When Irish Eyes Are Smiling

August 15, 2026

Something happened last week that is almost too good to be true.

More than 1.6 million people gathered peacefully and joyfully in Belfast, Northern Ireland, to participate in an event that would have been unthinkable in that location a few years ago. Fleadh Cheoil na hEireann (Music Festival of Ireland) is the world’s largest celebration of traditional Irish music and culture, and the annual event is usually held in successive host cities in the Republic of Ireland. So to choose Belfast, a locale outside of the Republic, the largest city in Northern Ireland, a city with a long history of sectarian violence, was risky because of the potential for disruptions, or worse.

In 1968 I was in high school where I took a class called Modern European History. We had to write a 10 page paper on a European country of our choosing, and I chose Ireland in part because of my Irish heritage and also because Northern Ireland was in the news a lot during the 1960’s due to what the locals called the Troubles, the violence and terrorism inflicted by Catholic nationalists and Protestant unionists upon each other. The unionists want Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom, and the nationalists want it to be part of one Irish island nation.

In my paper, entitled “On the Possibility of the Reunification of Ireland,” I reviewed the unhealed wounds from centuries of British colonial oppression, and then optimistically predicted that Northern Ireland would one day rejoin the rest of the island in a reunited Irish republic.

Looks like I may yet live to see that teenage prediction come true.

In 1986 I visited Ireland for the first time, driving clockwise around the island starting and ending in Dublin. The Republic of Ireland was, and is, peaceful and safe, but when I got to Belfast the vibe was tense. Armed British soldiers manned checkpoints and patrolled hostile streets, and I saw barbed wire, watchtowers, and armored personnel carriers.

In 1998, thanks in part to American mediation by President Bill Clinton and Senator George Mitchell, the Good Friday Agreement was signed by leaders of Northern Ireland, Britain, and Ireland, an agreement that ended the Troubles and brought a modicum of peace, but not trust, to the two feuding communities.

When I returned to Belfast in 2019, the British military presence was not visible, but nationalist and unionist neighborhoods were walled off from each other, and each flaunted political wall murals proclaiming their determination to prevail in their long, simmering civil war. Even so, it was a huge improvement from what I witnessed in 1986.

And then, last week happened.

From August 2nd to 9th people from all over Ireland, Catholics and Protestants and secular folks, streamed into Belfast to attend the Fleadh (festival, pronounced Flah). They brought their musical instruments, their traditional dancing shoes and costumes, their voices and their songs, and their Irish language classes, and they joined in the craic (fun, pronounced crack) on stages, in the streets, and in the pubs.

But this year the leadership of the Fleadh did something different. Well before the event the predominately Catholic organizers reached out to the Protestant unionist community and invited them to participate in the jamboree. So, with some trepidation, uncertain of how they would be received by the mostly Catholic traditional music audiences, Protestant unionist drummers, pipe bands, and dancers performed before people who in years past they would have considered their enemies.

The result? A unionist marching band, The Shankill Road Defenders, praised the Fleadh organizers for their “extraordinary welcome” at the festival and said they were “pleasantly surprised” by the warm welcome given to them by audiences of their political adversaries.

Local Belfast citizens were filled with pride at the success of the inclusive event that embraced both Protestant and Catholic communities. The New York Times quoted a Belfast man as saying during the event “It’s phenomenal, it’s buzzing – it’s absolutely jumping. I think this is a big moment for Belfast. I actually think it’s bigger than anybody realizes.” And the Times quoted a female Belfast artist who said “When we grew up here, everything was in black and white. And now, Belfast is in color.”

Belfast and Northern Ireland have come a long way toward peace and reconciliation. Was the 2026 Fleadh in Belfast a watershed event, a turning point in cross cultural community relations? Or was it just a fun series of concerts and dancing? Too early to say. But the Fleadh will return to Belfast in 2027, and with it will come the hopes and dreams of an island people.

As the Irish say, “Ni neart go cur le cheile.” There is no strength without unity.

Restaurant Lessons

July 22, 2026

It’s not fun to be humbled. But sometimes, buried in painful lessons, there are seeds for growth.

Every summer I work for four weeks at a restaurant. But not just any restaurant. It’s a 1,000 seat outdoor restaurant in an old growth redwood forest. But not just any primeval redwood forest. It’s the Bohemian Grove, an exclusive private men’s club for the rich and famous that is often characterized by outsiders as being shrouded in a veil of secrecy.

Inside our Dining Circle there are about 30 towering redwood trees that are themselves surrounded by 2700 acres of forest. I’m one of about 200 servers, bussers, cooks, and managers working among the redwood picnic tables, along with about 800 other employees in the larger summer encampment, including shuttle drivers, camp valets, security and fire department personnel, medical staff, maintenance people, and administrative support.

This is my 14th summer at the storied enclave on the Russian River here in Sonoma County. It’s no secret that celebrities such as singer Jimmy Buffet, comedian Conan O’Brian, documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart are or have been members of the club, and I’ve seen and/or served some of them. But I don’t recognize most of the men at my tables, and my Dining Circle coworkers are primarily high school and college kids, so my job is hardly glamorous.

Even so, there are worse places to earn travel money than a beautiful forest cathedral, complete with organ music reverberating throughout the giant redwoods.

Being a food server can be hectic and stressful in a fast paced environment, but my main challenge is internal and self inflicted. While outwardly I may appear good natured, or at least stoic, inside I can be curmudgeonly, judgmental, opinionated, and impatient. I’m not proud of those feelings of resentment of my coworkers for being flaky, sloppy, incompetent, or inconsiderate. Buddha only knows what they think of me. So each dinner shift is a struggle for mindfulness, of being aware of my negative thoughts and emotions and then letting go of my expectations about how I think other people ought to behave.

One strategy I use to overcome my inner crankiness is to thank and praise my teammates when they do something right. By focusing on their positive traits rather than their shortcomings I’m able to shift my attitude to a higher vibrational frequency of appreciation, which helps make all of us feel better in a sometimes challenging environment.

Another approach I use to tame my arrogance is to remember my own youthful foolish behavior. I worked my way through college as a kitchen helper at Herrick Hospital in Berkeley, and while I was an energetic employee, I could also be a goof-off.

One time, as a prank, I arranged the fan in our hot underground dishroom so that it faced a fellow dishwasher. He was grateful for the cool rushing air until I threw orange jello into the fan and it sprayed him and his white uniform with tangerine-colored gelatin. Enraged, he chased me down the hall and threw a baked potato at me. Sensing the incoming missile behind me, I leaped into the air and the potato sailed under my feet. I laughed and laughed, but he didn’t appreciate my humor.

So who am I to judge my teen workmates? And yet I do so, until I remember that I was once just as much of a screw-off as some of them are now.

Maybe my job in the Grove is karmic payback for my own youthful follies.

It’s emotionally uncomfortable to confront my shadow side and my hypocrisy. But each time I don my red server smock and black slacks I have a great opportunity to learn, and re-learn, humility and forgiveness.

I don’t have the money, property, status, power, or fame of some of the men that I serve. But I’m grateful for the chance to face and sometimes overcome my deficiencies and thereby experience a different kind of accomplishment. And I don’t even have to dodge any baked potatoes.

Disclosure Day

June 16, 2026

We are not alone.

That is the message from Steven Spielberg’s latest film, Disclosure Day, which I enjoyed yesterday at my local theater. I don’t see many flicks in movie theaters these days, but I appreciate Spielberg’s storytelling skills, and the metaphysical questions raised by this picture intrigued me enough to want to see it sooner rather than later.

Although the story suffers from an excess of violent car chase scenes and explosions, I suppose they are obligatory in order to appeal to a mass audience. But I found the movie entertaining in spite of those drawbacks, though not as captivating as Spielberg’s other alien films, ET the Extraterrestrial and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

The film title refers to an event in which it is revealed to the human race that the U.S. government and one of its defense contractors have been withholding information from the public about decades of government communications with extraterrestrial beings from an advanced civilization. The movie suggests that this revelation would be a major wake-up call for humanity, though it only touches upon the implications of such a paradigm shift in our understanding of the nature of our reality.

For some Christian fundamentalists, such a wake-up call would be a shake-up call. In a May 31st article in the New York Times it was reported that a group of Pentecostal pastors and podcasters was recently given a private briefing by two “intelligence operators” about the possible existence of visiting aliens, and these religious conservatives were alarmed. They, and later Vice President J.D. Vance, proclaimed these hypothetical visitors to be demons.

But a Catholic columnist for the New York Times had a more thoughtful response to the possibility of extraterrestrial existence. In his June 13th piece “Does UFO Disclosure Threaten Faith?” Ross Douthat wrote about Steven Spielberg’s movie and the debate about whether the discovery of extraterrestrial life would be a threat to organized religion, “with aliens stepping into the role that’s traditionally occupied by popes and prophets and mystics, angelic messengers or the Holy Spirit…The implication is that aliens are helping humankind to become spiritually mature. Which means that if God exists in the movie’s universe, the alien race seemingly stands in a closer relationship to the deity than human beings, and they’re here to act as the divinity’s interpreters and agents. And that idea – again, a commonplace one in certain circles of UFO discourse – is in pretty obvious tension with the belief that an existing scripture or teaching authority is the surest guide to faith and morals.”

Given the “pretty obvious” failure of organized religions around the world to elevate the human condition and morality, I would change the words of the John Lennon song to say “All we are saying is give aliens a chance.”

I’m not expecting flying saucers to land anytime soon, if ever. After all, the immense interstellar distances and the laws of physics make such an arrival unlikely, although maybe wormholes or some sort of interdimensional travel technology could surprise us.

Nor do I put much faith in conspiracy theories, although government, corporate, and religious coverups are not unknown.

But something has to serve as a catalyst for a shift in human consciousness, and I just hope we don’t do it the hard way. Climate catastrophes, nuclear or biological war, or more pandemics would certainly be shocks to our systems, but would they lead to a new understanding of our interconnectedness?

I’m reminded of Stanley Kubrick’s film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, in which mysterious monoliths appear out of nowhere at crucial stages of human evolution. According to the Arthur C. Clarke novels that inspired the movie, these vertical rectangles were designed by an advanced extraterrestrial race to help Earthlings and other beings in the Milky Way galaxy to make progress in their technological development.

I’m skeptical about the value of technological “progress,” because without the wisdom to manage it constructively, technology such as artificial intelligence can morph into artificial stupidity. But I would welcome help from more evolved civilizations elsewhere in the galaxy or universe, if they exist and are willing and able to offer us primitive humans a helping hand or a helping tentacle in our collective spiritual awakening.

What my intuition, my sixth sense, tells me is that such help is not only on the way – it is here, now, within us. We don’t need spaceships to rescue us, though they might be helpful, but we do need the inspiration and guidance being offered continually by higher levels of our own consciousness. Whether you call those higher frequencies light beings or spirit guides or angels, or buddhas from other dimensions, I believe it’s possible to tune in to those channels, those levels of our own awareness. And I’m workin’ on it.

In the meantime, if an ET offers me a joyride on his or her spaceship, my response will be: Yeeehaww! Ride ’em, cowboy!

All I know is that there’s more going on here than meets the eye. And more than meets the I.

We are not alone.

Chipper

May 9, 2026

A couple of days ago a friend in my outdoor meditation group told me that he was glad to see me because I’m always chipper. I hadn’t heard that term in a while, but was pleased to hear that he thinks of me as cheerful and upbeat. I suggested that perhaps I’m happy because I’m healthy, and he responded that not all healthy people are in good spirits. True enough.

Meditation is a good practice for listening, breathing, relaxing, and slowing down. I love doing it in nature because I enjoy the fresh air and feel nurtured by the trees, grasses, birds, and clouds. But I also need something more…well, active. This month marks the 57th anniversary of the day I began chanting the mantra Nam Myoho Renge Kyo. One advantage of chanting is that it is a form of prayer, of setting an intention, and it allows me to focus my energy on a desired outcome rather than just passively meditating. Doing both practices helps me balance both openness and directed energy.

I also love to sing, and chanting is a form of singing, of creating positive sound vibrations. Reminds me of the Beach Boys song Good Vibrations. So I like to practice LSD: Laughing, Singing, and Dancing. Doing those activities helps me achieve what Nichiren Buddhists call a high life condition – a lively, sunny disposition. And being in nature amplifies the healthy good vibrations.

However, my friends know that I can also be cynical about national politics and negative current events around the world. While I try to stay informed about political, economic, and cultural developments, I don’t wallow in the despair that afflicts so many people these days. Rather, I deliberately choose to cultivate a sense of wonder and appreciation, and alignment with the higher power that resides within each one of us. Is there ugliness in this world? You bet. But also great beauty. I try to stay grounded in the beauty of the oaks and redwoods in my neighborhood, while at night I marvel at the moon and the stars.

And speaking of stars, this week the U.S. government began releasing limited amounts of information regarding UFO sightings. Do I believe in UFOs? I don’t know – I’ve never seen one. Do I believe that the human race is the most intelligent life form in the universe? No.

As I like to say, I’m a short term pessimist but a long term optimist. Or as the song from the musical South Pacific says, “I hear the human race is falling on its face, and hasn’t very far to go. But every whippoorwill is selling me a bill, and telling me it just ain’t so.” Nature is resilient, and in the grand scheme of things, Gaia, our mother Earth, inspires me.

Makes me feel chipper.

Happy Mother’s Day, mother Gaia.

Breaking Borders

February 4, 2026

Bogota, Colombia

First impressions can be misleading. I hated Bogota when I first arrived here four days ago. But the capital city of Colombia is slowly working its charm upon me. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the people here are winning me over.

The taxi ride from the airport to the city center on a dreary early Sunday morning took me through shabby, rundown, dirty, graffiti-covered buildings and desolate streets. It occurred to me that I had made a big mistake in visiting another Latin American city marred by corruption and incompetence. “Oh great,” I thought, “Another giant sprawling Third World slum.”

But my destination was a hostel in La Candelaria, the historic center of the city with Spanish colonial architecture. Crumbling buildings, to be sure, but hey – they’re atmospheric, colorful, and they have tile roofs. The plazas and parks, the wildly gaudy wall murals, the gorgeous old cathedrals, the museums and art galleries, the restaurants, and streets thronged with people serenaded by music and entertained by street performers- this city is alive with energy and friendly, unpretentious people. Splashes of color, tropical fruit vendors (Colombia is just north of the equator), flower stands, and art everywhere. A working class urban garden district.

Yet this neighborhood in a city of eight million people high in the Andes has known its share of violence. The 16th century Spanish conquest of the indigenous cultures was brutal, and the 19th century Colombian war for independence from Spain, led by Simon Bolivar, was bloody. The 1948 civil war between left wing and right wing political factions destroyed much of Bogotá’s city center, and the latter part of the 20th century was marred by drug violence and gang warfare. Tourism took a nosedive from the 1980’s to the early 2000’s. But now La Candelaria is enjoying a resurgence in tourism.

As gratifying as La Candelaria has been so far, I wanted to step out of the tourist bubble and explore the darker side of Bogota. So yesterday, joined by Jake and Allie, young Canadians and fellow hostel guests, I signed up for a tour of the nearby hillside neighborhood Barrio Egipto. Until recently this barrio was a notorious no-go zone because of its gang turf battles and robberies of anyone foolish enough to venture near it. Named after its Catholic church, Our Lady of Egypt (a reference to the Virgin Mary’s escape to Egypt with Joseph and the infant Jesus), this barrio was the antithesis of the lives of Jesus and Mary.

According to one website, this hillside neighborhood was coveted by developers and their city government accomplices, so those predators deliberately removed a kindergarten, school, and hospital from Barrio Egipto and put an expressway through it, hoping that the locals would move out. Instead, the people stayed in their broken community, and gangs flourished. But in 2016 ex-gang members learned about community-based tourism and decided to use their gang stories as well as street art to open their impoverished community to the wider world to attract visitors from elsewhere in Bogota and Colombia and from other countries. In other words, they replaced crime with tourism as a source of income.

My companions Jake and Allie and I were guided by Harold (29), Junior (21), and later Andres (48), all retired members of the Décima 10 (Tenth Street) Gang. Their tour operation is called Breaking Borders, a reference to transcending the invisible walls between the more prosperous La Candelaria neighborhood and its next door district Barrio Egipto, as well as overcoming the fear and mistrust of the other three gangs in Egipto.

Although most of the crime and violence has been stopped in Egipto, Harold warned us to stay with him during our tour of his gang’s territory, because it’s still not safe for him or us to go into the turf of the other three gangs. As long as we were guided by him, Junior, and Andres, we were protected, and indeed Jake, Allie, and I all felt secure and relaxed during our sojourn in the part of Egipto we were able to see.

Our guides showed us their knife and bullet scars (Andres alone has 11 bullet scars) and told us of their violent crimes and their time spent in prison. They used to rob tourists and students from a nearby university and shoot rival gang members over territorial disputes and for revenge. But they’ve all lost family members and friends to the gang feuds, so they are helping the boys in their barrio to find alternatives to their lives of crime. They also showed us the colorful wall murals that tell the stories of their neighborhood.

With the help of Leona (20), a volunteer from Hamburg, Germany, who speaks fluent English and Spanish, Harold and Andres expressed their frustration that the city of Bogota neglects them, and that there are no schools, medical facilities, or jobs in Egipto. But Leona volunteers for the Buena Semilla (Good Seed) Foundation, a Christian organization that is providing some limited job skills training, education, nutrition, gardening, recreation, music, art, and most of all, hope to the children and youth of all four gang territories of Egipto.

And Harold and Andres told us that after they approached the nearby university ten years ago and offered to stop robbing their students in exchange for the university’s support, the university now offers Egipto residents informal classes in tourism, leading not to official tour guide certification but rather to “territorial companion” designations.

So although Andres acknowledged that he and his fellow Breaking Borders guides have not received any formal education, they have earned unofficial degrees from the University of the Reality of Life Experience as they transmit to their children their lessons learned from being gangsters and ex convicts.

As we walked among the ramshackle hillside homes and watched the boys playing ball and the little girls hugging their mentor Leona, we three tourists were touched by the warmth and humanity of the children, the honesty and courage of our guides from the school of hard knocks, and the compassion of volunteer Leona as together they attempt to accomplish a transformation of their community.

Character

December 6, 2025

What’s the difference between virtue and virtue signaling?

This was the question that occurred to me today as I read a delightful article, “A Sign of Virtue,” by Laura Hagar Rush in my hometown newspaper, The Sebastopol Times.

Sebastopol is a pretty little town (population 7,800) in Sonoma County, California, with “Black Lives Matter” painted in huge letters on the town plaza and a sign inside the public library promoting transgender rights. Many well-intentioned folks have preachy lawn signs informing passerby that, in effect, the occupants are not embarrassed by their moral grandstanding. Sometimes referred to as humblebragging, I call our local version Sebastopol-ier than thou.

But at least our small town groupthink is better than the vice signaling coming out of the White House, or what’s left of that building after a large part of it was torn down, soon to be replaced by a monument to a little man’s big ego. The ostentatious greed, corruption, and cruelty currently on display in Washington make the smugness of my trendy little burg seem saintly by comparison.

So I was charmed to read Laura’s article https://www.sebastopoltimes.com/p/a-sign-of-virtue about a local Sebastopol couple who have found a way to promote thoughtfulness and character building without talking down to their neighbors. Their idea is simple: twice a month, on the new moon and the full moon, they put a sign in front of their home with one word on it. That one word is a positive character trait, such as appreciation, courage, forgiveness, grace, honor, hope, integrity, and reverence. They have posted a different word 100 times over the last four years.

In my haste to run errands I have failed to notice their one-word signs as I have driven by their house. Maybe if I had practiced more patience and mindfulness, two of their posted virtues, I might have been more observant.

I like being inspired rather than lectured to, so their consciousness raising is the kind of high ground that I can aspire to. I’m not woke and don’t want to be, but I’m working on a different kind of awakening.

Thank you neighbors, for your kind and sincere character reminders.

Belonging

October 17, 2025

A couple of days ago Laurie, our rural postal carrier, saw me in my driveway and drove out of her way to welcome me back to the neighborhood after my six year absence. Many neighbors have stopped to chat and tell me how glad they are that I have returned to my home of 34 years. It feels good to be welcomed back to a place where I belong.

Coincidentally several classmates have “friended” me on Facebook in the past week, thereby reminding me that I belong to the extended family of Acalanes High School.

All of this has got me thinking: what is/are my community(ies)?

My siblings and cousins are my biological family. My Wednesday hiking group is an exercise and social community, and my weekly meditation group on Zoom is a spiritual support group. But I don’t feel any sense of community with other 49er football fans or fellow graduates of UC Berkeley. And I don’t feel much loyalty these days to the Democratic party, although I do appreciate Franklin Roosevelt’s creation of Social Security and Lyndon Johnson’s establishment of Medicare.

Part of my issue with the Democratic party (and the Republicans too, for that matter) is their emphasis on divisive identity politics. The motto of the United States is E Pluribus Unum, or “out of many, one.” In other words, unity, togetherness. But the Democrats, with their well-intentioned desire to champion the underdogs, have all too often emphasized our differences – racial, gender, sexual orientation – rather than our common heritage as Americans. And on the far left of the political spectrum, especially at some universities, we are told simplistically that white people are oppressors and everyone else are the oppressed victims of the Eurocentric culture.

The far right is even worse, with its promotion of white supremacy and Christian nationalism.

So I prefer Mark Twain’s definition of patriotism: “Supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.”

The America I belong to is a great nation that has every right to be proud of its impressive social progress and freedoms, even though that progress and those freedoms are under attack today. But I believe that the land of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln is resilient and will survive and thrive in the long run.

I also believe that there is something bigger than my country to which I owe my allegiance and my appreciation: our planet. We do not all belong to the same country, and I don’t advocate open borders in this or any other nation, but we do belong to the same human race that lives on Gaia, or Mother Earth. That common home deserves our loyalty and our protection.

I’ll go one step further: I believe that we all belong to what the writer Eckhart Tolle and others have called the New Earth, or an awakened consciousness of oneness with each other, with nature, and with the Great Spirit, also known as The Force, Source Energy, God, Christ consciousness, Buddha’s enlightenment, or whatever name you want to give to the cosmic Love energy.

So even though I’m a short term pessimist, I remain a long term optimist because I believe that it is the destiny of the human race to evolve to an awareness of our shared divinity.

For now, I’m just grateful to be back home among my human, oak, redwood, and animal neighbors, where I belong.

Reaching for the Stars

September 2, 2025

Sometimes, in the midst of positive developments in one’s life, an unpleasant reality check occurs to remind one that disappointment and success can be two sides of the same coin. Yin and Yang, anyone?

A few days ago I was in the midst of a stressful weeklong move from my apartment of six years back to this cottage in rural Sonoma County where I had lived previously for 34 years. I was excited to come back to my little house in the country, not only because I love the beautiful neighborhood, but also because in my absence my landlady had significantly renovated the home into an elegant, light and airy refuge from the workaday world.

I rented a U-Haul truck and drove myself and two local laborers between the old apartment and the new/old home. Marcelo and Adolfo were strong, hard workers with almost no English, so I enjoyed using my Spanish for eight hours. I treated them well, praising their skill and appreciating their labor. They had neglected to bring their lunch, so with them still on the clock I drove them several miles to a store where they could get some food. And I paid them more than we had agreed upon.

After dropping them off at their local labor center I returned to my new home to begin unpacking. That’s when I noticed that my two iPads were gone.

I couldn’t prove that one or both guys took the devices. All I knew was that I had left them plugged into outlets at my old apartment, and I never unplugged and retrieved them. In the chaos of the move I had not noticed their absence. And now I realized my loss.

At first I blamed myself for being so trusting and naive. Then, after that self recrimination, I turned my anger toward Marcelo and Adolfo, though I wasn’t sure which one to resent.

What upset me more than the loss of a $500 iPad (the second one was old and of little value) was a sense of violation of my space and my trust in my fellow human beings. I had been respectful and verbally grateful to them, and now one of them had stabbed me in the back. But which one? In my head I debated the likelihood of each one as the potential criminal.

But after 24 hours of guilt and censure, I realized that in the grand scheme of things my loss wasn’t that great. Other people have suffered from serious health problems, the death of people close to them, messy divorces, or loss of their homes, and I’m bitter about a thief stealing an electronic device? So I said to myself, “Lighten up, Dave. You have excellent health, a lovely home, and enough money, and other than this incident, your move went quite well. These guys have far less than you do, and even though there was no excuse for what one (both?) of them did, let go of your outrage, forgive him/them, and reach for (what Nichiren Buddhists call) a higher life condition.” So eventually, after much grumbling and self pity, I did.

And for the next three nights I walked a short distance from my front door and gazed in wonder at the Milky Way, with the stars framed by redwoods, oaks, and apple trees, as I listened to the music of the crickets and marveled at my incredible good fortune.

Today, after writing all of the above, on a whim I called my next door neighbor at my former residence and asked him to check my empty old apartment to see if by any chance I had left my iPads there.

I had. Marcelo and Adolfo had not ripped me off. I had imagined the most negative scenario, and in my mind had falsely accused two innocent men.

Oops.

Maybe reaching for the stars sometimes means reaching within to forgive oneself for assuming the worst about others.

Superman

July 14, 2025

“We all want to be Superman.”

So says James Gunn, director of the latest Superman movie that came out three days ago and which I saw today.

And because we all want to be Superman (or at least most men and boys have wanted to be superheroes; I don’t know what role models inspire women and girls), we project our beliefs and biases onto him. So in this film, Superman, originally an extraterrestrial from the planet Krypton, is not so subtly portrayed as an undocumented alien being persecuted by U.S. government immigration agents. And on the other side of the political spectrum, some supporters of the current American president have created a poster showing his face attached to the body of Superman.

But I’m not interested in the political interpretations of left wing and right wing spin doctors. And I didn’t watch the movie to see all the action sequences, explosions, special effects, and bad guys, though this story has all of those in spades. Nor was I drawn to the love story between Superman and Lois Lane, the journalist co-worker of his alter ego and alias, Clark Kent, though the chemistry between them was touching.

What has always attracted me to the Superman story ever since I read his comic books as a boy was his heroic character. Yes, I enjoyed his adventures, his superpowers, and his fighting for “truth, justice, and the American way.” But unlike the darker mystery of Batman, Superman was more wholesome, a clean-cut all American boy, sometimes dismissed as the Big Blue Boy Scout.

Adopted as a baby by Kansas farmers Ma and Pa Kent, Clark Kent absorbed the decency and morality of his salt of the earth parents. So as he grew up and realized his special extraterrestrial abilities, he became known as the Man of Steel, but remained humble and was not corrupted by his miraculous powers.

And in this latest feel-good iteration of the saga, the handsome muscular hero, played by David Corenswet, is courageous yet vulnerable, compassionate and flawed, charming and goofy. The child from outer space became a down to earth human being on a mission to love and protect the human race.

His nobility reminds me of valiant characters in some of the classic Westerns such as Shane, High Noon, and The Magnificent Seven. I’m grateful that I grew up at a time of positive role models in books, movies, and TV, because nowadays it seems that many men and boys are lost in a modern malaise of drugs, technology, and a lack of purpose and soulful identity.

In this heartfelt film, Superman, for all his good looks, charisma, and strength, is most notable for his kindness and idealism. He truly wants to help people, wherever in the world he finds them.

Is Superman a naive Pollyanna? Maybe. Is the movie corny? Sure – to some people. But not to me.

At a time of ugly headlines and divisive rhetoric, of wars and the greedy short sighted destruction of our Earth home, I find any portrayal of integrity, selflessness, and decency inspiring. And this man, this super man, is a reminder of what it really means to be an American, to be a human being. Not the chasing of wealth and power and fame, but the pursuit of what Abraham Lincoln described as “the better angels of our nature.”

Splendor and Shadow in the Range of Light

May 19, 2025

Everyone needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and cheer and give strength to the body and soul alike. John Muir

When I headed to Yosemite National Park a couple of weeks ago, I expected spectacular scenery and strenuous hiking. I found both. But I also encountered something else that I did not anticipate: small-minded Sierra Club virtue signaling.

During my weeklong sojourn in the land of sheer granite cliffs, gushing waterfalls, and massive sequoia redwoods, my body was challenged by steep mountain trails and my spirit was lifted by roaring river rapids and plunging cascades of frothing white water drama. But my patience was tested by crowds of fellow visitors and by my own judgmental condemnation of judgmental environmentalists.

Yosemite is, unofficially, the first national park in the world, set aside for preservation in 1864 by the U.S. Congress and President Abraham Lincoln. Many others have contributed to its protection, including President Teddy Roosevelt, John Muir, and a friend of Muir’s named Joseph LeConte. John Muir founded the Sierra Club in 1892 and Joseph LeConte was an early director of it, so in 1903 the Sierra Club named its Yosemite Valley lodge after LeConte.

But in 2016 the Sierra Club discovered that Joseph LeConte and John Muir were human. LeConte had promoted white racial superiority, and in his youth Muir had said some unkind things about black people and American Indians. So the morally superior Sierra Club leadership decided that LeConte and Muir could not pass its ideological purity test, and it cancelled LeConte and removed his name from its lodge in the valley, as I learned when I went there. The Sierra Club zealots have not yet cancelled founder John Muir, but they have considered doing so.

To my knowledge Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt have not been condemned by the Sierra Club – yet. But in 2021 the San Francisco Board of Education attempted to rename schools named after both of those men and John Muir, as well as schools named for George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and others, for whatever transgressions offended the school board. So the Sierra Club is hardly alone in its politically correct pandering to current sensibilities.

But if we continue to insist upon judging historical figures by the latest standards of social conduct and etiquette, we will eventually realize that all of the heroes of the past – and present – are defective. And not just the heroes. I bet that if you could put the lives of the Sierra Club leadership and the Board of Education under a microscope, you’d find that every single man and woman of them is flawed in one way or another. Probably in several ways. Just like the rest of us.

So I decided that every day during my stay in the Sierras, the mountains that John Muir called the Range of Light, I would rise above the pettiness of the leftwing groupthink dogma and celebrate the magnificence of Yosemite that has been bequeathed to us by Muir, LeConte, Lincoln, Roosevelt, and other imperfect beings.

Every day in Yosemite I said prayers of appreciation to the sequoias or oaks and to the aforementioned defenders of its mountains and river and forests. Every day I gave back healing energy to Half Dome and El Capitan and the Merced River, as well as to Yosemite Falls, Bridalveil Falls, Vernal Falls, and Nevada Falls. Every day I touched some part of nature with my hands and said “Holy, holy, holy” and “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” Every day I gave thanks to Gaia for its healing energy, and gave thanks to what Muir called “the grandeur of the Yosemite temple.”

And here and now I leave you with three quotes from John Muir’s book My First Summer in the Sierra:

Who wouldn’t be a mountaineer! Up here all the world’s prizes seem nothing.

Nature’s inexhaustible abundance…is eternally flowing from use to use, beauty to yet higher beauty; and soon we cease to lament waste and death, and rather rejoice and exult in the imperishable, unspendable wealth of the universe, and faithfully watch and wait the reappearance of everything that melts and fades and dies about us, feeling sure that its next appearance will be better and more beautiful than the last.

I have crossed the Range of Light, surely the brightest and best of all the Lord has built; and rejoicing in its glory, I gladly, gratefully, hopefully pray I may see it again.