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Bears in Yellowstone

Posted on June 21, 2015 by Bill Leave a comment

Scared Babies

In the 1950’s there were lots of bears in Yellowstone National Park. Despite warnings, people fed them, got out of their cars to photograph them, and listened to the campground garbage cans being raided. I saw hundreds of bears in Yellowstone, but have seen only one in the wild elsewhere.

I was never in danger there, but did have a few experiences. We traveled with a nineteen foot travel trailer, which made camping a lot easier. On one trip we were in a campground near the Firehole River so my father could fly fish. A sow and her two cubs had established residence close to all that food in the trash cans. The Park Service decided it was dangerous to have them in the campground and decided to trap them. The trap they used was mounted on a trailer. It was made from a ten foot section of galvanized 48″ culvert, closed at one with a trap door at the other end. They put bait up near the closed end with a trigger arrangement that closed the door when moved.

It worked. It trapped mom, but the cubs were outside. What a noise! She sent the cubs up a tree and they cried. Mom roared. I don’t remember when she was trapped but it was still dark, and there was no more sleeping for anyone in the campground. The Rangers showed up around 8:00 AM and stood around trying to decide what to do. The usual procedure was to haul the bears to a remote area some distance from the capture point and release them there.

Bear in Trap

This would not work here, with two howling cubs up a tree. Why hadn’t they thought of this beforehand? Three bears making enough noise to be heard at Old Faithful and a couple dozen campers standing around watching the fun. The Rangers thought about moving the trap across the creek and releasing her there. Would she charge back on a rampage? Would she stay there with two cubs across the creek afraid to come out of their tree? Would she cross the creek, collect the kids send then go on a rampage?

The Rangers were reluctant to release her right there, afraid of a rampage. Dilemma. Lots of standing around and talking. They finally chased all the campers away some distance away and let her loose. She called the cubs out of the tree but they were reluctant and even noisier, then they came down, and all three left the campground in a hurry. Everyone was relieved to not have a berserk bear in their midst.

1955 Nash

On another trip my friend Mike was along. There was a bear visiting the campground each night. My parents were in the trailer, and Mike and I slept on the reclining seats in the 1955 Nash (shudder). We decided to leave the windows down and shoot the bear with our slingshots when he came around.

We had a metal cooler with lunch food that we kept in the car when traveling. It was on the ground outside the car with good smells coming from it. We slept, than something woke me up. I heard something outside and poked Mike to wake him up. We loaded our slingshots and looked out. A BEAR! Just out the window. A big bear! Never have hand cranked windows gone up so fast. No shooting bears that night.

Posted in Memoirs, My Story, Stories, Yellowstone Bears

Backpacking in the San Juans

Posted on June 20, 2015 by Bill Leave a comment

Getting Off at Needleton

My backpacking days are over. I’m old, I have a titanium knee, and I hurt in lots of places. The inspiration for this piece is Reese Whitherspoon’s Wild. The movie is about a woman who decided to pull her life together by backpacking the Pacific Crest Trail. She did it and found herself on the way. I didn’t find myself backpacking, but had some experiences that are still with me. I even had some parallel experiences, the main one being: don’t go on a long backpack with boots that don’t fit unless you enjoy pain.

On a long trip through the San Juans, my boots were too small. We took the narrow gauge train from Durango to Needleton, just a stop on the line halfway to Silverton. We got quite a few looks from the flatland tourists as we got off for a trail into a canyon a long way from anywhere. From the trailhead it was several uphill miles to Chicago Basin in the heart of the Needle Mountains, where we planned to spend some time.

Don’t Buy Them Too Small

About halfway, we came across some guys helping their friend with a badly sprained ankle to get to the railhead. He was in serious pain, unable to put any weight on his ankle. His friends were looking pretty strained. That first trail is where I began learning about my boots. It was the seventies when you had to have those massive European climbing boots for a walk in City Park. I think I spent something like $200.00 for them. I was determined they would fit OK once they were broken in. Hint: those things could be so worn out the soles are falling off, but they won’t be broken in. There was only one thing to do, keep walking.

Chicago Basin

Chicago Basin was miraculous. It is a large glacial basin ringed by mountains, three of them fourteeners. Windom Peak, Sunlight Mountain, and Mt. Aeolus. The area is full of thirteeners, not as famous, but challenging. It is steep country. Most of the San Juans are volcanic, but the Needles are the cores of ancient mountains, much older than the relatively recent volcanos.

In the 1970’s, the United States Geological Survey was changing from 15 minute topographical maps to 7 1/2 minute maps. The map for the Needle Mountains was somewhat behind in the revisions. It was published in 1900. No color, no modern changes to man-made features, but still useful for navigation. 7 1/2 minutes is roughly 7 miles. It is possible to walk through the area covered in one day. The Needle map was 15 minutes with a note to add eight feet to each elevation. No GPS in those days, just triangulating from one peak to another.

The Needle Mountains are one of the most remote mountain ranges in Colorado. A big glacier once sat in that basin at the foot of those mountains and ground away for a long time. There are lots of places in the Rocky Mountains with great views, and Chicago Basin is right up there. The other good thing is that it is hard to get to. Keeps the riffraff out. We had the basin to ourselves, even during the backpacking boom.

Columbine Pass

As a bonus, the weather was good. When it was time to leave, we thought a good breakfast was in order. Pancakes and coffee. Lots of both. We struck camp and headed over Columbine Pass. The trail switchbacks up that glaciated wall to a summit over twelve thousand feet high. Hint number two: don’t climb a steep trail at high altitude with a stomach full of pancakes. They didn’t feel like pancakes, they felt like lead in there. I guess suffering is one of the aspects of backpacking.

The descent led us to Vallecito Creek, and a long hike to Vallecito Reservoir, where my father gave us a ride to the car in Durango. Now, it is day hikes or four wheeling. The knees are the first to go.

Posted in Backpacking, Colorado Mountains, Geology, Memoirs, My Story, Pain

The Dentist Part Two

Posted on June 5, 2015 by Bill Leave a comment

Dentistry

I wrote in March about my dental phobia. I home with a temporary crown. The last three months has been a dental black hole. I haven’t flossed, hardly brushed, and stuck with mouthwash. My cleaning last month wasn’t too bad, but only because Barb, my hygienist, is the best. I made an appointment for the crown after stalling for five months.

Thursday was the day and I have been something of a mess for a week. Worse, I was scheduled to have it done two weeks ago and came down with a bad cold and had to reschedule. That prolonged my agony. In defense of the dental office, everyone there is just great. They are nice, competent, and do their best to make every visit as painless as possible. I have been a patient there for over twenty years.

Steve Law is the dentist. A Minnesota boy, he went to St. Olaf College in the same town as Carleton College, that Susan, my stepdaughter,attended. He is a nice guy and a musician as well. Today he had trouble getting the old crown off. He drilled, pried, pulled, drilled, pried, and drilled some more. After he got all the gear out of my mouth I asked him why he didn’t use Channel Lock pliers instead. He said something about making it more comfortable. I do not equate the dentist’s office with comfort, despite their apologetics.

The assistant was also good, and funny as well. I just do not remember her name. I should remember, she has worked there as long as my tenure as a patient. I have a temporary crown she installed which will fall out before the next appointment.

I have lived with dental post-traumatic stress disorder for almost sixty years. Carol is a therapist and has offered to help, but I just cannot face dealing with the anxiety of reliving dental agony. At least the suffering is a good contrast with the good times I usually have. How can we know the good without experiencing the bad? Why does it have

Posted in Dental Phobia, Dentist, Fear, My Story, Pain, PTSD, Stories

Four Wheel Drive Equipment

Posted on June 3, 2015 by Bill 2 comments

Willys Jeep Wagon

I have been involved in four wheeling since childhood. Stuck up to the axles and high-centered in Utah, Colorado, South Dakota, and Wyoming. I like to get out where the country is wild and there aren’t too many people around. My favorite places are mountain passes in Colorado and the vast red rock country in Utah. I am not a hard core rock-crawler with a vehicle jacked up in the air with near tractor tires whining and rumbling down the street.

I have had International Scouts, Nissans, Dodges, and my current Toyota Tacoma. There is a long succession of Jeeps I have ridden in and driven. I have also been stranded in them. So, no Jeep for me, I just don’t trust them. There are lots of choices in four wheelers, but not as many choices for cheap four wheelers. I’m cheap.

1953 Chevy 2wd

I buy base model vehicles. I even bought one without air conditioning. 4x4s aren’t particularly cheap, but it is not necessary to spend $50,000 for a nice rig. My Dodge pickup had a small engine. Oh, wait, it wasn’t even four wheel drive, although I treated it like it was. I guess my willingness to use a two wheeler goes back to my youth, when we had a 1953 Chevrolet pickup. That was in the days when the only 4x4s were old military Jeeps and the venerable Dodge Power Wagon. Both were capable, but slow and fairly unreliable (35 mph in the Jeep, about 50 in a Power Wagon). Dad and I went hunting and fishing in that old Chevy. Dad was an amazing driver in the bad stuff. He used to maintain the telephone line from Fruita to Cisco, Utah across that adobe desert in a two wheel drive pickup. Up in the Bookcliff area, there used to be a pile of rocks at the bottom of a bad hill. If it was muddy or snowy the driver would stop, load the rocks in the back of the pickup, go about his business, and unload the rocks at the bottom of the hill on the way out.

Two times we went places in that old Chevy where no sane person would go without four wheel drive. Once, we were deer hunting up in the Douglas Pass country after a storm. The road was muddy with that slick stuff Western Colorado is famous for. We drove down into a saddle that was steep at either end. We couldn’t get up the hill. A newer pickup came by that had a limited slip differential, new at the time, and went right up the hill. We had to put the tire chains on.

Battlement Lakes Road

The other adventure was going fishing at the Battlement Lakes road on Grand Mesa. That road wasn’t steep, but was full of big rocks and mud holes. It was narrow, with little room to maneuver around obstacles. Dad put that old pickup in second gear, not even the granny gear, and mostly idled along thar road with that old Chevy six lugging along. The rocks in back rolled around and smashed my good spinning rod. We met some guys in there in a Jeep. They could not believe we got in there with a two wheel drive pickup. I don’t think the fishing was very good that day, but no matter.

Scout I

After he retired, Dad got into four wheeling. His first one was an old Jeep station wagon with a 283 Chevy V8. That thing was good in the bad stuff, but leaked oil and had some ignition problems. The next one was an International Scout I. Pretty primitive, but capable with one exception. There was a place on Elephant Hill in Canyonlands named Scout Slot. It was narrow, in solid rock with a ledge that was in just the right place to break the transfer case of a Scout.

After that was an older model Jeep Cherokee. It was pretty good, and it went around the White Rim Trail with some friends. Next was a Scout II. It was good, but one night coming off Elephant Hill it quit. Dad and I walked to the Canyonlands Resort and got the owner to tow us with his Ford pickup. We bounced a short distance and the Scout started. The carburetor float must have been stuck and bounced loose. I sold the Scout for the Dodge pickup.

2009 Tacoma

I did two wheel drive for a while then bought a Nissan Frontier. It was capable, lasted quite a while, then I crashed it on ice in Glenwood Canyon. Now it is the Toyota. It is good, but I gave it a dent on Pearl Pass. Now I have a Detroit Trutrac limited slip differential which should help. Summer is coming, and I’m ready to get out there.

Posted in Current Activities, Four Wheeling, Memoirs, My Story, Stories

My Music

Posted on May 5, 2015 by Bill Leave a comment

Buddy Holly

I was growing up when Rock and Roll was born. Prior to rock and roll, popular music pretty much defined banality. Then, the blues and the beat. Early rock and Roll was not always great either. There was a lot of bad stuff out there. The radio stations had to fill their space, and Buddy Holly, Elvis, and the Everly Brothers would not stretch far enough. The music was born out of the blues, and there were black musicians who kept the tradition alive with some innovative infusions. A lot of the trash came from Phil Spector, with his wall of sound.

Like most things In our culture, the real stuff got co-opted by white men in suits. The real stuff stayed alive, but you didn’t hear it on top 40 radio very often. There were some musicians far away who did listen to the real stuff, and they infused it with their own culture. The British Invasion began, and music changed again. A tremendous burst of creativity came forth, almost world wide. Today, it’s called classic rock. The suits, however, got to sell their schlock alongside the good stuff.

There was a parallel trend during all this change. The folkies were alive and well, with the real stuff, Judy Collins (From Denver), Joan Baez, and others. We also got the Kingston Trio-like commercial music. The king of the folkies was a Jewish boy from Hibbing, Minnesota. Not blessed with a great singing voice, he developed a huge following because his lyrics managed to define the mood of a restless generation.

Bob Dylan

Then, he went electric. Bob Dylan and his legion of followers and contemporaries created music that inspired and motivated many of my generation. There also was this war lots of people did not like. The music led and we followed it into the streets. It wasn’t just the music that created the cultural shift of the 60’s; the civil rights movement probably started it all.

There were some parallel trends in music during all this. People still listened to big band standards, the Burt Bacharach’s were out there, commercial bubblegum polluted the airwaves, and Jazz stayed alive through it all. The 50s and 60s were probably the golden age of jazz, taking its roots in the blues to entirely new places. I left rock and roll for a while around 1959-1961 for jazz. I guess I needed the blues. Today’s jazz seems like Muzak with chords.

Classical music. There was not much of a classical music scene when I was a kid in Fruita. My introduction came from the Brumbaughs. They had a piano, and used it. Tedd, the older son, was my age, and two blocks away. The Brumbaughs took me to a violin concert at Mesa College in Grand Junction. Tossy Spivakoski was the violinist. (How can I remember his name? It must have been around 1956.). He was a well-known concert violinist, but I think he thought he was casting pearls before swine in the middle of nowhere. . He hated any coughing or other noise while he was playing, and scowled at the culprits. I liked the concert.

J. S. Bach

After my mother died, I listened to a lot of classical blues. Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony is the probably the best musical lament of all time. Classical, especially Baroque, is now my favorite genre. Baroque seems to appeal to people with ADD. I can’t connect with the new stuff, pop is as insipid as always, and country is pop with a steel guitar. The scene is so fragmented I can’t track it.

I am sure there is good music, I just don’t know where. One place of genuine creativity that channels 60s protest music is Hip-Hop. I don’t connect with the sound too much, I guess I am too old and white, but if you want to know what is going on in Baltimore, listen to hip-hop.

Yo Yo Ma

I can’t listen to classic rock, I have heard every song several hundred times. Pop and country suck, so it is classical for me. Recently Carol and I went to a Yo-Yo Ma concert at DU. He is the most famous cellist in the world, and most of his program was Bach. I was transported. I have some old R&R in my truck, Bonnie Raitt, Dylan, the Cranberries, but it is mostly classical, mostly Baroque. I am content with listening to music that has been around for centuries. I am still a bit of a folkie, so that music is OK as long as there is no John Denver.

Posted in ADD/ADHD, Early Rock and Roll, KOMA, Memoirs, Music, My Story, Stories

Rock and Roll in the Sticks

Posted on May 2, 2015 by Bill Leave a comment

1958 Chevy

Western Colorado in the late 1950s and 1960s was a cultural backwater of the first magnitude. I-70 did not exist, making travel to Denver at least two hours longer than now. In Grand Junction, there was one television station and two radio stations. The Junction had the Daily Sentinel newspaper, and Fruita had the Fruita Times, a weekly with stories about the bridge club.

Things were on the move in the land. Rock and Roll had appeared, but not in our neck of the desert. The only contact we had was the Ed Sullivan Show, which introduced Elvis to the world. The local radio stations weren’t interested. They were making money playing Patti Page, the Andrews Sisters, and Doris Day. The raciest they got was letting Johnny Ray cry.

At first, we found Lucky Lager Dance Time on KNBC in San Francisco, but you needed a good radio, and there better not be any lightning between the Junction and California. Then, salvation! KOMA! As soon as the sun was down, KOMA boomed in from Oklahoma City. Rock and Roll ruled the sticks. And the sticks were extensive. KOMA dominated Oklahoma, New Mexico, Rural Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, Wyoming, and neighboring boondocks.

That radio station was our lifeline to the rock and roll youth culture developing in the country. This was not the Beatles and the Stones. It was Buddy Holly, Elvis, the Everly Brothers, all those Phil Spector bands, and some R&B, like Chuck Berry and Little Richard. KOMA was top 40, no obscure bands, just the big stuff. Yes, there was country and western, and Grand Junction even got a station later, but country was mostly confined to the pool halls and beer joints around 1960.

There was the KOMA band circuit. There were several rock and roll bands that traveled the region, playing in small town Grange Halls, Legion Halls; anywhere the band could rent a hall. Sterling, Roswell, Scott’s Bluff, Colby, Torrington, Hot Springs, Alliance, Garden City, Trinidad, all those little towns starved for anything from the outside world. The only band on the circuit I remember was Spider and the Crabs. They advertised their gigs on KOMA and kids came to the dances from all over. KOMA made money from the ads, and bad rock and roll ruled the boondocks.

Several of us would buy a case of Coors bottles, go to Grand Junction, listen to KOMA, cruise all evening drinking beer, and throw the empty bottles at highway signs on the way back to Fruita.

Was that youth misspent? No, not at all. I am writing about it now, aren’t I? Rock and Roll survived, and all was well until the mid-1960s. Here’s to KOMA in Oklahoma! The station is still in business, still playing rock and roll.

Posted in Colorado History, Early Rock and Roll, History, KOMA, Memoirs, My Story, Stories, Western Colorado

Decay

Posted on April 27, 2015 by Bill Leave a comment

Old Mine Building

My friend and I have coffee fairly often. We have many common interests, from DU Lacrosse to politics,spirituality, motorcycles, and bicycles to name a few. He plays pickleball, I don’t. I write, he doesn’t. We have fun.

We do find ourselves discussing our health care issues. He is coming off his second knee replacement. I have only had one. He needs a prostate ream job, I had one. He has had bypass surgery, I have high blood pressure. Even though he is fairly nuts, I don’t think he has ADD. Poor guy.

He is a year younger than I am, but I look better. We are both getting a bit on in years. Both retired, we have active, engaged lives. It’s good to share this time of life with another old dude. That health care thing does loom. Things do not work as well as they used to. The night before last I sustained a sleeping injury. I rolled over and Ow, Ow. My bad back did not like that particular motion.

Now what is that about? A stupid sleeping injury! Hiking, motorcycling, bicycling, home maintenance projects, at work, yes, but sleeping? Carol had a reading injury (wrist) but at least she was awake doing something. This is getting serious. Should I just stay in bed, not get up? Well, no that’s where I hurt myself. If I walk I might fall. If I drive, I might get a ticket. If I stay in my chair, I’ll get fat. There is no way out.

How did I get myself in this fix? I have always been something of a risk taker. I climbed fourteeners. I did both dirt and canyons on my motorcycle. I scrambled around in the slickrock desert alone. I jeeped over 13000 feet high passes alone. I bicycled in ten degree temperature weather on the ice to get to work. Now I hurt myself sleeping.

I am going to leave this coffee shop, drive up to Gilpin county, and go hiking.

Later. I went to Gilpin County, hiked and jeeped. I whacked my head on a low door frame in an old mine building, so now I have a scalp laceration. Some days.

Posted in Aging, Back Country Accident, Four Wheeling, Health Issues, Humor, My Story, Pain, Stories

The Garden

Posted on April 23, 2015 by Bill 2 comments

I am married to an artist. She paints, she writes (lately, haiku), is doing lots of cooking with our new kitchen, and she gardens. It’s spring, so a lot of our effort is going into the garden. I willingly garden, but it is mostly the labor part. I dig, I built a cold frame and re-glazed it, I water and help plant. I do not, however decide what to plant or where. I am getting better at pruning with my left-handed Felco Pruner. I mow, compost, rake, clean up, water, and haul.

We are landscaping in back, so lots of things are changing. We have a nice new patio with a pergola. The iris are already in along the fence and in the alley just outside.

The project this week is raspberries. We had a 15 foot long cedar planter built just in front of the big blank slab of a garage wall that is YELLOW. I prepared the planter soil with compost made from last falls leaves and a lot of coffee grounds from the coffee shops. The raspberries will get fairly high and will break up that expanse of garage. We were planning to have the raspberries planted by the pros but Carol got a call from a woman she met at a class offering free raspberries.

Raspberries

We jumped in my pickup and went over to their garden in what used to be a run-down neighborhood between I-25 and Highlands. It is being transformed with new construction, but still retains some of the flavor of what it used to be. We dug up about fifteen plants, brought them home and planted them. They were bare root, so some of them are looking pretty droopy, but I think they will make it. My job is to set some eight foot cedar posts and run wires between them to support the raspberry canes. The bushes can get about six to eight feet tall. I can’t wait to have fresh raspberries in my muffins.

Our perennials are doing fine. We were a bit worried after that early hard freeze we had last fall. Even Carol’s attempt to clone the Pacific Northwest with a salal plant and some azaleas survived. There is a deciduous bush next to the front door that is supposed to be evergreen that lost all its leaves. It has lots of little buds and a few leaves, so I think it will be all right.

One of the things we are getting done in front is putting big rocks and some perennials on the slope from the lawn down to the sidewalk. I am not getting any stronger, and that slope is hard to mow. It also gets dry in summer, as it faces west.

Our Little Free Library is up and running. It is one of the features on the slope. It is so much fun going out to check the books. We get quite a bit of business, but no problem, because people keep bringing us books. It’s painful, but I am culling some of my books. It seems like some of my soul goes with them. I hope they will enrich the soul of their next owner. It is good, life as a householder.

Posted in Current Activities, Gardening, Haiku, Home Improvement, Little Free Library, My Story, Planting Raspberries, Stories

Spring and the Spirit

Posted on April 15, 2015 by Bill Leave a comment

Spring!

Spring is the time of renewal. Life returns to the land, the daffodils and the tulips emerge. The people celebrate. In the Middle East long ago, as it is now, Passover was one of the celebrations. That holiday brought a teacher to Jerusalem, and the Western world changed. The teacher was a threat to the local leaders, who were anxious to not stir the Roman occupiers up. The Romans wanted stability to release the Legions to continue conquest, and stability for the tax collectors.

They crucified the teacher. That did not end the movement Jesus started. The believers grew in numbers, and began to realize that the crucified one was more than a teacher. His ministry continued, and we celebrate Easter. At Pentecost, the cycle became complete.

Torah

Many centuries before, the Hebrews encountered the One God. This changed their world view, as they were surrounded by people who had gods for every occasion. The One God gave the Hebrews the Law. They had Torah, the written record of God choosing his people and instructing them on how to comport themselves.

The intervening centuries brought much conflict and turmoil, as human affairs do. The people mostly persevered with their God. There are written records of that journey with God, and they still instruct us. They fell away, they returned, they went into captivity, and they returned. Their prophets had the spirit, and many others probably did also, we just do not have the record.

Then, the most miraculous thing happened. God became man and walked among his people, calling everyone to be His people. He was killed for it, but his message rose with Him and became stronger. Then, at Pentecost, came the Holy Spirit. God no longer walked among us or sent His prophets, but we received a great gift. The Holy Spirit can dwell within us.

Holy Spirit

I am not one to live by faith alone. I have to have evidence. Science works for me, because it is evidence based. My faith works because the Holy Spirit came, and it was the most profound experience of my life. Now, the spirit blows where it will, and it does not often blow toward me. That is all right, because I always have the spirit when I need it. The spirit comes when I need it, not when I want it. At first I had trouble with that, because I wanted to be plugged in all the time.

There is a problem with being in the Spirit all the time. There is no time for anything else, and the need to keep the body going intrudes. I thought about being a monk, but I find that I belong in the world. So, I have my spiritual times, and long periods when all I do is pray every day. I feel myself being moved into a spiritual time. I don’t know where it will lead me, but I am ready.

Remember those words, “Seek, and you will find.”

Posted in Holy Spirit, Jesus, My Story, Spring Flowers, Stories

Aggression and Fear

Posted on April 13, 2015 by Bill Leave a comment

Fear is part of life. We are wired to react to threats in a number of ways. Fight, flight, freeze, hide, cry for help. In our society, there is little to fear. In most of the country there is little violence. Sometimes we experience a flash of fear in traffic, or when we slip on the ice. For the most part, however, we are safe.

Why, then, to we have a culture of fear? Gun and ammunition sales are booming, security system companies are busy, people are taking self-defense classes, and living with fear and anxiety on a daily basis.

Within our generally safe country there are acts of violence. School shootings, workplace violence, robberies, gang shootings, random killings, on and on. These acts, if horrific, are but a small part of life in a country of 314 million people. They just do not affect most people. The only time I have been truly terrified was when I was caught in a lightning storm when hiking above timberline. I have never run so fast as that day.

The most important fear creator is television. It is hard to get good video of a drop in the unemployment rate, but easy to show police cars, fire engines, ambulances, yellow crime scene tape, and bodies on gurneys. The longest running TV shows are cop shows and doctor shows, with lives hanging in the balance every week. “If it bleeds, it leads”, the mantra of local TV news.

Yes, they are showing real violence, but I have personally never been a victim of violence. As a volunteer firefighter, I did see the aftermath of terrible accidents, but we were there to respond to those events. In my daily life in the same area, I never saw an accident.

Life has always been marked by violence. We are wired to deal with it. Adrenalin, anger, the need to assemble in groups for mutual protection, all are part of our DNA. In watching elementary school children in a park, I was always struck by the boy’s tendency to pick up a stick at the first opportunity. The girls would respond to aggression from boys, but tended not to initiate aggressive behavior.

Agression

Are the boys hunters or warriors, or are those behaviors modifiers of the same thing? I am currently reading about Ancient Greece. The tales are of war or the challenges of dealing with a dangerous world. Very few cultures have not been violent to some degree. There is always peril, whether from the neighboring tribe or the saber-toothed tiger.

Fear has always been a part of life. Today, despite all the turmoil in the world, in this country we enjoy one of the safest countries and times ever. The prevailing mindset, however, is fear. Growing up in the 1950s I ran all over town and always walked the seven blocks to school. Today children are accompanied by an adult when on the street. It is more and more unusual to see unaccompanied young teenagers out on the street.

Because of some events in my early childhood, I have never felt safe. I always have a strategy for dealing with a threat (back against the wall). I have never in my threescore and ten years had to deal with a threat. Because of my impulsivity and deep-seated anger I have sometimes initiated aggression, but usually calm down before getting myself in big trouble. I do seem to be getting better at letting go of the anger.

Is that the answer? Aggression breeds aggression? Especially with childhood abuse? The old Johnny Cash song, A Boy Named Sue, is an example. Father knew he would abandon his son, so he named the boy Sue in order for him to be abused and have to fight back to survive. Abandonment and the target of aggression became that boy’s life. He grew up to be angry and aggressive. The song implies that is a good thing. It is not.

When children grow up in a loving, fairly safe home with the knowledge they are loved and respected, they are able to deal with threats in a healthier way, knowing they will always have a refuge. We need to provide love, compassion, support, and respect for all children. A lot of that exists here, but how about the Sudan? It is a sad world. Work to end injustice and violence everywhere. Foster compassion.

Posted in Agression, Fear, History, My Story, Stories

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