Archive for November, 2010

Some of you guys wrote to tell me I was full of crap…didn’t know what I was talking about, and it forced me to review what I’ve written, trying to see it through different eyes. I’ve never claimed this to be a technical site, only reflections of my own, personal experiences, many based on life in Louisiana…like our ghosts and hurricanes…and of course, the oil spill.
As I’ve said elsewhere, if you keep your eyes open, you come to know a whole lot after you get a couple of bad storms under your belt…like what NOT to do, and when I describe what happens afterward, I’m just telling you what I’ve seen…and deeply appreciated. There’s a sort of renewal when you’re gathering branches, cutting down damaged trees, cleaning up, and sharing the misery with those you love…and those you barely know, a beauty in it all. I wanted to share it.
The oil spill is another matter. I LIVE HERE, and when it was going full force, we were innundated with information coming from all sides, some reassuring, some frightening. For a while, it was hard to figure out what was really going on, but I have to confess…we tended to trust the scientists much more than the government, particularly when assessments and projections started popping up. We wanted INFORMATION, not spin…or feel-good explanations, and I think we were right to do so. Even now, we worry about continuing damage, its economic impact, how it could change our lives forever.
I considered the entry about ghosts FUN, like creepy stories told in the flickering glow of a campfire. Who knows whether they really exist, but almost everybody down here has their own favorite story…which they’ll tell at the slightest provocation. I know some of it is self-serving…particularly when they come from popular HAUNTED hotels and B&B’s, but God, they’re a kick to write about!
The stuff about astronomy is RESEARCHED, but you know…aliens? Like ghosts, it’s anybody’s guess, but after seeing two greenish disks up there and encountering Von Daniken…in a way…I became unalterably interested in the phenomenon…and it’s been anything but boring. Even Hawking has put his two cents in, and opinions seem to vary all the way from considering it complete hooey…through intellectual curiosity…to sincere and comitted concern. I’m willing to wait and see who’s right and who’s full of crap on that one.
Some of what I write represents musings about things I’ve encountered on my life journey, and maybe they’re right about them. They ARE mostly personal observations, but I enjoy writing them and a lot of people seem to enjoy reading what I have to say. The only answer I can give those guys is to tell them nobody’s holding a gun to their heads, forcing them to visit my blog and read my entries. I’m easy to avoid, you know…one click…and I’m gone.
It’s startling to me, but it seems some people are even offended by my frequent references to God, who’s been the only refuge for us Cajuns for ages, all the way from our expulsion from Nova Scotia…through the Civil War and it’s aftermath…not to mention the advent of modernity. Deep-rooted faith has sustained us, but if you’re having problems with this, look at it another way. I think it broadens a person to admit there’s a being wiser, more powerful, and better than we are…keeps us a little less arrogant, a little kinder to others. My faith is important to me and a lot of other people down here, and if you can’t accept that, refer to the paragraph above and CLICK AWAY. I won’t mind…but I’ll let God speak for Himself.
One guy was even offended by “all the pretty pictures”. The only answer I can think of is to tell him I consider beauty an important part of life. There’s more than enough ugliness floating around. It’s important to be aware of it, but a life of nothing but ugliness without beauty to dull its edge is like trying to make a gumbo without roux…tolerable but VERY unsatisfying.
Guys, I’m ME. This is the way I do my blog. and an enormous number of people seem to appreciate it. I don’t mind being told I’m full of crap, but just saying it isn’t enough. Pick a point, develop your objections to it, make your argument, and I’ll be happy to respond. I think it might even be fun…but GENERIC objections? I’m against them. They’re too close to saying stuff like, “All…you fill in whichever group you like…are BAD.”
God gave us the ability to THINK. I just want us to use it a little more often. Of course, if you’re lacking in that department, you probably won’t even know how to click away from my website. I suggest you ask somebody how…THEN DO IT.
Hey, Picture Guy, did you notice? No pictures on this one, but I didn’t do it to please you. I just couldn’t find anything I considered appropriate. I mean, what kind of picture could I use?  I suppose I could find a pile of horse dung somewhere to photograph…but who wants to look at a pile of crap?

Ever look up at night and wonder what’s up there? I don’t. I wonder WHO’s up there and what they’re like…and I think we can make at least one assumption. They’ll be proficient at adaptation. Simple survival can be achieved by decent numbers of beings just plodding away, but successful survival, dominance, requires the ability to deal handily with changing, unfamiliar events and surroundings…and that’s something they may not know about us. We adapt extraordinarily well…to almost anything.
We aren’t the fastest, the strongest, or even the most determined on this planet, and we can’t even say with certainty we’re the smartest. God knows what a dolphin or whale’s IQ is; we can’t even communicate with them. The extent of OUR interaction has been to kill a lot of them and trap others to perform endlessly, and the wild guys avoid us…who could blame them? Because they stick to doing their thing, we put them in the “dumb animal” category, but it’s also possible that knowing you have the life you love, relishing the sea and the treasures it holds, and enjoying it to the fullest suggests wisdom. I guess we’ll never really know.
We, on the other hand, aren’t always all that happy with with the environment we’ve been dealt, but we’ve succeeded EVERYWHERE, killing animals for fur when we’re cold, taking clothes off where we’re hot, finding new foods, taming unusual beasts, accomplishing life in the most unexpected places. Yes, we’re SMART. I’m even willing to put us in contention for the smartest, but when we’re seriously challenged, we instinctively narrow our thinking, focusing on the problem, trying to overcome it. If we can’t, we deal with it in a productive way and learn to live with it…we ADAPT.
I’ve marveled at that particular ability during…and most prominently AFTER hurricanes. It’s incredible how resourceful and imaginative people can be at those times, and new ideas seem to catch on IMMEDIATELY…when others realize they work. The trick is not to be the poor fool whose idea didn’t work, but even he contributes in a left-handed, mud-on-the-wall sort of way. He tells us what NOT to do, and the next time around, successful innovations have been improved, enlarged, shared, and usually in south Louisiana, tastefully painted. Like I said, we’re good at it. We’re human.
We’ve been working at it for eons. I can just imagine the looks on faces of desert nomads when a guy first walked up through the heat in billowing layers of light clothing. Most people were taking stuff off, but he was putting more on. He had discovered INSULATION, and you can just bet it wasn’t long before everybody was doing the same thing. They understood immediately…it works…Achmed looks comfortable, LET’S DO IT! And they’re still at it, by now improved almost into an art form.
We’re lucky. With our capacity to adapt and an extremely useful structure…two sturdy legs, two wide-range strong arms, hands built for manipulating things, binocular vision with good depth perception, and a gigantic information processor, we can go just about anywhere, survive, and find ways to make things better, not like other animals we know. With the possible exception of whales and dolphins, a lot of sea animals seem to be trying to be fish…not the soundest survival concept…and VERY limiting, and most land animals are hopelessly lacking in the processor department, relying mostly on instinct and the stastical security of a herd.
They’re STUCK where they are, damned to a life of reacting and responding, frequently in terror, never branching away, never launching anything remotely like imagination. Only our simian relatives are anything like us. After all, they share more than ninety percent of our genome, and they, too, succeeded in a way. They became US…and sometimes I think they know it. When I look at their sad eyes, their faces forced as far through the bars as possible, it seems like our biological cousins are wondering, endlessly asking themselves where WE went wrong. By the way, they adapt pretty well, too…just not as successfully.
I think other beings out in the starry swirl will probably look a lot like us at first glance…in form. It seems to be the most utilitarian, but if they visit within the next hundred years or so, we’ll know they’re a lot farther along than we. After all, THEY will have found US, while we’re still decades from visiting even the nearest planets in our solar system, and probably centuries from colonizing them…if we EVER get around to it. Personally, I think it will take some sort of impending threat before we really get serious about it. For now, I think we’ll have spectacular science programs on TV, politicians crowing, and a couple of people trudging around on Mars, like they did on the moon…little else.
No moon or Mars base, no colonization, nothing but a few flashy, well-publicised trips, and I don’t think that’s NEARLY enough. Lately, I’ve come to think contact will most likely occur within that time frame, the next hundred years, and as you can probably tell, I’m still troubled by those bright little things whizzing around up there in the sky…exciting and pretty…but worrisome. If they’re not manned, they’re drones, and if we didn’t make them, SOMEBODY ELSE DID, somebody with a very efficient physical form, a tradition of innovation…and most likely, a genius for adaptation. They all go together.

Actually, that’s one of the plot lines in Kukulkan, the sequel to Dawn on Earth, but besides our ability to adapt, we have another edge. We’ve been blessed by hundreds, perhaps thousands of incandescent men and women who have taught us that kindness is better than hostility and good is preferable to evil, and for the most part…with exceptions here and there…you can fill in whichever trolls you prefer…we’ve incorporated those teachings into our lives. But meeting alien visitors who share that philosophy is NOT a given. They could be MEAN bastards…think Vikings…even Nazi aliens.
Who says they’re going to be NICE? I keep remembering all those movies, mostly in black and white…you know, people smiling, welcoming alien visitors…only to be blown to bits or incinerated. It sounds pretty much spot-on to me. They expected advancement to include kindness and benevolence, but as I said, that may be a CONSIDERABLE stretch. Actually, Clatu is the only exception I can think of…and we shot him in that movie. Of course, he got back at us, after he regenerated and Patricia Neal screamed a lot, and what he said was interesting. We have no idea what laws or moral code others may embrace…powerful, extraterrestrial others.
The sad fact is we’ve been the only successfully ADAPTABLE beings on this planet for so long we may have become a little smug about it. I mean, who’s going to challenge us? The only other species coming to my mind is dogs. They’re smart, too, but they seem to love us, carelessly relinquishing their innate adaptive capabilities. We’re alone in our slot…and it might be a problem. Secure as hell as top adapter, we’ve been coasting for maybe fifty thousand years, resting on our laurels and getting a little lazy about the whole concept in the process. We’re top honcho here…big deal! What about out there?
Others out there…if there are others out there, and I believe there are…will have adapted to something we’ve only begun to think about halfway seriously, space flight over enormous distances. When they come, whatever we do, however we respond, they’re probably going to consider us interesting…but primitive and incapable of anything threatening…sitting ducks, and ask any duck hunter what he thinks about that. THEY’RE EASY! We’d be caught off guard and incapable of responding effectively if they turned out to be hostile, and non-human is only a hair’s breadth from inhuman.
The way I see it, we need to do two things, hold on to principles luminaries have left us, and pray like hell the aliens have something like it in their history. In Kukulkan, I have a character, an alien, saying, “Kindness is not weakness, mercy requires more courage than battle, and good is better than evil.” God, I hope alien visitors share have that philosophy. If not, when our skies are filled with unfamiliar and threatening ships, we’ll be eyeball deep in you-know-what…adaptable or not.
If you think this is all imagination gone wild, read HISTORY, particularly the history of India and central Europe. Long before we took to the skies, people in those areas awakened to the sight of stuff like that up in the air…there are even paintings and woodcuts documenting it. The scary thing is it’s happened before, but it seems we were lucky then. They were at war with each other…not us, but WHO THE HELL WERE THEY…and will they come again? My answers are I have no idea…and yes, they will.

The Cabin at Toledo Bend

A lot of things change when you grow up. You begin to see things with less clarity and discover what you confidently believed wasn’t always the complete picture…like your parents. After you’ve shed the innocence of childhood, you begin to realize they weren’t nearly as positive and confident as they seemed. A lot of the time they were uncertain…and often a little scared, and you only saw what they wanted you to see.
Watching your innocence erode into adulthood is scary, too, particularly when you realize at one point or another, you’ll have to face a lot of doubt and uncertainty alone, and instinctively, you come to cherish the golden moments of your young life before you understood just how unpredictable and precarious the future actually is.
I know I’ve been lucky; I’ve had so much to remember fondly…a warm nurturing family, friendships I’ve maintained all the years since, the thick, simple delight of summer, and the glory of autumn nights before it got cold, the first corn of the season, the first gumbo of winter, the first frost, icicles…like I said, so many things, but of them all, summer days and nights seem to be the most memorable.
During the summer I can’t remember ever being tired, though I can remember my mom telling me I was and should go to bed. I can remember running all day and never stopping to rest, endless adventure, swimming in the bayou, and the absolute wonder of fireflies. We called them lightning bugs.
There was a poorly tended lot near my home, and when the grass seed pods were about a foot high, we prepared, carving trails through it with muscle-powered reel lawnmowers then waiting anxiously for nightfall and our quarry. They began just after sunset, thousands, maybe millions of lightning bugs, and armed with Mason jars and carefully punctured lids, we burst into our field of battle to capture as many of them as we could. I think the best I ever did was five on one run.
Of course, after we caught them, they tended to stop flashing and only looked like little flies, so we released them…and they started blinking again. We even built a release point in the field well away from the capture paths. We didn’t want to keep traumatizing the same unfortunate little insects, but to tell the truth, they didn’t seem to mind all that much.
After I moved to the city, I didn’t see them any more, though by then I had learned not to call them lightning bugs. Preoccupied with other things, I don’t remember whether I even wondered where they were, just sort of assumed they preferred a more pastoral landscape to concrete, cars, and cats. I didn’t see them again for many years until we were vacationing up in the Arkansas Ozarks a couple of years ago.
One June twilight my lady and I were sitting on the porch of our cabin and I was thrilled to see a pasture below us dotted with bright flashes of light…but it seemed to me there were fewer than I remembered. Maybe, I had exaggerated their number in my memory over the years. Still, they were beautiful, and I had to resist the temptation to run among them with my jar and lid.
When I told the cabin owner how happy I had been to see them again after all these years, what she told me was surprising…and sad. “Yes, they’re beautiful, but lately we’ve had fewer every year. Soon, I don’t think there’ll be any left.” Even though it began with DDT, I think the other pesticides we use are getting them, too. In our quest for perfect produce, we’ve inadverdently destroyed the charm and joy of summer and early autumn evenings.
That’s the way it is with science…and man. What seems to be a worthy and productive idea often has surprisingly negative consequences in other areas and to other beings. When those others are IMPORTANT to us, we stop immediately, but if they’re only beautiful and wondrus and decorative in the gathering darkness, we let them slide, and in the case of fireflies, all the way to oblivion.
I have a friend who always said, “The world is getting uglier by the minute,” and I think I’m beginning to see what he was getting at. It may be amazingly distractive and lavishly comfortable…but at a cost. Goodness has been squandered away, along with too many beautiful animals, and no matter how much we may regret their passing, when they’re gone, they’re gone for good.
And children will no longer find delight in the warm, open air, instead hunkering over computers or electronic games in artificial darkness, engaging artificial beings in an artificial reality. They’ll never miss the fireflies, mostly because they’ll never have seen them. My friend wasn’t completely correct…not only uglier, it’s getting emptier, too.

The Company of Green, and Sky, and Water

We spent last week at Toledo Bend, a huge reservoir between Texas and Louisiana. The water was too low for fishing, but I didn’t mind. I’ve never been all that big on fishing anyway. I mean…I know I’m smarter than a fish, so catching them isn’t that big a deal. And then there’s all the hooha that goes with catching fish…cleaning, gutting, freezing, finding dry ice to get them home. It’s easier and cleaner to buy catfish or telapia at the store.
I was just looking for quiet beauty, the company of trees and gently lapping water, and dark cool nights under a glittering canopy…and I found them all in a pine forest at the waterside. We particularly loved sitting on the porch at twilight, watching the light fade and stars timidly emerge. It was on one such evening that we saw him…one lonely little firefly.
It didn’t look like he was doing too well to me, flashing erratically, never moving, apparently stuck on a low-hanging branch. My lady, who is incredibly knowledgeable about such things, told me it might be a firefly predator. They mimic their prey and lure them to their deaths, but that didn’t make sense to me. If there were no fireflies, why the hell would there be a predator, and anyway, if all they eat is fireflies, they’re done for, too.
I choose to believe he was a firefly, probably the last I’ll ever see, and I watched him until he stopped blinking. I think he died in that tree, my last firefly, after exhausting himself looking for a nonexistant mate and the equally nonexistant promise of a continuing species. He could never know he also took the promise of beauty and delight with him when he left, but I’m glad we were sitting outside that night.
Nothing innocent, no matter how small or aparrently insignificant, should die alone, and I was happy we could be there with him. In a way, he had come to say goodbye, but he couldn’t know he was saying it to friends…who loved him…and would mourn his death…and sadly remember the glory of long past nights sparkling with joyful, glowing wonder.

The Afternoon Angel Came

Sometimes I wonder what’s ricocheting around inside Angel’s head. Most of the time it’s obvious, particularly when people are milling around just outside our fence; she HATES that. It’s really sort of funny. We have a cedar fence and she’s found the few open knotholes through which she can watch with one eye, growling all the while.
We have cats in the back yard, too. My lady loves them, but I’m not really CRAZY about cats personally. Sorry, but I gotta stop right now. While I was working on the blog, my lady walked in with Angel and told me it was MY TURN. It seems Angel insisted they play in the den and both of them are kind of tuckered. “Here,” she said, “Go play with Daddy!” but she doesn’t realize what an honor that was. Angel doesn’t play with just anybody.
Now, I know I’m not REALLY her daddy; I mean, WHO could possibly be confused? I’m not nearly furry enough, but Angel chooses to ignore that distinction, jumping into my lap while I’m at the computer and covering me with wet, slobbery kisses. Dogs never have understood the subtle nature of a real kiss, but both of us know what she’s thinking.
A lot of the time she’s either protecting me or playing, particularly when she brings me her favorite chew-toy and keeps hitting my leg with it, and sometimes…just for fun…I pick her up and walk outside with her in my arms. A kind of beatific look fans across her face, and I can just hear her thinking, “I’M HUGE! Look how far I can see!” She can be hilarious at times.
Dogs are simple…but not dumb. I know there are ancient echoes of life in the pack inside that endlessly active little head of hers, but when dogs collectively decided to trade us for a life foraging out in the wild, it wasn’t just convenient. It was something else. Over countless eons they figured out how to plug into our most essential values…like love, and when they’ve decided WHO they love, look out. It’s Katie bar the door.
I have no doubt whatsoever in my mind Angel loves me. With her sleeping quietly up on the edge of my bed at night…as she always does, I know…and I know she knows. When I’m sad or upset, she senses it, and nobody on Earth could ever hope for a more compassionate friend. When I’m happy, she’s ready to go…and do absolutely anything, usually at full blast and smiling every second.
Of course, at any moment, I can bring her back into the pack with a soft growl. I’m kind of proud of mine, gutteral, way back in the throat. My lady hates it, but that’s not the reason I don’t use it. Instead of frightening her, she gets embarrassed and sentences me to hours of pitiful, submissive apology, and I just don’t know how to tell her I’m not NEARLY as interested in her carefully protected underbelly as some wolf leader seems to have been millennia ago.
For DAYS afterward, she’s scrupulously obedient and deferential, but that’s not what I’m looking for. I want company and the unchallenged friendship of an equal…yes, an equal…a fellow creature on our rock who has decided to share her life with mine…or my lady’s sometimes when I’m busy, but I know how my lady really feels about all this. She lost it…and gave it away one terrible night in Texas.
After Rita, we went there to check on her father. He lived near the coast, and when we arrived, we found incredible destruction all through the area. At that time, my dog was Weetful, and when we left for Texas, she seemed completely normal. But it turned out she wasn’t. In the middle of the night she got into distress, and when we took her to an emergency veterinary hospital, they told us it was hopeless. She was in heart failure.

Weetful...Before She Got Completely Black

Now, Weetful was really old for a dog, and I told them to put her down. I thought that was what she would want, and after they did it, I walked sadly to the reception area and my lady, who I thought had a less than perfect relationship with poor Weetful. “What’s going on?” she asked. “Babe,” I answered. “Weetful’s gone. We had to put her down. She was in heart failure and they couldn’t save her.”
I’ve never heard a wail like that as she dissolved in sobs and tears, and I hope NEVER to hear it again. I thought she had only tolerated Weetful, but her grief was much too real…too elemental…SHE LOVED HER! I bet Weetful knew it, too…dogs are like that, but I, as usual, was pretty much in the dark about it all. When had they bonded? More importantly, WHY had they bonded? What the hell was going on when I wasn’t around?
The house was very lonely after that…and kind of empty. After a couple of months I told my lady I wanted another dog, and she didn’t object, though it felt like she considered it a sort of treason. To her, Weetful had become a canine saint, and while I understood, I missed having a dog around down here on Earth…and all those happy, slobbery kisses.
She didn’t come with me when I went to look for a new dog and I had no idea what I wanted when I left, but you know, God sometimes takes care of things for you when you least expect it. When I walked into the kennel, I saw a puppy much like Weetful, but what interested me most was the way she was working her little arm around, trying to unlock her cage.
When I held her in my arms, she looked up at me, and I saw a kind of glow. Snow white with big, brown eyes, I could see it in there…love…okay, maybe opportunism. I know dogs are crafty manipulators, but I quickly discovered how wrong I was to doubt that tiny little dog. And you know what? My lady saw through it, too…almost immediately!
“What are you going to name her?” she asked while she cuddled the puppy in her arms…and it was hard to ignore…she looked so much like Weetful. Okay…Weetful was mostly jet black and this dog was snow white…with a pink face, but allowing for the difference, she could easily have been an aberrant clone. It’s hard to work out genitics, but I knew one thing. I loved her and she loved me…and my lady was right in there with us.
“Angel,” I answered. “To me, it feels like Weetful sent her to us.” Now, I know a lot of people say all dogs go to heaven, but I think they got it wrong. All dogs COME from heaven. I think God knows we humans need unconditional love sometimes, so he sends us dogs to fill the void.
And, like God, Angel loves us…BOTH of us…selflessly, endlessly, tirelessly, but you know, it feels most real when she’s sleeping confidently at the foot of our bed. Yes, sometimes in the middle of the night she shifts position or scratches around a little and wakes me up, but I don’t care. She loves us, and we love her. Everything else is irrelevant, even the pack echoes from times NEITHER of us has ever experienced.
I gotta thank you, God, for thinking of something like this. You did good. Dogs are cool…and we need them. I know that now. They make our lives even better, but I think You always knew they would. Thanks again, but right now I gotta go play with my dog…she’s hitting my leg with that little blue hippo she loves so much. “Okay, Angel…FETCH!”