Notes From A Bear's Journey

     When the last post featured The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy (it had 3 editions), I was tempted to title that book "audacious" or "admirable" or "ostentatious" because its subtitle was "What Every American Needs to Know."  Maybe "pompous" would have been a better word.  Admittedly, I bought the book when it first hit the shelves way back in 1988 and indeed found it fascinating, a sort of mini-encyclopedia, one which I begin reading from the opening page.  But less than a quarter of the way through, I tired of it, for it was indeed an encyclopedia of sorts, or a dictionary, a book not meant to be read page to page but rather one meant to be peeked at when the urge hit (much as I noted when I used its definition of the word "prejudice" in my post).  But step back and imagine that you were one of the authors of the book, perhaps meeting for coffee or a chat, and debating whether you should tackle such a large project (a s

      Quick  word of caution : what follows  deals with prejudice past and present and  may prove upsetting and/or difficult to read...use your judgement.      One is tempted to think of Jane Austen and her classic novel Pride & Prejudice...or maybe not.  In today's world, the word pride has evolved into a new definition while the word prejudice has stayed with us unchanged.  Mention that word and its meaning will shift almost immediately to people of color.  Here's how the Dictionary of Cultural Literacy defined prejudice: A hostile opinion about some person or class of persons.  Prejudice is socially learned, and is usually grounded in misconception, misunderstanding, and inflexible generalizations.  In particular, blacks in America have been victims of prejudice on a variety of social, economic, and political levels.  Full disclosure: I have no idea --zero-- of what it feels like to be Black, or Native American, or Mexican, or Iranian, or any of a host of other races w

       We were back, remote country now, the night skies vividly reminding us what night used to look like before we moved into a city.  Our friend's outdoor fire crackled and sparked, our feet toasty, our bodies cold.  City slickers feeling for a night or two what fewer and fewer call a profession...herder, rancher, farmer.  Up at dawn, which is really night to most of us; a quick cup of java then it's onto the land,  territory we would consider unknown and perhaps scary, a land filled with critters whose eyesight and smell are part of this and whose sounds frighten us.  This is their territory, both predator and prey alike.  This new kid in town best be hightailing it out of here, they think.  They hope.  But with dawn will come another bulldozer, or trench digger, or stave markers.  We are many and they are few.      Wrote a piece in  National Geographic :  In southeastern England, an organization called WildEast is creating cracks in the human-dominated landscape, encouragi

     There's no place like home, said Dorothy, and most of us would be tempted to define that as being back in our own bed, our "home."  But home could just as easily move outward from your street to your city, or state, or country (say if a person in another state asks, where's home?).  But picture yourself at a Star Wars bar in a distant galaxy and home simply becomes Earth.  My home is Earth, you would reply.  And likely when telling that to someone, especially if you haven't been back in awhile, memories would come flooding back, almost all of them good ones.  For my wife and I, gone just shy of two weeks, heading home meant that we were ready to get back; not that we couldn't have stayed longer since we were thoroughly enjoying our return visit to Cornwall, but rather that everything was in place for our return...the coach, the flights, the pet sitters, the pile of mail.  It was time...but I had to throw in a quick recap of just some of the sights and sce