I met an older man a while back who told me about grief. You see at the time I was grieving and felt swallowed by it. At times I wondered if it would ever relent. Other times I decided it was something I must learn to live with. No escape ever.

When he understood my feelings he relayed the thoughts and words he once heard.

He said, “Grief is like the ocean after a storm. The waves are high and powerful. You cannot enter the water without being knocked down and almost drowned. As the storm slowly diminishes the waves grow smaller so in time you can again enter the water safely. But at anytime the waves can unexpectedly rise and knock you down again. Grief never leaves us. It does become a thing we can live with, but expect it to show its strength as the ocean does when something, or someone stirs it up.”

So I live with my grief. Some days I can almost not feel it. It’s quiet in the background. Other days, it gets triggered and memories of what I lost are unforgiving.

Peace be with you.

I suppose by this time in human history to be truly honorable is old fashioned. Perhaps it always was, but I don’t feel honor then compares to the lack of it in the 21st century.

To me the following describes honor.

Honor means doing the right thing even when you are alone.

Honor means respecting other people even when you disagree.

Honor means respecting the boundaries of relationships even when you don’t want to.

Honor means keeping promises even when it’s difficult to resist breaking them.

Honor means ignoring temptation even when it’s irresistible.

Honor means being there for those who need you even when it’s uncomfortable.

Honor means assisting those who need it even when they’re strangers.

Honor means helping an injured or trapped animal even when to do so is threatening.

Honor means never abandoning family members even though it is demanding.

Honor means never condemning others, not their opinions, even when they are diametrically opposed.

Honor means being the person you say you are even though at times it’s inconvenient.

Honor means not letting social media to dictate your life even when is desirable to allow it.

Honor means don’t steal or plagiarize even when to do so is profitable.

Oh, never mind. This is the 21st. century. Now life is about pleasure and greed. Honor be damned.

In the universe there are things that are known, and things that are unknown, in between there are doors.

William Blake

Summer always elicits a mixture of feelings. Anticipation being the most obvious. Add a dash of anxiety, sprinkled with joy and stilled with a slight undercurrent of sadness.

As a youth more questions than answers rode along as if somehow they might explain the turmoil of emotion. Life is quizzical at best. Filled with potholes and uplifting slopes. But always a shield of hesitation held out front as if that might divert trouble should it dare appear.

All I needed was a windmill, but I was unaware that fiction might actually step off pages and become part of me.

I would leave home after chores, which often took the morning and an hour or two of afternoon. Meet friends and enjoy the day. Or on occasion alone. Me listening to nature sounds. Me silencing the battering storm that life churned up in me head.

We built a log cabin the summer before with an ancient wood burning stove, enough bunk beds to sleep six. The roof was sealed with treated roofing paper, windows we scavenged from old houses on the verge of collapse. When completed we could seal the door and enjoy a rain storm.

Yet that summer my fifteenth, I found myself alone more than previous years. I could never quite understood why. So I went to the cabin and sat at the old time enamel top table with its rickety chair and ate lunch if early enough in the day.

The place smelled unused as it was. Like coming out of winter, sliding through spring was not enough to restore its former lived-in odors.

No I didn’t quite understand that time’ shimmering stillness summers past, was not the same that year. In fact that was the final year any of us used the cabin. Like having built it and used it for one year was the intended goal.

And the questions compounded into a crescendo of confusion.

Unbeknownst to me, that was the final summer of youth.

I feel fortunate. I live where trees are respected. Which also means wildlife is too. The rain that just thundered down like sheets of water is likewise a gift these days. Drought has ripped the water from the mouths of possibly a billion people worldwide. Horrible way to die.

As those of us who truly care, this will only worsen and we know there is nothing one person can do to alter humanity’s declining history.

The pendulum swung cutting deep and we humans may be the last to go, but maybe not. Mother Nature is not a kind mistress.

At times like what we currently live in when we move beyond theoretical we also move beyond theatrical.

The theoretical in this instance is why three nations are attempting to drive the world into nuclear annihilation?

We all know about Russia’s insanity with Ukraine. That is the first one.

Then there’s China. A nation of almost two billion that seems to believe they must regain control of land, islands, and seas once controlled by distant ancestors. As if no time passed other than for the end of life on earth. China too likes to saber rattle with nuclear weapons.

Lastly is Israel oozing its way to a war with Iran, bombing their research facilities, assassinating scientists on the streets of Iranian cities.

Perhaps the leaders of all three are theatrically dancing around a spinning black hole that devours some people’s souls and sanity. Turning them into hollow husks of humanity.

Unfortunately they ignore our biggest threat – Climate Change. Or have they decided a simpler way of fixing it? They might try bombing it back into into the stone ages.

No one man or woman should be allowed the power that the above three are abusing. At a cost to everyone.

Great replacements. That’s right there has been five of them. Yikes!

1 – Ordovician

2 – Devonian

3 – Permian

4 – Triassic-Jurassic

5 – Cretaceous

So yeah. It’s been messy to say the least. And smoke ‘em if you got them.

But of course these five have little, okay nothing to do with the 21st century version. See a group of people called the ultra-right has declared that the ultra-left you know them there liberals, are somehow mysteriously and perhaps secretly too, working overtime to replace whites folks with non-whites.

Now I admit I am baffled. How is this happening? Are them white liberals paying non-whites to have large families? Are liberals sneaking our southern neighbors across the Rio Grande? In what hundreds? Thousands? Millions even? Jeez.

Massive effort done in the middle of the night? Nope. Not according to the ultra-right. Them liberals are replacing Republican politicians to get it done. . .um no.

Maybe it’s their sneaking President Biden. Hummmm. Probably not.

I know, I got the answer. Liberals have sent missiles into the asteroid belt to divert a couple ultra-left stones to barrel into middle America. Okay probably not.

So what’s left?

Republicans in both houses of Congress can and we know will prevent legislation that would allow millions of Hispanics to invade across the American border. So where will they come from?

So truth time. The Great Replacement is an even greater hoax. Pass out the aluminum hats folks. There is a Greene walking the corridors. And she is not an environmentalist. She and her tin hat followers do not believe in climate change ‘cause to know we cannot trust them liberal scientists.

Or can we?