Remember the gist of that Biblical story of the Garden, that “Tree-of-the-Knowledge-of-Good-and-Evil” tale? Essentially, God allows Adam and Eve to eat from all the plants in the garden paradise save one, the tree in the center. Their reaction? Well, they were human, so if you belong to the species, you know what they did because you have probably done something similar—even a small something like going 37 mph in a 35 mph zone or crossing a street mid-block as a jaywalker. If you remember, the serpent says to Eve, “For God knows that in what day soever you shall eat thereof, your eyes shall be opened, and you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” * They do the human thing, of course; they choose to eat the fruit. Hey! It was there for the taking, and the Big Guy didn’t seem to be around, just as the police weren’t around when you exceeded the speed limit or crossed the street as a jaywalker. Their action turned their knowledge of “good” into a memory and evil into a daily occurrence, including your speeding and jaywalking.


Of course, slightly exceeding the speed limit and jaywalking don’t seem to be as significant as defying a Divine Being, but then, they seem less because of that “Original Sin.” If no one gets hurt, what’s exceeding the speed limit by two mph or jaywalking have to do with evil? Don’t we have free will and the intelligence to exercise it? Don’t we, like God, turn daily chaos into order. Look at desks lined up in a classroom, at cups in one cupboard and dishes in another, and at roofs on top and walls on sides. We did that; we established a personal garden by “creating a house” and building a kitchen; we set the rules. Aren’t we already godlike?


Many, if not all, cultures have some sort of creation story that includes an explanation for the origin of evil. And many cultures have axiomatic morals. Take the Chinese, for example. There’s nothing wrong with the practical advice of Confucius or the spiritual advice of the Buddha, nothing wrong with any moral system that advocates peace and harmony, but there’s a brutal lesson in the Bible that might serve every culture. Trying to be “like God” usually doesn’t end well. And that is what the Chinese are learning the hard way from the epidemic they initiated. The virus they altered has cast them out of their comfortable garden. Millions are once again sick, and apparently over a million have died in the latter part of 2022 from the recent outbreak of the disease they “invented” because they believed they were godlike. They just couldn’t resist eating the fruit from that one tree. The virus was there among unknown numbers of other viruses, and they had the ability in the garden labs to experiment on it. They thought no one was looking, apparently, and in their hubris—that’s the essence of the biblical “first sin” by the way—they believed they could do whatever with whatever without personal consequences. Not so, as we know from the pandemic.


Do the Chinese have an analog to that biblical creation story from which they might have learned about hubris? Not sure; I seem to remember something about Pangu dividing yin from yang and being assisted by four dragons, but not an exact parallel to humans being thrown out of paradise. But what if  an analog of that Judeo-Christian story did underlie Chinese culture? Could it have prevented the deaths of millions from an evil let loose in China and spread around the world? Knowing the story of the Garden of Eden certainly hasn’t kept people in the Judeo-Christian tradition from wreaking havoc.    


One can reasonably argue that altering viruses and bacteria to discover mechanisms that undo their potency and mitigate their threat is prudent. Why suffer sickness and death when there’s a path to healing and recovery? Look what we did with smallpox. But the serpent knows our weakness: We want knowledge that makes us godlike and that gives us control over everything, including our “enemies.” Westerners are right to suspect that China’s gain-of-function research was, at least in part, sanctioned by the country’s military (and possibly supported indirectly or directly by American taxpayers through an NIH grant). That the Chinese were building a biological weapon at Wuhan is not beyond the range of reasonable conjectures. Why make a somewhat deadly virus even deadlier? Again, it’s one thing to discover a cure; it’s another to make a new disease. It’s one thing to live in the Garden; it’s another to go after the one fruit, as in Genesis, “So in that day soever you shall eat of it, you shall die the death.” Yeah, the Chinese speed and jaywalk just as you do—when no one is looking.


Like the Germans of World War I who learned that shifting winds can envelope them in their own poisonous gas, the Chinese have seen their weapon turn on them—if, as I say, it’s reasonable to suspect they were manipulating a coronavirus for military purposes. That lesson Adam and Eve had to learn the hard way the Chinese are now learning the hard way, and, who knows, like the consequence of the first couple’s “sin,” the consequences of the Chinese experimentation will follow the ensuing generations of humans. There appears to be a limit to our control over the garden into which we were born—but did not create. You might be able to rearrange your kitchen dish ware, but you can’t like some topologist turn your cups into Klein bottles. There are limits imposed by the nature of the world, or should I say, by the laws of nature. Reshaping a hardened ceramic cup will destroy the cup.


There were bugs and critters and viruses and bacteria on the planet before we came along with the hubris to say, “Let’s recreate the world in our image.” In many instances we’ve done no harm, the development of a smallpox vaccine is an example; polio, too. But the story of the Garden of Eden and that first sin of hubris stays with us. We retell it in our daily lives. It’s the same lesson of the Garden that underlies the plot of Jurassic Park. If you saw the film, you might recall the character played by Jeff Goldblum noting that “nature will find a way.” A coronavirus will, like those fictional recreated dinosaurs, find a way to survive and wreak havoc on humanity. That movie and the biblical story foreshadow exactly what the Chinese did in their hubris. I can picture a lab technician in Wuhan: “I can do this because no one—that is all those people outside my special garden—knows what I am doing. It’s just a little virus, anyway. Where’s the harm?” 


Unfortunately, we lack the knowledge to become omniscient and omnipotent. And we don’t create as much as we recreate. Try as we might, we just can’t account for accidents and malicious and pathological perpetrators. Did that altered virus escape by mistake or by human intention? Was there a serpent? An Eve? We might never know, but we do know that the Chinese and the rest of us have eaten the fruit of that forbidden tree, and as a result millions came to know death. For all of us the Garden isn’t as pleasant a place as it was just a few years ago. And like all the subsequent descendants of the story’s first parents, those of us who have stubbed a toe, broken a bone, or suffered an illness, can’t know what we lost. Into the unknown future, humans will think COVID-19 is as common as any cold and that it has been a human condition from the start.
But no. Just a few years ago that apple hung on the tree unpicked. Paradise was Paradise.
Of course, prior to the pandemic, we had our Garden of Weeds running back all the generations to the first “Cain and Abel.” Poisonous gas used in WWI and more recently in Japan and Syria, deadly viruses like smallpox kept “on hand” in bioweapons labs or in CDC freezers, and the ultimate weapons of mass destruction in nuclear arsenals, are the products of our pride, just as the story of Adam and Eve is a story of pride: They wanted to be “like God.” Yes, there are degrees of defiance, but all defiance is pride; from your jaywalking or speeding to the manufacture and use of nuclear weapons, all of us tell the tale of proud defiance: We can do whatever we want to do with whatever we choose. And, as history demonstrates, we’ll do it even if it means harming ourselves or future generations. The garden left to us by Adam and Eve is one filled with weeds.


Strange how our species responds to “having everything.” The paradises we live in are never enough. We seem to prefer the weeds outside a garden to the fruits inside it when just one fruit is forbidden. We prefer exile from Paradise to a life inside it. As the twenty-first century reveals, no lesson from the past seems to matter. We already know what pandemics can do, what poisonous gas can do, or what nuclear weapons can do; yet, we keep the bacteria and viruses, the sarin and mustard gas, and the bombs and their delivery systems in arsenals under the control of people out of control. In our hubris, we decide our fate.


It really doesn’t matter that we already have knowledge of good and evil. It really doesn’t matter that we already know the consequences of trying to be godlike. We already know the tale long told of a simple plucking and eating a fruit. We continuously ask, “What harm could a couple of extra miles per hour beyond the speed limit or a little jaywalking do when no one is looking?” And we ask, "If we can slightly change a virus, not in the pursuit of a vaccine, but rather in pursuit of a dubious or unethical or dangerous goal, why can't we do it? ** It's just a tiny spike or two on the surface of something so small we have to use an electron microscope to see it. If we can jaywalk with impunity when no one is looking..."



*Translations vary, of course. This is, with the exception of a couple of words I changed, the Douay version.

**Is this another example? https://apnews.com/article/science-health-biology-organ-transplants-minneapolis-1522fa40ec69e565d8c1c90e7c85deda 

If you aren’t Scrooge, maybe you should consider emulating him in at least one aspect of your life.


Is it fitting that humbug entered the language as a student expression during the beginning of the Industrial Age? Traced to the 1750s, the word came to mean “deceiver,” the noun, and “deceive by false pretext,” the transitive verb.


Eventually, according to Online Etymology Dictionary, by 1825, humbug evolved to mean “sham,” “imposition,” “hollowness,” and “spirit of deception.” The association with “spirit” aligns with the famous Charles Dickens’ story of Scrooge in which the author employs three spirits to convert the irascible old Ebeneezer into a happy proponent of Christmastime charity and joy. * Until his emotional conversion, Scrooge, you’ll recall, was fond of dismissing Christmas with “Bah! Humbug!” until those spirits showed him Christmas past, present, and future. With regard to Christmas future, Scrooge asks at his untended gravestone whether or not his future is predestined or changeable. Happily, he discovers that his future is not predetermined on the basis of his past and that by changing his present course, he can shape his future.      


That the word humbug originated at the beginning of the Industrial and Technological Age does seem fitting. Advances in both industry and technology generated a class of wealth separate from aristocratic primogeniture and entitled inheritance, making those formerly relegated to servitude into a new class of keep-up-with-the-Joneses rich. A new form of entitlement entered the West with producers requiring merchants requiring bankers. It was this change in society that led to a new form of corrupt politician, one who could glom onto the wealth of others either through graft or through the power to distribute taxes. At the same time, the rise of widespread media in the form first of news sheets, then papers, radio, TV, and ultimately the Web, gave those in power means of controlling the narrative of the times.


In the twenty-first century, we stand at the culmination of efforts to control narratives and to spread humbuggery wide and far. Deceit is no longer localized. It can propagandize a nation or a continent. It can propagandize the world. We live in a world of scams and shams too numerous to mention. Some alter the lives of individuals. Others alter the lives of entire populations. The narrative of twentieth and twenty-first century dictators, for example, has led to the impoverishment, enslavement, and deaths of millions and to inordinate wealth for the elite few. And the humbuggery spread ironically through the quashing of personal skepticism. Whereas the skeptic can look at the narrative of the day and proclaim, “Bah, Humbug,” the manipulated masses have lost their inner Scrooges to a willful compliance to or acquiescence to the mainstream narrative.


Losing one’s inner Scrooge makes a potentially or formerly free person into a slave to the propagandists. Knowing this, self-aggrandizing politicians more intent on acquiring and keeping power and wealth than on serving constituents have aligned themselves with a compliant Press. Supported by a media that has lost its inner Scrooge, deceivers affect more people today than ever before, spreading deceptions with the aid of advanced technology, including AI’s algorithms. And in support, narrow-thinking pundits obsessed with an agenda they believe to be axiomatically true aid the dissemination of untruths. Want to know why Russian media and evenMoscow Patriarch supported Putin’s invasion of Ukraine over Nazis? Want to go back to ask how Hitler convinced an entire nation that Jews were the cause of their woes? Want to look at the African-American population in the United States ignoring the historical facts of their slavery, oppression, and voting suppression by southern Democrats while favoring those same Democrats as better than the evil Republicans who supported their emancipation and civil rights? In each instance—and many more—the people lost their inner Scrooges. They lost their skepticism. They read or watched the news without once uttering, “Bah! Humbug”—unless it was to question the questioners, that is, those skeptical of the mainstream narrative. And all the while the masses relinquished their sense of doubt, those in control spread actual humbug, actual deceit with their help.


The recently revealed American government insider deception about “Russian collusion” with regard first to the Trump campaign of 2016 and then with regard to the Hunter Biden laptop, plus a plethora of social media feeds that mainstream editors and pundits perpetrated to shroud the nation with deception that favors one party over another, really make recent years a true Age of Humbug. Yet, the phenomenon of humbug as we know it today is as old as the word humbug’s first use in what has become ever more insidious propaganda. Public manipulation through widespread deceit goes back at least to the eighteenth century and the proliferation of newspapers. Whereas a former ecclesiastical and secular aristocracy simply set up inviolable rules for a largely rural or feudal society, a new self-proclaimed aristocracy of self-proclaimed intellectual and wealthy influencers gained political power and control of information. Nevetheless, today’s culmination of deception shouldn’t surprise anyone. We’ve been on a multi-century journey to this point, starting with the use of the word humbug by those university students almost three centuries ago. **


The modern industrial-technological complex that gave rise to modern humbuggery seems to have more than just a coincidental synchronicity with the proliferation of deceit  that they so adroitly exploit. Cannabis? Tobacco? Hexachlorophene? Red dye number whatever? Above ground nuclear testing? Bisphenol A (BPA)? Green tech in windmills that ceaselessly turn and a sun that always shines? From products to processing, individuals need to question and to doubt. You need to doubt.   


Caught in the networks of deception, the propagandized are either unaware of or do not care about the reality of collusion among politicians, cushioned bureaucrats, and media.  Those who have relinquished their inner Scrooge to the propagandists are living lives of self deception or fear. The latter rises from the threat of ostracism or defamation because today’s humbuggers have empowered themselves to silence any who might call their deceptions “humbug.” Compliance and exile seem to be the only choices modern westerners have. Think that is humbug on my part? Try countering the global warming mob with data that conflicts with models, with logic that conflicts with beliefs, such as the world will end in 12 years, *** or with complaints about 50,000 “experts” flying off to conferences just to agree that “something has to be done.


Those who have paid attention to recent deceptions by government officials, particularly by those in the Intel agencies and FBI, have a healthy Bah-Humbuggery skepticism about any pronouncement by compliant media and government officials bent on keeping their power through deceit in the daily narrative. Independent and skeptical Scrooges refuse to accept those self-serving agendas based on deceit. But there is a consequence to the temerity of showing one’s inner Scrooge: Relentless ad hominem attacks by total strangers and a vindictive Press. The inner Scrooge has to overcome an innate pressure to bond to likeminded people, a pressure that derives from our gregarious nature.


Yet, being skeptical is as much an inborn defense mechanism as gregariousness is a comfort mechanism. When politicians pronounce that the “border is closed” as hundreds of thousands race across it, when politicians claim that after a rise in gas prices, a slight fall “puts money back in the pockets of consumers” (though they still have to pay prices higher than those of preceding years), when an 8% inflation that drops to 7.8% is seen as economic growth for the middle class, and when they claim “inclusiveness” is proper while it comes from exclusion of unfavored subcultures and their agendas slowly become law, yes, when all this humbug and other humbugs are broadcast as wonderful news over which we commoners should be happy, just pointing out the humbuggery can get one ostracized by the politically powerful and condescending rich elite. The skeptic who counters the propagandist always takes a risk. The person with a different story to tell finds few who will disseminate that story. Skepticism breeds loneliness, the bane of a gregarious species.   


Oh! That Scrooge’s ghosts could visit all the hypocrites of our time! Oh! If Jacob Marley could just drag his chains once across the floor of the newsroom or the cathedral of the Patriarch of Moscow. If those spirits were to visit, we might find that our future isn’t predestined by propagandists, and that we are truly free to think and do as we wish. And Oh! We don’t have to be Scroogian misanthropes to say, “Bah! Humbug.” **** We just have to question, to doubt, and to recognize humbug when we see it. On the contrary, recognizing what is humbug will do more to ensure a future peopled by independent thinkers.




*1843. A Christmas Carol in Prose: Being a Ghost-story of Christmas. If you haven’t read it, you have probably seen it in a theater or on TV in one or more of its many reiterations. The main character’s name has become part of the English language, generally indicating one with a misanthropic and greedy personality.


**In my own school days, my classmates and I used to use bunk as our substitute for humbug. Bunk derives from Buncombe County, NC, and a meaningless but prolonged congressional speech by its representative Felix Walker who wanted his constituents to believe he was “on the job” simply because he talked to the House. "I shall not be speaking to the House," he confessed, "but to Buncombe." Since 1841, bunk has evolved to mean “nonsense,” and, by extension, “humbug.” As a high school student, I was unaware of the etymology, but I did use it when I was skeptical: “That’s a bunch of bunk.”


***“Millennials, and Gen z, and all these folks that come after us, are looking up and we’re like ‘the world will end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change, and your biggest issue is how are we gonna pay for it?'” @AOC #MLKNow #MLK2019 pic.twitter.com/fbUxr2C0tJ


****Skepticism isn’t misanthropy, though individual skeptics, like the fictional Scrooge, can be misanthropic.

“No Mose; no Mose,” chant those opposed to the expensive system to prevent flooding in Venice, Italy. But all the alternatives are also costly, and the muddy island on which Venice lies seems to need Mose, the system of barriers that rise to protect Venice from high water. Raising the barriers is a costly procedure, maybe something on the order of 300,000 Euros for each use. And the overall cost of the system, scheduled to completed in 2023, will be twice the original estimated costs. Saving Venice? Not my worry, however. I live a thousand feet above sea level in western Pennsylvania on sedimentary rock that underlies my house in layers miles deep; no chance of slowly sinking here though occasional subsidence from old mine collapses is a possibility. But the local river lies 300 feet lower than my house. Flooding? No chance on my hilltop. Venice, by contrast…


No place on the planet is free from natural and manmade * dangers. New Madrid, Missouri? Yep. Sits above an earthquake zone that could shake the continent’s interior. San Francisco? We all know about California’s many faults and their threats. Storms in the Midwest? Nor’easters along the eastern seaboard? Volcanic eruptions in Central America and along Cascades in the West, hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico? Holy Cow! This is generally a very risky planet on which to live, and it seems that some of us have sought out the most dangerous environments as places to live or had the misfortune to be born in the midst of manmade and natural risk—not me, of course, because I live in quiet western Pennsylvania where earthquakes are rare and mild when they occur and storms are rarely life-threatening—have sought out the most dangerous environments as places to live. Venice, Italy? Muddy island on which people over centuries have built their lives only to find that mud compresses under weight. The city sinks even in the absence of sea level changes. The same thing happens in every muddy delta, including the Mississippi Delta and that expansive sea-level land of millions along the Ganges-Brahmaputra distributary streams. Did I mention that Bangladesh is also subject to Indian Ocean cyclones (hurricanes, typhoons), some of which have killed tens to hundreds of thousands of delta residents.


A fifty-car accident on the Ohio Turnpike during the December, 2022, winter storm resulted in many injuries and at least one death as of this writing. The Ohio Turnpike Commission, like the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission, had put out advisories against travel during the snow-and-ice event. Nevertheless, people traveled, took the risk, and wrecked. That’s what our species does. We build on a muddy island during an interglacial epoch when sea level rises; we build along rivers that flood and shorelines that undergo storm surges; we build in earthquake zones and tornado alleys. That’s who we are. And in the aftermath of every destructive event, we rebuild as though the same event could not occur.


Flooding of communities along the Monongahela River in western Pennsylvania isn’t a yearly occurrence, but the parking area called the Mon Wharf in Pittsburgh does get inundated rather frequently. And big floods do occur along the length of the river, washing over small towns and causing damage to the many houses on the Mon’s banks. But over the years, people have cleaned up the muds, replaced the carpets, couches, TVs, and dryers, and resettled in “the old homesteads.” That’s who we are. Risk be damned. And if it doesn’t come to us as in a river’s flooding, we go to it, skydiving, ice- and rock-climbing, white water rafting, skiing on treacherous slopes, swimming among sharks, and walking through territories where bears and mountain lions roam.


We build on unstable ground. If not on the muds of Venice, then on slopes. In fact, that house—my house—I mentioned above sits more than a hundred feet a stream that runs through the woods on my property. If one lives on a hill, one pretty much assures living near some slope, not necessarily a Tepui’s cliff, but certainly all hills imply valleys and lowlands. That river not far from my house goes by a name given by indigenous denizens. Monongahela is loosely translated as “River of Falling-in (or Sliding-in) Banks.” Landslides are common, as weak shales that underlie tough sandstones and limestones erode away. So, yes, I have a great setting in overlooking a forest and a winding stream populated by deer, groundhogs, turtles, rabbits, and numerous species of birds, but I have like those I fault for shortsightedness, built a house in an area with a specific risk—two, if one counts potential subsidence; three if one counts winter and spring storms, four if one counts 80-foot trees potentially falling on my house. Whoa! What am I doing here? Oh! That’s right. I live on Earth, where risk is endemic.


What’s a Venetian to do? What’s a Pennsylvanian to do? What’s anyone to do? Venice is sinking and will continue to sink as sea level continues its interglacial rise. Those who choose to continue their lives on that island or on muddy deltas, have little choice other than to leave or to spend money on maintenance, or on minimizing the risks. I suppose one can say that at the end of life each person can say, “Well, up until this point, I’ve been able to minimize risk.” The winners in life have minimized risk effectively, but it eventually overwhelms each of us in our ultimate demise, for just living a long life increases the risk of death. Not many 120-year-olds running around, are there?


But minimizing risk is the only way to live a long life on a risky planet. That so many humans have lost their lives in “foolish” risks is astounding to me. Yet, I am, if I examine my life, in some ways just as foolish. The lure of risk is powerful. That’s the reason for roller coasters and other theme park rides, isn’t it?


People will continue their efforts to save Venice until the muds eventually swallow the city. The costs will get increasingly more prohibitive, but generations from now, a new group of Venetians will discuss further expensive measures to save their homes and businesses. They will attempt to the very subsiding end to mitigate the risk they chose rather than abandon the city. People will continue to build along rivers that flood. And my descendants, post my departure to a realm of no risks, might be asking whether or not they should unload the cedar house on the hill before a landslide or falling tree claims it.


Remember that this is not your practice life. Anticipate what you can, and adapt when anticipation fails you. And when adaptation fails, get out, run away, hide, or do whatever it takes to minimize the consequences of risk. Venice? Great tourist spot, but I wouldn’t want to live there.      






*Manmade. Interesting choice of word, Donald, especially in the context of the U. S. Marines eliminating all use of “Sir,” and “Ma’am,” in a politically correct change that will no doubt help our military break things and kill people better than our enemies—who, unless I’m wrong don’t care about political correctness when breaking things and killing people are on their agendas. But, hey, this is the twenty-first century and almost, figuratively speaking, 1984. Poor Neil Armstrong. Had he made that first-ever trip to the moon today, he would have been castigated by the PC crowd for not saying, “That’s one small step for a person, one giant leap for persons regardless of their choice of gender—or nowadays, species.” As long as truly dangerous risks don’t threaten, the PC crowd will make the choice of words the risk. But I can’t imagine a U. S. Marine in the heat of battle thinking, “Now, what’s the politically correct way to address my captain? I don’t want to offend….” What’s that expression we used to say as kids? “Sticks and stones might break my bones, but words can never hurt me.” Instead of shooting bullets, marines should shout “sirs,” and “ma’ams” at the enemy; certainly, the enemy will be doing that to a politically correct military force.

In A. E. Housman’s poem “To an Athlete Dying Young,” the fifth stanza ends with the line “And the name died before the man.” Housman speaks of those many athletes whose feats came and went and whose names disappeared in the dust of time. Not so with former Pittsburgh Steeler Franco Harris, who made arguably the most memorable play in football, a play known for a half century as “The Immaculate Reception” after the conception of Mary.


Franco’s name, frozen in acrylic beneath his bust in the football hall of fame, has outlasted the man; his deeds on the turf carried him to Canton and memorialization. And few football fans, even younger fans, can say they never saw a rerun of that famous catch. At the end of this week of Franco's death, his team, the Steelers removed by two generations of players, and their opponents, the Raiders, intend to play an anniversary game honoring that catch. Franco, needless to say, but voiced by many anyway, will not be there.


At his funeral, we will see an enactment of Housman’s line in the second stanza, “Today, the road all runners come,/Shoulder-high we bring you home.” Carried on the shoulders of teammates either actually or figuratively those many years ago at the end of a game he won in spectacular fashion, he will once again be carried “home.” And the town itself will become “a stiller town” now that he has reached the ultimate end zone.


Franco, in my personal experience, always seemed to care about people. When my daughter represented her parochial elementary school because she won the Readathon, Franco, who attended the award ceremony for all the Readathon winners, patiently posed with each child as parents, awed by him and proud of their children, snapped photos. Meeting him by chance in her adult life, she found him to be patient and friendly, as though nothing else was important save that chance meeting. My younger son had a similar experience after Franco came to our hometown for a football awards dinner. Recently, that same son met Franco at an event to which they both were invited, with Franco once again acting as though nothing was more important than that moment in time and space.


In posing over the years for those many pictures with fans and their children, Franco did in each encounter what so many have done over the past half century, stopped time by hitting “pause” on the video to see that catch. Anyone who has ever landed at the Pittsburgh airport has seen alongside a statue of George Washington and Nelly Bly the moment of the catch captured in the figure of Franco Harris with outstretched arms scooping up the ball before it hit the turf. Good company for Franco, George and Nelly. Franco, like the other two, has come to symbolize the area that harks back to Fort Duquesne/Fort Pitt, Fort Necessity, Braddock’s grave, and the confluence of rivers. Franco personifies the area now as much as the country’s founding father and a woman who was as much as surveyor of the human landscape as Washington was a geographical surveyor.


I find it interesting that Mary has become associated with football. At the end of close games, quarterbacks launch “Hail Mary” passes to the end zones in hopes of a miraculous catch, each successful one becoming an analog of Franco’s Immaculate Reception. But few of those miraculous catches carry their meaning beyond the fandom of a particular team. Franco’s catch seems to transcend all; it belongs to city, region, era, and league. It was the birth of a championship team. The Christmas Eve memorial game gives evidence of that. I don’t recall the league memorializing a single historical play with a special televised game. And that it comes on Christmas Eve…


Think about it for a moment. Mary, whose conception was deemed immaculate gave birth in a humble setting in what has become as enduring an event as humans have recorded in art, architecture, and culture. That moment is memorialized every year throughout the world. The celebration of that “miraculous” catch is primarily an American matter, but even international visitors who land at the airport can’t help but notice the statue of Franco.


Franco, the great teams he had in support, and that catch have become indicative of American sports legend. But I prefer to remember him as a public figure with genuine patience in a fast-paced world. Yes, the statue and Hall of Fame bust memorialize him; the repeated showing of that catch does so, also. And the fiftieth anniversary game will capture the memory for a new generation of fans and athletes as older fans watch in nostalgia. But I prefer to remember Franco as one posing for a picture with a little girl, speaking to young football players at a banquet in a small town, and stopping to talk during chance meetings with my children in their adulthood as though no other matters weighed on his schedule. When Franco was with people, he was truly with them, attentive and kind, patient always with fans who associated their lives with his team, that catch, and the subsequent years of football dominance.


And while it’s inevitable that Franco’s catch and life will probably not endure as long as Mary’s immaculate birth and her eventual delivering a baby in a stable, both his catch and life will last as long as people play American football, go to Canton’s Hall of Fame, or pass though Pittsburgh’s airport. To have a moment in one’s life depicted in a statue placed next to George Washington’s statue reveals the honor afforded to Franco by the people of Pittsburgh. Would that any one of us could be so honored for a momentary accomplishment and an excellent career, or for a life marked by patience for others.


The most appropriate memorial to Franco is for each of us to freeze the moment of every encounter, to be with the person next to us as though there is nothing more important or pressing. Make every encounter a Franco encounter.

Mr. S. and Mr. H. talk.


Mr. S.: The thought occurred to me that context is everything.


Mr. H.: Sure, especially if you consider that the Universe is the context. Then, yes, context is everything. It’s all there is. Did you ever consider the corollary that everything is context?


Mr. S.: But I was thinking smaller than that. I know the Universe is the overriding context—and don’t even bring up that there might be other universes where the context is different; I was thinking more historically. Slavery in America, for example, existed in the context of a history of slavery, from ancient to modern times, or, in the case of America, until the Emancipation Proclamation abolished the practice. Of course, slavery still exists though many don’t seem to acknowledge it. In that historical context, however, I suppose most people who were born in the American South saw slavery as the “natural order of things,” maybe as a hierarchy of life they tied to their interpretation of the Bible. Slavery in America began in an era when many European Christians believed that both the distance from the mythical Garden of Eden and descent from Noah’s son Ham distinguished “humans” from “savages.”
    Noah cursed Ham’s son Canaan. Hold on a minute…Let me look…yes, here it is in Genesis chapter 9: “Cursed be Canaan! The lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers.” At the time of the voyage of the Beagle in the 1830s, that passage had come to mean racial differences determined a hierarchical human totem pole. Ham’s offspring were thought to be darker skinned and to live farther from that Garden of Eden.


Mr. H.: Sorry. Catch me up on that. It’s been a long time since I heard the story of Ham.


Mr. S.: Well, a good example of the belief lies in the story of Robert FitzRoy, captain of the HMS Beagle, the ship famous for carrying Charles Darwin around the world. FitzRoy held that concept of “inferior humans” before, during, and even after the famous voyage. For the bright, but fundamentalist captain, Noah’s outcast son spawned generations of savages, including the denizens of Tierra del Fuego, four of whom FitzRoy tried to “christianize” by taking them to England, dressing them in British clothes, and sending them to school. The proof of their innate savagery lay for FitzRoy when one of them, Jemmy Button as he was called, returned to his native land, where he immediately went back to his “primitive ways,” shunning the education and the fashion of the British. That attitude of condescension based on the context of Ham’s descendants was pervasive among 17th-, 18th-, and 19th-century Europeans. It certainly played a role in FitzRoy’s beliefs and actions.
    
Mr. H.: So, you are saying the context of both religion and culture was a driver of enslavement.


Mr. S.: Yes, but I really wanted to make a different point. I want to stress the significance of the context in which millions of humans lost their personal freedom. And I could point out other contexts that drove people to believe and act as they have.


Mr. H.: Makes some sense. Let me guess. There’s a lesson in all this.


Mr. S.: It’s not a difficult lesson to see. Context is everything. If I had been born in the American South in the early nineteenth century, I would probably have followed the belief of the day. Oh! I know. You want to tell me that anyone who was born then and there had a choice. But I would counter with today’s examples of gang members reared in inner cities without father figures, educated—or rather kept in ignorance—by failing public schools in economically depressed neighborhoods, and taught that they are victims. Sure, some of them break free from that context, but most don’t; thus, the many crimes and murders that disproportionately plague that inner city culture. It would be prideful of me to claim that I would have been the exception, the one who could break free from the context of southern culture in the era of slavery. And yes, I know that there were southerners who funneled people to freedom through the Underground Railroad. I just don’t know, given the context of the twenty-first century that I would have been one given the context of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the South. Can I truly understand a context when I am inside it? Can I truly understand it when it is part of who I am? 


Mr. H.: You have me thinking. I guess I could break down my own life into various contexts. I see that some people live almost exclusively in the context of political ideologies; some, in the context of religious beliefs; and others, in the context of some a like climate change or on rights based on identity. And I can’t go without mentioning the contexts of family, job, and health. I mean, look what some people do in the context of a chronic or terminal illness.


Mr. S.: I suppose you missed all those contexts associated with suicide, murder, and even war.


Mr. H.: I did, thanks. Plus, I failed to mention that contexts can be external or internal. Take all those riots in Minneapolis, Seattle, St. Louis, D.C., and…just take all those riots. People rioting in one place because of something or someone in another place—externally driven by the context of an event or a statement and internally driven by some need to loot and destroy. Look at what just happened in Iran, where women acted in the context of the “morality police” killing Masha Amini. Look at Russians leaving their country en masse because of Putin’s ill-advised war in Ukraine. There’s one, by the way! Look what Sweden and Finland did in response to the context of that invasion.


Mr. S.: Hmmnnn. Now that I think of it, telling children to see their lives in the framework of contexts might be a good move if they can be convinced that they are not victims of context. No doubt many teen suicides result from a belief that context is Everything; yet, the contexts of so many teen suicides are probably as limited in scope as mean girls shunning or shaming, bullies harassing, or a family member’s leaving or dying.


Mr. H.: Each of us could benefit every moment we understand the context of our actions.


Mr. S.: Where have you been? Isn’t that what mindfulness is all about, knowing the context of one’s thoughts and actions?


Mr. H.: I guess so. Mindfulness is context awareness now that I come to think of it. I’m going home to think about the contexts of my life.


Mr. S.: You’re welcome.

Desperation is dangerous. It limits the search for solutions. The desperate take ill-advised chances. You can see desperation’s effects in children abandoned at borders during the current Great Migration that historians generations from now will be able to assess. You can see its effects in the United States as millions surge toward Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. You can see its effects in Georgia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and even South Korea, where Russians have fled to avoid conscription into Putin’s increasingly more desperate battle that initially drove millions of desperate Ukrainians to migrate. You can see it in the diaspora of Venezuela, Syria, and Northern Africa. You can see it in Iran and in China, where oppressive governments impose the most restrictive laws. Just about everywhere you look, you can see desperation and its effects.


Individuals have long painted themselves into corners from which they see no hope for extrication. Nowadays, whole populations multiply what individuals have done: Take ill-advised chances. You can hear the desperation of Russian soldiers in intercepted phone calls to their loved ones at home; you can see how desperation has driven Russian soldiers to revolt and risk summary execution; you can hear it in the voices of Russian pundits that keep broaching the subject of nuclear war, the most ill-advised of all desperate acts humans have ever contemplated. Desperate times, indeed!


It’s now a world fraught with desperation, but it might be no more so than in centuries prior to the pandemic, World War I, and World War II. There have always been wars, have always been people conscripted into military engagements that held no personal value for them, and there have always been evil leaders running bad governments that suppressed their own people as all could witness even in the “free world” during the pandemic and as a constant in socialist and communist countries since their inception.


Desperation has long been a personal and social malady. Prior to its widespread proliferation through media, desperation spread by word of mouth. Today, it spreads its shadow overnight as social and mainstream media convince more people that they are desperate, that they have either backed themselves into an inextricable corner or been backed into that corner by some group or movement. Even governments enhance desperation’s spread. Take Putin’s gathering a soccer stadium full of Russians to announce in a televised speech Russia’s “special operation” to protect itself from supposed Nazis in Ukraine and from evil NATO members that seek to destroy the “motherland.” The cheering crowd in that stadium did not seem to recognize that they were backing themselves into a corner of desperation until months after the event, when body bags began showing up in villages and young men, conscripted to become cannon fodder, began calling home from the Front. Now, almost a year after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the world hears desperate Russian spokesmen talking about a greater likelihood of “going nuclear.”


Commonsense advises us to plan every paint job. Commonsense tells us to anticipate a way out before we paint a floor. And commonsense reveals that how we begin a project determines how we end it.*


Every family and every teacher who has encountered desperate people doing desperate acts should be motivated to include one very important lesson in every child’s curriculum: How to paint a floor from wall to door.




*Those who vote into power people who favor socialist and Marxist governments fail to plan their “paint jobs.” One need only look at the desperation of those who allowed socialist and communist governments to dictate how to paint their “floors.” One need only look at the historical migrations from “rooms” painted from door to corner.


            From Inside Out


    I painted the floor from outside in,
    Not knowing how I should begin.
    And now I find myself quite trapped
    Because my future was not mapped.
    If there’s a lesson all should know
    As they live and as they grow,
    It’s that for all the downcast mourners
    The world comprises many corners,
    And none provide an easy respite,
    They make, instead, the cornered desperate.
    “If I were you,” the wiseman said,
    “It’s best when people plan ahead
    “And paint the room from inside out,
    “Escape is then beyond a doubt.”

It seems to me that today’s Administration operates on reasons that lack underlying Reason. An example lies in the US government’s southern border policy—or lack thereof—where so many hundreds of thousands have crossed into the country illegally that to even speak of a “border” is an engagement in myth. Did I say hundreds of thousands? I mean over a couple million with the projection of millions more over the course of the next two years. Maybe the Administration has reasons for eliminating the most basic geographical description of a country: A political entity with geographical boundaries that separate it from either other countries or unclaimed wilderness. This, emphatically THIS, is where a country ends, and all within THIS boundary IS the land owned by the body politic. For the Biden Administration, in contrast, there is no distinction between “within” and “without” the nonexistent border. The “body politic” includes anyone who wants to be included, to the exclusion of the rules laid down by the previously defined body politic.


If one asked the current American Administration for the logic behind the open border, he would be disturbed by the lack of an answer. The head of DHS, questioned by congressmen, simply says, “The border is secure.” Of course, anyone with eyes can see the videos of caravans of mostly Central and South Americans—some of which contain identified terrorists— and anyone who lives in the many border towns and on ranches in Texas knows the reality of the uncontrolled immigrant invasion. In a purely empirical way, “reasonable” people know that the border is not—and this is irrefutable by the numbers—secure. Whatever the Administration’s reasons might be for refusing to uphold the laws of the land, the historically demonstrable will of the body politic, those reasons lack any semblance of Pure Reason. Or maybe not. Maybe the Administration operates on some a priori, or some axiomatic, thinking in which their assumptions exist in a world or on a level of Pure Reason that many Americans are just too incapable of understanding. Maybe the Administration operates in the realm of an inductive end product, some foreknown result upon which one can say, "See, we told told you we were right all along." It would be the same as completing a featureless puzzle and finding out afterward that, "Yes, we got all the pieces together properly. And, yes, you didn't know it, but we had our reasons for putting the pieces together because we knew beforehand the ultimate result."

But, of course, if you ask what the unfinished puzzle will look like, you won't get an answer. 

All of us have “reasons” for doing what we do and believing as we do. In many instances, the reasons fail the test of more encompassing Reason. That is, what we believe to be reasonable does not attain any unity with what is real and irrefutable. I might dream that I own a mansion, but upon waking, find that I live in a cave, and any attempt in my waking hours to unify the cave and the mansion fails utterly. I cannot make reality from that which is not real. I cannot say an insecure border is secure and simply will it to be so. Reasons can defy Reason. Dreams can be mistaken for reality. Caves can be mistaken for mansions. But when unrealities replace realities in the mind, then no judgment on what is real is valid. 


So, in circling back to the current Administration’s “reasons” for an insecure border, any reasonable person should ask whether Biden, Harris, and the Cabinet, plus, seemingly all the Democratic senators and all but one of the Democratic congressmen, simply believe that what they say is manifested in what is real. Do they operate on a priori knowledge? Some ultimate and irrefutable Reason that underlies their reasons? Do they believe they have an axiom on which all their border policies stand just as geometric reasoning and proof rely on the fundamental axioms?


And if they cannot define their reasons in the context of irrefutable Reason, do the members of the Biden Administration and all their compliant supporters—some eighty million of them if we consider their voting supporters—require empirical evidence that the border is not secure. Do they need more fentanyl deaths than the tens of thousands already accumulated as tragic consequences of an unsecured border? Do they need to have a personal experience, such as a child’s being assaulted by an illegal immigrant criminal? Do they need to experience a personal tragedy like the many acts of violence perpetrated on both abused immigrants and victimized American citizens to question their “reasons”? Obviously, that truckload of 51 dead migrants suffocated near San Antonio in the locked truck was meaningless. Or, did I miss the Administration's empathetic response?  


Probably. Recall what I have said repeatedly: What is not personal is meaningless. To which I'll add "unless it is empirical." The Administration, composed as it is of humans capable of feeling, has, it seems no empathy for the affected. The Administration’s undefined “reasons” for exacerbating the tragedies of crime and overdoses have no personal connection to realities. Is the Administration of one mind that America is “not defined by borders"? And do each of the Biden Administration’s supportive politicians hold this idea of a borderless country as an axiom even as all of them refuse to take the locks off their personal property or to remove the doors and open the windows of their houses? What is not personal is meaningless; but if one of them were to experience the same kinds of losses experienced by victims of illegal criminals, well, then...


Are the Administration’s reasons for its actions sounding the death knell of personal property? Is this a step on their path to complete socialism and a one-world society? And do the members of the Administration somehow see themselves as separate from the rest of the body politic? Do they comprise a group exempt from tragedies of loss of freedoms, loss of property, and even loss of life? Is this the group that reasons inductively, assuming as they do that they will attain some unified world of peace, love, and harmony, where, with the exception of their own stuff, all will freely share equally with any and all others what they have gained through their personal efforts?


The Biden Administration might have “reasons,” but it has not demonstrated it has Reason--or commonsense.

In a short verse, Bertolt Brecht writes,


I need no gravestone, but
If you need one for me
I wish the inscription would read:
He made suggestions. We
Have acted on them.
Such an epitaph would
Honor us all.


To alter that for this website, I write modestly:


I wish the inscription would read:
"He pondered life. We
Pondered what he pondered."
Such an epitaph would
Honor all who ponder.

Unfortunately, thinking doesn't necessarily lead to efficacious acting as I infer from Brecht's "suggestions"; in fact, it doesn't necessarily lead to any action. It can, in numerous instances, lead to inimical acting, as in the denial of rights and freedoms and even life perpetrated under the "thinking" of Marxists and socialists in the last 150 years and in the enslavement of millions of others under pre-nineteenth-century ideas about human value. But motivating others to think is the first step in getting them to act in ways that can be self-efficacious. There's no promise, of course, and no guarantee of benefits. People do what they do with or without forethought. Nevertheless, if I cannot be known for inspiring action as Bertolt Brecht desired for his legacy, then I desire to be be known for inspiring others to seek insights in the hope that their thoughts will be both self-efficacious and beneficial to others. 

​What would you want to see on your gravestone?    

Are you a middleman? Middlewoman? Politically correct “Middleperson”? Are you concerned about what such “middle-people” think? Here’s why I ask.


In his1969 book The Truth of Poetry, Michael Hamburger makes this point: “The vast body of critical and biographical literature about Baudelaire points to another development that is very much part of the situation of poets later than he; I mean the disproportion between the demand for poetry itself and the demand for literature about poetry. Very few, if any, serious poets since Baudelaire have been able to make a living out of their work; but thousands of people, including poets themselves, have made a living by writing or talking about poetry”( 2) [Bear with me a moment longer, because here’s the conclusion] “This anomaly--paralleled in many ways, as it is, by economic developments conducive to a proliferation of middle-men in all trades and industries—has not only produced conscious or unconscious reactions apparent in the political commitments of several outstanding modern poets, but has also affected the very substrate of their work.” *


Say what? It’s simple. We have more middlemen than we have doers. Take the annual State of the Union Address every President gives to Congress. The President speaks, and then afterward a host of others chime in about what he said, interpreting his words for the rest of us as though we were incapable of listening, understanding, and reacting. Or take a football game. Do you really need a commentator to tell you that So-n-So just threw a pass to a teammate? Or that a long run for a touchdown was a long run for a touchdown? Do you really need the incessant chatter of interpreters?


There was a brief experiment by one of the networks years ago. The televised game had no commentators. There were football players playing the game and a crowd making noise in the background. No comments. None. Zilch. The viewer was on his own, his eyes and ears his only guide to what was happening. I saw that game. At first it was a bit unnerving. I had grown accustomed to the voices of “expert” analysts telling me what I had been watching, explaining to me what I already knew. I had become used to the voices of middlemen.


And that’s what our society largely is. As Hamburger argues, more people—like professors of literature—have made a living off commenting about the works of others than the writers themselves, poets, that is. Of course, famous novelists can make a fortune, but consider the status of poets relegated to giving readings in small groups gathered in the back room of some library on a Tuesday night. Consider the limited sales of poetry books. Yet, there are critics galore who have made their living talking and writing about those few successful poets.


And on the nightly prime-time pundit shows? Well, it’s the same. People interpret others’ words and actions for the audience. It’s as though we are always watching a show like The Voice or America’s Got Talent, all of us constantly awaiting the opinion and judgment of others, the “middlemen” who interpret life for us.


And so, in a society of few doers but more interpreters, do we find that the doers eventually do as the interpreters influence? In short, do those who begin as creative voices end up as self-parodies and as puppets manipulated by those who analyze them? Are all doers awaiting the accolades of winning some “academy award”? Is everyone who becomes well known for a special talent eventually going to succumb to the analyses of “experts” who make their living off that talent?


Make an assessment here: How bound are you to the voices of middlemen? How dependent are you on the analyses of others? Watch the game with the volume turned off. Make your own analysis. Draw your own conclusions. Do your own judging. For your own sake, stop listening to middlemen.


*Hamburger. Michael. 1969. The Truth of Poetry: Tensions in Modern Poetry from Baudelaire to the 1960s. New York. A Harvest Book/Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.

The current US President, often apparently at a loss for words (or thoughts), uses “You know the thing” to escape his own mental entrapment. Once said, the thought becomes his communication to all because, well, everyone knows to what he must have been referring. In fact, faulting him for his brain freeze is slightly unfair though largely worrisome. Just about every human being suffers a momentary brain glitch. There’s so much to know and much to communicate, and we might properly assume that the head of the most powerful country has much on his mind. Nevertheless…


That the person called the “most powerful in the world” has brain freezes isn’t as worrisome to me as is his recapitulatory thinking. Mentally the product of an increasingly more Left-leaning Party, the President appears to foster growth on a tree of thought that finds its roots in socialist and special interest soils. His first acts in office demonstrated his philosophical bond to a generation born in fear: Fear of climate change, fear of social rejection, fear of financial insecurity, fear of political incorrectness, fear of labeling, and fear of just about anything that might be described as the successes of others who have forged fortunes from chaos. Or should I say “fear compounded by envy and ignorance”?


Take his closure of that famous Keystone Pipeline as an example of recapitulating the thought of his supposed political base. The pipeline had jumped every environmental hurdle and leapt through every environmental safety hoop. Its opponents had run out of options to halt its completion. It was deemed a safe option for transporting oil, as pipelines all over the world have demonstrated in the absence of sabotage. The pipeline industry had a history of complying with rules for the restoration of land disturbed by pipeline emplacement. The industry is safe and protective. I know this personally because I was part of 18-month study (1987) on right-of-way reclamation run by Argonne National Laboratory for the Gas Research Institute.*


Pipelines can be emplaced without much environmental damage, though as in all right-of-ways, where trees cover the surface, they must be cut. Any flight over eastern United States reveals straight swaths of bared ground through forests, where power lines carry their electricity from power station to homes. The right-of-ways are a necessary part of modern life and AC power transmission. And they are a necessary part of gas and oil transmission. Would the alternatives of DC power from localized power plants required by Edison’s grid in New York in the nineteenth century or trains from the North Slope in Alaska be as efficient for America’s large urban populations? Would using gas only locally be of any use to the nation at large? No, power and fuel distribution is essential to a large society with a third of a billion people.


But the “you know the thing President” decided that efficiently moving oil through a tried and true system was bad for world climate. Although I cannot say for certain, I’m guessing Biden has never been to a pipeline construction site or read research data on pipeline construction. I’m guessing also, that he seems to think that burning oil imported from Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, and even Russia has no effect on climate and that by shutting down American energy supplies he has done his job to save the planet. Go figure. Or, should I say, “You know the thing.”


A brain-freeze President isn’t a model of intelligent decision-making. He is rather a puppet of those in that generation fearful of risks, ignorant of physical processes, and manipulated by special interest groups with socialist leanings. A brain-freeze President is not capable of seeing options, as the hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan demonstrated. A brain-freeze President cannot anticipate the consequences of his actions except in how they fulfill the wishes of those he believes he must please.


And a brain-freeze President cannot recognize where policy has failed and decisions have weakened a nation both domestically and internationally. Don’t look for rational explanations for policies emplaced by a brain-freeze President because, well, “you know the thing.”


   

*Zellmer, S.D., Taylor, J.D., Conte, D.J., and Gaynor, A.J. 1987. Erosion Control on Steep Slopes Following Pipeline Construction.
The optimum means of inhibiting soil erosion by water on steeply sloped pipeline rights-of-way is a dense vegetative cover. A field study, funded by the Gas Research Institute and conducted by Argonne National Laboratory, compared the environmental effectiveness of eight erosion control methods representing a wide range of economic cost on a 23% slope in southeastern Pennsylvania. Replicated plots were established over the pipeline and on the working side of the ROW after cleanup operations. Precipitation, runoff volume, and sediment yield were measured after major storms for 18 months. Vegetative cover and species composition were determined by the point intercept method at various time intervals during two growing seasons. These data indicate significant differences in sediment yield for some storms due to control method and ROW location. Total plant cover was not significantly influenced by control method. 
https://www.osti.gov/biblio/5661684  (Zellmer, S D, Taylor, J D, Conte, D J, and Gaynor, A J. Erosion control on steep slopes following pipeline construction. United States: N. p., 1987. Web.) 


There are about 2,000 research articles on pipeline construction and gas and oil transmission. How many do you think the opponents to the Keystone Pipeline have read?