Most kids my age during WWII preferred Captain Marvel to Superman, as comic book sales of the time testify. One reason being most of us kids could more readily relate to Billy Batson than to Clark Kent. And after all, Billy was of our world not from some distant planet. Also, we could easily fantasize the magic of “Shazam” as actually being possible to a mortal if one were favored of the gods. Even to Christian kids this did not seem a heretical thought. Many of our comic book heroes of the time had supernatural powers, and we seemed to separate the mystical attributes of these various characters from what we were taught in church and Sunday school. Of course, there was enough of the supernatural and mysticism in the Bible to encourage our believing the same things might be possible for our comic book heroes.

However, while accepting Shazam changing Billy Batson into Captain Marvel none of us had any luck pronouncing such a magic word doing the same for us, which did not prevent our imagining such a thing was possible. Such is the wonder of childhood, believing so many things possible within the realm of imagination beyond the reality of our daily lives.

But with the passing of many years, I have come to realize that calling out to God seems of as little avail as trying to get Shazam to work for me when I was a kid. Like Lee Marvin in Death Hunt “I never did have much luck prayin’.” Though I often feel like the father in the New Testament crying out “I believe Lord, help thou mine unbelief!” it remains I never did have much luck praying.

And so, over a very long period of time I came to reflect that my calling out “Shazam” and calling out “Lord God in heaven” were very similar; and equally ineffectual. However, what worked for Billy Batson may work in prayer for those favored of the gods so I don’t entirely discount the possible efficacy of prayer, though I continue to think much of praying is in the category of us kids wishing pronouncing Shazam could be made to work for us.

My great-grandmother was the saint of my life. But once while I was building a magnificent structure out of wood blocks on the floor she accidentally hit it with her foot, causing the whole thing to collapse. She looked at the devastation and said to me in a mysterious voice, “The Phantom did it.” She knew the Phantom was one of my favorite heroes in the funny papers, but as an adult seemed not to realize he would never do something like knocking down my masterpiece any more than she would have done such a thing on purpose. As wise as she was, she had misspoken in an attempt to soften the blow of what she had done. The problem was that it would never have entered my mind to correct her, nor as a small child would I have known how to attempt an explanation of her error. Perhaps this is how I stand with God. I know he wouldn’t hurt me on purpose, but the explanations for such damage seem too much like my great-grandmother trying to soften the blow. But who am I to say to God: “You’re wrong.” Not only would it not enter my mind to do so, I wouldn’t know how to explain why God is wrong. And while I knew my great-grandmother was wrong, though I believe there were errors in the “Creation” as with all creative processes, I do not know if God is wrong.

But it often occurs to me as it did to Thoreau we may have good cause to wonder that while God might be lonely, the Devil has many friends. I will say if there were no Devil he would have to be invented just as an attempt to understand the lunacy of how America has changed from the time I was a child. Governor Schwarzenegger has signed a bill approving perversion in our public schools: From WorldNetDaily: “Mom and Dad” as well as “husband and wife” have been banned from California schools under a bill signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who with his signature also ordered public schools to allow boys to use girls restrooms and locker rooms, and vice versa, if they choose...The bills signed by Schwarzenegger include SB777, which bans anything in public schools that could be interpreted as negative toward homosexuality, bisexuality and other alternative lifestyle choices...

Knowing most legislators rely on legislative analysts rather than reading the bills they pass, I understand the unintended consequences of this. More people putting their children in private schools and a boon for salivating lawyers with more lawsuits at taxpayer expense against the public schools that don’t comply with what is very ambiguous language in SB777. Of even greater concern is the backlash this is bound to have on homosexuals as the great majority of sexually normal people who have a very natural aversion to sexual perversion grow increasingly angry over having the agenda of a very few forced upon every one. The high flown rhetoric of those forcing a homosexual agenda in the name of “rights” and “equality” cannot help but have an adverse effect on society as a whole.

I will not excuse those leaders in the churches who make a pretense of their prayers ever as much as any Pharisee despising the Publican, all the while faring sumptuously in palaces and wearing soft clothing. Where are any in politics or religion qualified to tell We the People we should repent in sackcloth and ashes in order to gain favor with God? Until America has such leaders, I can be forgiven for believing Shazam is of more efficacy than the prayers offered by the present leadership of America whether religious or political.

But I recall when I joined the Captain Marvel Club in order to be able to decode the secret messages how disappointed I was to find out it was only the alphabet in reverse. This didn’t prevent my continuing to enjoy the comic books, but somehow Captain Marvel just wasn’t quite the hero had been to me before this. Still, that was a comic book hero; I have a right to expect more from the “real thing” in America’s leaders.

Long before Thomas Wolfe’s novel, “You can’t go home again” was an oft used expression and one with which I was familiar even as a child. But Wolfe couldn’t possibly know how prophetic his story would be of America coming out of WWII. While a person may come to terms with themselves concerning change and dealing with life, it is considerably more difficult for nations, which quite often throughout history have gone through horrendous convulsions and bloodletting in the process of change and adapting to new conditions wrought by such a process. America was birthed through such a convulsive process, and the wars since that time have been unrelenting, each bringing about further changes in our nation. We are witnessing changes taking place in America even now due to the wars presently ongoing with no end in sight and escalating.

The nuclear age changed the world, and there is no going home from that. The nuclear genie was let out of the bottle, and there is no putting it back. But Tevye made a good point in “Fiddler on the Roof” concerning tradition. How else could a people hold together without their traditions he wondered? And when accommodation to change was demanded by circumstances, he wondered just how far he could go without breaking in adapting to such changes that threatened tradition; that threatened his very way of life?

Among my more valued books are The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics, and The Faith of America volume about Norman Rockwell filled with favorite pictures. The two books are a fair representation of the America I was born into and knew as a child. At this stage of my life I leaf through both books with melancholy nostalgia, realizing that not only is it impossible for me to go home again, but that so many of America’s traditions have been betrayed there seems no going home again for our nation.

As a witness to the changes that have been wrought in America following WWII by “removing the ancient landmarks which the fathers have set,” I will say many of such changes have not made our nation any stronger or freer, but quite the contrary. My generation respected and honored our flag for example. We didn’t question “In God We Trust,” because most of us subscribed to this. Same sex so-called “marriage,” those of my generation would have expressed both disgust and incredulity at the mention of such a thing. Abortion on demand as means of contraception? Unthinkable! As would have been “Press one for English” and the explosive growth of pornography. And none of us would have dreamed those in our government would lie to We the People wholesale, betraying our nation on every hand for power and profits.

Just recently Jack Cafferty expressed my own opinion when asked which of the present contenders for President offered any hope of change for the better in America: “None of them,” was his frank and candid reply. Neither Jack nor I consider ourselves cynics, but we do consider ourselves pragmatic realists.

Long ago I abandoned some of my conservative views; I came to oppose the death penalty because of its capriciousness state-to-state, I began to favor the legalization of prostitution and marijuana, I stopped opposing abortion believing this is the right of a woman to choose without the interference of men. But some of my conservative views remain unchanged over the decades of my life such as our Second Amendment right to own and carry a gun, and believing people should be personally responsible and fully accountable for their actions despite politicians, lawyers, judges, and the ACLU.

But as a pragmatic realist, I know a nation cannot possibly be any better than its leaders, and it is in the abject failure of America’s leadership to be personally responsible and accountable my thoughts turn to what our nation used to be before our traditions were sacrificed for the “greater good.” Yet, I am not naive to the fact that the seeds of America’s destruction may have been sown by the failure of the Founding Fathers to abolish slavery by our Constitution that resulted in Lincoln’s War followed by federalism and welfare as a way of life for millions, a situation that cannot possibly be resolved by laws fair and just to everyone.

America won the war against the Axis powers because we still had a sense of tradition, we still considered ourselves a nation with a national identity. This is no longer the case. We are a fragmented and divided nation on many fronts, so much so that there is no certain solution to the problem apart from some Draconian circumstance forced upon America such as a nuclear attack. And even at that, would we have the kind of leadership that would do what would be necessary in the interests of America? Response to 9/11 and the enormity of greed and corruption exposed in government gives me just cause to wonder.

Tevye had every reason to wonder how far he could go against tradition without breaking. Americans like me have every reason for wondering the same thing. There are times when I question whether I live in a haunted house, whether I live with the ghosts or spirits of departed loved ones and friends. No less is the question of whether the America I used to know is now only a ghost, one represented by those like George Washington and Norman Rockwell, those old comic books and strips that so very well recounted the changes taking place in America, but continuing to hold on to many of the best of the traditions that made America great.

The America I was born into and knew as a child is now only a ghost, and there seems no Dickens that will get the needed attention of our leaders, no spirits taking them on Scrooge’s journey to the past, confronting them with the present, and causing them to cry out for a chance to change the future for the better. I suppose a miracle is needed to save America from becoming nothing but a ghost, one that acknowledged a nation is defined by heritage, culture, a national language and secure borders, a miracle that would cause our leaders to turn from their wicked ways and do what is best for our nation. Short of such a miracle, I confess I have little hope anything less than that will prevail.

If Oscar the cat can sense the imminent death of someone and go curl up with them in order to comfort them during their final moment what else might be “out there?” While I like to give myself a wide range of speculation concerning the supernatural and even willing to credit things like UFOs, it often strikes me that so many proclaim themselves to be “moderns” in scientific thinking yet are so susceptible to what is no more than outright fraud among some academics.

The universe is unimaginably vast containing things unknown and perhaps unknowable; the universe contains things even beyond our capacity to imagine. We still do not know what life is or its origin; these remain open to speculation even among scientists dedicated to the study of life. But there is a “comfort zone” not just for those holding religious beliefs, but even for scientists unwilling to admit there may be things contrary to their beliefs:

The Latest Problems with the “Man Evolved From Apes” Thesis: By Frank Pastore, September 3, 2007: Cavemen are popular once again... I’m talking about the two discoveries that came out in August that should force all those “man evolved from apes” evolution charts in schoolbooks to be redrawn. You know the ones. You’ve got the knuckle-dragging, club-wielding ape on the left hand side and a businessman carrying a briefcase on the right hand side, with all the hypothetical evolutionary links filled in between... What’s been discovered is a 10.5 million year old gorilla and that two of our “ape men” ancestors actually lived together... See, the problem is—these two discoveries render all previous human evolution charts wrong. But, the bigger problem is—unless you’re a scientist—you’ve likely never have heard about it outside of this column or at least until you’d see the trailer for Ben Stein’s movie “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” coming out in February 2008. As Stein exposes, there’s been a virtual Inquisition by Darwinian fundamentalists against anyone who dares challenge The Book—Darwin’s infamous 1859 “Origin of the Species.” No longer about following the bread crumbs of inquiry in pursuit of truth, Big Science is now all about enforcing doctrinaire dogmatism. Dare question the problems with naturalistic evolution—as I do here—and be guilty of blasphemy. Ask for explanations about the still missing “missing links,” the absence of transitional forms, the sudden Cambrian Explosion, or the gaping gaps in the fossil record, and be branded an unbeliever—one who must repent of their sins, recant and do penance or be damned to academic hell for all time... Make no mistake. Fundamentalists are those who censure skeptics and prohibit inquiry. Today’s fundamentalists are not the Christians who, like me, are eager to examine the scientific evidence for Darwinian evolution, but those who deny that opportunity from ever happening. The real fundamentalists are those who chair the various science departments at our major universities—those unwilling to allow dissent... First, as reported here on August 9, two alleged ancestors of man, Homo Erectus and Homo Habilis, were found to be living together about 1.5 million years ago (MYA). This is a big deal because Erectus was supposed to have evolved from Habilis before later evolving into Sapiens (us). Think of it as finding out dad and grandpa were actually brothers, not father and son. This chart on Early Human Phylogeny at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History will have to be revised—again. The mythical evolutionary tree of life with man’s ascent from ape is looking more like a patch of thousands of blades of grass with the passing of each generation. Sapiens ends up all by himself—an evolutionary orphan—almost as though he just appeared in the fossil record fully formed—as though he were created and placed here. Imagine that. The second discovery, reported here, pushed the hypothetical human-ape split back another 10 million years, to now around 20 MYA. How so? The traditional theory is that man evolved from chimps about 6 MYA, chimps evolved from gorillas about 8 MYA, and gorillas evolved from orangutans about 14 MYA. But, with the discovery of a 10.5 million year old gorilla in Africa, this pushes the human-ape split back to at least 20 MYA. But between 15-20 MYA, there were dozens of primate species in Africa, and the hominid trail goes completely cold after 7 MYA. It looks like a dead end—or to the true believer, at least a serious detour over uncharted territory. Bottom line, not only do we find that dad and grandpa were brothers, but now we find out that we were adopted—or created. As the authors of the report on all this in the British journal Nature noted, “We know nothing about how the human line actually emerged from apes.”

Years ago it puzzled me that while some espousing evolution and the ape to man theory were as devout in their beliefs as any Bible thumper, they could never explain how male and female developed. It occurred to me there should be volumes of evidence showing how this happened. But the fossil evidence for such a transitional thing remained a closed door. Wherever scientists poked, the results were male and female without any transitional forms. Puzzling enough that modern man and civilization could suddenly appear only a scant few thousand years ago after so many millions of years without such development. Writing? Now just how did that happen so suddenly? Not to mention marvels like the pyramids and other such things. Atlantis? Who knows?

But to consider just one example of the marvels of human beings as opposed to ape-like creatures, I love airplanes and flying; I love stories and films about airplanes and flying. But I have never lost my sense of awe while watching a B-52 or some jumbo jet taking off and wondering at the marvel of such a thing. These behemoths of the air, how could the minds of human beings have conceived such marvels; then have thousands of other men and women actually construct such wonders? Sure, I know the physics involved, I know the hands on work that goes into such construction, but it remains a source of wonder to me. And just what is it that makes us get into these mechanical marvels and take to the air, knowing these things are subject to any number of catastrophic failures? Why have so many been so captivated they are willing to risk their lives in order to do things like taking to the air? As a pilot, I never got into an airplane and took off without the thought “This thing can kill me.” But this did not prevent me from flying. Nor has it prevented people from strapping themselves in and taking off in rockets to the moon and the space station.

The opening chapters of Genesis continue to hold the answers for me to many questions, though I have no way of knowing what the facts were leading to the story of Creation and that of humankind. However, as with The Fall were Adam and Eve also cursed with a “stupid gene” that led to things like the invention of gunpowder and airplanes? How about things like the automobile and splitting the atom? Computers?

There are a host of things that distinguish modern man from the many failed lines of other creatures, so many over millions of years that simply died out and disappeared. One of my own speculations has it Satan as a god had the power of creation, but his creations like the dinosaurs were truly diabolical and early attempts at human-like creatures failed and better gods intervened with the creation of the Adam, and it has been hell on earth ever since pitting the Evil One and his kind against the creation of the better gods.

I believe there was a decision on the part of the gods to create humankind; that we carry about in our bodies the very spirit of the gods and this compels us with divine curiosity to engage in many dangerous activities and inventions while reaching out to the stars, to climb a mountain with no other explanation but “Because it is there.” But there is that dark side to consider that may also lead to our very extinction. The conflict between good and evil has not played itself out yet; but there are those seemingly committed to the extinction of our species whether there is a Devil or not, whether we are children of the gods or not. But then there is Oscar the cat, and scientists in the electronics industry are having fits trying to understand the “tin whiskers” plaguing solder connections. And Steve Fossett has not been found despite all our science.

One thing my generation had in abundance was heroes. While I was raised by Christian, God fearing and Bible believing good people, as a child when faced with some moral dilemma like whether to take those forbidden cookies the decision might not be based on considering what Jesus would do, but rather what Dick Tracy or the Phantom would do.

You see, when someone like my great-grandmother said something was wrong, that was gospel to me as a boy and I’d be quick to go to fist city with anyone that disagreed. However, Jesus was somewhat esoteric to me as a child, but the funny papers and comic books of the time had real heroes I admired and to whom I could more readily relate. Some will construe this as an early indicator of my lack of moral perception. After all, once you admit Dick Tracy and the Phantom trumped Jesus when it came to moral decisions you obviously already had one foot in hell as a child, a point emphasized by Sam Clemens through Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. Face it; when a boy would rather play the role of a pirate than a preacher, an Old Testament prophet or New Testament Apostle he is a sure-fire contender for perdition.

Alas, my failings and shortcomings during childhood were manifold. But the good people who influenced my life, who emphasized doing right rather than wrong were often secondary to the moral instruction I received from the funny papers and comic books, the radio programs and films of the time. The difference between then and what was to come was the fact children of my time could depend on good overcoming evil; the good guys like Dick Tracy and the Phantom would always triumph in the end. Unfortunately, children today don’t have the heroes I knew as a child. The grim reality of the times mocks what is construed as the innocence, the naiveté and altruism of yesteryear, and children today are not taught the kind of morality I was taught as a child. And certainly they would seek in vain for any in positions of leadership in America that invite emulation, let alone any they would construe as “heroes.”

The “superheroes” of my time like Superman and Captain Marvel did not factor into my moral decisions very much because they were beyond the kin of whether or not to steal cookies or try to cheat while playing marbles. In somewhat the same fashion, the caution that God or Jesus was watching you didn’t have the same emphasis in my life as a child as did my heroes like Dick Tracy. The reason being I could think of becoming a man like Dick Tracy, but I couldn’t possibly relate to God or Jesus in the same manner. What kid ever thought he wanted to grow up to be a man like God or Jesus? Foreign as such a thought would be to any kid, the very impossibility of such a thing would prevent it ever being credited. Ah, but to grow up to be a man like Dick Tracy, that was attainable; and heroes like the Phantom and Tarzan, our cowboy heroes and some others were there as well.

There is no doubt in my mind the masterful Sinclair Lewis had some fun with his Elmer Gantry’s preaching Jesus was no sissy, attempting to cast Jesus in the heroic role of real two-fisted manhood. The failure to do so was not because there was any lack of examples of Jesus being a real man in the New Testament; bravery and courageousness are characteristics of Jesus. The problem was the same I encountered as a child; I could relate to Dick Tracy and others in a way impossible for me when it came to Jesus. He was too much in the category of the superheroes of my time; fascinating to read about, but impossible of attainment. Besides, casting out demons and performing miracles was somewhat beyond my understanding, and I knew I couldn’t perform magic like Mandrake or make myself invisible like the Shadow, I knew I couldn’t fly like Superman, but I could be a good guy like Dick Tracy fighting bad guys.

In many ways, Jesus was too much like the “virtual reality” of today’s electronic games and special effects. The reality is far removed from any kind of virtual reality. Who in their right mind would compare “virtual sex” with the real thing? Cops and soldiers can train with virtual reality for the “real thing,” but nothing will take the place of the real thing. Pilots and astronauts train in simulators, but all of them will tell you it isn’t the same as the real thing. Firing electronic “guns” in simulation will never take the place of a .44 magnum’s roar and kick or firing a real machine gun, and most especially not when a real person is firing back trying to kill you and the whizzing sound of bullets flying by is the real thing.

The many years have passed and I no longer have the heroes of childhood to emulate, nor do I spend much time thinking about God or Jesus watching what I do. They remain in the category of superheroes or virtual reality. What I do have is the belief my loved ones gone on before me may be watching; and more than any deities or heroes this prevents me from stealing those cookies. For me, this is the moral equivalent of belief or faith in any deities. And while politicians pander for votes declaiming on their “faith,” I think it would serve better to know their pedigree in respect to whether they have any like my departed loved ones to keep them straight and honest, those they believe they will have to answer to rather than their various professed deities.

I’m not sure but what the phrase “black and white” is no longer acceptable as a measure of determining something obvious, perhaps failing the test of political correctness these days, but it remains the way children view their world. To a child, some things are simply right and some things are simply wrong without the many shades of grey that will come to plague them as adults, acerbated by the legions of lawyers running the country that invariably make issues grey that would seem to be obviously right or wrong. Leave it to the Devil’s disciples, lawyers, to try to make everything some shade of grey without any moral distinctions of simply right and wrong. In this way, monsters continue to be free to prey on children, and murderers are judged by their degree of intelligence and social factors rather than the heinous acts of which they are guilty. One may be excused for eventually concluding most politicians, lawyers, and judges are pedophiles, molesters, drunks, and thieves given the decisions they make favoring criminals over their victims.

To give Jesus his due, since the present crop of politicians is making professions of “faith,” it would serve them well to consider the words of Jesus that unless a person is “born again” they will never enter the kingdom of heaven. I have come to believe Jesus may have been cognizant of better science than many of his proclaimed followers. I think Jesus may have had an idea about that 96% of the universe scientists theorize is unknown and perhaps even unknowable. Long ago I began to entertain the thought that while death was pronounced on humankind because of The Fall, we will be “born again” into an afterlife even as we are born into this one, but with the promise of “resurrection bodies” not subject to disease, death and decay.

Another thing to which politicians, and others, would do well to pay heed that profess to be followers of Jesus is his injunction that unless one becomes like a little child they will never enter the kingdom of heaven. In this Jesus affirmed the simple verities of childhood where the issues are never grey, but simply black or white, right or wrong. And the real heroes are those that choose to do what is right no matter how appealing the Devil’s offer to do wrong.

Good people will do good. I don’t believe good people need deities, heroes, or even departed loved ones to whom they think they will have to answer. No matter the evil and corruption we face in America, I think good people are able to separate good and evil and reach moral conclusions without the dubious benefit of being preached to by clergy, pundits, or politicians. The real problem I think we are facing is the declining options of choosing good over evil. And it is in this decline of options to choose the good Dick Tracy has fallen to the wayside and children no longer have the heroes I knew as a child.

If Muslim fanatics expect to bleed America dry through endless wars they will get all the cooperation they need from our Federal Triune Dictatorship. And while some people believe Caesar Bush is the poster boy for their argument in favor of abortion and birth control, something his own parents might agree with, the whole issue of sex needs a sober analysis devoid of emotions and so-called “humor.” There is nothing funny about sex; it is a very serious issue that demands some very serious discussion. And though Sam Clemens had a lot of fun with Adam and Eve, for me the issue of sex begins with attempting to understand the story of The Fall in Genesis where it would seem women got the worst of the deal and trying to figure out why this should be?

Certainly many of the ills of the world are due to overpopulation. Here in America politicians are determined to acerbate the problem through open borders for the sake of slave labor and continue extorting the responsible to support the irresponsible, to socialize America out of existence through slave labor and unproductive mouths. But no politician dares address the issues of birth control as a condition for social services. Yet the question remains why those that rut like animals without any concern for the resulting babies be supported by responsible taxpayers, by those that have only the children they can care for and offer a future?

It comes down to sex, often mindless sex for the sake of pleasure only without any sense of personal responsibility attached, and perhaps the answer is in the Genesis account of The Fall. Over a long period of time I have been laboring over a writing project with the working title “Hey God! What went wrong and when are you going to fix it?” Most religious people are not amused. For example, a fellow who previously had been very friendly withdrew his invitation for me to attend his church when I told him about it. But one chapter deals with the issue of sex and “original sin” in the Bible. Needless to say, it is proving to be the longest and most complicated part of the book.

Life is not molecular; it has no atomic structure and may properly belong to that 96% of the universe scientists presently theorize is unknown, and possibly unknowable. But as I continue to mull the possibilities in the beginning chapters of Genesis concerning Creation and God breathing the breath of life into the “Adam” making him a living soul, it seems the gods determining to make the Adam in their own image with this breath of life may have been somewhat confused in the creation of Adam and Eve. In any event, something went terribly wrong according to the account given.

Adam can’t find a suitable companion among the creatures brought before him to be named, so the gods decided to provide him with Eve. But Eve is beguiled by the Serpent (that may have been jealous of Adam and Eve); she in turn tempts Adam, and things really fall apart. The gods hedged their bet by providing a “test” for the first couple. And though Adam “takes it like a man” and blames both God and Eve for his failure, for whatever reason Eve and her daughters thereafter take the brunt of “the curse” and have been paying dearly ever since, with even the New Testament blaming Eve for being deceived. No matter one’s opinion of this seeming injustice, no one can fail to see women pay a far higher price for “original sin” than men, and far too often are treated no better than prey with men as the predators.

To begin, once having eaten of the forbidden fruit from “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” Adam and Eve realized they were naked and tried to cover themselves. Maybe this is where sex reared its head for the first time. The gods were shaken up and claimed Adam and Eve had become like the gods themselves, knowing both good and evil; sex being implied. So the Serpent told a half-truth, neglecting to mention the antidote to the forbidden fruit and the first couple was kicked out of the Garden to prevent them eating from “the tree of life” that would have enabled them to live forever like the gods. But before this happens, the judgment against the first couple is that women would suffer pain through childbirth, that they would forever after be subservient to men. And so it has been throughout human history, anecdotal blips of the occasional woman being in charge notwithstanding.

The story involving the curse pronounced against the Serpent may possibly be that of Satan’s fall, and though succeeding in deceiving Eve the promise given is while humankind may suffer at the hands of the Devil, the children of God will prevail in the end. In the meantime, as per the Scriptures Satan has dominion over the kingdoms of the earth, being confined here and going about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour and setting those in positions of power according to his choosing making it as miserable as he can for those that would attempt to live by the precept of the Golden Rule.

But sex has been construed from earliest times to be the cause of The Fall and God’s judgment against Adam and Eve, with women being blamed for the most part as sinful creatures, even unclean and sin by definition, that tempt men to sin. Dear Harper Lee certainly took fundamentalists to task on this issue, but the history of it goes all the way back to the story in Genesis, though the Roman Church and most especially the religion of Islam carry it to real extremes.

Nevertheless, there is no getting around the fact that while men make wars while women attempt to make homes this whole issue of the power of sex has a lot to do with the wars men make. And in this sense, sex may rightfully be viewed as the sinful thing the ancients construed it to be; especially since it is the power women wield by their sex that promotes so much evil in the world. The whole field of pornography since the most ancient of times proves the power women have over men when it comes to sex. And it may rightly be thought this is most certainly not a good thing, since both men and women suffer as a result and it was with this justification Sam Clemens observed “men and women are natural born enemies.” While he joked about this, I believe he may have credited the Genesis story more than he admitted.

The “marriage bed” has been the most successful institution in providing some relief from the results of The Fall, but from the most ancient of times men having several wives and concubines has been approved while this has been denied women. Certainly a most unfair double standard, as was pointed out so delightfully in “Paint Your Wagon,” but one that might easily be understood in the light of the judgment pronounced against Eve in the beginning. But attempting to understand why this happened the way it did according to the Genesis account is one of the most difficult of tasks. And while the New Testament teaches a doctrine of monogamy, the kind of sinful human nature resulting from The Fall does not accommodate itself to fidelity, but rather what has become “serial monogamy” here in America where the old “Till death we do part” has become an antiquated anachronism.

Love may be a form of temporary insanity; whether or not it will inevitably be betrayed by either death or infidelity, a point that led Sam Clemens to express his conclusion “death is the only pure and unalloyed gift of God.” As romantic as I am, there are some very hard cold facts of human nature that are not easily overcome by romanticism. Answers to this conundrum of life are difficult to come by. While I credit the ancient myths, especially those of the Greeks, with much truth, and while goddesses play an important role throughout it is the male deities that inevitably have the upper hand. Except when it comes to the power women wield through sex, including the historical fact of prostitution where women, not men, have power. This is certainly an important issue in the Biblical account of the “sons of God and the daughters of men” along with various other mythologies, and a study of the mythologies having to do with the various goddesses I believe sheds some light on the reason women are judged so harshly. There must have been a reason why David and Solomon were so easily undone by a pretty face while another launched a thousand ships, none of which ended in “they lived happily ever after.”

But I’m going to keep working on the book, though the speculations run far ahead of my attempts to put them in any meaningful written expression. Of this I am certain: While sex lends itself to much levity, much like economics, as Thoreau pointed out, it cannot so easily be disposed. Life is disproportionately unfair, and sex lends not a little to the unfairness. The subject lends itself to the making of many books, but I believe there is a need for mine. I tell myself there must be a plan in all this; I’d hate to believe the gods are a’ dither like politicians exclaiming “We gotta have a plan!”

While people carry on religious and political hatreds of various kinds, the recent flurry of activity concerning these should remind us that even though there are Halloween with the Great Pumpkin and Thanksgiving with turkey looming ahead, it is never too early for Santa Claus.

Two of the most endearing qualities of a child are trust and imagination. They will believe in magic, they thrill to stories of fairies and enchanted lands. Christmas, Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, stories of birds and animals, enchanted islands and forests; these are the domain of childhood.

We don’t forsake these things in adulthood. We continue to want our Merlins, Camelots, and enchanted glades. As parents, we enjoy making things like Santa and his elves and reindeer real to our children. All too quickly, we grow up and learn of the fantasies of childhood but the intent of parents in wanting their children exposed to the myths is the innocence of goodness.

Santa is the ultimate angel to a child. There isn’t the slightest trace of evil connected to Santa; he could never do anything wrong or anything to hurt a child. Santa believes in children, in the innocence of childhood. Our desire, as adults, to believe in angels follows the same pattern. We grow up and have to leave the myth of Santa, but we desperately want to continue to hold on to what he represents. The emphasis of Santa relating to children is the basis of his enduring popularity. He personifies the love of children and the best of childhood as no other figure, historical or mythological.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. Who will forget these words to a little girl written by Francis Church for the New York Sun in 1897? His concluding words to little Virginia:

Alas! How dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance, to make tolerable this existence...the eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished...The most real things in the world are those that neither children or men can see .Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world. Thank God! He lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

The Christmas season with the distinctive music and decorations, the buying of gifts, the celebration of the hope of peace on earth, is something none of us would like to see disappear. Singing Jingle Bells, Santa Claus is Coming to Town and reading ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas celebrate the season. Children write letters to Santa and hang stockings with care and we watch A Christmas Carol, It’s a Wonderful Life and Miracle on 34^th Street. We have added The Grinch to the story of Scrooge, there is now a Charlie Brown Christmas, Frosty the Snowman, The Little Drummer Boy, Rudolph and so many more with all the innocence, charm and fantasy of childhood.

The story of the North Pole, Santa’s home and the workshop of elves, the magic of Santa’s being able to visit every home with a child in a single night, going down chimneys, his Ho, Ho, Ho, children leaving cookies and milk for him and, very important, Santa knows if you have been bad or good, naughty or nice.

Believing in Santa is as natural to a child as faith and prayer. Childhood is of so very short duration, such a short time in which to teach and encourage children in the things that will prepare them for adulthood. The whole concept of Santa is one of the things that will do this. We know that all too soon our children will face the realities of the denouement of Santa. But the lesson of goodness and the memory of the magic and innocence of childhood, like the healing power of a mother’s kiss, should remain.

Of the greatest importance is the fact that Santa loves all children no matter the physical or mental differences, the race, religion or geography. This is what children learn from Santa. The non-Christian world recognizes the jolly old elf, separating him from sectarian religious beliefs. He is welcome in Turkey, China, Cuba, and even Iraq! And unlike the cruel wars fought over religious beliefs, none have ever been fought over Santa Claus.  And none will be unless, as with all wars, “adults” decide to do so.

“Does a Flapper Make a Good Wife? Painted lips, flush of liquor, scanty raiment, dash, and high speed – How do they mix with happy marriage?” The Roaring Twenties question posed in an article by Kathleen Norris in the weekly magazine Liberty may have given some men pause to wonder, and ask “Am I willing to risk marriage to a gal with these questionable attributes?”

Well, I admit that the question of whether a Flapper would make a good wife is a tad antique by now. But, then, so are both Liberty magazine and I. Still, the question raised back in the 1920s by Kathleen Norris about what constitutes moral, civilized good manners and behavior are no less relevant to a successful marriage these days. A good, moral man capable of responsible and trustworthy commitment and a good moral woman capable of the same are still most likely to make a good, moral, and committed marriage.

Nope, not going to go into endless discussion of what constitutes “morality.” I’m antique enough to believe some things are right and some things are wrong. It’s wrong to lie, cheat, steal, abuse a child, engage in sexual perversion or betray the love and trust of a marriage partner. Some might say in this respect “It’s easy to be on the side of the angels.” But only those who haven’t tried it would say such a thing in the face of society today notwithstanding the heated debate over women bobbing their hair seems no longer relevant to these times.

But one thing debated since the beginnings of human history has not lessened in intensity, the debate concerning questions surrounding the origin and purpose of life. “Why can’t we know?” a very young and beautiful Clara Bow asked in this exquisitely poignant way concerning the hereafter during a Liberty magazine interview. While Clara Bow was exploited as the “It” girl, anyone making a study of her life cannot escape the conclusion that she was a very profound person; and more importantly, a very good person.

To know that we don’t know raises an interesting philosophical question as well, particularly when science it telling us that 96% of the universe is unknown, and possibly unknowable, leaving great latitude for speculation as to what is contained in that vast unknown. When it comes to the grand questions of philosophy, the how and the why of the universe, of life and death, science has made some progress in giving us answers to the material composition of the universe, but the fundamental questions remain unanswered. And the question, all pretensions and charlatans aside, remains whether we can know? I can’t help but smile at the question Clara Bow in her interview with Liberty phrased so succinctly and eloquently, the haunting question from time immemorial, so seemingly ingenuously. And while the question lends itself to the dictum “You cannot know what you cannot know,” no philosopher or theologian has ever phrased it better or more honestly than she did.

Religion and its varied monuments, artifacts and methods of worship and the King of Disciplines, Philosophy, do not provide us any certain knowledge of where we came from or where we are going. They do not answer Clara Bow’s honest question. But it does seem that we are possessed of an instinct that caused Clara Bow to even ask the question; that drives us, just as the caterpillar, in a direction that death is not the end, that life does have purpose, that by whatever form of a “butterfly” we emerge, that purpose will be fulfilled. There is an instinct of self-preservation and for procreation in all life forms. Perhaps we human beings even have an instinct for love? Why shouldn’t there be an instinct for a belief in God, for a belief in purpose in our lives and that death is not the end?

Religion and the biases and prejudices in our lives may be matters of choice or what we have been taught to believe. Such things do not seem to be “instinctive” but depend on things like others and how they impact our lives, of things like the circumstances of environment, what we are taught and what we choose to believe. But could it be that we have an “instinct” to believe in God? If so, it still remains of critical importance to separate what we believe from what we know based on empirical evidence rather than coming to blows over matters of beliefs.

It may be that Clara Bow’s question cannot be answered while we remain in our present form. It may be that as the caterpillar may not know or recall anything of its larval stage, and the butterfly may not recall either of its previous stages of existence, such “knowing” isn’t possible for us at this time; that such things progress on the basis of an unconscious knowing that we call “instinct.” Like the caterpillar, we may believe in God(s) by instinct, and by that instinct attempt to live our lives in preparation for the hereafter, our instinct in most cases being to live by the precept of the Golden Rule and emerge the most beautiful butterfly possible at the next stage of life.

Though answers to such questions may in fact not be possible to us in our present form of existence, the pursuit of answers, the curiosity that drives people to search for answers continues. It seems that the quest for answers to these questions is just as natural (instinctive?) as that of the caterpillar preparing for its next stage of development. But the caterpillar, while having the instinct for survival and preparation for becoming a butterfly, has no sense of impending death… and it does not die, but metamorphose. Jesus’ parable of the seed certainly represents this very example, as does the teaching concerning “resurrection bodies.”

The quest for answers about life and death has much to do with a great deal more than just curiosity. Humankind has the knowledge of death, something the caterpillar does not have. The butterfly? It lays its eggs and dies and that is the end of the cycle of nature for it… but human beings? Self awareness is a great distinction between a lower life form and human beings, one that calls to mind the Genesis account of our being made in the image of God, and as such the children of God; and perhaps we have an instinctual “knowing” of this resulting in a search for answers and the refusal to accept death as the end of the cycle of nature for humankind.

I have pointed out in the past that we may be born with an instinct to believe in God(s), an instinct that leads us to believe in things like prayer and a hereafter, an instinct that makes us cry out to God(s) in extremis. It would be of great comfort to me to be able to answer Clara Bow’s question: Why can’t we know? My guess is that in the grand scheme of things it was determined best that we should not know, apart from what may be that instinct of knowing. And I continue to believe the opening chapters of Genesis are based on facts of the actual Creation and The Fall.

Time may be relative, but death is not. The quest for an answer to what life and death really are goes on and we will continue searching in spite of the many charlatans, and as long as humankind is possessed of self-awareness, imagination, and curiosity, whatever the source of these, we will continue the quest. In the meantime, I maintain the hope that I will yet join loved ones and friends that have gone on before me, no matter where they have “gone on.” My part, my responsibility as long as I’m in this body that is only a vehicle for the transport of this “fire of life” I carry about that is me is continue trying to emerge at last the most beautiful butterfly possible. After all, though esoteric it does not seem to me to be of paramount importance whether someone is the best Buddhist, Jew, Catholic, Baptist or any other, but what kind of butterfly may eventually emerge.

A very likable old fellow had a running joke among the patrons of one pub I used to frequent here in the Kern River Valley that he was planning on going to Tahiti as soon as he could get enough women to row the boat. Unlike Alec Baldwin who threatened to leave the country if Bush was elected, I am not going to make such a threat if Hillary is elected, though thoughts of Tahiti do come to mind.

Ok, so such thoughts of going to Tahiti have nothing to do with Hillary even if she was willing to do the rowing. However, since politicians have made such shipwreck of America anyway and will continue to do so no matter who holds what office I want to look at the bright side. Regardless of how much I despise the Clintons, much as it may be considered gallows humor I think of Ms. Clinton becoming President as “Fun with Bill and Hill.”

You know, the Bush administration hasn’t been much fun, and all bets may be off should Bush decide to go out in a blaze of glory by nuking Iran. But though macabre in some respects I view the Bill and Hill scenario with some degree of potential humor. Certainly the White House gossip would take a turn for the better, enriching both MSM and the tabloids, and interns would once more find their proper sexual role in the scheme of things.

Given to whimsy as I often am, it is fun to imagine Bill’s wife divorcing him as soon as she was elected. That would be a real hoot. But practically speaking, no matter how delicious the idea, the two are such political animals I don’t give that much chance of happening. Now thoughts of the Borgias do come to mind, but which of the Clintons would gain by one poisoning the other? Despite the Constitutional limitations, which would prove very disagreeable for Bill, neither he nor his wife would find murder at all disagreeable in achieving their ends as their dark past suggests though they might draw the line at murdering each other; not from affection but because it would be politically undesirable.

On the plus side, Hillary might bring back the White House furniture, linens, silverware she stole when she left the last time. All the computer keyboards that were missing the “w’s” have been replaced so that would not be a bother. However, attention would have to be paid to possible computer viruses that might have been encrypted by Bush cronies. Imagine Hillary trying to reach the ambassador in China and instead launching a nuke.

When it comes to race, the Clintons are admirably suited to winning minority approval by substituting the old “Forty acres and a mule, free watermelons and chickens” with things like “free healthcare.” And of course they will now add “free piñatas” to sweeten the deal. Thing of it is, they will not view these political promises as being racist.

People like Bill O’Reilly are not racist. They are guilty of being condescending and patronizing, something more insidious than overt racism. One of the major factors that enabled me to be a successful teacher in Watts is that I was never condescending nor patronizing. The grievous thing about people like the Clintons and O’Reilly is they seem oblivious to being so. It is a distinction of the wealthy and politicians that live such insulated lives they never have to deal with the circumstances that create the more ugly facts underlying racism. Because of this insulation from reality, they seem unaware of how hateful their condescension and patronization of those they unconsciously consider inferior really is.

For my part, I much prefer the in your face racism of Al Sharpton. He does not condescend, he does not patronize; he is the preeminent pickpocket that warns in advance he is going to pick your pocket. You know exactly where you stand with people like Sharpton. He is a thoroughgoing racist, a lying, cheating scoundrel and flim flam man that makes no apologies for being such. It says something about the MSM that find him such a darling. Jesse Jackson would do well to drop his pretense of being anything other than Sharpton, though Jackson could never be anywhere near as funny.

Despite it being Machiavellian in the extreme inviting the total destruction of America, given the total disaster of the Bush administration and my personal belief the Devil chooses those he wants in power, the electorate may opt for the familiarity of Bill and Hill. There is just something about that kind of comfortable familiarity that calls to mind:

Vice is a monster of such frightful mien

As to be hated needs but to be seen;

Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,

We first endure, then pity, then embrace.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744)

It was a proud moment of excitement for Americans when Alan Shepard became our first man in space. There he is on the front cover of LIFE, the issue of May 12, 1961 (20 cents), shown being plucked from the water by a chopper after his safe return. The headline: ‘AOK!’ THE U.S. IS IN SPACE.

The United States and the Soviet Union both launched men into space that year. But here in America when we were blind-sided by Sputnik the race to space became an urgent national priority. I stood in my yard that October of 1957 staring up in the night sky with both wonderment and consternation at that shining speck moving far overhead in its orbit; feeling almost betrayed that the Russians could possibly do such a thing before we did! How could such a thing have happened? Some of us shared our feelings that it felt like suddenly finding yourself being exposed and naked in public to a bunch of strangers! I was working at the LAX division of North American Aviation at the time during the F-86 Saberjet project and thought I knew something of what was going on; but despite our security clearances it seems none of us did.

For those interested, a search of the literature of the time is absolutely fascinating, in particular the comments of some of our leaders back then. Yes, many of us were fearful the Russians were soon going to be using satellites to take pictures of our secret installations, even launching satellites capable of raining nuclear bombs on America from space. There had been Roswell fueling speculation about UFOs, films like “The Day the Earth Stood Still” held us spellbound, our imaginations were working overtime as Hollywood rushed to get into full SciFi mode. So many of those older films have become classics, and I can still enjoy watching “The Blob” among many others.

However, no matter the changes between then and now some things have not changed; the government operated in secrecy then and operates in secrecy now, and the one constant is we were lied to by politicians back then and we are still being lied to by politicians now. Years ago Walt Kelly pointed out in Pogo “The dollar’s smaller...the bomb’s bigger.” In many ways this is what politicians considered “progress” then, and in many ways it is what politicians consider “progress” now. Back then we were being assured M.A.D. guaranteed our safety, and this is supposed to still make us feel safe though we are not being told for example what the Israeli’s really attacked and bombed in Syria or why.

But here we are, these decades later after so many truly amazing advances in science and technology, amazing inventions leading to the computer age together with the successes in space after Alan Shepard’s heroic ride including moon landings, putting Rovers on Mars, the Hubble Telescope and being able to hit a comet in space with surreal accuracy, and shuttle launches galore to the International Space Station. But despite all the near-miraculous technology including computers and the numbers of satellites now circling the earth no one can find Steve Fossett!

Ok, perhaps he met a humdrum end due to fateful circumstances as those in “Fate is the Hunter,” perhaps he may yet be found or even come walking out of that vast desert with an amazing story of survival to tell. This I know, it was aptly pointed out that looking for him was akin to looking for a needle in a haystack, and those of us well-traveled in the vastness of desert wastelands and very familiar with such wilderness environments know this is exactly the situation.

That said, the larger mystery is how we have been able to produce such marvels of science and technology enabling so much SciFi come to life inventions and capabilities like landing men on the moon and are unable to find a particular aircraft gone missing right in our own backyard? No matter the facts surrounding the needle in a haystack scenario, by now shouldn’t we be able to find that needle? Given the government propaganda about the tremendous capabilities possessed by our military and intelligence agencies, I have the uneasy feeling that perhaps our government is not being forthcoming about the limitations. And hearing of amateurs using their home computers in attempts to find Fossett only lends to my feeling of uneasiness. At that point the whole thing does become quite surreal; and it’s as though I was being transported back to “Bachelor in Paradise” where Bob Hope is trying to cope with all the “conveniences” of “modern living.” And the saga of Fossett makes me wonder how far we have really advanced in many ways we believe we finally have a handle on things?

I still love a mystery, and my whimsical turn of mind is given to speculation beyond what I can see or prove. But given no ELT or GPS signal from Fossett, given the enormous resources committed to finding him my whimsy turns to things like his proximity to Area 51, thoughts of extraterrestrials and flying saucers, all of this augmented by the one fact I can rely on. Those in our government lie to us. And while “abductees” are written off as kooks, perhaps the circumstances in the films “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “Independence Day” may yet prove to be more fact than fiction. Face it; when those in authority lie, no one knows the truth and fancy and conspiracy theories take wing.

However, in regard to whimsy while most of us I imagine are prone to write off as kooks those claiming to worship Satan, looking about the world it does seem easier to believe there is a Devil than some benevolent chief deity watching out for us; and my moments of whimsy may be evidence of “The idle mind is the Devil’s playground.” But we really don’t know the answers to many things, and though it be only whimsy we don’t know whether it will be Klaatu or the scenario in “Mars Attacks” we may yet face; and my tongue in cheek response to whether genetics and robotics will combine in Artificial Intelligence that may displace natural human beings attributed to God is: Can we do any worse? Notwithstanding all the Dr. Frankenstein scenarios, I can hardly be faulted for entertaining the question at times.

In my opinion, believing Satan to be real is a way of viewing the world and understanding why it is in the grip of evil and lunatics appear to be running asylum earth. In my opinion there is nothing we can do to prevent the Devil putting those he chooses in power, there is nothing we can do to prevent the mad dictators and tyrants in power from making untold millions suffer as a result of their madness.

Whether a Devil or not, humankind always faces the answer of Frank to a mad Rocco in the film noir “Key Largo.” What was it Rocco wanted, what would it take to satisfy him? Frank sums it up succinctly in one word: “More.” And responding to Frank’s answer Rocco replies, “That’s it...more.”

I believe the same thing motivates Satan. I think of Satan as a mad man, and in his madness seeking insanely for the only thing that he believes will satisfy him: More! But all Citizen Kane is able to murmur in the end is “Rosebud.” Whatever one’s beliefs or disbeliefs more will never satisfy anyone that selfishly seeks power and authority over others; that selfishly does evil just so they can have “More.”

With the usual sensitivity I generally show for those who have met with disaster after doing something really stupid, by now many of you have heard or read about the fellow recently that put a “pet” rattlesnake in his mouth and was bitten. Had he died, he would have been a contender for the much sought after Darwin Award that so far has eluded me despite my many efforts.

For example, most of us as children learned to make paste of flour and water; but hominy, “properly prepared,” makes for an adhesive that would put “Liquid Nails” to shame. You won’t find it in any Betty Crocker or Martha Stewart cookbook, but some few of you know the procedure, usually the purview of bachelors, of putting a can in a pan of water to warm on a stove; saves on using and washing unnecessary dishes. On one occasion some years ago, I had done this with a can of hominy. But the phone interrupted me, and becoming absorbed in conversation I forgot about the can of hominy. It was only when it sounded and felt like a bomb had exploded in the kitchen I was forcefully reminded of this lapse of memory.

Ruefully, I surveyed the damage. Not only had I forgotten about the can on the stove, the phone had interrupted me before punching the necessary hole in the can to allow the escape of steam. Readers may well imagine the kind of “bomb” I had unintentionally created. The bomb had punched a hole in the ceiling and made a huge dent in the top of the stove, and with the forceful explosion of the can each kernel of hominy had become a yellow “missile” plastering the walls and ceiling of the kitchen. It was while attempting to clean up the horrendous mess I discovered the marvelous adhesive characteristic of hominy “properly prepared.” Shortly into the cleanup thoughts of applying pneumatic power tools and an auto body grinder to the job crossed my mind.

Some people have been critical of the massive search that was mounted for Steve Fossett and still ongoing; correctly pointing out no such search would have been conducted for the average Joe that went missing under similar circumstances. But given his fame, it isn’t unlike the media frenzy over some psychopathic ex-football player.

We still don’t know if Fossett was on some clandestine mission around Area 51, whether he and his plane were taken into a flying saucer by extraterrestrials as per “This Island Earth,” whether he died of a heart attack and the plane landed itself as has been known to happen, or whether he was the victim of doing something really stupid. After all, even really smart people are capable of doing really stupid things. And it’s not impossible if Fossett is eventually found he will have been mummified by the sun, sand, and clear desert breeze.

Traveling Route 66 in the 40s was a real adventure in motoring across the country. I was entranced by the many desert “museums” that contained live rattlesnakes, huge tarantulas and scorpions, artifacts like two Gila monsters chomping each other’s tails in a circle of death, meteorites, crystals and geodes, Indian jewelry, hats, pipes, baskets and blankets; there was so much to inspire the imagination of a child. I especially wanted one of the souvenirs of the Painted Desert. There were small glass bottles with layers of the colored sands in them; they were really beautiful. But one place we visited had something that held me spellbound. It was a mummified body identified as a notorious outlaw. He had been lynched by a mob and left hanging from a tree in the Arizona desert, the weathered rope still around his neck and rusted manacles on his wrists; now on display for all to see. I’m not sure such a display would be permitted these days.

And, of course, there is “Psycho” to remind us of how strange adventures in taxidermy and mummification take place, and some of you will recall the story not that long ago about a mummified body of a man in Germany. He had been dead in his apartment for a full year before being discovered. There is a lot of weird stuff out there for inquiring minds. Right here where I live I won’t be surprised if I read a headline in our local paper: “Mummified body found in Bodfish.”

No one has seen or heard from Junky Jerry. Apart from locals here in the Kern River Valley, no one would really know much about him, and most of us accepted him as another local colorful character adding further distinction to Downtown Bodfish. He got the nickname over twenty years ago by touting junk as “antiques and collectables.” Not that he didn’t have any real antiques and collectables, but much of the stuff was junk; hence the name. Eventually he accepted it, and tried to turn a vice into virtue; kind of like Pride-Integrity-Guts. But I gave the cops credit for trying.

However, Jerry’s biggest problem was his mouth. He didn’t speak, he shouted. And his opinions were so abrasive; often outrageous to many people none of us knew how he managed to remain in business since more often than not he would chase prospective customers out of his store. And as he grew older, many began to suspect he had truly become cronked in the attic.

I had met Jerry when he first opened his place nearly thirty years ago. Somehow, I managed to tolerate him and his mouth and was probably the closest thing to a friend he had simply by virtue of longevity. So when I noticed his truck had not been moved from his backyard for a spell, something quite unusual, I tried calling but got no response. Knocks at the door and ringing the bell went unanswered. Jerry was elderly and lived alone with a cat for company. He had gotten it as a kitten and made it a housecat, thoroughly spoiling it. So I knew if Jerry had dropped dead there would be no one to take care of the cat. Ah, hah! Now readers know of my priorities in this case, further evidence of my sensitivity in such matters.

When there are no relatives to keep track of the elderly, it sometimes happens that one of these people can in fact be dead in their homes for a lengthy period of time before authorities are alerted. And even so, while the police can be notified of such concerns they can’t just bust open a door to check things out. And in Jerry’s case, he had openly expressed the desire to shoot a few of them on several occasions, even meeting me at the door once gun in hand. So I have done my part by expressing concern for Jerry to authorities, but it may yet come down to that mummified body found in Bodfish. Well, there is a lot of weird stuff out there; and things just keep getting weirder.

“The head monkey at Paris puts on a traveller’s cap, and all the monkeys in America do the same.” Thoreau’s estimation of Parisian dictated fashion throughout Europe and here in America was easily confirmed. And for those with the interest and grit to do some research on the subject, there are few things to compare with the fashion industry when it comes to in your face unadulterated racism associated with fashion. But the recent media focus on beautiful Caucasian women dominating the fashion industry is not a story for the weak in heart and mind; and most certainly it is not a story for those with a closed mind concerning the facts of prejudice and bigotry on the part of those calling themselves “liberal,” facts that will not go away no matter the amount of denigrating those they view as “conservative” or the amount of politically correct spin put on the subject.

As I once more intrude where angels fear to go, few would dispute Julia Roberts is a “Pretty Woman.” And it took a really pretty woman to play the role in the film in order for it to be successful. Those calling themselves “liberal” may think they have a claim on Hollywood because of it promoting perversion, sex and violence, but the reality is quite the reverse; it is a business to make money, and the film Pretty Woman was not going to be a success, it was not going to make money without a really pretty woman in the role. Discrimination? Of course! Blatantly so! That’s Hollywood. But there is a comparable discriminatory institution that helps Hollywood be Hollywood: The fashion industry.

While corporations get away with “murder for hire” using the politicians they have bought and own to legitimize their wars and other depredations, the fashion industry operates with the kind of impunity any mafia godfather could rightly both envy and admire. And despite the blatant racism it is one industry the ACLU knows better than to try and intimidate. But there is a very good reason both materially and esthetically why the fashion industry concentrates its efforts on using beautiful Caucasian women to promote itself: “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” and beautiful Caucasian women are the standard of beauty in the world of fashion, and in the less civilized world of pornography as well.

But beyond the esthetics of beauty there are some very grim reasons thoroughly implanted in human nature for the fashion industry dedicating itself to promotion using Caucasian women almost exclusively. You can find the reason for this in the classic 1933 film “King Kong” where it is pointed out the natives and Kong were attracted to Fay Wray. Back then there was little in the way of political correctness to avoid the obvious of the natives and Kong really going gaga over a beautiful, blonde Caucasian girl.

My attention was first drawn to this subject of discrimination in the fashion industry over forty years ago when I read Professor Claude G. Bowers’ definitive work “The Tragic Era” dealing with what is euphemistically called “Reconstruction” following the death of Lincoln. I have often recommended this book to people for them to gain insight to how America found itself in the grip of a Federal Triune Dictatorship following Lincoln’s War. But it helps to explain many other things also, it helps to explain a thesis of mine formed many years ago that the seed of destruction for America was planted in slavery.

One of the greatest questions of American history has been what if slavery had never been introduced in America? A further question is what if it had been excluded by our Constitution? Another question is what if the Negro leaders of the time had accepted Lincoln’s relocation proposal? Their refusal to do so prompted Lincoln’s question as to why these Negro leaders would want to stay in a land where they surely knew they would continue to be hated and despised, never to find themselves accepted the equal of Caucasians?

A great fallacy was given the imprimatur of the U. S. Supreme Court when the justices made the Draconian decision to abolish segregation. Living in their insulated world of privilege, never having lived like so many ordinary people the ideal of desegregation was doomed from the beginning for the very reason the fashion industry chooses beautiful Caucasian women almost exclusively. The court could make a law, but it could not force Caucasian children into the schools of DC, Watts, or Harlem, it could not change either human nature or the reality of beauty being in the eye of the beholder. What the court did in its blindness to the realities was to make a bad situation worse, creating what became known as “white flight” with many schools in America being even more segregated now than before the court’s decision.

Martin Luther King could have a dream, but it was a dream only, never able to pass the test of reality. But at least I had the benefit of being a high school teacher in Watts, I saw the fallacy of MLK’s dream on a daily basis in a community filled with people whose only dream was to escape their miserable lives, but doomed by a system that would never do any more than give out welfare checks in order “to keep those people in their place.”

The invasion of America by millions of illegal alien Mexicans has only benefited the wealthy profiting from slave labor, these wealthy with the politicians in their pockets refusing to secure our borders in order to keep these millions coming without hindrance. But the enormity of this betrayal of America adds to the misery of the millions of legitimate American citizens already living in poverty in places like Watts. There will never be enough welfare checks to keep these growing millions “in their place,” and the increasing violence across America with entire cities being given over to gangs, jails and prisons being “growth industries” is the result.

For those of us who accept we live in a demon-haunted world in which life is neither fair nor just, where the strong dominate the weak and women have never been accepted as of equal value to men, it is only to be expected the ideals of fairness and justice invariably give way to the grim reality of those dedicated to greed and avarice, to the ruthless whose goal is power and wealth. It is with justifiable cynicism “Treaties are made to be broken” rings all too true, and history is replete with “To the victor belongs the spoils,” and “The winners of wars write their histories.”

Prohibition was an ideal, but it was an ideal doomed by reality. Separate but Equal never passed the test of equality, but neither did desegregation; and a multitude of laws will never displace human nature that dictates “birds of a feather flock together.” However, the pecking order is the result of factors over which few have any control, the factors that make for a demon haunted world filled with inequities and injustices. The person who says they do not know much about art but they know what they like remains in the majority. And the majority always wants Fay Wray in King Kong, and Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. Hollywood was able to call Hedy Lamarr “the most beautiful girl in the world” without fearing howls of Racism! Discrimination!

It is futile to expect the leopard to change its spots, it is futile to expect Muslim nations to become democratic, and it is futile to try to promote “diversity” into the fashion industry. While it remains a truism “sex sells,” the fashion industry is dedicated to the standard of beauty being Caucasian. And there is nothing the Supreme Court, the ACLU, the NAACP can do to make it otherwise. A far deeper thing is involved with the fashion industry, one that no amount of laws or demands for change will avail. Who has the money and power? These, not fairness or diversity rule the fashion industry. And the fashion industry reflects the will and tastes of those who have the money and power.

Perhaps Bush has decided to nuke Iran; there seems little we can do about that. But suppose the Supreme Court was to decide to “nuke” the fashion industry including all its publications making it abide by the same anti-discrimination laws governing the schools and other government institutions, that Hollywood would have to make films in which diversity ruled to meet a quota system, that all pornographic material must meet such a quota rather than what those with the money want to see? We know life is not fair or just, we know we are all what we are by accident of birth and some things cannot be changed as a result of this.

But no amount of laws is going to surmount those things like the standard of beauty applied to King Kong and Pretty Woman; and not even the most tyrannical of despots can change this. However, tyrannical though it is “the head monkey in Paris” has always known where the money is, and the really big money follows beautiful Caucasian women. “The face that launched a thousand ships,” this by itself is enough to cause wars and change the course of history.

I can only wonder how the recent media attention being given the fashion industry’s blatantly obvious discrimination may stir thoughts of war in some, whether there may be marches in the streets with minorities carrying placards reading the contemporary equivalent of “Down with Fay Wray and Julia Roberts!” I suppose this would meet with roaring failure, and the reasons for such a failure should speak volumes to any believing they are going to change things when it comes to the power of the standard of beauty in the fashion industry, berate and revile it as some may. And the AARP notwithstanding, old and wrinkled does not come off as “sexy” no matter the spin. There are simply some things no amount of propaganda or laws can change.

One of several ongoing discussions I have with God is whether many of the advances in technology are the result of his influence or that of Satan. It does seem to me humankind would be better off without gunpowder or nuclear weapons. “Get a horse” has long passed, and few any longer say “If God had meant us to fly he would have given us wings.” Still, though not of an entirely Luddite persuasion I do have cause to wonder about some of the improvements of a technological age. But I remind myself I came along before there was a TV in homes, let alone a computer.

Notwithstanding their enemies in “Fahrenheit 451,” most of us know that even books can be dangerous; “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” for example. But is the forsaking of books and literacy in favor of computers any less dangerous? I think not. By now, the worldwide dependence on computers leaves many of us with the opinion we are vulnerable to things like being unable to account for nuclear weapons or even the accidental launching of nuclear missiles by any nation relying on computers for such things. And then there is the very real possibility of our enemies causing such computer damage as to paralyze America.

At my age, time flies whether you are having a good time or not. It seems the weeks and months now fly by and turn into years without any real perception of the time having passed. But there is no denying the “computer age” that has had such a profoundly marked influence on the passing of the years.

One thing that has not changed with the advent of computers is the hypocritical pretense of sincerity on the part of politicians that is infamously proverbial, and has been around as long as there has been politicians. I recall reading many years ago in the old Saturday Evening Post of one such incident in which the politico was campaigning. He recognized a man in the crowd, and while vigorously shaking his hand asked him in an unctuous voice, “And how is your dear mother doing?” The man replied, “Oh, she’s still dead.”

However, at least in this case there were human beings involved irregardless the human frailties. What with the computer age this is becoming ever less the case, but despite the increasing reliance on computers I do not anticipate a computer generated Rembrandt, Sinclair Lewis or Harper Lee. Nor have they made politicians any more sincere than the one in that old Saturday Evening Post jibe.

Tim Russert’s interview some time ago with David McCullough having to do with David’s book “1776” was one of the best of such interviews I have watched. But the painful fact brought glaringly and painfully to the fore during the interview is something of which as a teacher of many years experience I am too well aware— the fact that Americans have become illiterate when it comes to our history as a nation; and the universities long ago ceased to emphasize the importance of the Bible to our history as a nation. The omission of this alone accounts for much historical illiteracy among college graduates. Long ago the teaching of American History in our universities and their product schools fell to the wayside; as has the teaching of great literature in our schools; and no amount of “computer literacy” will compensate for this monumental loss to our young people especially. And it is in this I see the real danger such a loss poses to America.

There were several, large old pines on our mining claim. As a boy I was able to build a platform in the branches of one of these not far from our cabin. Thither I would resort to do my schoolwork on occasion, and in addition to the usual math, history, and English I would often take some books for pleasure like a National Geographic or a novel.

Sitting on the planks in the branches of the old tree, I would look out to the dun-colored, sere hills to the east, and moving my eyes north to north-westward to the majestic, forested and granite grandeur of the mountains I was master of all I surveyed from my aerie. What child could help but imagine all things were possible in such surroundings? But it took good books and good literature in conjunction with such grandeur of my surroundings to fire my imagination. Sadly, few even my age had such an advantage of environment I enjoyed.

Computers were in their infancy many years ago when I read a SciFi story in which a person got caught up in a relatively innocuous problem. But through having to deal with computers in attempts to resolve the problem, it escalated to his being condemned to death for a capital crime by the government despite the fact the fellow never was able to contact a living human being in the process! There would appear to have been a degree of prescience on the part of the writer of this story so many years ago as we face interminable telephone menus, especially for government agencies, our finally despairing of contacting a living human being.

An editor for The Bakersfield Californian published a column calling attention to the aggravation of receiving all kinds of material from banks, credit card companies, government agencies that continue to send out their computer generated propaganda long after a loved one is deceased. Granted it is left to the living to inform the appropriate parties that the loved one to whom all of this computer generated junk is addressed has passed on. But this editor pointed out the extreme difficulty one faces in stemming this flood of unwanted and unneeded computer generated material that continues coming despite efforts to stem the flood. Among the difficulties in attempts to inform the various parties and agencies involved of a loved one’s passing are those interminable mindless, disembodied telephone menus that so frustrate any hope of talking to a real, live and breathing human being.

Unexpectedly I find myself the remaining patriarch with all the folks now gone. I hope I have “cleaned up” after myself, and no one will suffer any “clutter” after my demise. We oldsters owe that to those we leave behind. But as to those ongoing computer generated messages from the various disinterested, disembodied entities continuing to haunt the living, beyond the aggravation of systems dedicated to taking our money dead or alive I fear our government agencies operate in much the same way. And like the film Fail-Safe when things become so complicated and complex relying on computers removing living, breathing, human beings from the system, when you have no one to hold personally accountable as with government throughout you have a system virtually destined to break down. And with so much nuclear saber rattling around the world this lack of personal accountability does not bode well for our survival.

It is good to put a human face on these systems, and to demand accountability. However, with those in government as with business motivated by greed and avarice, their lust for power, Emerson was tragically correct in pointing out the study of Shakespeare will not produce a Shakespeare, and the virtuous whether Socrates, Jesus, or Washington have left no “class” and each generation must find its own way. And I fear for this generation that has no leader of virtue to lead the way, and is moreover forced to rely on computers.

“The pen is mightier than the sword” has a history of proving correct. However, when the pen is forced to rely on computers there is room for much mischief. And whether of God or Satan, whether of neither, the world has become far more dangerous due in large part to computers. And so, my discussions with God on the matter will continue despite the fact we cannot go back any more than anyone can change the course of events set in motion by those like Bush. But in far too many ways the electronic age has built an electronic house of cards, one that is susceptible to a vagrant breeze that may cause the whole thing to collapse catastrophically.

To be sure, we live in a demon-haunted world and some of us have more trouble with the demons than others. Some of us can hardly dwell on some pleasant memory of the past than immediately comes to mind some ugly thing that attacks that pleasant memory. Jack Cafferty: “It’s Getting Ugly out There: The Frauds, Bunglers, Liars, and Losers Who Are Destroying America.”

I like Jack Cafferty; he seems bluntly honest. But there is no doubt in my mind I have covered the same subjects he addresses in his book in my own books. Writing is often a catharsis of the mind, of the heart and soul, sometimes a way of attacking our own demons and exorcising them. Having long been a fan of Jack, listening to the interviews about his book, the many things he mentions about dysfunctional family, a dysfunctional society, these are things many of us can relate to. But the one thing that struck me in one of the interviews was his mentioning being only 64 years old. I hadn’t thought about this previously, but here was a relatively young man, at least young compared to me, and he was talking about memories of a Norman Rockwell America, memories I don’t usually associate with someone as young as Jack.

Nevertheless, I have to remind myself occasionally that while America emerged from WWII on an extremely high note of optimism for the future this was quickly extinguished following Russia detonating its first nuclear bomb and the advent of Sputnik. There was the Korean War, the assassination of JFK, Nixon and Vietnam, so many things that were a part of Jack’s early memories he has more than enough to draw from in writing his book. Then to be in an occupation where you deal with the thoroughgoing corruption throughout our government on a daily basis, this alone would account for Jack’s book.

For those of us who have lived long enough for time to cast an azure tint over some of our memories of the distant past, memories that may age gracefully and acquire a pleasant, aged patina to the mind’s eye, we consider it a blessing when the mind works its peculiar magic of smoothing, or even brushing out, the ugliness that may have attended such things in our past. I have many memories from childhood during WWII, and most certainly not all of them are pleasant. But when I reflect on those years long ago, when I write about them, my mind often refuses some of the ugly realities in favor of those people and events that emphasize the good, and perhaps this is how it works in the hereafter as the Scripture has it all tears will be wiped away.

Whatever one’s beliefs about a hereafter, with the passing of Don Knotts it occurred to me how much we need to believe in Barney Fife and Mayberry. We Americans have been blessed with those like George Washington as our heritage, and those of us who experienced a Mayberry, Walton’s Mountain, and Norman Rockwell America prior to WWII are blessed with precious memories of the way things are supposed to be, much as Jack Cafferty points out. However, most of those my age were also blessed with many shared and common beliefs emphasized in the churches of America, and most of us believed in both God and the inherent goodness of America.

I don’t envy those like Jack Cafferty or Lou Dobbs, I don’t envy any who have jobs in the media, especially not those who are trying to do the work of dealing with the truth and presenting the truth to We the People. No matter their “success” in this world, I strongly suspect if there will be any real reward for their efforts it will be in the hereafter. In this world, too many kings remain given to killing the messenger, and in my opinion evil is so deeply entrenched throughout the world we are on a collision course with the kind of destruction only such evil lunacy explains.

For those of us who lived it before and following WWII and know what is missing in America today, what our leaders have squandered and frittered away by betraying such a wonderful heritage, it does seem that the demons outnumber the angels. Those of us who have lived long enough to look back far enough know what has been lost, and we can be excused for grieving over the loss.

It was while contemplating this loss, thinking about Mayberry and other like things my mind turned to something philosophers and theologians have long pondered about a possible “hereafter.” My idea of heaven would be Mayberry, a place where only goodness and virtue prevailed, where there is no place for the evil men do.

One of the things that has made it easier for me to contemplate my own death is the thought there will be those loved ones and friends who have gone on before me, those who are waiting to greet me upon my own passing. But I would not want them to be witnessing the failures, trials and tribulations I go through while in this present life. It could hardly be “heaven” where our loved ones and friends witness our ongoing struggles and are helpless to intervene on our behalf.

We read in the Bible a description of death comparing it to a seed being planted, one that will grow even as an earthly seed planted in the earth. Our earthly body even as that earthly seed is a promise of life coming forth, and will go through a transformation even as that earthly seed.

My own thought is that we will be “born” into the heavenly life much like we are born into this life. Just as we know nothing at birth but become slowly aware of our surroundings, slowly learning and becoming self-conscious and self-aware so I believe it will be in the hereafter. How else to cope with the shock of entering into the hereafter? No earthly seed could possibly survive being instantly transformed into its promise of the life it contains.

The doctrine of the “Rapture” has people being transformed in the “twinkling of an eye.”  But I do not believe this transformation could take place without incorporating that parable of Jesus comparing death and resurrection with that earthly seed. It takes time for the seed to transform, and it will take time for us to transform in the hereafter, to become aware of our new surroundings without suffering the same shock should a seed not be carefully nurtured and given time to grow into its earthly body. It may be our loved ones and friends gone on before us will be “gardeners” tending us even as our earthly parents tended us as babies, and we in turn “tended” our own children.

The Bible presents many thoughts on this subject, among them being that of earthly things being the pattern of things to come. While all of this is metaphysical, only speculation, nevertheless there is the reality of Mayberry. And for those of us who knew an America in which there was a Mayberry, those of us who knew Norman Rockwell’s America we live in hope of a heavenly Mayberry, since there is little hope of anyone listening to those like Jack Cafferty and there is no doubt in anyone’s mind “It’s Getting Ugly out There: The Frauds, Bunglers, Liars, and Losers Who Are Destroying America” tells it like it is.

Far from making America safer following 9/11, our own leadership still refuses to secure our borders for the sake of slave labor benefiting only the wealthy, and it would seem those dedicated to the destruction of America have used The Attack on America as an excuse for globalization and profits. Those politicians applauding themselves for frustrating any more attacks like 9/11 all the while dedicated to profits and betraying America in the process are not fooling anyone. But I’m sorry Jack; no “prophet” has ever been listened to or had any honor in his own house.

Letting fancy take wing and putting the obvious and mundane possibilities aside for the moment I have asked myself, now you don’t suppose Bush and Bin Laden are simply bored, do you? Pushing the envelope for the sake of feeling alive is not just for fighter pilots, the rich and famous or thrill-seeking daredevils, many of us ordinary mortals do so to relieve boredom. We humans are not wired for boredom, and even cats have a reputation for needing nine lives because of curiosity. However, most people have a sense of self-preservation that prevents them from taking unnecessary risks. Still, many qualified to say so will point to war being the ultimate aphrodisiac. There are few experiences to equal kill or be killed for thrills. Yet, there is no discounting stupidity that may lend itself to a few thrills as well. There has never been a lack of Dee Dee’s in Dexter’s laboratory looking at a button wondering what that thing will do, and pushing the button.

My not having yet achieved the status of those luminaries receiving a Darwin Award is really frustrating to me. I have worked hard for this award, I deserve it, and despite my many efforts have thus far been thwarted of winning this distinction I so richly deserve. It is more than enough to question whether the gods favor some over others, or even whether they might have a sense of humor and get a laugh about my efforts directed toward winning this particular award. I can imagine the deities nudging each other, exclaiming “Hey, get a load of what this guy is trying to do this time!”

Sigh. Regardless the many times I have failed there is no question in my mind, the gods notwithstanding, that I will press on, and I have accepted a nearly fatalistic attitude toward doing stupid things that should terminate my tenure in the land of the living. I do maintain some hope. If someone like Steve Fossett may have pulled it off so can I. More than one smart person has occasioned their demise by doing something really stupid.

Some accuse religious people of being stupid, but the attraction of various myths and superstitions leading to so many among even the most well educated engaging in things like religious observances, séances and astrology has its basis in being removed from the ordinary. Most of us want to spice up our lives with a little variety, most of us want to believe there is substance to the stories of ghosts and goblins in some form or another. But whatever the beliefs the Golden Rule is one that distinguishes between good people and bad no matter what the beliefs otherwise.

However, I also have to accept that if the gods have a sense of humor, if some like to play tricks with us humans, there is the possibility some of us may be more favored of the gods than others. Apart from my efforts to win a Darwin Award earning some laughs among the gods I have survived several incidents that should have been terminal and were the fault of others. After each of these I have been left asking why so many die from such things and I continue to cumber the earth?

Most of us enjoy a thunderstorm, the magnificent display of lightning and Nature’s Fury unleashed. The movie Twister was one most of us enjoyed and many could relate to those storm chasers, though common sense tells us there is much danger involved when we go out in such weather, and tragedies involving lightning strikes remind me of an incident during the time I was a boy living on the mining claim.

It was a warm, sultry and overcast day. I was fishing with a telescoping, steel fishing rod and wading in a creek near the claim when a dazzlingly, near blinding, brilliant blue wide sheet of lightning whipped alongside the stream of water to my right. It snapped off the branches of trees and bushes next to me little more than an arm’s length away with a cracking sound like large caliber pistol shots, and the pungent smell of ozone from the instantly ionized air engulfing me was searing powerful. I stood transfixed in the water, dumbfounded, looking at the steel rod I was holding. Why hadn’t the lightning struck me? Here I was standing in water with this long steel pole in my hands, all the conditions necessary for me to have been struck dead by that massive bolt!

However, I lived to tell about it, and it makes it all the more confounding why some die and some do not. While science provides some answers, there are still too many anomalies and questions that defy scientific explanation. Perhaps “The Force” is with some and not with others. At the point where science fails to provide answers, speculation takes over. Lincoln was far from being alone in expressing uncertainty over which side of an issue God favors, and there is certainly ongoing speculation over the question of why so many evildoers seem to prosper and go unpunished. Perhaps there is, as I have speculated, more than one spiritual “force” humankind has to deal with.

While I am grateful to George Lucas for his films, it is doubtful he knew Emerson had already written of “The Force” long before Star Wars. But when the phrase “The Force be with you” popped up in his films I knew Emerson had long before anticipated Lucas. As Chairman of the Board of the George Lucas Educational Foundation he should be aware of Emerson preceding him, and give that great American intellectual credit for this idea.

But as a force, weather is something over which we have little control, apart from us humans fouling our own nest, and if you are going to be out and about in threatening weather you take your chances with Nature. Children especially are at risk since they love being out of doors and playing in the rain, splashing in puddles and just being children.

The very day I received my Daisy Red Ryder Carbine lever action BB gun which I had earned selling Cloverine Salve and garden seed door to door in Little Oklahoma, I was understandably anxious to try it out, and my brother Ronnie was excited about going with me. The wide open expanses of the tumbleweed dotted alkali fields surrounding our neighborhood beckoned us to get out there and start plinking away.

It was turning into a humid day. There were some high, cumulus clouds just beginning to form and if we were really lucky we might get one of the summer storms I thoroughly enjoyed; one with a lot of thunder and lightning and huge raindrops that would explode into small alkali puffs and geysers when they pelted the dry dust.

The scent of fresh rain mixing with the earth was always a heavenly aroma to me. And we would have an abundance of fresh mud puddles to stomp in barefoot and feel the delightful squish of the mud between our toes. If the puddles of water were large enough, I would fashion small boats of balsa and rig tiny sails to send them scudding swiftly across the water. I had even made some with rubberband powered paddles, much like the rubberband powered cars I could make with empty thread spools. You notched the outer rims of the spools to give them traction, and if you made them just right they could scoot as fast as the spring-wound, store-bought tin racing cars.

But of course if a storm developed, Ronnie and I would have to cut our safari short and get back pronto. I knew better than to risk being out in an open field with lightening about, especially carrying a built-in lightening rod like the Carbine would become. You see, I knew about the hazards of lightning long before the incident while wading in the stream with that steel fishing rod. Stupid.

Grandma had told us many stories of dreadful storms in places like Kansas where she had lived. She told us of tornadoes, twisters with winds that were so fierce they would drive stalks of hay into telegraph poles like nails. I recalled once more the story of her seeing a mule standing in a field after such a storm with a fence rail driven through it.

I always wished I could witness such a powerful storm. Sometimes I would watch a dust devil on the alkali fields and wish it would grow up and become a real Twister. But then I would feel guilty if such a thing caused real damage or hurt someone. Funny how many things like this troubled me; wanting adventure and excitement, but not wanting such things to cause harm. Too bad, I often thought, that we can’t really save our cake and eat it too.

But there it is; Nature seems often capricious; and while we may enjoy the outdoors and thunderstorms, danger lurks no matter our personal innocence. Well, perhaps unless “The Force” is with you. But then, the Court Jester has favor with the king only so long as he can entertain the king. I sometimes wonder whether humankind is intended for the amusement of the gods; and at what point they may cease to be amused. The history of lunatics being favored of the gods is a long one, and there seems no want of lunatics among leaders in the world today, though I have good reason to believe the gods do not find them funny. In fact, they may yet prove to be the real contenders for the ultimate Darwin Award when the mushroom clouds begin to dot the landscape.

Steve Fossett was (is?) a determined man, an adventurer and thrill-seeking daredevil. He was determined to lead a life less ordinary, to never be bored and wring out of life what he could. But when those with the power to kill millions of people are determined to do so, pushing the envelope in order to make their own lives less ordinary and relieve their boredom by taking enormous risks with the lives of millions, we can be excused for thinking they are quite literally insane. And there is no lack of mad men in power, of those like Patton who love the smell of battle, of those who love the smell of Napalm in the morning.

It’s the dream of all tabloids, a headline “Steve Fossett and Nukes!” I do enjoy engaging in some whimsy at times. Does Steve Fossett and this have any connection? It would make for an eerie novel; Steve Fossett goes missing around Area 51, and now we are told that last week a B-52 was “mistakenly” carrying several nukes from North Dakota to Louisiana:

September 5, 2007. B-52 carrying nukes mistakenly overfiles U.S. By PAULINE JELINEK. The Associated Press: WASHINGTON — A B-52 bomber was mistakenly armed with six nuclear warheads and flown for more than three hours across several states last week, prompting an Air Force investigation and the firing of one commander, Pentagon officials said today. The incident was so serious that President Bush and Defense Secretary Robert Gates were quickly informed and Gates has asked for daily briefings on the Air Force probe, said Defense Department press secretary Geoff Morrell. He said, “At no time was the public in danger.” Rep. Ike Skelton, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, called the mishandling of the weapons “deeply disturbing” and said the committee would press the military for details. Rep. Edward J. Markey, a senior member of the Homeland Security committee, said it was “absolutely inexcusable.” “Nothing like this has ever been reported before and we have been assured for decades that it was impossible,” said Markey, D-Mass., co-chair of the House task force on nonproliferation. The plane was carrying Advanced Cruise Missiles from Minot Air Force Base, N.D, to Barksdale Air Force Base, La., on Aug. 30, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of a Defense Department policy not to confirm information on nuclear weapons. The missiles, which are being decommissioned, were mounted onto pylons on the bomber’s wings and it is unclear why the warheads had not been removed beforehand...

“Mistakenly armed with six nuclear warheads?” “Deeply disturbing?” A read through the whole article is not very reassuring. Anytime I am told by politicians or their lackeys I have nothing to fear, that’s when I become afraid. When they say “there was never any danger” that’s when I look for danger. These same kinds of people before 9/11 were telling us we had nothing to fear from Muslim fanatics.

This incident with the nukes does make me think of several scenarios like “Fail-Safe” and “The Sum of all Fears.” But was Fossett engaged in some clandestine government operation? Does Bush really intend to go out with a “big bang” nuking Iran? Are those “decommissioned” nukes really accounted for, or have some found their way to Israel? Who among us have any confidence in the government keeping an accurate account of anything, even nukes?

Of course, we are hoping Fossett will be found, and found alive. And it is only whimsy to even think of making a connection between his disappearance and those nukes. But I love a mystery, I still hope Klaatu will show up, and there are a whole lot of us Twilight Zone and X-File types always ready for a new episode, especially when we know those in government lie all the time as a matter of course. But things are really getting spooky lately.