Nov 11, 1012

The touch of evil>>>>>

I always figured I’d feel badly about it if I killed someone.

I’m sorry. I mean, wow, what a statement to spew out, to be tossed amid unsuspecting folks. But bear with me. I have my reasons for bringing this up.

I suppose this is a rather odd thing to introduce here, the first sentence on a blank computer screen. Who would write such a thing? Who would even think it? Reasonable people don’t go around killing other people. It’s rather an uncommon action. So why would I even contemplate my own reaction to this? It’s not like I figured on ever learning how it would feel.

But my mind does wander into varied places, and I have actually found myself wondering about such a thing. The Vietnam War offered up an opportunity. College kept me out of the draft for years, but I faced one year in the lottery after graduation. And in those days it was not unusual for the candidates for canon fodder status to consider their options.

For instance, the wife at the time had told me in no uncertain terms that I would not be reporting for duty if invited. Nope, we’d be moving to Canada. But in spite of her dictates, I did consider the possibility of attending, doing my duty, testing my immortality in war. So I mulled about in my head the various consequences of such a decision.

Dying came to mind, as did living on with various body parts missing as a side effect of combat. And I contemplated the taking of life. War excuses many of the behaviors we avoid most days at home. In war, killing folks is not only accepted, it is mandated. So I suppose that contingency would make it all just fine. Strike down a few of them other folks, and then come home and take up my life again as if nothing had happened. Don’t give it a thought.

But I gave it a thought. Several, in fact. Missed out on any real experience, for my lottery number didn’t come up, but I finally concluded that I’d probably feel bad about killing someone if I was compelled to do it in war. And I didn’t feel wrong for that.

I’ve been around for several of the more significant episodes of civil unrest in the last 50 years. I’ve seen civilization suspended following Dr. King’s murder and when the disputed verdicts came down following Rodney King’s arrest in Los Angeles. I’ve seen the videos of the enraged mobs in the streets, the beatings and the attempted murders. I watched neighborhoods looted and witnessed blocks of businesses burned to the ground.

And I sat in my little business here, feeling vulnerable and threatened by possibilities with those images in my head. And I wondered, when faced with such a mob, if I would defend my life’s work, and also my family and my employees who are both friends and family to me. Or would I simply run away and hope to survive, and take the loss of everything as just the price of participation in history.

I brought the rifle to work on the day the OJ Simpson verdict was read, for I wondered what that night would hold for civilization. Would the mobs be in the streets of my town this time, and would the buildings soon be burning around me? Didn’t end up needing it, but that old question was again in the front of my mind. Would I feel bad if I had to kill to defend that which was important to me, or would I instead choose to run away in terror, or die rather than kill?

We received the news via the internet. The young woman arrived at work at the veterinary hospital in Florida early in the morning, to care for the animals and get things ready for the day. The practice owner arrived an hour later and was greeted by carnage and gore. The walls were splashed with blood, the floors flooded by it. The woman had been viciously beaten to death with a fire extinguisher, after the savage had raped and tortured her. He was a twice convicted sexual predator, but of course he’d been let out of jail early both times, for someone didn’t want to keep a man like this away from society. That wouldn’t be fair.

The owner of that practice has a concealed carry permit now, and she is armed always. Her practice is located in a marginal area where crime is common, a neighborhood into which criminals are often released from prison to prey upon the decent folks, kinda like my place.

We hear of the doctor nearly beaten to death in his own hospital in Southern California because he annoyed a client, and of the strong-arm daytime robberies of veterinary hospitals for the few drugs found on the premises. And yeah, I know of all the armed robberies and those several murders that have been committed in the businesses just around the corner from my clinic. So yeah, that haven we call our clinic isn’t all that safe a place after all.

We have contingency plans in place, and ready access to weapons in the clinic, and I acknowledge that it is not a stretch at all to consider that I might someday be faced by that old question again. And no… I don’t want to be put into that untenable position.

I resisted the assignment to jury duty last month, for I did not wish to be inconvenienced by closing my clinic for 5 weeks. But I did sit in the jury box for a short while to be questioned by the judge and the DA before a jury was selected without me. And I spoke briefly with the murderer who was serving as his own attorney. It’s not fair perhaps, to judge a man prematurely, particularly when charged by the judge with the notion that you must only consider his guilt or innocence based upon evidence presented later at his trial, but this man was a sociopath.

Twice I watched him walk across the hall to enter the courtroom while a gaggle of potential jurors wasted time in the hall. He walked tall, quickly, confident…or was it arrogant? But when he got up from his chair to question me, the potential juror, he was bent over, limping, smiling, shucking and jiving. A simple, humble man, trying to pull wool over eyes. But I also watched him as the attorney from the public defender’s office tried to offer advice, and he transformed into the monster, flashing anger and hatred and that look in his eyes as he ripped into the man who tried to help him.

He dripped with anger, narcissism, thinly veiled unspoken threat, and no suggestion of a conscience. Simply watching him for those few hours was instructive, for I am a trusting person, and a tad naïve. And he had killed trusting, naïve people.

So I missed experiencing the murderer’s day in court. The internet yielded the details, of how he gloated and abused his moment in the limelight of his own trial, and enjoyed being the center of the universe, even though that universe extended only to the limits of the room. He taunted his accusers, insulted his jury, and hurled pain and hatred at the families of the two he had murdered, screaming at them, torturing them, enraging them for his own amusement. He was glad to be alive, and utterly dismissive of those who were dead by his hand. No remorse. No second thoughts. No cares for anyone but himself. Capable of harm to anyone he chose.

He is the sociopath I had spotted in the first moments. He is a monster, but in his mind, he has done no wrong at all.

There is not even the suggestion that he feels badly about killing someone.

He is the kind of un-human that every person in that courtroom, having witnessed his evil and felt the touch of fear in their heart when looking into his eyes, likely would consider for a moment seizing the opportunity to kill him on the spot. But yeah, they would all feel badly, after.

That jury now is deciding his fate, choosing between the slim chance that California would eventually abruptly end his wretched life, or simply gifting him with a life sentence without parole, which he referred to as his “retirement”.

And I am left to contemplate, with the likelihood perhaps increasing every year that someone with this murderer’s eyes will one morning barge into my clinic armed and angry and conscienceless, that I’ll have to face that choice that I’ve dodged for all this time.

Nov 4, 12

Who remembers the way back time before the arrival of the ubiquitous ATM machine, when if you wished cash money to go out for pizza on Friday night, you cashed a check to get it? As long as you had money in the bank to cover the check, this was a viable system. You flashed your ID, or the cashier recognized you as a frequent customer of the store, or because she went to high school with your dad, and that was usually enough. This system depended upon a degree of trust, which generally worked out back then. You could trust some people back then.

Other people violated that trust. On the board behind the cashier, fastened by thumbtacks and on display for all to see, resided a few of the checks that had bounced because they were presented by folks who knew there was no money in their account to cover said checks, and yet they cashed them anyway. You’d see names of people you knew, and from this you also knew that you would never again trust them, for anything.

This leads to the story I’ve told before, of the little girl living with her mother. It was that end of the month moment, when the checking account was close to nil, but the little girl still wanted pizza for Friday night dinner. The mother had nixed the idea, but the child persisted. Mother stated that there was no money, for she knew the reality. The child, not understanding, wondered why. 

“Why can’t you just cash a check?”

A reasonable request in her child’s reality, for that trick had always worked before. The mom was frustrated, for there was nothing for her to do. She had already used up whatever trust remained with her family and friends, and they no longer would loan her a few bucks until payday. And she couldn’t even count on that ole float, where the check she cashed on Friday wouldn’t hit her bank until Monday, and she could deposit her paycheck in time to beat the bounce. For that Monday was further in the distance.

So the child fumed, and the mom raged at the un-fairness of it all, and life went on for everyone else.

I faced down four hungry cats this morning. Part of this was my fault, for it was my duty to bring home the food from the clinic. I knew the supply was perilously low. I knew where the food was stored in the clinic. I knew it was my responsibility to see to it that the cats never go hungry, for they don’t like that. I forgot and left the cat food at the clinic yesterday. And I feel real bad about it, but I ran out of food last night. There was none left for this morning.

And to make things worse, the clocks changed at 2 AM, and so I selfishly slept in for that one extra hour while the cats slowly closed the circle around our bed, silently tapping their toes on the carpet. Watching me as I slept. Watching me.

I stirred in my sleep, and suddenly three cats appeared on the bed, watching me, prodding me, beseeching me. Breakfast was already one hour late, and someone was going to pay. 

COME ON!!! WAKE UP!!!

GET YOUR FAT ASS OUT OF BED AND FEED THE CATS!!!

There was to be no more sleeping for this fellow. So up I got and I walked down the hall. Assuming that food was FINALLY forthcoming, four tails accompanied by four swinging prodigious bellies led me toward the kitchen. They were in a hurry. They kept looking back. HURRY UP!!!

Cats differ from dogs. Dogs ask for food. Dogs beg for food. It’s as if food magically appears when the person produces it. Cats don’t ask. They demand. Ya see, dogs have masters, and cats have staff. They say jump, and we persons are supposed to ask, “How high?” Cats demand food and they expect obedience. Cats have entitlement.

Cats expect to be fed. That’s kinda my fault too, for I once began to feed them, and then from that point on, the cats decided not to chase and catch to eat mice and such. Food showed up in the bowls every morning and night, and that was how it was gonna be. Worked out fine for the cats. The heck with the mice. Entitlement.

So, I lied to the cats. Lying to cats is OK, for lying is part of their culture. I lied and said I needed to wash their food bowls, so while the bowls soaked, I drove down to the clinic and came back with cat food. So I got to live. I didn’t end up like the crazy cat lady who runs out of cat food, and all the people find later are picked over cat lady bones.

There are lessons here. You can’t have pizza every Friday night if you can’t afford pizza every Friday night. You should watch how much money you have in the bank, and know when you can refill the bank, and not spend more money than you can expect to find in the bank. And you shouldn’t feed so many cats that you face all those angry faces when you run out of cat food.

Which brings us to this election on Tuesday.

Don’t know if you’ve noticed, but California can’t afford pizza this Friday night. The kids still want pizza, but California cannot afford it. Hasn’t been able to afford pizza for some time. And California is trying to feed way too many cats. And the cats aren’t finding a full bowl whenever they want. The kids have come to enjoy pizza every Friday night, and the cats are, as always, entitled. And now they are all pissed off.

When the kids and cats are both annoyed, you will hear from them. They will, in fact, nag you.

Somebody runs this state. Poorly, but somebody runs it. Nobody wants to admit to screwing the whole deal, but somebody did it. They screwed it up. They ran out of money, stupidly and irresponsibly. And now they want to be re-elected so, they say, they can fix it. That makes sense.

The teachers’ union, the public employee unions, and the various folks  who don’t hunt mice anymore because we feed them better when they don’t, are all getting shortchanged since the government ran out of money. They are angry. They are nagging. Those folks who don’t work for the government, but are responsible for paying for the government, are just a bit miffed too. Because we know what comes next.

What comes next is the folks who don’t work for the government, but are responsible for paying for the government, are gonna be told to pay much more. For certainly the children are not going to ask for less pizza, and the cats are still going to feel entitled. And we sure as heck aren’t gonna see the people actually responsible for this mess volunteering to stand down and let others give an honest and intelligent effort, rather than the stupid and crooked performance we generally get.

We can vote some people out of office. And should. We can vote against the propositions that are nothing more than higher taxes on the folks who didn’t create this mess. We can vote to limit the power of the unions that orchestrated most of this mess. We can disappoint the people who have run the government for their own benefit, and our loss, who stupidly let this mess happen. And on a national scale, we can depose a President who guarantees our children will be saddled with a similar disaster for generations to come. 

Or we can stand by impotently and watch a way of life die because of greed and incompetency. Our choice. We get the government we deserve.

Kehoe, revisited

This was written years ago, but I like to go back and read it from time to time....

Dr Bob

I keep a magic rock in the top drawer of my office desk. Please don't tell anybody, cause you know how they get when they hear you have a magic rock. Some don't believe in such things, so they stare at me with that funny look on their faces. And if they know about magic rocks I have to watch them, or they might try to steal mine. 

Still, it's worth the risk, for when the day begins to overwhelm me, I can close my eyes, roll the cool smooth stone between my fingers, and immediately I'm transported back to Pt. Reyes National Seashore, to Kehoe beach, where I found it….

I'm strolling the high tide line heading south, and if I choose, I can walk for hours. I might walk to infinity, for I cannot see either end of the beach from here. A fog bank hangs a few miles off the coast, but the sky above is clear, blue, and sunny.

Two ravens swoop and soar on the wind above the sand dunes to my left. On my right, a line of ratty looking pelicans commute to the north, gliding in formation with their wing tips just skimming the waves. They drop into a wave trough, and then reappear above the next crest with just a few wing beats.

Tide's out, so the waves break well down the beach, spreading out into a thin smooth sheet that peters out before reaching my bare feet. This creates a mirror reflecting a foraging gull standing knee deep in the receding water.

With a slight whistling sound, the wind blows into my right ear and out the left. The air smells like no one has used it before.

Nobody is on this beach but me, nobody to interrupt the thoughts crashing around in my mind. I burrow deep into the vault that is my brain, finding memories stacked one upon the other on shelves extending well back into the darkness. It looks like this place hasn't been cleaned for a while.

Brushing old cobwebs out of the way, I stumble across boxes holding the thoughts of a lifetime. Successes and failures, victories and losses, weddings and divorces, it goes on and on. And it is packed nearly to the ceiling. No wonder I cannot think straight.

So I unscrew the top of my head and dump out all this crud into a little pile on the sand.

As I'm picking through it, tossing out the bad and trying to rearrange the good, a half buried fragment of abalone shell off to the side catches my eye. Turning the shard over, the sand eroded layers inside flash into brilliance in the sunlight, and I marvel at the frozen rainbow that God hides inside each of these shells. I wonder if an abalone, without any eyes, can truly appreciate the beauty of its own home. I guess none of us do, if we don't look.

 

Distracted, I get up and wander further down the beach. I watch the shorebirds scurrying about. They poke their beaks into each hole in the sand looking for all the world like street people searching for cans in the trash. Sandpipers hurry off in a group--a Blue Light Special at the sand flea table was just announced.

I glance out into the surf just in time to spot a harbor seal poking his head out of the foam. Curious fellow, he is watching me. I stop walking to stare back.

My new friend disappears into the next wave, so I go back to my browsing. That's when I find the rock. It's oval, about an inch or two long, and worn smooth by years in the sand. My rock is probably a bit of low-grade jade, with veins of white and brown. It has no real value, except for the magic. I walk along rolling it between my fingers.

Wait a moment…what’s that noise? The beach vanishes and I'm back in the office. I put the rock back in the drawer, next to the one from Death Valley. Time to go back to work…this time, with a smile.

Somehow, I forgot the little pile of brain crud I left behind on the beach for the next tide to wash away.

Guess I didn't need it, after all.

Stop Obama

I’ve never felt that it is my job as a commentator on the human condition to make any suggestions on how folks should vote. I like this thing we call the American republic. Our version of democracy has worked out pretty well for a couple of hundred years, and that means we all have a voice. So I’ve let people make their own choices, even when I think they are out of their minds.

Americans changed the world when we invented this form of government. And flawed as we are, we have beaten down true evil in the guise of dictators, kings, nazis, communists, militarists, and radical islamists. We’ve been the good guys for a long time, for we stand up against folks who by any definition are the bad guys. 

This system is not perfect. It is prone to abuse because it offers freedom, which means some find the freedom to abuse that very freedom. It is prone to complacency due to its success. And it allows laziness, entitlement, and corruption simply because we allow most anything in the name of freedom. Freedom has always been its own worst enemy, for it lets those who detest freedom the right to attempt to conquer it.

But this is our system, and we should love it and protect it, for this is about the freedom of the individual in a collective. No other system of government in history gives a rat’s ass for the freedom of the individual. The alternatives offer nothing but loss of individual freedom and eventual oppression in the guise of calming the collective.

When somebody comes along promising to improve the collective at the expense of the individual, well you can forget any semblance of individual freedom… but welcome to the anthill. And low and behold, the somebody who promised a happy anthill has always become the emperor, dictator, king, fuhrer, imam. That’s how it has always worked out in the history of the world, and nothing has changed.

And that is why we need to put a halt to that Obama guy, and to those who put him in charge.

When I was writing for the paper, and I took some shots at Obama and his corruption, many commented that I was a tea party drone, and thus not worthy of oxygen, much less an audience.

Well, just for the record…I’ve been a registered democrat since I turned 21 in 1970. Every single year since then. I thought that Nixon was evil incarnate, and I’ve been made uncomfortable by most everything the republicans have done for those forty some years. I don’t like the abuse of Americans by big business, and I think that that version of religion that has adopted the republican party is harmful, if not evil.

So there…

For the record, I have voted against the democrats pretty much consistently since my last egregious mistake when I voted for Jimmy Carter. I have not voted FOR someone since that mistake, but instead have voted against, for my fears have overtaken my hopes ever since. And I haven’t voted for a democrat since that episode.

I grew up in the shadow of Mayor Daley in Chicago. This system was evil incarnate, and it was allowed to function within the freedom we call our way of life. The good mayor was elected time after time, for that is our system. And once elected he ruled without compromise. 

The people who worked within the unions were decent folks. They enjoyed a certain exemption from responsibility, but they were simple people who didn’t understand the bigger picture. Those who ran the unions were criminals by any definition, and they prospered by selling the union vote to Mayor Daley. And all those dead people who voted for Mayor Daley were just following the directions given them from above. Those opposed to Mayor Daley failed to prosper, and sometimes simply died. Funny how that worked out. And when they got John Kennedy elected to the presidency, they had total control. And those who think that organized crime got Kennedy killed, well they weren’t far wrong. Chicago politics was the furhrer in American, but nobody seemed to care. 

Mayor Daley finally died, which put an end to his personal corruption, but the people who benefited from that corruption persevered. They kept the corruption going. And they got Obama elected. Those who claim the man never had a job overlook that period when he paid his dues to the organization by “organizing” poor Black folks to vote for the corruption. Obama was a cog in the machine that perpetuated the corruption.

Obama has a nice smile, and he says all the right things and he comes across as a nice guy who is out to help folks. And he is DAMNED good at this. He is a natural, the perfect candidate, a dream to the folks who support him. That is why the corruption made this opportunity for him. He came out of nowhere, because this benefited the corruption. None of this is a surprise. But he is there to promote the corruption, and that is why we need to stop him.

The republican opposition are idiots. They favor corruption in large industry and banking, and they need to be stopped. They favor social nonsense, and would ban abortion and gay marriage. They are fools and deserve no consideration. 

So why will I vote against Obama, and urge you with considerable passion to stop this man?

It’s pretty simple. If the republicans win, we might lose gay marriage and abortion. And the corruption that is large business will run amuck for a while. But in time we can fix this. Lose abortion and gay marriage, and many will suffer, but this can be corrected in time.

Let Obama and his supporters get their way, and we may never get our country back. The corruption that is organized crime and Chicago politics may rule over us. The corruption and organized criminal enterprise that passes for world government may finally turn us into the anthill instead of the voice of freedom that has always stood in the way of this. And yeah, he might really be the key that opens the door to world domination by islam. Think those folks will go for women’s rights or gay marriage?

Answer only one question…

If we lose abortion or gay rights, might we ever get this back. Well yeah. just go out there and get it.

If we lose the second amendment, and the government disarms America…will we ever get this back?

Well, heck no. Go out and get it with…what?

That is Obama and the people who put him there. It’s time we stop him before there is no time. To me, it’s as simple as that. Vote the lessor of evil, or never vote again.

8/26/12

I used to get many of my best ideas while listening to the Sunday morning talk guy on the popular local radio station. He was what you might call a raving liberal, not simply because of his immoderate communistic ideas, but because he liked to deliver said ideas as ill-tempered rants. Ostensibly a few hours dedicated to talking religion, the show generally slid instead into the same issues and arguments I like to engage. But rather than promoting his own agenda and arguing against other ideas, this guy preferred instead the vicious attack aimed at insulting those evil folks who harbored the opposite view. He was a nasty fellow. And of course his argument was always delivered from his perception of the moral higher ground, as this was a religious talk show. 

A former priest whose apparent only claim to fame was his abandonment of his former church, he left the radio station abruptly when he had to go to jail. Something about that huge stash of kiddie porn on his computer. I guess his apple hadn’t fallen all that far from the tree. And with him went a major inspiration for my moral outrage.

Now on Sundays I listen some to the NPR talkers on the radio as they preach to the choir. They are at least polite while they talk down to those of us who are too slow to figure out their obvious truths. I’ll listen to arguments presented politely, particularly when they are clearly researched and delivered, which you certainly can get from the NPR folks. I don’t have to agree with them and I actually enjoy listening to how they’d solve the world’s problems, since we all are inevitably headed down that persistently failed path and I’d like to see where I’ll soon be unwillingly herded.

This morning I encountered an interesting lecture on the radio. A clearly intelligent and educated young woman was pointing out the obvious need for a food source for all those folks living in great cities, since they don’t produce any on their own, and yet they still need to eat. Somebody somewhere else must create food, preserve it, transport it, and often prepare it, or those city folks are quickly gonna come up short. And amazingly enough, this has been going on ever since personkind (see how nice I can be to these people?) first set up cities and farms many thousand years ago.

According to this woman, most folks haven’t noticed that all the great civilizations, each born from large cities, sent out their armies to capture empire, onna count of the food they could steal from those other folks to feed their own. Today’s talker mentioned Rome, and its empire. A logical choice since they were successful for some long while. She forgot to mention the Nazis and their motivation to invade east into Poland and Russia during a time early in WWII when they should instead have been invested to the west. Nobody seems to remember that the main motivation here was the grain producing land over there, and the peasants who could be enslaved to farm it for the benefit of the winner of this war, and its people living in large cities. Too bad the Nazis lost, for they would have been set for life.

This dilemma of farms over there and cities growing larger and hungrier over here continues. The point of this kind lady’s talk concerned her concept of the corruption of the free market by large corporations that are messing with her food supply and forcing everyone in big cities to eat fast food and other evil concoctions. She of course, favors living in a city, and she finds herself at the mercy of said free market. Apparently she lacks the will it takes to move out of a city, or fend for herself, or simply avoid MacDonalds. And she suggests that many have the same handicap. So she assumes that someone else must take the reins and correct this travesty.

Not surprisingly, she figured a solution, which would be government regulation and control to keep the crooked corporations from harming the helpless people.  Utopia can be created with the proper orchestration.  According to her, government could control all this, the production and distribution, and all that which sounds vaguely of communism, and make it work out to the benefit of her friends who live in those cities. Heard this one before of course. On NPR, along with other sources. So did those folks who let the Nazis rule. Didn’t work out all that well for them.

Not all government is a bad as the Nazis of course. Most are simply bloated, inefficient, ineffective dumps that eventually just make things worse for the governed. Our speaker was hoping for this thing she calls “Good Government”. You know… a fairy tale government that actually works to the benefit of the people, rather than simply a self-perpetuating black hole that sucks the life out of a society. With the election coming up we will be hearing lots of lies from people who wish to rule us by promising “Good Government” yet again, which will fix all our problems. 

Funny how one side can watch its favored candidate make millions every year, yet they find fault with the other side’s guy because he makes millions every year. I saw one of their political ads the other night, attacking that other rich guy. That rich guy, or so the hatchet job states, paid only 14% of his twenty million income in taxes last year. Suppose this is accurate, which in a rare deviation from the usual hatchet job might actually be true, then this guy paid some 2.8 million dollars in taxes. That’s some considerable more than I did. You too, likely. This ad is aimed at folks who pay NOTHING in federal tax, to make the guy look bad.  He is taking advantage of the system cause he only pays 2.8 million. 

I love this kind of thinking. He should be forced to pay even more, so more folks could benefit from government largess rather than their own efforts, or lack thereof. Somebody is suggesting that the government needs a greater sacrifice from the successful so it can do its job, whatever that is. This is logic? Or is it emblematic of the greed manifested by every government, in the guise of helping us?

The coming election won’t be the last word on whether we turn everything over to yet another overreaching government. It is far from that. But the notion that we really should turn everything over to government eventually is the clear goal of one side, and only a significant goal to the other. There will be no winners among the us out here. It’s only a question of how quickly we choose to lose.

I’ll be eating from our garden, and chewing on the grass fed buffalo I killed, and I’ll dine at MacDonalds or not, based on my choice. My dollars and choices, along with many others can help change the corruption of the free market, for it will go where the demand, demands. Haven’t found a way yet to fix the damage done by “Good Government” except by limiting it, or eventually turning it out. As usual, shortly I’ll have to vote for the lessor of evils, but that is all the choice “Good Government” ever leaves you.

Reviving and Old Column

Change what you can…the rest you have to let be.

Once upon a time, a very long while ago, I strode away from my usual world. People talk of folks who were last seen walking away on a trail, and they just got swallowed up by the mountains. Well, that's kinda what it feels like. Jonah was gulped down by the whale. I disappeared into the mountains. All Jonah saw for a while was whale, and I all saw were mountains, for three weeks. For that short period of time, the outside world ceased to exist.

Two deer awoke and tiptoed away in the predawn darkness. They had been napping next to my car in the Camp Curry parking lot. No one else was around. I had checked and rechecked  my backpack the night before, so it was ready. I pulled it out of the trunk. The trick was to balance it on my knee, and then wriggle into the shoulder straps. Once I cinched down the waist band, I was ready to go. The old bamboo ski pole felt familiar to my hand. So did the weight on my back.

An old wood sign listing places along the trail, and the mileage to said places, leaned against a tree alongside the burbling river where the paved world ended and the trail began. Vernal Fall was first on the list, a mile or so up the trail. Then came the summits of Half Dome and Clouds Rest, Tuolumne Meadows, and then several others. At the bottom was Mt Whitney, a distant 217 miles.

The photograph of the sign is too blurred to read. The light was still too faint for my camera, but it was the first I took on the John Muir Trail, so it sits first in the slide carousel. Many photos followed. The last captures Dan and me at 13,700 feet, crouching out of the wind at the trail junction leading to the summit of Mt Whitney, munching on granola bars. We have our parkas on, but our legs are bare below our shorts. Remnants of the previous night's snowfall cling to the rocks. The snow is not melting. We are grinning like madmen.

The scribbling in my journal grew longer as each day in the mountains passed, a futile attempt to capture feelings inspired by such a journey. The little notebook records the anguish of facing all those miles in spite of those leg cramps that arrived on the first afternoon. It recalls the frustration when the bear took the food. And it tattles on a mind perhaps too prone to introspection when left with too little distraction.

My journal also talks of skies so blue they hurt the eye, and the glory of mountains stacked upon yet more mountains stretching as far as that eye could see. And it talks of friends made on the trail and others who walked in to join me and help celebrate the last days of this adventure. It tells of a time and place so detached from my usual day to day reality, that I paused to talk to a tree, and the tree talked back.

The trail took on its own routine, one different from the outside world. Sunrises came, and then sunsets, and always miles to go before I slept. Day, after day, after day. Unlike the world out there, instead of trying to shut down my brain to protect it from overwhelming oppression, I worked to keep it receptive to overwhelming beauty.

This journey, as all good things eventually do, came to its end. Dan dropped me off at my car in the Curry parking lot. It was covered with dust, but it started right away.

I felt I had been out of touch for a while, so I turned on the radio. Nothing had changed while I matriculated in the mountains. Nothing in the world anyway. Crime and corruption, anger and violence, insurrection and war continued unabated. Regardless of what I did, or didn't do, or how good it felt just doing it for those three weeks, I hadn't really affected anything out there. But inside…well that would be a different matter.

Stupid

I have in my small collection two 50 caliber cartridge cases that I found lying on the ground in the Mojave Desert. The headstamp on one has a W and A, and the number 43. I’ve always figured this identified the manufacturer and year made. And since I knew that General Patton trained his troops in this area before sending them to Africa and eventually Europe in 1943 and 44, I guess we can conclude that the rounds were fired around that time. So I found them more than 50 years after they were used in those exercises.

I was with a small group hiking the open desert when we came across a track on the ground left by an armored vehicle. An old track. You can tell when desert soil has been undisturbed for a long time. It gets this patina called desert varnish. Walk across it and you crack it. The varnish blending the old track with the rest of the surrounding soil was unbroken. 

Shortly, we found an old field telephone wire stretching across the land, and then a scatter of rifle cartridge cases on the ground, and these two larger ones. I had become the resident expert once I began identifying these things for the group, so they were brought to me when found. One lady on the periphery of the group had missed most of this, and when she caught up she asked what was happening. I smiled and held out my hand, holding a cartridge case, and I told her what it was.

The poor lady screeched, and ran away in abject terror. I tried to calm her, explaining that this cartridge had been fired 50 years earlier and thus represented no harm to her or anyone. I was wasting my breath, for this object had something to do with guns, and thus in her mind it represented a lethal threat to her. 

Any, even the most superficial knowledge of firearms would have negated this fear, but this woman was utterly uninformed in this subject. So for no rational reason, this harmless object terrified her.

Now, let’s step back for a moment and study why this last paragraph is totally erroneous.. .. 

This woman was not ignorant regarding firearms. She was in fact, thoroughly and effectively educated about firearms. Indoctrinated might be a better description. Since she was a babe in arms, she had been taught to fear and loath guns, by her parents and teachers, her political leaders, and her news and entertainment media. She knew all about firearms. They kill ya. They were to be feared. So she ran away from a harmless piece of 50 year old brass, simply because it was associated with firearms. Just shows to go ya that you don’t have to teach the truth in order for the teaching to be effective.

Now, the temptation here is to call this woman stupid. One 50 year old cartridge case does not represent a threat to anyone, and reacting as if it would climb out of history to harm this one woman does fail the likely test. I’ve a bunch of friends who would call this stupid. And I can assure you this woman has a bunch of friends who have implied that I am stupid because I harbor some notions they have been taught to disregard. 

I’m a rabid proponent of our Second Amendment rights, and it does toast me when most of the opposition arguments are tainted by misinformation. But that is how things are done in this world. Nothing new here, folks…keep moving. 

I’ve grown tired of being called stupid just so someone can disregard my arguments. But it’s gonna happen. I have enough faith in my own brain and my own arguments that I don’t fear losing these rights due to better arguments. But I do wonder how to counter all the lies and misrepresentations, and the indoctrination of so many. A lot of people want me to lose those rights. And a few of the others.  

With an election looming, the stupid word is flying around, sent from both extremes toward the other, and it is getting old. Both extremes are out to reduce our rights, so they should be recognized and opposed.

The first rule in debate is to address the issues, and not to denigrate the arguer. I’m tired of hearing that Bush was stupid, or Obama is stupid, or pick one. Stupid is what you pull out when you cannot counter an argument with a better one of your own. Why cannot we argue the issues, on their own merit, honestly, and leave the stupid word to those grade school bullies who have grown older, if not up? They still want to ruin our lives, and we don’t need to let them.