Midsummer madness

We pretend otherwise, but we're living in times of magical thinking.
And this is dangerous.

If you're reading this on a monitor, you are probably directly connected to a turbine somewhere, turning a magnet in a huge coil of wire.

The light that's triggering the images on your eye's retina was generated by passing electrons, which were pushed mechanically, either by wind or by steam.

The steam likely came from either burning coal or oil. It may have come from the heat of nuclear fission. How it came matters not, steam is steam.

My grandfather was born in 1898. The video below was made two years later.



We've become the gods in our own universes, and it's not going to end well.

I've been charged with teaching DNA replication to 15 year old children in New Jersey, children who do not know where food comes from, children who do not see stars, children who plug into walls without wonder.

I don't write much in June--the light, the air, the humming of life outside remind me what matters, and what matters cannot be found in words.

Words are wonderful. The love of my life is a writer. I get that we are human, and that our words help define us.

But in June, the casual brief grasp of an ornery grape vine grabbing my arm as I go through the back door silently reminds me that we have no more (nor less) privilege than any other being busy breaking down complex molecules made by other beings, all of us tied together by energy from the sun, none of us any wiser than any of the rest of us.

My Grandfather knew this, which is why worshiping on Sundays made sense to him. He learned to trust this new-fangled electricity thing, but it never replaced the world he lived in, the world that exists around us.

Outside.

Nothing (and everything) makes sense in June. Midsummer madness is here.