This is not my photo. But it depicts a milk snake much like the one I encountered. MIne was even paler.
Yesterday while running in the forest preserve where our cross country team first held races more than forty years ago, I started out on a section of path where the sun was beating down on the earth. Most of us don’t stop to think about how the sun warms the ground. But creatures that live at that level know the intimacy of contact with the soil.
To my pleasant surprise, I found a milk snake stretched out on the path. It laid there still as a stick. It’s beautiful pale markings were bathed in sunlight. For a few moments I studied its pale coloring and recalled how few times I’ve actually seen milk snakes in the wild. Some people like to capture or breed them and keep them as pets. I think they belong where they’re found. In the fields and forests.
The tarsnake of snakes
That’s one of the tarsnakes of creatures from the wild. They’re worth far more out there than in some aquarium or cage. But it is the acquisitive nature of some people is to take wild things prisoner for their own pleasure. I ask myself: What right do we have to do that other than for scientific study to learn what they need to survive in the wild?
Having seen enough snakes crushed by tires or feet over the years, I wondered whether the milk snake I found on the trail was dead or alive. Usually a snake that sees a tall human standing over it will slink away. Not this snake. So I reached down to touch it. No movement. Then again. This time it snapped into action and crawled into the tall grass next to the trail. It was a beautiful, amazing creature.
It had been sleeping in the sun. Taking a solar nap. Soaking up the rays. Getting its Vitamin D. Picking up warmth for its blood.
I hated to disturb it, but I also did not trust that the next person on the trail would be so impressed or so kind as to let the snake abide in its domain. Some people hate snakes. Fear them. Others run them over if they get the chance. If kids on mountain bikes came tearing along they might not even see the snake before it was too late. In all my years of running and riding, I’ve seen too many dead snakes to count.
The strangest encounter of them all was the day I met up with a guy in a cowboy outfit that had killed several snakes and wanted to show them to me.
Serpentine fears
Even the snakelike appearance of a natural object is enough to give some people the creeps.
Perhaps the fear of snakes is native to some. The classic tale of the serpent in the Garden of Eden depicts a serpentine creature that talks Eve and then Adam into following its instructions to eat a forbidden fruit. It quotes the literal word of God to sound convincing, but its objective is to take control of the couple through manipulation. For centuries that story has been used to warn people into obedience. But Adam and Eve were obedient to a flaw. They fell for the oldest and longest trick in the book, using what appeared to be religious authority to confuse their conscience and take them under its control.
Later when John the Baptist and Jesus confront the religious authorities for their manipulation of the masses through legalistic tradition, they brand them a “brood of vipers” for their collectively conspiratorial methods and lashing out at all those who oppose them.
So the real “snakes” in this world––and we are speaking allegorically here–– are often the people who claim to speak for God.
Natural courses
But in most cases there is nothing to fear from snakes in the grass as long as we stay alert and don’t trod on them by accident. Granted, we don’t want to mess with poisonous snakes of any kind. For snakes, that evolutionary adaptation is both a weapon of defense and a tool of predatory power.
After the snake moved off I continued on my run, snaking my way around the rutted dirt paths where our cross country course curls through the woods. It has been a while since I ran there and this time around I marveled at the ups and downs of that trail. I won quite a few races there, and have watched quite a few more over the years.
Snaking through the woods
The course that we used to run is only used in part these days. There’s a big field where the forest preserve district expanded the property and that’s where the starting line sits these days. I ran across the field too. It was soaked after several rains and my shoes took a muddy beating. But that’s cross country in any season. You take what comes.
Toward the end of the run I glanced down at the trail and saw another strong pattern on the ground. It was a feather from a Cooper’s hawk. I’ve seen them fly down the woodland corridor ahead of me on several occasions. This feather was from a juvenile, rich in brown and white.
I wasn’t running fast. Nor was I running far. Just about four miles with birds calling and snakes crawling. For all the reasons that we run and ride, these are some of the best: to get outside means to feel good inside. That’s reality. And that’s always enough for me.
In February a man named Ahmaud Arbery was shot while out running in a Georgia neighborhood. News coverage of the apparent murder lists several alibis on the part of those who shot Arbery. Video of the incident exists, and it has the creepy nature of a gaming scenario in which the players hunt down and kill their prey.
First hand experience
Having been a runner for more than forty years, and a cyclist the twenty or so, I have written about encounters with people who don’t like what we do, and let us know. I’ve personally been chased by people who threw a knife at me, harassed off the road by a Corvette driver angry about what he perceived as a traffic infraction and struck by objects thrown out the window of vehicles. And that doesn’t count the many times my senses have been jolted by people hollering out the window, honking their horns or nearly killed by someone texting while driving.
The race factor
But the shooting of Ahmaud Arbery carries an entirely different layer of meaning. The shooting was quite likely racially motivated. The video of the pursuit of Arbery as he’s running through a quiet neighborhood captures the vindictive nature of their motivations. As such, it also symbolizes thousands of other such pursuits through neighborhoods just like this for whatever perceived slights the pursuers project upon their victims. Their “success” resulted in torture, lynchings and bombings. This is American history. This is what our country has always been about. And nothing’s changed.
Greatest nation?
I’m personally sick of hearing that the United States is the “greatest nation in the world.” It isn’t. Not when events like this have taken place for centuries now and are still occurring to this day. Even the so-called Greatest Generation did little to fix the problem of racism. People of color returning home from the war returned to a nation still ruled by Jim Crow laws. We’d defeated Hitler but done little to fix the corrupt brand of racism this country still abided through the 1950s.
The 1960s set out to cure all that, yet President Richard Nixon’s response was to arm local law enforcement with military surplus. The cities were the flashpoint but the suburbs were the perceived battleground. I once worked with a fear-driven man whose stock of military-grade weapons were kept in his house because, he told us, “I want to be ready if the n****** come up my driveway.”
So accept it or not, this is the America in which we live. There are also armed protesters storming state capitols without penalty for what amounts to terrorism in public places. This is the America in which we live.
Dying nation
And this is the America in which so many people die. More people have been killed by gun violence of one kind or another than all the soldiers that have died in wars on foreign soil. This is the America in which we live. And even when racist people in this country display hate and commit acts of violence, the President calls them “good people” who are simply “angry” and therefore justified in their motives and threats.
So this is no longer a passive game of selfishly motivated hide and seek. When the President says that it’s okay to terrorize a state capitol and its legislature by carrying an arsenal of weapons in plain sight, then tells the governor to negotiate and “cut a deal” we’re officially living in a fascist culture.
The sound of gunfire
I sometimes ride past a gun range out where I used to live in Elburn, Illinois. The sound of those weapons plugging away at targets is a familiar sound out that way. Sport shooters love to play with their weapons.
I just find it ironic that the entrance to the gun range passes right by the entrance to a local church. It makes me wonder if any of the people attending that church ever stop to think about the reasons why guns were invented. They were developed for one reason: killing. Taking life. In military or in criminal actions, that is their primary purpose and reason for existence.
So much for the theology of Thou Shalt Not Kill. Nothing strange about having a church next to a gun range? Not strange at all.
Semantic dances
Gun advocates love to dance around that fact by stating that the predominance of gun owners are “law-abiding.” And yet the sound of those weapons being fired in the video of Ahmaud Arbery is beyond disturbing. That was no gun range. That was a public street where an innocent man went out of a run and wound up dead.
Were the men who killed him “law-abiding” gun owners?
A report on the killing shared this claim: “According to an incident report filed by Glynn County police, Arbery was shot Feb. 23 after two men spotted him running in their neighborhood and armed themselves with guns before getting in a truck to pursue him. Gregory McMichael told police that he and his adult son thought the young man matched someone caught on a security camera committing a recent break-in in the neighborhood.”
In other words, those two men took the law into their own hands. Their version of the law was to track down and kill a person they suspected of burglary.
That’s the paradigm we’re supposed to accept as an indication that the United States is the “greatest country in the world?” That people owning guns are the ones who get to decide who should live or die?
That’s not freedom. That’s terrorism. That’s not liberty. That’s vigilante insanity.
Policies of brutality
Life itself is a bloody risk these days, for some more than others.
But America has allowed these brutal policies to continue because they benefit those selfish enough to dismiss gun violence as a necessary byproduct of their personal rights.
Even the police are outgunned in a nation where guns now outnumber the people that live here. All because well-heeled yet fearful politicians and non-governmental organizations banded together to fix in place a dog-whistle interpretation of the Second Amendment that suits their purposes of profit and political control. In many respects, this ‘tradition’ is a theft of freedom that causes the loss of human life, and without seeming remorse.
Things might be changing simply because the lie of ‘guns are freedom’ is no longer sustainable. Word has it the National Rifle Association is in the process of falling apart. Their director Wayne LaPierre has been accused of misusing funds and there are hints that the organization has taken Russian money and embraced foreign influence in United States policies and elections. That’s about as un-American as you can get.
Vigilante attitudes
Yet much of the damage is done. The NRA’s prized interpretation of the Second Amendment has produced a nation that embraces lawlessness and endless grades of vigilante terrorism. These range from supposedly innocent Concealed Carry laws to Stand Your Ground codes of conduct that effectively guarantee protection to those who gun down others out of fear. Those men hunting down Arbery in Georgia were simply extrapolating the worldview that their suspicions grant them authority.
The NRA even defends the the right to conduct mass shootings and commit individual killings because “the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” After every mass shooting, the spokespeople trot out the apologetic that “It’s too soon…” to talk about gun control.
Policing fear
Even our police forces struggle to know their true role in using weapons when so many people are so heavily armed. So much for the “well-regulated militia” crucial to the “security of a free state.” We no longer have that under control. And some police, fearing for their own lives or fueled by some hatred of their own are too often taking matter into their own hands in an ironic version of the famous defense of gun rights phrase “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.”
Perhaps we’re a country too long involved with romanticizing cowboys with guns as heroes. Our movies repeat the theme. Our TV shows seem incomplete without a pair of beautiful-looking investigators or detectives stalking through dark hallways with handguns held ahead, spinning and twisting a barely varied plot of shooting the supposed “bad guys” lurking around every corner. The psychology of it all is absurd, and the supposed heroes seldom seem to die, and their weapons never run out of ammo. That is the ultimate American fantasy.
Triggered and addicted
Gun zealots are triggered by any language that questions those rights. But the sound of those weapons aimed and discharged at an innocent man running through a quiet neighborhood proves that America is a nation where part of the population thinks guns equal freedom, but that freedom includes the right to kill at will. For some people, that claim to rights is an addiction they refuse to quit.
It may not be possible to Make America Great Again because we never got it right in the first place. You can’t run from guns in America. That’s the sad reality of where our supposed freedom exists these days.
A cross country meet is not the place where one normally expects to see cheerleaders. That tradition is more closely associated with football and basketball games where crowds fill the bleachers. Yet there were cheerleaders assigned to our cross country team in the 1970s. One of them is a friend of mine on Facebook.
Her name is Ellen Erickson Piccony. I played basketball with her brother Lance on the high school team as well. “I wanted to cheer for basketball when my brother was playing,” she recalls. “But we didn’t always have a choice. So I cheered for cross country and wrestling.”
Respect and excitement
She noted that her admiration for the athletes in both those sports grew quickly. “Wrestling is exciting,” she recalled. “The sad thing is there is no real place to watch the sport after high school. Professional wrestling isn’t real wrestling,” she wryly observed.
It’s no wonder she was an admirer of the sport at the time. St. Charles High school had an astoundingly talented state champion in Dave Powell, along with a state third place wrestler in Joel Hestrup. There were many other great wrestlers in the program as well. What an interesting contrast in cheering for those two sports must have been.
Cross country cheerleaders
As for cheering at cross country meets, “We could not have done it without Trent (Richards),” she said of the late cross county and track coach. “He appreciated that we were there and treated us with a lot of respect,” she recalled. “He’d tell us where to go during the race so that we could cheer you guys on.”
It wasn’t glamorous work. “We often had to find our own way to the meets,” she said of cheering for wrestling and cross country. “We’d find rides or get someone to take us. Trent was the one that invited us to ride on the bus. We rode with the cross country team to the meets. But we weren’t about to go on that wrestling bus. We heard about the gross things that go on there, trying to make weight and stuff,” she laughed.
The cross country and wrestling cheer squad was comprised of six girls; Roxanne Arand, Carol Schreiber, Mary Ellen Pooley, Ellen Erickson, Claudia Donnelly and Kim Vance. Several were athletes in other sports. Ellen is third from right.
St. Charles High School cheerleaders
As one can imagine, attending cross country meets was somewhat less intense than cheering at a wrestling event in the confined spaces of resounding gymnasiums.
So the gals would often place themselves at intervals along the course. But much like today’s cross country programs, the story of the sport on most days was the personal battles of improved times and team camaraderie that mattered. Bearing witness to that was what made the sport rewarding for Ellen Erickson. “Getting to know the guys and seeing how hard they worked and ran. That was the fun part.”
Carol, Ellen, Kim, Roxanne, Claudia and Mary Ellen at Elburn Forest Preserve in October, 1974.
The previous year a different set of cheerleaders lined up at meets. That season the team won multiple races including invitationals and a district meet. So every season offered up a different flavor of success. Of course I well recall literally being the “new kid in town” that fall after transferring from a nearby high school. I wound up dating one of the cheerleaders (she’s in the photo at far left below) but our little romance did not last past the season. Such are the dalliances of high school excitement and fun in the moment.
The finishing sprint of a dual meet with our cheerleaders urging us home.
Spring breakers
Of course there was life beyond cheerleading and cross country during those high school years as well. Ellen recalled a spring break trip that a group of students and the wrestling coach arranged. The plan was to visit Big Bend National Park and canoe down the Rio Grande. “But the river was too high when we got there. So we partied in the campsite instead.”
I recalled that I’d dearly wanted to go on the trip that spring, but was also a bit anxious about the idea. Some of the kids signed up for the trip were known for their partying habits, and I knew I wasn’t in their league. Plus I didn’t want to get thrown out of track for drinking. So I stayed back home to train the week of spring break but had always wondered what it would have meant to experience the west that early in life.
Ellen shared that the group finally did get on the river. “The camp ranger finally got sick of us,” she laughed. “He told us to go ahead and canoe.”
I mentioned the trip would have been special to me with such an interest in nature. “It might have been life-changing,” I told her. She responded, “There were lots of people on that trip who went for that reason.”
Perceptions and memories
Those recollections illustrate how thin the veneer of our perceptions and memories can be. But sometimes a seemingly innocent period of time has more meaning than we might think.
Ellen recalled that the guy she dated in high school reached out to her a few years back with a message he wanted her to hear. He’d done quite well in life and wanted to thank her for the early influence on his outlook. She told me: “He came from a rough family life and said that dating me and meeting my family was important. ‘You made me see what it could be like and showed me what I wanted in life,’ ” he told her.
It all proves that while it doesn’t pay to live in the past, neither should we write off the experiences that form who we are. They help us face challenges in the present time, and give us insights on the people around us. You never know what you might mean to someone, someday, if you cheer them on a little.
That’s the kind of cheerleading we can all use about now, don’t you think?
Carol, Ellen, Roxanne, Kim, Mary Ellen and Claudia share a moment after my 4th place finish at districts in 1974. My friend Deane Westland joined me in the photo and pinched my ass, which explains my reaction.
This morning I drove out to a trail through a forest preserve not to go for a run, but to climb a hill next to the trail and take in the morning sunshine.
I’ve run and cycled past this hill on many occasions. It runs parallel to the trail, rising thirty or so feet above the surrounding forest bottom. So it’s not a huge hill. But it is a significant hill.
That’s because this hill is the product of glacial activity here in Illinois. The long mound runs east to west and covers perhaps 400 meters. Behind it to the south runs a small stream headed southeast to the Fox River.
The hill was dumped here as a gravel skein 10,000 or so years ago during the Ice Age in the Midwest. The hill is a terminal moraine of a sort, the place where a glacier pushed gravel and then melted back and away, leaving the mound of stone and dirt to last for millennia.
On the far west end of the moraine a shooting range is dug into the hill leaving a large, U-shaped gouge down to the surrounding ground level. For decades that site served as a sportsman’s club where marksman gathered to plug targets with their various weapons. How much dead ordinance is now buried in the haunches of that hill would be an interesting study indeed.
But mostly, the hill is composed of tumbled gravel and stones. There are small piles of them atop the hill. People have tromped a narrow path along the ridge, which is now covered with spring wildflowers. While walking, I encountered a pair of volunteer botanists doing surveys for the county forest preserve district. We compared notes about what we’d seen and shared a mutual appreciation for the unique topography.
As I stated, I’ve been past that ridge many times and decided to finally go up on the hill and look around. There were few birds about, but a temporary pool at the southern base of the moraine had a choir of chorus frogs singing after our recent rains. That sound is even more ancient than the gravel dumped her ten thousand years ago.
Following the ridge east, I reached the end where the ground dips down toward the stream. That’s where the path also crosses the stream. So I walked back to the car with phone in hand, taking pictures as I went. With my big camera in hand as well, I noticed the ears of a raccoon sticking up inside a hole thirty foot up in a tree. The creature was no doubt settling in for a day’s sleep after roaming the territory all night in search of food.
Now that I’ve walked the ridge that stretch of trail will feel more complete in my mind. I’ve always been a wanderer of woods and walker of trails. There’s no reason to change, especially in this period in history where nature is the only real refuge from human insanity. There’s a place on the hill for you too, if you care to go.
Driving back from taking our pup to doggy day care, the streets were much quieter than usual. Having lived in the area called the Tri-Cities in Illinois for more than forty years, it isn’t hard to recall a time when things used to be even quieter around here. There was less traffic back then because there were less people and less stores for people to visit. So things were quieter.
I’m not here to say that is good or bad. Businesses and malls have come and gone over those four decades. Houses cropped up and lifestyle shopping took the place of wandering around inside enclosed malls. Growth exploded in the Fox Valley. But things are changing fast.
Retail Armageddon
While driving home I listened to news that 70% of America’s economy is based on retail. Yet retail companies have already been struggling in the face of pressure from online sales. I’ve written marketing content and whitepapers for printing companies trying to make the transition from traditional to digital marketing. The effects of these changes are wide-ranging.
I’ve also worked for a municipality blindly trying to figure out what will happen to tax revenues as retail markets changes. That city lost $1M in annual revenue when a big box merchandiser closed up its location. Giants like Amazon are sucking up local business revenues. Downtowns across America have contracted or learned to thrive by changing their entire business mix.
State and local revenue wars
Meanwhile the debate at the state level is whether cities and towns should get a share of tax revenue from online purchases. Mayors and city managers are lobbying to make that happen. But getting a share of that money is challenging when states like Illinois and others are struggling to make their budgets work. There’s also a war over who pays more into the federal government and who takes out. That reality played out on the national stage when New York’s governor Cuomo, after asking federal assistance during the pandemic, was forced to lambast Kentucky’s Senator Mitch McConnell who complained that it was Blue States asking for bailouts. Turns out McConnell’s own state takes out $148B while Cuomo’s state pours money into the national coffers.
All this money talk clouds the reality that the wages earned by regular people have been flat for decades even while executive pay and corporate profits soar. Wealth has risen like cream to the top of the economy leaving the middle class to swim around in the toxic foam of credit card debt and mortgage payments. The Great Recession wasn’t that long ago, when millions lost their jobs and savings. President Obama at least provided a steady hand during the long recovery and handed a solid growth rate and largely employed society off to President Trump, who claimed all credit and clearly hoped to soar through the fall election by claiming the ‘greatest economy America has ever seen.’
Anger on the streets
But it turns out that Trump kicker is an illusion. The quiet streets on which I drove today are an indication that we haven’t been willing to look through the foam of mere survival to see how people are really getting along in this supposedly robust economy. The desperate plea of Make America Great Again had merit in one sense: the economy and healthcare and infrastructure all needed to be more balanced, and it was government’s job to do it. But that’s hard for Republicans who don’t believe in the merit of government to accept. So they threw more money at the wealthy with big tax cuts and hoped it would somehow paper over the cracks in the foundation of Americanism.
The disenfranchised in this country made great claims in supporting Trump, who promised to help them transition from legacy industries into good-paying jobs. Trump played front-page political games showing up at manufacturing plants where new jobs were promised. But capital still follows cheap labor out of country and overseas. They voted for a guy who promised to fix it all and it turns out that all Trump cares about is making the sure the fix turns out in his favor.
Farm fracus
The storm approacheth. Was it easy enough to see?
The cures that Trump promised America were even foamier than the illusion of America’s economic parity. When Trump messed around trying to clobber China with tariffs his action cost thousands of farmers their markets and livelihoods. The fix to that debacle required billions in agri-welfare to bribe farmers from revolt. Yet the true colors of the Trump philosophy were revealed when agriculture secretary Sonny Perdue had little compassion for everyday farmers. “Go big or go home” was his only advice.
The place where I live sits on the absolute spine between suburbia and farm country. I can literally throw a stone east and hit houses. Turn west and it lands in a fallow cornfield. Last year it was so wet that many farmers planted late or didn’t plant at all. Perhaps that was an omen of things to come when we consider what’s happening with the economy right now.
As I ride my bike west this year I’m watching for signs that farmers are ready to plant again. Last night we received a blanket of rain that added up to more than an inch, and I’ll bet there are farmers nervous as hell that the rains may delay things yet again.
Running out of time
I went for a run in that rain yesterday. At one point I covered a mile on a sidewalk next to a normally busy street and saw no cars. Zero. It felt like I’d gone forty years back in time.
The streets are just now drying off thanks to a steady 20 mph wind from the north. IN some rhetorical dream, it would be nice if some sort of wind would come along and blow this Coronavirus pandemic away. Right now the economy is soaked with unemployment as one in five workers has lost their jobs at least temporarily. Trump and some governors are pushing hard to open the economy back up, and I don’t blame them. He screwed this thing up pretty badly, and no matter what happens this November, the royal messup that Trump committed by ignoring and lying about the threat of a pandemic is forever sealed in the Baggie of evidence along with his “perfect” phone call to the President of Ukraine.
They would hardly admit it, but even Trump’s supporters are disgusted with his lack of honesty. They may blame anyone but Trump, and are focusing their ire on state governors issuing Stay At Home orders, but they were only following the instructions originally issued and demanded by Trump, who told them as well, “You’re on your own.” Angry citizens know we’re running out of time to get things moving again.
Common sense
Some are too stubborn to engage in social distancing.
My personal view on how much social distancing is necessary depends on the circumstance. Common sense enters the picture at some point. I wear a mask in stores and wash my hands regularly. I respect social distancing guidelines and don’t make unnecessary trips to the grocery store or anywhere else. Even while running or riding, I moved far away from others on the trails.
Yet I stopped at a grocery story out on the edge of farm country last weekend and noticed immediately that hardly anyone inside the store was wearing masks. I think people in some cases believe their stubborn nature amounts to immunity. That and carrying guns around to prove that they won’t be bullied into doing anything they don’t like. Some pastors even tested the power of God by holding services despite strictures against such gatherings. Covid-19 hotspots immediately cropped up. That was just lack of common sense.
Can’t be bullied
The trouble our nation faces right now can’t be bullied out of the way or resisted by mere stubborn determination. That approach may be part of America’s nature and tradition, but it isn’t working when the threat we’re facing comes from within, and from the top down. This isn’t just a trickle-down effect from Trump’s selfish brand of narcissism, although that’s what cost us crucial time in responding to this pandemic. He simply made it worse. There’s no denying that.
So rather than a trickle, what we’re now dealing with is a flood of denial. Denial of the threat. Denial of responsibility. Denial of science that contradicts the politics. Denial of the difficulties in combatting a viral disease. Denial of the economic pandemic that predatory lending and high credit card interest rates imposes on the populace. Denial that the coming generation of young people is way more honest about these things than too many Boomers care to admit. Denial that the toxic flow of misinformation originating from the Religious Right depends on a legalistically corrupt version of scripture. Denial that the notion of constitutional originalism has turned the country into a festering pit of gun violence, racial conflict and false notions of liberty. All because people are too eager to live in the past. Like the past was better. And that Make America Great Again every made any sense at all.
Like I said, it used to be a lot quieter around here. But perhaps that was an illusion all along.
The worms were everywhere on my run this morning. Last night’s rain brought them out of the ground onto the roads and sidewalks.
It doesn’t bother me to step on a worm, but I don’t do it on purpose. That meant attention was paid to placing my feet in spots where there weren’t worms crawling across the asphalt or sidewalks during a four-mile run. After half a mile, the avoidance of worms became second nature. I became Zen at avoiding worms.
Then there was the issue of my running jacket sleeves. For some reason I do not like it when the sleeves creep onto the back of my hands. I roll them back to avoid the feeling. It might seem a bit obsessive-compulsive to let something like that bother me, but I accept it and make adjustments as the run goes along. Quite the opposite of Zen.
I actually love running in the rain because there’s so much interesting stuff going on. The spatter of new raindrops on puddles. The flow of water down the street gutters. The swelling creeks overflowing their banks. The rest of life’s problems seem to drain away.
Rain Man in training
When I was a child living next to a private golf club south of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, I used rainstorms as an opportunity to play a round. I’d gather up three golf clubs; a three-wood, seven-iron and putter, and play the set of holes out of sight from the clubhouse. We weren’t members of the club, but the course was accessible right out of my neighbor’s back yard. So I’d take a couple golf balls gathered on my trips back and forth to my best friend’s house, and play golf for free whenever it rained.
I loved the feel of the short grass under my bare feet. I’d wear shorts and a light rain jacket and bring a couple tees to hit the first shot each hole. Then I’d run after the ball. I was a decent little golfer and would even score a par now and then despite the wet grass slowing the ball down. Sometimes the rain would open up in a driving storm, but as long as I heard no thunder or saw no lightning, it was fair game in my mind to play most of the course.
Sometimes I’d just stop and listen to the rain pounding the fairways. At times there would be springs popping up along the way. That clear water pouring out of the ground fascinated me. It seemed part of a secret world.
Naked ambitions
One afternoon I was hanging out at my best friends house on the 17th fairway when a massive rainstorm passed through. It rained for an hour solid. When it was over, we peeked out the back window to find a massive rush of water bubbling straight out of the ground. We ran out to investigate once the storm was over. And in kind with our liberated spirits at age of eleven or twelve years old, we stripped naked and turned the fairway into a giant Slip and Slide. His sisters came out to watch us but I could not have cared less. It was fair play actually, because I’d seen one of them naked through her bedroom window one night when my friend and I were out catching fireflies.
Rain is the most natural substance in all the universe. Water is the sustaining source of essentially all life on earth. I am proud and happy to be a Rain Man of sorts when it takes over the immediate world. But I never feel the need to count all the worms.
Many of us get our start playing organized sports during elementary school years when we first turn out for team sports such as baseball, soccer, hockey or football. That is also the first time in life that we encounter the people we call “Coach.”
On top of being a team captain in many sports over the years, I’ve done a ton of coaching over the years. During high school a classmate and I coached park district basketball together. He went on to get his Master’s Degree in recreation administration, then managed programming at a large non-profit health and fitness center. Even at seventeen years old, his attitude with the athletes we coached was one of encouragement and parity. I’ve never forgotten his example even thought I did not not always excel in following it. Coaching is not easy either as a volunteer or a professional. But we learn as we go.
Just out of high school I signed up to coach a large summer track program with athletes ranging from five years old to high school-aged kids. Some turned into national champions. We traveled with more than 100 kids competing across the state of Illinois for summer track meets with programs in Moline, Chicago, Rockford, Bloomington-Normal, Belvidere and more. The experience those kids got competing against kids from every type of background was life-changing in many positive ways.
Along the way, I was getting plenty of coaching myself though high school and college, then for club teams in road racing. Most of the coaches along the way were great at what they did; teaching fundamentals, finding ways to motivate athletes, encouraging people to compete in healthy ways, and respecting the other teams and athletes we encountered.
Bad coaches
Almost every public appearance by Trump produces anger, accusations and blaming others. Not a good coach.
But there were some bad coaches as well, petty people whose interests were almost all self-focused. I recall being made to sit the bench in a junior varsity basketball game because my friend’s father took us out of school on a Friday to do a college visit out east in Pennsylvania. We missed one basketball practice. It was an epic trip and an important step in the lives of young people trying to make decisions about their future. But all the coach cared about was the fact that I’d missed that practice, as if that was a sign of disrespect to him.
That same coach was known to sit pretty girls in the front row of the classes he taught so that he could look up their skirts. The girls knew it. They told me so. That permanently cemented my view of him, and I wound up avoiding basketball camp that next summer and never played again. Such are the negative influences of coaches without good character.
Famously demonstrative coach Jim Boeheim of Syracuse confronting a referee
Bad characters and bad actors
Which makes me think about what it would be like if the likes of Donald Trump were to have been one of my coaches at some point in life. I met plenty like him in business over the years. Men who made a big show of being moral and upstanding, only to turn out to be less than ethical. One local developer with whom I worked while serving as a marketing consultant to a development firm made a show of wearing a crocheted cross in his front pocket. Then we learned that he’d run up debts with every contractor he hired. His entire enterprise floated on a sea of unpaid bills. The relationship between the two companies soon fell apart, as did the large deal in which they’d invested time and money.
The patterns evident in people of questionable character are so consistent and familiar it is astounding that they don’t get called to account more often. But there’s a tendency in this world to excuse bad behavior rather than confront it, especially when those dismissing the warning signs have some personal gain to make.
Standing up to bad actors
Confronting bad character in the moment is seldom easy, especially in business settings where personal reputations are on the line. But the rest of life is a rehearsal for our work life as well.
When I coached youth soccer there was a team in our league whose coach was famously confrontational. He and the fans attending the game to cheer on their kids broke every rule and brand of etiquette one could imagine. Despite league rules stating that no more than one head coach and two assistants could be on their sideline, he had five or six guys running up and down their half of the field yelling instructions to his players. The fans lined up in their lawn chairs yelled at the referees and even made comments about our players. Their team had developed that culture in the mold of their coach.
The scene came to a head just before the half when one of our forwards stole the ball at midfield and dribbled into their goal box to make a shot. Their goalie ran out, grabbed our player’s shirt and pulled him down to the ground. No call was made. It turned out the young referee for the game was actually the older brother of the kid playing goalie.
Obviously the environment got even more toxic before the game ended. Our fans began getting irritated and my own two assistants were angry and upset. When the game ended, I sent everyone quickly to their cars and was walking back to meet my family at our vehicle when one of their irate assistant coaches showed up in front of me and began yelling six inches from my face. I stood their mutely for a moment, then quietly said, “You do know how wrong you are right now, don’t you?”
Something clicked with him at that moment. He backed off an apologized.
Modeling ourselves
Coaches have big unfluence on our lives. We often model on their example. And a good one this was.
I know what it’s like to lose my temper, get frustrated and blow my cool. For many years I was so competitive and hated to lose so badly I’d swear and act out. Even good coaches can lose their cool, especially when another team or competitor says or does something unacceptable. As a soccer coach for ten years, I confess to not setting the best example many times, even once tearing my hat in two pieces during a match after a bad call that cost us a goal.
So this is not to say that in assessing coaches throughout my life that I am (or was) perfect. Quite the opposite. But pointing out problems in the coaching style of others is not necessarily judging someone. It is healthy to try to look at the bigger picture and identify potential problem sources, not just dismiss or ignore them out of some desire to win or personal gain. Even great coaches such as Bobby Knight, the legendary chair-throwing coach at Indiana learned there are limits to their authoritarian models in coaching. Despite his winning ways, the University ultimately asked him to leave.
Now we’re living with President possessed of the same qualities as a bossy, abusive coach. Yet many of Trump’s biggest supporters insist that his imperfections are actually a blessing. Evangelicals even love to depict Trump as a man through whom God is working directly to effect good things in this world. By that measure, Trump can literally do nothing wrong. His flaws and even his outright fraud (Trump University) and conflicted interests on many fronts are ostensibly forgiven directly by God, so the providential claim is that the rest of us should just go along. Even the Senate of the United States was complicit in forgiving Trump’s egregious behavior in his attempts to coerce the President of Ukraine into corrupt actions on his behalf.
Learning from mistakes
But scripture tells us that learning from our mistakes is critical, or else forgiveness is not a given or a permanent state. Learning from mistakes is actually the most important quality of any good coach. A game lost is almost always a lesson won, unless you refuse to admit any sort of defeat or error. Then you are doomed to repeat them. A great coach knows how learn from his or her own mistakes as well as those made by the people around them. It is also true that you can tell much about the character of a person by who surrounds them and how they conduct themselves. It’s no secret why both John the Baptist and Jesus branded corrupt religious authorities a “brood of vipers” because they saw how religious legalism forced people into complicity with traditions corrupted by greed, self-righteousness and political power.
The lesson here is that a great coach learns to look objectively at situations and treat proteges with expectations, but respect. That is the most critical character trait of all. Everyone is accountable to one another. That is not judgment, it is good values.
That also means dealing constructively with complaint or criticism. One of the ways to deal with complaint is to frame its destructive qualities in terms of lack of respect, self or otherwise, and take ownership for any personal faults or errors before assigning them to others. That seems to be a big problem for Donald Trump. He refuses to learn from any of his past or present mistakes. Instead he whines and complains about how badly he is treated even when he leads the way in verbally abusing others and publicly revels in punishment and revenge. But his supporters seem to think that is his best worst quality. But a society that prides itself on belittling others is one diminished by its shrunken conscience.
No Apprentice please
Which is why I don’t think I’d ever be inspired to compete for Donald Trump if he was a coach. Back when he hosted that reality show The Apprentice I found the entire concept of firing people for entertainment’s sake to be offensive. What possible inspiration could one derive from seeing some bossy bully tell people “You’re fired!”
That is possibly the worst possible way to motivate anyone. Granted, creating an atmosphere of fear and trepidation is the tactic some successful coaches have adopted over the years. That Old School tactic was favored by tough old coaches for many years, especially back in the Good Old Days. But that is no guarantee it constitutes a Best Practice by any measure of civic engagement. After all, it was also common in the Good Old Days for people to experience sexual harassment as well as gender and sexual orientation and racial discrimination. The profession of human resources has evolved to prevent these Old School attitudes from dominating the workplace. That’s called progress.
Yet our current Coach In Chief exhibits all these negative traits in all phases of his life; personal, business and political. As result, the nation’s culture wars now flirts with outright civil war because he encourages old school attitudes with his claims of victimhood at the hands of those who dare question him. We all know coaches like that who rule the team or organization or league for years. They are the generals who refuse to be challenged on basis of their own claimed authority.
Old School War Mentality
Perhaps Trump is merely playing a role in his approach, adopting the Old School style of military commanders like General Patton or some John Wayne character that roils around in his head. Our nation lauds such leaders for sending men and women into war. But is the tactic of driving people by division and fear truly the best way to generate respect? Does breaking the will of men and women to rebuild it in the mold of a command genuinely create discipline and inspired competitors? Or is that an Old School anachronism?
War has always been known to reward a particular brand of mentality, one that frequently dismisses consequences in order to achieve certain outcomes. The war movie The Thin Red Line confronts this belief system in brilliant fashion, showing that soldiers and leaders truly do need to engage collaboratively in judgments of what it fair and sustainable even in war. Otherwise people die for no reason other than the ego of those driving them.
Nick Nolte plays a field commander driving soldiers to their limits in sacrifice and morality.
The United States essentially has an epidemic of soldiers coming back from the Iraq and Afghanistan with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Perhaps military veterans have always suffered stress disorders coming out of war, and it for centuries it simply fell into categories such as “shell shock” or other colloquial dismissals of mental health issues caused by war.
Despite greater awareness of the reality of this syndromes, some are still prone to stigmatize soldiers with PTSD. President Trump rankled military veterans with comments that were later published on StarsandStripes.com:
“Trump began speculating about PTSD on Friday morning when asked about the shooting, in which authorities say Marine veteran Ian David Long, 28, opened fire at a country-music bar in Thousand Oaks, California, and killed 12 people. Officers found Long inside an office in the bar, dead of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound.
“He was a war veteran. He was a Marine. He was in the war. He served time. He saw some pretty bad things, and a lot of people say he had PTSD, and that’s a tough deal,” Trump said after describing the shooter as a “very sick puppy” who had a lot of problems.
“People come back – that’s why it’s a horrible thing – they come back, they’re never the same,” the president added, referring to Long’s military service.”
No empathy. No compassion.No Respect.
That’s not exactly an example of compassion, empathy or good coaching, do you think? How do statements like that make tens of thousands of veterans and their families feel when the Commander-in-Chief of our military makes broad-based statements like that?
Trump also maligned the service of the late Senator John McCain, a decorated veteran who suffered years of torture, then emerge to a successful political career. Yet Trump seemingly blamed McCain for the ordeal. As reported on Politico.com:
“Appearing on Saturday at the Family Leadership Summit in Ames, Iowa, the real estate mogul took his running feud with Arizona Sen. John McCain to a new level. “He’s not a war hero,” said Trump. “He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”
Killing trust
The problem with statements like that is they undermine trust and respect by using disrespect as a controlling tactic. Trump’s supporters seem to love his use of disrespect because it is “old school” like a tough old coach yelling at his football players to suck it up during two-a-days in the August heat.
But we’re learning that old school tactics are not always best for the long term health and lives of people in sports or business. Surely professional and college football teams are learning that the old attitudes toward concussions suffered in the support are not acceptable. New protocols to protect players suffering concussions are now in place at every level of football. Even rule changes for the game of football have been imposed over the last ten years to discourage players from engaging in hits that can hurt themselves or other players.
Smashmouth attitudes
Some might call these changes unnecessary or, more cynically, the outcome of supposed ‘political correctness.’ There are still plenty of fans that prefer smashmouth football and fighting in hockey even if it causes those players to lose their minds later in life. That is a dangerous attitude to sustain in any society; that is acceptable to allow others to suffer for purposes of entertainment, to protect wealth, to satisfy sexual urges or achieve political power. If that all sounds a bit like Ancient Rome, the parallels are potently obvious. And what happens to empires that fall prey to such selfishness? They dissolve into vigilante factions eager to kill each other for dominance.
And sure enough, when Trump supporters showed up for rallies opposing stay-at-home orders due to Covid-19, many brandished guns to demonstrate their vigilante intentions, all while proclaiming some selfishly motivated form of “freedom,” to which their Coach tweeted, “LIBERATE!”
In other words, Trump incited those groups to insurrection of their own states. That is a crime.
Toxic selfishness
That attitude of selfishness and the toxic anachronism at its core has taken over much of the American mindset. Even the twisted interpretation of the Second Amendment, calculatedly disregards the first half, “A well-regulated militia, being necessary for the security of a free state…” in order to emphasize the second, far more selfish phrase “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” That elective interpretation potently illustrates how selfishly anachronistic attitudes have come to dominate the American experiment. As a result, the deadly annual pandemic of violence threatening every American continues year after year.
The person we supposedly rely upon to lead us through these problems is the “Coach” of our nation, the President. Yet as a “coach” Donald Trump exhibits a toxic selfishness that led him to ignore warnings about the threat of the Coronvirus pandemic in hopes that he could avoid any disturbance to the economy in advance of the fall election. Yet his selfishness delayed adequate response and preparation, and the nation was thrown into lockdown mode while deaths have risen to 55,000 and counting.
Yet even if Trump had displayed the personal courage to be honest with the country, few would have trusted him given his terrifically dishonest claims about what constitutes truth and what doesn’t. His daily flirtations with dishonesty make it difficult to trust his word on anything. The disrespect and suspicion he shows toward both his perceived enemies and members of his own staff, toward the press and even toward our own Constitution have all undermined national confidence in his true motives and judgment.
Trump’s base
Except that’s not the belief of Trump’s base, people who believe wholeheartedly in the smashmouth “coaching” style of Donald Trump, whose version of “winning” is to use intimidation and when that doesn’t work, deploy outright force to accomplish its aims. In that game the Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has been happy to be Trump’s assistant coach.
Whether that strategy is a genuine “win” for the nation is now being exposed. The economy that Trump claimed as part of his “winning” record has now dissolved thanks to his bad play-calling. Yet rather than accept responsibility, Trump spends all his time blaming the Democrats for every problem he has caused. Even his prized tax cuts gutted the middle class while enriching the wealthiest members of his “team” of millionaires and billionaires. The same goes for his disturbing attempt at righting the trade imbalance with China. Trump stepped in to play Tariff Manager and cost American farmers their key markets. Hundreds of family dairy farms in Wisconsin alone went out of business. Meanwhile Trump’s agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue dispassionately told America’s farmers, “Go big or go home.”
All these bad outcomes are the product of a Coach with no clue how to even keep America running, much less how to actually Make America Great Again. He’s trashed environmental laws, broken legislation governing auto emissions and ignored the genuine problem of climate change for all three years of his term. Trump knows nothing about playing the long game, as his string of business bankruptcies and political impeachment prove. It’s all about selfish, short-term gains and then lying about the wealth that seems permanent, but really is an illusion.
But then again, what do you expect from a Coach who drives his own golf cart on the greens? That proves he’s the worst to ever play the game, or any game, for that matter.
Sunday’s run turned out to be an interesting experiment in negative splits. My wife was scheduled for a ten-miler but I’m only up to eight miles in training as my hips and strength training progresses. So I ran four miles out with her and turned back to complete the run on my own.
We started with a warmup 10:00 mile. Then we dropped to 9:40 for the second mile. From there it was time for Sue to start her first 6:00 interval at her 10K pace, so we hit 9:24. A pattern was emerging.
The next mile I dropped another twenty seconds or so to come through in 9:07. Then came an 8:39, another twenty second drop to 8:18 per mile, and then the seventh mile in 7:55.
One of the best ways to practice pace control and negative splits is to do speedwork on the track. Then when you get to the roads, it is easier to recognize the pace you are going.
That was seven consecutive miles of descending or negative splits. Each of those miles dropped the pace by essentially twenty seconds. The final mile I used as a warmdown at 8:54.
The trick to running negative splits is to be consistent in how you increase the pace. Those twenty-second drops were the result of an increase in stride rate and style. They are also the result of years of practice running pace workouts on the track.
It’s also about stride changes. As the pace increased I moved onto the forefoot and increased my back kick a bit as the miles went along. I was running as if I were a younger guy again.
Labor pains
It’s been a laborious process at times getting back to this point of fitness. Last year was a depressing debacle for me with injuries and illness. That meant much of the time spent on winter runs was plugging away 4-6 miles at a time at 10:00 mile pace. Humble duties require commitment. Part of me wondered if I’d ever run any faster again.
Sticking with it pays dividends. And when one of those days comes along with negative splits and some evidence of results, there’s no better feeling in the world of running. Here’s hoping you can be negative sometimes. It’s a great feeling.
Last weekend my wife was given a time trial to do. Her coach Steve Brandes has been guiding her through improved run performance the last couple years and the results, I am here to tell you, are noticeable and impressive.
So we lined up on a quiet exercise path on a fresh Sunday morning. He gave her a target pace to stay under and we discussed that briefly during a fifteen minute warmup. Like all runners, she was slightly anxious at the idea of going fast for a 5K, but once we got the warmup done and the bathroom duties out of the way, she seemed ready to go. We’d also landed on a perfect morning. Fifty-some degrees. Not much wind. We peeled down to basic long-sleeves and were ready to go.
Starting line
We’d agreed to start at a park on the south side of Batavia where the bike path sits next to the Quarry pool. That’s the starting area for a local triathlon and duathlon, and we’ve both raced on that path many times. But it all seemed rather abrupt standing there together in the sunlight. How do you start a time trial on your own?
I looked ahead and realized what we needed to do. First I gave her a kiss and a quick hug, then said, “Let’s start our watches up there at that sign,” I told her, pointing out the park district pole indicating a mile marker.
Nothing breaks physical and mental tension better than rolling into a time trial. Otherwise you stand there awkwardly with a finger on your watch and all kinds of dreadful thoughts can go through your head.
Keep calm and run on
That’s actually one of the reasons why I was so impressed with everything that transpired during our time trial last weekend. My wife not only kept calm during the entire session, she dealt with the type of quick little fallouts we all experience during fast running. There are few fast runs where the pistons fire perfectly the whole way. Normally we feel good for stretches, then struggle a bit. It’s the getting back on track that makes all the difference.
As we moved through the first mile I was careful to let her dictate the pace. Running next to someone is fine, but nudging ahead is not at all helpful when the runner next to you has a goal pace and concentration is critical. We passed through the half mile point in good shape and I noticed that her breathing was steady and her stride light.
Change for the good
That’s the biggest change I’ve seen in her since we first met seven years ago. Her running form has improved so much. When I first met her, there was a plodding aspect to her stride, but over the years she’s learned to run more efficiently by using her midfoot more effectively. Her cadence has improved, as has her arm carriage. She’s now gotten faster even as we’ve aged. And we train together quite often.
Her coach has encouraged her to do more speed work. That has profound effects on an athlete’s overall carriage and efficiency. You can’t fake it if you’re running fast with an eye on the watch. We’ve done early morning interval sessions on indoor tracks and trained together in the breeze and heat of outdoor ovals as well. All the while we’ve discussed what makes her faster and what slows her down.
Progress points
Thus when we passed through the first mile a full thirty seconds under the goal pace for the morning I was not necessarily amazed, because I’ve seen her do the work. But I was thankful that she was letting herself explore her capabilities. Going for it.
The middle mile went just as well. Which left us with a mile-point-one to go, and that’s where the going often gets tough. Yet she ran that last mile ten seconds faster than the middle mile.
At the three-mile-mark we neared the bridge in North Aurora where the trail dips down to the river grade and back up again. We zoomed along and I could tell the pace of the day was adding up for her. Then those hundredths of a second seemed to drag. I was watching my watch as they ticked away. I let out a little chuckle at that point and she sighed, as in “When is this going to end?”
Finish line
Finally, it was over. She’d rocked the time trial close to the times she was running ten years ago. “You know,” she turned to me and said, “Running a fast 5K is almost harder than running a half-marathon.”
Her revelation meant a ton to me. I’ve told her many times that “back in the day” we journeyman road racers did the occasional half marathon but more often we banged away at 5Ks and 10Ks trying to drop our times week-by-week. Those competitive efforts required intense focus and constant training to achieve. I feel like she tapped into that spirit with her time trial this past weekend.
Nothing gives you more confidence than blowing through your perceived limits at a 5K pace that seemed unreachable. Whenever the triathlon world opens back up again it feels like she’ll have more belief in her ability to come off the bike and run confidently and a bit quicker. That’s what it’s all about. It doesn’t have to be amazing to be fun. But it sure helps to feel a dose of both now and then.
Nice job, Suzanne Astra. And thanks Steve Brandes for being an awesome coach for my wife.
And all you people out there training for who-knows-what…keep the faith. You can improve even if there are no races on the calendar. Take pride and interest in what you’re doing. Be inspired.
Last night before going to sleep I flipped through a booklet of results from my days of running cross country at Luther College. I’d stored those books in the bedroom desk and was looking for something else when I opened the drawer and pulled them out.
That must have set my mind thinking about that period of life. During the night I dreamt that I was walking down the long road from the Luther College campus entrance to the field house as if I was going to cross country or track practice.
Right before entering the field house, a young man appeared at my side and immediately engaged in conversation. He seemed friendly enough, almost like someone I already knew.
We were so absorbed in conversation that we walked right past the field house. Heading up to the union, I was sharing some quick recollections of my time at college when he invited me up to the cafeteria to meet with some of his friends.
The offer
When we sat down he pulled out a pamphlet and smiled. At that moment two other people sat down with us. One was a young man and the other an athletic-looking, attractive young woman.
As we talked it became clear that they needed someone to buy them alcohol for a party they were having at a place outside of town. They were offering incentives for the rate of alcohol I was willing to buy them, or a block of tickets they wanted to hand out to people attending the party. There were prices listed in the pamphlet and everything. All they needed were patrons to buy the supplies or admissions to the party.
They were particularly interested in getting whisky. Or else that was an interest of mine that just inserted itself into the dream. I don’t control these things. They just happen in dreams.
Sex for sale
It also became clear that one of the ultimate incentives for investing in the program was the opportunity have sex with the young woman sitting across the table from me. She also explained, while opening the pamphlet, that I could have the pick of any of four girls involved in the program. She showed me their pictures.
At that point I looked up and said, “But that would be cheating on my wife.”
I got up to leave the table and they walked along with me, whereupon several of the other girls involved in the program showed up. The two guys and the gals were not exactly pressuring me, but they were trying to make sure the temptations were known.
The situation
In my dream state my mind ran through what it would mean to take advantage of that situation.
Instead I considered exposing the whole ruse. I even mentioned an aspect of it to a professor or administrator that I knew on campus. Certainly the girls seemed willing participants in the scheme. And yet…
Leaving town
Next thing I knew I was in my car driving out of town. I had indeed promised to buy them booze but was looking for an excuse to escape the situation. So I simply drove away and seemed to have spaced out on the whole deal, because during the dream I came back to awareness and pulled over in Fennimore, Wisconsin with a sense of guilt at having lied to them. I pulled over with the sudden thought that I’d deceived someone. But then I realized that perceived deceit, quite ironically, was actually the right thing to do.
I believe I had that dream because these are trying times in this world. We’re faced with all sorts of compromising decisions during this pandemic and strain on the economy. Our minds are being asked to make unconscious choices all the time. Are we wearing masks properly? Are we wearing them at all? Who can we trust for news? What’s the right thing to do? Should we feel guilty if we’re working and others aren’t? And at what point should people press their employers for honesty if even they can’t get straight answers or honest information from our government?
And all that uncertainty got expressed in my dream in a simple more question: Is it okay to screw somebody to get what we want?
Sacrifice and selfishness
While there is a ton of sacrifice being made in this world, we’re also witnessing a brand of selfishness that seems unquenchable. People are willingly defying common sense, manipulating the truth to their own selfish reality and/or scamming the system however they can. Even people at the top of all this economic turmoil, the people in charge of the lives and destinies of millions, are playing games with who gets money and who gets left out.
It’s a transactional nightmare if you study it closely. Telling Americans that a one-time payment of $1200 is a “big, fat check” and that it should last ten weeks is one of the most cynical things a President of the United States and his henchmen have ever said to the public.
I believe that this era is a study in sacrifice and selfishness. That is what my dream was all about, a consideration of the seductiveness of wealth and power and the advantages it seems to promise, but only to those willing to sacrifice principle for approval by power.
In other words, are we willing to whore ourselves out to gain or take advantage of others in society.
Familiar and strange
It’s interesting to have a dream in which the circumstances are both familiar (my college town) and yet there’s an entirely different reality going on (the enterprising yet manipulative college kids) in which everyone is trying to get what they want rather than what they really need. These are the tarsnakes of life.
As for the moral dimension of that dream, I’m proud that even in dreamworld I made the right choice. There are plenty of powerful people in the world who would buy that liquor and have sex with that girl. We read about it all the time. And when those people gain enough power, they either manipulate or force others into their reality. And that’s what’s going on in this world as well.
Call me a liberal or a bleeding heart if you like. Call me a hypocrite for dreaming about potential sex and then denying it. Call me a naive fool for believing that moral choices really matter in this world. Asleep or awake, that’s how I’ll always choose to live. Trying to make the right and honest choices, at any cost.
