Sometimes you have to fly in big circles waiting for terrible things to pass. If you don’t wait… if you rush in unprepared… then you go down in flames.
The problem started with two molars whose expensive crowns both broke during the pandemic. I went to a Vietnamese pirate dentist who extracted both ruined and infected molars. tortured me heavily during the three-week procedure and extracted $4000 out of my pocket because I had no dental insurance. That was followed by a trip to the ER for a kidney-stone crisis, a matter of $65 out of pocket, thanks to the $185 a month I pay for Medicare. And two months later, another trip to the ER for a deadly low heart rate resulted in a week in the hospital, a surgical implantation of a pacemaker, and finally another trip to the ER after getting out of the hospital due to dehydration. The out-of-pocket cost of the hospital will be only $500, thanks to Medicare. Of course, President Pumpkinhead may kill Medicare, too, before I actually get the bill. It is expensive in this country to become poor. And if you are poor, you have no other option. At least, if I can manage three more bankruptcies by the time I’m 70, I will be qualified to run for president.
Life is definitely a lot like Moose Bowling. It is a simple game. In order to win, you only have to knock down all ten pins in one throw. The hard part is that you have to throw a moose to knock the pins down. Did you know that the average weight of an adult moose is 1800 pounds, or 820 kilograms? That’s a lot of moose meat to fling with my arthritic 68-year-old moose-throwing muscles. My flabber is totally gasted by that.
So, as I swiftly rise from prosperity to poverty, the ultimate fate of most old school teachers, it is probably a good thing that I have decided to become a nudist. At least I will save money on buying clothes.
I am diabetic. I am not supposed to have donuts for breakfast any more. Hence the obsession with donuts. I am only guessing here, but I think it may have something to do with the fact that the very name of donuts tells you what to do.
“What?!” you say. “What goofiness are you talking about now, Mickey?”
Well, I’ll tell you. I had a donut for breakfast this morning… with nuts.
The name “donuts” is literally a command. It tells you to “Do nuts”. So I had nuts with my donut this morning. Peanuts to be precise. Of course that’s what is wrong with the whole scenario. It doesn’t mean “peanuts”. It is commanding you to do something nutty. Maybe more like eating a donut when you have diabetes. No matter how good that particular donut tastes when you eat it, an hour later you are going to suffer.
So here’s the result of my being nuts this morning. I have come to the conclusion that the root of all evils in the modern world is “donuts”. Especially when it is pronounced “doo nutz”. Yes, eating a donut subjects you to the command, “Do nuts!”
And we all know how bad Trump’s diet is. Could he be imbibing donuts? Horrors! That explains Twitter, cabinet firings, tariffs for the fun of it, random protestations of “No collusion!”, and even “Covfefe”. Although Betsy DeVos as Education Secretary is an evil beyond even the power of donuts.
And how did Trump even get elected? Do people in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan glory in eating donuts before voting? How about disgruntled Bernie Bros? And one also suspects that middle-aged white women can’t resist a good donut… or an evil one either.
Could it be that I am down on donuts because I ate one and now I am writing this with a pounding high-blood-sugar headache? Well, yes. Eating one inspired this post. It was a chocolate donut with green, mint-flavored frosting. And it was evil. It is taking out its evil revenge on the blood vessels in my brain.
So, I implore you if you are reading this… no, I’m not going to tell you not to “Do nuts”… I am going to tell you, “Please, for the love of God, keep donuts away from me! Eat them yourself if you have to. But be warned! They have a secret meaning.”
The truth is sometimes Mickey tells lies. For instance, the title of this post is intended to lure you in with expectations of a juicy something that doesn’t actually exist. There is no controversy on the internet over this particular Mickey. He hasn’t done a very good job of keeping it secret that he tells a lot of lies. In fact, most of the most embarrassing and terrible secret things that he had been keeping secret for going on sixty years are now published in this blog. Talk about a life being an open book!
Of course, being a lover of internet conspiracies and ufo’s and junk, there is always that other Mickey to talk about. Yes, Disney has generated its share of conspiracy theories.
Everyone on the internet knows, for instance, that when Walt Disney died, he had his body frozen cryogenically so that he could be re-animated once a cure for his lung cancer was found. Of course, Snopes.com already did the investigation on it and brought out the fact that not only was Disney cremated with full documentation of the process, the first cryogenic freezing of a human being didn’t occur until a year after his death. This lie about Mickey’s dad, then is easily debunked. See, the internet lies about Mickey!
Of course, the notion that Disney was a racist and a Nazi and worked with the CIA are much harder to disprove.
A character from the original version of Fantasia that doesn’t help Mickey’s image.
Most heads of super-wealthy corporations are by nature fascists. The dictatorial style and oppressive oligarchic command structures of fascism organically grew out of business practices. Henry Ford, John D. Rockefeller, and J.P. Morgan were also Nazis. And, of course, no one believes me when I start in on the Disney/alien connection. After all, what’s with alien beings in Escape from Witch Mountain, Lilo and Stitch, and even Chicken Little? I may have some more conspiracy-theory investigating to do.
So, let me assure you that lies about Mickey are actually lies. The thing about Mickey’s dream in the 1960’s of seeing Annette Funicello naked is a lie… er, probably. The notion that Mickey trained himself to be a cartoonist by copying Disney characters like Carl Barks’ ducks are… err… um… lies… maybe. Well, anyway, the point is… don’t spread lies on the internet about Mickey. That’s my job.
I know that you are probably immediately listing all the reasons that my title is totally wacky monkey-thinking in your head. And if you want to lay into me in the comments, you are more than welcome. But the reality is that teachers have to develop the mindset that all kids can learn and all people have value… no matter what. That can be hard to accept when you factor in how corrupted, warped, and badly-taught so many people have turned out to be. It honestly seems, sometimes, that when faced with the facts of how people act… being violent, or greedy, self-centered, thoughtless, un-caring, and willfully stupid… that they really don’t even have value to others if you kill them, let them rot, and try to use them as fertilizer. The plants you fertilize with that stuff will come up deformed.
But the Doctor I have pictured here, the Second Doctor played by Patrick Troughton always seemed to find Earth people delightful. Alien people too, for that matter, unless they were soulless mobile hate receptacles in robotic trash cans like the Daleks, or mindless machines powered by stolen human brains like the Cybermen. There is, indeed, music in every soul, even if some of it is a little bit discordant and awkward. And people are not born evil. The classic study done on Brazilian street kids showed that even with no resources to share and living empty, hopeless lives, the children helped one another, comforted one another, and refused to exploit one another. As a teacher you get to know every type that there is. And there are stupid kids (deprived of essential resources necessary to learning), and evil kids (lashing out at others for the pain inflicted upon them), and needy kids (who can never get enough of anything you might offer and always demand more, MORE, MORE!) Sometimes they drive you insane and make you want to resign and leave the country to go count penguins in Antarctica. But the Doctor is right. No matter what has been done to them, if you get to know them, and treat them as individual people rather than as problems… they are delightful!
So let me show you a few old drawings of people.
Cute people like Andrew here.
Or possibly stupid and goofy people who never get things right.
Or long-dead people who made their contributions long ago, and sacrificed everything to make our lives different… if not better.
Or young people who live and learn and hopefully love…
And try really hard at whatever they do… whether they have talent or not.
And hope and dream and play and laugh…
And sometimes hate… (but hopefully not too much)…
And can probably tell that I really like to draw people…
Because God made them all for a reason…
even if we will never find out what that reason is.
A 1951 Schwinn Spitfire like mine in 1963 when the world was golden.
My bicycle was red. It was red and looked just like the ones that Captain Kangaroo had in his commercials that we watched on a black-and-white TV every day before we walked or rode our bicycle to school, across town a whole long seven blocks away. After school I could ride it out a whole mile and a half to Jack’s farm with Bobby and Richard and Mark the preacher’s kid to go skinny dipping in the cold creek in Jack’s South pasture. Jack was younger than any of us except Bobby. And it was a golden age.
Spiderman comic books and Avengers comic books cost twelve cents to own, but they were forbidden. And as much as we sneaked them and passed them around until they fell apart, usually in Bobby’s hands, we never knew that Dr. Wertham had gone to Congress to make our parents believe that comic books would make us gay and violent. He was a psychiatrist who wrote a book, so even if you didn’t believe him, you had to worry about such things.
I believed in Santa Claus until 1967. And after I found out, I only despaired a tiny little bit, because I began to understand you have to grow up. And adults can lie to you, even if they don’t do it to be mean. And the world is a hard place. And the golden age ended in November of 1963 when JFK was assassinated.
In June of 1968 I rode my bicycle out to the Bingham Park woods, Once there, I took off all my clothes and put them in the bicycle basket, and then I rode up and down the walking paths through the trees with nothing between me and God but my skin. I had a serious think about how life should be. All the while I was terrified that someone might see me. I was naked and vulnerable. A mere two years before that I had been sexually assaulted and was terrified of older boys, especially when I was naked and vulnerable. But I was a fan of the St. Louis Cardinals and Bob Gibson. They were repeated World Series winners. And they beat the Yankees in the series in 1964. And more important than that, cardinals were the little red songbirds who never flew away when the winter came. You don’t give up in the face of hardship. You face the trouble. No matter how deep the snow may pile up.
And in 1969, the first man to walk on the moon showed that a Star Trek world was in reach of mankind. Star Trek was on every afternoon after school. I watched a lot of those episodes at Verner’s house on his family’s black-and-white TV. The Klingons were always bested or beaten because the crew of the Enterprise outsmarted them. You can solve the problems of the universe with science. I know this because of all the times Mr. Spock proved it to me not just by telling me so, but by showing me how you do it. And what you can achieve is greatly enhanced if you work together like Spock and Kirk and Bones… and sometimes Scotty always did.
So, what is the way it should be? What did Mickey decide while naked in the forest like a Dakota Sioux shaman on a spirit-quest?
JFK’s 104th birthday was on May 29th. Dr. Wertham has been dead for 40 years. Bob Gibson was 85 when he passed away in October of last year. Captain Kirk turned 90 in March of this year.
The Golden age is long gone. There is no single set of rules that can clearly establish how it should be now. But I like those ideas of how it should be that I established for myself while naked on a Schwinn Spitfire in a forest long ago.
I learned a lot of what I know about cartooning by copying Disney characters. Now, I know that this post could potentially get me into trouble, because I am posting on a blog I use for marketing, an imitation Disney character, a very famous and very copyrighted character. Disney has been known to sue school districts for showing Disney movies in class without expressed written permission. They have become cruelly litigious since transforming from Uncle Walt’s Wonderful World of Color into an evil multi-national corporate media empire whose spokesperson is a mouse. So I beg you to pardon my transgressions due to love and debt I have to the work in the title of this piece. Consider this fan art, like the pictures I posted of the Phantom and Captain America (who is also now owned by Disney).
Fantasia is for me the Book of Life.
The movie starts with Bach’s masterpiece, Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. This amazing piece reminds me of earliest childhood memories. It begins with sound and the instruments that make it, becoming shapes and lines and movements and, eventually cloud forms. It is the beginning of perception, like modern art itself, the raw energy and emerging forms that I began to perceive as an infant, but could not define or distinguish clearly.
Next comes Nutcracker Suite by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. This is the explorations of nature and the magic of existence as a mere child. It uses Tchaikovsky’s sugar-plum ballet music to depict hours of play and learning and investigation and wonder. In it I see myself as a young child, viewing all the color and beauty through wide eyes.
Then comes The Sorcerer’s Apprentice by Paul Dukas. In this piece, the child in me, like Mickey the apprentice, for the first time bites off more than I could chew. I overstep my protective boundaries and get myself into a serious fix that has to be undone by the parent stepping in at the end, and not only fixing it, but delivering the consequences to my ignorant behind with a broom. Of course, we all know I will do it again. Every child does. But next time I will get it right.
This is followed by Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky. Here the child is child no longer. I watch the amoeba become dinosaurs to harsh and dissonant music. I learn about the world, growing and evolving, finding out that life is full of hard lessons. Life and Death play out there struggle, and the learning concludes when you reached the parched and hopeless climax, the realization that everything, no matter how big or powerful, ends in death and failure. Dust returns to dust.
The film then blossoms into The Pastoral Symphony by Ludwig van Beethoven. This mythical landscape of cute cherubs and satyrs, bare-breasted centaurettes, and Greek Gods rendered in pastel hues represents the blooming of romance, lust, and love. There is celebration, complete with Dionysus and his invention, wine. There is courtship, attraction, and bonding. When the cherubs pull the curtain closed on the centaur couple, we also know what is happening behind the curtain even if it weren’t for the cherub whose butt becomes a red heart. And, of course, there is a great storm that comes along, both in the pastoral music and the action of the cartoon, representing the volatility and strife that occurs when we dare to love another. It does, however, subside for life to continue refreshed.
The next piece is Dance of the Hours by Amilcare Ponchielli. This comedy of ballerina ostriches and hippos, bubble-dancing elephants, and aggressively dancing gators, is the domestic, married life. It is a comedy of graceful awkwardness, beauty and humor rolled into the same cake and cooked with irony and wit. And, of course, just like real life, everything is eventually carried away by the wind… until the next dance.
And finally, Night on Bald Mountain by Modest Mussorgsky and Ave Maria by Franz Schubert is the end of life. First comes the pain and suffering of death, ruled over by Chernabog the Devil. He commands the torture and heartless ritual that I am subject to even now, in the twilight of life. The flesh and the bones yield to his trans-formative whims. We must all dance to his music until the striking of dawn. Then he is defeated and the spirit soars, free of body and definable form to the rousing strains of Ave Maria. We journey through the cathedral forest towards the everlasting light, and the movie, like my life, will be done. But I do not despair, because life, like the movie itself, can be endlessly replayed and is eternal.
I was not able to see this movie for the first time until college, attending a screening at Iowa State. When it came out on VHS in the 80’s, I bought two, one to keep and store safely, unopened, and one to watch until it fell apart. I also bought the DVD when it came out with Fantasia 2000. I cannot count how many times I have seen this movie. I even showed it to my classes as I was about to retire, and didn’t secure written permission. But it was only this week, feeling ill and terribly mortal again that I realized… Fantasia tells the story of my life.
I had originally thought to call this post “A Walk with God.” But that would probably offend my Christian friends and alienate my Jehovah’s Witness wife. It would bother my intellectual atheist friends too. Because they know I claim to be a Christian Existentialist, in other words, “an atheist who believes in God.” Agnostics are agnostics because they literally know they don’t know what is true and what is merely made up by men. And not knowing offends most people in the Western world.
But Debussy’s Reverie is a quiet walk in the sacred woods, the forest of as-yet-uncovered truths.
And that is what I need today. A quiet walk in the woods… when no literal woods are available.
I have apparently survived the Covid pandemic. But this pandemic has been hard on me. Having had the Omicron variant, I am left without the strength I once had even though I am fully vaccinated. I have lost the power to be a substitute teacher, a job I love. The loss of the ability to teach in any form still drives me to tears. I am a prisoner in my room at home most days. My soul is in darkness, knowing that the end could be right around the corner. There is so much left to do, to say, to write down for those who come after so they can fail to read any of it and reinforce the cruel irony that informs the universe. I have stories and lessons and morals and meanings to give the world still if only someone is willing to listen.
I am not afraid to die. I have no regrets. But I have been in a reverie about what has been in the past, what might have been, and what yet may be… if only I am granted the time.
And, as always, I feel like I have more writing yet to do. I am about to finish The Education of PoppenSparkle. And I have started He Rose on a Golden Wing, The Haunted Toystore, and AeroQuest 5. And I have stories beyond that to complete if I may.
But the most important thing right now is having time to think. Time for Reverie. And reflections upon the great symphony of life as it continues to play on… with or without me.
The organic thing clinging to Cissy’s skin looked like a space suit, but felt like a herd of plooberbeasts was sucking on her body with their oily tongues. She pulled at the armpits and crotch to try to adjust out the discomfort.
“I am told that if you pinch the Danjer suit too often, it turns your skin a darker blue,” Suki said.
Cissy looked down at herself and consciously tried to quell the urge to pinch it furiously.
They moved upward into the massive headspace of the space whale, following quietly as the head warrior led them to meet the prince.
Prince Porodor was standing in front of the inside wall of a space-whale eye. The eyes functioned like windows on a spaceship. You could look through it and see out into space. But the whale could see through it because of a wide web of optic nerves that colored the skull walls around it with a spiderweb of nerve ganglia. There was a transparent panel in the middle of the eye that picked up images from outside and inside the whale simultaneously. It also framed the imperious-looking Nebulon leader like a halo. He stared down at Cissy and her two companions like an angry king.
“We must decide if the Earther Humaniti lives or dies here. The Lupin Stardog as well, though their fates may not match,” the prince said.
“Captain Cissy Moonskipper saved a large number of our clan members from slavery to a planet of Stardog pirates. We owe her our lives and freedom.” Suki’s expression was defiant, though her voice was calm and reasonable.
“We are at war with the Earthers and the Galtorr Fusions of the Imperium. They owe us our freedom for violating our rights as star-farers.” The prince gave a thumb-down gesture with his right hand.
“It is true they treat us unfairly, but they are not all the same, just as Nebulons are not all the same. This one is different. She is good and caring. If we kill her after what she has done for us, we are being no better than the evil Earthers we war against.”
“True, Sister Suki. But Nebulon Law will decide. And who is Nebulon Law?”
“You are my prince.”
“We shall test her, then. If she passes, she will live. But the Lupin must be rendered into whale food. We will tolerate no such vermin on this space whale.”
“This Lupin child is different, my prince. She is the loyal pet of Cissy Moonskipper. Without her to lead the way, we would not have been able to make our way out of Stardog slave pens.”
“Very well then. The pet’s fate will be a sharing of the master’s fate. They both die… or both will live.”
“Know this, then, my prince. If Cissy is fated to die, you must kill me too. I owe her a life debt that cannot be repaid if I allow her to die.”
The prince’s face looked disgusted and angry to Cissy. But he nodded his agreement with Suki’s conditions.
“Suki, why is he saying everything in Galactic English? He must know that both Friday and I understand what he’s saying.”
Cissy indicated Friday, quaking and shaking like she was standing on a machine for mixing sand and ferrous particles to make ferrocrete.
“He wants you to understand. He wants you to be afraid.”
“I don’t fear him. I’m almost as tall as he is. And I’m better looking too.”
“He can hear you. But, in this case, that probably helps you.”
The prince snapped his fingers repeatedly. “The racial testing! Here and now. Bring me the twins!”
The people watching this unfold, blue-skinned all, moved about to get out of the way. A group of what were obviously Vorran women dressed in the orange gear of the Vorranac Clan led two naked male children into the headspace of the whale. One was obviously a Nebulon with blue skin and yellow hair with the two red cheek spots on his face. The other one was very peachy-pink colored, and looked for all the world like he was the same race as Cissy. Though his hair was also blond.
“Hear this, Cissy Moonskipper, would-be savior of Nebulon slaves, these two children are alike in almost every way. Tell, me… for the sake of your life and life of your pet… How are these two children different?”
Cissy looked at the two naked boys. Same height. Same basic facial features. Same haircuts. Same taciturn expressions. She hadn’t failed to notice that the prince had called for twins.
“They are not different. They are the same.”
The prince chuckled in a way that reminded Cissy of villains in holodramas. “You are quite wrong, Cissy Moonskipper. Look at these two brothers. They are both the children of two Nebulons born in captivity and sired by a slave owner who was a white male Earther. One, whose skin is blue and has the red radiation-absorbing organs on his face, bears the dominant genetic codes of the Nebulon race. The other, his Earther-like brother, has only the recessive genes of his slave-owning Imperial father.”
“So, what does this mean?” Suki challenged.
“The test has been failed.”
“Why is this so?” Cissy demanded. “Surely if they are twin brothers, they are equal in the sight of Nebulon lawmakers.”
“No,” growled the prince. “Neither one is a citizen of this space whale because of their tainted blood. But the one with the dominant Nebulon genes can live among us and serve us for his long Nebulonin lifetime. The other one, even with the protections of a Danjer suit, will eventually sicken and die from the exotic radiations generated by the interior environments of a space whale. We may as well subject him to the same sacrificial ritual that will be used to dispose of all of you.”
Cissy was stunned.
The head warrior stood before them. “I will now take you to the place of feasting and leisure. You will have stentoriac sekktons of time to eat, drink, and be happy. Then we will assemble in the bowels to dissect and render you into food for the whale.”
“Stentoriac sekktons?” Cissy asked.
“You might want to think of it as three Earth days. Seventy-two hours,” Suki said.
Friday buried her puppy face in Cissy’s side and let the tears flow.
Seemingly Andy was having one of the luckiest spells of his life as a high school junior. He had inherited his great-grandfather’s 1920 LaSalle. It was a classic car that his grandfather drove in July 4th parades. And he always shared his grandfather’s deep love for the antique car. Loved it so much, in fact, that his grandfather put it in the will that the car belonged to him now. On top of that, Siena, the most beautiful girl in his class had said yes to being his steady girlfriend. She had said yes to the picnic in the Arizona desert.
But not everything was wine and roses. First of all, something had come up for Mom and Dad. At the last minute, Andy had become responsible for little sister Sally, a precocious seven-year-old. The only choices available were to cancel the picnic in the desert or to take Sally along. And he was missing the gentle wisdom of Grandpa Joe more than ever now. Owning the car was nothing next to Grandpa being gone.
But for some reason, Siena had been very understanding about having to babysit Sally on their date in the desert. Andy had some seriously racy daydreams about the date in the desert and what they could get away with, but he had thought that would come to nothing with the seven-year-old inserted into the middle of it. But Siena had asked for one concession to be okay with the arrangement.
“I will welcome the chance to get to know your little sister, but you have to promise me that if I ask you to do something on this date that you might not want to do, you will agree to do it without question.”
“What… what are you gonna ask for?”
“Oh, no. You don’t get to know that. You just have to agree and do it.”
“Um, okay? I mean, I promise I will… but don’t ask me to kill anybody.”
She laughed. “You may be surprised what you like once you try it.”
That said, he found himself bumping down the road in his classic car with Siena in the passenger seat and little Sally singing the “Let it Go!” song from Frozen in the back seat.
They found the quiet place surrounded by Saguaro cactuses where Andy had planned to picnic. It was on the ranch that had once belonged to Grandpa’s best friend, and Grandpa had said repeatedly that he courted Grandma there several times. They laid out the Indian blankets for the picnic and carried the food out from the back of the car. Sally insisted on carrying one of the watermelons even though it was half as big as she was.
“Okay, the time has come,” Siena said. “We are going to take off all our clothes and picnic here in the nude. I brought sunscreen.”
“But… but… Sally is here. We can’t… I mean… not if front of Sally!”
“You promised. Besides, we are going to practice naturism, not have sex or something.”
“I… um… what?”
“My family and I are practicing naturists. Nudists if you prefer. And since you are going to be my boyfriend, you are going to have to get used to this. Family naturism.”
Sally giggled happily as she led the way, being the first one naked.
Andy learned to like it with amazing speed once he finally overcame the initial shock. Putting sunscreen on Siena was almost as good as having her put sunscreen on him. Then Siena put sunscreen on an extra-wiggly little sister. The food actually tasted better when eaten au naturel in the wild. The hot sun and the desert wind felt better on bare skin than it did on sweat-soaked clothing. And then, full of picnic potato salad, they sat there and told each other picnic stories that were even more amazing when Siena told them about nudist people having nude picnics in nudist places. There was plenty of laughter.
Once the picnic was over, they didn’t get dressed to ride in the hot old car with no air conditioning in it. They waited to get home to leap back into their clothes.
“Thanks for that, Andy. I am grateful that you were so understanding about my family’s secret.” Siena’s grin was heart-melting.
“Yeah, um… It’s gonna be a thing, ain’t it.”
“It so is…” She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek… the one on his face.
Bustling downtown Dows with the grain elevator in the background
There are many simple truths to be gleaned from a simple visit to the scene of your childhood. You need every so often to get in touch with where you came from and the roots of who you are. Dows is not the town where I grew up. But we played them in 4-H softball, and we won almost as much as we lost to them. It is a town near enough to my little home town to be a place that impacts who I am.
You have no idea what this is, right?
Day before yesterday we went to Dows for a dinner with relatives. My cousin and her second husband were there. Her parents, my uncle who still lives on Uncle I.C.’s farm place that has been in the family for more than a hundred years, and my aunt who is going bald a bit, were also there. We ate in a totally Pepsi-Cola-themed restaurant and had a Rueben pizza with roast beef and sauerkraut on it (talk about your total cultural potpourri!) The experience taught me a simple lesson. We come from a bizarre mixture of themes and things cooked together in a recipe for life that can never be repeated and cooked again for our children.
You don’t order Coke here.
We avoided talking about politics because Iowa is very conservative and none of us enjoy yelling at each other about Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton using fact-free Fox News talking points and cow poop about how building a wall that Mexico pays for will cure all our economic problems because we all think we know how Hispanics moving into Iowa are ruining our lives. So, instead, we talked about how Eaton’s machine tool manufacturing plant in Belmond is facing more lay-offs.
The restored and re-purposed Dows’ Rock Island train station.
We talked about businesses that have gone out and not been replaced in the little Iowa towns around us. We talked about how no one walks beans any more, walking the rows of soy beans to pull button weeds and cockle-burrs by hand and chop rogue corn with hoe. We talked about how farming has gone to spraying weed-killing chemicals and factory-farming pigs instead. It is a simple lesson in how ways of life come to an end and are not necessarily replaced with something better.
There is an artist working on a patriotic project to put one of these in every county in Iowa.
We constantly remake ourselves as the world changes and ages around us. Nothing lasts forever. Life is a process of growing and withering and regrowing. A simple word for that is “farming”. Who we were impacts who we have become and will affect what comes after. But we learn simple lessons from going to the places we love best and doing our dead-level best to get from there to here and move eventually to someplace beyond. And Dows, Iowa is just one of those places… I guess.
Catch a Falling Star 
Holding Patterns
Sometimes you have to fly in big circles waiting for terrible things to pass. If you don’t wait… if you rush in unprepared… then you go down in flames.
The problem started with two molars whose expensive crowns both broke during the pandemic. I went to a Vietnamese pirate dentist who extracted both ruined and infected molars. tortured me heavily during the three-week procedure and extracted $4000 out of my pocket because I had no dental insurance. That was followed by a trip to the ER for a kidney-stone crisis, a matter of $65 out of pocket, thanks to the $185 a month I pay for Medicare. And two months later, another trip to the ER for a deadly low heart rate resulted in a week in the hospital, a surgical implantation of a pacemaker, and finally another trip to the ER after getting out of the hospital due to dehydration. The out-of-pocket cost of the hospital will be only $500, thanks to Medicare. Of course, President Pumpkinhead may kill Medicare, too, before I actually get the bill. It is expensive in this country to become poor. And if you are poor, you have no other option. At least, if I can manage three more bankruptcies by the time I’m 70, I will be qualified to run for president.
Life is definitely a lot like Moose Bowling. It is a simple game. In order to win, you only have to knock down all ten pins in one throw. The hard part is that you have to throw a moose to knock the pins down. Did you know that the average weight of an adult moose is 1800 pounds, or 820 kilograms? That’s a lot of moose meat to fling with my arthritic 68-year-old moose-throwing muscles. My flabber is totally gasted by that.
So, as I swiftly rise from prosperity to poverty, the ultimate fate of most old school teachers, it is probably a good thing that I have decided to become a nudist. At least I will save money on buying clothes.
Leave a comment
Filed under angry rant, autobiography, commentary, feeling sorry for myself, humor, Paffooney
Tagged as alaska, canada, hiking, nature, travel