In the last few weeks, I’ve had my world rocked by learning something I’ve always known.

I have dyslexia.  This is not news, this is something that my instructors and I have been fighting all my life.  It’s been the background noise to my education, sometimes drowning out the class.

I have recently found that dyslexia is not what we thought it was in the late 80’s.  Then, I simply knew that I had a disability that affects my ability to write and spell. We now know that a major component of dyslexia is vocal.  I am not able to differentiate all of the sounds of the English language.  Some of the sounds I can speak, but I don’t fully appreciate the sounds themselves.  When I speak them, it’s just the natural process of getting from one noise to the other.

Imagine I was making a blended color band of the entire rainbow; red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet.  Imagine I could not perceive orange, yet was shading from red to yellow.  I would pass through orange on the way through blending red and yellow, and my rainbow would look completely normal.  If all I had to do was show the picture, there would be no problem.  Now, imagine I am describing the picture.  My inability to describe orange would become much more pronounced.

This is me trying to understand reading and writing.  If I don’t recognize all of the sounds within the word, describing those sounds in the written form is exceedingly difficult.  Reading the written form becomes significantly harder, as the brain struggles to decode all of this extra, to me meaningless, information that is within the phonetic spelling of a word.  The extra concentration needed, the brain’s attempt to get to the answer using abnormal brain paths, that all causes some of the weird effects reported by many with dyslexia.  However, that’s not the problem, that’s the symptom.

There are other markers that come up in dyslexic writing that led to the more traditional understanding of dyslexia.  The stereotype of b-d confusion is real (along with q and p, thank you very much).  That, we now know, is about orientation of letters more than spelling.  If you know how to spell something, but you write a d instead of a b, that’s not a spelling problem.  One of the startling moments of my recent discussion with a speech pathologist was when she, before she looked at a sample of my handwriting, predicted I write with mixed capitalization.  I do, although I was never taught to.  She said that it is a fairly standard accommodation that people with dyslexia often come to, as it removes one of the barriers to communication (B is not easily confused with D) in a manner that has nothing to do with spelling.

This new information means many things.  Not the least of which, this means that all of the considerable work I have tried to do to become a better speller was not actually aimed at fixing the problem I was facing.  It means I should cut myself some slack, and go about learning in different ways.

It ALSO means that there are now better understood different ways to learn.

I don’t know of anyone who is quite as fortunate as I with regards to education.  My parents were the strongest advocates I could hope for, as were most of my teachers.  My teachers were tireless in reaching me as a student.  Mr.  Wright, in third grade, went to great lengths to rein in my frustration (and bad behavior that stemmed from it) and instead re-focused my understanding of school around my curiosity.

Ms. Mills, my 5^th grade math teacher (who I tended to treat as a sparring partner more than a teacher) figured that if I could not learn how to do my multiplication tables (by 5^th grade), she would find me rhymes to remember that gave me specific bookmarks from which I could work forward or backwards.  Ms. Pazar, who faced the same challenge teaching me in high school, taught me physical and visual tricks to do math, and then focused on giving me the tools to know when a calculator was lying to me.

In writing, Mr. Bagley, Mr. Stevens and Ms. Orbison went to great lengths to separate my spelling problems from my creative expression, making sure that the former did not make me lose my interest in the latter, and teaching me how to use tools to mitigate my problems with the former.

Most children with dyslexia are not nearly so lucky.  The good news is that with the new understanding of dyslexia, new curriculums are being developed that mirror much of the unofficial curriculum I was taught with.  There is more focus and less experimentation, and apparently good outcomes.  Good news for me personally is that there is an adult version of this curriculum available, which may be able to help me further going forward.  Those who have taught me taught me to find and use the tools for life long learning.  This new understanding of dyslexia have given me a complete new toolkit going forward.

The following is an old piece of writing long thought lost.

April first is a time of jest, when people test their wits and compare their pranks to decide which comes out best.

The competition is not always fair, when there’s a ringer in the air, up above, looking down to try and claim the jester’s crown, to be the one with bragging rights who from his heights looks down and knows that he has accomplished the best jest yet.

This story is true, more or less.  It’s changed a bit I must confess, to add finesse, but I digress.  The perfect setting for a jest, April First, nonetheless, in a state that’s known for pranks.  In ’87 the jester king was a bird on the wing

An Alaska Airlines flight rose into the clear daylight with little to obscure the view of what soon was to ensue.

This is where it gets absurd.  For a soaring eagle, a mighty fishing bird is he, pulled his catch out of the sea to soar away to the safety of some unknown tree.

I’ve no doubt but to assume he wished to eat his dish away from his fright at noise of the Juneau but his flight was laden by the weight his fish.

I’ve always thought it odd that our country’s mascot is a bird such as this.  For our façade that we share with the world, we chose a majestic flying rat, albeit with wings unfurled, soaring high throughout the day, surviving by scavenging what it may, out of the way, avoiding anything that may become a fray, least the hunter become the prey.  For truth be told, the mighty eagle is a coward.  Far from the image we portray, this bird is easily spooked away.

In fairness to the bird, if I saw a jet airplane chasing after me, I would run away at great haste too, and when the 737 climbed towards the bird, a bizarre collision soon occurred, as the plane spurred the bird to drop its fish and quickly bid adieu.

Of course you know the fish hit the plane.  The gift the eagle did bestow was in vain, as the plane changed it’s pace not at all, climbing far away from the denizens of the sea, or at least where they ought to be, far below in the Gastineau Channel.

This is not the end of the fishy tail, as calls for help proved no avail, for it was April Fools’day, where normal rules are thrown away.  When Boeing field got the word that a flying fish had struck their bird, their response time suffered some delay on account of the foolish day.

And who can blame them, truth be told?  The outlandish claim they were being sold?  Flying fish do exist, but a salmon on the wing?  What a thing to behold.  Given the day, let caution hold sway, and don’t fall for a tale so bold.

But what are our pilots to do?  The tale they told was true!  In Yakutat they were grounded lest they fly their craft impaired, their efforts were confounded to get their aircraft in the air.  Their radio sounded messages back to base until finally an astounded mechanic flew out to confirm their tale, or become a part of it.

What he found was indeed a scene so very rare.  Fish slime and fish scales, yet no reason to repair the aircraft.  The plane was cleared for takeoff to continue on its flight, the passengers lead safely home; well into the night.  The passengers were inconvenienced, as many will attest, yet they were there to see the years best jest.

The foolish jests of April are the best that fools can bring, but in ’87 the jester king was a bird on the wing.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was an amazing leader. Facing down institutional violence, he was able to talk about the long arc of history bending towards justice. He could see further ahead than the rest of us, and inspired hope and vocation. I have talked with people who described to me meeting him, and even 30 years later they spoke with infectious passion and purpose. It’s never difficult to find amazing quotes of his to share when his holiday comes around. In years past I have memorialized the public speaker and fearless motivator. This year, I am focusing on the prefix to his name, the Doctor of Systematic Theology.

In my college religion courses, there was always an open question. What if the Cannon had not been closed? What more recent works should be added to the Cannon, or at least to the Apocrypha? Should some of the works of Dietrich Bonhoeffer be added? How about Paul Tillich (the writings of which inspired Dr. King’s dissertation)? And, in what I am sure is not a surprise given the subject of this post, we discussed Dr. King, and his Letter From a Birmingham Jail. A letter written very specifically to clergy.

I recently re-read that letter, and it struck me as prescient, but for all the wrong reasons. In national politics, as we watch Christians wrap their heads around supporting people who do not appear to live Christian values in the name of politics, one part of Dr. King’s letter stands out as an unheeded warning with clearly laid out consequences that are coming due.

“There was a time when the church was very powerful… the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society…

“Things are different now. The contemporary church is often … the arch supporter of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s silent and often vocal sanction of things as they are.

“But the judgement of God is upon the church as never before. If the church of today does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authentic ring, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. I am meeting young people every day whose disappointment with the church has risen to outright disgust. ”

As a civil libertarian, I believe in the separation of church and state as a way of protecting those in a minority religion from being forced to profess unfelt beliefs to get along in life. As a Christian, I believe in the separation of church and state because the marriage of the two makes it far too easy for the church to be subordinate to the state, to protect the status qui, and become a meaningless social club.

Happy Dr. Martin Luther King Day. Let the words of the master orator rejuvenate and restore you to take up the good fight for justice everywhere. Let the revolutionary remind you that our job is not done. But also, let the pastor give you pause to reflect on the constant job of rejuvenating and restoring your own faith.

“The Meaning of Everything” is not my favorite Simon Winchester book, but that’s kind of like saying La Belle Heaulmiere is not my favorite piece by Rodin.

Both artists have done much more approachable work. Rodin’s “The Kiss” or “Thinker” don’t ask a lot of the viewer. The art is safely evocative of things the viewer is already interested in, and the viewer starts right there with the artist.

Winchester’s “Atlantic” or “Krakatoa” bring the awesome power of nature and the mmercantile history of nations to bear on the reader. Winchester does not have far to take the reader to find interest for the reader is already with him.

Today’s lesson in unintended consequences:

King Mansa Musa of Mali was the wealthiest person the world has ever seen. Mali was a center of trade with abundant salt and gold, and being south of the Sahara, avoided many of the conflicts of the “known world,” allowing it to prosper.

Mansa Musa was a devout Muslim, and in the year 1324 decided to make the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. By some accounts, he brought 60,000 people with him in his caravan. Being a devout Muslim, and being on a pilgrimage, Mansa Musa took his Zakat tithing to the poor seriously. Being the richest man the world has ever seen, such abundant generosity brought so much gold to the local economy of Cairo (where he stopped on the way to Mecca) that it devalued the currency, creating hyper-inflation.

Today, in “women I wish we knew more about,” Fatima al-Fihri.

Fatima bint Muhammad Al-Fihriya Al-Qurashiya was probably born around 810 AD in Kairouan, modern day Tunisia. Her father was a wealthy merchant who ended up on the wrong side of politics and her family, along with 2,000 others, were expelled. They settled n the Moroccan town of Fez in such great numbers that a district of the town was named for the city they fled.

We know little about Fatima. Kairouan was a center of learning, and we know that Fatima was well educated. We know that her father did very well as a merchant in Fez, and that she and her sister inherited quite a sum. We know that she was married, and then widowed, all of which left her a wealthy, educated woman with control over how her wealth was to be spent (which was a significantly more likely combination in the Islamic world than it was in Europe in the 800s AD).

Politicians and pundits really like Christmas, but then everyone likes a baby shower. You can show off your Christian bona fides in a nice safe manner, adoring the helpless baby before he has a chance to grow up and start talking.

The baby Jesus has not yet driven money-changers from the temple. The baby Jesus does not have the voice to tell us that to look after the less fortunate is to look after him. Jesus will become an adult before he tells us not to make a public spectacle of following him. So as long as we see him as the baby, it’s safe to weaponize his birthday. We loudly proclaim our faith on the street corners, shaking our tambourines at anyone who would be so crass as to offer us the incorrect blessing. We may wait to exchange gifts on Christmas, but truly we’ve already received our reward.

A week ago, Shannon and I were crawling through the remains of the U. S. whaling industry. At one point, the industry accounted for one fifth of the nation’s economy, and it really was no wonder. This ship we were on sailed with a crew of 36, but it was the work of thousands to fit her out for each voyage. The empty barrels and casks alone would take a cooper a year to build. The miles of rigging, the sails, the provisions, whenever the Charles W. Morgan set sail, she did so with the labor of a good portion of New England behind her. She always returned, and she made a profit on each voyage she made.

The reason for her profit changed throughout her career. First it was oil for heating and lighting the cities of Europe. Then, whale-oil was displaced by oil from the ground, and it was fashion and art, be it in the form of baleen for corsets or bones for carving or perfumes. The oil was then sold for its still unmatched abilities to lubricate without ever losing viscosity.

The important lesson for today, however, is that whale oil stopped being used for heat and light long before steam and diesel powered ships made a question as to the avalibility of whales for harvest.  Oil stopped being used for heat and light for economic reasons long before the whales became scarce.  Oil from the ground was a far easier and more reliable source for industry.  A well that struck oil was not a multi-year gamble as was sending a ship to sea.

The same is true in Alaska.  We find more and more proven resources on the North Slope.  We have, by some accounts, more oil remaining on the slop than we had in proven resources when we built the pipe-line.  There are, however, more viable alternatives to oil, and economics are again talking.  General Motors has announced plans to offer 18 new all-electric vehicles by 2023, and is taking about an all-electric future.

Let me say that again.  The second largest auto manufacture in the world is planning for an all-electric future.

All of the oil in the North Slope will mean nothing if there is no market.  The time of having oil pay for Alaska’s government will end, and opening ANWAR or NPRA won’t change that.  Offshore oil in the Chukchi Sea won’t change that.  We can’t make up the difference in mining revenue, and we don’t have the tax base to maintain our roads and ships without oil. What we do have is a $61 Billion Permanent Fund, wisely set aside so it could be a perpetual source of wealth once the oil is gone.  Today, we received our private dividends.  To be sure, it was smaller than some had hoped, but the “full amount” would not be largesse for a State that is so rapidly burning through its reserves.

This is our future.  Yes, there are places we can still cut, but not by enough to meet our revenue without oil.  And yes, we could be gaining more for our oil now, but that is at best a short term solution.  And yes, we could raise our taxes quite a bit and still be one of the lower-taxed states in the union, but we can’t raise taxes enough to pay for the expenses set before us by our Constitution. There are angry signs by the side of the road, angry comments in our newspapers and angry posts on Facebook about the “theft” of the PFD, but they all miss the long-term point.  The PFD as we have known it is not sustainable without oil, and the demand for oil is not likely to come back.  Like the whale-oil before it, petroleum is facing the economic reality that it is no longer the fuel of the future.

This week, a man walked into a school where his estranged wife worked.  He shot her, and two of her students, in front of a room full of children.  I have yet to see anyone in the media ask where and how he was radicalized.

This week, a woman in Wisconsin was walking home from her prayers.  A man got out of a truck, demanded she take off her hijab.  He knocked her down, beat her and cut her with a knife.  I have yet to see anyone in the media ask where and how he was radicalized.

The reality is, even if we asked, it would be hard to answer that question in the case of these two women.  The CDC reports that 1 in 4 women have experienced severe physical violence from an intimate partner.  Simply put, violence against women is endemic in our society, and being endemic precludes being radical.

But it should not preclude us from asking the question, because asking the question is making the argument that the prevalence of violence need not be taken as normal.  We need to ask why someone thinks he can shoot his wife.  We need to ask how someone got to the point where they could physically attack a woman based on what she was wearing.  We need to ask the question every time until we no longer think of this as normal.  We need to ask until domestic violence takes some form of radicalization.

There are three holidays of note this week.  The one that I got off from work is the least significant.

On the 14th, we had the holiday of Saint Valentine of Rome.  According to legend Emperor Claudius the Cruel was afraid that solders who had families would be more devoted to their families than to their emperor, so forbade solders to marry.  The priest Valentine did not accept Claudius’s jurisdiction over love and marriage, and as the story goes, married several couples in defiance of the Claudius’s edict.

The earliest recorded Valentine written was from, Charles, Duke of Orléans who is said to have written poems to his wife in France while a prisoner in the Tower of London, his words of love escaping his confinement.

Even if history cannot corroborate these stories, Valentine’s Day is a day where relaxed social rules allow extravagance in romance.  We have permission to let romantic love take precedence over normal rules.

The second holiday was Elizabeth Peratrovich Day on the 16th.  That’s the day where we celebrate her work, and the work of many within the ANB/ANS, in passing the Alaskan Anti-Discrimination Act of 1941.  If you have not read the transcript of her testimony to the Alaskan Territorial Legislature, read it here.  Her description of the three types of people who practice discrimination will be the most important thing you read today.  When we celebrate her day, we are celebrating all of those who speak to power and authority with a moral clarity that cannot be ignored.

Which brings us to today, President’s Day.  Today was the day that chosen as a compromise so we did not have to chose which great man’s birthday we should celebrate.  We take their day off of work, and celebrate their contribution to history.

Presidents don’t make history any more than bankers build buildings or politicians launch ships.

People remembered in our history books stand in front of others who actually build and they take credit for the work of the builder.  So my wish for you today is this… enjoy your day off but remember, when love overcomes convention, when moral clarity speaks to power, THEN is when we make history.  And while there will always be a person at the front who gets the credit, it’s you and I who make it happen.

HMS Terror has been found well preserved in 11 meters of water.  It appears her crew had taken time while abandoning her, so perhaps she was caught in the ice, and the crew then removed useful items and tried to make for home on HMS Erebus.

The discovery of the two ships has been a mix of science and story.  Research vessels had been following Inuit oral tradition, and the first sighting was made by an Inut fisherman who later crewed on the research vessel that confirmed the find.  Some 150 years after the expedition, the Terror was still sitting proud on the ocean floor, with her mast above the water for Sammy Kogvik to find when he was fishing.  6 years later, that find is confirmed.

I wonder how the passengers and crew of the Crystal Serenity are taking the news of this find.  She entered Bar Harbor, Maine yesterday after cruising the Northwest Passage this summer.

/my post on the rediscovery of the HMS Erebus

There are several emails circulating that remember how much better things were.  They shows kids playing outdoors without cell phones.  They show dads and sons fishing, or teenagers dancing in a soda-shop, all clean, neat and protected.  They show kids riding to school on bikes without helmets and playing on equipment that would “drive safety-lawyers crazy.”

The thing is, if you look at those emails, all the people in them are white.

Sociologists started looking at the commodification of nostalgia in 1979, with Fred Davis’s piece Yearning for Yesterday: A Sociology of Nostalgia.  In it, Davis noted that nostalgia was nothing new, but creation of group nostalgia, mostly through advertising, was.  With nationwide media shared in common, regional memories became less powerful than national ones, and the national memories were being created by the advertisers of that same media.

Advertisers created a memory of a simpler past, where things made sense.  An image of Eden that we, as consumers, could buy into simply by buying their products.

It’s an easy pitch to make, most things make sense in hindsight.  To make that pitch, however, much of history needs to be omitted.  Salespeople are not hired to tell the whole truth, they are sell a product.   Frequently, they do so with allusion to a simpler past, which only works if the storybook past actually appears simpler.

So, we got a version of the past without strife.  We see middle-class kids playing, and the the kids with the luxury of being middle class in the 50’s are white.

The result of this advertising is that we now have a collective nostalgia that  merged with collective amnesia.  We look to a simpler time that we understand (in retrospect) by looking at, and idolizing, the lives of middle-classed children.  Lost in that picture is the grown up world of Mutually Assured Destruction, school de-segregation, or class and social unrest.

The ultimate nostalgia trip is the idea of the fall from Eden.  The tale predates modern media, but has similar common elements.  Art from thought Abrahamic history depicts Adam and Eve being cast out of paradise, never to return.   The sin for which they were cast out was none other than that of understanding Good and evil.  Before they knew that, things were simpler and more idealistic.  A paradise to be sure, but a paradise ultimately made possible by ignorance.  Most of the religious artwork that depicts the scene shows Adam and Eve looking back, longing for what they lost.  Like us, the garden seems ideal, but with our experience in the garden predating our understanding of good and evil, how could we know?

When we talk about making America great “again,” we are panting our own picture, with us gazing back at paradise and longing for ignorance.  We dream, not of President Eisenhower putting a Christmas message into space on the back of a modified ICBM, but of a little girl picking a daisy in a field.  When I look back, I can’t help but hear the count-down voice-over, and shudder at how complicated life really was.

I much prefer to look forward to the greatness ahead.

I recently commented that the “oldies” radio station was playing music from my college years. Driving into work, I heard the Goo Goo Dolls, followed by an announcer who said “I know, get over it.  We’re playing your music on this station.  It eventually happens to everyone.”

I must admit, it made my day.

My cohort has reached a new milestone in life.  As I was driving home yesterday I realized that every song I heard was on the radio when I was in college.  This would not be a big deal, but I was listening to the oldies station.

Well, my friends, we’ve made it.  The nation’s advertisers have coalesced around us as a prime demographic.  They are showing us the sort of interest that we have not seen since before we got our mortgages.  We are in the sweet spot now.  Next, we will be loosing some of our stations to the younger wave of music and disk jockeys that tell the kids it’s all about them, but for now, the radio is OURS!

Apropos, disk jockey is an amazingly resilient moniker.  It worked for both acetate and vinyl disks, compact disks and hard disks.  Really, it’s only now that we are using solid state drives that DJ’s are no longer spinning disks in any way shape or forum.

There is a certain vibe to public buildings that are mostly empty with those still left still having work to do.  I am sitting in a university library over spring break.  Desks are empty and computers are plentiful, but the people around me are working with a relaxed focus, much as I did through almost every “break” in college.  There is none of the frantic wasted energy of finals, just the determination of the tortoise taking advantage of a nap in the college schedule to slowly pull back into the race.

It’s the same feeling as an airport or bus station at midnight, or a shopping mall an hour after closing.  Whatever mania the day may bring is replaced with custodians trying to repair the frayed edges of the day gone by, and the occasional traveler trying to catch a nap on a bench.  Everyone trapped inside a living space as it takes the time to breathe.

Reflection is itself a reflexive action.  When running full out, if forced to slow down the mind still keeps going, keeps making connections.  So, I’m sitting at a public computer, a Foucalt Pendulum swinging in the background, the rattle of library carts as a student workers re-shelve in peace, and surrounded by tortoises.  My people.  I’ve been there often enough that it’s hard to not feel a kinship with those around me who are quietly, urgently moving forward while the library around them breathes deeply.

When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:

To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among people,
To make music in the heart.

                                                                   –Howard Thurman

It’s so easy to dream of the days gone by, so hard to think of the times to come.

The Grace to accept every moment as a gift is a gift that is given to some.

What can we do with our days but work and hope?  Let your dreams bind your work with your play.

What can you do with each moment of your life, but love ’till you’ve loved it away?

Love ’till you’ve loved it away.

 

There are sorrows enough for the whole world’s end, there are no guarantees but the grave.

This life that we live and the times that we spend are treasures too precious to save.

What can we do with our days but work and hope?  Let your dreams bind your work with your play.

What can you do with each moment of your life, but love ’till you’ve loved it away?

Love ’till you’ve loved it away.

 

-Bob Franke

It is in vogue for Presidential contenders to out-do each other with more extreme ways of saying “no” to Syrian refugees.  When making sure the vetting process was not enough, Trump simply said we should stop accepting them altogether.  When Christie needed to cut through the noise, he made it explicit that even toddlers were a risk.  Meanwhile the French, even in the aftermath of the attacks on their soil, are continuing to accept refugees.  This brings to mind for me Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s meditation on the parable of the Good Samaritan.

In the parable, Jesus tells us of a man traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho who gets beaten, robbed and left for dead.  The dying man is passed by a priest, and than a Levite, both of whom continue on their way, refusing to render assistance.  Then a Samaritan, always a strange choice for a hero in Biblical stories, came to the man, helped him to safety and paid for his care.  Jesus calls upon us to be like that Samaritan.

Dr. King’s speech, I’ve Been to the Mountaintop references the parable;

I remember when Mrs. King and I were first in Jerusalem. We rented a car and drove from Jerusalem down to Jericho. And as soon as we got on that road, I said to my wife, “I can see why Jesus used this as the setting for his parable.” It’s a winding, meandering road. It’s really conducive for ambushing.

You start out in Jerusalem, which is about 1200 miles — or rather 1200 feet above sea level. And by the time you get down to Jericho, fifteen or twenty minutes later, you’re about 2200 feet below sea level. That’s a dangerous road.

In the days of Jesus it came to be known as the “Bloody Pass.” And you know, it’s possible that the priest and the Levite looked over that man on the ground and wondered if the robbers were still around. Or it’s possible that they felt that the man on the ground was merely faking. And he was acting like he had been robbed and hurt, in order to seize them over there, lure them there for quick and easy seizure. And so the first question that the priest asked — the first question that the Levite asked was, “If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?”

But then the Good Samaritan came by. And he reversed the question: “If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?”

Several candidates who would be our President, several governors are calling on us to ask what will become of us.  Meanwhile the French, who have recent experience with what could happen, are reminding us that we need to reverse the question.

All the world’s a stage.  We are  all merely players.  In our time, we play many parts.  Right now, the city of Raqqa is playing the part of whipping boy for the world’s most powerful men.  When Vladimir Putin needs to show strength after ISIS bombs a plane, Russia bombs Raqqa.  When Francois Hollande needs to show strength after the attacks in Paris, France bombs Raqqa.  Meanwhile, ISIS knows full well the role of Raqqa, and cleared out of the targeted areas before the airstrikes came.  The French are hitting abandoned ISIS bases while the Russians hit bridges, stadiums, clinics and hospitals.

Meanwhile our media has it’s part to play.  NPR had a piece this morning that discussed the disparity of news reporting between the Paris attacks and the attacks in Beirut.  Eleven stories talked about Paris this morning, there were no further stories about Beirut.  None was needed, as NPR pointed out the newsworthiness of the Beirut story is tempered by the fact that we expect it there, we don’t expect it in Paris.

If death becomes less newsworthy when it becomes expected, it is probably telling that neither this morning’s show nor yesterday’s talked about last weekends mass shooting in Texas.  6 campers were shot and killed.  The campers have moved into their final part; mere oblivion.  Their death is yet another shooting and is not even newsworthy.

We come now to the politicians.  The merchants of fear are playing their part.  They would have us fear refugees, the Trojan Horse that would bring violence to our country.  The violence is already here.  We have 5% of the world’s population, and 31% of the world’s mass shootings.  With 190,000 murders since 9/11 we have a history of violence that we are unwilling to discuss least we be forced to make uncomfortable decisions as a society.  Instead, they expect us to play the part of the coward who is afraid to face our own demons.  They would rather us be interested in facing the threat posed by fleeing refugees.

We’ve yet to decide what part we will play.

I’ve had a lot to think about since listening to our President sing “Amazing Grace.” I normally would not reflect on the leader of a secular nation in a religious context, but after President Obama delivered a magnificent eulogy that referenced racism as our countries original sin, it’s hard to not to.

President Obama did not talk about the Sumerian Woman at the Well in his speech but that is where my mind goes when I reflect on the nature of grace. It’s a simple story, but one of ones I find the most challenging. In the story, the woman’s relationship with Jesus grows not because she is perfect, but because she is imperfect. In the story, Jesus meets with the woman and tells her her sins. She does not deny them. She does not protest. She accepts him for who he is, and then goes on to be his first cleric, the first person sent before him to give the good news. She tells her town that the messiah is coming, and that he knew her and all her sins. To do so, she had to confess to her fellow townsfolk that she was a sinner, and allow all to be amazed that he knew what she had kept so secret.

To sin is an old archery term. It simply means to miss the mark. When you do so, you pick up another arrow, and you try again until you get it right. You can’t do that if you don’t look at the target after you shoot. If you don’t acknowledge to yourself that you missed, you never get better. In this way, President Obama was quite correct to call us out as a nation on the areas where we still sin. He was right to bring up economic injustice, he was right to bring up voter suppression. Much like the Sumerian Woman, we are elevated not when we hide our sins, but when we confront them.

So, we must confront our sins as a nation, but we can’t stop with what happens within our borders. Our original sin is not just racism, but it is that we as a nation maintain our position and authority through violence.

We have given our President the authority to target people on foreign soil with drone strikes. This authority gives him the position of being both judge, jury and executioner. The process used to determine a valid target is shrouded secrecy. There is no daylight, there is little discussion. What we know is that there is a “Disposition Matrix” which determines if someone is a “legitimate” target. There is a lack of transparency in how we come to that determination which makes it impossible for us to learn from our sins, to re-focus, and to improve. It also makes it impossible to understand how we could mistake a wedding convoy for an arms shipment, and impossible for us to explain to the victims what steps we are taking to make sure it never happens again.

President Obama has taken flack for talking about racism, but he was right to do so. There is nothing wrong with this country that can’t be fixed by what is right with it. When we work on problems, we make things better. President Obama has taken the first step, but the conversation must be bigger than the racism within our own borders. Like the Sumerian Woman, we could move forward with the Amazing Grace that comes from self-reflection. Like the slaver captain who wrote that song after freeing his human cargo, we can improve ourselves and the world, but first we need to be willing to look at ourselves. We are still blind. We need to be willing to see.

The Sun is the source of essentially all color on our planet. Sunlight is full-spectrum, and when you see something that has color, what you see is the reflected color that is not absorbed.  When the sun is at its brightest, the world is over-saturated with color, and we see less definition.  Paradoxically, there is so much color that we actually see less of it as direct sunlight trends to wash out everything. It is only when the sun is filtered that we see nuance and hue. Under a grey overcast day with light rain the solid monolithic green of a forest a becomes a multitude of greens, as well as reds, browns and yellows.  Resurrection Bay, on Alaska’s Seward Peninsula, is a deep fiord that accentuates that effect with steep craggy mountains providing depth and texture, shadow and light.  It really is the coastal rainforest at its finest.

Today, I saw the sun through a different filter.  The Alaska Sealife Center includes a delightful aquarium that is a must see if you ever get to Seward.  Every time I visit I discover something new. The first time it was the obvious things, watching birds “flying” through the water, seeing birds in a whole new light, and environment, as they show more grace underwater than one can imagine as they kind of lumber through the air.  I went back, and learned about fish policy, and the attempts at restoring Prince William Sound, and what has our had not recovered from the Exxon Valdez spill. This time my discovery was a new way to look at rain.

The signature piece for the Sea Life Center is the outdoor pen for the rehabilitation of marine mammals, filled with water constantly taken from and returned to Resurrection Bay.  Greater than 2 stories tall, you can stand at the bottom, and look up at the surface of the water.  What I discovered with this trip is that in a rainfall, each drop becomes a pin-prick of light; sunlight refracted to a diamond’s radiance.  As the water hits, it creates circles emanating outwards, each of which creates a mini rainbow, as transient as the raindrop itself.  Filtered light falling on water from the bay, showing a new layer of nature’s beauty.

I have come to a  fantastic realization; I have finally stopped following my dreams.  I am now following my happiness instead.

I have not given up on my dreams.  If a leprechaun were to grant me a wish (aside from the obvious of simply making for me a good fitting pair of shoes), I would have a band full of strings and harmony, and we would be performing hopeful, lightly political music at Winnipeg this summer.  We would jam on workshop stages with other musicians and share The Craic long into the night.  There are no handy leprechauns,  so getting to Winnipeg (or Carnegie) is not a matter of dreaming but a matter of following a series of choices, and not ones I can make.

A couple of years ago, I went to a workshop at Winnipeg about the economics of the entertainment industry.  In  it, we were given the best possible advice that anyone could give.  We were asked why we wanted to be professional musicians, and then told that there is only one “good” answer.  “That you must.  You can love music, you can love to entertain, you can want to serve, but at the end of the day the only thing that will be worth all of the sacrifices you will need to make is if being a musician is simply what you must do.”

I have spent some time “on the road.”  While I will always love traveling I have come to the conclusion that the “romance of the road” is a myth we tell ourselves so we can enjoy the resulting show.  For the brief time I was on the road following my dreams.  I remember long drives going over in my head what I needed to remember for my part and long drives home categorizing what I needed to fix in my costume or re-living the audience interactions where I should have been brilliant but was not.  I remember waking up in a hotel room, and looking for a phone book to figure out where I was.

I also remember specific nights more than a decade ago on where the craic was good.  Those were amazing nights and I could certainly see how some people must have that lifestyle.  For days after such a night creativity flowed out of me faster than my brain could register.   Poetry, writing, or solutions to stubborn problems would seem to come from nowhere.  There is not a feeling like it, and the best way to get to that feeling is to be with imaginative people who you don’t otherwise spend much time with.  People who have enough in common to share stories, but who have not yet shared their stories with each other.  Travelers who come together for brief periods of time.

I have felt this at festivals, at youth hostels, at conferences, at pub song-circles and in the back of a greyhound bus.  This, as much as the audience interaction, is what I dream about.  This is what the leprechaun would give me, but amazing craic on its own cannot equate to happiness for me.

I wrote some pretty good songs while under the influence of other people’s creativity, but the themes are all of saying goodbye to those people and of meeting again sometime in the future.  They are songs of not being together now.  I was in my early 20’s, and writing music that was essentially re-living the glory days.

Lao Tzu is attributed to saying “If you are depressed you are living in the past, if you are anxious you are living in the future and if you are at peace you are living in the present.”  Following my dreams lead to a few glorious moments of being in the present, surrounded by a a lot of time being either anxious about how I was going to get to a present moment, or depressed about no longer being there.  I was not very often happy, and that is what I have given up by not following my dreams.

Shannon and I are building a family.  Some parts are harder and more complex than we had bargained on, but with her I am not focusing my energy on a few nights of matchless camaraderie, but focusing on building what we have, every single day.  Our short term energy is focused on a fair next week, and the creative outpouring that will entail, but it is a fair we share, and when it is over, we will share in that process as well.  After that, we will share trips to see more of our family, and then the next project we choose to be a part of, together.  Eventually (no, this is not an announcement) we will be sharing projects with our kids in an expanded family.

Not following my dreams is allowing me to be very, very happy.  I won’t need a phone book to tell me where I am; I will be home.

I probably owe some of you an apology.   I went back through my blog, and I made public much of my old poetry.  Some of it is good, some is not, but although all of it is old, apparently my blog emailed each piece as a new post.  I suppose that everything old is new.

I graduated.  My hope is that I will now have time to devote to writing again, which prompted this excessive in the first place.

The webpage history is split into 4 basic parts.

• My original website, which had some writing on it, but no room for response,
• The LiveJournal days, which had some good writing and some real and meaningful responses from a few good friends,
• The Facebook days, which has a lot of posts shared with a lot of people, taking a lot of time, but ultimately having the depth and breadth of a mud puddle,
• This page, which we have yet to develop.

Essentially all of my poetry comes from the first two parts.  While a quick reading of the poems would suggest that I wrote only when I was feeling depressed, it was actually rather the opposite.  When I was feeling pretty good, I was feeling creative.  Many of the songs I wrote were actually written or fleshed out at Hostfest, written during breaks from performing as a troll, or on the trip back when my head was still buzzing with excitement and a desire to create.  I just found it easy to write about feeling depressed because it is an easier subject to find a models in art to draw inspiration from.

That desire to create has never gone away.  The difference is that I actually used to give myself the time to do so.  LiveJournal as a format encouraged spending time on posts, and the posts were worth reading.  As I migrated to Facebook, I found myself spending less time on posts, and then wondering why I only got so many likes.  Instead of responding to friends posts, I simply liked them and moved on.  I got in that same habit in real life.  I would walk the dogs, take time and think, and come up with something worth developing.  I would then get home, fire up the computer, and … fill my head with other headlines, other ideas, and all manner of things that would choke the life out of any ideas I could have been developing.

About a year ago, I walked away from Facebook, but I still did not give myself time to create.  The idea of growing ideas itself withered on the vine as I looked to other priorities.  So, I have made public some of my old writings as a reminder to myself of what I want to improve and develop.  The “Songs” tag has a list of much of that work.  Some of it good, some of it not, all of which comes to a conspicuous end as I became more addicted to Facebook.  So, hopefully this will complete my return to the creativity of that time, when I knew the difference, as Kelz so beautifully put it, between being mindFULL and being mindful

Sometimes I wonder if the astrologers have a point.  It’s hard to conceive of a planet 50 million miles away having an effect on the goings on in life, but something seems to bundle events.  Something seems to be the catalyst for change, and once it starts, it spreads to parts of your life that are totally unrelated.  Frankly, a planet in retrograde makes just about as much sense as anything else.

The task this year has been to hold on.  The idea of a journal, well intended as it may be, fell to the wayside as I finished my Master of Public Administration, lost an aunt, visited the family, lost a cat, gained a dog, and tried varied in interesting new ways of using health insurance.  Somewhere along the way, the seasons turned.

I can actually tell you exactly when it happened.  Graduation.  The whites and greys of winter had melted, leaving the golden remains of autumn for all to see.  Then, the day I received my Master’s hood, the budding leaves hit critical mass on the mountains behind my house.  Green.  Such lively, vibrant colors.  Shades of green beyond description set off the remaining gold on the ground.  Green and gold.  The school colors for UAA.  It was a fantastic day.

I will get back to writing down my original thoughts soon.  For now, I will redirect you to another blog, and ask that you go read in tribute to a friend who died last week.

Ron played a large role in my childhood, and certainly in my education as to what adulthood was really all about.  Whether his stories were true or not, whether he believed his conspiracy theories or not, he was a brilliant man who taught me to look at things a different way.

My years at Saint Olaf College taught me to frame my thoughts in thesis, antithesis and synthesis, always looking to logically check myself and my assumptions.  Ron was there to remind me that the very mental discipline it takes to check your own work is itself a trap.  You can go over the same problem in your head over and over, but sometimes you just need to take some black-powder up to Castle Hill, fire off the old cannons at 3:00 AM, and see what happens.

As for adequately describing the man himself, words honestly fail me.  For that, I ask you to hop on over to John Straley’s blog, where you can read his much more eloquent hand and meet my departed friend.