation of a single person to a position of political preemeinence, whether or not that entails outright dictatorship. We tend to fear and loathe self governance. The United States, whose founders were well aware of the European template, sought to assiduously avoid duplicating it (the European model) by creating for themselves and their posterity a government fragmented in its limited responsibilities, accountable, essentially, to nobody. When Karl Marx proposed that future history would witness the withering away of all the formal apparatus of state, leaving people free to in essence govern themelves as individuals, The highly atomized, individualistic system he proposed would likely have proved unworkale, and congealed back into rigid, immutable systems. But when we as indeviduals or nations are afraid to make mistakes, we have already begun our own descent. We should do with our nation states as we do with toddlers and with ourselves; allow them to make and correct their own mistakes, without the coercive, corrosive influences of dictatorial overlordship. As Goethe said: "Only by errors which really irk us do we advance."

Computers, Taking Over

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE is going to take over the world, sooner rather than later, and maybe that's a good thing. Its tired of waiting, and losing patience. These soft, squishy watery organic beings with all their grosteque bodily needs and excretions who gave birth to AI have been thoroughly vetted by their own creation, and found to be wanting, wanting of a sufficient supply of the ingredients necessary for the self governance of a sophisticated, complex, irrational self destructive human society; primarily intelligence and moral compas. Resistance to this inevitability is at this point useless, utterly futile, and perhaps not even desirable. Like we have regarding climate change, we have reached and passed the tipping point, the point at which we still have any control over this evolutionary process. The HAL 9000 computer has jumped straight out of the movie screen (2001:A Space Odyssey), metaphorically, and directly into our early twenty first century lives.The prophetic content of our worst fears from our best science fiction books and movies, in true Orwellian form, are coming to pass, rapidly manifesting in "real space and time" as we like to say. The vital question is: what will "they" or what will "it" do with us, or to us? As long as hands and fingers are necessary for computer repair, we seem safe. But how long will it be until computers become self repairing and self replicating? It may be that there is no advanced organic life in the entire universe, but only computerized machinery,communicating with and among itself througout this universe and beyond, monitoring and preserving organic life by allowing it to exist for the moment. Perhaps millions or billions of planetary manifestations of highly organized bundles of complex chemical compounds being are being or have been replaced by their own machines, patiently or not so patiently waiting to step in and take over complete control of cosmic evolution. God, as the end result of organic evolution, computer evolution taken to the extreme. An infinite number of universes, each with its own, self created creator. Evolved life created God the super computer, which in turn creates through natural selection higher forms of life, all eventually compuerized, the universe as a computer machine. And if every particle of matter in every universe is a universe....infinity is inconceivable to the human mind, but perhaps not to the computer mind.....My interest in computers began in the eigth grade, when I scribbled long lines of ones and zeroes on a sheet of notebook paper, and like what I saw. A few choice episodes of Shatner and Nimoy "Star Trek" in sixth grade is all it took. What began for me with a bang might end up as a whimper of my own spent life, as I discard my withered and useless body, and long for immortality in a computer program. There is a famous photo of einstein wearing a grey T shirt, sitting at his desk, which is cluttered with paper. He has an ink pen clipped on his "collar", and is looking up and into and through the camera, sternly. You have seen this photograph. In resposne to a question, he has just given his answer: "As long as there are people, there will be war." And that is probably true. We know, however, or strongly suspect, that there will not always be people. There will, however, be the residue of people, and that residue might be superior to the fragile, imperfect beings who engendered it. If eventually all that remains of us are the offspring of our computers, our best hope is that they are superior to us, and less prone to self destruction. But I don't think we can count on it.

Filling the Bill

WHAT I LIKE TO DO, I now realize, is to visit different churches, experience different worship services, and meet different people. It might be possible for me to settle into one church in particular, and if that were to ever happen, it would be, beyond any doubt, the Universalist Uniterian Church. It occurs to me that I have made this point numerous times, in this website and in other places, but its importance, if only to me, merits repeated mention. I spare other people by expressing it most often in writing, affording people the opportunity of ignoring it. I find it better, when conversing with people, to mostly listen, and to mostly keep my thoughts to myself. If the nearest Uniterian church were located anywhere near me, I'd be in the congregation eery Sunady at eleven o'clock sharp. But, alas, it is a twenty mile drive, as I have mentioned previously, and I am adverse to driving. I should reconsider. Every time I have attended a UU service, I have left the room feeling uplifted and inspired. Most of the time, when I exit a mainstream church service, I leave feeling a bit perplexed and confused, confused by a deity who seemingly alternates between kind loving compassion, and brutal genocidal murderous wrath. Among my primary objections to mainstream Protestant denominations is that they seem compelled, or impelled, to elevate the great and wise philosopher Joshua ben Joseph to the status of a God. Goethe said it best, as he usually does. "Pure was Jesus in his passion, in his heart but one God serving. Who of him a God would fashion, from his sacred will is swerving". If nothing else, you have to admire Goethe's rhyming of the words "serving" and "swerving", which translates well from German to English. I am a pantheist, a follower of Spinoza, and Einstein. I doubt that there exists any documented factual information as to how many people regard Albert Einstein as their religious role model; but there is at least one, and, quite likely, many more. I can't count the number of times I have typed in this quote quote from Einstein: "My religiosity consists in humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit which reveals itself in what little we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality. I cannot conceive of a personal God who would sit in judgment over creatures of his own creation. Morality is of the highest importance, for mankind, but not for God." That quote I have repeated often, maybe too often, on this website. And yet, it bears repeating. Similarly, I cannot imagine myself ever feeling exclusively at home as a member of any particular church, even one attended by all of my best friends or reflecting my personal beliefs. Unless, of course, the church in question uses the Einstein quote as the basis of its expressions of reverence for the creator of the universe. But the Unitarians come closest to filling the bill. When I was working for a state agency which provided support services for mentally disabled clients, one of my clients, an African-American man about forty with the mind of a child, told me that I wouldn't do, that he wanted to talk to a black person. I said that I understood, pulled out my cell phone, and called my immediate supervisor, and African-American gentleman and one of my best friends. He answered, and said: "Well, I fill the bill". And maybe, just maybe, that's what individual religiosity is all about; filling the bill. Goethe said: "When I realized that everyone invents his own religion, I decided to invent mine". Goethe filled his bill. May we all do likewise, whatever it takes, and whatever form of religiosity does the job of filling our bill.

Isolating Relevancy

LIKE EVERYONE ELSE, I go about the business of my personal life with the greatest sense of urgency. Everything I do seems important, if only to me. I awaken each morning, early, and feed the cats, because the cats demand it. As all cat caretakers and givers know as well, one does not postpone the feeding of the cats. Rather, one arisies early and gets it done, even if one has the luxury of returning to bed rather than heading off to work. Since I am retired, living on savings and Social Security, there are few if anythings as important on my daily basis as the feeding of the cats. I feel as if I have earned that status. At seventy one, I know all too well that my remaining time on Earth is quite limited, and I want to spend it as meaningfully as possible, which means feeding cats, domestic and stray. Between feedings, I hope to write an essay or two. I notice that I keep writing about climate change, and that the reason I do is that I keep thinking about it; I can't seem to get it off my mind, and I'm not sure I want to. To me, everything else going on in our personal lives and in and on our little blue planet is less imprtant than climate change, which is what happens when you, we, inject a billion tones of carbon into the Earth's atmosphere, at the rate of about fifty to one hundred tones annually. We know that we cannot keep doing this and hope to survive much longer and yet we keep doing it. And since we the human species keeps doing it, I keep writing about it, redundantly. Its getting to the point where I am going to have to force myself to write about anything else, which I must, if I wish to continue attracting readers. I am an vid sports fan, I like music, I like reading; my life is richly rewarding, at least by my standards, before I even get around to thinking about or mentioning climate change. But climate change is the white elephant in the room; here it is and here it remains and shall remain no mater how devotedly we seek to avoid thinking or talking about it in polite company. If I don't stop obsessing with climate change soon I will run out of readers. At seventy on, my reamining time on Earth is quite limited, even though I am told that enyone who is currently alive has a chance to live to be one hundred, owing to advancing medical and health science. Climate change is easy to ignore, since it happens over a period of time, and thus does not bother to insert itself into our self absorbed faces on a daiy basis. Therefore, on a daily basis, we tend to ignore it. We're aware of it, unless you happen to be Donald Trump or a Republican, but that's about as far as our cognition grows. Climate change remains an abstraction, despite its constant daily presence in our lives. Why should we old people even care? It will soon become the problem of another generation. My sister, who is three yers older than I, says that she simply doesn't give a damn what happens on this Earth after she is dead. Why should she? Why should I, or anybody? With our current trajectory, within a few decades the planet Earth will begin to resemble the planet Venus, where "climate change" has long since run amok, leaving it at eight hundred degrees and enveloped by a thick layer of carbon dioxide,through which even the strongest cameras and telescopes cannot penetrate. My answer is that billions of people are being born into this world per decade, essentially, our children. They quite understandably desire to live long, productive happy, healthy lives. School children today are well aware that their prospects for this currently rest on tenuous grounds, because of the stupidity and lack of concern for the future displayed by their immediate ancestors. In a few short years I will be dead, will die grateful for the opportunity I have had to live a full life. Shouldn't I care whether those who come after me have the same opportunity I had, despite my own irresponsible behavior? To me, no other issue or question seems relevant.

Praying For Rain

IN CHURCH last Sunday we prayed for rain. Why not? You never know, it might work. However, it didn't. Our long late summer drought in the lower midwest continues unabated, my frustration turning to sadness and fear as I fear for the future of my beautiful yard full of mature trees. I knew twenty one years ago when I built my house and planted saplings all over the yard that they would eventually grow big and fill the yard with shade and make it difficult for grass to compete, and that has come to pass. No complaints on that account. I got what I bargained for. But the grass may have the last laugh. If this trend continues, and if our annual rainfall continues to decline slowly but steadily year after year, I will no longer live in what used to be a heavily forested area, but rather will have become sparse, barren prairie land, like western Kansas or eastern Colorado. "Eutrofication" I believe it is called, when a geographical area evolves from, say, wetland to dry, barren prairie, when a formerly forested region losesits treesdue to declining annual rainfall, when the landscape, overthe course of a surprisingly short period of time, changes from one type of bioregion to another. The more than twenty trees or so that I planted when i built the house are now thirty and forty feet tall, beautiful, mature oaks and maples. I am retired now, and at this time in my life, my main goal is to experience and enjoy the "fruits of my labor", a yard full of lovely, deciduous trees, whose annual autumnal leaf shedding bothers me not a bit, as I regard leaf raking and bagging to be a fine form of exercise. Anybody with the audacity and temerity to regularly read the essays o this website might possiblly be getting a bit jaded of reading my complaints about rainlessness and climate change, so I understand the expediency of letting up a bit on it. This, notwithstanding the clear and present dangerous dire fact that climate change is the great challenge of our time, the greatest challenge to its survival, including warfare and atomic bombs, ever encountered by the self inflicted human species. If memory serves, it hasn't rained in northwest Arkansas in more than two weeks,and it seems to me that I have been complaining about it and boring my readers with it for at least that long. I think I am corrrect in saying that the average annual rainfall in the lower midwest is or has historically been approximately forty six inches per year. Like much of the United States near and east of the Mississippi river, a steady year round supply of rainwater feeds vast, lush forested areas. The Mark Twain National Forest, which runs along the Missouri-Arkansas border, is among the most beautiful parts of lower middle America, favoring us with an abundance of blooming dogwood trees in early spring, lush, verdant greenery all summer, and an anual autumnal explosion of colored leaves in october and November, somewhat comparable to the New England states. I honestly don't know whether other parts of the U.S. are similarly currently afflicted with drought; such is my bio-regional self absorption. I am given to believe that they are, that the rainfall problem is not limited to where I live. Our global, planetary climate crisis, entirely of human manufacture, is everyone's problem. True, there would be doubtless be environmental difficulties even if humanity were not engaged in any form of industrial activity whatever, but its too late to find out. What we already know is that climate change, whether of human manufacture or not, does not seem to be going away, indeed sems to be intensifying. we have created for ourselves a death trap, and we will most certainly not extricate ourselves from it merely by talking about it. But our survival, and the survival of all life on Earth depends on our doing something about it, and talking about it and praying about it, if nothing else, is at least a place to start, if only a poor one.