Black and White in a Gray World

Trying to ignore the fact that besides the few of you out there who are following this blog, there's no way to know who else is looking thanks to this spammy internet world we live in.  Oh well, maybe it's better not to know.  I don't like it but I can't stop it.  Life is mysterious, is it not?

Been musing as of late about the difference between CONDONING something you find abhorrent and realizing that you have little to no control to STOP it.  This has got to be the beginning of wisdom and a less stressed existence on this planet.  We can and often do say that we have reached a point where we "don't care" about something in the world that is upsetting to us, whether it is something that affects us directly or more global in nature.  But is that ever really true?  Can we STOP caring?  Especially if the issue at hand strikes at the very heart of one of our deepest held values?  No, I don't think we can.  We say that we have, but it's just not true.  If we had stopped caring, we would be severely depressed.  And those of us who have been there know that is no way to exist.

So what to do?  One's principles and values are trampled on daily, repeatedly and heartlessly.  We most want for things to change, but if we can't have that, we would be encouraged if others would simply respect our views.  This is the hardest thing to realize; and years of therapy later I still have immense trouble practicing it...that is, we have to allow others to have their views as well, even those we find most despicable, or else we are demanding something FROM others that we will not give TO them.  This falls under the category of realizing, like the trite cliched old serenity prayer says, that there are things in this life over which we have no control.  Others' thoughts and actions are two of these.  I'm not advocating letting others break the law, or even having no laws at all, but when something is legal, as long as we find it morally reprehensible, we cannot do anything about those who choose to practice it.  And unfortunately in the world we live in, things will continue to be made legal that we find unethical, if not dead wrong.  I'm also not saying there are no absolutes, no right and wrong.  I AM saying that no one can seem to agree on what those absolutes are.  Even the atheist believes that there are absolutely no absolutes.  That's a paradox.  Example:  there are several things that are quite legal in the state where I live, and to others besides myself are quite right, but I don't agree.  However, I can't force them to change their beliefs.  It just doesn't work.  That said, I wish that those others could not blast me continually for mine. Often times, it becomes an argument about bigotry, religious freedom and that some things are just fundamental, not subject to interpretation.  I disagree.  Things are fundamental to you; things are fundamental to me, but we won't agree on what those things are.  Sad but true.  Everything is subject o interpretation.  That's why the church is in the state it is.  I don't like what the KKK believes, and when they break the law I think they should be prosecuted, but I can't change what they believe.  This is so hard to swallow, but truth in THIS world isn't black and white. And who is wise enough to judge others?  You?  Me? 

We have trouble letting others have their own reality because we still have (somewhere, no matter how tiny) an expectation that they will change.  It's not impossible that they will; people do change.  But not very often, and not because someone is breathing down their neck to get them to.  And there is nothing more crazy-making than concentrating all your thoughts and actions toward that happening and it often never does.  Meanwhile you suffer all kinds of stress and frustration and even resentment toward the person who doesn't see any reason to change how they think or act.  I believe, and many others do as well, that for a human being to change in a major way it takes years of experience, a humble heart, and very often an act of Divine Power.  We just don't have the strength.  

It's really hard living in a world like this.  We go back and forth between intense passionate bouts of hyper-involvement with causes and groups and completely retreating from everyone and everything for a time, a season, possibly a lifetime. Such radical acceptance as allowing others to believe what they want doesn't come easy.  It takes time, lots of it, and many, many disappointments along the way.  Or at least have the respect to just listen to others, and OBSERVE, not jump in with both feet and all our emotions, drawing conclusions every step of the way.  It's a higher way of living, and not for the fainthearted.  Let's try it, can we?        

Referer Spam vs. Real Live People

For those of you who are real, living flesh-and-blood persons and not referer spam-bots, you deserve an apology for my lack of postings of late.  I discovered back in June that a blogger cannot really trust the stats to tell him or her how much traffic is coming to the blog because a lot of it is from "bots" which are computer programs acting like people.  My subsequent disgust at the idea made me not want to go to the trouble of writing anything for fear that there are no actual readers out there in cyberspace, just hackers and their machines.  In good faith, I have decided to keep blogging and trust Google to block these imbeciles as much as possible.  If you are a breathing human being, thanks for following.  If you are otherwise, stop playing massive multi-player games 14 hours a day and get out of your parents' garage and get a real job.  If you are a spam bot, may you catch the next nasty computer virus that comes along. . .

Pear Poachers

The first year we moved here (2010) we didn't have much fruit on our fruit trees.  They were very overgrown and in need of serious pruning.  The next year, we got lots of apples and figs, but the deer ate many of the plums.  This year, our third here, we had many figs and plums, but the deer got most of those.  The apples I picked yesterday.  But the pear tree was loaded before we left to go on vacation for a week.  Loaded!  But not quite ready, so I determined to wait and pick them when we returned.  Big mistake.  They are all gone.  Now, if it was only the pears within 6 to 7 feet of the ground, I'd blame the deer again, and Lord knows we are overpopulated with them on the island.  But the pear tree was absolutely CLEANED OUT!  All the way to the top branches, which you would need a tall ladder to reach.  Now, I'm not naming any names, but I find it hard to believe that someone would just drive by and then decide to go to all that trouble of pear poaching not knowing if we were home or not.

And we have some strange next-door neighbors.  They were obscured by 8 foot tall Japanese Knotweed when we first moved in.  But the county wanted permission to spray the noxious weed.  We granted it, as did the neighbors, and now we have no buffer between us.  What was it Robert Frost said about good fences making good neighbors?  I understand.  We see and hear everything from their property these days.  Everything from the fact that they live in an odd assortment of travel trailers and a garage with a upper level apartment to the fact that a mentally challenged person (or it could be an EXTREMELY eccentric person) lives over there who becomes agitated upon sighting a deer in the yard (which is an almost daily occurrence) and starts banging on the dead knotweed with a long stick and barking loud unintelligible protests.  And with the knotweed gone, they can well see our fruit trees now; that's all I'm saying for now. . . .

One of our friendly deer looking in the downstairs window.  He probably wants an apple.

The Dark Side of Success

Just watched a very interesting documentary on Henry Ford tonight.  What a visionary he was.  But while he achieved tremendous success far beyond what most people could ever even dream of, it seems that he still wasn't happy.  The program talked about how absolutely driven he was his entire life, to the point that he alienated many people who worked with him or for him.  He expected others to meet his high standards, and had no mercy when they did not.  

The saddest thing about his life would have to be his relationship with his son Edsel, his only child.  Of course Henry's high expectations were thrust upon his son, and there was absolutely no room for Edsel to be his own person.  In every way that he tried, he was always thwarted by his powerful father.  The story was told about one time when they were building the new plant, Edsel had the idea of having a separate building built for offices, and went ahead and okayed the excavation for the foundation.  Then his father found out and said "No, we will not do that."  The son asked what about the huge hole they have already dug, and Henry said "Leave it."  So every day Edsel had to walk past that enormous hole in the ground and be reminded of his failed attempt to defy his father.  So did everyone else who worked for Henry.  Wow.  

When the Ford Motor Company was the last holdout in the American auto industry against unionizing, even amidst violent uprisings and protests which were equally violently squashed, Edsel tried to reason with his father that negotiation with the unions would be unavoidable.  Henry still refused to give in.  Ever the controlling leader, he saw workers who wanted to unionize as lazy leeches who wanted to capitalize on his own hard work, just as he had seen investors when other company leaders had wanted to go public with company stock years earlier.  When Ford workers were seen talking to anyone thought to be associated with the union,  they were beaten and then fired.  Finally Edsel, on his own, without his father's knowledge, negotiated a contract with the Auto Worker's Union, then presented it to Henry, who held out for days, then finally agreed to sign it.  Not too long after that incident, Edsel became ill.  He had suffered with bleeding ulcers for years, and who would not have, living life knowing whatever you did it would never being good enough?  It had now progressed to stomach cancer, which he kept from Henry as long as he could, but as he was dying, his wife told her father-in-law.  Somehow deep down the elder Ford must have known that blame for his son's early death at age 49 was at mostly his.  The narrator remarked how Ford never recovered from losing his son.  When he asked his closest confidante, the man he considered to be the son he had always wanted, if he had treated Edsel cruelly, the man said, "I would not say cruelly, but I would say unfairly.  I would have been angry had you treated me like that."  To which Henry replied, "that's what I wanted, for him to get angry."

The other fascinating thing about Henry Ford was his other great legacy Greenfield Village, a historic museum in Michigan that he founded and built in 1929, and which is today the largest indoor-outdoor American history museum.  As a historian, I had known about this historic site for years, but I never really knew the story behind it.  Henry Ford grew up a  farmer.  As a matter of fact his father had expected him to take over the family farm, but he had refused to do so, first going to work as an engineer for Edison, then after meeting Thomas Edison and receiving encouragement from him to continue with his designs,  making the first automobile for the masses, and as they say, the rest was history.  

Yet, it seems he had regrets.  Even after his auto company became hugely successful he lived out in the country and worked his land himself.  He held only disdain for the massively growing,  sprawling city that his own ambitions had created.  The thousands of teeming masses needed to fuel the factory existed due to his own actions, yet he hated being around them,  and retreated daily to his own private peaceful oasis to wish for a simpler time.  It seems likely then that he created Greenfield, actually a "fake" historic town, by hauling in historic buildings from other places in a sad attempt to recreate that simpler time, and try out the path he had chosen not to take as a young man.  The famous Wright Brothers bicycle shop, Thomas Edison's lab, and Daniel Webster's house were three of the historic structures that he brought in to create his town.  He even had an old one-room schoolhouse restored and placed on the property, and selected children to actually be schooled there.  Reproductions of antiques were placed in the buildings, including the recreation of a set of his own mother's china which was placed inside the home in which he was born, assuring his own place among the other notable historical figures celebrated there.  Yet as much as he wanted to be remembered for his far-reaching vision, it was as if he had, through the actions of his life, also put into motion a process he wished that he could stop, but because he could not, he tried to recreate what existed before.  He said himself of his museum, "I am collecting the history of our people as written into things their hands made and used.... When we are through, we shall have reproduced American life as lived, and that, I think, is the best way of preserving at least a part of our history and tradition..."   How sad. 

3rd in the Lost Relics Series, "A Shard from the Alabaster Jar"

A close-up

2nd in the series, Lost Relics: A Feather from the Raven that Fed Elijah

No, there aren't four of them; it's the different sides of the same one.