There is something annoyingly phony about the protests currently going on on collage campuses. The youths involved are either paid protesters, (and some aren’t so young), or else party protesters. The former would not be there if it wasn’t for the money, and the latter wouldn’t be there if it wasn’t for the fun. The indignation they muster is either about as superficial as a child dressed up as a monster on Halloween, or it is the genuine indignation of a person squirted by water. A surprising number of the protesters have only a vague idea what they are protesting about. Many chant slogans they are told to chant, but when asked to discuss the issues with some semblance of depth, they can’t do it.
One annoying consequence of this superficiality is that it waters down quite serious topics, such as racism and genocide. When just about anything you do can be called racism, genuine racism gets ignored. The chief example of this is the incredible statement, “All people with white skin are racist”, which, despite being a racist statement, blurs the distinction between what is racism and what is not.
People need to think more deeply than they do, and muster what is called “discernment.” There is an actual difference between good and evil, and people need to draw the distinction. However those who profit off selling snake oil prefer false advertising to Truth, prefer Fake News to Truth, and even like to confuse the weak-minded by saying Truth is a relativity, a subjective preference, and is so variable it doesn’t exist; cultures differ; Vikings felt warfare was heaven; Buddhists did not; if you say war is good you are racist against Buddhists, and if you say war is bad you are racist against Vikings; Therefore you are not allowed to have any opinion at all.
Yet, after creating this moral apathy, these same people can get as moralistic as a fussbudget, when it comes to anyone who opposes their watering-down of distinctions. If you point out there is a distinction between good and evil, you are not only racist and sexist and various other “ists”, but, by trying to defeat evil, you are guilty of “genocide”.
Well, let us think about that. If you state a certain viewpoint is wrong, are you guilty of attempting to obliterate another?
The word “genocide” didn’t even exist until it was created by a Pole who experienced the horrors of World War Two. It is defined, by the United Nations, as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”.
But what about Nazi’s? Were they not a “a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”? Is not the United Nations guilty of hypocrisy, when on one hand they advocate an end to genocide, but on the other hand they agree Nazi’s should be wiped from the face of the earth?
I personally detest Nazi’s, and only bring this up to demonstrate how, without the distinction between good and evil, almost any resistance can be seen as genocide, and racist.
Which is exactly what skulls-full-of-mush protestors are doing, when they accuse Israel of genocide, for fighting back against Hamas, whose very charter advocates the genocide of the Jews.
What Hamas did on October 7, 2023 was unspeakably vile and inexcusably evil. If it is genocide to want such behavior wiped from the face of the earth, so be it. It is justifiable genocide.
People who define “milling around” as “loitering” do not understand the process of milling, as it was once done. Back in the “modern” world of our great-grandfathers, power, usually supplied by a water wheel of some sort, turned a great granite disk atop a stationary great granite disk. The top disk had slots cut into it towards the axle, something like the spokes of a wheel. The grain or corn to be milled started down these slots, but seldom made it to the center without being overridden and crushed between the two stones, becoming flour or meal which exited at the center. (Or perhaps it went the other way, from center outwards, in some cases.) In either case, as the grain or corn was trickled in to this grinding process there were initially no high tech scoops that efficiently pushed it into the slots; rather it agitated and bounced about at the entrance to the slots until dumb luck popped it into the slot. In other words, before it was milled it “milled around.”
My point is that “milling around” was part of the process. If grains or kernels stood still they would never enter the slot and be ground. There was no “loitering” involved in “milling around” (or “milling about”). In fact the agitation of grains of wheat or kernels of corn at the entrance of slots was necessary, if those wonderfully simple mills were to work.
As I have been feeling agitated, yet seem to be far from becoming any sort of refined “flour”, I therefore I think “milling around” is a good description of my current state. I am not loitering. I am part of a process above my pay-grade, in God’s hands. I am troubled, agitated, outraged, but lack the power to influence those who trouble, agitate, and outrage me.
I am not alone. The so-called “swamp” in Washington DC has resorted to corruption, calling it “ways and means”, which just isn’t right. Everyone knows it. They themselves know it, which makes them increasingly take steps to oppress the backlash they know is brewing, because they know they deserve it. They hope to delay the backlash until after they have lived their glutted lives, and then, like the French King once stated, “After Us, the deluge.”
However the American Revolution was not like France’s. It definitely had an ugly side, but nothing like France’s. Loyalists did hang the young schoolteacher Nathan Hale, but then acted astonished when they themselves were not hung, but sent packing to Canada, after they lost the war. And as these poor refugees fled north they received food and shelter from the very patriots they had despised. This is different from what the French revolution would have given them: The guillotine.
Despite all the wars and bloodshed, compared to other lands there is something very nice about America. It seems almost too kind. And, whatever it is, it is currently “milling around.”
I don’t find milling around a comfortable place to be. To be so agitated is all wrong. The righteous are overruled by bribed judges, over and over, as if filthy lucre mattered more than God. But what can we do? We “mill around.”
If I were given the time and resources to debate, I could explain why what is wrong is wrong, but such debate is exactly what “they” want to prevent. Therefore I, and countless others, wind up shadow-banned, marginalized, cancelled, unheeded, and part of a population “milling around.”
This is part of a repetitive process which occurs and reoccurs and re-reoccurs in history until we get sick of it. Good gets established as the “Law”, (or Constitution, or Bill of Rights), but then some slime-bags come along and think only suckers follow such sissy, Sunday-school rules, and they briefly prosper by cheating. I say “briefly” because, in the long run, history teaches us that “cheaters never prosper.” However, for a while they think they are smarter than everyone else.
The concept of there being a “Law” we follow to our benefit (and break to our detriment) is very ancient, and predates Moses and the Torah. Through the mists of time, scrutinizing clay tablets, we can catch glimpses of a “God of Righteousness” with a name something like “Zedek”, and this animates the mysterious appearance of Melchizedek, a “high priest of God”, in the wanderings of Abraham, long before Moses wrote the “Law” down.
The “Law” was written or dictated (or perhaps recalled after-the-fact; there is much debate about this,) by Moses as the Torah, which is basically the first five books of the Bible. It is not merely the foundation of Judaism, but also Christianity and Islam. Islam? Yes, for, although I am no scholar of the Koran, in 5:44 It states,
Indeed, We sent down the Torah, in which was guidance and light. The prophets who submitted [to God] judged by it for the Jews, as did the rabbis and scholars by that with which they were entrusted of the Scripture of God, and they were witnesses thereto. So do not fear the people but fear Me, and do not exchange My verses for a small price [i.e., worldly gain]. And whoever does not judge by what God has revealed – then it is those who are the disbelievers
My personal reading of the above suggests that followers of Islam (and indeed everybody) had best be wary of hating Jews, lest in the process they hate those who are following the Torah, which would make the haters themselves, and not the Jews, the “disbelievers.”
Sadly Mohammedans, and Christians, and Jews, have all at times failed to “Judge by what God has revealed.” That is how religions founded on love are corrupted to hatred and horrible wars. The hypocrisy gives religion a bad name. The behavior of Catholics and Protestants towards each other, and Sunni and Shiite Moslem towards each other, has been barbaric. And that is between followers of the same dogma, who you would think could get along. If you can’t even get along in your own cult, how can you love your enemies? Consequently we see the mayhem of crusades. It is enough to turn anyone towards Atheism. However the fact of the matter is that this disgusting behavior is not proof religion is bad, but proof some don’t practice what they preach.
The sad fact (that we mortals are able to be seduced away from obedience to the “Law”) is ancient. One delightful thing about Judaism is that they don’t hide their failures, in their histories.
One thing that has always fascinated me is the political situation which is apparent in the time when Jews had no overlords, described in “Judges.” They were apparently what we now would call “Libertarian”. They needed no police, for they knew what the “Law” was, and obeyed it, until they got seduced and didn’t. Then all hell broke loose and they became terribly upset, and milled about, whereupon a “Judge” appeared to rescue them and get them back on track, in terms of obeying the “Law.”
Though this was occurring 3000 years ago, it seems suspiciously similar to our situation today, as we mill around. I am wondering if we are wishing for a modern day “judge”. Perhaps Donald Trump?
But the ancient scriptures also describe a time the Jews didn’t just want a “judge”, able to discern between good and evil, but rather wanted to abdicate their personal freedom and accept a “king”. I delight in how the prophet Samuel warned the Jews how costly such an abdication of freedom would be.
So Samuel reported all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking him for a king. 11 He said, “These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots; 12 and he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. 13 He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. 14 He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his courtiers. 15 He will take one-tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and his courtiers. 16 He will take your male and female slaves, and the best of your cattleb and donkeys, and put them to his work. 17 He will take one-tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves.
America’s founding fathers wanted presidents to be short term “judges” and not long term “kings.” The first furthers freedom, and the second ends it.
In any case, I have no such power, as we currently mill about.
In some ways I’m glad I have no power, for the burden of telling people the difference between judges and kings would be great, especially because as soon as you have power you face an onslaught of seductions. What sort of fool might I make of myself? Suppose some publisher (who actually gagged at my poetry) told me he wept reading it, or some nubile maiden (who actually found my decrepit body so loathsome she wanted to vomit) told me I was irresistibly attractive? There’s no fool like an old fool, and I confess I’m susceptible to flattery, and therefore it is a good thing I never get any. Instead, I’m just milling about, with all sorts of other people who never get flattered.
Of course, there is something dangerous, even explosive, in the “milling around”. To continue my millstone analogy, people don’t think of flour as being like gunpowder, but when flour dust in the air was ignited by a spark in the old mills, there could be amazing explosions.
Perhaps we saw such an “explosion” in my little town, in broad daylight, at the “big” intersection of Main Street with the “Turnpike”. I pass through that intersection on my way to work, but not on my way home, (because I take a one-way road going home). Therefore I saw nothing unusual when I headed out to feed the goat at the Childcare at 2:00 PM, but later, at 6:55 PM, as I headed out after supper to a Bible Study, the intersection bore a remarkable graffiti.
(I took the above pictures a week after the event. The “burn outs” were even blacker when fresh.)
Usually such “burn outs” are the result of rebellious teenagers going wild at two AM, when no one can see them and report them. What I found striking was the above vehicle did its screaming pirouettes in broad daylight. Also there are some rumors the rebel wasn’t a teenager.
At this point there tends to be discussion about the danger involved, and the foolishness of risk, but there can be little doubt the graffiti which the burn-outs left in the center of a small town expresses a certain contempt towards authority. Then the discussion moves on to which authority is the contempt directed at: The “Law”? Or the busybody ordinances of bureaucrats who themselves are contemptuous of the “Law”?
I can’t say. Maybe a little of both. But I will say that I sense a pent up tension in the air, as people “mill about.” Nor do I feel it is only experienced by a particular political party in the United States. It seems to be world wide. People are simply fed up with a leadership which is increasingly contemptuous of the the “Law”, and increasingly disdainful of ordinary people who simply want to be left alone, and to live ordinary lives, where two sexes have babies in a wholesome and natural way, and support, nourish and raise their children to be good citizens. The simple and ordinary, which the “Law” teaches us is noble and beautiful, is increasingly under attack as being “racist” and “sexist” and “exploitation”, while that which is deviant and criminal is mollycoddled and praised and released without bail after committing horrific crimes.
We are pitted against each other, rather than brought into the brotherhood of unity, when in fact we are all in the same boat. Americans are at odds with the leadership of Iran and China, but the people of Iran and even China are also “milling around.”
Do you think the hard working people of China are not well aware of their government’s shortcomings? They are perhaps more aware than anyone else on earth. They laugh at us for ever trusting those we are starting to distrust, for they have experienced a century of cruelty. They have developed their own way of whispering what the government wants unspoken, and they are well aware of awful deeds, such as organ harvesting from hapless Uighur imprisoned without cause. They are “milling around” too, you know, and their leaders are very worried about it.
And so are the ordinary people of Iran. They too know about the Uighur, and they are incredulous that their leadership, which is so high and mighty about upholding Islam’s “Law”, is friendly with China and says not a word about China oppressing people simply for being Islamic.
In fact the whole world knows about the Uighur, but the leaders do nothing. Inaction is just one more unlawful thing they do among all the rest of the unlawful things they do, laughing up their sleeves at people who try to obey the “Law.” However the “milling around” seems to be getting louder and louder.
For the moment the “Law” seems powerless, but in fact it has a power greater than any leader’s. The “Law” is based upon Truth, and Truth remains true even when dictators disallow It being spoken. Dictators can scream and rage all they want, but Truth silently keeps smiling at them, for Truth cannot be anything other than what it is. It is invulnerable, and there is no kryptonite that can harm such a Superman. Most amazingly of all, Truth is Love, which is unfathomable to greedy, lustful and hateful dictators, and Love has a power so far above the heads of those who sneer at the “Law” that they are like worms under rocks.
This is what I personally feel is building in the “milling around” which I notice more and more.
The founding fathers of the United States were well aware of how people in leadership, (even they themselves), could be seduced and corrupted by greed, lust and hate, and they tried their best to create a government which would prevent such moral failures from gaining control. One device was free and fair elections. Free elections allow the “milling around” of the public to manifest in a manner that avoids bloodshed. However our last election was not free and fair, because the scofflaws in the “Swamp” don’t care about what the Founding Fathers cared about. I can’t imagine the upcoming election will be any different. However in a way it will be different. The “milling about” is far greater.
Many are nervous about bloodshed, and I confess I worry about that myself. But I also have a strange hope that the United States is different. We are a kindly nation, founded on the “Law”, and there may be something in our make-up that skips the bloodshed, and allows Truth to manifest in a way we can’t even imagine.
This strange hope was supported by the fact that on three recent occasions my intellect was reduced to despair. The current nonsense where students chant “Destroy the Jews” an “Death to America” is typical. Intellect is useless when you are dealing with appalling ignorance. One is reduced to moaning.
What good is moaning and groaning? Well, it seems fairly useless, but I chanced on something that struck me as rather wonderful in the sixth Chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans.
“….the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. 27 And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.”
My current woes are not worth recounting, but take my word for it: On three occasions my intellect felt as smart as the wrong side of a rock. I had no answers, and if I was younger I might have expressed myself by screeching tires on a road, and leaving burn-out graffiti of black rubber. Instead I expressed myself by writing three sonnets. In each case I began without any idea what the poem would be about, and in each case they began basically as a groan. Yet in each case I amazed myself. The groan flowed out easily, without correction, and when I was done I felt amazingly revived.
For what it’s worth, here they are:
After outrunning the wolves, the lone stag Stands on the hill, quietly contemplating Where to go next. Shall he climb yonder crag And watch the sunset, or graze lush grass, sating All hunger? Even beasts must make decisions.
I, too, must decide, but stand in a place With no paths, or perhaps my vision's Too weak to see them. Or maybe I face Many paths like the spokes of an old wheel, And I stand at the axle. Where to go? What to do? I wish I could hear God's will But my own logic's the poor guidance I know. I run from wolves like the stag on the hill, And then? I'm no shepherd. I'm a lost lamb. I am a not-ness in need of "I Am."
It's spring, but the yellow flowers seem sad. Sun's bright, but the north wind's crooner chills With his piercing song. The world has gone mad And the flowers all seem like a funeral's. Where has gone hope? Forsythia splashes Its yellow clowning, bobbing in the breeze, But I'm not amused. Something glum dashes The uplift, and If I wrote symphonies They'd sing of sadness. Someone is missing And the flowers remind me they're gone. My lips are cold. They want to be kissing As daffodils gleam their gold in the dawn. This ache in my heart makes it quite clear Love has not gone though love is not here.
I am hungry for that first drumming roll Of thunder in the spring, informing all We are under new management; the toll We paid is abolished; Winter's downfall Is accomplished; the wall that divided Is smashed like Berlin's. Yet today's rain Brought no lightning; it just provided The spring with more chill. I tire of the pain And look to the clouds for the longed-for shift. All the world seems awaiting. Where's the thunder? Wheres the glance of warmth that strangely uplifts Without words? All the world seems to wonder In a night so chilled the frogs cease their peeping. Though men go to bed, no one is sleeping.
One board game I disliked as a child was called, “snakes and ladders”. I didn’t like it because skill played no part. One was at the mercy of the roll of the dice, as you progressed towards the finish line. If you landed on a “snake”, you fell backwards, and if you landed on a “ladder”, you leapt forward.
The only way to control your destiny in such a board game is to cheat. You must gain some sort of control over how the dice roll. This may be illegal, but you do stand a far better chance of winning, unless your opponent is better at cheating, (or else catches you cheating, in which case the game may dissolve into a brawl).
Cheating seems to be how the game of politics is played in “The Swamp”, (IE: Washington DC.) They feel they are “the elite” and are smarter than the “deplorables”, (IE: Fellow Citizens). They do not really believe all men are created equal, nor that they should love their neighbor. Rather they feel that they should control their neighbor, because they are smart and the rabble (IE: Fellow Citizens) are ignorant. However the rabble are becoming roused, and the elite are increasingly fearful they are losing control. A storm is over Washington this “Super Tuesday.”
It shows up especially well on radar:
The funny thing is that elite in Washington DC would laugh at the idea that the physical reality of the weather has anything to do with the social climate they create with their cheating, even as they try to sell the idea to the Public that the Public is guilty of causing Global Warming.
The fact of the matter is that Creation is a unity. No man is an island, and all greedy attempts at segregation deny the reality of God’s plan for universal oneness, and do so in ways that stir up actual, physical storms. We do control the atmosphere we abide in, not by throwing virgins into volcanoes, nor by driving about in impractical electric vehicles, but more in the manner that the atmosphere of a movie is controlled by background mood music.
A historical example of the uncanny connection between men’s deeds and the weather appears in the fact that, when Hitler’s invasion of Poland forced even the peace-loving Chamberlain to conclude to his cabinet, “Well then, gentlemen, it is war”, there was a brilliant flash of lightning and deafening roar of thunder outside the House of Lords in London. Just a coincidence? I think not. It is as Shakespeare’s Hamlet stated, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy”, though perhaps we should update that to, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Hillary, than are dreamt of in your philosophy”.
The elite can write all the silly laws they want in their mire, thinking they control the vastness of weather (Global Warming preventions) and the minutia of viruses, (Coronavirus vaccines), but they don’t control either. They are pretenders.
They are desperate to cling to the powers they imagine they have gained, through their pretense. These words I write will most definitely be censored, though I write them to warn them, because I pity them. Actions have reactions, and, if one reaps what one sows, the swamp creatures are sowing thistles for themselves.
I’ve been addicted myself, and therefore have compassion towards addicts. I am part of a group striving to help youth escape fentanyl addiction. I wish I could also be of help to the elite, but they don’t admit they are addicted. (To power.)
The “swamp” needs to learn what fentanyl addicts have learned. To get what you desire is hell, compared to what you get when you suffer the agony of withdrawal symptoms.
The “swamp” scoffs at the idea I have anything to offer them, but are so scared of hearing me that they censor me (and millions of others).
They call me a “bitter clinger” (though I’ve never bought a gun) though they are the ones who cling, desperately, to power.
They display contempt towards the hands that feed them, dismissing the breadbasket of the nation as “flyover country.” Poor fools, can they not see what they are earning when they bite the hand that feeds? Don’t they see actions have reactions?
I’d like to go off on a long tangent at this point about the laws of Karma; of “reaping what you sow,” And also of “killing the goose that laid the golden egg”. Often it is better to deny yourself than to get what you want (but don’t need.)
The so-called “deplorable” tend to be poor, and must constantly sacrifice just to get by. They constantly deny themselves. Consequently they know of a sweet freedom, which those, who don’t deny themselves, are ignorant about.
What is this freedom you get? The fentanyl addict wants to know. They long to be free of the constant craving. They hunger to know about freedom, but the swamp is craven, and doesn’t want to know. However, as the swamp is suppose to be representing “the land of the free”, they damn well should want to know. What is this freedom I’m speaking about?
What is the freedom? It is the freedom from being controlled by a craving. Rather than hankering for money or power or fame, you can take them or leave them. You are not some child who will tantrum if they don’t get some toy, nor some adolescent who grieves greatly over infatuations. You just accept the Now.
Donald Trump seems a representative of such freedom. He is not controlled by the “swamps” cravings. All he has earned, through his wish to help us achieve the freedom enshrined in our constitution, is monstrous harassment, yet he remains free.
There is something very attractive about such freedom. It is inherently friendly. When Trump visited the border, he did not give the middle finger to illegal aliens, across the Rio Grande. Instead he cheerfully waved, and an excited voice returned from across the river: “Trump! Trump!” Trump laughed, “Even they like me! Isn’t it incredible?”
Yes, it is indeed incredible. It is also incredible that the governor standing up most for America’s integrity can’t stand up. In his wheelchair he stands taller than many who swagger, up to their armpits in the mire of the swamp.
It is incredible and even a little dream-like, and not a good sign for the swamp that despises impossible dreams, this Super Tuesday. Where they were sure they had loaded the dice and would land on a ladder, they see themselves landing in a swamp seething with snakes.
I have been privately thanking God for the past two mild winters, for, with the cost of heating through the roof, mild weather is mercy.
Winter, however, is not so merciful, in and of itself. Winter cannot help but be what it is, which is winter. Even when you make money from operating a lunch stand at a ski resort, as I once did, winter is an ordeal. I also used to make good money shoveling snow from roofs, or even walkways, taking advantage of people less muscular than I used to be. But even then winter was an ordeal. It is what it is. That is why the local Native American word for “old man” roughly translates to “one who has seen many winters.”
Winter takes a lot out of you. It is a season of subtraction. You start with lots of firewood, and like the sand in an hourglass, your woodpile dwindles away. In like manner you start with lots of hay in your barn for your livestock, and it too dwindles away. As does your food. One reason for Lent’s fasting is that little is left in the pantry, and a reason corn beef and cabbage is dinner on Saint Patrick’s Day is because that is all you have left.
As one endures this ordeal one keeps a sharp eye out for rats. They creep about and steal from the supplies you have so carefully set aside. Actual rats are bad enough, and I have fought them for decades. My fellow man should not be a rat, however Fraudulent Biden does appear to be a rat, for he is the reason energy prices have soared, and he is the reason inflation gnaws away at elderly schoolmarm’s pensions, with ratty vigor.
Fraudulent Biden even seems to be a winter, in and of himself. He is like ice upon warm America. Nothing he does promotes increase, and all he does decreases.
Some people claim we are sacrificing in order to achieve some high aim, but their math makes no sense. Elemental algebra tells even poets like me, who hated math classes, that what Fraudulent Biden calls “Bidenconomics” is basically a rat in the pantry.
Farmers don’t like rats, but they cannot allow a single rat to so grasp their attention that it is as if that nasty rat ruled the farm. In like manner, the stupidities of Fraudulent Biden (and the echoing stupidity of his stupid minions) cannot be allowed to pollute our judgement and common sense.
In our world, which politicians like to feel they are “above”, the hardship of winter has a benefit. The farmers note where their preparations for winter had shortcomings, and they sketch plans for how they will do better next time. And they do do better. They learn from experience. No pain, no gain.
Please note that the reason they improved was because they admitted they had shortcomings. This is one thing many politicians seem incapable of doing.
As I write it is 50 degrees (10 degrees Celsius). This is near record setting warmth for 9:00 in the evening this far north. However the pines are roaring atop the hills, as a front is about to pass. Temperatures are about to crash thirty degrees. No big deal. Just a front passing.
However 136 years ago it was a very big deal. The sharp digging of the arctic front tapped into the uplifting of a southern system, and the “phasing” of the two systems reinforced a lazy southern low drifting north and created an explosion at the mouth of the Hudson River.
The men forecasting back then didn’t see it coming. They can be forgiven, for we have never seen it again. They assumed the southern low would drift east, and the northern cold would drift east as well. This normalcy did not occur. Instead the the two systems sharpened just far enough north and south to “phase”, and the Blizzard of 1888 blew up out of nowhere.
It was a freak storm, basically a North Atlantic gale which belonged out by Iceland or Greenland, or parked off Labrador, but instead it parked just south of New York City. Consequently people in New York City got to see what life is like in Iceland, when the banshees of winter howl.
Try to imagine the mayhem which would occur if we saw a repeat of such a storm. Now people get all a tither in the Big Apple if they get four inches of snow in twenty-four hours, but the Blizzard of 1888 delivered four feet. And it was accompanied by steady winds of forty miles an hour, with far higher gusts. These winds created huge drifts. Lastly, this incredible storm hit an unsuspecting population, at a time when you had to show up at work to get paid. And the forecast was for “light rain, and then turning colder”. People attempted to conduct “business as usual” even as snows fell at a rate of more than three inches an hour, in 40 mph winds. Sadly, roughly 400 people died.
Roughly 100 were sailors, and as I’ve researched the event I have searched to find their reports, for sailors tend to know more about the weather than landlubbers. However, from what I have learned, sailors were as surprised as anyone else. Very few had boats with with engines, and most were still dependent on sails, so very few few would have left shore that morning if they knew such a storm was six hours away. But it was a mild morning at the end of a mild winter, and many set out with the innocent naivete of imbeciles.
Soon many were reversing course and praying to God they could make it home. As they described it, their barometers abruptly fell with amazing speed, (some people concluded their barometers must be broken when they fell below 28.00 inches of mercury,) (948 mb). However it was only the captain who was attending to technical stuff like barometers; the deck hands also knew they were in for it, when the sky abruptly became a purple close to black, and lightning laced the skies.
There are some tales of ships who made it back to port through abruptly bitterly cold winds and blinding snow, but many did not make it. Some turned out to sea, because they knew they could not make it. They knew it was safer to stay away from shipwrecking coasts, and to reef sails and put up a storm jib and to “ride it out”. They describe a surprising period of calm midst the screaming winds, like the eye of a hurricane.
Meanwhile, back in the world of landlubbers, New York City was basically reduced to an inoperative condition in six hours. All the trains, which were the most “modern” transport at that time, ground to a halt, or crashed into each other, because brakes failed to work on the ice. (The “modern” solution of 1888 was to “elevate” the trains above the streets.) Meanwhile all the “modern” electric and telegraph poles and lines were crashing in the wind and heavy, sticky snow. New York City couldn’t communicate with outsiders. (Actually one smart reporter found a way. He communicated using the cable under the ocean to Europe, and then back again, to tell Bostonian readers what was happening in New York. Boston got off easy, with only flooding docks and screaming winds and two inches of slush, but only forty miles inland people saw four feet of snow. That includes the area where I now live in southern New Hampshire.
It was an amazing storm, at the end of a very mild winter. I bring it up for two reasons. The first is that you shouldn’t lower your guard, just because this winter has been so kindly, in many respects. But the second reason is that, though it is sad roughly 400 died, the storm had a good effect, as well. Rather than the railways being “elevated” they became “subways”, and also electricity went underground, and in front of New Yorker’s homes they now don’t have to look at this:
New York City learned a valuable lesson from that awful storm. They took misfortune and made themselves fortunate.
I pray we can do the same thing with the misfortune called Fraudulent Biden. Like winter, he is an ordeal, but we can make our suffering become benefits.
I’m sitting in a rocking chair by a window with the fire roaring inside and the wind roaring outside, watching the snow swirl. A squall is moving through. In the summer we’d be having thunder and a heat wave would be ending. This being January, thunder is unlikely, but the sharp drop in temperatures is the same. Thaw is ending, and a cold wave’s in the cards.
I prefer being inside, watching the weather. I might go out as far as the porch, just to sniff the wind and hear the pines roar atop the hill, and perhaps grab a couple logs for the fire, but my hot-blooded youth is around the bend in my rear view mirror. Once I’d be drawn out to stride through such storms. Now getting me out is like pulling teeth.
Not that I don’t remember testing the limits, for in a sense I’m still testing them, only the limits are a lot less. Limits hit closer to home, as you grow grizzled. Walking up a long staircase is my modern Mount Everest, and the second beer now like the tenth. Life has its troubles, all the way through; it’s just that the ordeals of the old seem a bit pathetic to the young, who bound up staircases three steps at a time.
And I must admit I like getting texts from my second son, who lives on the coast of Maine, and must escape his stuffy office when it storms. He’s still hot blooded, and will go out to walk in the screaming wind to witness the wave’s fury at Maine’s stubborn granite shores. His ordeal is actually the stultification of an office, and he experiences an odd envy towards those who push the limits, driving trucks through highway hypnosis, with the wipers lulling and the hurricane gusts shoving the truck towards the verge, or the fishermen out in a storm, rocked drowsy by seas that would make anyone else sick and terrified. `How can one be so exhausted they fall asleep at the wheel in a hurricane?
Think of that, next time you order broiled haddock at a restaurant. We are beholden to people who push the limits.
But age reels in the limits. I can’t push my luck to the degree I once could. The time has come to sit by the fire and write memoirs. I should be retired, but of course Bidenflation has people afraid to stop earning, myself included. I haven’t shut down the Childcare I run, though I don’t hike with the kids as much or as far, and rarely get on sleds with them and go screaming down hills. I may even finally act my age. When the winds cut like a knife, I increasingly find things to do indoors.
I especially didn’t want to go out yesterday morning. I was cozy, in bed, watching the black window slowly purple with the day. The wind was roaring, but from the south, as we were on the east side of the storm that’s now departing. Rain was pelting the window, and the daybreak was late due to the thick overcast, but I didn’t have to get up. It was Saturday, I didn’t have to worry about my Childcare opening. I could drift back to dreamland. I snuggled down into my pillow, and just then there was the loud blaring of a horn.
It went on and on unceasingly. My wife jolted awake and uttered the two words without the third, “What the…” I swung from the bed and lurched blearily to the window. “Guess it’s the neighbor’s car. I can see it’s lights flashing”. Then I collapsed back into thankful sheets.
The horn went on and on. My wife gave up and got up to get coffee, as I tried to hide under my pillow. As my wife left she looked out the window. “Their car’s lights are still flashing. Whatever they are doing with their remote, it isn’t working. They’re going to have to go out into this filthy weather.”
“Poor souls,” I muttered sleepily, nestling back down.
The horn went on and on. I could hear it through the pillow. Finally I said all three words, and whipped out of bed to drag on my pants and my tee shirt and angrily stomp to the front door. Out on the front porch I could see the neighbor’s car wasn’t flashing its lights any more. What’s more, the horn’s blaring didn’t seem to be coming from that direction. In fact…could it be…
Quickly I slipped on shoes without socks and a heavy, cloth coat, and hurried out through the wind and rain and, sure enough, my Jeep was the culprit. The wind must have driven rain through the grill and wet the wiring under the hood. I opened the door and tried putting the key in the ignition. The horn kept baring. I sat down in the car and turned on the engine. The horn kept blaring. I tried to think, but its hard to think when a horn keeps blaring. Desperately I tried opening the door and slamming it very hard. The horn kept blaring. I tried locking and unlocking the locks, turning the engine off and on again, and then even insanely tried the radio and wipers, but nothing would stop that horn. I was going to have to disconnect the battery.
I pushed the buttons and pulled the knob to unlocked the hood and the tailgate (where my toolbox is), removed the key, opened the door and got a face-full of cold, stinging rain. Wincing I swung from the car, and came face to face with my wife, who had come out in a warm, especially fluffy bathrobe, big boots, and a broad rain-hat, and was studying her cellphones screen. “It says you should try locking and unlocking your doors”.
“Tried that.”
“Try starting the engine?”
“Tried that.”`
“Tried…um…” she squinted against a blast of wind, consulting her cellphone, “…um…disconnecting the battery?”
There are times an ungrateful streak appears in me. During such times I find kind, helpful people annoying, even if they are my wife. One of those times is when I’m standing in a wind-whipped rain in a coat designed for snow and not rain, which is rapidly becoming drenched and heavier, with a horn blaring and blaring and blaring. But I fought off a wave of sarcastic replies (my wife has trained me well) and responded, “I’m doing that exact thing right now.”
I turned to get an adjustable wrench from my toolbox, and came face to face with my oldest son and his wife hurrying up in bright raincoats. Wryly I thought to myself, “At least they had the brains to dress appropriately”. My son shouted over the noise, “Hi Dad! We came to see if you had passed out over your steering wheel!” His wife shot him a glance and said, “Actually we thought there had been an accident. Often that is what gets horns stuck.”
“Nope. I haven’t a clue what gives with this stupid horn. Wet wires I guess.” I was fishing about in my messy toolbox at the back of the jeep. “Oh, here it is.” I walked to the front and busily loosened the cable from the battery, as my son looked on in interest. Behind him the two women were chatting, one in a raincoat and one in a bathrobe, in a howling rainstorm. Not a thing you see every day. Even in my bad mood I wished I had a camera.
Abruptly there was silence, blessed silence.
I had an odd and perhaps crazed hope that by stopping the horn I might have fixed the problem. Even twenty-four year old jeeps have computer chips, and maybe those newfangled things just needed to be shut down and rebooted. It works with my laptop, when it goes crazy; maybe it would work with a crazy Jeep. I touched the disconnected cable back to the battery in an exploratory manner. “Blaaa!”
Enough! I disconnected for good, and turned to go. Before I could slam the hood my son reached in to tuck the cable a safer distance from the battery terminal, which I appreciated. Then he withdrew to immediately begin chatting with the women about the abysmal weather.
My wife was quite merry, in her rain-hat and rapidly wilting robe, laughing about how we had thought it was the neighbor’s car, and how they likely thought it was their car as well, which was why we saw the lights in their car flashing. They were desperately trying to stop their horn with their remote, when it wasn’t their horn at all. How funny!
I decided some people have a peculiar sense of humor. Slamming my jeep’s hood, I muttered something sardonic about finding a better place to talk, and headed dripping back through the rain towards the house, the chatterboxes trailing along behind me
My son and daughter-in-law were heading home, but seemed to feel it would be impolite to depart without civilities, so they walked up the drive and climbed the steps and we paused on the porch. I had worked hatless in the rain, which is never a good idea, and I felt on the verge of shivers. The porch was not good enough, so I was about to invite them in, when apparently the civilities were over, and they turned to go. I thanked my son for checking up on me to see if I had died, and he laughed. But I saw him scrutinizing the shrunken size of my porch woodpile. Ordinarily between knee-deep and chest-deep, it was down to six logs. I had my excuses, but was in no mood to make them.
Stepping in the house, I immediately noticed it wasn’t much warmer than it was outside. The roaring south wind had us in a veritable heat wave, for January, and it was nearly up to fifty (ten Celsius). Meanwhile indoors the wood stoves had burned low, and I hadn’t restocked them first thing in the morning, because I was enjoying oversleeping. Inside the heat was nearly down to fifty, which is when the propane heat automatically kicks on. I walked up to the thermostat that controls the propane heat, and cranked it up to seventy. (Twenty-one Celsius.) I’d be darned if I was going to hustle about tending fires and then waiting for them to heat the house up. So what if the propane bill was ten dollars higher? Sometimes a man just needs to splurge.
I hadn’t even had my first cup of coffee. That stupid, blaring horn had stripped my life of any semblance of extravagance. Well, I’d had enough. No more Mr. Nice Guy. I was going to put my foot down, and, come hell or high water, have my coffee.
Problem with putting your foot down is that you, in one way or another, usually step in it. The coffee in the pot was cool, and, even when I heated my cup in the microwave and slouched to my armchair, the wood-stove next to my chair was barely warm. Far away I could hear the propane furnace rumbling to life, but it would take time for that heat to reach my chair. So it looked like I would have to tend fires, after all.
I put my coffee cup atop the stove, crouched down and opened the stove’s door and poked around, gathering the remaining coals to a small pile near the door. Then I fished around in the wood box for scraps of kindling and bark, lay them on top of the coals, and carefully, split side down, put three small logs on top as a triangle. Then I wheezed at the coals with what is left of my lungs.
Something about starting a fire always improves my mood. Maybe its only because I used to get in trouble for playing with fire, as a boy, and now I don’t get in trouble any more. Or maybe not. I still get in trouble, for getting ashes and dirt and bugs on my wife’s clean floor. And also, come to think of it, I enjoyed starting fires even when I got in trouble for it, as a boy.
Instead I think there is something very ancient, even Neanderthal, about starting a fire. It involves power. Once the fire was blazing, even the most wimpy cave-man could cow a sabre toothed tiger, simply by waving a burning branch in its face.
As I sat on my haunches watching my fire grow my mood improved. I stood up and took off my wet coat and hung it on the coat-hooks we have by that fire to dry clothes. I sipped my coffee. I could hear words collecting as sentences in the back of my mind, and a post growing, revolving about the power of a fire. After all, fire also has power as a spiritual symbol.
If our pride, vanity and egotism is seen as the wood, then the fire that reduces such wood to ashes can be seen as a Spiritual Master’s rebukes and/or suggestions, which, in a sort of spiritual “chemical reaction”, breaks down wooden selfishness and frees up the selfless power of heat and light.
Hmm. This could get interesting. I squatted back down to poke intently at the fire.
I toyed with weaving in an image employed by Persian poets: Heat and light has the power to attract moths to circle inward, closer and closer to the flame, despite the danger of their imminent destruction. What might that symbolize?
I reached out, took a sip from my hot coffee cup atop the stove, and considered weaving a more down-to-earth-power into my braid of thought:. Arabs can embargo your oil heat, governments can ration your propane heat, electric companies can cut off your electric heat, but the only way to stop you from burning wood from your own back yard is to step onto your turf, which often, throughout history, has proven to be a bridge too far, for busybody bureaucrats.
As I crouched down and again poked at the fire I sipped my coffee, and decided this Saturday might not turn out to be so bad after all. A really cool post was brewing up in my mind. Even if I flopped at getting my ideas into a cohesive form, it would be fun to try. If I just hurried to finish my chores in my Jeep….
My Jeep. That was one thing Neanderthals didn’t have to deal with. A burning branch might stop a sabre toothed tiger, and back off a gigantic woolly mammoth, but it wouldn’t stop a Jeep from blaring its horn.
I couldn’t make the weekly Childcare deposit at the bank in a Jeep with a blaring horn. I couldn’t drive the trash to the dump the recyclables to the recycling center in jeep with a blaring horn. That meant the only doable chore was to bring wood up onto the porch from the woodpile, before the next storm. I glanced over at the window. The sky seemed darker, not lighter, as the sun rose, and the rain fell harder than ever. Not a good day for an old man with bad lungs to work outside.
My good mood popped like a bubble. Was there nothing I could do?
I supposed I could take my inability to do anything as a “sign”, an excuse to retreat and withdraw from the challenges of life, and be a “poet”. However, after doing this roughly sixty thousand times in my life, I know it only makes my problems, if not worse, then just sit there, looking at me. And I’ve also discovered it is very hard to write well when a problem is just sitting there looking at you, waiting.
With a sigh I faced the last thing I wanted to do: How to stop a Jeep from beeping. I typed that into the search engine of my computer, “How to stop a Jeep from beeping.”
Initially I plodded through various websites cursing my cruel fate. Did Keats or Shelley ever have to face such indignity? The good die young, but I get dragged into my old age dealing with inanity after inanity, until now in my decrepitude I’m reduced to dealing with beeping Jeeps. To think that I ever complained about washing dishes!
Then, abruptly and to my surprise, I found myself enjoying myself. I chanced across a website holding garrulous geezers who were very fond of their old Jeeps, even when the vehicles qualified (like mine) as “clunkers.” With wonderful humor they talked about all the problems they faced, keeping their rusted hulks running.
It turned out I wasn’t the only one faced with a horn that started blaring and wouldn’t stop. Unlike most other problems discussed on the site, no one had a clear answer to the problem. The two solutions to the problem didn’t actually identify what the problem was.
One solution was to pull the fuse for the horn. A old Jeep’s horn apparently was on a circuit all by itself, and no other functions would be effected if you pulled that fuse. However this involved finding the location of the fuse box, and then involved finding the location within the fuse box of the right fuse, and lastly of extracting that fuse, which isn’t always easy after it has been in place for over twenty years.
Easier was the second solution, which was to let the engine dry. This would solve the problem until it got wet again. Usually this happened when the owner’s spouse was borrowing the Jeep, which led to lots of funny stories. However this solution filled me with hope, especially as the window abruptly brightened from purple to gold, and the sun burst out.
The warm front had passed, and we were in the storm’s “warm sector.” It was still humid, and wisps of snow-eater fog appeared and disappeared over the snow-pack, but I ventured to hope my Jeep’s engine might dry enough to stop the horn from blaring.
Waiting for an engine to dry seemed like a chore I could handle, and I sat back to do it. I figured I could multitask by considering my brewing post, “Neanderthal Fires”. But just then my wife came bustling in, and began to regard me in an evaluating way. I hardened my jaw. My wife doesn’t always approve of how I spend my time. Just the way she looks at me makes me fear several items are being added to my Honeydew List.
This is another thing Neanderthal’s didn’t have to deal with. It is very hard to write when my wife is just watching me, waiting.
I decided to head outside and stack a little wood, quickly, before she could add to my list. The effort would get me huffing and puffing, and its harder to add onto an old man’s list when he’s huffing and puffing.
However even as I arose I heard an approaching engine, growing louder and then pausing in front of my woodpile, followed by a clanging. I went to the window and saw my grandson throwing logs into the big bucket of his Dad’s front-end-loader.
The sight made me smile, and it wasn’t just because I like it when my son and his sons stack my wood for me. It was also because we usually use the front-end-loader to transport the firewood greater distances than the fifteen yards from the woodpile to the front porch. It actually would have been faster to carry it armload by armload by hand, than to load it and unload it, into and out from the loader’s bucket. But my younger grandson just turned sixteen, and just loves to drive anything he can get his hands on.
My wife came and stood beside me at the window, and I adroitly switched the subject from my Honeydew List to reminiscing. I far prefer reminiscing to doing actual work, (unless you define my “work” as reminiscing on paper). (As I do.)
In my most sentimental voice I sighed how it didn’t seem that long ago when that grandson was thigh high, and now he’s abruptly big as I am. In her least sentimental voice she said I should pay our grandson something for all his hard work, reminding me this was the third time he’d stacked wood for us.
A spasm of irritation hit me. Since when do you get paid for stacking a old cripple’s wood? I never got paid for stacking my Dad’s wood when he got old. If there is such a thing as “child support” then there also should be a thing called “grandpa support”. In fact, a decent definition of “family” is, “Hard work you don’t get paid for.” But my wife only understands the sacrificing part, and not the receiving part. Fifteen devils leapt onto my left shoulder, suggesting sarcastic replies I could speak to her.
I’ve been well trained. I swiped all fifteen demons aside, scattering them, and I did not speak a single sarcastic reply, but I’ll confess I did sigh. And my wife’s eyes narrow when I sigh, as if a sigh spoke fifteen devils. I sighed, but said, “I agree. He deserves an allowance.” I took out my wallet from my back pocket and opened it. It held slim pickin’s. “Do you have cash?” She went to her purse and returned with two twenties. I had extracted two rumpled fives from my emaciated wallet, and accepted her contribution. Then I turned to the window and reminisced, “I worked for $1.60 an hour, back in ’71…”
My wife didn’t want to reminisce. The front door closed, and in the view out the window my grandson looked up from the woodpile and smiled. My wife entered from stage left, cheerfully exuberant in the sunshine. Meanwhile the devils were crowding back back onto my shoulders.
I don ‘t know what I expected to happen when I reached age seventy, but I did think I’d somehow outgrow thinking crabby thoughts. No such luck. If you want to defeat the habits of a lifetime you’d best begin when you are young, before they become the habits of a lifetime.
A racket was going in my head, sort of like a Jeep’s stuck horn. Out the window a grandmother and grandson were chatting happily in the fits of sunshine, as clouds scudded over in a springlike breeze, but I was fomenting a gloom, thinking up reasons to be offended.
I looked down at the money in my hands. Why didn’t my wife carry it out? Because maybe my son wants my grandson to work for free, out of the goodness of his heart, and maybe we’ll get a lecture for tipping the young man. Or I will. My wife will escape because she didn’t hand him the money. So she doesn’t even have to think about such reverberations.
Nor does she have to brood about inflation, and how the so-called “elite” are screwing the hard working salt-of-the-earth, the people who actually do the work that makes comfort possible. It is as if the “elite” are “clipping” the edges of silver coins, making the coins slightly smaller, and thinking no one will notice. But that was the original reason for “milling” the edges of silver coins, to keep such sneak-thieves at bay. And for the first hundred-forty years the United States existed there was no inflation. A man worked for “a dollar a day”. But then came the taxing and the tax collectors, and money was “clipped” in a new and technically devious way.
I sighed. My wife doesn’t like it when I get all political, but in my life I’ve watched the sneak-thieves prosper. When my generous grandfather gave me five dollars for Christmas it could buy a hundred candy bars, but if I give my grandchildren the same bill, they are lucky if they can buy two. More than ninety percent of the value of a five dollar bill has vanished in my time. Where has it gone?
Basically it has gone into the power (and pockets) of politicians, who do not have to create wealth; they just print money. But the money they print actually has no real value, though people salivate over it and are able to be bribed and compromised. And this worthless money dilutes the value of the real money made by real work. Inflation is to work what adultery is to marriage.
Neanderthals didn’t have to think about such stuff. They had no reason to save, or to save for long, for if you don’t eat the mammoth meat it goes bad. Even a flint spear-point must be used to have value, and if you hurl a spear the flint tip may smash if it hits the rocky ground. They lived more in the Now than we do.
But what was my Now? It was a stupid Jeep with a malfunctioning horn. I went back to the website and glanced for the location of the fuse-box, and then headed out the door.
My wife and grandson were still merrily chatting. Not much wood was getting stacked. I handed my grandson the money, a bit gruffly stating, “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your help.”
His face lit up. Youth does like praise, and also money. But then I added, “And if you don’t want to accept it, give it to your Dad, to pay for the loader’s gasoline.” His eyebrows shot up, and he looked a bit anxiously towards the front end loader, which was idling. “Oh, Yes, Absolutely. Gasoline is important. Absolutely.” Apparently I’d touched upon a sensitive topic. What couldn’t I keep my big mouth closed?
Avoiding my wife’s eyes, I continued on to my Jeep, and looked under the glove compartment for the fuse-box. There was no sign of a fuse-box anywhere under the dashboard. With a sigh I opened the hood and dared to reconnect the battery. To my delight the horn didn’t come on. Problem solved.
I ambled back up into the house to see if the web could tell me where the fuse-box was in “certain models”. Or maybe I just wanted to get back to the Jeep website, and enjoy the faceless brothers who knew the joys of being garrulous. My wife was bustling about in her highly efficient manner, but paused in front of me, and inquired, “Should I wait to go shopping to drive you to the bank?” I dreamily looked up, and murmured, “Bank? No need. The horn is fixed.”
No sooner had she driven off when I abruptly heard, “WAAAAAA!” Leaping up, I hurtled out the door and down the steps, nodding at my grandson as I hurried by to stop the awful noise. It didn’t take long to bring back the blessed silence, but as I turned to walk back to the house I had things besides Neanderthals to think about.
Obviously the wiring hadn’t completely dried. However the engine had heated up, so perhaps the engine’s heat would hasten further drying. I just needed to be patient.
Walking back to the house I found I was huffing and puffing. I had hurried down to stop the blaring faster than the prescribed speed-limit for seventy-year-old men. At the bottom of the stairs I nodded at my grandson, and pretended to scan the sky for signs of the approaching cold front. In actual fact those stairs have recently become steeper.
It is taking me a while to get back in shape, after being hospitalized with pneumonia. I’m off the oxygen, and my wife has shifted all the bottles and tubes and other paraphernalia into a back room where it doesn’t disturb the aesthetics of her interior, but I still remain more of a weakling than I like. As I took a deep breath and labored up the steps I wryly thought to myself I wasn’t doing a very good job of, ` “gracefully surrendering the things of youth.”
For some reason that phrase has stuck in my head, from a poster that was on the walls of many college dorms and hippy communes fifty-five years ago. It was an old sage’s serene advice, from something called the “Desiderata”, supposedly written in 1692 and left in a church in Baltimore and only recently rediscovered, (but in fact written in 1927 by Max Ehrmann). In any case, when my father was crippled by polio at age 34 he did not gracefully surrender. He fought like hell, and I seem to have inherited some of his ferocity. There is a Dylan Thomas mood in me,
Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
This tends to clash with the serenity I inherited from my mother, who understood rest is a great healer. She was a nurse, while my father was a surgeon and understood running laps is also a great healer. Little wonder they divorced, but I’m stuck with them in my head.
With a sigh I sagged by my laptop again, clicking back to the Jeep website, but my mind off with the Neanderthals. Judging from their bones, they lived brutal lives, yet cared for their injured, (and I suppose injuries are common when you hunt woolly mammoths without a gun). The cold was constant, and caused arthritis. Yet their elders lived after they were able to hunt, and when they died they were sometimes buried with flowers. They sat by fires that burned for decades in caves, talking about what? Jeeps?
How did Jeeps get into my thinking? Oh, yes, my laptop was open to that website, and some practical part of my brain was idly scanning comments the way some people play solitaire when midst deeper thought, and I was noticing something that distracted me from Neanderthals.
Here and there contributors had noticed that their blaring horn occurred in tandem with other electrical problems. Perhaps a radio quit or the heater’s fan quit. They could get by without a radio or fan, but when wipers quit the driver had to grab the bull by the horns and solve the problem, which apparently lay in something called the “wiring harness”. After a couple decades of jouncing across the landscape a Jeep’s wires frayed and then short circuited, and this might allow electricity to invade the circuit that supposedly was dedicated to the horn and only the horn.
I sat back with the serenity that comes from finding an answer. The driver’s side window of my Jeep had quit rolling up or down a few months ago, which was something I could live with, but I could not live with that horn. If drying the wires didn’t work, then I could….I glanced at the clock….
Yikes! The bank would be closing in 55 minutes, and I hadn’t even started on the receipts. And the dump recycling center would close in 120 minutes, and they’d slam the gate in your face if you were ten seconds late!
I’ll skip the details of the frantic rush that followed, except to say that when I reconnected the battery the wires were dry and I made it to the bank on time and without a blaring horn. Then I had to hustle to load all the trash from my home, and head over to the Childcare to grab that trash as well.
Having to hurry annoyed me no end. I like to saunter in and chat with the young ladies at the bank, but I had to fly in and out like the rudest capitalist. Then I always get irritated by how I have to spend time separating our trash for the various recycling bins, when it seems other, unnamed people could show some consideration and themselves do the separating, for an old man like me. Especially annoying are dirty kleenex in the paper bin, which is not allowed, and unwashed jam jars, which are not allowed, and so forth, which seems to indicate people are too prissy to dirty their fingers, and leave stuff to rot and become covered in maggots, for me to deal with. It’s not fair, and soon fifteen devils are on my shoulder, sawing away at the violins of my self pity, and my mind is soon blaring like a stuck horn.
Against all those devils is one sane angel on my other shoulder, telling me not to make a big deal out of minor offenses. I’d like to say this angel is the result of becoming old and wise, and that I’ve learned to be detached and objective, but to be brutally honest I think that angel has been there all along, even back when I was a wild teenager.
The comedian Bill Cosby once described a time he drank too much and became sick, and a conversation he had with a toilet bowl. Apparently we all have an objectivity within us, even when we are at our worst. Even Saint Paul describes how he knows what is good, but does bad things, (in the seventh chapter of Romans,) and I figure that, if a superman like Paul can blow it, it gives me an excuse to ignore the good angel and listen to the fifteen bad ones.
And I have to confess I derive a sort of pleasure out being crabby. I try not to be crabby out loud, or to hurt another, but privately, in secret, I need to express myself. I need to express how it sometimes feels like I go the extra mile for people who won’t go an inch for me. The good angel on my shoulder can remind me I’m not the only soldier in the trenches, and that millions die never thanked, never given a Medal of Honor or even a Purple Heart. The baked haddock I enjoy may involve a wrecked fishing boat. But they are not me. I’m the one suffering here, and therefore I’m the one crabby.
I was especially crabby as I arrived at the Childcare to grab it’s trash. Usually it is a quick job, but my younger daughter insists on living in a romantic novel rather than reality, and the current drama has her destitute with two small children. (I’ll allow you to fill in the details.) The State of New Hampshire, in a rare bit of legislative sanity, refuses to pay welfare for housing when family is available. Therefore rather than serenely retired I am a “support”. In some ways it reminds me of the Robert Frost poem where a hired hand returns to a certain farm to die, and the following exchange occurs between the farmer and his wife,
‘Home is the place where, when you have to go there, They have to take you in.’
‘I should have called it Something you somehow haven’t to deserve.’
In any case, she has come home, which irritates me for two reasons.
The first reason involves the fact I have a surgeon and a nurse echoing in my skull, the first saying healing involves exercise and the second saying healing involves rest. Simply avoiding schizophrenia forced me to marry the contradictions, and see both are correct. Furthermore, doctors can’t function without nurses, and nurses can’t function without doctors, and therefore most quarreling between the two is a waste of time, and divorce is the greatest waste of all. Consequently all the drama of romantic novels, and most of the angst in pop music on the radio, bores me. It is all a waste of time, compared to harmony. (Which makes me look like a hypocrite for being so discordantly crabby about romantic drama.)
The second reason for irritation involves the fact a poor old man like myself has to deal with extra trash. Furthermore, because she has little free time with two small children and a job, rather than shopping my daughter orders much through Amazon, which means her trash includes an amazing number of cardboard boxes. However the dump recycling center will not accept boxes unless they are broken down. But did my daughter find the time to break down the boxes? No. And lastly, I had arrived at nap time, (not only for the two little ones but for the exhausted Mom,) so I was expected to work on tiptoes.
But what about the exhausted grandfather?
Externally I try to appear sympathetic, empathetic and magnanimous to a saintly degree, but internally the violins of my self pity were sawing so fast the strings were smoking. Did Shelley or Keats or Shakespeare ever have to break down boxes on tiptoes? I very much doubt it. How am I ever to write my great work about Neanderthals when I have to be nice, and nobody’s nice to me? Worst was that I had to work so fast I was huffing and puffing, because the recycling center was about to close. But did anyone pity me?
Right at this point a text came in from my ten-year-old granddaughter, asking me why the word “polka-dot” has an “L” in it. I had no time to answer, and the irony of the situation staggered the devils on my shoulder backwards. Even they were amazed by the language I used to express my exceptional ire.
The irony is this: For some reason my granddaughter does respect my opinions, (but my daughter has a mind of her own). My granddaughter got her first cellphone for her tenth birthday, and I immediately received a gibberish of imogis. With my replies I hoped to teach her there was such a thing as the English language, and therefore her latest reply delighted me, as it expressed an interest in the language’s peculiarities. But did I have time to dote on this delightful granddaughter?
Noooo. Instead I had to tiptoe at top speed and break down boxes quietly for a daughter who does not want my opinion, which may be a reason she’s housed in the attic of a Childcare. It was utterly unfair. I had to deprive one who cares for me to pamper someone who can’t even break down boxes for me?
It was right when I had achieved the highest state of high dudgeon that, “WAAAHHHH”, the horn went off. Anyone napping in the attic of the Childcare left dents in the ceiling. I, meanwhile, experienced a near instantaneous shift from abused to abuser.
I did some quick calculating. I had ten minutes to drive to a dump that was six minutes away. If I didn’t make it in time I’d have to drive around all week with my Jeep stuffed to its ceiling with trash. I came to an instantaneous decision. Fixing the horn could wait.
Off I drove, horn blaring, past friends and neighbor’s houses, through the town, gradually shrinking down in my seat. Past the mall, past the post office, “WAAAHHHH”. People turning to look at me, in my highly recognizable Jeep, “WAAAHHHH”! Past the doctor’s office, past the Junkyard, past old Widow Simpson’s, “WAAAHHHH!” The six minute drive took as eternally long as the final period Math Class, back in high school, but a last I pulled through the gate and made it into the dump. Once I was through that gate they were stuck with me, “WAAAHHHH!” I hopped out by the glass recycling bins and popped the hood open, and there was sudden and blessed silence.
It seemed odd I was huffing and puffing so much. After all, how much effort is it to drive a car?
While leaning against the hood I noticed a box over at the side of the engine that looked suspiciously like it might be a fuse box. I pred off the lid. It hadn’t been opened in twenty-four years, and looked surprisingly fresh and new inside. It had a clear chart identifying which fuses did what, and the fuse for the horn was number 23. It behaved like a fuse will behave after twenty-four years: It seemed frozen in its socket, and wouldn’t budge. The dump officially closed, and I still worked at wiggling it free. The dump workers regarded me with disapproval.
It occurred to me that, even without the horn blaring, I was a sort of unwelcome noise in their lives. Right then the fuse came out. I reconnected the battery, closed the hood, and in blessed silence went about putting the paper in the paper place, the plastic in the plastic place, the tin cans in the tin can place, all the while getting stern frowns of disapproval. (Gosh! You’d think they could be nicer. After all, my taxes pay their wages.)
I rolled my eyes skywards to the Big Man upstairs. If a superman like Saint Paul could get knocked off his high horse, I supposed a fathead like me could benefit from getting my obese ego trimmed a bit, but there are certain Saturdays when I think I will not mind departing this foolish world in the slightest.
Lord, you are eternal, but I am not. I am less lasting than the mists of dawn. I'm no mountain; I'm firm as a stray thought And as lasting as an echo. I'm gone To begin with, compared to Your power, Yet I've endured dawn after dawn after dawn Going nowhere. I've no fleeting flower To garland You with. I look back upon My life, and my name's writ upon waters, But to You even mountains become beach sand In the blink of Your eye. Sons and daughters Of a thousand generations demand Less of You than a million galaxies, So what am I, but some dust in the breeze.
It has stung me when my Lord's pointed out How false are the false gods I've been fond of. I don't like feeling like a fool. I pout And sulk, but I needed to see my love Should be for the Creator, and not for His creation. Indifference has stung When I sing, and never hear the crowds roar. I feel a fool, for all my life I've sung To earwax. Yet thus God has taught me well. What good's Hollywood on the day you die? Maybe the media can make this world hell But death proves their judgement is a big lie. When I die I shall see if I have been fake Or if my Lord's pleased by the music we make.
I chose to write because I enjoyed it, even as a little child. I didn’t think much about why I enjoyed it. That came later. It was later that I became aware that what I enjoyed might not gain me praise, and might in fact earn rejection.
I can still clearly remember the morning I first became aware of a sort of schism between my self and my society. It was when I was still in grade school. I was working on a book I called “My Book Of Indians”, which basically was a regurgitation of pro-Native-American attitudes absorbed from Earnest Thompson Seton’s book “Two Little Savages“, (1903). It was springtime and I think the clocks had “sprung forward” into Daylight Savings Time, and abruptly there was an hour less daylight before school. This cramped the time I had to write.
How I came to be writing before school I can’t say; perhaps the sun simply awoke me earlier as the days lengthened; but I felt a sort of golden serenity when I wrote, and one morning the golden serenity blossomed into a powerful intuition, “This is what I was born to do.” It was either when I was in fourth or fifth grade, which would make me between nine and ten years old.
On this particular morning I went from my pleasant euphoria to the horrible realization I had missed the bus. I was late to school. Fortunately school was only a half mile away, and usually when I missed the bus I could simply grab my books and run like hell, and arrive before the first class started. This time I was especially late. As I ran to school it was with a sense of dread, and I was wildly formulating responses I might answer the teacher with, when she asked me why I was late.
The joke is, it never occurred to me that, “I got lost in my writing,” or, “I got too absorbed in my research,” might be a good and even pleasing excuse, an excuse a teacher would be delighted to hear. Instead I was desperately attempting to come up with something involving escaped lions or runaway trains.
This highlights an absurd dichotomy which existed (and I myself may have created) between the writing I did at home and the lack of writing I did at school. You might think that my interest and pleasure might have made me a good scholar, but in actual fact my love of writing was more like a secret, which I tried to keep the school from ever knowing about.
At school I got bad grades, was the class clown, and nowadays I likely would be diagnosed with some sort of “attention disorder” and drugged. In earlier times I would have been whipped. As it was I slipped through a loophole, during a permissive time when neither happened.
Anyway, on this particular day I ran like crazy to the school and was horrified to see no buses. I was so late the last bus had already disgorged its load of noise and driven off. A terrible silence filled the air, as I approached the door. Outside the spring sunshine was golden, but inside I could see nothing but a gloomy hallway. At that point I felt a tremendous reluctance to walk through that door. I knew I had to do it, but every fiber of my body loathed it.
Many can relate to how I felt, if they ever had horrible job they hated, yet had to push through the door and punch the time-clock. Just remember the day it was hardest to push through the door, and that is how I felt going to school that day. Just as I had the golden intuition, “This what I was born to do,” when writing, now I had the dreadful sense, “This is not a place I was born to be.”
The juxtaposition of the two strong impressions is what I most clearly remember. A schism was created.
Likely the fact it was springtime intensified the schism. What boy doesn’t want to play hooky from school on a golden spring morning?
(Back in my day a boy wanted to escape the lousy lights, stale air, cloying chalk dust, and dreary drill, and instead be walking in the woods like a free Native American. Modern youth may seem different, but just because the woods they walk are virtual doesn’t mean virtual woodlands aren’t far preferable to a classroom.)
However I believe that, opposed to this schism, is an urge to be understood, (or perhaps to share the beauty one has found and deemed worthy of playing hooky for). Therefore a boy has a divided heart, with one half wanting to flee society, as the other half wants to rejoin society.
Skip ahead a decade, and the young boy becomes a young writer, on one hand loathing professors, editors, agents and publishers, and on the other hand desiring education, correction, help and a way to make money doing what he loves.
Skip ahead five decades and the boy is seventy years old. If he still writes at all, and still derives great pleasure from writing, (as I do), then the intuition he had as a boy, “This is what I was born to do,” has proven correct.
Such a verification is easy for people whose persistence paid off, who became successful writers and who can now sit back and regard rows of published volumes on a bookshelf on a wall. But what about me? I was (for the most part) never “discovered”, and have written most of my life without the encouragement of recognition. Was I not in error, when intuition told me, “This is what I was born to do”??? For that boyhood intuition has not resulted in fame and fortune, and is not that our criterion???
Actually, I reject that criterion. I think I was lucky. Why? Because if an artist finds success in a specific area, he tends to focus in on that area, which has brought him success. If a Saturday Evening Post pays well, then he may spend decades painting covers for the Saturday Evening Post, even if he had great potential outside of that narrow window.
My single success involved being recognized by Anthony Watts on his website, “Watts Up With That” fifteen years ago, and publishing seven articles there. But to some degree this placed constraints on my freedom as a writer. If you look back through this website, at my posts over the past eleven years, you will often see my heart wrestling to subdue my boyish love of freedom in order to discipline my writing and produce what might look scientific enough to be published on that website (which I do admire).
In the end my boyish love of freedom seemingly won. It’s been over a decade since that website has published anything I’ve written, so it obviously did not have the power of a Saturday Evening Post to make a Norman Rockwell out of me.
Don’t get me wrong. The match between Norman Rockwell and the Saturday Evening Post was in some ways a marriage made in heaven. If a young writer meets a professor, editor, agent or publisher who treats them with dignity and honor, they should understand such people are few and far between. Honor them back. For I have met some delightful rascals in my time, but I have never met a professor, editor, agent or publisher who I felt was on my side of the schism. When push came to shove, if I expected money for my writing, they always seemed to want to make a whore or gigolo out of me, and I chose to prefer poverty. (WUWT was an exception to that rule; in that case I simply tired of talking about Truth in terms of arctic sea-ice.)
I likely should provide an example, though it will seem a lengthy digression to some.
When aged 25, when I still had some shreds of faith I might meet a good professor, editor, agent or publisher, I was told, “It isn’t what you know; it is who you know.” And so it was I approached a friend of the family, who happened to be the editor of a small newspaper, with my most recent manuscript, which I thought was truly great.
The editor was a jolly, pink-faced gentleman, with silver hair, married and with a handsome, full-grown son, and I had no reason to suspect he was homosexual. In any case he completely misunderstood the message in my manuscript.
The message was that, if you deeply love your father, but do not get enough of his fathering, you might seek to make up for that deficit by seeking out father figures. I should have added that healthy fathers do not have sex with their sons. I failed to add this, and this jolly soul assumed I was in some way “coming out of the closet”, and that I wanted him to be my next “father figure”.
After an exchange of several letters, (his short, handwritten and terse, and mine many pages of half-space typing, with a typewriter that had both a black and a red ribbon), a meeting was arranged.
He welcomed me into his office with open arms, which seemed innocent enough, but his further advances shocked me. After a somewhat humorous retreat, involving me back-peddling frantically several times around his office desk, he got tired and also seemed to conclude I was terribly naive. I concluded I understood how innocent actresses feel when they want roles in Hollywood movies and are confronted with “the casting couch.” When I explained to the merry man that he misunderstood what I meant by “father figure”, he looked at me with incredulity, and then remarked, “No writer has ever made it without either fucking somebody, or being fucked.” I reared up righteously and replied, “Well then, I’ll be the first.”
It may have been noble of me to say that, but time seems to have proven the fellow correct. Here I am, after decades of writing, and also after never fucking or being fucked to further my career, and I’ve never “made it.”
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not homophobic. I actually liked the guy. Considering I recall his words after 45 years, he may even qualify as a sort of minor “father figure”. I just had no desire to have sex with him. However I did appreciate him. After I had rebuffed his advances we spent a cordial afternoon together.
It began by us sitting back down in his office, and him being charitable enough to read my 265 page manuscript despite the fact I had no payment to offer.
He read with stunning and slightly offensive rapidity, for he had the gift of speed reading. I watched him go through my manuscript so quickly it seemed impossible he was thinking about the hour’s worth of thought I put into each page. It took him two seconds to glance down the page, and put an X across the page with his pen. 250 pages got the X. But 15 pages slowed him down. Most were the pages that skipped philosophy and actually involved my interactions with my father. They got no X, and on one page he wrote “touching” and on another he actually scribbled a paragraph, commenting that my assumption was not true, bringing in a rebutting proof from his own boyhood. But for the most part, at two seconds per page, he went through thirty pages in a minute, and two-hundred-sixty-five pages in less than fifteen minutes.
Then he had things to do, places to go, and people to meet, but he invited me along. He didn’t do so to demonstrate how amazingly packed the life of an editor can be, but rather because he found me odd, and was curious how I came to be so weird. He asked questions which proved to me he had actually absorbed some of my manuscript’s ideas, despite the fact he turned pages so rapidly it seemed impossible that he could be doing more than turning pages and putting an X on most of them. He asked these questions even as he dashed hither and thither, talking to printers and advertisers and reporters, and drove from here to there in a small blue car. Most of the questions were asked as he drove.
One thing that baffled him was how I could say I preferred the company of men to that of women, and not be homosexual. I felt inarticulate and mumbled some clumsy rhetoric about how a man needed to learn how to be a man before he’d be worthy of a woman, and he just laughed and called me a hopeless romantic.
Another thing he was curious about was my idealism regarding Truth. I stated honesty was the wellspring of morality, and if men were truly honest there would no need for laws. He rolled his eyes, stated I was proposing anarchy, and then shot me such a significant, eagle-fierce glance that I instinctively knew the glance meant that I should think hard about what he had just stated. And I did think hard about it. I had heard that I was a hopeless romantic before, but this was the first time I heard I was an anarchist.
Then, as irony would have it, he zipped his little, blue car to a lurching stop at a curb, hopped out, and proceeded to hurry up a wide, marble staircase to a wide, green lawn. He moved with surprising speed for a portly man with silver hair, his leather shoes pattering smartly on the marble. Apparently we were late to some sort of press conference.
Ahead was a mansion with a pillared front like a Greek temple, and, at the foot of the towering pillars, a fat, well-dressed man was speaking to four microphones, and also to a bunch of reporters who gathered humbly beneath him at the bottom of a second wide marble staircase. Obviously the man was a mayor, or perhaps even a governor, and the irony was that I had only just discovered I might be an anarchist.
As the editor arrived, the politician by the microphones interrupted some windbag explanation he was giving to gladly greet him, and all the other reporters also turned to welcome him. He was obviously well-liked. He delighted in the attention, making jokes I did not get, but which everyone laughed greatly at.
I was struck by how swiftly he changed from a person I could talk to into a person very different, an actor on a stage playing a part. He quite obviously liked playing his role, but it made me uncomfortable. It seemed fake, and I was big on Truth. My discomfort grew worse when I noticed eyes shifting from him to me, and the reporters seemingly going wink-wink, nudge-nudge. They were assuming something I didn’t like. To make matters worse, the editor seemed to encourage them, looking back at me and then back at them, and going wink-wink, nudge-nudge.
I could see how it looked. He was a jolly, happy character with the known foible of cultivating proteges who always seemed to be young, male writers, and there I stood, a big, floppy notebook in hand, obviously the next young, male writer. Abruptly I wanted to scream, “This is not how it looks.”
Instead I had the strong intuition, “This is not a place I was born to be.” So, shortly after the press conference, I left that “opportunity”, after politely thanking the editor for his kindness, and drove off in my tiny brown Toyota from that fiasco to my next one.
I hope you can see I hold no grudge against the man. I suppose he qualifies as being what is now called a “groomer” or even a “sexual predator”, but I just saw him as someone with desires I could not fulfill. And he likely saw me as someone with desires he could not fulfill. But this reality was no reason to be uncivil, and we did share ideas which I can recall even after 45 years.
But why did I have that sense, “This is not where I was born to be?” What propelled me to seek elsewhere?
With 20-20 hindsight, I think I sensed the beginning of what is now called “The Swamp”. But back then the rot had just started, and was a mere blemish on the skin of an otherwise wholesome fruit. The good Founding Fathers had gotten something rolling, and the politicians of 1978 were rolling along on the momentum of that goodness, forgiving of foibles, yet seemingly forgetful of the fact that good, without further good, stops rolling.
Yet I wonder if I ran away from a problem I should have attempted to solve. Maybe I could have kept the goodness rolling, and single-handedly kept The Swamp from becoming a swamp. I doubt it; most likely I would have been seduced and sucked down into the mire like everyone else, but that is something I shall never know. One cannot undo what has been done, and the fact of the matter is that I turned away from situations when intuition told me “This is not where I was born to be.”
This ends my long digression, and returns us to the question I originally digressed from.
Was it worth it?
Yes.
Why?
Because most people live their lives without fame and/or fortune, and are the better for it. They are, in fact, beautiful people living beautiful lives, and are what the Bible calls “the salt of the earth”. And this fact (that such humble people often are more worthy of respect than the fatheaded rich and fatheaded famous are) was something I saw, early on, from my side of the schism.
It is also not something one should expect the rich and famous to want to hear. Therefore, if you write about such reality, you are in a sense insulting the rich and famous, and shouldn’t expect to be showered with their favors.
However one will be showered by the favors of those who have no money to offer, and no fame. In some ways all they offer is hard work; they offer blood, sweat and tears, but, in the end, after fifty years, the young writer may find themselves in my shoes, the grandfather of fourteen, (soon [God willing] to be fifteen, and, in seven months [God willing] sixteen).
Now I will freely admit young writers are not aiming to create grandchildren when they write. But, if pressed, they do confess to hoping some people will still be reading their work in in fifty years, or at least that their work will have such a powerful effect that it will uplift the unborn, even if their actual works are burned and don’t survive. Me? I actually did think about future family, as I wrote.
It had to do with my being from a broken home. I wanted to mend the fracture, and my childlike prayers often included, “And please God, get Mom and Dad back together again.” However it was also fairly obvious such a reconciliation was not going to happen. Their divorce was downright flamboyant in the grandiose levels of discord it attained. In retrospect my parent’s overblown drama seems downright laughable, but at the time they seemed to feel a need to be secretive about what was blatantly obvious. You weren’t allowed to talk about it. But me? I wanted to write about it, on the sly. If I had to be secretive, I’d do it, but, on my side of the schism, I’d be open and honest.
Most young writers are in similar slippers. They want to be honest about something which needs to be addressed, but which it is taboo to talk about. Because it needs to be addressed, some will respond to their work by saying, “You know, I always thought that, but never dared say it.” However the gatekeepers of cancel culture may repress such agreeable encouragement with their insidiously disagreeable discouragement, and so the honesty is not rewarded, most of the time, though there are exceptions to the rule.
Young writers want to be the next exception to the rule. (Even old writers like me confess it might be fun). Imagine what it must have been like to be one of four young men in an obscure rock band called “The Beatles” in 1962. Or what it must be like to be Oliver Anthony, and to have a heart-felt song leap from the obscurity of twenty views a day on YouTube to over a million views in a single afternoon, to six million a few days later, and, four months later, to over a hundred million views. (YouTube pays creators a reasonable amount of money, for a hundred million views).
Lots of young writers yearn for a hundredth as much money, for their writing. If they only got paid, they could quit washing dishes and devote more time to the writing they love. Sadly, for every four Beatles or lone Oliver Anthony there are countless other singers and writers who escape recognition, and never get paid.
To young writers I say this: Consider ye the salt of the earth. Are there not many good, young mothers and fathers who wish they got paid for being good, because if they got paid they would have more time to spend with their children? But they don’t get paid for parenting, and in fact it is often bad mothers who get paid (welfare). But does the fact good mothers and fathers don’t get paid for being good stop them? No. Many of them don’t even expect acknowledgement for their gracious behavior. They just do what they do. Why? Because the alternative is loathsome.
In like manner, young artists should avoid alternatives when they start to look loathsome. Or that is what I told myself as a young man. But I was also told artists were wimps, were terribly wounded by rejection, and were so prone to wilting that one sign an artist was worthy was that he’d keel over and die young. That didn’t appeal to me.
Before very long I knew all about both the agony and ecstasy of art, but the general opinion seemed to be artists had no stamina and couldn’t take it, and, if no one would listen, they’d get crazy and cut an ear off and mail it to a woman they felt unheard by, like Van Gogh did. I did not feel this was a wise way to behave. Nor was it how the salt of the earth usually behaved. Therefore I decided to make a point. And the point was? It was that a writer didn’t have to be a lunatic. He didn’t have to die young. He could live to be over 70 and be the grandfather of 14 (going on16).
“Yes, but…” young writers will say. “How can you call yourself a writer when you have never been published”?
Actually one of the first poems I ever wrote was published in the Manchester Union Leader in 1968. I was fifteen. It didn’t make me a red penny, and in fact misled me to believe it was easy to be published.
Since then I’ve written all sorts of stuff, and I haven’t a clue whether a single sonnet of mine will reward me beyond the pleasure I got writing it. So why write it down?
Well, in many cases the writing was read, and the reader found great pleasure. (O.K., I confess, usually the reader was myself.) However there were a few, rare other cases where people besides myself surprised me by expressing pleasure over what I’d written. In fact, fifty years is such a long stretch of time that I’ve even written a song or two which were small town “hits”, sung in obscure bars, in living rooms at parties, or at church talent shows. There was even one time, midst fifty years of obscurity, when I experienced a glorious evening where I had an audience of over a hundred singing my song’s chorus. But no song ever “went viral”. As far as I know, not a single thing I’ve written will outlast me.
In some ways I hope my writing doesn’t. Why? Because it makes me more pure, if my writing has nothing to do with fortune or fame. It is purer still if it has nothing to do with acceptance or even, believe it or not, with talent.
At this point I imagine some young writers are sitting bolt upright and saying, “Stop right there. Nothing to do with talent? You had better explain that one, Bucko.”
To explain I like to use the following analogy:
Suppose you were lacking in talent, but loved music. Suppose you were tone deaf and knew for a fact your singing made people wince. Would that mean you were banned from ever singing? Or could you not, when no one was home, sneak into the shower and bellow your discordant heart out, and actually derive enjoyment from your singing? The answer to that question is a resounding, “Yes”, for lots of people, with voices less sweet than a donkey’s, get great joy from singing in the shower. Why? Are they not singing to an audience of zero?
Here my explanation drifts into mysticism, and gets a bit weird, for I assert the people in showers are not singing to an audience of zero, but of Infinity.
Most don’t think much about why singing in the shower feels so good. If they think at all, their singing seems selfish, and only done for one’s own well-being, like doing push-ups in a gym. Even if the sour singer imagines a vast crowd cheering, as he (or she) showers, entertaining warm and fuzzy delusions of grandeur, enjoying a flooding fantasy that waves of encouraging applause are giving him (or her) permission to bellow out the wrong notes all the louder, the singer seldom sees that what actually makes them feel so good, and makes such showers so strangely healing, is a mystic mystery.
Said the singer to the song, “It is for your lips I long But I cannot reach the charms Of my creation.”
The song came singing back, “You are everything I lack And we need each others arms For celebration.”
Even after fifty years, I can’t fathom the mystery. But I think it has something to do with creative people entertaining the Creator.
As a young writer this caused me problems. I didn’t want to be a bit religious. To be religious was to be a copycat. It was to recite by rote. It was to be stale, and never think. I would rather be original. I wanted to say the things that stale people didn’t. I wanted to be reinvigorating, to be fresh and new.
However there came a day when I was attempting to write about some element of Truth, in a fresh and new way, when, while rereading my first draft, I saw it was pathetic. It was like I was trying to trace the flickering movement of a flaring, crimson sunrise with tracing paper, using charcoal. Once the sunrise had faded, and was no longer there to inspire me, I was confronted with how I had portrayed it. It depressed me. My work was just charcoal on tracing paper, stagnant and stale, and such a bad representation of Truth that few could look on my work and even imagine a shade of red.
It was a humbling experience, for it showed me my “originality” was not so original as I thought. Yes, it was better than the religious, who mumbled words by rote and never bothered to think about the Truth their words mumbled about. I was only “original” because I did bother to think. But it did not make me the Maker. I might be what some called “creative”, but I could not create like the Creator did.
I did not create the sunrise, and therefore when I tried to artistically show how beautiful the sunrise was, I was just a copycat. I might produce a copy of a sunrise better than even a camera could, but still it would fall short. After years of failure it occurred to me my sunrise could never match the sunrise the Creator had created; my best attempts were my poor copy of a Genius far better.
At some point you need to tell your pride to shut up. Even if you are far better than most at seeing the beauty of life, you need to confess you are not the originator of that beauty. You are not original. You just copy better than other copycats.
I’m not sure why it was so hard for me to hear I was not original, but it was. I wish I had understood earlier. I urge young artists to understand what it took me so long to understand.
One way to look at it is: The Creator is the father, and artists are his adoring children. They want to be like Him. So they emulate Him.
At my childcare I often see children emulate their parents. It doesn’t matter if their mother is a seamstress or their father is a surgeon, the child will stitch with a make-believe needle made of straw. There is such child-like admiration involved I would never scold the child, though the simple fact of the matter is that the child is not capable of being either a seamstress or a surgeon. (Yet).
In like manner, no artist is capable of being the Creator. At best, they are just copycats. Even the most heroic and magnificent art, such as Beethoven’s ninth symphony, is but a joyful representation of what the Creator’s already made, but which most ordinarily don’t see (or hear). It takes a deaf Beethoven to open their eyes (or ears).
In terms of the issue of “originality”, there is no danger of stagnation when attempting portray Truth, for Truth is, by definition, the opposite of sameness; no two snowflakes or fingerprints are the same; even identical twins are not identical; even desert sunrises hold something new in their cloudless daybreaks. The only danger of stagnation arises when someone attempts to tie the Truth down, to limit it in the manner religion often does.
Perhaps that is why young artists so often become atheists. Goodhearted preachers, in their attempts to steer their flock away from evil towards good, have accidentally limited Infinity. Infinity laughs at limits. Young artists laugh at goodhearted preachers, unaware they themselves are limiting Infinity by saying it does not exist.
I could have saved myself from a great deal of trouble if, as a young artist, I had not wasted so much time being “original” in ways that denied the Truth which, in fact, I was trying to copy.
However I suppose it is part of a process. It does not occur to one that the father-figure one is looking for is Truth itself, and so one first works their way through a whole series of lesser, inferior father-figures, over and over sensing, “This is not where I was born to be.” Such incidents are part of learning, even when they are fiascos. An acorn does not become an oak all at once.
Even if one has the good fortune to draw a get-out-of-jail-free card, (which I suppose would be a father-figure who confessed he was inferior and pointed one towards Truth, as the only worthy Father), one retains doubts. Atheism lingers. Even saints have a devil on their shoulders.
Hardest to shake is the sense Truth has no heart. One prays, but hears only silence. One receives no instruction, so what is one to do? One sighs and turns away. But what does one then see?
One is looking at silent blankness, when one opens a notebook to an empty page. It is as blank as a crystal ball, but it does not stay blank. Lines of letters appear like the footprints of chickens. Then a line is scribbled out. Then the page is torn from the notebook, rumpled to a ball, and sails through the air to a wastepaper basket.
What just happened? You say you received no instruction, but in fact you just had a conversation with Truth.
These conversations can be quite a battle, because besides the Truth there are other voices, sometimes louder than the silence of Truth. There is the sneering of every bully who ever belittled and the snickers of every Karen who ever backbit. Onto the empty page can spill the gatekeepers of cancel-culture, repressing all agreeable encouragement with their insidiously disagreeable discouragement. Even when one consciously scribbles these snide voices out, they remain lurking in the subconscious, poisoning the very springs of creativity. The struggle seems so unequal one wants to go mad, die young, and cut off their ear like Van Gogh, but then one remembers Beethoven had his ears cut off by life itself, and it never stopped him. That is a truth so amazing that one’s faith in Truth revives.
My advice to young artists is to revive your faith in Truth. Not truth, but Truth, with a capital “T”. For, in its Infinity, Truth has a power few expect silence to have: The power of Love. All the other voices that spill onto the empty page twist truths with a small “T”, and in that swirling confusion of lesser father-figures one needs an Absolute they can cling to like a child clings to a father’s pants-leg on a crowded city street. And Truth, with a capital “T”, will respond.
Even if a young writer is sick of priests and preachers, (and communists are the most preachy of all), and any hint of religion (even a godless religion) makes them want to vomit, and they have been made allergic to the word “God”, they should be able to recognize they are repelled from some things because others are more attractive, and that they need a word for what attracts them. I suggest they use the word “Truth”. (This entire subject is absurd, when you understand our choosing this defining word is attempting to encapsulate Infinity. It would be easier to stuff an elephant into your shirt-pocket.) I furthermore suggest young writers give credit where credit is due, confess attraction where attraction is obvious, and investigate being adopted by an Ocean. An Ocean? Well, truth, with a small “T”, may be a cruel truth, But Truth, with a capital “T”, is a sea of Love.
Things have gotten very weird in a hurry. People insist upon being confused. Basic, fundamental, scientific realities are now open to debate. For example, are you a man or a woman?
Forgive me, but this seems like an amazingly stupid thing to argue about. As a “child care professional” I see very small children are very aware if they are born into a male or female body. Their “science” is simple. As they gain coordination, their hands become able to feel between their legs, and they understand, “This birth I am born into a male (or female) body.” If a two-year-old can arrive at such a simple conclusion, how amazingly stupid are those who can’t?
This stupidity has been a sort of blindness which has ripened like a cataract over the years, (and hopefully now can be operated upon and removed.) It is due to a simple mathematical equation: Science + Politics = Politics – Science. (Also: Science + Politics = Politics.)
A true scientist in some senses is like a poet, in that his thirst for Truth tends to cause him to neglect fashion and proper grooming, and he tends to walk about in a disheveled state with a wild gleam in his eye. Also, he tends to be broke, and unattractive to women, or at least women who desire money, and consequently he tends to feel lonely and sorry for himself, which leaves him open to temptation. He (or she) may be susceptible to a bribe. Money may not slake his (or her) thirst for Truth, but may gratify his (or her) hankering for blonds.
That is where politics steps in, for politicians often deal in short, sound-bite solutions that sound good but are not deeply thought out. This is not a problem when the politician surrounds himself with people who do think deeply, and also is a politician willing to stand corrected. One of Winston Churchill’s aides once said something along the lines of, “Winnie has a hundred ideas a day, and three are good ones.” Churchill’s genius (in part) lay in being able to stand being corrected ninety-seven times a day without any loss of confidence (which some mistook as arrogance). Unfortunately, many politicians lack such genius.
Sadly, there are all too many politicians who so treasure their shallow sound-bite solutions that they become ruled by a dogma which is not feasible. Their focus is power, and they seek to overpower all who seek to correct them. Some scientists they bribe, and some scientists they bully, and some scientists they ostracize, but, in the end, they don’t stand corrected but instead they fall uncorrected; in which case they fall prey to stupidity.
I saw the stupidity a long, long time ago, when watching very intelligent minds burn out on drugs around Harvard Square in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. Back then Harvard and MIT looked for merit in applicants, and the brains being burned out were brilliant. They were different from the brains of a good-hearted but very average lout. Where a lout on drugs merely commented, “Wow, man. Wow,” these youths with IQ’s of 160 flashed like setting suns, and articulated all sorts of amazing ideas, with around three out of every hundred ideas good ones.
Back in those pre-stupidity days there were time-tested ways of debating, and “peer-reviewing”, a brilliant-sounding idea to see if it was a good one. This was done formally in carefully written papers, but also occurred informally among students over drinks. The informal debates could get wonderfully rowdy at times, but the general assumption at that time was that everyone was interested in the same thing: IE: the Truth. It may sound prudish in our age of fraud and corruption, but the idea of intentionally lying was beyond the conception of many. Lying was simply not how the game was played.
I was privileged to be a younger person, eavesdropping on many of these debates. Initially I was a little pitcher with big ears listening to my parent’s generation. Later I became a little squirt listening to the societies of three older siblings. I basically shut up, and just listened. In general I learned far more from such situations than from any class in school.
Besides the topics at hand, I learned there were two sides to any debate. On one hand there was the person who dreamed up a new idea. On the other hand there was the person who tried to shoot it down in flames.
I tended to side with the dreamer. Some ideas were sound, such as the idea continents drifted, while others were not so sound, such as the idea you could invent a “dark light” which would direct a beam of darkness in the manner a flashlight directs a beam of light. But soundness didn’t matter to me. I liked the inspiration, the “high” of dreaming.
I didn’t like the “down” of skeptics, disbelievers who used cold facts to turn happy, buoyant balloons into blazing Hindenburgs crashing in disaster. To be a “down” seemed rude to me; it was far more polite to be a “high”. I did not like disagreeable people and preferred agreeable people.
Of course, Truth doesn’t care if you agree or disagree with It. Truth remains true even if the entire world denies it. And here’s the most mysterious thing: While people say, “Truth hurts”, in actual fact Truth is the most agreeable of all agreeable things. (However, you’ll have to trust me on this, for now.)
People say, “Truth hurts”, predominantly because their pride is wounded when their “high” is shot from the sky and becomes a “Hindenburg.” One moment they feel like a genius, and the next they feel like a fool and a laughingstock, “in error.” When egos are wounded in this manner, especially among young college students who are drinking or drugged, the subject can be dragged down from the pinnacles of Truth to the swamps of ill will and vengeance, all because of “hurt feelings”. Vanity leads people astray.
One knew they were completely astray when “hurt feelings” became the focus. Debates forgot the Truth, and instead became about who could make the other guilty. Guilty of what? Guilty of being a fool and a laughingstock. “In error.”
That happened to be what I usually was, as the youngest person in the room, more often than not. `Even the most stupid-seeming laughingstock in a debate could wheel upon me, should I laugh at their discomfiture, and snarl, “What are you laughing at, pea-brain?” And what could I say? The Truth was I was likely five to ten years younger than they, (for example aged fifteen when they were twenty-five), and in Truth I was a pea-brain, compared to them.
It was in some ways an unenviable position to be in, but in another it was a great blessing. It was a curse because “my feelings were hurt” and I could waste a lot of time licking the wounds of self-pity, but it was a blessing because being at the very bottom of the pecking order, a scapegoat even scapegoats could scape, made me aware how stupid the whole process was. It was a sort of blame game that wasted time and made no sense.
It would have been nice if, at that point, some wise adult had stepped in and stated, “It is wrong for them to treat you as an object of ridicule. They should treat you as a young mind, eager to learn, and as a potential protégé.” But of course, that didn’t happen. Instead I was repelled from the college-minded, into the travail of what I suppose you could call The School Of Hard Knocks, but what also might be called The School Of The Most Blessed, for in some ways I skipped a lot of the bother of the blame game.
How it happened is hard to say. I really can’t explain it, except to say Truth is the most agreeable of all agreeable things.
Someone told me, around thirty-seven years ago, something like, “When you point at others, three of your fingers are pointing back at you.” Someone else ruthlessly stated, around thirty-six years ago, “You are just blaming the world for being about to suffer an environmental collapse, because, if the world ends, it excuses you from having to get a Real Job”. Lastly, someone I respected greatly said, for the tenth time, around thirty-six years ago, simply, but with impressive authority and strength, “Don’t blame.”
I’m not sure why, but shifting away from blame brought a greater clarity to my thought. Rather than squealing about whether “my side” or “the other side” was “to blame”, I felt more able to focus on what the problem actually was.
I then noticed something odd. Often it is the people “to blame” who come up with solutions to problems, rather than the people who do all the blaming.
It seemed, for example, that the people who built power plants were more familiar with how power plants work, and therefore were better equipped to engineer improvements. Meanwhile, the people who merely blamed, squawking, “Your smoke is pollution!” never really lifted a finger. Blaming was not what created smoke-stack-scrubbers; the solution came through focusing on what the problem actually was.
Ask yourself, “Do I focus on what the problem actually is, or politics?”
When I was especially young, more than fifty years ago, to focus-on-what-a-problem-actually-was turned out to be difficult for me, as I was prone to running away from problems.
This escapism actually is a bit humorous to look back upon. In my youth a rock group called “The Jefferson Airplane” changed its name to “Jefferson Starship”, because they also wanted to run away. They planned to hijack NASA’s first interplanetary spacecraft, and head off into the void with poets and musicians and….um….mechanics and engineers. (I think they added “mechanics and engineers” because, even in their LSD-addled ambitions, someone understood the spacecraft they hijacked might develop engine problems, and at that point a poet would be of little use. You might need someone who could focus on what the problem actually was, and who could fix it.)
I think some of those Baby-boomers either took too much LSD, or never grew up, but they never got the memo about the importance of mechanics and engineers. And now they are old fossils in the “Swamp”, utterly engrossed in hijacking a different starship, (namely the United States), even though they haven’t got a clue how to run the thing, should they ever gain complete control. They are lost in some strange dream where, should they gain control, “mechanics and engineers” will magically appear and be servants who will do whatever they command, even if what they command is physically impossible.
You should notice I was careful to add the word “physically”. Some amazing things are spiritually possible, which are not taught at institutes of technology. For example, Jesus demonstrated it is possible to walk on water, and Saint Peter demonstrated he could follow, (albeit somewhat clumsily). Does this mean we should sink all our shipping, because such a physical dependence on ships is holding us back, spiritually?
I think not, for thousands of ships have sunk over the centuries, and you hardly ever hear of even a single passenger being freed from their dependence on lifeboats to such a degree that they could stroll blithely across the waves to safety on shore. In fact people usually drown.
In like manner, perhaps we ought not sink the “ship” of fossil fuels, so smugly certain freedom from such dependence will allow us to “walk on water” and create a life free of pollution. What the actual result may be is: Many people will drown.
Unfortunately, the smugly-certain lack such pragmatism. They tend to see in political terms, and envision Caesar crossing the Rubicon and burning all the bridges behind him. (As soon as Caesar crossed that river he was under the death penalty, as were all his troops. The Rubicon truly was “a point of no return”. There was no going back.) It was a daring step from safety to danger, and won Julius the crown.
All the stuff modern Rubicon-crossers are smugly-certain about is myopically focused upon power; they want to be “dictators for life” like Caesar became, forgetful of how Caesar died, daggered to death in the very hallways of power he lusted to abide in.
The people lusting for power now are ignoring fundamental realities, in their eagerness to control. In their desire to forbid fossil fuels (which allow liberty) they instead lust to make all electric (which controls all with the leashes of power lines and cords). To achieve this end they ask for the impossible from the “mechanics and engineers” whom they deem mere servants, mere peons who must do what they command. (But who can’t.)
The powerful are asking for the impossible, and, when reality hits home, the powerful are likely to face the wrath of a starved and frozen populace whom they, as powerful leaders, failed to serve and to protect. Then they, who were so swift to blame fossil fuels, (and to also blame any who said fossil fuels might have advantages), are liable to see an avalanche of blame come crashing back upon them. Some call this “rebounding Karma”. I call it the blame game.
The saddest example of such “rebounding Karma” I’ve learned of is the Christmas present the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu received in 1989. The poor fellow was so clueless about the rage he had created that rather than Christmas carols he sung communist anthems as he was marched to the wall and turned to face the firing squad.
To be honest, what the Swamp has set out to accomplish looks to me like it is worse than a detour. If it was a detour it would eventually get back to the right route, but the Swamp’s plots look like what the self-described “genius” Wile E. Coyote is known for: Inevitable Disaster.
Such cartoons get tiresome after too many episodes; one wearies of anvils always falling upon Wile’s genius. One yearns to just get down to earth, and down to business, and face what the problems actually are.
In the American Southwest one major problem is drought, for the area is basically a desert. Therefore the primary solution (get it?) for watering crops is not rain, but is irrigation, practiced even by the ancient, indigenous populations. The first hints of agricultural habitation exist 2000 years BCE, and the importance of digging canals to irrigate crops was apparent to inhabitants even before the culture described as the Hohokan appeared around 200 BE.
The Hohokan deserve an encyclopedia, as a people, and a remnant may still exist today as modern tribes, but they suffered a crash around the year 1350 for reasons that likely involve climate change, but likely also involved some failure of their leadership.
Such ups and downs are inevitable when a civilization such as theirs exists five times as long as the United States has existed.
Just as we had our Great Depression, the Hohokan had their mysterious equivalents, more than once. For example: A sort of capital city archeologists dub “Snaketown” was abandoned (with some buildings burned), even as the rest of the land prospered, around 1100 CE, and we know next to nothing of why. (I like to think some leaders got too smugly certain.) Over two centuries later a more recent downturn of their fortunes likely involved not drought, but flooding rains, which dug deep gullies which put the water levels of their rivers below the inlets to their vast system of irrigation. Faced with a massive engineering challenge, it seems likely that most of the people instead chose to migrate elsewhere.
Far more could be said; I only broach the topic of these past people to stress two things. First, the ups and downs of these people had nothing to do with white Europeans (at least before 1500), and second, floods, as well as droughts, were a reality that challenged them.
The situation in Phoenix today is not really all that different from what the Hohokan culture faced at its peak. A so-called “overpopulation” thrived/thrives in a desert that seemed incapable of feeding so many, but the genius of the society allowed/allows the people to live good lives. Just as the Hohokan households held shells from distant seashores and jewels from distant mountains, modern Pheonix holds much that isn’t created locally, but is brought in by trade from places far away. Likewise, just as Hohokan culture suffered a downfall when its irrigation systems were not adequately maintained, the millions of people now happy in Phoenix could suffer, if our modern systems are not adequately maintained.
I hope you can see where I am going with this. What is important is to-focus-on-what-the-problem-actually-is, and not on some irrelevant topic. The problem is not whether one race owes another race because of “blame”, or whether driving a car that runs on fossil fuel is to “blame” for both droughts and floods. That stuff is just the blame game. The real problems are more down to earth: How are we handling the gift we are given, called water.
I am no expert on water management, but I do feel I should try to be an educated voter. In pursuit of such education I should be able to turn to the media to be fed the news, but we all shake our heads over what has become of our media. The media has basically become screaming meemies. Like an alcoholic in need of a drink, they see worms crawling from the woodwork and are reduced to hysteria by the slightest drought or slightest flood. Not helpful. So I have to do research on my own.
The irrigation systems devised by modern engineers are amazing, and contain more variables than most consider. Irrigation doesn’t merely involve impounding water behind dams, which can be allowed to flow downhill by turning a faucet. Such a simple system would be a win-win, for it would involve both irrigating crops (and people), and also generating electricity. However in fact the system also involves pumping water uphill, before it flows downhill in the aqueducts, and all the pumping uses amazing amounts of electricity. In fact the water pumps of Arizona’s aqueducts use more electricity than any other consumer. In other words, the flow of water both produces, and consumes, electricity. Therefore, the people managing the flow of water need to be knowledgeable about how much money turning on the faucet is making, compared to how much it is costing. The situation is not so simple as it initially may seem.
Another variable is how dry or rainy it has been. When it is dry, the demand for water grows, even if it is costly to pump water uphill. But if it rains the water is not needed, and there is not such a need for the expense. The supply and demand go through amazing swings.
A totally unforeseen variable, when the dams were first built, were that the lakes of impounded water would become a significant tourism industry involving people who like to boat, fish, swim, water-ski or simply sit in the sun on a small houseboat. Such people have their own economic power, and have their say about whether their marinas will have enough water to float boats or not.
Lastly, there is only so much water to go around during dry times, and this causes states and nations to quibble about who gets how much, and cooler heads must avoid war by writing treaties that decree who gets how much. Even if your state needs water, you must sometimes begrudgingly release a certain amount to flow from your dams downstream to other states, if the treaty says so.
But this diplomacy gets stood on its head when there is too much water. Then you can get in trouble if you are “generous” and allow too much to flow downstream, for you are then to “blame” for downstream flooding. Again, supply and demand has swung about dramatically.
In the past two years we have seen the wailing of Alarmists shift from freaking-out about a mega-drought to the recent concerns about a mega-flood which might have occurred due to Hurricane Hilary. What I want to stress is that such hysteria accomplishes nothing if it blames “Global Warming”, (which gets the blame regardless of whether it rains or shines, or whether we manage or mismanage).
I think that, in the end, what matters most is what accomplishes something, which is the current system of dams and aqueducts, turbines and pumps, which has allowed the desert to bloom in the American Southwest. That practical scheme should be the focus. We want the desert to continue to bloom, for the alternative would involve hardship for many millions of people.
Los Angeles is much like Phoenix, in that it is a so-called overpopulation thriving in a desert that seemingly should not be able to support so many. In terms of local rainfall and snow-melt, Los Angeles should only be able to support 300,000 people, and the fact that, including its suburbs, it now supports 13,000,000 suggests two things. 1.) Some amazing engineering was done, and 2.) if that engineering is not maintained, 12,700,000 people will swiftly find themselves in dire circumstances. It is therefore important to be pragmatic, and not off in some dream-world where the fact walking-on-water is a spiritual possibility becomes an accepted physical reality.
Los Angeles’ growth involved, as often is the case with big cities, water being imported from distant farmlands, which often angers the distant farmers. Even in the suburbs of Boston, as a boy, I heard grumblings from old-timers about how the Boston Big-shots “stole” water-rights from small towns, and that grumbling was occurring in the far greener and rainier landscape of New England.
In California the way water was removed from Owen Valley involved some brutal power politics, and destroyed a landscape once described as “America’s Switzerland.” Owen Lake, once fifty feet deep after heavy rains, became an arid flatland with choking dust-storms of alkaline poisons. Were it not for some artesian springs that fed a few remaining marshes, an important flyway for many species of migratory birds would have been completely wiped out. When Los Angeles began to pump out even Owen Valley’s ground water, and even the artesian wells began drying up, the howl of conservationists finally created enough push-back to halt the myopia of a civic Los Angeles leadership which was fundamentally selfish and greedy, more interested in making money through growth than in facing the problems inherent in growth.
Some of the problems should have been obvious early on, when the conflict erupted in “water wars”, with angry farmers actually dynamiting aqueducts. There were also angry businesses that made money extracting alkaline chemicals from Lake Owen’s water, who sued Los Angeles as the lake dried up. The fact water vanished drove one small business to build a new plant (using a new process) right onto the dried lake-bed, but then that business needed to sue Los Angeles yet again because, in a period of heavy rains in the late 1930’s, the balance of supply and demand swung so violently from drought to flood that those in charge of the aqueducts abruptly had to dump water down into the bone dry lake, flooding the new factory.
California is interesting, for diverse interests sought water, and all the quibbling actually did result in some serious thinking by smarter people, who sought to balance the thirst of migrating birds with the thirst of farmers and thirst of small businesses, and also with the thirst of those who wanted to see Los Angeles grow.
An important factor is that, without water, much of the land is worthless. Some land may support orange and almond groves, but beyond 300,000 people, there could be no suburbs. However, with water, that same land, bought very cheaply, could be sold at a huge profit. And once profits become huge, an insanity called “greed” appears.
California is even more fascinating when one stands back, and watches the mania of greed operate through its history.
Greed was there in the first gold rush, when men flocked into the hills to such a degree that boats docking in San Francisco lost their entire crews and could not depart. Greed was there in the Water Wars, that allowed Los Angeles’ population to explode and made real estate sellers into moguls. It was there when small-town men and women abruptly became idolized Hollywood stars. And it was there when intellectual geeks fooling about with computer hardware and software abruptly became the world’s richest men. Very few of these rags-to-riches stories involved slow and patient growth, nor the careful balancing of multifarious interests. Instead it tended to be a great, big, all-American, “Yippie!”
Now you are probably going to ask me to define “Yippie.” Sigh.
I sigh because, when you get all spiritual about things, greed is not usually a good thing. Occasionally love can cause greed to be greedy about others experiencing mercy and kindness, but more often greed is all about me, or “my side”, (which plays into the blame game.) Greed wants to skim the cream and leave others the milk, or even to steal the water and leave others the dust.
Greed tends to start small and then grow like a cancer. The simple grift of a carnival barker becomes the majestic graft of a state senator. It grows because greed can never satisfy the human heart, which wants to give and forgive. In fact the greater greed grows the greater the hunger of the heart gets, which makes greed want even more. (This is why you so often see crooked people, who could have gotten away with their petty crimes, instead overdo their robberies until they are so flagrant not even the most indulgent authorities can overlook them.) Greed is a sort of vicious cycle and becomes the author of its own demise. Eventually one can own the whole world but is reduced to a King Midas, weeping because he has transformed his favorite daughter into heavy metal.
Yet in a strange way this ugly, dog-like habit of greed is part of the American “Yippie”. It is a confession that part of being free is to be human, and part of being human is to be greedy. Liberty allows us to want what we want. We crave what we crave. We desire what we desire. However, (and this is very important), we also know such greediness can be rebuked. Part of the American “Yippee” is the knowledge we can be smacked on the nose like a bad dog by a rolled-up newspaper. It doesn’t matter who you are. You could be King George of England. The American “Yippee” will smack you. Even newspapers get smacked by a newspaper.
Europeans, who seem by and large more obedient than “Yippee” Americans, have every right to criticize Americans for being both greedy and rebellious, (which is likely why their souls were born in Europe). If you are born in America your soul is wild and free and yet fully expects to get smacked in the nose by a newspaper. And the reason is stamped into the very coins our greed likes to finger, as the motto, “In God we trust.”
What this suggests is that, hand in hand with deplorable selfishness, the American “Yippee” believes in Something higher and better, which will not leave a hole in the heart like greed does, but rather warms and fills the heart with giving and forgiveness. It may seem like an impossible contradiction, but it is what it is.
It may also seem ambiguous, but few people are more generous than greedy Americans are. If our prosperity is due to greed, why did we give so much of it away? If we were truly greedy we would just keep it for ourselves. Instead we have given not merely money, but our lives, to help others.
Of course, greedy grifters do tend to skim the cream from a charity. The graft starts out small, as a line-item called “administrative expenses”, and grows to the unholy insult to charity the Clintons enacted, when millions in donations to help out after the Haitian earthquake built an absurd, single, lone house in Haiti, as the Clintons kept all the rest of the money for themselves, (uttering the amazing hypocrisy that they, the Clintons, could be trusted with the money more than Haitian leaders, because the Haitians were corrupt.)
Outsiders wonder why Americans don’t rise in wrath. The simple fact of the matter is that Americans did; Americans have an intuitive understanding of greed, and how it grows grotesque, and of how it is healed by giving and forgiving. In any case, when Hillary Clinton ran for president, the election was “rigged” so she would win, but the overwhelming disgust Americans felt towards her greed outnumbered the fraudulent ballots, and, against all odds, Trump appeared.
At this point we can return to what actually matters, for Trump was a hard-nosed businessman who knew the ropes. He dealt with what actually matters. In terms of the American Southwest, what actually matters is dams that hold waters for droughts, canals that move waters from supplies to demands, and contingency plans involving what to do when times of drought give way to times of flood. The proper management of this infrastructure is crucial to the comfort and perhaps survival of around 75 million people. We are not in the moccasins of the Hohokan, who could just migrate somewhere else (likely down to Mexico) when their infrastructure crashed. We are in a situation we should take very seriously. And blaming light bulbs for Global Warming is not a very serious thing to do.
One thing I liked about Trump, in those long ago days when he ruled, was that he simply stated Global Warming was not worth our attention. He was correct. The infrastructure is worth out attention, and, in the case of California, the irrigation system is a hundred years old in places. Cement gets crumbly after that long; the wiring of pumps and turbines ages and metal fatigues, maintenance is a requirement which millions of people are dependent upon.
This past year has seen the weather of the west go through one of its typical swings from one extreme to another. A very dry time was followed by a very wet time. Massive Pacific gales dug far south of their usual abode up in the Aleutian Islands, directing a stream of moisture directly at California, and filling rivers with flood waters even as mountains all the way to Utah saw especially deep snows.
This should have embarrassed the media, which had been stating “Global Warming” was creating a “Mega-drought”, because rather than a drought there was a flood, and the flood would continue when all the snow melted in the spring.
In actual fact the Alarmist media then did what it accuses everyone else of doing; it went into denial. It insisted the rains were just a brief, upward blip in the downward graph of a terrible drought. Authoritative maps were produced, showing areas experiencing floods were still painted red, indicating drought. This became absurd. By last July twelve maps had been produced by various “authorities” showing all sorts of varying scenarios, with some maps showing drought in the same places other maps showed flood.
Apparently there were differing definitions of “drought”. (To resort to hyperbole, what is not a drought for a farmer growing cactus is a drought for a farmer growing watercress.) But the media chose the maps with the most red, as they had their propaganda to crank out, their narrative to reinforce, and their balderdash to support, to earn their pay. They were bought and paid for, and were handed the news they were to report, investigating nothing while pretending to be “investigative”. Meanwhile mechanics and engineers had to tend to reality; the infrastructure.
The infrastructure was stressed, just as it was in the time of the Hohokan, and in places levees failed and aqueducts crumbled. Owen Lake reappeared, as did Tulare Lake on the far side of the mountains.
The reappearance of Owen Lake had some benefits in terms of settling the clouds of alkaline dust, and watering migratory flyways for birds, but repairs to the aqueduct became more urgent, to supply Los Angeles with water. Meanwhile the reappearance of Tulare Lake had a very different effect, as rather than alkaline dust it’s lake-bed was excellent soil, and had become excellent farmland. When the lake reappeared the farmland was flooded and crops were lost.
California’s farmland is a blessing to the rest of the nation, for in places a 300-day growing season allows California (along with Arizona and Florida) to produce fresh vegetables when the rest of the nation is buried in snow. People who scorn California’s politics and state the rest of the nation would be better off without California are not thinking clearly about their food budgets. To lose vast acreages to floods has consequences. The mechanics and engineers in charge of how much flow is held back in dams wanted to hold as much as possible back to reduce river levels, and thus reduce the regrowth of Lake Tulare, yet at the same time they looked nervously at the deep snow in the mountains. Had nature been mischievous, a single warm rainstorm could have unleashed an amount impossible to contain.
A worst case scenario was possible to visualize because early in its history California was hit by a tremendous, once-every-500-year combination of rain, snow and snow-melt which very nearly ruined the entire state. Nearly the entire Central Valley became an enormous lake. The government had to be moved from Sacramento.
It is possible to map the flooded areas using old reports
And mechanics and engineers dub a repetition of such weather an “ARkStorm” and map how modern engineering might handle a similar fiasco.
So you can see that highly qualified mechanics and engineers are quite aware they can fail, and flood waters can be ten to twenty feet deep in the Central Valley. This is because they are not given enough money to prepare for once-every-500-year events. It’ too expensive. So negotiations tend to pare back the costs, until they are only preparing for once-every-100-year events. But they still are aware of how such preparations may prove inadequate, and think about what their responses should be when the s— hits the fan and the levees are not tall enough and Lake Tulare reappears. They have “contingency plans”, which are basically how to make the pain less when the s— hits the fan. Practical stuff.
Now please compare this with the demented response of the media, last winter, when Lake Tulare reappeared. It was not the slightest bit practical, yet they got paid well to produce pure pulp.
First, the media can never resist using the word “unprecedented”. This is just plain stupid. I have just shown you the precedent. Even if I couldn’t find the precedent on my computer, I could turn to my nine-year-old granddaughter and she’d find it. The California history regarding the terrible floods from November 1861 to March 1862 is right there in plain sight, at your fingertips. They even involve episodes of our national history having little to do with meteorology; IE: How did the Confederate forces escape the superior Union forces in Arizona? (Answer: The rivers were flooding and blocked the advance of armies.) The evidence of a far more severe flood are everywhere you look, and this proves the media does not look, when they use the word “unprecedented”.
When one looks at the flooding of Lake Tulare that actually occurred last winter and spring, and one compares it to 1862, it is obvious last winter and spring were small potatoes, compared to a worst-case scenario. It could have been much, much worse, if the mountain snows had melted faster, but the fact is: It wasn’t worse. So how in the world can the press call the event, “unprecedented”?
Obviously the press does not care if it is accurate. The press does not care about the Truth. So, what does the press care about? Greed. For greed it grovels. It grovels to get its next paycheck, which it can only get if it obeys a master who thinks lying to the public is good policy. Good policy? Apparently. Apparently it is good policy to make the public afraid. It is good policy to whip up anxiety about the weather. It is good policy to state the current weather is a sign that Global Warming is about to end life as we know it. But current weather isn’t going to do that. Far worse has been seen before. And it didn’t end life as we know it.
Besides ignoring the history which one needs to research, the press ignores the history it itself made. After all, it was the press that stated, in November, that the mega-drought was going to last. It was the press that stated that the mega-drought proved that Global Warming resulted in unprecedented weather. This wasn’t ancient history. It was recent. But now they abruptly forgot their own history and stated that it was the flooding which was going to last, and to prove that Global Warming resulted in unprecedented weather.
The press seems to think the public is amazingly gullible, and that they can “cry wolf” on and on and on, and the public will never become jaded. They have forgotten the fable. In the fable, the mischievous shepherd boy arrives at a day when a wolf actually appears, and the boy cries, “Wolf! Wolf! Wolf!” but everyone is so jaded that that no one comes to his rescue. In the case of the modern mainstream media, “rescue” is the paychecks reporters receive each week, but such “rescue” can cease. The media have lost so many viewers with their dishonest hyperbole that their parent entities can’t afford them, and the reporters get laid off.
So far, news reporters haven’t learned their lesson. In fact they are doubling down, and are worse than ever. I have the sense they feel their power slipping away, and are desperately trying to bring things to a head, wherein acceptance of Global Warming (AKA Climate Change) is a prerequisite to being listened-to. If you don’t tow the line, thou shalt receive no funding. Thou shalt receive no publicity. Thou shalt be marginalized and ostracized and lonely as heck.
Oddly, this strategy is backfiring. Who receives no publicity? Increasingly it is the press itself. Who receives no funding? Who increasingly is lonely as heck?
What people seem to be interested in is: What is actually happening. To some degree there seems to be a bit of the mechanic and the engineer in the ordinary thought of ordinary people.
Of course, just as ordinary people are ambiguous in terms of greed and the rolled-up newspaper that smacks greed on the snout, the pragmatic side of ordinary thinking, which is like an engineer, must also deal with the “Karen’s”, who are not all that interested in what is actually happening. The “Karen’s” love to murmur and gossip, backbite and belittle, and in some cases badly hurt innocent people. (Likely this is why scriptures startle some people by, when defining certain behavior as “un-spiritual”, listing “gossip” right next to “murder”.) However, perhaps the hook of behaving like a Karen is a desire to learn the Truth, (even as it spreads a lie.) In the end, people seem interested in what is actually happening.
What was actually happening in the American Southwest was that a dry time was shifting to a wet time. But how long would the wet time last? It was obvious rivers would run high, as the tremendous snowpack in the mountains melted, but what to do with those waters as they ran, and what to do if the drought returned?
I think this is what we would be discussing, if we were a sane society with a sane media. And some people were sane, and actually dealing with the issues.
I was very curious about why they decided what they decided, because I am one of those people who ignores what the media blares, because they have violated my trust. Instead I look, when possible, to what reporters would look at, if they were something other than paid parrots.
At this point the general public can still access, to an amazing degree, the water levels of scores of reservoirs, and the flow rates of many rivers, and the level of snowpack in the mountains. (Those-in-charge haven’t yet shut such sources down, the way they closed down most ways an ordinary person could examine arctic sea-ice.) Therefore, without newspapers, one can see the situation in the Southwest for oneself.
The two largest reservoirs along the Colorado River are Lake Mead and, upstream, Lake Powell. Lake Mead was getting all the attention a year ago, as its levels sank so low sunk boats and mob-related corpses were exposed. The generation of electricity was curtailed. However, since then the levels have risen dramatically.
Lake Powell also showed a great recovery, as snowmelt poured into it last spring, but has dipped slightly more recently as some of its waters were released to Lake Mead.
Upstream of Lake Powell the 34 larger “tracked reservoirs” also recovered from low levels to what averaged out to nearly 90 % of capacity. In a few cases reservoirs were over 100% of capacity, which is not a good thing, for it demonstrates the reservoir has become useless in terms of flood control. Most never reached 100%, and the torrents released by spring melting were well handled.
The actual handling of the waters occurs below the radar of the mainstream media, which is only interested in the panic porn of sensationalism. However, there are true public servants working behind the scenes. As an outsider, some of the things they need to consider are puzzling.
For example, when the water had just started to rise in Lake Powell its floodgates were abruptly opened wide, to such an extent that its levels actually dropped. It was a five day event.
It took between two to three days for the torrents to flow down to Lake Mead, and then resulted in a very rapid rise in the levels of Lake Mead, for five days.
What was that all about? Rather than seek the mainstream media, it paid to seek the more local papers. The general public along the Colorado River needed to be warned the river was going to flood for five days. It would not hurt tourism, for it was during the off-season. But, as the flood was man-made, insignificant but curious local reporters asked the questions the mainstream doesn’t, and received an interesting answer.
Apparently, when a river moves around a bend, it erodes and scours deep channels to the outside of the curve, yet builds sandy, shallow beaches on the inside of the curve. These beaches were delightful places to stop, as people floated down the Colorado through the majesty of the Grand Canyon, but drought and low water caused the beaches to be degraded. The theory was that a flood would rebuild them. I never heard how the theory worked out. But it was interesting to read that someone decided a good flushing would do good, and could build as well as erode.
Another interesting disparity involved the treaties which require reservoirs to, in times of drought, release water for people downstream to use. Lake Powell easily achieved its quota, and currently has released more than 112% of the required amount. Yet Lake Mead has failed to meet the requirement, and currently has released just over 83% of the required amount. I assume this demonstrates how wet the year has been, and that rather than drought, flooding has been a concern downstream.
Downstream from Lake Mead are two large reservoirs, Mohave Lake and Lake Havasu. Lake Mead’s discharges keeps the level of these reservoirs fairly stable for irrigation purposes, while at the same time these two reservoirs stabilize the flow of the Colorado River, which otherwise would fluctuate wildly, because the demand for electricity varies hugely. If Lake Mead must release a set amount, they would not be prone to do it in a steady way. They would be prone to release lots all at once, when demand is high, and to release little when demand is low, which would make the Colorado flow in erratic pulses, but the downstream reservoirs smooth the flow out.
At Lake Havasu the waters of the Colorado are divvied up between the interested parties. 365 billion gallons a year head off to Los Angeles and San Diego via the Colorado Aqueduct, 488 billion gallons flow to Pheonix and Tuscon via Arizona’s Aqueducts, and the remaining 488 billion gallons flow to Mexican aqueducts, which leave not a drop to flow to the sea. Men have been so efficient that not a drop is squandered. A riverbed which once saw over a trillion gallons of water flow by becomes bone dry.
The same efficiency can have the bed of the Gila River bone dry, where it enters the Colorado at Yuma, south of Lake Havasu. Originally the Gila ran so deep that paddlewheel steamers ran between Yuma and Pheonix, but now all that water is used for crop irrigation and drinking water, golf courses and swimming pools and whatever men desire, upstream.
Before modern people say rude things about the mentality of people of the past, one needs to understand these past people were doing things on a scale never seen before, and were naive concerning consequences. They were simply doing what people had always done, but doing it better. The Hohokan had irrigated their crops for two thousand years; they just never did such a good job that they stopped the Colorado River, and the Gila River as well. Nor were modern consequences immediately obvious: The populations (and therefore thirst) of Los Angeles and Pheonix were much smaller when the projects began, and some projects, such as water for Tuscon, were not even completed until 1970.
Simply planning the construction of Hoover Dam took nine years, beginning in 1922 when Hoover was Secretary of Commerce. Construction began in 1931 when Hoover was president, and was completed in 1936 when FDR was president, and FDR saw to it Hoover’s name was removed. (A bit ungracious? But an example of the petty politics involved.) Only after FDR was dead was “Boulder Dam” called “Hoover Dam” again. Hoover lived to see his vindication, dying in 1964.)
It would be a glorious sidetrack to plunge deeply into the history of the dam builders, but what is important here is that the project was gigantic and straddled the desperation of the Great Depression. Even before the project began thousands of unemployed workers had shown up, with their families, in a desert where temperatures exceeded 110 degrees, that had no housing. Workers were dying of heat stroke even before the first worker was hired. Thoughts about native species of fish such as the “Boney Tailed Chub” and the “Razor Backed Sucker” were not on people’s minds. Nor was the nation of Mexico, at first.
However, you cannot just dry up a major system of rivers without suffering environmental consequences. People began to understand there was a price to be paid downstream for efficiency upstream. Plants and wildlife and fish and birds all suffered, as did people depending on them, when the Colorado stopped flowing. When the population of fish in the Sea of Cortez south of the Colorado River Delta crashed, dawn broke on Marblehead. Mexicans began to do calculations on the back of envelopes. They wondered if the protein they gained through irrigation matched the protein they lost through a decreased catch of fish.
It is important to remember our modern environmental awareness came from elders who learned things the hard way. For example, the United State’s EPA was not created until a river was so polluted it caught on fire in 1969. In like manner, the concept of “wetlands” being important simply didn’t enter ordinary thinking, a century ago. People saw a marsh as a stinking place of no value. They had no idea smelly places fed so many baby fish, which fed the bigger fish.
Becoming aware of unforeseen consequences is no reason to glue yourself to a highway, or enact some other overreaction too often seen in the antics of radical environmentalists. More moderate conservationists often propose solutions that don’t involve dynamiting Hoover Dam, and in some ways Mexico has been a better example of such sanity than the United States.
Rather than just blaming the United States for using water upstream, some Mexicans faced the fact that their politicians had fought to get 488 billion gallons of Colorado River water delivered across the border, and, if none of that water reached the delta, Mexico deserved some “blame.”
At this point some Mexicans wondered, “Couldn’t we allow just a little to flow down the parched riverbed to the sea, as an experiment?” The experiment was done, largely using wastewater from irrigation ditches, and, even with such cruddy water, the scientists taking measurements were amazed at the positive results, which allowing even a little water to flow down to the Sea of Cortez, achieved. When paired with tree-planting along the scorched banks of the river, barren stretches of land became verdant. Fish populations rebounded.
What is important about this experiment is that the blame game was avoided. Rather than pitting the desires of farmers against the desires of fishermen, the desires of both were met. It was a case of having your cake and eating it too; (IE: Impossible, in the eyes of some radicals.)
It should be noted that to the north conservationists, concerned about the decreasing populations of fish native to the Colorado River, (especially the “Boney Tailed Chub” and the “Razor Backed Sucker”), discovered they did not need to blow up Hoover Dam. Instead, the level of Lake Mohave began to be dropped and raised ten feet, each autumn, simply to help these obscure fish. We humans can behave sanely, if we work at it.
I bring this up because it demonstrates how, quietly and behind the scenes, sensible people tweak the system, even in a time of drought, to make it more productive. It is counter-intuitive to think that, in a time of drought, allowing any water to escape the “efficiency” of the upstream system would be a good thing, yet the level of Lake Mohave was lowered and water was allowed to escape irrigation and flow down the dry Colorado to the sea, and the benefits were, if not immediately obvious, obvious enough to vindicate the daring thinkers who dared challenge the “efficient”.
The simple fact of the matter is that the marshes and wetlands of a delta are swarming with life and feed the nearby fish to a degree where there is a population explosion, if the dry Colorado Delta is allowed to again be wet. An increase in the catch of fish becomes an economic fact practical people notice. Making money with fish must be weighed with making money with irrigation. And this can lead to further thought, such as “Can we irrigate without the Colorado?” Which in turn has Mexicans considering something perhaps California should consider: The economic feasibility of desalinization plants.
Desalinization is a topic one needs to keep abreast upon. Back when I originally researched the topic in 1970 it was not feasible except in extreme cases, such as on desert islands where it almost never rains, or ships at sea for long periods of time. But that is fifty years ago, and a lot has been learned, especially in very arid Arab lands, where they had lots of oil money to pour into research, or in Israel, where their very survival depended on water. The US Navy has also researched the subject. Both the subjects of distilling and osmosis have evolved to a degree where desalinization is only a tenth as expensive as it once was. To be an old hippy who researched the subject in 1970, and who therefore thinks they know all about it, is to be a fool.
Unfortunately, there is a certain mindset which made up its mind in 1969, concerning environmental issues, and hasn’t grown. (This failure to grow may well be an insidious side effect of seemingly harmless “recreational” drugs.) (People like to say, “There is no sign the drug changed me.” What they fail to see is that you are supposed to change. If Beethoven didn’t change, his ninth symphony would sound the same as his first.)
A more mature mindset sees Desalinization is important for a reason people failed to foresee, in the past. And what is that? It is that the irrigation of deserts has a habit of making soil more and more salty, for there is a little salt in the “fresh” water of the Colorado River, and when that water evaporates the residue of salt is left behind, until the salt in soil can reach a level where it kills the very plants you are attempting to irrigate. In other words, irrigation results in the “salinization” of soil, and flushing the salt from that soil with fresh water makes “desalinization” important, even miles from the sea.
So which mindset talks about blowing up Hoover Dam, and which mindset investigates desalinization? California’s or Mexico’s? Or even, California’s or Arizona’s?
What a joke it would be if Arizona, which doesn’t even have a coastline, invested in desalinization when California didn’t!
If it was Mexico that made choices that led to prosperity, as California made choices that led to poverty, a tide could turn, and people could be seen sneaking across the border in a southerly direction. After all, the grass is always greener….
Actually I’m perfectly fine with Mexico becoming prosperous. I cheer the successes of other people. What bugs me is the failures of my own people. And there is something prone to failure about the obstinate attitude of an American media which can’t budge beyond its fixation on Global Warming.
To me our American problem, to some degree, seems to involve semantics. We lack the words that adequately describe why it is spiritually true that unselfish behavior is far better than selfish behavior. I resort to clumsy images of people going “Yippie” and then getting their snouts whacked with a rolled-up newspaper. Why? Because I lack the words that properly define an important distinction.
For example, consider the word “compromise.” Is it a negative or positive word? I would like to suggest it is very necessary in any negotiations, but that it tends to be burdened by the baggage of selfishness. People tend to see “compromise” as a sort of surrender, but only for a while. It is like a “cease fire” in the heat of battle; it is not a true peace, but just a pause in a fight which will resume at a later date. Maybe you will agree not to blow up Hoover Dam this year, but reducing Hoover Dam to rubble remains on your agenda.
Now consider he word “integration”. Is it a negative or positive word? I would like to suggest it takes opposing parties which apparently are at loggerheads, and instead puts them on the same page. Rather than seeing things in either-or terms, things are seen in terms involving the benefit of all. For example, in Mexico farmers did not need to “compromise” with fishermen, because they both wanted the other to succeed, because they wanted Mexico to succeed. What’s more, they have succeeded (so far).
To conclude this digression, the distinction I am attempting to make would put the word “compromise” on the selfish side as the word “integrate” would be on the unselfish side. And why is this distinction important?
It is because the mentality of communists, globalists, elitists and other dictators and tyrants seem incapable of anything other than the most degrading sort of selfishness. They do not value any view other than their own myopia. They cannot see the value of other views. They are so certain their views are superior that they inevitably fall into the repression of other views, which is a sickness like cancer that always seeks a “final solution” which involves actually killing those who differ. The fishermen must kill the farmers, or the farmers must kill the fishermen. I have even heard some go so far as to suggest it would be a good thing to kill 95% of the earth’s population, because “over population” is “the problem”.
Over population is not the problem. The more the merrier. The more we have the more minds we have working on true solutions to the problems we are faced by. In fact, if you take the time to bother with actually studying history, it is amazing to see the problems mankind has overcome, and amazing to see where the saviors have sprung from. Sadly, however, some think they already know it all, and they can’t be bothered with the elders of our past. They would rather rewrite history to affirm what they think they already know, even if they are dead wrong. Such souls are not mankind’s saviors, but rather mankind’s nemesis.
Such devils actually have little interest in what actually matters, in terms of the infrastructure which millions of lives are dependent upon in the American Southwest. They live in a far-away swamp they think is not low, but a high Elysium of god-like power and privilege. Dams and canals? Fishermen and farmers? Such low-brow considerations are delegated to the riffraff, to those boring mechanics and engineers who do not comprehend the intricacies of Washington power-politics.
Personally, I prefer the low-brow stuff, because in my humble opinions the high-brows make no real sense. Their heads exploded at some point, (perhaps during an LSD trip in 1969), and they are now convinced they are aboard the Jefferson Starship, which they have highjacked and are now confidently steering out into a lifeless void. I prefer more sane brows. So let us look at what is actually happening, in the American Southwest.
After the mountain snows are done melting, (they actually keep melting, but the majority of the snow is melted by late June,) the next best source of water is the so-called “monsoon.” These are summer thunderstorms which vary greatly in their intensity and coverage.
I think the variation reminded some of the variation in India between drought and flood. Because that variation hinges upon the strength of the Asian monsoon, it was assumed our variation must also be a “monsoon”. However our variation is different, and, if you want the honest truth, I think more research is needed, for I think a degree of mystery is involved concerning why it sometimes rains and sometimes doesn’t, in the American Southwest. It involves factors different from Asia’s, which leads some to argue about the definition of “monsoon”.
Pretty pointless, if you ask me. East is east and west is west, and never the twain shall meet. If you define monsoon as strictly the situation created by prevailing winds in Asia, our monsoon is not a monsoon. We must invent our own word for some-years-wet-and-some-year-dry. Call it a “monseen” if you insist. But then get down to the business of describing what is actually happening.
And it is here the wonder sets in. For the fact of the matter is that there is still much to be learned and incorporated into our understanding. The science is not settled. There are some excellent theories floating around, but when it comes down to the nitty gritty of predicting whether it will rain or be dry, flip a coin.
Here is my layman’s understanding of the American “monseen”.
The Southwest lacks trees in many areas, and bakes under a summer sun that creates temperatures over 110 ( 44 Celsius) at the surface, and that hot air rises, which creates less air at the surface, which is a partial vacuum, so the barometric pressure falls. Nature abhors a vacuum, so air must come from somewhere to replace the air that has risen. Where does this air come from? And is it’s composition the same as the air that was lifted?
At this point you have to start to attend to the “partial pressure” of some air molecules compared to the “partial pressure” of other air molecules. And most important is water. Of course.
It turns out that, to a degree, when molecules of oxygen and nitrogen rise, their space can be taken by molecules of H2O. From where, in a desert? Well, from the surface of Lake Mead and Lake Powell and the 34 reservoirs upstream, of course. Vast amounts of water are available which were not available when the Hohoham scientists tried to figure things out.
But, if those lakes did not exist, the landscape would still be likely to find water, because the easiest route for air to replace the rising air is up the the river valleys. It is far harder to replace the air by pulling it up and over high mountain passes. Therefore, air is sometimes drawn from the humid Gulf of Mexico up the Rio Grande valley, or from the humid Sea of Cortez up the Colorado valley.
But you will notice I said, “sometimes.” On other occasions the air up the river valleys remains bone dry. Despite evaporation from reservoirs and from irrigated farmland, it remains a drought. Any rain that does fall makes long and beautiful purple streamers from the cumulus which fade, falling into the hot and dry air, and never reach the ground.
Although the rain does not reach the ground, the downdrafts associated with the wind do. As a young bum, attempting to write the Great American Novel on a portable typewriter in desert campgrounds, I had to keep an eye on the cumulus, for a calm, mild morning tended to be hit by a blast of wind around lunchtime, and such wind has no respect for piles of typing paper sitting on picnic tables without heavy rocks holding them down. A sign such a downdraft was imminent was the purple streamers appearing on the bottom of clouds.
These streamers, called “virga” by meteorologists, were called a word that meant “lady rain” by the Navajo sheep herders. When the clouds grew especially purple, lightning bolts could travel down the edge of the virga, hitting ground never wet by rain and igniting forest fires. These fires were so much a part of western ecology that some pinecones evolved to only drop their seeds when scorched by forest fires.
When the virga grew thick enough to actually reach the ground the situation could become dramatically different. Rather than “lady rain” it became “manly rain”, which the ranchers called “gully washers”. Dry gulches which had gone years never seeing more than a trickle of water abruptly became raging torrents.
At one campground I frequented I watched, during a 36 month period between 1984 and 1988, a sand dune be slowly extended across a gully by the persistent winds. This worried me, for I imagined the dune-dam might, in some future flash-flood, redirect the gully’s water right through the campground and wash away my tent. But I needn’t have worried. The dune was gone in five minutes, when the raging waters came down that gully.It made me understand the “flash” in flash-flood. The torrent was over in forty-five minutes, yet undid the work of three years of sand-drifting.
Spending so much time outdoors did seem to awake some sort of ability in me to forecast, but it seemed to be more like intuition than any intellectual science I could compile facts and figures about, and could use to produce a paper to be peer reviewed. Also the intuitive talent seemed to involve the immediate future more than the long range. I would never pretend to be able to forecast whether the summer would be droughty or not. The shepherds and ranchers might be willing to speculate, but some felt speculating might “hex” the weather; one might irk the gods if one pretended to understand them.
Meteorologists seem to be on better relations with the angels God charges controlling weather with; (either that or they just get used to being put to shame by the pranks of such “lesser” gods, zephyrs, and tricksters). They do make an effort to understand what makes some so-called “monsoons” wet and others be dry. The dynamics are different from Asia’s monsoons, and as far as I can tell there’s much more work to do before we understand them, and therefore the forecasts are often wrong.
To me there seems a great distinction between those who comprehend the magnitude of the work that needs to be done, and the fools who say “the science is settled” and who blame “Global Warming” for all the variety weather amazes us with.
My own experience with western weather was based upon the fact that, because I wrote nothing I could sell, and also because I found it very hard to write and also hold a job, I needed to find the lowest rent possible, if I intended to write. Cheapest was to sleep in my car, but the extreme discomfort (and the fact it often was illegal) tended to discourage that option except when absolutely necessary. Next cheapest was to sleep at a campground, which in those days only cost $25.00/week. However, I learned firsthand one was unwise to attempt this too early in the spring or too late in the fall. In mid-October one should seek a camper or a $60.00/week motel unit, and hide indoors from Blue Northers and cold and wet weather until mid-May. It was in mid-May that the winter storm track seemed to retreat north. Then the “monsoon” started to develop, with dry “lady rains” at first, and the thundering “manly rains” later. June tended to be hot and dry and July saw the heat build a better chance of gully-washers.
Weather radars were often unhelpful, as they could show rain without indicating whether it was lady or manly. But they did show peculiar systems that I called “ghost-fronts”. Though fronts did not appear on maps, they seemed to be faint remnants of storms that traveled along the winter storm track during the summer, after they pushed south and became extremely weak. At times they formed small hooks of clouds, or even spirals, as they drifted across the desert from the Pacific. Not much rain reached the ground from them, but they did prove that moisture could make it over the mountains. This moisture, basically riding the weakest and southernmost westerlies, met the weakest and northernmost trade winds, basically coming up the Rio Grande from the Gulf of Mexico, which also had to transcend mountain blockage to enter the Colorado Valley. The easiest route was up the Colorado River itself, though neither westerlies nor trade winds tended to go that way. I therefore decided to do a bit of b.s.ing, and proclaimed the south wind was created by the suction caused by so much air rising over the blazing hot deserts. Often there is low pressure just sitting over the Southwest for weeks on end, not due to any storm, but rather because it is so very hot.
A final factor meteorologists, mechanics and engineers need to consider seems unlikely in a desert: It is the remnants of tropical storms.
Atlantic hurricanes can head up the Rio Grande at Brownsville, and Pacific hurricanes can curve north and head up the coast of Baja California or the Sea of Cortez, eventually funneling moisture up the Colorado River valley, and , while these systems are weakened by the time they reach the deserts, they give surprising amounts of rain to areas that usually see little. When you read that blazingly hot desert communities such as Salton Sea or Palm Springs receive average of four inches of rain a year, you need to understand the average is lifted by such events; in fact they usually receive less, but occasionally receive far more.
Such events may be rare, but they are common enough to have a page in Wikipedia devoted to a “List of California Hurricanes”, though in fact it is largely a list of remnants. The very cold waters off California is death to hurricanes, and they fall apart with amazing speed as they approach from the south. Even so, the remnants are something engineers need to be aware of, for history warns us that a sequence of such remnants can afflict the Southwest. For example, in 1939 four occurred in four weeks:
September 4–7, 1939: The remnants of a hurricane brought over a year’s worth of rain to parts of southern California.
September 11–12, 1939: The remnants of a hurricane from the Gulf of California brought rain to parts of California.
September 19–21, 1939: The remnants of a tropical cyclone brought rain to California.
September 25, 1939: The 1939 tropical storm made landfall n ear Long Beach. Winds were near 80 km/h (50 mph) and rain was near 12 inches (300 mm). At sea, 48 people were killed. On land, 45 were killed in flooding as an intense thunderstorm immediately preceded the tropical storm. This is the only tropical storm recorded to make landfall in California during the 20th century.
Considering we have such clear records of past events, it would be difficult to call a current event “Unprecedented”. My ten-year-old granddaughter could find the above picture, if my elderly internet abilities were weak. One could even find examples of “close calls”, where massive force five hurricanes threatened California. (Although such hurricanes always weaken greatly as they cross over cold waters, if they crossed quickly enough, a force five hurricane might still retain the strength of a strong force one, or weak force two.)
Such a storm would be truly “unprecedented” in terms of the brief historical record, but there is also a recent geological record which clearly shows such rare events have occurred in the recent past, and therefore meteorologists are always wary of massive hurricanes that blow up in the warm waters south of California ‘s cold waters.
By the way, the storm shown above was Linda, in 1997. In the warm waters south of California it exploded to a power that scared meteorologists, for it had a central pressure down around 26.64 inches (902 mb) and sustained winds of 185 mph. Lord knows how high the gusts were, but the winds were higher than many tornadoes, and even if it weakened and was only half as strong when it hit hit California it would have caused havoc. However it did not follow the path shown on the lower right of the above picture. Rather than slicing right it hooked left, and dwindled to a depression as swiftly as it as it had exploded to a force five hurricane. Despite the fact its core completely missed California, its outer rain bands caused mudslides east of San Diego, and its enormous waves washed away a house and killed a surfer.
Before you laugh at the way the meteorologists worried about Linda, be aware that, even before Linda faded, a new storm, Nora, was spinning up to its south, and Nora did slice right rather than hook left. Nora avoided much of the Cold water off California and used warm water in the Sea of Cortez and, though it did weaken greatly, retained enough strength to come north through Arizona as an actual tropical storm , with tropical force winds. Considering tropical storms need warm oceans to be created and to sustain themselves, to have one over a desert is a bit bizarre, yet Nora was a weirdo. One mountain in southwest Arizona saw a foot of rain, and, considering the landscape is officially “desert” and gets around three to four inches per year, the gully-washers produced by Nora there must have been surreal.
In any case, I only bring these examples up to demonstrate such unusual rainfalls are by no means “unprecedented”. They may be flukes, but they are a reality, and meteorologists deal with such strange realities. One thing they have noticed is such flukes seem to always happen when an El Nino is building in the Pacific.
And guess what? This past summer an El Nino was building in the Pacific. So it seems only natural that meteorologists would keep an eye out for tropical storms that might effect the desert Southwest. Even an amateur like myself did. But the media? It was still pounding its flabby drum and promoting panic about mega-drought, or maybe it was mega-floods, but in any case was mega-something.
Enter a tropical wave from stage right. Even before it crossed Mexico one of my favorite hurricane forecasters, Joe Bastardi, casually mentioned this wave might become a storm like Nora in 1997.
Bastardi is a peculiar mix of bombast and humbleness, and he can’t figure himself out, so I don’t try. I just am amazed by his insights. For example, one time a tropical wave was just coming off Africa and he published, “Houston, we have a problem.” Roughly ten days later that wave was a hurricane (Rita?) hitting Houston, but rather than gloating Bastardi was berating himself because he missed some detail and the storm’s landfall was the wrong side of Houston. Or, for another example, another hurricane carved from the gulf across the American southeast, weakening to a tropical storm, and was heading out to sea off Cape Hattaras, where 99% of all hurricanes head for Europe, but Bastardi said this storm was different. He said it would loop a clockwise loop and hit Florida and enter the Gulf of Mexico and then perhaps hit New Orleans. Initially such a zany forecast seemed preposterous, but that is exactly what this storm (Ivan?) did. But Bastardi did not give himself time to gloat over such an unbelievable forecast, but rather castigated himself intensely because he was incorrect about the storm’s intensity. Apparently he thirsts more for correction and improvement than for flattery, which I agree is a good thing, but I take this time to praise him because he deserves it, and also to explain why I listen to him when he has intuitions.
If you look back at posts from that time on his blog at Weatherbell, you will see that even as Hilary was forming Bastardi was posting the track of Nora in 1997. Therefore, as Hilary quickly strengthened just as many storms have strengthened over those warm waters, and then headed north towards California, there was no reason to call the storm “unprecedented.”
So why do they do it?
Next the weather bureau caught on, and predicted Hilary would strengthen greatly and then weaken greatly, as west coast storms always do, but that, if it came north fast enough, it might retain hurricane strength as a minimal hurricane . It stated no hurricane had hit California since they had west coast offices (which wasn’t until 1940, after the Long Beach Tropical Storm surprised everyone in 1939.)
So what did the media then report? They certainly didn’t bother to report that the storm would weaken greatly coming north, but did report it was strengthening to force 4. This created the panic the storm was strengthening as it neared, when the weather bureau was quite clear it would weaken. Then the press also reported this was “unprecedented”, as no hurricane had ever hit California. Then they added this was likely due to climate change or Global Warming or your vehicle, unless it was electric.
Why do they do it?
The media wound up looking like a cat with lots of feathers but no bird, as Hilary was a bit of a dud. It was not far enough west to be like the 1939 Long Beach storm, or far enough east to drench Arizona like Nora in 1997. It split the difference, was too slow to retain hurricane winds, and lost some moisture over the mountains of Baja California. It did drench some desert communities, and was a greater gullywasher than a desert thunderstorm is, but was nowhere nearly as bad as the weather bureau worried it might be. This actually pleased the weather bureau, which would (for the most part,) far rather err on the side of caution than to see people put in danger by a storm which surprises forecasters.
There were some cellars flooded, and some cars had engines ruined when foolish drivers drove in waters too deep. The media, meanwhile, did its best to get dramatic pictures and promote panic about Global Warming.
Perhaps the most dramatic video I saw portrayed the moment a stream which had been dry for decades abruptly faced waters charging down from the mountains, and those waters picked up every twig, stick and log that had fallen for decades, and flushed it all downstream. As the waters progressed, they picked up more and more wood, until you could not see water at all. All one saw was a tremendous amount of wood, coming around the corner of a canyon in the distance and bearing down on the cameraman, who wisely moved off the bridge he stood upon.
At this point one tends to hear a lot of second-guessing about the mechanics and engineers who designed the flood-control channels, (only budgeted enough to handle once-every-fifty-year storms), who perhaps did not foresee such amazing masses of driftwood, nor such wood’s ability to plug up even large culverts as swiftly as beavers. In any case the desert received a years worth of rain in six hours, and bridge abutments were washed away, but more annoying was what was brought in, which was mud. Yet this was expected, especially below areas where the soil was destabilized by forest fires, (and there were even road signs warming of such mud, weeks before Hilary arrived).
And the mud did mess up golf courses which were constructed on flood plains where it would have been unwise to build houses, (though perhaps such messes could be called a water hazard and sand trap all in one, by dedicated golfers.)
And some are tempted, of course, to test limits, and do build on flood plains.
However it wasn’t as bad as the media seemingly hoped. No one died, and in many places, though the media screamed they had received a year’s worth of rain, it amounted to only three inches. (It is a desert, after all.)
In places like Palm Springs there were actually far more people out and about, as Hilary passed through. Usually, the streets are deserted in the heat of the day, with temperatures often up as high as 115 degrees (46 Celsius). But the deluge dropped temperatures to a balmy 86, (30 Celsius), and the breezy rain didn’t stop people, who actually seemed to find the conditions refreshing.
Many went out in the rain simply to frolic in the delightful refreshment, which returns me to my original subject, which is why the media feels it must horrify everyone. Why can’t people focus on the technical details which interest mechanics and engineers. Why get so distracted…
…oh….yes…blonds.
If you look back to the third paragraph of this post you will see that I stated that when a scientist was feeling sorry for himself, he may be susceptible to bribes. I stated, “Money may not slake his (or her) thirst for Truth, but may gratify his (or her) hankering for blonds.”
This is true for humanity as a whole. We tend to pervert our healthy instincts. It is healthy to nourish our bodies, but we can turn that into gluttony. Rest is good for the weary, but we can create sloth. Even breathing can be turned, by certain forms of yoga, into euphoria so addictive it makes heroin look like chump change. And reproducing our bodies perhaps leads to the wildest perversions of our healthy instincts.
Considering we all tend to be tempted off course in this manner, one way or another, the smartest response is to, “confess sin and receive an assurance of pardon,” and the stupidest thing is to be “given to sin.”
I like that word “given.” If you are given away, some hand is letting go of you. What is that hand? I think it is the hand of Truth.
Truth is the most agreeable of agreeable things, and this is especially true when you are frank, and confess you lost your train of thought because a beautiful blond walked by just then. Truth pardons that because it is truthful. It may not be high minded, and in fact may be lustful, but it is the truth. Maybe you blush to the roots of your hair, but Truth embraces you. You have stood by Truth, so Truth stands by you. Truth also helps you get back on track, and remember where the rails led, before you lost your train of thought.
If you are scornful of honesty the derailing becomes serious. You are “given to your sin”, which is a way of saying you have lost hold of what separates men from beasts. If your sin is sloth, you can’t overcome your laziness. And so on. Until you can’t even tell if you are a man or a woman.
Becoming lost in this manner tends to be a gradual process of degradation, full of self-delusion. We imagine we are making progress when we are actually pacing back and forth like a tiger in a cage. This seems to occur because there is something in the human spirit which craves freedom, and which knows when it is enslaved by some sort of addiction, and therefore we tend to alternate by being repelled by our addiction and being seduced by it. We make New Year’s resolutions and then fail to keep them. Back and forth; back and forth; restlessly going nowhere like pacing tigers.
The savior is Truth, which has been there all along, but we have failed to grasp it. Ambiguously, control comes through giving up control, but the ego craves power. Once the ego thinks Truth can be disregarded the ego becomes lost and the craziness of the power-mad appears.
A simplistic escape from the debauchery of the craziness is to enlist in some discipline. It does not matter much if it is a religion or a branch of the military, it is helpful to have some sort of drill sergeant bellowing at you, making you do what you don’t want to do. However, this tends to be the tiger walking one way in the cage, and the repression is accompanied by a longing for freedom. As soon as the soldier goes on leave or the sailor’s on “liberty”, the debauchery reappears with a vengeance. The fifty weeks of work leads to the wild two-week vacation, after which you’re wasted. This is the tiger walking the other way in the cage.
This is all avoided if one clings to Truth like a small child clinging to a father’s leg in a crowd, but people can’t believe it can be so simple. Also it offends their pride to be so small, so much like a little child. They’d much rather swagger. So off they go, either to boot-stepping discipline or to a wild party.
In the desert southwest the biggest party is the “Burning Man” gathering, held on a playa in Nevada. Originally this was a celebration of artists who simply wanted to be artists, rather than being burdened by the discipline of dishwashing, (or whatever other job they did to get by). It was an escape from the discipline that responsibly pays the bills. Originally it was held on a beach by San Francisco, but fires were made illegal on that beach, so they moved to a playa in Nevada, which has a certain irony, as “playa” is a Spanish word for “beach”.
In the American Southwest the word “playa” has evolved to mean the bed of a dry lake, an area which is usually very flat, and paved by a crust of dried minerals like a pavement, perfect for campers and RV’s to drive over. All sorts of artists would arrive and become “artistic”, which involved some genuinely inspired genius, (and discipline), but also a fair amount of promiscuous decadence. To be free of the chains of breadwinner discipline involves what people call “cutting loose”, and this tends to mix heaven with hell.
Then there came an infusion of amazing amounts of money. The people of Silicon Valley also wanted a break from the dreary discipline of “writing code” and from figuring out how to cram ever larger amounts of memory onto ever smaller chips. Some of these people were so rich they could blow a million dollars on a party. Some money went for drugs. (“Cocaine is God’s way of telling you that you make too much money.”) But some went for sheer fun; for huge and silly artworks, for preposterous costumes and excellent music; and for dancing like mad. The parties became events one needed to attend; a sort of proof one was a fashionable person who went where the “in crowd” goes.
However a playa, as a dry lake bed, may, when the climate reverts to a wet phase, revert to being a lake. If it so much as starts this process, the pavement-like surface reverts to mud, which slows the party down. This was a known hazard of the “Burning Man” celebration. Here is a picture of the situation in 2014:
If such a damper could happen before, it cannot be called “unprecedented” if it happens again. In fact, as former-Hurricane Hilary had brought so much moisture north, and dumped it in the deserts, it followed that the so-called “monsoon” would have more moisture to work with, when it came to building thunderstorms. One might have even forecast a greater than average “probability” that the Burning Man would be afflicted by a damper, and even a swamp.
Which is what happened.
My granddaughter could likely find better pictures, but the above is from a decent post about the debacle, found here:
The media went wild over the prospect of doom and gloom. Just think! 73,000 people stuck in the mud, miles from safety! Surely this was a Global Warming disaster! To their apparent disappointment, the media only could report a single person died, (when they stepped in front of a bus). There was nothing to report in the way of starving and thirsty people, miles from food and water, resorting to desperate deeds. In fact there was little negativity at all. But there was also very little reporting of the positive way people actually responded to the challenge.
I did a bit of digging, and to me it seemed the situation was an example of the American selfishness going “Yippee”, but being smacked in the nose by a rolled-up newspaper, whereupon an unexpected resourcefulness and self-reliance appeared, and things worked out better than any could have expected. In fact many delighted in the challenges, and some even felt the party was improved by mud.
Undoubtedly the situation involved a degree of danger. Initially even Fraudulent Biden was alerted to the potential of a national disaster. But there was no disaster. I find this a little bit wonderful. I like to hear the tales of individuals who disentangle and extract themselves from disasters, but this was not a few individuals. This was 73,000. It was as if the Titantic sunk and everyone survived.
Surely there is a tale here that would be good to be told, but the media does not want to tell it. They cannot free themselves from pacing like the tiger in its cage. They can see only one response, when those who “party hearty” get in trouble, and that is to bring back the drill sergeant. The government must step in and clout its discipline left and right. That is the only way the 73,000 can be saved. So, you can imagine how offended such a government is, when the 73,000 can’t be bothered filling out the applications for government assistance, and simply save themselves.
History seldom shows such escapes from the tiresome to-and-fro pacing of the tiger. For one sad example, when German faith was shattered by their defeat in World War One, their society fell into despair, deep debt, depression, hyperinflation that wiped out lifetime’s savings, and an abandonment of hope that led to the faithless immorality enacted on the stages of Berlin, (where part of one stripper’s grossly pornographic act was to publicly inject herself with heroin). Yet this decadent backlash only prompted the opposite backlash of Hitler’s extreme discipline, an insanity worse than the worst seen on the sick stages of Berlin. The tiger paced from insanity to insanity, from boot-camp to shore-leave to boot-camp, without escape. There were the ninety-seven bad ideas without ever the three good ones. What made the “Burning Man” different? How did they avoid repeating history?
Witnessing this, I again felt something was missing in my vocabulary. My mind went back to my misspent youth, when I would have been in a hurry to be “in with the in-crowd”, and to say, “I go where the in-crowd goes.” I wanted “to be a nonconformist like everyone else.” It is in many ways embarrassing to look back at old diaries and see what a copy-cat I was. However, after too long working the dullness of a Real Job, I wanted to cut loose and be free. (To be honest, sometimes “too long” was one day.)
Now that I’m a tiresome old coot, I tend to skim through the artworks on display at an event like the Burning Man, and silently check off the copy-cats. For example, there are only so many ways to portray sad polar bears regarding burning oil rigs, before the politically-correct sameness overwhelms the best surrealist efforts, and the revolution seems less than revolutionary. In fact to be truly revolutionary might gain a disapproving glance at “Burning Man”, for it might portray Polar Bears savagely killing and devouring cute baby seals, or oil rigs saving millions from freezing and starving.
However the spirit of “Burning Man” is largely accepting of any and all, and even so-called right wing conformists are welcome, as long as they don’t mind it if they never get central stage.
One thing I noticed about conformists was that they want to look like they are not conforming. They like the idea of being first, at the forefront, and revolutionary, but under examination much of what they do is not new; it is merely opposite. If short hair is in fashion they move towards longer hair, and if long hair is in fashion they move towards shorter hair.
When young I was forced into seeing the absurdity of fashion for a couple of reasons. The first was that I was a year younger than my classmates, and still a boy as they all became deranged teenyboppers. In my eyes they went mad, as they abruptly didn’t want to go fishing. They developed an aversion to mud when I still wallowed.
The second reason was due a family downfall, and the fact that we became poor and my mother had to revert to Great Depression strategies to get by, and this included hand-me-down clothes. Patches were not in fashion back then, nor were pants so worn that once a month I suffered the indignity of having the seat split right down the fanny-crack. It has been over forty years since I have suffered such embarrassment, but back then it’s regularity made it hard to be fashionable.
One tends to lose interest in a game one has no hope of ever winning, and for me this seemed true of the fashion game. I suppose I gravitated in the direction of being a slob. However back then there was something called “the dress code” which kept one from slipping too far from conformity.
Some “dress code” rules made no sense to me; blue jeans were not allowed while “school pants” were allowed, even when the “school pants” had patches and the blue jeans had none. However, for the most part the parameters of fashion were a given I didn’t question, even when I ridiculed them. One could poke fun at the parameters without actually stepping over the line. (“Mad” magazine was good at this.)
To a certain degree fashion was ludicrous, and appeared to have little connection with Truth. I saw this one winter when my family was at its poorest, and I was hunching about in a fashionable but threadbare coat shivering, and then my mother did some wheeling and dealing at a place called “The Children’s Exchange” and traded in three old coats for a single old coat I absolutely adored. It was a couple sizes too large, and utterly out of style, but well designed. Called a “Mighty Max”, it related to a simple truth. The truth was: It was winter and I was cold. But as soon as I put my Mighty Max on I wasn’t cold anymore. It was like being inside a warm pillow, or being hugged, and felt so good I could easily say to hell with fashion.
The fact that fashion was ludicrous was to a degree common knowledge, even to the degree that “status symbol” was a commonly used phrase, employed to poke fun at certain things, yet at the same time it could not be denied that some fashions simply attracted people. For example, one fashion of that time made cars heavier, more expensive, and supplied little aerodynamic lift, and yet there was something undeniable “cool” about cars with fins, so the fins got larger and larger for a while.
It is a bit of a sidetrack, but the fashion of big, bulky cars seems a typical example of the American “yippee” experience heading off through mingled greed and a spirit of fun towards the inevitable whack across the nose with a rolled-up newspaper. The whack took the form of the 1973 Arab-Israeli war and the resultant Arab Oil Embargo. Some of the lumbering American cars got as little as five miles per gallon, (and included a new trickery called “planned obsolescence”), while Japanese cars got over twenty miles a gallon and were wonderfully durable. As the price of gasoline doubled the American automobile industry crashed into deep trouble, and greedy people abruptly found themselves with empty pockets, and there was a fair amount of rending garments and gnashing of teeth, and 97 bad ideas for every 3 good ones. But…
…But in the end the American auto-industry came bouncing back. Somewhere in the background, behind all the frenzy and hysteria, the common sense of mechanics, engineers and scientists quietly faced the Truth, and Truth provided answers.
What I lack-vocabulary-for is words that describe the capacity Truth has to provide an escape for people who have landed themselves in trouble. Humanity usually has no one but itself to blame for the messes it gets itself into, and the blame-game only furthers the mess. The rich justify their greed as the poor justify their envy, and the situation tends to spiral downwards, unless the escape appears like mercy from the blue.
This mercy always comes as something as a surprise to those who have turned away from Truth, and accept the pessimistic cynicism that surrounds being “given to sin.” Yet over and over history demonstrates Dark Ages giving way to a Renaissance. What is the difference in thought that separates darkness from such dawning of light?
In my mind the difference is perhaps illustrated by a quick comparison of Paul Ehrlich and Norman Borlaug in the year 1970.
Paul grew up in a sterile suburb while Norman grew up on a working farm. Paul’s father was a shirt salesman, skilled at making people buy what they often didn’t need, while Norman’s father, as a farmer, produced a necessity. Paul went to college and studied obscure butterflies, while Norman studied how to continue a process that mankind had followed for a thousand generations: Choosing the best seeds to plant for the next year’s crops. (Neither corn nor wheat, as they now grow, exist in nature, and both involve seed-selections other than natural selection.) Paul’s study of butterflies attracted few investors, and he needed to grovel for funding and grants, while Norman’s study bore immediate results, and not only attracted investors by increasing crops, but attracted conservationists by making it less necessary to chop down wilderness to increase farmland, because old farmland became more productive.
At this point it might seem Paul was destined to be poor and Norman to be rich, but Paul was interested in fame and fortune more than butterflies, while Norman was interested in improving the productivity of crops, and only cared for fame and fortune when it involved getting funding to further his study.
At this point Paul, perhaps using salesman-charm learned from his father, pulled off a remarkable career-switch. He switched from butterflies to being a prophet of doom and gloom. For some reason he had the charisma to make pessimism exciting, and abruptly made very good money basically stating most of mankind was going to starve while choking in its own pollution, within twenty years. He appeared on the most popular late night TV show of those times (Johnie Carson) roughly twenty times, and likely wasn’t asked once about butterflies.
Meanwhile Norman was making sure most of mankind stayed fed. As Paul appeared on Johnie Carson and enchanted the public with what was tantamount to a scientific-sounding sensationalism, (sort of like a good teller-of-ghost-stories by a campfire), Norman was at the center of the “Green Revolution”. The very nations Paul stated were hopeless became self-sustaining and even exported food.
At this point one discerns a difference, and draws a distinction. Even if one gives Paul the benefit of the doubt and states he was warning people of a worst-case-scenario, what he proposed seems brutal for a man once enamored by butterflies. He proposed foreign aid be cut off to “hopeless” countries, and that their people be “allowed” to starve. He proposed the males of India and Pakistan be castrated, to prevent population growth. He proposed that, even in the wealthy west, people who chose to have large families be penalized, even if their children were well-fed, happy, and well-educated. He himself chose to have a single child, but then did not chose to be castrated. (He chose a vasectomy, I suppose so he could continue enjoy sex, without the inherent responsibility.) And he made this behavior pay, even to a point where a University sought him out, as a “famous person”, and offered him a cushy position which had nothing to do with butterflies, (which he knew a thing nor two about), but rather about “sustainability”, (even though time proved he was an ignoramus on the subject).
Meanwhile Norman was so consumed by his work that, when his wife informed him that he had won a Noble Peace prize in 1970, he thought she was joking and went on with his work.
And how about me, in 1970? Who did I hear about? Sadly, Paul got all the press, and Norman little. I was so convinced we would run out of oil by 1980 that I changed my life in accordance, and even convinced my mother to invest in solar panels. (In my own defense, it was to heat hot water, which makes far more sense than using solar panels to generate electricity. I think something like 90% of Israel now uses solar power to heat their water.)
Then, of course, we did not run out of oil in 1980, and I felt like I had been a fool. The changes I had made to my life were changes that I needed to reverse, and, because admitting I am wrong is not easy for me, reversing course was not an easy process. But Truth demanded I do it, so I did it.
Did Paul do it? Did he set a good example and make my life easier by admitting his gifts as a prophet were nil? Paul was so wrong that he qualified as a false prophet, and in ancient Israel he would have been led to the edge of town and stoned to death, but fortunately he was in America, and all you get here is a rolled up newspaper whacked across your nose.
What truly amazed me most was that Paul refused to admit he was wrong. How was that even possible? He predicted a billion would have starved by 1990, and worse. None of it happened. How can a person be so wrong and not admit it?
He had various excuses, which basically boiled down to “My ideas are right, but it is taking longer than I thought for them to manifest.” Meanwhile he kept his position as a famous person at his university, and continued to make decent money giving talks as a famous person.
To me it looked like he was stuck on stupid. I was reminded of a line in a hit song of those times, “Every form of refuge has its price.” If he had stayed with his study of butterflies he would have been like a honorable starving artist, but he blundered into a cozy situation and became addicted to it. Dishonorable. (But I notice that, in his old age, he has returned to studying butterflies.) (But not for profit.) But back at that time Paul seemed to me like a sort of sell-out. His dumb ideas had made a mess of my life, and I had suffered through following his bad advice, but he was too weak to suffer, and instead stayed cozy. He was living the good life as I endured The School Of Hard Knocks. I suppose some envy was involved, but he lost any respect I had for him.
But how about Norman? Did I switch sides, and become a follower of Norman? No, because I never heard of Norman, despite the fact he’d won the Noble Peace Prize. The media didn’t salivate over him the way it did over Paul. There was little sensationalism involved in cross-breeding strains of wheat, and yet Norman may have quite literally saved a billion people from starving to death. That should generate a sensationalist headline or two, but the media prefers a Paul, saying a billion would die. And that is the difference.
I brought up Paul and Normon because they exemplify the difference between dishonor and honor, between being “given to sin” and being “given to Truth,” and between being basically harmful and being basically helpful. It boils down to difference between lies and the Truth.
Thinking about this difference is no small matter. It currently involves the whole world. World War Three (so far) is occurring on an intellectual level, and involves the differences which I’ve brought up, sort of as a sub-topic while discussing droughts and floods in the American Southwest. But this “difference” can’t be dismissed as a mere sub-topic when it infuses, invades and in some ways poisons even topics as innocent as talking about the weather in the American Southwest.
When I began this post I thought it would consist of a pithy comment about how some sensationalism had been refuted by the “mega-drought” becoming a “mega-flood”, but the post, (and my life), have not gone as I intended. Events have occurred which give one pause. Such pauses tend to elongate my posts. My posts become repositories of my thought, as I am forced to stop and think. Hopefully readers will have forgiven me as this post became long winded, but there is much to think about.
I also am arrogant enough to think some ideas in this post are worth sharing, and, though I am far from finished thinking-about-things, now seems a good time to cut this post short and tie up lose ends.
At one point I describe my granddaughter as a nine-year-old and another as a ten-year-old. This is not an inaccuracy, but rather is evidence of how long it has taken me to write this post. This post was started as snows started to melt, and now they are starting to fall again in the mountains of the American Southwest. The “monsoon” (or “monseen”) has past, and we now watch the winter systems.
If you are rooting for a mega-drought, you will be disappointed to learn a weak low did manage to kick some significant moisture into southern California.
This rain approached 3 inches in some locals. In most areas it was less. However the sensationalist media reported it as “once every thousand year rains.” People seemingly said, “Ho hum”, and went about their business, as the media showed flooding in low places,and rains moved from California to Arizona.
Why does the media insist on making such a big deal of what is a very wet day, but not really that great a problem? Are they stuck on stupid?
This immediately embarks my mind on two long-winded sidetracks, right when I stated I was going to cut this long post short. In a nutshell they would describe:
1.) How people get trapped by a situation they find cozy, and learn that “every form of refuge has its price.” It is up to the individual to decide if the price is worth paying.
2.) How such a trap can become an addiction which compromises ideals, and creates a hypocrisy which mingles lies with Truth, until the worsening dependence results in morality so muddied people don’t know what Truth is any more. Describing this would lead to further sidetracking, and involve many pages describing how a perverted form of Islam came to form an unholy alliance with communism, based upon the legitimacy of lying.
(Hint: The Byzantine’s were so corrupt and so cruel that, in specific situations involving imprisonment and torture, Islam allowed lying, however this narrow window, basically an exception-to-the-rule, has been expanded grotesquely into what seems to be a general strategy, making the word of some Mohammedans worthless; if their lying is allowed their treaties are worthless. However accepting deceit as a political strategy has allowed their worst to ally with communists, even when communists are mistreating Mohammedans.) (I think both sides are well aware their alliance is an expediency, and that as soon as they are done exterminating everyone else they will turn on each other.)
I was struck by an awful irony, for, it was while contemplating the fact 73,000 escaped calamity at the “Burning Man” festival, other young people, singing and dancing and rejoicing at another festival, were utterly unaware of another calamity approaching them in para-gliders. Though many escaped the atrocities enacted by Hamas, many did not. The vileness was so pronounced that the “difference” gouges the page and obliterates the paper; to even mention “hitting a dog on its snout with a rolled up newspaper” seems wrong.
However the same principles apply, albeit in a warlike setting. Humanity creates a problem that demands a response, and one prays for leaders like Churchill, able to weed through the 97 bad responses for the 3 good ones.
Finding the three good responses is not possible if one uses cancel culture to disallow second opinions. Instead one stays stuck on stupid, and something about such stagnation gnaws away at the human spirit. When solutions based on Truth are prevented, bad festers in the manner hatred festered in Gaza, until, like a boil, the pus bursts forth, at which point the headache and discouragement of psychological warfare becomes the horror of actual, physical wars and genocides.
The founders of the United States were not unaware of the evil mankind is capable of, and it was to avoid that evil that the American Constitution was devised to prevent any one person gaining the power to silence others. Freedom of Speech was vital, and resulted in amazing progress. To cancel Freedom of Speech is to cancel progress, which makes it absurd that those who are most interested in censorship call themselves “progressive.”
The problems of the progressive movement are that progressiveness was one of 97 bad ideas that sprang out of a crisis the world faced 175 years ago. At that time the agrarian system was facing challenges, and people were going hungry due to the potato famine and other woes, but Truth provided answers, one of which involved the start of the industrial revolution, which involved home industry being replaced by factories, people moving to cities, and eventually new crises. This became a general upheaval all over Europe, called the generic term “The revolution of 1848”, though in fact it involved many different situations in many different places, motivating all sorts of deep thinking and attempts to find Truth. This is a continual process, in essence a revolution which has continued to this day, except for one particular stagnation that refused to change. That is communism, which calls itself a revolution, though I don’t see how, considering they’ve gone 175 years without changing.
How can they prevent change? This is how: They call changing a “counterrevolution”, and do everything possible to prevent it from occurring, including lying. They call any idea that differs from their own a weed they must remove from their garden, but their gardens are barren, and are proof that the worst weed of all is communism itself. They are the antithesis of progress, for, I repeat, by calling any who differ a “counterrevolution” they have gone 175 years stuck on stupid, and are the epitome of sameness, and are about as opposed to revolution as you can get. Revolutionary? One does not change things for the better simply by wearing a Che Guevara hat; that is merely a fashion and an example of a tiger pacing in a cage. Nor does one change things for the better by being a so-called militant, and, (though praised by propaganda in the mainstream media that calls you “a peaceful protester”), revealing your true colors by burning the storefronts of hard working entrepreneurs, attacking the police that protect you, or even paragliding into “raves” to commit atrocities. Such behavior only proves one is an useful idiot foolish enough to serve as cannon fodder for equally idiotic people who are older and a few brain-cells wiser; wise enough to work behind the scenes where they won’t get shot, or won’t get shot until things really get out of hand and they face what Nicolae Ceaușescu faced on Christmas 1989.
In conclusion, one does not change things for the better, in any way, shape or form, by warping or denying the Truth.
The founders of the United States wrote its constitution based on the premise people respected Truth and would not lie. However communism extols lying. Therefore a communist can place their hand on the Bible and pledge to uphold the constitution of the United States, and their word means nothing. Their intent, if true communists, may be to destroy the United States, and yet they can say with dewy eyes how they respect the Founding Fathers, and also the Father of all, which is Truth. Afterwards they can laugh up their sleeves, “Heh, heh, heh! What suckers and chumps these losers all are!”
History seems to show us that, whatever short term gains such scoundrels may gain by denying Truth, in the long term the result is downfall. Sometimes it is merely the downfall of that particular individual, a Macbeth at his tragic end, but other times it involves the downfall of entire empires. No matter what glories of God they may have shone with in their past, the rot of corruption can crumble their knees, and they fall. The United States is not above such an end. Past glories do not guarantee a future that is spared being ignoble.
History also shows such downfalls do not create a worldwide Dark Age, for if Truth is suppressed in one place another place benefits from the first place’s insistence upon staying stuck on stupid, for the second place allows Truth to lead them, and they spring up as a surprising new power in the world. In fact our very word “renaissance” is historically closely associated with the final downfall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453. In like manner, the fall of the United States can’t make Truth be untrue. Truth will simply burst forth someplace the power-mongering politicians never suspected it would. As they suspiciously regard Hungary, Poland, and India as hotbeds of counterrevolutionary dogma (IE: Truth) the next center of a new nation which astonishes the world might be Window Rock, Arizona.
Personally I hope I don’t live to see the downfall of the United States, although the behavior of many politicians in Washington D.C. does reek with a disgraceful, ignoble stench. To call them “The Swamp” is apt. They are shameful, but my hope is that this merely represents the entire nation getting whacked in the nose by a rolled up newspaper, after going “Yippie” too long (in many ways, but don’t ask me to go there, for I am concluding this post.) My further hope is that my nation retains its capacity to utilize Liberty and seek out the three good solutions from the ninety-seven less-good suggestions.
I’m still waiting.
The agony I feel is shared by fellow Americans, and was expressed so well by an unknown who called himself “Oliver Anthony” that his YouTube post became an overnight sensation. After two days it was well past a million “views” on YouTube, and past six million a few days later. People made a big deal of these numbers, and the people who like to think they control Truth because they attempt to control the media (and Free Speech) were wonderfully disconcerted, for they had not given this young man permission to speak.
The people perturbed by six million views can only be more perturbed by the fact that after four months this low-budget production now has over a hundred million views. (To be precise, 105,602,279 at 11:30 PM EST on December 23, 2023.)
Admittedly such a song is largely heart, and, while pointing out the head-oriented reality of certain problems, offers little in the way of solutions. However it does express a lack of faith in the solutions offered by “rich men north of Richmond”. (IE: Politicians in “The Swamp” of Washington D.C.). In essence it states the ordinary person is aware the liars are lying, and it is causing them anguish.
Although I do love music and think the power of the heart is superior to the power of the head, I am dissatisfied with merely moaning and groaning about the idiocy of the “progressives”. I want to meet them on the low level of intellect, and clash horns like the goats they resemble. (Meaning no offense to my goat Lydia).
However the liars increasingly seem to avoid any actual intellectual discussions. Why not? Because that might allow Free Speech, which might allow a “counterrevolution”, which they dread. This proves they are afraid of Truth. Why? Because they are addicts. They would sell their grandmother’s false teeth for their next fix, but they are not addicted to heroin, but rather power and all its perks. They so enjoy the cushy privilege which power has seduced them with that they fawn and bleat and bow to a king other than the King who is called Truth.
Over and over this has led to the fall of great empires originally uplifted by Truth. The fall can be prolonged agony; the fall of the Byzantine empire saw the rise of the Ottomans, and Constantinople was renamed Istanbul, but after a time the Ottomans too suffered the increasing rot of corruption until they were called “The sick old man of Europe” and were nearly wiped from the map, at the end of World War One. Only “The Young Turks” saved them from becoming a people with no nation, (like the Kurds). And in the American southwest the charcoal in the ruins of the Hohokan city of “Snaketown” in the year 1100 suggest how the mighty can fall even here.
And so it goes, and an individual feels small and ineffectual in the face of such prolonged downfalls. What can a lone man do?
Stand by the Truth. We may be small, mere motes of dust in the sunlight of millenniums, but it is not our job to be the Truth in its entirety. Truth can take care of itself. We need to take care to be truthful in the small spaces allotted to us, and that is enough. Maybe we will see our small efforts in some backwater had the power of a pebble to start an avalanche, and simply by cross-breeding strains of wheat on farms, far from the mainstream, we will start a “Green Revolution” and save a billion lives, or maybe not. In any case, it is not the individual who actually saves the billion lives. It is the compassionate side of Truth.
In the darkest winter night Look for unexpected Light.
One thing I adore about America’s homespun music is that, within the songs ordinary people devise for their own amusement, is that they often encapsulate profound intellectual debates, in simple and often humorous ways.
For example, the United States is currently at the point of a civil war about who should control power. Should the government control the power of propane? Or the people? Who should say whether or not we should have gas stoves. Whose business is it?
A creepy element of this conflict involves some people saying, “Just leave us alone.” But the government says, “It is our duty to help you.” Then the government feels entitled to “help” people who want to be left alone. The governors become bullies, shoving into people’s lives when they are not wanted. Then people say, “Mind your own business.”
Another creepy element involves people who have become “welfare dependents” and who actually do want help, yet fail to get help from the government because the officials in charge of money are directing the power-of-the-purse elsewhere. These “welfare dependent” people feel they are the government’s business, and cry out, “Mind your own business.”
(For a current example, in the horrible Lahaina fires in Hawaii those who depended on the government expected the government to supply water to fight fires, sirens to warn of fires, and proper management of traffic in an emergency, but the government felt it wasn’t their business; their “focus” was elsewhere.)
(Lahaina was especially troubling because the people who trusted traffic authority died, while those who defied the traffic authorities escaped. This should suggest that the “business” of your own survival is best left to you.)
The United States is based upon the idea that the best person to be in charge of our business is ourselves. Yet our new government seems to suggest they are wiser, and should be in charge of our business.
So who are we talking to, when we say, “mind your own business.”
Tweezers-intellectuals like Karl Marx wrote miles and miles of tedious print parsing and re-parsing the tiresome topic of where the dividing line should be between public and personal “business”, but American bumpkins with banjos, fiddles and guitars covered the vast subject in less than two minutes, (and got your toes tapping.)
What I find fascinating is the admission in the music that when you work for someone who “signs the check” that you are doing their business. No man is an island. We are on the same team. However unspoken in such an interaction is the idea that the employer will be doing your business. He must pay enough, and respect your dignity as an equal. If he fails…….
It is my boss's business that I do.
It is not your business. That is true.
And if boss asks too much, and I am through
I sing, "It's nobody's business what I do".
If my gal drives a limousine, and I
Supply the gasoline, it's nobody's
Business what I do. Yet way up high
God's eyes are seeing; His deities
All aim at freeing. Maybe angels have
Some work to do. And, because they have got
No fleshy body's earthly autograph,
It's no body's business what I've thought.
It's no body's business. It's no body's
Business. And yet it proves that God is.
One thing missed by fretful people who focus on how far CO2 rises above 400 ppm atop Mona Loa, is how greatly CO2 levels vary in a down-to-earth garden.
During the night fungus is active but photosynthesis has ceased, so CO2 levels soar up towards 1000 ppm. At dawn plants wake to a rich environment with high CO2 levels, and growth explodes as photosynthesis leaps into action. CO2 levels then plunge as plants gobble it up. By noon CO2 is down to “normal” levels, and growth slows greatly despite the fact sunshine is at its peak intensity. In the afternoon plants hardly grow at all, for, in the microcosm, CO2 sinks to very low “Ice Age” levels below 300 ppm.
So it turns out high CO2 levels are natural, and have a part to play in the ordinary, humdrum growth of the vegetables that are supposedly better for you than french fries.
So do not fret, fretful people. Out in your backyard garden CO2 soars above 1000 ppm and then crashes to 180 ppm, but your cabbages are not rolling about in pain. They take it in stride, and do most of their growing in the morning when the dew is still drying in the grass. And if a cabbage can take it, than so can you.
Sunrise's Swansong 