And the river flows (and sometimes dries up)

I started this year with a live mother and mother-in-law and a child still living at home.  The year is only 2/3’ds over and I no longer have a living mother, mother-in-law or any children at home.  The drought in south-central Indiana has left the grass brown and crisp and the tulip trees, cottonwoods and river birches have largely given up the ghost and called it quits for the year.  There seems to be a lot less life flowing through this place than there was just a year ago, despite the difficulties that were flowing through the streams then.  Normally I can walk among the plants and see the beauty and coax them into better effort.  Now, we’re just all of us, out of energy.

This will pass.  It’s simply a matter of redefining myself and reorienting to the new horizon.  But for the first time, I’m looking forward to the winter that will erase the chalkboard of this year.

I've blogged about my oldest daughter leaving for school.

Last night (today) my youngest left.

I've got no spare child left.

Why does it feel so bad when everything that we've wantend them to become actually comes about and they sprout their wings and fly without us?

Yes, I'm happy she made the drive from Indiana to South Carolina.  Yes, I'm sad she did it without me.  How could she do this without me?  What am I to do now that she is steering without me?

When Are We Dead?

This used to be a fairly easy question, although sometimes we got it wrong based on scratches on coffin lids.

It’s harder these days when one considers ventilators, artificial hearts, pacemakers, etc.  It’s actually a much debated question in medicine and philosophy (areas that I love).

I live considerably in both my brain and body.  I completed my MD degree and am working on my MA degree in bioethics.  If my higher brain function stopped and I could no longer participate in those worlds I would consider myself dead and be unwilling to continue and pissed off if I were forced to.  I live extensively in my body too.  I’m reminded of a couple of lines from a movie where one said that he treats his body like a temple and the other say’s “and I treat mine like an amusement park.”  Yep, even though I can still get into clothes I wore in high school, I treat my body like an amusement park.

I believe I’ve blogged on this point before: I have instructed my wife that the first time I shit in my pants I want her to get a gun and shoot me, and that she loves me so much and is so intent on fulfilling my wishes that every time I break wind she grabs a gun and checks my drawers.

If I could not think or recognize those around me, or if my body disintegrated into something which only kept my brain alive I would consider myself to be dead.

When would you be dead?

Nudity and rebellion in Vermont

BRATTLEBORO, Vermont (Reuters) - A Vermont town that is gaining national attention for brash displays of nudity -- from teens in the buff to naked elderly people -- awoke on Wednesday to an emergency ban on nakedness in most public places.

Officials in Brattleboro voted 3 to 2 on Tuesday night for a temporary 30-day ordinance prohibiting people from going about in the nude.

Public nudity made headlines last summer when the weather grew hot and a couple of dozen teens took to holding hula hoop contests, riding bikes and parading past stores wearing only their birthday suits. The disrobing has resumed this summer.  

 http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN1823185120070718

I have mixed feelings about this.  First of all, I can’t imagine living in a town that believes in personal freedom so much that the city council would be so evenly divided as to whether strolling around in the buff should be limited.  I wish I lived in such a progressive town.  In this part of Indiana I’m pretty sure that breast feeding in public is against the law.  After Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” during the Super Bowl one mother wrote a letter to the editor asking how she would ever be able to undo the damage done to her children by seeing that breast.  (Yes, it’s true, though I suspect that most any damage done to her children has actually been done by her).

Before I had my own pool in the middle of 58 acres I would have loved for there to be a local pool where I could have gone skinny dipping, which is still legal in Brattleboro.

Still, I can understand why perhaps some might not want people strolling nude in the middle of downtown.  It wouldn’t bother me any more than someone strolling in a really bad paisley jumpsuit or a man in bad golf attire.  But I’m probably weird in that way.  I really wouldn’t care, but I can see how some might.

What I think is really cool though, is that it was teenagers that initiated this.  These are rebellious teenagers in the fashion that teenagers were rebellious in the late 60’s and early 70’s.  For the most part, it seems to me that the youth of today have lost that real rebellious spirit.  It’s much safer to go along, don’t challenge authority, don’t challenge the mainstream middle of the road, stay safe, stay comfortable, don’t risk losing your cell phone or PS3.

Hermann Hesse wrote: “The bourgeois prefers comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty, and a pleasant temperature to the deathly inner consuming fire”.  I kind of like the heat of the fire and I’m really happy to see that rebellion is still alive in teenagers.  Maybe they’ll even stand up and challenge our emperor’s clothing one day. 

Honey Bees are disappearing

There are oftentimes we wonder if we've ever done anything good in our lives.  Today, during a time when honeybees are disappearing from our country, I took this picture of one of my girls (all field bees are female) working a sunflower in a sunflower field I planted this year.

I'm a beekeeper.  That's one good thing.