Notes From A Bear's Journey

      What have I done to deserve such a fate, asked The Beatles?  And while their song dealt with a relationship going sour, I often tend to ask myself that question but in a positive way.  So many others, especially as winter approaches and cash begins to tighten, have been dealt a far tougher hand than me, for what appears to be little reason.  However you want to say it --luck of the draw; ours is not to question why; God works in mysterious ways, even Einstein's "God does not play dice with the universe"*-- sometimes life proves more difficult for some than it does others.  Much of this thinking began for me with a bit of serendipity, a friend of mine recommending that I read his friend's books, one of the books being the author's time spent as a medic during the Vietnam War; and the other being his return to working at Disneyland  and going from clown make-up artist to creating the Main Street Electrical Parade, a light show which would be v...

               NOTICE: This post is NOT about politics (well, a tiny bit) ...            It's a popular phrase, or at least it was for one of the political parties here in the U.S., even if the result was more of a filling of "the swamp."  Indeed, of some 540 Republican candidates running for office in these midterm elections (just days away), close to 200 of them not only continue to deny that Joe Biden is President, but many have announced that they will question the voting results if they lose (but not if they win)...in my day, we would call such folk "sore" losers, and indeed just as with a sore, this political divide has now festered and become infected to the point of making its way into our country's body and could threaten its health overall.  BUT, talking politics is about as interesting as talking about the good time you had on a vacation, or about how much money you won while in Vegas.  Inste...

     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 A...

       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 organizati...