Going To The Dogs

Jinx, our eldest dog, is at my elbow, panting as she has for several months. She’s fourteen and her breathing is labored. She has trouble now getting up the few steps into the house and sleeps soundly in the morning as the younger dogs bound into the day. She has the run of the house, gets extra meals, and is generally cherished round the clock. She may fool us all and live for years, or, as we fear, may not respond as we try to rouse her one morning.

The next generations of dogs, son, Satch, daughter Rogue, and grandson, Banner, all border collies, seem in no hurry to change the routines established over time. They are happy to romp on their own, but when Jinx is in the mix, they still line-up by age, responding to the games Jinx initiates. Jinx may be a matriarch in decline, but she remains playful and eager to herd us, nudging us when we slow to a walk. Satch, a blue merle with the face of a panda, is generally sedentary and always hungry. He is transformed when Jinx begins to bounce in place, nipping at her tail, frequently trotting away in triumph with a spume of white fur at the corner of his mouth. Rogue, fox faced and busy, accomplishes two tasks at once, joining the pack’s pursuit of Jinx while carrying a frisbee, should an empty moment present itself. Banner, gawky adolescent, misses cues, invades personal canine space, bounds away barking, distracted by a goose flying overhead.

I met my wife and her dog simultaneously; she met my son at the same time. We knew from the start that our life together would include kids and dogs. Fortunately, her dog, a large Shepard mix with exceedingly discriminating taste in humans, came to love us, and we loved him with the giddy love that dog-deprived dog lovers feel when they meet a perfect dog. I held that dog in my arms as he died, and told my wife it would take some time before I could love a dog so completely again. The heart wants what the heart wants, however, and soon she came home with a rescue that needed to be loved and cared for.

I contributed my own questionable judgment when visiting friends with German Shepherd puppies bred from a line of schutzhund champions. One of the pups followed me, falling asleep on my feet as we talked about the litter. I was sunk, and, having misplaced confidence in my ability to read German, thought a schutzhund, meant “obedience dog”, exactly right for my wife’s work with therapy dogs and with dog obedience; it turns out that a schutzhund is actually a canine rocket, the sort of dog used by police canine units or in the military. Our rocket turned out to be a sweetheart with floppy bat ears. We named him Fledermaus, Maus for short, and loved him too.

Our first true therapy dog , later our first agility dog, a tri-colored Australian Shepherd, came to us from a breeder in Wisconsin, an adventure in cross country conversation that involved papers faxxed back and forth so that when the puppy arrived, my wife named him Fax. He was irresistibly affectionate, and I joined our children in slipping him treats, probably undoing all the training my wife had begun. He achieved some local fame when, sensing the opportunities available at a reception for a visiting poet, was discovered on a table top, his muzzle a tell-tale lemon bar yellow. He was soon joined by Blitz, a speedy border collie we thought a prospective agility champion. Instead, gentle Blitz turned out to be a champion therapy dog; the picture of him extended to his full length on a hospital bed, nuzzling a child fighting cancer, is still prominently placed on the clinic’s wall.

About twenty years into our marriage, about the time we went from two dogs to three, about the time that I came to expect that every article of clothing I owned would be caked with dog fur, about the time that our youngest dog ate the laundry room wall, I wondered if we had lost some balance in our life as a family.

At that time, it happened that I had an obligation away from home, so packed and headed for the airport, being sure to scruffle all three beasts before leaving the house. As I waited to check in for my flight, I noticed a passenger travelling with a wire-haired terrier and had to walk over to see if the owner would mind a short visit with her dog. Walking through the streets of an unfamiliar city, I again found myself approaching every dog that crossed my path. Before two days away from home had passed, I realized that just as I loved my wife, loved my children, I loved having dogs within easy reach, essentially at that point, the more, the merrier.

So, now we live with four, which is great, but a Facebook friend has been posting pictures of her Australian Shepherd puppy, and it has been years since we had an Australian Shepherd, and they are fluffy with a tiny bobbed tail that vibrates with joy when greeting its owners, and not all that large, and easy to train, and ….

Getting My Irish Up

Faith and begorra, it’s almost Saint Patrick’s Day, once again time for the Arangos to become O’Rangos in a tribute to all things Celtic.

We won’t be alone, of course; St. Patrick’s Day Parades are scheduled in Boston, New York, Chicago, Dallas, Baltimore, Atlanta, Norfolk, Denver, Holyoke, New Orleans, Savannah, Pittsburgh, Detroit, San Diego, Cleveland, Butte, Saint Paul, Philadelphia, Kansas City, and probably another hundred communities.

Buffalo has two parades. The shortest parade (98 feet) will be held in Hot Spring, Arkansas, where the famous Springs are dyed green. Unless the new administration breaks the established tradition, the north White House fountain will be dyed green. Chicago dyes a river green, Seattle dyes the parade route green, and the town of Rolla, Missouri paints the entire center of the city green.

All of this hoopla celebrates venerated Patrick (Patricus, Padraig), patron Saint of Ireland, routinely credited with bringing Christianity to Ireland from Britain and with banishing Ireland’s snakes, although it’s pretty clear there weren’t any snakes to banish.

Let that go. It doesn’t matter.

What does matter is that the celebration of Saint Patrick’s Day falls during Lent, during which time the faithful ostensibly practice penance and self-denial.

Except on Saint Patrick’s Day.

Free pass. Green beer. Let the good times roll … then back to sackcloth and ashes.

I don’t mean to disparage any saint; they didn’t get to be saints without having been martyred and often in a particularly disagreeable way. Saint Patrick, for instance … ah …. hold on …. I’m thumbing through my various guides to the saints, biographies known in the saintly trade as hagiographies, and … um …. Saint Patrick died at Saul, apparently not martyred, laid down, didn’t get up, thought it was indigestion.

Now, to be fair, he took his lumps early and often, having been captured, enslaved, and sold into bondage as a young man, and he did bring Christianity to Ireland against some very long odds. Credit where credit is due.

It just occurs to me that there are some other saints, whose day might be celebrated with something like equal enthusiasm, given the ways in which they were dispatched. I should begin by assuring the gentle reader that every day is some saint’s day; many have had to double up. No problem there. Let’s just take a look at three who could use a little recognition in light of the ways they were martyred.

January 21 – Saint Agnes Day.

Horrible story.

At about twelve or thirteen, Christian Agnes was courted by patrician Romans who thought she was hot stuff. Determined to remain pure and unsullied in her devotion to her faith, Agnes spurned some influential Roman aristos who complained to the local Prefect (magistrate) who, for her slighting of the guys, condemned her to be driven naked to a brothel where she was to be to ravaged.

Accounts vary, but one suggests that as she was about to be deflowered, her body became covered with thick fur, dissuading her tormentors from getting physical. Unable or unwilling to bend her to their will, infuriated, the slighted men of Rome attempted to burn her at the stake, but, you know how when you have people over and the coals just won’t catch and everybody’s waiting? The fire went out, whereupon they took the simple expedient of stabbing her in the throat. Saint Agnes is the patron saint of virgins.

March 7 – Saint Perpetua Day

Another Horrible Story.

The account of Saint Perpetua’s martyrdom is one of the oldest on record, ostensibly the diary of a young mother imprisoned in Carthage in the 3rd Century. Refusing to abandon her faith, Perpetua and her baby were joined in prison by Felicity, a pregnant girl who also refused to give up her Christian faith. Roman law forbade the execution of pregnant women, so the jailer had to wait until Felicity had given birth to take Perpetua and Felicity to the gladiatorial arena where they were scourged (whipped until flesh fell from their bodies) then tossed in front of wild beasts. Here’s where Saints Perpetua and Felicity deserve particular recognition. The men executed in that arena faced bears, leopards, lions; Perpetua and Felicity were eaten by a rabid cow. Seriously, a cow! Saint Perpetua is the patron saint of widows and mothers of deceased sons; Saint Felicity is the patron saint of expectant mothers.

August 10 – Saint Lawrence Day

Who is the patron saint of cooks? That would be Saint Lawrence, Lorenzo of Rome, who as librarian and archivist was believed by the Emperor Valerian to know where all the treasure of the early Church had been hidden. Compelled to bring the Church’s treasures to the emperor, Lawrence arrived at the court with diseased, orphaned, and crippled Christians, declaring them to be the Church’s treasures. Apparently Valerian had no sense of humor. He ordered his minions to slowly roast Lawrence on a grill until he revealed the true location of the goods. He is said to have responded to this torture by tossing off this line before he was completely toasted, “Turn me over. I’m done on this side”.

While many saints have been recognized in paintings, sculptures, and music, the martyrdom of Saint Lawrence is one of the few to influence a major work of architecture. The extremely pious Philip II of Spain built San Lorenzo Escorial, a monastery, palace, college, and library in the shape of a grill. August. Grilling season? Anyone?

There are many other worthy nominees such as Saint Hippolytus, torn apart by horses (patron saint of horses. August 13), Saint Agatha, breasts cut off (patron saint of breast cancer patients. February 5), and Saint Bartholomew, skinned alive (patron saint of tanners and plasterers. September 11).

One of the most remarkable saints, Hildegarde of Bingen is celebrated on September 17. She was a polymath, a writer, composer, natural scientist, and mystic. She even created her own language, Lingua Ignota. Saint Cecilia is the patroness of musicians. Saint Cecilia’s Day is celebrated on November 22, marked by George Frideric Handel with the Ode to Saint Cecilia’s Day and by Benjamin Britten, who was born on Saint Cecilia’s Day, with the Hymn to Saint Cecilia based on a poem by W.H. Auden.

One of the most indelible of all Shakespeare’s speeches in that given by Henry V on the morning of October 25, Saint Crispin’s Day, as his troops prepared to undertake the Battle of Agincourt:

This day is call’d the feast of Crispian
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam’d,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say “To-morrow is Saint Crispian.”
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say “These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.”
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words—
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Sailisbury and Gloucester—
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb’red.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be rememberèd-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

Come on. That has to be worth a parade or two! I’ll be suiting up on October 25th. Anyone who wants to join my band of brothers, we’ll assemble at dawn on the plaza in Ashland, Oregon. Be there or count your manhoods cheap.

Bracketology, Mel Kiper, the Combine, and Franchise Tag

OK, I know sports broadcasting is challenging, that there are inevitably some dry spells. It can’t be Super Bowl Sunday every day of the year, race horses have their own schedules, and hockey can’t start until the ice is down, but … while the networks scramble to fill empty hours for weeks before the Super Bowl, for the entire week of the MLB All Star game, before the World Cup heats up, between majors in golf, after Wimbledon and before the US Open, I get it…sure, bring on celebrity badminton, gladiators, bowling, netball, whatever.

But, here we are in the last weeks of the regular collegiate basketball season, a great rivalry is catching fire as the Spurs threaten the dominance of the Warriors in the West and the Celtics and the Wizards are closing on Cavs in the East (yes, I said the Wizards), Connor McDavid is the greatest show on ice, Spring Training is underway, and, by the way, UConn’s Women’s basketball team has won 107 consecutive games … and once again I am held hostage by Mel Kiper, ESPN’s draft analyst, the NFL draft guru, who has never attended an NFL combine, Mel Kiper, whose face/head/hair defy description, Kiper, who makes ESPN’s John Clayton seem animated, Kiper whose only function, as far as I can tell, is to guess at the order in which players eligible to be drafted will be selected between April 27th and April 29th. A month from now.

But Kiper is not alone. Sports journalists have flocked to Indianapolis to watch athletes run, jump, lift, and throw. In a not-entirely-stunning turn of events, the most highly touted athlete before the Scouting Combine has turned out to be the most impressive athlete at the combine. Myles Garrett, defensive end recently a student at Texas A&M, six feet and five inches of leaping fury, presenting a forty inch vertical jump, an eleven foot STANDING broad jump, 270 pounds of raw power will, Kiper intones, be the first pick of the hapless Cleveland Browns. Look, I’m happy to know that Garrett is impressive, and I’m sorry the only good news for Cleveland Browns fans is that they get the first pick in the draft, but enough already. When the NFL season actually begins, they will still be the Cleveland Browns, Garrett or no Garrett. These are the Cleveland Browns who traded FOR Brock Osweiler (with a 16 million dollar guaranteed salary) in order to trade Osweiler to … somebody. Recently signed receiver Kenny Britt puts the Brown’s quarterback situation this way, “Whoever is here is going to be here.” Exactly, say goodnight, Mel Kiper, and let’s move on.

With the combine ending, sports chatter immediately shifted to the not-very-arcane pseudo-science, “bracketology”, an incessant accompaniment to every broadcast up to “Selection Sunday” when the teams participating in March Madness are revealed. I’m as goofy about the NCAA basketball championship as the rest of the not-really-betting-but-I owe-Dave-five bucks-for-the-office-pool millions of late season college basketball fans, almost none of whom stayed up late enough to see Gonzaga, Oregon, Arizona, and UCLA stand out as legit final four prospects. There are some interesting decisions that will be unveiled on Selection Sunday, decisions about venue and seeding, odd judgments that last year put Buffalo and Villanova in the South regional, Yale and Duke in the West, USC and Wyoming in the East, and Gonzaga and Fresno State in the Midwest. Those are not the judgments I’ve been listening to for the last week. Joe Lunardi, bracketologist extraordinaire, does do some interesting guesswork about seeding, but, for the most part, he and his ilk endlessly gum about the last four teams in and the last four teams out, a conversation that continues unabated through the conference championships, where anything can and occasionally does happen.

Just when I think the focus can once again turn to actual sporting contests, NFL Free Agency arrives, teams set aside an unsigned but truly valuable player with a franchise tag, and the chin-wagging begins in earnest. Rookies don’t land at NFL training camps until the end of July. July! It’s the middle of March, and we’re not talking about Isaiah Thomas and the Boston Celtics, we’re not planning the ritual dismemberment of Gary Bettman, the worst commissioner in professional sports again defending ice hockey in Arizona, we’re not watching HBO’s documentary on UConn’s women’s basketball dynasty.

OK, I admit I will watch the first round of the NFL draft, and I will tune in on Selection Sunday to see who is playing where in the NCAA basketball championship, and I will listen to Trey Wingo as Free Agency kicks in, but grudgingly, because I have to, don’t I?

Then, when the talking heads (see Kiper picture above) are done, I’ll watch the Mariners play the Brewers in a Spring Training game that doesn’t count, spend three hours watching batters knock the dirt off their cleats, catchers peg the ball down to third after a strikeout, coaches hop out of the way of a screaming foul ball down the first base line, ball boys toss a ball to a kid in the front row, fans eating hot dogs.

Sounds good. No, sounds great, and I won’t need “dogologists” to analyze the probablility of mustard squirting or “fanologists” convincing me that kids get a huge kick going home with a baseball.

Missed Opportunities

Missed opportunities. Hmmmm. Where to begin?

I could walk to the shrine of Our Lady of Disappointment wherein the catalog of life-changing flub ups reside or skip to the Pillar of Indecision, finding there lashed the tens of thousands of chances missed. Poor judgment, impulsive reaction, clumsy hesitation, fearful posturing – the faces of mangled opportunity are many and varied.

Some opportunities once missed are lost forever. Harsh words can’t be unsaid, can’t be unheard. Betrayed trust leaves a permanent stain. Forgiveness withheld, apology withheld, amends withheld, love withheld – these have an expiration date.

Some missed opportunities are the roads not taken, the careers not chosen, the lives not led. It was Archimedes who plonked down in a bathtub and noticed that his body displaced a quantity of water equal to the mass of his mass. Apparently there were witnesses present at the event able to report that the dripping philosopher cried, “Eureka!” as he stumbled, naked, into posterity. Choices we make displace other opportunities; having joined the circus, we don’t go to medical school. In Economics, the phenomenon is termed “Opportunity Cost”, the cost of taking one action to the exclusion of another. If, for example, I choose to watch a re-broadcast of the episode in which Mr. Ed, the talking horse, feels unloved and decides to become the first horse in space (“The Horsetronaut” first broadcast in October of 1961), I lose the opportunity in that half-hour to write deathless prose that might have inspired mankind and prevented world famine.

That may be an exaggeration, but you see my point.

The cost of missed opportunity need not be attached to mutually exclusive choices. It is in this realm, that of opportunities not YET taken, that possibility flourishes. I guess I’m thinking of sloshing some of that displaced bath water back into the tub. Those neglected gifts, the aptitudes we have postponed developing, the interests we let lie fallow -they may have wilted a bit and need some tending, but doors we may have walked stiffly past might still be opened. Doors we have bolted in our personal relationships shut us in as much as they shut others out; how can we estimate the cost of apologies not offered or not accepted, thanks not given or not accepted?

There’s nothing original in observing that we may feel the deepest regret in the loss of a future that will not happen; shattered futures hang heavily upon us. In some instances, however, we have opportunities to mend the future to some extent. When in Casablanca Ilsa Lund walks into Rick’s cafe (“Everybody comes to Rick’s”), they have a chance to face the future they have lost. Rick and Ilsa will move on to lives other than those they had imagined, but they are reconciled and healed. They will always have Paris, and that is not merely good enough; it is simply good.

Since I’ve wallowed in cinematic schmaltz for a moment, I might as well trot out the next goopy reference. The lesson taught in The Dead Poet’s Society was that we must seize the day, Carpe Diem, but the alternate truth is that days unseized go on and on in the course of a lifetime. Let’s put Archimedes back in the tub and consider seizing the next day or the one that follows, “Postero Die”, looking back at opportunities not yet taken but still available.

In this relative universe, it’s never too late to be on time.

Yearbooks

Sad but not unexpected news came in the mail today. I was informed that there are no plans to present this year’s Reveille, my college’s yearbook, first published in 1855 and published every year since then. Apparently, a printed record of one’s collegiate life is no longer needed or wanted. My college is not alone; A few years ago, I tried to buy a yearbook for my son and daughter when they graduated from their alma maters, but none were published then either.

I will miss yearbooks; they have presented a sort of emotional and anthropological snapshot of particular sorts of institutions at particular points in history. Photos capture the prevailing fashions and attitudes, artless comments throughout the book reveal the language and cultural influences which prevailed among students about to enter the work world in that era. I own something like fifty yearbooks from schools and colleges I happened not to have attended. Some have peripheral historical significance, such as the Princeton yearbook published in the year that F. Scott Fitzgerald and Edmund Wilson graduated, but any whiff of significance is purely accidental. I found that Princeton yearbook in a barn in Maine next to a set of instructional manuals on the operation of the McCormick Deering Grain Binder. I passed on the manual, but paid top dollar (OK, actually three dollars) for the yearbook.

I started collecting yearbooks as a sophomore in high school. For reasons that shall remain undisclosed, it often happened that I was ~~held captive~~ ~~did detention in~~ fortunate enough to spend a great deal of time in my school’s library, an undistinguished library in most areas, but one that had amassed a significant collection of school and college yearbooks. It never occurred to me to wonder why the Rollins College Tomokan, the Union College Garnet, or Babson College’s Babsonian came to rest in the bowels of a small school’s library, but rest there they did until my enforced solitude in the building’s basement compelled me to find some kind, any kind, of diversion. Later, in my college years, I again used what might have been time better spent in pursuit of study in my major field (which was not yearbooks) rather than combing through my college’s annuals and others that happened to wash up in the college’s archives.

I would go on to become a college counselor for much of my career, endlessly fascinated by the stories college students had to tell about themselves. I’d like to think that I had some intuitive impulse to prepare for a vocation, but the truth is that for me there is a world of conjecture in any yearbook. The National Lampoon High School Yearbook remains a triumph of invention because, like The Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink, it understood the complexities of adolescent idiocy, not merely the self-important posturing and posing, but the unguarded yearning as well. The 1958 Tomokan was equally transparent, presenting the sisters of various sororities in charming vignettes, fraternity boys with similar affection, jamming the non-affiliated on a few pages of tiny photographs. I’ve done my homework since seeing that Tomokan, finding in the 1951 Tomokan the senior portrait of Fred McFeely Rogers of Latrobe, Pennsylvania, Mr. Rogers to the rest of us, the man who spoke at exactly 124 words per minute, the rate at which children best process language, who maintained his weight at 143 pounds for most of his life because it takes 1 letter to say I, four to say love, and three to say you, the same Mr. Rogers, who transferred to Rollins in Florida from Dartmouth in New Hampshire, from what was then an all-male Ivy League winter playground to a small co-ed college in Florida best known for water skiing.

It’s often a lovely day in that neighborhood.

That’s what I mean. There are stories within stories, and every yearbook sets the backdrop against which young people began the process of becoming themselves, or losing themselves, or hiding themselves. My Princeton yearbook, the 1917 Bric-A-Brac, would have appeared just as the United States entered World War I. Much is made of the annual musical comedy written and performed by students in the Triangle Club, and particular attention is drawn to the plot and lyrics written by Fitzgerald. “…both were out of the ordinary and well above the usual Triangle Club standard.” From all accounts, Fitzgerald pretty much ignored the petty demands of schoolwork in order to write the show, flunked out of Princeton, and found himself in the army as the nation entered the war.

The 1917 edition of Pot Pourri, the annual published by Phillips Academy Andover, chronicled the disruption of school activities as members of the junior and senior classes trained for military service. Athletics were suspended as the boys marched with precision in order to prepare for trench warfare. My copy of the 1940 edition of The Dial, yearbook of the Hill School, celebrates the career of young men about to leave the fun and frolic of school days for the hardship and danger of war. My father-in-law’s photo in that yearbook presents the high school senior’s version of the wry smile I first saw when meeting him for the first time. Within the next three years, he would be flying in a B-24 over the oil fields of Romania, completing mission after mission until his plane was shot down. He was held in a prisoner-of-war camp, escaping only to learn that his parents had been told he was missing and presumed dead.

I have college yearbooks from the post-war era, years in which G.I.s put away silver stars and purple hearts, changed from uniforms of the day to chinos, returned to the classrooms and the fraternities with the sound of war still in their ears. Their portraits are more serious, more composed, and their ambitions more grounded. Many lived in married housing; their children saw them graduate.

My own yearbooks document the cataclysmic upheaval of the 1960’s. In the first half of the decade, there are few changes from the books published in the 1950’s. Big events included football games, dances, Proms, fraternity and sorority rushes, hilarious fund-raisers in which men dressed as women, kissing booths, pie eating contests. Things started to change, very slowly; in November of 1963, JFK was assassinated, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. led a March on Poverty, delivering the “I Have A Dream” speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial, calling for an end to racism. But my freshman year in college, 1964-1965, was the first in which first year students (frosh) did not have to wear the class “beanie” and survive the ritual dismemberment known as freshman-sophomore cane rush. By the end of that year, a chapter of Students for A Democratic Society had been formed, protesting the annual “War Ball”, a dance hosted by the college’s students enrolled in the ROTC program. The Free Speech Movement had already begun at Berkeley, and by the time I graduated, college campuses had become hotbeds of political activism, many going on strike in May of 1970, after Ohio National Guardsmen opened fire on students at Kent State University.

The 1965 yearbook resembled the last forty yearbooks in substance and design. Within two years, the yearbook had become a “yearbox”, a collection of highly stylized photographs which could be combined in any order. And now, yearbooks have become, as they always intended to be, things of the past, too posed and too static in a digital age. Even video yearbooks have begun to disappear as an ordinary phone can hold thousands of memories to be posted and re-posted at will.

I am of an age. Each of us is. But we follow those who have gone on before us. I’ve spent a lifetime looking back at the histories of people I’ve never known. I’ve made up stories about all of them, followed their imagined lives, mourned with them, celebrated with them. Time wasted? Perhaps In a sense I’ve been able to live several lives, none of them with much impact, but with the conviction that no matter how fashion and language change, the path remains remarkably the same.

How I Love To Conversate

I find that chatting with people who live in the Rogue Valley or who have stopped by for a visit is by far best part of the volunteer work that I do; chatting comes easily as the shop benefiting Southern Oregon Hospice is splendid, the cause it serves is noble, and the likelihood of finding remarkable bargains almost guaranteed. As a confirmed thrift shopper myself, I am delighted to ring up a half-price sale of a set of vintage golf clubs or a designer gown, to congratulate the buyer and to admire the purchase. We are not what we buy, but there are affinities that emerge with the choices we make. I like hearing the stories people have to tell, and I find that asking a question or two seems to give folks permission to talk about where they have been and what they have found along the way.

I had expected that I’d meet a fair number of visitors in town for a short stay, catching performances at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and I do, of course, so I ask about the plays they’ve seen, about their travels, about the routines they have established over years of bringing family and friends to the Festival. I meet a number of people who have retired to Ashland, Medford, Talent, Phoenix, people starting a new chapter of their lives. I ask about the homes they have left, about jobs they once held, about family here and family left behind. I ask about the homes they have known and the home they are making. Our shop receives donations of well-kept furniture, china, linen, silverware, glassware, gadgets for the kitchen, serving dishes – all the items necessary to stocking a new house or apartment, inexpensively priced and virtually new. Folks new to the region find us, discover treasures, and return as they settle in and figure out exactly what needs to be added in order to make the new place a home.

Some customers stop in every week, admiring new displays, checking in. They linger, listening to the music we play, considering clothes on the rack, taking them to the dressing rooms, setting some aside and putting some away. I ask about trips they have taken, trips they have planned, about visits from their children, about appointments with doctors. The songs I play remind them of times past, of people they once cared for. Stories begun the week before return with greater detail and with added twists and turns.

I’ve learned three true things about conversation. Almost everyone likes to be asked about themselves, people need enough space to let a real answer emerge, and the real answer is honored by asking the next authentic question.

Think about the questions you wish someone would ask you. What parts of your story would you like to share? How could someone give you permission to tell that story?

The questions I ask are obvious: Where did you grow up? What was that like? Have you been back? What has changed? Do you have brothers? Sisters? Are you in touch with them? How did you come to live where you have? What were you looking for? What do you do to treat yourself when you need a treat? What do you like best about where you live? About the work you do/did? Do you like to read? What movies have you loved?

Don’t get the wrong idea. I’m not running an Inquisition from behind the counter; I don’t handcuff them to the register until they cough up a response. I express an interest in having a conversation and enjoy those that do develop, but I don’t push or prod. It happens that I have a daughter with an uncommon gift for asking thoughtful questions. I’ve learned a lot from her, especially in understanding that a really good question often has no easy answer; it may take fumbling to a first response, stopping to consider what I’ve said, reconsidering what I’ve said, clarifying what I’ve said, moving more boldly into the wider range of responses, and finally landing on something like a measured response to what might have seemed a simple question.

That process takes some time, and I have to trust that the person who raised the question actually wants my most complete answer. If I were asked to name my favorite book, for example, I’d probably blurt out something like King Ottokar’s Sceptre (the 8th adventure in the chronicles of Tintin, Belgian boy-detective) almost immediately regret having exposed myself as an arrested juvenile, flop around a bit, recall that I was so absorbed in the novel that I ran a fever while reading Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, but have read Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine at least seven times, enjoying the book more with each reading, but then, I read Heidi Julavits’ Uses of Enchantment in one shot, couldn’t put it down, yet, reading Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian may have been the most emotionally draining reading experience in a long line of emotionally draining reading experiences. I read Fitzgerald’s translation of The Odyssey every year and quote from it at the drop of a hat. Does that count?

So, I guess, Love Medicine.

No, maybe Hamlet

And, really, who wants to wait around while I work all of that out? The best news is that it doesn’t matter. If I trust the person asking the question, I have the opportunity to think seriously about how I feed my mind and imagination, and it is the person asking the question who has given me that gift. I’ll share what I can along the way, and that clumsy process can bring along something like a conversation if I allow room for another question or a comment and if I trust that I’m speaking with someone who actually wants to know what I think.

In the end it comes down to this – I ask questions because I do want to know what goes on in minds other than my own; I want to know what the human experience is for humans other than myself. In asking, I’m hoping the person buying the ceramic parrot will trust me enough to believe that I want to know where she intends to put the four-foot tall bird. Who knows where a conversation about that decision might end up?

Wait, maybe Carry on Jeeves?

Unclear on the Concept

I’m not always sure memory is my friend.

More often than I’d like to admit, a memory sponge lets loose and things I had hoped never to think of again come seeping across my forebrain (not an actual organ) slapping me with long-buried anxiety and shame forcefully enough that I am virtually living the grotesque moment yet again. In almost every instance, these dreg-fests remind me of miscalculations, awkward misunderstandings, cues missed, localized idiocy.

I would like to assume that opportunities for misunderstanding abound and that any of us can, at any moment, lack a clear idea of what is being said to us, asked of us, in store for us, likely to affect us. I’m not talking rocket science here; I don’t expect to understand anything about the Hohmann transfer orbit, for example. No, I’m suggesting that very simple initiatives can be confounding, if we are unclear on the concept.

What kid has not put up a sign, grabbed a few cans of lemonade from the freezer, found a crayon, and set up a roadside stand pitching cold drinks to passing neighbors? It seemed like a great idea to me, although I faced several impediments unique to my situation. I had neither lemons not lemonade and had no neighbors or neighborhood. On the other hand, I had a skill I hoped would stop traffic.

I pitched my sign on the side of the highway near a gravel turn-out.

Dissections 50 Cents

This where the lack of clarity on the concept came in.

I’d better start by assuring readers that I loved animals, would never knowingly harm an animal, did not set fires, did not hear voices that were only inside my head, had actual friends that were not provided by a taxidermist. I was a normal child in most aspects, a little dreamy maybe, gullible, easy to tease, but not unkind, certainly not cruel.

But, unlike the rest of my seventh grade classmates, I was fascinated with physiological systems and was very good at dissection. Our set of encyclopedias had beautifully detailed overlays, colorful diagrams that revealed the organs and skeleton of fish and mammals. I’d pored over those for years, so when the biology teacher dragged out the specimens soaked in formaldehyde, I could not wait to see if how real fish and frogs were put together.

It turns out that they are beautifully designed, miraculously designed. Ordinarily distracted and obtuse during instruction, I listened carefully as the teacher explained the procedure, hoping to avoid the sorts of mistakes seventh graders had been known to make. My penmanship was dreadful, but I had developed a steady hand while assembling model cars and in wiring the Progressive Radio Edu-Kit. I worked carefully and slowly on the frog I had been given, making sure that every incision was clean and precise, staying after class to make sure that every organ and system had been properly identified.

My diagram was beautiful.

I saved it and the next two, and, although the specimens did dry out and did shrink a bit, when covered with plastic wrap, they looked very scientific. I assumed anyone with a scientific turn of mind would celebrate my achievement and probably want to buy one of the three signed diagrams I had ready for sale. I may have been wrong.

I did set up my dissection stand and stood watching traffic go by for a considerable period of time before a car stopped, and a woman with two children pulled over. I can only guess at what she thought she was about to buy out of the kindness of her heart. She stopped short when she was close enough to read the sign advertising my craftsmanship, threw her hands out flat as of to protect her children from a collision, turned and walked away.

In that moment I understood that my understanding of the human condition was incomplete. I was mortified, embarrassed by my own idiocy, and filled with remorse that frogs once alive had become my shabby specimens. I got through the rest of the year in Biology, but whatever impulse I had once felt toward further work in the sciences had been removed entirely.

In the course of a bumpy lifetime I have made more consequential misjudgments, certainly injured more people, and probably damaged the universe more profoundly, but I recognize in this stunning folly just how disconnected my sensibilities were from those of humans properly considered “normal”. The only dissection I allowed myself from that time on was the bloodless dissection of sentences. I still marvel at the intricacy with which life begins and is maintained, but there’s no need for me to take it apart.

I pull over when I see a lemonade stand, a brownie or cupcake stand. I’ll buy whatever they’re selling, maybe a few extra, hand them more than I owe and tell them to keep the change. Their product may not always be entirely edible, but at least they are clear on the concept.

The Waffle Barn

I live in a small city in southern Oregon, practically perfect in every way; folks here are intellectually alive, culturally aware, decent and interesting. The valley is strikingly beautiful and the climate is mostly mild with the occasional decorative snow fall.

This is Shakespeare country, home of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, welcoming thousands of tourists each season, so it was probably inevitable that cutesy Shakespearean puns would pop up as local businesses attached themselves to the tourist trade. We have a health food and vitamin shop known as All’s Well and two Puck’s Doughnut shops. When it comes to Inns and Bed and Breakfasts, all bets are off. The Bard’s Inn, The Windsor Inn, the Stratford Inn, Arden Forest Inn, A Midsummer’s Dream, Anne Hathaway’s B and B and Garden Suites, and a dozen equally Elizabethan spots clog the local directory of places to land in town.

I get it. Makes sense. And then, out of nowhere, banners fly announcing the arrival of the Waffle Barn. I like waffles; I like barns. But, hey! The combination is just wrong..

No matter how you pitch them, if you look at the pyramid of the major food groups, waffles belong right there at the base – securely anchored among the comfort foods. And when might you need some comfort? For a start:

Relationship in the dumpster? Passed over for promotion? Tried on clothes at the store and nothing fit? Contacted by an old flame an old flame on Facebook looking younger and better than ever while your profile picture looks as if had been taken at the morgue? IRS audit coming up? Black cloud hovering overhead? Wondering if it’s all worth while? Looking back at a life seemingly frittered away? Figuring out that your mom loved your sister more than she loved you?

Whatever.

Nothing is ever so daunting that it can’t be remedied with a late night ride on the Comfort Food Express. Any one of the food friends listed below and/or any combination holds the promise of immediate relief.

Mac and cheese, chocolate,pot pies, any pie, biscuits and gravy, chocolate chip pancakes, mashed potatoes, fried chicken, more chocolate, green bean casserole, chicken soup, tamale pie, any other kind of pie, more chocolate, chips and salsa, milkshakes, sundaes, tuna casserole, chili, chili fries, chili mac and cheese, pizza… and waffles.

Of course, comfort arrives in different guises as you bounce around the globe. Brits seem to hunker down with mooshy things, mashed peas, boiled potatoes, custards, the highly regarded Spotted Dick (pudding made with suet and custard) and Bangers and Mash (sausages and mashed potatoes covered in brown sauce). Drooping in Russia? Order up some solyanka, but make sure to ladle in a dollop of sour cream to mellow out the pickled cucumbers,cabbage, dill, and brine that make this hearty broth. Out of sorts in Poland? Try the makaron ze smietana, a frothy pasta with strawberries and cream. Yes, I said pasta with strawberries.

Butter, sugar, suet, fat, rich, sweet, salty – these are words that bring comfort.

I’ll tell you where comfort is not to be found.

In a barn.

Barns are for cows, and horses, and sheep, and hay, and grain, manure, and rats. Large animals live there doing what large animals do around the clock. People who work in barns dress for the job; no sandals, flip-flops, stiletto heels in the barn. They wear boots. Big boots, high boots, made of substances that can be hosed down daily. Hosing, sweeping, pushing extraneous animal matter around – that makes up a good part of the day in the barn, unless you have to get in the first cut before the next rainstorm, in which case, you live in a world of swirling hay, spears of which embed themselves at will in any available expanse of skin. Tossing hay long enough brings a shot at farmer’s lung, easy to contract after breathing in hay mold day after day. And, let’s hope you haven’t baled up and stacked hay that is too wet as no one likes to see hay spontaneously combust.

I happen to like the ways barns smell; I admit it brings happy memories and, yes, even some comfort when the wind blows the right way. Whatever involuntary Proustian reflex I might find in or around barns, however, would absolutely be shattered with the introduction of waffles, or chili fries, or mashed potatoes.

So, what are appropriate names for a waffle place? The choices are many and obvious:

Batter Up!, Waffle Tasty. Waffle Yummy. Waffle Good, Waffle World, Waffle Mart, Griddle and Determination, Love ‘Ya a Waffle Lot, Jawful of Waffle, Waffle Hut, Waffle Shack, Meet Your Waffle Maker, Waffle Irony, Full of Wa, Full of Wha? Waffle’s R Us.

Have to get Shakesperian around here? Hamlet, Eggs, and Waffles? Merry Waffles of Windsor? Much Ado About Waffles?

Would I turn around and pull in to any of these places? Probably. But if you really want to get my attention, it’s a lot simpler to just hang the banner –

Breakfast All Day – Waffles

Play Ball!

Today, February 22nd, the world starts over again.

In Phoenix, Arizona at the beautiful new Salt River Field, the Arizona Diamondbacks take on the Grand Canyon University Antelopes, the Lopes, in the opening game of Spring Training in what is known as the Cactus League, pre-season major league baseball in Arizona. Tomorrow, in the Grapefruit League, the Detroit Tigers play Florida Southern College’s Water Moccasins at the recently renovated Publix Field in Lakeland, Florida. Times have changed as increasing numbers of fans fleeing the end of winter follow their teams to sunshine, and Spring Training facilities are spiffier, ticket prices higher, T-shirts and hats more expensive, and autographs harder to snare. Nonetheless, the relaxed pace of training games, the appearance of rookies who might turn out to be stars, genuinely splendid weather, and the opportunity to see the best players in the game up-close and personal, all of that is catnip to baseball fans.

Today you can cheer for the Lopes or Diamondbacks for $6.00 and drop another six bucks tomorrow when the Brewers take on The University of Wisconsin Milwaukee Panthers at my favorite park, Maryvale Baseball Park, a scaled down park tucked into a neighborhood that seats about seven thousand laid back Brewers fans, the most loyal and cheerful fans in Arizona. I’m not a Brewers fan, but I love sitting in the midst of a Wisconsin family reunion, cousins from Kenosha, twins down from Janesville, Uncle Bub from Green Bay now living in Appleton, the newlyweds from Eau Claire. They rib each other mercilessly and send the kids out for the park’s signature Klement’s bratwursts. The Brats are fabulous, but Klements hasn’t stopped there; they not only offer other irresistible and distinctive sausages, they suit ’em up and race them. Bets are laid down when the five costumed racing sausages (Brat, Polish Sausage, Italian Sausage, Hot Dog, and Chorizo) appear before the home team bats in the sixth inning.

Maryvale is a small town within the western city limits of Phoenix, but so gently removed from city life that an unprepared visitor can drive right by the park, confusing it with the Maryvale High School’s fields unless you stop for lunch at Wendy’s . The park offers shaded seating, a necessity on some sun-baked afternoons, but for $8.00 a fan can camp out on the grassy berm that extends from the third base bleachers to the first base bleachers, looking down into the bullpens cut into the berm on each side. I watch baseball on television because I can’t get to games during the season, but I miss the distinctive pop of a fastball hitting the catcher’s mitt only a few feet from my place on the berm.

Actually, of course, I miss it all – the sweep of grass in the outfield, the puff of dust when a hard hit ball skids past second base, the smell of impending thunder as the grounds crew drags the tarp over the infield. There’s even more to miss about baseball during Spring Training. My son and I shared a section of the stands with scouts from twelve major league teams, sitting close to home plate as they clocked fastballs and counted the corners each pitcher could paint with consistency. Until that afternoon, we had never seen a World Series Championship ring up close; that day we saw twenty.

We sat behind Peter Gammons, Groton and UNC educated sportswriter and ESPN baseball analyst, one of the three or four most respected baseball guys of our time, a shameless Red Sox homer, but capable of balanced reporting nonetheless. My son showed precocious grace in not asking for an autograph but offering a handshake as Gammons attended his first game since recovering from a life threatening brain aneurysm.

We were behind home plate when a Cuban refugee named Aroldis Chapman first pitched for the Cincinnati Reds in a game against the Dodgers. We had heard he threw hard, but until we saw the blur from mound to plate, pitch after pitch, some of which were actually strikes, we could not have imagined what a 105 mile an hour pitch looked like from the batter’s point of view. We literally stood ten feet behind Ichiro Suzuki at the Mariner’s park as he nailed runner after runner from deep centerfield, including a peg to FIRST base that clipped Jim Thome in stride.

Sadly the Cubs quirky stadium, HoHoKam Stadium in Mesa has been replaced with a shiny new park in Mesa, although it is probably for the best that one of the most dangerous viewing experiences has been taken out of circulation. We sat above the third base dugout, happily hoping we might see a foul tip and go home with a ball, when Aramis Ramirez skinned a foul line drive over the first base dugout literally knocking a patron out of his seat. From that point on, we sat behind a net or paid v.e.r.y. close attention to each at bat.

With no expectation other than catching a game, on March 21st, 2009, we drove in heat and painfully slow-moving traffic from Peoria to Surprise, a western suburb. The Rangers and Royals share the park, one of the prettiest, and on that evening, the Rangers hosted the Dodgers in what was a fairly uneventful game, until the crowds parted, the atmosphere turned electric, and a procession emerged. Muhammad Ali supported by his wife, Wayne Gretzky, George Brett, and Joe Torre.

And we got to see a ball game as well.

Spring Training has a rich history including some exotic choices for pre-season locale back before Arizona and Florida claimed the season. At the turn of the Twentieth Century, Hot Springs, Arkansas hosted the greatest number of teams (Chicago White Stockings, Cleveland Spiders, Detroit Tigers, Pittsburgh Pirates, Cincinnati Reds, Brooklyn Dodgers, and Boston Red Sox). Fans who travelled to Hot Springs in 1918 would have seen a Red Sox pitcher shoved into emergency duty in the outfield. Babe Ruth looked promising, knocking two home runs, including one that is alleged to have soared more than five hundred feet, landing in a nearby Alligator farm. Mr. Wrigley’s Chicago Cubs trained on Catalina Island in the 1920’s, a convenience for Wrigley as he owned the island. The Dodgers trained in Cuba and the Dominican Republic.

The Cactus League exists because Bill Veeck, one of baseball’s greatest showmen and innovators having trained his Boston Brewers in Ocala, Florida, where segregation was harshly enforced, in 1946 took his next team, the Cleveland Indians to Tucson and convinced the Giant’s owner to train in Phoenix. A year later Veeck signed Larry Doby, the second African-American to play in the major leagues, the first to come directly from the Negro Leagues, and the first in the American League.

I’m pleased that spring baseball in Arizona has its roots in an owner’s farsighted and humane vision, pleased that eight National league teams and seven American League teams meet in pre-season play, and pleased that an ambitious fan can pack a lot of baseball in a fairly short trip. And, it’s worth noting that whatever Saint Patrick’s Day might look like back in Chicago, the Cactus League version is much less about green beer and much more about familiar team hats decked with shamrocks and presented in rich Kelly green. You ain’t seen baseball hats until you’ve seen a green rattlesnake forming the familiar Diamondback “D”.

I’ll close with two thoughts. The first was written by Jim Murray, Pulitzer Prize sportswriter for the Los Angeles Times:

Spring is the time of the year when the ground thaws, trees bud, income taxes fall due, and everybody wins the pennant.

The second, a thoughtful, perhaps unexpectedly reflective statement from Hall of Famer Rickey Henderson, a remarkable player and widely known for referring to himself in the third person, as in “Rickey needs a hit tonight”.

I love playing this game and every spring training feels like the first.

Apocalypse When?

I suspect we will look back on the last fifteen years as the era in which post-apocalyptic literature and film became the imaginative default in our own perilous world, in the same way that ill-tempered aliens and radioactive mutant insects appeared as the threat of nuclear war became chillingly real in the 1950’s. Contending with monsters on the screen allowed a sense of mastery over forces we feared and could not control in the same fashion that fairy tales brought children face to face with ogres, trolls, goblins, witches, and adults capable of unspeakable cruelty. It’s possible that kids’ fascination with dinosaurs and sharks also allows a sense of mastery of large and fearsome forces, as does, in later years, spiraling into space on death-defying thrill rides.

Just a theory.

Theories such as those abound, and the supposition of environmental end times is certainly at work, particularly among writers who will live beyond the Baby Boomers. Raised in prosperity, distracted by their own life journey, that generation does not leave a secure future. The theory currently held by the President’s advisor, Steve Bannon, derives from his somewhat idiosyncratic take on speculative work done by William Strauss and Neil Howe. The Strauss-Howe Generational Theory was first presented in their book, Generations, and then expanded in The Fourth Turning to suggest that four particular sorts of generations move through history, each producing a cycle of moods, which they call turnings. In recent history, the generations have cycled in this order: The Lost Generation,the G.I. Generation, the Silent Generation, the Baby Boom Generation, Generation X, the Millennial Generation, and the Homeland Generation.

The four turnings describe the cycles of history with particular attention to two notable polar opposites, generations experiencing Awakening and generations experiencing Crisis. Awakening describes the attack upon institutions in the name of autonomy and personal spiritual growth. Strauss and Howe considered the consciousness movement (Boom Generation) which began in the 1960’s as the most recent Awakening. Awakening, they posit, is followed by Unravelling, the third turning. Institutions weaken, individualism is more important than coalescence. The Long Boom and the Greedy 80’s are evidence of an Unravelling leading to Crisis, the fourth turning.

Crisis often involves war in which existing institutions are destroyed and then rebuilt resulting in renewed civic involvement and the creation of stronger institutions. 1929’s Wall Street Crash and the outbreak of W.W.II were the last Crisis. The generation that came of age as the nation went through Unravelling became adults during the Crisis, they, the G.I. generation,were a generation that pulled things together, a civic generation as personal sacrifice was necessary in order to survive. In Howe and Strauss’ terms,this was a Hero generation. The next generation, born during Crisis, came to an age in which all attention was directed toward the Crisis. These, the Silent Generation, were adaptive, in the authors’ terms, an archetype they call the Artist. As this cycle ended, the next generation, the Baby Boom, born near the end of Crisis, inherit a rejuvenated nation and the freedom to become idealists, Prophets, a self-conscious force toward Awakening. Good news/bad news is that it is this generation that is at the helm when the cycle takes the nation to Crisis. The theory observes that, for the most part, leaders in almost all arenas today are members of the Boom generation. Waiting to take their place is Generation X, what is called a Nomad Generation or Reactive Generation, a generation bringing Awakening.

Bannon’s interpretation assumes conflagration and the most damaging war yet. As he sees it, the Boom generation moved up at a moment of great prosperity and success, the dawn of what was the height of American global supremacy. The Nomads, GenX, are moving into Awakening, in reaction to the mess the Boom generation leaves behind. Right behind them, Millennials have to pick up the pieces as we hit yet another Crisis, and for Bannon, the Fourth Turning, Crisis, means global war. His take is that the cycle of Crisis has played itself out with the American Revolution, The Civil War, Depression and World War Two. He predicts the next cycle will bring war on an even greater scale. Apocalypse.

Bannon’s mission has been to find a leader willing to bust up the existing systems in order to be able to deal with a Crisis already underway. Given his place in the halls of power, should crisis mean war, it won’t be easy to separate this supposed generational mood and the self-fulfilling convictions of a presidential advisor.

I am intrigued by generational theory, but on a bad day, my more personal impulse toward thinking apocalyptically has to do with the Antarctic and Greenland’s ice sheets melting, and that’s a lot of ice, about the size of the United States and Mexico combined. I’m made uneasy in learning that more than half of all the animals in the world have disappeared since 1970, and a quarter of all species of mammal are in danger of extinction; I don’t want to say goodby to Polar Bears, Rhinos, Snow Leopards, Mountain Gorillas, Albacore Tuna (Sorry, Charlie) . The Great Barrier Reef is well on the way to becoming the OK Barrier Reef. Species after species are throwing up their paws and fins in a final salute to a planet that can no longer support them. Oklahoma has become Earthquake Central, experiencing more than a thousand quakes per year greater than 3.0 on the Richter Scale. More than a billion barrels of wastewater injected near faults have the state rocking on a regular basis.

So, there’s that.

Apparently, however, there is reason to hope that many of what seemed irreversible trends are actually capable of reversal, and that all is not necessarily lost. We may not need Mad Max on Fury Road in the next few years; maybe we won’t have to host the Hunger Games instead of the Olympics. Despite the reluctance of some camps to give science and scientists the credit they are due, economic advantage goes to those who find ways to make thing work, and scientists are generating new, economically advantageous solutions to real problems on a daily basis.

Finally, the apocalyptic impulse, I’ve been advised is not out there, but in here, and by in here I mean in my Baby Boomer mindset. We, the Boom Generation, have had it our way for so long, held on our positions of authority for so long, continue to live for so long, that, at some point we begin to believe (because, I mean, Come On!) the world probably can’t go on without us.

I’ll admit that I do equate my extinction with total extinction because I’ll be extinct. That’s about as far as my projections can go. Can I conceive of planting a tree that my grandchild might swing on after my personal extinction has taken place? Absolutely.Beyond any positive legacy I can leave behind, I actually think that my children and their generation have the ability to make the world work at least as well as we have – not much of a challenge there!

So, whether the generational cycles are predictive or things just happen to happen, those who follow my generation will have to work quickly to set things right. I’ll be as extinct as the Snow Leopard, but I really don’t believe the world ends with me.

The Impractical Cogitator

Entertaining ideas without the slightest concern for their efficacy.