Random Thoughts April 2025

Ted Reads Random Thoughts April 2025

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I was talking with a friend of mine about whether or not a caterpillar that dies before it becomes a butterfly is a bad/sad thing. How do we know for sure? Could it be that it doesn’t have to go through a stressful process to get to where we are all going anyway?

My 6-year-old grandson said to his mom. “This life is so strange, why would we have a life that has so much pain?”  A fellow quester, he is. I hope he never stops asking those kinds of questions. Kudos to his mom and dad who haven’t programmed those kinds of questions out of him. If he would have asked me, I would have said, “Pain is that point where change occurs. It is that place where two or more colors of the universe come together. Where yellow and blue meet, and become green, I would guess that yellow and blue feel the loss of themselves, and if they resist the change, they experience pain. Pain is found in those places of transition, that place where things change.”  What would you tell him?

I have wondered for decades whether or not I would truly have any value if I could no longer “do” anything. As in contributing to the welfare of the humanity tribe. I grew up in an environment that more than suggested that my only true value was as a “work unit.” I bought into that and have lived like that since. I am coming closer each day to being more of a liability than an asset in terms of my life adding commercial value to this world. The gap between consuming more value than adding is becoming more and more pronounced. In pure economic terms I am becoming more and more of a liability than an asset. A consumer more than a producer.

If I am reading the handwriting on the wall correctly, it seems that DT and the gang aren’t wondering; they have already answered that question. Their campaign against food assistance, Medicare, VA medical support, social security, etc., if carried out to its intended end, is in effect pruning the humanity tree of us non-productive, non-essentials. I might be able to ‘buy’ the “we can’t continue to support human beings at this level” if there wasn’t a trillion-dollar tax cut on the agenda. For those of you historians, you know of this strategy. It was one of the initial pogroms (that is not a misspelling of ‘programs’) that Nazi Germany first implemented.

At my brother’s funeral I remembered one of his principles of life. He was a teacher and coach for over four decades. It went something like, “If a young person comes into my life being ‘not so good a person,’ that’s not their fault, it is what the cards have dealt them. If they leave my life the same way, I haven’t done my job.”

I read the other day of a research paper suggesting that chewing on wood was good for the brain. That’s not news to some of us. We were doing that in high school, chewing on toothpicks that had been soaked in cinnamon oil. Totally forbidden by the authorities. Some entrepreneurs sold them for five cents apiece. Does anyone remember that?

Edward Abby suggested that ideologies are only ever defeated with ideas, not guns.

I am reminded, as I watch various American law enforcement folks abduct people off our streets that Hitler had his storm troopers, tens of thousands loyal to his dying day and beyond. There are a percentage of us human beings who get pleasure from doing things like that.     

I got some good news the other day, in the sense that what was first thought to be another brain bleed turned out not to be. When I learned that good news, I thought, “Great I dodged a bullet, but could we please do something about the gun?  How about the shooter?”  

There are those who are wondering what they might do during these times. Leslie Marmon Silko suggests we write. “Writing may not change the world overnight but may have an enormous effect over time."  So, write, even if you keep it to yourself. What we all need most, Mary Lou Casey suggests, is a good listening to. Start with yourself. Recollections from ancestors are fascinating to me. It helps me understand myself better.

You’ll be surprised what happens. If you are brave enough, send what you write to people on your email list. Or you Facebook friends. You will be fulfilling one of your genetic imperatives. Trust me on that last part.

I was attending a play or more accurately a musical. For some reason I was drawn to the phenomena of clapping. Sometimes it is a sign of approval and appreciation. Sometimes derision and mockery. Sometimes a warning. Sometimes, surprise. A weird thing, clapping.

There are times when it seems as if every interaction is nothing more than a transaction. Then there are times when an interaction results in a transformation. It isn’t easy for me to predict which one it’s going to be. The former is always disappointing when I am expecting the latter. 

“Never get into a pissing content with a skunk,” I was advised by a grizzled old, close to retirement, High School football coach when I was a young coach grumbling to him about what I was going to do about a complaining parent of one of the guys on my basketball team. He was SO grizzled, he scared me. I took his advice and have used it as a guide for the rest of my life. I have to say, I have never been sorry and have continued to make that decision often. Not often enough though. There is a reason I am remembering that now. Me thinks I am talking with a skunk or maybe I’m the skunk.

I knew I was back in the ‘friendly confines’ of the Black Hills of South Dakota when a gentleman approached me as I was closing the back of my truck and said, “I like the looks of your outfit.”  This man was about 6’3”, looked like a body builder who very well could have made a lot of money serving as a living, mobile billboard for tattoo options. I smiled and said, “Thanks.”  I knew exactly what he was saying.

The first time someone said to me, “I really like your outfit” was in 1993, a year or so after we had moved to South Dakota from Michigan. A huge lumberjack of a man, who also ran the local sawmill that I was engaging to do some lumbering said that to me. I froze. I was confused. I wasn’t sure what he was talking about. I said “Thank you” anyway. He must have sensed my confusion and said, “What year is it?” Ahhh, I realized he was commenting about my new Jeep. I felt a huge wave of relief. “1992” I answered. I learned then that in this part of South Dakota, if someone says, “I like your outfit.” They are talking about your vehicle, not what you’re wearing.

I was reminded reading a scientific article, which suggested that I am here because a star died. I am grateful. When I look up and happen to notice the stars at night, I whisper to one of its siblings, or mom or dad, “Thank you.”

I was reminded of a point of view Pablo Casals expressed.  It goes something to the effect that all human beings have the capacity to be good decent human being. It is not complicated, but it takes courage to do it. May we all have that courage.