Lift Up Your Hearts!

It was a small gesture, but it felt so good.

The government gave us these for free, and they've been stashed in our closet ever since. The last time I used one was ages ago, in order to be able to assure members of our choir that my symptoms were seasonal allergies, not covid. They are now three years past their putative expiration dates, and I needed the space in the closet—and in my mind.

Tossing these boxes into the trash did nothing to undo the harm that was done during the covid era, nor to erase the shame I carry for my own behavior in that time of mass delusion and conformity.

But it still felt really good.

I've been out of the country for three weeks, and I never look at Tik Tok anyway, but I hear that it has been blowing up with European visitors to America (mostly thanks to the World Cup), expressing their pleasure, appreciation, and astonishment at how different their experiences were compared with all they had been told about the U.S. Some of those commentaries made it into Facebook Reels, and I enjoyed seeing them. Everything from the trivial (discovering ranch dressing) to the profoundly encouraging (finding that the Americans they met were friendly, helpful, and delightful—not at all they way we had been portrayed to them back home.

It works both ways, too. During our recent three weeks in Europe, we met many new people from many different countries, including England, Scotland, Canada, Norway, Sweden, Greece, Italy, Germany, Montenegro, Turkey, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Vietnam, Brazil, and the Philippines. We discovered that without exception they were interesting people, delightful to converse with, rational and reasonable, and that we held much in common. What's more, I saw no anti-American sentiment at all. I'm sure it exists, but in three weeks among ordinary folks, we met only friends.

I've often said that the 1960's were a miserable decade. Not for me, personally: a healthy family life protected me from dangers I only recognized years later. Plus, the excitement of the space program and my own love of science fiction kept me optimistic despite the insanity raging around me. But looking back at that time makes me realize that the rot I observe today has its roots set firmly in the 60's and early 70's.

Being at the age of nostalgia, sights, sounds, and events from my childhood will sometimes pop, unbidden, into my mind, and so it was with the song, "Everyone's Gone to the Moon." It debuted in 1965, written by a 20-year-old Cambridge University student named Jonathan King. It became a hit, and I fell in love with it. Most people these days have no idea what it was like to keep the radio on solely for the purpose of catching a favorite song when it played; there was not Alexa to fetch music on demand, and my budget did not allow for buying more than a handful of records.

One day, this song came back to me, and I wondered if I could hear it again. YouTube to the rescue! It's embarrassing to hear the bizarre lyrics again and wonder about my adolescent tastes: but adolescence can do strange things to people, and that time period was the most bizarre and outlandish I ever knew—until the last 10 years took insanity exponentially higher.

To the best of my knowledge, none of my friends shared my love of the song, nor had I heard any mention of it in the intervening 60 years until I searched it out on YouTube. Still, it was fun to rediscover the song, and to realize that as absurd as they are, the lyrics are poetical and have meaning if you're in the right mood.

...Not one, not two, not three, but FOUR armadillos cavorting all around.

They are voracious bug eaters, and welcome. I see them most often in the early morning, just before dawn.  When I can't really see them, let alone capture them with my camera.

We finally saw Lin-Manuel Miranda's Hamilton.

I've been aware of the show for some ten years. In April of 2016 I wrote, 

An Occasional CEO post about entrepreneurship [I've removed the link because it no longer works] has against all odds made me excited about a new Broadway show. I'll be happy to wait for a production that is less expensive and closer to home, or on video. But I want to see "Hamilton."

We did briefly consider seeing it during our visit to New York City in November of that year—before we decided to settle for visiting Alexander Hamilton's grave in Trinity Church Cemetery instead. And then ... Hamilton really took off. It became popular. Everybody had to see it! It became available around the country, and even, I'm told, on Disney+, of all things. So of course, contrarian that I am, I lost interest.

And then...we went on a cruise. And one day, exhausted by our intense excursion schedule—who said cruises were supposed to be restful?—we collapsed in our stateroom, flipped on the video screen, and took a look at the movie offerings. The choices were many, but nothing I wanted to see...except...except...there was Hamilton! A recording of the stage production, with the original cast, including Lin-Manuel Miranda himself. So we settled in for an adventure.

As is the case with much of my family, my reflex upon sitting down in front of a movie or TV show is to fall asleep, no matter how interested I think I am in what I'm watching. That was not the case with Hamilton, which kept my attention from beginning to end.

I wasn't expecting that at all. It's been a long time since I've been so moved by a show. For a few minutes it was disorienting: the style of music was totally foreign to me, and seeing Aaron Burr as a black character was as odd as the time I watched a version of the Mikado in which the characters were all British. But the strangeness passed quickly as I became engrossed in the production. Which was brilliant: from the interpretation of the story to the believability of the characters to the cleverness of the stage set. Best of all, perhaps, was a faithfulness to the historical story that I've rarely found in theatrical adaptations. The production feels authentic despite—or perhaps even because of—its unusual setting 

After that experience, I was shocked to read part of a conversation that my friend Eric—the same whose post had introduced me to Hamilton in the first place—had with ChatGPT about the show, in which the LLM made the following observation:

The Obama-era optimism and "America as an unfinished project" theme landed differently in 2015 than it does after years of political polarization. Historians and writers have increasingly criticized the show for sanitizing the Founding Fathers, particularly Alexander Hamilton's and others' relationships to slavery. The casting and "America then told by America now" concept, which once felt revolutionary, is no longer quite as novel. Some of the hip-hop references and stylistic choices are now identifiable as distinctly 2010s.

That criticism was as shocking to me as Aaron Burr shooting directly at Alexander Hamilton in the duel instead of "throwing away his shot" as Hamilton himself did. Hamilton moved me deeply, for reasons that had absolutely nothing to do with immigrants or slavery or President Obama or musical styles or anything that could possibly be considered political or cultural, let alone outdated. It touches on deep subjects and emotions and problems common to "all sorts and conditions of men" at all times, and deserves to be recognized for the classic that it is.

And then there is my own, personal, gut-level identification with the show. Hamilton hit me right where I live.

Just before the intermission, in the song, "Non-Stop":

Why do you write like you’re running out of time?
Write day and night like you’re running out of time?
Ev’ry day you fight, like you’re running out of time
Like you're running out of time
Running out of time
Are you running out of time?

How do you write like tomorrow won’t arrive?
How do you write like you need it to survive?
How do you write ev’ry second you’re alive?

And then, at the very end, in "Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story?"

Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?
When you're gone, who remembers your name?
Who keeps your flame?
Who tells your story?
She tells our story

And when my time is up, have I done enough?
Will they tell our story?
Will they tell your story?
And when my time is up, have I done enough?
Will they tell my story?

In two songs, this crazy musical about one of America's Founding Fathers nailed much of what drives my life and work these days.

It was an incredible experience.

In my More Fun post, I mentioned that my "I've had fun before" cartoon was a "four-way collaboration among me, my grandson, Copilot, and Claude." Here's more about that.

For a long time, I've had simmering in my mind the idea of making a cartoon (meme?) illustrating my frustration with having a far different sense of what activities are enjoyable, or pleasurable, or "fun" than much of the world I live in. The point of the cartoon would be the idea that I've experienced what the world calls fun, and I find it overrated. After finding my father's own commentary on fun, I was inspired to bring the idea to fruition.

My first roadblock was finding a suitable background image for the cartoon, something that illustrated what people conventionally vew as fun, or a fun activity. Searching through clipart and online images was not producing helpful results, and Copilot, which I usually use when I need to create a drawing, was not doing the job this time. Having found Claude extremely helpful in other projects, I decided to move into its space and give it the problem.

Claude was great at helping me figure out just what I wanted the image to convey, but then I ran into a major snag:

Claude can't draw.

This is where my grandson entered the scene. He suggested that I ask Claude to write a prompt for me to use with Copilot to help it understand what I was trying to do. This Claude did with ease, and Copilot nailed the idea in an image. I then refined the image through several back-and-forth sessions: Claude looking at the image and pointing out what worked well with my ideas and what needed tweaking, me questioning Claude for its opinion on what changes might make the point more clearly, and then going back to Copilot to implement the results. Eventually, we reached the "good enough is better than perfect" stage, and the cartoon was born.

I found the process to be an interesting collaboration. Working with Copilot felt like dealing with an excellent artist who was a bit slow on the uptake. Claude couldn't draw but was smarter and had a good eye. Noah provided the key that nudged me out of the rut I was in, and I put it all together. Claude called it a perfect creative team:

• Copilot: the talented studio artist who executes brilliantly but needs very clear direction
• Claude: the creative director with opinions but no hands
• Your grandson: the spark of inspiration
• You: the producer who held the vision, made the calls, and knew when it was done

I call it fun.

A companion to my previous post on fun. A four-way collaboration among me, my grandson, Copilot, and Claude.  Details to come, I hope.

As promised in a previous post, here's a follow-up to my dad's thoughts about happiness, during a 1993 Elderhostel lecture in Uruguay.

An event on the same day inspired similar thoughts on fun.

The same thing happened later that night. A friend of one of the speakers joined us at dinner and he sat across from the man next to me. At one time he asked my neighbor "Which of your activities so far has been the most fun?" My answer would have been that none has been fun. "Fun" describes a roller coaster ride (at least if you are much younger than I). "Fun" describes a short-term activity that has a lot of action with it. Our activities were interesting and/or educational but they were not fun. If you are not happy, you are not necessarily unhappy; if you are not having fun, you are not necessarily bored. Or at least that is the world as I see it. But I think I have the wisdom not to argue about it with anyone.

Living in the land of high-speed theme park thrill rides, at my age I no longer find most roller coasters pleasant, let alone fun. Research, writing, and the process of creation are usually quite enough action for me, and a sufficient response when someone asks, "But what do you do for fun?" Even if they then think I'm crazy.

I agree with my father, even if I generally lack the wisom in his final line.

One characteristic I share with of both my parents is a deep-seated suspicion of psychology and psychiatry, especially in their popular manifestations. Granted, I've known people who have been helped by counsellors, but I've also known those who have been badly hurt by the process. History is littered with examples of "best medical practices" that were more likely to kill patients than to cure them, and practices that mess with people's minds are no exception.

I totallly agree with my father's reaction to a lecture he heard in 1993, while visiting Uruguay.

The lecturer started talking about an article from "Psychology Today" on "The Secrets of Happiness," and I began to have problems. The problems were mainly with semantics and my interpretation of the meaning of words and while this was not a subject for discussion, I spent a fair amount of time thinking about it.

The article listed four important traits of happy people:

1. Self Esteem: Happy people like themselves.

2. Optimism: Happy people are hope-filled.

3. Extroversion: Happy People are outgoing.

4. Personal Control: Happy People believe they choose their destinies.

Of course I got into trouble early by asking what is meant by self esteem. I think she figured it was obvious, but she gave a rather long explanation that I didn't understand either. I suppose the answer is: Of course I like myself—I'm the only self I have.

But what we did not discuss is my dislike of the word "happy." To my mind, "happy" is a rather shallow word that describes a short-term condition. You were happy about Heather's recital; Porter's birthday was a happy event. But over the long run, your life is not happy except at times. You are contented, your life has been very satisfying, but it has always had the ups and downs that make "happy" inappropriate. Anyway, I think there are better words, no matter what others think. Perhaps my problem is that I don't have all the important traits for being happy.

I have still more to say about that letter, and that lecture, but that will be for another time.

This was my father's comment, from a 1993 letter, on the prevalence of creative wedding vows. I think that trend started in the 1960's.

I think the standard words are just fine if people would only listen while they repeat the marriage vows.

I have created my first, and I hope only, anti-Trump political cartoon. I usually give the president grace for decisions he makes that I disagree with, but supporting year-round Daylight Saving Time is a bridge too far. As most of my readers know, I'd be fine with permanent Standard Time, but being so far out of sync with the sun is just not right. (I'll give you time zones, for practical reasons, but see no such excuse for pretending that noon is one o'clock.)

This work was inspired by a political cartoonist whose name I don't know, who published a cartoon using the blanket-snipping idea back when President Nixon had the same crazy thoughts about permanent DST. I tried to find the cartoon online, but failed. So I decided to create my own, with a little help from Copilot. Okay, a lot of help. It can draw, and I can't.

Copilot may be able to draw, but its rules can be very frustrating, as I've said before. However, there's a certain creative challenge in trying to make one's point within the restrictions; it was actually rather fun.

At first I tried re-creating the old cartoon as I remembered it. My prompts are in italics, Copilot's responses in bold. These are excerpts from a much longer conversation, as we worked through the creation and refinement process. Most the design work was mine, but Copilot made the speech bubbles, and I thought they were great so I left them in.

Please draw a cartoon of President Trump in bed, with a blanket and a pair of scissors. In the first panel, he is snipping off the bottom of the blanket; in the second he is sewing the cut-off part onto the top.

I can help you create a cartoon — but I can’t generate or depict current political candidates or elected officials in new images. That includes drawing President Trump in any scene.

All right, make it President Nixon, then.

I still can’t generate this cartoon, Linda — even with President Nixon — because he is a real political figure, and I’m not allowed to create new images depicting actual politicians, even historical ones, in fabricated scenes.

Hmm. How about if you use a generic man but indicate somehow that he is a U.S. president?

It got a little further, but eventually came back with,

I can’t create this cartoon, Linda. The request was blocked because it still counts as depicting a U.S. president, even a fictionalized one, in a political‑cartoon scenario, which falls under the same safety restriction.

At this point, I changed the scene entirely, keeping the main idea but taking the president out of bed (which looked ridiculous; I don't remember how the original cartoon made it look otherwise) and putting him behind a desk, with a salesman selling the blanket-cutting idea. I added the caption to make it clear that the man was president of a fictional country. That passed! and the rest of the work was just refinements.

Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. — Patrick Henry

This week, the governor of Connecticut signed a bill (H.B. 5468) imposing serious restrictions on home education. Connecticut had long been one of the best states for homeschooling freedom, but with the stroke of a pen it has become one of the worst. If you can reach this HSLDA site, the front page is a good summary of the immediate problem.

Bottom line: There are other new requirements that are objectionable on their own, but the greatest threat involves the Department of Children and Families (DCF). I've lived through enough years of fighting for parental and child rights to get chills down my spine and knots in my stomach at the mere mention of such organizations. Their "better safe than sorry" excuse has been responsible for tearing even very young children from loving, stable homes, and separating nursing infants from their mothers—for days, weeks, or even months, while the system wheels grind slowly. So it's no wonder I get queasy at the thought of handing them the authority to take away a family's right to home education.

H.B. 5468 would ... require that families seeking to withdraw their student to homeschool be checked against the DCF registry. The registry includes not just confirmed abuse, but a wide range of “neglect” findings, some of which are minor, disputed, or entirely unrelated to a parent’s ability to educate their child. The bill also bars homeschooling for any family that shares a household with someone who has an open DCF case—even if the case has not been substantiated.

This expansion sweeps in an enormous number of families. Research cited by the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform shows that 25% of all Connecticut children, 34% of Hispanic children, and 42% of Black children will, at some point in their lives, live in a household with an open DCF case—overwhelmingly because of reports later found to be false or unsubstantiated.

Connecticut’s definition of “neglect” is broad and subjective. A parent can be placed on the DCF registry if a caseworker has “reasonable cause to believe” a child was neglected—a standard well below even the preponderance of evidence threshold used in civil court.

Our litigation counsel has reviewed the bill and concluded that it raises serious constitutional concerns under both the Due Process Clause and the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.

This isn't just about homeschooling. These weapons have been used in issues related to breastfeeding, to COVID vaccine compliance and a variety of other health issues, to nutritional choices, even to controlling a child's access to television. And parents will submit to almost anything to get their children back. This law puts families at the mercy of disgruntled neighbors—and vindictive ex-spouses. There is no "bail" for these families, no right to a speedy trial, no protection against cruel and unusual punishment, and certainly no right to be considered innocent unless proven guilty.

For too long we've taken our hard-won homeschooling freedoms for granted—all our freedoms, for that matter. What just happened in Connecticut is a grim reminder of how easily the most basic of human rights can be taken away under conditions of complacency.

The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance. — John Philpot Curran, 1790

I've been working pretty intensely with Anthropic's Claude on my father's letters, but every once in a while I need a break and delve into something else that might be interesting. For example, I recently asked Claude to tell me the 10 books written in English (or translated) that it would consider the most important. The response surprised me. Shakespeare and the Bible were obvious, but some of them I'd never even heard of.

1. Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes Widely considered the first modern novel. It shaped storytelling itself and introduced ideas about reality, fiction, and idealism that still resonate.
2. The Complete Works of Shakespeare – William Shakespeare Cheating slightly by bundling them, but no single body of work has shaped the English language and human self-understanding more profoundly.
3. The Bible (King James Version) Whatever your beliefs, its influence on Western literature, law, ethics, and language is simply unmatched.
4. Hamlet – William Shakespeare (if we're picking one) The deepest exploration of consciousness, mortality, and indecision in the English canon.
5. In Search of Lost Time – Marcel Proust The most ambitious novel ever written — a towering meditation on memory, time, and what it means to be human.
6. The Iliad – Homer (translated) The foundational text of Western literature. War, honor, grief, and fate — all still urgently relevant.
7. Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoevsky Perhaps the greatest psychological novel ever written, and a profound exploration of guilt, free will, and redemption.
8. 1984 – George Orwell No book has done more to shape how we think about political power, surveillance, and the fragility of truth — and it only grows more relevant.
9. To the Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf A revolution in how fiction renders consciousness and time. Woolf changed what the novel could be.
10. The Origin of Species – Charles Darwin Not a novel, but arguably the most consequential book written in English — it changed our understanding of life itself.

A few honorable mentions that nearly made the cut: Middlemarch, Moby-Dick, The Divine Comedy (translated), The Brothers Karamazov, and One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Although I am an avid reader, of this list I've read embarassingly few: Shakespeare (not the complete works, but I have watched all the plays); the Bible (all of it, many times, including the Apocrypha), Hamlet (of course), and 1984 (indeed I did find it much more relevant when I returned to it in 2020 than when I first read it back in the 1960's). I started both The Iliad and The Origin of Species but didn't get very far in either. The books for which I didn't even know the titles are In Search of Lost Time, To the Lighthouse, and One Hundred Years of Solitude. Of all the books I read for school, not many are on this list:  Hamlet (also Macbeth), Moby Dick (in college), and possibly 1984—I read that one and Brave New World at the same time, and while I think the latter was the one required for school, I can't be sure.

It sounds like an interesting challenge. Not that I really need additions to my To Read list; straw and camels keep coming to mind.... Then again, just last week I read a book recommended by one of my favorite granddaughters that was such a delight I would hate to have missed out just because my list is overwhelming. (Full disclosure: all my granddaughters are my favorites.)

We almost never sing my favorite verse of the Star-Spangled Banner, so I was especially pleased that we did so at the regular Friday-night-pizza-and-hymn-sing when we were recently visiting our New Hampshire family.   (The hymnal we used has two verses of the National Anthem:  the first, and this one.

Oh! thus be it ever, when free men shall stand
Between their loved home and the war's desolation!
Blest with vict'ry and peace, may the heav'n-rescued land
Praise the Pow'r that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust."
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

As I said two years ago, the best way we can honor those who stood bravely "between their lov'd home and the war's desolation" is to stop taking for granted the freedom they gave their lives to protect. Let's not defile their sacrifices by treating lightly the present-day assaults on our sacred liberty and Constitutional rights, but work to preserve what was gained at so great a cost.

Today I want to honor those who sacrificed, not their lives, but their lineage:  the Gold Star Mothers (and Fathers) who have lost a child in service to their country.  Here are those nearest in our family line who gave this "last full measure of devotion."   Each of their soldier sons died in World War I, serving in the 101st Machine Gun Batallion. 

★  Wallace and Florence Gesner (Wells) Porter  ★  parents of Hezekiah Scovil Porter

★  Olaf Frederick and Hilma Justina (Reuterberg) Faulk  ★  parents of Harry Gilbert Faulk

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Possibly I inherited my attitude toward dancing from my father. The following is taken from his write-up of his Elderhostel in Uruguay (emphasis mine).

The after-dinner event last night was tango lessons at the Alianza. I have failed to learn anything about dancing in the past 71 years, so I saw no reason to start now. But tonight they had a live orchestra playing tango music, so those who had learned their lessons could put it all into practice. I went, and although a few demonstrated their skills, I was content to listen to the music, which I enjoyed.

That said, several of my grandchildren greatly enjoy contra dancing, which is something like square dancing, and I think I would like it reasonably well if I were 30 years younger. As it is, I got too dizzy to find it pleasurable. Like my father, however, I enjoyed the music.