Book Published!

My book, The Bay of the Mother of God: A Yankee Discovers the Chesapeake Bay has just been published.

It’s a collection of essays about the people, places, and creatures including some of the curious ways we live here around the Chesapeake Bay. The stories  are told with pathos and humor.  I take my reader first to the everyday of life here on the Shore, from septic tanks to churches, from jelly fish to retirees and then to a different place where I suggest that there is  more here than just meets the eye. 

My photographs, images that accent the themes of each essay, accompany the chapters. 

Go to Amazon.com, to books and enter “The Bay of the Mother of God.” Be the first on your block. You probably won’t be the first – all my relatives and some people who owe me money have already been notified of the publication. So be the fifth or sixth!

Let me know what you think, I mean really think.

George

On the Boston Marathon

It was a terrible day in the neighborhood at the Boston Marathon last week.  When I heard about the bombing I was stunned. Then I felt angry, then frightened, sad and then confused. Again in our world, guns and bombs, more hate and more violence. Why?

Why does anyone have such hatred and feel driven to express it in such vicious ways? The explosion, I read, had been engineered to disperse shrapnel at near ground level tearing apart the legs and lower torso’s of runners and bystanders, a sadistic touch to a vengeful act. There is a dark side to our human condition. 

At the marathon, people were gathered together to celebrate life, to take pleasure in their mobility, to delight in the simple joy of being alive on a sunny day and enjoy feeling a part of a community.  Joy is life’s premier gift. Joy wants to be celebrated and it wants a community to celebrate with.

The violence seemed so meaningless to me. I know that in the perpetrators’ minds the calculated violence was purposeful and justified.  I cannot see how. Madness? A sense of righteous indignation, perhaps?  Some messianic delusions, or maybe were they two deprived or abused boys?  Only God knows.

We’ll soon hear theories about why these men acted as they did. 

They will be only explanations, attempts to be rational about what isn’t rational and while explanations may serve psychological or perhaps political curiosity, and the explanations will ultimately satisfy none of the survivors of Boston. Reasons offer cold comfort.  Comfort can be found in adversity, but the comfort comes not from explanations. It comes from helpers.

Fred Rogers of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood once said,  “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.”

This quote went viral in the media, recently. It struck a chord. I had the thought that Mr. Roger’s ghost had returned to earth to tell a violent world someone is always going to be there to help.  Mr. Rogers knew all about the dark side of the human condition. His life was spent in helping children embrace the dark side so they would not have to be afraid of it. It’s hard for kids or adults to have a wonderful day in the neighborhood when they’re hurt, feel alone or are scared to death.

In the Boston neighborhood that day, there were helpers everywhere: they shepherded people through the dark, held one another, prayed together. A physician who ran the race continued on running to the hospital where he could operate on the wounded. Nurses left private homes and showed up just to lend a hand and soon a sense of solidarity in suffering arose from the desolation of the carnage.

As the shock of crisis settles, grief and mourning begin. It is a slow process. There’s a lot of darkness that must be traveled. For grief and mourning to do its work, it must have helpers.  Helpers travel with the wounded through the dark, lift up the injured, hold the grieving, calm the frightened, helpers who just ‘show up’ and listen to the stories of fear, loss and sadness that must be told. Healing requires the kind of listening that communicates to someone that they are not alone.

In Boston that day, there was a healing presence, the kind Mr. Rogers communicated to children who feared they’d be lost in the dark.

It was a terrible day in Boston’s neighborhood.  But neighbors endured because helpers made all the difference in the world, the difference between despair and hope.

Diogenes and Unnatural Acts

Diogenes is still looking for an honest man. He’s been at it for centuries.  He carries a lantern because honest people are hard to see and if you find one, you need a good look to be sure they’re the real thing.

When I was a schoolboy I saw a pen I liked in the cloakroom and took it. The teacher recognized the pen and asked me where I’d found it. I flushed pure red while I insisted resolutely that the pen was mine. I wove a convoluted tale to convince her but she didn’t buy it, the pen was returned and justice done. Lying is a universal phenomenon and while it seems natural, in truth, it’s an unnatural act.

The way lie detectors work demonstrates this.

Lying disturbs my natural biological functions; the electric discharges on the surface of my skin change, while my heart and breathing rhythms fluctuate.  A flushed face may occur, as was my case in school. The lie detector documents these aberrations. God clearly set our default position to honesty. Lying may fool everyone but not our bodies; they don’t like it. The lie detector knows we’re lying because our bodies rat on us.     

Not so for animals and plants. They lie as if their lives depended on it. In fact they do.

Trust a Venus flytrap? Not on your life.  Her sweet invitation to insects to dinner is a ruse; she’s having them for dinner.  The cagy possum rolls over and plays dead because he wants me to think he’s road kill and leave him alone. One bird, the killdeer, another trickster, plays on my sympathies to fend me off, limping along as though crippled, luring me away from her homestead. Plants and animals will ace any lie detector test even while making their con. For them, lying is a natural act.

           

Since human bodies react negatively to lying, could chronic dishonesty debilitate me, not only physically but also psychologically and spiritually as well?  I know the debilitating effects of lies in a dysfunctional family can imprison people in a hopeless world. Some undiagnosed complaints plaguing some people may relate to living lies: lower back pain, headaches, listlessness, bad moods, and some forms of depression.  Our own lies victimize us as well as others.

We arrange falsehoods in a hierarchy the way priests categorize venal and mortal sins. Dirty rotten lies on top, then whoppers, next white lies and then fibs. Ever hear anything true spoken in a political speech?  Still the crowds smile, cheer, clap and throw hats in the air. Some people prefer lies.

For all that, fabrications are not necessarily a bad thing at all.

For marriages, certain strategic equivocations are necessary for the common good: I think of the husband whose wife asks him if he’s noticed that she’s lost weight. He says yes but he really hasn’t. Or the wife who assures her husband she doesn’t mind him watching Monday night football on TV drinking beer with his buddies. Truth be told, she hates it.

What parent would, when a child shows the picture she drew of you – red face, green hair, your legs like sticks, your nose like a cucumber and ears like Dumbo’s would say anything but, Oh sweetheart, it’s beautiful.

I can’t believe Diogenes has any problems with this.

Farewell February

I call February an in-between month.  

The calendar drops February midway between those times of the year when I am particularly energized: between the December holidays and the arrival of spring. Hovering some distance short of the vernal equinox and still distant from the excitement of the holidays, which by February have become a dim memory, I feel about the month that the world has shut down.

I know critters shut down some during February. Geese, usually chatty and gregarious, now hunker down silently on the ice, feathers solemnly tucked in tight by their bodies, beaks to the wind pointing like weather vanes into the blow. As the creek freezes, it's an especially tough time for Herons who can't fish through the thick ice. Out getting firewood the other day I found a bat. He’d rolled up in the woodpile wedged between logs as tightly as he could manage. His fir had ice on it but when I poked him, he moved slightly. He barred his teeth and feebly, hissed at me. He was annoyed with me for waking him up.

I like building fires in the fireplace and settling down with a good book in February.  The open fire unfortunately draws most of the heat from the house so it’s imperative I stay close to the fire. I dare not wander far from it. February can get claustrophobic.

A fit of cabin fever seized me one day. Photography offers me reasons to go outdoors. Bundling up I grabbed a camera, and went outside looking for pictures. Except for the pale grasses, the russet forest floor and the green stands of conifer trees, the landscape seemed denuded and colorless.

Walking along the edges of the creek, I saw small culverts, tiny streams and puddles where frozen ice produced stunning visual delights, delicate swirls, flourishes and supple textures like glaziers produce from molten glass.

As the ice forms, it arranges itself around unremarkable natural objects and sets them apart, discretely; the way jewelers meticulously place their finest pieces on silken pillows, providing the proper backdrop to showcase their beauty. The result is to see something as common as small stones, individual leaves, broken sticks and even pine needles in remarkably new and marvelous settings. Frozen in the ice, their individuality and character are revealed and I can see that the infrastructure of nature is especially stunning when its parts are framed in space and viewed singly.  “For it is only framed in space,” wrote Anne Morrow Lindbergh, "that beauty blooms. Only in space are events and objects and people unique and significant–and therefore beautiful."

The months of our years, although they come and go cyclically, may also have a forward thrust, that is to say, each month points us ahead to something for the equilibrium of our spirits as much to insure the balance of nature.

I suspect that February is that peculiarly in-between time when, since there is little going on to excite us outwardly, slowed down during this sedentary time of year as the bat was, our inner vision may grow more acute and we can behold in the smaller things like ice, rocks, leaves, and pine needles the wonder of the greater.

For all that, I’m still ready for spring. 

Not by Bread Alone

I fingered randomly through the yellow pages the other day.  By looking at the number of ads appearing for certain goods and services, I wondered if I might learn more about the culture here on the Delmarva and identify some of our priorities.  

Restaurants turned up first, with listings covering twelve pages. Automobiles also had twelve pages of listings, as did insurance brokers, physicians, with dentists trailing by four pages. Lawyers, on the other hand came in with a whopping twenty-six pages. One thing was clear; man does not live by bread alone. 

Church listings consisted of only one and a half pages. Tucked away in a bottom corner, on barely an eighth of a page, a lone escort service advertised. Its message, understated was surprisingly delicate and read: “Upscale, Discreet, Entertainment at its best.”

Curious that sex and religion hardly advertise at all while lawyers can’t seem to advertise enough.

Human survival depends on sex.  Religion has informed our moral conduct for eons.  I think the message here is that we’ve discovered more about human sexuality than was first suspected and learned there’s more to religion than rewarding the righteous and punishing sinners. Those keenly aware of this don’t advertise much these days because they know there are only a few out there buying any such notions.

         Comparatively, the volume of legal advertising is staggering. Ads may picture lawyers looking like  “just folks” in a feel-good family portrait. Others show snapshots of grisly accident scenes with EMT personnel working feverishly over mangled bodies. Doctors trade in injuries, too, but they don’t use broken bodies to advertise. Lawyers assure us, however, that they’re only making sure our rights are protected.

          

I saw only one page of ads for funerals. Wedding services listed covered two and a half pages– most  for catering. Comparing the numbers of advertisements for cars, food, doctors, dentists, insurance, and lawyers, love and death are small potatoes.

        

In comparing the volume of certain advertisements there’s good and bad news. We live longer, but have more health problems and therefore need more doctors.  Cars are a way of life and we service them as regularly as our bodies but I see few if any advertisements for feeding our souls. Our currency boldly declares “In God we Trust,” but the insurance premiums we’re willing to pay tell another story.

        

Comparing the tiny advertisement for escort services to the twelve full pages for restaurants indicates we’d prefer ponying up for the restaurant tab to shelling out for sex.

Why so many lawyers?  I think it’s because we’re losing our sense of community and how we’re all in this business of life together. Do we believe our differences can be resolved only by adversarial relationships? Must winning always trump cooperation?  Are we only winners and losers? The sheer number of legal ads would certainly suggest this. I hope, however, this is not so. I know we’re better people than that.

I pray for the day, going through the yellow pages, we find hundreds of mediation services available to us. And yes, they tell us, if you have a phone, you have a mediator, and call now, the first consultation is free. Successful cases are always a win-win.