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The world that I grew up in has disappeared into the past. I do not know what the future will bring. It used to be that spring was a time for flowers that reappear and fill Iowa with color again after a gray-and-white winter of cold and snow. And you could protect the little garden that exemplified your whole world with chickenwire, that Midwestern thing you see between the kids and the flowers in the Paffooney above keeping the beauty from being picked or trampled during games. As I write this, a massive cold front and potential blizzard threatens Iowa as a result of the changes industry has made to our climate. Will Iowa survive? The breadbasket of the world should be starting to plant the new summer’s crop. And floodwaters have spoiled enough of last years harvest to influence gas prices and raise food prices as there will be less ethanol and corn oil this fall.

And will I myself make it very much longer? I am ill today. I seem to have developed a pink-eye infection out of nowhere. I feel bad. And having just paid an exorbitant amount of money for Trump’s “beautiful tax cut”, I don’t have enough left for both a doctor’s visit along with antibiotics and food to last the rest of the month. Ah, the joys of being ill and bankrupt! Hopefully my body can still fight off infection by itself.

So, I end here today, feeling awful and still being a pessimist. We shall see if hope survives tomorrow. The fight is set before me for today.

Sometimes I simply have to stop and think hard about what I am thinking about. You can probably tell by today’s first Paffooney that I am thinking in Biblical proportions today. The picture is called “David Plays for Saul”. In the Bible story, the survival of Israel is definitely in question. King Saul, the anointed ruler, is under intense pressure from governing a kingdom that chose him rather than giving him a chance to choose for himself. He is surrounded by enemies with significant military power. He goes a bit loony over the matter, consulting astrologers and witches, even though God has told him through prophets, “Saulie, don’t do that, boy!” The prophet Samuel even goes so far as to find a new candidate for an anointed king, David the Shepherd, Son of Jesse. Saul uses his irrational mind to come up with a solution to the problem. “I know!” he says to himself. “I’ll murder the boy in front of God and everybody.” (Sort of a Trumpian solution, right?)

And then David plays his harp and sings. That decides the matter. Saul is calmed in his murderous mind and abandons murder plans just long enough to eventually lose his crown along with his head in battle against the Philistines. (No danger of Trump copying Saul there.)

So, as I sit and chew my cud and ruminate like a mooncalf, I am thinking we need a King David to replace the King Pumpkinhead we have now. And then he or she must fight harder than the Biblical David to overcome what has happened to us. If Israel represents the world, then Israel may soon be destroyed without a wise king. Climate change, dictators with nukes, and Republican kowtowing to billionaires are real problems not solvable through astrology.

Too often, it seems, I am the mooncalf, the monstrously malformed creature created by a lifetime of hard experience, loss, and fear of the future. But in many ways I am a self-made man. I know this because I sewed on my new right hand, implanted new eyeballs, and did numerous brain-enhancement surgeries on myself. (I do hope you realize I mean that figuratively, not literally. No, really! You can put away the torches and pitchforks!) I feel like a monster when I look at myself critically and end up not liking what I see.

Still, the world is full of beauty and wonder, for now, at least. And we must enjoy it while we have it, living the best life we can before it all too soon comes to its end.