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More From Less

The free market system works & all successful societies today are free market democracies. Free market democracies vary from the social democracies like Denmark and the less government involved democracies like the USA or Australia, but they are of the same species.
The bright line is between social democracy and socialism. It is unfortunate that they share the same root word, since it causes confusion. The difference is that in socialism government owns or controls major means of production.
Andrew McAfee is not a stickler for what people call themselves, but whether or not the systems feature what he calls the four horsemen of optimism – tech progress and capitalism combined with public awareness and responsive governments. The first two created and continue to advance the prosperity that they started around 300 years ago. The other two introduce values of the societies.
A way to look at tech & capitalism is that they are tools and methods. Just as you cannot build a house, a bridge or car w/o tools, you cannot build a prosperous society w/o tech and capitalism. They are necessary to a good society but not sufficient. To extend the tools analogy, we can use tools to build a home or a prison. Those are choices.
The tools of tech and capitalism have done so much good that we sometimes do not notice. The book goes into history of how we cured diseases, created widespread prosperity, greatly reduced deep poverty and enabled accelerated scientific advances. I fast-forwarded through this section, but I am aware that most people are unaware of the history so it must be included.
All of the above is common knowledge, if not always widely appreciate. The thrust of the book, implied by the title “More from less” is that market democracies have turned the corner in using less resources despite growing populations and more consumption.
Capitalists are always seeking to cut costs. This means they have the incentive to use less. Tech progress working in this incentive system gives the choices. A simple example is aluminum cans. An aluminum can today used only a fraction of the aluminum a can used decades ago. Even a greater example is what you & I are doing here. I wrote this and you are reading this with no need to print or distribute. We can all have a library of thousands of books with no need to for the resources to make and hold them.
Capitalism and tech progress do an outstanding job making new products. They do not do well with “externalities”. This is where the public awareness & responsive governments come into play. They are the democracy part of market democracy.
The obvious example of this is pollution. We need regulation and public awareness to identify and remedy externalities. There is a constant dynamic in this, but experience here is clear. Market democracies enjoy much healthier environments than others. If you look at the Index of Economic Freedom, you see that economic freedom is clearly related to better environments.
The big challenge today is climate change. Many people think that meeting the challenge will require radical changes. History is not on the side of this interpretation. Puritanical austerity will not do the job. The tools of tech and capitalism can be directed to address this problem too.
Let me give an example of how this worked earlier in my lifetime. I graduated HS into the “energy & resource crisis”. This was called an existential threat and experts told us that our way of life would need to change radically. They made dire prediction of famine, pestilence, deprivation. We were supposed to run out of oil, metals, wood … Scared the crap out of me when I was young. We adapted and overcame so well that it has become easy to dismiss those concerns as baseless. While there was exaggeration and hysteria, most concerns were real and overcome.
The system works. We can and often do change course, but there are no viable alternatives.

amazon.com   More from Less: How We Learned to Create More Without Using More

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The Invention of Nature

Humboldt is the most “famous” guy you have never heard of. His influence is big. Alexander von Humboldt influenced Thoreau, Darwin & environmentalists generally in the most recent centuries. More thing are named for Humboldt than probably for anybody else. There is the Humboldt current off the west coast of South America. Mountains, a species of willow, counties in the USA, even one of the seas on the moon. My neighborhood park in Milwaukee was named for Humboldt, although I didn’t know anything beyond the name when I was a kid So … who was Alexander von Humboldt? He was a great naturalist in the era just before specialization dominated the sciences. His monumental work was called “Cosmos” where he describe everything, the last person ever to credibly do undertake such an endeavor.
Humboldt explored lots of the world, but mostly he is known for his exploration of South America, where he mapped the land and documented thousands of new species.
The book I just finished was called “The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World.” It might seem strange that nature needed inventing. Isn’t it just there? Not really. Sure, something is there, but it is just chaotic, so much beyond human understanding that it is as meaningless to humans as the compete works of Shakespeare might be to your cat.
Humboldt’s contribution was to see nature as a whole, greater than the sum of the parts, as a complex of relationships. Our whole science of ecology comes from this understanding.
I bought this book because of this promise. I am interested in concept like this – the invention of nature, the creation of wilderness, do historians report or create history? This book was a bit of disappointment in this respect. It was a good biography of this extraordinary individual, but not so much a discussion of the invention of nature or to what extent we can call nature an invention.

amazon.com   The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) was an intrepid explorer and the most…       2

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Possessed by Memory

The Closing of the American Mind” was a great book that correctly called out identity politics and the tension between excellence and inclusion, so I thought I would look at his newest book called “Possessed by Memory.” I did not looks closely at the description. I should have done.
His last book is a work of fantastic erudition. He refers to works and thoughts that are just way beyond my comprehension.
I stuck with it for about an hour on the audio book while Bloom talked about the mysticism of the Kabbalah, what it means and its origins. It was interesting to learn that Kabbalah may be based on Gnosticism and hear about the discussion about whether Gnosticism is based on older Judaic tradition so that Gnosticism is based on the ancestor of Kabbalah. But the details of this do not interest me. I was listening to the audio book while cutting brush. When I brush cutter ran out of gas, I gave up on the book. Maybe it gets way better, but I will never know. The first hour or so is okay, but not worth the trouble. I cannot recommend this book unless you are deep into theology.

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Oak, longleaf and loblolly

I had not planned to stay overnight, but I felt too tired to drive home, so I stayed at Fairfield in Emporia. Not planning to stay, I didn’t have my computer, my phone was almost out of power & I didn’t bring a book, so I just went to sleep at 9pm and got a good night’s sleep.
Early today, I could go out to the farm and work all day w/o getting very tired. I got a lot done, but there is a lot to do.

I looked for and cut around the longleaf on Brodnax. Chrissy says I am praising my cutter too much, but it is great. Unfortunately, there are large areas where the longleaf are just absent.
Too few longleaf

As I have written before, I think they were planted too late in the year, so survival was not great. I think others were killed by the brambles. Anyway, I learned a few things I should have done. Not able to go back in time, however, I have two options and I will exercise both in part.
Oaks fill in
First is to allow oaks to fill in and then favor oaks. I want to have more oaks on the land, so I am cutting around the oaks where there are not many longleaf.
Super trees
The second option is to fill in with “super” longleaf. I ordered 1000 Varietal Loblolly Pine from Arborgen. These are supposed to be the best genetics. I figure that the longleaf have a three-year head start. If these loblolly grow as they say they should, they should end up at about the same in ten years. No matter what, I can see how well they grow.
First picture shows some of the longleaf where there are enough to them. Net is a little longleaf near a burned stump. I just though it was a good picture. Also indicates that the longleaf survived the fire. Picture # 3 is one of the oaks I found and trimmed around. Next is the 2016 loblolly on one side and the 2016 LL on the other. Longleaf are harder to grow. Last are tracks I made w/o noticing on the way to Burger King. I noticed only when I got inside. I guess the clay was on the bottom on my boots and it got loose when I walked across the wet parking lot.

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The Washington War

Just lucky they did not have Twitter in those days. We think of Roosevelt time and just after World War II as a golden age of American diplomacy and cooperation, and it really was probably the best time ever, but like most good times, it is a better story today than it was lived.
The “Washington War” covers the rivalries and sometimes the outright hatred among the men we nevertheless cooperated enough to win the greatest war in human history.
I have read dozens of books about this period. Most of them are Roosevelt-centric. It is hard not to be. He is the sun around which all the others orbit. But others also had agency. Roosevelt was the decider, but others set up his choices. This book does an excellent job of talking about the complexities of the relationships. Another think the author does well is to convey the contingency of history. We won the war and now it seems inevitable. In 1942, however, is sure was not a done deal. Things could have happened to produce a different result.
The thing that struck me most, however, was his discussion of the Morgenthau Plan. Of course, I studied it in history classes, but I thought of it mostly as a plan to partition Germany. I was only vaguely aware of its harsher aspects. It was a fatalistically cruel proposal, that would have resulted in the starvation or forced removal of tens of thousands of civilians. It is good to be reminded of the great hatreds that war engenders.
What saved Germany, and probably Europe was, maybe ironically, the Soviet threat. Decision-makers understood that destroying all German power would essentially invite Stalin into the middle of Europe. Stalin was ostensibly an ally, but most informed people understood already that he was a bloodthirsty tyrant on par with Hitler. It would not do to destroy one horrible totalitarian only to strengthen another.
“The Washington War” complemented the biography of George C Marshall that I finished a couple weeks ago. In fact, I got this book because it was recommended by Amazon as “readers also liked”. It is an interesting time to study.
As I said up top, it is lucky they did not have Twitter. FDR and lots of these great men had lots of hare-brained ideas. Fortunately, they floated them among themselves and they never got into the general circulation. Today’s leaders rarely have an unexpressed thought. Not good.

amazon.com   The Washington War: FDR’s Inner Circle and the Politics of Power That Won World War II

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Running, being and artery disease

Running was a big part of my life.  I ran for the usual reason like fitness & weight control, but I mostly ran for what I can only call spiritual reasons.  Running was how I felt in touch with myself and the world.  The rhythm of my breathing & the sounds of my footfalls, especially on gravel, combined with the more acute consciousness of my surroundings enhanced by the exercise made the whole thing a kind of meditation in motion.
Running away or running to
I started to run earnestly in the late 1970s.  There were reasons in my personal life.  I broke up with a long-term girlfriend.  I was becoming disenchanted with grad-school.  It was just a time of uncertainty and running seemed to fill in.  I cannot discount societal factors, however.  Running was in style. Whole books were written about it.  But maybe the biggest factor was the invention of good running shoes. Nike came out with their “waffle trainers.”  Until that time, running was too destructive on your knees and feet to be practical for anybody over the age of twenty-five.  There was a kind of folk wisdom, “the legs go first,” and it was true.
The 30+ years run
For the next thirty-some years, I ran regularly.  I started on the lake trails in Madison and Milwaukee, along Mendota and Michigan respectively.  I started to push longer and longer, eventually joyfully going on twelve-mile runs.  When I got the job in the FS, I took my running international.  I don’t like eucalyptus plantations because they support little wildlife because nothing much eats the leaves, even bugs, but eucalyptus plantations in Brazil were wonderful places to run because precisely because there are not many bugs.  My favorite trail in Norway went through the King’s farm, open to all but with perfectly maintained gravel trails and ideal Nordic farm scenery.  They said that old King Olaf sometimes walked around those trails, but I never saw him.  Krakow featured trails through a beautiful beech forest culminating at a big mound dedicated to national hero Josef Pilsudski.  But probably my favorite trail was closer to home. I used to call it my “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” run.  A long run could encompass the Capitol, Jefferson & Lincoln Memorials, and the various wonders of the Smithsonian. Besides the area around Capitol Hill, it was mostly flat and over well-maintained gravel paths.  I much prefer to run on gravel over concrete or asphalt.  I could list dozens of other favorite trails, but I am likely already being tedious.
A really debilitating injury
I found a nice running trail in Brasília along Lake Paranoá, and it was there that my decades-long running adventure ended abruptly.  It was on February 2, 2012 – Groundhog Day.  I was accustomed to pulls and pains associated with running.  I usually could just ignore them, maybe limp a little, but no injury stopped me from running for more than a few days.
A new kind of pain 
This time was different.  I thought it was just a shin splint.  I stopped running and in a very short time the pain stopped. That was easy.  I started running again and the pain came right back.  It was feeling different from any I felt before.  It was not so much a pain as an extreme fatigue.  I decided to give up the run for the day and walk home. But walking was not less painful.  I could go only about 100 yards before the pain got acute. But it went away almost immediately when I stopped, only to come right back when I moved.  It took me a long time to get home.
Walking hurt so much that I started riding my bike even the short distances to the restaurants and grocery stores nearby.  It hurt to ride the bike too, but not nearly as much. It was bearable.
This injury scared me.  Aspirin had no effect on the pain. Not being able to run was bad.  Not being able to walk was terrible.  But I still figured it was some kind of pull or tear.  It gradually got better, but I did not try to run again for fear of repeating.
Happened again
Then it happened in the other leg.  I was not running this time.  In fact, I notice it while driving. I was headed to Georgia for a conference on longleaf pine.  I was looking forward to exploring Savannah on foot.  This was less enjoyable with the pain.  I had trouble on the field trips.  I felt embarrassed as people older and apparently more infirm were easily able to do what I had trouble. I limped along.
This time, I figured I should see a doctor
Turns out that I had an aneurysm knee behind my knee.  They did some ultrasound and found I had peripheral artery disease (PAD).  This seemed very unfair to me, not that nature is fair.  This is the kind of thing common in people who do not exercise much, often those who smoke or have high blood pressure.  I had none of the usual markers.  The doctor gave me a long explanation, which boiled down to a simple, “shit happens.”   I don’t think he believed me when I told him that I exercised all the time.
There were two options.  You can get surgery to bypass the problem and put in stents.  In time, this would restore much of the mobility and it would relieve the pain almost immediately.  The other option was to exercise enough to mitigate the condition.   My explanation is simplistic and no doubt wrong in detail, but as I understand it the exercise creates new channels for the blood, expanding arteries.
Surgery or not
The doctors told me that the choice was mine, although they seemed to favor the surgical option, since it would relieve the immediate pain.  I don’t think they had confidence that I would exercise enough to fix the problem.  I chose the non-surgical option.  They gave me some blood thinning medication and told me to come right back if the acute pain returned, warning me that ignoring the condition was very dumb.  The condition could result in amputation or death if left untreated. I had been twice lucky, but maybe three strikes and I would be out.  They also wanted to do another ultrasound in six months.
Painful progress
Progress was painful, as the doctors warned.  I developed a kind of a system. I would walk as far as I could tolerate and then rest for 30 seconds.  I timed it.  It was remarkable how much it hurt and how fast the pain stopped when I stopped.  The muscle was starved for oxygen. That is why it hurt.  The pipeline was just too narrow.  When it got a chance to catch up, the pain was done.
I walked every day using this system.  I am not sure exactly when it got better.  One day I just noticed that I was not stopping for those “blood breaks.”   My legs still were not as good as before, but they were functional.
The hiking challenge
Alex wanted to go hiking in Utah, but the friend he had planned to accompany him dropped out. I was second choice.  I was happy to go, but still afraid of my legs not working well enough. I had the hiking poles, so I figured that I would be okay.  Even if my legs had been perfect, I cannot keep up with Alex. Age does that.  With that caveat, I went.  I did not always feel great, but I did manage all the hikes, albeit not so fast.
Next time I went in for the ultra-sound, they told me that my legs were better, not great but better.   They said that I could go to a year between appointments.  Last year (2018), I was lucky enough to get a WAE assignment to São Paulo.  I walked every day to and from the Consulate. It took about an hour each way and sometimes I would have to let my legs rest, but generally it got better and better.
When I came back, I felt that there was a quantum change.  My now annual ultra-sound confirmed it. The doctors were surprised.  It was as good as surgery would have done, maybe better.  I just got a letter from the doctor asking me to make an appointment for this year’s tests.
Back to old habits
Returning to running, I am going to try to return to running.  October 15-November 15 is the best running season in Virginia, so I am resolved to restart my running program next Tuesday.  I don’t think I will take my watch, so as not to be too discouraged by the slow time.  I will never get back to what I was, but even absent the PAD problem my 64-year-old self would not be as fast as my 56-year-old self.  At least now I have an excuse.

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What are some of your special talents

What are some of your special talents? Story worth

There is an old saying that if you really want to flatter somebody, tell them exactly what they think of themselves.  Since this a self-assessment, please take that into account.

First the negative.  I am a talent-free individual when it comes to arts, crafts or music.  I could not learn an instrument.  They kicked me out of the music program in 6th grade and told me not to come back.  I did better in art class in 7th grade but showed no special talent.  I can remember the words to lots of songs and I like to sing but nobody likes to listen to me doing it.  I can fix the breaks on my bike. If I try to fix much else, there are lots of left-over parts and “improvisation.”

Improvisation.  That is a sort of talent and I am reasonably good at that.  I also think I can write well, or at least rapidly.  And I am an entertaining public speaker. It was one of my strengths in the FS. At one time, I could give presentations in Norwegian, Polish or Portuguese and was in demand. Of course, it may have been mostly because I would do it.  Many colleagues avoided public presentations for fear of getting in trouble for what they said.  I had a talent for avoiding trouble in public presentations.  I am not sure it is a good talent, but I can talk around an issue and give authoritative answers while not coming down to a single position.  I really do believe in pluralism, so it was not as much a challenge accepting many positions.

The work of art I have been working on for years is my forest.  It is shaping up in ways better than I imagined but also according to some of what I did or had done.  I was looking over some of my blog entries about conservation.  I kept notes. I travelled a lot, visited lots of forest types, talked to lots of people and came found lots of ideas to apply to my small patch of land, and took pictures.  I sometimes feel small when people talk about managing thousands of acres; my big plans often involve acreage in the single digits. On the other hand, I have put my feet on most of my acres.  I have put my hands on many of the seedlings.   Though I know that it is unrequited, I love the land and I think that makes a difference to what I do on it.  The passion for the land, the curiosity to learn and apply more, this is a type talent.  They result on the land is a symphony.

When I shuffle off this mortal coil, I will leave three legacies – my family, my work and my land.  None have been my creations, but I have been an interactive in each.  I rarely write about the family, even though they are most important because they have their own stories to tell.  My work once seemed the most important thing in the world, but the perspective of time shows that I just held a place that many others could have done.  The land will persist. The decisions will be evident for decades, even if nobody knows those choices were mine.
There is a beautiful burr oak on the playground at Dover Street School. It greeted me as a mature tree when I showed up for my first kindergarten class.  It is there still sixty years later.  I have no idea who planted it or when.  But the legacy of that person has given me joy for – literally – almost sixty years.  If I can have a legacy like that, I will be content.  That is talent and that is special.
 
 
 

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Cutting brush

My right arm and hand, left shoulder and both legs hurt today, but I had fun and did some useful work cutting corridors for the fires we plan this winter. The weather was cool on Saturday and not hot on Sunday, so the work was easier.

I love my new cutting head. It can take down decent sized brush, does wonders on brambles and still get at the grass. The other new thing I got are those ear protectors you see in the picture. I can put the earbuds in under them and listen to my audio books – much better than using earplugs.

My bald cypress are my big concern. They survived the fire of 2017, as I confirmed when I see the black marks on the bottom of their trunks. But conditions have changed in that we harvested the nearby loblolly. This gave the cypress lots of sun, and they are responding wonderfully. It also gave more sun to the grasses, sedge and forbs. They have also grown wonderfully and I am afraid that they will provide more fuel for the fire than the cypress can tolerate. With that in mind, I am cutting corridors and cutting around individual trees. There are only a few dozen of them, so I have the capacity. I plan to set this part of the fire from the corridor, so that the fire will be “tame” here. I am afraid if it picked up momentum, it would be too hot.

You can see the corridors in the pictures below. The big asters are examples of the growth of the wildflowers since the harvest. They are about seven feet high.

The longleaf are supposed to be able to handle the fire. Still, I worry about them. My longleaf are so wonderful, as you see in the picture below. I don’t want to lose any of them, so I am cutting corridors there too, both as places to set off the fire and to provide calming for the fires that hit them.

A big danger is where two fires come together. They shoot up a hot plume that can singe the trees enough to kill them. The corridors should help mitigate this.

I have been consulting with Adam Smith about the fire. We agreed that we can back the fire into the stream management zones. It will be cool enough and probably go out in the SMZ. If it makes it to the water, it will stop there. In any case, it will not be likely to harm any big trees, but will clean up the brush.

After the fire, we will plant longleaf in the clearings.

I was also cutting on Brodnax. I am looking for longleaf we planted in 2016. I am finding some, but not as many as I would like. In the spirit of adaptive management, I am going to plant acorns I recently gathered and see if I can have some oak regeneration. There are also some big white oaks on the edge, so I expect that they will contribute too. I hope to get an oak-pine mix. I think it will be interesting.
Still a lot of work to do. I was happy to have Chrissy along this weekend, but I will probably have to go down alone a few more times before the fires.

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Growing up in Milwaukee

Some stream of consciousness thoughts about growing up in Milwaukee.
We were poor by today’s standards, although the comparison is unfair. Everybody was poor in the past, since progress and innovation has made once scarce luxuries into common necessities. Of course, it worked the other way around too. My father often pointed out how easy we had it compared to when he was growing up.

Like most Americans, we called ourselves middle class, although I think we would have chosen the description working class had it been available. Milwaukee was a working-class city. I could see a couple of steel mills and a tannery from our kitchen window. Within walking distance were factories that made industrial equipment, cement and very good bratwurst & kielbasa. The workers at these places could walk to work.

Our neighborhood was “blighted” during part of my childhood, at least that is what the city told my father. My parents worried that they would punch a freeway through our neighborhood. They tended to do that to blighted neighborhoods. I-94 ended up about a mile to the west. That is another thing we could see from the kitchen window. Cars used to make a lot more pollution in those days and so there was a yellow smudge line along the western horizon except on windy days. The air was not clean generally. We forget sometimes how it was in industrial cities during the 1960s. Besides the cars, the steel mills to the south and the Solvay Coke & Gas plant to the north ensured that we got a variety of flavors added to our air. The Solvay Coke & Gas plant flared methane as a byproduct and the eternal flame glowed day and night. The east wind that blew cool air off Lake Michigan brought the smell of the sewage plant. We did not have any fresh air and got used to that. When I came back to Milwaukee from college in Stevens Point, Wisconsin is the first time I noticed the special smells of my native city.

But I do not want to leave the impression of dirt and blight. It was not like that. Milwaukee was a great place to grow up. Those same factories that produced that pollution also provided plentiful jobs. We had lots of parks and back then Milwaukee was very peaceful. We had almost no crime and families were generally stable. Kids used to “fight” all the time, but never with the intention of hurting each other significantly and we stopped fighting if there was any blood or sign of real injury. Our schools were crowded, but competently run and students were reasonably well behaved. We had good local libraries, so everybody who wanted had free access to the accumulated knowledge of the world. Our Milwaukee Public Museum was a true gem and our zoo was great. We had public pools and you could swim in Lake Michigan if you could tolerate the cold.

We rarely went anywhere and few people moved in or out during my childhood. We could wander only as far as we could reasonably walk in one day. We had stability.

We were baby-boom kids and there were lots of us, the biggest generation in American history. Schools were crowded and the cities strained to build more. Our elders and the authorities were not sure what to do with us, so they often tried just to chase us away.
The cops were always chasing us out of parks, out of businesses or just asking us to move along when we got together in groups. There was a curfew for kids and you had to be home by 11pm. The cops enforced the curfew. I do not recall being afraid of the cops generally, but I do remember that we just ran away when we saw a squad car. We used to play football in the road. The cops would – justifiably – chase us out. We used to play football in nearby empty lots. The cops would chase us out of these places only after someone called them, but someone always did. That meant that our games usually lasted only around 20 minutes.
Most people did not call the cops on us unless mightily provoked but there were three who always did, maybe because of their proximity to fields where we played. The only one whose name we really knew was Mr. Reiner. He disliked kids in general and would call the cops when we walked anywhere near his house. The cops would come and kick us out, but they would sometimes explain that it was only because of him. He took the extraordinary step of painting in block letters on the side of his own garage – “Mothers watch your children.” A little down the road was a guy we just called “The Crab.” He was odd. He lived with his mother and was friendly to individual boys, but hostile to groups. My mother told me stay clear of such guys and I did. He called the cops as soon he spotted us, assuming we would soon be up to no good in his eyes. The last guy we called the “God D**M Man” because he would always come out swearing at us. He tended to yell and swear before he called the cops, so we would withdraw a little until he went in and then come back. The cops were usually okay to us. They would tell us to go to the park and play, where other cops would tell us to go home if we hung around too long.

Just as we were unaware that our baby-boom status was a departure from tradition, we did not know that we were the tail end of ethnic America. A generation earlier, our parents had been members of ethnic groups. They spoke different languages at home and were vaguely or openly hostile to other groups. Our generation remembered the ethnicity and would respond to surprising frequent question, “What are you?” by describing our purported ethnic heritage, but it didn’t make much difference.

I do recall a funny case of prominent ethnicity involving my father and our neighbor John Domelewski. They were arguing because John D accused us kids of making a mess in the alley. My father jumped to our defense, since he thought that he should enjoy a monopoly of yelling at his kid. John D and my old man were yelling loud enough to attract the attention of Mr. Gebhardt. Mr. Gebhardt was proudly German and a former Marine. He had the thickest white hair I have ever seen, trimmed to a flat head crew cut. I always thought he looked like a bald eagle. I think he would have been pleased.

Anyway, my father was calling John D a dumb pollock and John D was calling my father a stupid pollock. I don’t doubt that Mr. Gebhardt thought that both were right. They would not have come to blows. My father and John D were not that sort. But they calmed down and when they did they discovered that we kids were indeed guilty as John Domeleski said.
We had been playing in the alley and catching bubble bees in peanut butter jars. The trick was to catch the bee, shake the jar to make it mad and then release it close or onto a nearby friend. They rarely stung, but if they did it was just a temporary pain. If you cried about it, you suffered the greater pain of being ridiculed, but the anger option was available. I do not recall all the details, but someone had broken the bee jar in the alley and then, as often happens, we made a bigger mess. We had to clean up the whole alley, even though our mess was localized. My father and John Domelweski retired to their preferred activity of drinking beer as they watched us work.

I think this stands out in my memory for a few reasons. First, my father never got angry like that. This was odd. Second, parents, neighbors, cops and teachers – all adults – usually stood in solidarity against kids. If we were accused, we were usually thought to be guilty or at least culpable.

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The "real" Jesus

There have been books and documentaries talking about what the “real” Jesus looked like. Of course, nobody knows. Scientists have tried to guess based on what a statistically representative person living in that region might look like. Of course, we don’t really know what people from that region looked like 2000 years ago and Jesus’ father was from outside the region anyway. Does it matter?

I have been looking at examples of religious art, depicting Jesus, Mary and the Apostles. Very often, the people in the paintings look like the people who painted them. There were some very old conventions and some artists followed them. Some say the idea of what Jesus, Paul and Peter looked like was set before the 5th Century in art. I have included some examples.

The first is from Florence by an artist called Phillip Lippi. It is Mary and Jesus. We don’t know what Mary and Jesus looked like for sure, but thanks to this picture we know what at least some people in Florence looked like around 1400, since historians think this is Lippi’s wife and baby.

Next is Mary and Jesus by Giotto. He was among the first to make paintings more lifelike. We don’t know who he used as models, but his is a more traditional type of painting for the Virgin.

Getting into some older visions, we have St Peter & St Paul from what is now Turkey but in those days Constantinople was Roman. This is close to places where Peter and Paul actually walked. Finally a mosaic from Jordan, which is closer to the original action.
We talk today about having role models that “look like” us. Same back in those days.