There is so much going on these days in the world outside my fence that it’s hard not to notice, but one thing’s for sure, trying to get reliable news about anything, is a little bit like drinking from a fire hose. The stories come at me in bits and pieces and new bits replace old pieces before I can figure out what the first bit meant and follow ups get lost in all the confusion if any follow ups come at all. It’s enough to make someone want to run and hide, except that may be the point, although that just might be me trying to give purpose to random events.

My world is getting turned upside down. In addition to learning I have to hate Canada and love Russia now I’m starting to hear that empathy might cause the fall of Western Civilization. That’s going to kill the sympathy card business and lord knows what florists will do. And talk about re-thinking history. It seems as though the success of the various civil rights and civil liberties movements for blacks, women, and gays was a direct result of empathy, of people walking a mile in someone else’s shoes, and thinking, “Wow, that’s uncomfortable and why do they have to do that?”

I think the AI revolution has started and it’s more insidious than I thought. Yesterday, without warning, six large fingernail clippers showed up on the island in my kitchen. I have no idea how the hive mind communicated with them, but it did and there they were. Of course, there might be another less fun explanation. Whenever I’ve needed a clipper I get one from a place where I know I keep one–my dopp kit, my car, the bathroom, my guitar case, or a drugstore. Then at the end of the day, when I empty my pockets I put the clipper on the island. Although I did not know I possessed six of them, and I don’t know how I failed to see them gathering. That was a revelation and an interesting discovery.

I wanted to be an altar boy in the strongest possible way when I was in the fifth grade in 1956. I wanted to wear the black cassock and white surplice. I wanted to be part of the mass.  And I did it in 29 Palms, California. I was thrilled the first time the priest said the opening lines, “Introibo ad altare Dei,” and I replied, “ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam.” Which when translated means, “I will go to the altar of God, the God who gives joy to my youth.”, and not only did the mass give joy to my youth, but so did the gospels. And even today when I see the acronym DEI, I think of those lines and how the mass and the gospels infused my response to the civil rights movements for blacks, women, and gays.

Inclusion. This is a hard one, because on a personal level it’s likely we spend most of our lives excluding people and things from our lives. And while it's logical to argue that diversity is good and exposure to different foods, and music, and art will enrich our lives, most of us find ourselves settling in with the familiar religion, music, people and food that we like. And that feels pretty normal. There are even laws to protect our ability to choose, and laws to protect us from people who want to get too close to us.

I like the word equity. I have some in my home, and I try to have it in my life. It’s about fairness, but like its brother, diversity, it has gotten a bad rap in some quarters recently. What I don’t understand is why? Equity is baked into almost everything we do in our lives, especially sports. We handicap golfers and bowlers to even the playing field. We divide fighters into weight classes so that fighters are evenly matched. Horses and race cars are managed. Our public schools are divided into classes based on size. It’s about equity.

I was re-watching the Good Shepherd the other day, a 2006 film by Robert De Niro. It’s a fictional work about the creation of American Intelligence services. There’s an early scene where De Niro’s character is recruiting Matt Damon’s character to join the new endeavor prior to the US entering World War II. They’re at a Skull and Bones retreat, which is a secret society at Yale. In a quiet room over cigars and brandy, De Niro explains, “I’ll be looking for a few good men to head up various departments, in other words no Jews, or Negroes, or very few Catholics…”

I like to think of myself as a man of words. It’s mostly an old fashioned idea. These days everyone communications with video or podcasts. And I doubt any of my little 300 word blog posts will ever go viral. But I like words and the imagination required to make them real. Although, if they were shorter, they might have a better chance because, perhaps being pithy counts more than I think. Anyway, I have a few thoughts on some words in current usage.

A summer or so ago I went with friends to sit in the Guadalupe river. We had beer, snacks, and a popup shelter. We were joined by about a million of our fellow citizens who were floating down the river on inner tubes, boom boxes booming. Needless to say, all those people doing all the things people do in rivers, made the typically clear Guadalupe about as muddy as the Mississippi, and I can only imagine what things were being added to the soup by the tubers.

When I first started this blog in 2014, when it was solely on Facebook, I got a comment one day that said, “So what?” It stopped me in my tracks and made me want to run and hide. But then I decided I was writing for myself and if people wanted to come and read it they were welcome, but I’d still write, regardless. In the beginning, it was mostly about nature and life in the Hill Country. Then, in a seismic shift, I started writing about my wife’s illness and later, her death.

It was another day of mulching and mowing and yard work for me while trying to distance myself from the goings on in Washington D.C. Having convinced myself there’s nothing much I can do, having already voted, I had decided to let the big dogs eat and try to not watch or even comment. But I’m sensitive to the currents of history and I’m an interested citizen, so I look their way on occasion. Layoffs are the big news I see, and that’s interesting to me because I’ve laid off people before, and it was hard to do, especially because I delivered the news personally.

I miss the Sunday paper. A massive ball of newsprint, featuring the comics (all in color), a big sports section recapping Saturday’s games, Parade magazine (a national publication), and an entertainment section talking about movies, music and books. The Houston Chronicle’s entertainment vehicle was Zest magazine. I loved walking out on Sunday morning, picking up the paper, then parceling out the sections to my wife and myself. 

There might be forces at play in the world today that are beyond our understanding. And I might be willing to subscribe to a conspiracy theory if I could find one. At the moment I feel like a mammal in the age of dinosaurs, tiny, underfoot, and out of sight. The titans of our age are galloping across the stage, trumpeting like bull elephants, and the only thing I am to them is a number in a data set.

Yesterday, on my blog about Jimmy Carter, I posted a picture of a flag at half staff. The flag in question stands in the National Cemetery at Fredericksburg, Virginia, on Mayres Heights, the hill Confederates defended and Union soldiers attacked. It was one sided. The Union soldiers were climbing uphill over open ground. The Confederates with their cannons were well hidden in a sunken road. It was a slaughter.

It’s a national day of mourning for Jimmy Carter. I remember when he won the presidency in 1977. It was a breath of fresh air after the Nixon years. But it didn’t take long, however, for him to fall foul of the hell-bent-for-leather American psyche. In response to the energy crisis he lowered the speed limit on US highways to 55 and he suggested we wear sweaters rather than turn up the heat. His biggest crime, however, was failing to bomb Iran back to the stone age when they took our hostages.

On my recent trip to Virginia I visited the Civil War battlefield at Fredericksburg. It was the sight of another of those Union defeats attributed to poor union generalship and a failure to move in a timely manner. I’d read all about the battle, now was my chance to walk the ground. It was moving, and it's still hard to comprehend how they did it, how they faced the roaring guns and the bloody screams of fallen comrades to try and fight their way to the top of Maryes Heights against an entrenched foe.

I’ve been amazed at the response to the Bob Dylan biopic. Glad, actually, but I’m not sure if I want to see it, having lived it, if only at a distance. I sort of like all those characters keeping their place in my own movie, the one swimming around in my head, the movie in which they shaped my taste in music and my taste for life. Plus, I never much cared to know who was dating whom or how Dylan’s contemporaries felt about him. It was just gossip.

I like public transportation. I’m staying in Virginia just outside DC. Anywhere I want to go in the town, there’s a metro line that will get me there.I like the convenience, the commonality, the collegiality of it.

I got my book yesterday. Six Impossible Things. It’s less than 100 pages but I think it’s going to open up the world of quantum mechanics for me, or at least give me something to think about that’s bigger than myself.

We got a semi-big rain last night. By my gauge, it was nearly half an inch. My new roof appears to work as do the new gutters which now shed water at all four corners of the house.