Bathroom Humor

    I passed a few days watching my granddaughter Renley last week, who will turn seven in August. The thing I remember most fondly was hearing her laughing while I made silly voices with her stuffed animals as we read books at night. She even was able to read my favorite book from childhood called  "Theodore Turtle" which, although tattered and torn, has been passed down to her. I can still recall my own mother reading it to me and being amused by how absentminded the turtle was. That is the privilege of reliving ones childhood as a grandparent, when generally one has less stress and more patience than the first time around-not working full time and doing all the other things parents have to do. 
    While in the east I saw this changing table in the bath house at French Creek State Park and had to laugh...Anyone who has ever had children understands the exasperation one sometimes feels at 3:30 in the morning when the baby won't stop crying...Patience is one of the primary qualities one learns from children...    

Death

       Threw my brother Pete's ashes into the ocean at Kennebunkport  Beach, Maine, off the same rocks from which my father and mothers ashes were dispersed after their deaths in 1993 and 2012 respectively. I also spread some of them over a ball field in Ormrod, PA, where he both played baseball and was an umpire. The home field in Schnecksville, PA where he played as a catcher under the coaching of our father no longer exists. It was plowed under for renovations to the elementary school which we both attended. My parents moved to Sanford, Maine in 1977, where my maternal grandmother lived and which was the New England of their birth-she from Massachusetts and he from Rhode Island. Pete and his wife Linda and son Tim lived in Medford, Massachusetts for many years, and as families we all vacationed in Maine for many summers. Kennybunkport Beach was my mothers favorite, probably because it was less crowded and she could swim undisturbed by tourists. 
         Peter was a lifelong smoker so eventually succumbed to COPD, but he was able to see his beloved Phillies play in the 2022 World Series before he died, and he had a wonderful, joyous visit with his son and wife two days before passing in hospice. His somewhat autistic savant brain could recall baseball facts with remarkable detail, so that for instance, if you asked him who played shortstop in the 1969 world series he could tell you who and for what team and may even have remembered the scores and other trivia. I was not close to Pete in his later years, although when we did see one another we could pick up as though no time had passed. The unpredictable winter weather delayed the throwing of his ashes until May, and the mud like cloud in the picture is the slow return of a man's physical essence to the sea from whence we all have come. 

Spring/Aging

    
                  

   Beth and I walked at Chapman Dam state park on the 14th, a beautiful area about 10 miles from here, where the season is beginning to express itself. The spring peepers have deposited their eggs in a few of the more reliable bog puddles, and Spring Beauty flowers are very common in the open woodland. The west branch of the Tionesta Creek forms a large pond where it has been dammed to form the named park, and there is a suspension bridge upstream of the dam.

       The remaining picture is of a red oak tree which we have been nurturing since we found it sprouting from an acorn in our flower garden. This tree has refused to die in its short lifespan, having had its young leaves stripped by deer and caterpillars twice, so we finally decided to plant it permanently in the middle of the yard where hopefully it outlives us.    

          A few days ago I overheard two women talking in a store, when one of them said, " I would like to be 36 again...Those were my best years..I felt good...etc"  That had me reflecting about my own past, and I honestly think that some of my most productive years were between the years of 37 and 40, following a divorce, when I spent thousands of hours walking and writing in solitude. I had the free time and discipline to pursue serious, intense questions about life and the nature of reality, which led me to inner revelations which I still rely upon to the present day. I had been fortunate to have parents who loved me unconditionally, and they gave me  consistent moral guidance along with the freedom to be self reliant.                 My present peace of mind I attribute to those strong foundations, as well as good genes, daily exercise, never smoking and rarely drinking alcohol. Mentally, both Beth and I have noticed a loss of short term memory, which we jokingly call the 'ten second rule'-if more than ten seconds has passed, a subject often slips our mind. Such lapses are humorous rather than disturbing, and laughter seems to be a prerequisite for aging gracefully. No doubt there are people our age whose physical and mental problems are far worse than ours, so a certain humility and gratitude are also necessary. 

   That woman in the store did not wish to be very young, rather she appreciated the hard earned lessons that a few decades of living had offered her, but she also remembered the physical prowess of her thirties that twenty additional years had taken away. Growing old happens slowly enough that physical  changes are subtle at first, and a fading memory makes it difficult to recall exactly what one has lost until one sees a photograph from twenty years earlier; then the wrinkles and gray hairs of the present become obvious. Inwardly, something from ones childhood never changes, and youthful silliness and spontaneous joy emerge if one allows them-at least within those of us fortunate enough to have had good memories to hold onto. How much of human happiness is genetic and how much is nurture I cannot say, but I feel blessed to have had an enduring portion of both to sustain me as the years have passed...As for the 'ultimate' meaning of life, my intuitive impulses since I was a young man have always leaned towards learning of love...what it is, how to give and receive it to ourselves, to other people, to other life forms and to all things under Creation. I have forgiveness for people who have made mistakes along the way so long as they have accepted them as opportunities for growth and redemption towards that ideal of compassion and love that the word 'God' represents. However, when I witness people my age who still harbor prejudices and hate and anger towards other people or life forms, I consider them to have wasted decades of life. If you have been fortunate enough to reach 50 plus years of age without realizing the unity of all of Creation, you have truly squandered all that you have been given.

                

TwoMonthsTraveling

  I just returned from six weeks meandering around the south and west, then another three weeks with Beth in Texas and Georgia.  Her business  prevents her from accompanying me full time at the present, so I take the van and drive mostly back roads on impulse, sleeping and hiking and golfing where the road takes me. I escape the cold and snow of the north and discover new landscapes, sleeping in National forests and Walmart parking lots and wherever the evening finds me.                                                  To that end, as much as I do not agree with the conservative politicians in Texas, the state is very friendly to spontaneous people like myself, for they allow overnight parking in their roadside rests- which are numerous-and the small towns in the western part of the state have free parking for RV's -including electricity and water if one wants it. People in the south generally are more friendly than northerners , with store clerks saying 'thank you' and other civilities, although the abundance of Baptist churches gives the area a religious overtone that is a little uncomfortable. That is, beneath the pleasantries there is a residue of prejudice that is hard to define, as if some of the whites cannot quite admit that the civil war-which one town in South Carolina calls the "Confederate war"-was fought and lost because of slavery. The focus to them is on their pride for the bravery of the individual soldiers and generals rather than the reasons for the fighting. It is as though it would be acceptable for Germany to display the Nazi flag simply because the German soldiers fought well; the larger moral questions are ignored.  But politics aside the south and west are a wonderful winter escape, and I drift to the rural areas and small towns. Florida is an exception, for the overdeveloped congestion in that state is to be avoided unless one enjoys such things.                                                               The pictures show a Trump store for fanatics in Virginia, an exclusive Victorian era hotel on Jekyll Island, Georgia, a solar array in Texas, a sunset over the Mississippi river at the town of Natchez, and some of the fantastic landscape in east central New Mexico. ( click on the pics to enlarge...)

Buckaloons

       There is a national forest recreation area near town called Buckaloons that is used mostly by local people for walking their dogs or loading and unloading watercraft. About a level mile in circumference it used to be a primary camping place for Seneca Indians until white people arrived when-predictably- they were decimated by war and disease. Today there are 60 campsites used by people looking to get away for a day or two, although busy roads are within one half mile so this is not a pristine wilderness. Still, it remains a refuge for wildlife-fox and squirrel and deer and nuthatch and whatever else exists in the broader Allegheny forest-for despite the roads there is access to the thousands of acres beyond. The Brokenstraw and Irvine creeks flow into the Allegheny river within the area, and offer habitat for fish and water birds; I have caught bass and chubs in the rivers and no doubt that is why the Indians favored this spot. To me, this is one of those areas great for day use or for travelers to stay over night if passing through the forest. There are more remote places to camp and hike but the convenience of this location ensures its popularity.    ...click on pictures to enlarge them

 

Almanac

   I always check out the yearly almanac from the library, although I notice myself questioning the sources and wondering about the accuracy of the data more than in the past. That is the result of the division within our society and the deliberate distortions of reality among some people. I  consider myself a skeptical optimist, which means that I have tried to keep an open mind about things while maintaining a preference for the methods of science and logical reasoning. The cynicism and distrust I witness of our institutions is unnatural and distasteful to me; I accept that the data may be off by a few decimal points but that is the best human beings can do. I do not accept the cynical attitude that the majority of people have bad intentions.                                                                                                                                A couple of facts in this years almanac regarding money is that the wealthiest 30 U.S. individuals possessed over 2 trillion dollars in wealth as of April 2022 according to Forbes magazine. That is approximately what the U.S. spends on Social Security and Defense combined in one year.  The top 20% of people own 52.7 percent of wealth, the bottom 20% own 2.9 percent. That unequal distribution has been ongoing since 1970, with  the middle 60% also losing wealth consistently over the decades.                                    In the obituaries of 2022 is Peter Robbins, the voice of Charlie Brown in the 1965 Christmas special, and Jay Last, a physicist who helped create the semiconductors which laid the foundation of silicon valley.  Both are unknown to most people yet their influence continues long after their deaths. Many of the obituaries in the almanac describe accomplished people who are totally unknown except to their own generation and those who personally knew them. That exposes the profound temporariness of existence; people of every generation are forgotten by the next one, and only the most influential-the Einsteins or Lennons or Hitlers -survive the forgetting of time until what remains are the fragments that historians decide to preserve. Also in the almanac are people from other cultures whom western societies have totally neglected; history is written by the powerful. Nowhere in the obituaries are recorded the daily exchanges of the individuals who interacted with them; I do not suppose Buddhas family thought too highly of him when he abandoned them to seek his enlightenment.                                                             So an almanac is a potpourri of information that offers perspective, incomplete though it may be. It is an attempt to be objective in a world that desperately needs one.

Fusion Power

     Scientists announced today that they had achieved controlled nuclear fusion ( Google it...) for the first time on December 5th, a difficult feat that they have been working on for decades. The technology has tremendous promise as a source of mostly clean, 'limitless' energy, but there remain many engineering obstacles until we achieve economical power station reality.  I do not want to minimize or criticize the potential importance of this breakthrough, but I compare it to the Wright Brothers first flight when what will be needed are rocket engines. As new people and money and computing power are flushed onto the problem, maybe breakthroughs will occur faster than the progress in flight, so let's hope humanity has the time.