The Last Postcard Writer

For years I considered myself the last postcard writer. What used to be a common pasttime in America while traveling had, at least among people below a certain age, apparently dwindled down to just yours truly plus a few other throwbacks in my tribe with whom I am secretly in league.

It goes along with the general decline of all so-called "snail mail." I find that name curious, as it implies slowness, where in fact written community is much more efficient at conveying person-to-person communication in a meaningful way.  Remember being young and feeling yourself to a slightly different person with each passing season of the year? There is no better way to feel the momentum of your life again than by writing letters to old friends, handwritten if possible but fine to type it as well. 

Most people today would feel uncomfortable with that form of swift personal evolution, as well as how fast you can bond or re-bond with someone. You will learn that we have exiled this from our culture. I dare say most people would find that terrifying. It's terrifying to feel that alive.

My postcard-writing adventures started, I think, in the Fall of 2004 durnig a cross country road trip, and then picked up in the greatest intensity in the Fall of 2008, during my Great Road Trip Eastward during thte Presidential Election, at which time it became a mania. Going up the Ohio River from mouth to the forks, I stopped half a dozen times a day looking for postcards in the most obscure of places, and always attempted to buy stamps at the tiniest post offices in towns where the post office---and maybe a Methodist or Baptist Church---were the only things to indicate a town was there. Going into these post offices---which gave the excuse to stop my car and plant my feet on the ground in so many little places---was one of the most exquisite stretches of travel I've ever experienced, especially on a solo road trip. I purposely bought only a few stamps at a time, so I would have to stop and buy more. I often wrote the cards in the evening by lantern light in my campground, which was always not far from the river. As I wet upstream I felt like I was drilling down into the spiritual historical core of the nation. 

Sending that many postcards per day required having an expansive list of people to which I could send postcards. I wanted to include as many people as possible. I thought it might be like a little gift to them, to receive such a thing in the mail. It felt like everyday was Valentine's Day, the third grade version.

At the time I thought of myself as Me vs. Facebook. I could see Facebook was swallowing up the last remaining human-level of communication between friends and family. "Postcards are my Facebook," I told my sister, when I reached her place outside Boston in early November just a few days before the election. 

Of course I broke down at one point and made a Facebook account. I felt I needed to understand it. I decided to "go under" in the Nietzschean sense, even though I knew it would be like descending into Hell. That was 2009, and indeed Facebook was Hell, but I got what I wanted, which was to understand how it was destroying society. I went insane doing it, but gosh I learned.  What did I learn? Good question. Thankfully I deactivated in 2016 before the first Trump election and haven't looked back. 

I hardly send many postcards anymore. My list of recipients is smaller. I would send more and to more people, but it feels awkward now---handwritten mail is too personal maybe. But if I do have a friend who is up to receiving my postcards, they will get them at every stop. I've even mused at tapping into my expansive collection of unsent cards I've accumulated over the years.  I am prepared to rebuild civilization that way if necessary.

Climbing Mt. Everest

 Today is my dear old friend Charles' sixtieth birthday. We were bosom friends in high school and went to Georgetown together. In May 1988 we took the greatest road trip of all time, the two of us, from Salem, Oregon to Nashville, Tennessee in his 1974 Dodge Dart. We were both twenty-three years old. I remember almost every minute of it. Heck I remember every minute of that entire spring and summer, I think. Some eras of your life are like that.

He and I have drifted apart over the years, but we are still friendly. I am one of many people he knows in life, but there is no substitute for the trust of old friends, which are the greatest thing in the world..  I saw him last year at a wedding in California. Even though we haven't been bosom friends for a long time, it would not surprise me too terribly much if such an opportunity came around again, provided we both lived near each other. Right now he lives in Hong Kong. I think if I went there and sought him out, we would have a good time.

I wanted to wish him a happy birthday but the only reliable contact I had for him is on LinkedIn. He posts on LinkedIn a lot as part of his environmental activist position, or vocation, perhaps. I told him that LinkedIn was the shittiest way to wish an old friend a happy milestone birthday. I quoted from a famous football coach, "once you get the six handle on your age, you enter a whole new space." Indeed.

Since high school, Charles has been a fanatical runner, a passion shared by many of my friends in high school. He is also an avid outdoorsman and alpinist. I would not be surprised if he were, at this very moment, on his way to climb Mount Everest.  I've heard there are no postcards up there, so I don't expect I'd get one.

As for my part I had what amounts to a fantastic day. I hope his, and yours, is as good as well. Indeed, I do feel so old and so young.

Palm Sunday

 We just back from Palm Sunday brunch at Fred and Jan's place in Mesa, in the RV Park. Getting down there was aa bear, even on a Sunday. Most of the 101 is blocked for miles from our exit southward and the detour took us twenty minutes. Then getting off in Mesa at Val Vista Road, we found that thoroughfare completely blocked as well, entailing another detour.

The quiche Jan made was well heated by the time we arrived. Jamie was there. I had not seen her in at least a year I think. She had flown down from Louisville to her her mom and Fred, and of course her older sister Jessica.

Jessica is quite a free spirit. She works as a midwife in a birthing century in southeastern Indiana. She was telling stories of birthing adventures around the taable after brunch, including a woman who wass trained opera singer and whose breathing exercises consisted of her singing her labor. 

Jamie has two daughters by two different fathes. Her youngest daughter Mary often visits Mesa, or at leasat she did during her high school years and her college years, which just ended.  But on this trip it was just Jamie.

I'm always wary talking to Jamie at first because her politics are very strongly leftist.  I don't want to make a joke that I might make easily in front of the rest of them, but which might cause a defensive reaction. My dry black sense of humor is not for everyone,  I can push almost anyone to the limit of their tolerance of humor.

In contrast to my fears, we actually got along well. At one point we were siting around the dining room table able the meal and the subject came up of monasteries and convents.  Jamie mentioned the one in Bardstown, Kentucky near where she lives. She mentioned it was shrinking.

I said that this was probably not because of lack of people wanting to live their and join the community. Instead it was often the Catholic Church hierarchy, which hated these communities and was trying to abolish them.

I went into to launch into a whole monologue about how we live broken apart from other, in isolation, misery, and mental illness.  I said that there is a growing yearning for something more.  I mentioned how the RV park in which Fred and Jan lived was a partial solution, but really for Baby Boomers and select Gen X who would appreciate the communal aspects of it. It did not include the one issue that is the most important aspect of happiness for human beings, which is the communal sharing of meals. An ideal solution would include this, not as a forced thing for every meal, but an attractive option that is well used.

I said that within ten years there will be a huge push for people to. be able to live this way, especially among young people. Many types of solutions will be explored. Monasteries are one such solution.

The way Jamie was looking at me I could tell she agreed with just about everything I was saying. This is the way I like to talk to people.  I make people forget about the things we disagree about it.

She didn't even mind when I pressed on the accelerator by mentioning my belief that in many, but not all cases, these attempts at spontaneous real community will be in the form of traditionalism, and even an outright imitation of the past. In part this will be an attempt to negotiate a communal relationship with various modern technologies. "The Amish have one solution, obviously."

In response she mentioned a tiny house community put together by a group of older divorced women who had wanted to live in a communal way. 

See, we can get along.

Time is Different?

 One of the trends on social media (X that is) that has fascinated me lately is a perception among some people that somehow "time is different." 

I see this quite a bit from strangers in my feed. It comes in the form of the expression of an uncanny feeling that somehow the very flow of time has undergone a metaphysical change in recent years, as if we are in some kind of End Times. Most commonly people express this in relation to 2020. Nothing has felt the same since then, people say, but no one can say exactly how. Yet from the many comments such posts receive, I can infer that the feeling is widespread. People of all ages seem to feel it, even young people, which is odd. 

To focus on political changes is to miss the point entirely. It is not an expression just that "things have changed". That would be part of a normal old-style flow of time and change. We have all felt that. It was the dominant feeling in the 20th century and led to a cultural of rolling nostalgia. We are beyond that now. It is something deeper apparently. One could offer rational explanations, but these too defy easy interpretations that are satisfying.

Lenten Deceleration

 Yesterday I realized that I had been writing on this blog almost continuously since early December when we went to Hawaii. It has been one of the most intense periods of writing since I started doing this seventeen years ago in 2008, for various reasons. 

I woke up feeling like maybe I'd hit the wall for now in what I can express here and thought I should take a short break, at least until Easter, to devote the energy to prayer while it is still Lent. This is often how I do Lent, which is to start slow and lazy and increase it towards the end. With less than two weeks to go, this is time to increase my devotions. Without such devotions, the Paschal celebration is much less meaningful to us.

Humility--the old saying is that it is not about thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less. I think I've done all the self-reflection and self-examination I care to do for the moment. I don't regret anything I've written, or take any of it back. But I think I'll let God do the talking for a while, except for my prayers, which will be in part for you, dear reader.

When in Doubt---Poetry

 I was just reading that today (April 7) is the birthday of William Wordsworth (1770-1850), who is certainly one of my favorite poets. Happy Birthday to anyone who shares the birthday of this genius as well.

As it seems this week I am confronting some Lenten themes of repentance and introspection on spiritual themes, in part while trying to stay sane while working with AI to create more AI, I find solace in this well known work of his. For some reason, I love the accented syllable in "wreathed" in the last line. 

The World Is Too Much With Us

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;

The winds that will be howling at all hours,

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;

For this, for everything, we are out of tune;

It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be

A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

Ok let's have another!

My Heart Leaps Up

My heart leaps up when I behold 

   A rainbow in the sky:

So was it when my life began; 

So is it now I am a man; 

So be it when I shall grow old, 

   Or let me die!

The Child is father of the Man;

And I could wish my days to be

Bound each to each by natural piety.

Everyone is Broken

 Maybe it's because it's Lent, but lately the voices of discouragement have me very much on the defensive. They remind of my past failures and how I hurt other people and messed up opportunities to share true friendship and fellowship with others.

Deep inside me is a great fear, one that has existed in my since childhood. It is that in any friendship I make with others, that the friendship is always more important to me than to the other person. My fear is always that unless I keep the other person rightly entertained, amused, etc., they will lose interest in me and move on. So I have assumed that all the maintenance of the friendship is on me. 

The people who have broken this pattern with me, who have demonstrated and proven that they value the friendship as much as I do, or perhaps even more, are the ones who earn my lifetime trust and loyalty. So rare do they seem to me.

I am particularly susceptible to believing that other people are fragile. In my soul, I fear that I break them because of my enthusiasm for engaging with them in playful activity. I was conscious of this fear even when I was three years old. Americans in particular--at least the ones below a certain age--feel fragile to me, as if you have to maintain a perfect record to stay friends, and a single false step will make people turn their backs on you. With older folks and foreigners I know, I feel this much less. I feel that friendships are much more durable, and people are more patient and forgiving with each other's foibles. I feel like this has something to do with technology, specifically television, and how it created an postmodern expectation of human interactions that is impossible to achieve among real human beings.

Part of this is the fear that I will say or do the wrong thing unintentionally that will cause the other person to get insulted or angry with me, and they will then be done with me at that point. I will break them, or as I used to say, "blow them up." They go away, not wanting to be friends anymore. There are no seconds chances. Only time heals. Perhaps they come back, but then I am even more apprehensive about blowing them up again.

This idea that other people are fragile in this way is so embedded in my soul that it feels like a core part of my identity.  

In my wisdom I look back at the times I forced people to stay away from me because I feared the intimacy of true friendship with others. That is, I pushed them away before they had a chance to leave me. I caused the very thing I feared, but at least it was under my control. 

It doesn't have to be in the form of cross words. Often it is just be taking my playful nature too far. I have a very playful imagination, and I seek out others who will "play" with me that way. But I tend to break people that way, by letting my imagination go so far that I get the response of "you're too weird for me." And then I am alone again, wishing I had kept a rein on myself.

How I hate living this way, in this constant fear of breaking people. Having lived so much of my life this way, I don't want to be this way anymore. 

I ask myself: is this the way everyone feels? Is this just the human condition? Do we all live in fear of friendships disappearing at any moment over a miscommunication, or worse, an intended communication that reveals too much about someone else, that we wish we hadn't seen in them?

I do not know the answer to that question. We are all of us broken in some way. That is the human condition in the fallen world. Sometimes our brokenness overlaps that of others in a way that feels like some mercy from God that people can find each other and connect. 

I want to say, to my closest friends:

I know you are broken too. I know that you feel yourself to be broken. That is what I cherish about you, this feeling that in some sense we are both broken in a way that makes us understand each other in a way like no one else can understand us. We partially alleviate each other's brokenness in a way that, at least fleetingly, makes us feel un-alone. That I might do that for you, dear friend, gives me more joy than you can imagine. That this is not one-sided, and you might actually need me as a friend gives me a peace that feels like a little bit of Eden restored on Earth, and a promise of what is to come beyond this life.

To deny that we can do this for each other is to deny God, to deny the Holy Spirit to move our hearts. 

All Things New

 Winter kept us warm, covering

     Earth in forgetful snow

A little life with dried tubers.

Lately I have been thinking a lot about the idea of newness in life. What does it mean to be new, in one's self, and in life? Is it possible, and if so how to achieve it?

Of course this is a subject with deep spiritual implications, so I don't expect to come up with answers just by thinking, but rather by prayer and deep meditation. Nevertheless, there are answers, and I have recently found some clues that have greatly helped me.

Last summer I was at a point in my life where I thought that perhaps my life was essentially over, and that I was simply waiting for death at this point. It was not that I felt I was imminently dying, but rather that the spirit of renewal had left me and would not return. This was partly due to my physical condition at the time, but it was buttressed by the fact that I was turning sixty, and a certain arithmetic tells me that however long I live, the years I have left to be vibrant in the world are fewer than the years I have let slip by, even during my adult years. The years ahead will pass quickly as well. What will I use them for?

I have no "bucket list" of things to do and see while I am on Earth, to borrow a popular concept. The only things that truly matter to me at this point are loving God and loving other people. 

Loving God means in part accepting that God's will for my life will triumph over my own will. With that comes a great humility in accepting the difference, but as the saints know, out of this humility is a freedom and joy, even in the midst of suffering. God knows our hearts and He is always ready to forgive us. He is always ready to renew us in that sense, up to the moment we take our last breath.

But what about loving others, as we are commanded to do? The messiness of human life can leave us with grief and sorrow over past words and interactions with others. At some point the grief and sorrow can become so ingrained in us that it obscures the origins. The sorrow becomes a familiar comfortable burden that we carry with us, but one that separates us from others. We have to put down that burden of carrying it at some point, if we are to experience newness. This is so easily said, but how to do it in practical sense.

It helps greatly if the other person is your ally in this regard. It helps if they are on your side, patient with you while you figure things out. I recently experienced this with a close family member. We have been on good terms for decades, yet between us there was still a barrier that was the result of grief over actions long ago in the past. I recently decided, as part of this Lenten season of repentance, to address these point blank and wrote a letter taking responsibility in an explicit way that I had never done before. The result was a great burden lifted for both of us. The result felt like newness.

Newness implies a restored innocence. It means uncertainty over the future as when we were young, and this can tremendously disorienting in its own way. To stay sheltered in our grief means we can have control. Letting it go means loss of that petty control. It means that life becomes a voyage again, instead of static endpoint.  Elliot famously wrote about this in "The Wasteland." Lilacs out of the dead land.  

The appearance of this renewal is typically greeted by the voices of the Enemy in discouragement saying don't bother. Even knowing the source of these voices of discouragement, it can be a hard battle. Much easier just to avoid that struggle. Who wants to disrupt things too much by trying? Aren't you being a bit presumptive and rude? Some doors should be kept closed.

Winter kept us warm. What a powerful line, don't you think?

Perhaps it is the very awkwardness of the attempt, where one can feel a fool for trying, that is the necessary ingredient. The coming of spring means being chilly as one ventures outside. Maybe it has to be that way. In loving others, it is made possible by an awareness from our wisdom that we never truly knew the other person as fully as we believed--even as we may feel deeply recognized by them in fellowship.  In that inevitable gap is the life and soul of the other person. In that gap is the newness--which leads us back to humility. 

Who are you, after all? I am curious to know the real you, and brave enough to try to know you. 

In this realization comes the ultimate newness which is that we never truly knew ourselves as well. The locked-in version of ourselves that we would assign to ourselves for the rest of our lives is itself a false one. In letting go of our perception of another, we let go of a perception of ourselves. We shed something we don't need anymore. We feel, in some sense, new. It is how we help each other in life.

Settler Mentality

 On Friday I was in the Hayden Library on the ASU campus. I don't have borrowing privileges yet, but I wanted to walk around. It's an interesting structure, built in 1966 in modernist style, and named for Charles Trumbull Hayden, who founded the city of Tempe, Arizona. 

Among the places I checked out was a reading room, the Luhrs reading room, to be exact which is near the front entrance. To enter one must open one of the long slender glass doors with long slender metal door handles.

Inside were students at various study stations, as well as a collection of books on the history and peoples of Arizona. The main exhibit and display was about the "#LandBack" hashtag movement, which is native Aemrican-centric. I read the description. It talked of the need to develop "settler consciousness" about American history, presumably an appeal for us to acknolwedge more the negative consequences of white settment. This is actually one of the core mission statements of the university, as I learned when I was hired. Walking around campus it feels like much of the point of the education is to refute everything I learned about America and Western Civilization and replace it with a different version.  I don't know if the kids coming out of college go along with that or not. It seems a lot of them do, but there is also skepticism and a backlash. I will leave it to them to figure out how they want to think about these issues.

Besides the main display, there were a series of three chest-high shelves on which other collections sat. The first one, opposite the main "#LandBack" display, was for queer literature. On the other side of the shelf I found a collection of emergent Black voices. On the next shelf were Hispanic authors. Finally on the back shelf, which was mostly a spillover of the Hispanic section, there was a single shelf of Arizona pioneer-era literature

Of courses this is the one that fascinated me, and where I lingered.  The history of Arizona, like any state, is full of some rich detailed descriptions of life on the frontier, much of which is now considered not worthy of study at the university, at least by the people who run things and the circle of activists.  I started my Arizona pioneer studies by reading the intro to The Hand-Book to Arizona, a classic which once could. be found in any respecable home in the state a hundred years ago, according to its description.

Restoration

 Today was Saturday, my day off.  I was feeling a bit bluesy and realized I needed a walk, so I went out for a stroll in the park. I spied the little red free library box from across the pond and made my way towards it. As I approached it my heart leapt with delight. I could see that instead of the broken door being swung out from the box as it had been for over a month, it was flush against it. 

I drew closer. Indeed the door had been fixed. I tried it several times as a couple on the bench next to it watched me try out the door and inspect the repaired hinges, which appeared to have been simply bent back into the right configuration. They had repaired it in place instead of removing it. My email to the city had worked! 

Inside there were almost no books, as if it were reset. The bottom shelf of children's books was empty entirely and only about ten books were on the top shelf. My guess is that the city had removed the water damaged books inside, leaving only the undamaged ones. One of the books was The Official Downton Abbey Afternoon Tea Cookbook. 

Perfect. I couldn't ask for a happier twist to the day. I was so lighthearted that I extended my stroll into a long walk, all the way down to Bell Road, and then walking along it all the way to its eastern end, where it bends southward into a subdivision. Probably over six miles in all, but it was a pleasant day with a nice breeze and I was dressed for it. On the way back I passed by the box again and borrowed the afternoon tea cookbox, which I am going to read tonight in bed, having just finished a novel I was reading.

Daily Broadway Show

 I'm at the point in my semi-regular morning commute to the ASU campus where I know how many lanes I must switch in order to get off at the right exit. Coming down the 101 that means after I cross the river and pass the first exit, I need to get three lanes over to the right to get off at the Broadway exit, and on the frontage road I must switch three lanes immediately to the right, being wary of traffic, in order to turn right onto Broadway itself and follow it westward. Soon this delicate ballet will become second nature, the way things do when we drive the same routes.

I don't like the merge to the right on the frontage road, but it is the price to be paid for this right, which has no left turns at lights all the way to my destination. 

To wit--follow Broadway westward, further than I think, until it narrows to two lanes each direction, going past St. Augustine Episcopal Church and turning right finally on Mill Street to follow it north. After the vidaduct, Mill makes a strange left turn onto itself going north, because of the strange curvature in the street pattern. Then at the light, turn right onto the campus and immediately right within ten feet into the quick access of the Parking Lot 3 which is the huge one around the Gammage Performing Arts Center at the edge of campus, where I find a lonely visitor spot and park. By now I have learned I can purchase the parking permit before I leave in the morning (always remembering to press the final "purchase permit" hiding at the bottom of what appears to be final screen but it is not. 

This route---Broadway, followed by parking next to the Performing Arts Center is pleasing to me. It makes me feel like I am going to show, or participating in one.Around the performing arsts center, trailers for the last touring show that flanked by lonely parking spot have disappeared last weekend at the end of its month long run, but its banners are still on the lampposts along Mill Street

Parking there lets me continue the conceit that I am cast member. It is not the worst feeling in the world, nor is it the worst metaphor for what I feel I am doing everyday. Combine that with being on a college campus, and I have rich allegorical concept for my daily work existence, at least the basic outline of one.  I pity anyone who can't live like this, even though sometimes it feels like a form of insanity.

Courtesy Associate

 As I came up out of the Hayden Library today I saw the roiling grey sky above and felt the chilly air. I had come in through the front entrance of the original hulking structure and, having been directed down into the basement information desk, left via the stairs that came out into a plaza a climbed back up to ground level next to the Danforth Chapel.

As I got to the top of the stairs,  I felt the raindrops. For several days running I had been savoring the mild temperatures while on campus, thinking how hot it was destined to become in a few months. By the end of the month, such weather may be here to stay. Today I had no complaints. I savored the rain, even getting slightly wet on my trousers walking back to my parked car.

I had not succeeded in my attempt to ascertain library borrowing privileges with my recently acquired "Sun Devil Card", which is of the same general form as a student ID, but mine is for "University Associate." I had thought that as "staff", I had such privileges, but evidently as a "University Associate" I need the endorsement of the faculty member to whom I am attached. The helpful young woman at the basement desk told me I need to be designated at a "Courtesy Associate" to receive library privileges. Tomorrow I will ask my manager, who is not faculty but staff, if he can arrange that for me.

Another Free Library

This morning on my way into the lab on campus, I made a detour to checkout a place I seen on my first day, when I was lost and wandering around looking for my building. I had made note of where it was and so it was not hard to find it---a small house smack in the middle of the campus along a wide sidewalk and out front a quaint free library. This morning, with a little time to kill, I decided to check it out. I retraced my steps on the first from the engineering building northward and found the house easily. It looked like a small two-story frame construction one might see in Portland, with an ample porch and a nice slanted roof. 

Sure enough the little free library was out of front. I approached up the sidewalk carrying the coffee I had purchased at the Memorial Union on my way in. The sign out front of the house, which I had not noticed on the first day, read "Virginia Piper Writing House."

The little free library was much smaller than the one in my park. I turned the latch and opened the glass door. Even through the glass I could see that most of the books looked to be poetry volumes of recent vintage, and by their titles they looked to have the theme of being aligned with current politics, which is basically "anything that isn't written by a white man."

One of the volumes was called "A Postcolonial Love Poem", which looking it up now, apparently won the Pulitzer Prize. No doubt it is a powerful statement against the oppression of indigenous peoples. I read some passages from it. I could understand why it won the Pulitzer Prize. Yet it was not really to my taste. I suppose I am hopelessly "colonial" in that sense. My ancestors were pioneers and settlers, and I am a product of that. I don't feel bad about that. If I were to write a love poem, I suppose it would reflect that. 

After replacing the book and closing the door I walked up onto the porch and peered inside. Evidently this was the campus creative writing center. Tours are available every other Tuesday, at noon. I made a note of the time so I could come back then if it struck me to do so. 

Encounter with a Robot

 Friday afternoon walking back the parking lot of the performing arts center, I cut through the section of campus with the student dorms. Walking down the sidewalk I saw up ahead a robot making its way towards me. It was one of those "cooler on wheels" designed for delivery of food and other things. It was my first time seeing one in the wild.

As it approached me, I stayed on my side of the sidewalk. When it was about ten feet from me on the other side, I waved to it and said "hello there!" On its side was a sticker than said "I deliver to Sun Devils."

Whether it was this greeting with a wave, or my general look, I startled the poor thing, which stopped dead in its tracks as if I had interrupted deep in thought. It slightly backed up as if to look at me and then popped in pace, as if to say, "well, I will be on my way now," and then it proceeded past me with a low whirring noise. 

All in all it was a pleasant encounter. One thing that is pattern in my life is that people are generally friendly to me. Now I can add robots to this list as well.

Free the Library

 Since putting up the sign in the Free Library telling people not to put books inside, because they would be ruined by the nightly sprinklers due to the broken door, I have avoided the park. I am embarrassed I put up that sign, even though it said "city has been notified."

Who the hell am I to tell people not to put books in there? So what if they get ruined by water? Maybe that's ok. Maybe that's not the point of it all. 

I had barely been walking down to Bell Road, and definitely avoiding the box. Today I went back. The door was not repaired. Inside one could see many additional books. The worst damaged had. been removed. I couldn't tell if there was more ater damage on others. One person had thoughtfully wrapped their donation in a plastic bag. It was the autobiography of the current vice president. I loved that someone had cared to do that.

Anywya, I ripped out the signs. I may make new ones with a warning that books may get ruined, but it is not my business to tell people not to put books there. I feel so relieved. I can go back to my joyful checking of the library, and my normal walks. I may intervene to rescue certain books if I deem it necessary to do so., but otherwise I must let things play out as they are meant to do, not as I want.

The Professor is a Freshman

 This was my first week going into my new job on campus at Arizona State in Tempe. I have not spent much time on the campus there and it was a unique and pleasant experience.

I parked in visitor parking on the far side of the performing arts center on the edge of campus. As of this past wicked, the touring show of Wicked was performing on weekends and the truck trailers with the posters on the side were parked in the lot. I parked next to them, feeling like I too am part of the touring cast.

Technically I am on "staff" at ASU. I had not interacted at all with co-workers while getting hired, only by the recruiter firm through which I get paid on contract. It is a very well-paying position. I am supposed to go into the "office" two or three times a week, according to what I was told.

The office is really just a small windowless electronics lab in one of the engineering building. Here a team of staff and students are building a platform that will allows professors and students to create new custom AI-driven applications using the latest and greatest models, such as the one that powers ChatGPT, etc.

It is very cutting edge stuff. I have greatly mixed feelings about this work, as I am convinced we are heading towards an AI apocalypse which are going to destroy the remaining social fabric of western society. I feel like a spy from Team Human sent in to get their secret plans. 

My first couple days I had weird butterflies that reminded me of being a transfer student in 1985 in Salem. I felt both confident yet overwhelmed and confused. 

The Rescuer of Lost Friendships

 Just got off the phone with my friend Tom, whom I mentioned in the previous past. I hadn't spoken to him since 2004. He and his wfie live on Maui now. 

They left Portland four years ago because it was becoming a shithole, especially in his neighborhood, which is called Ladd's Addition. He spoke of the homeless people banging on his doors at night. They still own their house there and are going back to stay there for a month, and then flying to Minnesota for their son's graduation.

Our call lasted well over an hour. I felt over the Moon about it. It was exactly what I needed right now---for an old friend to get in contact with me unexpectedly. We both agreed the world is fucked up and everything is broken now. We both mourned over our inability to contact our mutual friend Adam, who goes through waves of the blues and cuts himself off from the world.  He doesn't return calls ever, said Tom. Tom and Adam used to hang out on a regular basis, but somehow they trailed off and they haven't spoken in years. That's hard for me to imagine, because I think of them as being close. 

Tom said he's going to try to get a hold of Adam. 

"I'll probably just have to go to his door and knock on it," said Tom.

"Dude, you read my mind!" I said.

"I was planning on going up there maybe this summer and going to his house, knocking on the door, and when he opens, hand him a manuscript I've written as I walk past him into the house, saying brusquely, I need your help." 

We reminisced about some of our old professors, and a differential equations class we both almost failed. 

 I suspect Tom and I will be in contact on a regular basis going forward. In fact, I'm going to make sure of it. Friends are a treasure and any friend I have at the moment, or recover, is going to remain my friend for the rest of our lives. No reason that can't happen.

This was one of the greatest days of my life, and twenty-four hours ago I didn't see it coming.

They invited us to come visit them in Maui and stay with them, and I could tell he was serious.

Give me a call

 Today I have been feeling a great deal of sorrow as I try connect to several old friends. In each case, I remember happy days when we shared fellowship and I feel the lack of it in the present moment, and the seeming impossibility of a restoration. In each case, there is an element of my own hand in making that so difficult---political or otherwise.

If you've read my blog, you know this is a constant theme of mine. In many cases it is my own hard-heartedness that has caused this. Since the start of the morning, I have sent out four letters by mail.

Yet something very wonderful has happened today too. I heard from an old friend whom I hadn't heard from in many years. He went to college with me in Salem in the 1980s. I think I last saw in Portland twenty years ago. Maybe I saw him when I lived in Portland. His name is Tom. 

His email to me was brief: 

I was thinking about you the other day. Im not a fan of email and havent done social media in a long long time.

Give me a call (808)xxx-xxxx

Now that's what I call the perfect email.

"Im not a fan of email." Amen to that.

"havent done social media in a long long time" Amen to that as well.

"Give me a call"  I'm beginning to think phone calls will save civilization, because they are one of the few ways to break through the Matrix that is keeping us all apart and mentally ill. 

If you want to be my friend, then a phone call is a requirement, I think. 

The area code told me he lives in Hawaii, perhaps. Turns out he and his wife now live on Maui, only a few miles when where we were staying in December. A shame I didn't know that, but there is always next time. And the phone call will be delicious.

ind

In Bisbee

 We just got home from a long weekend road trip to Bisbee, Arizona, an old copper mining town in southeastern Arizona near the Mexican border. It has now become a rather "bougie" place, as one woman there called this, with renovated hotels and many boutiques. We stayed at a nice restored hotel. 

But there are still many biker bars from the old days of it being rough and tumble. Thankfully it is up at altitude, almost a mile high, and quite cool. We are expecting hot weather down in the Valley this week. Summer is beginning. ugh.d

On the way to Bisbee we went through the Chiricahua Mountains and visited the national monument there. A wonderful place.

Jessica is already planning our next road trip. 

Placemaxxing

I changed the title of my new substack to Placemaxxing. I didn't really like the old one, but I needed something for the moment or else I would just keep stalling. I like this one better at least. URL is the same.

My New Blog: The Community Curmudgeon

 The Community Curmudgeon

Disgruntled reflections on the state of American communities in the dystopian 21st Century

Link : https://theironwood.substack.com/

I intend to continue to continue to use this blog here for personal reflections. The new one is intended for a wider public audience. I plan to post there at least once a week.

Legal Business in Seattle

 Yesterday morning I found myself sending an email to a pair of attorneys at a trial law firm in a suburb of Seattle. I marked it as personal and in the subject line I said that I was looking for information on a former senior partner in the firm, in his eighties and now retired.

I had found him online as a part of search regarding my parents and our family history. It had never occurred to me to look for him in a search before, which struck me as odd. As I waited for the results to come, I hoped not to see an obituary, and I was gratified that I did not. Instead I found the still existing page at the aforementioned trial law firm. There was no contact information on the site other than the phone number of the firm, and the email addresses of the two remaining partners, one whom apparently being senior, as his name was tacked on those of the firm itself, which still retained that of the retired gentleman I mentioned, in the way such firms do in order to retain continuity. Indeed there was no evidence of anyone bearing the first name of the firm. Such are the lineages preserved in such titles.

Knowing that I was contacting attorneys on personal business, I made my email short and sweet, stating that I was looking to contact their former partner. I clarified that I was looking for Don M----s, who had gone to Iowa State in the mid 1960s. He and his wife Judy were dear friends of my late parents, David and Maureen Trump, when all of them lived in married student housing. 

I said that my parents always spoke so highly of Don and Judy* (whose obituary I had found, alas). I asked if possible if they would forward my email to Mr. M----s, and that I would be grateful for any assistance.

I wondered if I'd hear back. In the afternoon my phone buzzed with the notification from apparently the senior of the two lawyers, the one whose last name was now at the end of the firm's name. He told me Mr. M----s was still alive. He said he would be glad to forward my email to him. He expressed condolences for the death of my parents. It was exactly what I hoped for.

I hope to hear from him, even a brief message. I can hardly wait to tell my sister Kate, as I think she would love to hear whatever he might say.

Also one more note. I have to find my baptismal certificate from early November 1964, signed by the rector of St. John's-by-the-Campus in Ames. It is somewhere in my possessions in the garage. It would confirm what I am almost certain of, namely that Mr. M-----s is my godfather (and his late wife was my godmother).

*This is the Judy I was thinking of in this previous post. Turns out she's alive! There are so many people with the name and close and ages. You can find false obituaries for lots of people.

The Perfect Spring Day

 I started my new job today. It's hybrid, and I will commute to downtown Scottsdale as part of it. I will not be working for a start-up, nor a large company. Instead I will be on staff at Arizona State University. It looks to be a good job.  My boss seems very chill, the way a university staff boss would be. I was hired after one half hour interview. The looks to be something I will be able to do quite well with no problem. It is about double my previous salary. 

It feels like the clouds are breaking. Also I mailed a postcard to an old friend, whom I haven't corresponded with in a long time. I was a little nervous sending it because we haven't always been on good speaking terms, but maybe we can be friends again. I am hopeful that we can. I hope my friend is joyful upon receiving it. 

And I stared a new blog. It won't replace this one. I will keep writing here. It is a new phase in my creative expression.

The temperature is perfect. No complaints at all.

Work, creativity, and fellowship. What more could a man ask for on a nice day like this?

Birdsong on St. Patrick's Day

 Monday. Finishing the last of my morning coffee before it grows cold, and lost in my thoughts and the space heater next to me pulses out the warm air that it is increasingly unnecessary at this point of spring, but which I retain the usage of, the way a man stubbornly stays in bed on a chilly morning.

My thoughts turn to my writing project, on which I got stuck again. My mind stumbles upon the solution, that might break the ice jam at last. It depends on help from an old friend. But that is a good thing after all? Dependency on others frightens me as it takes things partially out of my control. Yet this is exactly the reason it is good for me perhaps.

As my mind comes to a pause, I notice through the blinds that the sky has turned a pale grey blue in the east. Moreover, and more significantly I hear the solitary chirping of a bird outside, probably in the tree outside my window. It sings in bursts of notes, each  maybe five seconds long. 

I listen to the rhythm and pitch to discern repeated patterns. As I do, I imagine I am listening to one side of phone conversation, except through some filter where the phonemes have been transformed into pure notes. I imagine I can almost hear the words through this filter as the person speaking narrates their day to the other party.

 My paternal grandfather, who was a high school biology teacher in my hometown in Iowa, would surely be able to tell me the name of this bird, or at least make a good guess. I possess no such bird knowledge and could only start naming birds I know which exist here in the Sonoran desert, of which there are more species here than anywhere else in the United States. The desert here is not barren, only dry. The heat, in fact, makes it a dry jungle.

Garage Tidying Secret

 I found this principle applies: the first day can seem hopeless. Unless one is actually carting large amounts to the trash immediately, one feels like one is just moving things around with no progress.

One must be patient. Half way through the second day, it can suddenly feel like one has made great progress in tidying up.

This principle works for any messy, cluttered space.

Thoughts in a Garage During the Rain

 Yes it is finally raining. The rain started when I was in the garage and it was glorious to hear the water on the pavement just outside the open door. I didn't want to leave the garage With any luck it will rain all night.

I was down in the garage specifically to look for an old 1099 tax form in order to verify that I once worked a job in 2019-2020.  I used to work down there in garage during Covid just to have my own makeshift office outside the apartment. I felt lucky that we had that, and also that I had my full unspoiled undeveloped desert to roam on. 

That job was for building an app in a boutique ski hotel in Breckenridge---all remote of course.  It was a great job and it paid very well. Then it closed when Covid came along and they stiffed for a months work---sixteen grand. I don't think about that very much, but it made me lose a lot of trust in people in business. Live and learn. It seems like another world.

I got that job through an old business associate in the late summer of 2019. Jessica and I purposely detoured through Breckenridge and stayed the night there on our way to Estes Park that year, becausee I had already been discussing the position with the old coworker I mention, who had become the director of engineering there. 

Alas I had the stupidity to pack one of my Trump baseball caps---not the classic red MAGA het but a taste green and brown camo hat with gold lettering say Trump 45.  The issue was that I was wearing it absentmindedly at our cabin at the YMCA camp when my sisters drove up to greet us after we arrived. There was no issue at the time, but later during dinner my younger sister, prompted by an attempt at h humor with her, exploded with rage at me. How dare I! She had known I had voted for him, and was planning to do so again, but my wearing of the hat was crossing an unspoken line of truce which I had not been aware of.

She hasn't really spoken to me since, except to exchange pleasantries, at say my nieces high school graduation two years ago. She had been cold on and off to me in the past, but this is the longest by far. At this point I don't really expect to have a conversation with her again in our lifetimes. 

Meanwhile I think I am ready to abandon and foreswear all of my political stances on candidates if it means I can have my family and friends back. It's not that I don't care, or have changed my mind about my underlying values. It's that I feel like I have run my race as far as politics go. I've been doing this a long, long time in my life. I want to retire from it. I will let others hash it out. The world can go on without me. I am not needed. Maybe I will stop voting too, so I can tell my family and friends that I don't vote and will not discuss politics. Crazy, I know, but that's where I'm at. 

My sister's issues with me go deeper than politics---at least I assume so---so I don't think that will work with her. But maybe with some other friends it will work and that will be worth it to me, to at least see them again.

The Spiritual Crisis

 Just got done doing a 90 minute podcast interview with Jesse Hal, a Canadian podcast who reached out to me a couple months back with an invitation to interview me for his show "The Missing Link".  It's the second one I've done with him since the first of year. We spoke about the crisis in our society of people broken apart from each other. I spoke about the difficulties I have with friends and families.

https://www.youtube.com/live/8jzxZUIdTAk

He basically convinced me to take action in regard to reaching out to people with whom I am estranged without fear of rebuke.  I told him I've been holding off doing that..

We have so little time on earth, and to wait for more years to go by is just not acceptable. Better to take the risk now. Besides, as I said, I am the one keeping them away, because of what I imagine they would say to me.

Eclipse Contentment

 This morning a clear almost-full moon out the window in the darkness. Tonight will be a total lunar eclipse. Peaks at midnight. But I will probably be asleep, unless I wake up. 

Just as well. Chance of rain today is one hundred percent. Strong wind advisory. I plan to sit on the porch and listen to the sound of it as long as I can.

Smudge Moon

 Woke up pre-dawn to a smudged moon in the western day. Behind the remnants of last night's rain clouds it looked an oil pastel of a white spot, smeared with a thumb. I had not seen the moon in a weeks and it was nice to see it still exists in the sky

Places we lived (1967-1978)

All places are in Ames except number 8. Number 1 and 2 not listed for the moment. All the structures listed here are still extant as residences as of 2025. 

I don't feel bad that we moved so much. A couple days ago I tried to make a list of why we left various places, but it is incomplete. Everything from number 6 (803 13th street) onward is clear, but 3, 4, and 5  are vague or unknown. In some cases it may have been some kind of dispute with our landlord, financial or otherwise. 

Moving was just something we did often. I thought of it as normal. We'd box up our things and carry them to a new place. Many things would get thrown out each time, so among other things, it was a way of keeping our possessions pared down.

I didn't like leaving friends behind, but I usually didn't mind being the new kid in school (four different elementary schools) because I was always the smartest kid in class. Being the smartest kid meant other smart kids wanted to be my friend. I never had a problem making new friends.

Perhaps the biggest advantage of moving so often is that it supercharged my ability to track memories. So long as I know where a certain memory happened, I can usually place it in time as well, at least within a given year. My sister and I do this. "We were living in (fill in the blank)"

3. 2304 Ferndale Av. (1967-1968) Duplex. Earliest memories of a place. Earliest memory of a dream. Kate was born while we lived there.

4. 2228 Melrose Av. (1968-1970) Duplex. Learned to read and to ride a bike. 

5. 627 6th Street (1970). Duplex. An old house in the old part of town, one block from Downtown. I started kindergarten at Roosevelt Elementary.

6. 803 13th Street (1970-Aug 1971). Duplex. Anne was born while we lived there.

7. A-1 Eastwood Apartments, E. 7th Street (Aug 1971 to early 1972) A rent-controlled complex where we moved after Anne was born. I got my own room. I started first grade there.

8. 907 Fargo Av, Spirit Lake. Old free-standing house. (early 1972 to early 1973).We left Ames for a year because my father got a job in the little town of Spirit Lake in northwest Iowa.  I finished first grade and started second grade there. 

9. 925 Garfield Ave (early 1973 to late 1973). Duplex. We moved back to Ames. I finished 2nd grade and went to 3rd there at Sawyer Elementary.

10. 151-A University Village. (1974) Married student housing. My dad went back to ISU to finish his degree so we were eligible for married student housing for the first time since 1967.

11. 161-A University Village (1974 to summer 1975). We located to a nearby unit because of issues with our neighbors. Just a hundred feet away from previous unit but a much better experience. 

12. 1104 28th Street (summer 1975 to August 1978). Duplex. Dad graduated ISU at last and we left married student housing for good. It was right in back of the Mall, which felt like an amusement park to us. We stayed there three years, which seemed like forever. I went to fifth and sixth grade at Northwood Elementary, and also 7th Grade at Welch Junior High. 

The Passing of Eras

 As we age, we are bound to find comfort from the notion that it takes generations for a way of life to fade. We are familiar with the songs our grandparents favored, after all, even though we never danced to them ourselves. At festive holidays, the recipes we pull from the drawer are routinely decades old, and in some cases even written in the hand of a relative long since dead. And the objects in our homes? The oriental coffee tables and well-worn desks that have been handed down from generation to generation? Despite being “out of fashion,” not only do they add beauty to our daily lives, they lend material credibility to our presumption that the passing of an era will be glacial.  

But under certain circumstances, ..., this process can occur in the comparative blink of an eye. Popular upheaval, political turmoil, industrial progress—any combination of these can cause the evolution of a society to leapfrog generations, sweeping aside aspects of the past that might otherwise have lingered for decades.  

-- Amor Towles. A Gentleman in Moscow (p. 144).

The Sixties

 

The 1960s were a time of great social upheaval and change, in some ways more rapid and dramatic than anytime in history, in part due to technology. Yet almost paradoxically, for most people at the time, that change was happening "out there" in the wider world, in the currents of politics and the interactions of nations and civilizations. For most people, especially living in a small town in the Midwest, daily life at the end of the 1960s was much the same as it was ten years before. The high-visibility changes of the 1960s that one saw on the television news, that upended our culture in a seemingly chaotic way, would not impact most people's daily lives until the decades afterwards. 

It's strange for me to imagine that in 1968, which was so turbulent and chaotic on a national level in the media, I was still only vaguely aware of those things going on. Martin Luther King was assassinated not long after the above photo was taken. My father adored King and had gone to see him speak at the Iowa State Memorial Union when he visited Ames. He was a very passionate advocate of "civil rights." King's death would have been something that hit him very hard. Yet I have not the slightest traction of a conscious memory of any of that. Likewise my mother practically worshipped the Kennedys. I can only imagine her sadness when Bobbie was killed only a few months later.

I say all of the above with the conscious awareness that we are now living in a time when the passions of politics are greater now than they were even in 1968. The changes that happening in civilization may be ones that dwarf the ones of that era. 

I felt this most strongly during the pandemic in 2020. Walking to the grocery store, only a few hundred feet away from our front door, and seeing the quiet parking lot, I thought to myself, "this feels like 1968."  I couldn't quite explain it even to myself, but it was partly because life had become simplified and the world contracted again. My life back then consisted of home, grandma's house, the store, church, Downtown, the bank, the clinic, the park, and a few other places. 

Now we are living in the time after that disruption, and so much, especially technology, is now accelerating beyond anyone's ability to keep up. Every week is a revolution. The biggest change is that there is little barrier between our daily lives and the wider world of the culture anymore. Increasingly the firewalls have been breached and we are pulled along with great currents without the buffer of a time to adjust.  Keeping this in mind is one of the things that keeps me sane lately. 

I understand why people are losing their minds. I understand why they are so angry. The world familiar to many seems to be disintegrating and there is little we can do about it. In this ravaged time, I find refuge in the personal relationships I still have. My impulse is to reach out and buttress the connections I still have, like lashing ourselves together on a life raft in a storm lest we be swept overboard. 

Kate, Age Approximately Six Months

 

My sister sent me this by text over the weekend. Much to my relief, she long ago appointed herself the family archivist, with me holding a smaller auxiliary collection. I suspect this photo of her in the snow outside our house on Ferndale was taken in early 1968 by our grandfather Trump, who seemed to always have a camera, and who took the family photos.

Frost: A Time to Talk

Just found this after writing that last entry, while perusing the collection of Frost I rescued from the little free library in the park.

When a friend calls to me from the road
And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
I don’t stand still and look around
On all the hills I haven’t hoed,
And shout from where I am, What is it?
No, not as there is a time to talk.
I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,
Blade-end up and five feet tall,
And plod: I go up to the stone wall
For a friendly visit.

Team Cow

Yesterday we went to the rodeo---Rodeo Scottsdale, that is.  

We went with Jessica's mother and stepfather Fred.  It was our fourth year in a row.We went three years ago on Fred's 80th birthday. It was his first time ever going to a rodeo and he absolutely loved it, and we have gone every year since. Like last year, we attended the Sunday program, which has the finals of all of the events.

The drive is ridiculously short. The event complex, called Westworld, is just on the other side of Bell Road. I could easily walk there, but of course we drove and paid for parking. Inside we lingered in the outside hall before going into the area auditorium to take our seats. There one finds the vendors that are at every rodeo or western show, the vendors selling all manner of western clothes which are very impressive. There is something about the women wearing western wear---skirts and boots---that I find very appealing. I always look for cow prints. I love cow prints, whether it is on clothing or upholstery. I myself was wearing a print heavy cotton shirt as well as the "Rodeo Scottsdale" baseball hat I acquired several years back from one of the vendors. I thought it was as casual as could be, but this was enough to get a compliment from one of he women tending one of the stalls. 

Walking through the stalls, I was reminded of my recent posts talking about pigs, and how pigs were my thing. I had a large "pig collection." I mentioned that at one point I switched to Team Cow. But it's not like I just switched one day. I outgrew my fascination with pigs when I got to be twelve or thirteen. I still have a lot of my pig collection, including the pig stuffed animals that my paternal grandmother made for me.

I think now how much delight I must have given her, and my mother, with my fascination with pigs. It was a thing that we could have fun with. Then one day I was not interested in that anymore. I think about this, how parents and grandparents (and other relatives) can have this fun connection with a child and then one day it is over. The child is not interested anymore, and soon may not even remember the fun bond that gave so much joy to their parent. That actually happened to me with my nieces. One day the way we used to play just became weird to them, and I knew that it was all over. It is the way of the world, as kids grow up.

I didn't join Team Cow until I was in my mid twenties in graduate school in Austin. It was mostly due to my ex-wife Laura, was my girlfriend at the time. She was from New York City and had lived there all her life. In Austin, we used to drive out into the countryside for fun and on one the early trips, she saw a cow and got very excited. A cow!

"Sure," I said. "It's a cow. What's the big deal?" But to her that was a novelty. This slowly turned into a fascination with all cows, and especially the live bovine mascot of the University of Texas Longhorns. We went to football games just to see the mascot, whose name is Bevo. My friend James, who went to UT at the same time I did, still lives in Austin and goes to the UT games. He sends me pictures of Bevo. Everyone loves Bevo now, in the age of social media. Once again I feel like a forerunner.

Now everyone who knows me knows I have been on Team Cow for years. When they were little, my twin nieces used to call me "Uncle Cowie." One of them still remembers all this, but with the other one, I get a mysterious blank stare when I mention it, as if it never happened. I loved being Uncle Cowie.

What about beef? Do I eat beef? Yes. Roast beef was my favorite thing as a child, and then steak became my favorite food. 

How does that work if I am Team Cow? Because I am not a little boy anymore. I'm an adult.

But it's more than that. Years ago when I moved back to Colorado, I was driving north of Fort Collins in a county natural area where the gravel road passed through an open range area near the Wyoming border. Cattle there were roaming in a large herd without fencing along a section of the foothills.

Set away from the herd by several hundred yards, and standing on a small rise above the area beside the road, was the herd bull, standing motionless and surveying his domain. It was very dramatic to see that in a natural setting.

As I often do, while passing a herd of cattle, I rolled down my window in order to moo at the cows and see if I can get them to look at me. It's the same thing I used to do the pigs outside Ames when I was boy. I have a very good moo and I can often get cattle to turn their heads to look at me, and from time to time they will moo back at me, which is not easy to do.

On this particular day, as I did this, a young calf was near the fence. Delightfully, it started running up the car as if to greet me. I stopped driving, with my car idling. The calf stopped and looked up at me. 

"How can you be so friendly to me?" I asked it. "Don't you know I am your predator? I might wind up eating you?"

But all I saw were these beautiful expectant eyes wanting to interact with me. At once it hit me:

Cattle love us.

You can look at this in a spiritual way, that cattle were created by God as a gift to us. Cattle are a manifest sign of God's love for humanity. It is one of those things that make me see the deficiencies in the Theory of Evolution as it formulated, namely in terms of a sequence random mutation events.  

How could humanity exist without cattle? We could not be what we are without them. Yet what are the odds that a species like the cow would evolve randomly at the same time as human beings? It doesn't make sense to me. 

The biggest awareness I gained, however, came through reasoned reflection. It is the awareness that thinking of cows as human beings with individual souls is false. Cattle live in the collective of their species. In this sense, becoming food for human beings was the best thing that ever happened to cattle. How many of these giant beasts would exist today if they were not food? They would be rare, only in zoos. Instead there are millions upon millions of cattle worldwide. All the folks who want us to stop eating beef basically want cattle to go extinct.

All of this is notwithstanding the need to treat cattle humanely, including the process of slaughter. To do otherwise is to violate the cosmic, and perhaps God-ordained, compact that we have with cattle.