Notes From A Bear's Journey

     What's new, asked Linda Ronstadt back when she was a heartthrob for young souls such as me, her voice penetrating me as if a modern Siren trying to alter my direction.  The arrival of a new year brings back those times to me both with surprise and pleasure, for it's a point of time when many of us tend to look back at what we did, or where we went, or what made the news, as well as looking forward to what may be ahead.  Both of these time qualities --the past and the future-- are apparently uniquely human traits.  To our knowledge, animals and other life forms live only in the present moment, something that science and few religious practices advocate.  One thing that believing in a future accomplishes is often an urge to make something better or more efficient.  In my personal view such efforts sometimes flop, such as the recent James Bond movie ( No Time to Die ) or the Brene Brown book ( Atlas of the Heart ), both characters and authors I've previously enjoyed.  A

     Oh the ads, the blitz of "deals" and retailers understandably worried about consumers (note the word "consume" in there) and profits and such.  Not like China, where Xi Jinping is now the lifetime head of the Peoples Republic of China; and according to the recent report on 60 Minutes , he really is more for the people and, as one person put it, the peasants.  Tech monopolies?  Not so fast.  Break them up and distribute monies back to the people.  Kids watching too many video games?  Limited them to 3 hours a week and only on the weekends.  Time to hit the golf course?  Xi considers this a game for the bourgeois and wealthy so rip up 10 courses and replace them with a game everyone can play....soccer fields.  Is this where the U.S. is headed, the dreaded path of government socialism as one Congressional party is so fond of using as a rallying cry?   Then we'd best forget about the socialistic practices here in the U.S. such as Social Security, or Medicare, o

     On a clear day you can see forever; well, maybe not quite as far as the other side of the Manson Crater, an impact crater so large that it "would make the Grand Canyon look quaint and trifling" in the words of Bill Bryson.  That and perhaps the fact that it's been buried for quite literally, ages.  And that it's in Iowa.  But that isn't even the largest crater in the U.S . -- that honor goes to the one in Chesapeake Bay (what??).  And if you're looking for a part of our planet that was heavily clobbered by meteors in general, then you're in the right place; North America is home to a third of all the major impacts.  Hmm, didn't see that coming, eh?  Or that the eight words that started this post came from a musical , one of those Broadway shows where one song (such as the Bocelli-sung, The Prayer ) is far more remembered than the show itself.  The words went this way: On a clear day rise and look around you and you'll see who you are.  On a cl