Left To Write

Recently I had my medical and dental checkups – not usually something to write home about – but this is how it all started.  At my  dental checkup – mostly a regular cleaning appointment – both the dentist and the hygienist were pleased with how everything looked.  My hygienist even commented that she was pleasantly surprised and pleased to note that at my age I still had all my own teeth.  I’ve never thought about it before, and no one has ever mentioned it to me before, but I felt good about the appointment when I left.

Then a few days later I went to my Medicare medical wellness checkup, and the doctor asked me a number of questions.  Among those questions were: 

• Do you live on your own?  Yes.
• Do you dress yourself and get yourself ready for the day? Yes.
• Do you cook your own meals?  Yes.
• Do you eat protein, vegetables and fruit?  Yes.
• Do you do your own shopping? Yes.

And a few other questions along those lines to determine my level of independence.  There were also questions relating to my mental and emotional stability but I won’t go into those.

So, after those two appointments, I was feeling pretty full of myself – after all, I had all my own teeth!   And I was living independently and managing all these living skills on my own!  So after the medical appointment, I drove home and fixed myself some lunch, still feeling pretty good about living on my own.  As I sat at my kitchen island eating my lunch, I glanced over at the three lists I had there on the counter.  I must admit the irony of the three lists made me laugh.  At the top of the first list was the name Luke with 3 items listed under his name, one was titled Greg with one item on that list, and the third list was under the name Richard (several items were on that list).  Who are these 3 men in my life you ask??  Well, I’m in a sharing mood so let me explain.

Luke is my 16-year-old grandson who lives nearby.  He is tall and very technology oriented.  Luke willingly does the “tall” jobs for me – putting an item up on a high shelf, changing the light bulb that burned out in my master bathroom without having to use a stool to reach it – things like that.  And with his technology skills, he figures out what I perceive as glitches with my computer, but which in all honesty my former IT department at the City of Issaquah and I lovingly called PICNIC (Problem In Chair Not In Computer).

Greg is a family friend who has his own painting business and occasionally does other odd jobs.  Greg painted my house last summer and was helping me with a project in my yard this summer.

Richard is my handyman who is a licensed electrician and does all kinds of handyman jobs.  He measured, ordered and installed new cabinets in my laundry room, hung my new wind spinner on my patio, unclogged the kitchen sink so my dishwasher doesn’t spill water all over my counter when it’s running, installed my Ring camera at the back of my house so whoever continues to steal potted plants along the alley will be on camera, and one or two other minor tasks.  Also on Richard’s list was the new electrical outlet which he offered to install on my back patio area.  

So those three lists comprised my lesson in humility. These are the three men in my life who help me so I can “live on my own.”  Let’s face it: very few of us live entirely independently.  We all need help from time to time with one thing or another.  Sometimes the help is just called Google,  but in my case it’s usually called either Luke, Greg, or Richard.  So I give lots of Kudos and a whole bunch of credit to Luke, Greg and Richard for being the three men in my life helping me to “live on my own!”

OH THE GAMES THOSE COWS COULD PLAY!!

When I first moved here, my grandson, Luke, was 8 years old.  Each Wednesday night he would stay overnight at my house and then I would drive him to school Thursday morning.  Both of his parents work, so during the summer months, I would have him a couple of days each week and we would spend the whole day together.  When he was younger, the family noticed that he would focus on one particular thing and be totally unaware of anything else around him.  His mother had also mentioned to me that he didn’t seem to have much imagination, so I began thinking of fun ways that might expand his awareness and help spur his imagination.

Whatever we were doing or wherever we were going, we often drove by the cow farm on Marvin Road.  Partly in an effort to get him to look and notice what was around him and to make him think a little bit, I started pointing out the cows in the field near the road.  Then I noted how some were grouped together and others stood farther apart.   Soon I was making up stories about what they were doing or suggesting games they might be playing.  Luke really got interested in watching the cows each time we passed by and he really got into our story-telling too.  We had the most fun thinking of the games that the cows might be playing based on the formations they made while standing in the field.  If we saw a cow somewhat hidden behind a tree trunk, we thought they might be playing Hide & Seek.  If they were generally lined up one behind another,  we figured perhaps they were playing Follow the Leader.  If one cow bumped into another cow, we thought they might be playing Tag.

One day as we drove by, Luke noticed that the cows were arranged in three small groups.  There were three cows in each group.  In the center of the three groups stood one lone cow.  Luke looked at that and said, “Look, Grandma, the cows are playing Trivia and the middle cow is the Gina cow asking all the questions!”  I had to laugh at that and told him I thought he might be right and that they probably were playing Trivia.

Later when he was a little older, we drove past the cow farm and I noticed that the cows were lined up in two parallel rows.  The same number of cows were in each row.  I said, “Look, Luke, the cows are getting ready to line dance.”  He seemed a bit skeptical and said, “Oh, Grandma, cows can’t line dance.”  I said, “They could put their right hoof in and their right hoof out, their right hoof in and shake it all about!”  He answered, “That’s the hokey pokey!”  I replied, “Yes, but if they can do the hokey pokey, they can line dance!”  He thought a moment and then said, “I guess you’ve got me there.”  

Once the farmer sold the first group of cows, the second group didn’t seem to be nearly as playful.  But for a couple of years, we enjoyed the antics of the first group of cows on a very regular basis.

OK, kids, gather around me – it’s time for the talk.  Most of our lives, we can rest quietly and not too much is asked of us.  Sometimes we get pulled on, and we get walked on, and we get stuffed into things.  Sometimes it even gets a bit smelly.  But overall our lives are not too difficult.  However, these humans have one habit which is quite perplexing.

It all began many years ago or so I’ve heard.  Anyway, the fat guy in the red suit dropped some gold coins down the chimney of a poor man’s house to help his three daughters.  It so happened the poor man had hung some laundry by the fire to dry.  The coins dropped into the socks of the three daughters and that’s how it all began.  When they told their friends and neighbors, everyone began hanging stockings by the fireplace in hopes that the jolly man in the red suit would leave something in their stockings too.  

I’m telling you all this so you understand when it happens to you.  This coming of age/growing up/growing bigger thing is a little difficult sometimes but you are big enough now and you might be chosen as a sock to hang by the fireplace.  It hurts a little when they first grab you and hang you on that hook, but if they leave you alone after that, it’s okay.  You feel a bit longer than usual but that’s not too bad.

Later, on Christmas Eve, the fat guy in the red suit comes after dark, after everyone is in bed and asleep.  He comes quietly and stuff things into you – that’s when you really feel stretched beyond your limits.  You hang there all night long with small oranges, little toys, pencils and small paper tablets,  some useful items like nail clippers or toothbrushes or anything that’s small enough to fit into you.  And that’s the hard part – you just hang there not able to move.  And it is definitely not comfortable.  But don’t worry – the kids in the family will relieve you as soon as they wake up.  They’ll be all excited, and their shrill young voices may possibly bother you a little bit, but they’ll relieve you of all that stuff packed inside you and then you will feel much better.  

You look a bit concerned, a bit frightened.  Don’t worry.  It’ll  all be okay.  This only happens one night each year.  It seems odd, I know.  But it’s just something we have to put up with so that the rest of the time we can be totally relaxed, lying side by side in someone’s dresser drawer.  When that night is over, you can come back right here where we live all the time and we can talk about it again if you want.  I promise you that you’ll be okay.  And the rest of us will be here waiting for your return.  We’ll all be together again for a whole year.  Remember, I love you.  And if you get chosen this year, it just means you’re growing up and we will be back together again very soon. 

Any questions, kids?

With Apologies to Lewis Caroll

T’was chaos in the Office Ove;
It smelled of Musk and Micky Dees.
His edict/orders print in bold;
And Sharpie-signed for all to see.

Beware the MAGA hats my son,
Their jaws that snipe and liberals bash;
Beware the Orange-haired one; and shun
His constant lies and talking trash.

He took his Sharpie in his hand;
The Constitution there he sought.
His elbows on the Resolute Desk;
He pretended to be lost in thought.

Then Elon came with eyes aflame,
And chainsaw in his heartless hands.
He stormed into the Office Ove.
To wreak destruction with his man.

And so, they did. Sliced through and through,
With saw and Sharpie. Snicker, snack;
The Constitution shredded, there,
No guarantee was left intact.

“We’ve done the deed,” they sniggered proud;
“The Constitution, we have trashed,
A beautiful day; Callooh! Callay!”
With saw and Sharpie; slashed and slashed.

T’was chaos in the Office Ove;
It smelled of Musk and Micky Dees.
His edict/orders print in bold;
And Sharpie-signed for all to see.

There we stood, alone,
just the four of us,
in a vast desert, far larger
than the Sahara.

Climbed gentle backs of
dune after dune,
wind at our backs, stumbling down
the steep lee of each.

Twenty degrees north latitude,
northwesterly wind gusts,
blinded by blowing sand,
seared by desert heat.

Down into a trough between dunes
towering hundreds of feet,
lost in an endless sea
of the brightest white.

But this desert died
millions of years ago,
existing now only
in my imagination.

I stood upon rock of the rim,
Utah’s Snow Canyon State Park,
gazed down at rocks below ––
the Jurassic Navajo Sandstone.

Petrified dunes that last saw light
one hundred seventy million years ago,
rising up over time,
eroded by wind and water.

Then, one point four million years ago,
lavas poured forth
over a plateau of this exhumed
ancient petrified desert.

Streams cut canyons into sandstone and basalt
Three hundred thousand years later,
more lava poured forth, from fissures to the north,
filling valleys with fresh lava.

On the final morning of our St George visit,
I stood upon those hardened basalts,
and gazed one last time
into the canyon below.

White cliffs of Navajo sandstone to the west,
the valley filled by a third flow,
a mere fifteen thousand years past,
enveloping ancient dunes
that once danced across a vast desert.

Took my last few photos,
down into the valley, and
up to the pass to the north,
from which the lava last flowed.

“Let me look at our refund policy. OK if I put you on a brief hold?”

            “No, no. I prefer you put me on a long hold.”

            “Sir?”

            “Yeah, no. Put me on a hold for the ages. Put me on a hold that reflects Halley’s lazy loop through the solar system. Here’s Earth, here’s the Sun, zip past Mercury, dodge Neptune decades later then slowly, slowly, arc that U-turn and come back our way, so my grandson can see you in the night sky.

            “Put me on a hold measured in millenia. Start with Cro-Magnons huddled in caves, fleeing the unstoppable glaciers grinding their way down from the north, then melt those glaciers, evolve those Cro-Magnons to Homo sapiens. And put those men in mud and wattle huts, then wooden cabins, then stone castles, then steel skyscrapers.

            “I want a hold that feels the bump and grind of tectonic plates, scraping and shoving an ocean bottom, littered with seashells, until that ocean bottom becomes a mountain top – swept by icy monsoons and littered with oxygen tanks and those too foolish to turn back when their own oxygen ran out. And now the mountaineer and the seashell lie together.

            “Give me a hold where the sun shines down on a tennis match, a picnic, a walk in the woods, and extends through that same sun becoming a red giant. No longer so inviting to tennis players, picnickers, or sylvan strollers.

            “I want a hold that poets immortalize in Alexandrian quatrain, playwrights fill Broadway theaters with, and Tom Cruise hopes to turn into Mission Impossible: Nine.

            “Let’s not make this a vanilla hold, a 50^th percentile hold, a ‘meh’ hold. When people hear of this hold, I want them to gnash their teeth, to rend their garments, to keen so shrilly that windows shatter for three blocks around.

            “Can you put me on that kind of hold?

            “Yeah, um, we’ll just credit you the four dollar refund sir.”

            “I’m happy to stay on the line for a brief survey, if you like.”

In our yard, next to the old barn, there grew a lilac bush.
Lilac tree, really. It was big enough for an 8-year-old girl to climb.
When I was sad, or my feelings were crushed,
……. or I was just mad at people,
I’d sit on the third branch up, believing no one could see me.
And then I could cry.

On a day in May, when the full tilt fragrance filled the air,
I stifled my sobs as my mother approached, scissors in hand.
It must have been a Sunday. She was humming a hymn
as she snipped an armload of lilacs for the dining room table.
If she saw me, she didn’t let on.

You might think that’s harsh or unfeeling of her, but I did not.
Some cries belong only to oneself, coming from so deep down
they are invisible to outsiders. Only the flowers and leaves
could see and hear me, and stood guard until sadness subsided
and the crying stopped.

I often came across my mother crying alone after my brother died.
Always late at night, on the couch, with just the TV for company.
I silently got my drink of water or used the bathroom
and crept back upstairs to bed, never looking her way.
Yet I felt her body heave.

My mother and I spent a lot of time screaming at each other.
Too different, or too alike? Both, I suppose. But love between us grew,
even blossomed, as we shed our petals of tears through the years.
I knew she’d died before they called me, I heard the hymn she sang.
……. I miss her.
Especially when the lilacs bloom.

This is a season of reflection,
A reckoning, if you will.
Is life’s cup brimming over,
Or waiting for a fill?

As we look back across the year just passed,
Loss filled many hours and days.
Loss of a loved one, a lost ideal,
A loss of dreams in many ways.

This season also brings thankfulness,
As we try to balance our books.
We learn that gratitude can conquer loss.
We give hope another look.

Examine again your little cup.
Give yourself some grace.
Then turn to help someone else.
Your cup is full, grief erased.

As we sit among our company here,
Each face so warm and appealing,
I wish you laughter and good memories.
I wish you peace and healing.

One day, two men; which
do we honor for Justice,
Peace, Truth and Outlook?

A calendar day can
unite or divide people.
Choose wisely, my friend.

Cirque du l’Orange or
I Have a Dream Today?
Jan. 20 this year.

Cloudy future waits.
Will Martin or Donald define
This day they will share?

By James C. Nelson, Montana Supreme Court Justice (Ret.)

I want to offer you a different lens through which to better understand the climatological and environmental crises that we—indeed all of humanity—are facing. I would like you to view these crises through the long lens of our planet’s geologic and evolutionary history.

From the beginning of our planet’s formation, some 4.6 billion years ago, to the present there have been five major extinction events which destroyed anywhere from 70% (during the Devonian Period) to 95% (at the end of the Permian Period) of all living things on earth.  These extinctions were natural events: caused by some combination of rapid and dramatic changes in climate, combined with significant changes in the composition of environments on land or in the ocean brought on by plate tectonics, volcanic activity, climate change (including the super cooling or super heating of earth), decreases in oxygen levels in the deep ocean, changes in atmospheric chemistry (acid rain), changes in oceanic chemistry and circulation, and in at least one instance, a cosmological event—the  massive asteroid strike in Chicxulub, near what is now the Yucatan peninsula. 

Contrary to climate change detractors, science-deniers and those who refuse to acknowledge the climatological and environmental crises facing us, any notion that these do not exist, will not come to fruition, or that humans will somehow subdue the earth is utter nonsense.  Rather, it is the earth and cosmos that will, in due course, subdue all living things—as nature has already done, time and time again, for billions of preceding years.

Indeed, and to that point, our planet is presently in the midst of adverse climatological changes and a sixth major extinction event—in this instance, however, both caused by human beings. 

And that brings me to the new apex predator–US.

 Humans–homo­­­­—evolved from a genus of apes about 2.5 million years ago.  Our species, homo sapiens, evolved from these early humans, between 300,000 and 200,000 years ago. Up until a time between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago (12,000 years ago is the date most frequently cited) humans lived in small hunting and gathering groups.  It was during this time forward, that various of these hunter/gatherer groups settled in larger units—villages, towns, cities, and empires–planting and harvesting food crops, domesticating animals, and dividing labor as a more efficient way of living. Modern civilization.

If one were to view this geologic and evolutionary history through the lens of a standard 12-month calendar, life first appeared on January 1^st; the dinosaurs went extinct on December 25^th; humans first appeared at 11:00 pm on December 31^st; and modern civilization began at two minutes before midnight on December 31^st.[1]

During these two minutes homo sapiens crafted written language, digital technology, and methods to communicate information anywhere in the world in seconds. We split atoms, and harnessed their power. We sent people to the moon. Our presence in space grows more far-reaching and sophisticated each year. With our space-based telescopes, we have observed the light from a few hundred thousand years after our universe’s formation.[2]  We domesticated animals, and we grew agriculture on a massive scale. We invented treatments and cures for a goodly number of ills that killed many of us less than a hundred years ago. We probed the depths of the oceans. We learned how to change the structure of DNA and genes, ours included. We developed machine intelligence that will in all likelihood, itself, become sentient in not too many years. We explored the particles and forces that comprise time, space, gravity, and the laws that created us and still enable our very existence.

 All of that in those two minutes.

However, in those same two minutes we also created monotheistic religions; we wrote sacred texts; and, for good and evil, we empowered priests, pontiffs, prelates, and prophets to institutionalize our sectarian myths. We governed ourselves with warlords, kings, queens, dictators, and presidents, counting among those both the wisest and most evil and ignorant leaders. We warred against each other constantly, and killed billions of us. We explored, and we decimated indigenous populations in the process. We hold on to systemic racism, sexual and gender-based phobia, misogyny, and xenophobia. We discriminate against and punish each other for our differences.  And, we have fouled our nests, our waters and our air with all manner of filth, waste, disease, pollution and, ultimately, the heat from our industries and lifestyles equivalent to 400,000 Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs detonating every day–four every second.[3] Since the start of the industrial revolution we have pumped over 2000 billion metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere—presently, about 40 billion metric tons every year; over 5000 million metric tons by the U.S. alone.

We are the first species with the power to render our kind and most other living things extinct; and we are exercising this power to do just that. Homo sapiens has become homo extinctor (man the destroyer, the annihilator).  

 All in those same two minutes.

We became so smart, so fast, that we outsmarted ourselves. Modern humans have existed but for a nanosecond of geologic time. But, look at the appalling, toxic mess that we have created in our two minutes on earth.

Indeed, if we do not change course, if we do not engage our prefrontal cortex to rein-in our limbic brain, we will not be around for the next two minutes in a new January 1^st.  If we are to preserve the right of this and future generations to exist in a clean and healthful environment, then we must act.

And, make no mistake, we don’t have a million years to get our act together—that option is not on the table. We will not have another 40,000 years much less even 12,000 years–another two minutes– to learn to respect and nurture what our planet has given us, and to try to slow the progress of the disastrous climatologic and environmental Rubicon we are destined to cross within the next six years.  As it is, it will take many thousands of years, if not more, for our planet to recoup and rebalance from the excesses and mismanagement already committed in our two minutes of stewardship.

We are at the edge of the abyss. If we don’t change, homo extinctor will have destroyed most living things, and, in the end, will have annihilated our own species.

Our two minutes on earth will be over.  And, we will have squandered it.

©

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[1] See, Humankind, Ruter Bregman, Little Brown and Company, 2019, at p.51.

[2] https://science.nasa.gov/mission/webb/big-bang-q-and-a/

[3] Bill McKibben, Falter, Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?, Henry Holt and Company, 2019.

   at p. 22.