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In the wind-down of the Covid19 Pandemic we need to be more aware of our fragile health as a species than ever. Homo Sapiens is suffering now from ills of its own making. And yes, the virus itself probably has a zoological origin, the whole bats-and-pangolins-in-a-wet-market-in-China thing, and it may have been an accidental leak of virus out of a virology lab in China. But it is not a Chinese bio-weapon plot, no matter what Cucker Tarleson thinks… or says he thinks because he’s paid well to think it.

It is a matter of decades and even centuries worth of human greed and rampant profit motive. We are killing the world with industrial waste and increasing the heat world wide with the blazing fires of greed-meets-profit-motive intentions.

The furnaces of industry keep firing up when we need them to cool down and stop.

Even healthcare is monetized in this country to the point that financial predators are gorging themselves by creating economic pain in most of us.

And the political world is rabidly on board with protesting masks and social distancing in order to keep the plague raging and the sweet healthcare dollars rolling in. Not for the benefit of doctors and nurses, mind you. They are not the ones reaping the rewards. In fact, many of them are victims too.

I am stuck at home again now thinking about this again because my number two son and I are possibly under quarantine again. He had Covid once already, a year ago, and he was vaccinated in May. But now he’s sick in bed awaiting the results of another Covid test. It’s either that or a five-day bout of regular flu.

The worst of the many fears is that this is a vaccine-immune variant virus. If that’s what it is, I am probably doomed even though I am already vaccinated too. Oh, well. It’s been a good life. I hope the rest of the human race can conclude that too, as the next pandemic, or heat wave, or global extinction looms in the near future.

But take care… and be aware… because miracles have happened before.

My father is going into hospice care. Parkinson’s disease is winning against him. I am stuck in Texas until the results of my COVID 19 test come back. Needless to say, my heart is broken. I need magic to fix it now. Where do you find that kind of power? This is where I am looking today.

These are acapella songs. No instruments. Only voice. It comes straight from the heart. Out through the mouth and into the ever-present ether. Life may come to an end, but the sound of it continues… never-ending. Even God does not make a song unsung once it has been made real.

I have been watching these videos on my laptop, lying on my sickbed, and crying at the beauty, the truth, and the depths of sadness in my soul. It hurts to lose a parent. My father was born in 1930. In October of this year, his life-song will reach 90 years of age. It hurts now. But songs are never unsung once they finish. In this I find comfort.

I hope you will actually listen to these. I add a lot of music to my posts, and I never notice any reports of someone clicking on the videos. But these musicians; Pentatonix, Home Free, Peter Hollens, and BYU Vocal Point all have that magic… the power to both lift you up towards God and to make you weep for the bittersweet tragedy that is the experience of being alive and knowing… well, that every book has a final chapter, every song has a final note, and every life…

I don’t have to finish that thought, do I? Now is a proper time for sadness, for trepidation, for listening to music like this… and for remembering love. And I am not through crying just yet.

Since I originally posted this musical essay, my father passed away on my birthday in 2020. My mother did not last a year without him, rejoining him in September of 2021. I can’t listen to any of these songs now without weeping. But it is a good cry. It fills me up with the song of life. Who knows what tomorrow will bring? But today… today I am filled with the music of lives well-lived. He was 89. She was 87.

My laptop unexpectedly died. That made this phone post difficult.

I am not used to writing like this.

Do I use scissors?

The question arises from this most recent illustration I drew, “Are you saying, Mickey, that kids can learn better if they go to school naked?”

No! Are you crazy?

I used to teach middle school students. Can you imagine kids from this current modern culture being giving license to come to school starkers if they wish to do it? In the middle school world of half-brained sub-intellectuals passing judgement on everything? Especially judgments about appearance and attractiveness… or non-attractiveness? With brains fueled by hormones and the questionable values taught by TV and movies? Chaos! Fires being lit! Real and metaphorical! Windows being broken! Derisive laughter! Tears and sobbing from the offended! And that would just be the teachers.

But the truth is, if we look at the studies of B.F. Skinner and his recommendations for child-rearing in his Utopian propositions in the book Walden Two, children not taught to be ashamed of their nakedness from early on would develop more peacefully and naturally into perceptive and intelligent learners if allowed to be openly and happily naked.

Skinner, an experimental scientist, believed everything in life should conform to findings from scientific observations and scientific experiments. How loony is that? Why would we do something that is practical, natural, and beneficial just because it might enhance your ability to learn and enjoy your experience of the world?

In my illustration, I was actually intending to convey a notion of the relationship of openness and innocence to learning. The two children sharing the big danged book on the floor are nude because they are willing to approach the material with a sensory receptivity that can only be hampered by the barriers and limits we put on ourselves, like the clothing that we shield and limit our bodies with. So, I would never suggest it was appropriate to learn things while naked. Or even that, with the right training and cultural shifts, that going to school naked would be a good thing.

Even I have nightmares about being naked in school. In my dreams I sometimes dream about forgetting to put on clothes before going in front of a hostile classroom to teach something they all find boring and awful… while I am naked and awful myself. I still have that nightmare even now that I am retired.

No, I would never suggest that. Unless, somehow, you can suggest something by not suggesting it. Surely I am not tricksy enough to try to do anything like that. And remember, I was an actual teacher in an actual classroom for many years where I merely thought of them all as naked, because kids are all transparent about their lives and motivations and can’t keep a secret even if they didn’t want me to know everything about them, even the bad kids, and even things they wanted to hide from the teacher.

Here is a link to B.F. Skinner’s book, Walden Two; https://books.google.com/books/about/Walden_Two.html?id=lMpgDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button#v=onepage&q&f=false

I have been making plans to go to Iowa to visit my sisters, family, and the family farm place where my sister Nancy is now living and keeping the farm running. Things have been slowed by a couple of unforeseen events. The place where my wife’s RV was stored got broken into. The catalytic converter was stolen out of every RV and vehicle that had one in the whole place. No camper, no place for my son and his fiancee to stay as we visit. So, he cancels. My wife wants to stay in Dallas and fix the RV. But my limited ability to drive long distances may require someone to do at least some of the driving for me. The two-week plan was cut to seven days. Whether my wife drives or not may also depend on whether the dog gets to go or not. My wife hates dealing with a whiny dog on the road. And Jade hates riding in cars, thinking every trip she gets to go on is a ride to the vet.

I, of course, have the good fortune to be in poor health, rendered helpless by hot weather, arthritis, diabetes, and whatever bug which turns out to not be Covid has currently got me head-achy and out of sorts. The trip is still possible, but things are looking harder and harder to overcome.

I do not believe in ghosts. I need further evidence for most supernatural monsters. I don’t believe evil lives within phantoms, other-worldly beings, mutants, demons, chupacabra, and evil spirits.

But it does live within people.

People hurt other people. Sometimes even without meaning to. People are not perfect, and many mistakes they make have terrible consequences that kill, maim, and destroy people’s lives. It would be nice if we were a little bit better protected from some of the mistakes made by people with guns.

I am not haunted by ghosts. But the faces of the dead children at Sandy Hook and Robb Elementary haunt me. And former students who have left us too soon because of domestic violence, car accidents, drunk driving, and gang violence haunt me too. There are real monsters. But they have human faces.

There are at least three students I loved when they were alive that are now only sad faces in my nightmares. And there are at least four young adults I worry about because of the ravages of depression and the possibility of suicide that attends it. They are never going to be truly safe in the whole of their lifetimes.

But here’s the thing that lets me fall back to sleep when the ghosts in my nightmares are finished saying, “Boo!” and haunting me. If you ever loved someone, they still live in your heart. Their lives were not meaningless. You know for sure they touched at least one heart… yours.

I wish I could’ve saved you, Ruben. That gang did not protect you. And, J.J., you should not have had anything to drink before deciding whether you could beat the train to the railroad crossing. Alyssa, I am sorry you ever met him. You all three still live in my heart. Haunt me as much as you need to. You can never scare me again, and I would love to see you again, even if only as a face in a nightmare.

We live in a haunted world. We are viewed from the darkest corners by haunted eyes. But in the end, we have nothing to fear. Ghosts are not real. And there are no monsters, if only we choose not to become them.

I suppose it is my own fault. This is the second straight spring and summer where my views and traffic on this blog site have plummeted to depths not reached since 2015.

Before the pandemic, my daily views never dropped below 50. The number of likes averaged about 12 per post.

Now I have only topped 50 three times in the last 3 weeks.

My two posts yesterday averaged 7.5 views apiece. Each one garnered only 3 likes.

Ah, if I only had a brain…

My favorite hockey team won their first-round playoff series. But then they lost in the next series… though the team that beat them looks like they are going to sweep into the Stanley Cup and maybe win it. I am still celebrating the St. Louis Blues’ 2019 Stanley Cup victory. Perhaps it is enough to be happy with that.

Come to think of it, last year my views ballooned in late July and August through October after going through a very similar dearth of attention last spring and early summer.

Hmm… If I only had a brain!

So, maybe the Spring Doldrums are something that I have to get used to now. I have been posting two blogs a day, an old classic post with a new one. I know from past experience that that can both spark more interest and dampen interest. Maybe patience is the only thing I need to apply. What other tools are there for gaining readers’ interest? More nudes and maybe porn? No… I don’t think that’s reader interest worth pursuing. Nobody is reading and reviewing my book on Pubby either. And I am not changing anything about my fiction style in a weak and waffling attempt to improve my ratings.

So, I am well aware of my own weirdness enough to realize that not everybody wants what I have to tell. Don’t listen or read if that’s what your heart tells you. I can live with that. But, if I do die from it, it’s not me that has to live with the guilt. That’s entirely on you. (Unless you DID read this far. Then, hurray for you! Leave a like to prove how wonderful you are, and I will try to stop complaining so much.)

Uvalde, Texas.

I used to teach in Cotulla, Texas.

I was once in the high school where the monster went to school in order to help hold a UIL contest. That school does not generate monsters. The blame does not belong to them.

The current evil Emperor of Texas says because the armed guards at the elementary school were outgunned, there was no way to stop this shooting from happening.

Texas Senator Ted Cruz and future lizard-king of this country says gun-control laws wouldn’t have prevented the shooting.

Really?

How much does the gun lobby pay you to spit such poison frogs out of your wiggly-tongued propaganda holes?

Uvalde is worse than Parkland and Sandy Hook and Columbine… but only because it happened after those horrors.

Excuse me, please, I am not through grieving yet… I will never be through grieving.