Tribute to My Mother

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I know that Mother’s Day passed a few weeks ago, but I try to do something nice for my mother that isn’t monetary, and I decided to write a few words of tribute to my mother. The more mothers I meet, the more I appreciate my own despite her shortcomings. Everyone has weaknesses, but my mom's strengths were a good match for the things I needed, and her manner was a complimentary match for the way I operate and what I value. At every stage of my life, she got behind and supported things that were important to me, even if she didn't understand or enjoy them. Like the stereotype implies, my mother protected me, not from information or consequences, but from things for which I was actually unprepared, for unrealistic expectations, and from the nincompoopery of the world until I finally matured enough to see things as they really are. My mother was the primary arbiter of my religious exposure, education, and beliefs. If she had not put the Savior first within her life, I'm fairsure I would have ended up as debauched and misguided as the rest of my fellows. I didn't like being different back then, but the help my mom gave me, while it made me odd compared to my peers, gave me opportunities that they didn't get. Sure, I'm not as "successful" or attractive or whatever as they are, but I am a fully functional adult, and so many people close to my age are not that way. Part of that's me, but more of the credit goes to my mother than one might think.

A few weeks before Mother’s Day, I helped my parents move. As we drove away, we talked, and my mother at one point seemed to express some regret that they had not supported me financially in college. I pointed out to her that she kept an eye out for and paid attention to deadlines on scholarships so that I could pay my way on the auspices of academics and activities so that they would not have to contribute money directly. My mom will refer to it as "nagging", but her diligence in this regard helped me meet deadlines and apply for enough scholarships that I came through my undergraduate degree with zero debt. To get me there and to get me to and from for breaks, my parents paid the way, and I qualified for continuation of scholarship funds by virtue of my performance, but I earned enough that I paid for everything and actually gave money back that I didn't use (I couldn't use it because I graduated in under four years). Since then, I've met a fair few number of young people whose parents don't contribute, who in essence make their children earn it, work for it, and appreciate it. Sure, I didn't go to a job to earn the money, but I earned the money in other ways, sometimes by virtue of scholastics, and sometimes via other means, so that people were willing to pay for it. The counselors at school were no help. The scholarship sites only helped you search databases. I filled out the applications. However, without my mother, I would have either incurred debt or been forced to work more than 15 hours/week during school or had to rely on my parents, and I don't think they could actually afford to help me at that time. My siblings receive direct financial assistance; I had my mother's support, encouragement, and dedication to obtain money she and my father might not have been able to provide. She kept me out of debt.

My mother went to bat for me with adults. During middle school, over Christmas break, my report card came in, showing that I had earned a “C” for the semester in English. She went in to confront Mr. Gainey who claimed I had not taken the final. Knowing that wasn’t like me, mom appealed to administration, and when I was able to recollect questions from the final I “did not take” as well as the answer choices in order, the principal ordered Mr. Gainey to give me an A. Whenever other hiccups occured, whether in interpersonal interactions or scholastic efforts, my mom made time to come and meet with school officials. When the neighbors in Mt. Home ID got pissed at us for all the balls we inadvertently kicked over the fence, my mom faced down those grumps. When my baseball coach took me out with a 3-2 count to put in his son who struck out, my mom was at least as annoyed as I was, and when I stated a disinterest in further baseball, she supported that decision. Although she no longer intercedes because I'm an adult myself, she still provides counsel and comfort, and I know she's still on my side and has my back.

When it came to my relationship with, faith in and understanding of God, mom took the driver’s seat. From my earliest years, she was the one who insisted on reading scriptures together as a family, and I can remember as early as age 8 reading a few verses at night and then as I grew before school. As I grew, she was the biggest supporter of and belief in the notion that I could be led and inspired by God, and she never disparaged my claims to receive revelation or feel God’s guidance and love. I remember driving towards Craters of the Moon in Idaho and telling her I felt funny about the storm ahead, and she turned back because she had the same feeling. When I told her at about age 28 about meeting her dead maternal grandmother after our accident in England when I was six and she realized I had actually died in the accident, instead of dismissing it, she wanted to know more. As a missionary, she wrote in a letter that I should dry clean my suit periodically, which led to meeting Ursula Huber of Neumarkt, the only person I found and taught who repented and came to Christ. Sundays, mom and I discuss the gospel; dad does too, but I discuss it with mom more because dad and I are usually working on something or because he’s at church doing whatever leaders do. Apparently, I asked a lot of poignant and pressing questions, even as a small boy, and when my mom didn't know what to say, she taught me to find my own answers. Mostly, this meant going to the library and coming through the card catalogue, but since I started doing my own research at the age of eight, I soon learned the difference between valuable resources and editorial speculation, so when my interests migrated more intot he realm of religion, I knew how to tell the wheat from the chaff, from those who profess religion to those who could actually help me find answers to prayer. I know it was hard for my mother when I left to serve as a missionary, but she had trained me, she continued to support me, and she was there for me as I went off for the first time completely alone on another continent, and when I returned home, she met me at the terminal to welcome me home.

I know that my mother loves me. I know a lot of women who are actually pretty lousy mothers relatively speaking. My mother isn't perfect, but I know that she cares about me and truly wishes for my success and happiness. I am certain it bothers her to see me alone, to watch my heart break, to see me crestfallen, defeated, dejected, inspected, neglected, and rejected. She doesn't pretend to have all the answers; she did for a time, but she learned that I'm my own man and that, because I'm a man, I'm going to be pigheaded and not do what she thinks. She also learned that I'll do something virtuous and praiseworthy that is intended to bring honour to the family and the family name. She might not approve of what I do, but she understands why I think it's important. After all, she trained me, protected me, provided for me, and prepared me to be an adult. I know that she's probably sad that I'm as cynical and bitter as I am, but she knows that this comes from the fact that I have matured and as a consequence of the particular trials and troubles to which life subjects me. Some people get better cards, and some people get worse ones. One of the best cards dealt to me was my family. Richer than I you never can be for I had a mother who read to me. All that I am is in some way accredited to my angel mother. She's not perfect, but she pointed me in the direction of success, help me up as I took my first steps, and provided the truly necessary materials in order to end up where I wanted to be. My mother isn't flawless, but she was the best mother for me, and I think God for letting me choose her.

Make Your Own Future

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Since my parents were out of town this weekend and I didn't have dinner at their house, I decided to binge watch the "Back to the Future" trilogy this Sunday night instead. I realized something different about the movies now that I'm an adult that first unsettled me and then gave me a deeper appreciation for just how well written this trilogy is. Unlike other trilogies or anthologies, this wasn't written many years before it went to film, and the movies were filmed and edited in rapid succession. Sure, there are some errors, and it's kind of cliche like much that originated in the 1980s, but it's still one of my favorite franchises, and this realization just enhanced that. Growing up, I identified with Marty and felt the story was about him, his family, and their story. Now, I realize it's also really a story about Dr. Emmet Brown. Emmet is like me in more ways than I realized and more everyman than his character appears to be at first glance. Sure, he's a strange guy, but he's also just an ordinary guy. He's not seeking power or prestige or pelf. He's just trying to find a happy and peaceful life. He's not a superhero. He's an ordinary guy who makes ordinary mistakes who makes ordinary decisions that ultimately decide a happier fate for him than he originally intended. It's a story of hope about some ordinary people with an extraordinary opportunity who find satisfaction in the simple. It's my kind of story.

Emmet Brown is just a simple, nerdy, geeky guy pursuing his own interests regardless of what others think or say. In that way, I identify with the professor. What other kind of person would have pictures of famous scientists above his hearth? Brown uses sophisticated devices for the time, works on projects because they interest him, and is reclusive and introverted. Although he's also rich, he doesn't seem interested in opulence or appearances, and whatever he earns in whatever time period goes towards his scientific interests above all else. He is a man doing what he likes when he likes without the interference or involvement of others without regard for what other people think of him. He's not married or seemingly interested in women whatsoever. Wherever he goes, whether in his living room making inventions or to 2015 or to the old west, he constantly tries to find ways to make the world a better place. His inventions in 1955, his interventions with the McFlys in 2015, and his inventions/influence with the clocktower in 1885 all center around improving things around him. He's your standard everyday man who achieves great things but only really intended to lift where he stood. Emmet genuinely cares about others, including Biff's family. He comes across as the wise older mentor, but he's also a normal guy prone to the same shortcomings as everyone else, making him more personable, more believable, and more affable because although he's clearly smart he's also human.

Doc Brown makes mistakes that throw his life in turmoil. Since nobody, especially not he, ever traveled in time before, he is careful to avoid some things when traveling but makes other mistakes, which ultimately lead to his initial downfall. As with most scientists, he's naive enough to think that the Libyans can't find him and that they'll be satiated by his briefcase full of shiny pinball machine parts. He's careful, but he's not careful enough, and when the Libyans come for him, that really sets the story in motion. If not for Brown's mistakes, nothing would have changed to Marty's past. This entire franchise begins, not because of Marty's mistakes as we may think at first glance, but because of Brown's. Brown violates his own rules and lives at the end of part I, without which he would have never made more mistakes and necessitated future installments. He gets sloppy. People see the time machine who shouldn't, see the Delorean fly who shouldn't, and learn about its potential who shouldn't. By not paying better care to his surroundings, Brown inadvertently reveals to old Biff that there is a time machine, and Biff uses it to totally ablate Doc Brown's revised future happiness by going back and giving his younger self the almanac. Being the chivalric man that he is, Brown inadvertently alters time constantly, saving Clara from the ravine, falling in love, and then refusing to return to where he belongs. He knows you can't play dice with the universe, but his heart overtakes his head, his excitement overruns his logic, and his inexperience throws the entire universe into turmoil, not just things for the McFly family. His humanity and redemption from his mistakes are really the plot of this franchise.

Ultimately, however, Doc Brown discovers opportunity in this story to change his own future for the better. As the franchise comes to an end, you see a rejuvenated Doc Brown appear with his family. At the end of our story, he finds a way to continue to pursue science, to continue to travel through time, and to have a family. It's a story of hope and possibility, not just for Marty, but for Emmet. That titan of invention becomes a troubadour, and he finds his future in the past when his misadventures and mistakes culminate in an opportunity to meet and fall for Clara. Essentially, Marty saves Brown's life, literally and figuratively, as the trilogy concludes. Literally, he gives Brown a letter that prompts a bullet proof vest, and then he travels back in time and saves Brown from Griff by throwing a Frisbie and deflecting the bullet. Figuratively, Marty provides evidence that Brown's life has meaning through his work, since he finally invents something that works, and he gives Brown a chance at a higher purpose because Brown saves and then falls for Clara and has a family. He's depicting a man of about 60 years old by that movie although he's much younger, making Emmet Brown the only character I know from pop culture who is still older than I am when he realizes success. The entire series of events concludes with Brown's own words: "Your future isn't written yet. Noone's has. Your future is what you make of it, so make it a good one." Through their misadventures, both McFly and Brown find a better future than the one they knew when we first met them in 1985. Their relationship in essence transcends time.

"Back to the Future" is about making a better future for the people you love and about changing your fortunes. It's a story about redemption and second chances. It's a story about friendship. The unlikely friendship of Marty McFly and Emmet Brown provides both of them better chances at prosperity and happiness in their futures. It's a story about science. it's a story about hope. This story showcases how even when things go completely awry, even though it may come long after when you expected, you have a chance to be great if you act on opportunities that arise. Of course you are careful, but every life makes mistakes. We don't have to let our mistakes make us. Even Biff, the villain, ends up a better person in the story. Sure, he's a cowed sniveling simpleton, but he's no longer a bully, and he earns an honest living. It's a clean show. There is some violence, but there is little profanity, and Biff always ends up in manure not the profane metaphor used in modernity. It's a clean, family-friendly movie that gave me hope for a bright future as a boy and this weekend renewed my hope for a bright future now that I'm more Emmet than Marty.  I find hope in this new perspective on the story and how beautiful the storytelling is that there can be a happy end, a happier end anyway, even if you must wait longer than most for what you hope. With every choice you make, ever step you take, you decide your own story; you decide the person you'll be. It is possible to correct your mistakes, not with a time machine per se, but in such a way that you are aware of, open to, and acting upon them until you end up where you always intended to be- Back To Your Future.

American Idols

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While Moses went to the mount to get the commandments already revealed to him by God, God’s people grew tired of waiting for God and turned to idolatry. Often we point fingers of scorn at Israel and her golden calf even while we fashion idols of our own. American idols do not look very much like the idols of yesteryear, but in essence they continue the tradition of replacing God with the tangible that does and will reward us according to man’s metrics. Perhaps in our arrogant hubris we think ourselves immune to idolatry, and yet at many junctures Americans jump at the chance to discard Nature’s God in favor of other opportunities to worship. We trust in man and make flesh our arm, appeal to the favour of men who are fallen and trust their promises. Many people clothe their naked villainy with odd old ends stolen forth from holy writ and seem saints when most they play the devil. Some Americans even do the right things for the wrong reasons: to be seen of men. It’s not a new thing, and it’s not gone. It’s just more subtle now, where what we do and accept constitutes a bastardization or perversion of the good things for which God opened the possibilities. The Great Deceiver wants humans to take the pleasures which God has produced, at times, or in ways, or in degrees, which He has forbidden. Thus, our idolatry leads us further away from God and into the dark abyss.

From its earliest hours, even this great nation fell victim to the historical subtlety of idolatry. While some invoked their Maker, others made the Revolution a matter of personal prestige, preference, and prosperity. Most of them trusted in stone and steel for defense and productivity rather than in the God intoned by many, and although references exist to their Maker and Nature, these were bastardized to appeal to the irreligious and the conveniently religious so as not to offend those whose assistance mattered more than the Divine. Although a great patriot, Patrick Henry called, not for more piety, humility, and more submissiveness, but for more mortal mettle. Never in his speech, impassioned though it may be, does he appeal to the people to repent and draw nearer to God. He implores us to “make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power”. Never does Henry invoke God anywhere else in writ, making it look like an appeal to the religious sensibilities of the people, invoking the name of God but denying the power thereof. During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln opined that, “blinded by unbroken success” America had become “too proud to pray” and to implore let alone deserve the assistance of the Almighty. Closer to the modern day, we build armies and navies, start propaganda mills, and fill a murderer’s chest with medals while he’s across the foam in order to create heroes for the folks at home. Men are elected to Congress because they “served in Vietnam” (even if they were forced to serve), none of whom were ethical as soldiers. War is, after all, one of Satan’s tools, for it makes all men affected by it miserable in some way. Today, we trust in Government, electing people to office who ensconce government programs to do the things that God commands. Government does this so that government can control it and take credit for it, and so those driven by power and praise aspire to those offices so that we will bow at their offices, fawn at their doors and give unto them of our offerings as bribes for their favour. They set themselves up as gods unto the people, who no longer pray to God because even though it’s not yet illegal it’s discouraged, dismissed and derided as the hokey imaginations of the feeble-minded.

Modern America doesn’t even try to hide idolatry, going so far as to name shows like American Idol as tantamount admission that we no longer worship our Maker. Americans engage in every effort imaginable to give praise to the man instead of to God. We find sports icons, actors, comedians, and the like and make them our heroes. Some even fawn over fictional characters and “superheroes” in their fantasy which draws along an asymptotic line to faith in God. Others trust in politicians, in entrepreneurs, or in “slighted” scientists and become offenders for a word if you find any chink in their god. All of these are fallen, like we are, and we acknowledge omnipotence only in the Marvel Cinematic Universe while denying that possibility in our own. People no longer aspire to be virtuous. They aspire to be famous. The Tide Pod challenge and a slew of internet crazes exist so that people can have their 15 minutes of fame, however fleeing, however vapid, and however ill advised those attempts and contributions may be. Men are rewarded, not because they enlarge society or innovate something crucial but because they can sell minecraft skins, emojis, or advertising because people watch their youtube channels where they live stream video games. Adding insult to injury, many women choose these men as mates for the only skill that seems to matter- the skill of providing money with which to keep their wives perpetually entertained, pretty, and famous. Now these are sweeping generalizations, but they grow in number weekly as we promote people for bread and circuses. In order to get more bread and enjoy more circuses, people make ever increasing sacrifices to the man. Many pillars of industry/commerce spend so much time working to impress their bosses, build their portfolios so that they can advance and retire to do what THEY like. It’s not a sin to enjoy life. There are things to please the eye and gladden the heart, but there is a time, season and purpose to pleasure. Even women forsake their honour and duty to help God create life in favor of careers, of “equality”, and in the pursuit of wealth. We seek happiness in iniquity, in the accolades and approbation of other fallible mortals. When you make excuses to not serve, to not lift, to not admonish, to not testify of Christ, you serve mammon. In that quest to serve and appeal to mammon, we see an immutable trend to rack and stack people based on man’s metrics. In every circle of modern society, the hosts and guests divide people according to ranks based on their fine-twined linens, depending on their access to education, with regard for their cars or homes or titles or paychecks. Even in churches, men are elevated for their wealth, their credentials, their popularity, and their public personae. We no longer hold up men who are virtuous, honourable, of good report and praiseworthy, especially if those people do not validate what we already happen to believe. God’s way is to remember that we are eternally dependent on God for all that we have and are, that the teacher is no better than the learner, that the greatest among us will be our servants. God asks us to submit to His will, His timing, and His methods, to wait upon Him, to confess Him, and to give all that we have and are to Him, even if He asks us to sacrifice our firstborn sons as He commanded Abraham. Meanwhile, we permit fallen mortals them to act as if they were our masters and heap on their heads crowns of glory.

Idolatry eventually serves to bastardize God’s teachings and gifts to gratify man’s vain ambitions, conceal man’s sin, and elevate the base against the honourable. Everything with which we are born and that we are taught in Sunday School exists so that we can prepare to, learn the means of and then actually work to build God’s kingdom on earth. Our health and our wealth, our talents and our time, our families and our friendships all exist so that we can waste and wear out our lives in bringing to light the hidden things of darkness. Those teachings are to make us aware and capable of being profitable servants and multiplying our talents, not to our own advancement but to the advancement of society. This advancement is not to the utopia of man where we sing kumbaya and all share in a communal arrangement but to make men ready to return to God’s presence and partake of His glory. Rather than serve God’s purpose, we bend every opportunity, scientific endeavor, legal argument, and religious tenant to slake our lusts. Procreation becomes a form of recreation. Men spend mountains of money finding new contraceptive techniques and then funding abortions so that they can enjoy the pleasure without the concomitant responsibilities inherent in the powers granted by God. Most of the pageantry of men and women to find partners exists in so much puppet theater, not to form families, to show love, or to sacrifice for one another but to slake our lusts, gratify our pride, and solace our vain ambitions. We seek partners, not based on principles or character but so that we can show off trophies to our friends, brag about our exploits, and luxuriate in a common financial strategy that serves us rather than our offspring. Does any other species engage in those activities regularly out of the same self-serving arrogance with which humans take to fornication and adultery? Our good health, our good genes, our fortunate circumstances to be born in a free culture serve only ourselves rather than move us to multiply God’s creations and train up children to love and serve Him when we die. Eventually, recreation becomes the aim of every human endeavor. We look for ways to earn as much money as quickly as possible, not so that we can use it to build the Kingdom, but so that we can waste our time either in riotous living or in things which are of no worth and cannot satisfy. Murder is no better than cards if cards will do the trick. In retirement, some couples go out and waste their children’s inheritance. They do not waste and wear out their lives preaching the gospel, redeeming the dead, perfecting the saints or serving the downtrodden. They serve themselves. We make every excuse we can to do things we want and every excuse we can to explain away why we don’t have time for what God asks of us. Since we only care about recreation, our relationships remain superfluous. Out of fear, of rejection, of consequence, of being alone, we avoid difficult topics with our friends and avoid discussion of politics and religion, when those are essentially the two topics that matter most. Instead, we talk about anything else- the Vegas Knights, Vegas Nights, Vegas “values”, vegans, etc., just so we don’t have to talk about things that really matter with people we claim matter to us. We invite people over for barbecues but not baptisms. We invite them to hear Tupperware salesmen but not to meet the missionaries. We invite them to church fundraisers but not to church worship service. We invite them to book club but not to discuss the Bible. Sometimes we give support and praise, but what man among us bends his knees and prays? We don’t know our neighbors. We don’t know our congregants. We know the Kardashians however, and we know who was voted off the island this season. For each season of our lives we do not talk of Christ, we do not rejoice in Christ, we do not preach of Christ, we do not prophesy of Christ, and we fear to write according to our prophecies, and so our children have no idea to what source they may look for a remission of their sins.

Like its sisters in ancient times, American idolatry also separates us from both our God and our own good. When Stephen Hawking died, he was lionized as one of the greatest minds ever born, but he doesn’t have all the answers, and many of his answers may one day prove to be false. Ironically too, although he believed in a universe of infinite possibilities, he denied the possibility that there might actually be a God. You see, idolatry’s success requires the divine to actually be a myth, and yet idolatry doesn’t try to debunk divinity; it just focuses it onto some inanimate object above the bed, on the wall, atop a table, or hung about one’s neck. The power of an idol remains in the hands of the mortals who preach about it. The power of an idol is MEN, who are fallen. It is exceptionally arrogant of men, who are flawed, to claim any poor power to make of themselves something better than the sum of their parts. The ax never boasts itself against him who heweth therewith unless the ax convinces the trees that the ax is God and now the hewer. Idolatry in our time is a combination of both subtleties and blatant overtures, all designed to teach men to gratify his own pride, to live it up, to do what feels good, to protract HIS virtues on others, to set himself up as a god to other men and to worship what has no real power to protect and elevate men. You are not a better man because you own an ax or even because you can make one. Men are better off because they use that ax to husband only those resources they can receive and wisely use. Idolatry turns people away from God, and it has become a tool of government. Governments are always comprised of men who know that unless they direct our worship they have no power over us. American idols enslave men as their close cousins have throughout time to superstition and sophistry which dooms every society embroiled therein. American idols make Americans idle.

Two Kinds of Leaders

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Many articles are written about leaders and leadership, with an eye to being a good leader, but there is a need to recognize if you have a good leader so that you can avoid organizations that will either cause your ruin or their own. Leaders set the tone and prospects for their organization, and sometimes the people with whom you work matter at least as much as what you do. It has been said that most people don't quit their job; they quit their boss, and it's time we understood tersely why that is so. Leaders boil down to two attitudes when it comes to their position relative to the members of their team. The first group doesn't care who they had to step on in order to get there and who they have to step on to stay where they are. The second group remembers and venerates those who helped them rise and reaches down to help other people rise to better opportunities like they did. As long as people find some reason to stay, they will put up with bad leadership. If the leader offers them some token, they will take it. If the leader lets them do their job without interference or the way you want to do it, you'll stick with that job despite the leadership. If not, you'll find a similar job with different leadership and hope and pray that you get lucky enough to find someone who lifts you.

Far too many people in leadership positions constitute a kakistocracy, or rule by those who are least qualified. They usually achieve these positions by bullying others into choosing a different path. Some are belligerent bullies; the rest are manipulative, conniving people who engage in character assassination as a way to ablate your superior qualifications. In many cases, they also form coalitions and draw upon the power of others to climb up, promising them spoils, and then flip them the bird once the achievement arrives. They backstab, backbite, back peddle, and like back rooms. Surely, you can think of at least one person right now that you know in leadership who you think does not deserve it. They care nothing for the people. You are a means to an end. You are a "resource" to be consumed for their advancement. They will step all over you to get the position and then step on others to make sure they can't. They were the bullies in grade school who pulled down your pants to embarrass you, slapped your tray to the floor to starve you, and ganged up on you to make sure that even if your team won, you went down. These are vile people who follow the admonition of Voldemort that "there is no good and evil, only power and those too weak to seek it." BY their logic if you aren't willing to do whatever it takes to have power you don't deserve it. This kind of leadership is typified in the tyrant, the dictator, who tells people to fall in line or get in line. His organization is full of yes men who never compromise on a narrow vision and as a consequence miss opportunities and the warning signs of danger. Usually these organizations collapse under their own weight, unless they are government entities, which are borne up by law.

Small-minded leaders will hold other people back when they reach higher ranks out of fear of losing that rank. Some of them fear that if anyone else is promoted, it will reveal their weaknesses or ineptitude, so they make sure that nobody better than they are makes any progress. Some of them depend on their "underlings" for their numbers, bonuses, and performance, so they make sure you stay there so that they can continue to look good. In a few rare professions, they view it as a badge of honor to make sure that they "save the company money" by keeping people from being promoted, because it would cost the company. They forget that attitude of employees reflects leadership, and if the employees don't feel the leaders care, the employees won't work as well as they could if they thought their leaders cared about them. This petty group of people is usually the group that loads up responsibility on the best employees until the employees leave for other jobs and then wonders why they can't get good people to work there. Everyone wants to move up and advance, not just the people who are currently leaders. This kind of leader encourages and breeds mediocrity, because the only people they keep in the end or for the duration are people who have nowhere else to go.

In rare but blessed events, you find a leader who acts like a mentor and finds a way to help their people rise with them. The best of leaders look for people who would help the organization grow, improve, and excel, because they are not insecure in themselves enough to think that they're the best the company will ever have. They know that if the company improves, it will also be to their benefit in some way, even if obliquely, so they find ways to give their best employees the best shifts, first pick for overtime, first choice of vacation days, or whatever other incentives they can. When possible, they help those employees compete for promotion, knowing that if they surround themselves with better people the team will improve. The best of leaders groom their own replacements and help the best people to rise, even if they don't know those people and if those people don't owe them favors. Maybe you've met some of those leaders, who try to do whatever they can to keep you, even if they can't do what they would like or what you would like. At least they make an effort. They find a way to improve your lot. They find opportunities for you to advance. Maybe they pay for classes or let you out early or provide daycare or provide a company vehicle or let you go to conferences in exotic places. Point is, they do something to make it worth your while, to show you that they value you, because they know that if they spin the roulette wheel and have to replace you in a hiring process, they're likely to get a blase replacement.

When you have a bad leader, you have a choice to make. Are you satisfied by the work even if the promotions and raises don't come? Many people are not, and so they flit from organization to organization only to find that most people who aspire to leadership are the ones least fit to be there, and they remain miserable because they don't find joy in the job. Although it is true that the cream rises to the top, so often does the scum, and the scum thinks it's the cream.  If you are motivated by rank or pay or the esteem of colleagues, then an organization with bad leadership, however laudable their goals may be, may ultimately cause you misery. Perhaps this is why Thomas More gave Richard Rich the advice to be a teacher. He knew that power and position and pelf would change his young protege as it had most of his colleagues in parliament. Rich, unfortunately for More, was more interested in the rewards of man than those of God, and ultimately his testimony condemned More to death. The good leaders are very rare, because most bad leaders don't let those people infiltrate their organizations. You have to work somewhere, and maybe moving elsewhere will help, but ultimately in most cases you find that no matter who plays the part, Brutus is still Brutus and still stabs Caesar in the back eventually. People are people, and wherever you go you will find crappy leadership and crappy comrades. If leadership fails, the joy must be in the job. In conclusion, the leadership track in any organization invites you to consider the following poem- what kind of person will you be?

Edgar Guest: “I watched them tearing a building down, A gang of men in a busy town. With a ho-heave-ho and a lusty yell, They swung a beam, and the side wall fell. I asked the foreman: "Are these skilled-- And the men you'd hire if you had to build?" He gave me a laugh and said: "No, indeed! Just common labor is all I need. I can wreck in a day or two What builders have taken a year to do." And I thought to myself as I went my way, Which of these roles have I tried to play? Am I a builder who works with care Measuring life by a rule and square? Am I shaping my deeds to a well made Plan, Patiently doing the best I can? Or am I a wrecker, who walks the town Content with the labor of tearing down?”

CTR Rings Protect You

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In my Faith at the age of about 8, I received my first CTR Ring. CTR stands for Choose the Right. It was a reminder to us as we became members of the Faith to do what is right, to be the best version of ourselves possible, a tangible and visible reminder of a commitment we made even if we didn't fully understand its scope and implications. Back then, it was fun, but because I was a minority religion in school, it also made me an anomaly, but that had its purpose too. Now that I'm wiser and older, I understand some of these purposes better, and it's the only piece of jewelry besides my fitbit that I wear. Ever. It's cheap- $0.25US (back then), but its value is great. After I starting teaching Microbiology I learned of some other ways in which it protects you, and although I'm not sure if the leaders of the Faith knew this and did it intentionally, it adds a certain nuance. Now before you jump the shark and take credit for these thoughts, please know that I already told both my congregational leader and my Sunday School class these same things, so they can vouch for the fact that you didn't come up with it. The ring's presence and contents constitute its protective power. The metals of which it's comprised steel your mettle against the literal corruption of the flesh by organisms that would harm you or destroy you, and the symbols on its face remind you to steel yourself against influences of the spirit that would lead you away to harm or destruction. In essence, this is quite literally provided to young people in my faith as a shield and a protection against the power of the destroyer, literally and figuratively speaking.

The outside of the ring is made shiny by virtue of a zinc plating, a common technique to protect other metals from degrading (galvanization). Zinc is ironically essential for your survival in some cases and prevents the growth of viral strains that would otherwise corrupt your genome. Many genes in humans have "zinc fingers", which is a region of DNA where zinc ions bind that tell your cells where a gene starts so that you can use your DNA more efficiently. Viral genomes, which are MUCH smaller, when they bind zinc, are prevented from other associations with other molecules because the zinc outcompetes other molecules for room to dock. The purpose of the teachings of my Faith are designed to prevent other idealogies from gaining a foothold and reproducing themselves in you, and they are integral to show you what is really important and necessary for you to do in your life just like zinc fingers tell your body what parts of your genetics are important and useful. Galvanized against the powers that might otherwise degrade your mettle, the ring sits on the outside and provides you a reminder of what you ought to do and serves as a protection against influences that might direct your efforts to some other reactions. Like the galvanized outer metal layer, on your finger the ring resists forces that get at your core, that would change your principles, behaviors, attitudes and norms. The metal plating on the outside resists organisms that would establish themselves as part of your DNA and corrupt your ability to be the best version of yourself possible.

Most of the ring is made from copper, which also has a literal protective benefit. Copper ions provide protection from fungus. I have known this for years, ever since I went to the doctor when I was like 10 for a growth on my neck and the flight surgeon proscribed that I shower using selson blue shampoo, which is blue because it has copper in it, and the copper prevents the maturation of fungus, ergo the spread thereof. You are most likely to encounter fungus as a challenge to your health. That's because we use fungus in dairy products, bread, and alcohol as a means to actually prepare the final edible versions. So, if you have ever had any of those in your house, and if your house is too humid, there is fungus there making you miserable. In addition to that, there are some fungal strains that actually attack you- athlete's foot, jock itch, feminine itch, etc., and so the copper in the ring helps to prevent fungus from establishing a foothold and making you struggle even if you aren't actually "sick". That's one of the purposes of living a Christian life- so that you prevent the adversary from establishing a foothold in your life and creating problems you could otherwise avoid if he's not allowed to set up camp. Not everything evil encourages makes you evil; sometimes it keeps you from doing better things. Murder is no better of a temptation than cards if cards will do the trick.

Ultimately, the ring serves as a symbol of what we believe and the promises we make as Christians to live as He would have us. I know some people ask what would Jesus do, but more importantly, the ring asks us to consider what Jesus would have ME do. Simply put- the gospel of Jesus Christ is to love God, love your neighbor, and then live like you mean that, to choose what is right, what is best, and then trust in God's grace, love, and timing. We see the simple anagram and know what it means, and if you actually look at it, it reminds us that God ever always achieves great things by small and simple means. The benefit is not just subconscious and subtle. As the ring degrades and the metal grows exposed, the ring leaves a stain on the hand. As if the glaring green letters weren't enough, eventually there's a ring around the finger even if you remove the ring from the metals dissolving in the acids from your hand and entering the body. Both of these draw attention to your finger. Mostly, I think it bothers the wearer, because the ion ring on your finger is unsightly and because the green lettering and shield look almost cartoonish. This forces you to notice the ring, notice the ring's literal effects on your body and think about your CTR ring, reminding you to choose the right. It also sometimes draws the attention of others. That is I think one of the unsung and untouted effects- it affords you an opportunity to share your beliefs with your peers in an environment where it rarely surfaces and is regularly discouraged. My CTR ring affords me both the opportunity to remember my Savior as well as sometimes discuss Him with other people who are curious about what gaudy jewelry I wear and why. I don't really think God cares too much that we mostly stop wearing the ring after a few years, but I think He would smile to see the stain on your hand beneath it and know that you Honor the promise to remember Him always and benefit from the tangible and philosophical benefits this simple symbol affords.

I do not know if the church leaders even know or care about this, and I don't think it was their intent when they introduced these rings to be oblique and introduce layers of subtle symbolism, but I found it. Within a week of mentioning this in Sunday school, four members of my class started wearing theirs again, which is why my bishop asked me about it, since he noticed some High School Seniors wearing their old rings. So I told him essentially what I just told you. I think it's probably for most people a happy accident, but for someone like me, with an eye to see and a mind to comprehend, I don't think it was a coincidence that the ring provides literal as well as figurative protection. I live much better when I wear it. I feel much better (even if it's the placebo effect) when I wear it. Maybe I'm still not perfect, but it helps, and I don't get sick as much as other people seem to, and I'm not misled by fallacies like many people I encounter. The metals in the ring protect you from physical microbes, and the symbolic nature of the ring provides a shield against the attacks of the adversary. Sometimes, I find myself twirling it on my finger because the prongs are exposed, thinking about it subconsciously as I sit at my desk. Hopefully this shows in my actions. Essentially, there is no better way you could spend 25 cents to protect yourself from the fiery darts of the wicked and from the degradation of mortality than to buy and wear this ring. It's very small, but sometimes an inch of mettle is all that separates the hero from the craven, the Judas from Simon Peter. God loves us. He wants us to be successful, and He provides things to this end in our lives even if it takes us 30 years to understand the subtle nuances of His actions in our lives.

An Argument from Ignorance

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In October 2017 Patrick S Tomlinson proffered a scenario forcing pro-life people to choose between saving a child and saving some embryos and then declares that “everyone agrees” that a child is worth an infinite number of human embryos. Like most hypotheticals, it’s phrased to force you to choose between mutually exclusive propositions. This is a “heads I win, tails you lose” argument, a Kobiashi Maru. It is impossible for Thomlinson to be wrong, therefore it’s not scientific. It’s an ethics argument, and his entire basis lies in having a different ethos than respondents. Mephistophelian values are not my values, so I reject the premise of your argument as well as the terms concomitant therewith. In fact, I would probably solve the Kobiashi Maru the same way that Kirstie Allie did in Star Trek II and die trying to save everyone. Once you’ve removed Option C (die trying to save both) from consideration, it forces a choice in which I don’t actually happen to believe. Then you pat yourself on the back for forcing us to choose between bad and worse and excoriating us for not following our conscience. Remember that villains are those who issue this kind of ultimatum, not the sophisticated or virtuous.

Mr. Thomlinson proudly maintains that nobody has offered a viable solution. BY viable, he means one that meets with HIS ideals. He dismisses all contenders with an air of smug satisfaction and destroys other people for having a different opinion than his because the way he’s phrased the hypothetical, it’s impossible for his ideological opponents to not come off as hypocrites. His pseudo intellectualism is bound up in logical fallacies like Ad hoc ergo proctor hoc: If you don’t’ save the embryos and save the child, you are lying about life being concomitant with conception, and if you save the embryos but not the child, you can’t possibly care about people. Well, if someone has to die, I can’t possibly be expected to prove I care about all people, but then again, neither does Thomlinson. He doesn’t care about the respondents. The challenge, like his logic, is flawed, because it sets out to destroy the belief system of the respondent without replacing it with one the respondent considers an acceptable alternative. “you play by my rules” he declares, and then he mocks you when he wins using rules skewed towards the house. Wow, how clever. His premise is based on the argument that his definition of life is superior, but his definition seems simply to be “an embryo isn’t life”. Well, what is life? When does it begin? Is he claiming that it doesn’t begin until you’re five? I hear that life begins at 50. What makes his definition better than mine other than it happens to be his definition and he thinks he’s smarter than everyone else because nobody has come up with a logical answer to an emotional hyperbole.

Liberals are like everyone else in one important way. They’re human and flawed too, and the argument can be made that they don’t care about people either. Let’s change the challenge to be two different five year old kids at two ends of the building. One is a kid related to the liberal and the other is a stranger. Which kid does the liberal save if he is FORBIDDEN to save both? If the liberal argument is legit, then he would have the same percentage of saying the stranger and the relative, but we all know from human behavior that people preferentially preserve people they know and like. Ergo, you would see statistically that the liberals will not treat the stranger the same as the known child. You could conclude therefore that liberals do not care about all life equally, which he will protest, but if you are not allowed to die trying to save both, it’s impossible in this scenario to successfully argue that you do, just like the hypothetical he created where neither outcome successfully argues that a pro-lifer is pro life. He is FORCED to let someone die. He is forbidden to die trying to save everyone. Odd.

Tomlinson’s argument is based on the principle of sacrifice, but he is asked to sacrifice nothing in issuing the challenge. The simple fact is that decisions are made all the time where a sacrifice is made for practical or preferential purposes. It is not practical to preserve embryos. I don’t know how to store them, transport them, or raise them, but it is easy to find someone to raise the child and somewhere to store him. People who argue against the pro-life movement are not willing to make sacrifices. They usually like to make choices without consequences, ergo the rationalization at every turn for abortion. Sometimes they will clothe their naked villainy in odd old ends stolen forth from holy writ and seem the saint when most they play the devil, claiming they don’t want the as yet unborn kid to be in a disadvantaged life. Really, they don’t want to be disadvantaged. Remember that Barack Obama, Nobel Laureate, and hero of the liberal left once said he didn’t want his daughters PUNISHED WITH A BABY. That’s the difference between Tomlinson and me. Babies are punishments to him. They are an opportunity for me to share in the creative power with my Maker. We simply cannot see eye to eye in this scenario because we value and define life differently.

The liberal argument also revolves around the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few or the one. Yet, that math doesn’t add up when it comes to Tomlinson’s hypothetical. Mathematically speaking, he should be defending the feti, because they are many rather than the child who is one. However, liberals usually do what benefits THEM. Hence this challenge, which is not to benefit respondents but to validate Tomlinson as being a wizard of smart who saved believers from their false and farcical faith. In fact, Tomlinson claims that a child is worth millions of unborn, which is completely contrary to the argument aforementioned. It relies on what he calls a “life”. Those embryos aren’t going to cry as he leaves them behind or stare at him as he runs away or have their parents sue him for not saving them, but if he abandons the child, he runs that risk. In typical fashion, emotion will overcome mathematics, and he will save the child who looks like a human because he doesn’t want to see that child’s face haunt him until he dies. What if there are more human cells in the “embryo” collection than in the child? The needs of the many? When it comes down to brass tacks, the liberal argument always devolves into emotion over reason. It is not reasonable to save the embryos when more can and will be made, unless you consider that those might be the embryos of an infertile couple who paid good money for them and doesn’t get another chance. It is not reasonable to try to save both because that might cost you your life. Well, isn’t that just selfish? Who are we kidding? This isn’t about the kids. It’s about the person posing the hypothetical and the trap he creates for the unwitting person who believes differently from him.

There are people who might actually choose the embryos if we know more about them and do so legitimately. I know fairly well a number of couples who relied on fertility clinics to even conceive. It’s exorbitantly expensive to get one of these, and if one of those were mine, I would probably want to save them, and in doing so save thousands of other embryos to the benefit of people I don’t know or like since I can’t tell them apart. I know a student who was able to have a child because of something I taught in class. Don’t tell me that her child is less important than the child of a stranger she doesn’t know and might dislike. I didn’t know any of my nieces as embryos, but I know their parents, and I know that those parents never doubted they were carrying a living vessel inside them. They were excited to see the organs and then limbs form. They got to create life, and who is Tomlinson to deny them that hope? If you think that those kids would be better off in stem cell research, you have no heart. Each of these kids, just like the helpless animals liberals always want to rescue, has a distinct and endearing personality. I would do anything to save these little girls born to my brothers, and given what I know about them, if I knew an embryo in that vial belonged to one of them, you bet your touchas I’d leave that five year old child behind to save my own possible relative. Who is Tomlinson to decide that the emotional and financial capital expended by those whose embryos he expects us to doom to death are not worthy of saving? Who is he to decide what is human and who is worthy? Who is he to decide that my faith is bunk? Whose beliefs am I supposed to have? This tyrant of a man has essentially established a scenario hoping to impose his beliefs on others. He has spent a considerable amount of time preparing, postulating, and phrasing his argument to make it impossible for a respondent to give an answer he finds acceptable without sacrificing their own beliefs. Then he demands a coherent and cogent response from the uneducated and unprepared, and when they fail to meet his arbitrary standard, he declares them inept and rejoices at making them feel low. When we were young, that kind of behavior was the behavior, not of the enlightened, but of the bully, and it is just as worthy of scorn here as then. The infertile couples who long for children they can never bear probably cannot articulate what that one human embryo that might become their child is worth to them. To Tomlinson, it’s completely worthless, just like his logic. The Kobiashi Maru is ultimately a test of character.

True Love Follows Forever

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Since I got divorced, I've been single every Valentine's Day except once. I was sad to discover during the day that so many of the people about whom I care and who I respect didn't have any exciting plans tonight either. Some of those people were married, but many of them are also single. You may feel differently than I do about what matters in life, but for my part, it's the people in my life who made the difference, and every person I loved who isn't there anymore constitutes a void I feel sometimes very acutely on windy, rainy days like today. It's been almost a year since I saw or heard from some people who were important, and for the rest, it's been a great deal longer. I don't really expect to hear from most of them; unlike most people i meet, my exes don't come back or really ever talk to me again (unless they have nowhere else to turn for help or money). Usually Valentines Day sucks for me for that reason. It felt different this year.

Most of our conversations and relationships with people lack substance. We don't really know that many of our neighbors or friends, and most of us wouldn't dare impose on them on a day like this anyway. Partly that's on us; partly it's because we don't want to remind them they're alone on the "day of love". I talked to two fairly attractive students today that I know, neither one of whom has actually been in a class with me, but I didn't do so with an ulterior motive. Sure I was open, but I didn't talk to them because I wanted a date tonight, and they didn't make any offer to change that or find out what my plans were. The people with whom I spoke the most were the managers at Burger King when I stopped to pick up some cheeseburgers for my "date" because it's so very rare to see a bunch of managers all working together. They were sour a bit, but I think it resonated when i pointed out that their associates are young people for whom this day is very important. The rest of conversations I had were with men I know at work who don't apparently have anyone either. Some of them were also glad to have 'dates' like mine.

I feel odd that I have longer relationships with other things than with people. You know I have an unhealthy emotional attachment to my 1995 Saturn. When I left work, I ran my hand along the trim, patted Car2D2 on the dash and said, "Hello old friend". Interestingly enough, every relationship I've ever had, and everyone I've ever taken on a date with whom I wanted a relationship has been a passenger in that car. Every. Single. One. My entire life is represented in that car. It's been everywhere I've been if I didn't have to fly there first, and everyone important in my life or whom I hoped would be important who had the opportunity has sat in it, whether they wanted to or not. Former students know that my Saturn is part of my identity. Most of my friends know the rest. I am also heavily attached to and grateful for my beagle, who is also my valentine. Boy was he ecstatic when I walked through the door with cheeseburgers. He has been with me for every relationship I've had since I was married. He is sitting there right now on the minky blanket my mom made him for Christmas keeping me company, and later he'll go sleep in my closet on my socks and towels to keep me company. I have learned more about love from this dog and this car than from all of the flapping fish and the girls I've loved put together. No matter what happens, that dog adores me. If I hurt him or ignore him, he forgives me as if I never gave an offense, especially when I did it accidentally. He is grateful for every bit of attention, every treat, every walk, every time I go over and scratch his ears or rub his tummy. As for the car, I learned that when you have a problem, you don't trash something you love and replace it. You find out what's wrong and then you work until you repair the damage. Last weekend my mom let slip how much she's worried about me when the dog dies. I think this dog and this car are competing to see who can last longer in my life, but mom is correct- when they are no longer staples of my existence, I'll be a different person.  Here's a picture of my two loves- my beagle in my Saturn:

Earlier this morning I surprised myself by being more excited for the happiness of all my exes and would-be exes than you might expect. In addition to wishing them all a Happy valentines day indirectly on twitter, I also took to prayer and asked God to help them all have a happy day, even to include women I don't like who have tried to wreck my life. I mean, I'm not necessarily interested in seeing them per se, but I don't really get anything from wishing them ill, seeing them suffer, or watching them ache. I know God loves them, even if I don't know why or how, and many of them found people who love them too, so I hope they're happy. Ok, so maybe it rained this morning, but it could still be a beautiful day for them in less literal ways, and I hope it was. My mom is the only person who said anything uplifting to me, but the dog purred when I rubbed him, and the car sounded like a 22 year old car should probably sound, and when I got to my house everything was in order, and I had a good time eating cheeseburgers by candlelight and watching Damn Yankees with my beagle. He just enjoyed my company. He went deaf about a year ago, so even if cares about what's on TV, he can't hear it.

Today was a pleasant and quiet day for me. It's probably the first Valentine's Day in years when I wasn't upset to be single. Am I stoked about that? Not even close, but I have a dog who loves me no matter what for the rest of his life and a car on whom I've been able to rely for years. Maybe that changes tomorrow, but love, true love will follow you forever. Truelove is forever. So all of you out there looking for love, hoping you have it, and hoping that those you love return your love, I'm with you. I hope what you have is real. I hope what you have is wonderful. I hope it changes your life for the better. I love God and love that He gave me things to make my life better. For those who I loved and lost, I thought about you all today, even if you're in another town and someone tries to lay you down, I hope you're happy and that today was a good day.

USF Tempest Review

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Friday night, as I am apt each spring, I attended the Utah Shakespeare Festival's tour when it came to campus. This year, they performed something out of the normal rotation and curiously enough chose "The Tempest". I participated in the discussion after the fact, and two members of the troupe thanked me for the comments I made, and I decided to share them here because well it's relevant to this blog and its purpose. They asked us about the theme of the play, what we took from it, and I got something different than everyone else.

Prospero pontificates aloud as he decides what to do with the shipwrecked enemies cast ashore on the island where he has been living with his daughter for 12 years. He mentions that "The rarer action is / In virtue than in vengeance" (Act V Scene i). For me, that is the denouement of this play. First of all, it comes very near the end of the play after the things with which most people are familiar occur (the monster, the lovers, and the second plot to overthrow the Queen of Sicily) and complicate things at the climax. Some of these are already unraveling, but Prospero still holds the strings of fate. At this moment, it lies within his hand to decide whether to return justice for the privations he suffered or to do and be better than those whose fates depend on the decision he makes. Prospero realizes in this monologue that it could portend far better for all for him to do justice, and better still it ends better for EVERYONE in the play. Nobody dies. Families are restored. Ills are forgiven. Captives are released. The Tempest is one of Shakespeare's plays where everyone actually lives happily ever after. It becomes possible only when Prospero decides on the virtuous response instead of the vengeance which occasioned the tempest and subsequent shipwreck in the first place.

I doubt most people understand this when they see, read, or think about The Tempest. Certainly, the USF troupe members seemed to have not thought of this before I mentioned it. Sure, they think of forgiveness, but this is actually a happy ending. For everyone. Virtue usually is the only way everyone gets the very best ending. Sure, Prospero's brother, forgiven though he may be for taking the Dukedom of Milan, lives under threat that Prospero will reveal his subterfuge to overthrow Sicily, but even Prospero and his daughter advance, for this was the only virtuous way for Prospero's house to also rule Sicily and advance in gentry rank. Nobody was hurt. Everyone lives. How many of Shakespeare's plays end this way? How many people do what is virtuous? What do we do when virtuous actions don't lead to a better state? Do we really think about what's best for everyone or just for ourselves?

For my part, I'm glad the USF took a departure from the tried and true cadre of plays portrayed on tour. I'm not really a big fan of The Tempest, but that's because of the speed and ease with which the children of Milan and Sicily get together. Prospero's daughter reminds me of a woman I once loved dearly, who loved me for me, who wanted to marry me, and so it is always hard for me to see that particular way in which two people live happily ever after. I do my very best to be my very best, and sometimes when I am my very best, you can't tell because things don't necessarily go visibly better for me. I did not get the girl. I did not get restored to my Dukedom. I don't become wealthier or recover lost friends. However, Shakespeare's outcome depends on all the characters placing compassion and vulnerability on the table and letting go of our desire to control and be validated. At the end, Prospero relinquishes his power, announces that all the powers he retains are the poor ones of his animal frame. Sometimes it's important to see people let things go, to stop demanding and controlling others, to set them free. Sure, we all like that to work out for us, and sometimes it does, but more importantly, Prospero gains no net increase. Unlike Job, he isn't more powerful or wealthy or respected. The advances come to those he loves- his daughter and new son in law. It is a play about sacrifice for those you love that actually works out. It's essentially, "I hope you're happy even if you're not mine".

Over the years since 2012 when I started going to these plays, the price has gone up but the quality has not diminished. I was sad to see the small audience size. I was sad that there wasn't anyone I wanted to invite. I was sad when it ended, because The Tempest makes the case in the end, once you get past the costumes and the quotes and all the other pageantry to a man who decides on virtue, which is so very rare. Maybe if more people decided to do as Prospero we could enjoy more prosperity.

Aspirin Is The Best Painkiller

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I have a pretty high pain tolerance, and I don't usually take something to dull pain. Two weeks ago, while running electrical wire to the workshop in my back yard, I smashed by left index finger, and I didn't even ice it. It's still tender, and it reminds me that I smashed it, but I didn't take anything for it, whiskey or oxycodone, and I'm fine. Sometimes however I do take painkillers, not because I can't do without them but because I can't do something I must do while the pain persists. I need to work sometimes when the pain interferes, and so I find that, in a pinch, since I don't rely on painkillers that aspirin serves me best. In many ways, although it is one of the original and simplest of painkillers, it is superior to all others contrived by people. It is natural, and it is simple, and simplicity is often the ultimate sophistication (Leonardo da Vinci). Unlike some of the other medications, aspirin technically never expires in its ability to kill pain even when it changes form. Finally, it's so easy to find and cheap to make, that if you can get away with using it, it's really the best bet and the surest, even if it's not quick and even if you must take multiple doses.

From a cost-benefit perspective, aspirin is the cheapest way to kill pain. I mean, they even put aspirin in some of the other pill cocktails, and you can get generic aspirin anywhere any time; we even have it in some of our first aid kits. When I do the aspirin lab in chemistry, we always compare a new bottle to an expired one to show them that drugs don't technically "expire"; they change into something else. Aspirin is easy and cheap to make, and it's not bottled with a special brand. It is useful everywhere, and it's even sold by Bayer for heart disease. Sure, like all drugs, it comes with possible health risks, and dulling pain isn't as good as eliminating the reason why you hurt in the first place, but if you can kill pain with the cheapest and most ubiquitous pill available, that's a huge win. We need other drugs because most people overuse pain killers, and some people abuse prescriptions. Even when I was seriously injured years back, they only put me on ibuprofin, but you can also take aspirin WITH some other painkillers and it won't interfere with them, making aspirin the best, the least likely to cause dependence, and something that always CAN work, even if it doesn't clear up everything or at least everything completely. Multiple doses are much cheaper than other drugs, but we like to pay for the convenience of taking one pill all day, and you pay for it in more ways than money. We like to kill pain quickly, and aspirin isn't that quick, but it's also the least toxic way to kill pain in cells.

Aspirin is derived from an all-natural source. Long ago, old wives knew that if you chewed on willow bark it would dull pain, and eventually scientists recovered salicylic acid, the active ingredient, from willow as the causative agent. This means that the main precursor to aspirin is not only all-natural, but it's also 100% organic. Aspirin itself is then artisanal, because it's manufactured by people from the salicylic acid through an acetylation reaction. This is done because salicylic acid is irritating to the stomach. So, the manmade derivative is "gentler" on the stomach by pre-reacting it with something to keep it from reacting with you in a way that you don't desire. Of course other pain killers are even more gentle, and willows don't make salicylic acid to make our lives easier, but aspirin is made from concentrated vinegar and willow bark extract, which sounds like something you'd find at Whole Foods next to the wheatgrass. Both of its ingredients are perfectly safe for people, but it gets vilified anyway. In our culture now that potted plants and macrobiotic food, vegan diets, bikram yoga, and the plethora of esoteric solutions, aspirin is really the only natural and pure and vegan source to kill pain among the pills produced for pain. I know there are other things that work too that are not pills, and you can always suck willow bark if that floats your boat, but it really deserves a resurgence in this community under those auspices.

When aspirin "expires" it's still useful. Acetyl-salicylic acid breaks down by the release of the acetyl group as aforementioned, leaving its predecessor- salyicylic acid, which is also a painkiller. You can tell if you're aspirin is going bad because when you open the cap you'll be able to smell vinegar, which is evidence of the reverse reaction. It's why they sell the bottle with a cotton plug, so that the cotton reacts with the air rather than the pills and keeps the pills in useful condition longer. Even then, it just changes the painkiller from one to another. Sometimes when I take other painkillers, I don't feel like they're working, and they don't seem to have any effect at all. However, aspirin, when it expires, turns into a different painkiller, and even though it's weaker it's still going to dull pain. Friday morning I awoke with a headache left over from Thursday night, and when I got to work, I took some acetylsalicylic acid (aspirin) and within a few hours I felt fine. Now, the bottle says the pills expired in 2014, but I know that it's still a painkiller even if it's not the one I think it is on the bottle. For this reason, I think stockpiling aspirin is your best bet. Ok, maybe you need aleve or excedrin normally, but those medications really do stop killing pain when they expire, so they just make your urine more toxic if you take them after they expire. At least aspirin will still help dull your pain even if it's years after the bottle says it's bad. When other drugs change form, they cease to be painkillers, and maybe they become more dangerous derivatives than the pain you desired originally to dispel.

Despite its advantages, aspirin continues to take a back seat. It's inconvenient, weak, passe, and just not what people desire, not when you can take something powerful or if you're addicted either to the substance itself or the money you can make selling pills illegally. Nobody deals in aspirin after market, and I'm the only person I know who stockpiles aspirin, but that's one of my favorite labs to teach. We extract willow bark, make aspirin, and test the pills and show that the natural product is present in the pills and even moreso as they degrade. It's an easy test, it's a quick lab, and it is important because some students will find themselves giving "expired" medication in a clinical setting and need to know that the expiration date is really the date on which they can no longer guarantee that the medication contains 100% of the dose of the product we purchase. It may still be useful, and as far as I know aspirin is always useful. It worked for me Friday, despite being expired almost FOUR YEARS AGO. Next time I'll experiment with an older bottle, and I'll continue to show to classes for years to come that aspirin pills still contain aspirin long after you would normally toss them aside. Maybe I like aspirin so much because it reminds me of me- that somehow something useful can be resurrected from me, even if I don't feel useful or even if other people decide they'd rather try elsewhere.

I Hope You're Happy

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Thursday morning on the radio, the DJs were talking about the three people you will love in your life, about heartbreak, and about learning from loss. Before they finished, I turned off the radio, because all I could think about was the woman who broke my heart in 2013 and how much I miss us. It's funny because my friend had to persuade me to even date her, and if he had not, I wonder what I would feel, what I would write, and what I would do in the evenings. Wherever you are, whatever you're doing, and wherever you go, I hope you're happy. Of course, I hoped that we'd be happy together, but interestingly enough I discovered with this one that I really did love her. I mean, I could have burned her, burned us, given her the ultimatum I gave another woman when I first moved to Vegas, and as much as i don't think she'll do better, I didn't want to do that. I hope that her life is amazing, even if she's not mine anymore. Imagine my surprise then to arrive at work and find that youtube suggested based on my history that I watch the following:

I think it's funny that I even watched this video. I only did because my late friend Tracie loved Blue October. Now, Tracie and I were never going to be together. She was married when we met, and she walked a path that didn't even approximate where I wanted to go. Maybe she wanted to go where I wanted to go, but she didn't want it enough to make the major and essential changes for that. Nevertheless, I wanted her to be happy. In May of 2011, when I went to South Park CO to visit her, she was very surprised by my reactions. First off, I didn't approve of her gentleman friend even though she thought he was dreamy, but she eventually came to understand and even agree that her cowboy boyfriend cared more about his cattle and was only interested in riding her. Secondly, at the bar which was the only place to eat in town after 7PM, some rich yokel made a disparaging comment about her, and my friend Jay had to physically restrain me from beating the crap out of him. See, he owned like almost everything you could see, and if I'd taken him behind the Louvre, it would have made her life difficult there. I wasn't going to date or marry Tracie. I found her physically attractive, because she wasn't a good potential partner, but I did care about her and want her to be happy. Not necessarily at my expense, but none of these things cost me overmuch, and I was willing to take those steps if possible if it made her life better or gave her better opportunities even though my "love" for her wasn't romantic.

I wrote about this before in March of 2017 in "The Pain of Love". You hope they're happy. I mean, I even pray sometimes that, if the woman for whom I ache isn't coming back, she will forget about me completely because that will make it easier for her to be happy and be happier in the life she's chosen. Unlike some other writers and singers and poets, I don't want her to think back and wish she'd stayed; I hope she's happy, and that if she truly desires what she's pursuing that it will bring her the happiness she hopes it will bring her. For that to blossom as it ought, it's better if she does forget about me, completely, and dedicate herself to the life and people that she chose to love instead, not because she hates me or because I want her to but because she can give them all of the love that she possesses. I know this isn't the conventional thing, but it is the quixotic thing- to love pure and chaste from afar. You see, Don Quixote wasn't doing what he did for the servant girl because he wanted her to fall in love with him. He did it because that's what he believed chivalry demanded of a man- to do what is right especially for women.

Love is a misunderstood and misdirected phenomenon with most people, but true love always looks the same. IN a letter John Steinbeck wrote to his son John wrote about two kinds of romantic love. The first is a selfish one that serves the ego of the person who professes love, one that reaches out and says that no matter what you'll be together. It does not usually lead to respect, honour, or happiness. The second is what everyone thinks people mean when they talk about love. It calls upon us to be the very best versions of ourselves that we can manage. It looks toward the other person, often bringing forth goodness and wisdom that the giver did not know they possessed. That kind of love sees the other person with an eye single to the glory of God and desires the best for that person whatever that means. It's the kind of love that God has for us- that He is willing to let us wander and make mistakes and deny and reject Him and then still offers to rescue and redeem us. Now I don't think God expects us to act as Savior to those who hurt us; that's Christ's purpose. However, He does expect us to love our enemies and do good to those who despitefully use us and persecute us, to welcome back the prodigal even if we choose to give what we have to those we love who remain faithful. Real love, charitable love, the kind of eros that elevates men and really cements people together into families and an entity of eternity in His eyes loves the person even if they hurt us and hopes that wherever they wander their route leads them to happiness and peace. I know from reading CS Lewis that there are four loves, and eros is the lowest, but if it really is love, then it uplifts and lifts up those we claim to love to a better place.

Most people don't really love other people as much as they claim, and most people desperately hope to discover that they're the exception to the rule and that people who claim to love them really mean it. Even then, they don't know what it means to love those who hurt us, but it's what this song by Blue October named "I Hope You're Happy" and Journey's "Worlds Apart" really mean. You still love them, not the way you did, not to get together with them, but you still care for and about them. You hope that things work out, you won't desert them, not that they have claim to the same kind of things that they did before, but you really did care, you really did love them, not in the sappy, selfish, storybook way, but in the way that God wants us to love others- to wish for their best even if you derive no benefit from it. We remember them because they mean something to us, and we care about them because caring about them is caring about us, about our story, about our common heart, about our common aspirations back from when we were together. We hope they're happy, even if they're not with us. Not a day goes by that I don't think about this woman, but I don't hate her or wish her ill. Like the Beast, I have finally learned to love, and although I may not have earned her love in return, maybe the enchantment on me that makes me undesirable, untenable, and unaffable will fade in time and people will understand as months turn into years that I love them even if I don't see them anymore or talk to them ever again. I learned things about myself because she came. I will always be grateful to her that she helped me see who I really am, what I really believe. I hope you're happy, at peace, and prosperous wherever you are.