What is it about the insatiable human appetite for manipulation of the physical world? It has served us well, enabling us to become the dominant species on this planet. And now we are poised to venture to new worlds.

But do all forms of life shape, shift, and recreate their homes, without a means to self awareness, such that the very foundation on which they stand is eroded? How many forests, how many rivers, how many ecological systems must we fragment and destroy before we learn that we are dependent on the very systems we replace with something of our own design.

When will progress no longer be our rally cry? Perhaps only when our very survival is at stake. But even then, someone will profit, someone will win.

I have considered my sources of joy: backpacking, rock climbing, surfing, and cross country running with my partner Colleen; wood working, cooking, reading, watching movies, inventing, and listening to music. I realized that not a single one of these involves the internet.

When I further delved into this investigation, I realized that I could not think of a single function of the internet that directly brings me joy. I appreciate being able to order books and movies from Amazon (but prefer book stores); and the weekly engagement of my SIMOC development team, but would prefer an in-person gathering were we not spread across three countries and as many States.

That says something. For me, the internet is not a source of joy. It is instead a source of anxiety for I know that I must engage, nearly every day, to maintain my income, to pay bills, to engage my employer (University of Arizona) in an ever growing mound of documents to prove my very existence within the layers of bureaucracy.

I already consider myself a minimal user, yet a reduced engagement is desired.

When you hold the hand of a dying man,
all the days you have shared
are recounted through tears and laughter.

And in that final breath
all his stories of life and death
become yours to share with others.

We will miss you Terry …

A Celebration of Life

I am a third generation depression era survivor, the grandson of Raymond and Leta Kruse who dedicated their life’s work not to comfort or fortune, but to assurance that their children and their children’s children would have the best life possible. They lived through the Great Depression as teenagers, and that experience clearly shaped who they were and how they moved through this world. Conservative with their finances, yet incredibly generous with all they did and gave. Their faith in something greater was paramount, as a guiding light, not a source of retribution or shame. They were living examples of the Greatest Generation, those whose lives were shaped by an incredibly time of rapid change, having used horse drawn carriages as a principal means of transportation to an RV for wintering in Texas; a hand pump in the kitchen replaced by running water; a cob stove in the basement replaced by forced air ultimately heated by a geothermal pump. Landline telephones, analog mobile phones and digital cellular phones; film cameras, Polaroid instant cameras, and digital cameras; the electric range and microwave ovens; movie theaters, VHS, digital cameras and personal computers where all invented in her lifetime. My grandparents both grew up with horse drawn buggies in concert with the second decade of combustion engine transportation, and a lifetime of advances in automobile design, safety, and efficiency. While my grandmother had not been given transport in a self-driving car, she was aware of them and responded, as she often did, “What is this world coming to? Lordy! My oh my.” And with each syllable she would rap her knuckles on the arm of her reclining chair or the kitchen table.

Leta passed on January 1, 2023. Her funeral and celebration of life was held in Glidden, Iowa on her 104th birthday, January 6, sharing the day with Epiphany (coming of the magi) in the church year, which she loved. One hundred and four years. Simply incredible. While her physical body slowed, her mind remained engaged and sharp until the final few years, conversations engaging with stories of how she and my grandfather Raymond Kruse met, her husband of 67 years, her life’s work on the farm, overland travel to Canada, Alaska, across Europe, and Turkey, and more than thirty years wintering in Florida, Texas, and Arizona.

My grandmother kept a written diary in bound books for something like fifty years. Mostly brief notes that pertained to the weather, health of the crops, experiences in travel, and time with family and friends. Leta compiled many of her stories into a volume called “The Dash” which referred to the time between life and death, between 1918 and 2023.

[need to insert a sample from her book]

Grandma loved numbers and math. She wanted to be a bookkeeper or accountant, but when she and Ray elected to pursue farming, that was more than a full time job and did not allow for additional education or a second job. She was always playing with dates, addresses, —anything that added to her favorite number “7”. As if by design, the year of her death “2023” adds to “7”. And as my mother Linda (Leta’s daughter) later noted, “January 1 (her death) + January 6 (celebration of life) = 7!”

My memories of Grandma are vast, both visual and auditory. She always wore earrings, even when working on the farm. She was very much concerned with the affairs of the neighbors, members of the church which she and my grandfather helped found, and relatives whom she felt had acted in such a way as to step outside of their social bounds. She was a mother of three (Gene, Linda, Karla), gardener, and cook for a dozen men for more than two decades. She would drive a tractor, truck, and minivan; shovel snow, cut grass with a riding mower, and collect eggs from 2000 chickens before the sun rose every morning. Her call “Shee-eep! brought the sheep running as they knew they would be well fed. Her laugh was deep and her voice unique, a rhythm and style of speech that I attribute to her generation.

I could have been brilliant, but I chose to manage brilliant people instead.

Wilderness is the mirror for civilization. When we fragment that reflection we lose the memory of where we came from and a sense of who we’ve become.

I stood beneath the stars tonight,
and could not recall when last I received them
as something more than a single breath
and a kiss good night.

As when I was a child, this time they invoked fantasies of flight.

We watch the news and ask how is it possible that anyone could cause such pain, could inflict such damage without provocation, without self-defence. We naturally separate the actions of a dictator and his army from those of our colleagues, family, and friends. That is a crazy man, over there, out of reach, out of touch. He is a murderer, a criminal, and insane. But I am not.

We are the most homogeneous species on the planet, our DNA more similar between any two of us than any insect, rodent, bird or mammal. When we point to another, we are in fact pointing to our self, for in us is the foundation for them; and in each of them is a nearly identical copy of us.

When Vladimir Putin sends the Russian military into neighboring Ukraine, it is our DNA that makes this unfathomable move possible, for inside each of us is the capability to wield deadly force in defense of an ideal. Each of us is a killer, a murderer, a soldier and a thief. We may not in this lifetime express that capacity, but it is there, waiting as a latent thought, a bad dream, or a quest for power in a world in which we all feel powerless, and seek more than we deserve.

I am Putin. I am Kim Jong-un. I am Chairman Mao, Andrew Jackson, and Hitler too. And there is a part of me that resembles Trump for in my chemistry and makeup is the desire to mock those I do not understand and to build a narrative that reinforces what I want to believe, not that which is based in fact and reality. To kill another human, through direct conflict or remote action seems impossible, but there are times where if I am honest, I could pull the trigger.

I am Gandhi, Mother Teresa, King, Mandela, and the people of Poland who receive refugees into their homes. My wiring and chemical make-up is all of these too. Yet for some reason, I find it more difficult, more challenging to move as they did and do, to hold strong to my values, to let go of anger and pain such that I can again see a path forward in which we all benefit as one. They are in me too, their DNA very much my own, voices waiting to be heard.

I am a multi-generational being, the product of my grandparents survival of the Great Depression and my parents deliberate integration of the ’60s psychology that gives children a say in the path to their destination. Generation to generation our epigenetic code carries forward a layer of protection for our children, our children’s children, and theirs too. The families that survive the devastation in Ukraine will carry trauma in the marrow of their bone. Some will respond with PTSD or life-long anxiety, others no apparent effect at all. Some will return to the life taken from them, others will start a new. And in the next generation will be a random mix of powerful programming that will give birth to a new host of dictators, peace keepers, and everyone in between.

It is not yet known if times of war beget warriors to follow or a cultural shift toward peace that is sustained. Perhaps in the future we will have this clarity, and while NATO fears nuclear retaliation and the Pope cries out “Stop this massacre!” a mathematician will calculate the impact on a global scale dictated not by the cost of reconstruction nor the lives lost to bombs dropped, but by the number of dictators and illicit rulers who will inevitably rise from the ashes only to do it all over again.

I feel more alone in the city
than I do alone in the wilderness.

The more we barricade ourselves from others, the more others want to get in.

The more we hide our bodies, the more the unclothed body is appealing.

The more we tell our children “No!” the more we rob them of their childhood, their creativity, their passion for learning terminated before it is ever given form.