Those.  I was close enough that over her shoulder I could see some of the story headlines and, of course, the pictures.

The appeal of this literature is curious, and since this blog is about “life and other curiosities” I engaged in some reflection.  The subjects are well established and repetitive. Who’s addicted to what? Who’s cheating on whom? Whose new clothes do we love or hate? Whose weight is out of control? Who’s having plastic surgery and for what? Who is divorcing or marrying whom?

I wondered about the writers and editors of these publications.  Are they true believers in the truth and importance of their labors, or do they do this as a game, as a comic diversion?

Recently I watched “The Wrestler” with its Oscar-nominated performance by Mickey Rourke.  The film portrays the men who engage in the violence and “drama” of professional wrestling as actually a band of brothers in reality and completely conscious of the fact that they are acting out their parts for the entertainment of others.  The question remains as to whether the audience is similarly aware.

I found myself studying the magazine woman for clues.  She was middle aged and did not look at all like the women whose pictures she was observing.  She looked as if she might be the teacher of a children’s Sunday School class or the business manager for a decent restaurant.  But I made secret judgements (being Myers-Briggs INFJ) as to her taste and character and level of intelligence.  Then I tried to tell myself that actually she could be a Ph.D. is cultural anthropology and doing research for an article.  I accused myself of jumping to conclusions and possibly being a snob.

I remembered that the evening before my flight I had met with a book club where literature of importance and social value was discussed by certified intellectuals.  They had not discussed the latest reports about Brad and Angelina and whether Jenn is still in the picture or not.  And I am listening to music by Copland or Mahler, feeling somewhat good about myself.

But what does all this matter, really?

We spend our days as a tale that is told, and the fact that the tales are different does not make one better than the other.  It is better not to judge, or be judged.

I was hiking on a lakeshore trail in a nearby state park. Ahead was a small wooden bridge across a stream. Several good steps and you would be across this bridge. But crossing it on this early morning, I noticed something that brought me to a stop. Someone had written something there. I imagined it to be the hand of a young boy. But instead of “fuck you” or “parents suck” it was something strangely different.

“I love you!”

As I walked on, I began pondering this message. It was not addressed to anyone. Usually you would expect a name attached. “I love you, Mary!” Or Jane, or Sally . . . someone with a name.

Was the boy shy? Did he want to leave the message anonymous, so he could point it out to any girl he brought and claim it was to her? Or could his love have been for another boy, and no girl at all? Or was this message more of a wish than a reality? He felt love, but his love had no name to attach to?  Or could he have just been happy on a bright, sunny day and in love with life and with everyone?  I kept wondering because there were all these possibilities, and no way to tell for sure about any of them.

However, I vote for the bright, sunny day.  A day with an exclamation mark beside it.  A day when love was an overwhelming feeling that had to be written down, even on a bridge.  A day when it was free and unbounded, including all the world and the entire human race.

I know this sounds like nonsense.  I know such writing was not placed by the head of the local chamber of commerce, kneeling down on those boards in his business suit and tie.  It is nonsense for sure to him.  This is the work of a child, we assume.  It must have been a child, we assume.  Thus we make it childish and foreign to our practical lives.

Sometimes on televised football games the camera shows a person in the end zone holding a sign saying “John 3:16″–the location of a verse in the Bible.  The person wants us to get a Bible and read that verse.  He believes it will do us some good.  Perhaps it will for, if I recall correctly, this passage begins “God so loved the world . . ..”  So in this theology it is god-like to love the world, but that is in theory.  It seems that the majority of god-fans don’t see it that way.  Their god loves their particular portion of the world–their country or tribe or religion or ethnic group, or whatever.

Speaking before a fundraiser for his political party, Newt Gingrich recently declared: “I am not a citizen of the world. I think the entire concept is intellectual nonsense and stunningly dangerous!”  In this view it is every country for itself, and may the best country win.  Or it is every race or language group for itself.  Or it is every social or religious group for itself.  And so we always at war, one against another.  So it goes, and so it goes.

Human love, if we have any, tends to narrow down, not broaden out.  We love only certain classes, races, political persuasions.  We love children and relatives only if they behave themselves and treat us as they should.  We certainly would never love an enemy.  Our loved ones are the loving ones, meaning those who love us.  Thus does love amount to no better than a practical selfishness.

I know the author of the inscription didn’t have all of this in mind, but it’s what I think about every time I cross his bridge.

You get used to all the swim team noise.  You get to where you seldom even notice it.  But then, nearby, I heard unusually loud hollering.  Angry hollering.

One of the swim team “coaches” was giving the devil to a young boy.  Face red, arms waving, fingers pointing.  The poor kid just standing there with his eyes staring down at the pool deck.  I put the word coach in parenthesis because I’ve never seen a one of these guys doing what I would call coaching.  Their job seems limited to getting the kids organized in the water, timing their laps, and urging them on.

“Go, go, go!”  “Don’t let him pass you, Cramer!”  “Alright now, I want to see some better times.”

They do not teach about swimming.  Their deal is to motivate the kids to try harder at doing it the way they came there doing it.

I felt sorry for the boy who was being berated by his “coach.”  Although warm and comfortable in the adjoining hot tub, I felt his pain, his embarrassment.  It made me wonder about the men who do this.  Were they super athletes when they were this age?  Or are they taking it out on these kids as a make-up call for their own lack of achievement?  Do they have jobs where someone bosses them around, where they have to take a lot of crap, and this is a way of getting to unload on someone else, even a poor kid?

When I was the age of the swim team kids, I had a wonderful Boy Scout leader.  His name was John Murphy and we called him by his last name, Murphy, like we called each other by last names.  Murphy was devoted to us boys and we knew it.  He deserved to be called a leader, both in leading by example and also through his advice and encouragement.  There were certainly times we disappointed him, but never did he berate anyone.  Achievements were about us, not about him.  Murphy was someone I still feel indebted to.  My better self would like to be such a person and be remembered so long and so fondly.

To be sure, there are times for urging people to try harder.  There may be times for taking people to task.  But showing them the way, teaching them how things are, those speak louder and last longer.

Adirondack Shelter

The park lies astride two lines on the map: the Tennessee/North Carolina state line and the Appalachian Trail.  The trail held the most interest to me.  Along the trail there were camp sites with rustic Adirondack Shelters like the one pictured here.  They were made of logs and very solid.  They were open on one side and that’s where you built your fire and did the cooking.  A good spring was always nearby with cold, running water.  If I could add up all the nights I spent in these shelters it would be measured in months.

As boys, our scoutmaster taught us that staying in these shelters was both a privilege and a responsibility.  He said that the next hikers behind us might get in late or arrive in the rain.  We must leave some good dry wood and kindling.  We must leave the place clean.  And some left-over canned food would be a good idea too.  We must think of those who would come after us, and we must leave things for them as we would like to find them for ourselves.

Being a serious and thoughtful young man, I took these instructions to heart.  I felt satisfaction when I left a shelter in good order.  I felt guilt if I did not.  I rarely failed to leave things the best I possibly could.

I have hiked in and found shelters exactly as I would have left them, and I have found them trashed and without a stick of dry wood.  On those occasions I would wonder what kind of people had left things in such a mess.  Had no one ever told them about their responsibility?  I supposed they must have been from somewhere far away.  People who had not been raised right.

We pulled into such a shelter late one day in a solid downpour.  We were tired and soaked and cold and looking forward to a warm fire.  As my buddies huddled and rested, I went back out in the rain with my double-bit axe.  Across on the ridge I found a dead chestnut tree.  I knew there was dry wood inside.  I chopped and chopped and brought back logs to split under the shelter.  After considerable effort I got a hot blaze going.  The next party would find a nice stack of that wood all ready to go.

Why do I think back on this and feel that same kind of guilt as crude oil floods the Gulf of Mexico from an exploded oil well off the coast?  The fact that we are drilling for oil a mile deep and far out to sea highlights the fact that we have already plundered all of the underground oil that is easily within our reach.  We are going for the last of it, no matter the cost or the consequences.  For those who come down the trail behind us there will be none left, but who cares?

I once pulled into an Appalachian Trail shelter and found that people needing firewood and unwilling to climb the nearby ridge and fell a dead tree had taken apart and burned the entire outhouse, excluding the seat.  The seat sat oddly by itself in full view of the world.  Like the mountains in West Virginia that are stripped off to get the last of the coal and then left behind as so much waste.

Waste is the word for it.  The land, the trees and plants, the air and water, the buried resources, the wild living things that fly and run and burrow–we are wasting it all.  Those who come after us will surely wonder what sort of people could have done this.

View from our deck

Due to my recent hip replacement, I am not in snow shoveling form and my wife Karen is handling this task.  I have lived in the DC area since 1973 and never has the snow shoveling task been like this year.  We measure our snows now in terms of feet, not inches.  Inches are hardly worth mentioning.  In our subconscious we do realize there are parts of the country for whom winters like this are normal and expected.  But they are not us.

Were it not for those who go out in this mess to plow our streets and answer emergency calls and take doctors and nurses to the hospitals and climb power poles to replace transformers and downed power lines and pull slid-off-the-road cars back to the road and haul them off if needed and find where trees have fallen across the roads and chainsaw them into pieces and haul them off and drive ambulances through unploughed neighborhoods to get to stroke and heart attach victims and many other things I can only guess at, we would be lost and desperate.  (The previous sentence is intentionally complex and confusing because that’s the way things are now.)

Karen was out with her snow shovel awhile ago and a snow plow came into our court.  It made a couple of rounds and then I heard conversation.  Karen was telling the driver what a good job he was doing and how much she appreciated it.  I was amused but not surprised.  This is the same wife who gave our mail person a $40 cash tip just before Christmas.  She has given other things to such people in these situations.

How did our weary snow plow driver react to this appreciation?

Well, he made numerous additional trips around the court with an emphasis on our place.  Karen was still standing with her shovel and watching.  He used his big machine almost like a shovel, carefully getting as close as possible to curbs, cars, driveways, and mail boxes.  This saved a ton of hand shoveling.  When he finished and started out of our court, Karen thanked him again with an excited wave.

There are fellow citizens in these situations who take a different approach.  They holler and complain loudly about snow piles left behind and lack of service for all the tax money they pay.  They make angry phone calls and write angry letters to county officials.  They get their blood pressure raised and faces all red, feet stomping, irritable with their spouses for hours afterward.

I like Karen’s approach the best.  Most times it actually works better, and not just for snow plow drivers.