begin and end

In the denouement of dawn, the great dissolution of the night, the birds seem to anticipate at first and then grow still.

In the predawn mostly-darkness, they chorus and soar and make a hell of a racket: "Get ready!" they intone as one and in their crescendo, the night is once more defeated.

But when the sun grows visible and bright and when "day" takes on meaning, they slump back into an occasionally-punctuated silence. Things in the light are as quiet and resounding as they are in darkness and the birds know ... and don't make too big a deal about it.

It's over.

It's begun.

Did it ever cease or begin?

beasts of burden

Locally, a 58-year-old woman pleaded innocent yesterday to one count of armed robbery after she allegedly stuck up a credit union Thursday, demanded $50,000, and fled with some $7,000. She was armed with what was later determined to be a cap pistol.

The woman, Vivian Poreda, was behind on her mortgage. She was described as the sole caretaker for her husband, who has colitis. She herself suffers from diabetes and other ailments. On a guess, I would say she was desperate and that there is something heart-rending about that desperation and the corner she felt herself to be backed into.

In Dallas, in a story not yet concluded, an unknown number of men shot up police headquarters at about 1230 a.m. Saturday (today). One suspect was said to be angry that police had taken his child from him and accused him of being a terrorist. It's a bit up in the air as I write, but the bullet holes and simplistic brazenness of the attack likewise smell like desperation to me ... if not quite so compelling as Poreda's actions.

No doubt there are others who are far more mature and world-savvy than I am, but I find something wrong with the desperation individuals can feel when set side by side with the shot-cuff arrogance of those who tack wars and other depredations on top of simple human difficulties. Isn't there enough so that the burdens can be shared and ameliorated?

I think so, but, as I say, I am not as savvy as others.

stop time

In the taffy-like humidity that slows my mental and physical step, I think with an emphasis I haven't got the energy to support that it is really quite important to find some way to slow down and consider the life anyone might be given to live.

"Stop time!" A realm in which to knock off the physical and emotional grab-ass and just take a look.

In this regard, I have been fortunate to get some training in Zen Buddhism. I am not recommending it, simply noting what has been useful to me when it comes to "Stop time!"

Just for a moment now and then ... STOP IT! Fuck the virtue and the savvy! Just, for a teeny-tiny moment, shut up and be honest.

A Facebook personality and an oenophile's sensibilities cannot reach, so ... stop it and find the space in which to reach. Stop trying to be yourself and be yourself, if only for a few seconds.

It's a vital capacity, I'd say, but I'm damned if I can say how or why. That's for the Facebook and oenophile crowd.

'infidelity' in South Korea

Ashley Madison is seen as the first company in South Korea to aggressively promote itself as a dating website for married people, though other online dating websites and chatting services have long been used as channels for affairs or prostitution.

Among the surprises, the company says, is that more women than men under the age of 45, its most lucrative group, have signed up.

base line simplicity

On the very day when my daughter returned from grade school toting an electronic calculator, I went to the principal and bitched. Please don't provide my daughter with such a crutch, I argued: It'll just make her dumber and less capable, not smarter and more adept. I was politely but firmly informed that this was the wave of the future and that it gave children the opportunity to exercise their math skills in a wider perspective.

That was long ago, of course, and today I am stuck with the legacy of my daughter's inept training when the cashier at the local supermarket cannot readily subtract a $10.37 purchase from a $20 bill when the electronic cash register goes on the fritz. Perhaps the cashier has wider skills I am unaware of, but at the moment I just want to pay for the milk and sundries and go home.

There is something to be said for learning the shit that everyone else griped about as well. It's simple and the world works somewhat more smoothly when everyone knows how to add, subtract, multiply and divide. Whether anyone goes on to ponder the depths of E=mc² may be a wondrous thing, but if there is no mastery of the base line, how wondrous could it be?

Base line simplicity is deliciously attractive, especially in this age of too much information. On the negative side, it can lead to a teaching-to-the-test vortex that scares the shit out of all imagination. On the positive side, I get my milk and sundries in a time of electronic failure.

In 1904, Amadeo Peter Giannini opened the Bank of Italy in San Francisco. He specialized in providing a haven and a lending institution for the people who went unserved by traditional banks that catered to the well-heeled. "He offered those ignored customers savings accounts and loans, judging them not by how much money they already had, but by their characters." On a recent TV show, Giannini was said to have made loans based on the callouses he felt when he shook a man's hand. After the 1906 earthquake and fire devastated San Francisco, Giannini was there to help the metropolitan phoenix rise from the ashes. 

His bank today is called Bank of America. I doubt that the transparency on which Giannini founded his operation is still in evidence, but still ... it's nice to think it has very simple and straightforward beginnings ... balls instead of "human resources" directors.

Two days ago, Jon Stewart, host of "The Daily Show," took a five-minute bite out of the New York Times for its coverage of Republican presidential wannabe Marco Rubio's financial maneuvers. The Times reported on a boat and house Rubio had purchased and noted his attempts to pay down law school debt. It also reported on the number of parking tickets he and his wife had accrued: “Oh sh—! Marco Rubio got … 4 tickets! In … 17 years! I assume The New York Times obtained this damning information from Marco Rubio’s plaque in the ‘Hall of Best Miami Drivers Ever,’” said Stewart.

Of course news organizations are dying -- and the New York Times more than most -- to be known for their hard-hitting research and level-headed presentation to a public that is not in the business of rooting out what is under personal and policy rocks. And naturally, the New York Times had its excuses for wasting time on Rubio's non-infractions. It's a money-saver, that's for sure ... pretending to dig where the soil is softest. OK ... give 'em another Pulitzer.

But note the implications: If this is news to the New York Times and if this is editorial judgment, what service is the public receiving outside a gosh-and-golly gossip? People are hungry; people are jobless; wars sap the economy; racism is no joke; and politicians pursue venal adventures. But that sort of observation invites research and hence money. No one wants to spend money if they don't have to so the topics for research become increasingly simple-minded and inexpensive.

Risk takes nerve. Nerve is expensive.

Easier to use a calculator.

Easier to believe in god.

"Children of the Moon"

For years, the alabaster-skinned people born off the coast of Panama are called the Children of the Moon or the Grandchildren of the Sun. But that same sun is also the albinos’ greatest foe.

"did you ever meet him?"

I can't find it now*, but I know it's there/here somewhere -- the video tale/book of a man who joins a jungle tribe (in the Amazon, I think) with the intent, among other things, of introducing them/converting them to Christianity ... he joins and is then himself converted.

Floating around in my half-burned memory banks is the one question I believe members of the tribe asked this man with his metaphorical Bible tucked under his arm. Mind you, they were willing to listen to his tales of Christianity. But their willingness was the willingness they might extend to any individual ... or perhaps a child. Everyone's got a tale to tell and they have the right to tell it and be heard.

But, if I remember the video correctly, the one question the tribal members asked was whether this man who praised the realm of Christianity and its chief expositor, Jesus, was, "Did you ever meet him [Jesus]?" And when the man said he had not, there was a not-unkind unwillingness to take this man seriously. How true could tales be without personal knowledge and acquaintance? A wet dream may be compelling, but that doesn't make it either true or worthy of serious consideration. Dreams deserve attention, perhaps, but they are just dreams and as such do not partake of the verifiable present.

The tribal question is like a sword to the heart -- not painful exactly, but pointed and precise and inescapable in its aptness. A life of belief is a life in the past. To ignore the past is as foolish as to rely on it. Inspiration can be found in the past, but relaxation and an absence of doubt cannot.

Living in the past -- living on a diet of belief -- really can be inspiring. But it throws up a constant state of doubt ... trying to live in the past while inescapably living in the present. If there ever were an example of what Buddhists call "unsatisfactoriness" (dukkha), this strikes me as an example that supersedes Buddhism or Christianity or any other spiritual cage.

Did you ever meet him?

What a blessing of a question.

What a curse.

But if this life were based on nothing but blessings and curses ... well, hell, what sort of a life would that be?

*A helpful friend passed along the video I could not find. 

from Bedouin to billionaire

I just thought the tale told of Mohed Altrad, World Entrepreneur of the Year, was an interesting one. Marching to his own drummer has proved a success that he measures according to the happiness of his employees.

"You can ask why I am doing this," he says. "It has never been for money. I am trying to develop a humanistic venture to make the people who work for me happy."

"If they are happy, they are more efficient, better performers, they have a better life." That—he says—is what companies ought to aim for. "If I am happy, I work well."

beware the dread tofu!

Tofu, that holy touchstone of many a vegetarian devotee, has its drawbacks, as evidenced by this article passed along in email this morning.

seriousness and solemnity

Perhaps the difference between seriousness and solemnity is that solemnity is willing to place the responsibility elsewhere whereas seriousness is "all you."

mating itself to death

"Thie animal mates itself to death"

equilibrium deficit

Every now and then, there is an equilibrium deficit that asserts itself -- a moment or set of moments when all the good intentions and control valves simply won't wash and a soaring crabbiness claims the scene. Things feel raw and scratchy and there is some dormant teenager who wakes up and begins his yowling critiques with words like "people (meaning everyone except me) believe..." Or, if being accused of backsliding into a younger, hormone-rich environment is too much, there is the lacquered-academic version ... "one feels, of course...."

It's just a time when energies to find and assert a more balanced lifestyle run out of gas and ... everything seems to suck. No more Mr. Nice Guy! No more namby-pamby Middle Way!

And where there is no reining it in -- no sap-sucker TED talk or spiritual crooning that can revise this deficit -- I think the best thing to do is go with the flow for the moment....

As for example this George Carlin rant:

bullshit in a bull market

This actually resembles news reporting:

NEW YORK (AP) — Those record profits that companies are reporting may not be all they're cracked up to be.

As the stock market climbs ever higher, professional investors are warning that companies are presenting misleading versions of their results that ignore a wide variety of normal costs of running a business to make it seem like they're doing better than they really are.

iconic Vietnam war photo

TRANG BANG, Vietnam (AP) — He stands in the northbound lane of Vietnam's Highway 1, traffic swirling around him, horns honking. He is pointing. Right there, he says — that's where it happened. That's where the screaming children appeared. That's where I made the picture that the world couldn't forget.

Huynh Cong "Nick" Ut was 21 on that day more than half a lifetime ago when he stood on the same road, pointed his camera northeast and captured one of history's most famous images — a naked Vietnamese girl screaming and fleeing after South Vietnamese planes looking for Viet Cong insurgents attacked with napalm from the air.

two 'old age' articles

Yesterday, two quite touching articles crossed my bow. I hesitate to mention them since old age is a strangely, ineluctably private matter ... but what the hell, blogs are much the same.

One came from A.L. Kennedy, a Scottish writer, and was entitled, "How time passes differently as you get older." I liked it well enough to take a stab at sending some fan mail. I also passed it along to an elderly friend who shot back almost immediately that she was more in tune with an article that appeared in the New York Times: "A Group Portrait of New York's 'Oldest Old.'"

Both seemed in my mind to lend a voice to a voiceless set of concerns. The fact that both appeared in public media (the Kennedy piece was posted by the BBC) seemed a bit weird ... a media that is built to serve the socially and physically active, the au courant ... portraying a world that the elderly see increasingly in some rear-view mirror. 

There is little or no outlet for the experiences of old age. Certainly it cannot interest those who have not yet reached that age. Or, when it does interest them, it is usually comes hand in hand with helping or improving or explaining, which is what younger people do. And yet here were two publicly-comestible articles, giving voice to some mute constituency. Not that the could help or really inform, but it was nice to have company, or so it seemed to me.

And both articles made me smirk at some irony that expressed itself as: Just about the time the kids whom adults have raised and lesson-ed are getting their own can-do set of controls and judgments (needed for social interaction and 'success'), those who are older are watching the certainties and lessons lose their footing and focus and credibility. Those who are younger find no visceral need for the unraveling understandings of the elderly. And the elderly, who have tutored those kids, know it and find no one to talk to about the unraveling that chooses its own time and place. For the old to try to make things clear to the young is like a fish, flopping on the dock, being lectured about the life-giving properties of the air that is killing the fish. And more, one flopping fish talking to another is equally useless when flopping is the order of the moment.

Not only is it fruitless to speak. It is also tiring, and the elderly tire more easily and so, inevitably, lie back in the silence of unraveling. Sharing experience is not possible and no where is that more evident than in old age. Squirm, wriggle, flop, whine, weep, laugh ... "sharing" is a young person's sport.

And as if the two articles were not evocative enough, an email out of the blue asked me if I were the Adam Fisher who had lived with Abby as a young child. As children, our mothers shared an apartment in New York City. Her mother was a writer and (I think) illustrator ... as the picture above indicates.

Abby's memory is better than mine, so we shared -- so to speak -- some lopsided recollections via email.

in defense of what may be a vagina

The British sculptor Anish Kapoor has defended a piece of art in the French palace of Versailles that has been called "dirty" and "gross".

The installation, called Dirty Corner, sits in the grounds outside the palace.

Mr Kapoor said in a French interview it signified "the vagina of the queen coming into power" - but later said the work was open to interpretation.

a 'W' for Islamic State

Copies of Islamic State's English-language propaganda magazine, Dabiq, have been pulled from the website of online retailer Amazon.

Four different volumes were available for sale on the site, but in a statement to the BBC, Amazon said the product had now been removed. ...

The magazines were being sold in paperback form on Amazon sites in the UK, US, France, Germany, Italy and Spain. It can be downloaded for free elsewhere.

It reminds me a bit of Mark Twain's letter to the Boston Public Library, thanking them for banning one of his books because the ban guaranteed an additional 5,000 copies in sales.

A 'W' for Islamic State.

great fortune, great crime

Received in email:

Sometimes dubiously attributed to Honoré de Balzac is the trenchant quote

Behind every great fortune there is a [great] crime.

As a social barb, the observation holds a lot of water. Pick a fortune -- any fortune -- and the criminal costs may be well camouflaged in wonder and praise, but the particulars are sometimes as cruel as the wonder is wonderful.

But besides applying this yardstick to the environment in which anyone might find him/herself, I think it is advisable to turn the microscope within: What are the costs and cruelties, if any, to the great good fortune that might befall any traveler? The question is not meant to imply that an intemperate gloom or skepticism needs to be affixed to every aspect of life -- womb, gloom, tomb -- but rather that a little balance makes better sense and results in a less shattered outcome.

"You can't make and omelet without cracking eggs." Is there some reason to skirt or obscure the fact? Nothing wrong with a little delight. Nothing wrong with a little care.

Take spiritual endeavor as an example....

broken bat hospitalizes baseball fan

Talk about "The Bridge of San Luis Rey" and the inexplicable coming home to roost:

BOSTON (AP) — A fan whose head was bloodied by a broken bat that flew into the stands at Fenway Park was in the hospital with life-threatening injuries, police said.

The game [yesterday] between the Oakland Athletics and Boston Red Sox was halted in the middle of the second inning Friday as emergency crews tended to the woman and wheeled her off the field on a stretcher.

PS. The woman was expected to survive.

a stand-out performance

When my daughter was in high school (she's 27 and married now), she played third base on the girls' softball team and had a great batting average. She seemed to hit every time she came to bat. Naturally, I cheered like a bandit and it became a standing joke with all my sports-playing kids that they would admonish me: "Pop, please don't yell!" they would plead. I was loud. I was embarrassing. Their request was seldom if ever honored.

And one day, when I was watching my daughter's latest game, I wondered aloud to the softball coach why it was that these young women so seldom hit the long ball. Many of the team members were solidly-built and clearly strong yet the hits that they got seldom went out of the infield and, when they did, it was not by a lot. The team tended to win, but it seldom did so based on some long, soaring hit to the outfield.

When I looked at these young, strong women, in my eye they were people likely to become whatever the female version of the word "mensch" is -- real women, not stick-figure fashion plates whose lives are consumed by shoes or bling ... not nitwits in my eye. They were strong and likely to get stronger ... stronger and echt... no flimsy Kim Kardashians among them ... so why weren't they hitting the long ball of which they were clearly capable?

The coach absorbed my question and then said simply, "They don't want to stand out."

The answer struck me as a real home run.

Everyone would love to stand out (why else would Kim Kardashian gain so much traction?) and yet to stand out is to stand alone and no one, least of all teenaged girls, wants to be alone. So the desire to do well -- or perhaps really excel -- is tempered by the knowledge or suspicion or fear that to excel is to consign the one excelling to a desert island.

What seems yummy and desirable is also eek and repulsive.

And not only is such a conundrum limited to the world of sports or academics. In spiritual life, the same wrestling comes into play. Or anyway that's my guess: It may be that something called "enlightenment" is the capacity and the goal, but the idea of achieving it is repelling and deeply spooky. I may pray my ass off to God or pursue meditation with a will, but if I actually met God face to face or broke into some wondrous state of being ... who would I talk to, hang with, be comforted by? It is in this realm, I suspect, that the question may arise for others as it once arose for me: "What if I go crazy?"

The slick and the savvy have an explanation and a bunch of gooey words to respond with, but the question for the one seeking to hit a homer stands firm ... take your ooey-gooey some place else! I am dying to hit a homer and scared to do precisely that.

The girls had a winning season and even managed a few home runs, but the coach's observation lingers in my mind. A voice within says, "true dat!"

I can't tell anyone else how to solve the difficulty, if the difficulty arises. All I can say is that the keep going -- to begin and then continue -- smooths and soothes the hot fires of a much-praised homer. As a Zen monk whose enlightenment experience had been confirmed said when other monks gathered to congratulate him and one asked, "Is there any change in the problems you've had in the past?"

"Nope. Same old problems."

What a stand-out response.

'terror' potential

Another example of penalizing a person according to what he MIGHT do? ...

A former U.S. Marine who became a Muslim radical, gang leader and bodyguard to the blind sheik behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing is so adept at turning fellow prisoners into potential extreme jihadists that Florida prison officials have kept him in shackled and in solitary confinement for the last three years, and federal authorities want a judge to tack on another three decades. ... The U.S. attorney is using the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to seek an enhanced sentence for Robertson.

Chinese legerdemain

FLORENCE, Italy (AP) — As Italy's economy was heading off a cliff, police couldn't help but notice that the country's Chinese communities were booming. Luxury cars rolled past Chinese betting parlors and garment factories. Chinese immigrants were buying up Italian coffee bars and real estate. Their prosperity, however, was not reflected in local tax records.

"What do they do with the money?" said Pietro Suchan, then deputy public prosecutor in Florence. "Do they eat it?"

The U.S., among others, is for sale and the Chinese appear to be buying.

And what's not for sale might be more easily stolen:

U.S. officials said hackers in Chinalaunched a massive cyberattack on the federal agency responsible for collecting background information on, and issuing security clearances for millions of government employees.

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) said Thursday as many as 4 million current and former federal employees may have been affected. It said that number could go higher as the investigation continues.

unintended consequences

By 5:30 a.m., the house seems to be awash in social intent. It's not that everyone's running around like chickens with their heads cut off, but the tableau has shifted ... at least in my head. Like the smooth Saharan dunes, suddenly there is a dust storm.

First, my younger son is off to his two-week obligation to the National Guard today. His backpack and duffel bag stand ready. He has done all this before, but still, it has been a year since his last two-week-er and ... well, it's new and portends a time when he cannot slouch on the couch or fish or do whatever else he pleases. He will be at someone else's whim ... so he is nervous ... wants to measure up ... and I fret for his anxiety. Military training on Cape Cod.

His adventure puts me in mind of "the law of unintended consequences." I was in the army, so I wonder to what extent my occasional, not-terribly-hoorah references set him on a military path. Not that it matters much: Young men and women seek out big statements as a means of quelling the confusion that growing up entails. The military is Big and adult and challenging and comforting and, from afar, can seem to offer a settling effect on the growing-up willies... hence inviting still further unintended consequences.

Says Wikipedia:

Unintended consequences can be grouped into three types: 
-- Unexpected benefit: A positive, unexpected benefit (also referred to as luck, serendipity or a windfall). 
-- Unexpected drawback: A negative, unexpected detriment occurring in addition to the desired effect of the policy (e.g., while irrigation schemes provide people with water for agriculture, they can increase waterborne diseases that have devastating health effects, such as schistosomiasis). 
-- Perverse result: A perverse effect contrary to what was originally intended (when an intended solution makes a problem worse). This is sometimes referred to as 'backfire'.

Taking a close look at any set of circumstances or intentions makes me wonder where anyone came up with the idea that an intended consequence stood a snowball's chance in hell. Oozing sincerity, elaborate planning, careful and caring action ... and life seems to snicker, "so-the-fuck-what?!" The consequences are vast even as I and others like me attempt to fit our best-laid plans into a comforting, intended-consequences gunny sack. "Piffle" is the kindest word that comes to mind.

Second in the shape-shifting of my local tableau, my daughter came home yesterday in aid of a wedding she is helping to plan. As usual with her arrival, there is a new pecking order that comes into play as her hulking brothers defer, subtly, to her authority of yore. She is full of busy intention and careful planning -- very adult and a part of me wonders, "How the hell did that happen?" Naturally, she has an appointment to have her nails "done."

And third, my older son recounts his hip-deep efforts to raise money for his track team ... an effort fraught with politics and uncertainty and a new reason to bite his finger nails. Conscientious and feeling the weight.

Everyone else seems suddenly to be so "grown up."

Intended and unintended consequences ... what the hell else did I expect?!

Passed along in email today:

Jesus slingshot

Passed along in email:

the swan again...

Is there any place the swan does not swim? I don't think so.

Again I cross the border between what I find interesting and others might as well ... and what I find repetitive and boring and others might as well. I guess that's just the way it is this morning.

In Hinduism, there is a metaphor about a magical swan that swims on a great ocean. It is magical not least because swans (in reality) are as crabby and combative as geese and this swan is thoughtful and wise. But its central magical power in the Hindu telling is that this swan can extract a single drop of perfect and nourishing milk from the great sea on which it floats.

Pretty kool trick, don't you think? Getting to the good stuff, the nourishing stuff, the wise and compassionate stuff while floating in or on a vastness of what can be conflicting and confusing and sometimes painful input. The bumper sticker sums things up: "Shit happens."

Of course it's not always shit. There is nice stuff too. But the shit seems often to grab the marquee headlines. Death, disease, drugs, divorce and delight ... a small, alliterative litany.

First come the fireworks of love or anguish or satisfaction or dissatisfaction. The swan swims in high seas. But after that -- in more ordinary and less provocative circumstances -- there are less boisterous times, times in which anyone might resign themselves to sleeping in the bed they lay down in: It may not be Nirvana, but, well, "OK, I'm down with that."

I'm down with that but the swan's magical capacity goes unfulfilled. It's a small nag, perhaps but it can be papered over with, "Everything is a compromise" or "into every life a little rain must fall" or, less politely, "read 'em and weep." Who knows, maybe the swan is just some juvenile, spiritual wet dream ... get used to it!

Is there anything to which anyone decides to commit that doesn't create a great ocean of possibility? And the greater the commitment, the greater the ocean. Sometimes the commitment is "to die for." Sometimes it's less explosive ... like stamp collecting maybe. It doesn't much matter ... wherever anyone is, there is the ocean; there is the swan; and there is the milk (maybe).

It is simultaneously strange and yet utterly comprehensible that people should gather together on behalf of the swan. It's as if snuggling one by the other might reassure each that, no, you're not out of your mind to long for some swan, some apogee, some relaxed and relaxing understanding that brooks no doubt. Social critters gather together. That's what they do. And they do it even in circumstances where no amount of socializing can ever extract a drop of milk.

The choice of ocean is just the choice of ocean. Stick with it and the milk will naturally gravitate to the swan's wise tongue. Can anyone share what is already shared? This ocean. This moment. This tongue. It doesn't matter if it's a myth or a lie: Stick with it and the sweetness cannot be escaped.

OK ... enough blither.

donations for a track team

Here in Northampton, my son is a track coach (far left, back row) who is currently beating the financial bushes for his high school athletes who hope to compete in a national high school meet. I'll let him pitch the need, but if anyone can lend a financial hand (http://www.gofundme.com/vget4k) it would be sincerely appreciated. 

Hi! My name is Angus Fisher and I am one of the coaches of the track club Hamp XCTF. This season I have been lucky enough to coach some of the best athletes to ever come through Northampton! These guys and gals are some of the hardest working athletes I know and a good number of them have qualified for the New Balance Outdoor Nationals in Greensboro, NC.

We have qualified (on both boys and the girls teams) in both the 800 and 1600 Sprint Medley relay. In addition to this, we are also very close to sending a team in the Distance Medley Relay as well.

With all the entry fees and costs however, this is going to be an expensive trip. Sadly, because the meet is outside of the sanctioned season, we cannot ask for funding from our school and this is why I'm asking for your help.

Money will be used to cover lodging, transportation, gas, food, and of course, meet entries. Though I haven't been a coach long, I know that we have a group of the most hardworking, committed, and talented athletes in the area, and these athletes deserve to run on the highest stage. With your contribution, their dream will become an reality.

Thank you!

Dear Abby ... cruelty

The word "cruelty" sprang to life today:

Dear Abby: My 85-year-old mother told me that upon her death she is leaving each of her children a letter expressing to them how they have hurt her throughout the years. Never once has she acknowledged how deeply she has hurt US. It affected our childhood and adulthood. I think if she feels we hurt her, she should say it to us while she’s living.

It has always been about Mom’s needs, not ours. I, for one, plan to put her unopened letter in her coffin to be buried with her when the time comes. Her letter is just a final hurtful arrow to stab us with, and I already have had a lifetime of that. I don’t need her to damage me further.

Am I wrong? Normally parents leave heartwarming letters to give their children peace. She reads your column, so I hope she reconsiders. — Already Wounded in California

Dear Wounded: You’re not wrong. Your mother appears to be toxic. Sending her negativity down with her is a perfect solution in my opinion.

English is weird

Passed along in email:

English is weird.
It can be understood through tough thorough thought, though.

hitchhiking

Overview of hitchhiking laws by state.
Green: Hitchhiking legal while on the shoulder of the road
Yellow: Hitchhiking legal while off the traveled portion of the road, stay in the grass to be safe.
Red: Hitchhiking is completely illegal.
Gray: Specific laws, check the respective state article(s).

In memory, there is something rambling, gamboling, irreverent, self-reliant and romantic about hitchhiking. Like past military service, the interesting tales rise to the surface like gobbets of fat on a bubbling chicken soup while the majority of the reality is lost or forgotten or pushed aside.

My mother once observed about writing, "If you want to write a story about boredom, you don't make it boring." Stories -- hitchhiking included -- are snappy and fresh and interesting. Reality, assuming it could be remembered accurately, shrugs. Marriage, graduation, vacation, hitchhiking ... it's all pretty much the same in memory.

I got off on a hitchhiking tangent yesterday when I began to wonder how many laws I had deliberately or accidentally broken in my lifetime. Hitchhiking came to mind because, as the map-linked information above says, a lot of people, me included, think that in general hitchhiking is illegal. It's not and, where it is, there is a broad swath of law enforcement that turns a blind eye to it ... not always (zealous and wary cops exist), but often. There is some gut realization that not all people have cars and we all help each other out. Further, the bad experiences (the reasons for laws) of hitchhiking are nowhere contrasted with the event-less rides because, of course, the rides that came and went without incident were unremarkable and hence uncatalogued.

I figure I hitchhiked 100,000 miles, give or take, when all was said and done. The first ride I ever got came in the middle of a gushing rainstorm. The man who stopped for me had just come from his wife's funeral. I hitchhiked across the country twice -- once in military uniform, which, even in the late 1950's, was an iron-clad ticket for a hitchhiker. People still remembered the shared hardship of World War II and there is nothing like catastrophe to elicit bedrock generosity.

There was a learning curve to hitchhiking that evolved all by itself. Chevrolets were more likely to stop than Fords. Never petition a car with a woman in it. You could safely turn your back on Cadillacs: No one who got rich ever did so by being nice. But every rule had its exception and there was a fellow who stopped his Cadillac, got out of the car, asked me if I had a driver's license and, when I said yes, handed me the car keys and said simply, "Keep it under 80." He was a salesman and had work to do.

And, though I did get a dream ride from outside Sacramento to the middle of Pennsylvania, the most compelling ride came from a man and his pregnant wife, neither of whom spoke much English, who picked me up in the nowhere of Wyoming. What I took to be his farm-hardened hands were brown and calloused on the steering wheel. A wedding band was his sole and gorgeous adornment. He drove a beat-up 1949 Ford coupe and went about 500 yards from where he picked me up before he realized he was going the wrong way. Both the man and his wife were effusively apologetic. All I could think was, "Who would have picked them up if they had been hitchhiking?" In my book of hitchhiking chivalry, the man risked not only himself but, more compellingly, risked a pregnant wife... and a child ... and a meaning to a gorgeous, golden wedding ring. For me.

It made me want to cry.

That was a kinder, gentler and more straightforward time, perhaps. A sense of shared difficulty and shared resources was more common back then. Neither the Internet nor widespread drug use was yet in vogue ... the 'me' additives. Breaking the law when the law didn't make much sense was what grown-ups did. They understood there were penalties if called to account, but calling such matters to account was some way in the future ... a time of children sticking to the letter of the law because there is less and less backbone or character.

All this mixed itself into my lawbreaker's mind yesterday. But, backed into the box canyon of my own observations, I tell the high-point tales, to myself and others. I bask in a memory that is as cozy as it is inaccurate. Such tales leave out the hours and hours of standing by the side of the road, inhaling the backwash of tractor trailers that whooshed past, waiting and wondering if I would ever get where I was going, wishing I were rich enough to own -- who knows? -- maybe even a Cadillac.

Maybe that's what memory is -- a Cadillac for the man who doesn't even own a bicycle. And I guess I think there is no-harm-no-foul so long as I don't retail what I remember as the actual-factual truth. Isn't memory, of whatever sort, a bit like Grimm's Fairy Tales ... delicious and inviting even when it is not true?

At my age, there is less and less inclination to disapprove of a good lie.

I don't know. I do know I am happy to have broken at least one law in my life.

bits of news

-- WASHINGTON (AP) — The FBI is operating a small air force with scores of low-flying planes across the country carrying video and, at times, cellphone surveillance technology — all hidden behind fictitious companies that are fronts for the government, The Associated Press has learned.

 -- Of all the financial threats facing Americans of retirement age — outliving savings, falling for scams, paying for long-term care — housingisn't supposed to be one. But after a home-price collapse, the worst recession since the 1930s and some calamitous decisions to turn homes into cash machines, millions of them are straining to make house payments.

-- Ministers from 20 countries are in Paris to discuss ways to step up the fight against IS [Islamic State] - but Russia, Iran and Syria are not part of the talks.

IS has recently made gains in Iraq despite US-led coalition air strikes.

-- And the winning photo is....

Congratulations to Chris Schober, the winner of May’s photo competition! This month’s theme was Britain’s hidden gems.