Poetry Religion

The White Box

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Foreword

During 1974-1990, I was pastor of Luther Rice Memorial Baptist Church in Silver Spring, Maryland. The following is based on one of my experiences. After all these years, the memory is still vivid.

Couldn’t help noticing you aren’t beside your
wife here. I do remember your elaborate
wedding just back in the summer. And now
this.

All tight around his wife a huddle of women
is doing all they know to do. They cry, they
moan, they wail, they pat and hug. But she
stays grim and silent.

You pay no attention. Your anger is unending.

I stand up front in my assigned space, telling
how the Lord is merciful and good we surely
hope. Funny tent up over our heads, those
who could get in under. Most are scattered
out around and slanting against the cold
wind, catching whatever words fly by.

Words. Words know less in times like this. 
Where small wooden boxes lie quiet on
the ground. 

The box is white like the dress she wore
in summer, walking the aisle with
flowers in her hands and a baby
already in her womb. 

Baby dead now, some days ago in a crib
at the babysitters. Mother gone out and
doing something somewhere they said. 

No charges placed, except by the
looks you give. 

Keeping my eyes there in the Holy Book
is safer. Eyes tell. Yours are full of
fire and accusation. Hers sink deep in the
ground like the spades of grave diggers. 
Ground where this baby will lie from
here on out. 

And after my say is over, you move to
make sure about the matter. 

Put the casket down in there and
cover it up, you command. No, not later,
I mean right now. 

We’ll wait.

Man in charge hesitates. He never had this
before. They always do that after people
leave. Thinks this is crazy but keeps his
mouth shut. Goes and gets two in overalls
to bring their shovels and do it. Down
the little box goes.

Today they work before an audience.
Like I do. They keep glancing around
nervous but carry on as directed.

Cold time passes – slow as ice melting. 
Chills enter people’s clothing with no
letup. Faces turn, seeking the best
direction, and find none. Sounds of
dirt’s arrival mingle with the wind. Dirt
shoveled in and pounded tight. 

Tight like the twisted crib sheet around
the baby’s small neck. 

Mother begins to scream now. She is out
of her silence now. Other women join in
while they hold her against falling. 

The men stand together in their separate
groups, faces like wartime, forbidden to
cry or help either one. 

I must not move to go until others do.
Unfitting that would be.

With nothing more to say or do, my eyes
study the nearby paths. They climb to
the tops of tombstones, then back down
again. They guess the history of the buried
by the reading of their names. Time
stretches, measured out in shovelfuls.

And then finally a last and final one.

A woman whispers how cold the wind is
and how a person might catch their death
out here. Heads nod. The cries of the
women seem less and the talking more. 

The men are getting more courageous. 
They stir and nod and look in the direction
of the cars. Away from the business
we did out here today. 

And then like animals in a herd, we
move toward our cars. Cars that have
waited cold and quiet through it all. 

They lead her to hers, as you
march to yours. 

It is over now. My part is.

I put down my Bible and start the heater.

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Poetry Religion

The Canticle of Creatures

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Foreword

The following is not new and not mine. It was composed by St. Francis of Assisi around 1224-1225.

He was very ill and near the end of his life. He was nearly blind, in severe pain, and according to tradition he wrote the main body of the poem after a night of particular agony. There is also a belief that he wrote the final stanza welcoming “Sister Bodily Death” as he knew he was dying. Regardless of its history, the piece is remarkable for its poetic beauty, its love of the created world, and its spirituality that embraced suffering, mortality, and the physical world rather than fleeing from them. It may well be the most important early Christian text linking faith and ecology. It also presents the world as a community of creatures, and our praise and thanksgiving as the proper response.

I had read and studied this poem in other years, but it was heartening to read it again. This is why I am passing it along.

Thine be the praise, good Lord
omnipotent, most high. Thine
the honor, the glory, and every blessing.
To Thee alone, most high, do these belong;
to speak Thy name no living man is worthy.

Be praised, my Lord, with all that Thou hast made;
above all else the sun, our master and our brother,
whence Thy gift of daylight comes.
He is most fair, and radiant with great splendor,
and from Thee, most high, his meaning comes.

Be praised, my Lord, for our sister moon,
and for the stars;
Thou hast placed in the heavens their clear
and precious beauty.

Be praised, my Lord, for our brother wind
and for the air, in all weathers cloudy and clear,
whence comes sustenance for all which Thou hast made.

Be praised, my Lord, for our sister water,
who is most useful, precious, humble and pure.
Be praised, my Lord, for our brother fire,
for Thine is the power by which he lights the dark;
Thine are his beauty and joy, his vigor and strength.

Be praised, my Lord, for earth, our mother
and our sister;
by Thy power she sustains and governs us,
and puts forth fruit in great variety, with grass
and colorful flowers.

Be praised, my Lord, for those who forgive by the power of Thy love within them,
for those who bear infirmities and trials;
blessed are those who endure in peace,
for Thou at last shalt crown them, O most high.

Be praised, my Lord, for our sister bodily death,
from whom no living man escapes;
woe unto those who die in mortal sin,
but blessed be those whom death shall find
living by thy most sacred wishes,
for through the second death no harm
shall come to them.

Praise my Lord and give thanks unto Him;
bless my Lord and humbly serve Him.

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Nature Poetry Travel

Crossing the Continental Divide at Dawn by Motorcycle

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Elk Mountain is solid on my right, and
Colorado snow is melting on the
farther slopes. 

I glide across Medicine Bow River as
stars fade out in turn, the clouds of night
still dark against the morning grey,
one hint of color showing where dawn
will be.

The air I split in two seems not to care,
nor Wyoming law my speed, nor
anyone my passing here. 

It is well with the tires and the motor and
my life. I think how friends will ask
about this trip. Those I can never show
such a morning to. 

I will say the trip took an effort, but was
always a delight, and sometimes an ecstasy. 

Now is the ecstasy. A silver moon
hangs high overhead. The air is clear
like a trumpet note. Already the farm
houses are spilling yellow light from
kitchen windows, where breakfasts
sizzle on the stove. 

The land wakes as on its first day. 
Animals that watch me pass I am
watching too. Deer and antelope
stand grazing in herds as clouds test
colors of pink and red and silver. 

Just hours from now I will swoop down
on Cheyanne like Indians used to swoop. 
From among the trucks that got up early too. 
From the side toward Laramie and ocean. 
From whatever is told by men who ride two
wheels across a country in the open air.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Poetry Swimming

Eyed On

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Being old now and often
eyed on sideways and other
ways for anything suspicious
in my behavior or appearance
I am swimming stroke by
easy stroke down an early
morning lane in the
YMCA pool and all of a
sudden damn here comes water
sneaking inside my goggles
and my eyes blur and I
stop and grab on the wall at
the end not happy and Trish
who is teaching her class down
the way shouts out Ed are you
all right? meaning cramps or
pains or even those sudden
heart things and I say yes I’m
okay it’s just goggles and
then resume lapping and
after that I think on the
lessons here and finish up the
swim and heading out I
pause and share with Trish the
deeper meaning as I see it:

 Swim goggles are like people
they do act up sometimes.

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Commentary Religion Stories

A Boy and His Scooter

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Adam and Eve were happy in their garden until something happened, one thing, and in that moment, everything changed about their lives. In some theologies, it changed things in all the other lives to come after them.

Robert Frost’s poem “Out, Out“ tells of a boy sawing wood on a fine Vermont evening, only to have the saw jump and cut off his hand and end his life. As his blood drained out “the watcher at his pulse took fright.” And then he was gone.

Things can change, for better or for worse, in small moments of time.  She opens an envelope and reads one single line. A doctor walks into the room and speaks a single sentence. Two roads diverge in a wood, and despite the uncertainty and hesitation, the one taken makes all the difference.

And things can even change in our minds and thoughts as we anticipate and face such decisive moments. It becomes as if what might take place has taken place.

This happened to me on an unsuspecting day in downtown Waynesboro, Pennsylvania. I’d stopped at an intersection and waiting for the light to change I saw something that made me instantly happy.

A young boy, a boy of nine or ten years, a boy like I was once and still have the memory of, this boy was riding his scooter on the sidewalk.

His head was up, his kick was strong, his face glowed with the pleasure of adventure. I guessed his scooter was new and was the best thing that had ever happened to him. I remembered my first bicycle from the Western Auto Store in Maryville, Tennessee, as a boy about that age, and how I loved and treasured that bicycle.

When I first got it, my parents told me where I could ride and where I should not. I must not cross Court Street, they said. But I soon dared to cross Court Street anyway. And a car hit me and knocked me over into a ditch. My cut knee required many stitches. But as soon as the knee healed, I was back on the bicycle. I am still on bicycles. I know how the scooter kid was feeling.

But my moments with those feelings were not to last.

I noticed the boy’s features—Latino, I thought. And dark, disturbing thoughts came upon me then. I knew the boy may have been born here in Waynesboro, but his parents likely were not. His parents could be ICE deportation targets and the boy with them.

I pictured this boy grabbed helpless and held by masked agents armed for military combat. I pictured him separated from his parents and shipped far away to a detention facility. I pictured his fright and pain and confusion. I could see his face there, so different from the one on his scooter this calm and sunny day.

And then arose a sight of his scooter lying somewhere abandoned beside the road.

My world turned to anger. Anger as I thought about the leaders who plan and organize these things while claiming the Christian religion as their own and calling the country a “Christian nation.”

I thought how strange to associate all this with Jesus of Nazareth. He “went about doing good” the Bible says. Good like feeding the hungry, healing sick people, protecting children, and befriending outcasts such as lepers, prostitutes, and foreigners.

Then I drove on, feeling rather helpless about it all.

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Poetry

Dog Prints

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Had I been there and watching when
these marks were made, I would have
known more about what kind of dog
it was. About the size and breed and
color of its coat.

All the scene tells is that a dog was
there and then was gone. It left its
wet footprints and perhaps was
hurried on by smells and sights up
ahead. Even imagined ones, which
can happen with a dog. Or us.

What can wetness on a bridge mean
on a fine sunny day unless a dog
waded or romped in the nearby creek?
In water now flowing to the distance
and never to return.

Wet prints on dry wood hold no
hope of lasting on and arouse the
question: what does?

Do empires, wealth, and worldly fame
go on and on, as those who seek them
hope for?

Or are they much like this: dog
prints on a bridge which will soon
come to nothing? Brief as a dog’s
sip of water from the creek.

How many hikers who cross this
bridge will notice here these marks
so plain beneath them? How
many will think these thoughts?

We pass over and then are gone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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History People Stories

Phenacetin – One Story of It

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His name was Bernie and everyone loved him. He was a man of Christian faith and a faithful Sunday School teacher – there was no problem there. He was a family man with a loving wife and well-raised children – there was no problem there. He ran a small business, practiced honesty, worked hard, and made a living – there was no problem there.

But he had frequent headaches and took a great number of Goody’s Headache Powders. There was  a problem there.

Bernie was literally addicted to those headache powders. Even in church, I saw him lean his head back and pour the powder along his tongue, then frown as the stuff took effect. Everyone who knew Bernie was conscious of his havit, but it went largely unspoken about.


Sometimes he would say something first, like “I’ve got to take something for this headache.” People would look the other way and say nothing. I can remember thinking someone should say something to Bernie. But I was in my 20’s and he was in his 40’s, so I thought an older person should do it. I believe many people wished something could be done, but by someone else.

Bernie ran his “Bernie’s Produce” market right on Main Street and he and his family lived in the back of it. He was devoted to his business. I went with him once on his morning trip to Knoxville to shop at a large farm market. I marveled at how he selected produce and negotiated prices and how everyone seemed to know and respect him. He was not an unhappy man, but he must have lived in near constant pain. He did not live to an old age.

This was the 1950’s in eastern Tennessee, and the main ingredient in Goody’s Headache Powder then was Phenacetin. The powder did indeed relieve a headache. But it also created a headache cycle. The relieved headache created a new one to take its place, and this called for another powder which relieved that headache but then called for another, and so on and on. Addicted users were recorded taking 40-50 doses in a day, and one doctor claimed to have documented a man taking 100.

Phenacetin was synthesized in Germany by the Bayer company in 1887 and used in various products until banned in the U.S. in 1983, much too late to help Bernie. It was banned as a health risk with proven associations to severe kidney problems and cancer. Goody’s initially disputed these claims, but then removed the Phenacetin and replaced it with Tylenol. At the same time they obtained a sponsorship with NASCAR’s Richard Petty, and this helped them remain in business. The powder is still sold today and without the Phenacetin it is as safe as any other pain product.

The man responsible for the powder in the first place was Martin “Goody” Goodman, a pharmacist in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He developed it to sell in his local pharmacy in 1932. In 1936 a local tobacco and candy wholesaler named A. Thad Lewallen bought rights to the formula and began mass production. Lewallen was a shrewd marketer, and one of his targets was factory workers.

Before vending machines existed, Southern textile mills and tobacco factories had rolling refreshment carts that traveled around the floors. These were called “dope wagons.” They sold sandwiches, snacks, and dopes. (In case you aren’t familiar, “dope” is an old Southern term for Coca-Cola.)

Because the mills were incredibly hot, loud, and dusty, workers constantly suffered from headaches. The dope wagons began stocking Goody’s right alongside the Cokes. Workers called them “production powders.“ The combination of Aspirin, Phenacetin, and Caffeine worked so quickly that a worker could take one right on the factory line and get the boost they needed to hit their production quota for the day.

After the ban, Phenacetin found new life in the criminal underworld. Today it is one of the most popular “cutting agents” used to dilute cocaine and increase the profit. It looks like cocaine and gives a stimulating effect of its own. Compared to cocaine it is very cheap. A 50% mix is common for street sales.

And remember, this Phenacetin is the very same substance Bernie used to take as we sang together in church.

What got me to remembering Bernie? And thinking and writing about all this?

My young lifeguard friend at the pool was out with a headache yesterday. Today I asked her what she did about it. She said she took some Goody’s Headache Powder from the Walmart, and it worked just fine.

About the Illustrations

I created the illustrations for this article (and many others) using an Artificial Intelligence application.

Some might question the statement “I created” and insist that AI created them instead. My claim is that they came from me, from my head, and that AI was the tool I used to produce the images based on how I conceived them.

An artist uses tools like canvas, brushes, paints, models, drawings, scenes, and “still life” objects to produce a painting. But ultimately the painting has come from the mind of the artist, not the tools themselves. I know this explanation sounds defensive and that’s fine. AI is a wonderful tool and it certainly makes things easier than what an artist does with brushes and canvas. But I feel that the principle is the same.

I don’t just ask AI to “please illustrate this article for me.” I carefully describe each illustration I want and then go through an often lengthy process of correcting and improving the images through successive iterations. AI is amazing, but not perfect. Sometimes we just can’t get it right and I give up and turn to something else.

The rapid advancement of AI’s image creating abilities is mind boggling. I can’t wait to see what comes next.

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Poetry Stories

Rabbit Tracks in the Snow

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Early in my childhood memory is that house on
the hill in what was called the Pflanze Woods and
the time of the snows that came down in silence
and covered all things and might have meant stay
inside and keep warm but changed when my dad
said let me show you how to track a rabbit.

Mother smiled her approval of this idea as I
wondered about it, then let her bundle me for
the cold and pat and praise me to the outdoors.
I followed him, this North Carolina mountain
man presenting himself as a college professor
of psychology and other of life’s mysteries I had
no need to understand like I did the finding of
where the rabbits go in the snow.

 I had no idea then of how the mountain man
and I would later be at stubborn odds on this
and that, but here I followed him like wisdom
itself and as that which could be no earthly
better that bright and peaceful day. This was
a child’s Christmas and birthdays and ice cream
all bundled together.

I followed him across the yard I played in, and
past the big tree I hoped to climb someday, and
then more out and down along the ridge to where
a rabbit might roam, and was happy because this
journey was for me, me alone, and without my
older brothers who would have ruined it all.

 Dad first explained that many animals such as
dogs and foxes and squirrels leave tracks in the
snow, and we must first find the rabbit kind of
tracks. Not knowing what was right or not right
about this, I still looked and looked as hard as
I could.

And when dad did find some tracks, he showed
how a hopping rabbit lands his large hind feet
down first and in front of his small front feet
which touch down last behind them, and this is
how you know rabbit tracks. I thought this was
a sacred lesson about life in the world ahead of
me. And for that reason, I have never forgotten it.

We followed but never found the rabbit we
tracked that day.

I wondered from those tracks was it running
scarred as if chased by something large and
mean? Or was it just enjoying the new fallen
snow and the clean crisp air?

If it saw us coming, did it fear we had a gun?
Or did it run joyful and carefree as I thought
it might? 

Did it raise its long ears and listen to the
sounds of the east Tennessee town lying down
below our ridge, or were those to a rabbit
the sounds of another world?

They were another world to me that day.

I was tracking rabbits.

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Commentary Humanity Nature

Death Of a Kitten

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I look down on their territory from our back porch.
They come up to eat, drink, play, sleep, groom, and
sometimes to bring new kittens.

Mama Tail Tip did this. Brought two grays
and a ginger, all still nursing. Very wobbly, but
so very cute and adorable.

Especially Ginger.

Nothing much happier than little kittens at play. And tired
from all their play they are sleeping now. There on our
back porch in the cat bed under the sofa. Me in the
bedroom right beside it where I can hear things
on the porch. Things that shook me awake at 1 a.m.

And I ran and flipped on the light and saw
what it was and got a stick and ran out with
no fear just anger ready to murder but with
only a stick which can still hit hard and did and
off ran that huge raccoon down the steps and
on down into his woods.

Then I looked back there and was hit hard
myself by what I saw.

Little Ginger dead and bloody and part eaten
all alone on the cat bed.

Only hours from a happy playtime. Only hours
ahead of my having to stuff this in a plastic bag to
go out with the unsuspecting trash. Desperate
mother alive in hiding nearby, then desperate off with
her one living kitten out of three.

Silly I guess for an old man to get so attached to kittens on
a porch. Silly I guess to blame raccoons who need to hunt and
eat for a living too. Silly I guess to think a homeless mother cat
would be sleepless the rest of the night just like I was.

Better to be glad I live in a nice safe home with food and fuel and
police nearby if I need them. Better to know there are hospitals if
we need them, and armies to defend, and laws to restrain, and
friends and family to help if called on. And I thought on these things
in that long night until other thoughts began. Began to hit me like I
hit the raccoon.

The animals are wild and murderous, but we human animals are what?

Aren’t we gone wild and murderous in places we barely hear of like
Syria, Somalia, Nigeria, Ethiopia, and many more. The animals kill to eat,
but we kill for what?

Mark Twain thought he knew when he said “Of all the animals, man is
the only one that is cruel.”

Why did Cain kill his brother Abel? Not for food, surely.
Why did Romans stage killing shows for their wild and clapping amusement? 
Why did Nazis invent means to mass kill and burn their Jewish neighbors?
Why did Russia attack Ukraine?
Why did Hamas attack Israel?
Why is Israel slaughtering innocent Palestinians?

Why do countries devote so much of their resources to the task of
killing people instead of helping them?
Why are those who train to do the killing so honored and admired, far
above those who devote their lives to teaching or healing?

Why is the word “inhuman” so often applied to actions that clearly are
human by any understanding of human history?

Why in history do the persecuted so often turn around to become
the worst of persecutors?

Why are there now prominent calls to bring back public executions
in the U.S.? The last one in 1936 in Owensboro, Kentucky brought in
twenty thousand spectators.

So just imagine them with our stadiums and televisions today. Imagine
them on all the social media and podcasts. Don’t dare to say this could not
happen now in our America. It seems that anything can happen now in our
America. Anything.

All these thoughts churning, churning around in my head
for the rest of the night.

Can’t I please just blame the raccoon and forget all this?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Commentary Humanity Technology

What Is Real?

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So . . . the scene above is on a ridge just a mile from our home. I made the picture from a trail we often use for morning walks. The mountain barely visible in the background is part of the Appalachian range, and the Appalachian Trail is up there along the top of it. As a landscape picture, this one is okay. Not great but okay. If I posted it on Facebook the picture would get some likes.

But what if there were some people in this picture, looking as if they belonged there? That would add to it, right? And since this is rural, perhaps they would best be a farming couple out enjoying the walk and talking with each other. Talking in a way to make you feel their enjoyment of nature and of each other. Something like the following perhaps . . ..

I was happy about what these people added to the picture and went on to think more about this. I visualized the same couple as they might be on a small farm beside the sea. Up high above it perhaps. On the coast of Ireland perhaps. And so I imagined the following . . .

We know the process that might be used to create this series of pictures. I would first have enlisted and contracted with the models. I would have selected the clothing they would wear, and arranged their transportation. I would have shot the bare landscape scene and then placed the couple in it for their part. Putting them in just the right location and distance from my camera. I would have directed them to interact in different ways and later selected the shots I liked best. Then we would book flights to Ireland and repeat this on the Cliffs of Moher in County Clare.

All this is reasonable and could have happened that way with an adequate budget and a good bit of time. Instead, using artificial intelligence, I selected a picture I had already taken and spent some enjoyable minutes with my notebook computer and my AI application. AI and I created these pictures. The result is every bit as good as the traditional method. Who could tell the difference?

But some would say the AI pictures are deceitful and misleading. Although they may look real, they aren’t real and so they should not be allowed. You, the reader, may have thought this already. It is not unusual if you did. It is also to be expected that more and more we will be questioning what we read and see because of AI. 

But, if you think about it, the movies we love are just like this—they aren’t real either. They create scenes and situations that never existed, but we watch them as if they did. Sometimes at the end we are so into the story that we stay sitting through all those rolling credits because we are so transfixed and hating to break the spell.

Music is also like this. Someone feels something strangely moving and writes it into music. The music becomes an experience of something that words only hint at. When this succeeds, the listener has the same experience. When this greatly succeeds, the music may endure for hundreds of years. Sometimes we even refrain from replaying our music too often because we want the experience to remain new and fresh.

Poetry is like this. The poet feels things and then invents the right words to convey those feelings. Some poems may also sustain us for hundreds of years.

So AI is simply another way that our imaginations can be enhanced and extended. And so what if AI can invent some things faster and better than we mortals can? Are we jealous? After all, we humans invented AI, did we not?

Should novels not be published that depict the unknown and uncertain? that portray places that don’t exist? that imagine happenings that never happened? Should makeup not be allowed because it makes people look better than they actually do? Should fairy tales and ghost stories be kept from the minds of children? Should actors not pretend to be someone they are not? Should cartoons and comedians not be allowed to portray the ridiculous?

Imagination, representation, and interpretation—whether in art, science, or storytelling—are inseparable from what makes human understanding possible. And our humanity allows for the paradox that AI, which lacks feelings and emotion, may still create images that produce those feelings in us. That is the remarkable irony here.

We spend about a third of our lives in sleep. And a lot of that time we are dreaming. What do we dream about? Much of the time our dreams have little relation to the literal and actual.

I will give an example of my own. I have a recurring dream where I literally “leap tall buildings at a single bound.” I sometimes do sustained flying using my arms as wings. Sometimes those flying dreams can go wrong and I crash to the ground. But when things are going right they are exhilarating. They are so real that I look forward to the next one.

If the imaginary in our dreams can be more satisfying than the actual in our lives, what does that teach about reality? 

Painters have been falling in love with portraits of people who never existed for centuries; readers weep over fictional deaths; a sculptor feels tenderness for a lump of marble that’s finally “become” someone.

The most persuasive answer to “what is real” could be this: real is whatever evokes a genuine response in us, regardless of where the image or story came from. 

Is heaven real? Some people casually think so. Others strongly believe so. Others doubtfully hope so. Others scornfully deny the very idea. None of these viewpoints can prove itself yes or no in scientific terms. Even AI has no clue. Human understanding and artificial intelligence both have their limitations. But our quest for reality continues.

There were many years that a lot of us looked forward each week to the imagined lives of people in a small Minnesota town named Lake Wobegon. We knew them by name, almost like dear friends. Father Emil, Pastor Ingqvist, Pastor Liz, Wally Bunsen, Mr. Berge, Miss Falconer, Johnny Tollefson, Harold Starr, Carl and Florian Krebsbach, Art of Art’s Bait Shop, and Dorothy of the Chatterbox Café. Some of them reminded us of people we knew, and some of them reminded us of us.

Was Lake Wobegon real?

I think the answer is both no and yes. I think the reality of much reality is both no and yes. The reality of the couple on the hillside near my home or on the Cliffs of Moher is both no and yes. I did not actually make a picture of those two people in those two places. But they look happy and can be imagined as belonging to either scene. You can imagine walking up and meeting them, smiling and getting acquainted. That would be so nice.

Maybe, for a while at least, it is better to dwell on things like that than on all the war and killing and lying and stealing and imprisoning and executing and deporting and other human cruelty that is the focus of our daily news.

Afterword

Someone might read this article and say that I have been duped by AI. I realize there is lots of negative feeling about AI these days. People complain about the jobs it is replacing, the energy it requires, the falsehoods that people create with it, the “cheating” that occurs when students use it in school. And, of course, others claim that AI is out to get us all and eventually destroy humanity. 

Along with this, there is also a lot of negative criticism directed at cellphones. They are ruining our children. We are getting addicted to them. People can’t have a conversation with people any more because of them. They are robbing young men of their manhood, etc.

Along with this, there is also a lot of negative criticism directed at social media. It is dividing the country, dividing families, promoting conspiracies and falsehoods, etc.

To me, it is all about how we are using these amazing tools. They can be used for amazing good or for depressing ill, and sometimes it does seem that the ill is winning out. 

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