Category: Commentary

When i was in high school one of my teachers gave us a personality test for fun. It was short and to the point. It asked if we would rather live in a cabin in the mountains or in a home at the beach. I had no problem answering. I would always prefer living in the mountains. I find them to be majestically beautiful and soothing to my soul. I was stunned to learn from the results that my answer indicated that I was a close-minded person who does not enjoy being with people. How choosing the mountains over the ocean might signify something like that is beyond me, so I totally disregarded the analysis as being poppycock. 

I have always loved the mountains. They are like a stairway to heaven, a miraculous place that is both challenging and humbling. Most of our family vacations were spent camping in a tent near a mountain. When I was strong and fit the mountains called me to hike to their summits. I would spend entire days walking higher and higher on switchbacks that tested my endurance and strength. My lungs would sometimes gasp for air as I rose higher and higher and the air became thin. I pushed myself to keep going even when I felt exhausted and ready to quit. Making it to the summit was undeniably rewarding with vistas that seemed to continue past the horizon. I always felt that I had achieved something worthwhile and important as I shared my victory with others who had walked with me along the paths to the top. 

Even in the toughest of times I am able to mentally return to those grueling walks and realize that I have much more determination inside me than I ever dreamed. I know that I am able to endure challenges and emerge tired but victorious. The mountains made me feel alive and part of something way bigger than myself. They helped me to realize that I have mastery over myself but that I am little more than a speck in the grand scheme of things. 

Looking down from the top of a mountain I realized the importance of working together with my fellow humans. I would not have finished many of those journeys without the company and encouragement of others who came with me. I might have become too weary to continue alone. With the help of others I was unafraid because we shared the experience together. 

Life is so much like climbing a mountain. There are times that are so difficult that we look up and feel certain that we can’t succeed. We have to force ourselves to begin the journey by taking one small step and then another. If we have people who care about us, urging us on, we suddenly realize that we have made progress even though it is incredibly slow. We feel encouraged to keep pushing onward and upward, sometimes with an aching in our bodies and souls that threatens to defeat us. We see the summit ahead and we tell ourselves that we can do just a bit more and then some more. Eventually we realize that we have almost reached the peak and so we find the energy that we need to take the final steps. We rejoice that we have overcome our worries, our problems, the voices that hold us back and make us fearful. There are few better feelings.

Just as I have journeyed to the top of many mountains, so too has my life been beset by challenges that at first seemed daunting. I could not imagine growing up without a father, but I did. I wanted to run away from my mother’s mental illness, but instead I stayed and helped her. In the early years of marriage my husband developed a rare disease that often kills the people who contract it. I hated what was happening to my young family and did not think that I would make it alone while my husband was in the hospital. With the help of countless friends, I managed and my husband became well with the expertise of doctors. I worked full time while studying for a master’s degree. There came a time when I was exhausted and wanted to quit. My brother was a cheerleader who urged me to keep going. I got my degree and felt so proud. I never thought I would be able to quench my long held desire to write, and yet I have found time to tap the keys on my laptop and share my stories with an audience of people that I know and some that I have never met. The mountains taught me that with determination I can push myself through moments of discouragement and exhaustion. They showed me that I can accomplish my dreams.

I must admit that these tumultuous times are making me anxious. There is too much anger and division and hate in the world at a time when I would be content to just lead a quiet life. I find the mountains calling me but I am no longer able to hike to the top. My knees are worn, my bones are more fragile, my back has a tendency to ache. Now I can only sit at the bottom and gaze upward, remembering how glorious it was to feel as one with the power of the steep prominence. I have to imagine myself overcoming my own shortcomings and finding an inner strength that I did not know was there. As I think on such things I remember that there is great glory in the world, but we have to fight for it together. We are unlikely to get anywhere alone. 

I am hopeful that we humans will relearn how to work together again. I know how important it is for us to value each other and work in a spirit of cooperation. I will do my own part to tone down the anger and devote my energy to bringing people together. No person, group or nation has ever succeeded by constantly fighting and insulting one another. Progress only happens when we respect our differences and use our talents together for the betterment of all. The mountain that we all now climb is in our hearts. One step at a time we should begin the approach to the summit where hopefully we will find that the rhetoric and discord of the past few years is gone. The mountains are calling us to work toward achieving a world of cooperation for the betterment of all. We will need all of our strength along with the help of our fellow travelers to get there. We’ve done it before. We can do it again.

My mother grew up in a big family of ten people. It was almost a foregone conclusion that having that many individuals crowded into a very small house would end up being raucous. They each learned how to talk with loud booming voices just to be heard. Whenever they got together it was almost impossible for anyone to get in a word without screaming. Since I was born with a very soft way of speaking I learned very early to just listen to the cacophony of voices when I visited with my extended family. There were times when I felt like a fly on the wall as I observed the loud conversations. I suppose that I first began to develop my observational skills with that wild and rowdy group because it was easier to watch and learn from them than to enter the fray. 

It is not in my nature to attempt to talk over people because I am rarely successful in gaining their attention that way. As a teacher I developed a methodology that mostly worked. When my students became too loud I would stand quietly before them staring with a stern expression on my face until they quieted down. Somehow it always worked so I never had to decide what I would do if they just kept chattering. I suppose that I could have forced myself to yell at them, but I never cared much for that when I was a student, so I did not want to inflict a strident voice on them when I was their teacher. 

When I am out and about I tend to be someone that nobody notices. Sometimes that is to my advantage, but there have been times when I was attempting to get waited on by a clerk and I felt as though I must surely be invisible as other people pushed in front of me as though I was not even there. Even if I mumbled in dismay nobody seemed to care that I had been ignored. 

When I visited London a couple of years ago it was the first time in my life that I did not need to assert myself to get help or have a question answered. In fact, the people were so polite and deferential that I was initially stunned. I felt that somehow I had finally found a place where my quiet ways were actually appreciated. 

Some of my friends have encountered my rowdy family and felt overwhelmed by their exuberance. I suppose that I adapted to them long ago and find no particular need to push myself into their tumultuous discussions. I usually find a kindred spirit who is sitting off to the side with whom I manage to have a wonderfully uplifting conversation. I know that the rest of the crew does not mean anything insulting about their head-splitting noisiness. It is simply the way they grew up. They celebrate life with gusto and voices that would wake the dead. 

I actually have fun sitting in the midst of them and listening to their interactions. I know that if I needed help any one of them would come to my aid and they would be able to garner the attention that it is sometimes difficult for me to gain. In truth I prefer not being the center of attention. I can’t imagine being so famous that I would never be able to escape the limelight. There is something rather comforting about being able to stroll quietly and unobserved through life. I am able to see so much more than if I were always engaged in conversation. Watching the world is exciting. 

As a teacher I found that the most egregious attention seekers were usually the ones who felt the most insecure. They were often hiding hurts and abuse and sorrows. Bullies tended to be the worst. They seemed to be trying to prove something to themselves and by extension to everyone around them. They were constantly in need of reassurances that they thought they were getting by being the overbearing center of the classroom. On the other hand, some of the quietest students that I encountered were pillars of strength who were so confident that they had no need to force others to notice them. They possessed a kind of dignity that told me that they did not need the limelight, but somehow they often ended up there because people were drawn to them. 

My family members were loud, including my mother, but always very kind and thoughtful. The exception in the terms of the way he spoke was my Uncle William who was the eldest of the siblings, the patriarch of the family if you will. I have never met a stronger more compassionate human and yet at first sight he appeared to be rather ordinary because he was exceedingly quiet. He was so sweet and accommodating that one might have viewed him as a pushover, but nothing was further from the truth. He was a rock on whom everyone of his siblings depended for wisdom and strength. With a single comment expressed in a low but commanding voice he was always able to calm them. His power always amazed me. 

These days we seem to equate authority with rudeness and hurtful commentaries. Instead, the strong among us cannot be measured by the decibel of their voices or the insults that they hurl. Standing up for what is right and demonstrating kindness is a much better sign of greatness than being dominating and frightening. Kindness ultimately gets attention faster than being a boor. Just watch quietly and you will soon learn who to trust. Often the sidelines are the very best place to be. Just pay attention and you will see.

I grew up in a time when television was in its infancy and comic books were so popular that even grocery stores featured shelves of them. My mother was rather selective in what she allowed me and my brothers to watch and read. She limited the number of hours that we could sit in front of the t.v. and took us regularly to the library to borrow educational books. We mostly sated our taste for adventurous programing on Saturday mornings when when we watched the programs that we preferred while our mother slept longer than on the other days of the week. 

We became familiar with all of the fictional heroes of the era and marveled at characters like Tarzan and Superman and the Lone Ranger. We mostly surreptitiously learned about the superheroes of comic books from our cousins and friends because Mama thought it was a waste of time and money to purchase the pulpy magazines designed for lovers of imagined adventures and prowess. Surprisingly my grandmother kept a stock of comics on a bookshelf in her home. I would sneak into the room where they were stored and devour them each time I visited. Even though I never told her what I was doing she somehow knew to regularly purchase the latest editions and set them out in view so that I would find them. In retrospect I wonder if she liked the comics because of their illustrations that allowed her to “read” them even though she was illiterate or perhaps it was a habit that she developed for my father who was quite a fan of comic book humor and stories of fantastic worlds. 

I had a cousin who collected comic books like some people collect stamps or coins. There were stacks and stacks of them in his home and I have to admit to being somewhat envious that he had so much exciting reading matter at his fingertips. I too enjoyed the adventures of the great superheroes, bu it was not a well known comic book superhero who caught my fancy when I was young, but a silly cartoon squirrel named Rocky and his sidekick, Bullwinkle. 

In 1959, Rocky and Bullwinkle premiered on television. I would have been around ten years old when I first saw the show and I was immediately taken by its satirical stories that poked fun at the world of spies and Cold War intrigue. Rocky, aka Rocket J. Squirrel, was a flying squirrel who always wore World War I type flight goggles and seemed to have more common sense than most humans. His best friend was Bullwinkle J. Moose who always appeared to be confused by whatever he encountered in the world, but he was a loyal and affable sidekick who did his best to help with the cause. Together they fought the evil spies Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale who had infiltrated their once peaceful town of Frostbite Falls. Week after week they foiled the nefarious plots of this often frustrated couple who seemed overwhelmed by the superior intellect of Rocky.

The show began each episode with a little ditty that seemed to sum up the both ridiculousness and delightfulness of the plot,

“A thunder of jets and an open sky,

A streak of gray and a cheerful “Hi!”

A loop, a whirl, a vertical climb

And once again you know it’s time

For the adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends”

Whenever I heard that silly rhyme I knew that I would be transported to an hilarious world that would leave me laughing and wondering if everyone else understood the jokes that tumbled out so quickly that it was difficult to keep up with them. I so loved the stories and the characters that I would continue following them long after I was grown whenever I found them being rerun on some channel that featured old programs from my youth. 

The best thing about Rocky and Bullwinkle was that my mother liked it as well. She somehow viewed it as being a cut above ordinary cartoons and she shared our delight in the stories. Rocky became our family favorite and we still marvel at how intelligently creative it was. I suppose that I was even impressed when I found out that my husband was a fan as well. Sometimes we would laugh about our favorite moments on the cartoon and even fake accents to become silly versions of Boris and Natasha. We would both laugh at the very adult jokes that we heard on the program and wonder if our mothers had thought that we had been too young and inexperienced to understand the double entendres that slipped into the script. It was a closely guarded secret among kids that Rocky and Bullwinkle introduced us to a very intellectual and daring kind of humor. 

My father loved comedy and he even had a number of books in his collection that featured illustrated comic strips. If he had lived long enough I suspect that he would have been guffawing at Rocky and Bullwinkle along with me and the rest of my family. While I’m a huge fan of Batman and I really enjoy Iron Man, Rocket J. Squirrel will always be my favorite superhero. Who wouldn’t love a flying squirrel who constantly saved the world from horrible fates in a time when we were still climbing under our tasks to practice duck and cover lest the Soviet Union bomb or nation? Somehow Rocky seems as relevant now as he was back then.  

In early June (if all goes well) we will be heading to Arkansas near the little town of Caddo Gap where my grandparents once lived. It’s a beautiful slice of our country that I have loved since I was a child sharing adventures with my Grandma and Grandpa. The fun that I had was homespun and quiet, but it will forever have a special place in my heart. 

My grandparents decided to live out their last days on this earth at a farm. They chose a spot not far from where my grandmother’s parents had lived and eventually died. I’m sure that residing and farming there had a very special meaning for her so she was happier in that place than she had ever been. Every single day was filled with maintaining the livestock and nurturing the crops that she and Grandpa had planted. When the evening came they sat delightedly and with gratitude on their front porch surveying the land and their good fortune.

Whenever we came to visit my grandparents would arise long before dawn to get all of their work done so that they might dedicate their time to being with us. Grandma would make special meals and take us on hikes in the hills behind their property while Grandpa showed us how to milk cows, harvest peaches and fish. Sometimes we even visited some of the neighbors who were sweet folk who seemed to have spent their entire lives isolated from the rest of the world. They entertained us with homespun yarns while chewing on tobacco and smiling with toothless grins. Grandma would treat them as though she was in the presence of the Queen of England and she expected us to show them the same regard. 

We always had to travel to the farm in the summer because of school. It was brutally hot during the daytime hours and nobody had air conditioning in their homes. Few even had running water. My grandparents were considered the most well off in the area because of their modern conveniences like running water, indoor toilets and electricity. Neighbors would come to watch television or to borrow magazines and newspapers or just to sit in front of Grandpa’s big box fan. Mostly the people who live there enjoyed my grandmothers cooking and her generosity in sending jars of canned vegetables home with them. 

After dinner when darkness came we always moved to the front porch where we listened to the nighttime calls of the animals and watched thousands of lightning bugs glowing in the dark. It was one of the most glorious sights I have ever seen. It was as though thousands of little diamonds were glittering right in front of us and above them was a heavenly vision of so many stars that there was hardly a space that was not radiating with light. It was a wondrous and beautiful thing to witness and difficult to describe in today’s world of electric lights that cloud our vision and hide the creatures who were once there in profusion. 

I think about how glorious it was on those summer evenings and feel a deep tug of sadness that there are not as many fireflies as there once were. It seems that we have eradicated many of them, thinning their numbers by moving into areas where they once lived or using insecticides that killed them in great numbers. Ironically our own lights have also chased them away. Sadly this is happening all over the world, and while they are not yet an endangered species, they are trending in that direction unless we do something to guarantee that they keep living on our planet. 

I suppose that most people would think that fireflies have little use and that there is no real reason to worry much about them, but the truth is that they feed on other insects like snails that harm crops and do great agricultural damage. When there are enough lightning bugs they keep the insect population in a healthy balance. They are way more than just lovely creatures of the night and they are warning us that we have real problems on this earth that we are avoiding at our own peril. 

When the creatures of this earth begin to die, it should be a sign to us that we are in trouble as well. Violent weather events are becoming more and more commonplace. Drought is a worldwide problem that is way bigger than rising gasoline prices . Our most necessary natural resources are becoming more and more scarce as we continue to tear down forests and encroach on habitats that were once the domain of creatures that lived side by side with us in harmony. Just as we killed too many whales and buffalo, so too have we upset the balance of nature with even the smallest of creatures. We seem to have an insatiable desire for consuming  too many of the natural elements of our planet without thought to what the consequences of our actions will be. We scoff and even laugh at the scientists and protestors who warn us that if we do not take very serious actions to save our earth we will face dire and life threatening situations. It won’t just be lightening bugs whose numbers will dwindle for our lack of foresight. It will be humans who will suffer irreparable harm. 

We can celebrate earth day and plant a tree or a few flowers, but we must act as responsible stewards for this great gift that we have. We must protect and preserve enough of the land and the creatures that we do not continue to create a mass extinction of animals or plants like we have already done with so many species. It is our duty to take care of what we have and to take measures to conserve however we can. It will take all of us to ensure a future for all living things, including humans. 

We can’t ignore the warnings whether they come from creatures or other humans. It’s time we watched and listened. It’s time we recreate an environment where those little glow worms will shine and light up the sky with hope. It’s time that we dedicate ourselves to making our earth well once again.  

I have always been fascinated by the European Renaissance, a time when there were seemingly great leaps of discovery and knowledge in science, medicine, philosophy and the arts. Life indeed became better for many of the people, but those who toiled in the fields and did the hard labor may not have enjoyed the explosion of progress that developed between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries as much as those in the upper class and those who had begun to carve out a kind of middle class. There was still much ignorance and lack of equality. The ground gained in that period of time mostly belonged to men, while women still remained creatures of the kitchen and maternal duties. Still, the wondrous developments of the era catapulted humankind forward in such a dramatic way that it is often seen as the European flowering of scientific endeavors, medical progress, literature, painting and sculpture. 

The so called Dark Ages probably were not as void of light as we sometimes think, but they were marked by pandemics, war and conflict. Gutenberg had not yet invented the printing press, so only priests who created manuscripts and the most wealthy had access to books and educations.   Life was mostly about lots of hard work and very short lives. 

I always enjoy the Renaissance Festivals that travel across the country. They are exceptionally entertaining with their turkey legs, and jousting and music, but what I would most like to see from the Renaissance are the products of the great minds who changed the world in that time. It would be fun to have someone create a play in which Galileo tells his story to an audience and then takes questions from the crowd. Having an old time Shakespearean play would be delightful, especially if it was totally authentic. I’d like to see people dressed as characters from the Canterbury Tales and be able to go to a studio filled with works from Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. I’d like to sit with someone playing Descartes and find out how he came up with his mathematical processes and what led him to his philosophies. A real Renaissance Festival would be enlightening and educational. 

It is no accident that many of the founders of our country were well versed in the work of the great thinkers and artists of the Renaissance. They valued books and science. Ben Franklin was considered one of the great scientists and engineers of his time as well as being a writer and printer. He was a learned man who had no doubt studied Copernicus and understood that the earth was not the center of the universe. Thomas Jefferson devoured books and ideas, many of which had been developed during the Renaissance, and he was in the Americas because of the explorations of adventurers from across Europe. 

As I noted, not everyone benefited immediately from the progress of the Renaissance. I can tell by studying my family tree that my ancestors mostly remained poor and ignorant, especially the women. Neither of my grandmothers were educated beyond elementary school as late in as at the end of the nineteenth century. My grandfathers were farmers and laborers who knew how to read but mostly self-educated themselves. They never rose into the middle class in spite of all of their hard work. It would be left to my mother and father to become the first in each of their families to earn a college degree, although a somewhat distant branch of my father’s family tree indeed boasts a doctor. Nonetheless I know that some of my ancestors benefited from the Renaissance because some of them found their way to the new world in the earliest days of colonization. They brought what they knew across the ocean and then learned from the native people who were already here. Sadly, mistakes were made by them and others who had the bad assumptions that they were doing the original tenants of this land a favor by changing their ways. This was an arrogant attitude that was widely accepted as gospel when Europeans conquered people in the Americas, Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Their seemingly well meaning ways did not always work out so well for the people who were already living where they went or those that they used as slaves to work the land.

I suppose that calling me a progressive is accurate because I firmly believe that discovering new and better ways of living and thinking are what make humans great. I even think that God gave us our minds as a gift for improving the world for its people and for preserving this great planet. I have always felt that it is our duty to use our minds for the betterment of humanity, not just for enriching ourselves. The great minds of the Renaissance often understood this by performing great deeds and demonstrating great courage in search of truths. I am certain that each of us possess a certain level of greatness of our own and when we use share our talents to help make all people better we are developing our intellects the way we were meant to do. 

We are at a watershed moment right now. Our world is threatened with pandemics, wars, climate change, violence and ignorance just as it was in the Dark Ages. We can look away and move backward into another dark age of our own or we can do as the geniuses of the Renaissance did and bring light, beauty and innovation into the world. Our future is depending on science and great thoughts. We must be certain to cherish and support the new Renaissance men and women among us whose breakthroughs will catapult our world into a future that is bright. We should not be afraid for we now know that the world is not flat and that all humans are linked together in our hopes and dreams. Opportunity beckons us, but only if we listen to its call.