Tough Guys

If you rabbit-hole into health news and advice on the internet, you would think that humans are snowballs in hell. So many terrible things can happen. A new problem discovered daily. Any of which are certain to cripple or kill you slowly or suddenly, at any time .

I remember that I am on the far end of millions of years of evolution. Admittedly, some luck was involved, but humans did not take over the world because they were soft and weak .

Lately we tend not to give ourselves enough credit. People can eat anything, and throughout history, they have done so. A lot or a little, in conditions from charred to raw to spoiled. We automatically vomit up most poisons, we purge bad bacteria. Anything that makes it through the first line of defenses faces almost certain oblivion from a fearsome immune system. As for injury or damage – most organs usually repair themselves .

Admittedly, we do die eventually (although that might be another aspect of evolutionary toughness). And also over half of us now survive childhood when we would have once been dead before adolescence. No matter. With or without technology we’re the baddest life form that ever existed .

Okay. We need to avoid getting hit by a truck. Eat sensibly. Follow a relatively careful lifestyle. But the parameters in that lifestyle are immense, regardless of what some nerd with a microscope “discovered” yesterday .

So swagger a bit. It’s useful to play the bully once in a while. And all advice isn’t good.

Global Crossing Redux

Around 2000, I was working in a relatively high-tech company. All my colleagues were poised to get rich. They’d invested in all the upcoming technology stocks. The future would be golden .

Most were internet related. For the cautious, Microsoft was solid but turning into a has-been. Apple was there for the daring. But most dreams centered on the magic rockets like AOL or Yahoo. Speculative dreams pursued the “name territory” like Pets.com (nobody was using search engines so easily remembered names were the wave of the future). Beanie Babies were the bitcoin of those times. So many folks told me they knew their retirement and children’s college were set .

Of course they were partisans of their picks. They did not understand the venture capitalist truth that one must invest in a lot of losers to hope for one massive hit. They knew that they knew .

A lot of IPO issuances were springing up all the time. Ultimately buzz centered on ” Global Crossing”  – a fiber optic company. Whispers in the hallway. Clandestine peeks at moments on the company terminals. Advice. Certainty of payoff. How could they miss?

Of course – well – the “dot.com crash”. Most startups vanished as most startups do, carrying their stocks to the bottom like the Titanic. Twenty years later GlobalCcrossing was an okay investment. But most speculators had gone down with the ships .

Oh, I forgot, the past does not predict the future ,,,

Bugs and Features

When I was writing software and something unexpected would result, we’d laughingly claim “it’s not a bug, it’s a feature!” I’ve often applied the same logic to my own life, rather than complaining about things that usually cannot be fixed. 

For example, I’ve always been nearsighted. I actually enjoy taking my glasses off to view the world in a different way. Lines and shapes may be blurred, but other things such as colors are richer and I often notice different focal points .

Being short is hardly fun in this culture, but it did keep me out of trouble since I knew I would lose any fight I was in. My genes fit my size well to keep me mostly healthy, and lately it’s been a blessing to be small in cramped spaces like airplane seats. And, often, it is useful to be unnoticed and non-threatening .

The various degradations and pains of advancing age are never any fun, but if they are minor and temporary they do remind me to appreciate whatever remains. Nothing makes one appreciate normal teeth more than a toothache .

Admittedly it is a shallow, pollyannish or Panglossian view of “the best of all possible worlds” But like many philosophies, when it fits it works very well. Why waste time cursing fate, or gnawing outlook with envy? Some ambition is useful, some anger cathartic, some pain unbearable. But for the rest – well I prefer to try to change perspective .

Features, not bugs! 

Roses

All the roses on the patio are magnificently in bloom. Joan picked them out years ago, we don’t do any special care, but they perform wonderfully year after year. In another part of the yard we have a survivor from her youth, over 60 years ago .

All life is amazing. For most people, flowers are especially beautiful. Roses please us because of years of careful selection and breeding. A common joy it is too easy to take for granted .

As I think and write my mind feels with interesting (to me) dimensions, echoes, lessons.  A rose is a trigger to “deeper” issues. But I ignore that today. Sometimes one should just accept and enjoy the world as it is, this moment of now .

An important aspect is simply visceral. I took no special trip, I am looking at no formal media presentation. When I go out there is heat, sunlight. If I’m not careful, thorns. Scents, in back of me birds crying and a tiny chipmunk running by. In a word, “existence’ itself. Unadorned and infinite .

Finally there is memory and transience. And “this same flower that blooms today tomorrow will be dying.”  Long ago summers recalled, rose gardens elsewhere. Even the sad certain knowledge that this is all to vanish, finally retreat to winter to come .

All this from some common roses in a small backyard. Ah, a lesson there I am sure, but I shall not pursue it today .

Goonies

Police in the United States have generally been respected, at least in the last 50 years or so, even if regarded a little cynically. For the most part they are neighbors with a tough and stressful job, long stretches of boredom marked by moments of unpredictable terror. Most of us can sympathize with their occasional overreactions, rudeness, and even civil transgressions. Understandable .

ICE broke all the rules .

Nazi Stormtroopers are imagined as lean, mean, hard, cold, nasty, and effective. The image of ICE is more that of a gang of mumbling rumbling Michelin men, always moving in fat, deeply swaddled herds. Angry for the sake of being angry .

At some point in the past ICE agents were due appropriate sympathy as trained professionals, going into difficult areas to find “the worst of the worst” violent criminal alien gangs. A necessary job to mop up what local government could not handle .

But now? Local law seems adequate to handle and turn over the worst of the worst. The goon gang seems to be ignorant, obese, overenthusiastic thugs egging each other on to violently seize inoffensive women and children. Only to fill quotas. And an awful lot of the new masked faces in a bloated force simply resemble poorly trained, bitter unemployables, grateful to act badly while unidentifiable .

Goonies. And not in a funny movie .

Tick Terror

Lately a litany of ills has people around here huddling inside in fear. Deadly fevers from mosquitoes, flesh eating bacteria in the water, invisible plagues in the air. Ticks with strange and horrible diseases .

The common denominator is that the culprits are tiny or invisible. Also ubiquitous if you are in the wrong area. It’s quite difficult to avoid water at the beach, air on the patio, or grass in the park.

Ticks are my favorite public overreaction. Mosquitoes invisibly come from anywhere and bite you right away, germs are generally thinly dispersed, flesh eating is quite rare. Ticks cannot run, jump, nor fly. They’re quite slow and deliberate, and take a pretty long time to climb to wherever they want, dig in, and begin to feed. Lots of opportunity to find and get rid of them if you look.

But folks imagine them as some miniscule land variant of the great white shark. Stalking the grasslands ready to pounce. Dropping from the sky on the unwary. Cleverly racing up legs to hide under socks or shorts. Evolving to be impervious to insect repellent .

The good news for me is that most park visitors remain on paved road. To them, grass is toxic, woodland trails forbidden. I ignore the signs and check now and then, always when I have finished my hike. No problem. But – well – the trails are lovely and empty for us adventurous types, apparently courting death or worse .  I often receive incredulous stares from the crowds on the macadam.

As I often tell my 10-year-old grandson, the great thing to be really truly afraid of here on Long Island is not ticks, mosquitoes, bacteria, or sharks, but cars and the impatient maniacs who drive them.