“Truly interesting, this social media hate stuff. Yesterday, I saw that a prominent guy died and that those who disagreed with him rejoiced over his death. I’m just wondering whether or not it escapes the so-called trolls that they are also going to die.”
 
“Nope. Doesn’t occur to them. I believe they think that Death affects others but not them and that Death visits only those who deserve the visit. Either they never learned or do not remember John Donne’s famous line, ‘Do not ask for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.‘”
 
“Famous line probably made more famous by Hemingway’s use of it as a title for a novel. Is it a juvenile brain that trolls after a death occurs? You know what neurology tells us? Accurate or not, urban myth or science, the word is that the brain doesn’t reach maturity until mid-twenties. I’m guessing that most trolls are under 25, but I certainly have seen evidence of older ones, some among the rich and famous. Maybe mature brains range on a sliding scale, a wide spectrum. Yeah. The bell tolls for trolls but they probably can’t hear it through their expensive earbuds and earphones. I mean, come on, even as a little child I realized the lions under my bed encapsulated my fear of Finality.
 
“It’s possible, I suppose, that troll brains don’t think of death at all and that they never had lions under their childhood beds. But I’m inclined to think that everyone at some time would voice what Andrew Marvel wrote in ‘To His Coy Mistress’:
 
            But at my back, I always hear/Time’s winged chariot hurrying near/And yonder all before us lie/Deserts of vast eternity.
 
Certainly, I can’t be alone in recognizing that Death awaits all and that evil lies like a waiting lion under the bed of every sleeping brain. And lions can hide even in the corners of daytime. Remember Hopkins’s ‘I Wake and Feel the Fell of Dark, Not Day’?”
 
“Vaguely.”
 
“It’s kind of appropriate for our times. No, I guess it’s appropriate for any era. He writes,
 
            I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.
            What hours, O what black hours we have spent
            This night! What sight you, heart, saw; ways you went!
            And more must, in yet longer light’s delay.
                    With witness I speak this. But where I say
            Hours I mean years mean life…
 
Heck, if you awoke some morning when the darkness of human folly and cruelty isn’t the first news you hear, I’d like to know what day that was. Pretty much the first news makes me think I’m still in the middle of a nightmare, still lying over lions in wait, lions hiding beneath the bed to attack should I step onto the floor during either the dark or the light. I assume, maybe wrongly, that my feelings are common and that If Death’s lions made their way into my young brain, they must have made their way into all other brains, putting life into a grand perspective. Yes, the lions under the bed instilled fear in me as a little kid, but they also helped me to realize my mortal nature and the folly hate.”
 
“Some people never give their own mortality much thought, I guess, nor do they think that being cruel or evil has any consequence. And, well, maybe they’re right. Look how many evil people never suffer any consequences for their actions or words. Karma doesn’t come, at least not some identifiable retribution that brings justice in some form. As a result, not everyone reflects on his or her inevitable end; I’m growing convinced of that.”
 
“I suppose you’re right. But like you, I’m inclined to believe that mortality is a universal thought likely to occur not just in nightmares, but also in full consciousness, or even the partial consciousness of an immature brain. Hopkins has another great poem in his ‘Spring and Fall: to a young child’ about a little girl named Margaret who is grieving over the drop of leaves in autumn. He begins by asking, ‘Margaret, are you grieving/Over Goldengrove unleaving?’ Terrific poem. In the poem he asks the girl if she can care about such things as dying leaves. And he says, ‘…as the heart grows older/It will come to such sights colder/…you will weep and know why/…Sorrow’s springs are the same.’
 
“Death is the spring that keeps flowing. The clincher lies in the last two lines when he says what the real reason is for Margaret’s sadness. It isn’t over the falling leaves that she unknowingly grieves. It’s over her own ending.”
 
            It is the blight man was born for,
            It is Margaret you mourn for.*
 
“That poem makes me think that even trolls will at some time realize their own mortal nature and the folly of their cruelty.”
 
“That’s a great thought, but you’re asking too much if you think some hateful troll will study that poem’s meaning or gain through some other verbiage a lesson about mortality, and then cease trolling. Since there are ‘older’ trolls, I’d have to guess that nothing will occur to them until they lie upon their own deathbeds. And even then, I’m guessing that, given a computer or smart phone, they would troll till their fingers stopped moving, such is the world of petty hate that some seemingly would prefer to die in its claws. I need to think realistically. I’m not looking for any deathbed confessions, any repenting, any compunction. You and I might recognize our mortality, but not everyone seems to. Poetic lessons, poetic endings, and poetic justice aren’t necessarily the way of the world. Some Big Billy Goat Gruff doesn’t always come along to teach a hard lesson to trolls by butting them off the bridge of life.
 
“And no, lions don’t hide under all deathbeds; trolls don't necessarily have trolls.Maybe as the lion of death emerges from beneath the deathbed, some troll’s last words will be a proudly overt, ‘I hate….’”
 
“Right, so we’ll continue to see the mocking and the hate. But I do understand in a way. Although I might not have said anything at the time, I’m sure I wasn’t sympathetic when I heard of some terrorist leader’s death or the execution of some serial killer. I might not have trolled on the Web, but I might have mentally trolled because those who are truly evil don’t elicit any sympathy from me. Charles Manson, for example. I think I’m frustrated because in the ordinary course of events and interactions, in the comings and goings of millions during any lifetime, some people choose to troll others to exhibit hatred for those with whom they have some disagreement.”
 
“Let’s face it. Even if you were to get all current humans to live in peace and harmony, to empathize with one another, and to eliminate all forms of cruelty, you would have to go through the same process for the next generation, and the next, and the next ad infinitum—which, when I think about it, is an ironic expression for finite beings.”
 
 
*Here’s the complete poem by Hopkins:
 
Spring and Fall: to a young child
 
Márgarét, áre you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leáves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Áh! ás the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

“You know how those scary movies sometimes begin? Some long-buried monster comes to life in a cave, under a volcano, or in the deep ocean. Then it wreaks havoc on humanity. Well, we’re in the midst of one of those films, or maybe in the middle of a compilation of them.”
 
“How so?”
 
“The University of Rhode Island just released a report on a joint project with the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology and two other organizations.”
 
“On?”
 
“Microbes in deep sea sediments collected ten years ago: Microbes 101 million years old; Microbes that have been dormant, NOT dead, since before the dinosaurs died out. Well, Steven D’Hondt, one of the scientists, says that these little critters that were buried 6,000 meters below sea level could be revived. They were “capable of growing and dividing.* I don’t know about you, but I find that to be a very scary report.”
 
“Why? They’re probably harmless.”
 
“Until they aren’t. We know we live on a bacteria planet. It’s been one almost from the start. The things are everywhere, in us, in the air, on all the surfaces, under glaciers, in the ocean, and even deep in rocks. Yes, probably most are harmless, but I’ve been sick, so I know that not all are harmless, and some that had been around since before the last major extinction might have made mammals and dinosaurs sick, also. We’ve seen how dangerous methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, can be. What if some similar microthingy is hiding in sediments dredged up in the name of pure research and then released on some unsuspecting graduate student? You know how easy it is to spread stuff among college students. I’m not saying that it’s inevitable, not even saying it’s probable, but certainly it seems possible. Imagine how many microorganisms we still haven’t identified simply because we never encountered them. Had no one drilled into the deep-sea sediments, humans would never have come into contact with those old viable microbes.”
 
“Now you’re scaring me.”
 
“I keep thinking of how old ills keep resurfacing like Bubonic plague in Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado National Monument, and a campground that closed at Natural Bridges National Monument in Utah. Bad enough that we have new stuff to worry about, what with COVID-19, other SARS stuff, Swine Flu, and Ebola. Sure, major diseases come along all the time, but now we have the ability to go dig them up in places where humans could only recently visit, like the sea floor 6,000 meters below the ocean surface.”
 
“I see your point. Old ills do keep resurfacing. Thought we had eliminated mindless anarchy, also, but here it is, burning cities in the name of…gee, when I think about it, in the name of nothing. What’s going to replace the devastated area? And socialism's threat to personal freedom? Thought we had eliminated its threat when we defeated the NAZIs and when the Soviet Union fell. Guess not. Old ills keep resurfacing. They are as difficult to eliminate as bacteria. Always lying in wait for an opportunity to resurface, even when they are buried in the deep past. Guess we have to be a little more careful about what we dig up.”
 
“As I said, it’s a bit like one of the scary movies where the buried monster comes back to life to wreak mindless havoc on humanity.”
 
 
*URI. Deep sea microbes dormant for 100 million years are hungry and ready to multiply. Phys.Org. 28 July 2020. Online at https://phys.org/news/2020-07-deep-sea-microbes-dormant-million.html  Accessed July 29, 2020.  Morono, Y., Ito, M., Hoshino, T. et al. Aerobic microbial life persists in oxic marine sediment as old as 101.5 million years. Nat Commun 11, 3626 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-17330-1

The following might be apocryphal. Long ago I read that a Peace Corps volunteer spent time in a southeast Asian village. Supposedly, the women in the village swept their homes (huts?) with short-handled brooms. Seeing that the sweeping was a back-breaking effort, the volunteer taught the villagers to make and use long-handled brooms. Walla! No more stooping; no more bent and sore backs.
 
That no one in the village had for generations thought to invent a different kind of broom might be a lesson about what we are and what we do. Think, for example, of the 200 millennia of modern humans repeating their use of stone tools. And if we include our ancient hominin ancestors, we think of “advances” in tool form and use that identifies cultures, distinguishing, for example, between the Oldowan and the Acheulean traditions. Classification schemes like Grahame Clark’s and John Shea’s lithic modes identify “improvements” in stone tool technology that evolved over more than two million years, from Homo habilis to…well, just about every other hominin group that followed. Two and half million years of tool use and no Industrial Revolution until the eighteenth century! Humans and their ilk have long been “short-handled broom users.”
 
We could easily compile a list of “doing it the same way” without considering “doing it a better way.” Digging sticks instead of plows, plows without wheels and moldboards, for example, or saddles without stirrups: In hindsight some inventions seem obvious and simple, but they were, in fact, revolutionary changes. They were the longer broom handles of their time.
 
Of course, you’ll ask, “Is there some lesson in this?”
 
And, of course, I’ll respond, “Yes, there is.”
 
We’ve been running American cities the same way for almost a century. Has no one thought to change the broom handle?  
 
But the lesson could extend to each of us. No doubt there’s some short-handled broom—or maybe many—in my life. You, also, have some short-handled broom to which you have become so accustomed that you don’t think about changing either its form or use. It’s time for all of us to check the broom closets of our lives.

“I’m thinking of all those kids over all those years who watched as their first introduction to TV the rapid-fire letters on Sesame Street.”
 
“What’s the point? Get to the point.”
 
“You just made it for me. Impatience. And now impatience is daily exacerbated by the desire for a single-click website. People ask, ‘You want me to click three times to get to your site’s info?’ Sesame Street based 4,500+ episodes on the premise that children have short attention spans. The product? Rapid-fire short segments, letters popping into view for under a minute, bright colors and flashing lights that disappeared quickly as the next segment began. And one can see the effect in a society that wants an instant cure for COVID-19.”
 
“Wait! You’re relating Sesame Street to the pandemic somehow? There’s a non sequitur from a guy who thinks he’s mostly logical.”
 
“Not to the pandemic, rather to the desire for immediacy that has spilled into the mindset of a world frightened by a disease. We are among the most impatient of generations, this current lot. And many who grew up with a daily diet of Sesame Street’s short-attention-span programming are now adults seeking instant this or that: Short intense bursts of whatever. So, after a virus spread from the relatively closed society of China into the relatively open societies of the West and elsewhere, the short-attention-span generations asked, ‘Where’s the cure? Where’s the cure? Why hasn’t someone come up with a cure? Whom can we blame?’ And that immediately became a political mantra, with one side pushing that immediacy scenario onto a Sesame-Street-trained population. ‘Why, had we been in control, there would have been no pandemic.’”
 
“Tell me more.”
 
“More? If I stretch this hypothesis further, you’ll probably wander off mentally. But, shoot, I can’t stop myself. So much comes to mind, much of it digression. Like the difference between the average lengths of paragraphs in a twentieth-century Hemingway novel and an eighteenth- or nineteenth-century novel: Short versus long. I suppose we succumbed to brevity even before Sesame Street. The twentieth century was the Brevity Century. And now in the twenty-first century, we’re a people seeking quick fixes without realizing that not every problem has a quick fix. Seeds take time to grow. Vaccines take time to develop. Biological processes run their courses at paces not subject to will or desire. And so, we do what we often do when we’re faced with a problem: Seek a scapegoat; claim that we could have done better; wrap our fears and doubts in a blanket of personal irresponsibility, and ask, ‘How could “they” let this happen?’ and 'Why aren't they doing something already?'”
 
“I think I’m beginning to…Hey, did you see that article on Famotidine? Or that one on Remdesivir? And they say that Oxford just invented a vaccine that works.”

All traffic lights are unnecessary restrictions in a world of anarchy. Crosswalk lines and sidewalks are also unnecessary, as are restrictions on which side of the road drivers should use. Turn signals, horns, and passing lanes? 
 
Work hours? Class schedules? Doors?  
 
A telling incident of the Summer of Anarchy is a video in which a CHAZ/CHOP anarchist/videographer proudly speaks about a wall of overlapping graffiti.* As he films, he proclaims the wall is “an expression of our feelings.” Then a guy robs him of his camera. As the guy runs off, the videographer screams, “Thief!” repeatedly.*
 
Traffic lights. Who needs them? 

*That the graffiti was "overlapping" escaped his powers of observation and irony.
** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__hK_tvYbRo
 Accessed July 26, 2020

During the initial stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, Disney World's Space Mountain and Mission Space first closed and then opened in stages with limited numbers of visitors. The Disney experience changed. Fewer people could ride Space Mountain or Mission Space. That made the cost-for-what-you-get at Disney less attractive, especially if what-you-get is a day beneath a mask in high heat and humidity under limiting restrictions that prevent you from that “Disney Experience” of pre-pandemic days.
 
For just a few dollars more than a typical family trip to Disney World, you will soon be able to ride in a balloon to the stratosphere. Yes, Space Perspective wants to send people aloft in a pressurized capsule affixed to a slowly rising balloon for just under $125,000.* Okay, I lied about the price comparison. The balloon ride would be more expensive than a trip to Disney.
 
Uber-optimistic Jane Poytner and co-founder Taber MacCallum lived in Biosphere 2 in the 1990s. Poytner says that the ride in the 15-foot-wide balloon that is equipped with a bathroom (with a window) will lift passengers to altitudes sufficient for them to observe the blackness of space, the curvature of Earth, and the thin blue line of the atmosphere.
 
In a short video (see footnote), Poytner says that the driving force behind this balloon experience is for people to get a new perspective on where they live. She says she acquired a new perspective on life through her time in the Biosphere. Okay. I get that. Any new experience provides a new perspective. I’ve seen Earth from over 40,000 feet in a jumbo jet. Even at 33,000 feet, I’ve seen Earth’s curvature and the gotten a perspective on the atmosphere I can’t get from my house at 1,040 feet above sea level or from the local mountain at 2,700 feet. Yes, nothing like looking down on where people live to get some idea about human folly and the tiny personal and social worlds that are important to each of us.
 
I think, for example, of my local mountain, Chestnut Ridge. From Point Lookout or from the Summit Hotel on the western side of the ridge, one can look down on Uniontown, Pennsylvania and on villages to the west. From those two perspectives, the buildings and houses seem quite small, and the view has always drawn me to question what might occur behind those tiny windows in those tiny buildings and houses. Are people arguing behind those windows? Are they giving one another the cold shoulder? Are they actively engaging in violence? What is going on behind those tiny windows? The views from a mountain, from a plane, from a balloon in the stratosphere, or from the International Space Station inspire such questions. And one doesn’t have to go to a mountainside like those outside Denver on the Front Range or outside Reno like Mt. Rose to get a similar experience. The observation deck on any building like the Empire State Building affords a look over many “small windows” behind which there might also be strife—as well as friendship, compassion, and love.
 
Poytner’s balloon flights are, like Disney rides, limited to those who can afford them. Even plane rides are beyond the reach of many people. But perspectives on life seen at a distance are available to anyone who wishes to look. They require only the looking, and they provide insights into the fragility, folly, and tragedy that often disrupt lives. And from those distant perspectives come lessons.
 
At some time, each of us is behind one of those little windows, in one of those little houses. Think the next time a plane flies overhead or you pass by a distant mountain or tall building what your concerns look like from those perspectives. Think, too, of all those optimistic and good people who also live behind those little windows in their intent to live compassionately with others whose perspectives are limited by a foolishly myopic, psychological shortsightedness.    
 
* https://www.cnet.com/news/space-perspective-wants-to-sell-balloon-rides-to-the-edge-of-space/

Yesterday, I published an essay on the phrase “once and for all.” After I posted it, I resumed a reading through the science news and discovered a new “once and for all” on the very issue I had used as an example in the essay: The time of the first North Americans. Could there have been a more appropriate example of discovery overturning previous knowledge? What I had assumed to be the status of archaeological information on the subject was incorrect. Unaware as I was of research that I would later stumble upon, I mentioned the antiquity of the Paisley Caves residents and the Meadowcroft Rock Shelter’s residents, both pre-Clovis cultures. What I assumed about the history of early North Americans prior to the release of research on the Chiquihuite Cave in central Mexico was incomplete, even though I noted that further discoveries might negate current knowledge on the subject. Seems that my prediction, my “might,” was correct. Ciprian Ardelean of the Universidad Autonoma de Zacatecas and others appear to have discovered evidence for those earlier North American residents.*
 
Imagine an earlier time and mentality. Imagine a time when all knowledge was “final.”  Oh! Wait. You’re living in such a time. Here I was about to mention the thinking that led to the death of Socrates, the imprisonment of Galileo, and the burning of Joan of Arc, and then I realized that every age has its adherents to the omniscience du jour. Even in the age of scientific discovery one can find those who cannot accept “new” knowledge. Look no further than to Einstein who had difficulty with the quantum world and with his own version of Dark Energy. But if you want, look also to those who cannot accept any evidence that contradicts their accepted view of the world. Such, for example, was the case of those who would not accept a pre-Clovis culture in the Americas and those who would not accept the greater antiquity of dinosaurs over humans.
 
Fixed knowledge inhibits mental and psychological growth; yet, all of us harbor mental ships with some cargo of such knowledge, information that we cannot relinquish even in light of new and contradictory information. That to which we adhere in spite of contrary evidence is at the heart of many human conflicts. The surer we are, the more likely we are to take absolute positions mentally and biased views psychologically.
 
Does that mean there are no absolutes? Hmnn. I’m not sure. I think I know, however, that any statement, such as “There are no absolutes,” is self-contradictory. Isn’t the statement itself a proclamation of absolute knowledge? Every so often each of us might consider re-examining those “absolutes” that we treasure. They might not be as absolute as we think.
 
*Hood, Marlowe. AFP. 22 July 2020. Humans in America 30,000 years ago, far earlier than thought. Yahoo!News. Online at https://news.yahoo.com/humans-america-30-000-years-ago-far-earlier-160114498.html  Accessed July 22, 2020. 

Why are we so sure of ourselves even though we often later discover something that negates our surety? Is the brain determined to ensure permanence for itself while it knows that all, both inside and outside itself, is temporary? Take the term “once and for all” as an example. You’ve heard it in many forms, probably even used it in some form. Great finality in the term and its many variations.
 
Variations? Sure, even at the highest levels of supposed civilized behavior, like Neville Chamberlain’s “peace for our time,” his variation of “once and for all” encapsulated in the phrase he used after the Munich Conference. Chamberlain believed he had negotiated a permanent peace with Hitler’s government. Or take Richard Nixon’s version of the WWI catchphrase, “the war to end war,” or “the war to end all war”: Nixon said, “…by making peace for one full generation, we will get this world into the habit of peace….” That once-and-for-all phrase (“the war to end war”) often attributed to Woodrow Wilson, seems to have originated with H. G. Wells; both men believed that war could end war. Wilson called end of World War I “the final triumph of justice.” Idealistic rhetoric like Wilson’s exemplifies the brain’s desire for finality. When Nixon made his statement about making peace, he also said, “In this imperfect world, I am convinced that realistic understanding is on the rise and mindless hatred is on the decline. The strong likelihood exists that there will be no need for a war to end wars….” Putting the idealistic Age of Aquarius aside, we know that the realities of wars and strife continue. One needs only to look around at the time of this posting in the summer of 2020.
 
I have no doubt that you have your own version of “peace for out time” and “once and for all.” After all, what’s your alternative? Constant strife? Constant insecurity? Constant turmoil? If only people could adopt your ideals…if you could just “force” people to adopt your perspective, things would be different; chaos, as you see it, would subside; order—your order—would settle over the planet. Stop for a moment. What is YOUR version? Is it embedded in your politics? (Have you heard or said, for example, “This is the most important election of our time”? Or, “If we win this one, we will change the country forever”?—hasn’t that been said during every election cycle? Hasn’t something similar been said at the beginning of every revolution?)
 
So, how do we get to an ideal, to a final final, to that “once and for all”? Well, why not start with small steps? We could eliminate competition of all kinds, for example. “Not feasible,” you say. “What? All competition?” you ask. Smacks of all that idealistic egalitarianism people spread around these days, right?
 
Is nothing we do or say truly final? What about knowledge? Can’t we agree that science gives us final answers? Or religion? What about history? Can’t we agree on history? Isn’t it “finalized”? Er…maybe not.
 
Let’s take the smallest of examples, something from the world of archaeology. Surely, those many archaeologists who search, discover, and explain the past are of a common mind on history. Shouldn’t they be? After all, history is, well, history. But, alas, the competition to be the first to see this or that once lost something-or-other from antiquity has diggers scrambling all over the planet to claim a “first.” It is the archaeologist’s dream to discover, as Hiram Bingham did, some previously unknown ancient city like Machu Picchu or as Howard Carter found, some glorious treasure trove like King Tut’s tomb. Discovery can put to rest all those conflicting hypotheses about something historical so the hopeful thinking about finalizing goes.   
 
Finding what no one else has ever found can lead to fame, if not riches. Certainly, there’s always the potential for a book deal and subsequent TedX talks, not to mention some National Geographic documentary, and let’s not forget the possibility of a lucrative chair at some prestigious university or museum that provides funding for further discovery with a bevy of committed research assistants. All these perks provide motivation for finalizing the past.
 
The drive to be the next Leakey, Bingham, or Carter has engendered arguments among those driven to be first to see, to uncover, and to hypothesize—the first to finally finalize history, once and for all. The competition they generate can run from pleasant disagreements to intellectual wars like the one over how the sweet potato found its way westward across the Pacific from South America or the one over who was first to inhabit North America.
 
With respect to North America’s first inhabitants, archaeologists have split into different camps. One camp has long favored the antiquity of Clovis as “the first” North American culture, whereas another camp argues for pre-Clovis peoples, such as those who inhabited the Paisley Caves in Oregon, for example, or those who inhabited the Meadowcroft Rock Shelter in Pennsylvania, both seeming to be precursors of the Clovis people by at least one millennium or several millennia or more. And among those who accept pre-Clovis, arguments about which of those cultures was “first” there are those who claim to know “once and for all.”  
 
But the focus here is not on who is correct about North America’s first settlers. Rather it’s on a recent statement made by one of the archaeologists studying ancient North Americans, a statement that, I believe, indicates where we lie on the spectrum of intellectual development and the desire to finalize our knowledge.
 
Dr. Lisa-Marie Shillito, Senior Lecturer, Newcastle University, recently studied Oregon’s Paisley Caves to determine a date for its earliest inhabitants, which she places at more than 12,000 years ago. She said: "The question of when and how people first settled the Americas has been a subject of intense debate. By using a different approach, we have been able to demonstrate that there were pre-Clovis populations present in the area of the Great Basin and resolve this debate once and for all."* Now, I’m not doubting that there were, in fact, people in North America before the Clovis culture when I quote her; I think she makes a very good argument based on DNA found in coprolites. But wasn’t there already solid evidence for pre-Clovis habitation? What about the Meadowcroft Rock Shelter?
 
In light of the many archaeological discoveries over the past century or so, any archaeological claims to have settled an argument “once and for all” are usually followed by some new discovery, so twenty-first century archaeologists should be a little more cautious about making proclamations of finality. Some current undergraduate archaeology student might someday stumble across an as yet uncovered Clovis site or another site that pre-dates the Paisley Cave people. That’s what makes me keep thinking about that Meadowcroft Site, the rock shelter in Avella, PA. that archaeologist James Adovasio has researched for decades. Adovasio’s radiocarbon dates put people in the shelter for 16,000 to 19,000 years—in other words, long before the Paisley Cave people.** Even if the radiocarbon dates are a bit off, they are probably still indicative of a habitation older than that of the Paisley Caves. Yet, Dr. Shillito et al. introduce their research this way: “It is largely, but not entirely, accepted by the archaeological community that people first settled the Americas before Clovis [italics mine], which was seen as the earliest technological tradition on the continent for most of the 20th century, dating to 11,500 radiocarbon years before the present (14C yr B.P.). However, many questions still remain over who the earliest settlers were, when they arrived, and what route they took.” Shillito seems to have resolved—at least for her research group—the age and activity of people in western North America. She has uncovered good evidence for her statements, but what if someone stumbles across a hitherto unknown Clovis point that dates to before the Paisley Caves? Not sayin’ it will happen, just sayin’ it might happen, maybe not probable, but certainly not impossible. Heck, I’ve found things beneath couch pillows and in the garage that I never knew I had or had completely forgotten.   
 
That statement provides a point of departure for this: While arguing to finalize that which we debate in our contemporary society, like political, societal, economic, and religious systems, we find it almost impossible to finalize that which is, in fact, final, that is, history. Look, for example, at the summer of 2020’s push to rewrite the history of the USA. We will continue to argue that we have resolved this or that issue once and for all. We should keep in mind that every generation will rediscover history, so we can bet that those who believe they are finalizing some political, societal, or economic legacy, would, if they could revisit Earth in a time machine, discover that the history they knew wasn’t the history that the future knows. What news organizations proclaim as the truth today might be subject to revision within months, years, or decades. Propaganda in the present doesn’t establish a truth once and for all. Someone will potentially come along to uncover a different story, a different “truth,” or at least a different perspective.
 
The lesson is that if there are any “once-and-for-alls,” they are rare and probably not truly final. AND THAT BRINGS ME TO THIS: Shortly after I concluded this little essay, I stumbled across a story about the Chiquihuite Cave in central Mexico. According to archeologist Ciprian Ardelean of the Universidad Autonoma de Zacatecas, people were living in the cave as long ago as 33,000 years.*** Is this a discovery that puts to rest "once and for all" the previously "once and for all" discoveries? What "once and for all" is next?
 
*https://phys.org/news/2020-07-archaeologists-date-earliest-occupation-north.html
 
**Radiocarbon dating gives us some relatively reliable dates, but as objects get older, the radiocarbon dates separate from the actual dates. Thus, you will see a disparity between any radiocarbon dating and the guesstimated date for older objects. So, for example, the Meadowcroft Shelter’s radiocarbon dates might differ by as much as three or four millennia from the actual dates.

***Hood, Marlowe. AFP. 22 July 2020. Humans in America 30,000 years ago, far earlier than thought. Yahoo!News. Online at https://news.yahoo.com/humans-america-30-000-years-ago-far-earlier-160114498.html  Accessed July 22, 2020. 

In an era when death seems to be on the mind a bit more than usual because of the pandemic, I find myself remembering those who once graced my life, but who have since departed in the most permanent of ways. And among those many I have lost, I think of the first death that affected me in the Dylan Thomas sense that “After the first death, there is no other.”*
 
I met Joe Debich when my town reorganized school wards, sending me from my beloved Fourth Ward School to the Sixth Ward. We were classmates for only a year, and we were just fifth-graders. Then my family moved into a new home on the opposite side of town and into the Eighth Ward School. It wasn’t until I went into seventh grade in the common junior high that I renewed a friendship with Joe.
 
During the summer before ninth grade, my mother told me without details that Joe Debich was very sick. So, taking some of my money I had earned as a paperboy, I bought some comic books and went to visit my bedridden friend. At that time, I had no knowledge of leukemia. I visited Joe, who was in good spirits but who told me that at night the pain in his legs was very bad. Since we used to play basketball together, I said that as soon as he was better we would again resume our games. Then I left to do whatever a 14-year-old does with the rest of his summer vacation, in my case, carrying papers, playing baseball, and spending time as time passes.
 
When I walked into school that fall, I didn’t see Joe. Then, some classmates approached to say, “Did you hear? Joe Debich died.” My immature brain didn’t really comprehend other than to say, “But I just saw him a month ago.”
 
That night, a friend of mine and I went to the funeral home, where a number of my classmates had gathered to pay respects. Now, consider that during my visit with Joe, I had no idea that his disease was terminal (I guess my mother was protecting me from that fact), and he seemed to be the same Joe I had known.
 
What I saw in the open casket wasn’t Joe. He had gone from over 100 pounds to less than 60. Within seconds, I experienced that “after the first death, there is no other” feeling. I immediately, in front of classmates and adults broke into tears and fled the room, the hallway, and the funeral home, pushing through the crowd of teens with my friend following me. The walk home was over a mile, and I cried beyond attempted consoling by my friend. And I cried when I went into my house. And I went for another walk and cried, probably for a couple of hours. Yes, for at least a couple of hours. And not just tears, uncontrollable sobbing.
 
Since that time, I have gone into many funeral homes to honor deceased relatives, friends, and acquaintances. Often, the experience has made me tearful, but no visit subsequent to that funeral home visit to see Joe ever affected me to such an extent. Lingering tearful sadness for all, yes. But it’s as though all deaths had been foreshadowed by Joe’s death. I had mourned all those subsequent deaths in that one funeral home experience. And it was during that visit that my oft-repeated expression, “This is not your practice life” took root. Later in life I said in various versions: “This is not your practice college”—to students; “This is not your practice game”—to athletes; “This is not your practice practice”—to anyone striving toward a goal like mastering a sport or a musical instrument or, by extension, any skill.
 
If that expression has influenced others, they unknowingly owe Joe Debich a debt. As much as the volumes of philosophy, theology, science, and literature I have read, Joe’s brief life serves as a foundation for this website.
 
*”A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London”: The poem ends with “After the first death, there is no other,” but in the previous stanza, Thomas writes, “I shall not murder/The mankind of her going with a grave truth/Nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath/With any further/Elegy of innocence and youth.”

Don’t you just love the expression, “It’s a miracle; I can see; I can see”? What if the expression were, “It’s a miracle; I can see differently; I can see differently”?
 
The UC Davis Eye Center, working with France’s INSERM Stem Cell and Brain Research Institute, discovered that spectral notch filters in glasses help the color blind to see some color they could not previously see.* After wearing the glasses during a test period, the previous color-blind participants began to see color without the glasses. It’s an interesting demonstration that though eyes are necessary for vision, it’s the brain that “sees.”
 
I’m wondering whether or not there could be a reverse analog for these filters. You know, a filter that keeps people from seeing color, thus altering how people approach others with a different skin color. Apparently, there’s a need for such color blindness as one solution to racial bias. As a somewhat peach-colored human, I might then be treated equally with those who are a different color. Sure, I know that I’m listed as “white”—a Caucasian—but I’ve seen white, and I ain’t that color. Heck, after hours in the sun without some protective coating, I sometimes turn burnt sienna (but not where the “sun don’t shine”).  
 
Anyway, it’s obvious that skin color plays a role in how billions of people have interacted. But not just color. Take the stereotypical “differences” between the Tutsis and the Hutus. The unfortunate interpretation foisted on the two groups by German colonials was that the Tutsis were more “European” in appearance. Missionaries probably contributed to the stereotypical differences as they found one group more receptive to their message than the other group. Among the characteristics: One group is supposedly taller on average than the other and has “European” longer noses in contrast to shorter stature and noses for the other group. Once the stereotype was fixed, it became the “way to see” the two tribes of people. The lens provided to by both the Germans and the missionaries filtered the color of skin and trained tribal brains. Sure, there were differences that might have been obvious to the Hutus and the Tutsis who tentatively tolerated one another with some occasionally interruptive events, but the filtered lenses introduced by the European colonialists exacerbated those differences, leading to the massacres in Rwanda.
 
Filters that train the brain. That’s pretty much what skin color bias is all about. Through what kind of filter do you see others? Take off your glasses for a moment to remove the filters. Oh! Wait. According to the study by the eye center and the brain research institute, the effect of the filters endures for a time (as yet not determined). In short, it takes a while for the effect of such filters to wear off, maybe, in fact, forever.
 
So, to recap: In an experiment, color blind people wore special filters that gave them the ability to see colors. After taking the filters off, the color blind could see some color they previously had not experienced with their unaided eyes. Their brains seem to have learned how to see colors. Now, all we need is a set of filters that train the brain not to see color, at least not to see the color of people.
*https://phys.org/news/2020-07-special-filters-glasses.html
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