Category Archives: Personal and family life

June 14, 2026 · 7:03 pm

Gaslit

“Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.” Attributed to Rita Mae Brown

When the first snowstorm blew in last winter, I hadn’t used my snowblower much in two years. I am the neighborhood snow remover for four driveways; most guys like playing with toys that have loud motors. I was happy to fire it up. And fire it up. And fire it up. Wouldn’t start. Shoveled out the old fashioned way only about five inches of light snow. Went to the local hardware store and bought a sparkplug.

Wanted to get ready in case the big one hit that the long term weatherman was telling us might happen, and I did what any reasonably handy person has done for two hundred and fifty years. Watched a YouTube video, took apart the eight things that had to come off to get to the sparkplug and replaced it in my driveway. Our 24” Ariens has an alternate electric starter, so I ran the power cord out from the outlet off the back deck. After a little prompting, she started up. The pull cord hasn’t been able to get it going for a couple of years. Let it run for a while, and while the thing ran steadily, it ran rough. I thought I would wait until the annual preventive maintenance of the spring to let the experts diagnose the imperfections. Since we hadn’t had much snow for two years, I thought we would be OK.

The biggest blizzard in fifty years hit hard on my birthday in February and kept us inside feeding the woodstove for nearly two days. Deep, heavy, and drifted. Just under three feet of the stuff according to those that measure such things. My limited mechanical aptitude held up for the storm. I had stationed the snowblower at the end of the driveway under a tied down tarp and with the power cord running to the house. I was able to get my driveway cleared. Two or three hours more cleaned off those of my elderly neighbors.

The town plows were MIA for a couple of days on the side roads keeping the main routes open, but a fine young man from nearby Escobar Farm roared in on his giant tractor with a front end loader bigger than my car. The wheels were taller than I was. He seemed to enjoy running noisy machinery at least as much as I did, and he opened the five roads in the whole neighborhood until we all had access to East Main Road that the town had cleared. Free at last.

All was well on Birch Road. We could get to church, Home Depot, Clement’s Market, and Coastal Roasters coffee shop, and that’s all a guy really needs.

“If your liquors too red it’ll swell up your head. You better stick to that good ole mountain dew.” Stanley Brothers, Mountain Dew

When the daffodils came up and red wing blackbirds came back to the suet cage next to our birdfeeder, I realized I was well behind in preventive maintenance schedule for the snowblower. My old snowblower service company closed its doors for good last summer, so I had to find a new one. I don’t have a pickup truck anymore and needed someone who could pick up the machine. The company that services our lawnmower every year didn’t work on Ariens. A trusted friend who had lived here for decades recommended a small place a couple of towns away. When I called, the owner was friendly, smart, and knowledgeable. Picked it up in a day. Gave me a reasonable estimate for the PM work.

He called me a couple of days later and asked if it had been running rough, cycling higher revs with slowdowns, and needed more choke than required when it was new. “Yes.” Ah. He asked if I ran regular gas in it. “Yes.” Spending the extra on ethanol free gas and buying it in cans someplace other than a gas station didn’t seem critical to me. Much cheaper and more convenient at the bottom of the hill Cumberland Farm into my own can.

“Thought so,” he said.

“Oh, oh,” I replied to myself.

“Your carburetor needs to be rebuilt. The jets are corroded and ruined. It’s the ethanol in the gas. I knew it as soon as I started it up.”

Somewhere in the ancient past I knew that too. I ran special straight gas in my chainsaw like the saw shop warned me to do. I may have even known somewhere in my corroded memory that I should have done the same thing for the lawnmower and snowblower small engines but hadn’t. I either ran them dry at the end of their season or put some Stabile in the tank for the off season. I thought that was good enough, and they kept running. Until they didn’t. The indestructible lawnmower soldiers on. I promise to treat it better. But the snowblower carburetor is a winter creature and less forgiving.

Four hundred dollars later, I had the lesson permanently engraved. Much cheaper than a new self-propelled, 24” competent snowblower, but four hundred I could have better used for a weekend in Maine to visit old friends. When I got it back, it ran like a different machine with power and enthusiasm; started with one pull on the cord. Who knew?

I should have.

“I don’t know if I’m smart, but I think I can see, when someone is pullin’ the wool over me.” Bob Dylan, Let Me Die in My Footsteps

Large motors in cars have been adapted by their manufacturers that see which way the wind blows to run on ten percent ethanol biofuel mixed into our petroleum. Small engines like chainsaws, lawnmowers, and my unfortunate snowblower have smaller jets more easily corroded, and the fuel stored by less than diligent owners like me can sit unused off season for a longer time. Ethanol attracts water; if enough water accumulates, separation can occur, resulting in a water/ethanol layer that can cause corrosion, poor combustion, and fuel-system problems. It can even eat your carburetor.

Ethanol is most often manufactured from ground up corn, a convenient cooperative of government mandates, farm state politicians, a zealous farm lobby and late to the green party Big Oil anxious to appear agreeable to the people who will occasionally superglue themselves to museum masterpieces to save our much abused home planet. While it does do its job for the corn farmers by keeping food prices and sales up, things are more expensive for the consumer, especially for those least able to pay. But you have to break a few eggs, and I’m not sure how much it accomplishes in keeping the oceans from rising into our kitchens and slaughtering millions along the coasts as climate Ph.Ds. Greta Thunberg and Al Gore predict.

The corn lobby, agribusiness, ethanol refiners, farm state congress members who enjoy political donations and lucrative speaker’s fees at conventions in places like Turks and Caicos, and well paid, well-nourished lobbyists love ethanol, but artificially supported prices because of the five or six billions of bushels of corn used to make the stuff every year affect a wide variety of other folks. More expensive corn on the table and the increase in ground corn feed which raises dairy and beef price affects everyone who buys groceries, which is most of us. Lower income consumers, some poorer countries which rely on food imports to survive, livestock farmers, and anyone buying gas take it good and hard as H.L Menken warned us.

Some critics say ethanol just placates the planet protectors but with no real positive effects for the planet. Ethanol is about a third less efficient than the petroleum version, so it reduces over all miles per gallon by about 3%. When you add in the manufacturing energy to make the stuff, the additional diesel used for farm equipment and to transport it from farm to manufacturer to the place where it is diluted into the bulk of our fuel, and the energy to produce the extra fertilizer it takes to grow it, there are those who say it does not save much carbon from being pumped into the atmosphere, if any. And it ate my carburetor, so I am not feeling particularly charitable to the corn lobby this month. I know it’s my fault deep down, but I would have liked some help protecting myself from myself.

I can live with burning straight real gas in my small engines. I’m probably not despoiling the atmosphere very much, and at eighty, the shoveling and mowing with an old hand reel mower is a bit beyond my long term capability. If you want to superglue yourself to the Mona Lisa on my account, I have no objection and understand your concern.

” Nothing is ever really lost as long as we remember it.” Lucy Maud Montgomery, The Golden Road

Faces

“The face is a picture of the mind as the eyes are its interpreter.” Cicero, De Oratore

In 1968, the year after we were married, I vaguely remember going to see the brilliant movie “Faces” written and directed by John Cassavetes in the downtown theater in Northampton where we lived. Going to a movie was our mutually enjoyed extravagance back before movies too often became caricatures, CGI, and comic book superheroes. Our date was often followed by a fifty cent hot fudge sundae at the State Street Fruit Store soda jerk counter if it wasn’t too late. “Faces” delved the emotions, vulnerabilities, and masks of the characters in the tragic dissolution of a marriage, intensely personal and focused on close ups of the actors with a handheld camera. I don’t remember much of the plot, but I do remember the faces.

Faces do that to us. Anatomy books tell of forty three muscles and over ten thousand documented expressions, some powerful and some subtle. The human face is unique to each person; facial recognition software is based on that certain knowledge. With any degree of awareness, we are sensitive in the extreme to the subtle shifts in the facial expressions of those with whom we are most familiar, especially in our spouse that we love and especially in a spouse of nearly sixty years. Our faces have evolved over these many years, but while our shared life together has drawn us ever closer, her character, her essence, her irreplaceable “Ritaness” has not changed, and her face mirrors the same person I fell in love with all those decades ago.

We often read the same books. We’ve been reading Carl Trueman’s book published last month, “The Desecration of Man,” [i] which like most of what Dr. Trueman writes, provides an insightful look into what we have wrought in our postmodern culture. There is a memorable passage in the book where he discusses faces in a way that traces a particular woe the sexual revolution has exacerbated.

Trueman explains the impact and roots of how ubiquitous pornography has metastasized into a billion dollar industry in every corner of the internet and on every kid’s smartphone and has been enabled through the insistent undermining of the exceptionalism of the human person. What he calls the “desecration of man” developed for centuries as we incrementally substituted understanding our existence as a unique created being made in the image of our Creator (Imago Dei) with evolving as a lucky collection of atoms. From a miracle hybrid of soul and body to a rearrangeable assembly of “meat Legos”[ii]. But I digress.

In one chapter, he quotes a passage from Roger Scruton’s book, “The Face of God.” Scruton describes pornography as “a marginalization, indeed a kind of desecration, of the human face.” Porn, which is a demeaning drama of prostitution in front of a camera, replaces a unique face with a body, and any body will do, interchangeable and consumable. When we look upon another’s face, we see an “I”, a subject; when we look only upon a body, we see an object to be used. Trueman invites us to share a thought experiment.

A groom anxiously awaits the appearance of his bride while he stands next to his best man at the front of the church. Suddenly, the back door opens, the bridesmaids and entourage process into the church with the organ playing Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March.” But instead of the woman he loves and to whom he pledged his troth, another woman walks in with a face not the one he cherishes. Perhaps she’s even beautiful, but would he be satisfied with this stranger? Would he still be willing to commit his whole life to her for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health until death do them part?

The sexual act out of the context of this pledge is hormonal lust, not love, a selfish act of using another person for pleasure. In this transaction, we objectify another human being, and they objectify us. At least ideally, the marital embrace once was considered as holy, a unique intimacy between a man and a woman based on surrender and trust, and a loving lifelong commitment. Together out of that commitment, they share responsibility and sacrifice in mutual love for childbearing and rearing commensurate with the sacred telos of reproduction and continuation of our species. All these aspects were recognized to be intrinsic in our nature as man and woman and our relationship. The status of sexual relationships now, while casual and ubiquitous in entertainments, is merely a desirable component of personal self-fulfillment and pleasure, thus, “If it feels good, do it.” The hook up culture that resulted has diminished us.

So, has the millennia old definition of what it is to be human been jettisoned as well, tragically and in grave error? Has our understanding of what it means to be human become incoherent and abandoned the Creator’s vision for us as made in Imago Dei? Is the postmodern, progressive understanding of us as a random collection of molecules evolved accidentally in a harsh and unforgiving universe an improvement or an impoverishment? Have we stopped seeing each other’s faces?

“In her face I saw such things as make me say:

‘Now God, who made such a one, be praised.’” Dante Alighieri, La Vita Nuova

When I look at Rita, I see her face. Always have.

From the dedication to my book:

In a sudden revelation, Rita or I will look at each other and declare, “You’re a different person than me.” After almost six decades of married life, that is not a simple proposition.

I will look over at her reading or praying near the woodstove early on a winter morning with her finger absentmindedly twirling in her hair just above her ear and become filled with love. We have come so far together. I joke that we grew up together, but it was after we were married.

Astonishingly at just over nineteen, she committed to living our lives together for better or worse, and before we were twenty one, we took the vows. She was a respected assistant head nurse on a large floor in a city hospital at twenty two while she provided the bulk of our thrifty livelihood while I was still in college.

When our children started coming after I graduated, she put aside her dreams, career aspirations, and who knows what else to throw her lot in with a guy who wanted to climb trees for a living. She created our home out of new whole cloth and held up more than her end for many years until she returned to the workforce a quarter of a century later to lead and hold together a couple of different prolife nonprofit organizations.

Imagine! Committing to share a life with someone and all that entails. Ups, downs, our own frailties, fears, uncertainties, gifts, and liabilities. All in. Nothing reserved. Yet, she did it. With me. Takes my breath away sometimes.

” When you are old and grey and full of sleep,

And nodding by the fire, take down this book,

And slowly read, and dream of the soft look

Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,

And loved your beauty with love false or true,

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

And loved the sorrows of your changing face” William Butler Yeats, When You Are Old

[i] Desecration of Man: How the Rejection of God Degrades our Humanity, Carl R Trueman, Penguin Random House 2026

[ii] Mary Harrington’s perfect description of the malleable body under the influence of postmodern radical subjectivism.

Don’t Get In The Truck!

“We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.” Kurt Vonnegut, If This Isn’t Nice, What Is? (Advice to the Young)

When our kids are young, things blur, memories telescope, or as our daughter and mother of five recently put it perfectly, “Days seem endless sometime, but the years fly by.” Grandchildren, however, seem like different stories to us. Time is slower. Each one is indelible and unique. Proverbs 17:6 put it perfectly, “Children’s children are a crown to the aged.”

Little anecdotes are embedded in my mind like diamonds in a coal mine; they pop into my consciousness at odd moments and always bring at least a smile – sometimes welling up emotions that make the old guy fill up unexpectedly. There are seven grandchildren, all expertly homeschooled, but I’ll tell only a few tales. They all have their different interests, talents, and endearing idiosyncrasies. Four of them dance and just helped perform a professionally choreographed ‘Swan Lake,’ learning multiple roles each. They dance with grace and control, passion and beauty, lost in the music. That’ll make an old guy cry every time.

Two live in Southern California and are competitive multisport athletes who always try hard at eight and six. We’re out west for a First Communion and will catch the last tournament weekend of the spring softball season. The First Communion girl is my early morning cuddler. When she was younger, I’d be the first one up until she came down the stairs sleepy, warm, and smiling in her pj’s to cuddle on the coach and I’d read to her. Now she reads to me. Insists on it. Koufax, their 90 pound German Shepherd lap dog, usually joins us and puts his head on my lap.

Locally, there was the ‘scooter’ who never really crawled because she didn’t want to relinquish whatever she was holding in her hands and flew across the floor sitting and motoring with one leg scissoring. Now she is confidently conversant with Chesterton or Augustine, Flannery O’Connor or Homer, Tchaikovsky or K-pop. Next fall she will be heading off to Catholic University of America in Washington. She sings her last concert next month with the statewide honors choir. Alto. Oh, I’ll miss that voice down the street.

Then there was the button kid. Before she could talk or walk, I’d hold her while wearing one of my decades old well-worn three button Eddie Bauer sweaters. She would immediately start on my buttons with ferocious concentration. Buttoning. Unbuttoning. Buttoning. A half dozen cycles faster with each iteration. Her concentration was only exceeded by her eye hand coordination for such a tiny person. Now she is fifteen and draws with equal concentration and coordination. Recently, she drew the cover for my book of the camp on Webb Lake in Maine. And portraits. Lots of portraits. One of our extended family in-laws is a professional artist. “That’s incredible,” he said. Papa thought so too.

Another budding scholar is in her third year of Latin at 12 years old. We call her scary for her prodigious memory, relentless logic, and omnivorous appetite for books. She is the resident expert on dragons (seven types) and devoured C.S. Lewis, E.B. White, and Laura Ingalls Wilder just about whole. She told us she wants to be an architect and build things while simultaneously a prima ballerina and mother. But she would make a formidable attorney. She always wants to know what the rules are. Exactly what the rules are. When she was three or so, she was happily clearing out a nostril. Her mother suggested that it was not a great idea in public. “Don’t pick your nose.” The little lawyer got quiet, thought a bit, and sought clarification. Precisely what would and would not cross the line? The girl just wanted to know. Looking up in complete seriousness, she asked, “Can I pick the other one?”

Finally for this post at least, there is the emerging wildlife ranger who is now eleven and loves all things fauna, wild, domestic, or imaginary. Her current favorite is the sugar glider. On the way to ballet lessons, we always pass what we would call in Maine a ‘beef critter’ farm – laconic Maine teleology. We observe which large ones of the herd get moved into the fattening pen, the next to last stop for these Black Angus steers. We count who’s left each week. Our ranger knows the ones in the pen are destined for the steak grille and leather coat factory and are all males. She knows the local Gurnsey and Holstein dairy herds are all females, and she understands that and why these things are so ordered.

I never explained to her how bulls got to be steers. Giving her the details that castrati put on weight faster and are better marbled with tasty fat than bulls has not come up, and I’ve not introduced the subject. I have some concern that an eleven year old in an intemperate moment might explain it to her five year old brother with some mischief in mind, and he’d need a couple of years of therapy to recover.

I clarified to her that when the time was right (for the farmer), they were trucked off site to a butchery and returned to the farm store for sale in labeled small plastic wrapped packages. She accepted this well and acknowledged she liked a good cheeseburger too. When she was about nine and learning about what befalls the beef critters, she decided to warn the ones she had gotten to know and count, although I never noticed any of them paying her any attention. Probably for the same reason, they never figured out the sign out front about fresh beef for sale. After a while, when we passed the feeding pen of the short timers, she would roll down her window and yell to them, “DON’T GET IN THE TRUCK!!’

“The lonesome friends of science say

“The world will end most any day”

Well, if it does, then that’s OK

‘Cause I don’t live here anyway

I live down deep inside my head

Where long ago I made my bed” John Prine, The Lonesome Friends of Science

Have you read about the possible polarity switch that may have been underway for the last few hundred years? [i] The outer core of our planet is molten liquid iron and nickel. The core is superheated and moves with the rotation of the Earth and creates a natural geo-dynamo that generates our magnetic field. The magnetic field screens us from cosmic rays that would destroy our DNA like scarab beetles in the mummy’s tomb. Without our magnetic field deflecting the solar wind, it would blow away our atmosphere and evaporate our oceans, turning our beautiful blue ball into a desolate red rock like Mars.[ii] Poor Mars has no chance and no magnetic field protecting it. A polarity change occurs when Earth swaps poles as the core moves around every four or five hundred thousand years. Here in Rhode Island, our compass would point no longer to Maine but to Florida.

Such a mind bending shift happened 780,000 years ago when our compass switched to its current setting. Briefly in geological time, our magnetic north pole moved south about 40,000 years ago, but migrated back after a couple of centuries, and there are many hotly debated signs like a slightly weakening magnetic field that might signal it’s in the process of doing it again. Geologically, a flip is overdue. Might play havoc with navigation for us and the birds which have their own inner compass. Not to worry, it takes centuries for the magnetic North Pole to migrate that far. It won’t mean that we lose our magnetic field, but there would be disturbance in the Force.

We live in a time of disruption. And the disruption is not limited to geology.

“You better start swimming or you’ll sink like a stone, the times they are a changing.” Bob Dylan

In the previous post, Remnant, I quoted Jorge Bergoglio (Pope Francis) talking about a change of eras rather than an era of change. Having magnetic north move around is unsettling enough, but if we lose sight of true North, that’s a far more serious problem for us human beings.

Circling back to our grandchildren, what world are we leaving for them? Our culture has changed so radically that our parents in 1940 would be dumbstruck as if we had fallen into a sci fi dystopian novel. We are muddling along in a change of eras; no surprise we are befuddled.

There are countless examples.

When discussing beef critters with our granddaughter, I avoided the bull and steer part. In doing so, I avoided the bull and cow part too. Because she helped care for a baby brother, and she understands the basics anyway. She knows that a Holstien dairy cow spends her life in fields and barn giving to the farmer and us from six to nine gallons of superb milk every day. What I didn’t have to explain to her, because it is common sense, is that steers missing a few parts will not start producing milk or calving; they are just bulls without portfolio.

Ideology and philosophy uprooted our postmodern societal imagination and enforced how gender is now a matter of identity and choice. But ideology and identity do not change biology. British cultural commentator Mary Harrington coined an ideal term for the oddness of our redefined self-created image. The human body remade into whatever we want it to be, she described as “meat Legos.” But biologists like neo atheist hero Richard Dawkins clarified that actual biology is clear: there are large gametes and small gametes, and efforts to change that are futile. The pain of those suffering from gender dysphoria is incapacitating, and they deserve all our love, sympathy, and respect as human beings. Whether rearranging their body parts may help their identity issues is intensely debated, but it will never result in a biological transition.

Ideology cannot redefine what a human being is. Not for lack of trying.

Our modern turn to radical expressive individualism, profound skepticism, deconstructing the limitations and controls of formerly commonly understood civilization, and radical self-creation has percolated down into our confused common societal perceptions for the last few hundred years from Nietzsche, Freud, Marx, Satre, Foucault, Derrida, and others. Seeding in and metastasizing like many hazardous ideas in faculty lounges, these notions have diffused into popular understanding, not just gender labeling, but in almost every aspect of our culture. The pace of change has accelerated at a breathtaking pace. Imagine even twenty five years ago, a candidate for the supreme court before a Senate confirmation hearing being asked to define a woman and having no answer. No breaking news that we are confused.

Another sign of the times that would have been rejected without hesitation by my parents is genetic manipulation, especially its use combined with IVF and surrogacy for eugenic goals to create our perfect kid. I’m sure you can come up with your own without much brain work. Transhumanism. AI controlled autonomous weapons. On and on. In Jurassic Park, the most memorable line for me was from Dr. Ian Malcolm who told Dr. John Hammond who revivified the dinosaurs, “Just because we can do something, doesn’t mean we should do it.” That may be the most ignored warning of our times.

“And I know just what I’d change if went back in time somehow

But there’s nothing I can do about it now.” Willie Nelson

The shifting ground of our era is one of moral instability when the unquestioned principles of millennia that were the foundation of our civil order are now seen as inhibiting human freedom. Subjective freedom, not what is right, has become our lodestar. True North is on the move but has not entirely disappeared. At least not yet, he said hopefully.

Well recognized figures like Dawkins, Elon Musk, and Jordan Peterson have been expounding that while, of course, they don’t believe that Christianity is literally true, they favor a ‘Christian culture,’ because a shared common belief system of morality and reality with widespread acceptance keeps our society from decomposing. They are right. What they fail to acknowledge is that while a Christian culture does have indispensable value for societal cohesion, without a Center, it cannot hold.

So, dear grandchild, when common popular beliefs some rolling up to your gate in a faded and dented stake body truck, but no longer seem wise or coherent, well, “DON’T GET IN THE TRUCK!”

“Those who kill God discover in the long run that they have to step up and be gods and provide all that God once offered: a stable meaning and significance to life. Or given their rejection of the traditional Christian answer, they need to provide a response to the psalmist’s question, “What is man?” Carl Trueman, “The Desecration of Man: How the Rejection of God Degrades Our Humanity” 2026

[i] I’ve been told by a professional editor whom I greatly respect and admire that I wander too far afield in these posts. He’s right, but bear with me, and maybe these strands in this one will weave together for you in the end. Or not. On the About page of this blog, from the beginning, “I write this to help me clarify my own thoughts and to encourage (I hope) contributions to the “Great Discussion” in which we all need to engage. I especially enjoy the juxtaposition and relationships of seemingly disparate topics.” I’m too old to change now. As the bumper sticker says, “Not all who wander are lost.”

[ii] https://theconversation.com/earths-magnetic-field-protects-life-on-earth-from-radiation-but-it-can-move-and-the-magnetic-poles-can-even-flip-216231

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Filed under Culture views, Faith and Reason, Personal and family life

Tagged as change of era, children, grandchildren, polarity switch, teleology, what is man

March 5, 2026 · 1:00 pm

The Art of Fire Maintenance

“I understood what he meant by a house being finished when you can warm it.”

Walden, “House-Warming,” Henry David Thoreau

Snowing. Again. Not the demonstration of the power of nature blizzard from a week ago that is almost impossible to walk into, but light snow, steady, gray skies. A good afternoon for a comfortable chair with our feet up by the wood stove, warm with a good book. Rita is next to me doing the very same.

I have spent most of a lifetime with wood – climbing trees, cutting them, then lumberyards, building with it. We’ve also heated our homes with wood for over forty years. Since learning how in Maine. Making mistakes. Refining our technique, building woodsheds – three of them at different homes. Cutting, splitting, now at eighty buying cords of seasoned oak, maple, ash, birch, and apple that some other professional cut, split, seasoned, stacked and delivered. I only have to re-split some of it with my good heavy maul against a solid maple cross section chopping block. I enjoy splitting wood so long as I don’t have to split cords of it. Wood warms me twice as the proverb says.

We use quite a lot of kindling in the fall and spring to relight the wood stove. House gets too hot, so when it does, we let the fire die out. My obsessive compulsive never-fail fire lighting. Crumpled up newspaper, a few ‘logs’ of tightly rolled newspaper, kindling that is gathered cleaning up the driveway after our wood is delivered – splinters and chards of dried hardwood and bark. On top of the kindling and paper, small split wood is stacked crisscross for two or three layers with room in between pieces for air to circulate and smoke to rise. One match ignites the pile at the bottom in four or five places. After it fires up for ten minutes or so with the vent wide open, the fuel mixture blazes into intense heat, and I can build with larger stove wood on the glowing coals. Four or five times a day, we load it and control the heat by the size of the load and the position of the vent.

In the winter it can burn for weeks off that one match, banked up at night with the biggest pieces, and revived in the early morning from the coals about four am. Sometimes it needs the attention of a birch and leather handheld bellows to encourage it when it needs a little help. The fire snaps and issues a quiet rush of fresh flames until it once again catches on its own. The stove creaks and crackles too as the cast iron expands to accommodate the heat. Morning sounds.

Bellows, fire tongs and poker. Small shovel and airtight ash bucket to clean out excess ashes, gloves to handle the wood and avoid splinters in my fingers. A handmade wood box to store the day’s supply after I haul it in from the shed helps keep the mess and dust manageable. What I once cut and split when I was young from sixteen foot logs, I now buy from a reliable local source cut and split, still costing less than oil for our back up furnace. Good tools, lessons learned over many years. Warm in any storm even if we lose our electric power, and we could even cook a bit on the top in a pinch. Sometimes on a cold night I sleep out by the fire to feed it early in the predawn hours to keep the home and family warm.

Musing by the fire. About warmth and weather and wood and other wonders.

“I had for fuel a good supply of wood cut from the forest… which I had stored up.”

Walden, “House-Warming,” Henry David Thoreau

Firewood costs less than framing and finish lumber, but it accrues value in similar ways. Hardwood is denser, has less potential creosote to gum up and cause chimney fires, burns hotter and longer if it is properly seasoned to the right moisture content. A cord measures four feet by four feet by eight feet. One hundred and twenty eight cubic feet of seasoned hard wood that weighs about 3,700 pounds.[i] I move it piece by piece four times: to the wheelbarrow to push to the woodshed, stack it carefully in the woodshed, later take from the woodshed in our durable canvas sling log carrier to stand in our wood box, and the final move as needed is into the stove to keep us warm. Two to two and a half cords handles heating our downsized bungalow nicely for a winter. Our old drafty farmhouse in Maine required eight or nine.

Our son once worked for a division of a large investment company setting up office and remote computer systems to track the accruing value of their assets. South America, New Zealand, southern U.S. What they tracked was the growth of trees in their forests. Investors could buy shares in them. Incrementally, year by year, annual ring by annual ring, a tree’s diameter thickens to support its expanding height and breadth. Growth is extrapolated by professional foresters who estimate precisely the board footage per acre for eventual harvest. The carefully monitored board footage increase is the return on investment valued by the shareholders. Foresters will measure and brokers track the investment like others track income statements, balance sheets, organic growth, share valuation, and ‘green field’ new ventures.

There’s a lot of compiled science, data, and calculations about heating a house with wood or anything else. Our Quadra Fire stove isn’t the most expensive kind with a catalytic burner, but for a combination of affordable and practical, it’s a solid stove with its re-burner tubes, and it burns as cleanly as most. Science tells us the estimated 24 million BTU production of a seasoned oak and maple cord is equivalent in a stove like ours to about 160 gallons of fuel oil in our 85% efficient furnace, which sits quietly most of the time. Wood burns and emits more CO2 than the oil equivalent but with an important distinction. The harvest of wood should be regarded more as agriculture than despoiled park land. Wood is a renewable resource.

Trees survive and grow like all chlorophyll based plants by photosynthesis, a multistep amazing series of chemical reactions within its millions of living cells every moment of sunlight. To simplify a multistage process, that I once studied in detail: photosynthesis harnesses the energy of the sun[ii] absorbed by chlorophyll and uses it to combine atmospheric CO2 with water from the roots to create glucose and oxygen, which is expelled back into the atmosphere. Glucose is used by the plant for energy, a building block for its other necessary proteins, and the oxygen provides the rest of us with clean air. A tree is an efficient carbon processor and atmospheric cleanser.

Every day, cell by cell the trees renew fixing carbon into new potential fuel until the cycle begins again. Tree carbon will recycle whether we use it or not. What grows will decay as inevitably as its life cycle in the forest. Or as in our fire. Harvested or unharvested, it will return to the air and soil. The only variable is time frame.

That is why many consider burning wood for heat as carbon neutral. It releases the carbon bound in the tree more quickly than wood left to rot back into the soil, but the carbon released is the same quantity, rotted or burned, over time. In contrast, burning oil has a similar source of carbon from rotting biomass a million years old, so it releases carbon that would have remained in the ground. Oil, gas, and coal are essentially new sources of atmospheric carbon. Oil doesn’t reabsorb its carbon by regrowth like wood does. Even as we burn, the trees for our future heating seasons are efficiently recleaning the air from this year’s CO2.

Robert Frost once wrote in a poem about a vine covered cord of stacked and split firewood he found abandoned for unknown reasons in the woods. He wondered about the work and care that went into the stack and how it returns the dead wood to the air and soil one way or another.

“What held it though on one side was a tree

Still growing, and on one a stake and prop,

These latter about to fall. I thought that only

Someone who lived in turning to fresh tasks

Could so forget his handiwork on which

He spent himself, the labor of his ax,

And leave it there far from a useful fireplace

To warm the frozen swamp as best it could

With the slow smokeless burning of decay.” Robert Frost, “The Wood-Pile”[iii]

Science can tell us quite a lot about burning wood and heating homes, but like all science it can rule only on a reductive truth, a constricted concept of reality, not false, but not comprehensive either. Ah, my son, all truth cannot be expressed as science. Not all truth is measured; some of it is simply recognized. Science is one basis of reliable and objective truths; however it is not the only source. Empirical observation, theory, and experiment are marvelous tools, invented by Francis Bacon, but the scientific method is based on principles that are philosophical, even metaphysical, and cannot be verified by science. The erroneous claim that truth can only be established by the scientific method is self-refuting for it cannot be proven by its own rubric.

In addition to the scientific method, an example of truth that cannot be proved by science is intelligibility upon which all science relies. No lesser light than Albert Einstein said, “The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible”[iv]. Why is the universe explainable in abstract mathematical terms human beings can describe and formulate? Nothing makes the intelligibility of the universe inevitable or provable by the scientific method. To believe that intelligibility can exist without an Intelligence or Designer behind it is a leap of pollyannish fancy in service of an agenda.

Another set of ideas is the mystery of the ‘anthropic principle.’ Astonishingly narrow ranges of at least seven physical forces are indispensable to allow the formation of carbon, stars, planets, water, and other non-negotiables necessary for our existence. These include gravity, the cosmological constant, both the strong and weak nuclear forces, and the ratio of mass from electrons to protons. Tiny variations in strength in each of them would doom formation of atoms, complex molecules, stars, planets, galaxies and the existence of all known objects in the universe.[v] The odds of these forces existing within these fine-tuned parameters out of all possible potential ranges have been calculated to be less than one in all the subnuclear particles or quarks in the universe. Science can tell us with great exactitude their measurements and why the fine-tuned range is essential to our existence. But it is mute on why they are so perfectly suited to me writing this, and you reading it. Science cannot speak to why existence exists.

A third obvious, but unscientific, proof is what has been called the argument for the existence of God from contingency. Stick to a summary, please Jack, as this is already a long musing. Everything we know is contingent, in other words, we exist, but we are not necessary. We are caused and therefore contingent upon other prior existences. I exist because my parents existed. That oak tree exists because another earlier oak made an acorn from a fertilized flower, dropped it after it ripened according to gravity and the nature of its stems. A squirrel carried it off and buried it a few hundred feet away, and after it rotted, the seed within the acorn germinated in soil, warmth, and moisture conditions necessary for it to prosper. Both oak and squirrel evolved over a few million years from more primitive forms of life back to before recorded history. If everything we know is contingent upon some other cause, what do we call the necessary first thing? The non contingent being without a cause? We cannot be ‘turtles all the way down, in infinite regress and defy all logic, can we?

Science can tell us so much about how, what and when, but cannot speak with any eloquence about why there is something rather than nothing[vi] at all.

These are the truths, and many more that we can ponder and read, and learn about on a cold, snowy afternoon in front of our woodstove.[vii] What is good, and what is evil, and why. Poetry, literature, the good, true and beautiful expressed in art of all kinds. In Act Five, Hamlet spoke to his friend, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy”. Are these ideas not true as well? Self-evident? A kind of ‘true’ more indispensable to the mind, heart, and soul of a human person, that strange hybrid being of body and soul, spirit and earth, mind and mud.

And those complex truths are something the scientific method will be utterly insufficient to explain.

“Shut in from all the world without,

We sat the clean-winged hearth about,

Content to let the north-wind roar

In baffled rage at pane and door,

While the red logs before us beat

The frost-line back with tropic heat.” John Greenleaf Whittier, “Snow-Bound- A Winter Idyl

[i] By contrast a gallon of oil weighs about seven pounds, so the BTU equivalent 160 gallons of fuel oil only weighs about 1,700 pounds and is a very efficient storage source of fuel. Using it requires setting a thermostat and calling up the service company if it doesn’t work. Wood is a lot more work. Hence, oil is still far more commonly used, but oil tanks can run dry at the least opportune moment like a blizzard when deliveries are unavailable. A well-stocked woodshed is a security bank of warmth.

[ii] As a sidebar, science demonstrates that almost all our energy is stored sun or star light one way or another. Fossil fuels and wood are obvious. So is solar. Slightly less obvious is wind power, but wind is produced by the unequal warming of sea and land, a warming produced by the sun. Water power is enabled by the evaporation of water from the sea due primarily to the warmth of the sun, and subsequent rain gathered into streams, rivers, and eventually controlled by dams. Even nuclear power is based on the controlled release of radioactive energy in the form of heat. All radioactive elements were produced in older stars billions of years ago and released in the form of the collapse of neutron stars and the explosions of supernovae, which is gathered again hundreds of thousands of light years away by gravity to help form new suns and more to the point, planets.

[iii] As another aside. If a tree falls in a dry forest, the carbon and methane produced are equivalent to burning. Very little methane is produced and the fire consumes it. If it falls in a swamp and under the mud and water, frozen or otherwise, anerobic decomposition turns much more of it into methane, which is a far more potent greenhouse gas. So, in some common conditions, rotting in the wild pumps more greenhouse effect into our atmosphere. Another plus for woodstoves.

[iv] From Einstein’s 1936 essay “Physics and Reality,”

[v] For a good summary of photosynthesis with detail enough to understand the principles, see this Britanica article.

[vi] By nothing, we infer a nullity, absolutely nothing, not the quantum field of enormous potential energy some propose as an explanation. A quantum field of energy that leaps in and out of existence is not nothing, just another turtle.

[vii] Image of our woodstove at the beginning just a phone photo from me. The sketch of Nonna and Papa reading and thinking by the fire is by ChatGPT based on my description. Not perfect, but I think the point is illustrated, and I don’t have my grand-daughter’s artistic talent or patience.

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Tagged as hearth, heating with wood, musing by the fire, wood stove

January 26, 2026 · 12:13 pm

Fragments

“I’ve seen pretty people disappear like smoke. Friends will arrive; friends will disappear.” Bob Dylan, “Buckets of Rain” from the “Blood On The Tracks” album

I’ve written before about the sudden revelation that broke in on me when I was rocking, singing, and reading to our kids getting ready for bedtime many years ago. I realized with a jolt that there would be a last time that I would share this intimate, precious time, and I would not know when it was while it was happening.[i] In another post, I wrote about our many Maine times, our decade living there and the forty years of summer visits since, mostly on Webb Lake in Weld[ii]. Again, it struck me that there will be a last visit, and it is unlikely I will know that while we are there.[iii]

Nostalgia for me tends to peak around the turn of the year in the stillness of winter, and this year is no exception. The similarity of other events and even other relationships to reading to our children or the still ongoing summer idylls in Maine is inescapable. Those undetected last times occur and have occurred with friends and family too. We have all experienced similar ‘last time’ visits with those we care about. They don’t come with notices or calendar reminders. They come and they go and rarely do they announce themselves. Last time visits are seldom perceived in real time except in retrospect. People move away great distances. We lose track or we move. Jobs change. Relationships suffer neglect and fade away. Sometimes years afterwards, unfortunately, they are only acknowledged in our reminiscence at a funeral. Too late to do anything differently than we did. Or didn’t do.

I’ve come to understand that our lives pass by often in fragments as a mosaic rather than a perfectly scripted narrative with a well-defined beginning, middle, and end like a Hallmark movie. Development of the story is inadequate, and the denouement is without the satisfaction of a happy or even recognizable ending. Not to be morose, but I see this not so much as a heartbreaking breakdown like a sad country song, but more like an invitation to do better. To be better.

“Donde no hay amor, pon amor, y sacarás amor.”

Where there is no love, put love—and you will draw out love.

Saint John of the Cross, Sayings of Light and Love

Last weekend we were eating at our favorite breakfast joint. We are not fine dining gourmands; we are breakfast joint folks. Have been all our lives.[iv] The waitress welcomes us with strong fresh coffee in solid mugs (tea for Rita) as soon as we are seated – diner coffee, no baristas or expensive, complicated options needed – a bottomless cup for under three bucks. She circulates among her tables from time to time with a fresh pot and refills the mugs.

She starts scribbling our order on her pad before we have our coats off or said more than good morning. Our order rarely varies; she looks from one to the other of us and tells us what she knows we’ll order. They can carry six plates at once and the food comes hot off the grille, rarely taking more than five or ten minutes. She never annoys us or hovers and asks how everything is so we’re coerced into mumbling an awkward response with mouths full of eggs, home fries, or blueberry pancakes There are advantages to being a regular. We know all the waitresses in the place. And the cook. We have a nodding smile acquaintance with other regulars.

After she confirmed our order, last week she asked a shy question. If you are breakfast diner regulars, you know that breakfast diner waitresses are not shy. They give as good as they get to the patrons at the counter and the tables. Lighthearted familiar repartee with shared laughter is the point. Last weekend, though, she leaned over and said very quietly, “You are ‘prayer people,’ right?” The topic had never come up, nor did I think we were particularly obvious about it. I replied that we were such people. Or tried to be. She said, “I’m worried about my daughter. Can you say a prayer for her this morning?” She told us the situation, which was temporary, but concerning. Of course, we replied in tandem. This week she thanked us as soon as we walked in and told us all went well.

It may be that we are offered a dozen opportunities a day, heavenly invitations that we miss. But this one was overt. Every day we have opportunities to love, to connect, to be open, to listen. And every day we are too busy or distracted or self-occupied to notice them. Invitations come from family. From friends. From colleagues at work or social organizations. From casual acquaintances. From waitresses. From strangers.

The loneliness and alienation of our culture is legend. The richest country in the world, maybe ever, and instantly connected to everyone, everywhere, and yet we are isolated. Starting most especially with young people who grew up never too far from a screen, usually in their pockets.

Our connections are digital, not analog – false touchpoints without touch. Not only our connections with other human beings, but too often our connections to natural things, wild things, untamed things – they too are screened through our screens, removed from anything real and focused and present.

We are products and consumers of the Machine[v] we have created and named Progress. We are trained to be consumers, programmed to be consumers. It’s what keeps the Machine oiled and running smoothly. We mine for “likes” and approval to prove to ourselves that we exist. The Machine feeds us exactly what we want to hear, and we dutifully ensconce ourselves in our silos and lap it up. We have become a voracious appetite doomed to never be satiated. Then we wonder why we are lonely, depressed, suspicious, and resentful.

We all know what the solutions are to our festering isolation, yet echoing St. Paul, we don’t do them. We revert to our screens, our non-threatening disconnected connections because connections with real things, real people get messy and uncomfortable. Woods trails are muddy with roots and rocks and hidden obstacles. Other human beings impinge; they may ask of us who knows what. We know that a walk in the nearby woods or fields or on the beach is what will begin to heal us. We know that a live open ended conversation with another person will begin to heal us. We know that reaching out with a simple act of kindness and love will begin to heal us. But we are tired. We are distracted. We are busy. We are afraid. The screens beckon.

“In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers.

It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness.

This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud.

I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate.

There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.”

Thomas Merton, “Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander” (1966)

[i] Rockee Sing, Dad, Do Rockee Sing

[ii] Summer Kitchens

[iii] Both posts cited above in the endnotes are included in the book published in December, “Shelter In The Storm,” available on Amazon. Written around the themes of the mosaic of our past, the people and places that inhabit our lives, and our faith is Someone greater than ourselves. Get the book. Give it a good review if you’d be so kind. They help in prioritizing searches for others.

[iv] Here’s one old post, but there are others. Diner. Didn’t make the cut for the themes of the book. Maybe the next one?

[v] A book well worth your time from last year. Against the Machine, On the Unmaking of Humanity, Paul Kingsnorth. Get a copy. Read it. It will change your paradigm.

Christmas Gravy

“There are always Uncles at Christmas. The same Uncles.” Dylan Thomas, “A Child’s Christmas in Wales”

My father was an incurable competitor and would add savor to any enterprise with a small bet. Golf, tennis, volleyball, street football, who could throw a football for the longest distance, or cribbage, he was always ready to go. If a thing was worth doing, it was worth betting on. At least for low stakes.

I can’t remember for certain whether it was a big family get together for Christmas or Thanksgiving, which were annual events for our family either hosted at home or at some relative or other’s home, but my memory is that it was Christmas dinner. Joyful, well lubricated with punch or highballs or beer. Laughter, singing, storytelling, joyful, loud and chaotic, moving from room to room, hugs, with lots of Irish jokes that went over the cousin’s heads most of the time. Just what a large family gathering should be. At Christmas, it often meant caroling with my father’s pristine church voice tenor leading the way.

The gathering that I remember here was a two turkey affair with five uncles and our aunts who actually ran the day, some grand uncles and aunts, and a dozen and a half of cousins were underfoot. I was one of those underfoot. Cousins lived in their own company at these times, a world largely ignored by grownups unless we became too raucous or broke something fragile.

My mother was the youngest of the six children of Jim and Molly Lararcy, all born before or during 1920. All of them were part of the Greatest Generation which weathered first the Great Depression, then the bloodiest war in human history. Four girls and two boys. Jim was a tin knocker sheet metal craftsman; Mary Ann, called Molly, was a dedicated home maker. My dad met my mother because she was the twin sister of Sonny Laracy; they were youngest two of the Laracy kids. Sonny was my father’s Army buddy; they served as scouts together for the Ninth Armored Division. My father was captured at the Battle of the Bulge, and he survived that ordeal to come home to his beloved Betty.

My father resolved that this annual dinner was better celebrated with a contest, a friendly wager, a bet on gravy superiority. He was our regular Sunday dinner cook and prided himself on superior gravy.

Early on the morning of the holiday, my dad took extra pains with his submittal to the hotly contested and critical gravy contest with my Uncle Jim. He tasted it repeatedly and tweaked it with a little extra flavoring and spices until it was almost perfect. Two tureens of piping hot gravy were on the table to pour generously over our mashed potatoes, vegetables, stuffing, and the carved up birds. A secret vote with little slips of paper was organized, and everyone got to write “Jim” or “Jack” on one of them to deposit into an empty shoebox.

After dinner and the punishing desserts that finished us off, the food coma left some of the oldsters nodding off in the most comfortable chair they could find. It wasn’t time yet to start singing, but my father rallied the voters to gather around for the vote counting so he could bask in adulation and victory. He was never a guy who gloated, but he far preferred to win in any contest.

He lost. Not even close. Uncle Jim had outdone himself and my father. His gravy was the clear winner. My father pouted later at home and speculated that the ballot box had been stuffed. Maybe with mail in votes? Perhaps one or two of us was disloyal? At the party, he was a gracious loser, albeit a disappointed one.

On Christmas Eve, my father would inevitably attend Midnight Mass. As I got older, I had the privilege and pleasure of going with him. Alone in the choir loft with him, the choir, and the organist. My father was the soloist. His mother had been a professional singer, and my dad’s tenor was heard at USO shows during the war. Always before Mass, he “loosened up his pipes” with a shot of Southern Comfort or Jack Daniels. Just one. Not enough to impair, but a little help stretching them out. “Oh, Holy Night” silenced the full church.

He’d be “cooking the bird” through the night and make the gravy in the morning. After Mass, he would be up most of the rest of the night he wasn’t cooking, wrapping presents for the happy chaos in the morning under the tree with the six of us kids. We’d go to Christmas Mass after the grand openings as a family.

As the oldest, once I regrettably outgrew Santa, the consolation prize was to play a role in the adult drama of getting the kids to sleep before Dad went to Midnight Mass. The role involved sneaking outside and ringing bells, so the younger siblings would hasten to their beds, convinced the big, white bearded guy himself was soon to be on the roof and wide awake kids would prevent him from coming down the chimney. We’d set out cookies and milk for Santa and a couple of carrots for the reindeer by the fireplace. My second job was to eat the cookies, leave a few crumbs, drain the milk glass, and nibble the carrots

L to R: Mark, Jack (kneeling), Barry,Beth, Greg

convincingly. Being part of the conspiracy with my folks was the consolation prize for growing up.

After Midnight Mass, now sleepy myself, I’d fulfil my cookies and carrots duty and head up the stairs to sneak into bed in the room I shared with (at the time) three of my brothers. My sister, Beth, got her own room, a gender discrimination benefit no one questioned or resented. My youngest brother, Marty, had yet to join us. Carefully, I’d slip under the covers in my new pajamas careful not to rouse Mark with whom I shared the double bed. Mom always got us new matching Christmas pajamas, the one present which we were allowed to open on Christmas Eve.

Full of cookies and carrots, I’d lay my head on my pillow, listen to my brothers sleep breathing, calm down, content even while excited for the morning. Close my eyes. Wake up early when the young ones started to slip down to the family room to see if they could guess what they were going to open after my bleary eyed folks made the coffee, got their camera, and sat in the chairs by the tree.

“I could see the lights in the other windows of all the other houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steadily falling night. I turned the gas down, I got into bed. I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept.” Dylan Thomas, “A Child’s Christmas in Wales”

Christmas announcement.

After many years of doing this, at the request of friends and family, I put together a book of blog posts with some editing and additions. Not a biography or a narrative, but a mosaic of an ordinary life described in the past, people, places, and faith that formed us.

If you have interest, it is available in an affordable paperback on Amazon. An e version, hopefully soon, will be available for those who prefer their library in their tablet. A review and five stars would help get the book seen if you are generous enough to take the time. Or share with your friends of similar taste who might enjoy the read on a cold winter night. It would be much appreciated.

Here’s the link to the book in Amazon. Shelter In the Storm

Or you can search on the title in Amazon.

The cover was drawn by our granddaughter Ellie, who is fifteen. Her drawing is of the camp that four generations of us have enjoyed. For over forty years on Webb Lake in Weld, Maine, we have swam, climbed, canoed, read in our hammocks, and enjoyed smores around campfires there. It is featured in a couple of the essays.

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Tagged as Christmas, Christmas memories, christmas-eve, family, family gatherings, holiday meals, holidays

November 19, 2025 · 12:57 pm

Swing me, Wally

“Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family. Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one.” Jane Howard, Families

We are rapidly approaching holiday family gathering times. They are, as we all have experienced, a blessing, but a blessing with its complications.

Growing up in a small town, the older kids went to Midnight Mass and sang those nostalgic and beautiful familiar carols. We all knew the first verse and most knew the second; after that it was hit or miss. My father used to solo at Midnight Mass in his perfect tenor after a quick shot of Jack Daniels or Southern Comfort at our house to ‘loosen the pipes.’ “Oh, Holy Night” or “Panis Angelicus” at Communion.

Any resistance to going to bed after Mass was dealt with by telling us Santa just doesn’t come to houses where anyone is awake. In the morning there was a barely past sun rise gift opening frenzy with bleary eyed parents who had wrapped gifts until an hour before the kids got up. Next came a quick and unfancy breakfast, some magic time to play with new toys and tally them on the floor of our shared bedrooms. Define the borders of each kid’s stash. I slept in a room with three brothers. One single bed and a bunkbed. It never felt crowded.

The Christmas rituals continued with a turkey dinner for which my father had sacrificed the rest of what little Christmas Eve sleep was available. After he dropped into a quick nap nodding off in his chair, he and my mother would round us up each carrying a new favorite toy. We would pile into the station wagon unstrapped and boisterous, then head over a few miles to Uncle Timmy and Aunt Julia’s Federalist style two story house in an older neighborhood for a casual supper and the annual gathering with our menagerie of uncles, aunts, and cousins. To be more accurate, Timmy and Julia were our great uncle and aunt, Julia was one of two surviving sisters of my mother’s mother, the late Mary Ann (Molly) Laracy, ne Manley. The furniture was solid wood with elaborately carved legs, heavily upholstered in a dark floral pattern, well maintained with arm covers on the chairs, and not much of it was comfortable.

Timmy was genial, slightly flushed, quietly observant, and quintessentially Irish with a knowing eye and a ready quip. He was tall with huge hands and prominent knuckles. He sat at the head of the dining room table while the kids ran carefully amuck. We loved him and his humor. He was also the town chief of police, and as we learned years later he was universally feared by potential malefactors as in ‘don’t ever mess with Timmy Cullinane.’ For his grand nephews and nieces though, he was benign Uncle Timmy, and we felt safe and welcomed in his home. Julia was gracious, kind, with a calming smile, and supplied her loving hospitality without pretense or expectation. Their only child, Marie, taught at the Boston College School of Nursing for many years. Marie baby sat for us once or twice in a pinch when she was still in school, and I confess I had a crush on her soft voice and warm, smoky laughter. Like most of my cousins, she called me Jackie, a name I’ve rarely heard since.

While the adults savored the buffet, drained the spiked punch, and relaxed in mirth and conversation in the formal dining and living rooms, the cousins lived their own version of Christmas in the rest of the house, avoiding being underfoot and annoying the grown-ups. Four of us were born in 1946 of the four Laracy sisters and their husbands recently back from the war. Later came more cousins, including my five siblings. The older cousins would retreat to the back stairway off the kitchen and play school, a game devised and supervised by my cousin Mary. Always supervised and taught by Mary because, well, because she was Mary. She eventually did enjoy a successful career as a teacher in public schools. I do not believe she could use the stairs for her students there, but I wouldn’t put it past her.

The game went like this. The pupils all started bunched up on the bottom step. Mary asked us in turn a question, usually history or science, and the answers she was looking for were determinative. Any arguments disputing wrong answers were not just discouraged; they were futile. Each correct answer allowed the pupil to scoot up one step. There was crowding and jostling and an occasional elbow. Each wrong answer dropped us down a step, but you could not descend lower than the floor, so there was only so far to fall. Mary would often seem slightly more pleased with a smug smile when demoting us than she was gratified to give us a promotion to a higher level, but that just might be my faulty memory. I can’t ever remember a winner. The game went on until we gave up with numb legs and found the next entertainment or a loud complaint escalated until an aunt came over and broke up the class.

“The village policeman always seemed to be about. He knew the foibles of the whole countryside and trod softly, seldom needing to do more than quietly suggest.” James Herriot, “All Creatures Great and Small”

One of Uncle Timmy’s most reliable cops was Wally. Always squared away, big hands, Billy club hung at his belt. Salt and pepper hair, tall, and perhaps ten pounds over his ideal weight by today’s standards, but he carried it well. He frequently played volleyball with the adult men evening league in the high school gym. Knew everyone in our community, or at least all the families. We lived in a growing municipality run by elected selectmen, and we were in transition from a small mill town that still had some factory housing to a larger bedroom commuter hub halfway on the rail line from Providence to Boston.

And everyone knew Wally. Trusted him. The kind of policeman you called when you needed help. The kind of policeman who showed up when you needed help. Rumor had it that, like Uncle Timmy, as friendly as his preferred manner was, Wally was not to be trifled with. An aggressive belligerent drunk would likely need first aid before they locked him up for the night. A particularly troublesome one who hit a woman might require stiches in the emergency room. No one was shot or damaged permanently, but consequences were administered swiftly, and such rough justice was painful and unlikely to be forgotten.

Wally did not wear a balaclava to mask his identity from his fellow townspeople. He was not afraid to be identified or worried about reprisals or ashamed of what he did. I’m not sure if law enforcement that needs to mask up to go to work says more about the cops or about the rest of us. However, masked agents of the law do not strike me as a societal improvement from guys like Wally.

Wally’s main claim to local legend was as a crossing guard for the school before and after classes. He especially enjoyed the elementary school crossing three blocks from the town hall and the old police station. In days of yore, law enforcement sergeants and below did not consider it beneath them to spend a half hour of their shift helping kids safely navigate crossing one of the more heavily traveled streets: Main Street, Common Street, Stone Street, School Street. Even the names evoke clear and pleasant memories for me. A policeman’s job was to keep the town safe for the residents, and kids crossing busy streets were in their care.

Our Wally was special though. His big grin would flash as he recognized his regulars, calling them out by name. His signature move, if they wanted, was to grab their wrists both gently and securely and spin rapidly around. Sadly today, that would probably cost him his job. But for the kids in the nineteen fifties, although it was thrilling and felt a little risky, his strength was unmistakable, and no one was ever afraid. We were flying.

We’d run to him and cry out, “Swing me, Wally!” And he would make us soar.

“Most street cops are honest men doing a hard job. The good ones know their streets like family.” Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

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November 3, 2024 · 6:28 pm

Hospitality

“The paradox of hospitality is that it wants to create emptiness, not a fearful emptiness, but a friendly emptiness where strangers can enter and discover themselves as created free…” Henri J.M. Nouwen

Rita and I started volunteering at the Sachuest Point National Wildlife Refuge in February this past year, mostly in the Visitor Center. During a typical shift between fifty and a hundred visitors will come into the center to ask questions, look for directions, cruise our little shop of nature books, clothing, and art, browse the well-designed exhibits while their children try to complete the scavenger hunt identifying the various animals and birds, get a drink of water, or use the restrooms. The rangers estimate they represent about a quarter of the total visitors walking the two and half miles of trails. It’s a busy place, but it rarely feels crowded.

We’ll feed the critters in the tank, make sure there’s plenty of toilet paper in the bathrooms, close out any sales from shoppers who buy from the gift shop, guide the visitors with trail maps and the large mural of the refuge for visitors, answer questions about what they’ve seen, or just point out the entrance to the bathrooms for those who come in looking a bit frantic.

One of the pleasant surprises for us has been to dispel the common misperception that the work ethic of government employees is somehow not up to the standard of private employees. The rangers we’ve had the honor to meet are dedicated, smart, knowledgeable about wildlife – both flora and fauna, friendly, sensitive to visitor needs, diligent about protecting all things wild, and work hard and long. They don’t direct from afar; when plantings are needed to recover and protect erosion areas, they are on their knees with dirt on their hands. Understaffed, they rely heavily on volunteers to help with building and trail maintenance. They have a mission, and willingly fulfill it with dedication and no small measure of joy in their calling.

A second and more transformative surprise comes in meeting the many strangers who come from all over the country and the world to enjoy the trails and beauty of Sachuest Point and marvel at the array of nature through hiking or studying the exhibits. Hospitality in this sublime place has benefits for the visitors and those who welcome them. Hosting a visitor center turns out to be a minor apostolate and an opportunity to make decisions to love other human beings we meet along the way.

Most of the questions we field are prosaic. “Do you have a trail map?” Yes. This is how you orient it to the visitor center. Ocean View is a bit longer, but more open to the sea out by the point. Harbor seals have been seen there. “Can I fish off the rocks for stripers?” Yes. In season and with a license you can get online. “I heard there is a scavenger hunt questionnaire for kids?” There is, and we have stickers for them when they attempt it. “How much do I owe for parking here?” A hundred bucks, cash, is my usual answer, but no one ever believes me or pays. It is open and free to all. “Where are the bathrooms?” For the guys, there is a very big one out back in the woods. Rita gives me ‘the look’ when I say that. Or you can use the ones right behind you that have a flush. “Can you tell me what this bird (or bug or snake or shellfish or snail or flowering shrub or vine) is on my phone camera or as I describe it?” Sometimes we can. Other times we need to consult the many books on our wildlife shelf. It’s enjoyable to search and learn with them. “What is that animal we saw that looks like a weasel?” Probably a mink. “I saw a pair of pheasants (with great enthusiasm)!” Yes. They are very beautiful. “Does anything eat the deer here?” We have a good herd of about forty here. Please don’t feed them. Sometimes coyotes get a small or a weakened one. And sometimes the velociraptors get one. (That may get “the look” again from Rita, but kids like my answer. Wide eyed, they laugh.)

“’Twas in another lifetime, one of toil and blood

When blackness was a virtue the road was full of mud

I came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form

Come in, she said, I’ll give ya shelter from the storm.”

Bob Dylan, “Shelter From the Storm”

The word “hospitality” derives from the Latin “hospes.”[i] Other related words derive from this root like hospital, host, hostel, hotel, and hostage or hostile because the Latin could mean guest and stranger or even enemy. Hospitality implies a mutual social obligation to provide welcome and shelter to neighbors and strangers who might prove occasionally to be a problem. That is always a risk with hospitality, I suppose, but has never proven to be a problem for us.

Like other venues that welcome all comers, Sachuest has regulars who become known and comfortable with the place: men, women, and children who walk the trails weekly or daily. Most are folks like us who have come to love the varying moods and seasons of the trails and walk them year round. We never tire of hundreds of migrating songbirds that come and go, raptors, waterfowl, insects, snails, and flowering plants. We recognize the regular hikers from the trails, and they recognize us. They are invariably friendly and smile easily almost without exception. I have yet to meet a cranky person there – either because the environment eases their angst or because it tends to attract people who don’t carry a lot of it anyway.

But some of the regulars are familiar with loneliness, heartache, and hard lives. They come often; we know some of their names. Occasionally they might drag a chair over to the welcome desk and bring us up to date on the assisted living or nursing home where they live. We have greeted visitors with a terminal diagnosis; they are brought by a friend or family member to remember the many good times here. Not exactly a bucket list visit, more of a bittersweet farewell. Sachuest visitor center offers them a respite from the grinding routine even if they can no longer walk the trails.

One regular visitor lives in an assisted living and only gets out when her friend (platonic) drives an hour over a couple of bridges to pick her up and bring her to the center after their AA meeting. They come almost every week, sit for a while on the benches outside and chat quietly, enjoying some people watching, and taking in the view of Sachuest Beach with the spires of St. George School on the southern end along with distant views of the Bellevue Avenue mansions across the bay. Oftentimes they come in for a visit and sit in the chairs by the visitor desk to bring us into the conversation. He is a pleasant sort of absent minded fellow who is a retired bus driver, gentle and unassuming without pretensions. She has a couple of black belts in two martial arts, which apparently were helpful in her old job as a bartender and occasional bouncer. Her life remains difficult and now is physically challenging. They seem an unlikely pair but clearly benefit from discovered kinship and support. He lifts her up with quiet small acts of kindness.

And so can we try as well — listen, smile, console and commiserate, if that is what seems needed, laugh together if we can, empathize, share stories. Take them by the hand sometimes. How fragmentary and imperfect and partial our response is, but God uses even our inadequacy to comfort and build up in insignificant actions and words of little consequence. Connect. Acknowledge our common struggle. Lighten the load for a short time. Offer solace and momentary affable companionship. Sachuest Point Wildlife Refuge is a good place, and we will try to make it even more of one if we are able.[ii]

“To love someone means to see him as God intended him.” Fyodor Dostoevsky

[i] https://www.etymonline.com/word/hospitality

[ii] Pictures from my phone and The Good Samaritan, Vincent van Gogh. Public domain, Wikimedia. One is a phone picture of me taken by a ranger on the day fifteen or so rangers and volunteers planted 1,200 indigenous shrubs and grasses to return an old trail to the wild after it had to be moved due to erosion. It was a grand day among grand company.

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Tagged as hospitality, National wildlife refuge, Sachuest Point Wildlife Refuge, travel, visitors, volunteer, volunteering

August 4, 2024 · 5:18 pm

Summer Kitchens

“In Maine we have a saying that there is no point in speaking unless you can improve the silence.” Ed Muskie

Not sure this improves the silence, but…

When we drive up the dirt road from the camp on Webb Lake to turn east on Wilton Road to Farmington for church or groceries, there are Maine houses along the way that we remember with affection and respect. Old houses, generations old. Practical houses for pragmatic people who avoid many things that don’t make sense and do many things that do. Center chimney capes are common, and there are larger colonials with integrated additions for various purposes and perhaps extra kids.

Maine fosters eccentricity and a vast collection of creative architectural solutions; many varied attempts with mixed success to survive long snowy winters are everywhere in evidence. Homes along the rural roads are scattered with large dooryards, and the inexorable forest threatens to encroach on the fields that are left. Old, barely habitable double-wide faded mobile homes sit on overgrown once cleared lots with a motley collection of partially cannibalized pickups and campers up on blocks – ten foot tall poplars and alders growing through perforated flatbeds. A deserted small John Deere tractor with a flat tire disconsolately rusts out. Rural poverty with stove pipes sticking out through the walls of shacks sided with boards and wind torn Tyvek house wrap. A few are abandoned with collapsed roofs; others look like they should be but aren’t.

A quarter of the mile down the road an impeccable modular cape or ranch sits proudly on a small hill, carefully, lovingly landscaped with a paved, sealed driveway, a small flagpole and new flag in front, and a lawn that looks like it was trimmed with barber scissors. A modest vegetable garden grows fifty feet from the house, often surrounded by a wood pole and galvanized wire perimeter to discourage the deer and rabbits. Hopeful tomato plants, green beans, corn, potatoes, peppers, and some greens – spinach, beets, or Swiss chard, zucchini and summer squash, maybe a pumpkin or watermelon vine spreading along the rich soil, growing so fast the bottom of the fruit is drag worn and discolored.

Certain features identify my favorite species of farmhouse, and there are sadly fewer of them than fifty years ago when we lived here. Some of them are deteriorating and returning slowly to the earth. Some are re-tasked into apartments. Some are meticulously maintained, but there are a couple of overhead garage doors installed where large paned wood windows or homemade matched pine board doors once adorned the facade.

Frequently they have metal roofs that are loud in a downpour. Like sleeping in a tin tent, but comforting, steady protection from nature in a four season environment. Metal roofs with a steep pitch to shed snow easily. We had such a house with a metal roof when we lived in Farmington forty years ago. No gutters to be torn off with ice dams and snow slides, just a two foot cantilever to push the gushing rainwater and melted snow away from the house. Diverters or a small additional extension over the front door with the granite threshold protect visitors and residents opening the door. Sensible roofs that can last for at least a generation for a harsh climate with deep snow in the winter.

A barn that was once for farm animals, and still is for a few, remains attached to some of these homes. Hay in the loft. Stalls and laying nests for the hens, vegetable and egg stands out by the road. Grain in the large wood feed box. Chickens, goats, a milk cow, perhaps some calves for future milk or steaks, and a deadly, half feral, symbiotic barn cat or two to control the mice and rats. Barns are sometimes connected to the family home through that most sensible extra room – a summer kitchen. Much more than a breezeway connecting to a two car garage, a summer kitchen is like many things in Maine – it has more than one useful purpose.

Harsh winters are interrupted by glorious springs that also harken the arrival of mud and black fly season. Time to plant and begin the arduous process of splitting next winter’s firewood. In winter and spring, it’s prudent to have a connection to the barn that doesn’t include wading through drifts or shoveling a path.

When the heat of a six week summer hits, there are abundant lakes, rivers, streams, and for those fortunate coastal dwellers, saltwater beaches. But it’s a time for summer kitchens too.

A summer kitchen serves several critical purposes besides connecting to the barn for winter access to animals needing attention. A summer kitchen lessens July and August heat building up in the house for cooking in the main kitchen, heat rising to the bedrooms to make sleeping a sweaty project even when the screens aren’t torn. A sound wood stove in the summer kitchen is good for the long boils for lobster or sugar corn on the cob and baking bread or canning later in the summer and fall. Summer kitchens by design are practical, built for storage and work with only stone counter workspace and maybe a stool or two without adornment or pictures on the wall. Oftentimes they lack plastered and insulated walls like the barn they connect. Simple and perfect for their purpose.

The kitchen hospitality so common and welcome for Maine visitors planned or unplanned is reserved for the in-house winter kitchen where the family table and chairs are set up. With sugar bowl, creamer, mugs and whatever muffins or scones or cookies are in the pantry at the ready.

Summer kitchens are beneficial, intelligent, thoughtful, sensible things, a symbol for me of a beneficent, thoughtful, and intelligent people with generations of experience and hospitality in a challenging climate.

“Maine is a joy in the summer. But the soul of Maine is more apparent in the winter.” Paul Theroux

Here we are once again after forty or fifty years of enjoying Lake Webb in an old camp – a rare place in west central Maine lakes country. Surrounded by hills and mountains: Mount Blue, Tumbledown, Bald Mountain, Big Jackson, Little Jackson, Blueberry Mountain. Sunsets beyond my ability to describe them. Clean, clear water constantly refreshed with nine streams feeding Webb and one large outlet into the Weld River that flows unimpeded alongside State Highway 142 to the Androscoggin River and on to the Atlantic. Once it was a major logging route with the native tall white pines, spruce, and hemlocks abundant in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Wood to build the houses. Wood to build the ships at Bath. Planks, boards, masts.

More power boats now than our first years here, but mostly on the weekend. Since the beginning occasional water skiers and tubers have circled the five mile long, twenty seven hundred acres lake. But jet skis are a relatively recent, unwelcome, and loud intrusion that terrifies the loons and herds them into the outflow end of the lake. I wonder sadly when the last loon will seek a refuge in another lake farther from the yahoos. That will be a heartbreaking loss. One would think thrill chasers could find a quieter, less obnoxious way of feeling power between their legs. There are plenty of other places to play man-boy. Not this little bit of remaining retreat and haven. That’s why God made Harley’s for crying out loud.

During the week though, there are still mostly single sail wind powered silent boats, canoes, kayaks, and an occasional small flat bottomed fishing boat trawling at a very low speed. The sound of children playing and laughing on a still morning can carry more than the half a mile that separates us from the state beach on the opposite side the lake. Those are welcome sounds. We can see the splashes when they jump off the “Big Rock” about three quarters of the way across. We make at least one pilgrimage ourselves in the canoe. The outcropping juts about four feet above the surface with a straight drop into deep water. The Mount Blue State Park side of the rock is fifteen feet of gradual gentle slope of granite at about a four pitch, perfect for dragging a canoe to rest while we dive, jump, and swim.

“Did you ever see a place that looks like it was built just to enjoy? Well, this whole state of Maine looks that way to me.” Will Rogers

Sunday Mass for us is at St. Joseph Church in Farmington about forty minutes east first up, then down an elevation past Bald Mountain, a winding road with switchbacks and vistas that pops my ears. St. Joe’s is the parish that welcomed us back to the Church half a century ago: the happy event that saved our marriage. There we formed lifelong friendships. The current pastor, Father Paul, recognizes us now with a smile and greeting. As he does greet our daughter and her family with five children who stay at the camp where we stayed with her as an infant so many years ago. The screened in porch sits fifteen feet from the water’s edge. (see picture above for a view from the porch)

The former pastor at St. Joe’s from fifty years ago, Father Joe McKenna, is retired and ninety three, living in Portland. A most welcome visit and meal with him on the way north is something we always look forward to and are grateful for. He still retains his lively, unconventional intelligence, acute insights, fighting spirit, and wry sense of Irish humor. A natural storyteller, he is always delightful company.

The couple that owns the only remaining store in Weld converted it from the last elementary school here; they always greet us as well as old friends. We can get most everything really needed by way of groceries there. Downeast coffee, lunch and breakfast too at the counter in the adjacent old classroom. Good breakfasts with fresh eggs, bacon, toast and home fries. Burgers, fries, hot dogs, sandwiches, pizza, it’s open most summer days from six in the morning until early evening. A small playground next to the parking lot still entertains the kids, albeit with gravel on the ground, not ground up rubber stuff. A single clay tennis court remains well maintained at the bottom of the hill next to the Weld Community Center. Sweep the court, brush clean the lines when done, and wear shoes that won’t tear up the court are the only rules.

The entertainments of screens or city are scraggly substitutes for these simple pleasures. They may bring titillation, but the consolations of woods, fields, mountains, lakes, and time to read are healing. Screens and entertainments bring commotion and distraction from our troubles, but not restoration. Only places like this restore.

“Maine is a beautiful place that I paradoxically want to hoard to myself and share with everyone I meet.” John Hodgman

We know that there will be a last visit someday to our treasured Maine woods. The camp will change hands from the family we have known and liked here for four decades, or we will become too infirm to make the trip. We may not know it when our final visit ends, but I have no regrets, only gratitude for our many irreplaceable memories that will console us for the rest of our lives.

“I would really rather feel bad in Maine than feel good anywhere else.” E.B. White

Images: Top: Common Maine road hazard
- Middle: View at the camp porch of Webb Lake
- Bottom: View from nearby Center Hill near the spring where we get our water

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Tagged as Maine, summer kitchens, Webb Lake, Weld

June 18, 2024 · 6:55 am

Phubbing Along

“I read for a living, and I fully confess that when I’m reading, I have to put my iPhone on the other side of the room. Otherwise, its presence always suggesting that something very interesting must be going on in my pocket. How does the phone truly operate in our minds?” Jonathan Haidt, from an interview with David Remnick in an article in New Yorker, “Jonathan Haidt Wants You to Take Away Your Kid’s Phones”

“Hi, my name is Jack, and I am a phubber.”

Teens in circle holding smart mobile phones - Multicultural young people using cellphones outside - Teenagers addicted to new technology concept

IStock Getty Images

What’s a phubber? Someone addicted to “phubbing, first coined as a word in 2012 by the McCann Group, an advertising firm in Australia as part of a “Stop Phubbing Campaign.” Unfortunately for most of us, it was ignored. “Phubbing” is a combination of “phone” and “snubbing.” The miserable practice of ignoring the one you’re with for the omnipresence of those you are not with but remotely connect with our smartphones. “You are not enough to keep my attention; I’ve got to check this text, respond to this compelling ping. This addictive Facebook or Instagram or TikTok post is beckoning to direct me to something to indoctrinate or sell me or just suck my time. No excuse. Just checking out.”

“And if you can’t be with the one you love, honey,

Love the one you’re with…” Stephen Stills, “Love the One You’re With,”

Crosby, Stills, and Nash

Of course, I don’t want to be in a Phubber’s Anonymous group, or suffer an intervention, or invite a sponsor to hold me accountable. I’m perfectly content to feed my addiction. Except I’m not. It makes me lonely, vaguely dissatisfied, restless, alienated when I find myself scrolling Instagram pictures or YouTube short sports videos or a Facebook feed. Or accumulated texts and emails from a dozen subscription sources. At least it’s not TikTok accumulating my interests and data to the CCP. Forfeit is a quick hour of my increasingly finite time as it slips by like a bucket full of water with a hole in it. Irretrievably gone. Put the thing away, will ya? All the algorithms conspire to be ingeniously addictive. You know it’s not good for you, right? We can feel it in our bones like tumors or osteoporosis. But when the urge starts up, and the thing beckons, we go there.

Need to do something. I’m admitting I’m addicted. I’ve done an inventory and come up short. I’m not sure what the program believes the formless ‘higher power’ to be, but I know what God means to me, and I can pray about this and ask for help. I have started down the path to better mental health, but I expect the claws to keep trying to pull me back.

“From 2003 to 2022, American adults reduced their average hours of face-to-face socializing by about 30 percent. For unmarried Americans, the decline was even bigger—more than 35 percent. For teenagers, it was more than 45 percent.” Derek Thompson, “Why Americans Stopped Hanging Out – And Why It Matters.” From ‘The Ringer’ podcast.

Anxiety, suicidal ideation, depression, loneliness, and alienation have been on the rise for years and are frequently written about, especially with the young – documented unprecedented levels requiring treatment. In this new era of instant connectedness, we are becoming more unconnected than ever before. But we persist in our ill-conceived faith that technology will solve our problems and cure our ills.

Recently a new bot was introduced from the AI platform Digi – an AI companion in an X post in December. Twenty-three million views. Click the link of the Pixar female image below and see what you think of the sample in the X, formerly-known-as-Twitter, post. The solution to human loneliness in a lonely time? A Disney quality animation bot. Just in time. The Pixar female image is reassuring as she promises that I am the most interesting person she’s ever met. So happy someone finally thinks so.

Our faith in our devices and connecting to the greater world informs us that everyone must benefit from the computer in our pocket and a satellite hookup to all the knowledge in the world. The prevailing narrative is we are liberating humankind with this technology. A story last week might give us pause as to how prepared most human beings are for the benefits.

The story was circulating in various news agencies about colonizing with the universal blessings of the computer in our pockets. Elon Musk is one such evangelist for salvation through technology. Last September a major donor hooked up a remote Amazon tribe to Musk’s Starlink network of 6,000 satellites. The donor has hopes to enable 150 remote tribes to do the same. They will all have phones in their pockets too. If they have pockets.

The 2,000 member Marubo tribe, who live along the Ituí River, are already hooked up and tuned in. Access to the world. And the world’s ways. The chief says his youth, especially the boys, are not only hooked up, but hooked. On phone time. On porn. On violent video games. Learning from the Western ways, the boys have become much more sexually aggressive and experimenting with the kinky stuff they had never conceived of before.

Some quotes from the interviews in the NY Times article that spawned the internet conversation: “When it arrived, everyone was happy,” Tsainama Marubo, 73, told The New York Times. “But now, things have gotten worse. Young people have gotten lazy because of the internet, they’re learning the ways of the white people.”

“Everyone is so connected that sometimes they don’t even talk to their own family.”

“It changed the routine so much that it was detrimental.”

“In the village, if you don’t hunt, fish and plant, you don’t eat. Some young people maintain our traditions,” TamaSay Marubo, 42, added. “Others just want to spend the whole afternoon on their phones.”

It appears that I am not alone as a phubber, and the addiction is ready to rewire any of us without regard to where we live, who our tribe is, or what else we should be doing. The unreality of screen connectedness beckons insistently to us all.

“If one thinks that existence itself has no ultimate ground of intrinsic meaning or value, if reality is not perceived as good in itself outside of one’s own manipulation of it, nothing can be truly celebrated, even if one energetically pursues temporary diversions and pleasures.” Dr. Daria Spezzano, “Thomas Aquinas, The Nones, and the Dones,” The New Ressourcement, Vol 1, No 1, Spring 2024. After the thoughts of Josef Peiper “In Tune With the World,” 1999, South Bend, IN

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Tagged as addiction, Amazon tribe, life, mental health, phubbing, smartphone, social-media, technology

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