This foolish essay about berries that mean love to me is only partly inspired by the Beatles song, “Strawberry Fields Forever.” That’s because, of course, their song was only about meditating. In the lyrics they take you to the “Strawberry Fields where nothing is real… but it’s nothing to get hung up about…” They are talking about a blissful place of no worries where we all need to go. And then staying there forever.
This, of course, I could never do. Worrying about the future is tattooed on my behavioral imperatives in the dark part of my stupid old brain. And while I often found that place of no worries, and lingered there for a bit, I found you could never really get anything done if you stayed in that state of strawberry fields forever.
But don’t get me wrong, strawberries are a critical part of every healthy mental diet.
You see, my meditations on strawberries when I was a child of eight, nine, and ten centered on the strawberry patch at Great Grandma Hinckley’s place.
She was, as I incorrectly recall, slightly older than Jesus when I was that age. By that I mean, though she seemed museum-quality ancient to me, I had derived wisdom about life, love, and laughter from her before Sunday School taught me any of those things said in Jesus’s words.
And I was given the task of mowing her lawn in the little plot of land surrounding her little, tiny house in the Northern part of Rowan where I also lived and grew and celebrated Christmas and Halloween and Easter and the 4th of July. And though I was doing it because she was so old, I never even once thought she was too old and frail to do it herself. Grandma Hinckley’s willpower was a force of nature that could even quell tornados… well, I thought so anyway when I was eight. And she gave me a dollar every time I did the lawnmowing.
But there were other things she wanted done, and other things she wanted to teach me. There was the garden out back with the strawberry patch next to it. She wanted me to help with keeping the weeds and the saw grass and the creeping Charlie from overrunning the strawberries and choking them to death. (Creeping Charlie wasn’t an evil neighbor, by the way. He was a little round-leafed weed that grew so profusely that it prevented other plants from getting any sunlight on their own leaves, causing a withering, yellowing death by sunlight deprivation. I took my trowel to them and treated them like murderers. I showed them no mercy.)
And Grandma always reminded me not to be selfish and eat the very berries I was tending in the garden. She taught me that eating green strawberries (which are actually more yellow than green, but you know what I mean) was bad because they could give you a belly ache, a fact that that I proved to myself more than once (because eight-year-olds are stupid and learn slowly.) She also taught me that it is better to wait until you have enough strawberries to make a pie, or better yet, strawberry shortcake with whipped cream. She taught me that delayed gratification was more rewarding in the long run than being greedy in the short run and spoiling everything for everybody.
She always gave me a few of the ripe strawberries every time I helped her with them, even if I had eaten a few in the garden without permission. Strawberries were the fruit of true love. I know this because it says so in the strawberry picture. Even though I probably never figured out what true love really means.
My Great Grandma Nellie Hinckley was the foundation stone that my mother’s side of the family was built on. She was the rock that held us steadily in place during the thunderstorms, and the matriarch of the entire clan of Hinckleys and Aldriches and Beyers and other cousins by the dozens and grandchildren and great grandchildren and even great great grandchildren. I painted the picture of her in 1980 when she passed away. I gave it to my Grandma Aldrich, her second-eldest daughter. It spent three decades in Grandma’s upstairs closet because looking at it made Grandma too sad to be so long without her. The great grandchild in the picture with her is now a grandmother herself (though no one who has seen this picture knows who it is supposed to be because I painted her solely from memory and got it all wrong.) But Grandma Hinckley taught me what true love means. And true love has everything to do with how you go about taking care of the strawberry patch.
So, apparently, according to my Republican friends, Joe Biden is a Communist bent on destroying the Constitution, the Economy, and America in general. The January 6th Insurrection was a peaceful protest except for the Antifa bad actors who wore MAGA disguises and the people actually on trial are innocent.
Pundits across the spectrum are saying the Republicans will win.
I hope you all enjoy your Fascist dictatorship under Herr Ronald DeSaniflush. I expect to be executed within a couple years’ time for promoting radical and dangerous ideas like empathy, fully-funded education, and the equal value of all races, cultures, and religions.
An infinite number of monkeys with and infinite number of word-processors will supposedly eventually type out everything I have ever written and everything I am going to write… As well as everything I will ever write with a random word misspelled or replaced with the wrong word. It would be an infinite mess. After all, infinite monkeys and infinite word-processors would fill infinite space and leave no room for infinite bananas. The monkeys would all starve after the initial typed manuscripts are completed, and any surviving monkeys that randomly evolved an ability to eat word-processors would die from exposure to infinite rotting monkey corpses. The whole thing gets gruesome after a while.
But let’s get serious for a moment. (Something that is generally difficult for Mickey.) Monkeys with type-writers will not solve my essential problem. I will not run out of stories before I run out of time for story-telling. And I find it totally creditable that my time is almost gone.
I am ill again, with a viral infection that gives me headaches, low-grade fever, and a wicked cough. I feel horrible. I had chest pains last night that led to a serious debate yet again. If it had been a heart attack, that would’ve been the end. I cannot survive economically another hospital bill. So, I have to go on the theory that since the last heart-attack scare was only arthritis in the ribs and the strange effect that has on EKGs, this one must also be the same. I can’t afford any other conclusion. And since I am still alive to write this, it was obviously the correct conclusion to draw.
The titles I have listed above, still in my stupid old head, are eleven more books I will add to my growing list. This is, of course, entirely dependent on how much longer I have before the darkness claims me for all time. I have writing to do. No more days off. And if I get five more years of two books a year, I just might make it. But last night convinced me that the effort may end at any time. So, though I am sick, I better get busy and write something.
The tradition I grew up in was that you spent the early morning reading the Sunday paper, the Des Moines Register and Tribune, pouring over the Funnies while Dad read the news, society, and sports pages… along with Parade magazine. And we would eventually trade, me releasing the Funnies to Dad in return for the sports page. Then he would give in to the nagging of my sisters and let them read the Funnies before him while he reread Parade magazine.
Of course, our moral training would follow (the parts that didn’t come from the Funnies, I mean.) Then we would go to the Methodist Church for an hour of Sunday School followed by a service and sermon from the Methodist minister.
That’s what Sunday thinking was all about. Somebody else would tell us what to think about morality, religion, and events in the world. And as I got older, and sometimes skipped going to church, there would also be Meet the Press and NFL Today. Always somebody who was not me telling me what to think.
It is always easier to let someone else do the thinking for you.
This Sunday I let Anand Giridharadas do the thinking for me. For those of you who don’t know the man with too many syllables in his name, Anand is an Indian-American born in Shaker Heights, Ohio who rose to fame as a columnist for the New York Times and is currently a political pundit who writes incisive criticisms of the current Capitalism-obsessed world.
He was a guest on Jon Favreau’s Sunday program Offline.
They were talking about how Republican extremists are not waving the American flag as much after the January 6th Insurrection. And he made the point that the more peaceful side, those of us who are more progressive and want to heal the country without resorting to violence, need to take ownership of being flag-flying patriots more.
After all, he said, we are doing something in this country that no other democracy in the world is trying to do. Germany, France, England, even Sweden are primarily white-race-dominated democracies trying to provide peaceful, prosperous life for all citizens, while we in America will soon be a minority-dominated democracy. If we succeed in ruling the ultimate melting-pot society peacefully, we will be exceptional because no one else is doing that.
That is an incredible thought. I am glad he did that thinking for me.
We all need to be saying, “Black Lives Matter,” not because white lives don’t matter anymore, but because, “All Lives Matter, Including Black Lives, Because We Are All Brothers and Sisters Together.“
Sometimes the most important thoughts come about because, on a lazy Sunday, I let somebody else think for me.
I do draw some pictures from models, photos, or other illustrations… but fantastical things that you can’t find a model for are what occur most often in my stupid head.
I was back in a classroom yesterday as a sub. 6th graders. It did look an awful lot like this, but I was holding another teacher’s giant pencil. Except for the fact that I re-posted this from 2019. I have not been able to sub since before the pandemic lockdown happened in 2020. This is the ski-jump on Valwood Parkway in Farmer’s Branch. I merely changed the railroad tracks into a stream.I taught all three of these kids when they were thirteen, but one in ’81, one in ’92, and one in ’94. Oh, and not on Mars. No models were used in this picture, though I did know several blue children.Done without a model, unless you believe 3″ tall fairies are a real thing.No werewolf girls posed topless for this picture.This classroom photo was entirely in my stupid old head, not in a school gymnasium full of snow.Even the mountains in the background were drawn directly from my mind’s eye.A lot of what I draw is merely emotional flim-floogery and provides a look inside of me that makes a portrait of me drawn even more naked and vulnerable than if I drew myself nude.
This oil painting hangs in my library and is hard to light properly. This one is better than before.The eyes of the tiger are important to get right. The Tyger in William Blake’s poem expresses the duality of good and evil, as this picture is also trying to do.This is the oldest colored-pencil picture I have, not hard to photograph, but easy to overlook.Pencil remains difficult for the camera to capture in all its nuances.Pen and ink is easier, but the white still turns out gray without the best possible lighting. This is high-school years old.The subject of this drawing is inside my head.My Vietnamese War painting from the 80s got me criticism for being political.
Some Art is created for the sake of illustrating my novels. So, today’s artwork is all about that.
Running for the Bus inThe Boy… ForeverRe-done cover art for SuperchickenFrancois and Mr. Disney for Sing Sad SongsDavalon, Tanith, and George Jetson from Stardusters and Space Lizards
Silkie and Donner in Magical Miss Morgan
Mike Murphy and Blueberry Bates from Magical Miss Morgan
Invisible Captain Dettbarn, Valerie in Squirrel Form, and Mary Philips from When the Captain Came Calling
Anneliese the Gingerbread Girl from Recipes for Gingerbread Children
Grandma Gretel, Todd Niland, Sherry Cobble, and Sandy Wickham from Recipes for Gingerbread ChildrenZearlop Zebra the ventriloquist’s puppet, Terry Houston, and Murray Dawes from Fools and Their ToysOrben Wallace, The Bicycle-Wheel Genius
I apologize for talking about preparing for the end of the world, but that is exactly what this post is about. I don’t anticipate that the world will end while I am still alive, but the prospects brought about by politics in this country makes me think once or twice about that conclusion.
After enduring the four years of the Trump administration, I thought we had lived through the terrible episode. Especially after the Pumpkinhead lost the 2020 election and I had personally survived the Covid 19 Pandemic that his incompetence allowed to grow out of control. (The man threw away Obama’s pandemic-response guide, the one that prevented an Ebola Pandemic, just because he hated Obama.) At this point, we have put in two years of trying to recover from the damage the orange one did in four long years, and suddenly it appears that midterm elections will put the control of Congress back in the hands of the greedy, corrupt and malevolent Trumplican Party. They will spend the rest of the Biden administration trying to revenge-impeach Grandpa Joe and undo the climate-control legislation, as well as stop any new measures that might keep the economy from being destroyed (because, of course, it is not in the political interest of the Trumplican Party to allow Grandpa Joe to get credit for fixing anything.)
A Texas election official hard at work.
But now the Republican… er, Trumplican Party is probably going to win lots of elections, not because of representing the will of the people, but because they cheat by gerrymandering districts, denying certain voters access to easy voting conditions, and apparently whose election results will be accepted and whose will be rejected.
Realistically we have until 2050 to repair and reverse man-made global warming. If we don’t meet that deadline, the world will die… oceans will become acidic, the air will become too hot for life, and all life on Earth will go extinct. It will be total game over.
And the government we will be handing power to will undo everything and delay all progress except for giving tax breaks to billionaires. No more Medicare or Social Security. Any sexual preference besides cis-gender white heterosexuality will be illegal. Black history will be illegal (it already is in Florida and Texas.) And all of that won’t matter because all intelligent people will be dead. A good portion of those who are too stupid to realize you can’t just hole up in Walmart with the air conditioning on high and survive for months or years will soon realize that Walmarts without supply trucks coming in daily are not worth saving.
So, although I may be dead before this year is out, government collapse will follow soon, and I may live to see it. Climate refugees are already a thing. Floridians will need to grow gills in a couple of years. The prospects are not good, even if foolish voters abstain from voting for Trumplicans.
Fare thee well, world. We shall soon see if there is an afterlife or not.
I am definitely getting older. And tomorrow is not guaranteed.
I have serious health problems, and I live in a land where Republicans and the corporate overlords get to tell us all that if we don’t have enough wealth to forfeit for it, even though they keep raising the prices to make higher profits, then I am welcome to die and make room for someone who works harder for less money.
I generally laugh it off and continue to work harder. I have avoided the expense of insulin, which is very expensive because Big Pharma knows that if my life is threatened I’m likely to pay every cent I own for what will save my life. I walk at least 7,000 steps a day, usually more, and I eat the best food I can manage in small quantities, just like the diabetes experts taught me in 2004, back when I could still afford health care from specialists. I will continue to fight to live and do it without paying all my money to rich Republicans and corporate overlords who are fat and need to walk more and eat better themselves.
I could easily be dead of heart failure or stroke by tomorrow. And I don’t fear death. A quick, surprise end would be better than lingering suffering that drains my family of resources and wealth, the way the Republicans and corporate overlords hope it does. But my 90-year-old aunt in Iowa recently pointed out that both of my parents were in their late eighties before they passed away, and two of my four grandparents lived well into their eighties. My Grandma Beyer lived to 95, and I had two great grandparents that fell short of 100 by two years or less. It is possible I have time to get more done.
I did already complete a career in teaching for 31 years which is my primary claim to a life well-lived. And I was a successful teacher, at least according to the many former students that told me I made a difference to them and they remembered my class fondly… they couldn’t all be lying, could they?
But with my retirement, I invested my time as a storyteller. I have already published 19 novels and two books of essays. My best work was in Snow Babies, Catch a Falling Star, Sing Sad Songs, Recipes for Gingerbread Children, and The Baby Werewolf. And my storytelling has produced some things beyond those 21 books that I hope to finish.
And I do not feel like I haven’t done enough good storytelling in my life. Teachers are professional storytellers after all. So, if I drop dead ten minutes from now, I have not been cheated in that category either.
But I am having trouble with wandering thoughts, diabetic depression, forgetfulness, and arthritic fingers that constantly make me go back and retype things endlessly. I have recently gone whole weeks without working on my various works in progress. And I have only kept my blog-posting string going by reposting old classic posts every now and then.
If I am going to make further progress, it will be slower. I have not given up. But I am slowing down.
Catch a Falling Star 
Strawberry Fields
This foolish essay about berries that mean love to me is only partly inspired by the Beatles song, “Strawberry Fields Forever.” That’s because, of course, their song was only about meditating. In the lyrics they take you to the “Strawberry Fields where nothing is real… but it’s nothing to get hung up about…” They are talking about a blissful place of no worries where we all need to go. And then staying there forever.
This, of course, I could never do. Worrying about the future is tattooed on my behavioral imperatives in the dark part of my stupid old brain. And while I often found that place of no worries, and lingered there for a bit, I found you could never really get anything done if you stayed in that state of strawberry fields forever.
But don’t get me wrong, strawberries are a critical part of every healthy mental diet.
You see, my meditations on strawberries when I was a child of eight, nine, and ten centered on the strawberry patch at Great Grandma Hinckley’s place.
She was, as I incorrectly recall, slightly older than Jesus when I was that age. By that I mean, though she seemed museum-quality ancient to me, I had derived wisdom about life, love, and laughter from her before Sunday School taught me any of those things said in Jesus’s words.
And I was given the task of mowing her lawn in the little plot of land surrounding her little, tiny house in the Northern part of Rowan where I also lived and grew and celebrated Christmas and Halloween and Easter and the 4th of July. And though I was doing it because she was so old, I never even once thought she was too old and frail to do it herself. Grandma Hinckley’s willpower was a force of nature that could even quell tornados… well, I thought so anyway when I was eight. And she gave me a dollar every time I did the lawnmowing.
But there were other things she wanted done, and other things she wanted to teach me. There was the garden out back with the strawberry patch next to it. She wanted me to help with keeping the weeds and the saw grass and the creeping Charlie from overrunning the strawberries and choking them to death. (Creeping Charlie wasn’t an evil neighbor, by the way. He was a little round-leafed weed that grew so profusely that it prevented other plants from getting any sunlight on their own leaves, causing a withering, yellowing death by sunlight deprivation. I took my trowel to them and treated them like murderers. I showed them no mercy.)
And Grandma always reminded me not to be selfish and eat the very berries I was tending in the garden. She taught me that eating green strawberries (which are actually more yellow than green, but you know what I mean) was bad because they could give you a belly ache, a fact that that I proved to myself more than once (because eight-year-olds are stupid and learn slowly.) She also taught me that it is better to wait until you have enough strawberries to make a pie, or better yet, strawberry shortcake with whipped cream. She taught me that delayed gratification was more rewarding in the long run than being greedy in the short run and spoiling everything for everybody.
She always gave me a few of the ripe strawberries every time I helped her with them, even if I had eaten a few in the garden without permission. Strawberries were the fruit of true love. I know this because it says so in the strawberry picture. Even though I probably never figured out what true love really means.
My Great Grandma Nellie Hinckley was the foundation stone that my mother’s side of the family was built on. She was the rock that held us steadily in place during the thunderstorms, and the matriarch of the entire clan of Hinckleys and Aldriches and Beyers and other cousins by the dozens and grandchildren and great grandchildren and even great great grandchildren. I painted the picture of her in 1980 when she passed away. I gave it to my Grandma Aldrich, her second-eldest daughter. It spent three decades in Grandma’s upstairs closet because looking at it made Grandma too sad to be so long without her. The great grandchild in the picture with her is now a grandmother herself (though no one who has seen this picture knows who it is supposed to be because I painted her solely from memory and got it all wrong.) But Grandma Hinckley taught me what true love means. And true love has everything to do with how you go about taking care of the strawberry patch.
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