Lift Up Your Hearts!

Is this taking sympathy too far?    Porter after MOHS surgery this morning.

Heroes do not always appear heroic until time has a chance to reveal the magnitude of their actions.

From Hillsdale College's Imprimis July/August 2019.  "Rediscovering the Wisdom in American History" by Wilfred M. McClay.

So accustomed are we to thinking of Lincoln in heroic terms that we forget the depth and breadth of his unpopularity during his entire time in office. Few great leaders have been more comprehensively disdained, loathed, and underestimated. A low Southern view of him, of course, was to be expected, but it was widely shared in the North as well. As Lincoln biographer David Donald put it, “Lincoln’s own associates thought him ‘a Simple Susan, a baboon, an aimless punster, a smutty joker.’” Abolitionist Wendell Phillips called him “a huckster in politics, a first-rate, second-rate man.” George McClellan, his opponent in the 1864 election, openly disdained him as a “well-meaning baboon.” For much of that election year, Lincoln was convinced, with good reason, that he was doomed to lose the election, with incalculable consequences for the war effort and the future of the nation.

In case you are curious, here's the lastest predicted path (11 a.m.):

The public schools around here have already decided to close for tomorrow, and I wonder why.

I take the possibility of a hurricane seriously and tend to err on the cautious side (no hurricane parties); what I question is the timing. So many times in my memory have schools been closed for days that turned out to be absolutely fine. With the weather—especially storms—you simply can't know so far in advance what is going to happen, so why make the decision so early?

I didn't grow up with hurricanes, but we had "snow days," and never knew till the same day whether we'd have school or not. Those are great memories: ears glued to the radio, listening to the list of schools that were closed. It was usually a long list, since most school districts were local and small, and my school district began with an "S" and thus came near the end. Oh, the cheers when they finally called our name (or groans, if they didn't)! My mother cheered as enthusiastically as we did—or so it seemed to me at the time.

The deciding point for closure was whether or not the roads could be plowed in time for the school buses to make their runs. (All but a small handful of us walked to my school, and they never worried about us, but they closed the whole district if the buses to other schools couldn't run. I was grateful for those rural schools.) The Superintendent of Schools would wake up early, assess the situation, and make the decision then.

I don't understand why Florida doesn't do the same.

On the other hand, at least when it turns out to be a false alarm, the kids here have a nice day off. But as I understand it, they must make up missed days later in the year, which we never did, and it sure seems unfair to shorten an expected vacation!

I've discovered that very often when I am impressed by an Epoch Times article, the author turns out to be Jeffrey Tucker. Here's another one: "The Undying Necessity of Moral Courage." Please be sure to read as well my comment at the end of this post.

Tucker is a realist, and the article starts out depressing, with a reiteration of insights from Joseph Schumpeter's book, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (1942). But it ends with a bit of hope.

I keep going back to this treatise for guidance in our strange times, mainly to better understand the interaction of economics, politics, history, and culture. His outlook is probably best described as transideological; a partisan of capitalist systems, he was not optimistic about human nature itself.

You can see the entire work as an elaboration on the following principle sometimes attributed to the Stoics: “Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And weak men create hard times.”

Yes, capitalism works. Manna falls as if from heaven, and people are no longer taught its source through any lived experience. Better lives, richer lives, more opportunities rain down on the population as if by magic.... What does this do to human character? It trains people to believe that the ancient virtues are no longer operational. We don’t need fortitude, resilience, courage, and determination. A credit-soaked world no longer needs thrift, prudence, or sobriety. Instead, rising wealth of the sort we’ve experienced since the late 19th century trains people just to go along for the ride. Careerism replaces courage. Credentials replace talent. Erudition replaces wisdom. Indulgence displaces prudence.

States come to believe that they can promise their populations anything and that normal accounting has been superseded. They create giant cradle-to-grave welfare states. They intervene in every conflict, domestic and foreign, as if there are no limits to resources. The culture celebrates recklessness, sloth, and opportunism instead of discipline and fortitude.

Schumpeter was even more correct than he knew. In 2020, the wealth seemed so automatic, so inevitable, so indestructible, that most nations in the world actually set out to shut down their whole economies in a new science experiment in disease mitigation, all while they waited for labs to roll out some magic cure that turned out to not work. ... And how did most people respond? They went along.

People’s lives absolutely fell apart. Arts, culture, mainline religion, and so much more fell apart. Major media lined up to push official messaging. So did Big Tech. The upheaval utterly changed the functioning of life itself. It was a fiasco for the ages, and guess what? Weak men did indeed create hard times, and those have hit everyone very hard today. 

All of this is backdrop to the real crisis of right now, and you know the substance of it: It is a political crisis now illustrated by an attempt on Donald Trump’s life. He was spared by the grace of God: a sudden turn of his head toward the screen caused the bullet to slice off the top of his ear but miss his head. ... But the story does not stop there. Having been shot at and bleeding from his head, he rose to his feet and rallied the gathered crowd while promising to fight on and urging others to do the same. As security forces got him away from the violence, he fist-pumped the air one more time and then left.

(I took the photo from the article; the attribution is AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

In our times, we’ve rarely if ever seen anything like that. Those who said he was a mere actor, influencer, opportunistic politician, or businessman on the make saw a different man when faced with mortality itself. He exercised resilience, fortitude, and moral courage, all those ancient virtues that are so ill-practiced in our times but which ultimately drive history. Most people I know, even those who completely oppose his politics, are still in awe of that scene. It rocked the world and made history.

We ... are so accustomed to a culture of inauthenticity ... that it is startling to witness an authentic display of genuine fearlessness in the face of death. If I may say so: We needed this. Desperately. We all needed to remember and know that it matters.

All politics aside, our times have deprecated and driven out the old virtues and toughness along with it. I’m convinced that an authentic display of exactly that is precisely what the world craves right now. We need it more than ever in our lives. Otherwise, we will continue to go the way that Schumpeter predicted, straight to the doom he foresaw for Western culture.

From what I have observed over the last 70+ years, I can affirm that these points are accurate and important. However, I want to add this: Good times do, indeed, breed weak people; for one thing, they allow us to survive and procreate. But they also provide the stability and means through which art, culture, and creativity can flourish.

I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelaine. — John Adams

It is also true that there is no inevitability about the idea that individuals are determined by their times. Bad times bring forth heroes, flawed and broken as they may be, in greater number—but they also provide unusual opportunities for villains. And there's no reason why the good, the strong, and the virtuous can't flourish during times of ease and plenty, albeit that it takes firm intention, deliberate practice, and self-discipline. I look at our family, friends, and neighbors, and see much to give me hope.

There is a lot about the Ukraine, and Ukrainian history, that we don't know. I remember that shortly after we became involved in the current war, a wise, knowledgeable, and well-travelled Swiss friend remarked that he couldn't understand why the United States would get involved; he saw little difference between Russia and the Ukraine, and did not think it any of our business—to get mired in such a dispute would be plain foolishness on our part.

Well, when has that ever stopped us? All the wars in my own experience, beginning with Vietnam, have been characterized by (1) Pre-war meddling, on our part, in the internal politics of one or more of the countries involved; (2) Ignorance, at the highest levels, of the history and culture and customs of the peoples and places we were fighting; and (3) An unaccountable tendency to avoid at all costs either losing or winning, but to drag the conflict on and on, at great expense and loss of life. Our involvement in the Ukraine—which goes back much further than the most recent conflict—is just another in a long line of inexplicable American policies.

I recently came upon an e-mail written by my father in May of 1994. I doubt it sheds any light on our present predicament, but provides a quick snapshot of the Ukrainian situation thirty years ago. My father had not, to my knowledge, been in the Ukraine himself, but he had visited not only Poland, but also Yakutsk in Siberia, through the Elderhostel program (now called Road Scholar).

I want to quote from a letter I got from one of the couples who was in Poland with me. After their Elderhostel, they did some more traveling in Poland and then went to the Ukraine to try to find some of the roots of their daughter-in-law. They went to Kiev and Ternopil and they wrote their observations of both Poland and Ukraine. As far as Poland is concerned, they concluded that in spite of lots of problems, Poland will make it. This is a conclusion that I would not argue with. But as far as Ukraine is concerned, they wrote:

Ukraine is a much different situation. They used to have jobs and some stability in their lives. Now their government is gone and nothing has replaced it. The infrastructure is crumbling. They don't know who is in charge. There are no experienced emerging leaders. They have a temporary currency, and they don't know what it will be worth tomorrow. Factories are shutting down; unemployment is rising. The people are very despondent. They are losing hope.

That is the sort of situation that can lead to all sorts of problems. As I recall, Ukraine declared its independence when the Soviet Union collapsed, as did Yakutia. But I saw no such problems in Yakutia when I was there. On the other hand I am not sure that Yakutia tried to be as independent as Ukraine.

The Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) was recognized as such in 1992. It is the largest republic in Russia. Whatever Yakutia may have tried for in the way of complete independence, Dad was probably right. Despite high levels of poverty, a miserable war draining Russia's economy, and an awful climate, I suspect they are still in considerably better shape than the Ukraine.

The following is from CNN. If you want the information from a news outlet with a different political perspective, you can easily find it. It is essentially the same wherever I look, with varying degrees of concern being expressed but the same story.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told CNN that Ukraine’s request to use long-range missiles on targets inside Russia is part of his “victory plan,” that he is due to present to US officials next week.

Zelensky has been pushing Ukraine’s allies to ease restrictions on weapons and although there have been signs of the US shifting its stance he said they are yet to be given the go-ahead.

“We do have long-range weapons. But let’s just say not the amount we need.” Zelensky said Friday, adding that “neither the US nor the United Kingdom gave us permission to use these weapons on the territory of Russia.”

Speaking to journalists, Zelensky blamed the allies’ hesitation to authorize such use on escalations fears.

Escalation fears? And rightly so! Zelensky wants us to authorize the use of American missiles to strike deep into the sovereign nation of Russia, and he thinks we shouldn't be concerned about how Putin would react?

How would we react if Putin should supply Cubans with missiles and authorize them to use those missiles on the United States? Oh, wait—haven't we seen this already? And avoided World War III by the skin of our teeth and the courage of a Russian Naval officer?

We have been overtly and dramatically poking the Russian bear over the Ukraine for more than two years, including crossing Russia's "red line" by encouraging NATO membership for Ukraine. Actually, we've been messing with Ukraine's politics for a lot longer than that, though most Americans (including me) only became aware of it in early 2022.

Are we so divorced from the natural world that we have forgotten how unwise it is to tease a bear? Let not the one who encourages another to repeatedly provoke a bear think that he himself will escape when the bear turns wrathful.

It is the height of hubris to believe that America can flirt with World War III and remain unscathed. I acknowledge that sometimes a wise, bold, and decisive move made in the right way at the right time can bring about a strategic victory, but that opportunity has passed. It's only my opinion, but for what it's worth, I believe Russia and the Ukraine could have worked out a settlement early on if we had not been encouraging Zelensky and the Ukrainians to believe they could actually win all they want from this war. It's true that a much larger power can sometimes be defeated by persistence on the part of the smaller party and indecisiveness on the part of the more powerful one (e.g. Vietnam and Afghanistan), but the cost—in lives, land, infrastructure, and resources—is unspeakably great. A prolonged war only enriches the wrong pockets.

Consider:

• The United States military is not in a position to win a direct war with Russia, without resorting to terrible—and illegal—weaponry. I'm sorry to say that, and I mean no disrespect to our military personel—at least at the lower levels; I think less of the top brass and the politicians who are making our biggest decisions. But we are insufficient in hardware, personnel, and morale. Our only hope is that Russia is worse off, which it likely is at this point, but that makes it all the more likely that Putin will step out of the bounds of conventional warfare.
• That part about being insufficient in personnel? Perhaps only one who has lived through years of military conscription, as I have, can truly understand the horrors of a draft, the internal damage it causes a nation, and the blessings of an all-volunteer military. I don't see an out-and-out war being fought, let alone won, without a march larger military than we have, and that means conscription. Are we prepared to sacrifice our sons (and likely, this time, our daughters) in a fight that never should have been ours in the first place, if there is any reasonable way it can be avoided?
• We are pouring untold billions of dollars into Ukraine aid, of which over 100 billion directly aids the Ukrainian government. (See this article from the Council on Foreign Relations for details.) Leaving aside all issues of how much is lining corrupt pockets, and how much is sleight of hand in which the U.S. is getting rid of outdated equipment in hopes of being able to replace it with newer technology, that's still an incredible amount of money that we don't actually have. We are saddling our children and grandchildren with an enormous debt burden that makes their impossible college debts look like pocket change. (Side question: Does anyone even have pocket change anymore?)
• Ignoring the critical point that we are spending money that's not ours, and the fact that a massive influx of governmental money often does more harm than good—still, what progress might we have made if we had spend even a small fraction of that (albeit nonexistent) money on (for example) clearing our air and water of dangerous chemicals; supporting childhood cancer research (woefully underfunded compared with other cancers); strengthening our national security by encouraging small farms and businesses, protecting our farmlands and natural resources, building up and protecting our infrastructure, and bringing critical manufacturing back to the United States? (I'm all for international trade, but not at the expense of our independence.)
• By our actions, we have forced Russia to strengthen their ties significantly with countries that view us as a common adversary, China and Iran in particular. That's not good. I'll take a trade war over a war with bombs any day.
• By our heavy involvement in the Ukraine, we have set our relations with the Russian people back decades. They may be upset with Putin for continuing this war, but for certain they are upset with America for what our sanctions have done to them. And rightly so. We had been booked for a visit to Russia in the fall of 2020, and I expected to experience the warm welcome that our friends had enjoyed on their own visits to the country. Thanks to the worldwide, ill-advised panic over the covid virus, that trip was postponed—and later cancelled because of the war. Even if we avoid WWIII, I don't foresee living long enough for relations between Russia and the United States to heal sufficiently for tourist traffic to resume. My father enjoyed his trip to Russia in 1993, when he was my age, and perhaps my grandchildren will have a chance in their later years; I hold no such hope for myself.
• How is it that we care so much about the border between Russia and the Ukraine and so little about the borders of our own country? Our fentanyl and organized crime crises alone are orders of magnitude more important to the American people than which country rules the Donbas.
• I'm starting to believe that the events that mean so much to me, brought home forcefully during our recent trips to Berlin (the Fall of the Berlin Wall) and Gdansk, Poland (the Solidarity Movement), did not please everyone in our country. There appear to be those who very much miss the excitement (and profit) of the Cold War days.

This coming Thursday, President Zelensky will meet with President Biden to push for a green light to send our long-range missiles into Russia.

Regardless of whatever your political opinions may be, if you are a praying person, please pray for this meeting, and for his additional meetings with Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. I am more concerned about the possibility of unthinkable war than I have ever been—and I lived through the duck-and-cover days.

One of my favorite Substack people (Heather Heying, Natural Selections) wrote this in her article entitled, "It’s an Upside Down World, and You’re Living In It."

I used to be a Democrat. Two of the things that I did that felt democraty include:

I bought as much of my food as possible at farmer’s markets, and got to know the farmers who grew my food. I bought organic, and avoided GMOs. When given a choice, I bought food that was grown closer to how it had been before humans got involved—cows that had spent their lives grazing outside, coffee grown in the shade on farms with canopy trees, tomatoes and strawberries picked at perfect ripeness, transported as little as possible, eaten fresh and raw.

And I refused pharmaceuticals except when absolutely necessary—the notable exception being vaccines, which I barely questioned until Covid raised my awareness. Over the counter drugs were no better. The rule of thumb in our house was: the longer it’s been on the market, the more likely it is to be safe. Aspirin seemed like a pretty safe bet, as did some antibiotics, in moderation. Everything else? Buyer beware.

I still do these things. My behavior was always informed by an evolutionary understanding of the world, a fundamental preference for solutions that have stood the test of time (e.g. beef over lab-grown meat), and wanting as little corporate product and involvement in my life as possible. Such behavior just doesn’t seem democraty anymore. It seems like the opposite.

In response, I wrote the following.

For decades, I have been saying that the Republicans need to reinvent themselves as the party of human-scale life. Seeing Trump and Kennedy together call to Make America Healthy Again gives me more hope in that direction than I've had in a long time.

Your beautiful, healthy approach to living felt Democrat-y to you, but in my life it has always been embraced by a mixture of folks, from hippies to conservative Christians, who shared a love of what we saw rejected by mainstream society: children and family life; non-medicalized childbirth and homebirth; the critical importance of breastfeeding; independent and home education; the belief that children can be far more competent and responsible than we give them credit for; small businesses; small farms and natural foods; the superior flavor and health benefits of raw milk and juice, pasture-raised animals, and organically-grown fruits and vegetables; homesteading and preserving/restoring the land; reclaiming heritage breeds and seeds; and a deep concern for the environment that was called conservation before it was taken over and ruined by the environmentalist movement. 

If the Republican Party will truly embrace and fight for these values, I will in turn be thrilled to have finally become a Republican after 56 years a Democrat. The beginning of the end of my complacency with the Democratic Party was discovering the party's intense opposition to homeschooling—despite the fact that so many of the home education pioneers were radical liberals in their day.

Home education may have been the beginning of my disaffection, but the disconnect between the Democratic Party and the values I thought were their priorities became more and more obvious, accelerating at a most alarming rate, to the point where I agree with Dr. Heying again:

The democrats are claiming that they’re on the side of the little people. The only proper response to such claims is this: No. No you are not. Stop lying. And: No.

Republicans, this is your chance. Don't blow it by infighting, nor by sabotage from within. Reach out to the Independents and disaffected Democrats—like Dr. Heying, and RFK Jr., and Sasha Stone...and me—who are reaching out to you, willing—eager—to put aside our differences long enough to do the really hard work of seeking and saving that which is rapidly being lost.

Rescue the Republic—Join the Resistance

As promised, here is more about the Rescue the Republic rally. A graphic of their foundational ideals,

and the line-up of their speakers/entertainers. The link takes you to the whole list, of which I recognize and respect almost half. The bigger names include: Bret Weinstein, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Russell Brand, Jordan Peterson, Tulsi Gabbard, Charlie Kirk, Matt Taibbi, Robert Malone, Pierre Kory, and Heather Heying.

I'd love to hear them all, even the people I don't recognize. I'm expecting that their talks will be recorded and made available to those of us who can't be there. I confess to this weakness: I love live events if they're small and I can sit down while I'm listening; standing up in large crowds and listening over loudspeakers, less so.

Of course, the purpose of being there wouldn't be so much for the entertainment as to support the cause. But as I said, at least I bought the t-shirt. Unfortunately, it's not expected to be delivered till mid-October, so I'll have to show my support post-facto.

I'm not the kind of person who attends demonstrations, or pretty much any large-crowd events. I went to exactly one major rock concert in my life—Jefferson Airplane, at the Rochester War Memorial, when I was in college. I took it all in stride, but it certainly was not an experience I wished to repeat. When I lived in Philadelphia, I attended one Phillies game (in Connie Mack Stadium!), and one Sixers game, but if and when I attend sporting events, I much prefer smaller venues. Preferably with family members on the field.

In 1968, I stood in front of a movie theater with other Democrats and waved a sign and handed out flyers for Hubert Humphrey; about a decade later I joined other prolife demonstrators lining the streets of Rochester, holding signs and cheering the drivers as they expressed their solidarity. I'm pretty sure that was the extent of my activism; I mean, I was a college student in the early 70's, and never protested the Vietnam War, nor burned my bra, nor participated in a single sit-in! I was in college to learn, and hopefully not waste my parents' money and my time.

Large-group events, especially protests, can be dangerous places. You can find yourself unintentionally in the middle of a counter-demonstration with bad blood between participants. You could be caught up in a false-flag operation designed to cause trouble. If you were merely an open-mouthed spectator in Washington, DC on Epiphany, 2021, you could find yourself in jail, and if you were in Tiananmen Square at the wrong time in 1989, you could find yourself dead.

No thank you. Not my thing.

However, there have been two recent events that I really wished to attend in person. One, the Canadian truckers' Freedom Convoy and celebration/protest in the middle of a frigid Ottawa winter.

The other is yet to come: The Rescue the Republic - Join the Resistance event in Washington, DC on Sunday, September 29, 2024. That's only 10 days away!

No matter what you may think you know from mainstream media about the Freedom Convoy and subsequent events in Ottawa, I can pretty much assure you it is wrong. We watched hours and hours of Viva Frei's live, man-on-the-street coverage of every day of the Ottawa part of the event, and it was the most beautiful, most diverse, and most peaceful event I've ever seen or heard of. It was awe-inspiring, and I've given it a whole category to itself here.

The Rescue the Republic—Join the Resistance rally has the potential to be just as remarkable.

I have much to say about this event, such as the philosophy, the goals, the lineup, and what other people have had to say about it, but I'll space it out over several posts, hoping to avoid the TL;DR effect. If you're too curious to wait, there's a lot more at https://jointheresistance.org/.

Why is our Republic worth preserving? What is the West?

At its heart, it is an agreement to distribute opportunity as widely as possible. Today, the foundation that makes up the West is under attack. This moment demands radical change and requires liberals, conservatives, and independents of every color and creed to unify to rescue the West.

Let’s come together to celebrate the essence of what makes America and the West so special. A message of peace, love and unity is at the heart of this celebration.

Rescue the Republic: Join the Resistance will kick off at 12pm on Sunday, September 29th.

The stage will be located northeast of the WWII Memorial (east of 17th Street) and open viewing will extend all the way to the Washington Monument. The program will consist of a mix of musical artists, comedians and thought leaders who alternate in a fast-paced program.

Barring some extraordinary, unexpected event, we won't be able to be there in person, even though I'm pretty sure that if we lived in the DC area I'd conquer my aversion to crowds to be part of what I hope to be a great moment in history. At least I've done the really important part already:

I bought the t-shirt.

This is a partial post that I began in December 2016, and have neglected ever since. Whatever other commentary I was going to add is lost, but this much I believe worth preserving, particularly because we were visiting a major Northeastern city (the major Northeastern city) less than two weeks after Donald Trump was elected president of the United States.

Porter extended our usual family Thanksgiving get-together in Pennsylvania by arranging a five-day visit beforehand to New York City. It was an awesome visit. First of all, for the people. Coming so soon after the election, it was delightful to find everyone so polite, considerate, and going out of their way to be helpful. Yes, this was New York City! Having had our stereotypes of Venice shattered, I shouldn’t have been surprised. Even a multi-racial discussion about the election itself, which we overheard in a local restaurant was calm, reasoned, and willing to give others the benefit of the doubt. Willing to give Donald Trump a chance.

We stayed in three different hotels during our stay. This was for financial reasons, but also gave us the opportunity to experience different parts of the city. Our first hotel was the most interesting, being located in the middle of an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood, where almost all signs were in Hebrew, and we stood out as much as we had among the Gambians during our visit to that country earlier this year. I think we were the only non-Jewish guests in the wonderful little hotel. From that Jewish neighborhood we easily walked to our dinner at a Muslim restaurant: Senegalese, where the food is similar to Gambian food. When we arrived, it was just closing for a private party, but the owner kept a section open for us when he learned why we wanted to eat there.

No one understands genealogists. People get all excited when I say we saw Hamilton, but their faces fall when I pull out my photos of his grave. A visit to NYC would be incomplete without a spot of research at the NY Public Library, and if the time was too short (as always), it was productive.

Except for that, strolling through Central Park, and a moving walk around the 9/11 Memorial, our visit was focused on museums—and on eating our way around the world. In addition to Senegal, our culinary travels included Indonesia, Japan, Thailand, and India. Sadly, our favorite Korean restaurant had closed. In Chinatown we ate French pastries—and visited a Jewish museum and active synagogue. New York is amazing. Our only disappointment came from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where the artwork is stunning, but the docent was ignorant and some of the curatorial decisions appalling. Our experience with the Museum’s branch at the Cloisters, however, was outstanding. Two other gems that aren’t on every tourist’s list are the Morgan Library and Museum, and the Frick Collection. I was reminded of the importance of the very wealthy to the world of culture. Not only do they commission art, they preserve it.

Even though incomplete, I think I've covered most of our New York City adventures for that trip. As when Porter was working at NYU back in 2010—and unlike my memories from the 1970's—I felt safe, even on the subway. I'm happy to have visited the city during the few, anomalous years when efforts to keep public spaces safe were largely successful. My friend who lives there paints a different picture now—though as one of New York City's Finest, and a top-notch detective, he might have a somewhat jaded view.

My own view of very wealthy people has also become jaded since 2016. I still think they have done immeasurable good in preserving culture that would otherwise have been lost, and arranging for it to be made available to the common people. But I'm not so sure about the super-rich today; it's one thing to create a museum, and quite another to fund bioweapons labs. But that's another story. I'm okay with building electric cars, developing a space program, and fighting for freedom of speech. I guess it all depends on the person—wealthy or not.

C. S. Lewis said it best:

We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man.

There is nothing progressive about being pig-headed and refusing to admit a mistake. And I think if you look at the present state of the world, it is pretty plain that humanity has been making some big mistake. We are on the wrong road. And if that is so, we must go back. Going back is the quickest way on.

This where-are-they-now? post is particularly for our children, and any others who played in the Florida Symphony Youth Orchestra with John Dupuis. John made a big splash in those days with his composing, including writing a piece that was recorded by the Seattle Symphony Orchestra and used at the Islands of Adventure theme park opening in Orlando. This was exciting for all of us, and I wish I could feature his Atlantis here, as it remains one of my favorite pieces of music. With a beginning like that, I fully expected to start seeing John's name on movie credits, as the music he composed back then had a distinct movie soundtrack feel to them.

But most of us grow up and get regular jobs. John certainly has done well, even if working in the school system is not as exciting as working in Hollywood. And he continues to compose. Recently he alerted me to one of his new works, called "Melodia Perpetua." Written for string orchestra students, it doesn't have the complexity of the works he wrote for the FSYO, but you can still hear the distinctive Dupuis sound, which was a joy to hear and brought back such good memories.

I actually wouldn't wish a Hollywood life on anyone. But I was told by another composer that the advantage of writing for shows is that you don't actually have to be there; composers were working remotely long before it became de rigueur. So I'll keep hoping you're secretly working on that movie music dream, John! I'd even go see the film, and I almost never do such a thing....

I'm terrible about organizing and identifying photos and memorabilia. My intentions are good, but follow-through abysmal. I keep working on it, but the rate at which objects join the queue far exceeds the rate at which they are processed. I'm so grateful for (1) location stamps on my pictures—whatever the risks are of letting Google know where I am, the benefits for photo identification are immeasurable. And (2) Google Lens and Image Search. The unidentified photo of me as a little girl standing next to some monument? My father wasn't much better than me at keeping up with the documentation, but Google told me immediately that I was on top of Mt. Greylock in Massachusetts! Still, it's a very long and sometimes tedious job, and I just keep putting one foot in front of the other. My goal is to collate photos, memorabilia, and writings into a compact collection that people (i.e. family members) will enjoy looking at. The state it's all in now, if it falls into the hands of my executors, most of it will get tossed. If it's a hard job for me, it will be impossible for them. And I'm not getting any younger.

No pressure.

First, there's all my immediate family's stuff, which has been accumulating since we got married nearly 50 years ago. A couple of dozen large photo books with the pictures in chronological order (good) but largely unlabelled (terrible). Boxes of memorabilia that will be invaluable for identifying photos and for piecing together stories, even if most will eventually be tossed (before or after scanning). Carousels and boxes of old slides, which was the film medium of choice in our earlier days. Eighty thousand digital photos to sift through, label, and organize. The older photos take longer to process, as they need to be digitized and identification is much more difficult. The early digital photos don't need to be scanned, but they include very little identifying information. The pictures we took after getting our smart phones in 2014 are much easier to process because of included date and location data, but make up for that in sheer volume.

That's imposing enough. But as a firstborn (and thus more likely to be able to make identifications of older people and places), and even more as the resident genealogist (who cares the most about family history), I have become the repository for over 100 years worth of old photos (mostly unidentified) and memorabilia, from both my side of the family and my husband's. It has been accumulating in my closet for decades. And I mean accumulating; boxes and boxes that looked good because they were neatly stacked, but inside, all was chaos. I've been ignoring them because other projects have had higher priority, and—let's be honest—because I've been too intimidated to begin.

Recently, however, I girded my loins and pulled the first box out of the closet. I had decided that if I would just get everything roughly sorted by family and era, it would be easier to tackle the smaller chunks (certainly a relative term) piecemeal. That's the theory, anyway.

I began by going through all the boxes and sorting the contents into very rough piles.

It gets worse. What you see here doesn't begin to reveal why I suddenly felt completely overwhelmed when I ought to have been rejoicing in having made a start.

In addition to a lot of stuff that I know I'm going to discard, I found treasure. In particular, a large stack of notebooks containing further journals kept by my father, of which I had been unaware. I had already scanned and organized the 15 journals that I knew about, and that was quite a project in itself. It was thrilling to find more, from the later years; not so thrilling that they were written in unorganized spiral notebooks—here a little, there a little—sometimes in the kind of pen that bleeds over onto the other side.

Plus I found stacks of Dad's letters to the family and essays (with photos) of the many Elderhostel programs he had enjoyed. Dad was a prolific writer and a good one, and it's amazing to read what he wrote about life during our childhood years. I know better than to think I will be able to read them all as carefully as I would like. But I really want to scan them, and do some minimal image editing to make the faded text more legible, so that they will be available, especially to my younger siblings, whose activities they cover more than my own. My first thought had been to toss the Elderhostel writings, but it turns out they make interesting reading, and I think are worth preserving. Maybe that's the writer in me, reluctant to let go of any good writing, or the dutiful daughter who finds value in her father's thoughts. But at least one person in the family has expressed an interest in reading the stories—if they were in an organized form. And most of his letters are worth preserving, being another source of family history.

At one point I hoped to transcribe the journals and letters—and I have my own hand-written journals in addition to his. Why? For the same reason I like to have e-book versions of books (as well as physical copies of my favorites): The ability to search the text. (How old was my brother when he had the chicken pox?) Plus, in the case of handwritten originals, a transcribed version would be much easier and more pleasant to read. My father's handwriting is even harder to decipher than my own, if only because I generally wrote in manuscript, and he in cursive. However, I gave up the transcription dream for two reasons: (1) I'm not planning to live to 150, and (2) I have hopes that Artificial Intelligence, whatever disasters it might bring, will soon be able to do a much better job than the transcription software currently available. So I content myself with digitizing the pages, and occasionally including keywords in the filenames.

This is a huge project (and perhaps a just penance for not keeping my own archivist work up-to-date over the years!) but at least I know that my siblings and children, having entrusted the job to me, are of necessity all on board with my throwing away whatever I can't justify keeping. But that's a big responsibility, too, and one I find particularly difficult. Throwing out items that I figure I may someday want l is not my strong suit. What keeps me going is knowing that it all will be lost if I don't get it into a manageable state.

I took on the job because I care about family history—and possibly because I'm the eldest. First-born's burden, I suppose.

One. Step. At. A. Time.

Don't be manipulated. Good advice, but very broad, and hard to follow. This post was inspired by what I have read about "bad actors"—AI bots or paid humans—attempting to sow discontent, anger, and hatred online. The Chinese and the Russians have both been accused of this, with what seems to be pretty convincing evidence, and I fear some of it is also homegrown.

My greatest concern is that Artificial Intelligence is rapidly advancing to the point where we can no longer trust our own eyes and ears, at least where online videos are concerned. It is possible to manipulate images and audio to make it appear that someone is saying something he or she never said. Think what political enemies could do with that! Everything from rigging elections to starting World War III. And you know those crazy spam blackmail threats that claim they recorded you doing "nasty things" in front of your computer? The ones you face with a grim smile and quickly delete because you know you never did whatever it is they claim? Imagine them including a video of you "actually" doing or saying what you did not? What if they show you a candidate for public office in that compromising position? Or your spouse, or your children. What about fake kidnappings? I could go on and on—my imagination is fertile and paranoid.

But that's not where I'm going in this post. AI's not quite there yet, and we have a clear and present danger in the here and now: Angry, profane, and hateful comments posted to articles, videos, and podcasts. Nasty online videos (especially the short form commonly seen on Tik-Tok and Facebook Reels) whose purpose (obvious or subtle) appears to be to stir up negative emotions. And that's just what I see every day; I know there's a lot more out there. It's hard not to have a visceral reaction that does no one any good, least of all ourselves.

And that, I'm afraid, is exactly the purpose of what is being posted. To make us angry; to make us suspicious of each other; to influence our reactions, our actions, our purchases, and our votes.

The best solution I've been able to come up with (and I have no idea how effective it might be, except with me) is this:

• Know your sources. Is this negativity coming from someone you actually know, in person, so that you are aware of the context? Is it from someone you know online only, but have had enough experience with over time to assess his general attitude, reliability, and track record? If not, keep your salt shaker near.
• When in doubt, if the content tempts you to react badly, assume the best: It's a bot or troll whose purpose is to make you angry; or a human tool too desperate for a job to consider its moral implications; or an ordinary human being who has been having a bad day/week/year (doesn't that happen to all of us?). In any case, make an effort not to fall into the trap.
• Avoid sources that usually make you react badly. Unfortunately, I don't think we can afford to avoid seeking information about what is happening in the world. One of the first rules of self-defense is to be aware of your surroundings. But we can be cautious. Even the sources I find most reliable can have nasty trolls in the comment section, so I mostly avoid reading the comments. I'm also trying to wean myself off of the Facebook Reels (mostly ported over from Tik-Tok or Instagram it seems). They can be fun, and funny, and sometimes usefully informative. But they are definitely addictive, and I've noticed that far too many of them are negative, even if humorous, leaving an aftertaste of fear, anger, disgust, and/or suspicion. Not good for the human psyche!
• Consider slowing down? I'm struggling with this one, because of the reality that so much of our information comes in video form these days. Unlike print, in which it is easy to skim for information, to skip over irrelevant sections, and to slow down and reread what is important, and which provides a much better information-to-time-spent ratio, the best one can do with video is to speed it up. I find that almost everything can be gleaned from a video just as well if it's taken in at 1.5x speed, sometimes even 2x. Porter's ears and brain can manage 2x almost all the time. This is a blessing when there is so much worth watching and so little time! However, here's what I'm struggling with: videos watched at high speeds tend to sound over-excited, even angry, when at normal speed they are not. And the human nervous system is designed to react automatically to such stimuli in a way that is probably not good for us if we are not actually in a position to either fight or flee. I don't have a satisfactory answer for this, but I figure it's at least worth being aware of.
• Remember that the people you interact with online are human beings, who work at their jobs, love their families, and want the best for their country, just as you do. Unless they're not, in which case it's even more important not to rise to the bait.

Be aware, be alert, do what is right in your own actions and reactions, and hope for the best. It's healthier for us all.