Search light beam into the sky. Attenuation. Laser to the moon. Even that undergoes attenuation. Your influence. Sorry, that, too. With distance comes weakness. Your influence, absorbed full force nearby, attenuates. Not to worry. It happens to everything and to everyone, even the powerful.
 
Sometimes that’s good. Wouldn’t want an exploding star to have the same force here as there. Attenuation is a saving fact of existence, keeping us from unitary thought. Without attenuation we’re all the same, hit equally and inundated by waves of the same influence. There’s little individuality in that. Fortunately, weakening signals are built into the structure of the universe.
 
So, your influence fades, absorbed by the friction of ideas. Even ideas promulgated by founders of great religions seem to weaken with extent. And when space is not the attenuator, then time absorbs the spreading energy. Not too many people today read The Avesta in an Agiary.
 
There will always be exploding stars. For most people they appear as though from nowhere to outshine briefly the light of a galaxy. But if I said to people of the Southern Hemisphere, “Remember Supernova 1987A?” only a few would recall; and fewer still would recognize the reference to GSC09162-00821 Sanduleak, the blue supergiant that went supernova in the Large Magellanic Cloud 167,000 years ago.
 
So, when the next wave of an idea washes over you like the light from a distant sun, know, before you decide to ride that wave like a light-surfer, that it will, like all previous flashes, fade with distance and time. And when you think your own flashes of insight and influence will change the world, realize that even if there’s an initial crowd riding your influence, they will—most of them—look for a new source of wave energy as your light fades. Yes, attenuation is the destiny of both the expanding universe and the world of thought that it contains.
 
 
 
 
 
 

Fly over Phoenix, AZ, and look out the window. Pay attention to the colors below. The highlands around the city, like Camelback Mtn., are dark brown, reddish brown, and, at their bases, a bit green. The flat landscape below, dotted with white, grey, and light brown roofs, is mostly a light brown. You might expect as much in a region that gets only eight inches of precipitation per year. Live in Phoenix, and your annual chance of seeing a rainy day is only one in ten.
 
The green at the bases of the mountains is easily explainable: Water follows gravity’s pull, so what falls on top ends up below and in the erosional grooves cut into the slopes. Plants find refugia from the dry heat. But out there in the suburbs, you will see some other green, vast flat square stretches of it. Sod farms. Big business. Gotta give the owners credit for seizing a sunshiney opportunity. Plants like sun as much as they like water.
 
Problem is, of course, there isn’t much water. So, drawing on regional water supplies is a necessity. That’s good for the grass and the business, but it conflicts with a burgeoning population’s needs for the liquid that supports all life.
 
Grass in the desert! We’re not talking Bromus carinatus (California brome) or Erioneuron pulchellum (fluffgrass), or any other endemic species. No, the sod farms grow hybrid grasses with varying tolerances to arid, semiarid, and humid climates: Midiron, Santa Ana, Tifgreen, and Tifway (variations of Bermuda grass, Cynodon dactylon).
 
Sod farms in Phoenix reveal something about our use of place. We believe we can change any environment into an environment of choice. So, people from humid areas have migrated to semiarid ones and carried their image of “home” with them—and then done what they could to impose on a place that which requires constant artificial support. In other words, we spend energy and resources to alter as we wish, even though what we wish we must maintain with constant attention. 
 
Of course, there’s the other side of the argument, the one that says we do because we can. But non-native grass in a desert is truly a luxury item and superfluous. What drew 1.5 million people to Phoenix? Were they seeking grasslands? Or was it the dry climate with more than 300 days of sunshine each year? Did they pack their lawn mowers when they migrated to a desert? Did they have a desire to buy gasoline to run those machines where, had they not planted sod, such machines would be unnecessary?
 
Now look around. You might live in a humid zone where grasses are unstoppable in their bid to cover the world. You have to deal with them. Otherwise, tall grasses hide snakes and make picnics, yard games, and sports activities very difficult. And otherwise, your HOA or neighborhood compliance officer will fine you for not caring for your property. And otherwise, you will be stigmatized as careless or indolent.
So, the people of Phoenix, who could spare themselves the costs associated with lawn care in a desert actually choose to change a place to add an inconvenience, simply to fulfill an image of what they once had in a different place.
 
We are at once both part of Nature and separate from it. We are at once both part of place and separate from it. What separates us is that we do as we can, regardless of the consequences to ourselves, from small inconveniences like watering and cutting grass, to large inconveniences like redistributing natural resources like water.
 
We’re not the first to change place to our own detriment. About over 4,400 years ago in Mesopotamia, the people of Mashkan-shapir near the Tigris River built a system of canals. Smart move. Right? They irrigated. Grew stuff. Life was good until it wasn’t. Evaporating water in a dry climate led to the chemical deposition of salts in the soil. Worsening soil. Smaller crops. Collapse.
 
Growing grass in Phoenix won’t probably lead to a collapse analogous to that of Mashkan-shapir. But as desirable as it is and as good as it looks in neighborhoods and on sports fields, inedible grass is ultimately an inconvenience that tells us something about how we see ourselves with respect to where we find ourselves. 

Thessaly’s Got Talent. But it was the Singer of singers, Calliope, who won the day over the locals. Unfortunately for the losing singers, the daughters of King Pierus, defeat by a Muse came with a price. They were turned into Magpies. Or, so goes the myth. You don’t mess with the head Muse.
 
You’d think being turned into a colorful “crow” would be all bad news. But it seems that Calliope chose to turn the ladies into birds with intelligence and skills that offset their less than perfect singing voices. Magpies not only use tools, work socially to hunt and protect, and express apparent empathy, but they also recognize themselves in a mirror. So, Pierus’ daughters must have kept their sense of identity.
 
Is that fortunate or unfortunate? Let’s review. The girls lost the singing contest and, as a consequence, their human form. They retained their self-awareness and their ability to socialize for their own and for others’ good.
 
It happens to all of us eventually and to some sooner than to others: In a physical sense we become less—or different—from what we were. We lose something of our previous human appearance. We age. We lose athletic prowess, strength, some muscle tone, and maybe a tooth or two. Our voices change. Through accident or disease we might lose part or all of an organ. We might lose a limb. Although we might try out for Thessaly’s Got Talent, we know we have only a small window of time to win the contest. And even if we make the contest, winning isn’t assured, particularly if the competition includes the best singer in the universe, a Calliope.
 
But if we retain our self-awareness, we are fortunate, even in times of disappointment. Note by comparison those who suffer from mental disorders that rob them of the capacity for self-identification. Yes, even in good health as your voice changes, you might eventually turn into a squawking version of your former self, but if you can still tell that even with the changes it’s you that you see in a mirror, you have an enduring identity that no physical change can alter. 

Ostensible delicacy sometimes hides durability and adaptability. Orchids are the example. They certainly are adaptable with species that live not only in the tropics, but elsewhere. And they appear to be durable. We know their fossil pollen from tens of millions of years ago, and their origins possibly run to 100 million years ago. If that conjectured date for their origin is correct, then orchids survived what the mighty dinosaurs couldn’t: A worldwide mass extinction 65 million years ago. While mammals were diversifying and proliferating after that event, orchids were also, and with more success—if we go by species count. In kinds and varieties these beautiful flowers outnumber mammal species about 4:1.
 
So, orchids are tough in a sense that counts. They can, in spite of their delicate appearance, survive very hazardous circumstances. Not just survive, we should note, but flourish, proliferate, and evolve. Of course, just about any individual mammal can destroy an orchid, so durability here means surviving through the ages, weathering changes to place. Apparently, orchids did a better job as a surviving group than did all of our rather intelligent ancestors, from Australopithicus afarensis through Homo habilis to Neandertals—all delicate individually and as groups.
 
Orchids might even survive the onslaught of destruction by humans. As we chop down tropical rainforests, where about half the more than 20,000 species of orchids grow, the other orchid species live where they can, unconsciously waiting to adapt to new environments or to return to the ones that we abandon. Delicate flowers wait till we, like our ancient ancestors, are gone.
 
Are orchids an analog for two types of humans? There are those who destroy the seemingly delicate and the delicate they have sought to destroy through the ages. In every instance the destruction has been temporary, the destroyers succumb to some extinction event, and the seemingly delicate rise again and proliferate. And, as the orchids outnumber the mammals, the delicate outnumber the destroyers.
 
Of course, there’s no way to get this message to the current and next generation of destroyers. They destroy now and will destroy until they succumb to their own extinction. In their inevitable absence some beautiful, delicate flowers will adapt and endure. 

Every human era is an Age of Style. What people wear, how they wear it, what they think, and how they express. Even body shapes are subject to fashion. Why? Fashions, no matter how fleeting, are patterns, and patterns make us feel secure. If “this” is here, then “that” is there. Those who move among familiar patterns never feel lost. Of course, there are always competing patterns of life, and eras fade one into another, often through an evolution of style, but, yes, sometimes more abruptly after a rejection of an older style. For individuals, the patterns, once established, seem worth protecting, so much so that some take style to be more important than underlying and more enduring human qualities, that is, those qualities that persist.
 
On the run from cradle to grave each of us encounters challenges to who we are and what we stand for. There’s nothing new in noting that. Each of us makes the run uniquely, expressing a style of life that combines individuality and culture. At times we run the straight and true, passing markers of accomplishment, gaining skills by experience and practice, and avoiding or defeating the treacherous who, for whatever conscious or unconscious motives, stand in our way. At the end of the run others who knew us speak of achievements, but in the best of eulogies, mourners speak of personal style: “Yes, he/she did this or that, but we hold dear the WAY he/she approached every challenge and arrived at every goal. His/her style enhanced the considerable substance of that run toward immortality.” Go back to Greek and Roman eulogies, and you will read praises that differ little from those of our time. Substance and Style: They run parallel in lives of the praiseworthy.
 
In the nineteenth century a subtle shift occurred that elevated style a bit above substance. Edmond Rostand seems to have started the trend in 1897 when he wrote Cyrano de Bergerac. The word panache, the last word of the play, had appeared sparingly in print during the 1800s. But after Cyrano uttered it as his last word of the play, panache became more widely used. As evidenced by its appearance in print, panache underwent a seeming exponential increase in frequency of use by the 1950s. From the mid-twentieth century on the western world has been living in the Age of Panache.
 
Cyrano, great swordsman and articulate poet, utters at his death that no one can take away the one thing that defined him, his panache. Yes, he certainly had a flamboyant style and great confidence, but then, he had the skills to justify his panache. 
 
Acquiring skills is a lifelong task that requires hard work and practice. But since 1897 we’ve seen burgeoning unjustifiable panache that elevates style in the absence of accomplishment. We live in an age of pseudo-Cyranos. Have you noticed how many people have self-justified panache without accompanying skills or accomplishments? Or have you noticed how some reality TV stars receive adulation from adoring fans simply because of style?  
The twenty-first century emphasis on style seems, if not greater than, at least equal to that of the French royalty who paraded through the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles in the 17th century. Our mirrors are TV, the Web, and social media. Our highly modern technological mirrors reflect our general and overt emphasis on the Way more than on the What. Is our contemporary world defined by style over substance? Since all eras embrace style, how is ours different?
 
Our instantaneous and worldwide media have elevated style to a level our ancestors could not imagine. Small example from football: A football player runs toward the end zone avoiding would-be tacklers and divots in the field, the as-yet-un-scored touchdown playing in his mind. His brain already shifts to his public celebration, a dance he has choreographed and that will bring added attention to him after he scores. He’s almost at the end zone when he lifts the ball in anticipation of scoring. He loses his grip. The ball squirts from his hands before he crosses the line. It bounces through the end zone. Touch back, not a score. Embarrassment—because the style was more important than the score. Meaningless panache, but typical of our age.
 
We carry footballs rather than swords, so we can’t call ourselves swashbucklers, proving our worth by defending others, as well as ourselves. Cyrano used his sword to defend others and himself from unwarranted attacks. But we duel in other ways, particularly through various media. Seems that like Cyrano we, too, regardless of social or economic status, face the challenges of treachery, bias, and falsehood. These challenges are always a threat to substance, and they are particularly evident in the battles we see in our media.  
 
The place for acknowledgement of one’s accomplishments and style is, as it is for a football player, in the end zone of life. On the way there, like some unassuming halfback dedicated to scoring a goal for his team and fans, we need to carry the ball securely, get the job done by protecting what is ethically worth protecting, and like a modern Cyrano, fend off the players that keep us from scoring. In a lifelong struggle against Falsehood, Prejudice, and Treachery reaching goals with style will be praiseworthy, but only after we enter the end zone.

The Wright Brothers. Edison. Tesla. Amati. We fly. We read at night. We use electric motors everyday. We play violins. Check that. We hear violins, even in some rock music. Anyway, the guys I mentioned all invented something enduring.
 
Nicholas Amati, a luthier in Cremona, survived that region’s plague in 1630. The other luthiers in his family, the people who taught and supported his violin-making, died in that plague. Amati then went on supposedly to influence Antonio Stradivari, the guy whose surviving violins are worth a bunch of money. His 1716 “Messiah Stradivarius” has an estimated worth of at least $20,000,000. But this is not a history lesson on violins. What Amati, and then Stradivari, did was to set in motion exquisite refinements of the Cremona-style instrument, one with four strings. (That fourth string was introduced by Nicholas Amati’s grandfather, Andrea) The improvements in violins were the product of experimentation.
 
The rise of the violin paralleled the rise in a kind of thinking that permeates modern society: Humanism. That’s interesting in many ways, but in one that I find particularly curious. One specific violin from the sixteenth century, supposedly the work of Andrea Amati and bearing the coat of arms of Charles IX of France, is highly decorated and bears the motto “Quo unico propugnaculo stat stabiq religio” (“By this defense alone religion shall stand”). Yet, the experimentation and reliance on the individual that resulted in the fashioning of that violin was, in fact, part of what led to a rise in humanism and the downplay on dogmatism. Your sense of who you are and how you should approach understanding the world are related more to the making of that violin than they are to the motto it bears.
 
As the Renaissance progressed, critical and scientific thinking evolved, much like the violin that began as a three-stringed instrument. The versatility of the instrument increased dramatically, enhanced by changes in width, length, and shape of sound hole, plus the wood craftsmanship of people like the Amatis and Stradivari. All the while the rise of secularism, reliance on human ingenuity, experimentation, and unceasing questioning permeated more segments of society.
 
We hear violins today in soundtracks from movies, at concerts, and in solo performances. We say the instrument is, like other string instruments, pleasing because it uses “strings,” just as our vocal chords use “strings.” The instrument mimics the human voice. We should note that that instrument also gave rise to voice in another sense, the voice of the individual.
 

The windows along my deck reflect images of my property’s many trees. Looking at my house is much like looking at a forest interrupted by cedar ship planking. The appearance is good for people, bad for birds. A number of birds do what birds do. They fly to apparent trees at full speed only to have their flights and their lives abruptly terminated against the glass.
 
In their short lives birds cannot pass on what they learn about crashing into barriers they failed to see. Like the birds, humans also crash into unexpected and unseen barriers. Unlike the birds, many of us attempt to pass on our learning to those we love and those less experienced. Our attempts to pass on warnings about barriers are, unfortunately, only irregularly successful. Both parents and teachers discover the difficulty of passing on lessons about anticipating barriers.
 
The geography of each life is bordered by barriers both self-imposed and imposed. Some of those barriers, like addictive habits, are visible, but we still bang into them. Some are invisible and are an inevitable consequence of limited experience, distraction, or ignorance.  
 
Every place on our planet presents us with some limiting barrier: Ebola in tropical Africa, landslides in hilly areas, floods in valleys, heat events in summer and cold events in winter, droughts, torrential rains, tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tornadoes, hurricanes, tropical storms, lightning, sinkholes, forest and grass fires, rip currents, falling coconuts, mold in the hay, trips down the steps—name a place, and I’ll cite the limiting barrier.
 
It is our finiteness that is the ultimate barrier, and it is one we fly toward from birth, never really knowing when we will encounter the glass. Along the way those more experienced attempt to tell us about the folly of flying toward appearance and reflection without forethought. In our turn, we try to pass along the knowledge we have garnered from less than fatal collisions with idyllic reflections from hard surfaces. But the young birds, the unthinking birds, the unrealistic birds keep crashing headfirst into the glass.
 
This finite life is not a practice for another go-round. Imposing barriers on ourselves adds limitations that can, like the windows of my house that interrupt the flight of birds, halt the flow of our lives or even end them. The key to successful and effective living is to anticipate those barriers, to be smarter than the birds.

In 1984 Jerry O. Anderson, a football player, rescued people from floodwater in Tulsa, OK. Five years later he lost his life saving two boys from drowning in Mufreesboro, TN. During a live broadcast in April, 2016, Steve Campion, an ABC-13 reporter in Houston, TX, helped a man to safety just moments before his car went under floodwater. The seemingly confused man was only ten or twelve feet from a concrete embankment, but he began swimming toward the other side. Campion waded into the water to assist him to safety.* In Baton Rouge, LA, David Phung jumped into floodwater to pull a woman and her dog from a sinking car.** Near Amite City, also in LA, Fire Chief Bruce Cutrer helped arrange for the National Guard to helicopter out a motorist stranded on a fallen tree in the middle of fast-flowing floodwater.*** And in Clarksville, TN, Officer Holden Hudgin carried a child to safety across floodwater.**** Seems that there’s no shortage of people who are willing to save others imperiled by dangerous waters.
 
What are we supposed to do with all those statuettes and medals in cars? They show “Saint” Christopher, the patron and protector of travelers, carrying a child—Jesus, representing the weight of the world—across dangerous water. Christopher was a very big guy and very strong—or so the legend goes. And what are we supposed to do with all those old posters and models of the Solar System? They show Pluto as a planet, a celestial body once categorically equal to giant Jupiter.
 
St. Christopher isn’t an official saint, and Pluto is no longer an official planet. Oh! How times have changed from those simpler days when both saint and planet were part of the heavens. Is it a coincidence that both Christopher and the planet Pluto have been reduced in stature or that the spacecraft Horizon that explored Pluto left Earth in the same month as Christopher’s feast day? Well, of course it is. But imagine if the connections were more than coincidence.
 
As passed through the centuries, Christopher’s story relates that in his wanderings to find the most powerful leader to follow, Christopher supposedly once served a strong warlord/criminal called The Devil. Eventually, Christopher found purpose in helping people cross a river. Interesting. Pluto was the Roman god of the Underworld. And Pluto had an assistant named Charon, the ferryman who took people across the River Styx.  
 
Christopher on Pluto would be the stuff of legend, too. Giant man on a dwarf planet, he would be living where no traveler ever went. The irony of it: A man that dwarfs others of his kind stands astride a planet that dwarfs none. I could imagine him there, his eyes looking to the heavens and spying distant Earth, wondering when we will come. He stands on the bank of a frozen river, waiting to carry someone across the ice. He'll have to wait. You have more local travels to make and dangerous streams to cross. 
 
Unlike little Pluto, your world is big enough to be classified as a planet, and it is warm enough to have turbulent waters difficult to cross. It would be nice to know that there was a sure-footed and strong helper out there, waiting on the bank to carry you across. Alas, with the reassessment of Christopher, you seemingly have to ford dangerous streams on your own most of the time, but you aren’t without help. Miss the time when a protective giant assured you that some powerful overseer cared? Miss knowing with certainty that a St. Christopher will help you in times of trouble? When the floodwaters rise, you might have your own Christopher that saves you at least temporarily from life in the Underworld. He goes by various names in our modern world: Jerry O. Anderson, Steve Campion, David Phung, Bruce Cutrer, and Holden Hudgin. Or, as others appear to be sinking, maybe you will become the next St. Christopher.
 
 
* http://abc13.com/news/video-abc13s-steve-campion-rescues-driver-/1296639/
** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbiPT5VMo8E
*** http://www.wwltv.com/news/local/northshore/man-rescued-from-floodwaters-after-clinging-to-tree-all-night-long/296658551
**** http://clarksvillenow.com/local/clarksville-police-and-fire-conduct-flood-water-rescues/

Not that you’re interested, but did you know that some mussels have made the endangered species list? Two reasons: Mussels don’t go out actively searching for their food, so whatever comes to them comes in water that can be polluted. Mussels’ sessile nature also means that they need the water to circulate, and some stream-dwellers have found their water somewhat stagnant after the building of dams. But again, other than your wanting some mussels in your pasta or seafood soup, why should you be interested?
 
Although animals more mobile than mussels have also made the endangered species list, mussels present an analog for any of us who think we can “sit and wait” to change our lives. We can’t blame mussels for their passive lifestyles, but we can blame ourselves for “sitting and waiting.” Mussels are aquatic and, except for their early life cycle mobility attached to some fish as larvae, completely sessile. They don’t have a choice: They live a life—sometimes as much as a century—of sitting and waiting.
 
When we find ourselves inundated in a stagnant or polluted lifestyle, we can do what mussels can’t: Get out of the “water” and move. We have the muscles that mussels don’t. Not using those muscles means risking endangerment and possibly even extinction. 

“I bruised a bone in my foot, and the doctor gave me a boot to wear. I got the common comments, of course. ‘Soccer practice?’ ‘No,’ I usually respond, ‘an elephant stepped on my foot.’ And I get a smile as I return the smile to the clever commenter.”

“Don’t you just hate it when that happens?”
 
“What?” I ask.
 
“You know, things like broken bones, burned down houses, and war.”
 
“What a combination of images! Broken bones and war? Are we talking playground accidents and nuclear holocaust?” I inquire.
 
“Well, what I meant is that things occur suddenly to change lives. Look at what wars do. Everything changes, even for the survivors.”
 
“I wish I could offer an insight,” I offer, “but I can only say it’s the nature of life to incorporate the unpleasant.”
 
“But when you consider that we’ve worked for 200 millennia on trying to organize things, to make things civilized, isn’t it a shame that we still have all the problems our Paleolithic ancestors had? About the only difference is that you get to wear a plastic boot until the bone heals. Is that what civilization has given us?”
 
“You mean plastic?” I ask.
 
“No, not just plastic. Yeah, we have that and a bunch of other stuff that Paleolithic humans never even dreamed of; in fact, not even the Greek philosophers or Renaissance scientists could have imagined plastic. No, I mean that we have ‘civilization,’ a highly developed scheme of living. We should be beyond all forms of discomfort and disruption. Two hundred thousand years and we still have the same types of problems, and, in reality, we’ve even added some that our ancient ancestors never knew.”
 
“So, are you saying that ‘civilized’ people are really ‘uncivilized’?”
 
“I hadn’t thought of it like that, but yes. There’s too much ‘uncivilization’ in civilization.”
 
“Here’s my take,” I offer. “Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel said, ‘They come on the scene only in uncivilized conditions.’”
 
“Who is the ‘they’?”
 
“Heroes. It’s the heroes that come on the scene in uncivilized conditions. That’s how we know them. They show up intermittently, of course, because there is so much ‘uncivilizaton’ in civilization. But it is ‘uncivilization’ that draws them forth. They can be the inventors of a walking boot for someone with an injured foot, a person who rushes into the burning house, or the one who acts to save war victims. They provide the little glimpses of what I think you want civilization to be. They make a place and a person or persons better for a moment. Civilization pops up in their acts. The scene changes from desperation to at least temporary hope. Civilization and maybe all places, too, exhibit ‘uncivilization’ as a status quo. ‘Uncivilization’ is the proverbial elephant in the room as it was the mammoth in the Paleolithic rock shelter. Maybe the semblance of modern civilization is an artificial background or a mask or covering that hides our ties to the Paleolithic. Heroes emerge when the rudimentary uncivilized circumstances surface. They don’t necessarily restore complete civilized order; many of them have lost their lives in the very act of heroism. Their acts are always specific to time and place. As Hegel says, they arise only in uncivilized conditions. There is a personal question in this, one for all of us: When we encounter ‘uncivilized conditions,’ do we ‘come on the scene’?”
 
“Okay, so what really happened to your foot? Was it a soccer accident?”
 
“No, I already told you. An elephant stepped on it.”