View from the Mountain

The Shade Trees Are Still There, We Aren't

I remember well the Sunday afternoons under the shade trees enjoying watermelon or homemade peach ice cream. As children, we played like there was no tomorrow.  It was a simpler time when people could actually talk politics without getting angry.  There was nothing like an old fashioned chicken stew to bring families together in North Carolina's rolling hills. 

There were no chicken stews that I got to attend during my college years. Those were the especially turbulent late sixties and early seventies and I was far away from North Carolina in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  As I finished my degree in the summer of 1971, I needed to get away from those strange-hued city-night skies where it was impossible to see the stars.

Perhaps with a different childhood I could have gone back to North Carolina which still was clinging to elements of rural life. Instead I ended up going to Canada because I had fallen in love with rural Nova Scotia and the endless waters and forest that I saw there. Just maybe Nova Scotia reminded me of North Carolina in the fifties. It was certainly about as far away from Cambridge, Massachusetts as you could get.

Like many on the same path, I came across the book, Living The Good Life, by Helen and Scott Nearing. The Nearing's book along with the Whole Earth Catalogue by Steward Brand and Malabar Farm by Louis Bromfield were very influential in my sixteen years in Canada that included thirteen years of farming and growing our own food. The books were as much about community and interest in the common good as farming and growing food.

It did turn out that life in Nova Scotia and also New Brunswick was much like my youth growing up in the Piedmont of North Carolina in the fifties and sixties.  Since I did not have many of those North Carolina rural skills, it was lucky for me the influence and knowledge of my mother followed me to Canada. Her story and that of her generation whose roots ran deep into the fertile soils of rural North Carolina has always had great meaning to me. Even though I put great distance between myself and North Carolina, the ideas, the traditions, and memories stayed with me as guides to living a life away from the city lights.

Just as people used to gather under shade trees in North Carolina, friends used to just drop by on Sunday afternoons at our farm for visit. It was a great excuse to stop working and spend some time catching up on the neighborhood news. It was the way people built relationships, established trust and found common ground.  I cannot ever remember discussing politics.

Beyond the impromptu visits, there were community picnics, shared meals, church services (even burials) and work done for the good of the community. All these things made for richer shared lives. When we were on the farm, I never doubted that the community and friends helped us be successful. The support of their communities was essential to success of farming when we had our farm.

That was back in the seventies. The fifty years since then have not been kind to under the shade tree gatherings or any of the other ways that we connected and established relationships.  Even workplaces have fundamentally changed. Modern companies with their distributed workplaces have made it highly unlikely that employees feel much connection to their local communities through their ever more soulless companies. There are exceptions but most of us work for companies with little local identity. With the pandemic many more people are now working from home today than even a couple of years ago.

As for the common good, most people have lost sight of that. Those who have achieved great riches rarely credit the communities that have helped them so much.

Months of pandemic pressure have made it even harder to make local connections or even talk about the common good. Technology has given us some supposed solutions. The trouble is that they never work nearly as well as true human connections. Many times technology makes things worse so it is often counterproductive and alienates us from the people we need.  We are not likely to get back to shade tree gatherings or really knowing our neighbors anytime soon, but we can hope that out of all this isolation from each other, a solution might some day arise.

The Sweet Sixteenth Anniversary Post

November Sunset White Oak River

This November will bring up the sixteenth anniversary of my first post on Typepad. November is a time for memories for me. 

I wrote on the web for a few years before I found Typepad and then used other platforms including my own site but I never gave up on Typepad. Spread across a few blogs on the service, I have over two thousand posts.  I write because it helps me figure things out and because I can look back sometimes and see how right or wrong I have been. Sometimes what I write helps people with a decision but mostly I write to clarify things in my own mind.

Perhaps I have never shared any great words of wisdom, but I have managed to get this far in life with respect for our lives and how we have lived them. Writing has helped me do that. My wife, Glenda, and I have had a wonderful adventure. Some of it has been hard with sleepless nights but there have been plenty of enjoyable times also. I have made some mistakes along the way but I have also stood up for a lot of things that I believed. Sometimes doing that was not easy and certainly not rewarding monetarily, but having the courage to do the right thing is how I was raised. I am proud of it and I am unlikely to change.

There are a lot of things in today's world that you cannot understand no matter how much you write about it. This has been a tough year.  If you had any innocence left, like me, you probably lost that innocence in 2020. 

Recently I was driving home from Lowe's Home Improvement on a Sunday afternoon.  Highway 58 where I was driving is a two-lane road when delivers much of our beach traffic to the beaches.  It is often easy to recognize beach traffic.  A mini-van or sport utility packed to the ceiling with a luggage carrier on top is a pretty good tipoff. As I was headed north what looked like a beach-bound mini-van heading south swerved well over into my lane.  It was close enough that I had to swerve also and I also blew my horn. Had I been going faster than the posted 45 MPH or not paying attention, I might have ended up in an accident.  The mini-van was easily doing 60 MPH. We have learned over the years that the closer some people get to the beach, the faster they drive. Supermarket parking lots can be dangerous on check-in days.

I can only speculate why the mini-van came into my lane. My first guess and the odds are that it is a good guess is that the driver was distracted by his or her cell phone. It happens all the time.  The question is what is so important that you would risk your family's lives so close, literally just a few miles, from your vacation destination? It appears some have become so connected that it impossible to disconnect and focus on important things. That includes parents who go on walks with their children but never take their eyes off their cell phone.  Like my mother would say, "Who raised those folks?"

Some other things about the current state of our country baffle me. How can people who exclaim their extreme loyalty to our country think they are helping the country by intimidating others who are trying to vote or participate in the political process?  Since when is it okay to use pepper spray on a peaceful march that included children and was only headed to vote? Even more scary, what gives you the right to force a bus containing a political opponent, the former vice president of the United States, off the road. Intimidation and violence have no place in the world that I hope will welcome my grandchildren. Between political intimidation and people too stupid to wear masks during a pandemic, I am not sure what our world will be like when I write next year's post if I am lucky enough to be around. I hope the future looks a little brighter.

I will close with some observations from my last year's post. They have hardly changed.

1. First, there are many people in the world whose actions either intentionally or unintentionally are hostile to the rest of us. Often we are little but roadblocks in their schemes which often have more to do about their own insecurities than anything else.
2. If you are trying to do what is right for the majority of the people, you are going to run into people who will oppose you. There are people out there who care more about themselves than about anything. The concept of the greater good is foreign to them. I have seen these people, had to deal with them and felt the hurt long after they have disappeared.
3. I have also come to realize that there are people who really do not care for facts unless the "facts" happen to bolster their own opinion. It is hard to understand but they seem to love to cling to the worst stories about people. Even if the narrative has no factual basis, it lets them rationalize their dislike, distrust or divorce from reality.  They deal in lies and rumor.
4. Another fact of life is that many people have trouble admitting that they are wrong. They will try to shovel the blame over on you even when it requires unbelievable contortions.  It is never their fault mainly because they dress in Teflon and everything slides off of them.
5. A goal for us all in our thoughts, our writings, and our actions is to call out the people who are trying to destroy our world. If you are silent, you are complicit.
6. Finally, if you are struggling to demonstrate balance in your thoughts, maybe you need to see if your subject requires a stand instead of balance.

 

Keeping Our Brains Wired

Our minds are amazing but like most things, they perform better if they are used regularly.

For most of my life I have been an avid reader. For the last one and half decade I have spent much of my time writing. That includes thousands of articles on the web and five books.

Most of my reading beyond the proof reading of the long proposals that we produce at work has been newspapers. This past fall I decided that for my own mental health I needed to read a few books. The first one I tried failed to interest me. Now that I have read a couple of books including the last one which was 479 pages, I am not certain that the first book was the problem.

As I really got into the third book, it occurred to me that my brain was starting to make connections more easily than it did in the second book. Though I read the book over a period of six or seven weeks, I found myself more engaged than I was by the second book which had the same author and a similar plot. It was also easier to pick up the book after having missed a few days reading. When I wanted to go check on something about one of the characters, it was easy to thumb back to the passage I needed. My hands seemed to find what I was looking for quickly.

Could it be that reading complex books primes our brains to keep track of more information than if we only read short articles?

While this is just anecdotal information from one person, I cannot help but wonder if this might be a big problem in our society. Reading a long book with a complicated plot, a number of characters or ideas takes far more skill than reading a newspaper article or a tweet. Reading a book takes more thinking and stimulates your imagination far more than consuming a short article in just a few minutes. Of course any kind of reading (along with drawing your own conclusions) does far more for your mind than passively absorbing the pronouncements of a television talking head. 

We seem to have an overabundance of people whose thoughts appear unconnected at best. Perhaps there could be many reasons, but maybe one is the decline of reading, especially long books. According to an article in the Washington Post, " the share of Americans who read for pleasure on a given day has fallen by more than 30 percent since 2004." Leisure reading has hit an all time low.

One way to think about it is the dining table pictured at the top of the post. Imagine that the newspaper articles you read are mostly from the same few authors who join you regularly at your table and sit at the same places each time. Like good friends coming to dinner, you have a pretty good idea what they are going to say. The conversations are pretty simple and typically exactly what you expect.

A complex book is a far more complex dining scenario. Imagine the author as a puppeteer who carefully places people at the table and removes them before you really get a chance to know them. Of course the characters at the table change rapidly and you have to stay on your toes to gather as much information and connect the dots as the author/puppeteer gives you the opportunity. Figuring out the story takes concentration and some skill as the characters rotate around your dining table often taking different seats at the table. Even the light on their faces changes. The whole thing is challenging but very rewarding when it all comes together.

I know that I am pleased to be back in the reading grove. A good book beats good television any day.

Fourteen years of posts

On the Friday after Thanksgiving 2018, the View from the Mountain blog will have its fourteenth anniversary. It was not my first adventure on the web but it certainly has been my most persistent presence. We have not lived on the mountain overlooking Roanoke, Virginia, since 2012 but I have kept the blog going. I am happy that I did since much of my WordPress content written from a coastal perspective is locked away in a difficult to access database. There are close to 1,500 posts here.

I suspect View from the Mountain would have been an even more successful blog if I had picked a focus for it, but I never found the need to do that. I was never looking for commercial success or for mastery of a specific topic. The special topics that interest me are covered by other blogs. I have a blog that talks about the Crystal Coast, another that has a focus on living/gardening/fishing on the coast, and my Applepeels blog about Apple. There are even a few other odd ones that I have written over the years but none with the diversity of content that is here.

This blog has always been my honest view of the world whether it was operating systems, cameras, life, places or how people treat each other.

It seems appropriate today to look back at some of my first thoughts here and speak to some of the changes since I first start writing. It is hard to start this without mentioning that the Crystal Coast, where I live in 2018, as I am writing this is something of a changed world since Hurricane Florence visited us on September 13, 2018.

Even in my early posts, I wrote about how life has shaped my views. The older I get the more thankful I am that I have had the opportunity to see the world from a number of perspectives.  Little did I realize how impactful my time in Canada would be when I became a landed immigrant at Yarmouth, Nova Scotia in the summer of 1971. It is a great privilege and a humbling experience to view your own country through the eyes of others especially a country like Canada which in spite of all the talk has a lot of affection for its southern neighbor.  The deep personal ties between Canada and the United States are far too strong for lasting damage to come from the hateful rhetoric that sometimes spews out of Washington, DC.

American and Canadians have fought shoulder to shoulder in too many wars to have their friendship destroyed. Both countries have their own challenges but like most things in life, the opportunity to solve those challenges is a lot brighter with the help of friends than with hectoring from the leader of one of the countries.

All through my life whether in a Boy Scout troop, with my farm neighbors, or on a corporate team, it has been clear that when people work together they achieve more than when working just for themselves and falling to the temptation to tear down each other. I will always believe that the reason (besides price) Apple's computer market share is stuck in the 12% range is that the sales executives at Apple think that Apple sales teams should compete against each other for business instead of working together.

Taking an adversarial position with everything in life is a harsh and self-defeating way to live. Taking a win-win approach has always worked better for me. Thinking that you can go it alone as an individual or a nation might achieve short-term results but it unlikely to bring lasting positive results. If life is all about making the other person the loser, you can count on that coming back to haunt you at another time.

Even as hard as I have worked, I certainly could not have gotten through life without the help and support of others. It started with my extended family and mother, continued through high school and college, and got even stronger during our days on the farm. I am pleased that even my suburban life has been filled with friendships and support. We could not have moved from Roanoke without the help of friends. I certainly could not have survived the challenges of living in an HOA community with occasional strife without the support of friends and the sanctuary of our Presbyterian church.

When all is said and done, friends and allies are much better to have in your corner because there will always be enemies and competitors in another corner. It is much easier to stand up for what is right when those friends and allies are with you.

You Cannot Ignore The Waves You Create

We live in a society where many people think they can say or do whatever they want even if it harms others.  They actually do not care since they have an agenda where they and perhaps a friend or two who refuse to see them in anything but a favorable light are the only ones who matter. 

While they might protest that they are doing things for the good of others, a close examination of their rhetoric and more importantly their actions leads only to the conclusion that whatever they are doing is designed to benefit or entertain themselves and everyone else can go to hell.

Almost all of us come in contact with these people who love to quote facts, rules, and precedents as long as they support their intended outcome.

Most of these folks tend to try to get their way by shouting louder than others, trying to control the opinions of others, and threatening or insulting those that do not agree with them.  If they are in government of any form, the last thing they want to do is to face the people whom they represent in a meeting.

Few of these folks are truly interested in a process that will actually solve a problem unless it resolves it in their favor.  They attempt to bully anyone involved in issues and end up looking like a toddler having a temper tantrum.

They are the self-proclaimed experts on everything and of course their way of looking at things is the only way to look at anything. True facts are just confusing.

I have spent a life standing up for what I believe whether it was equal funding for the education of children in rural New Brunswick or running an HOA by following the rules.

Over the years I have seen people threaten to do this or that if I did not do something.  Experience has taught me that you can only live your life to your own standards if you refuse to bend those core principles you have chosen for your life.  The only response to a threat is to stiffen your resolve.

What surprises me most is that so many of these scorched earth people who will do or say anything to get their own way, think that the horrible things they say and do have no impact.  They might attack your reputation one day and act like nothing has happened the next day. They are oblivious to the consequences of their actions and part of that is because people are afraid to stand up to them.

One of telling signs of these people who sow discord is accusing the very people trying to solve a problem of sowing discord.  It is their fall back position of choice. While oblivious to the discord they have created, they are quick to point fingers at those hoping to resolve issues.

Their inexcusable behavior creates waves of consequences that wash over us all.  Often we end up having to do things that we would never had done if we were dealing with normal people who care for people besides themselves.

It is long past time that we sentence people like this to life without real contact with the rest of us.  If society is going to survive, why do we coddle those that seek to destroy it?  Certainly we should stop electing them to any positions of authority.

If your agenda is to take advantage of the rest of us while you get your way,  why should you expect me to be so stupid as to help you do it?  It has never worked on me in the past and is unlikely to do so in the future so just save your threats for someone who has not seen it all before.

Remember if your role has responsibilities that effect me, count on me to hold you accountable if you do not fulfill those duties.