Icy Vapor and Frost Feathers

.  Bitterly cold this morning:  probably -25º F.  Even us Mainers are not used to these extremes.  People are not lingering outdoors to talk as usual, but are dashing to the shelter of buildings.   Me too!  But suddenly I am struck by the beauty this depth of cold has brought and I turn around. The shallow valley of the Stillwater River is filled by an actual vapor cloud, its puffy appearance belying the subzero temperature. (When this happens over the ocean in these very cold conditions it is called "sea smoke".)  The rising Sun streaming through this cloud spreads a reddish-gold tint everywhere surrounding us. 

.  Even ice gives off some water vapor, a process called sublimation. So the trees nearest all this condensing, evaporating and recondensing moisture have a diaphanous coating on every branch. It sounds like a cliché but the effect truly is best described as magical.

.  The magic affects even the humble street storm drains, some of which have a rare kind of beauty this morning. The "breath" of very humid and slightly warmer air above the waters far below has hit the chilled iron grid and formed "frost feathers," or at least that is what I call the formation.  It seems to only occur when the air is very dry and the temperature is extremely col, like today.  So I actually looked forward to finding these again this winter and did not want to miss the opportunity.  By now I am chilled to the bone but rewarded by the chance to take some memorable photographs. 

Going forward to Yesterday

.  It has been a lifetime preoccupation for me: testing my wits to use clues resourcefully to reconstruct the past.  As early as I can remember in childhood I was interested in astronomy, wherein the light from stars reaching us is all from a prior time.  And most of the rest of my life has been spent in a profession where, essentially, I help others to recover resources written, spoken or uploaded at some past time.

 .   I have little formal training in theology, but at the Yale Divinity School Library where I once was employed as a clerk, the words and works of saints and scholars permeated my workday  atmosphere.  The big buzz in those years was the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, some ancient parchment documents secreted in a cave in the hills of Israel.  Just the possibility that these materials date from the time of Jesus, and might even be from a monastic community that he was associated with or had visited, electrified everyone.

.  There are many people today who can read ancient Aramaic and Hebrew.  So the language of the texts presented few problems for the professors at Yale and elsewhere.  But the word "scrolls" overstates their condition.  Few were intact. Most were damaged, and some of the precious findings were scattered shards requiring hours of attempting to piece them together to reform a cohesive readable page.

.  Photographs of representative examples were very accessible and could even be found in popular books and magazines.  It was then that I became enamored with the nearly impossible task of physical and intellectual reconstruction of texts having few contextual clues.  (The Essenes, who had stored the Scrolls two thousand years ago, were a secretive Jewish religious  sect about which little is known even now.)

.  I will never be a Scroll scholar.  But from time to time I have experienced the quest vicariously.  Now to the present story.  For years I had kept in my office a scrap that had broken off some government publication in our Library's collections.  I wanted to restore it to the book it came from, but I procrastinated and it stayed in a box waiting years for inspiration to strike me.  Now I am trying to wind down my office in preparation for retirement.  I came across this shard and decided to put my years of experience to a test:  find the document it came from, having only the clues that the incomplete text itself could provide. 

.  In our work we assist people all the time to fill in the missing pieces of a citation.  In these cases only one or a few elements are missing or misquoted.  Think about this.  What are the chances of identifying the book from which a random page came -- incomplete at that -- and with absolutely no indication whatsoever of its source?  I took on the challenge!  More in a later story when and if I solve it.

"'Tis an Ill Wind Indeed Which Blows No One Any Good"

. A little story that's another example of " ’Tis an ill wind that blows nobody any good. " Perhaps you have heard of this expression? Bartleby's explains: someone profits by every loss; someone is benefited by every misfortune.
. Anyway there were two maples in the back yard, one in front of the other. The farther one in back had five trunks, two of which plus the main stem, were partially rotted through. Also the bark was falling off the main trunk in an unsightly way, and invoked pity, if nothing else. If it should ever break in a storm unfortunately it would fall in the neighbor's yard in back of us, not mine. Though I'm sure she'd be understanding about something not under my control, still it would not be good for neighborly relations.
. So "to kill two birds with one stone" (an expression that almost slipped from my lips at a Maine Audubon meeting!): 1) My spouse would like a little more sunlight coming through in the back of the property; and 2) I would like to get rid of a hazard tree and be able get on with other projects that the tree issue is holding up. (Is that three birds, or two?)
. I got out my chainsaw and 2-story ladder and tackled the trunks and branches that were safely accessible and would naturally drop into my yard. I know my limits so the rest of the job called for the pros. I phoned a couple of tree services and left voice mails. One on Sunday, one on Monday. I happened to be home Monday: a day off to catch up on home chores.
. Early in the afternoon soon after a crazy hail storm I saw a truck, with two men in the cab, pull up in front of our house. It was equipped with a "cherry picker" (personnel lifter). I couldn't see the full name on door, but it wasn't Bangor Hydro. I thought: Because he has a good sized cherry picker on the truck, maybe Bangor Hydro had so much hail storm damage to power lines they hired a private contractor to help? Of course I thought that was awfully fast response to the storm if that were so!
. Next door at the retired math professor's, a landscaping guy from another company happened to be working. I don't know if these two parties knew each other, but in any case tradesmen tend to form a brotherhood with others of the same profession, no matter that they are competitors. The two men went over to chat with him, idling the truck motor all the while. When I finally saw the company name on the truck -- Colvin's -- I did not connect it with my calls as I mistakenly thought I had called companies named Coleman’s on Sunday and Copeland’s on Monday.
. After a while the two from the idling truck started to walk up our driveway: a tall lean guy with a full red beard, dressed plainly and looking like my image of a Biblical prophet. But on closer look his beard barely disguised his relative youth. The other was a shorter, reticent guy in a bright yellow raincoat, who seemed to literally follow in the “Prophet’s” footsteps. They were heading straight for our back yard, so I rushed out to greet them, forgetting my in-house shoelessness. My bare feet seemed to attract their attention and they showed mild surprise... and I made it worse by saying "Boy that was fast. Didn't I just call you a few minutes ago?" The Prophet stopped in his tracks and looked at me puzzledly saying: "You called yesterday." I was not fully convinced yet, but I felt a little embarassed with the possibility that I might indeed have confused him with a competitor. I figured I'd better cover my tracks and so I said "Oh yes, now I remember."
. With the reticence typical of Maine men... the Prophet said "Well the ice storm prevented us from doing another job, so if you want I could do it now. Otherwise it will be a month from now." So the ice storm that was bad luck for some other party turned out to be fortunate for me, literally an ill wind blowing someone at least, some good.

Gli uascia farra giara: a Story About Context

. As a teen I worked for my namesake Uncle Frank at his small grocery store in the section of Waterbury where many Italian-American immigrants had settled. Unlike some other immigrant groups, who mostly came in large waves during 1890-1920, our customers arrived at scattered dates right up to the present. Thus it was not uncommon to hear the Italian language spoken on the street and in stores.
. I've always had an interest in languages. So the necessity of some knowledge of Italian for doing business was all I needed for motivation. I learned quite a bit, with our customers as teachers, especially how to express prices and weights, and how to count change at the cash register.
. We stocked some items specifically because they were popular with them, such as baccalà (dried salted codfish), sardo (hard grating cheese), and broccoli rabe a nearly flowerless variety of the vegetable. So I learned all those, and also -- to my great delight for the music they carried in pronounciation -- the names of the immense varieties of pasta.
. These people were excellent at preparing foods from scratch, usually preferring fresh goods to canned. So some of the trade was seasonal. In late summer, for example, we sold purple grapes by the case, rather than by the pound, for their winemaking. If I could not immediately understand a customer's needs I could usually find out what they wanted by asking a series of questions, or indicating an area of the store. One day an older woman, "right off the boat" as they used to say, came in for a product. When she asked for it, it did not quite sound like English. In fact it was expressed musically as if it were Italian, so I thought she was saying something like: "Gli uascia farra giara...?" I was stumped. But since I heard what sounded like "wash" I asked her "Sapone?" She shook her head "no." Then since "giara" sounded like a traditional quantity of weight in Italy I walked over to the produce stand and with a sweep of my hand (gesturing is always welcome in Italian) asked "questa?". "No" she indicated. However the sweep of hand happened to stop in the direction of enormous piles of boxes of canning jars . (It was canning season). Her eyes lit up and she indicated the Mason jars, along with their hardware such as glass covers. Bravo!
. I did not recognize the English word she was trying to say because I had never heard it used in connection with canning. But what experience did I, a teenage male, have about canning? Very little! Evidently the American locals used a New England expression "washer" for the seal which was otherwise known as a "jar rubber." So this was the noun she learned.
. You see, I couldn't understand "Italian" because I really didn't understand the English! Double context problem! Now it was very plain: Gli uascia farra giara = th' washe' far th' jara!

What a Difference a Haircut and New Eyeglasses Make...

.  This week I'm trying to catch up on stuff that's been neglected, needs tending, or needs to be made ship-shape. I got most of that stuff done. Then I decided that it's time to pay a little attention to myself and maybe get a haircut, and get to the optometrist's for some long-overdue new glasses, and that would get me almost up to date.

. Women try out a new look from time to time by getting a different 'do. It can make for quite a change in appearance.

But you know, a haircut can make a similar radical change in a man's appearance as well. Here are pictures of me "before" and "after" my haircut at the shop of my friendly French barber, Richard Dumont, today. What a difference a haircut, mustache trim, and a change of pants can make!

. Treating myself to these things seems to have boosted my confidence, and lifted my spirits, as I automatically stood up straighter afterwards. You can see the positive change in my posture. In fact I'd swear it also made my head look smaller!

Visual Version of Vaunted View on Voting

. For the November 3 posting the text and graphics were actually composed and compiled for an educational display I put in the ground floor hallway of the building where I work: "Elections: Circus or Serious?"
. Attempting to teach something via that medium requires first catching the eye of a passserby and keeping their attention: lots of color, uncluttered arrangement, plenty of graphics, and a minimum of text. It is helpful to mount some things out of or above the plane of the floor and the back wall of the window box.
. I think I achieved the goal. In fact some did not even wait for it to be completed! They took in the display along with the sight of a human standing in back, assembling it live. Another challenge is given by the fact that the back consists of two doors that swing out in opposite directions. The best display disguises the break between them.
. It is very important to appear non-partisan on a topic like this. For example any election kitsch has to be evenly balanced between McCain and Obama.  (But I had secret satisfaction in the fact that the cup is definitely an Obama mug, with his face just barely hidden.)
. I hope your candidate won. Mine did.

That Sacred/Sassy American Spirit!

Our Attitude About Candidates for Political Office
. What is it about the American spirit such that we both mock and vote for our candidates? Politics and political figures are favorite topics for humorists, and the grist for endless satire both written and performed. Yet we take our right to vote very seriously, considering it almost sacred. *
. No matter the occasional scandal, great pains are taken everywhere to protect privacy of voting. Ballot counting is done under the watchful eyes of representatives of opposing parties to assure the utmost fairness and accuracy. As an example, the U.S. Constitution addresses the popular vote at the very beginning, in Article I: “The House of Representatives shall be composed of members chosen every second year by the People…”
* “The sacred rights of mankind… can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.”
–- Alexander Hamilton, 1775

Politcal Kitsch
. Wikipedia defines Kitsch as used “… loosely in referring to any art that is pretentious to the point of being in bad taste, and also commercially produced items that are considered trite or crass.” The iconic American kitsch object is, of course, the pink flamingo. Presidential elections seem to inspire an outpouring of memorabilia the best of which, ironically enough, will later become desirable and collectable “Americana” for example old campaign buttons!

-- Cartoon source: Blog of Liberal White Boy, a self loathing christian.

Serious Political Communication
. Sober messaging to the electorate is very much alive, even simultaneously with the hot party-like atmosphere created by kitsch and satire. It seems almost obligatory for major candidates to publish one or more books around election time.  At each election more technological avenues – new media – arrive for candidates to get their cooler, more detached communications across to voters. Though it would be a stretch to call much of it “restrained” there are boundaries, both formal and informal that reign in the more outrageous or fraudulent promoters. Yet in the Internet Era, when messages reach millions in very short times, opponents must react quickly in their rebuttals and counter-attacks, lest falsehoods survive merely by being in the public consciousness for too long.
. New in this Presidential election: robocalls. Although the technology was developed earlier, 2006 marked the first widespread use of autodialed calls that deliver a pre-recorded voice message if the phone is answered either by a person or their answering machine. This marks their first widespread use in a Presidential election. Public reaction has been negative and will surely affect their deployment in subsequent federal and state elections.
. However a new generation of telephone users is glad that robocalls to cell phones are still illegal under federal law!

-- Cartoon by Don Davis courtesy satiricalpolitical.com.

What difference Does One Vote Make?
• In 1916 one vote in each of the voting districts of California reelected President Wilson. If Wilson's opponent, Charles E. Hughes, had received an additional vote in each one of California's voting precincts, he would have defeated Wilson.
• 1948 - one vote per precinct in Ohio and California gave Harry S. Truman the presidency.

• 1960 - one vote per precinct would have elected Richard Nixon president over John F. Kennedy.
• 2000 The election on November 7, 2000, was the closest presidential race in history. Governor George W. Bush of Texas won Florida’s 4 electoral votes by just 537 votes over Gore!
• But most important of all it makes a difference … to you! Many people today think voting is the most important right Americans have. There are many places in the world where people do not have the right to vote. So go to the polls tomorrow and enjoy it!

After the Party's Over
. What will you do with your political kitsch when the 2008 election is over? The usefulness of some of those items will expire tomorrow, November 4 after the Presidential election is decided. I will still be able to use my Obama for President mug no matter how it turns out. Nonetheless I hope I will be able to use it for "victory coffee"!

--Cartoon adapted from VVork

"Running on empty"

. Fascinating phrase that..."running on empty." Albeit with a finite time left, it means that one is still running. The metaphor is often used to imply that one is fatigued in some way. Given the restorative powers naturally available to the human body, mind and soul, there is an implication that one can eventually do something about it, and that the fatigue is temporary.

. A long time ago I decided that the world consists entirely of two kinds of people: the doers and the watchers. There is a certain amount of risk involved in taking any action. The most timid elect to take no action, lest they fail, or get injured, etc. They prefer to watch others. When they witness another's failure do they say "I told you so?" The German expression schadenfreude has suddenly become popular for this. It means taking disagreeable pleasure in others' suffering. Nasty little snits aren't they!

. When one gets to a certain age the empty signal seems to come more often than formerly. But the restorative process is always there. Besides, who said there is only one gauge to look at? What if one is totally exhausted after doing a very good and noble thing that was personally and morally satisfying? What about the goodness gauge? The nobility gauge? The satisfaction gauge? Aha, let us not be sucked into the limitations of the narrow-minded. Life has breadth. Watch all the gauges!

30,000 B.C. -- Two More Like Us?

. It is about time to update my acquaintance with paleoanthropology, the study of the origins of humans. Thus it was a happy circumstance when my son gave me The Jesuit and the Skull by Amir D. Aczel. A great plus is that the book contains much biographical detail about the life of Teilhard de Chardin (the Jesuit priest and scientist mentioned in the last posting for the worthiness of his spiritual writing for seekers of any faith). There was an especially interesting passage about evolution in general and about hominids particularly:

"Many scientists believe that it would not be unusual for several hominid species to have coexisted; the oddity is rather that we are now the only human species alive today. Coexistence of related species seems to be the rule in nature, not the exception."

. But I was not prepared for this astounding statement which immediately followed:

"And if research findings about a fossil discovery made in Java in 1996 are correct, then not two, but three different human species have inhabited our planet at the same time as late as 30,000 years ago. These were Homo sapiens, Homo neanderthalensis, and Homo erectus -- the remnants of a hardy species of human ancestor that had wiedely inhabited our planet for well over a million yearas."

. Boy did this complicate my thinking about the relation of humans to God and spirit! This realization is not quite like hearing that life was discovered on Mars, but the feeling is very close to that, for me.
. Below is an adaptation of the human family tree provided on the Smithsonian Institution's web site. (Sorry about the reduced clarity. It looked ok on my screen but Blogspot does funny things with image resolution.) The whole point of it is to show that, based on current research by C. C. Swisher et al., the timeline for Homo erectus, also know as Java Man, might be extended enough to overlap with Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon (us).

Physical age; Emotional age; Mental age; Spiritual age

Four facets of human maturing
- This is probably no new insight to most readers, but we apparently do not grow at the same rate physically as we do mentally and emotionally. There are any number of examples of child geniuses, 40-year old adolescents, and of 18 year-olds calm and wise beyond their years. My thought here concerns an often neglected aspect of ourselves: growing up spiritually.
- For many people faith is a set-it-and-forget-it kind of thing. If they still have belief at all, it may be frozen in time back with their childhood religious education. It is no wonder that many scorn the creeds expressed by others. Those people are still functioning spiritually as youngsters. So of course their convictions do not sound worthy of an adult and predictably one rejects them.
- Why do we allow ourselves to neglect spiritual growth? I guess one answer is: because we don't know any better and nobody tells us!

Precarious place of religion in personal spiritual maturing
- This is my understanding of religion. The founders of the world's sects preached full-fledged systems of belief, matured over many years of contemplation, meditation, and inspiration. But they realized that a start must be made with easy-to-understand representations of their faith for the new adherents. There are methodologies for making abstract concepts more real to new believers including analogy, metaphor and allegory. One famous example is St. Patrick's use of the three-leaf shamrock to represent the Holy Trinity. Another is Jesus's parable of the mustard seed as a stand-in for faith, both its vulnerability and its potential to grow and flourish. (I am not neglecting or denying the possible place of supernatural or psychic interventions for the purpose of initiation. But I have limited personal experience with that and must stick with what I know as of now.)
- However in no case that I know of was it their intention to leave the faithful stuck in the moment when they first received the teachings. Some religions accomplish growth by initiating devotees in a succession of increasingly esoteric "circles." Others accomplish this through a life-long series of rites or sacraments, usually as outward symbols of inner spiritual development. A few have well-developed progressions of lessons and duties leading to greater spiritual maturity, but those that I know of are involved with monasticism or close discipleship with an adept or spiritual director.
- An example of a medium with great potential for help, but where this has failed to operate well is popular American choice in reading material. If the reading public mentions spiritual writings at all it is usually in the same breath with sectarianism. It is unfortunate that religion, or at least the organizational kind, is the only approach to spirituality that seems commonly known. But the really worthy writers are not covering "religion" at all but studying the spiritual aspect of what it means to be human. They share their insights through their writing, just as authors in other fields might do.
- In this essay I am of course addressing myself to the needs of the laity, not clerics and othre religious leadership.

Our privilege and obligation to attend to our spiritual growth
- A while ago I was shocked to hear this verse in a song on one of those popular religious stations: "Oh Jesus, my maker..." Somebody did not do their homework! No Christian denomination preaches that Jesus was the Creator. Christ himself always referred to the Father as the origin of all things and all rules of conduct. Those Christians who believe in the Trinity divide it exactly that way: Father, Son (whom they believe is personified or incarnated as Jesus), and the Holy Spirit.
- In a way I have less of a problem with creationists who claim that dinosaurs were contemporaneous with early humans. At least they have been searching for evidence to bolster their beliefs (though I have yet to see the fossil verification they lay claim to.) But that songwriter is frozen in a baby state of belief. Further, if he is going to write religious songs for the edification of others he has a moral obligation to get it right, rather than to spread his ignorance through bad music.

A case study: "Who is Thomas Merton?"
- It was my turn to suggest the next choice for our book group. My first proposal was a lead balloon, as nobody had heard of Thomas Merton, one of the most important American writers on the spiritual life and the search for God. One group member actually said this "I don't read anything with that little cross and 'Imprimatur' in the front."
- I think they would have found him interesting. But such an author suffers a priori from two things: 1) how persons feel about the religious background of the author (in this case, a Catholic Cistercian monk.) 2) The plethora of miserable stuff pouring out of well-funded religious publishing houses, along with the pamphleteering of annoying ignorant proselytes.
- So writers covering spiritual topics, like Merton, Teilhard de Chardin, Henri Nouwen, Kyriakos Markides and others, never get in the front door, so to speak (a weak pun on the door-to-door religious canvassers!)
- In some Evangelical and Pentacostal denominations there is encouragement that congregants should take steps to grow spiritually. But it is unfortunate that the otherwise promising slogan "born again" has become identified as some kind of final step, rather than a breakthrough to a lifelong maturation of spirit.

Confession (classical sense) of personal belief

- I've spent a lifetime reading, studying, attending lectures and even participating in other religions and in Eastern and New Age sects. Their contradictions and shortcomings have not succeeded in discouraging me. I have gotten past the resulting state of confusion and doubt. At my age, when people might say I am entitled to be cynical, instead I believe that there is something substantial in them all, a common thread. I have found that all spiritual seekers are striving toward the same goal, known by hundreds of names that make them seem disimilar, but they are the same: unity with God.
- I have found that logical discourse and debate about God, divinity, and religion are in the end of no use in the spiritual search. In complete sympathy with the scientific viewpoint I agree that these are matters that are not, cannot, or should not be tackled in the same way as the search for physical truths. I've come around to trusting intuition, inspiration and epiphany as the proper way to proceed for seeking spiritual truth. With eyes open to the fact that these are subject to the same propensity for error as all other human endeavors, I try to find that which has heart, rings true, and resonates with the findings of trusted others who are more advanced.

Further on the obligation to grow spiritually
- Advancing toward unity with God, just for me, so I can enjoy some kind of spiritual ecstasy, in the final analysis is an empty endeavor propelled by a hollow motivation. Gautama Buddha expressed the opposite as the true path to inner peace:

"In the Hinayana teachings Buddha explains how to attain liberation from suffering for oneself alone, and in the Mahayana teaching he explains how to attain full enlightenment, or Buddhahood, for the sake of others."

- But a misunderstanding I had about these teachings is that they preach world-denial or renunciation. That may be characteristic of some sects in Hinduism, but the Buddhist view is apparently more synergistic:

"As long as one clings only to the affairs of one's daily existence in this world one cannot grasp that reality. For this reason, the Buddha taught people to transcend their daily lives, which are uncertain and fleeting, in order to overcome these sufferings. However, to realize the essential life which continues eternally, transcending both birth and death, means to establish the solid foundation of human existence within the harsh realities of this world."

- Although I admire and respect the wisdom of the East, I remain uncomfortable with their

rites and scriptures. Yes, the relationship to me, a Western seeker, feels unnatural.

So I, like many others, appreciate interpreters in our own culture who have achieved this synthesis and shared it in their writings. Here are some authors, and selected works of theirs that I have found helpful:

. Kyriakos C. Markides: Gifts of the desert: the forgotten path of Christian spirituality, and The Mountain Of Silence: A Search For Orthodox Spirituality

. Franklin Merrell-Wolff: Philosophy of consciousness without an object, and Pathways through to space

. Thomas Merton: Mystics and Zen masters, and The Asian journal of Thomas Merton and other works

. Bernadette Roberts: What is self? a study of the spiritual journey in terms of consciousness and The experience of no-self; a contemplative journey

. Alan Watts: Cloud-hidden, whereabouts unknown; a mountain journal and The wisdom of insecurity; The way of Zen; Tao: the watercourse way and other works

Why did God make brains, if we aren't going to use them?

Finally I discovered why seemingly conscious, literate and school-educated people cannot (or feel they cannot) do the simplest things. When it came time to learn something, anything – that would help in a situation they simply said “I don’t give a hoot” and turned off their brains.
Let’s suppose that brain power output can be measured in units. I don’t mean how many units of brain power a person has, just how much they should apply in a given situation, or to solve a problem. Here are some typical measurements, in a new Metric unit to be called “intellihoot”. In all the situations below the people refrained from applying intelligence, many deliberately so, to the degree indicated by the number of intellihoots.

What quantity of withheld intelligence does it really take in order to…

. You are at bus ticket window. They ask your name (in which the third and fourth letters are “ih”) You spell it slowly and make sure they’ve written “…i” before you tell them the next letter. As soon as you utter “h” they go back and erase the “i” and write “…hi”. (10 intellihoots)

. Person sneezes openly on a borrowed pencil and then hands it back to you. (20 intellihoots)

.A work-study employee has not shown up for work since last Friday. On Wednesday I call him to ask what's up. He says "You know last Friday when I came into work?" "Yes?" I respond, wondering what is coming next. Then he says "Well that was my last day." I then say "So I am getting minus 5 days notice, a negative number? That breaks all records for the least possible notice of resignation!!" I burst into scornful laughter, and there was embarrassed silence on the other end of the line. (25 intellihoots)

. I walk into a fast food restaurant to order a large coffee to go. I ask the attendant for "half decaf and half regular" She questioned me at least twice what that meant. I could see she was trying to think of a company rule or reason not to accommodate the customer. Finally I said: "Get a large cup, fill it halfway with decaf." She did this. "Now grab the regular pot and fill it the rest of the way. " Finally it was done as I asked but the expression on her face told me she felt she had made some great custom service and that she had done me a great favor. I had never had anyone freak out about that request like that before or since. (30 intellihoots)

. Parking lot is nearly empty. After you park, you open your door, get out and reach in to get your things. At that very moment someone has chosen the spot next to yours (why?), and insists on pulling into it. If you try to continue with your chore they actually glare at you and fume until you close the door and get out of their way. (35 intellihoots)

. A person leaves a fan on in the staff lounge to “cool the room.” Before they depart I say “Fans don’t cool the air. They cool people by evaporating sweat. So it just wastes electricity if no one is in a room." “Uh-uh,” they say. "When I put a fan in my bedroom window at night, it cools the room.” (40 intellihoots)

. You are tooling along in your car on a road with a 50 mph speed limit. Visibility is excellent, as the day is clear and bright. There is no one else on the road for a mile in each direction. You approach a junction with a side street and notice a car stopped there, supposedly waiting for a safe opportunity to pull out. You have now driven much closer and just when it is barely possible to brake and avoid hitting them, they pull out in front of you and go 25 mph and no faster. (45 intellihoots)

. This story from the front page of the Bangor Daily News for July 21, 2008 about a black bear that wandered into a Bangor, Maine neighborhood struck me as illustrating the warning in my August 29 blog about assuming there are simple solutions to complex social problems, as well as connecting to the theme of this posting.

“Game Warden Jim Fahey was dispatched to the neighborhood around Fairmount Park sometime after 8 am. Saturday after public safety agencies were flooded with calls about a bear wandering the streets … When Fahey arrived … a large crowd had gathered wondering what the bear might do next…
‘The bear was pretty wound up at that point and it was in a neighborhood where a lot people had gathered…’ said Sgt. Chris Simmons, a supervisor with the Maine Warden Service. ‘The warden in the Bangor neighborhood had to make a decision based predominantly on public safety. With crowds of people watching, the warden assessed the likelihood of the bear making it back to the woods without encountering a dog, without taking a swipe at a child, and without being struck by a car or causing a collision.’ ”

-- Contrary to impressions left by tv wildlife shows, which shrink time for televised events to accommodate impatient viewers with short attention spans, a tranquilizer dart doesn’t always work swiftly to incapacitate a bear. Retaining its full strength almost until it drops from the tranquilizer, the bear's behavior becomes totally unpredictable putting those nearby at risk.
-- Despite what some members of the public might think, most wardens and forest rangers love animals and appreciate unspoiled Nature. The warden assessed the risks to people and decided to shoot the bear, which obviously took presence of mind to do his duty not only because it is such a waste of a beautiful life, but also to have to do so in front of a crowd who think the wild animal is gentle and passive like Yogi Bear.
-- Ironically, after it was all over and people started in on the warden and the Warden Service, not a single person said that by crowding the bear and the warden they were a contributing cause to increasing the danger of the situation. (Everyone who crowded in as if it were a sea mammal show: 80 intellihoots.)

Two Mothers

. Today's news carried a story from Blue Mound, Texas contributed by the Dallas News. Two 20-something male intruders smashed their way into the Hoehn household while the whole family was home. The Hoehns have two children: a 12-year old son, and daughter age 5. Here is a news excerpt:

"As Mr. Hoehn emerged from the bedroom, Ms. Hoehn grabbed hold of the intruder's shotgun and pointed it upward and away from the children's rooms. "I wasn't going to let them get to my babies," the 34-year-old mom said. "No way in hell." While Mr. Hoehn wrestled with the intruders, Ms. Hoehn reached for a candle – the only heavy object within reach – and threw it at the man with the shotgun."

. Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska and now the Vice Presidential candidate for the Republican Party is also a mother. Her 19-year old son Track joined the Army last year. She has one other son Trig a new-born. Her daughters are Bristol (18), Willow (13), and Piper (7). Trig, was diagnosed prenatally as having Down syndrome. Quoting from the Wall Street Journal:

"She has said she would make abortion illegal in all cases, unless the life of the mother was at risk. Sen. McCain would make exceptions for rape or incest as well. Unlike Sen. McCain, she opposes stem-cell research, which involves destruction of human embryos. And she supports abstinence-until-marriage programs, where teens are taught to refrain from sex until marriage and contraception is discussed only to explain its failings."

. I do not know Kellie Hoehn's opinions on abortion. But I am absolutely sure of her love for her children, proven by her emotion under duress that even at 12 and 5 they are still her "babies." Although the stories seem far apart they each illustrate something in Nature, especially among birds and mammals, that I call the Centrality of Motherhood or the Authority of Mother. In choosing to allow her Down Syndrome fetus to be born Palin was exercising her primal authority.
. Birds are known to salvage what they can of their fledglings in times of short food by selecting the strongest and nourishing them to survival, obviously at the expense of their sibs. Primates, especially humans, have more options because they know they can enlist others to assist in raising weaker offspring.
. However the place of men in making these decisions is questionable. There is no demonstration of similar authority in Nature for them. In a few cases among mammals they may even be a threat to their own offspring. Therefore I am not going to state an opinion. But I will note one weakness in logic for female extreme pro-lifers like Palin. By deduction it appears that they grant the right of any male, even the lowest scum, even by force, to sire a child on any woman, even their own mother. That rankles me as I am definitely for the protection of women. Without something to keep a lid on them, the record of men is not universally good in this respect, witness the infamous treatment of females, even little girls, recently exposed at the Yearning for Zion Ranch near Eldorado, Texas.
. Well, enough dark thoughts. This is intended to point out the central role Nature carves out for Mothers and the reinforcement given by the highest standards from the greatest moralists, purportedly even God, as recorded by Moses in the Fifth Commandment, and even from that time of extreme patriarachy:
* * Honor thy Father AND Mother * *

Attempting Solutions to Societal Problems

Sometimes it helps, in understanding an overwhelming or controversial issue, to boil it down to its very essentials. Conversely, though they can be summed up by a single catchword, it is dangerous to assume that there are very simple solutions to many-faceted problems. A photograph, on a back page in yesterday’s newspaper brought these principles, which I believe in and try to use to guide my life, suddenly to a focal point.

The issue in question is important and controversial. People do not agree on a solution. But they each believe they have the solution. The catchword that sums it all up is immigration. How ironic that among a populace whose very presence, most of them, is due to the migration of their ancestors to the land of opportunity, that it has come to this. I boil it down to it essentials: opportunity has become controversial.

In a past blog posting I gave my ideas on something that would seem to be enjoyable to all: fun. Yet even that brings out selfishness in people. They want to have fun, their fun, but have trouble sharing it. It is the same with opportunity, a universal good that people, for various reasons that seem justifiable to them, cannot share easily.

At the right is a photo taken as U.S. Marshals Service deputies direct several suspected illegal immigrants from the federal courthouse in Hattiesburg, Mississippi to a waiting van for transportation to an overnight holding facility, Tuesday, August 26, 2008. The immigrants were detained in a raid on a manufacturing plant in southern Mississippi the prior day. Over 600 suspected illegal immigrants were picked up during the raid.

Photo courtesy Associated Press/The Press of Atlantic City Media Group

Look at this picture in its essence. These people have broken the law. They are being detained by law enforcement officers. That part makes sense. But there is more… Remember, they are being arrested for working! That defies reason. Also they are being seized as persons, in contravention to our Constitutional doctrine of habeas corpus, and will be precipitously placed on airplanes to foreign countries which they had left for good reason. Thus they are immediately terminated from employment, and separated from their families plunging them into grief, poverty, and loneliness. Their punishment has already begun. This is being done in a country whose justice system forbids “… cruel and unusual punishments”.

Above, however I warned of the peril in assuming there are very simple solutions to many-faceted problems. Unlike Cuban refugees who must risk a sea voyage and thus arrive in small numbers, Mexicans, who comprise the majority of these immigrant workers, make a land entry to the USA. Also their country is very populous ,very poor and has a high unemployment rate. Last, American companies have outsourced jobs to Mexico, which reduces the domestic labor market. In hiring illegal immigrant workers here companies drive down domestic wages, a fact not lost on citizens competing for these jobs.

Immigration has replaced abortion as the new fixation of conservative voters. Great emotion is expressed by blue collar folks about what are euphemistically called “guest workers,” for example “they are taking food off our tables!” The common man or woman does not see that the chain of events leading to the situation that so scandalizes them is actually created by business executives, not Mexicans.

Another wave in the anti-immigration faction concerns the "life boat” concept of the United
States. Eventually the boat will be loaded to the point where no more can come, metaphorically, to the land (boat) of opportunity. Ironically the birth rate is the highest in the nations that can least afford to feed and raise the children. This strikes a nerve among Americans who believe in family planning. They say “they keep having more babies, who grow up and cross the border and then we have to find jobs for them. Why should we have to solve their problems? Seal the border.”

There is no question that this is a complex social issue, but I want to introduce even another complication. All these efforts by government agencies, foremost Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), costs taxpayers about $20 billion annually. However even illegals pay income tax – there is no avoiding it as employers must withhold tax amounts from all workers' pay and forward it quarterly to the IRS. Since most illegals use false Social Security numbers these funds never gain them any pension benefit, but fills the federal coffers at about $25 billion a year. So there is actually a net gain of about $5 billion because these workers will never see any benefit from their withheld wages. Adding to that is the fact that they pay sales tax on their purchases like everybody else thus, in some places, partially offseting the cost of education of their children and other municipal services in the towns where the illegals live.

To put this in perspective the latest estimate of the societal cost of drug abuse is a staggering $220 billion a year, including law enforcement costs, losses due to drug-related thefts and other crimes and medical services directly related to substance abuse. The government never sees any of the money paid for the drugs as all transactions are in the black market. In citing this I am not suggesting free reign at our borders. Far from it. As I said there are never clean, simple solutions. To the essence: government cannot do everything and society cannot possibly solve all its problems, so let’s make a comparison as if we were doing triage: where should the greatest efforts go?

Problem 1, illegal immigrants working in this country. Societal costs including law enforcement $20 Big ones, “free” income from taxes collected but not ever credited to the worker $25 B, a net of $5 B. Problem 2: drug abuse ruins health, propels addicts to steal to support their habits, involves drug dealers and customers in violent conflict, and is a scourge in neighborhoods, schools and workplaces. The societal cost is about $220 B, there is no monetary return. Back to the original question: go after people and arrest them for working, a net contributor to the country, or step up efforts to stem the flow of drugs that are sapping the strength and health of our nation?

Meditation on the Galaxy

It was fairly late in the evening and we had reduced the number of lights on in the house, as was customary to help get in the mood for sleep. My wife went out on the deck for a while. I read at the dining room table. A few minutes later she came in smiling and spoke as if she was sharing a great little secret: "Come on outside. I have a surprise for you!"
I could only guess that it was some kind of sky sight, as she knows how much I like astronomy. When I first went out I said "I can't see a thing. It will take a few minutes for my eyes to get dark-adapted." Meanwhile in this oblivious state I mused: aurora? meteors? Slowly, magnitude by magnitude ever fainter stars came into my vision. When it clarified down to the fourth magnitude I saw it: the Milky Way in rare dark-sky splendor.
Once she got me out there, nobody could tear me away. I sat way back in a lounge chair and tried to remember what had attracted me so early in life to the stars.
Lacking any new insight on that topic, I decided to take an imiginary star trip. I felt no particular attraction to any one star, so I tried to imagine the sight before me for what it really was: the foreground stars are like nearby trees, the fainter ones can be imagined as a look into the woods, finally the Milky Way is like the deep forest, a general blur in which individual trees cannot be distinguished. It was not long before I succeeded in perceiving the heavenly sight that way. (The illustration at the left is intended to help visualize stars of farther and farther distances showing as fainter and fainter individuals and finally, the most distant ones blending into the distant general blur.)

What we call the Milky Way is actually a view of our own galaxy seen edge-on, since we are near the outer edge looking in to where the majority of our "neighbor" (astronomically speaking of course!) stars are.
It then recurred to me that every night we are privileged to look out the window of Spaceship Earth. And what a sight it is. It would be easy to assume that everything in the Universe is lined up the same way. But the reality is that the relative angles of planetary orbits in solar system is way off from the plane our Milky Way galaxy. The illustration at left is adapted from an image in a page by blogger Plantigrade. Imagine that you are on the little Earth globe, looking up. The red line represents the Ecliptic, the plane in which everything in the Solar System travels. Our galaxy is tilted about 123º to that plane. That is why our summer view of the Milk Way is over our heads.These nights it is actually running from horizon to horizon passing directly overhead, not at all aligned with the Earth's axis of rotation.

I suppose that if the motion of Earth as the Sun drags us around and around galaxy's center were like a train, then we would be riding sideways in our seats, like guy on the right!

Breaking out of the rut and ironically, hitting the rutted foot trails

Like Frodo I know if I don't just get up and go now it will just get progressively harder to get out of my rut and conversely I would have increasing distress from missing the forest ambience and the trail life. So as my Dad used to say I'm "taking the bull by the horns" and just bullishly and brazenly planning, over the resistance of my irritable side "Clumso", a 4-day backpack on the Appalachian Trail.
. I continue to do lots of day hikes at Acadia National Park and elsewhere. But in addition I had done some kind of multiday backpacking every year since 1993. Regrettably I seem to have skipped the last two years. This is not a good pattern, both for maintaining my good health and for keeping a positive state in my soul.
. On Monday, in an inspired moment, whammo... I grabbed the Appalachian Trail Guide to Maine, chose an agreeable section known from past hikes and immediately sent out an email blast to likely companions. I hoped that by doing this spontaneously and suddenly I caught Clumso off-guard, tricked myself sufficiently to go through with this, and thus break the backpacking inertia cycle that's pestered me since 2006. One of my email correspondents immediately accepted and we began to plan. All this within less than 12 hours !
. It does help to travel with somebody not only for companionship, but to help keep my motivation level high and to make it harder for Clumso to badger me to cop out. As I age family members also seem to thoroughly approve of and encourage having the support of an accompanying friend.
. Certainly good things will flow from a successful completion. In the future, I hope, going for other trips this year will come more naturally and feel easier to go through with. Right now though, I am experiencing a bit of "stage fright." This always goes away as soon as my feet first hit the trail, and is noticeably less on the next trip if it is near enough in time to still feel familiar.
. I'm telling you all this not only as a means of honest sharing, but also to indicate there is a psychic factor in making these plans that depends very much on motivation and keeping a positive, confident state of mind.
. Planning the next one will take exactly that: riding on the force of will of somebody (could be me, could be another person) who would break the ice and start the preparation. Long live the Trail!